Greg Alexander — Grow & Scale Your Boutique Services Firm

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done. I think docsa Talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to Docs of Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatant.com Bill G. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today. All right, we're talking about how to grow and scale professional services firms. Our guest today did that. 162 million for a professional services firm was the sale, right? So there's a lot of opportunity and we deal with them all the time. I know a lot of our audience, listeners, viewers have professional services firms. We're going to share some great things for that. We've got a guest with experience with a book, with a company that does work around this thing. Hang in there. My name is Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast. We bring our show to you every week with something to do with the world of scaling up. Getting the people right, dialing in the strategy, executing better, improving your cash model and all of the leadership things that go into taking the company from here to there. That's our show. ScalingCoach.com is the website. You'll find it also wherever you are right now. Hey, I have a big favor to ask everyone. We are a little behind in our Apple podcast tracking relative to the results of the downloads. And and you could do something really great for us if you would give us a review, an honest review, whatever you like about the show on Apple Podcast platform that would really be helpful. We could use a bunch of them. Like right now it's an area that we're behind. So as we go to the show, I'd like to ask our regular loyal listeners if you wouldn't mind going over to Apple Podcasts if you're on the platform and give us a good review there or whatever. Give us a crappy review if you hate it. But I'll bet if you're a regular listener you don't hate it. But all right. I'm joined now by Greg Alexander. So Greg has a book out the Boutique how to Start Scale and sell a professional services firm. And we've worked with them in the past and we know a big range of them and these kinds of firms often feel like they can't sell. But Greg did it for 162 million and now his book and his company are all about helping firms like that grow and scale and, and find exits and that kind of thing. So we're going to talk all about that today with Greg, who joins us from Dallas area. How are you, Greg?

I'm well, Bill. Thanks for having me today.

Oh, and I didn't mention the company. Right. So the book is the Boutique how to Start, Scale and Sell Professional Service Firm. And the company is Collective 54. So we'll talk about that. We'll go to that as well. So, yeah, really glad to have you on the show. Why don't you tell us like your story, your background? I think it's always the place where we generally will start with guest because it's what led you to this book and this business talk about your firm. What kind of firm was it? What did you do? And how did you kind of go through that process and end up selling for 162 million?

Yeah, sure. So I described my career in three chapters. The first chapter was that as an employee, I was a young college recruit, went to work for a hot tech company called EMC at the time of Dell Computer, rose up through the sales ranks after the dot com bubble burst, went back to school, got my MBA that launched chapter two, that of being an entrepreneur. And I started my management consulting company. It was called SBI Sales Benchmark Index. What it did was it helped B2B sales organizations improve their productivity by applying the science of benchmarking to the art of sales. I had that from 2006 to 2017. That's when I had the exit for 162 million. And I mentioned that number because that's unusual for a consulting firm. And so we did some things that led to that that launched chapter three, which is the chapter I'm in right now. I'm the founder and owner of Collective 54. Collective 54 is the first mastermind community dedicated exclusively to the needs of boutique professional services firms. And that's what I'm doing now. The easiest way to understand Collective 54 for your audience, it's like an EO, but focus on a single industry, professional services.

So we have a lot of listeners, viewers from EO and especially YPO around the world. Let's go back to SBI for a minute. So the who did you work with what kinds of firms. And what exactly is this work that happened?

Yeah, so we had three categories or three market segments. So we had the Fortune 500. So one of our clients was ConocoPhillips, another was Hewlett Packard. These are people that had thousands of sales reps all over the world. The types of things we did for them was we designed their territories, we wrote their compensation plans, we set their quotas, we determined which products to sell through which channels to which customers. That kind of thing.

The data side of sales planning, correct?

Yeah. That's why it's called sales benchmark index. Yeah. Second group was private equity firms and we would work with their portfolio companies. They had hired us because their thesis was that they could improve the economics of their sales organization, particularly the lifetime value of clients and the cost to acquire a client. And then the third group was well funded startups and their challenge was unique. They were strapped to a rocket, they were growing really quickly. So it was all about deploying a large salesforce in a hurry. So those are the three types of companies that we worked with.

