How to scale your consulting business

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Today, I want to show you how I’m scaling Profit Ladder. I have a hunch you’ll be keen to apply the same approach to your business.

First, we’ll recode our definition of scale — something more appropriate and appealing for business owners like us. Then, you’ll learn my 2-stage scaling approach.

Before we get into it — and speaking of scale — I’ve launched a free training where you’ll learn one strategy to grow your consulting & coaching profits 1,810%…

OK, let’s dig into scale that earns you F*#K OFF money…

For the first seven years of my career, I worked at Accenture. I was one of tens of thousands of consultants deployed to clients around the world. Years later, I’d leverage my experiences there to start my own consulting company.

Of course, I always dreamed of scaling it. But did scale mean hitting Accenture’s numbers? 800,000 employees and a market cap of $211B? The thought of 80 employees feels crippling to me, let alone 10,000x that.

I had no baseline for what scale meant… for what it looked like for a small, solo-owned business.

More money? How much?
More staff? More clients? How many?

Is this what scale equals? Bigger and more?

I think the answer is yes when other people’s money is on the line. Investors. Shareholders. Holding companies. PE firms.

But you and I don’t have those obligations. Maybe down the road. But for today, I don’t need to make 12 figures. And I don’t want to have to hire 30 people or work 100-hour weeks (like I did at Accenture).

For me, the goal is to make myself and my family comfortable. Not necessarily FU money, but enough that I don’t have to think about it.

Let’s call it F*#K OFF money — enough that buys me the privilege to step away, for a little or forever. Enough to experiment with wild ideas. Enough to choose work that is measured in social or environmental impact, rather than dollars.

And so here’s how I plan to scale Profit Ladder to reach those levels.

Scaling Profit Ladder

For the first 11 months, it’s primarily been me working hard (not carelessly) on my own. I’m lucky to also have 1 designer and 1 growth strategist who help me on a contract basis, here and there.

The work involves helping my clients identify their productized offer and associated launch plan. I then connect them with strategic partners to help build their offer and take it to market.

I could extend my business to offer build and GTM services, but I know that will mean more overhead, time, and stress — not my version of scaling. I’d rather be known for one core thing than spreading myself out thin.

I’ll do this kind of work, in this format, through 2025. In parallel, I’ll continue to manage my own marketing and sales. I’ll manage my newsletter and social media content. I’ll run my events. I’ll build up my partnerships. (reply to chat about partnering)

Scale up until this point will be linear. The more I work, the more I make. Likewise, the more I work, the more my confidence grows.

In the background, things are evolving:

• My content gets better

• My testimonials get stronger

• Word-of-mouth spreads faster and wider

• My client interactions become automated and streamlined

As a result, my current cap of 4 clients per month grows to 8. This is a pivotal point where scale takes on a new form by productizing.

FIRST-LEVEL SCALING: Operational Productization

Instead of hiring and training team members, where revenue would continue to grow linearly, I’ll begin to productize. Not to sell (yet), but to improve my operations so that I don’t need to hire or hit burnout.

• Done-with-you client work evolves into do-it-yourself templates & worksheets

• Live client teaching & coaching evolve into pre-recorded and async materials

We’re pre-packaging, streamlining, and systematizing things here.

The critical element that enables this will be the time and reps I put into working elbow-to-elbow with my clients, every single step of the way for the first year. That way, I’m not cheapening the experience or diminishing the results. Instead, my experience allows me to discover ways to deliver the same outcomes in less of my time.

This first level of scale for service-based, people-powered businesses is transforming intensive, manual parts of your work into automated and/or DIY assets.

My 8 clients per months scales to 15. I’ve doubled my revenue with roughly the same operational infrastructure and costs.

What I do next with the extra revenue is what unlocks the second level of scaling. Things get really exciting at this point.

SECOND-LEVEL SCALING: Marketing & Sales Productization