How to Accelerate Partner Performance and Maximize Growth

Your consulting firm can only grow as fast as the leaders inside it. And yet, many firms spend years trying to solve growth challenges through marketing, sales, or new service offerings while overlooking the leadership systems that actually drive performance. That is exactly what we are unpacking in this episode with Nate Boaz.

After serving in the Marine Corps and building his career across firms like McKinsey, Accenture, and Microsoft, Nate now helps professional service firm leaders accelerate partner performance and create stronger leadership teams.

In this conversation, you are going to learn why some partners consistently outperform others, how firms can reduce founder dependence while increasing growth, and what it takes to create repeatable systems for leadership development, business development, and scale.

If you are serious about building a consulting business that can grow without everything depending on you, this episode is worth your attention.

Welcome to the Consulting Success podcast. I’m your host Michael Zipursky, and in this podcast, we’re going to dive deep into the world of elite consultants where you’re going to learn the strategies, tactics and mindset to grow a highly profitable and successful consulting business.

Before we dive into today’s episode. Are you ready to grow and take your consulting business to the next level? Many of the clients that we work with started as podcast listeners just like you, and a consistent theme they have shared with us is that they wished they had reached out sooner about our Clarity Coaching Program rather than waiting for that perfect time. If you’re interested in learning more about how we help consultants just like you, we’re offering a free, no pressure growth session call. On this call, we’re going to dive deep into your goals, challenges and situation and outline a plan that is tailor made just for you. We will also help you identify where you may be making costly and time consuming mistakes to ensure you’re benefiting from the proven methods and strategies to grow your consulting business.

So don’t wait years to find clarity. If you’re committed and serious about reaching a new level of success in your consulting business, go ahead and schedule your free growth session. Get in touch today. Just visit Consulting Success – Grow: http://consultingsuccess.com/grow to book your free call today.

Nate Boaz is Co-Founder and Senior Partner at Kinavic Leadership Acceleration. With a pedigree including McKinsey, Accenture, Microsoft, and Roark Capital, Nate specializes in leadership performance and human capital strategies for private equity and Fortune 50 companies. His background in Marine Corps Counterintelligence informs his expertise in decision-making under pressure. An author and thought leader, he helps organizations scale impact through systems design and technology, ensuring leaders are equipped to drive value in the evolving age of AI and complex global markets.

Connect with Nate Boaz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nate-boaz/

Discover more about Kinavic Leadership Acceleration: https://kinavic.com/

Hey, Nate. Welcome.

Thank you, Michael. It is great to be here.

Yeah. Looking forward to our conversation today. I think where I would like to start is from what I saw, you know, you spent about two years in the Middle East in combat operations, about five years in the United States Marine Corps. And when I looked at your experience, I saw that you went almost directly from being in the Marine Corps – you also started an organization where you were raising money for Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS – but you went from the military, Marine Corps almost directly into working at McKinsey. And I wanted to ask you, just like, how did you go from, again, the military, Marine Corps into McKinsey? Just walk us through what those kind of steps look like.

Well, I can make the joke that John Oliver makes that there are like three legitimate cults: the Marine Corps, McKinsey, and the Mormon Church. And I have two of the three, right? The Marine Corps is unique amongst the services in that it is always sort of been scrappy. And you have got to be an athlete versus a position player. Every Marine, a rifleman kind of mentality. I was in military intelligence, which is an oxymoron, most people say. But in the kind of work I was doing, human intelligence, it was much more focused on what I think are the core consulting skills, right? Asking people questions, right? Deeply understanding their needs and their problems, collecting objective, fact based, sort of ground truth information, synthesizing that, analyzing that, and trying to influence senior leaders to make different decisions than they otherwise would have made without that information, right? So, actionable insights was sort of the intelligence work I was doing.

I did not know that. I did not know consulting was a real job. I am still not convinced it is a real job or not, but I remember doing my McKinsey interviews for summer associate, and I sort of explained that connection I had made, which was like, I was doing all these case studies, and I was like, oh, you interview people, you collect this information, you do some analysis. I am like, basically, I have been a consultant for the last five years of my time in the military, and I think they bought it. I do not know. I must have been half good at selling that to them, because my business experience was nil.

