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. But a new era is arriving—an era when the marginal cost of intelligence falls to zero.
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.” Her team is still posting, still investing time, still showing up consistently. But internally, the conversation has changed. They used to ask, “How do we do more on LinkedIn?” Now they ask, “Should we keep doing this at all?” Every planning meeting circles back to whether the investment makes sense.
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 founders and organizations resist its adoption. To understand this phenomenon, I turned to an unlikely source—a 20-year-old college student and USMC enlisted “Forward Observer”, who we will refer to here as Ethan, whose thoughtful skepticism about AI mirrors the concerns I witnessed.
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.