Small is Beautiful

Published by Matt Church – Founder on 11 August 2023

It’s amazing how much freedom there is for people in a practice model. Running a practice where you sell your time enables you to do work you love, with people you like, the way you want.

No time to read the blog? You can listen to it here.

Often, a time-based practice is criticised by business advisors who say you can’t achieve the leverage required for freedom. They often say that you can’t scale like a business can. They state you can’t leverage other people’s time or money when you run a practice. This is true in the typical growth for growth’s sake mindset that underpins much of the modern commercial world. But it doesn’t guarantee happiness, joy or fulfilment. And it’s not applicable or helpful to how we suggest you run your practice. Running a practice requires a fundamentally different paradigm from a classic business.

There is an aphoristic fable that observes a well-meant unsolicited advice based conversation between a business person and a fisherman. Spoiler alert – the ridiculousness of growth as an a priori mandate for success is the punchline.

Read the conversation here…

I also enjoyed this podcast conversation between Tyson Yunkaporta, a professor of indigenous knowledge, and Jim Rutt, an old-school techpreneur with links to the Game B movement. Yunkaporta undermines the growth mandate of Western markets and invites us to ponder the difference between growth and increase.

Listen to the podcast here…

The point is, as Nobel prize winner Schumacher explained in his 1973 landmark book, small actually is beautiful! His book titled; Small is Beautiful is a great read and the chapter on Buddhist economics speaks to why one of our faculty Alex Hagan, a brilliant thinker, observed the thought leaders practice model ‘this model hacks capitalism’. Well, he actually said I have, but that’s a little hard to tout when I’m writing this, and yet I just have. Awkward.

Anyways …

The thing is you can make $500,000 to $1,500,000 per annum in a practice model with 60-70% coming out to you the principal. Invest that take-home money in capital growth assets with a good market return and in 7-15 years you will be financially free.

This works.

It’s not a get-rich-quick game or start, grow and exit your business for lotto-like figures game but it is reliable and more importantly, it’s fulfilling. In a practice, we focus on take-home versus turnover.

When work is a labour of love and you are doing what you were born to do. When you are self-expressed in service to others, the grind disappears.

Add to all this the power of positioning to flip business development from chasing new business to attracting it and you have a very potent idea indeed.

I love being a thought leader running a commercially successful practice and so do hundreds of successful graduates of our program.

Come join us if this appeals to you.

You can do this.

• Get a copy of our book, The Thought Leaders Practice, and see how it’s done.
• Purchase access to our complete online course. Something we call The Curriculum.
• Join our School. And get immediate advice on how to make this work for you.