The Consulting Growth Podcast
Joe O'Mahoney is Professor of Consulting at Cardiff University and a growth & exit advisor to boutique consultancies. Joe researches, teaches, publishes and consults about the consulting industry.
In the CONSULTING GROWTH PODCAST he interviews founders that have successfully grown or sold their firms, acquirers who have bought firms, and a host of growth experts to help you avoid the mistakes, and learn the insights of others who have been there and done that.
Find out more at www.joeomahoney.com
The Consulting Growth Podcast
Scaling a Boutique Consultancy | Anish Patel & Prof. Joe O'Mahoney
Anish Patel takes us on a fascinating journey from his beginnings as a "physics geek" to building and selling a successful consultancy in this candid conversation about growth, leadership, and knowing when to exit.
With refreshing honesty, Anish reveals how his scientific background created the perfect foundation for consulting work. "The scientific method was something that really I was interested in," he explains, describing how identifying issues, gathering data, developing hypotheses, and convincing others translates perfectly from physics to business consulting.
The conversation delves into the struggles of transitioning from a well-known consultancy to founding Patel Miller. Anish shares a powerful realization that many founders experience: "I thought I was one of the best salesmen of consultancy in the retail industry out there... What I realized when I started my own firm was that I was brilliant at converting opportunities, but I wasn't very good at originating them." This distinction between originating and converting work becomes a crucial insight for anyone building a consultancy.
Perhaps most valuable is Anish's framework for success - the "three A's" that differentiated his boutique firm from larger competitors: Availability (being responsive when clients need you), Amiability (maintaining genuine relationships beyond projects), and Ability (delivering excellence beyond methodological competence). This approach helped his firm punch well above its weight in a competitive market.
The discussion also covers the eventual sale to Metis, with Anish offering candid reflections on the post-acquisition phase. His advice to avoid becoming overly focused on earn-out terms at the expense of activities that actually drive business success provides valuable perspective for consultancy owners considering an exit.
Whether you're contemplating starting your own consultancy, struggling with growth challenges, or considering an exit strategy, Anish's journey offers practical insights and honest reflections on what truly matters in building a successful consulting business.
Prof. Joe O'Mahoney helps boutique consultancies scale and exit. Joe's research, writing, speaking and insights can be found at www.joeomahoney.com
Welcome to the Consulting Growth Podcast. I'm Professor Gero O'Mahony, ceo of Equity Sherpa. We help owners of consultancies quadruple the equity value of their firms over a two to four year period. If you'd like to know how we do this, visit equitysherpacom. Okay, welcome back to the Consultancy Growth Podcast. I have the pleasure today to be joined by Anish Patel, who started, grew and sold Patel Miller to Metis a couple of years back and has an interesting story of what happened before that. You've had a lot of experience, anish, so, starting off, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you very much, joe. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2:Now could you give us a bit of? I was looking at your profile and you've had an interesting journey, firstly into consultancy and then, through consultancy, your experience with some of the big firms. But you started off somewhere very different, didn't you?
Speaker 1:I certainly did when I was going through school, college and university. I was a physics geek I still am, I suppose, in my spare time and I wanted to apply physics in something that I thought would be really useful, and medical physics was a really, really interesting field. So I managed to complete my degree in physics, my undergrad, and managed to get onto a very, very interesting scheme where I got paid to do a part-time master's and also train as a medical physicist in hospitals by actually doing the job. So it was a wonderful opportunity. One of the things that I first experienced was although hospitals are amazing places and they do wonderful things, now more than ever, day one of working in a hospital. I realized I hated working in a hospital, which is a bit of a deal breaker for a medical physicist, but I plowed through the course because I did enjoy it and I did see some amazing things and work with some great people. But it was really then that I realized that medical physics really wasn't a career for me.
Speaker 2:Am I right in saying it was? Um? It was Accenture that you went to after the election, was it it?
