Moonlighting as a MarTech Consultant

Courtney Makara 0:23

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

Mike Rizzo 0:39

Hey, this is Mike from MarketingOpscom. 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 marketingopscom.

Courtney Makara 0:55

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. Our guest is Tom Keefe, who is currently the Director of Marketing Operations at Engagio, recently acquired by Demandbase, who is a full-time employee there but also has experience in the consulting world. So thanks for joining us, tom.

Tom Keefe 1:26

Yeah, thanks for having me. Courtney, Happy to be here experience in the consulting world.

Courtney Makara 1:30

So thanks for joining us, tom. Yeah, thanks for having me. Courtney Happy to be here, great. So, tom, you and Grant know each other from previous worlds. And Grant, thanks for doing the introduction and having Tom join us today. Looking forward to it.

Tom Keefe 1:45

Absolutely so, tom, tell us a little bit about your insight into the consulting world and experience with that in the past before you were in your current role, yeah, so you know I was doing some moonlighting back a couple of years ago, working full time, and an opportunity came up to, you know, really start my first ever consulting gig.

Tom Keefe 1:59

So I really hopped on it, started my own LLC, you know, got the accountant, the tax person, everything set up on the background, so so I could go full force and do these types of work, you know, after hours and then kind of spending it on weekends. And it was a really eyeopening experience for a lot of different ways and I think one of the really cool things about doing it was I was able to learn more about what I was able to accomplish and you know those skills around pricing, scope of work. You know how am I going to promote myself and how do I set expectations for these customers, you know that are really paying me for my time and my results, versus just sitting in an office and getting things done for 40, 50, 60 hours a week. It was really great and I'd love to explain you know what I learned and what are some of the things I would look out for going into another consulting role.

Courtney Makara 2:50

Yeah, I'd love to hear it. But I also wanted to know did you feel like you? So you said you, you were moonlighting. So whenever I've done that in the past and I felt like I was cheating on my girlfriend or something, did you? How did you? How did you tell me about the mind process? Were you feeling underpaid? Were you feeling bored on the weekends? Like how does one go from I am a satisfied engaged employee to I am moonlighting in the same category of work that I do full-time, but I'm also doing it on the side? Walk me through that thought process.

Tom Keefe 3:31

Grant, you nailed it. You know it does feel like you're cheating on your girlfriend a little bit. You know, if you really love your job, it's always a little weird to be doing something on the side. But from my perspective, you know it was something that I knew I needed to get under my belt to really round out my experience. Because you know, as a marketing ops person, you don't get a lot of customer facing opportunities. You don't get a lot of opportunities outside of vendor purchases to talk pricing and you know one of the biggest parts of MOPS or SOPS, any operations, is time management.

Tom Keefe 4:02

So, understanding that, okay, if I was going to do this, I needed to set the expectation that you know, from eight to six, eight to five, monday through Friday, I was unavailable. That is not a time where I'm going to take calls hop on Zooms. All of my work is going to be done off hours and on weekends and I thought that setting that precedent early on the engagement was really helpful for me to lose that feeling of, you know, guilt and cheating and I'm doing something wrong. Because you know I wasn't working for a competitor. I wasn't, you know, in violation of any, you know, contract offer with my current employer.

Courtney Makara 4:38

So just having that separation of my full-time world versus, you know, my moonlighting world was a really big help in terms of that that sense and, um, I mean to be clear though it technically was probably, like it's commonly, against employee agreements, um, but I think that you're setting the the boundary was like super valuable, you know, because oftentimes it's during office hours or during excus, excuse me like office computer or office time is when people kind of get in trouble for doing stuff like that, or, you know, if it starts to take away from your full-time job. So then you get these, you decide to want to do it. How did you get your first clients? And and you know, talk me through some of the things that you learned from doing that. Yeah, so you know, one of my first clients happened to be, you know, talk me through some of the things that you learned from doing that.

