What this is: A practical and personal guide to why honest conversation is the most powerful business tool an independent consultant has.
Who it’s for: Independent consultants who want to rebuild trust with past clients and warm contacts without it feeling like a sales call.
What you’ll take away: How to invite someone into a conversation, what to ask when you get there, and why listening is the strategy.
The most valuable thing you can do for your business this week isn’t write a post, launch a product, or update your website. It’s have an honest conversation with someone who already knows you.
Most consultants try to sell before they listen.
They build the offer first. They write the sales page. They launch the thing. And then they go looking for people who need it.
I do it the other way around.
I have the conversation first. I listen. And then, when I know what someone actually needs, I tell them how I’d do it if it was my business.
That’s not a methodology I read in a book. It’s how I’m wired. And it took me a long time to stop fighting it and start building around it.
The Tea & Chat is how I did that.
What the Tea & Chat actually is
It’s 30 minutes. It’s free. It’s booked via a simple scheduling link so there’s no back and forth about timing.
And it is not a discovery call.
A discovery call is where you find out if someone is a good fit for your offer. A Tea & Chat is where you find out what someone actually needs, without deciding in advance what the answer is going to be.
There’s no deck. No agenda. No carefully prepared list of questions designed to move someone towards a yes.
Just a conversation. Me, you, and the truth about where your business actually is right now.
I named it Tea & Chat on purpose. Because that’s what it feels like. Two people who know each other, catching up properly. And somewhere in that catching up, something useful always emerges.
The invitation
Here’s how I frame it when I reach out to someone I want to reconnect with:
“I do a free 30 minute Tea & Chat, it’s just a conversation, no agenda at all. If you fancy catching up properly I’d love to hear how things are going. Here’s the link to book a time that works for you.”
That’s it. No pitch hidden inside it. No pressure. Just an open door.
The scheduler link does something important here too. It says: I’m organised, I respect your time, and this is a real thing. It removes friction and signals that you take the conversation seriously, even if it’s free.
I use TidyCal for mine. Simple, clean, does exactly what it needs to and there is no monthly subscription fee, just a one time fee which starts from $29 for lifetime access (this os my plan). Try TidyCal here
Disclosure: the TidyCal links in this article are affiliate links. If you sign up through them I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. I only ever recommend tools I actually use myself.
The conversation
Once you’re in the room, the only job you have is to listen.
Not to position. Not to steer. Not to wait for the gap where you can mention what you offer. Just to listen, ask good questions, and let the conversation go where it needs to go.
The questions I find most useful are the ones that get past the polished version of someone’s business and into the real version.
Not “what are you working on?” but “what’s actually going well right now?”
Not “what are your goals?” but “what’s keeping you up at three in the morning?”
Not “what do you need help with?” but “if you could change one thing about how your business is running right now, what would it be?”
Those questions open people up. And when people feel genuinely heard, they tell you things they wouldn’t put in a brief. The thing they’re quietly building. The launch they haven’t announced yet. The problem they’ve been carrying alone because they weren’t sure who to tell.
That’s not gossip. That’s trust. And it’s the most valuable thing that can happen in a 30 minute conversation.
What you’re really doing
Big organisations pay other big organisations thousands of pounds to find out what their customers actually need. What keeps them up at night. Who else is competing for their attention. What they wish existed that doesn’t yet.
You can find out all of that in a single honest conversation.
Because here’s what a Tea & Chat actually gives you, if you’re paying attention:
You take the temperature of where someone is in their business right now. You hear what’s working and what isn’t. You find out what’s coming: the launch, the pivot, the thing they’re quietly planning. You discover who else they’re talking to and what’s competing for their budget and their attention. And you find out what they actually need, which is almost never what they said they needed when you last spoke.
That intelligence doesn’t just help you serve this person better. It helps you understand your market in a way that no amount of research or content consumption ever could.
And you got it by having a cup of tea and asking a few good questions.
Why this works for me specifically
I don’t have a product catalogue. I don’t have a menu of services you pick from and add to a basket.
What I have is this: a conversation, followed by exactly the right thing for you.
My Human Design strategy is to respond, not to initiate. I don’t guess what people need and build things to match. I wait for the conversation. I listen to what’s actually going on. And then I respond with exactly what the situation calls for.
The Tea & Chat is how I’ve built a business around that. It’s not a limitation. It’s the model.
And the thing I’ve noticed, consistently, over years of doing this: the people who book a Tea & Chat and have a genuinely honest conversation almost always end up knowing exactly what they need next. Sometimes that’s working with me. Sometimes it isn’t. But they leave with clarity they didn’t have before.
That’s not an accident. That’s the point.
Below, I’m giving you the exact questions I use in a Tea & Chat, how to set up your own version in TidyCal in under ten minutes, and the one thing to do at the end of every conversation that turns a good catch-up into a long-term relationship.