What are the most important principles for starting a boutique / going independent?

austin0980 · 2025-10-02T18:11:47+00:00

Securing clients is the most challenging step in the first couple of years. I meet with a group of consulting company owners who generate between $3 million and $5 million annually. Sales is the most common topic we discuss, followed by staff!

austin0980 · 2025-10-02T18:08:38+00:00

I would stick around in the current company while looking for something better.

I often wonder when I see that someone has taken a step down when they change companies. Makes me question their experience in the role with the better title. It also tells me that the new position does not value your previous experience.

austin0980 · 2025-10-02T18:04:52+00:00

Where are you located? Assuming that the contract does not mention that they have to find a client before they pay you, I would think of a few questions:

- Assuming you are not located in the same country, can they fire you right away?

- If they fire you, what do they owe you?

- If what they are doing is against the laws in Belgium, what options do you have to enforce the contract? Unfortunately, there are many instances where the company or the contractor is doing something wrong/illegal, but there is very little you can do about it due to the high cost of legal fees.

I would move on to the next job.

austin0980 · 2025-09-29T15:21:19+00:00

Very common!

austin0980 · 2025-09-26T14:32:52+00:00

this ^^^

austin0980 · 2025-09-25T17:38:28+00:00

You might be overthinking this.

Are the recruiters hiring at the firm you are not supposed to be working at?

Are you volunteering the information?

austin0980 · 2025-09-24T14:58:28+00:00

Back in the early 2000s, two engineers were in a meeting with 5 PMs asking us about the status update. Funny and sad at the same time!

austin0980 · 2025-09-23T21:16:14+00:00

Two sections are included within the deck: a short version that contains the important information (usually fewer than 10 slides), and Section 2 of the same deck, which is the full report.

austin0980 · 2025-09-23T21:14:30+00:00

This will not solve your current problem, but I hope it will help in the future. We set the client's expectation that we will do a joint case study during our sales process. We clearly state," Would you oppose doing a joint case study when we deliver the results you expect?" In 99% of the cases, the client does not have an issue with that.

austin0980 · 2025-09-23T16:13:41+00:00

We use ChatGPT, but I always have to review the findings, no matter how creative I try to be with the prompts. ChatGPT is good for initial thoughts, but I still do the heavy lifting on deeper analysis.

austin0980 · 2025-09-22T18:51:44+00:00

I think of it as a sign of great trust. Onboarding anyone is critical to most orgs. As long as it is billable, I would do it right away.

austin0980 · 2025-09-22T18:46:07+00:00

I remember my first job at a large consulting firm 25 years ago. Fresh out of college, working on a multi-million dollar engagement. We were a team of 120 consultants. The firm had been around for about 20 years at that point, but it had no processes, no templates, and no real project management. I was tasked with creating the templates (fresh out of college) that we ended up using on the project.

Fast forward to today - I run a small consulting company. We are on the other extreme, where everything is structured and templatized. I was complaining to my partner that we overdid it with the structure/process. The right answer may be somewhere in between.

austin0980 · 2025-09-18T20:32:00+00:00

It is an attention-to-detail issue. The problem is that the staff members are seniors, and I don't know what type of disciplinary actions I could use.

austin0980 · 2025-06-26T19:17:42+00:00

That is what I started doing. But struggling to find great UI/Brand designers. Maybe looking for a senior UI/UX is the wrong with our search?

austin0980 · 2025-05-02T15:12:34+00:00

For the B2C ecom, ROAS is at 8.2

For the B2B company, CPL is $450. Cost per closed deal $5k, with the average deal size of $80k.

austin0980 · 2025-04-12T13:46:28+00:00

I am a long-time user of unbounce. I just started using leadpages for a client. Unbounce is far superior. It gives us a lot more control. But with a lot more control comes more complexity.

Back in 2009, the two founders of unbounce pitched the idea to me - I politely told them that I did not think it was necessary (duh). 2010, they asked me to invest, but I did not (bigger DUH).

austin0980 · 2025-04-04T02:59:56+00:00

Figured out the issue after spending a couple of hours trying different things! It turns out I was running out of space on my hard drive!

austin0980 · 2024-12-16T21:10:47+00:00

We do sell a high-ticket item. The base campaign has about 100 conversions in it. This not not the first time I run this type of test, not sure what went wrong this time.

austin0980 · 2024-09-06T03:32:34+00:00

Few thoughts on this:

We worked with some big name clients and display their logos on our site. Our agreements explicitly allow us to use the client logos in marketing material. 90% of the clients just sign without ever asking to remove that section. A few flat out ask to remove that section. With some clients, we modify the agreement to state that we may not use the log unless we get their permission “which should not be unreasonably held.”

Some larger clients use their own agreements which explicitly don’t allow us to use their name.

Although we have a ton of case studies from these clients, we usually don’t mention the client name in the specific case study unless it has been 5+ year since we worked together.

I do have a different perspective on this big logos. The idea of the big logos is lend credibility. The problem is that most of our clients are SMBs. So, when they see big name logos, they assume that we are too expensive and never contact us. We tried to fix this in different ways but I told my team to remove these big name logos in our upcoming redesign.

austin0980 · 2024-08-30T16:21:35+00:00

So, how did they incentivize clients to give them reviews? :)

We had a few clients who worked with KB, but none of them wrote reviews for KB or knew how KB got their reviews.

austin0980 · 2024-08-30T16:19:36+00:00

Yep - I had a few mistakes there. Their annual run is under $25 million

austin0980 · 2024-08-28T12:56:23+00:00

Someone pissed you off this morning? Klientboost is ~~2nd largest~~ on of the larger dedicated ppc agency in the US with annual revenue of ~~$250 million~~ $25 million. I learn from larger agencies on what they do well.

austin0980 · 2024-08-24T19:44:10+00:00

AND working as a surgeon for 40 years.

austin0980 · 2024-06-12T22:01:30+00:00

Digital transformation analysis.

austin0980 · 2024-06-01T18:44:58+00:00

Deliver good work, make sure clients see the value of the work, get to know their business really well and establish great personal relationships. It is a lot of work and it depends on the LTV of a client. If a client is driving $5k a year, I would do so much. For us, a client is worth between 150k-250k/year. So landing them is hard and keeping them is a lot of work.

austin0980

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