How exactly does a mechanical engineer with dreams of working with race cars end up becoming “The Fry Guy” with his own million-dollar consulting business in the potato processing industry? Mike DeLong, President of Projex Consultants, is here to share his unconventional journey doing just that.
Striking out on his own after years working at McCain Foods, Mike credits Projex’s early success to emphasizing clear service offerings, a targeted client focus, confident communication, and creating a powerful referral network by leveraging industry relationships with equipment suppliers. Discussing his efforts to scale his business, he notes that he hired a virtual assistant to focus on high-value tasks, then recruited skilled professionals with competitive pay, remote work, and unlimited PTO, to help overcome the challenges of solo consulting. As you will hear, Mike’s remarkably high client retention comes from genuine care, sharing industry insights, and consistent communication, demonstrating that clear vision, strategic relationships, and a people-first approach are the keys to building a thriving consulting business.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How to leverage niche expertise to build a thriving consulting business
- Strategies for activating and nurturing referral networks
- How to strategically scale your team with virtual assistants and industry experts
- The importance of balancing entrepreneurial ambition with personal values
- Tactics for building and maintaining strong client relationships
Welcome to the Consulting Success podcast. I’m your host Michael Zipursky, and in this podcast, we’re going to dive deep into the world of elite consultants where you’re going to learn the strategies, tactics and mindset to grow a highly profitable and successful consulting business.
Before we dive into today’s episode. Are you ready to grow and take your consulting business to the next level? Many of the clients that we work with started as podcast listeners just like you, and a consistent theme they have shared with us is that they wished they had reached out sooner about our Clarity Coaching Program rather than waiting for that perfect time. If you’re interested in learning more about how we help consultants just like you, we’re offering a free, no pressure growth session call. On this call, we’re going to dive deep into your goals, challenges and situation and outline a plan that is tailor made just for you. We will also help you identify where you may be making costly and time consuming mistakes to ensure you’re benefiting from the proven methods and strategies to grow your consulting business.
So don’t wait years to find clarity. If you’re committed and serious about reaching a new level of success in your consulting business, go ahead and schedule your free growth session. Get in touch today. Just visit Consulting Success – Grow to book your free call today.
Mike DeLong, PE, PMP, brings nearly 20 years of global engineering and project management experience to the potato processing industry. As Founding Principal of Projex Consulting, LLC, Mike leverages his expertise managing multi-million dollar projects across three continents to help potato processors optimize capital projects. His firm’s EPCM+ framework and proven methodologies have helped clients like McCain Foods double revenue, slash operating costs by 20%+, and significantly enhance safety performance. Based in Burley, Idaho, Mike is passionate about helping processors achieve impactful results through strategic project management.
Connect with Mike DeLong
Discover more about Projex Consultants
00:00 – Introduction to The Fry Guy Persona
Hey, Mike. Welcome.
Thanks, Mike. It’s good to be here.
There we go. Two Mikes. Yeah, I’ve been looking forward to this. Let’s start off. I want to go back a little bit because you are known in our world, at least in the kind of the consulting success community and I think now beyond that, as The Fry Guy. And I have to say that for those checking this out on YouTube, behind you there on your desk, you actually have some french fries. So where does The Fry Guy come from? Explain a little bit more of what you do and how you got into the business of being The Fry Guy.
Well, it’s a bit of a process, and it certainly wasn’t deliberate. So I went to school for mechanical engineering in Canada, and I thought I’d become a race car engineer or a vehicle engineer when I was studying. And after graduation, I worked at a consulting firm, an engineering consulting firm, and a client happened to be McCain Foods, a global french fry processor. I quickly got involved in that project and realized I wasn’t a very good designer, and I wanted to focus on project management. And that’s where I entered the french fry industry accidentally. And I spent three years working as a consultant for McCain Foods, helping build french fry factories in India and South Africa, and then later on became a McCain Foods employee, managing capital projects as they expand their existing factories and build new factories. And I was in charge of some really interesting projects for over a decade with McCain in North America. I live in the US now in Idaho. I came here with McCain Foods and then, yes, I started Projex Consultants about two years ago when I left McCain Foods. And Projex Consultants is a project capital project management consulting firm. And we focus primarily on the potato processing industry. So I was, I guess, anointed The Fry Guy during, actually, a consulting success event. And it kind of caused me to embrace that persona, if you will. And it’s becoming a bit of a personal brand, and it’s been really fun. And yeah, I’m Mike The Fry Guy now.
