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.
Last year, Eclipse Consulting Group launched our internal “Eclipse Academy” where we have been investing formally in the strategic development of our employees to be better professionals and consultants through a blend of structured offerings around everyday learning, core training, and targeted skill-building.
In the competitive landscape of Professional Services, boutique firms often face the challenge of growing, scaling, and eventually exiting successfully. Collective 54, the first community exclusively for founders of Professional Services firms, is dedicated to helping its members achieve these objectives. One effective strategy that firms can adopt is the Win, Keep, and Grow approach. This blog will explore how focusing on these three simple concepts can lead to profitable growth.
Let’s be honest: your to-do list is lying to you.
It looks productive. It feels necessary. But in reality, it’s a guilt trip disguised as a plan — a mashup of legacy tasks, half-finished habits, and things you swore you delegated but somehow ended up doing again this week.
Before I started Collective 54, I had a front-row seat to the power of peer advisory groups. I’ve been in rooms where wisdom flowed from experienced operators, where confidential issues were unpacked, and where lifelong business friendships were formed.
Collective 54’s Greg Alexander frames the lifecycle of a professional services firm as a 15-year journey: 5 years of growth, 5 years of scale, and 5 years to exit. If I had followed that path, I’d be on my third company by now.
The second half of the year is where discipline matters most. You’ve already launched your 2025 plan, and undoubtedly, conditions have changed. Some of your original assumptions are holding, others are not. The target remains the same: profitable growth. But how you get there will depend on how quickly and decisively you adjust.
As professional services owners, we’re wired to solve problems and deliver results. But between daily firefighting and pursuing big goals, we can lose sight of something equally important: actually enjoying the work we’re doing and the relationships we’re building.
Business is fast, competitive, and always evolving. Whether you’re managing a small team or running a multimillion-dollar firm, being great at your craft isn’t enough. You’ve got to lead, grow, adapt, and keep up with the speed of change in tech, talent, and expectations. And let’s be real—knowing when to pivot is just as important as knowing how.