Tom Keefe 5:29

Yeah, so you know, one of my first clients happened to be, you know, a former, like it was a referral from someone I'd worked with in the past that really enjoyed working with me. They had a gap in their operations, you know team, and they said, hey, we'd love for you to come in and, you know, start with an audit and we'll tell you where we're trying to get to and you can tell us kind of how much work is going to be involved, what you think we need to do if there's gaps in the technology, if there's gaps in the sales process. So you know, just the audit alone, I think, by going around, by going that route and starting there, versus, hey, I'd like you to achieve A through X was really helpful again for me to understand well what is the scope of this. Was really helpful again for me to understand well what is the scope of this. And I'm sure you know people listening have always done like a trial of SaaS products. Or you know, hey, let's hop in a discovery call for a sales rep, and that's kind of how I treated the discovery and I wanted to understand kind of, okay, I want to jump into this, I want to do this work and get into this new consulting world, but how much of that time is really expected? So being able to jump in, get that access and get the audit done at first was a very big help. And, you know, I would recommend kind of working in a templatized world of like okay, this is the system, these are the important flows, this is the tech that's involved. This tech is talking to that tech. Excuse me, here's some disconnected technologies that we can, excuse me, bring into the stack to aid their end goals. But the audits only is useful if you know that end result. Right, if we're trying to create a tracked people journey, if I do a general audit, I might not be looking for that type of thing. I might be looking at, okay, well, with all the data mixing and matching and tying together, versus now I can do an audit with a specific understanding of okay, are we tracking the buyer's journey of these prospects? Is it going into outreach or sales office? Is it coming back to Salesforce? Is there an SLA around these things? So really having that objectively driven audit was very helpful.

Tom Keefe 7:32

And you know, to touch back on, how did I get this opportunity and other opportunities. It's all been from word of mouth. To be completely honest, I've probably done four or five engagements now and every single time it's oh, I heard you did great work for A, b and C. Oh, this person recommended you. So I actually don't even have anything about my consulting on my LinkedIn profile. It's really just a word of mouth kind of side gig for me, and I think that's a really great way to go about it If you're doing it as a moonlighting side project, because you know that the people that are referring you, they know your skillset versus, hey, let's go batch and blast every marketing manager on the East Coast from LinkedIn and maybe you know you run into someone that you don't mess with or they have different expectations from a consultant than what you're willing to give. So I really do think that the referral process is a great way to get going.

Courtney Makara 8:26

Well, I have a question for that, Tom. So you're doing it freelance, but you're getting inbound traffic, you're getting referrals and positive experiences. Why not leap in and do it full time and do it the 40 hours a week? What keeps you with one foot in the door of like the W-2 employee world? Yeah, I'm curious your thoughts on that.

Tom Keefe 8:47

Yeah, you know, it's kind of like cutting the cable box out of your house, right? We're all just so used to the ease of the W-2 and the benefits of the 401k, and, you know, unlimited PTO and a free laptop. You know, these are all things that just bring my stress level down, not knowing you know where that next paycheck is going to come from on a weekly basis. And, personally speaking, you know, we all have our own financial strategies, but my consulting is one of those things I look at as additional savings, and I think it's really good because I can set my own hours, I can take on as much work as I can at certain times, and you know, some customers have even asked oh would you be willing to, you know, work on a retainer while we just retain your services for a month or two, and I think that's a really good way to go about it If you, you know, are looking to move away from the W-2, maybe having a couple of key clients versus constant, you know churning engagements,

Consulting Pricing Models and Strategies

Tom Keefe 9:47

I think.

Tom Keefe 9:47

For me, though, I just like having multiple pieces of the pie right. I like the work I do full time, and then I like being able to jump industries in this consulting world, maybe working for a B2C business, a B2B business. I've actually worked with other consultants helping their customers, which has been an interesting piece, because now it's like, okay, I'm going to kind of take a step away from my solo view, my solo work habits, and actually work with an agency who's servicing you know results and insights for their customers. So for me, I think it's really good to either. For me personally, I like doing both, because I just like switching it up, but I think there's definitely something to be said for doing it full time and on your own, because you know if you don't want to work Monday, you don't have to work Monday. You can work Tuesday through Saturday and no one's going to yell at you if you're not on Slack. But again, that's all expectations that you need to set, you know, right at the beginning of these engagements.

