Episode 105: I Didn't Plan Any of It: How a PhD Scientist Built a Fully Booked Consulting Practice Without a Sales Strategy

Season #2 May 07, 2026

She launched an LLC as a side project with no strategy — and 9 months later was fully booked across four retainer clients. If you're wondering whether your expertise alone can fill your pipeline, this episode will change how you think about it.

In this episode, host AJ Riedel talks to Charla Marshall, Founder and Principal Consultant of DNA-ed Services, LLC. Charla is a forensic geneticist and former Deputy Director of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory who built a thriving consulting practice in one of the most niche scientific fields in the world — entirely through reputation, without a sales strategy.

Why You Should Listen to This Episode

If you're a self-employed consultant struggling with inconsistent income, a thin pipeline, or the pressure to constantly market yourself, Charla's story will reframe everything. She went from government employee to fully booked consultant in just 9 months — not through cold outreach or a marketing funnel, but by leveraging deep specialization and a reputation built over a decade of high-stakes scientific work. In this conversation, Charla gets honest about what she doesn't know (business, taxes, sales), how she's thinking about revenue diversification, and what it really looks like to build a consulting practice that supports the life you actually want.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

How Deep Niche Expertise Eliminates the Lead Generation Problem: Charla explains how being the go-to expert in a highly specialized field — forensic genomics — meant clients came to her before she ever had to go looking for them.
Why 'Fully Booked' Isn't the Finish Line: Now maxed out at 50+ hours a week across 3–4 retainer clients, Charla is confronting what comes next — and why even a thriving hourly practice can leave you financially exposed.
The Revenue Diversification Challenge Every Successful Consultant Faces: Charla shares her thinking about moving beyond hourly retainers toward books, speaking engagements, and brand partnerships — and why she's approaching it organically rather than forcing it.
How to Build Business Credibility When You Have Zero Business Background: From filing an LLC to doing her own taxes with TurboTax and ChatGPT, Charla walks through the scrappy, resourceful approach she took to figure out the business side from scratch.
The Lifestyle You Can Actually Build as a Self-Employed Consultant: Charla describes the real day-to-day of a thriving consulting practice — including walking the beach on weekday mornings and being present for her kids in ways that were impossible in her government role.
Why Consulting Success Is Repeatable — If You've Put in the Work: Charla makes the case that if you've genuinely 'peaked' in your field — done the work, built the reputation, earned the credibility — transitioning to consulting is less of a risk than it feels.

Listen to These Key Moments

Note: Timestamps are estimated

[0:00] Welcome and What 'Thriving Through' Means — Charla's definition: enjoying the whole ride, not just the milestone moments.
[1:15] The Path from Government Scientist to Self-Employed Consultant — From Deputy Director of the Armed Forces DNA Lab to launching an LLC out of her guest room.
[4:00] How LinkedIn Launched a Consulting Practice Without Trying — What happened when a colleague mentioned her LLC name in a conference presentation slide.
[6:30] Zero to Fully Booked in 9 Months — How word of mouth and niche reputation filled her calendar faster than any marketing strategy could.
[8:00] Why This Path Is Repeatable (If You've Done the Work) — Charla's take on 'peaking' in your field and why it's the right time to transition to consulting.
[10:30] The Business Admin Reality No One Prepares You For — Filing an LLC, doing taxes, building a website — and how AI tools helped her navigate it all without hiring a lawyer.
[13:00] What Keeps a Fully Booked Consultant Up at Night — The real risk of an all-retainer, hourly-based practice and how Charla is thinking about what happens if a client walks.
[17:00] How Charla Is Building Revenue Streams Beyond Her Retainers — Books, paid speaking, brand partnerships — and her organic approach to growing them.
[22:00] The Consulting Lifestyle: What It Actually Looks Like — Beach walks on weekday mornings, less stress, more presence with her kids.
[25:00] The Resource That Expanded Charla's Vision — The podcast that helped her see that matching her old government salary is just the floor, not the ceiling.
[27:30] Why You Can't Build a Consulting Practice Alone — On finding a mentor, consuming the right content, and the value of hearing from someone who's been exactly where you are.

About Charla Marshall

Charla Marshall is a forensic geneticist with a PhD and a decade of federal government experience, including serving as Deputy Director of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, where she led a 11.5-year project developing DNA sequencing techniques to identify Korean War soldiers. She is the founder of DNA-ed Services, LLC, a specialized consulting firm focused on forensic genomics technology transition. In just 9 months, Charla went from launching an LLC as a side project to fully booked across 3–4 retainer clients, entirely through reputation and word of mouth.

