You have written the handbook nobody else wanted to write, sat in the room when a termination went sideways, and learned which parts of employment law actually matter versus which parts are theater. Going independent means selling that judgment directly instead of drawing a salary for it. The mechanics are more concrete than they look: a real decision about certification, three project types that reliably pay, a pricing structure that varies by which of those three you are doing, and one risk that catches generalists more than anyone warns you about.
Do you need a certification, or just proof
Nothing licenses you to call yourself an HR consultant. Unlike a CPA or an attorney, there is no gatekeeper. That makes the credential question a business decision, not a legal one, and the honest answer is: it depends on what you are selling.
SHRM-CP costs $399 to $499 for non-members to sit the exam, or $350 to $399 if you join SHRM first (membership runs about $200 a year, so the math only works if you plan to renew anyway). HRCI's PHR is the other common credential, similarly priced, and slightly more focused on US compliance mechanics than SHRM's broader competency model. Neither is required to land work.
What the certification buys you is a fast credibility signal with a founder who has never hired an HR person before and has no way to evaluate you on judgment alone. If your pitch leans on compliance work, being certified shortens the sales conversation. If you are coming in through a warm referral from someone who already vouches for your work, the letters after your name matter a lot less than the reference did.
The three projects that actually pay
Independent HR work clusters into three recognizable engagements, and it helps to know which one you are pitching before you quote a price.
The compliance audit. A founder gets nervous, usually after a near-miss or a lawyer's offhand comment, and wants someone to check I-9s, review exempt-versus-non-exempt classifications, and flag wage-and-hour exposure before it becomes a claim. This is bounded, deliverable-based work, and it is often the easiest first sale because the founder already knows exactly what they are buying.
The handbook and policy build. Every company eventually needs a real handbook instead of a Google Doc someone wrote in 2021. This is project-priced, has a clear start and end, and is the classic first engagement for a new independent because it does not require ongoing access to sensitive employee data.
The fractional HR retainer. The company that keeps calling. This usually starts right when a company crosses a headcount line that changes what the law requires of them: 15 employees brings Title VII and ADA into play, 20 adds age-discrimination and COBRA obligations, and 50 is the big one, triggering FMLA and the ACA's employer mandate. Founders rarely see these thresholds coming, which is exactly why the retainer conversation tends to start in a panic rather than a plan.
Pricing: hourly, project, or retainer
Match the pricing model to the work, not the other way around. Compliance audits and handbook builds are usually flat project fees, because the scope is knowable in advance and an hourly clock creates the wrong incentive for both sides. Fractional retainers are monthly, typically scaled to a set number of hours or a defined scope of access.
When you do bill hourly, mid-to-senior independents typically land between $75 and $150 an hour, with specialists in compensation design, multi-state compliance, or executive-level HR work reaching $195 or higher. Junior generalist work runs lower. Price at the bottom of that range for your first client or two while you are building a portfolio of references, then move up once you have three or four engagements behind you.
Get errors-and-omissions insurance before you sign anything, not after. It runs roughly $30 to $70 a month for a solo HR consulting practice, and a founder's counsel will frequently ask for proof of coverage before a contract is signed, especially for compliance-touching work where a mistake has real financial consequences for the client.
The tradeoff nobody mentions: fifty states, fifty rulebooks
Here is the risk that catches generalists off guard. Employment law in the US is set state by state, not federally, on most of the things that actually generate claims: paid sick leave accrual, non-compete enforceability, pay transparency requirements, and mandatory harassment training all vary by state, and some vary by city. A client with remote employees in five states is not one compliance problem. It is five, layered on top of whatever federal law already requires.
The consultants who get a client into real trouble are usually the ones who advised confidently across every state a client happened to hire in, without either specializing in a handful of jurisdictions or explicitly routing anything outside their depth to employment counsel. Decide early whether you are a generalist who partners with a lawyer on the edge cases, or a specialist in one or two states who says no to everything else. Both are workable businesses. Pretending you can cover all fifty is the version that ends badly.
Where the retainer actually comes from
Founders do not wake up and search for an HR consultant the way they search for a plumber. The trigger is usually someone else noticing the problem first: an employment lawyer drafting an offer letter who realizes there is no handbook behind it, a fractional CFO building the first real headcount plan and spotting the 50-employee cliff six months out, or a recruiter who just placed the company's tenth hire and knows exactly what that headcount now requires legally.
That is the case for a referral circle over a one-off referral. It is a small group of non-competing independents, an employment lawyer, a fractional CFO, a recruiter, an HR consultant, all serving the same kind of growing company and passing along what they notice before the founder does. When the CFO in the circle sees a client about to cross 50 employees, the HR consultant gets the introduction before the company has even started looking. Referna builds these circles, eight to twelve vetted peers, and keeps them active, so the next retainer is already in motion while the current one is still running.