Growing a consultancy isn’t just about winning more work—it’s about freeing the time and money to build a real business. Many consultants get stuck delivering nonstop, with no space to grow. This article explores practical ways to break that cycle: using associates strategically, focusing on repeat and follow-on work, outsourcing low-value tasks, and pricing for value, not salary replacement. Done well, these moves create breathing room, improve profitability, and give founders the capacity to invest in sustainable growth rather than constant survival.
Key Takeaways
- Survival and Growth: Initially, consultants must secure enough projects to cover expenses while laying the groundwork for future growth.
- Working with Associates: Using associates boosts income and project capacity, despite reduced margins and building external expertise overall.
- Repeat Business: Focus on standardized, repeatable services to build expertise, improve efficiency, and free time for marketing.
- Follow-on Work: Prioritize new business with existing clients over finding new ones to save time and effort in business development.
- Outsourcing: Delegate nonessential tasks like research and operational marketing to free time for your strategic priorities.
- Raise Prices: Consider the value delivered to clients and the additional overheads when setting prices, not just previous salary metrics.
- Use Platforms: Employ virtual assistants and platforms like Fiverr and Upwork to handle time-consuming, low-skill tasks efficiently and cost-effectively.
There are many bumps on the way to success as you grow as a consultant. The first is survival: securing enough projects to pay the bills while finding your feet.
The second you typically encounter is how to free up enough time and money so that you can build your consultancy. Establishing the spare time and money to start growing the firm: recruiting consultants, building marketing systems, and improving your operational processes.
Many solo consultants trapped, working hand-to-mouth for years, leaving no space or cash to grow.
Strategies to Free Up Time and Money for Growth
So, what is a very small consulting firm to do to free up time and money to start growing the consultancy? Here, I detail four ways of doing exactly that, so let’s begin…
1. Work With Associates
Working with associates shouldn’t be a business model for an entire company unless there’s a very good reason for it for two reasons.
Relying on associates lowers profit margins and lets valuable expertise accumulate outside the firm itself. However, initially working with associates can be a route to making some money without selling your time.
It enables bidding on larger projects and evaluating whether key associates could join as employees. I’ve given advice on how to recruit and use associates here.
2. Do More Repeat Business in Aligned Areas
Small consultancies often start with varied work, but offering repeatable or productized services soon frees time and ensures steady cash.
As you become known as THE go-to person (or more realistically, one of the people) for that specific service, the less time you will have to spend marketing.
Repeating work enhances skill, efficiency, and pricing, accelerates system creation, and eventually lets others deliver the service for you.
If you need to do other work, ensure that is strategically aligned to your main service: either the same service in different sectors or a service which is upstream or downstream from your service (e.g. a discovery project or impact analysis).
3. Follow-on Work
Aligned to the point above is seeking new business with existing clients rather than new ones. Small, growing consultancies lack reputation, spending excessive time building client pipelines, which is hard work and limits business development.
And it’s all time that you could be charging out at so I would always say, really work on your existing clients, and you get their testimonials where you can, but ideally, also look for follow on work, but for repeatable business.
Develop follow-on services after your signature service to save time acquiring new clients and expand your offerings efficiently.
4. Outsource Work
When you outsource work, I don’t mean that front end work in terms of working with associates, although very often that can be outsourced. In this case I was talking about with partner was doing a lot of research work.
Much of this work could have been outsourced, even to capable PhD students, as it doesn’t need their direct involvement. If you can outsource that, obviously, there’s going to be a differential in what you’re paid.
So you can accumulate a bit more money, it also frees you up to be doing other things.
Raising Your Prices: a Bonus Tip
I’ll also add one other one in that I tend not to give because everyone else gives it: put up your prices. When people starting consulting very often they calculate their daily rate by thinking about their old salary and pension, and transpose that into a daily rate. The odds
Focus on the value you provide to the client, rather than just considering the price when setting your rates. And also you’ve got a whole load of other overheads.
You’ve got to market, you’ve got to sell, you’ve got to employ people and all the rest of it so put your prices up.
Those are a few tips for very small growing consultancies that are just thinking about, “I’m just doing stuff all the time, how can I free up time? What do I need to do as a business to grow, but also how can I free up money on the outsourcing side?”.
We can talk about the back office. There’s a whole load of platforms that you can use Fiverr is one of them. Upwork is another, set yourself a virtual assistant to get them to do the menial tasks for you.
All the tasks that take a lot of time and don’t need a lot of skill but some of the operational side of marketing, you know, writing eBooks, tidying up your blog, uploading stuff to the website, all of that can be done by someone else very cheaply elsewhere. I hope that was useful.
