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Unlocking Value

Garwood Growth

Unlocking Value is designed to give founders and owners of professional services firms more confidence when they're working toward an exit or thinking about taking on investment. 


Across six episodes, our host John Howard speaks with founders, investors and advisors about the moments that define the transaction journey - how to get ready, what to expect and how to succeed.

We cover everything from value drivers and team alignment to investor expectations and life after the deal. You’ll hear from people who’ve sold their firms, taken minority investments, stayed on, exited and started again – and from those who advise or invest in firms like yours every day.

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  • 23 episodes
  • fortnightly
  • Avg 50 min
  • English

Episodes 23

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  • Yesterday · 1 hr 3 min

    Deri Hughes – The Inner Game: What Drives Your Behaviour as a Leader?

    Deri Hughes is Founder and MD of Honeycomb, a firm that helps consultancies develop stronger teams through training and skills development across client delivery, leadership and business development. A big part of this conversation is about what Deri calls the “inner game” – the thoughts and feelings that drive how we behave. Deri talks very openly about his own experience at Bain, where the need for achievement and positive feedback became closely tied to his sense of self-worth and started driving his behaviour under pressure. He also explains what eventually prompted him to understand those behaviours better and respond differently. From there, the conversation gets very practical. Deri and John talk about sales, developing junior consultants and how firms can protect the learning and judgement that risk getting squeezed as AI makes delivery faster. Deri also reflects on starting Honeycomb before he knew exactly what it would become, trying different business models and eventually deciding to focus the firm fully on training. Deri and John discuss: What Deri means by the “inner game” and how it affects the way we behave under pressure. Why Deri describes his younger self as an “insecure overachiever” and wishes he had developed greater self-awareness earlier. Why so many consultants struggle with sales and what can help them get started. The foundations firms need if they want more of the team contributing to growth. Why AI productivity gains need to leave room for learning, judgement and reflection. Honeycomb’s own experience of adopting AI and the different ways people respond to change. If you lead a consulting or professional services firm, there’s plenty here on developing people, building broader sales capability and understanding your own behaviour as a leader. If you enjoy conversations like this, please follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Deri Hughes, Founder & MD at Honeycomb

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  • September 29 · 1 hr 8 min

    Episode 46: Steve Timms – Rethinking How Consulting Work Gets Done

    Steve Timms is CEO of Diabsolut, a consulting firm that helps organisations get more value from Salesforce and Certinia. When Steve joined Diabsolut in 2024, he inherited a business whose historic source of success was changing. The large ClickSoftware projects it had relied on were disappearing, and the firm needed to decide what it wanted to become next. That led to a much broader rethink of the business. Steve has been moving Diabsolut from implementing what clients ask for towards helping them work out what they are actually trying to achieve. More recently, the same thinking has shaped its approach to AI – not asking how AI can make existing work faster, but how it might change the work itself. Steve and John discuss: Why strong channel partnerships depend on behaving as though “we want that deal for them more than they do.” What it takes to move from implementing software to advising clients on the outcomes they are trying to achieve. How Diabsolut is connecting AI agents across sales, discovery and delivery so knowledge gathered early in a client relationship carries through into the work. Why the business deliberately keeps humans involved in its agent processes, both to protect quality and help people become comfortable working differently. How AI is pushing Diabsolut towards more fixed-price work – and raising harder questions about what clients should pay when the same outcome takes much less time to deliver. Why Steve believes that once you know a decision needs to be made, delaying it rarely makes things better. If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and are thinking about how AI might change your delivery model, economics or the role you play with clients, this episode is for you. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Steve Timms, CEO of Diabsolut