Speaker 1:was. It was or it was Amberson Consulting. I now showing my age, but around came 1996 when I thought, well, what can I go away and do if medical physics isn't the thing for me? And I researched lots and lots of different things and this thing that I never really knew existed, called management consultancy, popped up, and I looked into it and the more I learned about it, the more I realized that actually it is the scientific method, and the scientific method was something that really I was interested in, one of the core things about physics you identify an issue or an opportunity, you gather lots of data around that you speak to lots of people to understand that data, you develop hypotheses, you test those hypotheses with people, you develop conclusions and then you convince people that those conclusions are the right thing.
Speaker 1:And so I realized that my brain was wired to understand and execute the scientific method, and it would be a relatively easy switch to turn that to business and to turn that to solving business issues or finding business opportunities. The management consultancy suddenly piqued my interest and as a 22-year-old going out into the world, I also thought that they're quite highly paid, certainly more highly paid than medical businesses will ever be paid, and that had its draw as well. So I looked out for lots of different companies, got a few interviews and I found Anderson Consulting, went for a few interviews, met a few people there, felt like home and ultimately I had the pleasure of them offering me a job. So back end of 1996, I started at Anderson Consulting.
Speaker 2:Were you one of the? I think the transition from Anderson Consulting to Accenture probably created more independent consultancies than any other event in the Western world. Were you part of the cohort that left during that rebuild, shortly after that change in ownership?
Speaker 1:ownership yes, it was. So I left there in uh 2005, so the move from anderson consulting to accenture had already happened, yep, um. And at that time I was running, uh, the uk's retail strategy practice within accenture, um, and it was a great place. The cohort from there are now, you know, um, all over industry and got some really big roles. And it was certainly at that time when, post-ipo, I'd been at Anderson Consulting Extension almost 10 years and I thought it's time to take a bit of a break. So I left without a real view of what I wanted to go away and do, but took a career break and managed to travel around and live in a ski resort and do all the things that I never really found the time to do.
Speaker 2:And now you put a hook out there earlier and I know to fight it because I'm very interested. We won't go too much into it because we might bore the listeners, but I'm very interested in the extent to which consultancy is a science and obviously there are some limitations. You can't run experiments, you can't repeat experiments, it's it's not a laboratory conditions, but obviously there are some things that tend to work um, and and we can sometimes find those things out through, you know, studying uh interventions, you're with your physicist or your science uh hat on. To what extent have you found in your experience, to what extent have you been disappointed, um, with consultancy or organizations as a basis for science in terms of predictability, knowing what's going to happen and generally being right about interventions? Have you ever been disappointed and thought that didn't go the way I expected, despite having the experience and the knowledge and the studies and all the rest of it behind you?
Speaker 1:Lots of times. Things have not gone right, actually, and I think there's probably a couple of reasons why, and there's probably a couple of things that you have to do to react. The reasons why are I always find that the consultancy side or the advisory side, is really a balance between art and science, and so science will only get you a certain way, and there's always got to be a rational, data-led lens of all of the work that we do. People, our clients, will expect us to know the facts, they'll expect us to know the data, they'll expect us to know where that data comes from, and so that's really a basis for all of the work that we have to do. On top of that, then there is the art of storytelling, and that's really when you position the so what and the insights and the what next from the data, to really engage and convince and lead and challenge our clients, and that's really two different components. So the science is really the rational component, and I think there's also a political component and there's also an emotional component to everything that we do, and you have to take all three of those things into account More so lately, a social component as well, but taking all three or four of those things into account when we're really developing actions and insights from our work has got to come through, and if it doesn't, then sometimes you can disappoint. The second thing where we can be disappointed is we do a wonderful piece of work taking all of that thing into account.
