S2E4: The truth about paid ads, with Karen Young

No guest this time. It's another Ask Me Anything, built from the questions consultancy leaders ask me most.The first one I keep hearing is whether it's your positioning that's the problem or just a slow market. From there I get into narrowing down, websites that don't convert, the phrases every firm uses, and getting a partner group to agree.In this episode:How to tell whether it's your positioning or a slow market, and why spend never goes to zeroWhy narrowing down feels so risky, and two ways to do it: the spearhead approach and the column approachPositioning around a situational niche instead of sector or company sizeThe blink test, and what your homepage headline and imagery have a few seconds to doWhy "people first" and "award winning" don't set you apart, and what doesTalking about a client result in the present tense without making a promiseHow to get your partners to agree on one way of describing what you doHow long it takes before buyers associate you with the problem you've claimed, and why testing your message is the only reliable way to find outThere were more questions on my list than I got through. If yours didn't come up, send it to me on LinkedIn for the next AMA. Guest interviews are back next episode.If any of this sounds like your week, book a Positioning Primer. It's a 15-minute call with me, and there's no pitch: https://meetings.hubspot.com/matt-hodkinson/positioning-primerFor more on these ideas, subscribe to The Unique Boutique® Bulletin: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-unique-boutique-bulletin-6995763255029682176/Send us a message

You know what to do. So why aren’t you doing it?Tom Cooke is a business performance coach and author of It’s Time to Win Big. After working with more than 2,000 business owners and founders, he’s convinced that most of them don’t need more information - they need to be more effective with what they already know.We talk about why procrastination is usually an emotional block in disguise, how to trace a slowdown in your business back to the activity you stopped doing, and why the feast and famine cycle is a focus problem, not a sales problem. Tom also makes the case for courage over confidence, “optimum” over perfect, and creating space in your week rather than cramming it.Plus his answers to Snog, Marry, Avoid - including the one thing he thinks business owners should stop outsourcing to AI.Find Tom at tomwjcooke.com and on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/tomwjcooke.Send us a message

Sara Boltman founded Butterfly Data in 2003. She'd seen what her employer was charging for her time and decided she could probably do it herself. For years it was a solo operation, run on three-month contracts around house renovations and two small children. Today it's a data consultancy of nearly 50 people, working on citizen-scale data for government departments, banks and insurers. It's also employee-owned and a certified B Corp.In this episode, Sara and I cover:Choosing data over nuclear. Why a physics graduate sponsored by Nuclear Electric chose dot-com era consulting instead, and how a scientist's habit of testing a hypothesis applies to running a business.The breakfast meeting. The 2019 approach from an acquirer that made her realise she needed to learn how consultancies scale.Working for free. The Home Office ACE framework, a year of unpaid work before the first paid commission, and the pitfalls of proofs of concept that bypass IT and finance.Going employee-owned mid-growth. Why she did it to solve a retention problem rather than to fund an exit, and why she calls Butterfly the John Lewis of consultancies.The "so what" problem. Why nobody cares that you're a B Corp or employee-owned until you explain what it means for them.Getting picky about clients. How narrowing her focus changed what Butterfly bids for, and the moment she accuses me of "differentiation shaming".SenseIV. Her medtech side venture, which grew out of a hackathon and has just raised its first seed round.Sara closes with Snog Marry Avoid: track what each win really costs you, only go into harness with people whose values match yours, and stop being the single point of failure in your own business.Send us a message

Peter Wardle spent 25+ years leading transformation programmes across telecoms, rail and energy - and got so frustrated with big systems integrators failing to deliver that he set up his own consultancy to fix broken programmes.In this episode of The Unique Boutique, Peter shares his journey from the Royal Engineers to founding Mainstay Consulting and Intelligent Assessments, and how he turned decades of health check IP into MAST, a continuous assurance platform now used by boutique consultancies to digitise their own frameworks.We cover:The go, no-go meeting where every leader scored 90%+ confidence - and one subject matter expert said zeroWhy anonymous confidence pulses surface problems months earlier than status reportsThe rebrand that changed everything: nobody wanted "assurance" (it sounds like audit), but everyone wanted "delivery intelligence"The honest truth about productising your IP - including the mistakes Peter made when the platform became a shiny object and client work sufferedHow to use assessments as both a diagnostic and a marketing tool, without turning them into a data mining exerciseWhy AI is a brilliant intern but a terrible postman - and the governance every consultancy needs around itPlus Peter's Snog Marry Avoid: document your IP, live by your frameworks, and stop regurgitating unchecked AI output to clients.Connect with Peter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pwardle/ Intelligent Assessments: https://intelligentassessments.aiIf you lead a boutique consultancy and want to stand out in a crowded market, subscribe to The Unique Boutique for more conversations like this one.Send us a message