You just got out of the military and you thought, “Okay, what am I going to do next?” And you saw an ad or somebody told you, like, how did you actually find the opportunity?

It was more luck and a bit more random and help from some friends, right? So I applied to the CIA, the FBI, and HBS. And my best friend, he got out. He had gone to a legitimate undergrad. I went to the Naval Academy, where you can only go into the military, right? He is like, “You should come to business school.” I am like, “There is such a thing as a master’s degree in business?” I was literally incredulous about it. I was like, “What? That is a real thing?” He is like, “Yes, and you should apply.” And so almost as a dare, I applied to Harvard to go to business school, not thinking that I had a chance of getting in.

When I found out I got in, I was like, I cannot turn this down. This is amazing. And I literally got there and my eyes were open to a whole new world of strategy, management consulting, private equity, venture capital, investment banking, hedge funds, which I still do not understand, right? This whole world, that was not the world that I grew up in or had experienced in the military. And the closest thing that I could connect with was consulting, because I felt like my leadership skills, my people interaction skills were built for doing that kind of work.

[04:55] – Making the Leap from Consultant to Business Owner

Gotcha. So you moved on. I mean, the list of companies that you have spent time at, it reads like a who’s who. You went to Accenture, to Microsoft, the current consulting business that you are a co-founder at, Kinavic – you joined in February of this year, from what I understand. And the question that came up for me as I was kind of going through this and the research that the team put together on you is you have again, this list of who’s who you jumped from. What happened for you? What caused you to go, “Okay, I am going to stop climbing this corporate ladder of these global organizations, and I am going to become a co-founder in a consulting firm?”

The short answer is I finally got the cojones to do something on my own, right? If I could give advice to the younger me, it would be to take that risk sooner in my career. Other people I know went and did a couple years at McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Accenture, you know, lots of great boutique firms out there, right? There is really no bad choice to go cut your teeth at doing consulting in one of those bigger firms for a couple of years to just see what it is like and learn, right? I mean, it is a great place to learn. I should have, you know, I do not really have regrets, but I would have liked to have made a jump sooner because I think there is a big difference in being an owner versus an earner.

Scott Galloway talks a lot about that. I am a big fan of his, which is like, you know, you are either working for someone else or you are working for yourself. And now the only person I have to blame for the culture and for the management decisions and for the direction I do not like is the jerk and my co-founder that are sitting at the top, right? And so it took a lot of maturing and some earning for me to get to a spot where I felt comfortable doing that. But I think it is the best- It is the hardest and best thing that I have done in my career. It is not the first venture. I jumped ship from Microsoft and started a couple other companies, and this is sort of the third in a series because who should start just one company? Why not start more than one? But this is the one where I get to do the work I love the most. And I think that is where there is the greatest chance for success, is when you are doing that which you were meant to do and doing it without anybody sort of looking over your shoulder.

So the firm was started in 2022 from my understanding. You officially joined four years later, February of 2026. I understand that you were involved in the firm in the firm at the earlier stage, but more as an advisor. And so I would like to kind of understand if you could walk us through what was your role early on and then what kind of brought you back to coming to more official capacity as a co-founder? Let’s just start there. And then I have a follow up question to that.

Yeah, so a bit of the origin story as it relates to me and my involvement. I was a chief operating officer of Accenture Strategy Consulting, which is about a $2 billion business at the time. I just transitioned from leading talent strategy and leadership development for Accenture into this sort of more P & L role. And we were trying to compete with the Big Four and MBB and go after all of them, right? And we were growing at a really big clip, doing some acquisitions, trying to increase pricing and deal size and all the stuff that the consulting firm that is growing is trying to do.

And a lot of that has to do with adding partners that are accretive to the firm. Whether you are a one person shop trying to get to a two person shop or whatnot. You are always thinking about, can I add partners that click with the culture and the values and the mission, but then they are also going to be accretive and help us scale revenue. Most of the executive search firms that were landing partners, those partners were not successful. Like within three years they would be gone, right. And they would not hit their targets.

It was this little boutique firm called Beecher Reagan that was doing executive search and they were landing all these partners that were staying, performing, and exceeding their targets. So I got really curious. I was like, what is it about the, like an A/B test? What is it about these guys and gals versus these guys and gals that are different? And the difference was Kinavic, right? So they were working to do- they were building this firm, doing leadership assessment, right? But not just assessment for selection, assessment for performance acceleration.

