Episode 130: From Startup to the UK’s fastest growing consultancy, with Tony Clark

In this week’s episode, Nick chats with Tony Clark, Founder of NextWave. Regular listeners to this podcast will know that we centre the discussion on the various routes our guests’ careers have taken, in order to highlight the endless possibilities offered by a career in consulting. Tony’s journey is a fascinating one. After spending nine years at Accenture, he was on course to make Associate Partner, but instead changed track and helped to scale two successful boutique consultancies, MA Partners and Crossbridge Consulting – both of which grew and eventually went on to be acquired by larger groups. During his time leading those firms, Tony honed his consulting and business growth skills, delivering complex technology solutions for clients in financial services, and this led to an idea for his own venture. NextWave launched in 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, but despite the difficult start, the firm has already grown into a £6m+, 60-strong digital acceleration consultancy. Recently recognised as the UK’s fastest growing consultancy and 13th fastest growing business in the UK as a whole, with an annual compound growth rate of almost 200%. Nick and Tony dive into some fascinating topics in this episode, including… - Tony’s decision to start the firm and the signs that he saw in the industry that helped him set the course for NextWave - How Covid-19 almost derailed NextWave before it even got started – and how the firm not only bounced back but went on to achieve phenomenal growth in just three short years - Why not being ‘billable’ ended up being one of Tony’s best business decisions in founding Nextwave - How living the company values has resulted in a culture that people want to be a part of …and much more. In fact, there’s so much in this episode, it’s almost impossible to summarise! Suffice to say, if you’re thinking of making the leap from Big 4 to boutique, planning to start up your own firm, or simply enjoy listening to epic success stories, you’ll love this episode of Climb in Consulting. We hope you enjoy the show! Reach out to Tony: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-clark-07160b/ Learn more about NextWave: https://www.nxwave.com/ Books, magazines, and websites mentioned in the show: To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Persuading, Convincing, and Influencing Others by Daniel H. Pink 24 Assets: Create a digital, scalable, valuable and fun business that will thrive in a fast changing world by Daniel Priestley NextWave Perspectives: The Sunday Times Best Places to Work Award 2023

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As a management consultant myself I’ve always been lucky to have mentors who have guided me through my career. When I was in house I regularly had quality time with Senior Partners that helped me rapidly accelerate my career and has continued to help since I’ve gone out on my own. While I had this great resource and knowledge bank to draw on I know many friends in Consulting aren’t as lucky with some only speaking with senior partners on a monthly or quarterly basis. That’s why I created this podcast. I wanted to help people like you who want to accelerate their careers in consulting by interviewing leaders in the field to share the advice, tips and strategies that they used to get to the top so that you can to so that you can too. In each Episode I’ll be interviewing a senior figure in the industry so that you can learn from them. We’ll be going deep in to their background, how they succeeded and what their advice would be for you. This podcast is brought to you by Create Engage the Digital Marketing agency for the disruptive Management Consultancy. Digital Marketing has moved forward, but most consulting firms haven’t. Many Consulting firms still see their corporate blog as their sole Digital Marketing channel and find themselves frustrated when these blogs yield little if any results. To help those of you who want to harness the power of Digital Marketing to grow your Consulting Business but don’t have the knowledge, capacity or in-house capability to do so I launched Create Engage, the first Digital Marketing agency for the Management Consulting Industry. If you’d like to find out more about how Create Engage can help you use Digital Marketing to take your business to the next level then drop me an email at [email protected] or go to our website www.createengage.co.uk where you can download our free case study that breaks down down the Digital Marketing strategies used by one successful Consulting firm to help them grow over 400% in just 3 years and gives you the secrets they used, so that you can apply them in your own firm.