How To Scale A Solo Professional Services Business

Are you ready to scale and grow your consulting business?

You've got a steady stream of projects. You're well known in your industry. You may even exist thinking about hiring someone to work with you.

This is a fourth dimension when many consultants feel like they are starting to hit a wall (or mayhap you're already smacked your caput confronting it and are feeling a boundless hurting).

Y'all're maxed out in terms of billing. You can only work and so many hours in a day. And you don't have fourth dimension to work on your business — only in information technology.

You're at a place where y'all want to grow your consulting business — exponentially, not incrementally.

If you want to start a consulting business, get more leads, or raise your rates, this article is not for you.

But if you want to grow and scale your consulting business — to $1M (or even far beyond that), then I'chiliad going to offer you lot different tactics, strategies, and the mindset it takes to grow your consulting business — the right manner.

Past the end of this article, you will learn…

• The three different consulting business concern models and the pros and cons of each model (and which is all-time for yous)
• How to go from a solo consultant to edifice an elite team of consultants under yous
• How to apply assistants, processes, and systems to automate and calibration your consulting business to new heights

QUICK LINKS

• iii Consulting Business Models For Growth
• Advantages & Disadvantages For Each Model
• Delegating & Using Assistants For Growth
• Systems & Processes For Automating Your Consulting Business concern
• Developing A Growth Mindset
• Get Assist Growing Your Consulting Business

Dissimilar Models for Scaling Your Consulting Business

There is more variability in consulting businesses than you might remember.

This realization is important for growing your consulting business. Choosing the correct model for you lot will assist y'all grow your consulting business, and savor the process while doing it.

That said, there is no "best" consulting model. It's subjective to what y'all desire.

• Practice yous desire to work closely with your clients, on interesting, complex, and rewarding projects where yous solve big problems?
• Take you dreamt about managing a team of consultants and running a consulting house — enjoying the perks and responsibilities of existence a Managing Managing director or CEO?
• Are you lot desperate to escape lengthy sales processes and complex proposals, and instead package your expertise into a product?

Before you choose how you lot grow your consulting concern, you first must consider what it is yous want.

Remember almost how you'd like your day-to-solar day to look similar in your business organisation, and how y'all'd prefer to go about growing your business.

The three models below should assist you become clear on what's the correct fit for yous.

The Consulting Firm Model

The firm model is your classic consulting firm.

Y'all hire consultants to deliver projects, usually billing past the hour or by the twenty-four hours. As the firm owner, you take a margin of the profit.

The house model is a highly scalable consulting concern model that's favorable to growth.

When you're running a consulting firm, you aren't always going to be working closely with clients on consulting projects. Y'all can, merely that's only one part of it.

You're also going to be focused on growing your business firm — winning more projects and hiring more than consultants. Thus, your income is separate from your time spent delivering on projects, and information technology often grows with each consultant that yous hire.

Here's what your team might look similar as a consulting house owner:

"I have an office director who takes intendance of all of my invoicing and billing and also sets up the initial interviews if they need boosted resources. We've got another person that helps manage the staffing system. I've got the usual accountant, chaser, financial adviser, and a banker who helps with loans because a lot of these companies don't pay for 90 days, so we have to deal with that. So as far as people on the ground, I've got nigh a dozen people on the ground at different clients who are doing mostly project direction work, merely there's a number of designers, product people, and a finance person. I got three finance people in one of our clients."

-Barc Holmes (Learn more well-nigh what it'due south similar running a 7-figure consulting firm in our interview with Barc)

When y'all utilize various consultants and other people to run your concern, you get to focus on what yous do all-time.

Whether that's working on high-value projects or building up your business, the firm model is fantastic for growth — and also for selling once the firm is big enough.

Example: Navelent

In this example, Navelent, you can meet a squad of consultants. This is an example of a consulting business firm. Their website is typical to what you should find in an effective consulting website — i focused on idea-leadership, example studies, and making it easy to contact them.

With multiple consultants, they're able to take on multiple consulting projects. Mindy Millward and Ron Carrcui run the firm. They piece of work on consulting projects — and on growing the practise.

This is an important distinction. As a consulting concern owner, you're focused but as much on your ain business every bit you are your customer's. You lot are responsible for developing new business so your consultants accept projects to work on.

