Your expertise is built on experience, perspective, and judgement. But now you have to go out and attract clients yourself. And you've found that conversations drift, follow-ups stall, and nothing ever quite moves to a decision.
You leave a conversation thinking it went so well. There was interest. They seemed to understand. You tell yourself you'll hear from them in a few days.
Then nothing happens. No refusal. No decision. Just silence, or a vague reply that keeps things open without making actual progress. And you're left wondering what exactly went wrong, and why.
What hurts most is the uncertainty. You can't tell whether the issue is explanation, confidence, timing or something more fundamental. You just know that too many conversations don't get to a decision.
This site is for consultants, coaches, therapists, tutors, practitioners, and specialists who want a more reliable way of attracting the right work without resorting to hype, pressure, or performative selling.
What you can expect instead
This is what changes when we work together. Fewer people say, "That sounds interesting," and more people ask, "What would the next step be?" Conversations begin to move towards decision rather than explanation, and the next step becomes clearer without needing to be forced.
I offer one-to-one sessions. They're not about turning you into a marketer, but about restoring a sense of proportion and judgement, so you stop over-explaining, hesitating, and performing rather than engaging. One practitioner - a psychotherapist - described what changed after we worked together: "When I spoke with a new potential client, it felt like half the conversation had already happened."
The work is grounded, practical, and priced for where you are, not where you're heading.
Where to go next
If you want to see whether this fits your situation, start with IS THIS YOU?, below.
If you want to understand how this work is approached in practice, scroll down to HOW I WORK. That section explains what can change, what's expected of you, and what working together actually involves.
If you already feel this could be the right kind of work for you, go to the CONTACT section.
Is this you?
You're a self employed professional whose work genuinely helps people, but who doesn't yet have a reliable way of attracting enough of the right clients. In many cases, you're not new to your field. You may have spent years developing expertise inside organisations, working in roles where the work came through the system and your contribution was understood without needing to be constantly articulated. Now you're working independently, and that structure has gone. You have to generate your own work.
You might describe yourself as a consultant, coach, trainer, therapist, practitioner, specialist, or something adjacent. The label is not the issue. What you have in common is that you sell expertise and professional judgement, not products, and attracting clients was never what you were trained for.
You may already have tried to explain your work properly. You've written your brochures and rewritten your website. You've chosen your words carefully. On paper, it often looks sound. Yet, in practice, something still is not landing. People hesitate. Conversations drift. And nothing quite progresses.
A familiar set of situations
Some of these situations may feel familiar. You rely heavily on word of mouth. When referrals come, things feel easy. When they slow down, there's no dependable way to restart momentum.
You have plenty of conversations, and some of them feel genuinely promising. They say they're genuinely interested. They ask you to send something over. You leave thinking: this one seems different. Then the days pass. Nothing arrives in your inbox. You send a follow-up. No reply. You consider calling, though every instinct tells you not to chase. If you do call, it goes to voicemail. And your WhatsApp message still shows two blue ticks. And you're left trying to work out what exactly went wrong in a conversation that felt, at the time, like it was going so well.
You know you are supposed to market yourself, but most marketing advice feels vague, over engineered, or even repellent. Hype, pressure, and performative selling do not sit well with you. At the same time, doing nothing clearly isn't working either.
You've tried all sorts of of things that produced fragments of progress, but nothing you can trust or repeat. Directories. Social media. Other forms of outreach. Blogging. Perhaps even an online course or two. Over time, the accumulation of effort without return starts to wear you down. All you want is for somebody to pay you to do the work you know you're good at.
The real problem
This is not about becoming better at what you do. And it's not about turning yourself into a different kind of person.
It's about learning how to get out there in a way that fits the kind of work you actually do. Talking about it clearly, getting in front of the right people, and creating opportunities for engagement that don't rely on luck, referrals, or waiting.
For many experienced professionals, this is the first time they have had to think about this deliberately. Not because they avoided it, but because it was never previously their responsibility.
The purpose of this site is to help you decide whether this is the kind of problem you're facing. And whether one to one support focused on attracting clients and engaging prospects is what you should now be considering.
Who this work is for
This work suits a particular kind of person. The kind of people who take their professional standards seriously and who care about the quality of what they deliver. People looking for practical help getting 'out there' and having clearer, more productive conversations, but without turning themselves into marketers.
It suits people who are willing to take responsibility for attracting clients, even if they dislike the idea of marketing. They are prepared to act, reflect on what happens, and adjust, rather than look for a single trick that removes the need to engage.
