CrackerJack Consulting Podcast

Jul 25 2024 16 ep. 31 mins 1

CrackerJack Consulting Podcast artwork

Boutique consulting firm leaders share lessons with you. In the CrackerJack Consulting Podcast, David A. Fields interviews people who have built successful, boutique firms to find out how they solved the critical challenges that could have stymied their growth. Every episode comes with a prize – a valuable infographic, worksheet, framework or other tool that draws from the podcast and you can use to help your consulting firm make progress. The podcast is specifically for leaders of boutique consulting firms (i.e., firms roughly $2m – $100m/year); however, if you have a smaller or larger practice, you may still find the episodes interesting and useful.

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How Do You Stay Ahead of the Curve

Jul 25 2024 36 mins

How do you continue to innovate so that your firm becomes increasingly valuable to your clients? To answer that question, I turned to Charles Mauro shortly before he retired because he has made a (successful) practice of keeping his firm on the cutting edge of their specialty.

How to Manage Through Up and Down Revenue Cycles

Jul 25 2024 25 mins

Your consulting firm may be enjoying a banner year. Or, you may be trying to climb out of a revenue dip. Or perhaps you're somewhere in between on the revenue roller coaster that seems to define small consulting firms. Managing the ups and downs with excellence and poise is a skill set worth mastering, and it's what I tackled in this interview of Colleen Murray from Jump Asociates.

How to Enter and Succeed in a Field Where You Don't Have Deep Expertise (Yet)

Jul 25 2024 25 mins

If your target market is no longer buying, your firm may have to pivot. Great idea in theory, but how do you do it? Zo Ratansi, founder of Sixsense Strategy Group has mastered this skill and put it to good use in building a successful boutique consulting firm, so I tapped into his wisdom to help you when you need to pivot your firm.

Adding Software to Your Consulting Firm's Offerings

Jul 25 2024 31 mins

Consulting firms frequently view software products as the holy grail. They're infinitely scalable revenue streams that don't require any labor (or at least minimal labor) after they're built. But are they really the holy grail? I attempted to answer that question with the CEO of a firm that has launched a software solution to its clients.

How to Win the Battle Against Discount Staffing Firms

Jan 19 2024 31 mins

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

How to Create Perfect Alignment Among Your Executive Team

Jan 19 2024 21 mins

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

Acquisitions, Integrations and Underperformers, Oh My!

Jan 19 2024 32 mins

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

How to Prevent Burnout at Your Consulting Firm

Jan 19 2024 27 mins

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

Turning Around a Broken Culture

Jan 19 2024 46 mins

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

How to Scale Beyond The Original Founders

Jan 19 2024 40 mins

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