Episode 79 – James Constable – Albany Beck

In today’s episode of Climb In Consulting I speak with James Constable, CEO and Founder of Albany Beck, the specialist financial services consultancy that’s disrupting the industry with their unique approach that balances leading subject matter expertise with cost effective delivery. Now full disclosure, Albany Beck are a client of ours, but it didn’t start like that. I originally approached James to appear on the podcast but one thing led to another and here we are. Having worked with James and the Albany Beck team for coming up to six months now, it was great to sit down with him for the podcast and talk about the Albany Beck story from the beginning. While I knew some of the journey he and the team have been on, there was lots I didn’t, and this conversation was my chance to find out all about it. Having started his career in contractor recruitment, James founded and grew Albany Beck to become one of the leading contractor resourcing firms in the banking industry. This success ultimately led him to sell part of the business to private equity. But that’s not where the story ends. Having worked in recruitment for over 15 years, James and his team felt that they could see the problems with both the contracting and traditional consulting models, and knew there must be a better way, so they launched their new consulting offering, or Albany Beck 2.0 as it’s sometimes called. Their unique model, something that James goes in to detail on in our conversation, has seen them go from strength to strength. Growing from a team of just the founders, to over 170 consultants in less than 18 months. And as James explains in today’s episode, that’s just the beginning of their growth journey. We go into a whole host of topics in this conversation, including: – Why James and the team decided to launch Albany Beck and the client conversation that started it all off. – How they were able to scale the business so quickly and their secrets to making their model a success. – And James’s advice for anyone considering striking out on their own, the conversations you should have with your significant other before doing so, and why Jeff Bezos’s wife deserved every cent of the divorce settlement she got. It was great to catch up with James outside of our day-to-day work together and have a conversation for the podcast. Working with the Albany Beck team, we see first-hand the great work they do and the business they’re building, and I really enjoyed having a chat with James to share his insights, learning and experience with you for the podcast. Whether you’re looking for advice on starting your own firm or considering how your consultancy will need to adapt its business model to keep pace with the competition, I know you’ll get a ton from this episode. Get in touch with James at – https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-constable-a7b6633/ Check out Albany Beck at – https://www.albanybeck.com/ Specific things discussed in the show Who Moved My Cheese by Dr Spencer Johnson – https://amzn.to/3ckO3BB Loosing My Virginity by Richard Branson – https://amzn.to/3smAdnL

Om Podcasten

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.