So really clear, did you work with all three in the beginning or did you move into more? Were they all kind of equally valuable or did you find one that was better than the other?

So when we launched, we started with a Fortune 500 and that's because of my background. I was a sales leader in the Fortune 500 company and a lot of people had left EMC at that time and they landed as sales leaders in these big companies and word of mouth dragged me into those businesses. And then we did a project for a really fantastic private equity firm called Premiera. They were spinning a company, Genesis out of Alcatel Lucent. And we caught them at the right time. We knocked it out of the park and they kind of spread us through the Palo Alto, Menlo park, growth capital, PE groups and bingo, we spread like crazy in the PE space. And then, you know, professional services, all about word of mouth. So we started rubbing shoulders in the venture capital community because they were kissing cousins to private equity, if you will. And we started doing business in the startup group. So that's kind of how it evolved over time. As for were they all equal? No, they weren't. Our biggest impact was on the private equity space because they were buying low and selling high. And our impact really moved the valuation of those companies. And they were short sprints, you know, they typically held those businesses for five years. So there was a beginning and an end. And at the end everybody could directly attribute the value that we created for.

Them, that makes a lot of sense. And I could see why private equity is so focused on like, let's take the company and then let's just make it more efficient. Right. But I also hear the opportunity, if you have a professional services firm, maybe you should do that work yourself before you sell at a pretty low multiple to private equity and then.

Is very active in professional services. And that's a recent thing, relatively recent, let's say in the last five years or so. And the main reason for that is that pro served firms are capital light businesses, they throw off a ton of cash. And the private equity model is you buy a company, put a lot of debt on it, and as long as you can service the debt, then you're in a good spot. And services companies can service the debt because they're very profitable. My firm had 52% EBITDA margins just as an example. And when I sold, we sold the private equity for those reasons.

Yeah, that's a great position to be in. And yet not all of our professional services firms are thinking about that and running really efficiently. They'll have high overhead, they'll have inefficient areas. So let's share some of the other stories from the book and from your work. You've got quite a few that you shared in preparation, I think. Let's start with the problem first. And you shared a story about an infosec pricing company. Was that yours or was that different?

Which, which store are you talking about?

Something information security business that was doing some pricing work.

Oh yes, yeah, yeah. So when I had sbi, one of the practices we had in that company was a pricing practice. And very often that was a software company. Their pricing models were done incorrectly. So in that case they were thinking about cost up pricing, they weren't thinking about what the value of their service really was. So we taught them the difference of that and as a result, their clients were willing to spend a lot more because it was a percentage of the value that was being created. And that switch alone justified a much higher price for the service.

Yeah, that's such a. I mean you tell that story in a very bare bones fashion, but. But that's so gold, right? If you're thinking about in pricing from a cost basis, then you're thinking about yourself like a commodity and not thinking about the value. And I hear that shift in there. Thinking about what is the problem we're solving, what's the value that we're creating. Thinking about it from that standpoint can Change everything. Whether you're a coaching business, consulting business, a energy business, clean energy, like whatever, you know.

Yeah, you know in the rule of thumb in pricing is for every 1% improvement in pricing, it's a 10% improvement to profitability. And the reason for that is, is that you don't add any cost, you change your price. In theory, if you can charge more, you're not adding any cost to the production process or the labor or anything like that. So it drops directly to the bottom line. It's an under leveraged lever if you will. Particularly in professional services, which is what I'm working on right now. So much. And so often they say, okay, so I'm getting hired to do this project, how much is it going to cost me to deliver this work? They throw a margin on top, 20, 30% and they throw the price over the fence and hope the client says yes. That's the wrong way to go about it. The right way to go about it is to work with the client to truly understand the problem and what's the payoff if we solve it and what percentage of that payoff are you willing to share with me, the service provider? And when you start top down versus bottoms up, you end up making a lot more money.

