Every case is different but I would expect something as follows. You would probably start with between 2 and 4 people and probably end up at around 5-7 people. They key here will be the people generating the income for the business; both sales and delivery. At $1M you probably would not have an office manager or many ancillary functions as they cost money. You would potentially outsource your accounting. If your sales staff/person is very good you would start with selling one or two project. As these are being delivered next ones would be sold and so on until you cannot deliver more and you have to hire another consultant. At this stage you would probably take in contractors until you are certain of the project pipeline. This will differ for FT projects and PT projects. It will also depend on the daily rate you are charging. If the daily rate is $1k then you are looking to sell 1000 man days to get your $1M => 4 guys working 250 days per year. Add 1 sales guys and 1 or 2 junior staff plus office costs etc. The time of this can take is as little as 6 months or it can be 2 years - all depends on your sales.