Introducing the Society of Martech Consultants

Hi, I'm Michael Hartman.

I'm Naomi Liu.

And I'm Mike Rizzo. And this is OpsCast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MoPros, the number one community for marketing operations professionals.

Tune in to each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you and your marketing operations career.

Hello, I'm Courtney Makara, and this is the Society of Marketing Technology Consulting Podcast. SMTC has joined forces with the marketingops.com community, but our mission is still the same, to educate and support anyone involved in the martech world as a consultant.

Hey, this is Mike from marketingops.com. If you're thinking about going into consulting or you're already a successful consultant, join us online by becoming a member. As a pro member, you can join the SMTC and other private networks at marketingops.com.

In this podcast series, Grant Gregorian and I interviewed guests on their journeys as consultants. We discussed all that it means to be a great martech consultant from setting up their business or joining an agency and how to find new clients and keep their existing clients happy.

I hope you enjoy the interview. So Grant, what is on your mind today?

Hey Courtney. Um, well, it's our first podcast, so I wanted to let all the listeners know what this podcast is going to be about. So this first episode will be more, you know, it's kind of going to be meta.

Yeah.

Where we wanted to kind of introduce ourselves and talk about, you know, what the purpose of this podcast is, what we were thinking about and what to expect going forward. So you can decide if this is for you or not. Um, so, you know, Courtney, why would you, why did you agree to do this podcast with me?

I love the idea. I have now been a consultant for a whopping 13 months, and it's still a strange experience. You know, some days I'm super confident, and sometimes I feel really alone, and you reached out and wanted to just talk about what it means to be a consultant and kind of support each other, and it's been a huge benefit to me. There's been a couple other people in the consulting world that have been really kind and supportive, and I thought, well, why not? Why not support each other, and we can, share best practices and kind of lift each other up. So, I mean, really, I feel like the original brainchild was your inspiration. So why did you even think of this? What was your motivation?

Yeah, I mean, I'm in the same boat. So I've been a freelance consultant for a few years and then I went and got a job again. And then recently I've become a freelance consultant again. And I was just thinking about how hard it was for me the first time. You know, when I was— when I had a job in a cubicle at a pretty company, it was like, you know, why did you decide to jump? And I was thinking back to myself of those years, and it was pretty scary. Like, I remember really wanting to do it, really wanting to experience, you know, some of the freedom that comes with it, some of the, you know, independence in terms of what type of work you do, who you work with. We'll kind of explore all the different reasons you might want to become a consultant. For me, I did want to be location independent, and I did want to have more control over my work. And I thought I could also make more money, honestly, because I saw how much my— the consultants we were hiring were making. And I was like, oh boy, maybe that's for me. You know, I wanted to try it out, but it was really scary. And so I was lucky enough that I was able to reach out to some friends and kind of to ask them about what it was going to be like. But, but I thought, how great would it be if there was a resource online where we could share resources, maybe even template contracts? We could share how to find clients, how we're finding clients, how to do marketing for yourself, what it means to work in an agency versus being on your own. And, you know, the truth is, like, I'm no expert, right? But we wanted to use this podcast as a way to learn ourselves. So we'll have We'll have guests on, we'll do our own little research, and then just share everything that we learn with you.

Yeah, I think it sounds wonderful. I definitely have had people reach out to me and ask questions about, well, how did you decide? And what did you do? And how do you set up an LLC? And who does your taxes? And again, I'm shocked that people are asking me because I figure I'm new at this. I'm not perfect, but why don't we all help each other out?