And so my leadership development background, I am like, that totally makes sense, right? These are adults, it is in the flow of their work, right. It is executive coaching, but it is coaching with data using Hogan and their own proprietary assessment. So I was a buyer before I jumped in, right? So I met Clark Beecher who had started Beecher Reagan and then helped fund and start Kinavic. And he introduced me to Angela Navarro, who is the founder and co-founder and my managing partner now. And I met Angela and she is like, “Will you be a strategic advisor? You have been on the client side, you have done all this leadership consulting work in your career. Will you be a strategic advisor?” And I helped her get things started and in a good way. And she has done a tremendous amount of work to make sure that Kinavic actually delivers the ROI. And it does, right. Because I would not join a firm that was just about, like, coaching or just about assessment, right? It is about business results. And then what do you do to drive those?

So that is kind of how I got involved. And when I was looking to go start something that was at the core of what I love to do, I reconnected with Clark and he is like, “You should check in with Angela. I think it would be a perfect time for you to jump into this head first.” And I started doing it on a contract basis and I said, “Wow, there is something really special here that we could scale. And even if it does not, even if it is a healthy lifestyle business, we are having amazing impact in people’s lives and really big companies, right? We get to be the advisors to advisors, which is really cool.”

[11:17] – How to Scale Beyond Founder Dependence

So my follow up then to you on that is like, you know, you were involved as an advisor in the early days, and then you come back four years later, contract. Then, you know, now much more engaged. What were some of the challenges for you? Because you are coming in as a co-founder as opposed to just coming in as, let us say, a partner, principal, associate. So were there certain challenges or things that maybe you saw differently? I am just wondering about that experience that maybe others could kind of glean or learn from how you kind of navigated that.

Yeah, I mean, I have seen scale and scaling, right? I mean, big time, right? Like, you know, McKinsey was much smaller when I was there. I built a leadership development practice from zero to like 60 million. You know, at Accenture, we were 220,000. I left, we were 450,000. It is now like 800,000. It is ridiculous. I am not saying that that is the right path, right? You shouldn’t just throw people and bodies at problems, especially in this era of AI and amazing technology. But I saw what Angela had built, right, in terms of clients and impact, repeatable processes and structure, right?

And as you know, most small organizations suffer from a key man or woman problem, right? Like, you have that one person. “Michael is the only guy that can do this. If Michael is not there, you know, Consulting Success goes away.” And I saw Angela had built all of the things that you would want, the foundation that we could add partners in that as long as the mission is clear, the values are aligned, they are going to contribute to the culture and make it better. No assholes, right? Like all that stuff. If that is in place, then we could really grow this. And I said if I am going to do this, if I am going to throw my, I do not do anything half ass, right. And if I am going to do this, you know, I am going to be all in, equal partners, you are going to be the first among equals. You are going to be the managing partner because you are doing it. But let us do this together and let us take the special thing you have got going here and let us really grow it into something magnificent.

So for any first time listeners, they might be wondering, you know, is Consulting Success a one person shop as you just- And no, we are a team of 20 plus people and Michael goes away, everything is good and we have amazing people on our team. So I’ve just got to point that out, Nate, in case, you know, you are making people wonder like, “What? There’s a lot more people on the website.

Put group on there, Consulting Success Group and then people.

Yeah. Way back in the day it used to be that myself or my cousin, co-founder Sam, we were pretty much doing everything, right? And then over the years, of course we built out a team and all that.

But the point you are making to me is a really important one because I see this even with firm owners that are, you know, they might have 10, 15, up to 20 people, but there is still so much reliance on them. And they tend to be the ones that are still bringing the vast majority of the business development very often, right? The founders will be shifting kind of their percentage away from delivery so they can just spend more time dedicated to the sales business development type of function. What you just talked about is this idea of, you know, bringing partners on that are accretive, bringing partners on as essentially becoming that business development channel. Can you just talk a little bit more about that? Because you have this unique experience of, you know, doing this at McKinsey, doing this at Accenture, doing this at other places. When you kind of hear the word scaling or you think about growing a professional services firm, what does that look like in terms of best practice and thinking through bringing people on that can actually not just help you to do the work, but to really grow the business?