Most consultancies grow by doing good work and hoping more of it turns up. Deri Hughes calls that delivery-led growth, and it's where firms get stuck.Deri Hughes founded Honeycomb Consulting Skills Training, working with the leaders of consulting firms who want their teams to be more effective, more engaged, and more profitable. Around half of that work is now sales training - which means he spends his days watching consultants avoid the one thing that would move their pipeline.In this episode, Deri breaks down the three levels of consultancy growth: delivery-led, relationship-led, and authority-led. He explains why most firms plateau at the first, why the second one terrifies the average consultant, and why the third is both the elite tier and the safety valve for introverts.We also get into how much of your IP you should be giving away (his rule of thumb: more than you're comfortable with), what really happened when Honeycomb moved its entire operation onto AI, and the reason he's pulling back from AI-generated output despite the productivity gains.Then there's the inner game - the head trash, procrastination, and imposter syndrome that keeps capable consultants from doing the things they already know they should do. Deri has been mapping this for twenty years, and it's the part of the conversation with the most in it.In this episode:The three consultancy growth models and how to tell which one you're stuck inWhy boom-and-bust pipelines are a psychology problem, not a process problemThe IP question: how much to share, and why giving it away doesn't cost you workWhat "AI native" actually looks like inside a boutique firmThe inner game - and why the growth you need is through the thing that scares youGuest: Deri Hughes, Founder, Honeycomb Consulting Skills TrainingHost: Matt Hodkinson, Founder, TyltStop competing. Start leading.Send us a message

You already suspect you're undercharging. What you probably haven't accepted is that it's your fault - not the market's, not your clients'.John Ray spent nearly three decades in investment banking and investment management. Then corporate ageism pushed him out the door in 2013 - and he discovered that after a career surrounded by money, he had no idea how to price his own work. Neither did any of his clients. That gap became his life's work.John is the #1 bestselling author of The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices, host of The Price and Value Journey, and has produced over 2,000 podcast episodes.In this episode:Why price isn't a number - it's a system, and a marketing signalThe red flags that reveal your pricing is inadequateWhy pricing by the hour puts you on the opposite side of the table from your clientWhat the Generosity Mindset actually is (and what it definitely isn't)Why the clients who cause you the most grief are the ones paying you leastWhy winning 100% of pitches means your prices are too lowThe AI question: does it amplify your excellence or expose your stupidity?The one question to ask a client this week that will change how you priceSnog, Marry, Avoid - John's quick win, his non-negotiable, and what to bin tomorrowConnect with John Website: https://johnray.co Book: https://thegenerositymindset.com Podcast: https://pricevaluejourneypodcast.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnray1/Send us a message

The Credible Choice, Not the Louder One - Sue Rizzello on Proof as DifferentiationMost boutique consultancies have a handful of case studies sitting on their website, quietly doing very little. Sue Rizzello thinks that's a wasted revenue opportunity - and in this episode, she explains how to fix it.Sue has spent 35 years in B2B marketing and runs Remedy Marketing, now in its 20th year. Her specialism is proof: using customer case studies and thought leadership to make boutique firms the credible choice, not just the louder one. In a noisy, commoditised market, she argues, it's the quality of your work and the depth of your insight - made visible - that sets you apart. Everything else is just volume.In this conversation, Matt and Sue get into:Why expertise on its own no longer differentiates youThe "problem-solution-benefit" trap that makes most case studies dull, and what to do insteadWhy the client's experience - not the service or the product - is the real differentiatorSue's social proof pyramid, and why one great case study can outweigh a hundred testimonialsHow to use proof at every stage of the buying journey, not just to closeGetting clients to say yes: why a case study is about them, not youHandling confidentiality with anonymised, interview-led storiesWhy case studies are "gifts that keep on giving" - some still working a decade onWhat real thought leadership looks like in an AI-flooded world, and why AI can't originate itThere's a lot here you can act on this week - starting with an honest audit of the stories you already have and don't realise you're sitting on.About Sue Rizzello Sue is the founder of Remedy Marketing, a B2B marketing agency specialising in case studies, thought leadership and customer proof. Connect with her on LinkedIn or find out more at remedymarketing.co.uk.About the show The Unique Boutique is the podcast for boutique consultancy leaders who want to stand out, sharpen their positioning and become the obvious choice in their niche. Hosted by Matt Hodkinson, founder of Tylt.Send us a message