Courtney Makara 10:44

Yeah, absolutely. I definitely had that thought process in my last full-time role of you know if I could do nights and weekends and pick up a couple things, but I felt this loyalty and, you know, cheating factor I like that analogy that you guys came up with and so I kind of ripped off the band-aid and went into it full-time. But I also wanted to touch in on your talk about a retainer and pricing, because that's really how I have kind of structured most of my business. I would say like 80 to 90% of my clients are project-based on a retainer. You know I'm considered an employee on their team.

Courtney Makara 11:20

You know a few days a week. You know two days a week to four days a week, depending on how much work there is. But then I've had a few people that really want that hourly rate. You know how much you charge per hour to build. You know webinar programs or something like that. So I'm curious is your experience? Do you have any gotchas or big red flags to pay attention to as we, as we consultants, try to figure out the right pricing model?

Tom Keefe 11:42

Yeah, you know, I think so. When I first started this, one of the first things I did was I looked at what my salary was per hour, because I've actually never done that. It was like, oh, what is this divided by 2080? I was like, okay, that's my hourly rate, that's great. And this consulting work is not coming with benefits, it's not coming with all of the little perks that come with the W-2 job.

Tom Keefe 12:04

And then from there I was looking at Upwork and different other self-help consulting sites and seeing what people were charging and I think setting the right price for yourself is a daunting task because you'll set a price and you'll say, well, wait, would I pay this? And you know you can talk yourself in and out of that price constantly. So my prices usually range around like 150 to 200 an hour. And the reason you know it might sound very high, it's because I know that I can handle more than just your standard marketing ops technologies right, if you have, you know, sales engagement technologies, like a sales author outreach. If you have a CRM, right, if you have different types of marketing automation, I feel fully confident that my skills will apply to those. Hence the higher rate. But you know, if you set that high rate, you're not getting any work. Some people might think, well, maybe I should decrease and maybe I should sell myself a little short. And I honestly don't recommend that because if you think that you're worth a certain value and that your work will stand up and the integrity is there, you know, stand by your price, have that confidence in yourself to promote yourself at the rate which you see yourself being paid. So I think that's a big part for people when they're starting off. It's like well, do I take, you know, $50 an hour, $80 an hour, $500 an hour, and honestly, every company is going to be a little bit different on how they want to spend that.

Tom Keefe 13:28

And when it comes to retainer pricing, I think a lot of it is around the expectation right. So I know that in the one time I've done this, our retainer based system was okay. We want you for 40 hours a month, so basically it comes out to 10 hours a week. Now my big thing again, because I was full time was okay. Well, monday through Friday, 8am to 6pm, I'm unavailable. Like I will see your emails, I will respond to them later when I'm not on company. You know location and using a company laptop and making sure that I'm not affecting my full time role.

Tom Keefe 14:03

And I think you know when I do that retainer my rate, I lowered it because I wasn't available all the time, because I wasn't available all the time, but during the weekends it was a 24 seven. Hey, you have something, we'll have it done. All the deliverables will be sent to you by, you know, 6 PM on Sunday and then we'll work through the next week of deliverables. So maybe, if you're available, you know, during the week, if you have more hours, um, to be flexible with and it's not these set days and times maybe your retainer goes up a little bit more, because you know things can change and things can snowball after one question. Oh well, now we need to fix A, b and C. So that's going to be a little bit more work.

Tom Keefe 14:40

I personally prefer the hourly rate because with these operation type jobs, what I've seen is, hey, I'm talking to the director of marketing, the director of sales operations, they want to achieve A, b and C. Okay, great, let's do the audit, let's scope out the work. Here are the things that I believe need to happen, and no fault to anyone else. Sometimes the person hiring you doesn't know the full scope of the data architecture or the process that goes into that. So now to achieve your goal, you might actually have to bring in more people from their side right. There might be another layer to the complexity around maybe changing an AE or ADR habit or demand gen managers process. That wasn't originally a part of your scope and you know, if you're doing retainer work or overall project based pricing, you might lose out on that additional work that you discovered by trying to produce the best result for the client.