There we go. I have to tell you, Mike, that you are one of the people that I use as an example when someone says what kind of consultants do you work with at Consulting Success? And I said, “Well, there’s all kinds,” but even people like this. And I also use you as the example of how you can be in what some people can’t even imagine exists as building a business around. Like a real, very narrow, in some people’s minds, niche. But as you and I have talked about and recently had this conversation, the market is actually much bigger than people think. When you look not only at french fries, but then you start thinking about potato chips or crisps as they call them in some countries, the market really does expand.
I was going to say, just in terms of the market size, it’s very much a niche target market for me as a consultant. But the global french fry market is a $21 billion market as of 2022, it’s growing to $30 or $32 billion by 2030. We also service the potato chip industry, and it’s a $30 billion market globally and growing to $40 or $45 billion by 2030. So it’s an incredibly huge market that really nobody thinks about, especially the french fry market. They all just think french fries come from McDonald’s or our other favorite fast food joints, but they’re made somewhere.
There we go. All right. So you came in and if I remember correctly, it didn’t take you long- pretty quickly, I think, within the first eight weeks or so of being in the program, you landed like a six figure contract. I think then after you had a couple or a few more five figure kind of deals that you landed. Take us back to the early days of your business, because I’m really interested in having you share: What were you doing? What do you think led to you having such a strong start in your business?
04:39 – Starting as a Consultant in a Niche Market
In the early days, when I started my business, I really thought I would be like an independent consultant, a team of one, perhaps, and offer these consulting services to french fry processors. I wasn’t super clear on how I was going to do that. And what I was clear on is that I wanted to get to that point quickly where I had the clarity. So I sought out your group and the Clarity Coaching program and got involved. And within those eight weeks, as you say, I was able to work with my coach to develop some pricing strategies and proposal strategies. And the timing was really good because it really clarified who my ideal clients were, and I kind of got my messaging dialed in. And at the same time I was working on letting everybody know, “Hey, I’m an independent consultant.” I reached out to my network. But the key was just having the confidence in what I was proposing and the way I proposed it that I could help this client with their problem. And I got from knowing nothing about being a consultant to that point in a really short time. That was where the confidence really kicked in. You know, I had kind of some proof that what I was doing was valuable to somebody. And I worked on my own for a while after that, for several months. Then I started working with some subcontractors I met through networking to provide additional services like design work and stuff. And at this point, I’m still thinking, “Hey, I’ll continue my business by myself.”
Before we actually get into kind of the next step of you scaling, hiring, thinking about that, I just want to point to one thing that you just talked about, because I think it’s such an important one, and that is confidence. So you put in the work early. You established the foundation, you got some help, obviously, with that, but you knew that it was important for you to get that foundation in place. And we see this a lot with consultants who, they’re going to the market, they’re trying to have conversations, but ultimately they’re not getting the results that they want. And very often it’s because they’re not actually clear on what they’re offering. They’re not clear on who their ideal client is. And so it’s hard for them to go to the market in a compelling way or an effective way because they’re not actually communicating anything with confidence. And there’s a real lack of clarity there. So I think for those of you who are listening right now and thinking, “I think I’m doing the right things, but I’m kind of spinning my wheels.” Ask yourself: How confident are you in who your ideal client is? How confident are you that you’re solving a real problem? How confident are you that you can really deliver a very tangible, valuable result and outcome for these people? And what do your service offerings look like? Are you very clear on all that? And if you’re not, that’s probably where you want to spend some time.
Okay, so you got some initial projects, Mike. And I would be remiss if I didn’t ask this, because I know our audience loves details. You mentioned that you kind of activated your network. You kind of went to people, you let them know what you’re doing. Is there anything in that process of how you went to the market, talked about what you’re now doing as a consultant that landed meetings or kind of created that initial momentum for you that you feel is really important to highlight?
08:15 – Leveraging Industry Relationships for Referrals
Yes. In my industry, all the processors buy equipment from companies, and I recognized that if I made those companies aware of what I did that when their processing clients called them, they would be able to refer me to them if they needed help thinking through capital projects. So, that’s happened time and time again over the course of the two years I’ve been in business. So I’ve paid close attention to the equipment supplier network, the service supplier network that services these french fry processors and built relationships with those people because it helps me help them help the ultimate client.
