The Consulting Growth Podcast

Osad

• 50: How Boutique Consulting Firms Scale for a Successful Exit with Martin Mehalchin 08.07.2026 35min

  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 journey from a locally anchored boutique to a broader North American player, including the role ...
• 49: Scaling a Consulting Firm Without Losing Culture with Stuart Packham 10.06.2026 45min

  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 private equity-backed buy-and-build platform across leadership development, sales training, and e...
• 48: How Smart Founders Build Repeatable Growth with Jamie Shanks 13.05.2026 36min

  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 multiple reinventions. He explains why founders must learn to enjoy the climb rather than chase a fin...
• 47: How Consulting Firms Scale Under Private Equity with Karen Thomas-Bland 08.04.2026 48min

  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 decision-making. Founders must adapt from autonomy to accountability, while also managing cultural tra...
• 46: From Olympic Gold to Consulting Firm Founder with Adrian Moorhouse 11.03.2026 34min

  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 in British Swimming before co-founding Lane4 in 1995 with academics and a sales partner, applyin...
• 45: How to Scale a Consulting Firm Globally with Matthieu Courtecuisse 04.02.2026 56min

  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 than capital in global expansion, and how early investments in data, AI, and technology shaped the f...
• 44: From Growth to Exit: What Founders Need to Get Right Early with Richard Goold 14.01.2026 36min

  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 long-term value creation. He has led and exited consulting businesses, including a £35m sale follo...
• 43: Organisational Health as a Growth Engine: The Q5 Approach with Olly Purnell 10.12.2025 44min

  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 to support Q5’s growth in the UK, US, and Australia. Olly explains why Q5 moved away from an assoc...
• 42: The Second Bite Strategy with Todd Taskey 03.11.2025 54min

  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 – cash, earn-out, and equity – and explains why that third component often becomes the most valuable....
• 41: The Future of Professional Services: How Agentic AI Will Reshape Consulting with Rob Price 15.10.2025 1t 8min

  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 team members with specific expertise, memory capabilities, and tools. These aren't simple chatbots – t...
• 40: Scaling a Boutique Consultancy with Anish Patel 15.09.2025 42min

  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 I was interested in," he explains, describing how identifying issues, gathering data, developing hypotheses, an...
• 39: Unlocking Consultancy Success: Richard Brackstone on Growth, Strategy, and Leadership 15.03.2025 43min

  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 that followed their management buyout. We explore how leadership changes, a commitment to diversity, and serv...
• 38: Chris Tomlinson on AI-Driven Transformation and Boutique Firm Advantages 20.02.2025 38min

  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 and refining work processes, transforming traditional consulting models to be more adaptive and e...
• 37: Preparing for growth inflection points: lessons from two successful CEOs 21.01.2025 1t 29min

  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 Palmer (ex-CEO of GoBeyond and OEE Consulting) - both of whom grew and exited their firms around t...
• 36: Talent Strategies for Boutique Consulting - Gary Landes, Wilton-Bain. 02.12.2024 44min

  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 being a trusted advisor and the necessity of becoming a visible expert in today's content-driven w...
• 35: How to Price your Consulting Services with Ethan Williams 30.09.2024 41min

  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-williams-8567278/ We dive deep into Ethan's experiences at GE Digital, PwC, and McKinsey, and his transform...
• 34: Thought Leadership & AI in Boutique Consultancies – Insights with Athena Peppes 02.09.2024 37min

  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 boutique firms can leverage AI to distill valuable insights from existing client relationships...
• 33: Productize! Eisha Armstrong and Chris Dando discuss how to generate products from expert knowledge 11.07.2024 37min

  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 productized some of its offerings. Eisha, brings her expertise in helping service companies rein...
• 32: Presidential Whisperer: Michael Kempner on growing his PR firm to 300+ people 10.05.2024 53min

  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, revealing that nurturing talent is just as crucial as attracting it. We discuss the importance of brand per...
• 31: Mastering M&A in the Consultancy Sector with Jerome Glynn-Smith of Equiteq 09.04.2024 37min

  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 in the consultancy sphere, and the delicate art of balancing risk and scalability for consulting...