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  • September 15 · 59 min

    Episode 45: Dave Kirby – Assume You’ll Want to Do It Again

    Dave Kirby is the founder of Coppett Hill, a consultancy that helps private equity-backed businesses improve how they find, win, keep and grow customers. When Dave started Coppett Hill just over three years ago, he wanted to avoid something he had seen throughout his career: professional services firms telling clients to capture and use information systematically while often struggling to do it themselves. One of Coppett Hill’s values is “building for growth”. The principle is simple: if you’re doing something for the first time, assume you’ll want to do it again and let that shape how you approach it. That thinking runs through how Dave’s firm builds its methodologies, analytical tools, code, training and project knowledge. Each piece of work becomes something the next team can build on. Dave and John also discuss: Why Coppett Hill puts around 30 to 40% of its fees at risk on some engagements – and how knowing they might ultimately be accountable for the results changes how its teams think about recommendations. Why Dave keeps success fees simple and wants clients to be genuinely delighted to pay them. The “what, so what and now what” – and why good analysis only creates value if it ultimately changes what people do, where they spend their time or the capabilities a business has. Why Dave generally encourages businesses to do fewer go-to-market activities, but go much deeper on the ones they choose. A simple way to make practitioner-led business development more deliberate – starting with the 100 organisations you most want to work with and tracking whether relationships with them are actually progressing. Why Dave wishes he had recognised earlier that what really interested him was running his own business – something his wife spotted before he did. If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and are thinking about how to make knowledge more reusable, make business development more deliberate or connect your work more directly to client outcomes, there’s plenty here to borrow. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow Unlocking Value so you don’t miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Dave Kirby, Founder of Coppett Hill

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  • September 2 · 57 min

    Episode 44: Svetlana Tarnagurskaja – Hire Great People Before You Need Them

    Svetlana Tarnagurskaja is co-founder of Dot Collective, a data and engineering consultancy that has grown to around 160 people in just five years. Svetlana and her co-founder Tom bootstrapped Dot, which has been profitable from day one. A lot of that growth has been built around a simple belief: hire genuinely good people, treat engineering as a craft and trust people to get on with their jobs. Svetlana describes one of Dot’s foundational values as “freedom with ownership” – giving people clear outcomes and the space to work out how best to achieve them. That emphasis on expertise also shapes how she thinks about AI. Svetlana believes software will become faster and cheaper to produce, but that doesn’t make engineering expertise less important. As more of the build itself becomes commoditised, she argues that architecture, systemic thinking, judgement and assurance become increasingly valuable. John and Svetlana also discuss: Why Dot hires for the strength of the team rather than simply filling open roles – and why Svetlana is willing to hire an exceptional person ahead of demand when the business can afford to do so. How Svetlana and Tom divide responsibility as co-founders, including why ownership sometimes means backing the other person’s decision even when you would have made a different one yourself. Why founders need to deliberately protect time for strategic thinking when day-to-day operations will otherwise expand to fill every available hour. How AI could reshape the economics of technology delivery, with less effort required in the build itself but greater importance placed on design, architecture and assurance. How Dot is already using AI internally, from a voice-based tool in the first stage of recruitment to chatbots that make company knowledge easier for the team to access. The personal trade-offs behind Svetlana’s career, why she rejects the idea that people can simply “do it all” and how her own experience as a working mother has influenced choices Dot has made around its culture and maternity leave. If you lead a consulting or professional services firm, this episode is a useful look at hiring ahead of demand, sharing responsibility as a business grows and deciding where expertise will matter most as AI changes how work gets done. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Svetlana Tarnagurskaja, Co-founder of Dot Collective

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  • July 7 · 53 min

    Part 1: Jason Soar – What a Supermarket Can Teach Your Firm

    In this episode – the first in a six-part mini-series on the technology-driven change reshaping professional services – John is joined by Jason Soar, who spent thirty years inside Sainsbury’s before leaving to advise grocery businesses in the UK and the US. Jason opens the series from outside the sector on purpose: his industry has already lived through the kind of disruption ours is now facing, and the lessons carry across more directly than you might expect. Grocery was hit by two waves at once – the discounters the big chains were slow to take seriously, and then the arrival of online shopping. Each forced the industry to change fast, and that pressure quickly showed which businesses were built on solid ground and which weren’t. What interests him most is what the disruption laid bare. Selling online demands fast, accurate data, and when that meets a business still run on manual processes, every weak spot shows. He tells the story of an AI tool brought in to manage stock that made availability worse, not better, because the data underneath wasn’t good enough. His lesson is simple: understand the real problem first, and fix the basics before laying new technology on top. Beyond the grocery parallels, Jason and John discuss: Why “we have loyal customers” is one of the most dangerous things a firm can tell itself – and why the warning signs tend to be in the data long before anyone acts on them. Why surviving this period of disruption is really a leadership test: making time to think years ahead, not just quarter to quarter. The idea that even if all these new technologies disappeared tomorrow, you’d be a better business for having got your house in order anyway – and what that suggests about how to approach AI in professional services. Why businesses get slower as they grow, how the work fragments into silos, and where the real inertia sets in. Using AI to spot the gaps and connections a team can’t see, without asking it for the answer. Why he’s “slightly allergic to the word consultant,” and would rather coach a team through the work than leave them a slide deck. If you lead a professional services firm and you’re weighing where to point technology and AI next, this episode is a useful place to start – the same questions seen from a different industry a few years further down the road. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Jason Soar, Retail Consultant & Advisor, Partner at The Partnering Group

