Leaving corporate to start consulting: what if nobody pays me?

If you are inside one of the redundancy numbers in the news, or sitting next to somebody who is, the first thing on your mind is probably not strategy. It is money. What happens when the salary stops.

I volunteered for redundancy. Four others were made redundant after me. I left in 2025 with no clients and nothing built on the outside. So this is about the fear I had myself: what if nobody pays me?

Why the outside looks empty from inside

Inside a company, the money question answers itself. The salary arrives on the same day every month, whatever kind of month you had. One employer pays for everything you know.

I worked in technology reward at UBS. Retention is designed: bonuses are deferred and paid out over years, so whenever you look up there is money you would be walking away from. The outside is meant to look empty from where you sit.

So the fear is real, and it is also partly the design doing its job. Nobody pays you until somebody does. What changes it is evidence, and you can collect that before you leave.

I made my first sale early, because I sold before I built. Then revenue dipped, and I learnt that one sale is not a practice. You need a way of finding the next client, not only the first.

How to test it this week

1. Write down one problem you have solved inside the company that somebody outside it would pay to have solved. Name who has it as a role, not a sector.
2. Find three people who have that problem. Not friends being kind: people who would sign the invoice.
3. Ask them what the problem costs them today, and whether they would pay to have it solved. Stay within what your contract allows.

If two of the three lean in, your problem has a name outside your building. If none do, you found that out in a week rather than a year, and you still have the salary.

Already out? Run the same three steps on a problem you have not tested yet.

Step 1 is the hard part: which problem. The free diagnostic, what would people pay me for?, works on exactly that, from your own history.

You do not have to stop being afraid that nobody will pay. You have to find out while somebody still is.