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Hi there,

In our previous emails, we've talked about the importance of trust, demonstrating expertise, and building relationships for consultants. These are key ideas for every solo, micro, and boutique consultancies. But now it’s time for us to talk about the differences between you and other firms in the market.

The goal of this email series, after all, was to challenge generic growth advice. Each consultancy is unique in its own way, and what works for one might not work (or even be harmful) for another.

Some clients repeat it as a joke, but it’s true that seasoned advisors will answer most questions with a "it depends." The more experience you gain from various client engagements, the more you recognize that there's no one-size-fits-all solution. The reality is messy and complex, and context matters.

That's why, before you start exploring a plan to grow, it’s essential to invest some time looking at your consultancy's specific characteristics. While this is best done through a 1:1 private conversation, I want to share with you five factors that can significantly impact your initiatives:

• Your vision and definition of success
• The problems you solve
• Your targeting and positioning
• Your business model
• Your team and resources

Here’s a brief explanation of what they consist of and why they matter.

Your vision and definition of success
​As the saying goes, "If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there." It's impossible to create a growth strategy without first (1) defining what growth means to you and (2) clarifying exactly what you want to achieve.

Actually, the right word is not impossible but useless. What is your plan of action supposed to achieve, and why? If you can't answer that, there's really no point in strategizing anything.

You need to be able to answer how big you want your consulting business to become in terms of revenue, profit, and employees in the next 2-5 years. What your ideal working routine looks like. What kind of consultancy you want to build.

Of course, you don’t need to start this process with specific goals (and it’s actually better you don’t). It’s ok to use ranges. But you will need some kind of direction to inform your growth strategy and initiatives, or else any plan will do.

Your critical problem
​Every consultancy reflects the problems it solves. You might solve complex and relatively unique problems. Or problems that are uncommon for the client, but common in your industry or market segment. Or your specialty is solving common and frequent problems.

Your critical problems might be recurring or not. Urgent or not. Sometimes, they might even be seen more as opportunities than problems by clients.

I could go on and on, but you got the point. The nature of these problems directly affects who you work with, how clients buy your services, and how your consultancy operates. A specialized advisor will invest time in clarifying this since your critical problem will indicate what you must prioritize and which best practices (if any) you can borrow from other consultancies that overcame similar growth challenges.

Your targeting and positioning
​You might specialize in a specific service or serve a particular industry or vertical – or a combination of both. You could cater to SMEs, Fortune 500 giants, or any organization in between. Again, the business you choose to be in matters.

In poker, there's an important concept called "table selection." The idea is simple: Your success is not just determined by your skills in the game, but also by the table you choose to play at.

You can't earn much if you sit at a table where people bet small. You'll be out very quickly if you sit at a table with players much better than you. To increase your expected financial win, you have to find a table where:

1. The stakes are high enough to be worth playing; and
2. You have a high chance of winning against the other players.

The table you choose to sit in determines the scope and difficulty of your success.

You have hyper-competitive tables with low risk and low potential levels of success. An example could be competing with freelancers for $100 commoditized tasks (writing articles, doing generic research, providing administrative support). There's not a single consultant who would say this is a good table to sit in.

On the other side of the spectrum, you have tables with high potential levels of success, high risk, and almost no competition. Any hyper-specialized consulting firm would fit here - its narrow positioning allows the firm to dominate its space. But they also must balance the need to continually invest in new IP development while proactively generating demand among their handful of potential clients.

For all of us building, managing, and growing consulting businesses, the table you choose to play at is among the most important decisions you can make. And it will inform your growth plans.

Your business model
​You've likely heard advisors, analysts, and strategists praising or criticizing the business model of an organization. Unfortunately, it's mostly empty talk. What exactly is a business model?

When you look at academic publications, thought leadership, and popular research - which I did - you quickly realize that there is no universally accepted definition. That's probably the main reason why most discussions are filled with business jargon and subjectivity.

To keep this email reasonably short we’re not diving deep into the topic now. But the lack of quality information and tools for consultants is what led me to perform deep research and create a business model framework specifically tailored to micro consultancies. If you’re interested, you can learn more about it in this handbook(link).

What matters here is that there are different ways consultants can market, deliver, and charge for their services.

Your marketing approach can be more focused on capturing existing demand, or proactively generating new interest. Some consultancies focus solely on strategy offerings, while others also support the implementation of solutions. You may offer bespoke consulting and advisory, training, coaching, or even digital products. And let’s not forget about the different pricing strategies and cost structures a firm can adopt.

These different choices on how your consultancy operates can explain why:

• Most freelancers get stuck with an income below $100k/year, while top-performing solo advisors routinely earn close to seven figures a year.
• Most micro consultancies struggle with tight cash flow and client concentration issues, but hundreds of lifestyle boutique consultancies achieve high margins and flexibility with teams as small as 3 or 4 people.
• Significant changes in their business model, although complex and time-consuming, had a disproportionate impact on consultancy founders we’ve worked with (2-3x their total compensation in 12 to 18 months)

There’s no point in reviewing your business model every month. But if you’re serious about growing your practice, I certainly recommend you do it at least once a year.

Your team and resources
Last but not least, every plan of action needs to consider the available resources you can leverage. Every micro consultancy founder would love to have more people to support them, more money to hire them and invest in growth. But we’re in the real world. We need to make the best with what we got.

Most of you who are reading this don’t have large teams (you’re either a solo advisor or likely employ less than 10 people). But that doesn’t mean people don't deserve your attention. You may have assistants or associates with whom you often work together. You might have co-founders and co-partners.

That’s why, in order to plan for sustainable growth, it’s important to ask:

• How do your personal goals affect the rest of your team? Is everyone aligned on the kind of consultancy you want to become in the upcoming years?
• Which tasks, activities, and challenges do people want their work to consist of? How do they look at growth? What energizes them?
• And when you're working as a team, what's the dynamic like? What do people say, and what do people do?

Of course, your people are not your only resource. You probably also have intellectual property (IP), market assets, and relationships and partnerships to leverage - it’s important you take some time to look at all of those. Every serious growth advisor will assess them to identify sources of value and potential new revenue for your consultancy.

Those five factors are why you should be wary of generic growth advice, EVEN if it comes from people like me who are specialized in serving micro consultancies.

George Bernard Shaw once said:

Here’s a question for you: Are you doing the same for your consulting clients and prospects? Are you evaluating whether your content, service, or solution is the right fit for their context before presenting it to them? And, most importantly, are you putting their needs first?

I imagine (and certainly hope) you do.

Now, think about your growth advisor or whoever you listen to regarding marketing, business development, and offering development. Do they measure you like a tailor, catering to your consultancy's unique needs? Or do they rely on one-size-fits-all solutions, such as online courses and productized agencies?

I think it’s more than fair for us to demand that, just like we do with our clients, whoever supports you with growth puts you and your consultancy first. At least if you’re serious about growing your practice.

In our next and final email, my goal is to help you prevent costly mistakes. I will share some of the blunders micro consultancy founders make when hiring growth support, and provide you with some insight to help you choose the right approach for your practice.

As I’ve mentioned, to explore your consultancy's specific characteristics we would need to shift the conversation from this email series to a 1:1 conversation (feel free to reply to any email for a chat). So today what I recommend to you is a reading assignment.

The following handbooks are long-form articles that explore in more depth some of the factors that make your consultancy unique. Read them. Take notes. And think about whether you can clearly communicate your future aspirations, your market and favorite problems, and business model choices.

• Handbook link 1
• Handbook link 2
• Handbook link 3

Wish you a great reading.

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