Yeah, I think it comes down to, you know, standards and processes and discipline. And that is not sexy, but it is the stuff that is necessary, right? And I will give you like a real example. When James O. McKinsey started McKinsey, it was Marvin Bauer who actually wrote the book on what this firm is going to be. And they were still giving that out when I was a summer associate. They probably still have an updated version of it. I have it somewhere in my library upstairs. What it was about was getting the SOP, the standard operating procedure of how being a McKinsey consultant is – what it means. You know, what do you do? How do you approach clients? How do you live the values, all of those things in a very structured and repeatable way.

And the challenge I find in smaller organizations. I was just having this conversation with Angela and one of our senior executive coaches this morning, right? We are going to get everyone together in Atlanta – I happen to be in Atlanta. Angela is in Atlanta. We have some other people that are close by – to actually, really up our standards on how we do everything, everything from the Hogan assessments we do, our own assessment approach, how we deliver executive coaching, how we do top team effectiveness and other leadership interventions, so that it is not just contingent on me doing it or Angela doing it, or our best master coach doing.

And I think that becomes the governor, the limiting factor, right? Whether it is in your business development, it is one person, two people, right? Or your product delivery, service delivery, right? To the extent you have productized it, right? That is a question to ask yourself. “Could I teach Michael to do this, and then could he go do it as well or better than me? And if not, am I apprenticing Michael to do that intentionally?” Right? So we had that conversation today. So we are going to bring, you know, some of our more, you know, junior or less experienced. They are not necessarily junior, but folks that can be cross trained. You know, we have practitioners that are great coaches that are not great at leadership effectiveness facilitation. We have, you know, folks that are great at, you know, top of the funnel stuff, but, you know, they cannot do client delivery.

And so it is a real question: Can everyone be cross trained? No. Should everyone be? No. But can you scale by breaking down some of those barriers of what people are able to do and then what you are asking them to do so that they can actually, you know, unlock that capacity in your team that may be keeping you at the growth level that you are at.

[17:43] – What Makes High-Performing Consulting Partners

One of our coaches, John, at a recent Mastermind event we held in San Diego, did a talk about going from five to 50 people. And ultimately their business consulting business was acquired when it was about 100 people. And he kind of- He broke down, similar to what you’re talking about, but in a lot of detail how they went about training and creating programs and opportunities for people inside of the firm to not not only become advocate, but to actually raise their hand and say, “Yes, I want to go through the training on this. I want to level up, I want to become more involved.” And I think that’s that for a lot of people at the Mastermind event that we held, that was a bit- that was eye opening because they hadn’t necessarily thought of the opportunities to develop your people further.

Shifting a little bit, the firm focuses on performance acceleration for leaders inside of professional services firms. How did you arrive at that level of specialization, focus and positioning? Was this an Angela thing? Was this, you know, were you involved or do you know how they kind of arrived at that, at that focus?

Yes, it was very much, you know, Angela was at North Highland. She was the chief operating officer at North Highland. She also helped build Beecher Reagan. And she wrestled with the same fundamental question I was talking about when I was at Accenture, which is, you know, why these partners versus these partners? Right? Why are these partners successful versus these? And so many times organizations convince themselves that they just picked wrong. But I would say most firms, you know, at this level, even the smaller ones, do not pick wrong as much as they do not help people become successful once they are there, right?

It is like sort of the mushroom development approach. You know, shove them in a dark room, cover them in manure, and then just hope that they grow, right? And so we saw that all the time, where it is like, you know, I am courting you – “I really want you, Michael. You are the best. Like, and you have got this pedigree and this experience. You have been at one of these firms that is the envy of our firm,” and all this stuff. And then we get you over there and then like six months, you are like, “What the hell did I sign up for?”

So Angela was sitting there seeing that and the cost of it, right. Like, if you are talking about multiples of seven figure books of business, then you are probably paying, you know, high six figures, low seven figure salaries, plus the signing bonuses, plus that. So you are talking about, like, to get an ROI on one of these hires, you need them to sell $3, 5, 8, 10 million worth of business, and they were not getting it. That is where Angela said, I said, and, you know, in the formation of this, whatever we do, it cannot be executive life coaching, right. That never has an end to it, right. It is like a therapist that never gets you off of your addiction, right? You are like, maybe I am. You are addicted to me paying you, right?

