Clever Counsel #33 - Interview With Jason Anthoine
I'm interviewing a handful of senior consultants I admire to capture their experiences and perspectives on the consulting journey.
For my third interview in the series, I want to spotlight Jason Anthoine, longtime senior consultant and Senior Vice President + Managing Director, Arketi Inside. You'll find his insights below.
What made you say, “Screw it, I’m going out on my own”?
When I was an intern at the Georgia Forestry Commission, my boss, Howard, was a long-time newspaper man turned communications guy. He was a legend in the forestry industry and such a delight to have as a mentor so early in my career. His advice about when to leave any job was to stay there as long as you are learning and growing. If that’s no longer true, it’s time to move on, regardless of title or salary or any of that other stuff.
On top of that advice is my own around going out on your own: do it once you believe you know more about what you do than they do. That may be true on Day One, of course. But if you’re not learning and growing AND you know in your heart of heart you’re better than the team around you and the other agencies/freelancers they work for, then it’s time to scratch that itch.
How did you land your first high-paying client?
When I went out on my own the first time, my first client was the company I was leaving. My boss there, Mike, was smart enough to recognize that I had an entrepreneurial spirit and kind enough to support me when I decided to pursue that. He hired me as a consultant to keep doing my former day job for six months, at which point they’d backfill my open role. I got that opportunity because I had chemistry with him and the folks at the company and I had demonstrated expertise that they still needed, whether I was an employee there or not.
Your strongest supporters are the folks who already know you and already know how great you are. Start with them.
What’s one thing you did that changed the game for your growth?
Specialize, specialize, specialize. Do one thing and do it well, at the exclusion of everything else you are probably also really good at. The hardest thing in business to do is to say to opportunity. But when you say no to other stuff, it frees you to say yes to all the stuff that’s within your specialty. Having said that, I get it. You still need to pay the cable bill. So it is fine to say yes to work that isn’t in your specialty, especially when you’re first starting out. But you can never talk about that work in your marketing because it will water down your positioning. Also know that when you do that non-specialty work for that client, they’re gonna keep coming to you for stuff like that.
So be careful who you do it with because they’ll come to know you for that and probably just that, regardless of your positioning. But, again, perhaps it’s worth it to help make ends meet. Just keep it under your hat and resist the temptation to keep doing it.
What’s a piece of conventional consulting advice you flat-out ignore?
You must respond to RFPs.
RFPs are a crock of crap.
Companies use them to demonstrate that they know exactly what they want. But the reality is the RFP is a demonstration that they have no idea what they want. They have just figured out a way to build a process around ignorance. Most work has between a 15% to 30% margin, higher if you’re lucky. If you go after an RFP for a $100K project, you’re likely to spend $15K to $30K of your own time and materials to win it.
That is, if you win it. Let’s pretend you win it. You just ate up all your margin to win the project, meaning you’re doing the actual work you just won at cost. Let’s pretend you lose it. You just lost a big chunk of money (hard money and soft money) adhering to a process that you have very little control or influence over. You may be the perfect person for the job. But they’ll still hire the CEO’s brother-in-law anyway, leaving you holding the bag and feeling like they played you for a sucker. Because they did. Is this 100% true all the time? No. But true often enough that you should just respond to RFP with a list of clients who think you did great work doing a very similar thing and leave it at that.
When have you felt like going back to working for someone else — and why didn’t you?
I left my first consultancy behind so I could get more global experience working for larger firms. That felt like an opportunity I wouldn’t have otherwise, which also felt like it would limit not only my consultancy’s growth and my own personal growth.
And just last week I sold my latest firm and joined the acquiring firm. Both times, this was not an act of desperation or admission of failure or any of the negative vibes that come from changing your mind. As long as you are deciding to keep going it on your own or going back to be with someone else, then those are good decisions. Because they are deliberate and are made after a lot of thought about what you want/need/like/don’t like/etc. In any job you’re doing – on your own or not – your decision about your next step should always be about you and what you want. As soon as you let someone else decide that, you’ve outsourced your personal and professional growth and career and that rarely turns out well. You. Get. To. Decide. Whatever way you decide.
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Jason Anthoine is a 36-year veteran of internal communications, employee experience and culture change. He currently serves as Senior Vice President + Managing Director for Arketi Inside, a workplace change and communications consultancy.
Jason is also a valued member at CommsConsultants.com, and I want to sincerely thank him for sharing his insights for this edition of Clever Counsel.
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