I was going to write this post about the importance of customer experience in professional services. Over the past few days I had prepped for this by working with Claude on concepts, outlines and drafts and was going to reference that chat this morning to finalize the piece. Upon firing up my browser to got to Claude’s website I got this error:
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. The same delicate equilibrium defines every thriving professional services firm. Too much internal tension creates rigid hierarchies, excessive oversight, competing agendas left to fester which result in your best people burn out or break away.
I was on the road for a good part of the last few months and saw an interesting trend: CEOs who know they are underpriced for their value are uncomfortable (at best) to increase their prices. This fear falls into three main categories:
There’s an irony that every professional services owner eventually faces: we built our businesses by providing expertise to clients who need specialized knowledge, yet when it comes to growing our own firms, we often resist seeking that same level of expertise for ourselves. We’ll spend months trying to figure out complex marketing strategies, stumble through people management challenges, or wrestle with operational inefficiencies—all while charging our clients premium rates for the exact same type of specialized guidance in our own domains.
Most professional services firms grow through founder-led selling, squeezing business development in between management meetings and client deadlines. And while BD time is essential, it can also be crippling. There never seems to be enough time for administrative tasks, crafting personalized messages, doing the research, and sending timely follow ups. That is why BD is so often sporadic and unpredictable.
The founders were exhausted. They had built a respected professional services firm through talent and relentless effort, yet the business refused to scale. Revenue grew, but not enough. Profit improved, but inconsistently. Their dream of someday selling the company felt out of reach.
A simple, repeatable plan to pick wins, launch pilots and measure impact.
You don’t need a lab or a giant budget to start. You need a clear why, a short list of high-impact problems, and a fast way to test. Here’s the formula I’ve used for my company and clients that you can run as a visionary founder or owner to build your “getting started” roadmap.
Prime numbers are a crystallizing way to categorize heuristics for scaling businesses, and professional services in particular:
Most firms track business development like they’re reading the scoreboard after the game. Website traffic. Proposal counts. Win rates. These stats may look important, but they only tell you what’s already happened. They don’t tell you why things happened or where your next opportunity lies.
Three years ago, Collective 54 hosted its first annual event for founders of boutique professional services firms. It began as a simple idea: bring together leaders who had been collaborating virtually to connect, learn, and grow in person.