What He Said When I Asked What He Does Now

I was at a dinner last month. Small group. Guys I’ve known for years. Most of us are in that stretch where some are still working, some aren’t, and nobody’s quite sure what to call it.

I asked Tom what he was up to. He’s been out of the packaging business for about two years. I figured golf. Maybe some travel.

He said, “I got a call last Tuesday from a private equity firm. They wanted to know how regional grocery chains decide which shelf-stable brands to carry. We talked for forty-five minutes. They paid me four hundred bucks.”

I put my drink down.

“Who set that up?”

“A company called GLG. I’m in their expert network. They call me maybe twice a month.”

Tom doesn’t have a website. Doesn’t have a business card. He has thirty years of knowing how products get from a warehouse to a shelf. Somebody’s paying for that. Here’s what I found out when I started looking into it.

There are companies — they’re called expert networks — that connect investors, consultants, and private equity firms with people who know things. Specific things. How a factory floor works. What a hospital buys. How insurance claims get processed. How trucking routes get planned.

The big three are GLG, Guidepoint, and AlphaSights. They have over a million experts in their networks combined. Most of those experts aren’t famous. They’re not authors or professors. They’re people who spent decades in an industry and understand how things actually work.

The clients pay the network. The network pays you. Typical rates run $200 to $500 an hour. Some specialists earn more. Most calls last thirty to sixty minutes. You talk. You answer questions. You hang up. A check shows up.

That’s the whole job.

Here’s the part that surprised me. These firms aren’t looking for theory. They don’t want a white paper. They want to know what’s really happening inside an industry — the stuff that never makes it into a report.

A hedge fund thinking about investing in a medical device company doesn’t want to read the annual report. They want to talk to the guy who ran distribution for a competitor for fifteen years. That’s you.

The more specific your knowledge, the more they want it. Supply chain for frozen food. Commercial HVAC maintenance contracts. How school districts buy textbooks. The boring stuff is the gold.

You don’t need a degree for this. You don’t need a website. You need experience and the ability to explain things clearly. That’s it.

Not all of this looks the same. There are three main ways to get paid for what you know, and they work differently.

▸ Expert network calls. The easiest way in. Register with GLG, Guidepoint, or AlphaSights. Fill out a profile. Wait for calls. Pay: $200 to $500+ per hour. Commitment: a couple hours a month.
▸ Advisory boards. Companies — especially small and mid-size ones — bring on advisors for ongoing guidance. You might meet once a quarter by video. Some pay a retainer of $5,000 to $15,000 a year. Some offer equity. Platforms like AdvisoryCloud connect advisors with companies looking for help.
▸ Expert witness work. Lawyers need people who can explain technical subjects in plain English. Construction, finance, engineering, manufacturing — the list is long. Average rates run $350 to $500 an hour. Some cases pay five figures for twenty-five hours of work.

Pick the lane that fits your life. Or try more than one.

Don’t overthink this. Here’s what I’d do if I were starting from zero.

First, write down what you know. Not your resume. Your knowledge. What problems have you solved? What systems do you understand? What would someone in your old industry call you to ask about?

Then sign up. GLG has an open registration. So does Guidepoint. It takes about fifteen minutes. You set your hourly rate. You list your areas of expertise. They match you with incoming requests.

Set your rate at $300 to $400 to start. You can raise it later. Too low and you look like you don’t value your time. Too high and you don’t get matched.

Then wait. It might take a few weeks. But when the phone rings, it’ll feel different than any meeting you’ve ever sat through. Someone is paying you just to talk about what you already know.

I want to be clear about something. This isn’t a get-rich-quick play. It’s not going to replace a salary. Most people who do this earn a few thousand to maybe twenty thousand a year on the side. Some do more.

But that’s not really the point.

The point is that the thing you spent your career learning didn’t stop being valuable the day you stopped getting a paycheck for it. It’s still in your head. It’s still worth something. And there are people who’ll pay you to share it — on your schedule, from your house, in your pajamas if you want.

That’s not retirement income. That’s proof you still matter in the game.

I asked Tom if the money was the best part. He thought about it for a second.

“Not really,” he said. “The best part is that someone calls me and says, ‘You’re the expert we’ve been looking for.’ After two years of nobody asking me anything harder than what I want for dinner, that hits different.”

I think about that a lot. Most of us spent decades building something in our heads — how things work, who to call, what to watch for. That doesn’t go away when you clean out your desk. It just stops being asked about.

Unless you put yourself where the questions are.

The phone might ring. And when it does, you’ll be ready.

— Walter