Last year, I had 539 one-on-one calls with founders and executives of boutique professional services firms. From QBRs to onboardings to sales conversations and diagnostic readouts. After that many conversations, one lesson stands out above the rest: the firms that thrived in 2025 were bold, and the firms that struggled played it safe.
When I returned to Management One in 2025, I came back to something I’d never really had before: a Board of Directors.
I’d built and run M1 for years making every major decision myself. That’s how most entrepreneurs operate – you figure it out, you trust your gut, you carry the weight. And for a long time, that worked. But one of the reasons I originally sold the business was the loneliness of it. The weight of every big decision sitting entirely on my shoulders. The isolation of being the only person who could make certain calls.
Every Scale-stage founder in Collective 54 is likely doing some version of the same thing right now.
Reviewing 2025. Refining a plan for 2026. Deciding what to double down on — and what to stop.
That feels responsible. It’s also where many founders quietly lose a year.
Not because they lack intelligence or effort. Because they fail to separate signal from noise at the exact moment it matters.
I’m writing this as a Scale-stage founder who just completed his first year of the scaling phase and had to confront that reality.
Our winter holiday season has almost passed us by, and hopefully some of us got to enjoy the time with family and friends over stories, laughs, good food and some much-deserved rest. Even though the holiday starts with Thanksgiving (although my wife would say it really starts with Halloween, her favorite holiday), and turkey and stuffing is well since in the rear-view mirror, let’s not forget what the intent of the Thanksgiving holiday is. Let’s try to actively remember the intent of that holiday every week.
Every firm in the world is trying to make decisions about AI right now.
It feels like progress. New tools. New workflows. Faster output. But underneath the activity is a choice that will matter a lot over the next few years.
I am seeing firms headed down one of two paths. Problem first or tool first.
I’m Todd. I’m an alcoholic.
My parents were both the first—and only—people in their respective families to go to college. Not just college: professional degrees. They worked their asses off and built a legitimately good life. Dad had a thriving accounting practice. Mom was a nurse until she had me, then she stayed home and played a lot of tennis. We had a large suburban house, the club memberships, a beach condo, and a lake place. From the outside, it looked like a clean, stable upper-middle class win.
A three day AI build saved a logistics company $180K per month and turned into nearly seven figures in ARR. That’s not a flex. It’s a signal that outcome based pricing and AI leverage are rewriting how professional services firms compete.
“Nail it before scale it” is powerful in professional services because scaling multiplies whatever and wherever you are already. This is especially true of quality delivery, margin discipline, and operational chaos. When your core offer and delivery system aren’t repeatable, growth forces constant reinvention, creates overpromising in sales, and drives margin leakage and burnout. Nailing it first means you’ve defined a clear ICP, a standard engagement with consistent outcomes, and a delivery playbook that average talent can run without heroics. Then you can scale with confidence because you’re replicating a proven, profitable system rather than amplifying variability.
Every professional services founder knows the feeling. You’ve got a handful of consultants who are genuinely excellent. They deliver for clients. They make you look good. They’re the reason you can sleep at night.
Most professional services firms don’t lose because they lack strategy. They lose momentum—often before the year even begins.
For CEOs, this shows up in familiar ways: leadership teams stuck in planning mode, decisions deferred until January, and organizations waiting for “clarity” while the market moves on. By the time the year officially starts, speed has already been lost.