Courtney Makara 15:35

Yeah, that is definitely something I have experienced for sure. I personally don't like the hourly rate because there are certain things I know I can do really quickly because I've done them for 10 years, but they still have value. You know if I can do it in 30 minutes, you know there's still value of my QC process and you know methodologies that I've created for myself. So I do like the retainer kind of project-based. But as I have been tracking you know my hours on my own, sometimes I'm like Ooh, wow, I'm not really making what I should be. You know this, one week I've put in, you know, 50 hours on a project. So I'm still kind of figuring that out and getting advice from other people on how to do that in the right way. Grant, what is your thought on the retainer hourly thing here? Yeah, I mean one of the biggest mistakes I remember when I was first getting into consulting, I did the exact same thing you did, tom. I took my salary, I divided it by 2080, whatever number. I didn't even know. How did Tom? I took my salary, I divided it by 2080, whatever number. I didn't even know how many business hours they were in a year. I had to Google that too.

Consulting Rates and Tax Considerations

Courtney Makara 16:37

Courtney Makara 16:38

And um, and it came out to like 35, I think, uh, $35 an hour. And that's literally what I quoted to my first consulting client. I said, hey, 35 an hour, and I think they were like client. I said, hey, 35 an hour, and I think they were like, okay, let's do it. And um, and you very quickly learned that like, oh wait, I have to pay taxes on that. I have to, you know, pay, uh, like basically everything that you, you essentially take for granted when you're full-time. You know, like, you don't have any days off, you are not allowed to become sick. You, you have to do all this, additional benefits, everything else. So, whatever your hourly from salary is, you know it's a double it or if not more, because, um, it, you need to be able to at least have it enough to cover, like if you're expecting to be to be getting paid as much as you are in a full-time role.

Courtney Makara 17:34

But to your point, I think there's also the reverse of that. So for the client, there is kind of like the calculation of oh well, maybe they're not available when I need them, or on the weekend, or whatever. But for yourself, there's also that risk level that you're taking on. Like you said, when you're going freelance you may not have a gig, you know, until you get the next one, and so your rate needs to somewhat reflect that. Like I would say, give yourself more than you were making full-time, because when you're full-time it comes with, like I feel like the rate is lower because it comes with a kind of the security that you're going to be getting it.

Courtney Makara 18:11

But when you're freelance there's the added risk. So your rate should be slightly higher to cover for that, so that because, um, if you then after this project, you know, can't find another project, you still need to be able to like feed yourself. Do you know what I mean? So you're right at this like a really helpful exercise to go through in your own right, like as a business owner, to say what is my price, what is the market rate? What is my risk level? What are my benefits? How much money do I want to save? What's my opportunity cost of going mountain biking on the weekend? How much is that really worth to me? You know, is that a $1,000 bike ride? I'm foregoing Right, or what is that? Well, and the retirement savings is one thing you know, the pre-tax savings that you can have when you're a W-2 employee but the matching also is realizing oh, I'm not getting, you know, a 401k match from my employer. And obviously the health insurance is a big one too, and I've been independent and got my own health insurance coverage. And, Tom, it sounds like you have the benefit of employer provided healthcare, which is great.

Tom Keefe 19:19

Yeah. Yeah, that was a nice added bonus and a lot less stress taken off the consulting engagement, not having to worry about that. But I do want to touch on one thing. You know we keep talking about here it's a tax piece of it, right? So I think that was a big learning curve for someone like me, because you know we all get the income tax, we understand what that is, but you know, in the state of California you have to pay taxes on the LLC. You have to, you know, pay state fees and franchise board fees and a lot of things that I was not expecting to pay franchise board fees and a lot of things that I was not expecting to pay.

Courtney Makara 19:58

Yes, I had the same thing. Yes, I even figured that the city of Portland wants to know how many hours you're actually working in the city, because I don't live in the city but I would go in and go to like a co-working space and when I talked to my accountant he was like well, how often do you go to that co-working space? How many hours for the last year? And I ended up having to pay the city of Portland, I think $200 last year. Yeah, I learned something new.

