The Consulting Growth Podcast

What does it really take to build, sell, and successfully integrate a specialist consulting firm? Carlos Keener has spent more than 25 years working in M&A, integration, and post-deal operating models. He founded Beyond the Deal (BTD), building a specialist consultancy focused on helping organisations capture value from acquisitions and other inorganic growth events, before the firm joined Oak...

What happens to a professional services firm when AI makes the work faster—but clients expect to pay less? Shawn Yeager, founder of Upshift, works with professional services firms on the commercial implications of AI: not simply which tools to adopt, but what firms should sell and how they should price once parts of traditional delivery become easier to automate. Drawing on three decades working w...

How can a boutique consultancy scale beyond founder-led growth without losing the culture that made it successful? Rob Ferrone is a product data and PLM strategy advisor who founded and led Quick Release, a specialist engineering consultancy focused on product data management and product data flow. In this episode, he explains how the firm grew through referrals before developing a structured, con...

How can boutique consultancies scale, diversify, and prepare for exit without losing the culture that made them successful? In this episode, Professor Joe O’Mahoney speaks with Martin Mehalchin, a former Lenati leader who helped build the Seattle-based customer strategy and experience design firm into a nationally recognised consultancy before its 2018 merger with PK. Martin reflects on the growth...

How do you scale a consulting business from £2M to £30M without losing culture, customer focus, or entrepreneurial energy? In this episode, Joe O’Mahoney speaks with Stuart Packham, Group CEO of Alchemist Group, about scaling professional services businesses through a combination of organic growth, acquisitions, operational rigor, and people-first leadership. Stuart shares lessons from building a...

How do you build multiple successful agencies, recover from failure, and keep scaling without burning out? In this episode, Joe speaks with Jamie Shanks, founder and CEO of Get Levrg, and a three-time agency founder who has built businesses in sales training, technology, and outsourced revenue operations. Jamie shares the entrepreneurial mindset that has driven him through wins, setbacks, and mult...

What really changes when a consulting firm takes on private equity, and how should founders prepare for it? Karen Thomas-Bland shares practical insights from working across private equity-backed consulting firms, transformations, and integrations. She explains that the biggest shift post-investment is not capital, but discipline: more rigorous reporting, structured governance, and collective decis...

What does it take to build a consulting firm that lasts 25 years and successfully exits to a Big Four firm? Adrian Moorhouse, Olympic gold medallist and former world number one swimmer, shares the story of how he transitioned from elite sport to building Lane4, one of the UK’s most respected leadership development consultancies. After retiring from swimming, Moorhouse moved into talent development...

What does it take to build a consulting firm that is global from day one? In this episode, Joe O’Mahoney speaks with Matthieu Courtecuisse, Founder & CEO of Sia, about the long-term decisions behind building one of the world’s largest founder-led consulting firms. Matthieu shares how Sia was built with international scale in mind from the very beginning, why founder commitment matters more tha...

What does leadership really look like when growth, pressure, and personal risk collide? In this episode, Joe O’Mahoney speaks with Richard Goold about scaling consulting firms, leading under strain, and building long-term value without losing culture. Richard Goold supports founders, CEOs, and boards through the hardest stages of growth—scaling sustainably, protecting culture, and preparing for lo...

What does it take to scale a consulting firm internationally without external capital? In this episode, Joe O’Mahoney speaks with Olly Purnell , Managing Partner and co-founder of Q5, about how the firm grew from a five-person partnership to a global consultancy. With nearly 30 years of consulting experience, he leads client engagements across sectors while also focusing on attracting top talent t...

What if selling your business wasn't the end of your wealth creation journey, but rather the beginning? In this fascinating conversation with Todd Taskey, M&A advisor and host of the Second Bite Podcast, we explore how marketing agency founders can transform a business sale into an extraordinary wealth-building opportunity. Todd reveals the three currencies every business seller receives...

Agentic AI is rapidly transforming professional services, yet many consultancies remain cautious about its implementation. In this groundbreaking conversation, Professor Joe O'Mahony and Rob Price explore what happens when multiple AI agents work together as a team to tackle complex business challenges. Rob explains how agentic AI differs from traditional AI applications by creating virtual t...

