What the hell happened?

Success had always been a given for me. Job with a top consulting firm right out of college and it was a career rocket launch into space from there. Staff, Senior, Manager, Senior Manager?there was no stopping me. Traveling all over the country, working with Fortune 500 companies, it didn?t get any better than that?except for the traveling all over the country part.

Three years ago I decided I?d had enough of parenting and husbanding (is that a word?) by phone. Being out of town Monday through Friday was getting incredibly old. Besides, I didn?t need to work for someone else anymore. After 17 years I was an ?expert?, so why not start my own firm, consulting wherever and to whomever I wanted.

Hence the birth of Breakthrough Consulting and the start of ?the good life?. Or, so I thought?

It?s amazing how quickly you can go through 17 years of savings and two lines of credit when you?re really focused?and boy was I focused.

Things started off strong. A few local clients who I?d worked with before decided to give the new firm a shot. I hired a dozen consultants and we were off to the races. We beat our plan each of the first 12 months and we were up to 50 employees before the glue was dry on our office nameplate. That?s when the real ?fun? started.

It?s hard to see the floor falling out beneath you when you?re running as fast as I was?but by the time I looked down, the fall was pretty steep.

It started when our largest client, who made up 40% of our business, decided they wanted to go ?in a different direction?. I?m still not entirely sure what that meant or what new direction they were now headed. What I am sure of is that we would no longer be paying our bills with our biggest client?s profits. It also meant I had 20 consultants ?on the bench? (that?s consultant-speak for ?getting paid for doing nothing?). 

The ?fun? continued when I informed these ?on the bench? consultants that they now had to work on some business development activities (that?s consultant-speak for ?selling?). Since, for some people, ?selling? is a dirty word, within 2 months, half of my ?on the bench? consultants decided to quit. Of course, they included a good portion of my top performers.

Over the next several months, we teetered on the brink of success and failure. Clients would come and go, employees would come and go, and our high growth business was shrinking by the month. The ?rah rah? attitude we started with was now almost completely gone. Employees weren?t happy, clients weren?t happy, and I wasn?t exactly a thrill to be around.

This is where our story begins.