Projectworks Blog: Projectworks Podcast

Mark Orttung (Projectworks CEO) and Dominique Rennell (Projectworks CCO) are joined by Christophe Delaire, the CEO of Marshall Day Acoustics, to discuss what good differentiation looks like at different stages. Marshall Day Acoustics is a one-of-a-kind acoustics consultancy with a global team of experts working everywhere from concert halls to wind farms.

New Projectworks data from over 700 firms points to one operational habit separating the fastest growers from the rest. (Spoiler alert: It's resource optimization.)

What is your consulting firm actually worth? Allen Debes and Mark Orttung have bought and sold more than 10 consulting firms between them. In this episode, they break down how buyers arrive at a number, what moves your multiple, and why exit preparation starts earlier than most founders think.

There are plenty of brilliant delivery leaders in professional services. People who keep complex projects moving, clients happy, and teams focused. They're good at what they do. (Often very good.) But a ceiling exists and most of them hit it. Not because they lack skill. Not because they haven't put in the time. But because the thing that makes someone a great delivery operator is not the same thing that makes them a credible executive. In our latest podcast episode, Projectworks CEO Mark Orttung sat down with Joanna Moore (COO at OCM and a 20-year professional services veteran across Australia, Europe, and APAC) to unpack what that transition actually looks like.

In a recent Projectworks Podcast episode, Doug Taylor (who co-founded Provoke and scaled it to 150 staff) sat down with Mark Orttung (who took Nexient from $30m to $130m). Together, they co-wrote The $50 Million Consulting Firm, and in this episode they shared a collection of lessons they wish they'd had earlier when scaling their software consulting firms.

Novigi has an impressive story. Since launching in 2016, they’ve scaled to 550 staff across six offices and two countries, while becoming the fastest-growing professional services firm on the AFR Fast 100 - their story is worth studying.

Many consulting firms look healthy from the outside, yet behind the scenes everything is only just holding together. Often the problem comes down to operational infrastructure that isn’t fit for purpose. Common examples include everything still depending on a small number of people, leadership teams avoiding the elephant in the room, and the firm’s Founder being the only source of new business. Sound a little too close to home? Read on, or watch the latest episode of the Projectworks Podcast below.

Consulting firm growth does not slow down politely. It hits a wall. One month you are humming, the next you are swamped with work but somehow moving slower.

When I first became CEO of consulting firm Nexient, things felt stuck. We were doing a lot of $100k, $200k, $500k projects, and were just stuck at a wall between $30M and $40M in revenue.

If you signed a big client tomorrow at your current rates, would you be happy to live with that pricing for the next three years? Most consulting leaders I speak to quietly admit the answer is no. Wage costs have jumped, client expectations have shifted, and yet rate cards still reflect a world from two or three years ago.

It's never been easier to pump out a bland pitch - thanks ChatGPT. Unless your firm’s strategy is to be the cheapest offer on the table, here are five things your pitch will need to do to win in 2026, in order to win.

Most consulting execs think the biggest challenge in scaling is sales. It isn’t. Or at least, it isn’t only sales. The real challenge is scaling both pipelines at once – revenue and talent. If you grow one without the other, you break. Sales without delivery capacity shatters trust. Talent without sales leaves people on the bench and drains morale.