DARK HORSE Consulting
Who says it has to be done that way?
Conventional wisdom is useful. Until it isn't.
There's no shortage of business advice. Frameworks, formulas, best practices. Some of it is excellent. Some of it is expensive bullshit with very nice slides, and has absolutely no business being anywhere near your business.
DARK HORSE is my consulting work with business owners and managers who are good at what they do and can't work out why the business isn't keeping up. Revenue that swings from month to month. Growth that stopped a few quarters ago and never restarted. Weeks that belong to everyone except you.
- It's 23:40 on a Tuesday and you're answering client emails, because nobody else can do it properly.
- You send a quote, hear nothing, and write "just checking in" for the second time this week.
- Revenue is higher than three years ago. What's left at the end of the month isn't.
- You started the business for freedom. The last week without your laptop was in 2022.
Where I look
Most consultants specialise in one discipline, which works nicely as long as the problem lives there. When a business is stuck despite everything, the cause usually sits in how four things interact, so I look at all four at once.
The person running it
Who you are decides what you sell, at what price and with how much conviction.
Sales
Conversations that feel like two people working out whether something makes sense, which is how good clients prefer to buy anyway.
Marketing
Visibility that fits who you are and earns attention, trust and decisions, in that order.
Processes
Every step from first contact to paid invoice, planned and handed over cleanly, so revenue becomes something you can plan.
You don't need another fucking framework. You need someone to look at what's actually happening.
How we work
Look at what's actually happening
Numbers, conversations, processes and your calendar, before anyone suggests anything.
Question the obvious
Every inherited rule gets one question: who says it has to be done that way?
Decide what fits
A strategy built around your circumstances, your team and your life, which may well mean doing less.
Make it run
Offer, sales conversation, process and team, until it works without you heroically holding it together.
Before we optimise a process for six months, someone should ask why the hell it exists.
What clients have done with it
Individual results from individual businesses. Yours is a different business, which is rather the point.
"Working with Lukas, I increased my annual revenue from €200,000 to €1.8 million in just six months. His flexibility and his relentless commitment to helping me reach my goals impressed me most. Beyond the financial success, I've grown enormously as a person."
Anonymous client, ProvenExpert
"As a radiologist in Munich, I'm used to communicating with technical precision. Still, I felt my words didn't always have the effect I wanted. Working with Lukas changed exactly that."
Dr. L., ProvenExpert
"Lukas is a sales professional who knows exactly what he's talking about. After a two-day seminar I had more clarity than after three-month mentoring programmes I'd done before."
Anonymous client, ProvenExpert
"Highly competent and very experienced. The training is surprisingly simple to apply. We had a running joke: 'I don't know what I said, but it felt good.'"
Fabian S., ProvenExpert
Reviews translated from German. Read all 44 reviews on ProvenExpert.
How a first conversation works.
Good conversations about working together feel like two people trying to work out whether something makes sense. Rather less exciting than "seven psychological closing hacks", admittedly.
You tell me where you are
What's working, what isn't and what you've already tried. I ask the questions that show me where the problem actually sits.
I tell you how I see it
How I'd approach it, what the first steps would be and where the lever is. You keep that, whatever happens next.
I name the format and the price
If working together makes sense, I tell you which format fits and what it costs, plainly. If you'd like to meet in person, say so here and we'll arrange it.
You decide
Whether it fits, whether the timing is right, and whether you want to start now. I won't try to talk you into anything.
60 minutes, free, no sales show.
Questions about DARK HORSE.
We already have an agency or a consultant.
Good. I usually ask the questions that come before their work, such as whether the thing they're optimising should exist at all.
My industry is different.
I'd hope so. That's precisely why the borrowed playbook isn't working, and why we start by looking at your business instead of somebody else's.
I don't have time for this.
Understandable, and slightly the point. Most of the businesses I work with run on the owner's time, and freeing some of it up is usually part of the job.
What does it cost?
It always depends on your situation: what we're working on, how deep we go and how long we work together. Prices are available on request, and you'll hear yours in the first conversation as soon as we both know it fits.
Do you work online?
Yes, all of my work happens online, wherever you are in the world. In-person work is available on request. If that matters to you, mention it in the first conversation and we'll sort out the details there.
Is it discreet?
Yes. What we discuss stays between us, with an NDA on request, no names and no references. That applies equally to people in public positions.
Doing the same thing again and hoping it'll turn out differently is a rather questionable strategy.
There's usually another way to look at it, and quite often that's where change begins. Let's find out whether that's true for yours.
Worst case, you leave with a second opinion.