So, like, we are very business minded and, or an assessment that just gives you a huge report on Michael and you are like, “What the hell am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do with this?” Right? And so to us, it was about actionable insights that drive business results. And the ROI is not about the denominator, it is about the numerator, because the denominator is not that big. Like, most of the work we are doing is what the cost of one of those partners would be or less. But across 20, 30, 50 partners, having them hit and exceed their targets faster, right? And then build the habits to do it on their own and then apprentice and develop the next generation to do it without us, right? Teach a man to fish kind of thing.

And so that is where we conceive this notion that there is a lot of shops out there that are single shingle or a few people that just want to do coaching. Come talk to us, right? Come talk to us. Because I think there is a better way, a better client value proposition when you are a firm that focuses on client business results first, and then builds the tools and approach based on that.

[21:44] – Using Leadership Assessments to Accelerate Growth

I was going to ask you the question of how the company right now is structured, but before we even get to that, I’m interested in your engagements and the structure that you use. So you’ve talked about this assessment, which I think is called the Verity Leadership Assessment that is kind of powered with Hogan, you talked about. I want to come back to some questions about IP and around that in a moment, but before we get there- so can you walk us through what a typical engagement looks like. Does it start with an assessment? How long does the engagement typically go?

It starts with the client problem that we are trying to solve, right? What the client need is. And I think about it in terms of an integrated leadership performance system, right? So we are mainly focused on anyone who has a sales target, you know, P & L and above, right? And so some places that is an associate principal or a principal, a partner, a managing director. Whatever the nomenclature is within that business. But it is like you have a sales target, right? And you are working in teams, you know, in practice areas and service lines and markets. You know, you are going to market and you are out there developing business either originating or farming within the clients that you are serving.

The problem presents itself in many different sets of symptoms. It is a selection problem. We are not sure we are bringing in the right direct entry partners or junior partners. It is a performance acceleration problem, like in the onboarding. We are not sure if they are getting up to speed fast enough. It is static. The books of business, of the people that we have had for a while is not growing. The deal size is not growing. They are not able to get pricing in the market. Like, what is going on here? You know, it is a retention and rewards problem, right? We are not sure we are promoting the right people. We are not sure we are retaining our best people. What is going on there? And then there is like a succession problem. Like, we do not know that we have the bench strength to start filling these practice leadership positions when these folks retire or they are hanging around too long and we are not able to move things. So we enter the patient, you know, in many different places based on the symptoms. But it all comes back to building the correct leadership success profile by which you are measuring people’s traits and personalities and behaviors and performance against, right? If you do not have a clear target, you could end up anywhere.

Let’s just take the example, Nate, if someone is a partner in a consulting firm or some professional services, they’re, you know, they’re kind of, their mandate is to bring in or quotas, you know, $5 million this year, but they’ve been plateaued at 3 million for the last couple of years. What would that look like? You know, you would come in, you would take them through an assessment and set metrics? Just walk us through, like high level, what would that look like?

End to end, broad strokes. So we would never be in on just one individual, right? Like, we do not single people out and we would not recommend doing that. We would not do it. I mean, I think sometimes defining your firm is also about saying what you would not do and that would not create much value. Like you would have a relationship with us, but like, how would that help change the dynamic in which you are trying to be successful? Because we want the sponsor, the person that is sponsoring you, we want whoever is paying the bills to be bought into this, right? There is something to that.

So say that is a team, say it is a practice area that Michael is a part of, Michael is one of the partners. We would do contextual interviews. I think context is the most important piece of data. Not what, you know, it is not about what got you here, it is about what is going to get you there and what, where is there? There is the business growth plan, the value creation plan for BP backed company, right. It is what the business goals are and how does the talent influence those business goals is the first thing we try to nail down because that informs the competencies that you need and what we are going to measure you against. We interview senior leaders, we interview individual partners, we do structured interviews. You know, there are a lot of firms that do structured interviews, but that is all they do. Some of the search firms, some of the other assessment firms it’s like, I want to know, from the time Michael was a child until now, everything you have done, that is one set of data. It is necessary but insufficient.

