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.
Owners of boutiques are either focused on growing, scaling or exiting their Proserv firms. This post is focused on those owners looking to scale their firms. Many of us struggle to scale, even after years of positive growth. I have heard this from many of my peers in Collective 54. I have experienced it myself. So what’s the problem? Why do we fail to scale?
In the early days of building a professional services firm, the allure of scaling can be hard to resist. The vision of a thriving, self-sustaining company is compelling, but scaling too soon is the number one startup killer. Even in the best-case scenario, premature scaling can force you to backtrack or even start over.
In boutique professional service firms, be it consulting, software development, systems integration, managed services, or others, the role of the founder transcends beyond just leading the firm. It encompasses shaping the culture, defining the strategy, and making pivotal decisions that ultimately guide the firm’s trajectory.
Sellers often misunderstand the true purpose of an interaction with their buyers and thus miss the mark. They sign into a video call or step into a conference room and start in on a rehearsed pitch. They solely push a “proposition” communicating the solution offering and very little about what outcomes the solution delivers to the buyer. More times than not they fail to even mention how this helps solve the buyer’s current challenges. A pitch with a value proposition lacking any value is simply a proposition — and often a failed one at that.
The journey of a professional service firm owner can simultaneously be exciting, daunting, and fulfilling. Many have analogized this endeavor to that of a sailor crossing mercurial seas. The hardest part of any voyage is letting go of the past comforts of the shore and beginning your courageous trip. As you reflect on the early days of your business, you clearly remember the cash flow constraints, the scarcity of time, and the importance of each sale.
Hiring an investment banker isn’t something a person does every day. Statistically, most entrepreneurs sell only one business in their lifetime, often using the proceeds to retire or pursue new opportunities. For Collective 54 members, hiring an investment banker might be associated with the culmination of a 15-year project.
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.
For professional services founders seeking to grow, scale, and exit their firms successfully, membership in Collective 54 (C54) is a treasure trove of resources and connections. But with such a wealth of content — from coaching and Block courses to solution guides and peer meetings — the abundance can feel overwhelming. Here, I share my journey of turning their content into a structured system that has transformed how I use C54 to achieve my goals at The AMG Team.
The pursuit of entrepreneurial excellence is a crucial component of success. Many founders, though, unintentionally hinder their pursuit with simple missteps in defining roles and expectations.
Building an entrepreneurial culture fosters ownership, buy-in, innovation, and growth within your company. However, there are common missteps that employers make when it comes to fostering this within their teams. Getting these wrong can have an impact on more than company culture. It can also have legal, financial, and operational ramifications, as well. It will throttle your growth, impede scaling, and delay (or foreclose) your exit.