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  • July 7 · 53 min

    Part 2: Jon Stead – Nobody's Paying for the Slides Anymore

    John’s guest this episode is Jon Stead, chief executive of CMap, the software that runs the commercial side of consulting, architecture and engineering firms – quoting work, resourcing it, billing it. He’s the first of the technology-firm leaders in the mini-series, and he can see across roughly 700 firms and nearly 50,000 users at once. That view gives Jon a take on the market that runs against the headlines. The gloom, he argues, is really about the Big Four and the big strategy firms, whose model always leaned on a pyramid of junior staff – and that pyramid is under real pressure. But in the mid-market, where CMap sits, his data shows growth has held steady for two years. And he’s wary of how often AI gets the blame for cuts that are really about money getting tighter – AI as the “covering story.” What is changing, he says, is what clients buy. Analysis is becoming cheap – he reckons the first three years of his career are now a skill in Claude – so the value has moved to the harder part: turning the answer into something delivered. That pushes firms to productise how they work, building repeatable methods that AI can run on. Because, as he puts it, AI amplifies everything, good and bad. If the way you work is ad hoc, ad hoc is what gets amplified. Beyond the headlines-versus-data picture, Jon and John discuss: Why buying slowed almost to paralysis last year, especially in the UK, and how “people and AI, not people or AI” is starting to settle the nerves. The move from time-and-materials towards fixed fees, and why pure outcome-based pricing is still rare – often because the client isn’t set up to buy that way. Why engagements are becoming longer and more iterative – a partner with “one foot in your camp” rather than a project that ends with a glossy PDF. Why firms now have to invest in their own knowledge systems, and how that shows up as new costs on the P&L that weren’t there before. How PSA is shifting from a system of record to a system of action – agents helping decide who to put on a job, not just recording who was on it. Why juniors are increasingly hired for soft skills over raw analysis, while everyone mid-level and up is expected to get more technical. If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and the headlines have you worried, this is a steadying, practical view of where the mid-market actually sits – and what’s worth getting right before you ask AI to do more. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Jon Stead, Chief Executive of CMap

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  • July 7 · 50 min

    Part 3: Sri Ganesan – Be the Storm

    In this episode, John is joined by Sri Ganesan, founder of Rocketlane, a professional services automation platform built for customer onboarding and implementation teams. Sri is a serial founder – his first company was acquired by Freshworks, the first Indian software firm to list on the Nasdaq – and through Rocketlane he sees how hundreds of services teams actually work. He’s the third conversation in the mini-series, and the one that goes deepest on AI, though as he’d say, it’s really about leadership. Sri’s starting point is blunt: the firms paid to bring AI to their clients are often barely using it themselves. He sees three levels of AI-enabled change – running the business, the admin around projects, and the work itself – and reckons almost everyone is stuck on the first two. The real prize, how the work actually gets done, barely moves. What unlocks it, he argues, is hands-on leadership: a leader who builds something themselves soon learns what to ask of their team. And the payoff isn’t job cuts but growth – he points to a firm whose biggest projects went from two years to a few months, and whose services team doubled. His philosophy is “be the storm”: happen to your market, rather than letting it happen to you. Beyond the three-levels idea, Sri and John discuss: Why “focus time” is the piece most teams are missing when it comes to changing how they work, and how a hackathon and a couple of readily available tools get them further than another directive to “use AI.” Why the future is selling outcomes rather than hours – and why clients are already asking “haven’t you heard of Claude?” when they’re quoted a timeline that seems too long. How to price when hours are no longer the cost: anchoring on the value delivered, and who keeps the benefit when the work gets cheaper. The “copy of my brain” idea – capturing what’s in a leader’s head so the team doesn’t have to come to them for everything. Where Sri still insists on the human touch, and the words – “quietly,” for one – that now give the game away when AI has written something. If you lead a professional services firm and you suspect your own use of AI is shallower than it should be, this is a practical, slightly uncomfortable nudge – and a clear sense of where to start. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Sri Ganesan, Founder of Rocketlane

