Last week, we explored how a consultancy can gradually come to depend on you for work that doesn’t necessarily need your distinctive contribution.

That raises another question. Where does your involvement actually make the greatest difference?

When you're running a solo or small consultancy, it’s easy to measure your contribution by how much you do and how hard you work. But the work that creates the greatest value isn’t necessarily the work that demands the most effort.

Your greatest contribution might feel easy

Think about the moments when you’ve made a significant difference to a client.

Perhaps you’ve spotted a connection they’d missed, asked a question that changed their perspective, or helped them make a decision they’d been struggling with.

What might have taken you twenty minutes could have saved them weeks of uncertainty.

Because it comes naturally to you, it’s easy to overlook just how valuable that contribution was. Years of experience have made something relatively straightforward for you that others find exceptionally difficult.

It’s one of the reasons experienced consultants can undervalue their best work.

Not everything needs the same kind of involvement

I’ve been developing a simple exercise called the Brilliance Finder that looks at your work through three categories.

The middle category is particularly important for solo consultancy owners.

There will always be work that needs doing, and you’re currently the person best placed, or simply the only person available, to do it.

That’s perfectly reasonable. But recognising the difference between that work and your distinctive contribution changes how you look at your time.

Value isn’t the only consideration

There’s a danger in taking this distinction too far.

Some of the most demanding work we do is also where we develop our expertise. Working through a difficult problem can lead to insights that wouldn’t have emerged otherwise.

And there will be other activities that don’t particularly need your distinctive expertise, but which you genuinely enjoy.

They might give you a change of pace, restore your energy or simply be part of why you enjoy running your own consultancy.

There is no reason to give them up just because someone else could do them.

The Brilliance Finder helps you recognise where your distinctive contribution matters most. What you choose to keep doing should also reflect the kind of consultancy you want to own.

More choices than you might realise

For solo consultancy owners, there’s another interesting development.

Until recently, creating a system to handle recurring activity could be more trouble and expense than doing it yourself.

AI is changing what’s possible.

You can now use it to help you design processes, build simple automations or connect existing systems in ways that previously required technical expertise or expensive support.

The resulting system might not even need AI to operate.

It means work that once had to depend on you can become much easier to manage without adding people or unnecessary complexity.

And, of course, some activities may not need doing at all.

Making room for your best contribution

Building a consultancy worth owning doesn’t mean removing yourself from everything that someone or something else could do.

Your expertise is a valuable part of the business, and so is the enjoyment you get from running it.

The opportunity is to design the consultancy so that more of your time and energy goes towards the work where you make the greatest difference, without losing the things that make it rewarding to own.

Looking at your own working week through the Brilliance Finder, which activity could you change to make more room for your best contribution?

One area that often depends heavily on the founder is finding and winning the next client. And when you’re busy delivering, it’s often the first thing to lose your attention.

My Ready-To-Buy Playbook explores how to build a more consistent approach to attracting and winning the right clients, so business development doesn’t always have to compete with delivery.