The 100 Person Challenge

What I tell everyone to do when they ask me if they should start their own consulting business

In 2018, I made a leap—I started Array, my own company.

In the course of a few weeks I went from commuting to my desk at Redscout’s SF office and reporting to the company’s CEO, to sitting on the corner of a shared table at The Wing’s new SF location and reporting to… myself.

I launched the company without a founding client. Just a vision for who I wanted to work with and just enough naiveté to get started. So on my ‘first day’ at work, I had to decide how I wanted to approach the beginning.

“How you do anything is how you do everything”

I’ve always been a very task-oriented person. Regardless of the size of the challenge, I break it down into tasks. (How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time.)

Artwork by one and only Shel Silverstein from his poem Melinda Mae

Back when I’d made the jump from the non-profit world to consulting, I had to convince a CEO to hire me. They were looking for a head of business development to steer their digital shop into a bold, financially successful future. I’d spent the previous years running fundraising in the arts, and then building campaigning tools and platforms for MSF. Not exactly the perfect match for running business development for a NY creative firm, but I knew what I was capable of.

After I interviewed with the company’s three partners, I knew the issue that I had to overcome. I had to convince them that I could connect them with the right type of partners. It would be very easy for them to hire someone already doing that job at another firm. It would be harder to hire someone moving from Switzerland back to the U.S. So to convince them, along with my thank you notes, I included a list of the first ~50 people I’d call the first week (names, titles, and the types of projects I’d envision us being able to do with them) if they hired me.

I got the job.

Practice makes perfect

When I started Array, I did something similar. On my first day working for myself I made a list of 100 people I knew—either directly or within one degree—that I believed would care or at least be willing to listen to what I was building with Array. Once I had the list, I started writing and calling those people.

The act of calling and writing forced me to get tighter at describing why I was starting Array, what I was offering partners, and who I envisioned working with. Within the first 20 or so notes and calls, I landed my first few projects and Array was off to the races.

First steps

That “100 people” challenge is one I share with anyone thinking of starting their own service company, or beginning to freelance.

It’s a concrete task that forces someone to consider who they know that could be interested in their business. Maybe they can’t get to 100 but that’s not really the point. The point is dedicating time to consider—who do I already have in my corner? How would I talk about my business with them? Would they support me? It’s the first step.

I hope sharing this encourages more people to take their first step.

More soon,

ALC