Summary

• I’ve identified six core principles that will maximize All-In Consulting's chances for success if followed consistently.

• The core of these principles revolve around answering two key questions:

  • “What did I contribute to the AI community today?” and

  • “How can we be the type of consultancy where lead generation is never a problem?”

• To address both of these questions, I'm launching AI video thought-leadership content in February 2025.

Over Christmas break, I focused on crafting a clear, actionable plan for growing All-In Consulting.

At the core of this are six key principles that I believe will drive significant growth if followed consistently:

1. Permanently Solve Lead Generation – Instead of asking, “How do we get more leads?”, we must ask, “How do we build a business where lead generation is never a problem?”
   

2. Contribute to the AI Ecosystem - We are not just another service provider. AI is an ecosystem, and we must be active contributors to that community. Every day we must answer the question: “What did I contribute to the AI community today?”
   

3. Achieve Omnipresence - We need to be everywhere and known by everyone. All-In Consulting, our names, and our faces should be synonymous with AI. We must become the go-to source for learning about AI—the kind of channel people binge-consume to learn about AI in the fastest way possible.
   

4. Focus on Habits Over Goals - Success is built on execution. Instead of focusing on distant goals, we must establish and never miss the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly routines that drive results.
   

5. Delivery → Sales → Marketing – These are our daily priorities in order. A business can not be sustainable without consistent delivery for clients first. Sales comes next, as they are deeper in the funnel. Marketing, while crucial, should be the first thing we deprioritize if necessary.

6. True AI Expertise – Excellence is the ultimate form of job security. We should view ourselves as perpetual students and continuously improve our understanding of AI. We should aim to be most informed person on AI in any room. Our views should be nuanced, evidence-based, and ready for debate.

I’m betting that disciplined execution of these principles over the next two years will position All-In Consulting for substantial growth.

Today, I'll dive deeper into principles 1-3 and explain why I believe AI thought leadership video content will be key to All-In Consulting's next phase of growth.

The 5 Paths to Solving Lead Generation

When considering how to build sustainable lead generation, there are several proven paths within the AI community:

1. Scientific Research - Leaders like Yann LeCun and Ilya Sutskever who make scientific breakthroughs in AI

2. Technical Infrastructure - Teams behind frameworks like LangChain and LlamaIndex that power AI development

3. Education - Pioneers like Andrew Ng who build comprehensive AI courses

4. Content Creation - Thought leaders like Ethan Mollick who write books that make more accessible

5. Community Building - Folks who organize AI conferences and events

These approaches have proven highly effective. Andrew Ng's work building courses and deeplearning.ai led to his appointment to South Korea's AI advisory board.

I can’t imagine this guy ever struggling to find “leads.”

Ethan Mollick, author of "Co-Intelligence," commands speaking fees of $40,000-70,000 and is widely seen as a thought-leader in the space. I see folks constantly inviting him to events in the comments of his posts.

He certainly doesn’t struggle for leads.

The team that founded OpenCV, the computer vision library, leveraged their technical expertise into the OpenCV consultancy to help folks implement their tools.

They seem to be doing quite well and also not struggling for leads.

My point is it’s definitely possible to permanently solve the lead generation problem.

The two things the folks who achieve this have in common are 1) consistent contribution to the AI community over many years (principle 2) and 2) true AI expertise (principle 6).

That’s what I aim emulate.

From process of elimination, I've chosen to focus on AI video content for these reasons:

• Scientific Breakthroughs require venture-scale funding and research infrastructure which I don’t have

• Technical Infrastructure requires significant capital and which I don’t have any good ideas for at the moment

• Courses are a potential future direction, but are a more advanced tactic and I’d need clear differentiation from existing offerings on Coursera

• Community Building I have no experience with

This leads me to content creation, specifically AI video content, as my strategic focus. I see a clear opportunity in this space for several reasons.

The Current State of AI Content and Why I’m Choosing Short-Form Video

I’ve noticed a couple things about the current AI content landscape.

First off, the most influential AI thought leadership predominantly exists in written format.

Andrew Ng shares his insights through newsletters on his deeplearning.ai website, while Ethan Mollick focuses on platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Substack.

The video space in AI currently serves a different purpose. Video content creators typically focus on AI news updates, technical tutorials, basic introductions, or highly specialized technical discussions.

While these are valuable, there's a noticeable gap: the same type of thoughtful, strategic AI insights we see on written platforms… in video format.

I see an opportunity to fill this gap with short-form videos that offer unique perspectives on AI implementation and strategy.

While production value won't be the focus, the content will deliver valuable insights drawn from real consulting experience, addressing common questions and challenges in AI adoption.

Several content creators have shaped my vision for this approach. ClearValueTax demonstrates how complex economic and financial topics can be explained with remarkable clarity and conciseness.

The CEO of Third Stage Consulting shows how to discuss ERP implementation challenges and trade-offs with professionalism and depth.

Lastly, OnScreen Authority provides a model for the production value I’m aiming for.

This content strategy aligns perfectly with our core principles.

Imagine if I was able to be the go-to person to learn about AI on all the video platforms, our authority and credibility would be unbeatable to the point that leads should never be an issue, thus solving principle 1.

Furthermore, because it’s a gap in the AI content space, this is my contribution to the AI community, thus solving principle 2.

Video will also help All-In Consulting stand out more from the saturation in written content and achieve omni-presence, thus satisfying principle 3.

If I combine this video strategy with consistent execution (principle 4), successful delivery for clients (principle 5), and reading consistently on AI (principle 6), this should be a sustainable formula for growth.

My Next Steps

I’ve already taken steps to make this happen. I’m currently interviewing social media managers, video editors, and strategists to help with this new strategy.

I’ve also begun thinking about the logistics of this, including my equipment, my scripts, and my editing style.

I’m aiming to get my first videos out in the last week of February - look out to see me on video soon!

So what do you think of my 6 principles? Do you think:

• Achieving the 6 principles above is the formula for success?

• Do you think AI video thought leadership is the way forward to achieve those principles?

Let me know by replying to this email or commenting below!

Let’s Stay Connected 🤝

In the mean time, if you’d like to follow along with my journey:

• Subscribe to my weekly AI newsletter here

• Catch my daily posts on LinkedIn here

Look out for another update from me in February!

- Michael

Summary

• All-In Consulting grew this year, but not as much as I would’ve liked.

• This year I learned to critically analyze advice, not get distracted with side projects, and slow down non time-sensitive decisions.

• I expect 2025 to be a better year as I have a clearer focus on AI, fewer energy drains, a new business partner, a larger existing client portfolio, and an improving economy.

I’m not yet where I want to be, but I’m certainly further along than where I started. All-In Consulting grew this year, though not as much as I had hoped.

That said, simply surviving 2025 feels like an accomplishment. Advisors warned me that 2024 was one of the toughest years for tech consulting since 2008.

As business slows down around Christmas and New Year’s, I’ve reflected on the lessons of 2024 and what I’ll do differently in 2025.

Here are my three key takeaways.

1. Don’t blindly follow people’s advice

Well-intentioned but misleading advice cost me at least three months going down wrong paths this year.

This is a mistake I want to avoid for 2025.

For example, I was encouraged to niche down into a specific industry, like supply chain (a strategy called “vertical” positioning).

This approach works well for consultants with deep, industry-specific experience—like a doctor serving healthcare clients or a FinTech veteran launching a FinTech consultancy.

But my expertise spans multiple industries, especially in software and AI.

When I shifted to “horizontal positioning” by focusing on AI, it became clear this was the right move.

Why this mistake happened

Advice is always filtered through someone else’s perspective.

Critical details about your situation might be missed, or the advice-giver might unintentionally project their own experiences or biases onto you.

Worse, they don’t bear the consequences—you do.

In my rush to execute, I didn’t stop to critically assess whether some advice truly fit my circumstances.

In 2025, I plan to act with more agency, evaluating advice carefully and taking full ownership of my decisions.

Question: Have you received any advice recently? Consider whether it was given with incomplete information. Does it apply to your unique situation?

2. Staying Focused - Cut out side projects and stick to my expertise

In 2025, my goal is to eliminate all distractions and side projects.

Everything I do must directly advance All-In Consulting—no product-building, no unrelated services, no exceptions.

In 2024, I got sidetracked with a few side projects, and they drained a significant amount of energy.

I already spent 2022 exploring different entrepreneurial ventures and chose consulting because it had the most traction.

It continues to have the most traction of all, so it doesn’t make sense to backpedal on that decision.

Focus also means doubling down on my expertise—AI and software exclusively.

For example, I once worked with a client in law who wanted to build software in a completely unrelated industry.

While possible, I gently reminded them how much easier and more successful they’d likely be by leveraging their existing career experience rather than venturing into unfamiliar territory.

The same principle applies to me.

If a project or idea doesn’t align with my core expertise, that’s a red flag.

It’s not worth the uphill battle when I can make more progress by sticking to areas where I have a proven track record.

For instance, I’ve moved away from Odoo ERP implementations because they fall outside my experience at Netflix and Amazon.

Instead, I focus on pure software and AI projects, where I bring the most value.

Question: Are you pursuing ventures aligned with your expertise, or are you straying into unfamiliar territory? How can you focus more on what you know best?

Slow Down Non-Urgent Decisions

My third key lesson from this year is to slow down when making non time-sensitive decisions.

If a decision can be delayed without consequence, I’ll take that time to ensure it’s the right one.

While many people struggle with moving too slowly, I have the opposite problem—I’ve sometimes moved too fast, leading to avoidable mistakes.

For example, if I had slowed down, I wouldn’t have enrolled in the Odoo partner program, a decision I quickly regretted after shifting focus to AI.

In fact, I’ve already seen the benefits of slowing down.

Just this month, I was unhappy with the work I received from a vendor. They were slow, and the results didn’t match my expectations. When they pressured me to pay, my usual instinct would have been to settle quickly.

But I paused.

I gave myself a couple of extra days to think it through, and in that time, I realized something felt off—I had never even spoken to their manager.

When I asked to escalate the issue, it led to the cancellation of the contract, saving me thousands of dollars.

All because I slowed down.

Question: Are there decisions you’re facing right now that could benefit from a little more time and clarity?

Final Thoughts

Despite the challenges and lessons of 2024, I’m optimistic for 2025. Several tailwinds are working in my favor including:

• Fewer energy drains

• A sharper focus on AI

• A new business partner

• A larger and more established client base

• An improving economy and growing market

With these advantages, I’m aiming to double my revenue in the coming year—stay tuned!

Let’s Stay Connected 🤝

In the mean time, if you’d like to follow along with my journey:

• Subscribe to my weekly AI newsletter here

• Catch my daily posts on LinkedIn here

Look out for another update from me in January!