I found a lot of people that work with government agencies, with utilities, large established firms. They're often their, their path is often cost plus kind of thing like, and they want to know their cost, that kind of thing. And I had a software development company back in the 90s and I came and I just asked stupid questions in the beginning, which is always a brilliant thing like what do you want to get done? Okay, great, and what's that worth you, what's your target budget? What are you trying to get this done for? Because I know on the, on the manager side, the executive side of the buyer is a problem, some pain point, right? And then a budget, an idea like, okay, this is worth 60 grand to me or this is worth 3 million or something. They're like, and I need to get it done in this quarter or next quarter or something. You know, that's how larger company managers and even some smaller ones think about it, like what am I going to get this thing done for in what kind of time frame? And so in fact they really don't want to, some of them are required to do that cost plus thing, but they, they don't want to spend open ended on that. You know, they'd rather know, great, it's $500,000 and I'm going to get this thing done in eight weeks.

Boom.

Much clearer.

Yeah, exactly. You know, and in the government sector, as you just brought up, it's a little different because it's usually RFP driven and there's a requirement to have multiple bids, et cetera. But a lot of people don't realize this, but some of the highest priced consulting firms in the world, like a McKinsey or Bain and BCG, they do a tremendous amount of work with the government. And sometimes people think, well, someone like that, that charges a premium and they charge a huge premium. They wouldn't do work with the government because the government wouldn't pay those rates. Not true. They do pay those rates. In fact, you can look up what the government actually pays because we're citizens, we pay the taxes. It's in the public domain. You can see exactly what they pay. And they're paying millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars with consulting firms, IT software development firms, et cetera. So it's not true that the government's not willing to pay a premium. They are.

Yeah. I think in your. You talk about selling cures, right? Not sell painkillers and cures, not vitamins. And I feel like that's absolutely clear. Like solve someone's pain point. That's where people throw money. Later, when they have a relationship, they might buy your vitamin subscription. Right? That's the maintenance plan and the follow up.

Yeah, I mean, so painkillers, when you're in pain, you're buying it, you want the pain to go away. It's urgent, it's pressing. Vitamins are like New Year's resolutions. You know, maybe you go to GNC in January and then by July, you never goyou never step foot in the store. So if you're selling vitamins, it's a lot harder than it is selling painkillers.

Yeah, it's funny, you really have to develop a long term habit around something like that. I was rarely consistent with vitamins until I started to have to take some daily pills. Right. For cholesterol, blood pressure, and that kind of aging crap. And then I started to consistently take my vitamins and then came Covid. And I'm like, oh, I better take my vitamins. And now I become really good, really reliable at taking all my little daily meds. Makes me such an old person, you know.

That's a great story. I mean, Covid turned vitamins from a nice to have to a must have. Nobody wanted to get Covid, so they started taking vitamins to avoid Covid. That's a great story. Of how when you're a nice to have service or product all of a sudden becomes a must have sales go up.

Yes. And we saw companies that we've worked with in that sector have seen their sales increase like to the max of their ability to supply, you know, just right at the thing. No, no trouble for demand in that world so much. So another company that you shared with us is a professional translation translator business. Talk to us about that. What kind of business would that? You don't have to share the names of the folks, but. And what was their problem? What did they do?

Yeah. So translation is a growth industry, which is surprising. Now we'll see what happens in the world of AI going forward. But back in the day, if you were a software company and we did a lot of work, you know, I started the company in 2006.

Yeah.

And that's right around the time that SaaS hit the market.

Yeah.