Connect with Charla on LinkedIn: Charla Marshall

Charla's Website: DNAedservices.com

Episode Transcript

Charla Marshall — Full Interview Transcript

What Thriving Through Means
AJ: Welcome, Charla Marshall. Welcome to the Thriving Through Podcast. I'm so glad to have you as my guest today.

Charla: Thank you for inviting me, AJ. I'm really excited to be here.

AJ: The first question I like to ask podcast guests is this: What does thriving through — or thriving — mean to you?

Charla: Thriving through, to me, means enjoying the process. In our work and our careers, we're often focused on a goal. For me as a scientist, that goal could be something like getting a grant funded or getting a publication accepted. We're often waiting for those benchmarking moments in our careers to be happy or fulfilled or thriving. But when I think of thriving through, it's enjoying the full process — making sure that your daily life is just as exciting as those milestone moments. Thriving through is enjoying the whole ride.

The Path from Government Scientist to Self-Employed Consultant
AJ: Tell me your path to becoming a self-employed consultant.

Charla: My path started as a scientist. I was working for the federal government for 11 and a half years — nine years as a contractor, and then two and a half years as a federal employee. I was the Deputy Director of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. It was a very exciting job. I couldn't have asked for more as a forensic scientist. I have an anthropology degree, so that was as good as you can get.

But I just wasn't happy. It wasn't the right role for me. It felt limiting in terms of what I could do. I didn't have much freedom or independence. I was definitely part of a very regimented system, working in a military organization. Once I realized that even a dream job isn't necessarily my dream job, I started to think about what was next.

When the opportunity came to resign through the Deferred Resignation Program last year, I took it. Luckily, I had a supportive supervisor and supportive leadership, and they let me go — which meant they lost the position. They no longer have a Deputy Director for that lab. The deferred resignation gave me four months to decide what I was going to do.

I knew I was in a very niche field, and even within forensic genetics, I'm in an even more specific niche. I needed time to figure out my next step. Having a PhD and a postdoc and doing a lot of publications, I assumed the academic path — becoming a professor — was the logical next step. And I'd always loved the idea of being a professor, but when I examined it honestly, what I was really attracted to was the summers off and walking across a beautiful campus. It had nothing to do with the actual teaching or research.

Launching an LLC Without a Plan
Charla: So while I was applying for academic jobs, I also started an LLC. I live in Delaware — it's very easy to start a business here, and everyone knows it's a tax-friendly state. I probably spent a couple hundred dollars on a website and filing the LLC. I figured I would take some small projects on the side while I pursued my long-term goal of a professorship. That's not what happened.

I announced this on LinkedIn. At the time, I maybe had 500 followers. I thought nobody was paying attention to what I was doing. I was just expressing myself into this void of an audience — I genuinely thought I was talking to myself.

Well, apparently I wasn't. I went to a conference, and one of my colleagues put the name of my LLC — DNA-ed Services, LLC — on a presentation slide. I was so embarrassed. I thought, this is one of the many little projects that might not go anywhere. I had zero confidence it would work or take off.

But after that conference, it led to two actual clients and another potential client. Within the next couple of months, I was fully booked. I did not plan any of it. I didn't even really know what a consultant did until this past year. It wasn't a career path anyone had ever shown me — but here I am, and I am so happy.

Zero to Fully Booked in 9 Months
AJ: You went from zero to fully booked — 50-plus hours a week across three to four retainer clients — and you did that in nine months.

Charla: Yes, I did.

AJ: How much of that was intentional strategy versus word of mouth and good timing?

Charla: None of it was intentional strategy. My only strategy was: I'll do this while I apply for a real job. It was completely a side project in my mind.

But because I'm in such a niche field, and there is what I would describe as a technology transition happening in forensic genetics right now — we're moving from the old DNA fingerprinting methods to genomics — it's a big shift. I happened to be in that role at the military lab for a long time, and I learned all the new techniques. It gave me a strong background in doing genomics in a forensic space.

Because of that specialization, there's a real need. Other labs are saying, we want to adopt this technology — Charla's done that, let's call her. I'm primarily working with organizations rather than individuals. It's been really nice. But yes, completely word of mouth and reputation-based. I've been really fortunate to have the clients I have, because they're wonderful to work with.