So then we have you do a Hogan assessment. Takes about 45 minutes. Hogan is the most legally defensible, scientifically validated, most cited in the literature approach to nailing down someone’s personality traits, but also their motivators and derailers. So we get that data, structured interview, we take all that together and then our proprietary database that looks at close to 20,000 partners who have been successful across a variety of firms, right. In the consulting space, tax, audit, management, legal, basically professional services writ large. And there is a certain signature of traits and competencies and experiences that predict success in doing that job.

We bring that all together and we debrief you and we give you actionable insights. Here are your strengths, here are your strengths overused. Here are your derailers. This is how you operate under stress. Here is what you can do about it, here is how you can show up differently. So you, as an individual benefit, we bring that together and we debrief your sponsor, whoever the senior director, senior partner is that you know, you are a part of his or her practice, we team map the data. Everything is a team sport. Michael and Nate go to market together. They serve clients together. How are they interacting? How do these things show up? How can they complement each other’s strengths? You know, what else do we need to add into this team that might not exist or ever exist between the two of them?

So that is the kind of stuff. Then there are other tools, right. More tactical tools. Some of them are IP, some of them licensed from others, some of them just good leadership development hygiene, where we help these teams come together and have a one plus one equals three proposition, right? How, you know, can the sum of the parts be greater than the whole? And it is by getting people to work together differently. I mean, that is basically what we do. And we do not want to be there forever, right. Like, that is a very clear thing that we say up front. Like, if we are coaching people more than 12 months, then it may be them and not us, you know, because you can habituate behaviors pretty well after 90 days. And we say six months is a good amount of time. And sometimes we are there for 12 months. But-

And oh, the one other thing I would say you asked about, like, what does that look like? We build business specific traction plans for the individual. Michael, this is your target: 5 million for this year. This is what you think you can do. This is what you need to do. Here are the behaviors that you need to do, because that is all you can really control. You can control what you do. That may be asking other people for help, those things. And that is where we try to give people the encouragement, right? We are talking about adults here. The encouragement to step outside of their comfort zone and do things and try things that they might not otherwise try on their own and do that in a way that understands what makes them tick.

[29:06] – Business Development Strategies That Win Enterprise Clients

So if we now apply that or just overlay that on top of your company, I’m interested in what is Kinavic’s go-to-market strategy. How, how are you all building business? How are you approaching business development? Growing the pipeline? When I look at the website, you know, I see some insights, I see some, some articles and content, but it doesn’t appear that you’re attracting a ton of, you know, website traffic through content by itself. So I’m wondering, how are you bringing in business for the company?

I think relevance is probably the most important term that I think about in client conversations. And it starts with having your ear to the ground on what is happening in the markets and the clients you are trying to serve. And so I stay very close to what is happening in professional services, especially mid-market.

Nate, just, just to interrupt for a second. So when you say staying very close, I want to get really kind of detailed, tactical. What does that look like, for you? Are you reading stuff? Are you, you know, you have your AI alert?

I am having lots of client conversations that are non commercial. “Can I talk to you, Michael, about your business and what you are seeing and hearing out there?”

Is that. So is that the use? You go out to people you target who you believe could be an ideal client. Like, how are you getting to the initial meeting? You know, these are people that are like most of us, right? Everyone’s very busy. They have a lot of people reaching out, trying to sell them. How do you cut through the noise to get to the point where they say ‘yes’?

Part of it is promising not to sell them, you know, and being really genuine in that, right? Because I think if people are interested, they will tell you, right? And if they are not, they may just ghost you, right? But they are interested, they will tell you. And so when I jumped into this role, I had to reactivate my network. I know a lot of people that are in the talent and people organizations of organizations, which is one starting point. But I also know a lot of people who are associate partners, partners, senior partners in organizations.