The more projects you become, the more consultants you can rent, and the more turn a profit you can generate.

The Productized Consulting Model

The productized consulting model revolves around packing your expertise into products.

These products can have the form of information products, courses, programs, books, subscriptions, etc.

What you lot're doing with this model is putting your consulting services into a package and sticking a fixed price on information technology.

There are no customized proposals, you often avert lengthy sales cycles, or complex pricing agreements. You put a price on your expertise, package it into a product, and introduce it (marketing is disquisitional, of course) to the marketplace.

Consulting Success® is based on the productized model.

We've packaged our consulting expertise into courses, preparation programs, and coaching for consultants.

If you're a consultant — a subject field matter expert — in that location's nothing stopping you from putting what you lot know into a production.

If you are used to working very closely with your clients on custom consulting engagements, it can experience a bit unnatural.

Just It's entirely within your power to do. You can start with something simple like a discovery offer.

Example: TIG Brands

TIG Brands is another productized consulting business. They offer a set "stages" consulting that is broken down, step-by-footstep — into a series of productized consulting offers.

Elliot Begoun, founder & CEO of TIG Brands, could easily offer custom consulting with his expertise for emerging food and drinkable brands.

Instead, he's congenital a process and system for helping up and coming nutrient and beverage brands abound into bigger, more established businesses. He's broken it down into stages and private productized offers.

He's also able to teach his own employees on his procedure then they are able to run a plan themselves. This is a highly scalable model and fashion to grow your consulting business.

(Listen to our podcast with John Warrilow and learn how to productize your consulting services)

Customized Consulting Model

The customized consultant is one that I'm very familiar with. I ran my own consulting business for decades.

With this type of concern model (mutual amid solo consultants), you lot're customizing your solution to each client.

I was able to grow my customized consulting business into a highly profitable concern.

Many of you reading this commodity are running this blazon of consulting business.

When you run a consulting business using this model, yous take all the freedom in the earth. You get to choose everything: who you work with, how much you charge — and you lot tin can customize everything you lot offer exactly how y'all like it.

If you're running a business on this model, that also means you're dealing with certain challenges: wearing many different hats at once, the feast or famine cycle, and profitable pricing so that you tin earn more without having to work more than.

Some other big challenge is that y'all'll finish up feeling overwhelmed.

You lot have to exercise a lot yourself. Every new project involves some sort of recreation (like when writing proposals), because you don't take the do good of systems and processes of the productized model.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of customized consulting business is that they are the toughest to grow.

As you volition read below, driving ambitious growth is not for every consultant. Perhaps you desire to stay modest and create a overnice lifestyle business for yourself. If that's you, then the solo consultant model is perfect for you.

But don't think that y'all cannot grow a solo consulting business — because you absolutely can.

Example: David C. Bakery

David C. Baker, Founder of ReCourse, is a great example of a successful solo consultant. He runs a highly profitable consulting business and works on a variety of different projects with a variety of different clients.

Could he grow his consulting business: hiring more than consultants, training them to do his work, go a nice office space, etc?

Probably.

But that's not the life that every consultant wants to live.

You tin can tell from his website that he'southward carved out a nice niche for himself. He gets to work on what he wants, who he wants to work with, and wherever he wants to do information technology.

This degree of customization and control is not equally easily plant in the other models.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Each Consulting Business Model

Every consulting business organization model can abound — and each model comes with its strengths and weaknesses.

Permit'southward explore some of the strengths and weaknesses of each one to assistance you find the one that best suits you, your lifestyle, and your goals.

The Business firm Model

Advantages

• You can hire professionals to handle parts of the concern that you don't want to handle
• The concern tin run without your twenty-four hour period to day involvement once it is established
• The business becomes an asset that if y'all choose to sell will take greater value than if information technology was but you running the business by yourself

Disadvantages

• Payroll — y'all get responsible for paying the salaries of your employees every month
• Heavily focused on business development — if yous're into doing consulting piece of work, you lot might be doing much more than business concern evolution (sales) than consulting work
• The consulting house model does take other's relying on yous and yous must human activity like a manager and leader every day

The Productized Model

Advantages

• A great way to scale your consulting business as your income isn't directly related to your time spent billing
• You lot become a chief at your arts and crafts as you've developed proven systems and processes developed from doing the same matter over and over
• You create a valuable asset that tin be sold and doesn't require your twenty-four hour period to twenty-four hour period involvement in near cases to operate