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  • July 7 · 43 min

    Part 4: Sarah Edwards – Make Every Consultant Your Best Consultant

    In this episode, John is joined by Sarah Edwards, who leads product and go-to-market at Kantata, a professional services automation platform. Sarah has spent thirty years in and around consulting, and through the Leaders in Consulting community she talks to firm leaders most weeks – so her view comes from the leaders themselves. Sarah’s argument starts with a hard truth: consulting has run on people and billable hours for thirty years, and that model is under real strain. What lasts, she says, is a firm’s expertise – yet most firms leave it locked in people’s heads, where it walks out the door when they leave. The firms pulling ahead turn that expertise into something the whole firm can use, and Sarah’s phrase for the goal is ‘making every consultant your best consultant’. AI runs through much if the conversation, but she’s clear it doesn’t rescue a shaky business. As she puts it, AI doesn’t fix a broken operating model – it scales it, and makes it worse. So the work is to get the foundations right first: the visibility, the knowledge, the way the firm runs. Then AI has something solid to build on. Beyond the question of expertise, Sarah and John discuss: The mood among consulting leaders – urgency and optimism in roughly equal measure, with a lot of unknowns – and why talent and client expectations top their list of worries. Why the old model of billing hours and “heroics” is under pressure, and how firms are edging from time-and-materials towards fixed fees and, slowly, pricing on value. The knowledge-management problem firms have wrestled with for decades, and why it might finally be solvable. Why “everyone’s going a bit agent crazy,” and the difference between agents that just automate the status quo and ones that help you work differently. The workforce of the future as people and agents together, and why firms are starting to cost an agent the way they cost a consultant’s time. Why firms are so ready to sell change to their clients, yet so slow to make it inside their own walls – and what the delay ends up costing them. If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and you’re working out what’s worth holding onto as the model changes, Sarah makes a strong case that it’s your expertise – and offers a practical sense of how to stop it walking out the door. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Sarah Edwards, Chief Product Officer at Kantata Enjoyed this episode? And if you’d like to explore how Garwood Growth helps firms build value in practice, get in touch with the Garwood team for a conversation.

    • Transcript
  • July 7 · 55 min

    Part 5: Deb Ashton – The Billable Hour Is Running Out of Road

    In this episode – the fifth conversation in our mini-series on technology-driven disruption – John is joined by Deb Ashton, who co-founded Certinia in 2009 and now runs its customer experience. Certinia is a professional services automation platform, and through the advisory boards and customer programmes Deb runs across three continents, she hears from a wider range of services firms than almost anyone – from teams embedded inside the big technology companies to large independent consultancies. Deb's starting point is one that stuck with John: services and technology firms have spent years helping everyone else through change, and are now on the receiving end of it themselves. The hardest part, she says, is commercial. Firms are being pushed from billing for time towards pricing for value – but value is far harder to measure than hours, and AI breaks the old link entirely when a task that took a person five days takes an agent minutes. She points to one firm that spent fifteen years turning a familiar argument over price into a conversation about value – eventually building a repeatable method around it, with payments tied to the results it delivered. Tellingly, the clients who saw real value were the ones who came back for more. But none of that works, Deb argues, without the basics underneath. A firm can't put AI to good use until it has clean, connected data and consistent ways of working – the unglamorous foundation that everything else depends on. Beyond the pricing question, Deb and John discuss: Why the line between running projects and delivering them is blurring, and what changes when agents move onto the front line of client work. A project agent that reads a Slack channel and meeting notes, spots the risks and issues, and updates the log itself – and what that frees a project manager to do instead. The split she draws between the "intelligence" work agents are good at and the judgment work that stays with people. The efficiency trap: if AI saves everyone a couple of hours a day, how a firm turns that into revenue or margin rather than letting it evaporate. The build-versus-buy question – the "topic du jour" – and the hidden long-term cost of building your own AI over the weekend. One firm's move from 70% of the work done by people to 70% done by agents – and why it puts agents through the same training, even on empathy, as new joiners. If you lead a professional services firm and you can feel the commercial model changing under you, Deb offers a clear-eyed view from across the market of what's working – and why the unglamorous groundwork of clean data and disciplined delivery is what makes the rest possible. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you don't miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Deb Ashton, Founder of Certinia Enjoyed this episode? And if you'd like to explore how Garwood Growth helps firms build value in practice, get in touch with the Garwood team for a conversation.