And what I did when I approached them, not just through LinkedIn, but getting their email addresses. There are all kinds of ways you can do that if you do not have it, right? You can find ways to do that. Do not spam people, right? I mean, we all get so many front end of the funnel things from someone you do not know. Remember the person, remember the last time you talked to them? You know, think through the last point of connection you had with them and reach out to them in a very genuine way. Like I say that there is nothing better than being up front about the truth. “I took this new role. I am very curious to learn about the market and potential clients. I would like to know if you would be willing to share what you guys do today. Do you do any assessments? Do you do any executive coaching? Do you do any leadership effectiveness work in the flow of work with people? How do you think about direct entry partner hires or the performance of your current partnership?” Got a pretty high hit rate on that.

And is that an email that you send to people and they- you expect them to respond back in those answers or is, is the initial outreach get in on a call and talk about that?

Give me 15 to 20. I usually shoot for 20 minutes. People are like, oh, that is nice. I get 10 minutes. Like, give me 20 minutes of your time. Be very respectful of it. You know, “Give me 20 minutes of your time.” And then they are like, “Oh, that is nice. I can fit it in. And I have 10 minute coffee break between that and the next thing.” And then shut up and listen, right? Like in that 20 minutes, if you have talked for more than five minutes, you failed. My most important piece of technology: I buy these in bulk from Amazon Basics, right? Yellow legal pad and a pen. And they sit by my desk and I just scribble notes. And people connect to that too because they are like, “He is really listening to me.” Because I am, damn it. I like, I really want to know what is going on for your business.

And then I keep track of those notes and if there was any follow up, follow up right away, even if it is just a simple, like the whole recruiting thing, even it is a simple just after it: “Thank you so much for your time. You know, I promise not to bother you again unless I have something interesting to say,” or whatever the follow up was. Oh, you want me to go? And people do not be pissed off if they pass you off to someone else. I know some very senior people at organizations and I know they are going to pass me off to someone else. So I up front say, “Who on your team should I connect with? Because I know you are too busy, you know, solving all the world’s problems over here and that I know that there is someone in your organization that is responsible for this that you would rather I go talk to.”

So I think that is the meaningful front end of the funnel stuff, right? And then have a perspective, right? You do not have to write thought leadership, but I use that, right? I have written a couple of articles. One on the era of AI, one on PE backed talent diligence recently. I am going to do another one on the thing that I shared with you before the call on this framework around human performance and what actually drives human performance. Put it out in the open, right? None of this stuff is a secret. People want to know that you actually know what the hell you are talking about. And so the more you keep your insights and perspective and thought leadership a secret, the more likely it is no one is ever going to talk to you. And so be willing to put it out there, even if it is somewhat controversial.

And, Nate, when you say put it out there, what does that look like? It goes on the company’s website. It goes on your LinkedIn. You send it by email to everybody in the network. Is there anything that you do differently

In a very targeted way, right? And so, like, look, I am very much like, you know, this alignment of relevance, I said relevance before for the PE stuff, right? Okay. Who are the PE companies or PE firms? They do not consider themselves companies. Who are the PE firms that are investing in professional and business services, have them in their portfolio or acquiring more or have sold some in the past? This would be relevant to them. Who do I know? Right. And so it is like peeling the layers of an onion right back. Like, who would give a crap about this? Who do I know that would give a crap about this? Who do I have contact information that I know that would give a crap about this? Let me send that to them in a very- you know, and it is a little bit, you know, white glove, but wouldn’t you rather have a connection and a conversation with someone who kind of knows you, is interested in learning more, you know, that sees the content is relevant, than to spam, to carpet bomb, right. Tons and tons of people, and then get some, like, weird interest, right? And so to me, the best way to convert, you know, to increase your conversion rate is to make sure that your aim of your targeting is that much better.

It’s value over volume.

Yes. That’s a better way of saying it.

Yeah. Then doing, Doing less, but doing more of what actually matters.

Yeah. Focus for impact, right?

[36:17] – Overcoming Long Sales Cycles as a Small Firm

What’s been one challenge since you’ve joined the firm? And I know it’s now, you know, a few months in, but what’s been one challenge that you’ve seen or experienced in growing the business that you have found a way to actually overcome? And what lesson did you learn from that?

