When I started Newpoint Advisors, I thought scaling a professional services firm would be a straight line — a predictable path where each win stacked neatly on top of the last. Not unlike getting on an elevator and going up. If you had the right service, the elevator just went up. You only had to be patient. Boy, was I wrong.
At the start of 2025, I made a simple New Year’s resolution: complete a marathon.
Up until then, most of my training had been for baseball or CrossFit. Strength mattered more than endurance. Running had never been my thing. But, I wanted to see what would happen if I set a big goal and followed through.
Content just became cheap. If you haven’t noticed, you now have access to millions of AI-generated articles explaining how AI is changing content. Take the AI of your choice – it lowers the threshold for publishing ideas.
As professional services owners, we know the importance of having a strategic plan. We spend considerable time each year crafting thoughtful annual plans, setting ambitious but achievable goals, and mapping out the path forward. But here’s what I’ve learned over the years: the real challenge isn’t creating the plan—it’s keeping it alive and relevant throughout the year while maintaining focus on what truly matters.
Most founders think growth comes from more leads, new offers, or better sales tactics. But one of the most powerful growth tools is already sitting inside your firm: the post-project review.
When we started expanding SureStep internationally in 2009, the world looked very different. The G7 dominated global economics, the US dollar reigned supreme, and “going global” seemed like a straightforward extension of domestic success. Fast-forward to 2025, and nearly everything about international expansion has changed.
If you run a boutique professional services firm, you’ve likely felt the ground shift under your feet: slower inbound, elongated cycles, clients insourcing, price pressure from AI, and teams stretched thin. The symptoms are familiar; the diagnosis varies. This post offers a practical, founder-friendly playbook, rooted in Greg Alexander’s The Boutique and fresh insights from fellow C54 founders, to stabilize revenue, rebuild momentum, and emerge stronger.
In May, I argued that 2026 growth planning has to start journey-first—not budget-first. Map how buyers actually discover, evaluate, and choose you; then align teams and targets to that reality.
One of the hardest parts of running a professional services firm is keeping great clients and growing with them. Too often, founders fall into the trap of treating every client the same. That works in the early days, when you are just trying to get revenue in the door. But as your firm matures, that approach stalls growth.
I’ve long believed in the transformative power of habits. Small, recurring actions have an extraordinary ability to compound, producing significant value over time.