    • Transcript
  • July 7 · 1 hr 2 min

    Part 6: Jonathan Corrie – Good Delivery Is Your Best Sales Pitch

    In this episode – the sixth and final in a mini-series on the technology-driven change reshaping professional services – John is joined by Jonathan Corrie, co-founder and chief executive of Precursive. Precursive makes software that helps services teams sell, resource and deliver their work more profitably, mostly inside software and AI companies. Jonathan built and sold his own services business before Precursive, and runs a global community of services leaders called the Services Delivery Alliance – so he’s seen this world as an operator, a founder and an adviser. Jonathan looks at services through a hard commercial lens. His central point applies as much to a traditional consultancy as to a software firm: how you deliver work shouldn’t be treated only as a cost. Done deliberately, good delivery is what drives growth – clients who get real value come back, buy more, and hand you bigger problems. He’s blunt about why so few firms run it that way, and what it costs them. The way to get there, he argues, is to productise your expertise – and he doesn’t mean building software. It means spotting the problems clients bring you again and again, packaging what you know into a clear set of offers, building a proper sales process around them, and delivering them the same reliable way each time. As he puts it, you stop offering an open bar and start offering a choice of four drinks. On AI, Jonathan is clear-eyed: the real constraint isn’t the technology, it’s whether a firm has the knowledge to use it safely and well. He’s wary of the hype – and of the mixed message leaders send when they tell staff to embrace AI while the news is full of it costing people their jobs. Beyond the case for services-led growth, Jonathan and John discuss: Why the best firms want more than half their revenue coming from recurring services – and why that mix earns the highest value when a firm comes to sell. “Less scatter gun, more sniper”: knowing a client’s business so well you can be genuinely prescriptive – a discipline he took from his years at CEB, the company behind The Challenger Sale. The three types of client problem – one-time, re-occurring and recurring – and why mapping the relationship over three years, rather than a single project, keeps a clear answer to “what’s next.” “Forward-deployed engineering,” and the move from “show and tell” to “proven move” – why clients increasingly want to see the work deliver before they commit. The pricing paradox at the centre of it all: when AI does in minutes what used to take an associate two weeks, what do you charge? Why recording the value you’ve delivered – something Jonathan reckons most firms, his own included, do too little of – is what earns the renewal and the next piece of work. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Jonathan Corrie, Co-founder and CEO, Precursive Enjoyed this episode? And if you’d like to explore how Garwood Growth helps firms build value in practice, get in touch with the Garwood team for a conversation.

    • Transcript
  • June 23 · 51 min

    Episode 37: Richard Longstreet – The Hiring Data Doesn’t Match the Headlines

    John's guest this episode is Richard Longstreet, the founder of Tarka Talent – a specialist recruitment firm working with consulting businesses across the UK and the US. Tarka places experienced hires across the consulting market and produces an annual salary survey that tracks what consulting firms are actually doing when it comes to hiring. What has this year’s survey found? To start with, entry-level hiring has nearly doubled in this year's survey, despite widespread assumptions that AI is reshaping the junior end of consulting. And the most in-demand role right now is what Richard calls the “experienced practitioner” – someone in the five-to-nine-year range who’s a safe pair of hands for running projects and owing client relationships. Beyond those statistics, Richard and John discuss: Why consulting clients have become more demanding buyers of the services they commission – and what that pressure means for the highly leveraged delivery models that larger firms are built around. Senior hires: why director and practice lead appointments only succeed about 50% of the time, what firms consistently get wrong in the first year with those hires, and what a realistic timeline for success looks like. What AI is and isn't yet changing in how consulting firms hire – including how to run an honest interview process – and which parts of the market are furthest ahead. The research Richard is running across the sector right now and what he keeps finding in early interviews: confident views about AI reshaping consulting, but surprisingly few practical examples of it already doing so. Richard's own experience of growing Tarka too fast, and what being more deliberate about building a business actually means. If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and hiring decisions are on your mind, Richard's data and experience make for a useful conversation. Please follow Unlocking Value to get early access to future conversations. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Richard Longstreet, Founder of Tarka Talent

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  • June 9 · 46 min

    Episode 36: Stephen Johnson – Hard-Won Lessons from 17 Years of Growth, Setbacks and Leadership

