Most engineering and built environment consultancy owners hire when they're desperate. 

Someone quits. 

A project blows up. 

The owner is drowning. 

And so they hire fast, reactive, and usually for the wrong role. 

The consultancies that grow consistently do it differently. 

They make three specific hires, in the right order, at the right time. 

— Hire One: Admin Support (Start to $1M) — 

You're doing everything. 

Chasing invoices. Scheduling meetings. Answering emails. 

And somewhere in between — you're supposed to be winning & delivering work. 

Admin support gets the low-level tasks off your plate so you can focus on growth. 

It sounds simple. But for most owners at this stage — it's the unlock. 

— Hire Two: Strong Seniors ($1M to $3M) — 

You're running every project, managing every client, reviewing everything. 

The business can only grow as fast as you can personally carry it. 

High-quality seniors break that ceiling. 

T...

We'd been planning the North Queensland trip for months. 

Just my wife and I. 

We needed it. 

I'd been pouring everything into building our engineering and built environment consultancy — and we were both ready to finally breathe. 

But within 24 hours of landing, my phone hadn't left my hand. 

Client calls. 

Text messages. 

Problems that were supposed to be handled by the people I'd left in charge. 

Projects were drifting. 

Clients couldn't get answers. 

And instead of escalating things internally — they were calling me. 

On holiday. 

With my wife. 

Thousands of kilometres away. 

She watched it happen for two days. 

And then she told me exactly how she felt. 

She wasn't angry at the business. 

She was angry that I couldn't let go. 

That we'd come all this way and I still wasn't present. 

And she was 100% right. 

So I deleted the email app off my phone. 

And turned the phone off completely. 

I chose to be present with her -...

This is one of the most common mistakes I see consultancy owners make. 

Things are stretched. Margins are tight. The team is under pressure. 

And the instinct is: we need to hire. 

But here's the reality — 

Hiring more people won't fix your profit. In fact, if you get the timing wrong, it'll make things worse. 

In this week's podcast episode, I break down exactly why — and what to do instead. 

Inside this episode we cover: 

• Why every hire reduces profit before it improves it — and what the real lag looks like 

• Why throwing people at problems is often avoidance of the real issue 

• Why 7 or 8 times out of 10, it's not a people problem — it's a systems and process problem 

• Why growth phases are meant to feel messy — and where profit is actually built 

• The Growth → Consolidation → Rest model and why the most profitable phase is the one most owners skip 

I also share a brilliant win from Mandy inside our Boardroom community — who just h...

For a long time, my entire sense of progress (and self-worth) was tied to a to-do list. 

Every day started with it. 

Every day ended with it. 

And if I hadn't crossed enough off — the day felt wasted. 

It didn't matter if I'd had a great conversation with a client. 

Or made an important decision for the business. 

Or been genuinely present with my family that evening. 

If the list wasn't shrinking, I felt behind. 

And the brutal truth about a to-do list? 

It never shrinks. 

You cross one thing off and two more appear. 

It's a game you can never win. 

And I was playing it every single day. 

The exhaustion wasn't just physical. 

It was the constant feeling of never being enough. 

Never doing enough. 

Never getting on top of it. 

My wife could see it. 

My team could feel it. 

And deep down, I knew something had to change. 

So I stopped measuring my days by what I got done. 

And I started asking a different question at the end of each day:...

We've spoken with hundreds of engineering and built environment consultancy owners over the years. 

And there's a pattern we see constantly. 

They know their revenue. 

But ask them their net profit margin last month? Blank. 

Their team utilisation rate? Blank. 

Profit per project? Blank. 

The business can look healthy on the surface while quietly bleeding profit underneath. 

We've seen it firsthand. Strong revenue, team flat out, everyone busy. But the profit isn't there. And nobody can figure out why. 

Here's why. 

Staff can be completely utilised — even over utilised — and projects are still making no money.  

When teams spend too much time on projects, margin disappears. The hours blow out, nobody catches it in time, and by the time the project closes, the damage is done. 

The frustrating thing? It's entirely preventable. 