That’s such a great example of leverage. And this exists for every business. So for those of you joining us right now, think about where your ideal clients go. Who has access to them? All right. So, in your case, Mike, by accessing these organizations or these companies, you access or connect with one of them, but they have access to many of your potential ideal clients, right? And so that’s the leverage piece. And so whether it’s you’re targeting a software company that is really entrenched in your industry, or it’s law firms or accountants or other types of service providers or technology providers, really look at and think about where do your ideal clients go? Who has access to them? And if you can establish the kind of relationship that you have, Mike, with these companies, it can really deliver some great results. So thanks for highlighting that. Anything else that stands out for you?
Once the connections are made I’ve recognized that I need to continue to nurture that network and engage with that network over time. And it’s important that you stay top of mind with not only these- I’ll call them referral partners even though there’s no formal partnership, but to just stay in touch with these people. Because you never know when something comes up that somebody needs help with and you want to be the first person they think of that can help them solve that problem. So being deliberate about nurturing that network is a focus of mine and I would recommend anybody that has that network, that leverage, to really be genuinely intentional about nurturing that network.
Really, really good point.
All right. So let’s come back then to the team. And you’re kind of now at a point where you’re scaling and growing. So you recognize it’s not going to be a one person show anymore.
Not just The Fry Guy anymore.
Yeah. There’s going to be The Fry Guys or Gals or whatever it ends up being– So who’s the first hire? What did that look like and why did you bring them on?
11:29 – Scaling the Team: First Hire
My first hire was an executive assistant. I needed to unload the tasks that weren’t where I added the most value to our clients. So administrative tasks, travel booking, things like that. I was almost getting swamped with some of that stuff, hours and hours a week. Having a VA onboarded over the course of a couple of months to take a bunch of that work off my plate has been tremendous in terms of my mental freedom and my mental capacity and my energy levels, but also allowing me to do more work for the clients. That was an incredibly valuable first hire.
In hindsight, should you have made that hire sooner or do you think it was at the right time for you? How did you think about that first of all?
12:20 – Affordability and ROI of Virtual Assistants
I don’t think it would have been a lot sooner, but maybe the course– It took me about a year to hire somebody, and maybe I was ready at 10 months or 11 months, but I had to think about it and research it a little bit. So I’d say by the time I recognized it until the time I made a hire was about two months. Before that, I was head down, grinding just trying to find my footing and figure things out.
And how do you today view the cost/investment of having a VA? Because a lot of people hesitate to make that kind of hire because they’re viewing it as, “That’s money out of my pocket and maybe I should just push a little bit longer, wait till I land one more client or wait till my revenue gets a little bit higher.” What would you say to those people in terms of the kind of investment return that you’ve experienced from that hire?
I’ll start with noting that my company is completely remote, so we don’t have a brick and mortar office. And because of that, it allowed me to investigate like an overseas virtual assistant. So that can be achieved or obtained at a much lower price point than an assistant in person in the US. You’re not having to pay $30,000 $40,000 a year or whatever the going rate is. I don’t even know because I didn’t look at it. But I could tell you it’s much more affordable going with a service, any VA service, Wing, others.
Sure. You could spend like a thousand or two thousand.
Let’s say two thousand a month, right?. And if you’re a consultant who’s billing out at $150 or $250 or $350 per hour, you can easily justify freeing up five hours a week of your time to unload some of those tasks and, you know, focus on higher level tasks, higher value, higher impact. So to me it’s an investment and now I don’t at all sweat that investment. My great assistant Louise has become part of the team and I couldn’t live without her at all.
Okay. Louise is now in place. So you got your virtual assistant. That’s now freeing you up to folks on higher value areas and opportunities inside of the business. Let’s fast forward though to the next hire or the next decision that you made for the team. What role was that? What were you solving for and kind of how did you go about finding that person?
15:08 – Hiring Industry Experts to Scale Operations
The next hire was an opportunity to– I sought him out. It was an expert in the industry, well respected within the industry amongst equipment suppliers and things. So I basically recruited, he had a lot of value to the work we were doing and I saw an opportunity to win more work with having his expertise on board.
And what’s his role?
He’s a project manager and designer. So he works with the clients and actually does design work related to their capital projects and then oversees portions of the projects that are in progress on behalf of the clients.
And was he working when you reached out to him? He had a job already at that time?
Yeah, he had a job at a major processor. So he left a large corporation to join a startup consulting firm because he believed in what we were doing and he was looking for something interesting.
