Every post we have published for founders of boutique professional services firms.
When was the last time you gave some serious thought to your firm’s value proposition? If you don’t know the answer, you’re overdue for a value proposition innovation overhaul.
No one likes to talk about cutting costs. It is more fun to talk about revenue growth. Yet owners and operators of professional service firms need to stay on top of their cost-cutting measures.
Did you know the average age of a successful founder is 45, according to Harvard Business Review? When most think “entrepreneur,” they think of the young college dropout who invented the next hot...
The most-read blog post on Collective 54's website is How Selling Professional Services is Different Than Selling Products.
Members of Collective 54 are searching for one of three things for their professional services firm: growth, scale, or exit.
Boutique professional services firms are resource-constrained, with only so many dollars, hours, and employees available to pursue growth.
Is your business differentiated? Or just different? If you can’t answer with confidence, you may be leaking revenue — and that’s not good for your firm’s future.
The real cost to run a boutique professional service firm is hidden from most founders because many founders use the wrong cost measurement systems.
When you're focusing on growing or scaling your firm, one option you may be considering is how to expand into new markets for new sources of revenue.
This article was originally published on ReadWrite . When I talk to founders of service firms, many of them express the same desire to me: They want to become software companies.
If you're considering exiting your firm one day, you're thinking about how much your firm is worth.
This article was originally published on Entrepreneur . Business plans are like mining for gold.
A declining industry is an industry with an absolute decline in unit sales over time. For example, data recovery services in the US are declining by 9% per year .
Emerging industries present unique opportunities for both meteoric rises and swift downfalls for professional service firms.
This article was originally published on CEOWORLD Magazine . In the boutique professional services industry, there are “young” 10-year-old firms and “old” 10-year-old firms.
Many professional service firms compete in mature industries. This overview of the mature industry environment, its challenges, and strategies for success can provide a starting point for founders to...
Professional service firms need capital to scale, as do product companies. However, the capital-formation process used by a service firm is different than the one used by product companies.
There’s a big difference between selling a professional service versus selling a product.
According to the US Census Bureau, an average of 4.4 million companies are launched every year .
If you've been keeping up with the Maturing Founder (and if you haven't, check out the first installment discussing the Flirt through Childhood Stages here ), you know that as a founder of a boutique...
Most founders in professional services are first-time founders. This means most founders are immature in their roles.
Scalability is the highly sought-after holy grail of business, but not every professional services firm has scalability in its future.
Macaroni and cheese. Spaghetti and meatballs. Those pairings exemplify the dynamic relationship between EOS (“Entrepreneurial Operating System”) and Collective 54.
Founder market fit is the relationship between the founder of a firm and the environment in which that firm operates.
Knowledge is power. In the modern business landscape, there are plenty of potential pitfalls for founders, owners and leaders.