It's not for people looking for hype, shortcuts, or passive solutions. And it's not for people who cling to an "if you build it, they will come" approach.
What comes next
If this description feels accurate, the next section explains how this work is approached in practice. It sets out what working together typically involves and what the work looks like once it becomes a practical decision.
How I Work
What's it like to work with Wild Thyme Consulting? Most independent professionals who get in touch already know their work is good. What they want to understand is whether this kind of support will actually change anything. This section addresses that directly: the results you can expect; the beliefs that underpin the work; and what makes this different from most of what is available.
Expected results
When this work is effective, conversations begin to move more naturally towards decision rather than explanation. People become clearer about what you do and why it matters without needing to be persuaded.
Client attraction becomes more deliberate and repeatable. You become less dependent on referrals and word of mouth - not because those stop mattering, but because you have a way of creating momentum that doesn't rely on them.
Not every conversation converts, but fewer stall for reasons that feel vague or discouraging. You'll find it easier to talk about your work in real situations. Not because you have learned a script, but because you understand what you are actually offering, what matters most to say, and what to leave out. The conversations that follow tend to feel less like performance and more like enquiry. And that, more often than not, is what moves them forward.
Over time, effort that looks busy but produces little tends to fall away. What remains is activity that creates genuine engagement and clearer next steps.
Guiding beliefs
Good work deserves to be recognised, not dressed up. The problem is rarely quality. It is clarity.
Marketing that requires you to perform or inflate yourself is unsustainable. If a way of attracting clients cannot be maintained without strain, it will eventually be abandoned.
Responsibility matters on both sides. This work is effective when you are willing to engage, try things, and pay attention to what actually happens.
My approach
Each session focuses on what you're actually doing to attract clients right now: where conversations begin, where they stall, and what tends to happen next.
The work stays close to real situations rather than abstractions. I pay attention to where effort is being misdirected, which often shows up as activity that creates motion without progress.
The work is iterative rather than prescriptive. You try things, we look at what happened, we refine. Confidence grows from experience rather than reassurance.
What makes this work different
This is not about importing tactics designed for someone else's business. The emphasis is on judgement, proportion, and fit rather than formula.
Having seen the same patterns repeat across consultants, coaches, therapists, and specialists, I can usually recognise when advice is technically correct but practically useless. And when activity sounds impressive but does not survive contact with real people.
What comes next
If this feels like the right kind of support, the next step is to understand how the work is structured in practice: how we begin; what a typical engagement involves; and what commitment is required.
Working Together
If you're a self-employed professional whose work is genuinely good but whose client pipeline is unreliable, uncertain, or too dependent on referrals, this is the work that addresses that directly. If you have not yet read the earlier sections of this site, it is worth starting there. If you have, and it has described your situation accurately, this is where that becomes a practical decision.
The Work
The purpose of this work is to give capable self-employed professionals a reliable way of attracting the right clients; one that fits how they actually work, and doesn't require them to become something they're not.
Every engagement begins with a diagnostic. Most people who come to this work have already tried a number of things that have not produced consistent results. That's not a reflection on their judgement. It usually means they've been addressing the wrong problem, or addressing the right problem in the wrong order. The diagnostic identifies where breakdown is actually occurring, so that what follows addresses the right problem rather than the most visible one.
There is not a range of options to select from. This is the work.
From there, the engagement takes one of two forms:
Focused interventions. A focused intervention addresses a single breakdown point over two to four sessions and produces a specific, usable output.
A positioning statement gives you a clear, accurate description of what you do and who it is for. One that holds up when someone asks the obvious question at a networking event, rather than producing a hesitation you have to talk your way out of.
A verbal introduction does the same work in spoken form, so that first conversations create genuine interest rather than polite confusion.
A sales conversation framework means you know how to move a promising conversation forward without it feeling like pressure or performance.
A proposal template means that when interest has been established, the written follow-up reflects the conversation rather than undermining it.
Focused interventions are priced between £250 and £600.
Complete interventions. A complete implementation programme works across all five areas over twelve sessions, building an entire client attraction system tailored to your work, your language, and the kinds of clients you are trying to reach.
By the end, you will have a clear account of who your work is for and what it does for them. One you can use consistently across conversations, written materials, and introductions without having to reinvent it each time.
You will know where to focus your time and energy to get in front of the right people, and how to approach those conversations in a way that feels natural rather than forced.