See, that’s why I want to highlight that because very often people have this belief, which is incorrect, that somebody working at a more established, larger, higher paying company is not in the realm of possibility to join your smaller company. But time and time again, when you look at what actually happens, it’s what you just said. It’s that if your values, if your mission, if your story, if what you’re working towards, if the freedom, the lifestyle, if all of that aligns with the person you’re reaching out to, it’s rarely that money is the biggest draw or that the size of the company is the biggest draw. It’s more about, “How will I be feeling and how does this align with the kind of, again, lifestyle that I want to have and the mission and what I want to be kind of doing?” And then, not to mention a lot of these large organizations are filled with politics, nonstop meetings, all kinds of things that people don’t enjoy. So that’s great that you were proactive and you saw the bigger opportunity and went after it.
Yep. So he’s been a tremendous addition to the team. He was first full time hire in 202, full time salaried employee in 2024 in March. And then in September, I added another project engineer that came from another processor that had a similar story. He was finding his work not as fulfilling as it once was and he really, he found our vision very compelling which is to be the number one consulting firm for the potato processing industry when it comes to project management process optimization. And now I’m working on recruiting a third resource, a third full time individual to join us and to assist a client full time.
Yeah. So you’re four today, five soon. When you think about- going back in time, before you had made that first hire, it was you, you’re doing all the work, you’re billing everything for the clients. What was it like for you? How did you figure out the model that would make sense to start building your team as it relates to compensation? So making sure that you’re paying what you want to be paying to attract the kind of talent and people that you want to have. At the same time, making sure that it’s still going to be profitable for you to bring these people on in terms of how much you’re getting paid from clients. Can you just explain and just share whatever you’re able to in terms of how you kind of thought through that and arrived at an approach that you feel good about?
19:11 – Balancing Compensation and Flexibility in Hiring
So it’s evolving and it’s a work in progress. But I recognize that to recruit somebody that is coming from a corporate role, a large corporation that has benefits such as 401k here in the US or health insurance, paid vacation, benefits like that, as a small business, I’m not in position to offer those. So I thought about paying a really competitive wage. In fact, it’s not even competitive, it’s above that. So, I want to pay well for expertise. I don’t want myself or my team to worry about money. But the non-monetary aspects were really attractive to the people that I want to attract to the company, which is flexibility to work remotely. I have an unlimited PTO policy that means we’re all adults and we can flex our time accordingly as long as we’re meeting our clients commitments. So we have clients all across North America, one in South America. We’re working on India and Europe as markets as well, developing some relationships there. If our guys or our team members, I should say, want to travel and they can travel and continue to service clients across different time zones, I promote that. In fact, it’s allowed me to do the same thing. I spent 90 days traveling across the country in an RV with my family this summer and working remotely and making client visits along the way. So it’s that flexibility that people find valuable in addition to just cash. So is it the right model? I don’t know, but it’s working for me now.
We talked about a niche market. I would say one thing that I’m recognizing now or a lesson learned is that a niche is great because it provides a lot of opportunity when you position yourself as an expert and really are an expert. However, it’s difficult to recruit within a niche where people have that specialized expertise. And for me to offer a compelling package, it has to be some of the fringe benefits like the flexibility and so on.
21:38 – Challenges of Growing a Consulting Business
What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far or maybe some you’re still working through as it relates to growing the business to that million dollar mark?
I’d say one of the bigger challenges is more of a personal challenge. It’s about the mindset of how if I look back maybe a year ago, it was about “Do I want to grow this business?” So there was the mindset there. And then when I decided, “Yes, my clients are asking for it, I will grow the business to support them,” and then learning how to do it in a responsible way. I’m a small business. I don’t have a huge bank account to go out and hire a bunch of high priced consultants and pay full time wages without having secured some work. So it’s been thinking about the cart and the horse kind of dynamic or dichotomy. And I’ve just recently arrived at- I’m willing to go out and ask clients how we can help learn about their problems and how we can help them solve their problems and then build our team to support that. So if there’s an opportunity to help somebody, then I can go out and either find a full time employee or a strategic partner or a subcontract resource that can help us.
You talked about mindset being one of the challenges or at least just something that you had to overcome in the early days. Thinking about how do you want to build this business? Do you want to build it beyond just yourself? And we’ve had some conversations about as the business has become more successful and in some ways busier, you can get into situations where you kind of look around, go like, “Wow. I’m more successful financially than I was before, but I also have a lot more going on than I did before.” Can you share any of those thoughts that you’ve been having or kind of how you’re viewing that situation right now from somebody who maybe is a couple steps behind where you are?
