After working with more than 150 consultancy owners across engineering and the built environment — the patterns are pretty clear. 

Most founders are working incredibly hard. 

But their growth keeps stalling for the same few reasons. 

Not market reasons. 

Not team reasons. 

Not timing reasons. 

The same five reasons. 

Every time. 

In this week's episode, I sit down with Doron Dinor — one of our coaches inside Boardroom — to unpack exactly what those five things are and what to do about them. 

Inside this episode we unpack: 

• Why staying in the technician role is quietly capping your growth. 

• How to break the feast and famine cycle for good. 

• Where profit margin erosion comes from — and how to stop it. 

• Why plateaus are part of the process and what to do when you hit one. 

• How a clear plan eliminates decision fatigue and puts you back in control. 

If you run a consultancy and growth has slowed or become harder than it should be...

Most consultancy owners think cheap clients are a necessary evil. 

You take them on because you need the work. 

Because the pipeline is quiet. 

Because saying no feels risky. 

But here's what's quietly killing your margins: 

Cheap clients are the most expensive clients you'll ever work with. 

I call it the Cheap Client Tax. 

And it shows up everywhere. 

It's the scope creep that never gets charged. 

The variation that felt too awkward to raise. 

The invoice that sits unpaid for 60 days. 

The Sunday night phone call that somehow became normal. 

It's the hours your team spends managing the relationship. 

The re-work from unclear briefs. 

The meetings that go nowhere. 

The constant pressure to do more for less. 

And then there's the hidden cost that no one ever even realises. 

The lost opportunity cost. 

Every hour you and your team spend servicing a cheap, high-maintenance client is an hour you're not spending on A-grade clients. 

Clien...

Most consultancy owners approach business development the same way. 

Reactively. 

Chasing leads. 

Responding to enquiries. 

Following up opportunities as they appear. 

And it works. 

For a while. 

But eventually that approach hits a ceiling. 

Because chasing work is not a strategy. 

It's survival mode. 

And if you want to win higher-quality clients and bigger projects — you need a different approach entirely. 

You need to win work by design. 

Not by accident. 

In this week's podcast episode, I break down what strategic business development actually looks like inside a consulting business. 

The difference between daily lead generation — LinkedIn, marketing, calls, relationship building — and the longer-term strategic BD activities that help you access better clients, bigger projects and more predictable growth. 

I also share a story from my own consulting business. 

Where we spent two years deliberately pursuing one ideal clien...

A new car is nice. 

A share portfolio is smart. 

A growing business feels good. 

But none of that is the real reason we got into business. 

The real reason? 

Choice and freedom. 

Choice about what you work on. 

And what you don't. 

Choice about who you hire. 

What clients you take on. 

And which ones you politely walk away from. 

Freedom to go to the gym at lunch — without asking anyone's permission. 

Freedom to take a Friday off and turn it into a long weekend. 

Freedom to just…not work. 

And sit on the sideline at your kids' sports carnival knowing the business is running. 

That's what this is really about. 

Not the revenue number. 

Not the car in the driveway. 

This life. 

And having a business that supports it. 

We only get one life. 

And it's too short to be doing things we don't want to be doing. 

And here's the thing — 

If you feel like you've got the business, but not the freedom… 

I...

 There was a period not that long ago, as we were building our engineering consultancy, where I could literally feel the stress building in my body. 

Tight chest. 

Shallow breathing. 

Always tense. 

From the outside, everything looked good. 

I was putting on a brave face.  

But internally, it felt very different. 

Flat. 

Couldn’t relax. 

Couldn’t switch off.  

Always “on.” 

Felt like I always needed to be available for the team and for clients. 

And I kept telling myself… 

This is just what it takes to build something great.  

Until I stopped and asked myself a different question: 

“What’s the point of building a successful business… 

…if it comes at the cost of my health, my energy, and how I show up at home?” 

That question became my north star.  

Because at the end of the day — 

Your business is meant to support your life. 

Not slowly take you away from it. 

So let me ask you: 

How are you actual...

As we were building our consultancy from $3M to $30M, we kept hitting the same cycle. 

Win work. 

Get busy. 

Stop doing BD. 