Speaker 1:When it comes to implementation, we forget the people component and people don't always react in the way in which we expect them to react. And if we lose sight of that, then a lot of the times our actions and implementations may not go as well as we hope to. So what of how we react to that? Then, clearly, the counter to both of those things make sure when we're interrogating a project, we look at all aspects of the project and not just what the data is telling us. That will tell us a lot and it will get us up to speed really, really quickly. There are a whole wealth of inputs and influences outside of the data that we have to take into account. And the second is always the voice of the business, the voice of the colleague, whatever you want, the voice of the customer. Make sure that you're always thinking about implementation when you're developing your plans, and if you don't, you will add time and you will cost a lot of money and not deliver the value that you expected.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, thank you, that's really really nice, Really nice insights. And I was just thinking as you were talking, a lot of people might have said, well, this doesn't sound like science at all. But what's interesting is, if you read histories of science all the stuff you're talking about in terms of politics and convincing and storytelling it works in science as well. There's a lot of great discoveries that haven't come to the fore immediately, sometimes because the story wasn't right and the politics weren't right absolutely.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of what we do that is just research for pure research, and you'll find an application at a later stage yeah, definitely, yes, yeah, what?
Speaker 2:whilst you were talking, I did remind me of a conversation I was having yesterday, actually, with someone, and we were talking about whether very bright people struggle when being leaders of consulting firms or any firms. Now, you're clearly very bright, you've managed to make that jump and you've got the physics and you've got the business side of things as well. I'm thinking, obviously, when I mention names, I'm thinking of two or three leaders of consultancies who sometimes get caught up in their own head, especially if they haven't had a very practical background, where they tend to get caught up in overthinking rather than just get on with it. 80-20 implementation.
Speaker 1:Without a doubt, that's that classic analysis paralysis. You can think far too much about something, and actually there's a lot in the DNA of a consultant that encourages that. Certainly, if I think through my upbringing as a management consultant through Anderson, accenture and other places, the method was quite a key component of everything that we did and you had this beautiful and elegant 12-week multi-track plan that you'd execute precisely, out of which would fit a wonderful piece of insight, analysis or next step, and that's inbuilt. If you go back to the early days of Anderson Consulting, we used to call it the business integration methodology and it was a huge encyclopedia of whatever the business problem there was a method to solve that business problem, and that encourages analysis. Of course it does, because as young consultants we don't have the industry expertise to know and feel what the right answer is or what the best answer is. But we're encouraged to learn a method and sometimes the brightest people execute that method better than anyone else that you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 1:But sprinkling in the things that are outside of that method that may influence the outcome yeah, are things that sometimes you overlook. You can can be too method focused and over time you learn that method is important. But applying that method in the 50 different scenarios that you've applied it, the method becomes the secondary point as a sense check to know that you're looking at all of the different components. Yes, and if you lead with method, you can very quickly do a lot. But stop thinking yeah, and our clients typically pay the rates that we look for. Yep, not just because we're great doers. Our clients have lots and lots of great doers. Where we really need to differentiate ourselves is great thinking based on that doing yes, so yes, sometimes and always. I suppose the second point is definition of brightness. I suppose there's very, very different definitions of brightness, but if you come back to the analytical brain, yes, there's very, very bright and analytical people that focus on the analysis rather than focus on the so what? Yes, and our job as leaders in consulting is to balance the two.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and also, you know and I criticize myself here because it's something I very much struggled with when I jumped from, because I I went to green master's, phd, then consulting, so I had this lovely um, protected academic uh space for years where I could take four years to do a phd and nobody denied eyebrow. And it was something I certainly struggled with was, you know, getting stuff done, even if it wasn't perfect, and I think so I've dealt with quite a few. You know physicists or PhDs, and I think it's also a safe space. So, with analysis, you know it's all logical and you've got the numbers, you're in front of the computer. You know people and clients and problems are messy when you get stuck into them and it can be quite uncomfortable for some people.
Speaker 1:It really can. It reminds me of a very live example, actually, where we're working with a wonderful client doing a really, really important piece of work and we set out a three phased approach. Phase one is to collect the data set. Phase two is to interrogate it and look for opportunities and develop some hypotheses. Phase three is to then turn that into an action plan, and it's amazing how you can set out expectations for a project or a program in this very well thought through way. When you get into it, everyone always jumps to phase three in phase one, and understanding that is really really important, and even now, sometimes I forget to understand that and then it causes extra work.