So all these new companies were coming in software as a service and they usually started in the US because that's where the big market was. But eventually they needed to expand outside of the US which drove a need for their software to be translated into additional languages. So it drove a big need for translation services. Yeah. And that's a classic example of professional services. That is a professional service, meaning, you know, you need highly educated, skilled workforce to handle that work. And it drove a big demand. So the process of selling that service, if you will, into a specific use case. Software in this example was a very particular thing we like to say. And I know the folks in scaling up say this all the time as well. The riches are in the niches. So if you can define a market that's small enough that you could be the 800 pound gorilla, but big enough to matter, you can really knock it out of the park. And that's a great example of that. That was a pretty well defined market. There's X number of companies that had that need. But this particular firm was the best at it and it became a substantial firm and it was a great outcome for everyone involved.

Well, there's translation for tourism, there's translation for government and NGO type stuff. There's translation live delayed. Right. Interpretation versus document translation. And translation for business is a pretty big category. But then you've gone both for correspondence and marketing, communications contracts, things like that. And then you've gone Further. Translation for SaaS. Business is a very specific, unique client and something that you could kind of dominate and it would have unique needs.

Exactly. And that's, you know, I believe that we're in the golden era of the professional services space. And I feel that way because the gig economy that started in the consumer world is spreading into the corporate world. And because innovation is happening so quickly, large companies which are the dominant purchasers of professional services, they just can't keep all the expertise in house. Every six months the expertise changes. So instead of buying it, they're renting it. And it's creating this opportunity, this wonderful opportunity for these pro serve firms. In fact, Collective 54 is the name of our firm. So where does the number 54 come from? So the North American Industry Classification, that's 54.

Not the studio?

No, not studio, I wish. But just the United States alone. $2 trillion a year is spent. 2 trillion. Organic growth rate of 5% employs 11 million people. It's the second largest sector, trailing only the energy sector in the United States. In fact, we focus on the boutiques which are firms between 10 and 250 employees. So they're post startup at pre scale if you will. And Pre exit it's 1.5 million of them in the United States. So highly, highly, highly fragmented. Now how can there possibly be a million and a half firms out there? That's how much demand there is. That's how much money is spent in consulting and marketing and advertising, IT services, financial services, law, accounting, design, et cetera, et cetera. There's so much money being spent that all these firms are doing really well. The disturbing part bill of that is only 4116 of them have reached scale. Defined as more than 250 billable people. That's one quarter of one.

Wait, wait, wait. You said the scale you determine is 250 billable? Yep, that's our definition point that you.

Yeah, once you hit 250 billable people, you really have hit scale. The revenue per head is about 300 $400,000 in that world. So you're really a large at scale business there. Many of them go public at that point or they sell at that point. But if you think about it, one and a half million and only 4116 of them have reached scale. One quarter of one percent. So what the heck did those 4000 firms do that everybody else didn't do? Because the rest of us, they all wanted to do it, but they were unable to do it. And that's what we hope to solve with Collective 54, to shine a light on those things. And that's what the lessons are in the book.

Yeah. It seems to me that if you find a problem and a client, a focus area, then you can fine tune your solution and your service on that client and problem. And that seems like kind of the key thing that you're going at is a lot of focus on a particular niche and then fine tuning something so that it's not just you or you and five other people that are doing it, it's 250 people doing it that you've sufficient. And with those numbers. Right, 250 people. And what did you say the average revenue?

3 to 400,000, depending on the 3 to 400,000.

You're talking about people that are making 75 to 150,000 a year probably in that range. And that's being dirt poor if you live in San Francisco, but in a lot of the country, that's a lot.

You know, let's tell the story of Goldman Sachs.

Yeah.

Because everybody knows that.

Yeah.

Okay, 40,000 employees and only 400 partners. 400 partners split up billions of dollars a year in fees. Yeah. So yes, the average, you know, sergeant in the army is making 70550 grand. But the people that sit on top of the pyramid are printing money. And that's the nature of professional services. It's a pyramid. That's called the leverage ratio. So in Goldman, you got 400 people keeping 40,000 people busy. And in that example, they sell work at 2, 3, $4,000 an hour, but they deliver it for a hundred bucks an hour and they pocket the spread. That's how the business model of Pro Server works.