Tom Keefe 20:18

See now. The one thing I will say, though, is that you know, if you have a spare room in your house and you turn that into your office, you know, now you kind of can work towards maybe some tax benefits, right? So while you are paying out for all these different pieces of government, you know taking their cut in your work, you also can benefit by. Hey, you know I'm spending money on my business, and now these become write-offs, which are way too complicated for someone like me, but my tax person says they're great. So I do think there's a nice balance between you know understanding what you should charge, what you need to save from each check for those taxes later, and then how can I spend money to improve my business? And look at my home office Now, that might be a tax write-off because it's used purely for my consulting business and nothing else.

Courtney Makara 21:10

Yes, that was a very specific caveat. My accountant said you know, if you do have that home office, it has to solely be used for that. It's not a space that you're also using for other things, and he was very, very adamant about that.

Mike Rizzo 21:24

So I think having yeah.

Courtney Makara 21:26

I think having an accountant and tax person that you trust and mine is focused specifically on Oregon small businesses which is something that's been really helpful. It sounds like you obviously have a California person to help you, grant. Are you doing it on your own or do you have professional help in Colorado? I just wing it, you guys, and I do research a lot, but I always think like, oh man, am I missing something? Something am I not? But I go through the questionnaires and I think every year I learn something new. I like to know the intricacies of it, so I like to do it myself. Um and uh, the one. The one thing I remember when I first started that really hit me was this there's this self-employment tax because we all pay it. I guess as a society we're not really set up to encourage entrepreneurship, which is kind of crazy. But it's true, we have all sorts of penalties in the tax law and in life, around insurance and everything else, that really make it tough. So I think, tom, your strategy of eating cake and uh, whatever the experience and ice cream I think you you're on to something.

Courtney Makara 22:40

I think there is, uh, that's a good way to be able to do it if you can, if you can manage it, if you have the time, um and um and so so kudos to you. Any other words for somebody who has a full-time role and is thinking about moonlighting. What else? Would you any other parting thoughts or advice?

Tom Keefe 23:05

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things I learned was really that scope of work is crucial, setting the expectation on early, not just in terms of your availability, your pricing, et cetera, but also what needs to be done to achieve those objectives, because chances are you're going to need help on the client side as well, because you probably can't change a person's process or maybe they're not giving you admin rights to tech or you need access to other technologies that were not, you know, under their management. So, really understanding what the objective is, what it will take to get there and then trying to associate, you know, time spent or money component to that, I think, was something I'm still trying to really pull in the reins on and perfect. So don't feel bad if your first time you undervalue yourself or you overvalue yourself, like practice, uh, practice makes perfect and you know the more you try, the better you'll get at it. And I think the other thing too is, you know, step out of your comfort zone. You know if I, I've worked in techs, uh, for tech companies for a while, and so my consulting roles have not been with tech companies and it's been a nice change and I learned a couple of new things and being a B2B marketer and working for a B2C company.

Tom Keefe 24:16

It was eyeopening. I was like oh wow, you do. Your focus is totally different than ours and I understand now why it is different. Versus just like oh yeah, like, b2c is just a totally different animal. It's like no, now I have some experience in it. So while we're all kind of doing the consulting work you know to make a living and get that retirement built up, I do think it's a really good way to expand your experience and round out your circle as a professional.

Courtney Makara 24:44

Well, this is excellent. Thanks again, tom, for taking the time to chat with us about your consulting experience, and best of luck to you.

Tom Keefe 24:54

Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. Thank you so much.

Courtney Makara 24:59

Great to meet you and take care Likewise. Have a good one, and thank you for listening to this episode of SMTC Podcast. If you like this episode, please rate us on the platform you're listening to this on. The ratings help make the podcast better, make it easier for other people to discover it, and also be sure to subscribe, and if you haven't already joined the SMTC, by going to join smtccom and join as a member. It's free. We look forward to hearing from you.