Independent HR consultant in Dublin, ~4 yrs solo, a mix of project work and one-off advisory. Lovely months were followed by empty ones, four-week proposal cycles, and clients who only appeared when something was on fire. I wanted a base layer of predictable income and less time explaining my invoices.
What changed
Launched a 3-month retainer at €1,400/month: two scheduled calls, email access during business hours, a monthly summary note. I deliberately priced below my per-project average to make it an easy yes, and I didn't cap the async work because I thought that would annoy people.
Result
Two of three retained after the first term; one lapsed and went back to ad hoc work. Revenue per client was about 12% below what the same person would have paid me on a project basis, dropping to roughly 30% under when async questions piled up in the same fortnight. Cash flow stabilised properly for the first time in two years and I stopped doing speculative proposals to fill gaps.
Limitations
Three clients is not evidence, it's anecdote. I underpriced out of a fear of asking, and I still haven't solved the 'busy week' collision because I have no associate and no reliable way to see which clients are actually consuming hours. It also doesn't prove retainers beat projects, only that they beat unpredictable income for me.
Started offerin retainers last yr because cash flow was wild and churn was killin me. Solution: 3-month floor, 2 calls a month, email access, €1,400/month. Sounds clean.
What actually happened: two clients paid the first month, then went quiet for six weeks and showed up the week before the invoice. Third client wanted a deliverable moved to next month, then next month again. I was doin the same total hours, just locked into a lower number, and I'd promised response times I couldn't keep when three renewals landed the same week.
What I did next: cut the slot to 90 minutes and moved everything else to a shared doc. Renewed two, lost one. Ran about 12% under my old project average, but I stopped guessing what next month looked like.
€1,400 is too low for Dublin. A good HR consultant should be charging €2,500+ for a retainer with calls and email access. Undercharging tells clients the work is small.
The 90-minute slot was probably the fix, not the retainer itself. When a client can ask anything by email, they do, and the month quietly becomes a project. Did you notice a difference in the clients who renewed versus the one who left?
