Consulting: Product Ladders, Scalability, Referrals

“Expertise is gained by investigating why a system doesn’t work.”

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💎 Why It Matters

Consulting helps you learn more and earn more.

See across environments and capture more of the value that you create.

🔍 Problem

Clients lack the expertise to solve their own problems.

💡 Solution

Consultants guide clients and sometimes implement solutions.

🏁 Players

🔮 Predictions

  • More consultants will outsource non-core competencies like accounting (Bench.co), scheduling (SavvyCal) and entity setup (Stripe Atlas).
  • Consultants will become more specialized. Outsourcing non-core competencies helps you focus. Kevin aggressively automates and updates processes to save time.

☁️ Opportunities

🔑 Key Lessons

  • Do great work. This is your best marketing. Remark-able work helps you “live” on referralsStewart Townsend hasn’t worried about outbound lead gen in over a decade.
  • Optimize for quality over quantity. Selling time doesn’t scale. Work with better clients to earn more instead of working more.
  • Agencies have negative scale effects. As they grow, so do coordination costs. This leads to more revenue but lower margins.

😠 Haters

“I don’t want to trade time for money.”
You can skip steps in the entrepreneurial journey. But it tends to take longer. See the ladders of wealth creation.

“We already covered agencies.”
We also covered the differences between consultants, agencies and productized services. These are distinct.

🔗 Links

📁 Related Reports

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Stewart Townsend (Channel as a Service), Kevin Whelan (Kevin.me), Vishal Srivastava (Trainedge), Montse Ventosa (Neu21), Tem Nugmanov (Optemization), Vincent Haywood (VHDigtial), Daniel WulfRay Deck (Sustained Ventures), Emmanuel Vivier (HUB Institute), Josh Spector (This Is How I Do It), Keanan Koppenhaver (Alpha Particle) and Cole Grolmus (MetaSecurity). We had a great time jamming on this report.


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Trends PRO #0068 — Consulting has more insights.

What you’ll get:

  • 20 Consultants (122% more)
  • 5 Predictions (150% more)
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  • 8 Key Lessons (166% More)
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With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

  • (📈 Pro) Who charges $7,000/month as a fractional CMO?
  • (📈 Pro) How to shorten sales cycles?
  • (📈 Pro) How to sell retainers?
  • (📈 Pro) How to limit scope creep?
  • (📈 Pro) How to find quality clients?
  • (📈 Pro) How to use discovery offers?
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  • (📈 Pro) Which aspects of consulting are being automated?
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  • and a lot more…