Scaling a Professional Services Firm – Part 4 Prime Heuristics for Scaling*
Prime numbers are a crystallizing way to categorize heuristics for scaling businesses, and professional services in particular:
Tips
Seeing Around Corners: How Cash Flow Forecasting and Adaptive KPIs Keep Growth from Outrunning You
When a business crosses $5 million in revenue, founders often relax. Sales feel steady. The team’s expanding. The future looks predictable.But growth doesn’t create stability — it exposes fragility.At Newpoint Advisors, we’ve seen hundreds of companies scale from $5 million to $50 million. The ones that stumble rarely run out of customers. They run out of cash — or worse, visibility.
Scaling Valleys: Why Growth in Professional Services Feels Like a Series of Cliff Dives
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.
Building a Target Operating Model: Begin with the End in Mind
The mission of Collective 54 is to help us founders grow, scale, and exit their boutique professional services firm. We are all on various points in that journey experiencing all of the same elation and frustrations that are part of the territory. I have recently become more focused on the exit that I will, in part, define the culmination of that journey.
The Mindset Shift That Unlocks Your First Great #2
There are two conversations happening in your business. The first is public: growth, new clients, visible momentum. The second happens in private, at 11pm, in your office. You are putting out fires your team should have handled, missing another evening with your family while a proposal only you can approve sits unfinished. The thought creeps in: “If I stop, everything stops.” This is the conversation we need to have.
The Workslop Trap: How AI Amplifies Bad Consulting
There has been much talk of AI-Generated “Workslop” after a recent HBR article made headlines. Like most things AI, the issue is not new, but it’s magnified and faster…. Slop with a new name and a Ferrari engine.
Consistent Growth Through Account Strategy
For founders of professional services firms, growth cannot depend solely on chasing new logos. The most sustainable path to scale comes from expanding within your existing accounts. Many founders in Collective54 tell me that Account growth is critical, and has historically been their top growth lever. But it’s not predictable, and seems like it’s very much customer driven – not sales driven. Account growth delivers higher margins, lowers client acquisition cost, and creates fertile ground for referrals and reputation.
Seller’s Journey – “The Soft Stuff is the Hard Stuff”
Selling your business is the most difficult event during a business owner’s journey. Period. After 25 years advising business owners, I have developed a deep conviction in the phrase that during ownership transition “the soft stuff is the hard stuff.”
Embrace the Unknown
Historically, something has always been thought to disrupt companies, from the printing press to machinery to Excel, and now AI. Every day, I log into LinkedIn or other social media and see new content about AI. Some are inspiring, some educational, but there are also warning AI will replace the whole workforce.
Managing CEO Stress and Anxiety in Healthy Ways
This quote resonates with me: “Work on the business, not in the business.”. For me, part of working on the business is making myself more resilient, healthy and happy so that I can make the investments in the rest of the business. If I’m not stable, energized and able to bounce back from challenges, then how am I supposed to work on the rest of the business?