23:50 – Maintaining Work-Life Balance as a Consultant
I know we have people who are many steps ahead and they’re running or involved in multimillion dollar consulting businesses, but others are at an earlier stage and they might be $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 or something like that. And they’re asking themselves the same question of is it worth putting in that additional not necessarily work or effort but trying to grow this business just beyond myself or taking on more work? What would you kind of tell them to look out for or to think about to try and maybe maintain that balance or to get the most out of that journey?
One thing that’s top of mind right now, I guess is ask yourself, and I ask myself, “Why did you become a consultant? What did you value or what were you thinking about were your values when you decided to become a consultant?” For me, it was the flexibility that I could enjoy to spend time with my family, to work in different locations and things like that. And then a little story about my journey with that particular value is that, I shared this earlier, I decided to do this 90-day road trip in a motorhome with my wife, two kids and two dogs.
And so it was a very nice looking motorhome, I’ve got to say, because I saw some photos and it was pretty nice looking.
We were pretty comfortable being inside that motor home for 90 days and nobody was injured. But I actually found it to be quite strenuous mentally on me because I was driving the motor home to different locations and spending time with my family and spending time away from my family as they went and did excursions at different locations and stuff. But I had my clients to attend to, my employees to attend to and to support through the summer. And it was an extremely demanding period on my personal schedule and my energy. But I had to- I would find myself being critical of how I was spending my time. “Maybe I’m not getting enough work today.” “Oh, man. Maybe I’m not doing as much as I could be.” “Revenue’s taking a dip in the summer because I’m not as busy seeking opportunities.” And I felt like that through the summer. Reflecting on that now after having been home for a couple months, is I chose to do that. I got to do that. The money is not the only thing. I wanted the flexibility, that’s what I value. I still do. And although I set revenue targets for the year and I may not meet them because of the time we spent on the road and divided attention, it doesn’t matter. I was living what I wanted and what I valued through the summer. And that was 90 fantastic days traveling the country with my family.
There you go. Yeah, well said, man. I appreciate you sharing that. One thing I want to hit on as well, you touched a little bit on talking to your clients, finding out what they want, like spending time with them. But I’ve also seen that you have clients that have, and correct me if I’m wrong here, but have pretty much been with you since you landed. You have long term clients, you don’t have clients for a short period of time and they continue to be with you even now, two years in. What do you do or what do you think is contributing to your clients wanting to stay with you, continuing to be with you? Are you just doing– I mean, and let’s say beyond doing good work, because I know obviously you do good work. And we’ll call that table stakes. It’s important, obviously. But is there anything that you feel that you do or focus on that contributes to those longer term relationships?
27:55 – Building Long-Term Client Relationships
I genuinely care about my clients being successful. And I guess as a course of, as a business owner and being in this industry, I stay connected to the industry. I attend industry trade shows and events. I’m consuming content about industry topics and I’ve made a lot of connections through that effort. When something crosses my desk or I become aware of a certain item or topic that I think a client will find interesting or valuable, I’ll share it with them. And not only do they appreciate that, it also keeps, it gives me a reason to stay in contact if we’re not actively working on something together. And maintaining that relationship is so important because especially as a consultant where we’re not offering a product, we’re offering our expertise to help them solve a problem. It’s like the clients are not buying from Projex Consultants. They’re buying from Fernando, my employee, or Clark, my employee, or myself. Because we help them. We partner with them to help them through realizing their vision.
Well, Mike, you’ve been doing a great job in building this business. I’m excited to continue seeing how you take it to the next level. And I want to make sure that people can learn more about The Fry Guy and his consultants and everything else that you’ve got going on. So where should people go to learn more about you and your company?
29:38 – Expanding Industry Presence and Personal Brand
So I’m on LinkedIn, so you can search me up – Mike DeLong on LinkedIn, and also our company website, projexconsultants.com, P-R-O-J-E-X consultants.com and we’ll have a new podcast launching within the next couple months. It’s called the Tater Talk Podcast. You can find that on our website and I’ll have some stuff posted on LinkedIn as we get that kicked off. So I’m really excited about the Tater Talk Podcast because it’s going to bring people from the global industry talking about their journeys and their stories and their impact that they’re having on the total potato industry.
Cool. All right, Mike. Well, thank you again so much for coming on here today. We’ll make sure to link all that up in the show notes. And so if anyone wants to go deeper into those resources, just head over to consultingsuccess.com click on Podcast and you’ll find Mike’s episode right there. Mike, thanks again.
Thank you so much for having me. This was a good time.
Important Links:
Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.consultingsuccess.com/podcast