- Michael

Guess how many followers I gained from this.

Answer: Around 400 followers. I had about 15.3k followers before this post, and now I’m at 15.7k.

That’s around a 0.1% conversion rate from impressions to followers!

At a 0.1% conversion rate, you need about 1 million impressions to gain….1,000 followers.

That’s a tall-order, especially if you don’t have many followers to begin with.

The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs

These low conversion rates could just be the “Law of Shitty Clickthroughs” in effect.

Coined by Andrew Chen, a partner at Andreesen Horowitz, this law says that marketing channels degrade overtime.

For example, the very first internet banner ad in 1994 had a click-through rate of 78%.

Compare that to a Facebook ad that had a click-through rate in 2011 of 0.05%.

That’s a 1500x decrease!

What this tells me is that you can’t just rely on advice from others about growing marketing channels. By the time they share it, those strategies are often overused and less effective. Instead, you have to innovate and discover the channels that work for you.

Let’s take the common advice to “post on Twitter/LinkedIn, build an audience, and funnel to a newsletter” as an example. With more readers experiencing newsletter fatigue, this approach may not yield the same results.

Instead, it’s better to pay close attention to emerging channels and try to be an early adopter.

For instance, instead of focusing solely on platforms like X/LinkedIn, consider exploring newer options like Threads or Substack Notes.

Sometimes, it’s not even about new platforms but new features on existing ones.

For example, LinkedIn’s new video feature could be a great opportunity for video content creators to stand out before it becomes saturated.

Beating the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs with Network Effects

Lastly, instead of only relying on content marketing, you could also try doubling down on network effects by optimizing word-of-mouth and viral loops.

For example, early on in Twitch the team focused on making the creator experience better. The more satisfied the creator, the more they streamed, the more viewers it generated, and the more creators streamed — a flywheel effect.

For consulting businesses, this could come in the form of doubling down on Referrals and word-of-mouth programs as it’s one of the most cost-efficient channels there is.

I’ve personally been trying to push this more as you can see in my LinkedIn profile, website, and featured section.

I’ll share the results in 2025—stay tuned!

Let’s Stay Connected 🤝

In the mean time, if you’d like to follow along with my journey:

• Subscribe to my weekly AI newsletter here

• Catch my daily posts on LinkedIn here

Look out for another update from me in December!

- Michael

Today I wanted to update you on what’s been going on with All-In Consulting and what I’ve been focused on in life.

Specifically, this newsletter will focus on:

• The new website for All-In Consulting

• My revamped content strategy for LinkedIn

• A new AI newsletter I’m launching focused on the ROI of AI

Let’s get right to it.

1. All-In Consulting Has a New Website!

First off in the most exciting news, I’ve got a new website! You can check it out at allinconsulting.ai.

Below is a screenshot of the before and after:

My motivation for this new website is 3-fold:

1. To shorten our URL from allinengineeringconsulting.com to allinconsulting.ai to make it easier to remember

2. Clarify our value proposition and intended audience

3. Highlight our 100% focus on AI through the .ai domain

Before the website messaging was focused on building Gen AI apps for people.

But after many conversations, it became clear that this messaging was too solutions oriented when it had to be more results oriented - hence the new focus on ROI in the headline.

It also became clear that we had to focus on serving established businesses and enterprises over any other clientele.

Decision makers there are mostly concerned around revenue impacting ROI from AI initiatives.

As such, we’ve focused our messaging to “Helping Businesses Accelerate ROI from AI” to hopefully resonate with our target customers.

The website also looks much sleeker and professional to match the expectations of our ideal clients.

So what do you think of the new website?

Let me know what you think by replying to this email or in the comments below!

New LinkedIn Content Strategy

Two weeks ago, I began executing on a completely new content strategy.

Instead of just posting any random thought I had, I’ve decided to go all-in on AI, and post almost exclusively about it. 

Unlike other AI content creators who focus on consumer use-cases, news, or technical deep-dives, I’m trying to focus exclusively on an underserved niche: Executives who are interested in AI but are worried about the ROI and implementation risks.

Now every piece of content I post now goes through 3 questions:

1. Is this relevant for executives?

2. Is it understandable by non-technical folks?

3. Is it technically accurate?

With this new focus on AI, I’ve changed up a few more things including:

• Consistency - I’ve upped my posting volume from 4x/week to 7x/week

• Graphics - Every single LinkedIn post must have some visual, photo, or video to accompany it

• Systems - I use templates and have set routines for cranking content out in bulk

• Data-Driven - I will more closely monitor impressions, follows, and engagement and double down on content that does well

This focus on content reflects my belief that content marketing is a NON-NEGOTIABLE for expertise businesses like coaching and consulting.

If someone sells expertise, and they don’t post content, I would question their credibility - how could they not have any opinions on that topic to share?

I also now believe that before starting any content marketing, you must be able to clearly answer these 3 questions about your strategy:

• Who is your intended audience?

• Why should they follow you?

• How are you differentiated from the competition?

I recommend you try answering these 3 questions for your own content strategy before going further.

It will help you better focus your efforts!

Announcing the All-In Consulting Newsletter!

Lastly, I’ve also launched a second newsletter, the All-In Consulting Newsletter.

Every week, I will discuss an enterprise AI use-case, evaluate its ROI, and share ways to implement it in your own business.

As a result, I’ve decided to taper down the personal brand building I did on this newsletter to once a month so I can focus on AI content exclusively.

However, don’t fret as I haven’t forgotten you and will keep you updated on All-In Consulting, just a little less frequently as I post more about AI.

So if you want to see what I’m up to, feel free to subscribe to the AI newsletter here and watch me post about AI every day on LinkedIn here.

And look out for another update from me on this newsletter in a month!

- Michael

tl;dr

• It took me 2.5 years of consistent posting to reach 15k followers on LinkedIn

• Quality and quantity are not mutually exclusive when it comes to content creation

• I consider the time spent building this audience an overall break-even investment

I crossed 15k followers on LinkedIn recently.

It took me 2.5 years of consistent posting to get to this point. I estimate that about half of the followers came when I went viral with my post about why I quit my job at Netflix, and the other half came just from consistent 3-4x/week posting.

Although many creators have grown even faster than I have, I’m still proud that I even got to 15k at all. I fondly think of all the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve had, and everything I’ve learned along the way.

In today’s article, I share my top 3 lessons from these last few years of content creation.

Quality and Quantity are NOT Mutually Exclusive

I used to think that quality and quantity was an unavoidable tradeoff I had to make. 

There was a turning point though in 2022 when I realized that my 1x/week posting on LinkedIn simply wasn’t going to cut it. So I first ramped it up to 2x/week, then 3x/week. And then I said if this is do or die for business, then f*** it, why not 4x/week, which is where it is now.

And that’s when I realized that quantity and quality are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, the best creators are all prolific creators as well. You CAN have it all. Arguing otherwise is just an excuse for laziness.

For example, millions of people love Stephen King’s writing, but many people forget that he has written over 80 books in his lifetime, many of which were duds, and one of which was even pulled off the shelves.

The famous Japanese artist Hokusai has an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 works to his name in his lifetime. This was back in the 1800’s when he had far less technology to speed up his creative process.

Leena Dong, a famous comedy content creator with almost 20M followers across all social media channels, said that she was not an overnight success, but got to where she is by consistently posting videos every week for over 10 years.

And looking through her videos, they are both consistently posted and consistently funny.

So remember - creators have to CREATE. Writers have to WRITE. 

Quality and quantity are not mutually exclusive. The best content creators are also the most prolific.

Everything is Content

Another major lesson I learned from content creation is how to come up with ideas to post about.

Consistency helped me better spot all the content opportunities in my normal day-to-day life because EVERYTHING could be content.

Had an interesting conversation with a friend?

Did you feel inspired by a book you read? 

Are you in the middle of an interesting project?

Are you at an event? 

Did you travel somewhere new?

All of this is content!

In fact, I also realized how much content you can potentially squeeze out of a single event. You can post about it before you attend, during the event, and after the event as well, literally 3x’ing the possible content out there!

And despite so many content creators churning out more content than we could ever consume in our lifetimes, I’ve realized that there are still so many perspectives and ideas that still haven’t been fully documented yet.

Your unique take even on the mundane topics is still valuable and a fresh perspective that deserves to be posted!

For example, although job quitting videos are common, it seems like every single one still has a different take on the same topic. 

Don’t let the fact that other people have already posted about something stop you from posting your take on something. Your perspective matters too!

Create Content Because You Love Doing It

Lastly, I’ve learned that you should create content because you enjoy doing it, not because you’re expecting an ROI on it. Otherwise, you’ll burn out before reaping any of the rewards.

I’ve certainly learned a lot from content creation. But considering the amount of time this takes up, with each article taking around ~6 hours, and each LinkedIn post taking ~30 minutes 4x per week, that’s 8 hours, or a full work day, spent on content creation every week!

It’s a heavy investment, so I often switch back and forth between saying it’s worth it and it’s not worth it, and would call it a roughly break-even investment of time.

Some of the tangible benefits I’ve gotten from doing this include:

• Winning at least 2 consulting projects I wouldn’t have even won if it weren’t through the visibility that content creation gave me

• 1 paid speaking engagement, 4 podcast appearances

• Countless people and friends made 

• Invaluable entrepreneurship lessons 

• Better communication and writing skills in business settings

• A wide network of people who I can ask for help

• A number of potential business partners

However, I’ve also wondered if spending all the time on content creation on direct sales (for example, testing ads, cold emailing, or bidding on more projects) would’ve been a better use of time.

As the saying goes:

There’s the famous story of another influencer on Instagram named Arii with 2.6+ million followers, who tried to launch a clothing brand and couldn’t even sell 36 T-Shirts.

So ultimately, I can only recommend content creation because you love doing it, sharing your thoughts, and expressing yourself to the world. 

If you only do it purely for an ROI, you might be disappointed.

What Now?

I’m still posting regularly, and aiming to be as consistent as possible. But at the same time, I’ve learned to not burn myself out doing this as well. 

If I feel like I need a break, I will unashamedly take it. Given the choice between content creation and a direct sales opportunity that is more pressing, I’ve also learned to prioritize what will make the sale now over a longer-term content marketing play.

Either way, I will continue to post despite the modest rewards because I enjoy writing and meeting new people.

Onwards to 20,000 followers!

In the mean time, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter where I post daily content on AI and entrepeneurship.

You can also connect with me here on Instagram.

And, if you have any referrals for folks interested in building anything related to AI, let me know!

I offer a $1,000 referral bonus for every opportunity that closes (website link).

