More and more clients are turning to giant staffing firms for consulting capability. Firms like Graphite, BTG, Infosys, and Toptal present real competition for your consulting firm. I dug into this challenge and how to overcome it with Mark Piro, the Founder and Managing Partner of Affusion Consulting.

If your executive team consists of multiple people (e.g., practice leads, or functional heads) or you have multiple equity partners at your firm, it's shockingly easy for that small group to have divergent visions and plans for the business. I delved into that situation with David Burnie, founder of Burnie Group.

On your journey down the yellow brick road of consulting firm leadership, you've probably encountered the occasional result (or person or team, or practice area) that falls short of expectations. Or, perhaps you're post-merger/acquisition and the evil spell of disorganization has hit your firm. In either case, it's time to visit a wizard of consulting firm leadership and operations: Kurt Brykman. I did, and this excellent podcast episode is the result.

Consultants work hard. Very hard. Sometimes too hard, especially when there's a spike in project demands and you have trouble finding talented people to add to your team. The inevitable result? Burnout. Unhappy consultants quit, which leads to more pressure on the remaining team and more burnout and a vicious burnout cycle. I addressed this topic with Robin Nasatir, who was the CEO of Cliff Consulting and experienced burnout firsthand.

Ask any successful boutique consulting firm leader what the number one success factor was in building their firm, and they'll say, "culture." Great. But what if your firm's culture isn't strong? Or, what if your culture is downright broken in some ways? That's an easy problem to run into, particularly if you've been involved in any acquisitions. To lead us in an exploration of these questions, I turned to Tom McMakin, the CEO of Profitable Ideas Exchange.

Scaling. That's a big topic which is on the mind of virtually every owner of a boutique consulting firm. How do you grow the firm and, especially, how do you grow it past yourself or yourself and the other, original founders? We hit that question head-on in this podcast with Matt Pieniazek from Darling Consulting Group.

Most boutique consulting firms bemoan the paltry awareness of their firm compared to large, well-known consulting firms. You can, however, build very high awareness in your target market, as demonstrated by the rapid emergence of Umbrex as a competitor to GLG, Catalant, Business Talent Group, a-connect and similar businesses.

That’s why this episode dives into the whys and hows of building awareness with the perfect guest: Will Bachman, Managing Director of Umbrex.

As you expand your consulting firm, you quickly find that some employees are good at delivery but don’t have other, critical consulting skills. In particular, some delivery mavens lack the Business Development skills and/or ambition typically required to reach the top of a consulting firm’s ranks. How should you manage the career path of those team members?

That’s the question I explored with Erin Anderson, the Chief Operating Officer at AG Consulting Partners.