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 the name of your business and your area of specialty?

A: My name is Rob Dodson and my organization is called Information Analytica. We do red teaming, tabletop exercises, and war gaming for strategy planning. That happened as a result of a previous cybersecurity effort in response to data breaches or incidents that happened. I found that I liked it a lot more because it was a lot more dynamic. It went over very well and I've done three for one individual in the last three years and he's referred me to other people. So, I've kind of moved my concentration over to that. I still do tabletops for cybersecurity, but less of them and now more among the strategy management and planning side.

 

Q: That's a super interesting niche. Tell me a little bit more about what do you mean by tabletop?

A: Basically the client comes up with an idea that he wants to pursue and he's trying to build a strategy around it. He gives me the background of it and I put together some scenarios that they can work through with some ‘mouse traps’. It's basically a what if scenario type approach that if you do this, what happens here? They get to see problems before they occur, before they've invested the money, before they've spent a lot of time going through and trying to determine whether or not it's a good idea. It's more of a sounding board. We get the major players of the product or program in a room together and we spent about three hours just going through it. It's worked and has been very successful. The client has been able to clarify what they want to do and then we take it to the next step, which is the work gaming piece where we put it into practice and see what would happen. It's like a pre-marketing approach. What kind of reception do you think it would get? What happens if it doesn't go the way you think it's going to go? How are you able to reconstitute yourself or can you pivot and take advantage? Or does something occur that shows you someplace else to go or something better? The idea is that when we get done, you have a strategy for whatever you're doing that has all the bugs, the kinks, and the wrinkles, and the warts taken out of it, and it has a much, much better chance of success.

Q: You said that you were doing this for a client and then he asked you to do it again and then you decided to offer it to other people. Is that really how this business started?

A: Yes, word of mouth. He was telling a couple of his friends and one of them called me and said, “Hey, you're doing it for him, can you do it for me?”

So I went over and talked to him and now we're doing it for schools. When they look at curriculums, especially in the STEM organization side of the house, which classes do they need and, what do we need to make sure we have it ready for kids? I've done a couple of schools where we've sat down with the administration and walked through the ideal outcome and how location factors into the curriculum. For example, in San Antonio we don't have a lot of manufacturing, but Toyota's here and Toyota's big into robotics. We worked with two schools where we put an emphasis on robotics and Toyota hires these kids out of high school into an intern program like you wouldn't believe. They never would have done that if we hadn't had the opportunity to sit down and walk them through this.

 

Q: So how long have you been self-employed?

A: Some people say all my life I've worked for other people. I've kind of been doing this on and off for the last 10 years. I've taken a full-time job a couple of times because it was interesting and I can pick up a skillset, but I kept my sidelines going at the same time.

 

Q: How has PICA helped with your journey? 

A: I've used a lot of your materials and I’ve attended some of the workshops. PICA’s approach is similar to mine. There's a lot of big strategy management consulting companies out there, but they don't cater to the people who could use it. The McKinsey's and The Boston Group and those Fortune 5000 people aren’t taking care of the little guy down the street. So I go after the little guy down the street and try to help him. And the people that you have in there are. The sharing of ideas is really where it's important because the big guys, they don't care. But the little guys need help and we need to figure out how to serve them better and the exchange of ideas that PICA offers is really what's important.

 

Q: Since you've been independent what do you think has been one of the bigger challenges that you've had to address?

A: The economy. I think making sure that you can provide your services in a manner that allows you to sustain a living, but that doesn't break the bank of the small businesses. We see retrenchment when things get really tight for them so we have to be a little bit more creative in what we do. So instead of a lot of times where we'll have a week of engagements, we'll do workshops for one or two days, cut the price down, do less, but still keep them engaged and keep them moving forward. So I think the biggest challenge is just reacting to what's going on in the economy and the small and mid-sized business enterprises' ability to have these services at a price that isn’t going to put them into bankruptcy.

 

Q: Tell me a little bit about how you do marketing or get new business.

