PICA Member Spotlights

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

 

Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us your consulting specialty?

A: My name is Mark Smutny and Civic Reinventions is the name of my consulting business. I work with non-profits who have a lot of internal struggles, unhealthy conflict and dysfunction. I go through a process of realigning them to their mission purpose and mediating conflict. The outcome or end product of my intervention is a healthier, more productive non-profit that can actually work 100% toward fulfilling their mission instead of fighting internally all the time.

 

Q: The non-profit space can be difficult for many solopreneurs. Why did you decide to focus on non-profits and what have you learned in terms of finding work and getting contracts in that space?

A: It's because of a lifetime involvement in non-profit work, primarily as board member, often as chair or president of the board, but also staffing a variety of non-profits at the executive level. It's been my life work.

I have often found leadership or power is more diffuse in a non-profit than in the for-profit sector. A nonprofit CEO or executive director may not have all the power that you think of in a for-profit. There can be ambiguity about who the deciders are, sometimes it's a board of directors, sometimes it's the executive director, sometimes it's even a program director. It just all depends on what the issues are and the culture of the organization.

My consulting business is all about relationships, cultivating those relationships, and I don't think that's any different than any other sector in terms of getting gigs. However, non-profit leadership is messy. It can be kind of hard to figure out where power is located. During the assessment phase, before I sign a contract, I interview most of the key players.  Assessments are not so much about how you will help an organization, but how you nurture those relationships. The focus is always on the potential client. The process can take a while and with the ambiguity in nonprofit life, it can take some time to figure out who are the real decision-makers.

 

Q: How long have you been independent and why did you decide to go solo?

A: It's a little hard to say when exactly because I dabbled in consulting even when I was salaried. But I really started taking it seriously in 2018 when I published the first edition of my book. Then fast forward a couple of years later when I published the second edition of my book, I started getting these inquiries from non-profit resource centers and community foundations who wanted me to do workshops on the content of my book. And from that, teaching workshops led to contracts. The book a gigantic business card that led to teaching gigs and ultimately to some consulting contracts.

 

Q: What is the name of your book?

A: It's called Thrive, The Facilitator's Guide to Radically Inclusive Meetings, Second Edition.

 

Q: Was it written with non-profits in mind or is it more about facilitating effective meetings for anybody?

A: I had non-profit life in my mind. My ideal reader was a person that was fairly new in their career and an executive director or a CEO of a non-profit. However, I have this discussion with our two sons. One is employed in a Fortune 500 company and one is a consultant working with high-end corporations. They both say, "Dad, I use your stuff in my work setting.” So, yes and no.

 

Q: You’re right that your book became a big business card because it really establishes your credibility. But it takes an enormous amount of effort and diligence to write and publish a book. How did you stick with it and make it happen?

A: First of all, I can be very disciplined. I am a morning person, so when I awaken in the morning, I hide out in my home office and crank out words for two hours, the only interruption is a refill on the coffee. No emails, no communication with my wife, just very focused. I finished my manuscript’s first draft in 120 days. There was only one morning that I didn't write. So, I'm very disciplined when writing. I’m also married to a really good editor. She has a mass communications and journalism background. Barbara is good at taking my raw text and slashing and burning it until it comes out right. Then when I was ready to find a publisher, I found an amazing publisher who was also a superb editor.

 

Q: So you published the book, and then you decided to go independent, correct?

A: I published the second edition, and I got a call from the CEO of a non-profit resource center in Seattle called 501 Commons.  Nancy said to me, “I want you to teach a workshop.” It took me two days to quit my salaried position, say to myself and my wife, “I'm going into this thing full time.” I had been in a middle management position that drove me crazy because I was used to being the top dog at whatever organization I was in. I just didn't like it even though it led to some contracts later on. It was absolute freedom to say I'm done with salaried life and I'm ready to launch. (And no boss). 

 

Q: What’s one or two things you had to learn being self-employed as your own boss?

A: All the back-end stuff was new to me. Setting up my LinkedIn profile in a way that was inviting to potential clients, the accounting and invoicing software was something I had never had to do before. I always had a finance department that took care of that, I only had to read balance sheets, P & L’s and cash flow statements. I didn't have to actually do the business accounting operations. But now, as a solopreneur, that is all on my back.

I was always good at nurturing relationships, but to do that in a more disciplined way, to make sure that every week I was nurturing relationships that could potentially lead to a referral or even a direct contract, that was all kind of new in the sense that I had to keep at that a lot and I couldn't really take a long break. 

