It's Superposition's 1st Birthday!

David’s note: If you enjoy this newsletter, do me a solid and click the ad at the bottom of this article. My cats have expensive tastes 🤣

Exactly one year ago today, I launched Superposition, and it’s so hard to believe how fast (and insane) these past 12 months have been.

It’s super easy for me to see this now, but when I started this company, I had no concept of the rollercoaster that would follow:

Rather than spending my time on my usual newsletter, though, I figured it’d be more entertaining to use this special occasion to give you the unedited behind-the-scenes of my first year running the world’s most meta Data & AI consultancy.

and to walk you through the 5 biggest lessons I learned along the way, starting with:

The single biggest problem that we consultants (especially those of us in the Data & AI world) have to overcome is analysis paralysis. We are huge nerds and want every available piece of data before we decide on anything about our company, and every move has to be thoroughly researched.

When you’re working for someone else, this tends to come up in really quirky and mildly annoying ways: projects take longer than they should, your team works around you, that sort of thing.

When you’re building a consultancy of your own, though, it unfortunately means leaving knowledge on the table. The problem for you is that knowledge (like compounding interest) is something you want more of as early as possible as an entrepreneur.

Information = better decisions = progress = money = growth.

You can’t escape this.

In the early days of Superposition, I struggled with this majorly. I didn’t want to launch officially, I didn’t want to commit to an ICP, and I didn’t want to showcase my work.

All because I was afraid that idea would fail.

What happens when you fail, though, is that if you’re giving it an honest effort, you learn what not to do next time: when selling to a potential client, when delivering to a client, when bringing someone on. When doing literally anything.

An effective Data & AI consultancy has to know three key things:

1) What it specifically sells (e.g., data governance, data visualization, AI enablement, education, etc).

2) Who it sells to (i.e., a specific industry vertical or type of persona)

3) Why those people buy (i.e., what makes you different than anyone)

And the only way to land on all 3 of those things is to experiment a lot.

So if you’re feeling stuck in growing your consultancy, it’s likely because you’re not taking enough risks. Next time you’re hesitating, just go for it.

Make the first pancake, and the rest will sort itself out.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t set out to build the world’s largest consultancy, or to compete with the biggest shops in the world. I knew from the start that my goal was to build a small but mighty consulting shop that I could be proud of, and that could sustain my family long-term.

So, in my mind, my goal for Superposition’s first year was simple:

You might laugh at that goal, but to me it was a pretty clear reminder that building a consultancy takes time.

Unlike any other type of business, consultancies have an extremely slow-moving sales cycle. You have to generate attention, build relationships, grow them, find opportunities to monetize your services (or have them find you), and deliver the work itself before you can get paid. You can often go months without selling anything (especially when you’re starting out)

So after having spent my entire career in consulting, I was pretty clear with myself that a reasonable goal was simply to validate my market, get actual paying clients, and hopefully, make more money than I spent in year 1.

As I started working towards that goal, I realized very quickly how ridiculously low that bar was. I hit it pretty quickly, and after 12 months, we are well over $1 in profit, with many paying clients, an offer that makes sense, and so much more momentum that I could imagine.

The point of me telling you this story is to say that as a consultancy founder, you can’t hit what you can’t measure.

At any stage of growing your consultancy, you need to be crystal clear on exactly what the goal is, so you can define how exactly you’re gonna get there. It doesn’t have to be a perfect plan, but you do need to have one.

Otherwise, you’re just aimlessly wandering, and that’s a space you don’t want to be in as an entrepreneur.

This one is pretty simple, but I’m going to tell you ten times so it really lands:

CHARGE WHAT YOU’RE WORTH, CHARGE WHAT YOU’RE WORTH, CHARGE WHAT YOU’RE WORTH, CHARGE WHAT YOU’RE WORTH, CHARGE WHAT YOU’RE WORTH, CHARGE WHAT YOU’RE WORTH, CHARGE WHAT YOU’RE WORTH, CHARGE WHAT YOU’RE WORTH, CHARGE WHAT YOU’RE WORTH, CHARGE WHAT YOU’RE WORTH

The number one reason any consultancy fails is because they have no idea what it costs to deliver their work, or are trying to make up what’s missing in their sales funnel by charging less for their work.

