Let’s have a candid conversation about where your organization stands regarding its AI Maturity. If you’re feeling a bit lost about your company’s AI journey, don’t worry—you’re in good company. Think of the AI Marketing Maturity Model as your roadmap from “just playing around with ChatGPT” to running a fully AI-transformed marketing powerhouse.
In the dynamic world of professional services, whether you’re leading a consulting firm, a leadership development training company, or a systems integration business, one universal goal resonates: making more money. Achieving financial growth in such industries isn’t just about hard work and expertise; it involves strategic business model evolution. Below, we outline a three-step process designed to guide owner-operators of small professional service firms towards greater profitability.
Sure, that title is clickbait-worthy, but you made it this far, so what is the real story? A common mental model: If we only had a larger sales team, we could grow revenues at a pace that is faster than the growth in costs. But salespeople cost us more than any other type of labor, and their comp plans are usually tied to invoices, so we pay them first before anyone else. It can be challenging to afford to grow your sales team, especially before you even know who will make their quota.
The pursuit of entrepreneurial excellence is a crucial component of success. Many founders, though, unintentionally hinder their pursuit with simple missteps in defining roles and expectations.
Building an entrepreneurial culture fosters ownership, buy-in, innovation, and growth within your company. However, there are common missteps that employers make when it comes to fostering this within their teams. Getting these wrong can have an impact on more than company culture. It can also have legal, financial, and operational ramifications, as well. It will throttle your growth, impede scaling, and delay (or foreclose) your exit.
In the competitive world of boutique consulting, the quest for generating new business can often feel like an uphill battle. For small firms, especially those navigating the complex waters of data analytics consulting, the challenge is not only in attracting clients but also in crafting a sustainable model for business development. This tale unfolds with the founder of an 8-year-old consulting firm, a beacon of ambition and innovation, who found himself at a crossroads after the primary responsibility of generating new business became a bottleneck in his quest for growth.
Once upon a time, in the bustling world of boutique marketing agencies, there lived a founder whose vision and creativity knew no bounds. His agency, a 17-year-old gem, shone brightly with creative services tailored for B2B clients. Yet, despite its sparkle, the agency remained a quaint lifestyle firm, not quite reaching the heights the founder had dreamed of. This is a tale of transformation, of a journey from contentment to ambition, led by the guiding light of Collective 54.
I firmly believe that great productization of services stems from deliberate alignment with First Principles. Put another way: Great productization is forged through past experiences and mistakes. However, only the most committed founders—those who can say “no, we don’t” to buyers countless times—will succeed in achieving Extreme Productized Services. Productization is a commitment to First Principles. Let me share my experiences and mistakes along the way.
Since college, I have been a hustle-and-grind professional. It only got worse when I became an entrepreneur and ran my own show. I’d never taken more than a week-long vacation. Then recently, in September 2024, I took a huge leap and embarked on a once-in-a-lifetime journey: hiking the Camino de Santiago, a medieval pilgrimage route spanning 500 miles from the Pyrenees in France to northwest Spain. My wife and I hiked it in 26 days, carrying everything we needed on our backs. While it started as a personal adventure, it became a transformative experience for me and unexpectedly for my company.
As the CEO of a boutique professional services firm providing outsourced finance, accounting, and HR consulting services, I’ve always advised clients on operational excellence. Yet, like many professional services leaders, I found myself managing a complex web of disparate systems in our own back office. This is the story of how transforming our technology stack not only streamlined our operations but also delivered unexpected benefits that have revolutionized how we serve our clients.
As an owner-operator of a small service firm, whether it’s a consultancy, marketing agency, IT service provider, or any other service-oriented business, you’ve likely faced the frustrating challenge of chasing down late payments. It’s a widespread issue that disproportionately affects small service firms, and it can significantly hinder your cash flow and business growth. In this blog post, we’ll explore why this happens, how to diagnose and measure the extent of your collections problem, and offer both proactive and reactive strategies to improve your payment timelines. Plus, we’ll show you how joining a mastermind community like Collective 54 can make a difference.
