Playbook
How to choose a consulting niche by stating what you are not
Publishing a point of view before you have a company, and finding out within two weeks whether anyone competent disagrees.
In development
Join the waitlistPlaybooks, courses and tools for services founders
Founder advice is written for product companies. This is for services.
25 years as a CTO and CEO. Three services companies, each past $1m in revenue. One sold for over $30m.
The pricing, margin, utilisation and recurring revenue material I needed when I was building consultancies and managed services firms, written for the way those businesses actually work.
James Smith. CEO of Critical Cloud. Co-founder of the business that became DevOpsGroup.
Why services
Services businesses run on different rules.
Most founder advice assumes you are building software. Services businesses run on people, utilisation, pricing the work, recurring revenue that is hard to win, and margins you protect one engagement at a time.
When I started, I couldn't find anything written for us. So I wrote it.
Playbooks
The frameworks, set out so you can run them on Monday.
Each playbook takes one decision I had to make in a services business, names the framework, shows the arithmetic behind it, and gives you the sequence and the artefact to run it yourself.
Playbook
Customer discovery questions for a new consulting business
The cheapest market research a founder can run: ten questions, ten conversations, and a ranked list of what actually hurts.
In development
Join the waitlistPlaybook
How to build a consulting rate card with no billing history
How to set a defensible published rate card with no billing history, instead of one guessed day rate you spend two years defending.
In development
Join the waitlistCourses
Work through it with me, on your own numbers.
Structured training for founders and leadership teams who want the change made, not just understood. You bring your own pricing, utilisation and client mix.
Course
How to build recurring revenue in a consultancy or agency
Take a project-led services business and rebuild it around revenue that repeats. Pricing, packaging, delivery model and the sequence to move without breaking cash flow.
In development
Join the waitlistWho it is for
01Founders of consultancies, agencies and managed services firms past their first million.
02Leadership teams whose revenue resets to zero every January.
03Services businesses heading towards a sale in the next two years.
Tools
The models and templates, straight out of real use.
Interactive models, worksheets and Notion templates you can put in front of a client or a board this week, with the assumptions written down so you can argue with them.
Customer discovery questionnaire scorer for consulting founders
Run the ten-item pain list across your own conversations and score every pain twice.
Consulting rate card builder: model a graded day rate card
Build a graded rate card from a borrowed ladder, with the day defined and the blended rate modelled on the rung you will actually sell.
Recurring revenue counter: four readings from one services ledger
Four readings of your recurring share from one ledger and one period, with the spread between them.
Application tiering model for managed services pricing
Sort a client estate into tiers that justify what you charge to support it, split across Core, Remediation and Kaizen.
Revenue per billable person model and utilisation tracker
Compute RBP at company, division, team and deal level, set a target from your own cost base, and size the four leaks.
Monthly KPI scorecard Notion template for a consultancy or agency
A three-database Notion template for the one-page unit scorecard, with a markdown mirror.
Revenue ceiling and cash forecast model for a services business
Find your sustainable ceiling from twelve months of revenue and set it against your own cost lines.
Stop-doing list Notion template for a consulting business
A Notion register classifying every service, customer category and internal programme as Keep, Behind or Stop.
Completion waterfall model for a business sale, headline to cash
Walk a waterfall from headline down to money that actually moves, at a date, on a worked example.
Book
M$
Million Dollar Services
Building, running and selling a services business
Million Dollar Services, by James Smith
Two people with day jobs started a blog in 2013. Eight years later the company was sold for over $30m. The book is the account of what happened in between: the cash crisis, the change of direction, the investment, the hiring mistakes and the sale process, with the decision behind each one set out so you can judge it yourself.
In development
Newsletter
Read the stories. Get the playbooks as they publish.
Paid subscribers receive each playbook as part of their subscription, and everything is available to buy individually here.
Read on SubstackWeekly, from the inside
The decisions, the pressure and the mistakes, written from notes and diaries.
The whole library, not one a month
All fourteen playbooks come with a paid subscription, complete from the start.
Or buy just the one you need
Every playbook, course and tool is sold on its own here.
Free to read
The reference layer, no waitlist needed.
About James
We had two day jobs, a blog that wouldn't behave and an idea we thought was worth trying. Eight years later, the company was sold for over $30m.
I'm James Smith. In 2013 my co-founder and I started the business that became DevOpsGroup, a services company helping other businesses build and run software. We built it in Wales, took investment, grew, made mistakes, faced a cash crisis and had to change direction. I'm now building Critical Cloud.
I draw on my notes, diaries and recollections, checking the dates and figures as I write.
Be first to know.
Join the waitlist and you’ll hear when the playbooks, courses and tools launch.