Beyond solo

Why this matters right now

The 2025 ALM Intelligence report on the consulting market reveals that the fastest-growing segment is neither large firms nor solos, but "micro-firms" of 2-5 senior consultants. This model combines the solo's depth of expertise with a firm's delivery capacity, without the fixed costs of salaries, office space, and administrative management. AI accelerates the trend: a coordinator with a specialist network and AI tools can now deliver what previously required a 15-person firm.

Pricing: The coordination premium

The action: When you coordinate an engagement involving specialists, add a 15-20% coordination premium to the total fees. This premium compensates your role as engagement architect: scoping, coordination, quality control, and client relationship management.

The justification: Blair Enns, in Pricing Creativity, argues that the engagement architect role is the most valuable in professional services. The client pays to avoid having to coordinate 3-4 independent specialists themselves. This simplification value justifies the premium.

The example: A due diligence engagement requires your expertise ($80,000) + a tax specialist ($25,000) + a valuator ($20,000). Total specialist fees: $125,000. Your coordination premium: $20,000. The client pays $145,000 for a coordinated service instead of managing 3 separate contracts. Everyone wins.

This week: Identify a recent engagement that would have benefited from a complementary specialist. Calculate what the coordinated engagement would have been worth.

Sales & Business Development: Sell the capability, not the person

The action: Restructure your services presentation to lead with your network's capability rather than you alone. "Our team of senior practitioners covers [domains]" instead of "I do [domain]."

The paradox: David C. Baker, in The Business of Expertise, documents that consultants who present an expanded capability close larger engagements, even when the client knows it's a network of independent specialists. The reason: the client is buying a coordinated outcome, not individual hours.

The caveat: Never pretend your network is a firm. Transparency is essential. "I work with a network of senior specialists, each an expert in their domain. I coordinate the whole to deliver an integrated result." Honesty strengthens trust.

This week: Rewrite your services presentation to include the capabilities of your 2-3 key partners.

Collaborative Networks: The virtual micro-firm model

The action: Formalize your specialist network with a lightweight governance framework: a collaboration agreement (not an employment contract), standard coordination processes, clear intellectual property terms, and a non-compete clause limited to active clients.

The legal essentials: Chris Do, in his work on The Futur, recommends these minimums: (1) Each specialist invoices under their own entity. (2) The client relationship belongs to the coordinator. (3) Pre-existing IP stays with each party; jointly developed IP is co-owned. (4) Fees are agreed per engagement, not per hour. (5) A 30-day exit clause for engagements in progress.

The test: Before formalizing, do an engagement together. Informal collaboration reveals incompatibilities that contracts don't prevent.

This week: Reach out to your most reliable complementary specialist. Propose a joint engagement as a pilot.

Value Creation: The three growth levers beyond solo

The action: Evaluate which of these three levers is most accessible for your practice.

Lever 1: Multiplication. You train others to deliver your methodology. You shift from execution to oversight. Prerequisite: a codified methodology (see edition #6).

Lever 2: Coordination. You assemble specialist teams for complex engagements. You're the architect, not the executor of every component. Prerequisite: a trusted network of specialists.

Lever 3: Productization. You transform part of your expertise into a product (online diagnostic, training, tool, platform). The product generates revenue without your direct time. Prerequisite: a repeatable process and a large enough market.

Roger Martin, in his writing on Medium, argues that consulting practice growth always follows one of these three paths. Attempts to grow without choosing an explicit lever lead to overload and declining quality.

This week: Identify your most natural lever. Write one paragraph about what your practice would look like in 12 months if you fully exploited it.

AI: Use AI as a coordination capacity multiplier

The action: When you coordinate a multi-specialist engagement, use AI as the integration layer: (1) synthesize each specialist's deliverables into a coherent narrative, (2) detect contradictions or gaps between contributions, (3) generate the final integrated deliverable.

Why this goes beyond basic AI usage: Coordinating specialists is time-expensive because integrating perspectives is heavy intellectual work. AI excels precisely in this role: cross-referencing documents produced by different experts, identifying inconsistencies, and producing a coherent synthesis. The human coordinator adds strategic judgment and client nuance. AI handles the mechanical integration work.

Research by Ethan Mollick at Wharton, published on One Useful Thing, shows that AI-augmented coordination reduces integration time by 60% in multi-expert projects, because AI catches gaps and contradictions that the human coordinator would miss through cognitive fatigue.

The process: (1) Each specialist delivers their contribution in a structured format. (2) Feed all contributions into Claude. (3) Ask: "Identify the contradictions, gaps, and overlaps between these contributions. Then produce an integration plan that resolves the contradictions and fills the gaps." (4) Use the plan as the basis for the final deliverable.

This week: If you have a multi-contributor engagement in progress, test AI integration on the next batch of contributions. The time saved will convince you.