Speaker 2:We love solving things as consultants, don't we? It is always very tempting to jump to the recommendations because it's instinctual and you kind of feel you know it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And the executives of our clients? They're not really interested in phase one and two. They'll take that for granted. They want to know phase three. There's always a pull to tell me the so what quite early on in project yeah, and he's thank you for.
Speaker 2:Thank you for allowing me to take us off in a slight diversion there, but I I find it fascinating this sort of you know the social and political aspects of of what we do. I'd love you to tell us a little bit about how you started, how and why you started the tell Miller, but also you know the journey of growth itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. I was at Deloitte, so I used to run Deloitte's UK retail consulting practice and I had a personal strategy in my life, which was a big event and it caused me to really think about what I was doing, where I was going and what I really wanted to achieve. And Deloitte is a wonderful company, a wonderful business, and the option was always to go back to Deloitte. But at that point I really thought well, I've set practices up for other people, it's about time I set practices up for myself. And luckily, miller Jonathan Miller, a very good friend of mine was also thinking something at the same time. He was working for a different business and we thought let's start our own business, and that was really the kernel of it.
Speaker 1:It could have been anything. It could have been making widgets on a factory line, it could have been. We looked at lots and lots of different businesses something in the cycle industry, something in the fashion industry, lots and lots of different things, something in the cycle industry, something in the fashion industry, lots and lots of different things. And we had a bit of an aha moment, which was well, we know consulting, we know retail. Why don't we build a retail consultancy? And so that's what we did. We flipped a coin and it was Patel-Miller rather than Miller-Patel, and we wrote on the back of a napkin a bit of a business plan as to how we might get this thing going.
Speaker 2:I presume that you both had non-compete clauses, which must have made it a little bit difficult to start.
Speaker 1:Well, that was one of the factors that made it a bit easier than otherwise. We didn't really have any non-competes because I'd already been out of work for a few months and Deloitte are a wonderful, very understanding business. Jonathan was working for a retailer at the time, so he was already out of his non-competes, and so actually we thought, well, look, we know a good network, we've got something to say. We feel as though there's a gap in the market opening up for industry specialists and boutiques, and so we thought, well, why don't we just go away and do it? So, as I mentioned, read the business plan. Um found the the url was available for patelmillercom excellent. Um built the website and then started, uh, immediately going to talk to clients about what we were going to do and seeing if there was any interest to work with us now it's.
Speaker 2:it's quite a challenge and I I realized this because how I started off in consulting consultancies was my friends in the large firms, often bumped up against partner, didn't quite make it left, started their own firms and then were quite shocked about how tough it was and starting your own firm as opposed to having a queue of clients because you work at McKinsey or Deloitte or whoever. Yes, what challenges did you have? What was surprising? Jumping from a well-known branded firm to a startup?
Speaker 1:The way I put it is that I thought I was one of the best salesmen of consultancy in the retail industry out there. I'm not an arrogant person, but I did think I was quite good. What I realized when I started my own firm with a name that nobody knew although they knew me was there are two paths to selling great consulting work and working with great clients. The first is originating opportunities and the second is converting on those opportunities. What I realized when I had my own name on my own business was that I was brilliant at the second, but I wasn't very good at the first, and the reason why was that I never really had to originate work, In that the brand and the network of the big consultancies is the origination engine.
Speaker 1:So if you are looking for a new strategy piece of work, you know you can bet the first three or first five organizations that you go out to ask for their opinion are the names that you recognize. You're not going to go to a Patel Miller, and so the first thing that I realized was that, yes, this is harder than I thought. That said, it did take me about a year to realize that.
Speaker 2:Yes, this is harder than I thought.