Thanks,
Michael

tl;dr

• I went to Saudi Arabia for 18 days to mentor two different hackathons - Sedrah and NextGen AI related to sustainability and gen AI respectively

• Ensuring the judging criteria are clear and well-communicated is essential for fair competition

• Participants should draft their presentation before building their product for greater alignment and clarity on the final deliverable

📣 Announcements

1. There will be no article next week in observance of July 4th. Newsletter to resume the week after.

I recently wrote about my time in Saudi Arabia where I was invited to to mentor two different hackathons.

The first one, Sedrah, was a hackathon focused on sustainability tech. The second one, called NextGen AI, was focused on…AI of course.

The idea was that events like this would help grow the startup ecosystem in Saudi Arabia and help diversify the industry outside of oil as part of their Vision 2030.

Since the two events were only two weeks apart, I decided to fly in for Sedrah first, stay for two weeks, attend the NextGen AI hackathon, and fly out right after.

I’m glad I went because both events turned out to be very memorable times of my life.

Clear Judging Criteria is Critical for Fair Competition at Hackathons

The way hackathons generally work is that they are short 1-3 day events focused around a certain theme.

Participants form teams to build a prototype (usually from scratch) in that time, and present at the end for the judges to evaluate.

I learned a few things about organizing hackathons from attending both.

First, I realized how important it is to spell out the judging criteria for all the participants from the beginning so they know what to focus on.

If I had to run a hackathon myself, I would explicitly call out whether teams should all start from scratch or if it’s OK to bring prior work to the event.

Teams that bring prior work in had a significant head start over those who started at the event, so this is an important criteria to call out.

I also think it’s important to put more weight on getting something functional and working at the end.

Otherwise anyone could propose any kind of crazy solutions, but whether it is practical and implementable is another story.

So ensuring they actually have a real working demo during their presentation is something I would weigh more heavily when evaluating winners.

The Best Demo Always Wins

From my observations from the participants’ side, first I noticed that the winners tend to have deep expertise in the problem they are solving. 

For example, at the NextGen AI hackathon, the winner was someone who built a financial compliance tool using AI and had worked in the fintech and compliance industry for many years. 

It was a similar story at Sedrah where the winners were business owners who had worked in sustainability for most of their career.

This shows that entrepreneurs seeking to disrupt an industry should consider working in that industry to better understand the problems they seek to solve.

Second, I realized that hackathons are legitimate growth channels for startups.

It gives you a chance to pitch your startup and show your progress in front of a large audience to gain customers and attract investors.

At this event, I realized also how important the presentation was, as that’s all the judges have to assess your work on.

So anything that isn’t shown in the presentation, like edge cases or deployment setups, aren’t worth investing much time on in such a time-crunched environment.

Even in my talks, I advised participants to start with their presentation and work backwards from that.

They should draft out what they want to say before they even start building the product because it will help clarify what their end goal should be.

Lastly, winning hackathon pitches tended to have a particular format that I called the 1-1-1 format, which means you spend 1 minute on each of the following:

• The problem

• The solution

• The impact 

In that order during the presentation. So the 1-1-1 framework can help you clarify how best to position your demo.

For example, in this demo from the winning hackathon at an Accenture hackathon, notice how their slides follow this structure as well.

Here in the first slide, the winner discusses the problem that seniors have reading prescription labels.

Then notice how they discuss the solution - their app that uses AI and computer vision to turn text into voice.

Lastly, they address revenue potential, market size, and scalability concerns.

So just as these hackathon participants structured their presentation in a 1-1-1 format, I recommend you do the same at your next hackathon!

Final Thoughts

These two hackathons were the first hackathons I’ve ever been to, and I’m sure I’ll attend more in the future, especially if I build a SaaS product again.

I particularly enjoyed attending the Saudi hackathons though, because it gave me a chance to interact with locals and learn more about the culture.

While there, I learned:

• How devout they were as the event space had dedicated prayer areas that people frequently used

• Saudis are more nocturnal since most hackathons started around 1pm, whereas in the US hackathons usually started early at 8am

• That women and men can work together, but outside of that there is generally a respectful separation of genders

I also gained a further appreciation for the power of public speaking. Both of the talks I gave lead to many lasting connections as people approached me after to discuss it further.

In fact, I now have more connections in Saudi Arabia than any other country in the world (outside of the USA)!

Pro-tip: Always give a talk at every event you attend!

And if you wanted to check out my presentation, you can use this link below to see my transcript and slides.

Enjoy!

In the mean time, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter where I post daily content on AI and entrepeneurship.

You can also connect with me here on Instagram.

And, if you have any referrals for folks interested in building anything related to AI, let me know!

I offer a $1,000 referral bonus for every opportunity that closes (website link).

Thanks,
Michael

Hiring is a top priority at All-In Consulting as it enables me to scale operations effectively. Currently, I focus on managing engagements while building strong teams to deliver on each workstream.

Clients have praised the strength of my team, and I believe my hiring methods can scale revenue to the low seven figures without the need for full-time employees.

Hiring freelancers and contractors offers many advantages over full-time employees.

You can select the best talent for each project, leveraging their specific expertise to avoid common pitfalls. It also keeps expenses down because you’re not paying for anyone’s time on the bench.

The only disadvantage is that sometimes there is a lack of continuity as they may have other projects going on.

But personally, I have not found this to be a big issue.

Many freelancers have worked with me for over a year, providing stability comparable to full-time employees, who can also leave with little notice.

In today’s article, I will discuss my process for attracting and hiring the best freelance engineers.

Create Job Posts with SEO in Mind

The first step in attracting the best engineers is to be mindful of SEO when creating a job post.

Think about the words your ideal candidate would use to search for a job, and include those keywords in the headline and body of your job post. This will ensure your job is discoverable.

Some details worth mentioning include:

• The title of the role they may be looking for (e.g., intern, CTO, architect)

• The technologies they should have experience with

If you’re unsure about the right keywords to use, search for existing job posts similar to yours and incorporate their keywords into your job post.

Don’t Be Cheap with Hires

I also recommend not being cheap with your hires.

You can’t ask for a 10x engineer and pay 0.1x the price.

Don’t lowball engineers - research market rates, and at minimum try to match it. Too low of a budget will turn away the best candidates from applying for your project.

The time a good hire will save by making the right technical decisions and requiring less management is well-worth the cost. 

In fact, I view paying more as insurance against mistakes from happening.

Also, paying to boost your post so more people see it on job boards is generally worth it.

For example, on Upwork you can pay $30 to make your post a “Featured” job. If $30 helps me attract the best candidates to apply, it’ll easily pay for itself.

Choosing the Right Platforms

The platform you choose to hire from is also critical for the right types of hires, as different platforms cater to different types of talent.

This is a breakdown of what you can expect on the most popular platforms:

• Fiverr - for hiring people for one-off gigs

• Upwork - for hiring general talent

• Catalant - for hiring management

• Toptal - for hiring specific technical expertise

So depending on the requirements, choose your platforms wisely.

Criteria for Selecting the Best Candidates

So now that you have a job post in place, you need a way to evaluate candidates. Here’s the 4 criteria I use, in order of priority:

1. Technical excellence (40%) - Do they have the skills to get the job done exceptionally well?

2. Communication (30%) - Are they fast and reliable with communication? Do I understand what they are saying?

3. Past performance (20%)  - Have they completed similar projects before? Do they have strong testimonials?

4. Vibe check (10%) - Do I get good vibes or bad vibes from the candidate?

Technical excellence is number 1 because if they can’t do the job then nothing else matters.

Communication is second, since how fast we communicate dictates how fast we execute on a project, especially in a world where remote work is so common.

Past performance matters because it helps de-risk the hire.

And vibe checks are important because if my gut tells me something feels off about the person, it’s probably right.

Some folks have disagreed with my use of vibe checks saying it’s too subjective, but imagine getting on a call every day with someone with bad vibes for 6 months. 

That’s a no-go for me, hence why the check is there.

Deciding Who to Interview

When filtering candidates, I’ll first evaluate them on the strength of their past performance and cover letter.

Past performance can include things like testimonials, reviews, and case studies. 

If they don’t have any past performance, then a strong, customized cover letter detailing their approach and showing they read the description and put effort in can compensate.

My Interview Process

I’ll then shortlist the top 10 candidates to interview, who I will then slot in 20-minute interviews back-to-back.

I will usually send them the problem to discuss 24 hours before our call. The problem is usually more context around the actual project they will be working on, so it’s more realistic.

Then during the interview, we will discuss their solution and compare it with the solution I come up with. 

If their solution scales and produces the right output, they pass on technical excellence and communication.

After I interview all the candidates, I’ll rank them, make the hire, and call the winner to inform them that they won the project.

I’ll usually finish all of this before I go to lunch.

Conclusion

I’ve met truly incredible and inspiring talent through my hiring process. Almost all of the freelancers, contractors, and consultants that I’ve hired I’ve worked with long term.

In summary, if you:

• Be mindful of keywords that candidates are searching for

• Don’t be cheap 

• Have set criteria for interviewing and filtering candidates

• And be decisive

You’ll be well on your way to hiring the best candidates yourself!

In the mean time, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter where I post daily content on AI and entrepeneurship.

You can also connect with me here on Instagram.

And, if you have any referrals for folks interested in building anything related to AI, let me know!

I offer a $1,000 referral bonus for every opportunity that closes (website link).

Thanks,
Michael

I recently came back from an 18-day work trip in Saudi Arabia. I was there to mentor two different hackathons, and I had two weeks in between events to explore Riyadh, the capital city.

It quickly turned into one of the most memorable trips I’ve ever had.

I’ve visited over 20 countries in my life, and Saudi Arabia was the most unique country I’ve ever visited. 

Saudis fully embrace their culture through the traditional clothes they wear, their architecture, and food, which was markedly different from what I was used to in the US.

There were also very few tourists compared to travel destinations like Japan and Europe.

Saudi Arabia is still not seen as a vacation spot, so most Americans rely on media depictions to understand life in the Kingdom, which can be biased. 

This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see things firsthand.

In this article, I’ll share the biggest differences I noticed between Saudi and American society, along with some photos I took while there.

I’ll cover my hackathon experiences in a separate article in the next few weeks.

Religion Permeates Saudi Lifestyle

The first difference I noticed in Saudi Arabia was how deeply religion is woven into everyday life, as the vast majority of Saudis are Muslim.

For example, people pray five times a day, and you can even hear the prayer calls from the mosques daily. Many Saudis also carry prayer mats with them to pray on the go.

Public buildings often have large prayer halls, and the bathrooms have shower areas for cleansing before prayer. 

The ceiling of my hotel room even had a sign pointing in the direction of Mecca as you can see below!

Contrast this with the US where the First Amendment of the Constitution establishes separation of Church and State. No one religion dominates the US the way Islam does in the Kingdom.