You will have a way of handling the moments where interest stalls or drifts, and a clearer sense of when a conversation is genuinely progressing and when it is not.
Referrals and word of mouth will still matter. But they'll no longer be the only thing standing between you and the next client.
Complete implementation programmes are priced between £3,000 and £4,000.
Next Step
The aim is to attract clients with integrity, not to override their judgement or your own. If you want to understand how I think about that, and whether the person behind this work is someone you could trust to apply it on your behalf, the next section addresses that directly.
Case Studies
There’s a reason most consulting websites have a Case Studies page. Before you can even think about engaging with someone, you want answers: Have I worked with people like yourself? Have I produced results? Am I credible? Do I actually know what I am talking about? Fair questions. All of them.
And you deserve straight answers.
Not anonymised paragraphs that have been so carefully worded they could describe just about anyone. A pipeline that improved. Enquiries that arrived ready to book. The right clients, finally. True enough to give the nod of recognition to. Too vague to trust.
Here's the thing: a case study describes what happened for someone else. What it can't tell you is whether I understand your situation, whether the work will change what happens in your conversations, or whether this is the right moment to act on it. Someone else’s experience cannot answer those questions. They only become clear once we have a conversation together.
Consider what you’re actually hoping a case study will uncover. That someone else had promising conversations that produced nothing? That they followed up carefully and got a reply that sounded like progress but wasn't - ‘we haven't made a decision yet, we'll let you know when we have’ - and found themselves nowhere?
You already know that story. It’s why you’re here.
What changes when this works is not your materials or your manner. It's the quality of what happens next. Conversations that used to drift begin to move. The follow-up that used to disappear into silence starts to produce something. Not because you've learned to push harder, but because you've stopped doing the things that were working against you.
This page is not trying to prove that others have been satisfied. It's trying to show that I understand what you are dealing with, and that the person writing it might be someone you could actually work with.
Here is what I think I know about you. You're not struggling because your work is weak. You're struggling because the people who would benefit most from it can't yet see that. And you've started to wonder whether the problem is you. Your confidence. Your manner. Your ability to explain yourself when the moment arrives.
It’s probably not. But that doubt has started to cost you, in hesitation, in over-explanation, in conversations where you give too much away trying to prove something that shouldn’t need proving.
That’s not a case study. But it is closer to what you came here to find out. That clarity doesn't come from reading about someone else's experience. It comes from a conversation.
And by the time that conversation is over, you'll already know whether this is the right work. Not because I’ll have made a case for it, but because the conversation itself is the evidence.
If you've read this far and recognised yourself, you are already further along than any case study would have taken you. The question that usually remains at this point is not whether the work makes sense. It’s whether the person doing it is someone you can trust to think clearly on your behalf, without posturing, pressure, or noise. The next section addresses that directly.
About Me - and "Wild Thyme"
By the time people reach this point, they usually already know whether the work makes sense to them. What they're often deciding now is whether I'm someone they trust to help them work out why their sales conversations aren't converting, and what to do differently, without posturing, pressure, or noise.
I work with experienced professionals who are good at what they do, but find client attraction strangely uncomfortable. Not because they lack ability, but because selling was never meant to be the job. Over the years, I've seen the same pattern repeat across consultants, therapists, practitioners, specialists, and small business owners who trade in judgement rather than products.
My name is David Feller. My background is not in tactics, funnels, or “growth hacks”. It sits in years of working alongside people whose work genuinely helps others, and watching what happens when that work has to be explained, justified, or compressed into something it's not. I'm interested in where conversations stall, where confidence drains away, and where capable people start performing instead of engaging.
What I bring to the work is perspective, not a formula. I've been around long enough to recognise when advice is technically correct but practically useless. When something sounds impressive but does not survive contact with real people. When activity creates motion without progress. My role is to notice those moments quickly, name them plainly, and help you move past them without making you feel foolish for missing them.
Much of the work is about restoring proportion. Helping people stop apologising for their fees. Stop chasing the next bright tactic. Stop trying to sound like something they are not. And start having fewer, better conversations with people who are actually deciding whether to proceed.
One practitioner described a shift they hadn’t expected: “Someone contacted me and said they’d read the entire site. They told me, ‘Normally I skim a few bullet points and decide. But I kept reading.’ When we spoke, it felt like half the conversation had already happened.”
Another client noticed a different change: “Before, every discussion seemed to slide towards price. Now the conversations that continue are different. People say, ‘I’m not sure if I should do this at all. But if I do, it would only be with you.’ That surprised me.”