Disadvantages

• Some discover it ho-hum to offer and provide the same service/product over and over
• Often requires more clients (volume) to attain high revenue level and some consultants feel a dip in their acquirement when they first first this model

The Solo Customized Model

Advantages

• Considered to be very much a lifestyle business
• High-profit margin and the ability to 'eat' all the income you take
• Doesn't require management of other people

Disadvantages

• Some discover it difficult to stay motivated and productive when they are the just person in the business organization
• Difficult to sell because all revenue and clients rely 100% on you
• You tend to accept less time off considering y'all feel like you don't earn unless you lot're working (which is often truthful)

These three consulting business models are only a showtime. Yous can mix and match different elements of these. As a solo consultant, you can build products. As a firm owner, you tin can work on loftier-value consulting projects or retainers.

Don't retrieve you're "stuck" in a single business organization model.

In the sections below, you'll learn how a consulting business concern running on ANY model can drive growth and scale through outsourcing and building systems.

Delegating and Using Administration To Scale Your Consulting Business (& Work Less)

In Perry Marshall's 80/20 Sales and Marketing, he talks nigh how 20% of the work you practise is responsible for 80% of your results.

Information technology'due south not a rule. It's a physical law. And it'due south appreciable in all aspects of your business organisation.

Think well-nigh this: at that place are a few tasks that you practice that are worth far more than the majority of the tasks y'all spend your time on each 24-hour interval, week and calendar month.

For at least one minute a day, even a $twenty/hour employee is worth well-nigh a thousand bucks an hour. Which means a $200-per-hour employee (dr., lawyer, business owner) is worth ten thousand dollars an 60 minutes.

Yous increase your income by focusing on all these activities and find some other mode, or some lower-paid person, to do the low-value activities. You move resources from the left side of the bend to the right side.

-Perry Marshall, 80/20 Sales and Marketing

What's it hateful that a $twenty/hour employee is worth "nearly a thousand bucks an hour" i minute a day?

Imagine that you hired an assistant to do your direct outreach. Many of the emails they send and the calls they make won't garner a response.

But there's that ane phone call — that one email — that gets a response and helps y'all gear up up a meeting with a determination maker.

If you plow that meeting into a $50K consulting project, and then the minute your assistant spent writing that email was easily worth $1000.

Landing a call with a big conclusion maker? That's a $one thousand/hour task that a $20/hr employee accomplishes.

It'due south with this 80/twenty principle where y'all commencement with your consulting businesses growth plan.

To scale your consulting business concern, you must…

• List the tasks you lot do in your business
• Sort the tasks from lowest value to highest value
• Identify which lower-value tasks can be washed by someone else
• Rent someone to practise those lower-value tasks

This is the essence of delegating and using the assistance of others to drive growth in your consulting business.

It'south an essential step of how you can calibration your consulting business organisation:

When you do this, you tin can spend three hours a day on your highest value job — instead of 30 minutes. You won't be caught up with your lower value tasks because someone else will exist doing it for yous.

And the ROI volition be clear — the time spent working on your more valuable tasks should pay for the contractor many times over if you've sorted your tasks out in the correct manner.

To help you visualize how y'all might do this in your business, give this exercise a try:

List out all the tasks you do in your business. Tasks like…

• Writing
• Enquiry
• Interviews
• Speaking
• Proposals
• Sales Calls
• Marketing
• Invoicing
• Accounting

Write down each and every task yous do in your day to twenty-four hour period.

Then, turn it into a spreadsheet, like this:

You'll put a check side by side to the tasks that y'all practice (the loftier-value tasks), and a check next to the lower-value tasks that you should await to outsource.

Having a visual reference of the tasks you tin can rent someone to have of your plate is the commencement step earlier hiring your first contractor and outsourcing your beginning task. It's one of the well-nigh critical steps to growing your consulting business organisation.

Start past outsourcing the most menial tasks that yous just don't want to practise anymore. Use a platform like Upwork or Fiverr to notice a freelancer who will do this for you.

This is how you motility your nearly important resources, your fourth dimension, over to the high-value tasks.

And information technology'southward a big office of how consultants grow their business concern — past creating more time to focus on those higher value tasks.