Seeing the Saudi lifestyle made it clear to me that there is no one right way to live life, and it’s hard to impose one style of living on others. Religion works out for them, and a secular society works out for America.

I gained an appreciation for valuing spaces for prayer and religious expression over utility and productivity above all else.

Saudis Value Being Good Hosts

The second difference I noticed is that hospitality is valued highly in Saudi society.

I was struck by how generous people were to me during my stay.

A Saudi friend let me stay at his Airbnb for free for 2 weeks. He would drive long distances to pick me up and take me places, which happens more rarely here in the US.

So many Saudis paid for my meal that I felt kind of bad about it. 

This contrasts with American norms where everything is more transactional - every dollar and favor is tracked carefully. Bills are split, and generosity like this is rarer.

Perhaps this is because hospitality is just valued more in their culture.

I also wonder if it’s related to the financial conditions of Saudis versus Americans. Saudis can afford to be more hospitable because of the social support systems in place.

A few Saudi friends mentioned that companies have quotas requiring a certain percentage of roles to be filled by Saudis, which guarantees citizens jobs.

They also have a system where people with the same last name are part of the same tribe, providing social support.

This contrasts with the US where there is less of a middle class, and financial pressures are larger.

63% of Americans can’t cover a $500 emergency, and 65% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So it’s not that Americans aren’t hospitable or generous; they literally can’t afford it.

The generosity that many Saudis showed me left a deep impact, and I find myself trying to be more generous here in the US.

Saudi Homogeneity vs. American Individualism

Lastly, Saudi society is more homogenous than American culture, where individualism is valued higher.

For example, most Saudis dress similarly. The men wear the white “thobes” with the head scarf, and the women wear hijabs or burkas as part of their religious worship. In the US, fashion attire is more diverse.

In Saudi society, you generally live with your family up until marriage. In fact, if you don’t live with them, one Saudi told me it’s seen as “shameful”. However in the US, you generally move out at 18.

Furthermore, the US is a country of immigrants, whereas Saudi Arabia is mostly….Saudis. So the US is a more diverse country.

Individualism helps fuel the entrepreneurship culture here in the US, but there is something to be said for the harmony of a population that acts as a cohesive society.

Conclusion

Part of the reason why I enjoyed this trip so much is that it allowed me to have diverse life experiences only accessible through entrepreneurship.

It allowed me to see the rapid growth of Saudi Arabia and notice opportunities I would’ve never known about.

Had I stayed at Netflix, a trip like this would’ve been very unlikely to happen. 

I’m certain I’ll be back. Inshallah!

In the mean time, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter where I post daily content on AI and entrepeneurship.

You can also connect with me here on Instagram.

And, if you have any referrals for folks interested in building anything related to AI, let me know!

I offer a $1,000 referral bonus for every opportunity that closes (website link).

Thanks,
Michael

If you’re looking for a crash course on project management, I highly recommend reading through this book here. It was written by Odoo, an ERP system, on how to successfully implement their software. 

Although it is primarily focused on helping partners in their ecosystem manage Odoo projects successfully, many of the principles they teach are broadly applicable to any large scale project.

I stumbled upon this during a pivot a few months ago when I was looking at Odoo as a potential partner. Although that pivot didn’t work out, I found the project management methodology I learned from them useful.

So today I wanted to share the most important takeaways from that book so you can lead projects successfully as well including:

• What project success means

• The different phases of a project

• And how to manage customer expectations

Project Success is About Being On-Time and On-Budget

The first useful insight was that the decision makers for a project care primarily about two things: finishing the project on-time and on budget. 

As a project manager, it’s easy to get this confused, as projects often involve many different stakeholders.

However if there is one person you want to please the most, it’s the decision maker who chartered the project, as they are the ones who will judge if the project was a success or not.

So given the choice between adding a new feature that a user wants but potentially risking the timeline or budget of this project, we have to ruthlessly prioritize finishing things on time and on budget first.

It’s so important that their methodology recommends splitting implementation delivery into TWO phases. 

The first phase includes only the bare minimum needed to launch, and the second phase is for the nice-to-have features after. 

They emphasized it’s better to not push back a Go-Live date for the first phase launch for the sake of completing a few extra features.

Even if the launch misses a few features, it’s better to launch and add things after than to delay the project.

Key Takeaway

When you’re managing client projects, always remember that the number one priority is to keep the project on time and on budget.

How to Phase Different Projects

The second insight I found useful was how they phased their projects. In their methodology, they gave this recommendation for how long to devote to each phase of a project:

There are a couple interesting points to this. 

First is the relative amount of time you should spend planning vs implementing.

Given that the ROI analysis and the kick-off are part of planning, this indicates that Odoo believes that 15% of a project should be spent on Discovery, or roughly one week of planning for every 7 weeks of work.

What’s also interesting about this phasing is that they allocate 5% of the time for a “Go-Live” phase to turn on the system.

This is useful because training the team, turning the system on, and monitoring the launch for issues may take time, so it’s worth explicitly accounting for that.

And lastly, I like how they split their implementations into two: an initial one to get the basic requirements out, and a second one for nice to have and custom features.

This helps to keep the initial launch date the same and not let non-critical features delay a project launch.

Key Takeaway

Consider following a similar 15%-85% split ratio between planning and implementation, accounting for a Go-Live phase, and delaying non-critical features to a second phase after the Go-Live.

How to Manage Customer Expectations

Lastly, the Odoo methodology book spends an entire chapter discussing how to manage expectations, giving a variety of tips on this topic.

First, they mention avoiding giving customers different options. As the consultant, we should propose the solution and only show other options if the customer isn’t satisfied with your proposition. It advances the project timeline faster and avoids a decision by committee.

They also mention pushing back against data import requests. Often when migrating to a new solution, people want their past data imported into the new system. 

But what they’ve found was that the ROI of this migration tends to not be worth it. People rarely check for the past data anyways, and it can be very error-prone and tedious process to import that data, thus adding more project risk.

They also suggested minimizing custom development, and going with configurations of out of the box solutions as much as possible. 

I would agree, as I’ve found it’s generally better to spend time upfront looking for existing solutions than risking building something from scratch.

Building solutions from scratch takes more time and the final product likely won’t be as polished as a pre-built solution anyways.

Key Takeaway

Avoid giving options to customers, data imports, and custom development for smoother project delivery.

Final Thoughts

If you want a crash course in project management, I highly recommend looking through any methodology guides from ERP vendors. Their methodology is informed by thousands of implementations and is a useful crash course for folks interested in project management, regardless of the industry.

You can find the official methodology book for Odoo here.

In the mean time, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter where I post daily content on AI.

And, if you have any referrals for folks interested in building anything related to AI, let me know!

I offer a 10% referral bonus (up to $1,000) for every opportunity that closes.

Thanks,

Michael

The ability to evaluate different niches and decide which one is worth focusing on is a critical skill all entrepreneurs have to learn.

Especially since the niche you choose will affect everything you do for a while, it’s worth doing some upfront research to verify that whatever path you choose shows promise.

I particularly like using Google Trends for evaluating different markets. You can input different keywords related to your niche (for example, the names of different technologies, like AWS or Kubernetes) to see how they are growing.

Had I discovered this sooner, I would’ve likely avoided months going down the wrong direction. 

How I Use Google Trends to Evaluate Niches

The first rule to choosing a niche is that it must be part of a growing market. And not only growing, but it has to grow faster than all of its competitors or other niches that you could focus on.

And that’s exactly what Google trends helps with, as the search volume trends can give you an indication of how fast or slow a niche is growing.

About a month ago, I was trying to niche down in supply chain by focusing on implementing a particular software called Odoo.

However, after not being able to win many projects in this space, I decided to do more market research on Odoo. I found out that the data was there all along on why focusing on Odoo was not the right move for me.

At first glance on Google Trends, Odoo looks promising, as you can see it does appear to be trending upwards here.

However, when I plotted it against one of its biggest competitors “Zoho”, I realized that Odoo was still relatively small and didn’t look like it was going to overtake them any time soon.

This suggests that if I was going to focus on any particular software, perhaps Zoho was better to focus on than Odoo.

Then I decided to plot Zoho and Odoo against AI, and that’s when I realized that both of them were relatively small compared to AI.

And when I compared AI to other trends like crypto, I realized that AI is currently at double the peak of crypto in 2021! 

The moment I saw these graphs was the moment I decided that Odoo was not the right niche for my consulting business, and decided to focus on AI instead.

This reminds me of a story from Jeff Bezos where, despite his extremely lucrative career in finance, he just couldn’t look past the fact that the internet was growing at 2400% year after year, which is why he left and founded Amazon.

Similarly, if AI is growing at the rate it is now, ignoring it could be a big mistake. And indeed, right after pivoting to it, I saw signals that it was the right move.

Final Thoughts

To be clear, Google Trends is only one factor to consider when niching down. If you were an Odoo expert, and you had a line of people out the door wanting your services, then by all means focus on Odoo.

But if all things were equal and you had to choose a niche, it’s probably better to bet your career on AI than on Odoo.

So the next time you do a pivot or positioning shift, I highly recommend using Google Trends to look at both the growth rates and relative interest compared to other niches to decide what to focus on.

And if you see a trend line like AI’s graph, it’s an indication to pay attention as there’s more opportunity there.

Anyways, in the mean time, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter where I post daily content on AI.

And, if you have any referrals for folks interested in building anything related to AI, let me know!

I offer a 10% referral bonus (up to $1,000) for every opportunity that closes.

Thanks,

Michael

Hi friend, 

The last few weeks since my last newsletter issue have been incredibly eventful and crazy. Life is certainly a lot more colorful as an entrepreneur than in corporate, as almost every week there are surprises that I couldn’t have anticipated. 

So today, I wanted to update you on what I’ve been up to and what I’m excited for in the next few weeks including:

• lessons from pivoting back to AI

• moving to San Francisco

• and an upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia

Pivoting Back to AI

I decided to focus on AI again. After trying for a few months to niche down into supply chain, I had trouble securing any projects in the space. So I decided to turn my attention back to AI just to see what the market response would be like, and I got feedback instantaneously.

I was able to win a few AI projects almost immediately after focusing on AI, my content on AI performs better on LinkedIn, and there’s just more excitement from clients and the general market about AI than supply chain.

It’s clear that AI is here to stay, and that perhaps now is an even better time than last year to start focusing on it. It’s likely also a better fit for me skill-wise than supply chain.

I learned from these pivots that the market wants what it wants, and it’s better to give the market what it’s looking for than to force anything on it.

If you look at Google Trends below, you can see how AI has actually surpassed the popularity of “mobile” recently, and has more than double the interest of crypto at its peak in 2021.

