How can professional services firms achieve sustainable growth and scale in 2026? In a landscape of rising costs, a challenging labour market, and of the constant demand to adopt new technology, finding the right path forward can be difficult. We sat down with Kurt Miscinski, CEO of Cerity Partners, who shared how his business grew from an idea into a global professional services firm.
Here’s what we learned:
Technology boosts productivity and scale
We know that technology offers clear benefits for growth, but for many professional services firms, strategic investment in digital tools remains a challenge. The number of choices can be overwhelming, and the cost and effort to implement them can seem unworkable. If a firm is already operating profitably, there may not seem to be an immediate or significant need to change. But for Cerity Partners, a clear and focused technology strategy has been part of their approach from the beginning. Their success comes down to three key actions:
- Prioritise best-in-class technologies
- Invest in the right engineers to develop, implement and integrate them
- Cultivate proprietary data and use it to elevate operations
“Our strategy has always been: find the best in class, work on the IP, work on our own proprietary data warehouse. We’re not going to try and programme our own systems,” says Miscinski. “The biggest challenge for colleagues is having to pull up four, five, six, seven different applications so let’s invest in engineers to tie [all our tools] together so those systems talk natively to each other. We have an entire dedicated group of colleagues to do that.”
Your people are your most important asset
In a competitive labour market with rising staffing costs, a targeted approach to talent is crucial for managing cost and boosting performance.
Cerity Partners have a particular focus on talent development in their strategy: specifically, recruiting and developing juniors, and developing prospective partners.
“We’re on college campuses every fall and spring, recruiting directly from colleges,” says Miscinski. “We have a whole talent acquisition team that’s out there just developing talent at all times…developing those relationships.”
“We built a 16,000 square foot Cerity Partners University, so every year we hire 40 plus 22-year-olds coming out of college [and] we invest eight weeks of dedicated training to get them through that initial bootcamp.”
“Then we have partner development…they might be really talented individuals that are at other firms that aren’t their forever homes. Or they might have an independent firm and we think they’re a terrific group of people and if we were to merge our firms together, we’d be a better firm. We have a whole dedicated group of colleagues that do that, day in, day out.”
Like Cerity Partners’ approach, a comprehensive talent strategy is about more than just remuneration, which is not the sole, or even the most important reason employees join and remain with a business1 . Alignment to the broader business strategy, robust development pathways, and belief in leadership are equally important.
It’s worth asking how your firm is approaching its own people strategy:
- Attraction: What is your employee value proposition? Why would someone choose to work for you?
- Development: How do you nurture junior team members and identify high-performing talent? Does this strategy tie in with your succession planning?
- Reward: How do you regularly recognise high performance beyond remuneration?
- Retention: How do you ensure people feel included, empowered and aligned with the firm’s goals? Does your firm have a strong workplace culture? Do your staff feel included and aligned with broader business goals beyond their day-to-day tasks? Are they empowered to deliver value and voice their opinions? Do they have a fair balance between their personal and professional goals and responsibilities?
Your people strategy is a virtuous cycle. Investing in your people creates a culture that attracts new talent and builds a strong pipeline of future leaders who will carry that culture forward.
Leveraging capital to accelerate growth
For many firms, there are moments in their growth where organic profit alone isn’t enough to scale operations. For Cerity Partners, strategically using external capital at critical moments has been key to their success.
An angel investor provided the foundational capital to launch the firm, based on a compelling business plan and a team of committed partners. After several years of proving their business model to be successful, partnering with a private equity firm provided another injection of capital, allowing for heavier investment in operations and an expansion of headcount. This built the robust infrastructure needed to support a more rapid expansion in the future. Finally, to cement their leadership in their field, Cerity Partners recapitalised again, with a larger private equity partner and over 90 partners rolling 100% of their equity into a new structure.
Now, Cerity Partners has reached what Miscinski calls ‘escape velocity’.
“In business, that concept is used when the scale and growth of an organisation starts to exceed its need for more capital to fuel that growth.”
“Over the last 18 months, for the first time, we’ve been able to experience escape velocity and it’s pretty cool.”
By strategically partnering for capital at the right moments, a firm can:
- Set up for success: An initial runway of funds can give your business room to prove its success
- Build infrastructure: Injections of capital can fund the non-client-facing functions that are essential for scale
- Achieve market leadership: Strategic partnerships and investments can solidify your brand and market position
- Reach ‘escape velocity’: Excellent execution can place your business in a position where it generates enough momentum to fund its own future growth
Navigating your options for bringing capital into your business is a major strategic decision that carries risk. When done right, however, it can be an effective way to build value and scale into your business and achieve your growth aspirations. Engaging a broad range of trusted expert advisers can help guide you through the process.
Chart your path to sustainable growth
The journey from start-up to scale looks different for every firm, but the story of Cerity Partners highlights a common truth: sustainable growth is built on deliberate choices.
Whether it’s investing in the right technology, developing your people, or strategically leveraging capital, each pillar requires a clear and intentional plan. By bring these elements together with a focused strategy, you can build a resilient business that thrives, well into the future.