How Repeatable Is This Path?
AJ: What's your honest read on how repeatable this process is?

Charla: I think it's repeatable. I did a PhD, a postdoc, and then 11 and a half years on a major project — developing DNA sequencing techniques to identify Korean War soldiers buried at the Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. I put my heart and soul into that project. I did a lot of publications and won a couple of awards.

I think you reach a point of peaking in your field — and peaking will look different for everyone. But if you've put in the effort, if people know who you are and respect your work, that's a good time to transition to consulting. A lot of people do it toward the end of their careers, near retirement. But I think more people in my generation are choosing consulting earlier, because we're realizing that 9-to-5 work in large organizations isn't necessarily fulfilling for us. We want to be in charge of our own schedules, take our kids to school, take on projects that genuinely inspire us.

The Biggest Challenges: Business Admin and Revenue Vulnerability
AJ: Tell me a story or two about the biggest challenges you've faced building your practice.

Charla: The biggest challenge is that I knew absolutely nothing about business. Nothing about how to start a business, what forms were required, how to do taxes. All of those administrative things were a huge challenge — making sure I did them right and on time. I wanted to be frugal starting out. I didn't hire an accountant. I'm using TurboTax. I haven't hired a lawyer yet. So I've been using AI — ChatGPT — to help guide me through the process. How do you set up a website? How do you start an LLC? It walked me through all of it, along with LegalZoom.

The second challenge is that now that I'm fully booked on an hourly basis, I'm still dependent on three or four clients. If one of them were to leave, I'd have space to fill. And because I'm in such a niche field, there are only so many potential clients. So I'm actively thinking about how to diversify my revenue — because I don't want my income to be entirely hourly-based.

The Risk of an All-Retainer, Hourly Practice
AJ: What would happen if one of your clients decided to make a change tomorrow?

Charla: I would advertise that I have a time block available and see if that prompted other potential clients to come forward. I'm not actively advertising right now — I've been focused on client success and satisfaction, communicating well, making sure I'm doing what they want and going above and beyond. I can see my clients planning for the longer term. One has me on a renewing annual basis. The worry of losing a client actually inspires me to work harder and to bring them what they need.

I'm feeling more secure, but it is something I think about in the back of my mind. This is sink or swim.

AJ: What percent does each retainer represent of your time?

Charla: My main client is 50% of my time — about 20 hours a week. One is 7 to 10 hours a week. One is 4 hours. And I'm adding another 20-hour-per-week client this month. The organizations I work with tend to think in terms of retainers rather than projects, but really what I'm doing are specific projects. Some weeks I work more, some less, but the deliverables are clearly defined.

AJ: These retainers are pretty stable — one is annual, you said?

Charla: One is annual, one is indefinite, one is on a three-month basis — I just completed three months and am doing another three. And one is a specific eight-month project.

Building Revenue Streams Beyond the Hourly Model
AJ: How are you thinking about building income streams that don't just add more hours to your week? You're already maxed out.

Charla: That's a question I've been pondering a lot lately. I've always wanted to write a book — I know I have it in me. I've had a couple of previous attempts, and I even had a literary agent at one point, but it never came together. I think those earlier ideas were more about what I felt I should write, rather than what I genuinely had inside me to write. So I'm going to reframe that and make it more authentically mine.

Speaking engagements are another option. I speak regularly at conferences, sometimes internationally. A lot of times those aren't paid, or there's just a small honorarium. But I'd love to pursue larger, paid speaking gigs. And then there's the possibility of partnering with companies for paid promotional work — if there's a company bringing a new technology into my space, representing that technology could be a natural revenue stream.

AJ: How active are you in pursuing these?

Charla: I've just started thinking seriously about the book again. For the others, I've really learned in the past few months that I need to stop trying to force things to happen and wait for alignment — between what I have to offer and what someone else needs. For example, a potential brand partnership should grow naturally out of a real relationship. I don't want to cold-call a company and say I'm looking for paid advertising. I want to meet them at a conference, find something we're both genuinely excited about, and see where it goes. It's a more organic approach to growing revenue streams, and I'm hoping it works.

AJ: What if in a year from now, you're still hoping and it hasn't happened?