 

Q: What's one thing you know now that you wish you would have known before you went for it?

A: I wish I had known how much fun it is, how thrilling it is to do what I most love to do. I guess if either I'd had an internal voice or someone outside my brain with a megaphone saying, “Mark this is exactly what you should be doing!” that would have helped. In retrospect, I think I did have some family members that had always encouraged me to branch out, but the bottom line is I had no idea it would be so much fun.

 

Q: Have you had any surprises on this journey and if so, what was it? 

A: I think one is that when I exude confidence and when I have a sense of joy and fulfillment, that that is actually contagious. My doubts about whether I was competent in a particular intervention disappeared when I realized I really do have something unique to offer and that's cool. From that grows a kind of confidence that I think is contagious to the clients I've worked with.

 

Q: I've started using the term solopreneur. more than independent consultant. When you hear the term solopreneur, because you are one, what does that mean to you?

A: One thing it doesn't mean is you are isolated. In fact, you are surrounded by a whole lot of people that are really supporting you. Liz, you're one of those people, and the other PICA members I’ve connected with. Then there are family members who say go for it. It's still a group effort, but what it means is bottom line, I'm doing the work, I'm doing the accounting, I'm doing the business development, I am nurturing all those relationships. I'm tweaking the website. I’m tweaking the LinkedIn profile. The responsibility rests on my shoulders even though I feel surrounded by a whole lot of people that are supporting me on this journey.

 

Q: You always seem to exude confidence, but you've heard me talk about how most solopreneurs still have to deal with FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) from time to time. Do you still get FUD?

A: Not really. When I made the mental transition of bidding on a project by what I was worth and what I brought to the project, instead of sitting with an electronic timesheet and calculating all the hours that I put into the project, when I made that conversion to bidding as a project, I had to contend with, “Oh, but I can't be worth that much.” Doubt lurked. Especially when working with non-profit who were so small, they have no staff and limited budgets, I felt guilty about charging so much. There is a myth of scarcity that pervades much of the nonprofit world and it makes you think they can't pay people what they're worth. I had to get that out of my head and then just go ahead and bid on a project. If the executive director or the CEO or the decider said, “No, that's too high”, well then, we negotiate. If we can't reach an agreement, I can always walk away.

But do I have that anxiety anymore? I suppose not. Because in my assessment, pre-contract, I listen to what their financial capability is because one of the things you’re trying to measure is the health or disease of a nonprofit organization around their fundraising. If they're weak in that, then I need to refer them to a consultant that does fundraising. So, FUD, not really, but it wasn’t that long ago that I had plenty of FUD about bidding.

I am constitutionally a confident person. My whole life I’ve been an achiever. I’m drawn to leadership. Facing big challenges is what I do and who I am. It's just the way I was reared and nurtured. Maybe men are affirmed more than women (still). My wife has a doctorate, she's just brilliant and superbly capable, yet she has lots of doubts about her capability.

 

Q: What’s next for you and Civic Reinventions?

A: My biggest contract is with the Washington State Administrative Division of the Courts designing transportation systems for people that are not able to get to all their appointments in the process of retrieving their children from the child welfare system. These parents have had problems with addictions, lost their driver's licenses, and now to get their kids back from temporary custody, they have to jump through all these hoops. Without decent transportation, they can’t get to their appointments.  I am the leader/facilitator/project manager of a multi-sector planning team that has twenty-five stakeholders seeking to solve and fund transportation solutions in some of the most challenging settings in rural Washington State.  

That's my biggest project for this year. The Washington Administrative Office of the Courts and I will soon engage in negotiations for a multi-year contract. With my assistance, we will develop transportation programs in rural counties throughout Washington state for parents trying to get their kids back. I'm very excited that I am working in this niche, even though it's not exactly how I market myself but it's a big deal and it's very meaningful.

I've just made a kind of a shift in my branding from helping non-profits in an increasingly diverse world to helping non-profits turn from toxic conflict to mission success. I'm basically saying I'm looking for gigs with non-profits that are in deep trouble and need a lot of help, but are doing important work, they need to do more of that work, and I want to help them get to mission success.

 

Q: How can people find out more about you and Civic Reinventions?

A: The easiest way to do it is to go on my LinkedIn profile or on my Civic Reinventions website. You’ll immediately see my phone number and my email address. I'm very bold about saying call me, email me, text me. We will have a wide-ranging conversation, no charge whatsoever. I'm here to listen, so I just try to be very open about all the ways that you can contact me - website, email, phone number, and LinkedIn.

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