So yeah, I'll tell you a story. So when I was first starting out, I remember I wanted to be a Marketo consultant. That was my thing. And I had a job. And so I just put in Google, I said freelance consultant Marketo, because I wanted to see, like, are there people out there who do this? And I found one. It was— I'm going to name drop here. It was Inga Romanov, who was in New York, and she's like an amazing Marketo consultant, have since, you know, has had a consultancy for many years. And at the time she was just, she was a freelance Marketo consultant. And I just reached out to her just cold on LinkedIn. And I said like, hey, you're, you seem to exist. And like, I want to be like you. I want to be a freelance person. And she got back to me so quickly. I was so amazed because I was like, I'm this guy in Colorado, you know. I have a job, but I want to quit one day. And she was so helpful. She was like, okay, you know, here's what you're going to do. And like, here's how much money you're going to ask for. And she told me basically to like not quit my job right away and to just kind of do it on the side first, uh, to kind of build up, you know, the— to first of all, try it out.

Uh-huh.

And also to kind of build up my muscle, build up my clients. And that's exactly what I did. I didn't quit. I was just kind of working nights and weekends. And then, to be honest, also days. And, and, and then after a while, after 6 months, I was making as much working nights and weekends consulting as I was with my job. And that's when I was like, okay, if I quit now, it's a, it's a complete replacement of revenue. So like, I can still pay my rent and I can survive. And then, so it's time for me to jump. And that's what helped me. So it really was, community and like other people giving me the confidence to do it. So I think that's super important.

I think that's so brave of you to just reach out to Inga cold like that.

Inga's not scary. It's not scary.

She's super nice. She is super nice, but you just never know. But I feel the same way. There was plenty of people that would encourage me and support me and say, why aren't you doing it? You know, you talk about it and you waffle back and forth. You know, just do the leap. And it was terrifying, but I've done it. And like I said, I've kept my doors open now for 13 months. So I feel like I can get a little bit of a successful checkbox in that column. And I just love to help other people that are debating about if it's the right fit for them and what are the pros and what are the cons.

Yeah, I mean, there's— we have a lot of support structure for the content of the work itself. You know, like there's a lot of information about MOPS, about MarTech itself. Like here's how you do this or that in this system or, and so on. You know what I mean? Like the actual work itself.

Here's how you build something. Here's how you troubleshoot, you know, this issue. Yeah.

But I don't think there is as much about the work itself or the format of the work. So are you a consultant? How are you keeping your calendar? How are you billing stuff? How are you structuring your contracts? I think especially for consultants, because when you're an employee, it's all kind of taken care of for you, and all you have to think about are the work things, hopefully.

Right.

But when you're, when you're going off and doing your own consulting, you have to think about all these other things. So those are the things that we want to, that we're going to cover in this podcast. So Courtney, who, who, what type of people are we going to have as guests?

We want to talk to other consultants who are independent like you and I, but I'd also love to talk to people like Inga who have started agencies and have kind of built a community for themselves and an army and deciding, I have not ventured out yet to bring an employee into my business.

Mm-hmm.

Because that's another intimidating step that I haven't decided to breach, but I'm curious, how did other people decide to do that? At what point of revenue did they feel comfortable bringing on more people? headcount. So I'd love to talk to them as well.

Mm-hmm.

And then also people who, you know, are just asking the questions of, well, I want to be a consultant, I want to do nights and weekends on side projects, but how do I get started? Or, you know, what do I have to do legally? Do I have to become a business? How do I do taxes? So I've, I've jumped through some of those hoops, obviously, and I'm in the state of Oregon, so there's certain rules there. And I'm not gonna have all the answers, but I can at least help you know what questions to ask when you do find your business attorney or your CPA in your state.

Do you think we can find an attorney or a CPA or both to come on the podcast?

Oh yeah, absolutely.

That would be so cool. We should get some free advice.

Yeah, I think so. Of course, they're gonna, you know, have their consent language of—

Sure, ask your doctor about—

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, but yeah, I just think a resource to kind of help each other. I do think I think the pricing question that you brought up is really a big one. There's a lot of opinions about, you know, do you charge hourly? I think that's been kind of the status quo of—

Right.

Oh, marketo consultants cost, you know, X dollars an hour. I haven't really done things that way. It didn't really work for me, and I have been really lucky with clients that we have been on the same page. I prefer like project-based or, you know, retainer-based, but everyone's a little bit different, and it's just kind of interesting to figure out how those conversations And do you do that when you're pitching yourself in that part of the conversation, or does that come, you know, later down the line of the relationship?

