The Collective 54 members at the Founders Summit last October completed an exercise that forced us to summarize our work succinctly to uninformed audiences. Frankly, most of us seemed to struggle mightily with completing the C54 “haiku”:
One of the toughest transitions for consulting firm owners is letting go of client work. It’s easy to worry that stepping back might jeopardize client relationships you’ve spent years cultivating. After all, clients often come to us for our expertise and personal touch. But holding on too tightly to client work can actually hinder growth—for your firm, your team, and even your clients.
In today’s fast-paced, digitally-transformed business landscape, particularly within the consulting industry, the concept of time off—or Paid Time Off (PTO)—has become a linchpin in the realm of employee satisfaction and firm culture. For boutique consulting firm founders crafting an effective and competitive time-off policy is not just an administrative task—it’s a strategic tool.
As a founder, you’ve poured your heart and soul into building your professional services firm. You’ve navigated countless challenges, celebrated hard-won victories, and perhaps have reached a point where you realize you can’t do it all alone. Many founders find themselves becoming bottlenecks, which directly impacts both growth and profitability.
Starting a professional services company can be deceptively easy. The founder’s network is a verdant hunting ground for both leads and referrals, and their mere presence is often enough to close a deal. But soon a harsh, inevitable truth dawns: without a reliable means of generating pipeline outside of the founder, the business can only go so far. And, when it relies only on the networks of few key employees, the business is also over exposed to cycles of feast or famine.
In small service firms such as marketing agencies, IT service providers, and consulting firms, founders are in a relentless pursuit of top talent. The cornerstone of this quest often lies in crafting an irresistible employee value proposition (EVP). While compensation has traditionally been viewed as the primary lever to attract and retain talent, emerging trends suggest that it might not be the golden ticket after all.
In The Boutique by Greg Alexander, Chapter 3, “The Competitors,” introduces a critical insight: 30% of the time, boutique professional service (pro-serv) firms compete with their client’s internal resources. This was a revelation when I first read the book several years ago, and it remains a foundational truth for boutique firms providing marketing, IT, HR, accounting, or other professional services to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
You’re running a professional services firm, so let me ask you something: Would you advise your clients to ignore their most expensive line item? Would you tell them to leave their biggest asset unmanaged? Would you suggest they let their key differentiator drift aimlessly?
We all know the story: owners who built successful firms through deep personal involvement struggling to scale beyond themselves. If you’re reading this, you’ve likely already recognized this challenge in your own firm. The question isn’t whether to address owner dependency – it’s how to do it systematically.
Sure, that title is clickbait-worthy, but you made it this far, so what is the real story? A common mental model: If we only had a larger sales team, we could grow revenues at a pace that is faster than the growth in costs. But salespeople cost us more than any other type of labor, and their comp plans are usually tied to invoices, so we pay them first before anyone else. It can be challenging to afford to grow your sales team, especially before you even know who will make their quota.
