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Collective 54✕
founder field notes

The archive.

Practical lessons for founders building in Era 3.

Some Banks Go as Low as $500K. Check Which Ones.

The Endgame

A Collective 54 member who runs sell-side M&A for a living told the room something most founders have backwards.

Oct 16

He Mapped Every AI Role Onto a Job Description He Already Had

The Playbook

AMG Team builds data, marketing and automation systems for law firms, hospitals and financial services firms. When Eric Weisgarber brought AI into that work, he didn’t treat it as a pile of tools and hope ownership sorted itself out.

Oct 15

His First Engineering Hires Are Aimed at His Own Services

The Playbook

Eclipse Consulting Group advises large enterprises on data management. In its entire history it had never hired a full-stack engineer to work on anything internal to the firm. Now in the AI-era, Michael Ivie has hired a team of them, and pointed their work at productizing the services Eclipse already sells.

Oct 9

He Priced His Own Learning, Then Paid It

The Confession

Nick Anderson spent 25 years in banking before becoming CEO of OneAccord, and he had watched 2 AI pitches fail in front of him. He did not answer with a strategy. He worked out what the learning would cost in hours, accepted that it would earn nothing, and committed the time anyway.

Oct 8

Same Fee. Different Word. Approved.

The Benchmark

End State Solutions used to bill by the hour and sometimes cleared under 40% gross margin. It runs 82% to 85% now. Charlton Evans got there by moving to fixed fees plus a fee that has different names for different clients.

Oct 6

Some of His Rocks Are 30 Days Now, Not 90

The Playbook

Katalyst runs on quarterly rocks. Luke Johnson made the cycle variable, so some rocks are 30 days and some are still 90. The firm stopped carrying work that had already gone stale.

Oct 5

He Was Building AI Everywhere. Then He Picked 3.

The Confession

Mike Gibbs was pushing AI into every corner of SureStep at once. Nothing was finished. He stopped, named the 3 problems his firm actually exists to solve, and refused to let anything outside them compete for the people who ship. The project list stayed long. Things started shipping anyway.

Oct 2

He Built a Community His Clients Wanted to Join

The Playbook

David Ackert, CEO of PipelinePlus and bestselling author of The Short List, had spent years advising law firms and other professional services organizations on business development when he noticed an opportunity that had little to do with the services his company was selling.

Oct 1

Revenue Went From $2M to $5.5M. His Income Didn't Move.

The Benchmark

Operatus nearly tripled revenue in a single year. Chris Fezza took home no more than the year before. The reason was sitting in the difference between his best project margin and his worst.

Sep 29

The One Question He Wishes He'd Asked His Advisers

The Endgame

Brad McAllister sold WAP Sustainability. The thing he would change is not the price, the structure or the timing. It's who he had in the room.

Sep 28

What Kills a Deal Is Bad News That Arrives Late

The Endgame

Frank Williamson runs Oaklyn Consulting, an M&A advisory firm. Asked the number one reason deals fall apart, his answer was a buyer's assumption that turns out wrong. His fix is for the seller to raise the deal killer early.

Sep 25

The Product Was Right. The Launch Email Went Nowhere.

The Confession

Consume Media built a platform that turns a $6,000 to $7,000 video into roughly a $1,500 one, delivered in under 2 weeks instead of 5 or 6. Leo Falkenstein sent it to the clients he knew should want it. The response was nothing like he expected.

Sep 24

Same Project, Same Deadline, Forty Percent Fewer Hours

The Benchmark

One firm rebuilt how it delivers its core engagement and took almost forty percent of the hours out of it. The delivery date did not change at all. That second fact is where the money is.

Sep 22

Check This One Number Before You Spend on Growth

The Playbook

One founder screens agencies on a single retention number before deciding whether growth spending is worth anything at all. The number is 70%.

Sep 21

The Best Buyer May Already Be Your Biggest Partner

The Endgame

Darren Smith sold Smith Consulting Group to his largest partner. Across the whole deal, the buyer never asked him about profitability.

Sep 18

Your Exit Prep Needs a Number, Not a Good Week

The Confession

Todd Rapp is working toward an exit and admits he cannot tell a good week from a bad one. He thinks most weeks land in about the same place. What changes is where he is standing.