Totally, yeah. I'll share a story, another story from Grant.

Stories with Grant, I love it.

So when I was first starting, I remember, you know, that time when I was kind of getting ready to jump, and— but I didn't have any clients yet. No, no paying clients. This was before I had a chance to talk to Inga yet. I was like, I know what I'll do. I will, um, go to the Marketo community back in the day, um, and I will post on it that I am available and willing to work, uh, for free for a nonprofit. And I was like, if you're a nonprofit and you're a Marketo user, I'm here for you and I will support you. And, um, I heard from zero nonprofits. And instead I heard from A bunch of people who were like, hey, I don't know about this nonprofit business. We're a for-profit company, but like, I want a consultant. I'll pay you to come do stuff. And I was so amazed. I was like, wow. And I remember I said, my services are $35 an hour because I took my salary at the time and I just divided the number of hours there are in a year.

Boom.

$35 an hour was how much I was going to spend. And they were probably like, okay. Let's do it. And so that was my, that was my first project. And needless to say, I mean, it was wonderful because it got me practicing being a consultant, but it— but obviously I had underpriced myself significantly and I had to learn really quickly, you know, kind of adjust. So we'll definitely talk about stuff like that as well. So what other topics? Anything else we're going to cover? Legal stuff, contracting, pricing? Pitching yourself. What else?

Yeah, I mean, I think the, the culture of being disciplined. A lot of people have mentioned to me, oh, I, I could never do what you do. You work from home all the time. I like to have an office. Um, and so I think that there's some benefits and it fits certain people's personalities. But when you are a consultant, it's a different kind of like accountability practice of meetings on your calendar. You know, clients are expecting you and it's just your name on the line. I actually feel much more accountable. And working from home has not— it's not like I'm running around, you know, doing laundry and cleaning the house all the time or sitting around watching TV. There's a lot more pressure, I think, to be there. But everyone kind of has to figure out their own way to work from home and how to be successful and set up their own structure.

Yeah.

Or just not work from home and work from the beach or, you know, outside of coronavirus timeframe work from Europe.

And yeah, now we should mention that we are recording this exactly during the coronavirus time. So I think a lot of people have now had a chance to practice working from home. And, and hopefully they see that, you know, it's possible and it's very doable. But you do have to take care of that discipline problem and take care of some of the other things. We will talk about the remote work idea. I will share lots of stories about Taking my family and moving to Costa Rica while I was a freelance consultant.

Ooh.

Well, maybe we'll do an episode on that, share the mistakes and the learnings from that. Really fun. And we'd love to hear from, from you guys. We'd love to hear about your stories of consulting or working remote. What else, Courtney? Do we, do we explain, I think, decently enough what the What the podcast will be about?

Well, I sure hope so. And if we didn't, you can reach out to us at joinsmtc.com and tell us what you want to hear. Have we clarified the community? Again, it is free. We just want a place for everyone to get together and share ideas. And if you're stuck and need a helping hand, you know, we can all lift each other up.

Yeah, and we haven't figured out exactly what the format will be, whether it's like a forum or an email thing or what is it exactly, but we'll figure it out as this podcast kind of progresses, as we hear from you and set something up in a way that is truly society and community-like. I think that's it. I think that's a wrap, Courtney.

I think that sounds good. Episode number 1 in the bag.

All right. Well, Thank you to listening. Thank you for listening to this episode of SMTC Podcast. If you like this episode, please rate us on whatever platform you're listening us on. The ratings make the podcast better because of the algorithms. The podcast algorithms will make it easier for other people to discover it as well. Be sure to subscribe so that you get notified when new episodes come out. And if you haven't already, join the SMTC list, email list, by going to joinsmtc.com and you'll become a member. Joining the email list is being a member. That's it. It's free. And we look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks for listening, everybody, and have a great day.

Bye.

Bye.