Charla: I've actually already started one potential opportunity. I'll be meeting with them in May at a conference. It started as a conversation about a new technology — mitochondrial DNA — that a company is distributing. I reached out to my contact there and said I was excited to hear about it. By the end of that conversation, my contact said, maybe we should start working together on this — I could see you representing this technology for us. That's how it happened. I'm just a nerd following my interests and where they lead. Making sure the conversations keep going is a big part of being a consultant. Share what you do, ask about people's pain points, stay curious — and don't be afraid to say, I'd love to do this with you.

I don't really have fear about next year, because I'm doing my fair share of planting seeds today.

The Consulting Lifestyle: What It Actually Looks Like
AJ: Is your consulting practice delivering the lifestyle you dreamed of?

Charla: Oh, yes, completely. I'm sitting here in my guest room makeshift office — my husband works from home, so he's in the actual office. I can do work whenever I want. Sometimes that means the weekend, or early in the morning, or late at night. I work better under those conditions, because I like to work when I'm motivated and have the energy.

I'm with my kids so much more, and I'm so much less stressed. My kids have actually noticed. They've said, Mom, you're not so stressed anymore. And I just think, I know, this is amazing.

I'm also a beachcomber — I live about a mile from the beach, and I love to walk and look for sea glass and purple shells. It's become this ritualistic, meditative thing for me. I listen to a good podcast, I walk the beach, and it's something I can carve out time for on a weekday when no one else is there. That's restorative in a way I couldn't access when I was working for the government.

The independence is great. I love what I do. It's been wonderful.

Vision for Growth: Building a Small Team of Experts
AJ: Where do you see your practice in the next three to five years?

Charla: It's going to be interesting. Since I launched, I've had a few people reach out and say they're retiring in a couple of years and would love to work with me. I think, yes, I'd love that — but it also sounds overwhelming, because I'm already fully loaded. How would I integrate someone else into my practice? That said, I do see myself growing to at least two or three expert consultants in forensics. I'm letting it come to me — but growth is most likely.

AJ: What do you think the biggest challenges getting there will be?

Charla: I think there will come a point where I've bitten off more than I can chew. I have said no to clients when a project didn't feel right or wasn't something I could execute well — and that experience showed me what my limits are. The challenge will be knowing when to say no, and then making sure I can delegate when I've committed to something I can't do entirely alone. Delegating might mean hiring someone part-time or full-time.

I've done hiring before — I was Chief of Research at the Armed Forces DNA Lab and hired multiple scientists over the years. But hiring an administrative assistant is entirely new to me. I know how to hire scientists. I don't know how to hire someone whose job is to help me organize the business. That's going to be a challenge.

Resources and Connecting with Charla
AJ: What's one book, podcast, or resource that's been invaluable to your consulting practice?

Charla: Melissa Lieberman's How to Grow Your Independent Consulting Business podcast has been really inspiring. I stumbled upon it a few months ago. It's specifically for independent consultants — solopreneurs — which fits exactly what I'm doing. Some of her episodes are about scaling to a million dollars, and while that might sound like a dream, what I appreciated is how she expands your thinking about what's possible. One thing she emphasizes is that matching your old corporate salary is just the floor, not the finish line. There are options above and beyond that. That was important for me to hear.

I've also listened to the Thriving Through podcast and found it really valuable to hear other consultants' stories — how they got started, what they're struggling with. Hearing from others in the same boat is meaningful, especially when you don't personally know any other consultants in your field.

I also reached out to one consultant I did know — Charlotte — before I went all in. She consults in criminal court case reviews, which is different from my work, but she said the same thing happened to her: she left her job, and then her inbox filled up. Every year she thinks maybe this is the last year, and then it fills up again. She told me, you have clients who came to you, you don't have to advertise, this is naturally coming to you — you're going to be fine. Having even one person who has been through this and can say that is invaluable.

AJ: Last question — how can listeners connect with you?

Charla: I'm most active on LinkedIn. I'd love for anyone watching or listening to send me a message about their work as an independent consultant — I'd love to have a virtual happy hour over that. And you can also find me at
DNAedservices.com — feel free to reach out.

AJ: Wonderful. Charla's LinkedIn URL and website will be in the show notes. Charla, thank you so much for talking with me today — it's been a delight. You are the first scientist I've had on the podcast, and it gives me a completely different perspective on consulting from a very scientific viewpoint.

Charla: Thank you so much, AJ. I was thrilled to be here, and glad to be the first scientist. I really enjoyed the conversation. I wish you the best of luck with the podcast — I can see you're growing and doing more all the time, and it's fun to watch.

AJ: Thank you. And for those of you listening or watching, until next time, keep thriving through.