Scaling a firm with the ultimate goal of a successful exit requires a precise strategy, the right tools, and disciplined execution. By leveraging proven frameworks and actionable insights, you can position your business to achieve maximum value when the time is right. Join Brian Ackerman, Partner at Ascendient Healthcare Advisors, as he shares how he’s leveraging Collective 54 tools like the Firm Estimator, Exit Readiness Checklist, and EOS Integration Plan to scale his firm and maximize its value. In this session, you’ll gain practical insights into how to apply these tools, optimize your operations, and develop a roadmap that sets your firm up for long-term success.
TRANSCRIPT
Greg Alexander: Hey, everybody. This is Greg Alexander. You’re listening to the ProServ podcast brought to you by Collective 54. If this is the first time you’re listening to our show, this show is dedicated to leaders of professional services businesses. So if you’re in the expertise business—consulting company, marketing agency, IT service provider, architectural firm, law firm, etc.—then this show is for you. What we aim to do on this show is to help you make more money, make scaling easier, and someday potentially get to an exit, or at least make that exit achievable.
Greg Alexander: On today’s show, we have a Collective 54 member. His name is Brian Ackerman, and what we’re going to talk about is how to grow quickly through the use of multiple tools in an integrated way against a particular problem. The problem is an overdependence that a firm may have on a very small group of people, very often the founder or co-founders, or maybe, in addition to the founder and co-founders, a very small circle of partners in the firm. This ability to replicate yourself, to get great at delegation, to scale, is a challenge that plagues many of our members. Brian and his partners have done an exceptional job, in my opinion, at quickly addressing that, and I wanted him to share with us some insights on how they did that. So, Brian, it’s good to see you. Would you introduce yourself to the audience, please?
Brian Ackerman: Yeah, Greg. Thanks for the opportunity to be here. I’m Brian Ackerman, a partner with the firm Ascendian Healthcare Advisors. We are a management consulting firm that just celebrated our 30th anniversary. A handful of years back, we went through a bit of a resurgence as we reevaluated where we are and our trajectory going forward. In terms of what we provide, we work strictly in the health and healthcare space, offering strategy, planning, and regulatory services to a variety of client types, primarily hospitals, health systems, public health departments, and other government entities. Again, thanks for the time, Greg.
Greg Alexander: Brian, you published an article on our website back on January 7th, and in that article, you talked about how you addressed the problem of the firm being too dependent on a very small number of people, which was getting in the way of scaling the firm the way you all wanted to. You took an approach of using some tools that we provided you, but not in isolation. You used these tools in an integrated way, and in your article, you talked about three counterintuitive things that you learned from that. To refresh your memory, the first counterintuitive item was that quality improves with delegation. There was a feeling that maybe quality, in terms of client satisfaction, would degrade. The second was that tools create clarity and confidence. The third was that structure enables freedom, and that one I was particularly interested in because you got granular enough to talk about how time was allocated on a calendar. I thought we could use that article as our outline for our discussion today. But why don’t you start by helping the audience understand the problem you were solving, which was this overdependence on a small group of people, and how that was inhibiting scale.
Brian Ackerman: Just a little background—there are three partners in this firm, and we have a chief of staff as well. A big focus of ours over the past few years, even before doing this assessment and work with you, Greg, was laying the groundwork from a recruiting standpoint. We’ve got an awesome set of managers in place and staff supporting them as well. With your help and the tools we’ll discuss, we’ve started to press the gas in terms of delegation to that team, doing it in a structured way that allows them to live into their potential while positively impacting us from a client satisfaction perspective. We recognized this as a key area of focus, and the tools really helped us isolate and address it.
Brian Ackerman: And prioritize the key areas where we needed to focus, at least in this first year of implementing efforts to break through that founder’s bottleneck. Let me talk you through the process now, Greg, in terms of how we approached that or if there are any other specific questions you wanted to ask, what will work best around that?
Greg Alexander: Yeah, I want to get into the specifics. But before we do that, I have to ask the question which our listeners are probably asking themselves right now. So you’ve been in business for 30 years. Why now? Why tackle this problem now?
Brian Ackerman: Yeah, it’s a great question. You know, we have, as a firm, done strategic planning. At some point, a number of years ago, we realized we’re doing strategic planning for our clients, so we probably should do it for ourselves. A number of years ago, we started doing that. The partners all get away every year to do a retreat, and every year it is about identifying the big problem that we need to address. What are the big priorities? Historically, that has been focused a lot on growth, geographic expansion, and service development, which is still certainly on the list of things to do. But as I’m sure many of the listeners know, you reach a certain point where that is prohibited because of the bottleneck. We certainly realized that in spades as we worked through the tools. The primary reason is that during our retreat this past November, we understood that this is a big area of focus that we really need to target.
Greg Alexander: You know, I’m reminded of that phrase—I’m going to botch it—but something about the cobbler’s kids having holes in their shoes. I think we’ve all struggled with that. Let me dive into some specific areas here because these podcasts are short, and I want to give the listenership some immediate value. I was really blown away by how you have reorganized the calendars of your three partners and your chief of staff to dedicate time blocks for different activities. I was drawn to that because I’m always emphasizing solving the founder bottleneck to create a scalable organization by being a firm versus a collection of people. I get pushback from members who say, “Hey, I’m barely keeping my head above water. I don’t have time for that yet.” You guys have figured out a way to solve that issue. So tell me how you reorganized partner calendars.