I compared it to other ERP implementers like “Odoo” and popular technology like “AWS” and it makes even those popular technologies look small.

It’s clear that the market wants AI.

I feel confident about this shift, so look out for more AI related content coming up in this newsletter soon!

Moving to San Francisco

I’m also moving to San Francisco soon as well. After living in Palo Alto for 3.5 years, I wanted to reduce expenses and be closer to family and friends. 

While apartment hunting, I visited 10 different places, and used Craigslist and Apartments.com to search for listings before finally making a decision. From my research, the most desirable areas in SF to live in include Pacific Heights, Noe Valley, Inner Sunset, and Marina.

Apartments.com is best for high-rises and apartments managed by large real estate companies. Craigslist is where smaller private landlords post listings. I would highly recommend looking at Craigslist, however there is a scam going around where people will ask you to pay money to do a “credit check” before meeting in-person or visiting the place.

Anyone asking you for money before meeting or visiting is a SCAM, including these “credit check” requests, so please don’t fall for it!

Anyways, from my research, it seems the market rate in San Francisco has 1 bedrooms in the $1.5k-3k range, and 2 bedrooms in San Francisco in the 3k - 4.5k range. If you really want to reduce expenses, it’s possible to rent rooms in a house for under $1.5k.

Moving is always sad, but I feel the reduction in expenses and better connection with friends and family will more than make up for it.

Mentoring a Hackathon in Saudi Arabia

Lastly, I’m gearing up for a 2-week work trip to Saudi Arabia in late April to early May. I’ll be mentoring two hackathons in the region, one related to sustainability tech, and the other on….Generative AI (of course).

It seems these initiatives are all related to Saudi Arabia’s recent push in Generative AI with them earmarking $40 billion dollars of investments in AI.

It’ll be my first time in the Middle East, and I am incredibly excited! I even have some friends there, so I might just make a trip out of this since it’s practically a whole day's worth of travel just to get there.

This trip justifies to me both 1) my choice to focus on AI and 2) leaving corporate.

Opportunities like this would’ve never happened had I stayed at Netflix. Life is certainly a lot more vivid and memorable as an entrepreneur, and I hope to keep these wins rolling with this new direction.

Anyways, in the mean time, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn where I post daily content on AI.

And, if you have any referrals for folks interested in building anything related to AI, let me know!

I offer a 10% referral bonus (up to $1,000) for every opportunity that closes.

Thanks,

Michael

📣 Announcements

1. I’m offering a 10% referral bonus (up to $1,000) if you refer someone who needs AI integrated software built to All-In Consulting.
   
   Have them mention your name, and I’ll reach out when the deal closes.

I tested cold email outreach to grow my consulting practice last month. 

After sending 292 cold emails, I got a 2.7% reply rate and 1 positive response.

But the one person who said they were interested ended up canceling the meeting at the last second, thus netting no booked calls from this cold email campaign. 

You can see a breakdown of what happened below.

Why I Started Testing Cold Emails

After reading a few books that mentioned that an over-reliance on inbound marketing could lead to stagnation, I concluded that exploring outbound channels might yield quicker growth than traditional inbound channels like content marketing, SEO, and referrals.

It’s also a more scalable and predictable path to growth.

With outbound sales, you can create an equation where you know that for every 1,000 emails you send, you will book a certain number of meetings.

So the problem then becomes a matter of increasing the email volume to hit those appointment targets. 

Personally, I was aiming for around a 1% bookings rate for cold emails, or 1 booked call per 100 emails sent.

My Approach

I started off by creating a separate domain with website copy tailored for the segment I was targeting: distributors and manufacturers.

I created an email address under that domain for sending cold email out, so I wouldn’t damage the reputation of my main consulting website address.

I decided I was going to discuss a couple main problems that they often had including:

• Manual Errors - My target customers often suffer from too many repetitive tasks that lead to costly business mistakes

• Information Silos - Data is often scattered across multiple tools, making it difficult to get a holistic view of their business

• Scalability concerns - The lack of automation hinders their business from scaling their operations further

For prospecting, I used Apollo.io, a lead generation tool, and filtered leads by only contacting folks who:

• Have CEO and COO titles

• In the USA

• With 10-100 employees

• That had the keywords “manufacturing” or “distribution” for certain types of items 

Although I did test a few variations and problem points to target in the cold email, the general gist of my cold emails looked like this:

Everyday, I would dedicate 2 hours to researching companies, come up with some personalization for the email before sending the cold email out manually through my Gmail account.

My plan was to make sure this worked before automating this process out using a cold email platform.

But since I didn’t book any meetings from this campaign, I never got to this stage.

Why My Cold Email Results Were So Poor

First off, I don’t think this happened because my prospects weren’t seeing the email.

Although I couldn’t directly see the open rate because I was doing this manually, the 2.7% response rate is still within industry benchmarks that hover around 1-3%, indicating people did open it.

Second, I also don’t think it’s an issue of volume.

If I expected at least 1 meeting booked per 100 emails I send out, that’s a 1% bookings rate. The chances of landing a meeting after sending 300 emails then is 95%, so if I sent 292 cold emails out, I probably should’ve gotten at least one meeting by then.

Instead, I think the poor campaign performance was due to two main factors. 

First, I was offering help implementing a software called Odoo ERP. But in order for clients to be open to this, I had to catch them at the exact moment they were looking to buy new ERP software or when their old ERP contract was about to expire. 

It is difficult for me to know if the companies I’m prospecting actually have the problem I was solving.

So unless I could target people with the EXACT problems they have at the EXACT time they need it, my cold email strategy was not targeted enough to work.

Second, it could be that different industries have different preferred means of communication.

For example in supply chain, many of these businesses are family-owned businesses, run by older generations.

They often may not openly embrace new technology the way engineers do, and they may prefer different ways of communciation, like tradeshows or traditional phone calls over emails.

What Am I Going to Do Now?

I don’t think cold email is dead, but it needs to be highly targeted.

I continue to get some inbound requests for AI related integrations, so I may test other types of cold outreach involving AI integrations instead.

I am also considering doubling down on content creation again, potentially expanding my reach using video platforms like Youtube and Tiktok and publishing on this newsletter more often to drive more leads. 

But for now, the cold email campaign for supply chain is on pause as I figure out more reliable channels for growth.

Stay tuned!

Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

1. “Beginner’s Guide to Medium in 75 minutes” - where I break down my entire writing process and show you how to grow your Medium following.

2. “How to Be an Engineer Influencer” - where I teach W-2 employees how to diversify their income streams by building an audience on social media.

Connect with me on social media here.

If you’re having trouble niching down your consultancy, consider focusing on channel partnerships instead.

This channel-focused approach means that instead of solving problems for anyone using any solution, you focus only on taking projects related to a single platform.

For example, if you’re a cloud architect, you could niche down by only building solutions on AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure.

If you’re focused on data engineering, you could try only building solutions for data platforms like Cloudera, Databricks, or Snowflake.

If you’re implementing ERP, focusing only on Netsuite, Oracle, or SAP is one option as well.

And so on.

Benefits of a Channel Partnership Approach

This type of partner channel approach is very compelling because it solves many problems that consultancies have.

For example, focusing on only one platform tends to fix most positioning problems. If you say, “I help businesses implement Netsuite,” it’s crystal clear what you do and gives you clear criteria for who to target (ie Netsuite’s customer profile is now yours).

It also ensures there is demand for your expertise because if these platforms are growing then more and more people will need your help.

There is also clear precedence for partnership-focused consultancies growing large. 

For example, a supply chain consultancy called 4Sight only focuses on Manhattan software implementations, and they’re one of the biggest consultancies in the industry.

Another example is Servos, where they focus only on ServiceNow implementations for the government and have also grown a lot the last few years.

So if they can do it, so can you!

Evaluating Good Channel Partners

I’ve come up with a few criteria for knowing if a platform is worth building your consultancy around:

• Is their platform growing?

  You want to be on a platform that is growing significantly so that your expertise becomes more and more in demand over time. 

• Is there precedence for building a consultancy around their platform?

  If there are no other businesses focused around that platform, then it could be that there is not enough demand for those services.

• How mature is their partner program?

  How much support do they offer their partners? Do they have dedicated partner managers, training, and onboarding?

• Is there a conflict of interest partnering with them?

  Many times these partnerships develop because product companies only want to focus on building their platform, not the implementation. However if these companies are also interested in providing service and implementation help, then they might be competing with you for the same customers.

How to Get Started

So if you’re interested in starting a channel partnership, I would recommend looking at a few big technology players in your vertical.

Most of these companies have dedicated partner pages and partner directories on their website where you can learn about the program and reach out.

Speak to their partner managers, and if they fit the four criteria above, it could be worth pursuing further!

Connect with me on social media here.

I can’t believe 2023 is already coming to a close!

This milestone means I’m nearing the 2-year mark of my entrepreneurship journey. And this was truly a successful and pivotal year for my business.

2023 was the year I decided to go “all-in” on All-In Consulting.

I learned a lot, I pivoted a few times, I grew as a manager, salesperson, writer, and consultant, finished an accelerator, and hit every single goal I set for myself at the beginning of this year.

In January 2023, I was still publishing my second course on writing on Medium. 

And now at the end of this year, I’m deep into supply chain and logistics software consulting.

What a difference a year makes!

I wanted to send you a wrap-up issue for 2023 where I share my greatest discoveries from my entrepreneurship journey this year to help you in yours.

They include:

1. What the consulting sales funnel looks like

2. Realizations I had around vertical positioning

3. And why you shouldn’t blindly copy what other people do

Figuring Out the Consulting Sales Funnel

One of the biggest discoveries I made this year was figuring out how the consulting sales funnel works.

For me, I’ve noticed that the sales process generally follows these 4 steps:

1. A client DM’s me 

2. We schedule a free 30-minute discovery call

3. We move to a paid assessment

4. We move to a paid implementation

Before landing on this, I had tried a number of other sales funnels including: 

1. Charging for the first 30-minute discovery

2. Giving away the discovery for free

3. Moving straight to discovery over DM’s

And more.

But when I did this, I found that either this hurt my close rates, or I ended up doing too much work for free. 

I really wished someone just told me to use this funnel earlier, as it could’ve helped a number of opportunities close more smoothly.

Takeaway

If you’re doing any type of consulting sales, consider using a sales funnel similar to mine because at most you’re only giving away 30-minutes for free.

Observations about Vertical Positioning

Another big learning from this year came from my vertical positioning shift to focusing only on supply chain software needs.

It’s only been a few months since I made this change, but everything seems to indicate that this was the right move.

For one, I noticed that there is significantly less competition when I bid on projects related to supply chain.

And two, I’ve had a number of manufacturers and warehouse owners reach out to me since I made this shift, indicating I have control over my client portfolio.