Underpricing will not get you more clients - it’ll just get you shittier ones.

Underpricing will not magically fix your problems - it’ll make them worse.

Underpricing will not let you deliver more - it’ll actually do the complete opposite.

I learned this the hard way during my first year by losing clients, prospects, and A LOT OF TIME, so take it from me:

There's something we Data & AI consultants always talk about, but never TALK about: The AI world right now is like one of those insane amusement park rides where they shake you a lot in every possible direction. Fun, but extremely chaotic and noisy AF.

There are a lot of so-called “AI experts” out there, and most of them won’t admit that to you because it’s not good for business.

If you (like me) come from a background in the data consulting industry, you’ll find this extremely ironic. For the longest time, our work was lame. No high-level executive ever wanted to talk about data, and they certainly didn’t want to spend mountains of money on it (other than when they absolutely had to).

Now, in the world of AI FOMO, everyone wants to hear from us nerds, and that can be a little overwhelming.

If you follow this newsletter, it’s likely because you’re a real expert. You’re not pushing get-rich-quick schemes with Claude or ChatGPT walkthroughs or whatever.

You’re building real tools and enabling real business outcomes for companies of all sizes and shapes, and that means you need to be crystal clear about what you sell and the things you can deliver.

For me, the way this has played out is that whenever I tell someone that I run a “consultancy for other Data & AI consultants”, all they hear is the AI part - and I might as well not have said anything else.

So my request to you is that we (who have been in this space well before and will be in it way after the hype dies) need to be strong stewards of the work we do, and not succumb to pushing FOMO and nonsense to make a quick buck.

Be clear about what your expertise is, how that matters to real companies, and why those services are meaningfully valuable to your ideal customer.

Be louder (and more precise) than the noise, and everything else will become a million times easier to manage!

Over the course of my entire career, my biggest frustration with the consulting world is that it is BORING AF. It’s almost impossible to describe to what extent that’s true, and it feels like we as an industry decided that our collective perspective on marketing our services was going to have the personality of a jar of mayo.

In a real sense, this is what I meant in the previous section when I was talking about being louder than the noise. You are a real expert in some subset of Data or AI work, so don’t be afraid of shouting it loudly you dummy!

I’m convinced that a large part of the reason I’ve been able to find success through my company is that when I think about my work, I only really have one rule:

That doesn’t mean that (like me) you need to be posting memes, photos of your cats all over Linkedin or hosting the world’s most nerdy game show.

But it does mean you need to understand what your voice is, and to have fun in showcasing your personality and what makes you unique.

The only way to find the clients you want is to let the world know exactly what you’re looking for, and that needs to come from your mouth (not Claude or ChatGPT’s).

Although if you have cute cats, it helps 🤣

The 5 biggest lessons I learned across the first year of building my company. Obviously, there were a lot more than I could cover, unless I wanted to keep you here for about a week, but it goes without saying that I’m super excited for year 2 of Superposition.

I have a lot of super interesting stuff cooking for the coming months, and I can’t wait to see what new tricks I learn about running a consultancy from here on out.

If I can leave you with one thing, it’s that above all else, if you want to run an effective Data & AI consultancy, you have to care about the work.

What we do is a very niche line of work (sure), but it’s more important than ever on an industry-wide scale. Take that opportunity seriously.

As for me, I hope to have so many new things to report in this newsletter as this company continues to grow and I learn more from each of you.

So to close this out, I’m so appreciative to each of you who have been part of the Year 1 journey - your input, advice, and friendship have been invaluable in getting to this point.

I couldn’t have done it without you, and I’m so excited to continue building, so thank you!

If you read this newsletter and feel like you need an external perspective to get unstuck in solving many of the challenges I mentioned above (as well as any other parts of running your own consultancy), I’m here to help!

Get in touch to learn more about how I enable Data & AI consultancies to sell, deliver and scale more effectively through my workshops. If you haven’t already, visit my:

And let’s chat more about where you’re struggling with your consultancy!

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

P.S.: A reminder that if you enjoyed this newsletter, you should click this ad so my cats will stop yelling at me about how I need to increase Superposition’s treat budget 🤣

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