Brian Ackerman: What we’ve done is set goals for how those partner calendars will evolve throughout this year, quarter by quarter. For quarter one, we have set aside what we’re calling “Firm Development Fridays.” The focus of our Fridays, theoretically every hour of that day—though not always perfect—is devoted to developing and executing the strategic plan we put in place. This includes everything related to the founder bottleneck work and other areas identified in the strategic plan. Fridays are set aside for this purpose. Additionally, I’ve set aside two hours every morning for internal reviews. Part of the concern I had was that internal meetings and reviews were scattered throughout my calendar. By condensing these to the mornings, it leaves the middle of the day open for client work. Ideally, the last two hours of every day are dedicated to more firm development. That’s the goal, the Holy Grail. We’ve started to move towards that, educating the team on what it looks like, and we’ve had some early success.
Greg Alexander: It’s a great example. If it isn’t on the calendar, it’s not happening, right? We’re all super busy, and you’re being intentional and deliberate with this. I love “Firm Development Fridays.” Another item you talked about that I wanted to highlight was your goal to transfer client relationships from the partners to the managers. You set a goal for yourself that 80% of client relationships would sit with the manager level versus the partner level by year-end. I was really impressed by that because if there’s one thing our members hold on to, it’s the relationships they have with clients. They’re very afraid to hand those relationships off, but if they don’t do that, they’re not going to scale. So how did you overcome that fear, and how is that going?
Brian Ackerman: Each of us focused heavily on recruiting for culture fit and expertise, which brought in incredible managers. I quickly overcame the fear when, in the middle of last year, I was on a call with a couple of my managers and a client. The client trusted the manager—you could see it. So, systematically, we’ve broken down all of our services. If you drill down, we probably have somewhere between 12 and 15 services. There’s a varying degree of handoff depending on the service. We’ve created a “Partner Involvement Decision Matrix”—we’re management consultants, so we had to have a matrix in there somewhere. When a new engagement comes in, we look at that matrix to determine where partners should or shouldn’t be involved. We’ve also established an internal kickoff meeting for role clarification. For example, “Brian’s not going to be on this project,” or “Brian’s going to be in the background,” or “Brian’s going to be on the calls,” depending on the matrix we put in place.
Greg Alexander: Very, very interesting. And how is that explained to the client, and do they push back?
Brian Ackerman: Yeah, we’ve walked through this with the clients. It’s more difficult, I think, with long-established relationships. In terms of the goals you talked about, Greg, that’s something we’re going to evolve more and more throughout the year. But in general, no big pushback. We continue through other methods of standardization to keep an eye on quality, and we haven’t missed a beat on that. The clients are able to get on calendars quicker; they’re not trying to get on the partner calendars. In many ways, they’re even more excited about that.
Greg Alexander: You know, that’s a helpful tip, and I want to make sure we underline that. If you’re listening to this and you’re struggling with transferring client relationships to the manager level away from the partner level, one easy way to do it is to start with the new clients. Start there first and train the clients on how to behave, meaning that their point of contact is the manager, not you. Therefore, they just won’t know anything different, and they’ll think that’s the way you do business. Get that in place first, and then, if you want to go back to the legacy clients and handle that, which is a little bit more difficult.
The last thing I wanted to talk about, as it relates to what you all are doing right now for this podcast—and then, of course, we’ll go into much more than this on the member Q&A—is the partner knowledge transfer system you developed. That really struck me. Intuitively, my thought is that you all have this tribal knowledge sitting in the heads of your partners, and you need to get that out of their heads, into the firm, and institutionalize the firm’s knowledge. Is that correct? If so, tell me a little bit about how you’re doing that.
Brian Ackerman: Yeah, that is correct. As part of our work, one of the things we’ve gone through is the accountability chart. To give you a little background, we have split the founder and CEO roles. The founder, Dawn, is in charge of that knowledge transfer structure. We spent a good bit of January getting that in place. Similar to what I talked about in terms of the number of services, for each service, a partner is in charge of three or four different areas in terms of transferring knowledge.
Case studies are one such area that we put in place. We need to have detailed case studies and a live Q&A session for each one where our team can ask questions and work through different things. We’re also using AI to transcribe and document detailed areas of conversations. Back to standardization, we’re doing a much better job this year. For each product or service we offer, we’re creating playbooks. These playbooks help distribute knowledge and serve as another category or column we’re focused on for each of our services.
Greg Alexander: Fantastic explanation. Separating the founder and the CEO—I get a lot of pushback on that. As you scale, it’s my point of view, one man’s point of view, that those are two different jobs. It’s too much work for one person to scale a firm. Separating the founder and CEO roles is mission-critical. When I advocate for that, founders often ask, “If I’m not the CEO, what am I going to do?” Well, this is an example of how you’re going to spend your time. You’re going to build a knowledge transfer system. You’re going to work on the firm, not in the firm. Take tribal knowledge, turn it into methodologies, document the methodologies, teach people how to use them, and document case studies. By doing this, you’re replicating yourself and amplifying the impact a founder can make on a firm. Great example of that.
Alright, Brian, let’s end it here. I don’t want to steal all your thunder. We look forward to diving into these things and specifically how you’re doing it during the private member Q&A, which is coming up in a couple of weeks. On behalf of the community, thank you so much. You guys are great members. We’re so lucky to have you in the community, and we certainly appreciate your willingness to share with us.
Brian Ackerman: Yeah, appreciate it. Look forward to delving in a little more detail. Thanks, Greg.
Greg Alexander: Alright, and a couple of calls to action for the audience. If you’re not a member and you’re listening to this, go to collective54.com, fill out an application, and we’ll get in contact with you. If you are a member and want to learn more about how Brian is scaling beyond the partners, look for the meeting invitation for the private member Q&A session. Until then, I wish all of you the best of luck as you try to grow, scale, and exit your firms.
Note: This transcript was generated by Zoom.