Speaker 1:That's it. It did take me about a year to realize that. Okay, and the reason being was that the clients where I was originating work and knew me well and I'd worked for for a very long time with various different hats on they were really, really open to working with Patel Miller and so actually on day one of being in business I managed to convert quite a well-known client I won't say who they were that paid us quite a lot of money, excellent. But we'd work with them over the next six months and we'd figure out how to fill that order book and so we had a healthy bank balance of day one of being in business and we managed to convert on three cornerstone clients for the first 18 months of being in business. So actually the first year to 18 months, it was relatively easy actually yes, it basically it's a common.
Speaker 2:It's a common thing actually where you know, very often people consult, uh, you know, friends, family, old colleagues, old clients absolutely once that dries up, it's a different kettle of fish.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and it wasn't really a question of it drying up. It was a question of we'd grown around the expectation of that curve continuing Suddenly. The liquidity in the business and the salary bills at the end of every month are pretty significant, and that next phase of growth to really drive profitability is the thing that's really hard to come by.
Speaker 2:How did you overcome that challenge? How did you shift from you know, I've got these nice, safe clients who can pay me well, to saying, well, I need to go and find new ones. What worked there?
Speaker 1:What worked? The first thing was me changing my mindset of what the role of the partner, or managing partner, actually is.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And you know we have to do everything and there's a hundred things that we have to do.
Speaker 1:But the differentiating factor for the managing partner or the founder is bringing new clients and keep the team happy.
Speaker 1:And you can do 25 different things, but if you're not doing those two things you won't grow, you won't be profitable and you won't be successful. That causes a lot of other implications for the expectations on the rest of the team. You know, confidence in delivering the work that we're delivering, confidence that we'll get that next piece of work when it's an ongoing process, confidence that we'll find new people and we have the right benchmarks for hiring great team and all those sorts of things. But the origination engine I'll go back to the two parts of selling, consulting that origination engine is something that nobody else in the organization will do and if you're not doing it, then it's not going to get done. And I think the realization that I have to focus my efforts firstly to build a great team around me, to give confidence that the business will run and we'll have great clients and happy clients, but that relentless focus on going out to find new work, building the network, was something that I had to shift to quite quickly, okay, and that was quite a big realization.
Speaker 2:Was that? Did you get into the content marketing thing, or was it you picking up the phone, you know, going for dinners and introducing yourself to people at events?
Speaker 1:The latter primarily, but we had to do a bit of the former and balancing the two was quite interesting.
Speaker 1:When no one knows your name and no one knows who you are, it's one thing getting an introduction to that person, either through your own network or referrals, and running events and drinks, receptions and dinners and breakfasts and all of those sorts of things, but the first thing that person is going to do when they come, when your name comes across them, is look you up.
Speaker 1:And so to have good content and to have good points of view on the website through LinkedIn and all of those sorts of things, is really, really important. You know, no one's going to stumble across you and say, oh, I must call these people to talk to me about retail operating models. However, if your name does come across their desk through the network, chances are they are going to look you up. So having a credible point of view and an interesting point of view and a well-thought-through website and content is really really key. Yeah, second piece, for that is when you're going out to find um and build your team, the first thing that a lot of these people will do is look you up on the internet and so you know the way in which the business comes across uh through the website is really, really important yes, yes, it's interesting.
Speaker 2:So I've noticed this kind of um push back on on content marketing, seo and a few other things with founders. The logic seems to be that we can't compete with Deloitte when it comes to SEO, so there's no point doing blogs and thought leadership. But, as you say, consulting is competing in two markets One is for clients, one is for employees, and neither of them are going to hire or be hired without going and checking you out.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely Absolutely. Like you say, don't try to compete with them on quantity, yes, because you'll lose, but try to compete on quality, yeah, and try to find the point, based on your own strengths, where you have a really, really individual and unique point of view.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, okay. So listen, we've talked about, you know, one of the struggles that you had in terms of, you know, overcoming that pipeline challenge. I'd also, like, you know, like to talk about something that you were particularly proud of or worked particularly well during the growth period, because, you know, obviously listeners are probably many of them will be at the stage you were at, you know, six or seven years ago and be thinking about, you know, especially in today's environment um, can they do that work, that that worked for you?