Yeah. And when you've got and scaled a company like that, then all those people are learning something. They're hoping to make partner one day or they're deciding that they want to go do their own thing or they go into some other related field. They learn something in the process, but. And a few would stick around and you know, and work at a lower level forever.

Actually, they don't let them work at the low, low level forever. There's a thing called the upper out pyramid that dominates pro firms at scale. So every job on the ladder has got an expiration date and you either progress up in the pyramid. If you're watching my hands on the video, the pyramid narrows greatly and the system either pushes you up or spits you out. And it's a talent supply chain. So you can't sit in a job for 10, 15, 20 years because you're clogging the supply chain. There's a new class of people coming in behind you. So they're constantly getting better by weeding out the Weak.

Yeah. It's a very interesting thing to think about. Like, there's a life cycle. Not every job lasts forever. There's a progression. Which isn't to say that should be true of every job everywhere in every industry. And that kind of time. I mean, a lot of people who, you know, they. I, I had a woman working for a company once, and I, I was frustrated that she didn't seem more growth oriented because so much of the company was growth oriented. And my coach at the time said, dude, she's great. She has your company values, except for the growth thing. She'll do that job for the rest of her life and you need that job done. And she's very happy with that. That works for her and her life. So leave her alone.

Yeah, you know, I would.

She was on the accounting team and, you know, she found her place.

Yeah. Personally, you know, my story at SBI would be contrary to that example. Yeah. You know, our belief is it takes 15 years approximately to go from launch to exit and proserve.

Yeah.

There's three, three stages. Grow, scale, and exit. About five years in each stage, and the employee composition changes dramatically there. So I started with a group of pioneers and this, these were the early employees. And these are people who like to go first and invent things. Then about five years in, you're scaling and the last thing you need is more invention. You need more iteration.

Oh, my God. So, hey, hold there. Amen to that. If you're a founder who's invented, founded your business, created your product or service, that kind of thing, you need to back off and allow people who iterate and improve things stop inventing. It destabilizes the company. And I say that with love because I am by nature an inventor, a creator, an idea monkey.

Then you get to the third phase when you want to sell your firm and you don't even need iteration. We call them settlers, people that just want to show up for every work and operate the machine.

Yes.

Because someone buying you wants stability. Yeah. You know, and if, if your audience consists of entrepreneurs or founders, they need to recognize and have enough self awareness when they get the heck out of the way and hand the firm over to somebody else, that's more appropriate to take it from that point in its evolutionary state. And that, that's why I sold my firm. And the person that took over for me, you know, was somebody better suited at that moment in time.

Yeah. It's a really good thing to think about. Where's the progression? When do you bring in the coo? When do you replace yourself as CEO? How do you work yourself out of a job instead of building a company around you and all of your strengths and weaknesses. Really different way of thinking about things. Well, I want to go to one more story but let me just give a couple shout outs to some of our folks before we run out of time on our show. First of all, big shout out and thanks to my friend and mentor, you know him also Vern Harnish who started the whole scaling up framework and the Rockefeller habits that preceded it, founded the EO organization and others. So anyway, shout out to Vern and then to Wanna Mitchell, our show producer who gets our show ready. Our guests ready things shepherds it all through the folks at Podfly who produce the audio, the show notes, do the distribution for us each week. If you'd like to get more information from us or that kind of thing, want to get in touch if we can help you find a coach or something like that in your area, put you in touch with one of our guests. ScalingCoach.com is is our web address and our partners and that kind of thing. Our align today Software Growth Institute elearning all the other kinds of things in the world of scaling up. You'll find links to all those things there@scalingcoach.com and our email infocalingcoach.com I have a big ask for you if you wouldn't mind. If you wouldn't forget, we could use some more reviews on the Apple platform because they really track that thing. So if you wouldn't mind giving us a review there, good or bad, an honest review is fine over at Apple Podcasts or wherever you're going. If you watch this on LinkedIn, if you watch this on YouTube, wherever it is, give some reaction. That would really help us for our visibility for the show to help others discover. So back to Greg and your show. You talked about competition of different types and our focus on competition. You shared a story about a client in the telecom industry. Tell us about that company and what they did and the focus there.

