Growing the Top Line

Acknowledgments

My first run‐in with book publishing was in 1990 when, as a newly minted consultant, I helped David Maister self‐publish his first book Managing the Professional Services Firm. I got to proofread, lay out the book (on a PC with CorelDraw and Adobe PageMaker as I recall), design the cover, and then saw it turn into the world’s leading guide to the challenging art of managing a professional services firm. I think at that point I decided to write a book, and I’ll always be grateful to David and his amazing wife, Kathy, for setting me on the pathway of consulting and encouraging me to write this book.

There is a whole bunch to this book writing exercise I didn’t understand, and I am happy to have found a great team to work with at my publisher Wiley. My great thanks to Mike Campbell for his sponsorship and guidance throughout this process; Christina Verigan, my development editor, for her patient editing; Dawn Kilgore, my managing editor; Susan Geraghty, my copy editor and Sharmila Srinivasan, my content refinement specialist. I also have to thank my friend and fellow author Doug Fletcher for introducing me to Mike and convincing him I was a good bet to make and Ike Williams at Sennott Williams & Rodgers for shepherding me through contracts while he was on a family vacation overseas.

Contributing interviewees make this book great. In alphabetical order, I’d like to thank Graham Anthony, Ray Ausrotas, John Beering, General Paul E. “Gene” Blackwell, Pat Burns, Nancy ...