A: Most of mine, believe it or not, is word of mouth. I've been involved with the school systems from the cybersecurity standpoint for about 12 years with a program that the Air Force Association has called CyberPatriot. Most of the schools have gone from that to STEM. It seemed like more and more of the kids that were in my cybersecurity group were also in robotics. So when Toyota decided that they were going to push the robotics programs that went with the schools they asked me, “How do we do this from a cybersecurity standpoint?” I got involved on the robotics side of the house and it kind of went from there. We did a tabletop exercise to determine the best approach. That school actually ended up developing a race car for Toyota for high school kids. It was electric driven, so it had solar panels on it. They came in second nationally and that kind of pushed that school to say, “Hey, let's sit down and look at what we can really do.” They've since expanded their offerings and they call it career alternatives.

They also now offer a court reporting certification for high schools. The state of Texas and the Bar Association said, “We don't have enough court reporters”, so they built a program. We helped them go through the process and looked at the pitfalls and all that. What they ended up with is a program where an 18 year old can do court reporting in depositions, not in court, but when they're having a deposition, these kids that are certified by the state are like an apprentice or an intern. They get to work for the lawyers and do depositions. Something that lawyers have had trouble finding people to do because the courts are busy. So it was a two pronged approach that worked out really well and they've been fairly successful with it. They've gotten kids into a profession that they never thought they'd get into. It's an at-risk school, which means that less than half the kids in that school went to college. So because of this, they developed a career path for people to be successful without college.

 

Q: How do you do your pricing?

A: We price them as a flat fee for each one of the three offerings, the tabletop, the word gaming and the red teaming. We price those all out at five grand a service. Then if you buy all three of them, because we can basically use what we do the first service for the next two, we give you a $3,000 discount. So basically what happens is it's 15,000 if you do them independently, and it's $12,000 if you do them all together.

It's a full week, five days of work on my part, but not necessarily on their part. On their part, two half days of really working with them and the other half of those days are spent working with senior management. We go over what we did and make adjustments. In the mornings we do an exercise or an event and then in the afternoon I'll sit down with the management and go through all the findings. We make adjustments, come back the next day, put those adjustments in and finish up another round just like the first day. On the third day I write up my report recommendations and then do my presentation. We discuss and make any adjustments they want. On the last day I'll deliver a final product with all of their input and my recommendations together.

 

Q: Did you always do fixed fee pricing?

A: Yes, in a way. When I've worked for some companies that charge by the hour, they could never figure out what their good hourly rate was. They would try to give the client a fixed price based upon what they thought the hours were. So most of the companies I've worked for are just all over the place when it comes to pricing. I decided I wasn't going to do that. I would just figure out what my time and effort are worth, and then I'll figure out what I'm going to charge and go from there. I've been successful with that, and I've not had to raise my prices for three years because business increases kept everything out, which these guys appreciate. If the costs go up, if I can increase my client base, then I can keep the cost to people the same. That's been my mantra to most of them and it's been successful. So most of my marketing has been word of mouth.

 

Q: So what's next for you and your business?

A: We're going back to the idea of maybe using some of the school's kids and taking on some interns. A friend of mine wants to join us too and take us to the next level, which means we'll go from from the sole proprietorship to something different. But what we're really looking at is what they call here a for-benefit company, even though we won't be.

That means we're taking people with skills they want to further develop, using them as interns, and keeping our ability to keep our prices in check by using interns instead of a full salaried individual. So giving the intern the opportunity to learn a skill and go out and do something for the community, and then keeping the prices down for the small and the mid-sized business enterprises. We think we can sustain ourselves a lot longer with that approach than if I had to start hiring full-time employees. Now, that doesn't mean I may not end up hiring some of the interns, but the idea is that giving them an opportunity to get out in the business while they're still developing and maybe finding something that they might be interested in that they would not have been exposed to normally.

The easiest and the fastest way to contact me is to visit my website, which will explain what I do and give you a place to contact us.


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