"I Want You to Fire Me": Monica Chinisaz and Chris Petty of Firestone Solutions on Consulting That Earns Your Trust
The best consultant is the one you don't need anymore. In Episode 11 of What's the Buzz?, recorded live at the University Club, Brittany Jenkins sits down with Monica Chinisaz and Chris Petty of Firestone Solutions to talk about government contracting, why customer service has gone missing, and the "fire me" philosophy behind every engagement they take on.
Who are Monica and Chris?
Monica Chinisaz founded Firestone Solutions two years ago after almost 20 years as a government contractor, where she was the person agencies called when something was going wrong and needed fixing. She supports federal clients with IT strategy, acquisition planning and portfolio management, and this year earned her certifications as a CMMC assessor, helping defense contractors get ready for their cybersecurity audits.
Chris Petty leads the commercial side of the practice. He has been an executive at multiple companies and has owned four small businesses, including a Jimmy John's franchise, and now works with business owners as a fractional COO on operations, growth and leadership coaching. The two are married, have worked from home side by side for more than a decade, and run Firestone together (consultfirestone.com).
What we talked about
- What Firestone does across federal agencies, CMMC readiness and assessments, and commercial clients.
- Earning the CMMC certifications: practitioner, assessor, then lead assessor, and the late nights it took.
- Why customer service is dead and how billing by the hour pulls consultants away from what clients actually need.
- Discovery calls and fixed monthly fees, so clients pay for results instead of watching an hourly invoice.
- Over-communicating on purpose, including office hours clients can drop into.
- Buying a manufacturing company right before COVID, and what a seven-year lawsuit taught them about resilience.
- Working together as a married couple and the ground rules that make it work.
The lesson: "I want you to fire me"
Chris put it simply: his job isn't to make money off a client's time. It's to save them time, save them money, and leave behind processes so good they don't need him anymore. If Firestone scopes 20 hours and the work takes 40, the client still pays for 20. The deliverable is what matters.
That mindset is rare, and it's exactly why people trust them. For any service business, the takeaway is the same: measure yourself by the problems you solve, not the hours you bill, and your clients will become your loudest referral source.
Solve one problem at a time
After a fraudulent business purchase, a pandemic and years in court, Chris and Monica learned that entrepreneurship comes down to one thing: solve a problem, then the next one. You'll always have a thousand problems. Pick the most important one, chip away, and look back every once in a while at how far you've climbed.
Watch the full episode
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Key takeaways
- The best consultants work themselves out of a job by building systems you can run without them.
- Fixed monthly fees keep the focus on results, not billable hours.
- Start every engagement with discovery: the problem a client names isn't always the root cause.
- Over-communicate so clients never have to wonder what got done.
- When you have a thousand problems, solve one, then the next.
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