At first I was scared to make this move, because I thought that vertical positioning would be too limiting.

However, it actually opened up even more opportunities that I never had access to before. For example, in supply chain the largest software projects tend to center around: 

• Warehouse Management System implementations

• Enterprise Resource Planning implementations

• and Systems Integrations

And some of these projects are multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts.

These aren’t projects that a general software agency can fulfill. So although vertical positioning may close some doors, the other doors it opens up are even larger.

Takeaway

Vertical positioning opens doors to larger projects that you wouldn’t have access to if you were just a general consulting agency. 

Consider adding an element of vertical positioning to better differentiate yourself from other agencies.

Don’t Just Copy the Games Other People Play

The last thing I learned this year is to not blindly copy other entrepreneurs.

Many times it’s not clear exactly how successful they even are with their tactics, and they could also be playing a totally different game than what you’re playing.

For example, a lot of entrepreneurs try to follow the same playbook that includes something like:

• Building an audience on Twitter and LinkedIn

• Selling courses

• Running communities

• Building SaaS products

But other people’s motives for doing these things could be different than yours. So if you blindly copy others, it might not serve your goal the way it serves them. 

For example, some people run their entire businesses through Twitter, hence why they Tweet all day.

But I realized with vertical positioning that my potential clients in logistics and supply chain tend to be on LinkedIn, and not on Twitter, so I deprioritized building that channel. 

Looking back, I believe this was the right decision as it helped me focus on the channels that mattered.

Takeaway

When everyone is looking left is when you have to look right. 

Don’t just blindly copy what other entrepreneurs are doing, but think about whether doing what they do will truly help you achieve your goals.

What’s Next for 2024?

I have 3 main goals for 2024:

1. Gain deeper supply chain technology expertise

2. Develop a scalable lead generation pipeline

3. Niche down further into only focusing on systems integrations, WMS implementations, or ERP implementations.

I’m certain with multiple successful engagements under my belt, all my learnings from this year and an improving economy, 2024 should be an even better year than an already amazing 2023!

Anyways, enjoy your Christmas and holiday break - you deserve it! I’ll see you next year! 🎄

Connect with me on social media here.

I’m writing to announce a shift to my newsletter going forward. It involves two main changes:

1. I’m starting a new newsletter called Supply Chain Only, focused on insights for supply chain professionals

2. I will update this newsletter once per month instead

When I started my entrepreneurship journey, I thought that quitting my job would be the hardest decision I would make.

It turned out to be only the first of many difficult decisions.

One of the recent difficult decisions I’ve made involves committing to focusing on a specific industry for my consultancy. 

As part of this shift, I’ve decided to change from general software engineering consulting to only serving clients with software needs in supply chain.

This includes building internal tools, automation, and integrations to drive cost savings and open new revenue streams.

This positioning shift means a shift in my content strategy as well.

I’ve enjoyed building in public and writing for this newsletter.

But I ended up attracting people interested in following my independent consulting journey, and not the supply chain professionals I have to target for my consultancy. 

I’ve spoken several times on niching down and vertical positioning in the last few months. It would be inconsistent if I didn’t follow my own advice. 

As such, if I’m serious about this positioning shift, I need to create content for potential supply chain clients, hence why I’m shifting my focus to the Supply Chain Only newsletter going forward.

I still want to keep in touch with you, as I’ve met so many wonderful people through this newsletter.

That’s why I’m committed to still publishing here on a monthly cadence.

Going forward, I’ll be publishing weekly on Supply Chain Only instead. If you’re interested, you’re welcome to follow my journey here.

I’ll publish my first article there this Wednesday where I’ll discuss 3 ways to reduce freight rate costs.

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn to stay in touch as well.

My next update will be in December.

Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. It’s been a pleasure being together on this journey. 

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   New issue to come 2 weeks from now.

I’ve always been curious about what it’s like to run a brick and mortar store. We visit these physical stores all the time, yet they are talked about much less than the venture-scale startups that dominate the headlines.

Recently, I had the chance to interview several Bay Area brick-and-mortar store owners, gaining valuable insights into entrepreneurship and the challenges of running a small business.

Today I wanted to share my top 3 takeaways from these conversations. They include:

1. How important location is for starting a small business

2. How acquisitions work for small businesses

3. The hidden costs of entrepreneurship they wish they knew earlier

It’s All About Location

One of the key points that several owners emphasized was how significantly your business's location impacts its success.

They mentioned how the Bay Area is a particularly challenging place to start a business because business owners face difficulties in almost every way.

In terms of regulation, the process for getting the permits and approval from the city can take a long time because small businesses don’t generate much tax revenue for the city.

So they are comparatively lower priority than a large corporation like Apple in Cupertino, or Tesla in Fremont.

Employee retention is also more difficult in the Bay Area. They mentioned that in small towns, employees will often stay with a business for longer.

But here, employees change jobs very quickly. This adds additional hiring burdens on store owners.

And lastly, expenses are much higher in the Bay Area. High renovation costs, rent, and wages can all eat away at your margins compared to other areas.

They all recommended that I consider other areas besides the Bay Area if I wanted to start a store, where regulation is more friendly, costs are lower, and hiring is easier.

They mentioned several more affluent suburban areas that don’t have these same issues that Bay Area has.

How Acquisitions Work

Another interesting point they made was how business acquisitions work for small businesses.

Originally I thought you could just cold-call businesses to ask if the owner was interested in selling.

Boy was I wrong. 🤦

Several of these owners mentioned that acquisitions for small businesses tend to happen in two scenarios:

1. When there’s a split (ie a divorce or business partners have to part ways)

2. When the owner retires

Unless you catch a business in these specific scenarios, the owner is unlikely to be interested in selling.

Second, they mentioned that many owners aren’t necessarily focused on maximizing acquisition value, but that trust and relationships play a big part in the acquisition as well.

Many of these owners want to make sure they are handing the business off to someone who can run it and care for it properly.

As such, they mentioned how important it was to be deeply involved in the community to build these relationships with business owners.

And that over-time, acquisition opportunities will naturally unfold.

So the lesson here is that if you’re interested in acquiring a small business, consider being more active in the community, particularly in certain ethnic groups if those groups tend to own businesses of a particular type.

Investing in these relationships is more likely to lead to acquisition opportunities than cold-calling businesses will.

The Hidden Costs of Entrepreneurship

Lastly, it’s worth noting that none of these owners described their entrepreneurship experience as easy.

They mentioned that there were many hidden costs to running a small business that they wish they knew of ahead of time.

For one, they rarely are able to get long stretches of time off. They mentioned that they thought they could build a turn-key business and just hire a manager to run everything.

But it often didn’t turn out that way because issues would always arise that needed their attention.

For a couple family businesses, they also mentioned that the stresses of the business took a toll on their relationships with family and loved ones as well.

They had to burn the midnight oil often, working long hours after work and on weekends to get it off the ground.

For what it’s worth though, all the owners I interviewed said they weren’t worried about the finances of their business anymore, so at least they made it eventually!

Final Thoughts

It’s clear to me from talking to these small business owners that no path in entrepreneurship is easy.

And in many ways, I’m glad I do consulting instead, as consulting avoids a lot of the problems these owners had to deal with related to owning a physical storefront.

However, if you are interested in starting a small business, by:

• Considering the regulatory environment where you’re starting your business

• Investing in relationships and community involvement as part of your entrepreneurial efforts

• Playing the long game

you’ll be well on your way to starting your own successful brick and mortar business!

Connect with me on social media here.

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Many people treat sales and project delivery as separate parts of a consultancy.

Sales teams brings new clients in, while project delivery teams serve existing ones. 

A common mistake that many consulting founders make is that they prioritize sales over delivery since sales brings new revenue in.

However it’s crucial to understand that good project delivery is what ultimately drives sales success.

If you consistently deliver results, clients are more likely to return to you in the future and refer you to others. 

In this article, I share three key principles for ensuring smooth project delivery:

• The importance of having a discovery phase

• Focusing on the first and last weeks of an engagement

• Having the right meeting cadence to ensure alignment among the team

Never Skip the Discovery Phase

Abraham Lincoln once said, “If I had 8 hours to chop a tree, I’d spend 7 hours sharpening my axe.” 

That is, the preparation is just as important as the execution itself. And this plays out in consulting implementations as well.

Most consulting engagements consist of two parts: discovery and implementation. Discovery is the planning phase, and implementation is when you actually start building.

Many engineers are over-eager to jump straight into the implementation phase. After all, coding is the fun part. 

But rushing into building things is a mistake, as it’s important to always do a discovery phase first.

It’s during this phase that you understand what the problem is, align on the final deliverable, and uncover project risks. 

Software consulting projects are like building a house.

Before we can put one brick down for a house, there’s a lot of planning that has to happen. You have to survey the land, measure everything out, apply for permits, and talk to vendors.

Similarly for a software project, there’s also a lot of planning and investigation that has to happen before implementation can start.

Otherwise you could find yourself using the wrong framework, or in the worst case, building the wrong thing entirely.

So before implementation starts, it’s important to align on these three deliverables during discovery:

• A system design diagram so it’s clear what the changes you will make are

• Product flows designs, like wireframes or mockups of what the user experience will look like for the final product

• A week-by-week timeline for implementation

Having these three deliverables at the end of the discovery would be the equivalent of having a blueprint, timeline, and specifications doc for a house so that construction goes smoothly.

The First and Last Weeks are the Most Important Ones

The second principle to successful project delivery is to focus on the first and last weeks of a project.

These two weeks are when issues are most likely to arise.

In the first week, your primary goal is to align the team on the implementation plan, timelines, and priorities. This is also when you make sure everyone has all the right permissions so that they can start coding immediately.

Any lost time in the first week will push all the other deadlines back as well. These delays also compound over time, as a single day delay can easily turn into a week-long delay at the end of the month.

The last week is also important to focus on because there are a lot of moving parts. Knowledge transfer, handoffs, testing, deployments, and engagement extensions all happen this week. 

This is also when team members may get reassigned to different projects, so it’s critical to wrap everything up now before team members move on.

Interestingly, the middle of the engagement is the smoothest, as that’s when the engineers start coding and doing what they do best. So as long as they are off on the right direction after the first week, things are less likely to go wrong here.

I recommend paying close attention to the first and last weeks, setting daily goals for the team, and even having daily standup meetings to make sure everything is moving forward as expected.

Once these two weeks pass, you can adjust the meeting cadence as necessary.

Meeting Timing Matters

Lastly, I’ve found that the timing of your internal team meetings can greatly affect the smooth execution of a project.

I used to have standup meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays with my team, but I realized that this leaves 4 days between Thursday and the next Tuesday meeting for things to go off course.

