The city of Denver, after spending $100k on a consultant group to rename its downtown ‘16th Street Mall’ finally released the rebrand today. Just cut the Mall.
Of course this is after spending and estimated $175 million for the complete overhaul of about a mile of 16th street, so the price tag seemed like a steal.
What would you all have spent $100k on and why is it my new consulting service.
You are asking two different questions.
Best $100k You Ever Spent?
What would you all have spent $100k on
Years back a school district purchased an annual subscription to my software. It was less than $5k since they weren’t a large district. They hired a consultant to tell them how to implement it. I could have told them. They never implemented my software. I’m guessing the consultant probably charged more than we did, and was probably a friend of someone in charge.
Divorce.
Only regret is not doing it sooner even at 10x the cost.
Friend was high up in a family run business. It was struggling a bit some years ago. They brought in consultants to turn it around. The consultants made two changes. The founders initials were the name of the company lets say A&B. They changed that to A+B and designed a new logo. Second, they updated their website but only the homepage, click any link to any other page and it was still the old design. They billed for SEO which is of course bullshit.
The total bill for that effort was 1.5 million dollars.
Anyway your story made me think of this. I had a friend who was fond of saying ‘all I need is one’ (sucker).
How does that even happen?
When you hire someone for that kind of service, don’t you have some kind of expectation about what they are going to do and what it will cost? How could they possibly justify a bill that big?
That feels like someone hiring me to renovate their house, I paint the front door, change a few light fixtures and bill them a million bucks.
It sounds like whoever hired the consultant screwed up royally.