    In this episode, John is joined by Stephen Johnson, founder and CEO of Roq, a consultancy focused on helping organisations deliver large-scale technology change. Stephen founded Roq in 2009 and has since grown the business into a 120-person firm working with major enterprise clients. In the conversation, he reflects openly on the realities of scaling a people business over nearly two decades, including the pressures that come with growth, leadership evolution and navigating difficult market conditions. Stephen shares a practical perspective on what drives long-term success in consulting businesses. He talks candidly about the operational disciplines, leadership behaviours and cultural decisions that have shaped Roq’s growth. John and Stephen discuss: How Roq grew from a start-up launched during the financial crisis into a 120-person consultancy – and the key inflection points that shaped that journey. Why culture doesn't happen by accident, and how leaders need to actively shape it as their businesses grow and evolve. What Stephen learned from a sudden post-Covid downturn in client demand, including why strong growth can sometimes hide risks that are already building beneath the surface. Why trust, honesty and a willingness to challenge clients are central to building long-term relationships and winning repeat business. The challenges of scaling leadership teams, including why some people thrive as a business grows while others struggle to make the transition. How Roq uses EOS and Traction to create accountability, maintain focus and turn good intentions into consistent action. How AI is changing consulting and technology delivery, and why Stephen believes developing junior talent remains critical despite advances in automation. If you lead a consulting or professional services firm, this episode offers a practical look at what it takes to build, grow and sustain a consultancy over the long term – through growth, pressure, leadership change and shifting market conditions. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you do not miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Stephen Johnson, Founder and CEO of Roq

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  • May 26 · 45 min

    Episode 35: Duncan Ramsay – Inside the investor mindset: Building scalable consulting firms

    In this episode, John is joined by Duncan Ramsay, a Partner in the commercial team at ECI Partners, where he works closely with management teams to help scale and grow businesses across the portfolio. Before moving into private equity, Duncan spent time at PwC advising investors and businesses on commercial due diligence and growth strategy, giving him experience from both the consulting and investment side of professional services. Having spent years evaluating, investing in and supporting consulting and professional services firms, Duncan brings a clear investor perspective on what really drives long-term value creation in the sector. The conversation explores what separates scalable firms from those that struggle to grow, why operational maturity matters far more than many founders realise and how AI is beginning to reshape both consulting delivery and the economics of professional services itself. John and Duncan discuss: What investors actually look for in a professional services business, including the importance of revenue quality, repeatability and operational scalability Why forecasting, utilisation management and clean operational data become critical as firms grow and why leaving those foundations too late creates major challenges later on The difference between relationship-led businesses and transactional consulting models and why customer advocacy is such a powerful driver of resilience and value How AI is already changing professional services, from internal delivery workflows through to pricing models, productisation and the future structure of consulting firms Why firms that properly codify their methodologies, workflows and intellectual property are likely to have a major advantage as AI adoption accelerates What private equity involvement actually looks like in practice, including how investors support management teams through value creation planning, leadership evolution and scaling challenges Why specialist boutique firms are increasingly gaining ground in the diligence market and how AI is shifting the value of judgement versus analysis If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and are thinking about growth, scalability, operational maturity or the future impact of AI on your business model, this conversation offers practical advice and perspectives from someone who sees these challenges across dozens of firms. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you do not miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Duncan Ramsay, Partner at ECI Partners

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  • May 12 · 45 min

    Episode 34: Jenny Burns – The Accidental CEO: The Leadership Path She Never Planned

    In this episode, John is joined by Jenny Burns, CEO of Magnetic, an innovation consultancy that helps organisations solve complex problems and create new products, services and experiences at pace. Jenny’s career spans more than 25 years across large corporates and smaller businesses, before an unplanned move into leading and growing her own firm. Jenny describes herself as “the accidental CEO”, having never set out to run a business but instead following opportunities, taking risks and learning along the way. Her journey includes scaling Magnetic, navigating the sale of the business to a larger consultancy and, more recently, buying it back to restore its independence. This conversation stands out for its honesty about what leadership actually feels like, particularly in moments of uncertainty and transition. Jenny shares a grounded perspective on building a business – not just as a commercial exercise but as something deeply human. Jenny and John discuss: What it really feels like to step into the CEO role, including the emotional weight and shift in responsibility Why smaller businesses are not inherently simpler than large corporates and how leadership “shadow” shapes culture at any scale The reality of selling a business, including the intensity, isolation and unpredictability of the due diligence process Why Jenny chose to buy the business back and how independence enables a more agile, differentiated position in today’s market The ongoing tension between structure and agility and how to avoid over-engineering a growing consultancy How personal brand, leadership style and culture come together to shape both client relationships and long-term business value If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and are navigating growth, change or leadership for the first time, this conversation offers a refreshingly candid view of what that journey actually involves. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you do not miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Jenny Burns, CEO of Magnetic

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  • April 28 · 46 min

    Episode 33: Andrew Laird – Where values lead, growth follows: Rethinking how consultancies scale