Now I recommend having team meetings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That way, you can set priorities for the team on Monday, and ensure that there is no more than 1 day between meetings for things to go awry. 

This is particularly important in this day and age when teams are remote. To make up for the lack of face-to-face communication, more frequent standups are critical.

Additionally, I’ve found that it is important to have 1:1’s every two weeks with all team members including freelancers and contractors, especially for longer-term projects.

When working remotely, there’s no “water-cooler” talk where you passively pick up on project details.

These 1:1’s are your opportunity to hear about project risks and implementation details that might not get surfaced in team-wide meetings.

They are also your chance to give feedback on what they’re doing well, and what they can improve on. 

Both these 1:1 meetings and team standups are the main touch points when you speak with your team, and so it’s important to get these meetings right.

Final Thoughts

Successful project delivery drives sales. By:

• not skipping out on a discovery phase

• focusing on the first and last weeks of an engagement and

• scheduling both 1:1’s and team-wide meetings on a regular cadence

your engagements will go smoother and drive your consultancy’s growth.

Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

1. “Beginner’s Guide to Medium in 75 minutes” - where I break down my entire writing process and show you how to grow your Medium following.

2. “How to Be an Engineer Influencer” - where I teach W-2 employees how to diversify their income streams by building an audience on social media.

Connect with me on social media here.

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My first year of entrepreneurship felt like running around with my pants on fire.

I was constantly on the move, but it wasn’t clear where exactly I was running to.

As my second year comes to a close, one of the biggest wins I had this year was greater clarity on what I should be working towards.

And I’ve finally figured out what the multi-year roadmap for building an early-stage consultancy looks like.

Having this bigger picture in mind helped me better prioritize my goals, and figure out whether I was moving in the right direction or not. 

It helped assuage any anxiety I had during slower periods as I could prove that I was still making progress, and it helped me determine what my focus each quarter should be.

In today’s article, I’ll map out what the 3-year roadmap for starting a consultancy looks like, and how this informs the growth strategy for your consultancy.

Understanding the 3-Year Timeline for Independent Consulting

Starting a consultancy is a 3-year journey. Each year has a specific theme, with 2-3 success criteria. 

So long as all your actions are consistent with that year’s theme, and you’re able to complete the success criteria for each year, you should feel confident that you’re making significant progress.

The 3-year roadmap looks like this:

Year 1: Experimentation

In your first year, the theme is experimentation. And as such, your goals are to 1) develop fundamental entrepreneurship skills and 2) decide which entrepreneurship option you want to double down on.

Committing to entrepreneurship is a career change. And as with any career change, it will take time to develop the fundamental skills in that career before you’re able to advance further.

I would treat year 1 as a building year where you develop fundamental entrepreneurship skills, including:

• Not being afraid of self-promotion

• Not being afraid to make asks

• Fast execution

• Consistency

• Content creation

• Fast decision-making

I would also treat this year as your opportunity to try many different entrepreneurship options out. This includes coaching, consulting, community-building, freelancing, courses, product-building and more.

Each of these options could be a full-time job if you commit fully to it, so your goal for year 1 is to choose which of these options you want to double down on.

As a personal example, it was during my first year of experimentation that it became obvious that consulting had more traction than anything else I did.

So consulting became the natural focus for me at the beginning of 2023. 

I suspect that your trajectory will be very similar, where you will be naturally drawn to one option over all the others after a year of experimentation.

That’s what you want to double down on in year 2.

At the end of this year, if you have tried many experiments, have clarity on which entrepreneurship path you want to focus in on, and developed general entrepreneurship skills, I would consider this year a success.

Year 2: Foundation

As you enter your second year, you have mastered general entrepreneurship skills, and know that consulting is what you want to focus on.

Your goal now is to develop general consulting skills, and choose a specific domain to focus your consulting expertise in.

The general consulting skills all consulting founders must have include:

• Knowing how to price projects

• Understanding the balance sheets for consultancies

• Knowing all the key metrics you should target for your consultancy (gross margins, growth rate, etc)

• How to hire and build teams

• What the sales funnel looks like for your consulting domain

• How to manage client expectations

• How to successfully deliver on projects

• How to write proposals

• How to write case studies

• How to qualify leads

• Fundamentals of positioning, differentiators, and solutions offerings

• How to build a lead generation plan

By the end of this year, you will have also completed several engagements, have clients in a broad range of industries, and have a better idea of which clients you want to focus on.

That’s when you’ll know what your focus area in your consultancy should be in year 3.

By the end of this year, you should also have a lead generation plan ready for how you will find more of these ideal clients. That way going into year 3, your job will be focused mostly on implementing this growth plan.

Year 3: Focus

By year 3, you are a consistent entrepreneur, you have overseen several consulting projects end-to-end, and have now chosen a consulting specialization.

Your goal is to now go all-in on this specialization and develop deeper expertise for the industry you’re choosing to focus on.

So a successful year 3 would look like this:

• Your client base is primarily in your target industry by the end of this year

• You have implemented the lead generation plan from year 2, and doubled down and optimized the most successful ones by the end of this year

• You have significant industry insight, expertise and authority developed in your field

At this point, your lead generation is scalable, and delivery is automatic. You’re able to confidently forecast your finances.

Your priorities in years 4 and onward is to scale leadership, potentially even hiring a general manager or CEO to run the day-to-day for you, and position yourself for an acquisition in years 5-7.

What This Means For You

So we’ve discussed the 3-year timeline for starting a consultancy and your main focus areas for each year.

Here’s how this will dictate your priorities as you grow your consultancy.

Takeaway 1: Know your positioning in the timeline

There are levels to this consulting game. You have to make sure you know which level you are on right now and check off all the boxes at your current level before advancing to the next one.

For example, many people are interested in starting a consultancy right off the bat and try to learn the general consulting skills in year 2 before mastering the general entrepreneurship skills first.

Without that foundation, their growth will plateau quickly until they learn the skills from the earlier level first.

For example, if they aren’t able to make asks, how would they ever develop a referral business?

If they aren’t able to develop fast execution skills, how would they implement a lead generation channel quickly?

So some questions for you to ponder are:

• Which year in this 3-year timeline are you in right now?

• Have you checked all the boxes from the previous years already?

If you have completed all the boxes, feel free to move on to the next stage. If not, it may be worth investing some time in developing those skills before learning any consulting specific skills.

Takeaway 2: Make consistent content creation a goal in year 1

If you don’t know what experiments to try in year 1, consistently producing content on a set schedule is a great way to start.

Content creation is like a mini-university in entrepreneurship. Each piece of content is like a product, so content creation teaches you how to execute quickly and bring a product (your content) to the market as quickly as possible.

It’s also a pre-requisite for consulting because a large part of consulting is writing.

You’re constantly writing proposals, sending client emails, communicating with your team, and writing case studies. So you’ll need these skills as you build your consultancy anyways.

Content creation is so important now that I consider it a foundational entrepreneurship skill.

Takeaway 3: Setting income goals is not productive early on

Lastly, I really encourage you to not set income goals for yourself in your first two years of starting a consultancy.

Instead, treat attaining all the skills in years 1, 2, and 3 as your success criteria instead.

I see a lot of new independent consultants say they want to quit and try to make X amount of money by the end of the year. And invariably they get discouraged if they don’t hit those goals.

The problem with income goals is that anyone can make up a number and set it as a goal. But it doesn’t give you any direction on how to achieve that goal.

Skills collection is a more concrete goal to strive towards.

Income is also a lagging indicator of your own personal growth. The income will not catch up until your skills catch up as well.

So focus less on the income you’re making, and make sure to check off all the pre-requisite skills I mentioned above instead.

I promise the income will catch up eventually!

Final Thoughts

Understanding the 3-year timeline for starting a consultancy will give you clarity on what to focus on each year.

By focusing year 1 on experimentation, year 2 on foundational consulting skills and year 3 on focused expertise, you will be well on your way to building your dream consultancy.

Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

1. “Beginner’s Guide to Medium in 75 minutes” - where I break down my entire writing process and show you how to grow your Medium following.

2. “How to Be an Engineer Influencer” - where I teach W-2 employees how to diversify their income streams by building an audience on social media.

Connect with me on social media here.

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Most people interested in starting their own consultancy are in it for the immediate cashflow it provides.

And when they’ve saved up enough from it, they move on and let their business wind down naturally.

But few people realize that rather than letting it die out, it’s possible to sell your consultancy instead. This could lead to the biggest payout of all.

For example, imagine if you owned a consultancy making $10 million/year. If you were able to secure a high-multiple valuation on this, you could sell this consultancy for tens of millions when you decide to exit. 

Compare this to a typical multiple of 0.75-1x for average growth consultancies.

Or worse yet, imagine someone who just lets their consultancy fizzle out on its own. 

That’s a lot of potential value left on the table!

Furthermore, knowing how a consultancy is valued during an acquisition is critical for consulting founders because it gives you a clearer direction for your consultancy’s growth strategy. 

If you know how a buyer will value your consultancy during an acquisition, you can focus on the factors that will raise the enterprise value of a consultancy from the very beginning, while not wasting time on the factors that won’t.

It’s so important that I’ve invested time into researching how consultancies are valued during acquisitions and have compiled my findings in today’s article including: 

• the two biggest factors that drive a consultancy’s valuation

• how this informs your growth strategy as a consulting founder

How is a Consultancy Valued?

In general, the buyer of a consultancy is interested in one thing: expectations of future revenue.

And for a consultancy, there is nothing that guarantees expectations of future revenue more than long-term contracts.

So if your consultancy takes a lot of one-off engagements, this can be good for cashflow in the short term, but it doesn’t guarantee any future revenue. 

Therefore, if your consultancy’s revenue consisted of only one-off engagements, it would not command a premium valuation. 

However, having many long-term contracts with clients can significantly boost your consultancy’s valuation because it secures future revenue.

For instance, if you secured a 5-year contract with a client worth $1 million/year and decided to sell your consultancy, you could argue that its potential value is as high as five times its current annual revenue.

The assurance of future revenue, with at least $1 million expected per year for the next few years, sets your consultancy apart from those reliant on one-off engagements.

So securing multi-year, long-term contracts is critical for high-multiple valuations.

Projected Growth Rates are Key for High Consulting Multiples

The second significant factor affecting valuations is the projected growth rate of your consultancy.

If investors believe there is a strong case for your earnings to grow significantly in future years, they are more willing to pay a premium to capture that future growth now.

And the best way to secure a high, projected growth rate is to base it on a proven, scalable process.

For example, let’s say you ran an ad campaign that cost you $100k, but it generated 1 million dollars worth of sales.

If you could make the case that your target audience is large enough that you could 10x your marketing to $1 million worth of ad spend, then you could project that your sales would 10x along with it. 