Sep 17

Give the Expert a Project Manager Without Hiring One

The Playbook

There is a category of work most firms quietly decline: too small to carry a project manager, too complex to run without one. One member stopped declining it.

Sep 15

Ninety-Five Percent of This Firm's Revenue Renews Without a Sale

The Benchmark

ROI Revolution has been running since 2002. Someone finally ran the numbers on its own revenue mix. Retainer: 95%. Project: 4%. Billed by the hour: 1%.

Sep 14

The Numbers You Trust Live in a Spreadsheet No Buyer Accepts

The Endgame

A founder can see profit by service line and by project. It lives in a set of Google Sheets. The accounting system, the one an outsider would actually open, cannot produce it.

Sep 11

The Same Salesperson Produced Only Once the Pay Changed

The Confession

A founder hired the firm's first salesperson on a straight salary, no commission. Months of brand-building, almost no new work. The same person now sends the firm leads and gets paid for each one.

Sep 10

The Firm Where Clients Stopped Asking for Specific People

The Playbook

A client told Dave Makerewich something most agency owners would love to hear: everyone wants your team, but nobody is fighting over specific people. That was by design.

Sep 8

Talking to Buyers Early Told This Firm What to Stop Selling

The Endgame

Ravit Gutman took calls with potential buyers years before hiring an M&A firm, with no intention of selling. The point was to find out what they would actually pay for.

Sep 4

The Work That Loses Clients Is the Work You Cannot Automate

The Confession

Pivotal Advisors thinks it can take a core deliverable from about 24 hours of work down to roughly 6. Then one of its partners named where accounts actually get lost, and it was nowhere near the deliverable.

Sep 3

Break the Work Into Smaller Buys Instead of Cutting Your Price

The Benchmark

Cortado Group got faster at delivery and refused to hand the savings back as a discount. Average deal size drifted down anyway. Total client spend did not.

Sep 1

Top Line Up 50%. Bottom Line Up 600%. Same Year.

The Playbook

Advent will finish the year up 50% on the top line. The bottom line moved further: operating income at about 16% of revenue, and a 600% increase in EBITDA over last year.

Aug 31

What Makes a Firm Worth Zero to a Buyer

The Endgame

Khalid Mokhtarzada acquired a small agency for nothing, then tripled its revenue and multiplied its profit five to six times. The firm had clients and it had craft. What it did not have was a business around them.

Aug 28

Speed Only Pays if Clarity and Judgment Rise With It

The Confession

Rohan Paul can now build five prototypes over a weekend, alone, on work that used to take weeks of team conversations. His confession is not about the tools. It is that a 30-person team cannot absorb that pace, and that pushing harder would break it.

Aug 27

Margins Doubled in a Year by Automating the Expensive Processes

The Benchmark

Bart Bartlett doubled DemandZEN's margins in about twelve months, at a firm growing 50% a year, and credits no transformation program at all. Just one question, asked process by process.

Aug 25

A $500K Project Now Costs $100K. It Still Sold for $250K.

The Benchmark

A project this firm scoped two years ago at $500,000 can now be delivered for about $100,000. The firm sold it at $250,000, and the client was happy to sign.

Aug 24

Ten Years of Goals and Enterprise Value Was Never One.

The Endgame

CSI Group sets objectives for one year, three years, and ten. Enterprise value has never been on the list. Revenue and profit were, and co-CEO Bobby Greco now thinks that was the wrong scoreboard.

Aug 21

Nobody Bought the Pay-for-Results Deal. Offering It Still Closed Sales.

The Confession

Eric Weisgarber has spent months offering outcome-based pricing at AMG Team. Clients taking it so far: zero. Deals closed anyway, and the offer is why.

Aug 20

Stop selling what you do. Sell the system that does it.

The Playbook

A founder rewrote a firm's pitch in one sentence, out loud, in front of the room. Same work. Same people. Same result. The only change: what the client thinks they're buying.

Aug 18

The Billable Number Was Wrong for Years. So Was the Margin.

The Benchmark

Grants Plus set out to find the real margin on its client work. The problem turned out to be one step upstream: the formula it used to count billable time had been wrong for years.

Aug 17

Talking to Buyers Early Told This Firm What to Stop Selling

The Endgame

A founder took calls with potential buyers years before hiring an M&A firm, with no intention of selling. The point was to find out what they would actually pay for.

