Doubled the Business, Then Doubled It Again

The Situation

This specialized sales coaching firm had approximately 20 years of expertise and a proven methodology. But the business faced an existential crisis.

Everything came through word of mouth. No marketing, no thought leadership, no systematic demand generation. Worse, the founder's professional network—the source of all business—was retiring. As contacts left the industry, the pipeline evaporated.

The founder knew many people but had no way to stay connected. His LinkedIn network was dormant. New buyers in his target market didn't know his firm existed.

And the core service—analyzing field coaching reports—was labor-intensive and expensive. Trained analysts scored each report against a detailed rubric at roughly $500 per report. For large clients with hundreds of managers, this created significant costs and scalability constraints.

The Approach

We made three transformative moves:

Built Founder Visibility. Transformed the LinkedIn network from scattered connections to targeted industry leaders—over 70% matching ideal customer profile. Established the founder as visible expert through consistent thought leadership.

Reengaged Dormant Relationships. Systematically reactivated past clients and inactive contacts. This generated three qualified opportunities in the first few months—fastest path to revenue.

AI-Powered Service Transformation. Automated field coaching report analysis using AI trained on the firm's proprietary rubric. Reduced cost from $500 per report to nearly free. Improved consistency beyond human analysts. Accelerated feedback from days to instantaneous.

The AI transformation took hundreds of thousands in annual analyst labor costs out of the business while improving service quality and speed.

The Impact

Doubled revenue in the first year. Doubled it again in the second year.

The AI transformation paid for my consulting engagement several times over through immediate cost reduction. The visibility transformation solved the existential network crisis and created sustainable pipeline generation.

The founder now faces a high-quality problem: deciding whether to scale with team and infrastructure or maintain as a highly profitable lifestyle business.

The Lesson

Network dependency is existential risk. Professional services firms that depend entirely on founder relationships face catastrophic failure when those relationships age out of the market.

But existential challenges can become dramatic growth. Systematic visibility building, relationship reactivation, and operational innovation turned a dying business into a thriving, capacity-constrained operation—all within two years.