Three years ago, Collective 54 hosted its first annual event for founders of boutique professional services firms. It began as a simple idea: bring together leaders who had been collaborating virtually to connect, learn, and grow in person.
Most professional services founders know these fundamentals. But in the day-to-day grind of building a business, it can be easy to forget them or let them drift.
This post is a reminder. A quick audit of the core elements that make firms successful. If you’ve got these dialed in and things are scaling nicely, great. If not, this might help you identify what needs attention.
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.
I’ve been with Collective 54 for a little over three years now.
In that time, I’ve supported hundreds of founders and executives as they look to make more money, make scaling easier, and ultimately make an exit achievable.
Working alongside these leaders, and learning from my peers, mentors, and coaches, has felt like earning a real-world MBA. That kind of education is only possible because of the opportunities I have here.
Many firms craft value statements, put them in a slide deck, and hope the words sink in. The unfortunate reality is that values that live only on paper rarely have any gravitational pull. They have to show up in hiring, onboarding, daily routines, and feedback.
Peace and profits come through clarity. That’s why in 2025, our company, Interview Valet, updated one of our core values. It’s something we had all known in our gut, even if we hadn’t yet put words to it: “Heck Yes or No.” We borrowed the phrase from Derek Sivers, the founder of CD Baby, who popularized it as a decision-making compass in a book and TED Talk. The idea is as simple as it is powerful: if something (or someone) isn’t a “heck yes,” then it’s a no.
My dad founded Corporate Insight in 1992 as a solo marketing research practitioner. He was content in that role—until 1997, when he hit on an idea to productize research. That’s when I joined him, and within three months, we launched our new service and made our first non-family hire. At the time, we thought we’d stay a small, five-person operation. But the market had other ideas, and as demand grew, so did our team.
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?
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?
A healthy ego can be an entrepreneur’s best friend. But when vanity intrudes, all the puzzle pieces start to come apart.