    In this episode, John is joined by Andrew Laird, Chief Executive of Mutual Ventures, a specialist consultancy focused on public service reform and local transformation. Andrew co-founded Mutual Ventures over 15 years ago with a clear but unconventional ambition: not to build a large consulting firm, but to create a vehicle for doing meaningful, impactful work in public services. Since then, the firm has grown steadily, building a strong reputation for combining central government policy insight with practical, on-the-ground delivery. Now, as the business enters a more deliberate phase of growth, Andrew reflects on what has changed, what has stayed constant and what it really takes to scale a consultancy without losing the culture and values that made it successful in the first place. A central theme throughout the conversation is the idea that growth should be a consequence of value, not the objective itself. Andrew shares a candid perspective on the consulting industry, highlighting where it adds real value and the areas where he thinks it falls short, particularly in public services. Andrew and John discuss: Why Mutual Ventures was never built for growth in the traditional sense and what has prompted a more intentional shift towards scaling the business How culture, team structure and internal investment underpin sustainable growth, even in smaller consultancies What it takes to embed business development across a team and why consulting “sales” is fundamentally about relationships, not selling The role of thought leadership in building credibility, creating demand and differentiating in a crowded market Andrew’s perspective on the legitimate role of the consulting industry, including the importance of delivering real value and knowing when to step away If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and are thinking about how to grow without compromising what makes your business distinctive, this discussion offers a thoughtful and practical perspective on what to prioritise and what to avoid. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you do not miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Andrew Laird, Chief Executive of Mutual Ventures

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  • April 14 · 48 min

    Episode 32: Tamzen Isacsson – The state of consulting today, from the CEO of the MCA

    In this episode, John is joined by Tamzen Isacsson, Chief Executive of the Management Consultancies Association (MCA), the body representing the UK’s leading consulting firms. Tamzen works closely with firm leaders, government and stakeholders across the consulting profession, giving her a broad and well-informed perspective on how the sector is evolving, from growth and talent to AI, hybrid working and the UK’s position on the global professional services stage. A theme that comes through clearly in the conversation is that the consulting industry doesn’t always tell its story particularly well. Much of the most impactful work happens behind the scenes with clients, and firms don’t often step back to articulate the value they create. Tamzen and John discuss: The current state of the UK consulting market, why growth is returning and why the reality is more nuanced than the headlines Why the UK remains one of the most competitive and globally respected consulting markets, and how international demand is shaping firm strategy How talent models are evolving, from increased demand for experienced hires to more fluid career paths and the impact of hybrid working on development The reality of AI in consulting, where it is starting to create real value, where expectations are still running ahead of reality and why firms need to stay focused on outcomes The growing importance of consulting to the UK economy, alongside the opportunities and ongoing challenges for SMEs in accessing work Throughout the conversation, Tamzen emphasises one core idea: in a profession shaped by constant change, uncertainty and new technology, the fundamentals still matter most. The firms that succeed are those that invest in their people, build trust with clients and stay focused on delivering real value. If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and want a clearer view of where the industry is heading, beyond the headlines, this episode is for you. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Tamzen Isacsson, Chief Executive at the MCA

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  • March 31 · 40 min

    Episode 31: Jeremie Guillerme – Turning reputation into a strategic advantage

    In this episode, John is joined by Jeremie Guillerme, Partner at Reputation Inc, a specialist consultancy focused on helping organisations understand, build and protect their reputation with the stakeholders that matter most. Jeremie has spent his career advising businesses across corporate affairs, communications and strategy. His work centres on a simple but often overlooked idea: reputation is one of the most valuable assets a company has, yet very few organisations manage it in a deliberate or structured way. For professional services firms – where value is almost entirely intangible and built on trust – that gap matters even more. Jeremie and John explore what reputation really means in practice, why it so often falls between the cracks in leadership teams and how firms can take a more intentional approach without overcomplicating things. They discuss: Why reputation is best understood as the collective perception of your stakeholders and how it directly influences commercial outcomes The idea that reputation is a “risk of risks,” where operational or cultural issues can quickly become reputation problems if left unchecked How an “outside-in” perspective, particularly through structured conversations with clients, can highlight risks and opportunities leaders often miss Why consulting firms are especially exposed, including the concept of “reputation by association,” and why choosing the right clients matters more than people think How firms can build and protect their reputation in a noisy environment by being clear on what they stand for and selective about what they engage with If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and want a clearer, more practical way to think about reputation beyond brand and communications, this discussion offers a useful perspective on where to focus and what to do differently. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you do not miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Jeremie Guillerme, Partner at Reputation Inc

