Every post we have published for founders of boutique professional services firms.
Early in my career I attended a seminar that changed the direction of my life. The speaker walked onto a stage in front of thousands of people and owned every inch of that room before he said a...
For years, boutique professional services firms measured success by headcount. More employees meant: more credibility more capability more scale more enterprise value Today, that equation is changing...
AI tools are everywhere, and I will be the first to say they have added real value to how we work.
There is a lot of bad press around AI. Many firms are reducing headcount because of AI. What I see is amazing things people around me are doing as a result of AI.
You built a great business. You're ready to sell, and you know how businesses are valued: Valuation = EBITDA x Multiple But here's what most sellers find out too late: The buyer has a playbook.
A Snake Oil Salesman is someone who sells something they claim works but doesn't. They do it with a lot of confident, flashy persuasion to distract from the lack of substance.
Why “grow without hiring” is the most important sentence a boutique founder will write in 2026. Most boutique professional services founders think they have one AI strategy to pick. They are wrong.
For many founders and owners of professional services firms, the hardest strategic question isn’t how to grow—it’s how to transition without undoing what took decades to build.
There's a list of roles in every boutique firm that exist on paper but rarely get done well. Account management. Service design. Marketing. Sales management. Every founder has the list.
Three conversations boutique founders keep having about AI and the one they're avoiding. Two years into the AI era, many boutique professional services founders I talk to are stuck.
Like many Founders, I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching, using, testing, and talking to my peers about AI the last 12-18 months.
I have attended three Collective 54 retreats in the last 7 months. I am not a founder - I am the COO of a boutique professional services firm.
My partners and I have built Rootstrap over fifteen years. In that time, the firm has passed through many distinct inflection points.
Information-overload. Conflicting advice. Market disruption. Margin pressure. The once in a lifetime opportunity enabled by AI. Change at the speed of… well…AI.
Over the past 30+ years, my firm has built a business focused on evaluating the digital customer experience delivered by the nation’s leading financial services and healthcare companies.
Launching a new product isn’t just about having something innovative—it’s about making sure people notice, understand, and ultimately care.
For twenty-five years, I have lived by a simple truth. The service business is a human endeavor. At OneAccord, we lead middle-market companies through transition. We do not do this with slogans.
If you talk to most firm leaders right now, there’s a similar pattern that comes up. Pipeline feels less consistent. You’re not getting pulled into as many opportunities.
If you’re a business owner looking at AI, you’ve probably felt the same tension we did: AI is moving fast , clients are asking for it, and it’s hard to justify building everything in-house from...
What the Stanford AI Index 2026 means for founders of boutique professional services firms.
If you’re running a boutique professional services firm, you’ve probably embraced Greg’s hyper-specialization thesis of winning by going narrow and deep in your market. Pick your niche. Own it.
There's a rule most founders learn early: work on the business, not in it. It's good advice. Usually. Right now, it's wrong.
You pulled up your pipeline this morning. The number looked reasonable. You're about to make hiring, spending, and growth decisions based on it. Half those deals aren't real and you know it.
Recently our community had a pretty heated debate about EOS – specifically, whether the Entrepreneurial Operating System is still the right framework for running a professional services firm in 2026.
At Collective 54, I talk to hundreds of founders and executives of boutique professional services firms every year. Right now, AI comes up in almost every conversation.