The hardest conversation I watch founders walk into is the one where they finally decide to sell the firm they spent twenty years building. They have real revenue, a name people respect, a roster of good clients, and they expect an offer that reflects all of it. Then the buyer finishes diligence and the number comes back at a fraction of what they were picturing, or no real offer comes at all.
What the U.S. Army’s Workforce Study Reveals About the Future of Knowledge Work and What Business Leaders Should Do About It. The Question Most Companies Are Getting Wrong
Early in my career, I made a classic mistake. A coworker and I shared a stakeholder that was on the spacey side with a leisurely response time. We’d also share some stories and laughs related to this individual’s atypical antics. There was this one time that I got a reply from said stakeholder to an email I’d nearly forgotten sending. A reply which arrived almost a full month later.
The boutique professional services industry is in a death march.
AI is causing a shakeout. Some firms are closing shop. Some are retreating into lifestyle firms. The ones still fighting are fighting harder than they ever have.
Your clients are getting hammered. Boards are demanding an AI strategy. Vendors are pitching nonstop. Internal teams are overwhelmed and, frankly, scared. And somehow everyone expects leadership to have the answers. Most of them don’t – not yet.
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 single word.
I did not know it then, but what I was watching was authority in action.
Not fame. Not a title. Not a resume. Something that goes much deeper than any of those things.
Today, that equation is changing quickly. At a Collective 54 theory session (Episode 214), Greg Alexander challenged founders to stop optimizing for employee count and start optimizing for EBITDA per employee. He identified nearshoring and offshoring as one of the key levers firms can use to improve margins and scale more efficiently. He’s right, but there’s an important nuance many firms underestimate.
AI tools are everywhere, and I will be the first to say they have added real value to how we work. But the more the industry focuses on what AI can do, the more I find myself thinking about what it cannot replace: the human beings who show up every day, grow with us, and make this work worth doing.
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. Not long ago, building a software application meant hiring developers, writing requirements documents, managing timelines, and spending money you may or may not have had. If you had a great idea but weren’t technical, you either found someone technical to help with the idea or you shelved it.
You built a great business. You’re ready to sell, and you know how businesses are valued:
Valuation = EBITDA x Multiple