Speaker 1:oh gosh, that's the the, the big question, right, and I think, if I take that in two parts, so some of the proudest moments through through the patel milliers when I was building um that firm, I think taking a step back and the things that remind you that you're doing something right and you're doing something successful and you're making a real difference to your team and clients were probably the proudest moments, and there's probably a few through the 10 years in which I built that firm.
Speaker 1:The one which was more reoccurring was every year. So my industry focus is retail and consumer. So every year we used to host an anniversary event to just celebrate that we made it through another year and we were still in business and we used to invite lots and lots of people from industry, leaders, from retail and consumer to a really informal but really enjoyable and fun drinks reception and it was always one of the most stressful things that we did through the year because there's the expectation of are they going to come, who's going to be there, I hope it goes well on the night and the logistics. But actually always taking a step back Every year, the anniversary event, I always used to be reminded when I see a room of about 100 people who really want to know, or know or feel part of the story of growth of the Talmiller and actually feel some emotional attachment to the business that we'd set up.
Speaker 1:That used to be, annually, the most proud moment of the year oh lovely Because we used to you know, when we used to run events, that the big consultants is, we'd probably get a five or ten percent acceptance rate. We used to get a 40 to 50 acceptance rate to this event and it used to became one of the events on the retail calendar oh that's nice.
Speaker 1:People wanted to go because they knew they were going to have fun. They knew they were going to meet lots of people that they know and that they hadn't seen for the last year, and it was just things like that that reminded me that we're doing something right and we are successful and we're punching well above our size and weight.
Speaker 2:It's also reassuring because, I mean, I don't know about you, but you know, I think consultancy is full of insecure overachievers. And you know, when you pass over a big firm, you know you're doing well because you're getting a fat bonus and you're getting the feedback all the time. But when you're running your own firm, it can be quite a lonely experience, can't it?
Speaker 1:It's very lonely. It really is very lonely at times and of course there's a great team around you and you can share the load, but ultimately it's like the buck stops with you. There's lots of people who are relying on you for a career and for enjoyment and for development, and actually that's a huge pressure as well, and so at times it can feel very lonely absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and skipping to the second bit of the question, in terms of the growth of the firm and your successes with clients, what worked? It might be something quite small in terms of a competency framework or a bonus system, or it could be something to do with leadership or culture. Were there any things that you thought, oh, that was a good decision, rad.
Speaker 1:I think the main thing was I almost if I describe it with three A's and this applies to both the team and also our clients One of the principles of Patel Millers and one of the values, the core values that we had. Our first core value actually was that we are in business for the well-being of our people.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:And that permeated through the organization and permeated with the way in which we worked actually that we are an asset-based people, asset-based business, looking after those. Suddenly they'll look after the clients and we'll take it from them, and I think finding the thing that our clients and our team really wanted was that personal touch. And that really is the three A's, as I put it. And the first is availability, and it's really being there at the client or with your team when they need you and responding really, really quickly to their needs. And the second is then amiability, so doing it in the right way and doing it in a friendly way.
Speaker 1:I had a very when I was very junior at Accenture Anderson.
Speaker 1:I had a very senior client and he gave me some amazing advice.
Speaker 1:He said don't be one of those consultants that becomes a friend in the six months of the project and you forget the next day and then I hear from you again in three years time when you want to sell me something. And actually that amiability is really, really key and that just keeping whether you're working with clients and team or not, just keeping in contact, being interested in them they will be interested in you and just chatting about industry or trends or business or moves or colleagues and friends is really really key. The amiability side is really really key. And then the third thing is ability. You know there's lots of people with ability, but actually going above and beyond, as I mentioned, moving away from method and moving to experience, is really really key. And I think that's a real differentiator for the smaller boutique-type firms, in that you can over-represent on all three of those dimensions at once. We can be faster, we can be more industry-specific and actually the expectation of working one-to-one with our clients will be much, much higher.