Yeah, so this was a tech company in telecom. They did a very specific thing in the switching space. I won't bore you with the technical details, but they had this truly inventive, pioneering type solution and they would go in and they would pitch it and they would have a funnel full of deals and the sales team would tell the sales leader $10 million is going to close this quarter and the end of the quarter would come and 3 million would close and they didn't know why Exactly. Part of the service we provided them was called Win Loss Reviews. So we would pick up the phone and we'd call people and the people that awarded them business that tell us why they won and the people that didn't award them business and tell us why they lost. And this company in particular, they never really lost the business to a competitor. They lost to the biggest competitor that we affectionately refer to as Do Nothing. So what is a description of the Do Nothing competitor? It's the project that went away. The client all of a sudden just decided not to do anything. They didn't spend any money. And let me tell you something, there is son of a bee to be. They are a really fierce competitors. In fact, we track this at Collective 54 as well. And we estimate that somewhere between 50 and 55% of our members, when they lose business, they lose it to this competitor, Do Nothing. So what happens? Well, normally what happens is you're not pursuing a real project. You know, we talked earlier in the show, there really wasn't a compelling burning problem to solve. There was no urgency around the problem. So pursuing new business is costly and it takes a lot of time. So you go after this deal and you think it's a deal and it's not really a deal. And the client calls you up and says, oops, sorry, we're not moving forward. There's another priority. And we've decided to direct our attention because your clients and your customers have the same problem you do. It's too much to do and not enough hours and day to get it all done. So how do you make sure you're a priority? So in that story, we taught them how to work with their client and calculate the true cost of inaction. So if you do not move forward.

This is highlight the pain, put a value on the pain, on the problem.

Yeah, yeah. And once their clients prospects realized that it really wasn't an option to do nothing.

Yeah.

Because not only was there real pain today, but that pain is going to compound. In other words, every day you don't act, it gets worse. And that was a breakthrough for them. And their close rates went up substantially after implementing that technique.

I think it's really, really useful. We tend to think about, well, I have this competitor over here and I have that competitor and I've lost out again and again to the do nothing competitor with companies that I really wanted to work with and they're like, yeah, we'll just keep thinking about it or whatever. Because who knows why it seemed too hard to them or it Seemed, whatever. They're doing fine. They're doing well enough as it is right now. So they kick it down the road a little bit until it's going to be a problem later.

Yep. It happens all the time. And when you're selling something intangible, like a professional service, it's really easy to kick the can down the road.

Yeah.

Because sometimes a client, maybe they're buying it from you and they've never bought it before. It's the first time they've ever made a decision. So they don't really know what their cost of inaction is. They don't know what good looks like. You know, I tell the story oftentimes I like to drink wine, but I'm not a wine connoisseur. If you gave me a taste test between a $50 bottle of wine and a $500 bottle of wine, I probably wouldn't tell the difference.

Actually, a lot of people can't tell the difference there. And I live near wine country. Yeah.

The people that are selling wine for half a grand, they're going to lose my business because I can't recognize the difference. So it's their job to explain the difference to me and show me that, I don't know, maybe I got a worse hangover the next day if I drink the cheap stuff. And if you translate that to a business context, it's the same thing. It's your job to show people what it truly costs them and hard dollars or opportunity costs by not moving forward.

Yeah, that's a really useful thing. I think there's a slight variation on it. I wonder if you have anything to say about it. But it is sort of the soft version of do nothing. It's like, we're not going to hire doing anything else. We're not going to outsource, but we're going to ask people internally to work on something that they don't have time to work and that kind of thing. Like, we're going to have people do a mediocre job of this thing that you specialize in.

So get this. So that's 30% of the equation. So I talked about our benchmarking earlier. 50, 55% of the losses collected, 54 members lose it, do nothing. 30% of them lose to that. We call it internal resources. And what they say is, I'm the client. I think I can do what you can do as good as you can do it. And it's quote, unquote free.