I have been on the other side of big companies, and big companies do not treat small companies well, you know? And I know companies are people, right? Like and so, and it is not all people, but the the procurement processes, the time, it, you know, the time of the sales cycle, the promises not kept, right? That that is really hard, right? When you are a smaller business and you are counting on these relationships and the revenue to convert and all these things, that is really hard. It is hard to get attention, right? When you are trying to have an impact and it is an attention economy and people are super busy in these big jobs. And so I think being- patience is super important and I do not have a whole lot of it, but I have had to learn as a father of three kids, you know, and one with special needs and as a, you know, as an entrepreneur, I have had to learn patience. And I think if you stay consistent and try to manage your own frustration and try to have some empathy for, even though what they are dealing with is very different than what you are dealing with, have some empathy for that and then just keep at it, right. Just keep chipping away because something is going to break your way.

Let me just go a little bit deeper into that for a moment. So let’s take the consulting business owner that has, you know, a team of five to 20 people and they have some pressure to make payroll. The business has been doing well. They want to go up market, they want to expand, they want to land larger deals. So they are hearing what you are saying and they are running into the procurement departments and they need to get all these MSAs and everything in order. And so it is taking them a lot longer than they had hoped. But they have to kind of bridge this balance between, “Hey, we need to land more deals now, we need to grow revenue, but we also know we need to be patient.” If you are dropped into that seat right now, what is the approach? How do you guide that strategy to make sure that there is still cash flow coming in, the business is still growing, but we are still not going to abandon the desire, the goal of long term patience, bigger deals that take more time?

I have thought a lot about this and I appreciate you asking it. I learned before Palantir became famous for the forward deployed engineer, when I was at Accenture, I had all the chargeability requirements, you know, for all the people who are on the bench, right? You are constantly thinking, did I over hire you know, what do I? And I said, people can be deployed doing something accretive to the firm, regardless if we have client work or not.

Okay. Can you give an example?

So I will give you one at Kinavic because it is more relevant to probably more people listening here. You are that five person shop. Is every one of those five people doing origination or would some of them be delivering once you sold the project? You have got to get people over the, you know, ‘try it before they buy it’ hump. Because you are small and you do not have brand recognition and they do not trust you yet. Well, some people extend trust. Some people you have to earn it. And I find that as a small firm, you gotta earn it. And so what we did as soon as I got in is I said, you know, “Angela, what are the deals where they have been stuck where we can break through by offering an investment,” I never call it free. Nothing is free. An investment. “This is what we would have charged. This is what we are charging,” and have them pay something. So go back to them and say, “You know what? We will do three assessments and coaching sessions for three of your people that would normally cost X, right? Can you pay us something for it? Because we have to feed our families and we are not a charity, but we think it would be very, very instructive to you and beneficial for you guys to see the value in this. And by the way, if you do not see the value, do not pay us. Or if you do not see the value, let us stop that you know that that process that we are in, that has taken six months,” right?

We did that and we started seeing breakthroughs. And then as you generate some cash, think about the highest dollar value of investment. Because it may be instead of trying to- again, you know, you know, ‘pray and spray out there’, your volume, take your target client list, who your ideal clients would be, and go bring them that proposal that says, “Here is what we want to invest in you. Because we think you would value our work more than anybody else. We chose you. Let us do this for you,” right? “And if you find value in it, then let us propose what we would do next. If you do not, we won’t bother you.” It is really focusing on getting that conversion because I think as a small firm, that is the hardest part. You get a lot of first conversations. You get a lot of, “Oh, I like that. If we had time or follow back up with me in a month or whatnot.” Like, you need to pin them down to doing something.

[41:47] – Building a High-Performance Consulting Business

No, I think that’s great advice.

Nate, I want to respect the time that we have in the calendar, so I’m conscious- I know you have a hard stop coming up, but I appreciate you coming on, sharing a bit of your journey. For those that want to learn more about everything you guys have going on, where’s the best place for them to go?

Yeah. Kinavic.com, K-I-N-A-V-I-C.com, which means kinetic navigation, right? So we are all about, like, speed and performance, acceleration. But, you know, if you do not know where you are going, you could end up anywhere. So you gotta aim for that success profile.

There we go. We’ll have all that then linked up in the show notes at consultingsuccess.com Nate, again, thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you, Michael. And I hope everyone enjoys it, and I would love for some feedback.

Important Links:

Nate Boaz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nate-boaz/

Kinavic Leadership Acceleration: https://kinavic.com/

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