Speaker 2:Great, thank you, that's really. I wrote those down as you as you were talking. So, cause I'm really like I'm teaching a, I get my students going to my MBA, students going out to local charities, acting as consultants. So if it's okay with you, I'll give them the three A's, Of course, Absolutely, Really useful. Okay, so you've got the firm, you've grown the firm. You're perhaps looking well, you were looking at an exit. What was it about? Did you go through a formal sort of you know, broker or bank process where you go through the whole, you do the beauty parade? Or was there something about Metis that you thought, actually, you know, this just works actually you know, this just works.
Speaker 1:Well, if I take a step back from that, we never really had an exit in mind.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:But actually there was an event Jonathan Miller left the firm and so it was really at that point and I'll go back to it's a lonely place to be. It was lonely when it was Jonathan and I. It was even lonelier when Jonathan left the firm. Good news is we're both still great friends and we still work together.
Speaker 2:That's something and not always the case, as you know.
Speaker 1:Exactly. But there was a very amicable split and we remain great friends and we still work together today in different ways. It was really at that point where I thought, what do I want to do with this business? And I really had two questions in my mind Can I run this business by myself and do I want to keep running this business by myself?
Speaker 1:I ran it for another 18 months and so I'd proven that I could run it, but it felt a little bit more lonely and actually it was really the implications on the team that I had. You know, where's the next big wave of growth going and coming from for the team? And at that time, you know, for a long time digital and data had been big areas of investments of our clients and that would have taken many millions to build a capability to be credible in those spaces. And so I thought, look, we do great work, but who, um, who is going to provide me and the team with that next wave of growth? Uh, so, to answer a specific question, I didn't go through a broker. Um, we did have quite a few inbound calls from other businesses. Um, I'd never really entertained them, but because of those two reasons, I started to entertain those conversations and a business called Metis came along and I met the people and that's really what started the process. There were other options as well through that process, but Metis clearly became the front runner quite quickly.
Speaker 2:Well, you also probably saved yourself half a million in terms of not going through a bank. Indeed, it's not a cheap process. Okay, now I know a bit about Metis, but if you could tell us a little bit about Metis and how it is either similar to or different to what you were experiencing before joining?
Speaker 1:So it's a wonderful firm. I'm still here, having been here for just over four years now. So it's a fantastic firm and it was really the opportunity that Metis gave the team, which was the draw. Firstly, it was all around the people, the people three founders that I met got on really really well with them. The growth trajectory that the business had been on over a relatively short space of time. I think Metis and Patel Millers started about the same sorts of time. Okay, metis is now about 1100 people. Wow, so it's been spectacular growth over that period and the opportunity within Metis was really really clear.
Speaker 1:So Metis had big, you know, established offices and practices throughout Europe, but nothing really in the UK. Patel Miller was acquired and it really became the firm that rose to the UK practice. But it still felt like that small community, albeit within a bigger organization. So there were many similarities on the you know, the culture and the people and the aspiration side of things. There were many similarities in the overlap of what we did and where we did it.
Speaker 1:So a big advisory practice within Metis, which is that's me, and a big focus. A lot of our clients are in retail and consumer, so there was a big overlap there in terms of what we did and how that could support Metis and how Metis could support the growth of the UK practice within that. Okay, and then the differences, which are really complementary, were a big data solutions practice and a big digital practice. So being able to expand what I can talk to my clients about was really really key, and I think that's one of the key things with a successful integration is finding those elements of complement and finding those elements of incremental, and having both of those things really helps businesses integrate and then grow really helps businesses integrate and then grow?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and I think often founders or owners who sell assume that the buyer has done their homework and they have an integration plan and it's fine. And in half the cases it's simply not the case. And even when they do do it, they're going to miss things.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, Absolutely. The expectations of going into the deal will be very, very different. One thing that's guaranteed it will be very different expectations on the other side, and reacting to that is going to be quite critical actually.
Speaker 2:Yes, and do you have any other advice for people you know sort of potentially, you know, coming up to a sale and you know they're obviously focused on the sale and not perhaps the earn out, but that post-deal phase, from a founder's perspective who might be, you know, joining the buyer, for you know between two to five years, know between two to five years. Do you have any advice on making that work above and beyond?