A newly established practitioner put it more simply: “People don’t ring to ask whether they should work with me anymore. They ring to ask when. They already know what I’m about, and they use the same language I do.”
Those moments are not accidental. They happen when persuasion gives way to recognition. When language is organised around the client’s problem, not the practitioner’s label. When explanation stops trying to impress and starts helping the right people recognise themselves.
I'm not interested in turning you into a marketer: No doubt you'll be relieved to hear that. The work is about helping you stop tripping over yourself when opportunities appear, and responding in a way that reflects the quality of the work you already do.
Wild Thyme is taken from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, a play full of confusion and crossed signals, of people losing their bearings, of feelings that never quite find their right expression. Oberon describes a grassy bank "where the wild thyme blows"; a still, sheltered place in the middle of all that disorder. It is where he chooses to act. Where he applies the potion. Where the transformation begins. Things fall back into place. The name is not accidental.
People have said to me that they often wish they had found this work earlier. Usually after realising how much time and money they spent chasing things that looked like progress but changed very little. That regret matters, but it is not the point. The point is that once things click, the work becomes simpler, calmer, and easier to sustain.
If this website feels less brash than most marketing sites, that is deliberate. I am not trying to appeal to everyone. I am interested in working with people who recognise their own situation here, and who want to move forward without pretending, performing, or inflating themselves.
If you've read this far and feel a sense of relief rather than excitement, we should probably be talking. Not to be persuaded. But to find out whether the timing is right and whether this is something we should be doing right now. If that conversation feels like the right next step, the Contact section is where it begins.
Contact
If you’ve reached this point, you probably already have a sense of whether the work itself makes sense to you. What usually remains is a different question: about timing, fit, and whether it’s worth starting a conversation now.
Getting in touch does not commit you to anything.
The purpose of first contact is simply to understand your situation a little better and decide, together, whether this is the right work to do at this point. There is no pressure, no pitch, and no obligation to proceed.
People reach out in different ways, depending on where they are. Some prefer a short message to test the water. Others want to set things out more carefully in writing. There is no right way to begin, and no expectation that you already know what you want to do.
However you make contact, the starting point is the same. We have a practical conversation about what’s happening in your business, what you’ve tried so far, and where things feel stuck or uncertain. If it looks like this work can help, we talk about what that would involve. If it doesn’t, we say so plainly.
This initial conversation is exploratory and uncharged. It exists to remove uncertainty, not create it. You won’t be put on the spot, sold to, or treated as though you should already have answers you’re still working towards.
You can contact me in whichever way feels easiest. A brief WhatsApp message is fine (see the icon in the bottom-right corner). A more considered note via the form below is equally fine. Email or phone works too. Choose the option that feels most natural.
If you’ve been hesitating because you feel too small, underprepared, or unsure how to explain things, that’s normal. Most people I work with felt exactly that way before the first conversation. You don’t need to arrive confident or clear. That’s part of what the work is for.
If this feels like the right next step, I’d be glad to hear from you. And if it doesn’t, you should leave here with more clarity than when you arrived.
David F.
Get In Touch
Oops, you're not quite in the right place. This page makes considerably more sense on a mobile, and that's a deliberate choice rather than an oversight. It runs to several thousand words, and that kind of reading works better when you're holding it in your hand than when you're sitting at a desk. Scan the code opposite and we'll continue there.
Wild Thyme Consulting works one to one with independent professionals who are good at what they do, but find that early conversations with prospective clients don't reach a decision.
In most cases, you'll have arrived here after a conversation with me, my business card in hand, the QR code scanned. That's precisely how this page was intended to be read, on your phone, in a quiet moment, after we've spoken.
The mobile experience mirrors the kind of one-to-one exchange that Wild Thyme Consulting is built around, and that's not something a desktop or laptop replicates quite as naturally.
What you'll find there is not a typical marketing or sales resource. It isn't about learning to become a better marketer or a more confident salesperson. It's about something different entirely. The page is designed to do that work for you, so that by the time you speak to a prospective client, the question on their mind is not whether to proceed, but when.
The page was designed with a specific intention. Most pages in this space try to persuade. This one tries to explain. By the time you reach the end of it, the conversation we need to have will largely have already happened.
If you'd prefer to make contact directly, leave your details below and I'll be in touch. There's no obligation and no pitch, just a straightforward conversation about whether this is the right work for you at this point.
Get in touch