Anish Patel takes us on a fascinating journey from his beginnings as a "physics geek" to building and selling a successful consultancy in this candid conversation about growth, leadership, and knowing when to exit. With refreshing honesty, Anish reveals how his scientific background created the perfect foundation for consulting work. "The scientific method was something that really...

Richard Brackstone, the managing partner of Moorhouse Consulting, and I talk about growing consultancies. We talk about his time at Andersen Consulting and spearheading projects in the Blair-Brown government era to leading major projects at Lloyds. We'll explore the interesting evolution of Moorhouse Consulting, tracing its rise from Dom Moorhouse's vision to the fast-paced expansion tha...

Chris Tomlinson, the founder and CEO of Muuto, is reshaping his firm by embracing AI. Learn how Chris and his team are leveraging the power of generative technologies to shift their consulting practices. Chris shares his insights on how boutiques can outpace larger organizations by harnessing the agility to innovate without the usual constraints. We explore the potential of AI agents in modeling a...

Any business school student will tell you about the S-curves that most companies encounter when they scale: when what got you to point A will actively prevent you from getting to point B. Anticipating these leads to smoother growth, happier employees, less stressed CEOs/owners, and keener investors / buyers. Here, we learn from the growth journeys of Richard Goold (ex-CEO of Moorhouse) and Mark Pa...

Why do senior hires fail so often in consulting? What can we do to minimise this? Join me as I sit down with Gary Lanz from Wilton Bain to explore the intricate art of talent acquisition and development within the consulting industry. We discuss finding the strong senior hires who can generate business, fit culturally, and harmonize with existing teams. We also tackle the ongoing debate between be...

In this episode of the Consulting Growth Podcast, we sit down with pricing strategy maestro Ethan Williams, who transitioned from real estate investment banking to becoming an authoritative voice in global pricing strategy.  Here is Ethan's AI Pricing Advisor: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-MNWgcA4wX-value-based-pricing-advisor Here's Ethan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-wil...

What does great thought leadership look like for boutique consultancies? Join us on the Consulting Growth Podcast as we engage with Athena Peppes, a luminary in thought leadership and artificial intelligence. Drawing from her stellar career at Accenture and her current role as an independent consultant, Athena unveils what makes thought leadership effective. In this episode, Athena demystifies how...

Productization offers considerable opportunities to consultancies as the cost of development has collapsed. Eisha Armstong is the world's leading expert on how this is achieved in consultancies, co-founder of Vecteris and celebrated author. Chris Dando is a member of the Boutique Leaders Club and founder / CEO of Reinvigoration - an operations consultancy which has recent successfully product...

Meet Michael Kempner, the mastermind behind MIKEWORLDWIDE. His is a story a narrative woven with tenacity and transformation moving from a solo operation to spearheading a leading independent PR firm, where embracing past hurdles has been integral to the company's monumental growth. This episode peels back the layers on how valuing human capital has been pivotal to MWW's success, reveali...

Unlock the secrets to a triumphant M&A journey in the knowledge economy with Jerome Glynn-Smith, the Equiteq's Head of Europe. As a former JP Morgan and Deloitte luminary, Jerome provides wisdom on the pivotal role of specialization within the technology and professional services sectors.  Our chat navigates through the critical $10 million revenue threshold, the allure of private equity...

Phil Rolfe founded, grew and sold FS101 to P2 Consulting, then P2 Consulting to Valcon, where he is now the country COO for the UK.  This episode promises a treasure trove of wisdom, from Phil's transformative journey from Eagle Star, KPMG and RBS to the innovative frontiers of Vulcan's data problem-solving focus. As your host, Professor Joe O'Mahoney, I'm thrilled to share how...

Imagine if you could transform your consultancy's repetitive tasks into a unique service offering or automate more of your back-office? That's precisely what our guest, Tim Redgate Strategy Director of Axioned, discusses in this fascinating episode of Consulting Growth. We dive deep into the concept of productisation and how it can be a game-changer for consultancies and professional ser...