Yes.

Now the task there is to say, really. So now it's the second or third job. So you're telling me you got people sitting on their hands with nothing to do? Let me show you how much work that's really involved with doing what it is that we do. And the job there is to scare the crap out of them, to show them that, oh my gosh, it's like the work of full, full time people, maybe three or four of them. And now you're going to place this huge project with all this work on somebody who's already super busy. And then once they see that, they say, oh my goodness, I didn't realize the level of effort it was to pull this off. And yes, I might think I'm as smart as you and as capable of you, but guess what? I don't have the capacity. So I'm going to go to you and I'm going to rent it. I need an extra pair of hands. That's the way to defeat Internal Resources as a competitor. And it's a weird way to think about it because in essence, you're competing with your client. And that's strange, but you really are.

Yes. You know, I had, I was telling my wife something I don't know a couple months ago and I'm like, well, it's just, it's really easy. You just do this, this and that. I mean, they could do that. And she's like, stop it, stop, stop, stop, stop. She's like, it's easy for you and for almost no one else. And she's like, and how long you been at this? And I'm like, oh, I've been doing this. And we did some math for a minute. I'm like, oh yeah. I have well over 10,000 hours leading teams and sessions and coaching and I have been a CEO several times and now I've worked with thousands. Um, like she's like, don't diminish that shit just because it seems easy to you now, like you spent a lot of time having something occur for you is easy. And it wasn't always easy for you. These things that you do today, like breathing right. So don't devalue yourself.

Let me tell you about SBI and our journey with Scaling up because this is a good story on awesome. So I, I, as the founder, you know, I, I know Vern, Vern. Vern was proponent and advocate of ours in the early days.

Nice.

So I read Rockefeller Habits and I read Scaling up and I got all the free tools and I decided that I was smart enough to handle the one page strategic plan myself. The opsb as we referred it. And all of a sudden they launched this big initiative internally and I start driving everybody crazy and here's how we're going to do things and blah blah, blah. And it was a nightmare because I screwed it up a million times. And then after I solved the company, the guy that took over for me hired one of your coaches and paid the. It was quite a bit of money. I think it was like $100,000 or.

Something is right in the range. Yeah, for our better coaches.

And they committed to it like two to three year journey. And their implementation of scaling up was a hundred times better than what I was doing. And the implication of that was the firm took off as a result of that. So it's a great scenario, it's a great story to say that sometimes the people you're selling to, they don't get it and maybe they have to stick their hand on the stove one or two times and burn themselves before they realize that they really do need the expertise.

It's a really good thing. And not just for self serving for us, but for all our listeners who have professional services firms. Don't discount yourself in what you do. I got clear over time. At first I felt a little anxious asking for my rate and that kind of thing. And then as I grew and had more experience and I saw the results we produced, I'm like, yeah, you are probably going to spend 2, $300,000 with me over a couple of years. But the work that I'll take you through will make many millions of dollars of direct observable value in your business. Like it's not a hard equation to do. Right. And it costs something. Right. I got to pay Vern some referral and royalty and I got support staff and costs and taxes and you know, things like that. So it's not. Not nothing. All right, well we've covered a lot of things. I want to direct, folks to your website. Studio54.com. No, that's the nightclub from like the 70s. Collective54.com is the website right there on the screen and in the show notes. Not hard to remember. You can remember it as you're driving, as you're running, as you're on the treadmill, Stairmaster, whatever you're doing right now. Collective54.com is a place to go check out. This is a community. Of course you can find the book reference there. The boutique, how to start, scale and sell a professional services firm, you'll find out there. And also this whole, this like EO like organization for professional services firms to help you scale and grow. Collective54.com Very good.

Thank you.

Thank you so much Greg for joining us on the show today. I hope everyone got value from that. Keep scaling up. We'll talk to you again next time. Bye bye. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app. You can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.