Consultancy founders are often creating more value than they realise.

A useful client conversation might lead to an insight you haven’t articulated before. A difficult project might force you to develop a better way of solving a problem. Both create value.

The question is how much of that value your consultancy gets to keep.

The value that disappears

A lot of consultancy value is created in the moment. Valuable conversations, problems solved, and projects delivered are all how consultancy works.

The problem comes when every piece of value depends on you creating it again from scratch, because the consultancy retains very little of what your work has produced.

You might have spent ten years becoming exceptionally good at something, but if that expertise only creates value when you are personally applying it, that value sits inside you rather than in the consultancy.

This is where assets begin to matter.

What makes something an asset in a consultancy

An asset is something your consultancy creates that can continue producing value beyond the moment it was created.

They take a variety of forms and often start small. An asset can be a way of explaining a problem that repeatedly helps clients understand it, a process that makes delivery easier, or a reputation that means prospective clients arrive with more trust.

The important part is that some of the value created through your work remains in the consultancy and can be used again.

What remains after the work is done?

This gives you a different way to look at the work you are already doing. Sometimes the answer is very little. Other times, you’ll see you have created something that can make the next project easier and the next client relationship more valuable.

That is an asset.

Assets change the experience of owning a consultancy

Consultancy growth can easily become a process of creating more demand for yourself. But if the value still has to pass through you every time, growth will increase the demands on your hours, attention and presence.

Assets change that relationship by letting some of the value you have already created keep working for you.

A strong reputation means you spend less time convincing, and a proven approach means you spend less time reinventing delivery and proposals.

As you capture more of the value your work has already created, your consultancy changes.

A more valuable consultancy

Hard work establishes a consultancy. But hard work alone can leave you with a business that needs you to keep recreating its value every day. Design changes that.

The more value your consultancy can capture, reuse and build on, the more progress compounds as each piece of work builds on the last and each client builds on the next.

You do not need to design yourself out of the business.

You just need to capture more of the value you create and get it working for you more consistently.

Step back and see what you’ve built

These are the kinds of things we explore at Breakthrough Day.

The value already sitting inside your consultancy is often hard to see from the inside, especially when you are busy delivering, selling and keeping everything moving.

Breakthrough Day gives you the space to step back, look at what you have already built, and see where more of that value could be working for you.

Learn more about Breakthrough Day here.