Time is often described as the most valuable resource when you're running a consultancy.

I'm increasingly convinced that your attention is more valuable than your time.

You might technically have eight good working hours in a day, but very few of us have eight hours of our most valuable attention.

Our attention is influenced by our energy, the work we're doing, and what's happening around us.

And when you're running a founder-dependent consultancy, where you choose to place that attention has a disproportionate effect on the value you create.

Where your attention creates value

Some of your attention goes directly into creating value for clients, some into winning the next client, and some into simply dealing with the administration that comes with running a business.

The rest goes into developing your thinking, building relationships, and improving how your consultancy operates.

The problem is that an hour is an hour, but the value created by that hour can be radically different.

An hour spent fixing something that keeps breaking may save twelve over the next year. An hour developing an idea could eventually become a framework you use with every client. Or an hour nurturing the right relationship could lead to opportunities for years.

This raises an important question: how do you make the attention you have more valuable?

Turning attention into assets

This is where assets become particularly important in a founder-dependent consultancy, because so much of its value depends on where you personally apply your attention.

You can release that constraint by capturing your attention.

An idea can become a framework, experience a methodology and repeated advice a tool.

You can turn relationships into a network and consistent good work into a reputation.

The attention you invested once continues to create value through the asset.

Increasing the output from a limited input

There will always be a limit to your time and energy.

And I don't think the goal of building a successful consultancy is to continually push those limits. It's to increase the value generated from them.

That means becoming increasingly deliberate about where your attention goes and creating assets that allow the value of that attention to compound.

I'm starting to think this is one of the defining characteristics of what I call a Performance-Lifestyle Consultancy.

It doesn't become successful simply by getting bigger or busier. It becomes more valuable by getting better at turning the founder's limited attention, energy and time into exceptional value.

And, importantly, doing it in a way that leaves enough of those most valuable resources available for life outside the consultancy.