Most founders I talk to are trying to grow without stacking up overhead or hiring more people than they need. We’re no different. For us, digital transformation isn’t some trendy phrase; it’s just a practical way to deliver clearer, faster, and more valuable results for our clients.
In the competitive landscape of Professional Services, boutique firms often face the challenge of growing, scaling, and eventually exiting successfully. Collective 54, the first community exclusively for founders of Professional Services firms, is dedicated to helping its members achieve these objectives. One effective strategy that firms can adopt is the Win, Keep, and Grow approach. This blog will explore how focusing on these three simple concepts can lead to profitable growth.
Let’s be honest: your to-do list is lying to you.
It looks productive. It feels necessary. But in reality, it’s a guilt trip disguised as a plan — a mashup of legacy tasks, half-finished habits, and things you swore you delegated but somehow ended up doing again this week.
Most professional services founders know these fundamentals. But in the day-to-day grind of building a business, it can be easy to forget them or let them drift.
This post is a reminder. A quick audit of the core elements that make firms successful. If you’ve got these dialed in and things are scaling nicely, great. If not, this might help you identify what needs attention.
“The riches are in the niches” is a phrase I’ve heard time and again during my time with the Collective 54 community—and it couldn’t be more true in professional services. Clients aren’t just buying time; they’re buying expertise. They want proven frameworks, methodologies, and insights that increase their chances of success. Here are three reasons why your professional services firm should strive to be a true specialist in your niche:
Before I started Collective 54, I had a front-row seat to the power of peer advisory groups. I’ve been in rooms where wisdom flowed from experienced operators, where confidential issues were unpacked, and where lifelong business friendships were formed.
The first calls seemed like every small professional services firm’s dream scenario. We were being introduced by a very credible reference to a top-tier management consulting firm as “the right company” for highly specialized aerospace certification work with a Middle Eastern client. The referral came through a former FAA executive whose credibility in aircraft certification had opened doors that typically remain closed to small firms – great niche for a boutique!
Big Deal Excitement Can Blind Us. Imagine you have a massive deal in the pipeline. This is it, it is your ticket to the big time. You’re excited, as you should be. But is the deal a good deal or not? Sometimes our excitement lends us rose-tinted glasses; glasses that blind us to agree to terms or be overly optimistic for performance. We once experienced a client engagement where our excitement blinded us, which caused us to lose meaningful money, something we didn’t anticipate due to several terms within the deal.
Collective 54’s Greg Alexander frames the lifecycle of a professional services firm as a 15-year journey: 5 years of growth, 5 years of scale, and 5 years to exit. If I had followed that path, I’d be on my third company by now.
The second half of the year is where discipline matters most. You’ve already launched your 2025 plan, and undoubtedly, conditions have changed. Some of your original assumptions are holding, others are not. The target remains the same: profitable growth. But how you get there will depend on how quickly and decisively you adjust.
