Attendees

• Andrew Tischler
• Jon Rothbart
• Dave Zucker
• Tamara Benetti
• Ben Niedner
• Marius Scholinz
• Brent Packer

Topics

1. 🤔 Personal experience: What has been your own personal experience in the independent consulting market in the past 6 months?
2. 📈 Market changes: What are the macro changes you’re seeing and hearing about in the market and your hypothesis on the cause? (e.g., slowdowns in certain industries, increased demand in other industries, increases in certain types of projects, etc.)
3. 🧗 Action: Which actions can do collectively in NorthLawn and individually to be more effective for opening up more opportunities?

Notes

🤔 Personal experience: What has been your own personal experience in the independent consulting market in the past 6 months?

• Tamara
• Noticed a stark contrast between 2022 (extremely busy period) and end of 2023 (big slowdown of opportunities)
• However, in the past 10 days (end of Jan 2024), there has been much more activity, specifically
• In Germany and Austria (not in US)
• For non-remote roles
• Topics in transformations and carve-out support (PE operations, preparing for a spin off) and less interesting projects (e.g., new market entry)
• More from international clients in the region than local players
• Sourced via LinkedIn and certain platform (The Barton Partnership, expertpowerhouse, Operandi, Umbrex)
• Malt, BTG where they’re more anonymous platforms and people don’t talk to you, it’s much harder
• Dave
• Overall uncertainty in the market and a sense of “wait and see”
• The market dynamic plays to PE’s strength since PE can take advantage of the down market
• Marius
• Had main client for past 6 months and now looking for more
• Unsure if PE flow has changed or if other market have gone down so it seems larger
• Even for transformation / restructuring work, finding it challenging to win work
• Feeling that even if good fit, there is always something preventing from converting (e.g., price, more niche)
• Platforms (e.g., Malt) are aggregating as many consultants as possible (as much supply of consultants) making it tough
• Ben
• Noticing an uptake on competition recently when pitching on platform
• More personal interaction platforms (either directly with clients or boutique firms) is better
• Hard to have transparency on what makes a successful pitch
• Feels like layoffs increased supply of independent consultant
• Andrew
• Platforms that has worked well historically for him were Movemeon and McKinsey alumni job board
• Interested in how NorthLawn can collectively work together on group hunting and farming
• Jon
• Similar themes to the above

📈 Market changes: What are the macro changes you’re seeing and hearing about in the market? (e.g., slowdowns in certain industries, increased demand in other industries, etc.) (Adapted from Unleashed podcast on state of independent consulting market with Charles Aris CEO/ Umbrex)

• Bright spots
• Industrials: Trends towards onshoring manufacturing and operations in the US
• Private equity portfolio ops: Though deal flow is down, they still are looking to maximize their investments’ value
• Projects with immediate and measurable cost savings or revenue growth: Less interest in companies about the long-term and more of a shift to immediate revenue growth or cost savings due to down market
• Dull spots
• Consumer packaged goods and retail: Due to low customer certainty and market slowdown
• Long-term strategy projects: Less interest in companies about the long-term and more of a shift to immediate revenue growth or cost savings due to down market
• AI-related projects: Too new and uncertain for consultant hiring
• Brent is noticing the opposite and that AI is active

🧗 Action: Which actions can do collectively in NorthLawn and individually to be more effective for opening up more opportunities?

• Overall, desire to do more collectively through NorthLawn for “hunting and farming”
• Detailed catalog on members’ experience and client needs
• External-facing webinars and information sharing to potential clients and across members’ networks
• Differentiated offerings (e.g., “2 part-time consultants for the price of 1 full-time”)
• May require client education (e.g., in Germany/Austria they are accustomed to working with individual people) [Tamara]
• Approaching the platforms collectively as NorthLawn “firm”
• Possibly experimenting with a low cost part-time sales to support outbounds [Marius]
• Generally, are there NorthLawn aspects that can be outsourced? (e.g., PR, marketing, etc.)

🅿️Misc. notes / parking lot

• Defining the NorthLawn “product” and our value proposition