What does it really take to build, sell, and successfully integrate a specialist consulting firm?

Carlos Keener has spent more than 25 years working in M&A, integration, and post-deal operating models. He founded Beyond the Deal (BTD), building a specialist consultancy focused on helping organisations capture value from acquisitions and other inorganic growth events, before the firm joined Oaklin Consulting.

In this episode, Carlos explains how he moved from independent consulting to building a firm, why scaling a specialist consultancy requires conscious trade-offs, and why founders need to decide what they actually want from their business before pursuing growth.

Carlos also shares lessons from selling BTD, including how to identify the right buyer, articulate the specific value your firm brings, and think carefully about your own role after a transaction. He discusses the realities of post-deal integration, why cross-selling can be harder than expected, and why cultural compatibility alone is not enough. The conversation concludes with a practical perspective on AI: clients ultimately care about speed, quality, outcomes, and price, not which tools consultants use to deliver them.

In this episode you will learn

• Why Carlos chose to build a specialist M&A consultancy rather than remain an independent consultant.
• How founders can move from selling themselves to selling an organisational capability.
• Why scaling a specialist consultancy requires deliberate choices about leverage, size, and client delivery.
• How sellers can identify and communicate the specific value they bring to a potential buyer.
• Why founders should decide what they want their post-sale role to look like before agreeing a deal.
• Why culture, working practices, and commercial routines all matter when assessing a buyer.
• How AI may change consulting delivery without changing what clients fundamentally value.

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction
(01:00) From Independent Consultant to Firm Founder
(04:20) Building and Scaling Beyond the Deal
(09:20) Designing a Consultancy Around Your Goals
(12:10) What Consulting Owners Should Know Before Selling
(16:40) Finding the Right Buyer for Your Firm
(21:30) Life After the Deal: Integrating BTD into Oaklin
(23:40) Post-Deal Lessons and the Challenge of Cross-Selling
(26:10) How AI Is Changing Professional Services
(29:50) Why AI Tools Are Becoming Harder to Monetise

Connect with Carlos Keener:
Carlos Keener on LinkedIn:
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/carloskeener

Oaklin – M&A, Integration and Inorganic Growth:
https://www.oaklin.com/m-a-integration-and-inorganic-growth

Beyond the Deal / BTD:
https://btd.consulting

Leading the Deal – Carlos Keener & Thras Moraitis:
https://books.google.ro/books/about/Leading_the_Deal.html?id=5C8guAEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

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Prof. Joe O'Mahoney helps boutique consultancies scale and exit.

Follow Joe on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeomahoney/

Follow Joe on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/joeomahoney

Visit Joe’s Website:
https://www.equitysherpa.com

What happens to a professional services firm when AI makes the work faster—but clients expect to pay less?

Shawn Yeager, founder of Upshift, works with professional services firms on the commercial implications of AI: not simply which tools to adopt, but what firms should sell and how they should price once parts of traditional delivery become easier to automate. Drawing on three decades working with emerging technologies, Shawn argues that AI is exposing the weaknesses of the billable-hour model while increasing the importance of judgment, trust, relationships, and commercially differentiated expertise.

Joe and Shawn discuss how firms can map services into exposed, compressing, defensible, and emerging categories; why boutiques may have an advantage in experimentation; and why AI transformation needs to begin with business-model thinking rather than technology deployment. They also explore productization, subscription-based services, AI-enabled leverage, pricing and packaging, client validation before building new offerings, and what the rise of forward deployed engineers could mean for consulting firms.

In this episode you will learn

• Why AI is putting pressure on the traditional billable-hour model.
• How to classify services as exposed, compressing, defensible, or emerging.
• Why judgment and trusted relationships remain difficult to commoditize.
• How AI can enable new subscription and recurring-revenue offerings.
• Why firms should validate client problems before building AI products.
• How pricing, packaging, and positioning need to evolve alongside delivery.
• Why AI transformation should start with commercial outcomes, not technology.

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(00:16) Meet Shawn Yeager

(01:13) From Microsoft to AI

(03:07) AI Changes Consulting

(05:44) Faster Horse or Car

(07:59) Investor AI Due Diligence

(10:42) Mapping Service Exposure

(14:05) Subscription Advisory Future

(15:07) New Skills and Leadership

(17:23) Automation in Practice

(21:55) Case Study Pricing Reset

(27:01) Build vs Business Outcomes

(29:48) Spinouts and New P&L

(31:51) Forward Deployed Engineers

(35:53) Closing Thanks

Resources:

Follow Shawn on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnyeager

Website: https://upshiftco.com/

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Prof. Joe O'Mahoney helps boutique consultancies scale and exit.

Follow Joe on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeomahoney/

Follow Joe on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/joeomahoney

Visit Joe’s Website:
https://www.equitysherpa.com

How can a boutique consultancy scale beyond founder-led growth without losing the culture that made it successful?

Rob Ferrone is a product data and PLM strategy advisor who founded and led Quick Release, a specialist engineering consultancy focused on product data management and product data flow. In this episode, he explains how the firm grew through referrals before developing a structured, consultative approach to business development and expanding to more than 200 people across the UK, US, Europe and Australia.

Rob discusses how technical consultants learned to contribute to sales by diagnosing customer issues, consequences and value rather than relying on conventional sales techniques. He also shares lessons from international expansion, including the importance of repeatable recruitment, cultural ambassadors, clear leadership responsibilities and greater employee autonomy.

The conversation examines Quick Release’s acquisition by ALTEN, the value of preparing for a sale before a buyer appears, and the operational foundations that can reduce acquisition risk. Rob also introduces his latest startup work, which uses AI to improve employee engagement, insight gathering and communication during transformation programmes.

In This Episode You Will Learn:

• How to move beyond referrals and founder-led selling
• Why consultative sales methods work well for technical teams
• How regular practice improves pitches and objection handling
• Why recruitment and culture become critical during international growth
• How clearer leadership responsibilities can reduce scaling friction

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction
(01:37) Quick Release Origin Story
(02:55) From Referrals to Sales
(05:12) Scaling Beyond Founders
(07:03) Training Technical Sellers
(08:39) Practice and Objections
(12:03) Growing Pains at Scale
(15:07) Culture Across Countries
(16:22) Lessons and Mistakes
(20:27) Selling to Alton
(27:11) Final Advice


Resources:

Connect with Rob on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-ferrone

Learn more about Quick Release:
https://quickrelease.co.uk/

Send us Fan Mail

Prof. Joe O'Mahoney helps boutique consultancies scale and exit.

Follow Joe on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeomahoney/

Follow Joe on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/joeomahoney

Visit Joe’s Website:
https://www.equitysherpa.com