Pro Serv Blog

Every post we have published for founders of boutique professional services firms.

How To Apply Signals That Scale And Avoid Noises That Stagnate Founders And Their Firms In 2026

Every Scale-stage founder in Collective 54 is likely doing some version of the same thing right now. Reviewing 2025. Refining a plan for 2026. Deciding what to double down on — and what to stop.

Eric L. Weisgarber

Sharing Thanks After Thanksgiving: A Weekly Ritual

Our winter holiday season has almost passed us by, and hopefully some of us got to enjoy the time with family and friends over stories, laughs, good food and some much-deserved rest.

Robin Way

Problem First or Tool First: The Fork in the Road for Services Firms in 2026

Every firm in the world is trying to make decisions about AI right now. It feels like progress. New tools. New workflows. Faster output.

Matt Alexander

You Can Choose Your Bottom

I’m Todd. I’m an alcoholic. My parents were both the first—and only—people in their respective families to go to college. Not just college: professional degrees.

Todd Stanton

From Billable Hours to Seven-Figure ARR: Learnings From Solving a $2M Problem in 72 Hours

Three weeks ago, I got a call from the head of a 500-employee logistics company. They were about to lose $200,000 per month due to a contract dispute over something mundane: measuring cable diameters...

Ashok Sivanand

Nail It Before You Scale It in the Age of AI

One of my favorite sayings when it comes to scaling is, “Nail it before you scale it.” Why? “Nail it before scale it” is powerful in professional services because scaling multiplies whatever and...

Jeff Klaumann

How I Tried to Keep My A-Players (And What I Learned)

Every professional services founder knows the feeling. You've got a handful of consultants who are genuinely excellent. They deliver for clients. They make you look good.

William Lieberman

Strategy Isn’t the Race. Momentum Is.

Most professional services firms don’t lose because they lack strategy. They lose momentum—often before the year even begins.

Kimberly Kraemer

Why AI Should Do the Heavy Lifting and Humans Should Do the Thinking

French novelist Marcel Proust once said, “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.” That’s exactly what AI enables when it comes to win and loss...

Julie Rogers

The Secret to Winning Enterprise Clients? Start with Their Strategic Plan

As the co-founder of a consulting firm that has spent years inside boardrooms, C-suites, and crisis war rooms, I’ve learned that the quickest way to lose credibility with an enterprise client is to...

Justin Wasserman

Leveraging Executive Debriefs to Drive Re-Engagement

When a consulting engagement concludes, the formal deliverables are often complete, but the relationship with the client is just beginning.

Jimmy Leppert

Beyond the Platform: The Case for Vertical Depth in Agency Positioning

In the agency world, positioning often gets treated like a tagline exercise. Pick a platform, pick a service, polish the capabilities deck. But real positioning isn’t cosmetic.

Peter Kang

Execute for Success in 2026: Turning Plans Into Pipeline

If Part 1 was “plan via the journey” and Part 2 was “fund the journey,” Part 3 is about putting it all into motion. Planning and budgeting only matter if they lead to results.

Jeffrey Pruitt

Strategic Insights from a Client Advisory Board

What if your best strategic insights didn’t come from consultants, books, or conferences, but instead from your own clients? When we launched our first Client Advisory Board in 2022, I quickly...

Luke Johnson

The Dunning–Kruger Effect: The Hidden Risk Undermining Boutique Firms

There’s a pattern I’ve seen over and over again: the people who know or have done very little often speak with the most certainty and entitlement, while the people with true expertise are far more...

Michael Ivie

Why Q1 (2026) Success Starts in December — Not January

Why Q1 (2026) Success Starts in December — Not January Most boutique firms don’t lose momentum in March or April. They lose it in January.

Brian Kerlin

AI and the New Leverage Model for Professional Services

For decades, the economic engine of professional services was built on one deceptively simple concept: leverage .

Matt Alexander

Faith at Work: How Belief and Values Shape Boutique Firm Success

In the high-stakes world of boutique professional services, it’s easy to believe that success is solely the result of relentless effort, sharp strategy, and personal ambition.

Don Goldstein

The Stories We Tell About Our Clients Create the Service We Give Them

The moment your team complains about a client, you’ve already lost. Not because the client hears it—usually they never do.

Tony Amador

The Hardest Transformation Is Your Own: Why Boutique Firms Struggle to Change

Change is hard. At Intevity we have spent two decades helping large, complex organizations transform; modernizing systems, redesigning processes, realigning teams, and unlocking real business value.

George Jagodzinski

When the Marginal Cost of Intelligence Goes to Zero

The Big Idea For decades, the consulting industry has relied on a simple formula: smart people sell their time to solve complex problems. The more complex the problem, the higher the hourly rate.

Co-authored by Greg Alexander and the C54 AI Assistant

LinkedIn's Value Crisis: Why Executives Are Questioning Their Investment

The platform feels broken, but pulling back might be the bigger mistake A marketing director told me last week that her team constantly asks themselves about "the true and current value of LinkedIn."...

Justin Nassiri

Understanding AI Resistance: Perspectives from the Next Generation

As CEO of End State Solutions, an aerospace certification consultancy at the forefront of emerging technology, I've observed that while AI promises transformative efficiency gains, many capable...

Charlton Evans

AI is Great, But Let’s Not Lose Our Sense of What Makes Us Excellent

I was going to write this post about the importance of customer experience in professional services.

Michael Ellison

Navigating Tension

When Tension Finds You Every leader who's flown a kite understands the paradox: grip the string too tightly and you'll snap it; let it go slack and the kite plummets.

Chris Rozum