But you can't fix what you're not tracking. 

Here's what we recommend every consultancy owner puts in place: 

A ...

There was a period building our engineering and built environment consultancy to $30M where I was completely consumed by it. 

Every win felt enormous. 

Every setback felt catastrophic. 

Every bad day at work followed me through the front door. 

I thought that level of investment meant I cared. 

That it made me a better business owner. 

That it was just part of being serious about what I was building. 

My wife saw it differently. 

One night she said something I wasn't ready to hear. 

She told me that living with me had become exhausting. 

That my mood was dictated by whatever had happened that day in the business. 

That the kids were walking on eggshells when I came home. 

That she never knew which version of me was going to walk through the door. 

It stopped me cold. 

Because I hadn't even realised I was doing it. 

I thought I was showing up for my family. 

I was there physically. 

But emotionally? The business had all of me. 

And here's ...

As we were building our engineering & built environment consultancy from $3M to $30M, we were obsessed with winning work. 

Every new contract felt like progress. 

Every new client felt like a win. 

Every yes felt like momentum. 

But underneath the revenue growth, something wasn't adding up. 

A handful of clients were consuming a wildly disproportionate amount of our time. 

They changed scope constantly — but pushed back on every variation. 

They paid late. Every single time. 

And every interaction left the team drained. 

But we kept saying yes to them. 

Because the revenue looked good on paper. 

The truth we had to face was this: 

Not all revenue is equal. 

Some clients pay your invoices. Others cost you far more — in time, in energy, and in the toll it takes on your people. 

So we did something we'd never done before. 

We scored every major client. Not just by revenue — but by margin, by relationship, and by whether they were the kind of wo...

Most consultancy owners I work with have experienced this at some point. 

Revenue is growing. The team is expanding. Things are moving fast. 

And then…  

Everything plateaus. 

Growth slows. Forward movement stalls.  

And suddenly you start asking yourself — what's wrong with the business? 

Here's the truth: 

Nothing is wrong. 

Growth plateaus are not a problem. In fact, they're often one of the most important phases in building a strong consultancy. 

In this week's podcast episode, I unpack why business growth rarely happens in a straight line — and why the plateau phase is actually where the real foundations of a great business get built. 

Inside this episode we cover: 

• Why strong consultancies grow in cycles, not straight lines. 

• Why plateau phases are where systems, structure and team capability get built. 

• How to stop reacting emotionally to slowed growth and use the period strategically. 

• The difference between chasing r...

For a long time, I believed that figuring it out on my own was just part of the journey. 

That asking for help meant I wasn't capable… or even worse — a failure. 

That needing support was something to be embarrassed about. 

That the best leaders just... knew what to do. 

So I kept it all in. 

Every worry. 

Every doubt. 

Every problem I couldn't solve. 

And for a while, I told myself that's just what it takes to build something successful. 

But the truth? 

I was exhausted. 

Overwhelmed. 

Running on empty. 

And the people closest to me were getting the worst of it. 

I wasn't showing up the way I wanted to at home. 

I was short-tempered. 

Distracted. 

Not the husband or father I wanted to be. 

The business looked fine from the outside. 

But inside, I was drowning. 

I finally admitted I needed help — to myself and to those closest to me. 

And it was one of the most important decisions I ever made. 

I got a business coach. 

Most engineering and built environment consultancy owners build their business by saying yes. 

Yes to every client. 

Yes to every project. 

Yes to every opportunity that comes through the door. 

And it works — until it doesn’t. 

Because at a certain point, saying yes to everything means saying no to the things that actually matter. 

The consultancy owners who are stuck right now aren't stuck because they're not working hard enough. 

They're stuck because they're saying yes to the wrong things. 

Yes to the client who grinds on price and drains the team. 

Yes to the project that only works if the owner is in the middle of it. 

Yes to staying involved in delivery instead of leading the business. 

Yes to doing tasks that someone else should own. 

And no — by default — to the things that would actually move the needle. 

The shift happens when you flip it. 

Yes to clients who value your expertise and pay without hesitation. 

Yes to hiring people who ...