Pipeline dries up. 

Then we’d scramble again. 

At first, we thought it was normal. 

But it wasn’t the market. 

It was us. 

We were treating business development like something you do when you “have time.” 

And the reality is — you never have time. 

Delivery always takes over. 

The shift for us was simple: 

We made BD non-negotiable. 

Every week. 

No matter how busy we were. 

Client catch-ups. 

New opportunities. 

Follow-ups. 

That consistency changed everything. 

The pipeline smoothed out. 

We stopped reacting. 

And we started choosing better work, with better clients. 

Most consultancy owners don’t have a BD problem. 

They have a consistency problem. 

So the question is: 

Are you only doing BD when things slow down? 

Or have you built it into your business so it...

A lot of consultancy owners think their profit problem is pricing. 

They assume fees are too low. 

Or the team need to work harder. 

Or they just need to win more work. 

But often the real issue is this: 

Profit is being lost during delivery. 

Not when the job is won. 

After. 

Quietly. 

Through rework. 

Unclear scope. 

Missed assumptions. 

Poor QA. 

Unpaid extras. 

And delivery issues that slowly chew through margin one hour at a time. 

That is why a consultancy can be absolutely flat out and still not be properly profitable. 

Because busyness hides inefficiency. 

Full calendars can look healthy. 

A busy team can look productive. 

But if projects are drifting, rework is creeping in, and no one is tracking time against fee properly, profit can disappear fast. 

That is why being busy is not the same as being profitable. 

In this week’s podcast episode, I break down where most margin loss actually happens, why busy teams often...

“Can you make your fees a bit cheaper”? 

I guarantee this question gets asked in our industry  

Every… single… day… 

We don’t ask Doctors to be cheaper 

We don’t ask Woolies to “shave 10% off their price of ham” 

Or the Physio to “throw in a session for free” 

So why is it OK for your clients to ask you to be cheaper…? 

What do you think?  

Why do they keep asking? 

Send me an email at [email protected] and let me know.  

Josh 

PS: If you’re interested, here are 4 ways I can help you right now: 

1.  Grab a copy of my new book | Profitable Engineering Consultant | 9 strategies to grow with confidence, get your time back & consistently hit 30% plus net profit margins – Click Here

2. Subscribe to our podcast | Learn how to run a more profitable consultancy and grow successfully – no fluff, just actionable and practical advice from someone who grew a consultancy to $30M and exited successfully – Watch Here or Listen Here + make sure y...

Last week we ran a training for our Boardroom members on hiring an Ops Manager or GM and bringing stronger operational and admin support into the business. 

During the session, we showed them two simple calculations that completely changed how they viewed their time. 

The first was Dan Martell’s buyback rate – what your time is actually worth.  

It’s your annual salary divided by 2,000 (50 weeks x 40hrs / week).  

So if you pay yourself $200,000 a year, your buyback rate is $100 per hour. 

That means any task you are still doing that could be done by someone else for less than $100 an hour should be bought back as quickly as possible. 

Admin. 

Inbox. 

Chasing the team. 

Formatting documents. 

Project follow-up. 

Low-level coordination. 

You get the idea.  

Then we looked at their strategic hourly rate. 

This is your annual net profit divided by the number of hours you spend on strategic work across the year. 

So if your consultancy makes $1M a ...

4 years ago I made the decision to quit drinking, for good. 

It was honestly the best decision I’ve ever made (apart from marrying my beautiful wife 😉). 

Even just one drink was affecting affect my sleep, my health and my quality of life. 

I had a line in the sand moment travelling through Tassie with my family 4 years ago. 

We were driving through Cradle Mountain in the most picturesque scenery. 

And I was hungover after 2 beers with my father in law. 

The family was laughing, singing along to music. 

And I was tired, grumpy and snapping at everyone. 

Not the version of myself I was proud of or who I wanted to be at all. 

So in that moment I made a decision. 

Not one more drink – ever. 

And I haven’t since. 

It was incredibly hard at first. 

My mates didn’t know how to engage with me. 

They (and I) felt awkward that they were drinking and I wasn’t. 

And it made me realise that I’d probably kept up drinking for longer than I w...