"We need a new client tomorrow." It's the moment most consultancies start thinking about business development - and according to Luke Badiali, that's already too late.Luke is the co-founder of BeDeveloped, which helps boutique consulting firms replace feast-and-famine selling with a repeatable BD engine. Drawing on conversations with over a thousand consulting leaders, he makes a clear case for getting ahead of the curve rather than reacting when things go wrong.In this episode we cover why business development feels so much harder in consulting than in other sectors, and why throwing money at a senior sales hire so often fails. Luke digs into the opportunities firms are sitting on without realising - dormant contacts, under-served clients, and the simple key-account question that opens new doors fast. He gives a straight answer on whether cold outreach works in consulting, makes the case for picking up the phone again, and explains how to sequence outreach from your hottest relationships down to genuinely cold prospects.He also walks through what changes when a firm gets this right, including a client who went from one new business conversation in a year to twenty-five in six months, a realistic timeline for results, his take on the state of the sector in 2026, and where AI genuinely helps with BD - and where it doesn't.Plus our regular Snog, Marry, Avoid finish: Luke's quick win, his non-negotiable, and what he'd have every founder ditch today.A practical, no-nonsense listen for any consultancy founder whose pipeline runs hot and cold.Find Luke on LinkedIn or at bedeveloped.com.Send us a message

"Google are bandits." It's not the kind of thing you'd expect from a certified Google Partner agency - but Karen Young says it with a smile, and she means it.Karen is the founder of Ethos Metrics, the ethical pay-per-click agency built on a simple, provocative idea: the platforms are incentivised to maximise their own profit, not yours, and that gap costs advertisers more than they realise. In this episode she explains how the system really works, why most default settings benefit the platform over the advertiser, and how a smart business can take back control.We cover where AI is genuinely improving paid advertising and where it's just noise (plus a few horror stories of letting it run unsupervised), why LinkedIn is often the better bet for consultancies, the difference between vanity metrics and the numbers that actually matter, and how to know whether PPC is even right for your business before you spend a penny.Karen also shares the story behind Ethos - why she built a deliberately small agency of "corporate escapees," and why being honest to a fault has become her sharpest point of difference.A genuinely useful listen for any founder who's been burned by paid ads, or assumed they were beyond reach.Send us a message

Most consultancies still pitch what they can do. Clients have stopped buying it.Cris Beswick has spent two decades inside the boardrooms of global brands - first as a consultancy founder with two exits (the second five days before Lehman Brothers crashed), and now as an innovation, leadership and culture advisor to CEOs at some of the world's most complex organisations.In this episode of The Unique Boutique, Matt sits down with Cris to unpack why the big-consultancy model is visibly cracking, what's replacing it, and why boutique firms are now better positioned than the global names to win the work that matters.What we cover:Why "innovation is an outcome, not a thing you do" - and what that reframes about how you pitchThe McKinsey stat that explains everything: 84% of leaders say innovation is critical, only 6% are happy with their performanceWhy capability-led positioning is dying - and outcomes-led positioning is taking its placeThe "innovation theatre" trap (and the positioning equivalent boutiques quietly fall into)Why roughly 80% of AI implementation programmes are failing - and what leaders are getting wrongThe "position of truth" - the honest baseline that should anchor every client engagementHow boutiques can now run the same diagnostic-led approach the big firms have always had to themselvesVulnerability, authenticity, and the nerve to tell a CEO they're the problemPlus: snog, marry, avoid - what to embrace, commit to, and ditch in your business.Guest: Cris Beswick - innovation, leadership and culture advisor. Keynote speaker. Founder of The Evaluaite Hub.Host: Matt Hodkinson - founder of Tylt. Category positioning for boutique consultancies ready to lead, not just compete.Send us a message