How do y'all make sure the freelancer you hire can actually perform the tasks you need?

Using Systems and Processes to Automate Your Consulting Concern

Retrieve about the tasks in your business organization that you practise frequently. You probably take a fix of steps — or a process — for doing said task in an efficient, timely fashion.

Instead of having to remember almost what to do to attain the goal of the task — you go through the steps and become your desired result.

To create processes for your consulting business, you want to list all of these tasks — and so write out those exact steps you have to complete them.

When you lot exercise this, yous're laying out the systems that brand up your consulting business concern. They go from abstract and in your head to solid, tangible steps. When you've written them down, yous have a reference for the processes that make up your business.

These are ordinarily known every bit Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).

In one case you've written standard operating procedures for your business, you'd be surprised how much easier it becomes to run your business.

You spend less energy completing these tasks because you follow the steps.

Formalizing your standard operating procedures will open up upwards new doors for outsourcing. You tin rent contractors to carry out your Standard Operating Procedures and run other parts of your business concern.

It also makes it easier for yous to discover the software that volition practice certain tasks besides.

When you do hire your get-go contractor, you'll have your SOP for the job yous're hiring them for.

For example, if you're hiring them to do research on prospects, write downward, in detail, the exact steps you would take to do this yourself.

This standard operating procedure — your system for completing this task successfully — makes information technology easier for your contractor to exercise information technology right. And information technology also makes it easier for you to teach them.

Moving forwards, you lot're both able to refer and improve upon the process by tweaking and improving the system.

Building and perfecting these systems make upwardly the foundation of a growing consulting business concern. Whether you're a solo consultant or looking to productize, having systems and processes in identify brand growth possible.

Developing A "Growth Mindset" for Your Consulting Business

To abound your consulting business, y'all must really want it to grow.

Many consultants might think they desire to grow their consulting business, but growing a consulting business is difficult.

You'll take to try to new things. You'll have to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. And you'll face the risk of failure.

Consultants that successfully abound their business are hungry for it. They take action to accomplish information technology.

Top-performing consultants don't wait for information technology to happen magically — they brand it happen. They pick a goal, a timeframe, and take the steps they must in gild to hit their goal.

Developing this mindset for growth —of taking activeness — requires rubbing up confronting your fears.

You'll be attempting many things you lot've never thought you would always practice: hosting a speaking engagement, writing a volume, publishing a course, edifice a team, managing payroll — all of these are some examples of what y'all might do to accept your consulting business organisation to that next level.

Growth requires doing things differently — and doing them better.

Finally, growth requires investing in your business organization. Whether it's in new tools, staff, marketing, or coaching — yous must learn to invest in your own business. To take calculated risks. To develop a mindset of abundance, not scarcity.

If aren't willing to invest in your own business, you lot'll notice it very difficult to abound your business organization.

At that place are people right now who've made it to exactly where you want to be.

What'southward it worth to you lot to invest in them? To be able to pick their brains on any problem you came across? To have access to someone who's dealt with your same challenges and solved them?

Those are the blazon of people you'll invest in if y'all're serious about growing your consulting business.

Growth is more than than just a set of marketing tactics or a "hack."

It's a mindset.

To learn more well-nigh mindset and developing a mindset for success, read my bestselling book: The Elite Consulting Mind

Get Proficient Assist To Grow Your Consulting Business

Consultants who are serious about growing their business aren't afraid to invest in people who can help.

They acquire from the experts who have been there, done that, and can pb the way with their experience.

That'southward what our coaching program is for. We've congenital up our own consulting business using all 3 models over time – so we know the benefits and challenges of each. And we've helped countless firms, productized consulting businesses, and solo consulting businesses all grow their consulting businesses.

At Consulting Success®, nosotros tin can help you calibration your consulting business and grow it past what you thought was possible.

Whether you want to…

• Build upward your own consulting business firm and get a highly-esteemed Managing director…
• Plow your consulting business into a product-oriented consulting business then yous can sell your services at scale…
• Create the perfect lifestyle consulting business, work with you want, and accuse what y'all want…

We can assist.

Learn more almost our coaching program and how we tin help you grow your consulting business organisation — in a sustainable, scalable way.

Source: https://www.consultingsuccess.com/how-to-scale-your-consulting-business

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