PICA Member Spotlights

Q&A with independent consultants who successfully “made the leap” and created the consulting career of their dreams

 

Q: Please introduce yourself and tell us your area of expertise.

A: Hi, PICA community, I’m Jamin Spitzer, the founder of Abacus Insights Partners. We are a boutique consulting firm that helps large companies better understand their earned media coverage. Earned media coverage is any kind of news coverage that a brand would generate. (For example, Facebook is in the news every day.) Anytime the media covers a story in any way, there are PR people who are working to get that coverage either landed or improved. My consulting firm helps major companies with large PR departments figure out how to measure what they do and why and how they've succeeded.

Q: It’s a very unique niche or area of expertise. How did you end up in this business?

A: Back in 2015, I'd been at Microsoft for about 10 years, and there was a movement in the company to be more data-driven – using data to make better decisions. During those 10 years I had different roles in marketing and felt that there was an opportunity in communications to get more meaning and value out of the communications data the organization was producing.

There really wasn't a lot of rigor or data hygiene related to communications or PR. I took on that role for Microsoft around 2015, did a lot of work, and took it from an area of weakness to an area of strength. When it was time for me to think about my next move, I started talking to my network of people at other companies and realized that everybody was bad at this thing I had done at Microsoft. They all felt like it was a missed opportunity and that they needed to be getting more meaning out of their data. So I said, "Oh, maybe that's the thing guys, let's take the leap." So I did and that's why I started Abacus Insight Partners.

Q: How long ago did you make the leap to independent consulting?

A: I've been independent for just a little over a year. Informally, the business was in existence since June of 2020, but it actually didn't really start until September, and I signed my first client in November.

Q:  You also introduced yourself as a boutique consulting firm, so even though you stepped out of corporate to be an independent consultant, you've already grown to be more than that.

A:  Yes, though I’d say we are still pretty small.  I have a bunch of years navigating big companies so to do data analytics for a major corporation, you need to be more than just one person. One of our clients is a major corporation that makes up 80% of our revenue. It's a full business process outsourcing deal so they have me managing the data providers in addition to producing analytics and insights and managing that client takes more than me. So the top line looks really nice, it’s a big budget, but there's also a lot of money flowing out because I have 3 subcontractors helping and there's also a bunch of contractual relationships that I have with data providers on behalf of the client.

This client, like a lot of big companies, is really busy and they don't want data, they want insight. So we go from managing the data provider, to sucking down that data, grinding it into a bloody pulp, figuring out what it means, and then giving the client a lot of insights that are meaningful and actionable. I have a saying, “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.” So that's what we do.

Q: You mentioned having subcontractors. As your business grows, are you considering taking on employees? With regard to subcontractors versus employees, what sort of questions are you dealing with?

A: I'm very much dealing with those questions now. It's a little bit of an existential question: do you want to be a big business and maybe sacrifice short-to-medium term profit in order to grow? Or do you want to stay smaller and maybe optimize more for the short-term profitability of the account? One good way I’ve been coached to think about it is how much time you’re spending “in the business” versus how much time you're spending “on the business.” If I want to be a bigger business, I have to spend more of my time on the business and the people I hire should be the people that are in the business.  But that’s easier said than done when the client wants something and you need to make sure its done right.

I guess it’s an open question right now. I am just starting a renewal conversation for 2022 with my main client and every indication is that they are not only going to renew, but actually increase their spend by maybe 25% or 50%. We'll see, but at that point I think I have to say, "All right, this is really happening." I also want to land that second big account. Right now I have two other corporate clients.  They are fine, but they're small. Hopefully they get bigger, but I want to get that second big whale. If and when that happens, I think then I’ll have to have that discussion of, "All right, maybe we should be a bigger business and I should turn these contractors into employees and give them equity, and a health plan and take on all that overhead and so forth."

It becomes a set of questions around time and time pressure. The bigger you get, the more of that stuff you can hire people to help with, but when you’re small, you do it all yourself because it just doesn't make sense to spend the money. Should it come to pass, I’ll look forward to the day when I am not own tech support for my team.

Q: What's been one of the most satisfying or gratifying things about being self-employed?

A: Well, it's definitely a leap and it's a bet on yourself. I've definitely struggled at times with should I be doing this [being self-employed] and I suffer from LinkedIn envy. Obviously we need LinkedIn as a tool, but when I go on there and see people I know and they've gotten promoted, and they’re so happy, and they have time to write blog posts, I have a weird envy of that stuff. I don’t begrudge their success at all, but it does create self-doubt about should I be doing this or should I get back inside a corporation.  The positive thing that drives me though is I want to build something. I've wanted to do something like this for a very long time. I didn't know what exactly it was, but I used to do entrepreneurial side hustle stuff when I was much, much younger.

So it was the time to do it, to try it. I've always wanted this, so the biggest thing for me is that I'm doing it. I'm out there and I'm believing in myself in a way that allows me to have an impact, grow my business into something, and then figure out what I want to do with the remaining years I keep working.  

Q: What's one thing you know now that you wish you'd known 18 months ago?

A: There is no discernible pattern within my old contacts in terms of people that reply to my messages and want to help, and all the old contacts that I reach out to who don’t respond to me. 

Q: And you're all data, so if there's no clear pattern, there's probably no pattern at all. What's your answer to that? How has that influenced the way you're building the business?

A: Well, I'm still working my existing contacts but I've met a lot of new people over the last year. Because of the pandemic, it’s all on Zoom, but you spend a lot of time together and you get to know people. Most of my new business has come from existing relationships that started nurturing before I stepped out on my own. 

Next I’ve got to start getting new accounts. I found an interesting angle by talking with a number of the data providers. One of them potentially wants us to join in with them on an RFP and basically present as a full suite services. There are communications managers saying,  “I don't know how to make sense of this stuff. I need a professional that's actually going to take this cacophony of data and turn it into music." And I'm like, "Here I am, ready to do it."  I just have to find those people. 

I imagine there are PICA people out there reading this who have some relationship somewhere with a large company that can use what we do.  I’d love the referral and the opportunity to return the favor.

Q: Prospecting for new clients is always a challenge for anyone who's self-employed. I remember when you were just starting out, you were doing some speaking engagements. Was that a good use of your time?

A: That's a hard question to answer. It was great to do those events and then link to those videos on my website. That gives me good credibility but I didn't get any direct business out of it. I think the people that were attending were not the buyers, they were the practitioners. I did have a few conversations with practitioners after those sessions, but it was more like they wanted my help to answer a problem, as opposed to them wanting to hire me. I think the best thing about it was it gave me content I could put on my website.

Q: If you have one piece of advice for an independent consultant who has been at less than two years, what would it be?

A: I think the main thing is to be clear about what part of this is going to get you most excited. Does doing the work get you excited? Then go and do the work. If building a business is going to be what's going to get you excited, then focus on that. I find myself trying to balance ‘working in the business’ with ‘working on the business,’ and I’m discovering it the elements of running the business that gets me more excited because it's new. 

Q: If people want to get in touch with you or learn more about your business, what would be the best way to do that?

A: The best way is via our website, Abacus Insights Partners. And you can find me on LinkedIn at Jamin Spitzer and on Twitter as well.


~ ~ ~ Related Resources from PICA ~ ~ ~

Know the benefits and challenges before making the leap:

How to do outreach to build your pipeline:

How to leverage speaking at conferences to build credibility and awareness: