The Consultants Who Took Their Own Advice and Built Million-Dollar Companies: The Smartware Story
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In the world of business consulting, there’s a common phrase that echoes in boardrooms and brainstorming sessions alike: “Consultants don’t build — they advise.” But a growing group of strategic thinkers are flipping that assumption on its head. They’re not just offering insights and frameworks to clients; they’re using the same playbooks to build successful, global enterprises of their own.
“You realize the frameworks work, but only if you have the grit to stick with them when things go sideways. That’s what separates operators from advisors,” noted Melanie Perkins, CEO of Canva, who started her career advising design students and later applied that insight to revolutionize how the world creates content.
One such standout is Nicholas Kinports, a former agency strategist and brand consultant who transitioned from advising Fortune 500s to founding Smartware Technology, a rapidly expanding consumer electronics brand. His story — along with those of other consultants-turned-founders — shows how taking your own advice may be the most underleveraged strategy in the business world.
From Whiteboards to Warehouses: The Smartware Story
Kinports began his career crafting digital marketing and innovation strategies for global brands through his work at Lonelybrand and HY Connect — companies he helped grow and sell. But it was with Smartware Technology, a company he founded leveraging his deep understanding of marketing automation, brand positioning, and retail optimization, that Kinports truly validated his own frameworks.
“So many of us build growth engines for clients and never ask: What if we built one for ourselves?” Kinports shared. “Smartware started as a thought experiment in brand incubation and became something real — fast.”
Today, Smartware Technology sells connected consumer devices in more than 30 countries, with major retail partnerships, a strong DTC channel, and a global brand presence powered by the same digital systems Kinports used to pitch to clients years prior. Everything — from the company’s SEO-first web architecture to its influencer affiliate model — was born out of slides Kinports used to sell others on the power of digital transformation.
A Broader Trend: Consultants Who Turned Operators
Kinports isn’t the only one. Consider:
- Tony Hsieh, before scaling Zappos into a customer service powerhouse, ran LinkExchange, a digital ad consultancy acquired by Microsoft. His understanding of online customer behavior fueled Zappos’ legendary service culture.
- Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, came from a consulting background at Netscape and Loudcloud. His consulting-led frameworks for company building are now standard reads for tech founders.
- Whitney Wolfe Herd, who worked in brand and user engagement roles before founding Bumble, applied many of the viral growth tactics she advised others to use in her own app’s explosive rise.
And the quotes from the field echo the same refrain: consulting is an incredible training ground for launching a business — as long as you’re willing to execute.
“In consulting, I saw every kind of problem up close — but I never had to own the outcome. That changes everything when you’re the one signing the checks,” said Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify, who credits his early software consulting experience for shaping Shopify’s product-first ethos.
These examples, like Kinports’, point to a broader truth: the best consultants often do have what it takes to operate at scale. When the advice is good — and the strategist brave enough to execute — the results can be transformative.
Why It Works: The Framework Factor
Consultants live and die by frameworks. Market-entry matrices, competitive positioning maps, segmentation models — these tools are often powerful when applied consistently and rigorously. The difference between the slide deck and the supply chain is simply execution.
“I knew what worked because I had seen the data — across dozens of industries and hundreds of brands,” Kinports explained. “The only thing left was to test it myself.”
Smartware’s rise validates that belief. Its product launches are tightly choreographed around real-time consumer insights. Pricing models are dynamic. The brand voice is consistent across 20+ languages thanks to content systems Kinports first used in client presentations.
Lessons for Consultants with Founder Aspirations
For consultants dreaming of founding their own ventures, the lesson is clear: your insights are more than just theory. If you’re already building playbooks for other businesses, you’re halfway there.
Start small. Run an MVP. Prove your hypothesis the same way you’d advise a client to do. Most importantly — as Kinports and others have shown — treat yourself like your own best client.
“Consulting teaches you how to ask the right questions. Building a company means answering them yourself,” said Naval Ravikant, angel investor and founder of AngelList, who began as a technical and strategy consultant before launching several companies.
Conclusion
Nicholas Kinports’ Smartware Technology isn’t just a case study in startup success — it’s a blueprint for how today’s strategists can become tomorrow’s CEOs. By taking their own advice, consultants are proving that the knowledge economy isn’t just for clients anymore. It’s a launchpad for something much bigger.
Because sometimes the best client… is yourself.