This applies to SEO as well.

For example, if your website currently receives 10,000 monthly visitors and you’re planning to invest in SEO and content marketing, you can project future growth by estimating that these efforts would double your website traffic, and hopefully double the revenue generated as well.

A last example is by expanding your services.

If you were a consultancy with many existing clients, and you were confident that you could offer an upsell service that they would pay for, you could project that your consultancy would have an even steeper growth rate once you implemented this service.

In all 3 of these examples: ad spend, SEO, and upsells, you have a marketing program that is both proven and scalable.

You are now able to make the case for why your consultancy deserves a higher multiple valuation.

What Does This Mean for Your Consultancy?

Now we know that two of the most important factors that affect consulting valuations are: 1) long-term contracts and 2) high projected growth rates.

This implies a few things for your business strategy as well.

Startups are Not Ideal Customers

This might be a hot-take, but I think it’s better for a consultancy to target Fortune 500’s and more mature business than early-stage startups, particularly those without VC-backing.

They say that the life of a company is “power-law” distributed, which means that you can estimate the lifespan of a startup by 2x’ing how long it has been around for. 

For example, since Amazon has been around for 26 years, you can predict that it will be around for another 26 years.

Microsoft has been around for 48 years, so it will be around for another 48 years.

However based on this 2x rule, a startup that has only been around for a year will likely only be around for another year. 

Startups are not stable enough by nature to sign long-term contracts, so it’s better to target companies that have been around longer if you’re looking for premium valuations during an acquisition.

So a question to ask yourself is: 

“Is it likely that your target audience will still be around 5 years later?” 

If yes, they are likely an ideal client that could form the foundation of a long-term contract.

It’s for this reason why government contracts are so valuable. No entity is more stable and boasts a larger budget than the government.

Consider Scalable Growth Strategies Sooner Than Later

Most consultancies grow from the founders’ personal sales efforts.

Although necessary at the beginning, relying solely on the founder’s personal network or business development effort will make it difficult to justify a high valuation for a consultancy, because once the consultancy is sold, the founder is also gone.

There goes their personal network and their amazing sales skills!

Instead, it’s important to start thinking about scalable lead generation strategies earlier than later.

By scalable, I mean any growth strategies that could still run without the founder’s own personal business development efforts.

This includes things like:

• SEO

• Ads

• Training a sales force

But if your lead generation consists of mining out your own personal network, and going on vacations and golf trips with clients, these relationships won’t transfer to the buyer of your consultancy. 

Therefore, they also don’t contribute to a high valuation during an acquisition.

It’s for this reason why I also believe it’s not good to name a consultancy after a founder’s name.

Once a consultancy is sold, the founder isn’t going to be there anymore, so it’s difficult to transfer the founder’s personal brand over to a new owner. 

Here are two more questions for you to reflect on:

1. Can you show that your business development efforts are both repeatable and can consistently generate sales?

2. Is this model easily scalable?

If the answer is no to these two questions, it’s OK to continue doing it in the early days.

But eventually you’re going to have to find a channel more scalable if you expect to sell your consultancy for a premium in the future.

It’s Never Too Soon to Specialize and Differentiate

If a consultancy is able to secure long-term contracts, this indicates two other things:

1. The client believes they will have ongoing needs

2. They believe you can perform this service better than anyone else

Particularly for number 2), this means you have to avoid becoming a “commodity consultancy” where any number of consultancies can easily perform your function and replace you.

This necessitates specialization and differentiation in your field in order to stand out from the “general” service providers who provide solutions to anyone and everyone.

One example of a consultancy that is specialized and able to secure these long-term contracts include, Praxent, a Fintech consultancy. 

Notice how their expertise in Fintech, (not just general software engineering) gives them deep expertise in integrations with the financial sector that more general software agencies won’t know how to do.

This allows them to accumulate large contracts with big and mature clients, and build their reputation among other Fintech companies, thus attracting even more potential clients in the future.

Another example is RedHawk IT Consulting.

I know of this consultancy because I was on sam.gov once, the website for government contracts, and I noticed that this consultancy kept winning IT contracts from the government.

When I researched them further, I realized why: they specialize in providing IT services for the government. 

In fact, it’s run by veterans, so they must have a lot of connections and a deep understanding of how to navigate the government system.

They are so focused on government contracts, they even have a hawk in their logo!

So a final question for your consultancy is to consider how you can be as targeted as both Praxent is with Fintech and RedHawk IT with the government.

One way to do this is to consider adding an element of “vertical positioning” where you target a specific industry for your consultancy the way they do.

It will make it easier for you to compile a list for your lead generation efforts, and help you develop “snowballing expertise” in a specific field that makes your consultancy stronger over time.

Final Thoughts

Consulting founders should study what goes into the valuation of a consultancy early on, as it could inform their consultancy’s growth strategy.

By focusing on ways to guarantee expectations of future revenue through long-term contracts, and developing scalable growth models early on, you will command a much higher valuation for your consultancy if you ever decide to sell it later on.

Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

1. “Beginner’s Guide to Medium in 75 minutes” - where I break down my entire writing process and show you how to grow your Medium following.

2. “How to Be an Engineer Influencer” - where I teach W-2 employees how to diversify their income streams by building an audience on social media.

Connect with me on social media here.

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2. I’ll be on vacation this week so no issue next Tuesday.
   
   Newsletter to resume two weeks from now on 8/29/23.

I’ve been taking a lot of intro sales calls with clients the last few months.

But my close rate was very low (in the single digits), and I felt there was something wrong with how I was handling sales calls.

So I carved out some time the last few weeks to do some reading into how to be a better salesperson. 

And there was one theme that kept cropping up throughout my sales research, which was the importance of crafting a compelling offer.

In this article, I’ll summarize my learnings about offers from Alex Hormozi’s book, “$100 Million Dollar Offers” including:

• what an offer is

• elements of a compelling offer and

• how to improve your offer so that buyers can’t say no

What is An Offer?

An offer is a proposal for how you will do business with a customer. 

For example, some of the many offers that I’ve made before include:

• Project-based engagements based on deliverables (eg building an MVP)

• Time-based engagements (eg monthly retainers or hourly calls)

• Value based engagements (ie getting paid on commission)

• Free 30-minute intro call before the paid engagement

• Offering to architect their product

• Offering referral bonuses 

• Fractional CTO services

• Engineering Consulting

• Positioning myself as a software agency

• Positioning myself as a dev shop

And more.

The way you craft your offer is important because the same product positioned with different offers could lead to vastly different results.

For example, I run a software engineering consultancy called All-In Consulting, and I’ve noticed that some clients balk at paying for a “paid discovery” phase before I move into actually building their software. 

But I’ve noticed that if I position the discovery phase as:

• a “vision to paper phase”

• a “credit” for implementation or

• the first “milestone” we try to hit for implementation

then clients are more likely to agree, even though technically there is no difference. 

In this case, having clients view the initial investigation as a “stepping stone” for their final product was more compelling than viewing it as a separate phase, and it helped increase my close rate.

Furthermore, offers are important because if you craft the right offer, you don’t even have to do any sales.

As Alex Hormozi puts it, “the key to sales is making an offer so good people will feel stupid saying no.”

So if you have an offer that’s really compelling, it practically sells itself.

But how exactly do you craft an offer like this?

The Four Keys of a Good Offer

All good offers have four things in common. They:

• Speak to the dream result the client is looking for

• Increase the certainty that they will get their dream result

• Decrease the amount of time it takes to get value

• Decrease the amount of effort or sacrifice needed to get it.

Hormozi describes this in the equation below:

With this framework, we can evaluate every offer based on these four dimensions to see how we can improve an offer to the point that clients will always say yes.

For example, let’s say you’re a career coach, and you’re offering 12 week coaching packages where you meet with a client once a week to talk about their career goals.

Do you think this is a compelling offer that is a “no-brainer” to sign up for?

Using the value equation above, let’s analyze this offer and see how we can improve it.

Dream Result

When someone signs up for career coaching, their dream result isn’t 12 meetings with the coach.

Their dream result is getting promoted or getting a raise faster. 

So this means this offer could already be improved by mentioning the dream result in it like “Get a 10% raise or more”.

Certainty

With the current offer, there is no certainty that the client will achieve their dream result.

The only thing certain is that they get 12 hours of coaching. 

So this offer could be improved if the offer included some guarantees, like “you only pay if I get you the raise,” or “your money back guaranteed if you don’t get the raise.”

Time to Value

It’s unclear in this offer when they will get the promotion or raise they were looking for.

For example, some promotion cycles and raises only happen on a yearly cadence.

Does that mean that the client will have to wait a year to see the result?

So we could strengthen this offer by mentioning when the client can expect results (ie a promotion within 6 months).

Cost or effort

The customer may get great advice from the career coach, but it’s still on them to put it into action.

So there is still a lot of effort needed from the client even after paying for the coaching service.

This offer can be improved if the coach’s offer includes the exact scripts for the client to use in negotiation meetings.

That way the client can spend less time coming up with what to say.

What a Better Offer Looks Like

Compare this example of a general career coach with the offer of a salary negotiation coach who will negotiate a pay raise for you, while getting paid on commission. 

Not only would this coach make a lot more because it’s commission based, this offer is also much more compelling because it includes all four elements of a grand slam offer:

• Dream result - This speaks to the direct result that the client wants which is getting paid more

• Certainty - The client doesn’t pay unless the coach gets the result. So it’s 100% certain that they won’t pay for empty results.

• Time to value - Salary negotiations have shorter timelines, as the time between a company making an offer and an employee accepting it is usually less than a month. So the client will see the results faster.

• Effort or cost - The coach would be the one negotiating with a company, so the employee doesn’t have to do anything

I suspect that a career coach positioning their offer as a salary negotiations coach would close more deals and get paid more than a general career coaching selling their time.

This offer hits all 4 points of a grand-slam offer, and is therefore much more compelling.

Final Thoughts

If you’re struggling with low close rates, it might not be a lack of sales skills that’s holding you back, but your offering that needs to improve.

So here are some final questions to help you improve your offers:

1. What is your customer’s dream result? 

2. What guarantees can you make?

3. How can you deliver value to them as soon as possible?

4. How can you decrease the amount of work they have to do to get that result?

Combine your answers to these four questions, and you’ve got your grand slam offer!

Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

1. If you’re an engineer looking for career advice, I highly recommend checking out Taro.

   It’s run by my friend Rahul, and it’s a community of software engineers all looking to level up in their career.
   
   Use this link to get 20% off when you register!

2. “How to Be an Engineer Influencer” - where I teach W-2 employees how to diversify their income streams by building an audience on social media.

Connect with me on social media here.