Aug 14

Fix the Small Complaints and Keep the Clients You’re Losing

The Confession

One founder ran the math on their own book: lifting the average client from one and a half or two contracts to two and a half would, in this founder’s words, “transform this business.” The thing standing in the way is not sales. It is the client losses nobody saw coming.

Aug 13

Sell the Whole Year Up Front and the Renewal Chase Disappears

The Playbook

This firm just had its biggest sales month ever. The part that changed the business was not the size of the deals. It was the length of them.

Aug 11

The Same Overhead Sells a $50K Deal or a $500K One

The Benchmark

Most boutique consulting projects sell for $5K to $50K. One member firm moved its average deal from under $200K to $700K in about 18 months, and close rates improved while it happened.

Aug 10

The Exit Risk You Can Fix and the One You Can’t

The Endgame

Asked to put two more years in before going to market, this founder said yes, then named the two fears out loud: the M&A window, and the firm’s biggest client.

Aug 7

Handing Off Clients Cuts the Margin. Keeping Them Caps the Firm.

The Confession

This firm’s profit runs at 17 percent, and the founder knows it should be north of 40. The confession: every move that fixes it makes the number worse first.

Aug 6

Doubled the Gross Margin in a Year by Fixing One Number First

The Benchmark

A founder inherited a firm running gross margin in the low 20s. Before chasing a single new client, one number got fixed first.

Aug 3

Your Sale Price Sits in Three Buckets. Most Founders See One.

The Endgame

A boutique M&A advisor who has run deals for professional services firms says the number founders fixate on is the least useful part of the offer.

Jul 31

The Retainer Clients Stopped Renewing Once They Did the Math

The Confession

Signing annual retainers used to be easy for this firm. The founder now says why they stopped: the deal was tilted, and clients worked it out.

Jul 30

The Platform That Turned a Six-Week Deliverable Into a One-Day One

The Playbook

A production job that used to take six weeks now ships in about a day. Same firm, same clients, a different engine underneath.

Jul 28

The Founder Once Sourced Every Lead. Now It’s Down to 10%.

The Benchmark

Five years ago the two founders personally generated 100 percent of the pipeline. Today they generate about 10 percent.

Jul 27

“Too Small to Sell” Is a Feeling, Not a Number

The Endgame

A founder assumed the firm was too small to even discuss an exit. Then the buyers said firms this size are trading at 7 to 10 times.

Jul 24

Switch to Accrual Accounting Long Before You Plan to Sell

The Confession

A firm that grew on simple flat-fee, cash-basis billing discovered at the deal table that buyers wanted something it had never tracked.

Jul 23

The Clause That Raises Your Prices Every Year Without a Conversation

The Playbook

Most firms fight for a price increase one client and one awkward email at a time. One member stopped fighting. The raise is written into the contract before anyone signs.

Jul 21

One Client Went From $100K to $600K

The Benchmark

The fastest revenue in this firm did not come from a new client. It came from turning a single $100K project into a $600K relationship.

Jul 20

On the Biggest Sale of Your Life, Hire the Lawyer First

The Endgame

Most founders hire the investment bank first and let the bank point them to a lawyer. One founder weeks from going to market did the exact opposite, on purpose.

Jul 17

The Cash-Flow Trap That Keeps a Firm Resting on Yesterday

The Confession

Every founder knows a service goes stale in about two years. The quiet confession is that the same cash flow keeping the lights on is exactly what stops you from building what comes next.

Jul 16

The Contract Change That Made This Firm’s Margins Predictable and High

The Playbook

This firm stopped bleeding money when clients stalled. A single change to how contracts are written turned erratic project margins into consistently high ones.

Jul 15

Why This Firm Stopped Writing Project Stories and Started Banking Proof

The Playbook

A firm realized its case studies told nice stories and proved nothing. The fix was to change what gets captured, not who writes it.

Jul 14

Half-Booked at 40%. The Profit Benchmark Is 65%.

The Benchmark

This firm’s billable utilization sat at 30 to 40 percent while the industry standard for a healthy services firm is at least 65. That gap is where the profit quietly leaks out.

Jul 13

Why This Founder Is Buying Recurring Revenue to Become Sellable

The Endgame

A firm that wins blue-chip project work can still go from full to nearly empty in a matter of weeks. That swing is exactly what caps the price a buyer will pay.

Jul 10