Are You Leaving Meat on the Bone?

Do you wanna know what really grinds my gears? That most Data & AI consultancy founders I meet are literally throwing money in the trash.

Most of us spend our first few years developing extremely detailed technical knowledge, building demos, partnerships, or whatever else in the name of early growth. Then suddenly, we actually get it, and it all goes to waste because our sales pipelines are made out of swiss cheese.

Tragic.

You’d think it’d be the other way, really. I mean, a bigger pipeline typically equals more clients, right? So logically it should also mean more success.

Why? Because unless you’re really on top of things, your simple pipeline where you do basic discovery, demos, and ad-hoc change requests overloads waaaaaay faster than the processes you use to manage it.

The way this plays out is that, as you grow, you start getting way more types of inbound that you can handle (because you now get referrals, but you also have partnerships, outbound motions, content marketing, conference talks, you name it)

You try to handle it all, until it gets so bad you end up with an uncontrollable pile of useless proofs of concept, and leads no one follows up on.

You try to bring in a salesperson to help you, but then you realize the way you sell data & AI work isn’t how others do it (and hint, it’s not as good as you’d like)

You start estimating projects (which are getting bigger and more complex) based on vibes and historical knowledge with your clients, rather than precise scoping.

And then you finally realize you’ve somehow ended up in the business of chaotically responding to what your clients need, rather than focusing on real growth opportunities for your business. Which means your pipeline becomes a lot less about generating new opportunities

Preventing this is not impossible. It just requires focus:

You have to maximize your ability to qualify every single lead you capture (which means structuring processes and tools to dig into ALL INBOUND INTEREST SIGNALS)

You have to accept that no one is going to sell how you’re going to sell as you expand (which means you have to define standards so you don’t have to be in every call)

And most importantly, you have to build real relationships with your clients (so you can actually predict their real issues ahead of time rather than at the end of your projects)

The reality is if you feel your sales process is wasting opportunities (no matter how big your shop is), that’s a PROCESS problem (not a SKILL one) and fixing that is your number 1 priority to grow.

Which means if this is something you’re stuck with, you should give me a call 😉

The early days of building your own consultancy are lonely AF, and sometimes as a founder, the sheer amount of problems you have to juggle can be incredibly overwhelming, to the point of almost generating an existential crisis.

You can probably relate to how isolating that feels, and I do too (because I go through them just like you).

So a year ago, I started offering my fellow Data & AI consultancy founders “therapy” sessions to give them an external perspective to understand and overcome those moments of crisis.

A few weeks ago, I announced that I’d be offering these sessions for free to any founder willing to go live with me on the internet and openly talk about their problems.

And I’m super excited to announce that this Thursday, October 1st, it’s finally time for the first (of what I hope are many) LIVE THERAPY SESSION!

For this debut episode, I’m honored to be joined by Emily Neuhoff (the Founder of Commit Me Co Design), as we discuss the many existential problems that she faces as she continues to grow her shop.

In the session, you’ll be able to learn what keeps Emily awake at night as she thinks about the future of her consultancy, where she’s getting stuck in overcoming many of those challenges, and how my advisory frameworks can help founders like you and her define immediate solutions to them.

Register to join us here, and stay tuned for some highlights in next week’s newsletter if you can’t make it!

BTW, if you enjoy the concept and want to participate in a future live therapy session, reply to this email and let me know - I’m looking for future participants!

When you build a consultancy for other consultants, you get a lot of weird questions.

Questions like:
“Why exactly did you leave a career consulting for big firms to do this?”
“What does a consultant for Data & AI consultants even do?”
"Why is everything you do so weirdly colorful?"
“Why does your brand look like it was pulled from an SNES game?”
“What does a game show have to do with helping other consultancies?”
“Why is your Chief Marketing Officer a cat?”

And normally, I’d answer all those questions one by one, but in newsletter form, that would take foreverrrrrr.

So next week, I’ll be answering 5!

I want you to hit me with your best and most burning questions about me and my company. Business, brand, personal, funny, weird, (really) weird. Nothing’s off limits.

Share them here, and I’ll give each of the 5 best questions a 100% honest answer in next week’s newsletter. And before you ask, you can submit as many as you’d like, so go crazy!

P.S. Yes, you can even ask me what my favorite ninja turtle is.

P.P.S. It’s because Plum is a meowketing genius.

If you, as a consultancy founder, have never felt like this in the middle of a client meeting, you’re lying.

And if you try to pretend that you haven’t, you’re also lying (or you perhaps haven’t been a consultant for long enough yet 😄)

Impostor syndrome is the worst.

Don’t let it win. You’re better at your job than you think.

If you’ve enjoyed the topics I talked about today and want to learn more about my work - let’s chat!

I specialize in helping founders of boutique Data & AI consultancies of all shapes and sizes overcome existential problems in their growth.

So if you’re finding yourself stuck as your shop scales, I’m here to help!

Want to learn about my new consulting 101 offering? Book a time to chat here!

Want to talk about a problem internal to your company? Sign up for a free therapy session with me!

Want help to expand, ideate, and scope Data & AI projects with your clients? Sign up for a demo workshop!

And if you want more details, check out my:

Otherwise, thank you so much for reading, and see you next week!

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