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  • March 24 · 36 min

    Episode 30: Jonathan Peachey - When cognition becomes free: What AI means for professional services

    In this episode, John is joined by Jonathan Peachey, founder of Factory X and former board member at Next 15, where he spent several years leading M&A and transformation across a group of more than 20 businesses spanning consulting, marketing and professional services. Jonathan has spent much of his career at the intersection of new technology and established business models. Having worked through multiple waves of disruption – from the early internet to big data – he brings a practical, grounded perspective on what makes AI different and why this moment matters for leaders facing deeply unfamiliar territory. As Jonathan sees it, leaders may be fundamentally underestimating AI’s potential impact. That’s because AI is not just another tool to help consultants work faster. It’s a tool that changes what clients can do for themselves. And that raises some big questions about where firms add value and how they will compete in the future. Jonathan and John discuss: Why AI is different from previous technology waves and why it poses a more direct challenge to traditional consulting services and operating models Which parts of professional services work are most exposed and why execution-heavy work is likely to be hardest hit How firms should respond in practice, including where to start and Jonathan’s framework covering commercial, operational and governance priorities Why intellectual property matters more than ever and how firms can start turning what they know into something more scalable How AI is likely to reshape pricing, business models and valuations and what that means for leaders and investors If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and are trying to work out what AI really means beyond the noise, this conversation offers a clear, practical way to think about where to focus and what to do next. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Jonathan Peachey, Founder of Factory X

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  • #29
    March 17 · 40 min

    Episode 29: Chris Allinson – First of the Next, Not Best of the Last

    In this episode, John is joined by Chris Allinson, Managing Partner at Yonder Consulting, a firm that helps organisations rethink how they grow and where they compete as markets evolve. Chris has spent his career working at the intersection of strategy, innovation and insight. He describes his approach with a simple phrase: being “first of the next, not best of the last.” It captures one of the hardest challenges for any consulting firm – how to keep evolving your thinking and your offer while the demands of existing clients keep you focused on today. Chris introduces the idea of silent drift: not the sudden disruption leaders tend to worry about, but something quieter and harder to notice. The kind of gradual shift where revenue is holding, the team is busy and nothing looks obviously wrong – yet the role your firm plays in clients’ organisations is slowly becoming less central. They discuss: What silent drift is, why firms performing reasonably well are often the most exposed to it, and how leaders can spot the early signs before the shift becomes too hard to reverse Chris’s idea of “first of the next, not best of the last” and what it means for consulting leaders trying to stay ahead of their market How looking beyond your immediate sector into what Chris calls frontiers can help firms see emerging opportunities earlier Why the most effective strategic thinking combines rigorous, data-led insight with the kind of imagination many professional services firms have trained themselves out of How consulting firms can challenge their own assumptions early, rather than waiting for a client or competitor to force the change If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and feel your market shifting in ways you cannot yet fully explain, this conversation offers a useful way to think about what might be happening – and what to do next. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you don’t miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Chris Allinson, Managing Partner at Yonder Consulting

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  • #28
    March 10 · 37 min

    Episode 28: Adrian Hands - Coffee to Cash: Simple Habits That Keep Professional Services Pipelines Healthy

    In this episode, John is joined by Adrian Hands, an experienced sales leader who has spent more than three decades in roles across technology, SaaS, media and e-commerce. Adrian now works as part of Positive Momentum, a group of seasoned consultants who run their own practices while sharing support, tools and common ways of working under the Positive Momentum umbrella. Growth comes up frequently in John’s conversations with professional services leaders because balancing client delivery with maintaining a healthy pipeline is a challenge most firms never fully solve. In this conversation, Adrian brings a refreshingly down-to-earth approach to a challenge that can often feel harder than it needs to be. They discuss: What Adrian calls “bloody good questions” and why the quality of discovery conversations determines the quality of everything that follows The simple weekly habit Adrian uses himself: five non-live prospect conversations every week, or what he calls “coffee to cash” conversations How to make selling more systematic and build a genuine growth engine in a professional services firm Where even the best-designed growth approaches come unstuck because human beings are involved The Positive Momentum model and why it offers a genuinely interesting alternative to traditional consulting firm structures If you are leading a professional services firm and wrestling with how to keep the pipeline healthy without compromising the quality of your client work, this episode is well worth your time. If you enjoy conversations like this, follow the show so you do not miss future episodes. Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth Guest: Adrian Hands, Positive Momentum

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