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...

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...

“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...

As we were building our engineering and built environment consultancy from $3M to $30M, we wore all the hats. 

We were leading. 
Selling. 
Managing the team. 
And still heavily involved in delivery. 

At the time, it felt responsible. 

We told ourselves that staying close to the work meant protecting quality. 
Keeping clients happy. 
And making sure nothing slipped through the cracks. 

But over time, we realised something important: 

Our time in delivery was actually sabotaging growth. 

Because every hour we spent inside projects was an hour we weren’t spending on leadership. 
On business development. 
On strategy. 
On building the team. 
On fixing the things that would actually allow the business to grow. 

And the bigger we got, the harder it became. 

The business needed more from us strategically.  
But we were still buried in the doing. 

That’s when we made a decision.  

Founders can’t stay deep in delivery if they want the business to keep growing. 

Yesterday’s “Hiring An Ops Manager Or GM” workshop was one of the most detailed sessions I’ve run on removing founders from the day-to-day running of their consultancy. 
 
Engineering and built environment consultancy owners showed up ready to stop carrying operations themselves — and walked away with a clear plan for installing the operational support their business needs. 
 
And the feedback’s been great: 
 
“Exactly what we needed — clear, practical and immediately applicable.” 
“This gave us real clarity on what the Ops Manager role should actually look like.” 
“Great session Josh. Lots of practical takeaways.” 
 
A few people reached out saying they couldn’t make it live — so I’m making the full replay available until Friday. 
 
Grab the replay here to watch at your convenience >> Click Here
 
You’ll get access to everything included in the workshop: 
 
✔️ The Ops Manager vs GM Decision Framework 
✔️ Clarity on the responsibilities, ownership and accountability for the role 
✔️ A practical plan to ...

Tomorrow we’re running the “Hiring An Ops Manager Or GM” online workshop — and if you’ve been sitting on the fence, here’s why now’s the time to jump in. 
 
Here are some real-life examples from Boardroom coaching clients who’ve installed operational support and stopped carrying the entire business themselves: 

 
— John & Amanda brought in an Ops Manager and Admin support, freeing up their time through delegation while delivering their biggest month ever 
— Steve hired an Operations Manager, creating clarity, structure and the ability to plan confidently for the next phase of growth 
— Giulio installed an Ops Manager who now handles operational logistics and execution, allowing him to step away from day-to-day involvement 
 
Take a glance at tomorrow’s calendar. 
 
Now back to me. 
Now back to your calendar. 
Now back to me. 
 
Tomorrow, you could still be stuck running the day-to-day — answering questions, fixing workflow issues and carrying the operational load… 
 
…or you could learn the exact sy...

Let’s be honest. 
 
A lot of consultancy owners end up parenting their business. 
 
Not leading it. 
 
Parenting it. 
 
You check everyone’s work. 
You answer every question. 
You solve the disagreements. 
You make sure everyone’s playing nicely in the sandpit. 
You step in when something breaks before someone starts to cry.  
 
And you find yourself constantly repeating things like: 
 
“Did you check the system first?” 
“Have you looked at the template?” 
“Please update the tracker.” 
“Did you check that before it got sent out?” 
 
Sound familiar? 
 
Before long, your day starts to look less like leadership… 
 
And more like supervision. 
 
It’s like you’re checking homework, breaking up disagreements, answering silly questions and making sure the business doesn’t run off the rails. 
 
That’s not how a consultancy grows. 
 
And it’s one of the biggest reasons founders get stuck carrying the entire business. 
 
Let’s fix that. 
 
Next week, I’m running an online workshop: 
 
“Hiring An Ops Manager Or GM” 
— Tuesday 10th Ma...

When we grew our engineering & built environment consultancy from $3M to $30M, we thought we had operations sorted. 
 
Projects were coming in. 
The team was busy. 
Revenue was growing. 
 
But there was one problem. 
 
The business still ran through us. 
 
When systems needed changing — we were involved. 
When workflow broke — we stepped in. 
When business reporting needed reviewing — it landed on our desk. 
When team issues escalated — we handled them. 
 
And because we could fix it quickly… we did. 
 
Sound familiar? 
 
The truth is, most consultancies stall because the founder is still the operational bottleneck. 
 
— A business that only runs smoothly when you’re across everything 
— Decisions that wait for you 
— Systems that depend on your input 
— A team that escalates instead of owns 
 
That’s the problem. 
 
And next week, I’ll show you how to fix it. 
 
I’m running a 90-minute online workshop called: 
 
“Hiring An Ops Manager Or GM” 
— Tuesday 10th March 
— 11:45am – 1:15pm NSW time 
— Just $100 to join 
— Limi...