No, and it's worth being precise about why. IR35 is a rule about people who work through their own limited companies; I don't. I'm a sole trader, engaged business-to-business under written terms. What matters for you instead is employment status generally, and the engagement is built to be self-employment through and through: I control how the work gets done, I work for multiple clients, I can bring in associates, and there's no obligation on either side beyond the SOW. If your accountant or legal team want to look under the bonnet, I'm happy to walk them through it.
Covered from the first conversation. My Terms of Business include a confidentiality clause that runs for five years after we finish, and it cuts both ways. If you'd rather use your own NDA before we talk specifics, send it over; I sign sensible ones without fuss.
Then we stop, and the exit is priced fairly. Retainers roll monthly with 30 days' notice. The Fractional Executive starts with a three-month term, because nothing useful happens in the first month, and rolls monthly after that. Project work is billed against milestones you've accepted. Anything paid in advance for work not yet done comes back to you pro rata. And a "Let's just talk" session is free if it's not useful within the first ten minutes. I'd rather lose an engagement than have a client feel trapped in one; trapped clients don't refer.
Often, yes. The industry has earned its reputation: armies of juniors, hundred-page decks, recommendations that evaporate on contact with Monday morning. I spent twenty years inside that machine, which is exactly why this is built to be the opposite. One senior person, evidence before opinion, and a written plan you could execute without ever hiring me again; every engagement is designed to make itself unnecessary. That last part is the test I'd apply to any consultant, me included: ask what happens when they leave. If the answer involves more of them, keep your money. If it helps, here's what you'd actually be signing.
A two-page statement of work in plain English: what I'll do, when, for how much, and how we'll work together. No schedules of definitions, no clauses that only make sense to the person who wrote them. Here is a real example (PDF), and the live ones are no longer. The Terms of Business sit behind it and are written the same way.
Up to a point, and the limit is rather the answer. Every output is written for one business, from its own numbers, its own people and its own particular mess, so there is no library to browse and the one closest to your situation almost certainly doesn't exist yet. What I do have is a small number of past deliverables with the client details taken out, and I'm happy to walk you through one on a call: the shape of the thinking, the level it's pitched at, and how specific the actions get. The thing you'll notice is that they don't look much like each other. That isn't a filing problem. It's the product. (If it's the commercial side you want to see rather than the work, the example SOW is above.)
Three reasons. You get the person you met: no pyramid of juniors learning on your invoice. You pay for judgement, not overheads: my prices are a fraction of a firm's because there's no office tower inside them. And accountability is undiluted: one name on the work, findable at the end of a phone. What a firm offers that I don't is an army. If your problem genuinely needs forty people, I'll say so and help you buy the army well.
Whichever the work needs, agreed in the SOW. I'm based in England, about an hour from London, but my postcode has never scoped an engagement: I'll work on site anywhere, UK, Europe, the US or beyond, with travel and expenses recharged at cost wherever the meeting is, including the train into London, and remote everywhere in between. Two decades of global work taught me when a problem needs a room and when it needs a video call; diagnostics usually deserve some days on site, ongoing rhythm works well remotely.
Me. Where an engagement needs more than one pair of hands, I bring in trusted associates I've worked with for years, and I remain responsible for every line of the output. You'll always know who's doing what, and the person accountable never changes.
Please do, and thank you. Most of my work arrives this way, usually from accountants, and the arrangement is simple: I'll tell your client honestly whether I can help, and if I can't I'll say so and point them at someone who can. No fee changes hands in either direction, because a referral you were paid for isn't a recommendation. You're welcome on the first call too; the accountants I work with most often ask to be. Nobody owns the client, everybody serves them, and if that's how you work as well then we'll get along.
The first conversation, usually this week; there are evening slots if daytime is impossible. A Diagnostic Day typically lands within a fortnight. Retainers and projects start when the SOW is signed, which is two pages of plain English rather than a procurement saga, so it's rarely the bottleneck.
Still weighing it up? The cheapest way to find out is a conversation: book a free 30-minute call or start with Let's just talk.