Speaker 1:you know, hitting the targets if you can, oh gosh, uh. Any advice? I think the earn out is obviously. You know the overall deal shape is obviously quite critical. Um, the one thing that I found was that the more I focused on that, the less I focused on the things which are really going to execute against that deal shape, which is me going out to market, finding new clients, delivering great work and building a team and building a positive and cash flow and profitable and growing revenue. Business is, and at times I was, too distracted by the deal shape and the equation for earn out rather than really, and that takes a lot of brain power. Actually and I'll come back to expectations pre-deal and post-deal your brain power is only 100%. Where you invest, that brain power is going to be quite critical. I was investing a lot in the deal shape and not enough on the things that are really going to make that deal shape successful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really good advice, but I mean, it's hard to do, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Oh, without a doubt.
Speaker 2:You know you don't want to get strung up because you've missed some small print in the contract or you haven't. You know, guaranteed investment or whatever.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, A good lawyer through that process is worth their weight in gold. That's one of the things I realized. Actually, the first real interaction of a good lawyer who can help you through that process to understand the paper versus the reality is quite a key thing. I can say the second thing with against pre and post deal expectations that my hotel window was acquired on the 1st of February 2020, and a few days later COVID happened, so that really was quite an interesting thing in that period.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh well done.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Okay, and what does the future hold? What's the? You know? I mean, obviously Metis has had, you know, a good few years, certainly compared to the rest of the market. So you know, I'm guessing it's an exciting, positive place to be.
Speaker 1:It's very exciting and a very positive place to be for a number of reasons. One, people here are fantastic and you know, if you enjoy working with the people around you, then everything becomes easier, and that's really the starting point. That's why I did the thing in the first place and that's why I'm still here. The growth aspirations we have as a business are really, really exciting, and so that's great to be part of. I've expanded my role within Metis as well, so I still run the UK practice, but I also run advisory services, which is one of our big practices globally as well. So I sit on the executive board, so that gives me good visibility of what's happening across the business. It gives me good influence as to how we're moving forward as a business, and that helps me grow and it challenges me as well.
Speaker 1:We're growing at a rate which is way, way above and beyond the market, and so we're definitely doing something right. And within the strategy of the organization we've got a brilliant blend of advisory, digital solutions and data solutions. So not only have we got the three-week, three-month, six-month advisory type programs, we also have a large proportion of our revenue is from longer-term partnerships, where we're really having influence at our clients and really having gain share models where we succeed, when we deliver great results for our clients, and so actually the business model within Metis is really really well suited, and we're just setting out a new strategy of growth over the next, uh, few years, which is really really exciting, um, and it's a wonderful yeah, wonderful and exciting journey to be on that's great.
Speaker 2:That's great, it's, you know it's. I don't think people realize how hard, once you get to that size of sort of, you know, around the thousand mark, it's difficult to grow, it's not. You know you have to be doing very good work but plus, balancing, managing the costs and all the beauty that comes with, you know a bigger firm, and so the fact that you're still growing at the great the rate you are is is very impressive. You must be doing some things right.
Speaker 1:We're definitely doing some things right and, if I think back over my my career, there's always the threes. There's humps when you get to three people within a business, when you get to 30 people, when you get to about 300. And I'm still figuring out whether the next one's at about 1,000 people or 3,000 people, but I'll let you know when I know. Yes, yes, but there are certain humps that you get to when you grow consulting practices that are really hard to get over. Actually, yes, but that's probably you could spend a whole hour podcast just talking about those humps.
Speaker 2:Well, I pretty much wrote my last book on those three humps, yeah, and that was 100,000 words, and I still felt I had more to say. Anish, thank you so much for your time, your insights, and wish you all the best for the future. Yeahish, thank you so much for your time, your insights and, uh, wish you all the best for the future yeah, thank you for the time.
Speaker 1:Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you. It's been a pleasure thank you.
