October 20, 2008 - Prosys is Now Acture Consulting.

(SEATTLE, WASHINGTON) We are pleased to announce two important developments today. The first is that The Prosys Group is now Acture Consulting. Acture is a word that means "Action."

The second and most important development is the addition of James Gallagher as a Managing Director for Acture Consulting. For nearly 2 years, Prosys has focused mostly on Product Management work for emerging companies in the Seattle area. With James joining the team, it puts together a "1-2 punch" in terms of providing value to start-up clients. James will head up the Sales & Customer Strategy practice for Acture.

James brings with him a solid playbook with a focus on sales traction and customer acquisition. Over the last 16 years, James has been responsible for building and accelerating revenue streams for dozens of companies. While at Jobster, I personally witnessed James build a sales engine of systems, process, people that achieved some phenomenal sales numbers for our SaaS products.

As Acture brings year two to a close over the next few months, we are gearing up for a busy 2009, assisting start-ups in the areas of business, product and sales strategy. We believe that 2009 will be an important year for companies, as they find they must do more with less. We look forward to partnering with companies in achieving this goal.

what am I passionate about?

Nearly one year ago I joined with a former colleague and founded a consulting company. It made complete sense. We both intended to work independently for the foreseeable future and at the very least we would be sharing the operational overhead and costs. We formed our corporation, hired a talented accountant and collections specialist, and selected a law & tax firm. Our 2007 tax year turned out to be a good one, we posted a profit.

In summary, year 1 (2007) was all about building the business and operational infrastructure to do something more.

Now I sit and review the 2008 plan and have been talking to a lot of colleagues and contacts about where opportunities exist in the marketplace. Some interesting and compelling things have surfaced, but they ultimately force an important question that was posed to me indirectly over lunch the other day:

What do I want out of this? What am I passionate about?

My immediate response over my spicy grilled chicken sandwitch was that I am passionate about product strategy and helping early stage companies establish an understanding of their market and the build the plans to address it. My lunchmate was perfectly happy with that answer and so was I. Now, however, I wonder.

Thinking more about it that day, I am most passionate about the freedom of working for myself; building a business that ultimately enables me to acheive my life goals. The most specific life goal is better life-work balance but without the financial sacrifice.

The Product Manager in me is starting to see the roadmap:
- BETA: My departure from Jobster. I was so eager to launch beta that I left without plans of what I might do next. That took some guts and passion.
- v1.0: Sub-contract consulting
- v1.5: Co-founding Prosys Inc. and finding my own work.

Each of these stages have taught me something more about myself and what I want.

The clarity reached just after lunch the other day was that while I am passionate about consulting, I am actually not as passionate about consulting as I am about building a business to reach those life goals I spoke of. Consulting is the answer for now and I am good at it.

What is in store for v2.0 you might ask? Good question.

Turning your talents into a consulting business

As Prosys continues to grow, I have found myself talking with a lot of consultants (and would-be consultants) about how they position themselves in the marketplace. I have always been a generalist with a broad range of skills that I can bring to the table, but I have learned recently that I need to settle in on a few key ones. At first this felt like pigeon-holing myself and potentially limiting my project opportunities. In fact, it has done the opposite. When your name comes up in conversations, I think people are better able to quickly define your value proposition as a consultant. If you have heard much about Prosys, you'll know that word-of-mouth is our primary growth strategy, so making sure that the message is crisp and easy to grasp is absolutely important.

All of that being said, I have not completely settled on those key things for myself yet. I am getting close though. Product prototyping for upstarts in the area is probably going to be one of them...

Prosys Consulting Group, Open for Business

I am happy to announce that a former Jobster colleague and I have launched a consulting services organization, Prosys Consulting Group Inc. The concept for Prosys was born out of our own experiences as independent consultants, building our own businesses during much of 2007.

Prosys in a Nutshell

Business and technology consulting services are a well established economy in the
Pacific Northwest and beyond. Whether the firm is Accenture at the national level or Slalom
Consulting from a multi-region perspective, the typical business model of a consulting firm is to hire and train professionals as full-time employees and staff them to projects, charging the client up to and beyond $300 per hour, depending on the project and skill sets needed. Consultants are typically paid as salaried employees.

In this model, I believe that only the consulting firm truly wins, with rich margins. Clients are left with high consulting rates that climb steadily as the firm becomes more entrenched in the company. Experienced consultants, while they may see a competitive salary, see a low salary relative to the value they provide the client. I consider this to be a large gap in the current model, and a big opportunity for Prosys.

The Prosys Group has developed a consulting co-op business model that aims to change this equation, so that all stakeholders win. Prosys is an alternative to the high margin consulting firm model, empowering experienced professionals to become independent consultants. Prosys then provides member consultants with everything they need to set up and run their own consulting company, and removes the professional’s “fear of the unknown.” Some informal polling of professionals we conducted identified the some of the reasons that people decide not to independently consult - our goal is to "take the edge off" of those issues.

Prosys has put the finances, people and processes in place to handle key shared services for the consultants, including contracts, accounting, invoicing, upfront payment for work completed regardless of when the client pays their invoice. Most importantly, Prosys offers long-term value to member consultants by maintaining a "clearinghouse" of new projects to make finding the next project less daunting.

The result of these services is a win-win model that:

1. Empowers professionals consultants to be independent, building their own business.


2. Offer client companies the same consulting talent at lower rates than the large consulting firms.


3. Consultants enjoy a higher salary, more in-line with the value they provide the client

Growth Strategy: Referrals

Core to our strategy is the way that we intend to grow. Rather than have a sales team pushing consultants out into the market, we are relying on a "pull model." When our member consultants come across new opportunities with their clients, they are relayed to the rest of the member community. On the consultant side, Prosys is very selective about the consultants that join our community, insuring the highest of quality. Recommendations and referrals from those who have personal knowledge of their work is a must to be accepted. We think that this rigorous approach will insure that the referrals continue to flow.

With a solid collection of consultants and opportunities in our pipeline, I am optimistic that Prosys will be a provider of great value to Northwest companies for some time to come.

she was right

Mind you, I am only a few weeks into my first consulting gig at a former employer of mine based in Redmond. Just as I was leaving Jobster, my wife made a comment regarding her lack of confidence that I could stay out of the start-up arena for very long.

Another friend, who traveled a similar road a few years back, warned me that consulting at a former employer had a massive chance of being instantly boring. I interpreted that as an opportunity to leave some brain power on the table for the "strategery" of developing ideas I had in the hopper.

So, here I am, 2 weeks into my project and my wife's lack of confidence is turning out to be spot on. The nice thing is that while I am adding a lot of value on this project, I have the horsepower after hours to keep developing my next thing.

Speaking of the "next thing" I am ramping up for an unveiling of it sometime in the month of April or May 2007 (if all goes well), so stay tuned. I can tell you a few things about it: it is a technology start-up, I am passionate about it, it is an underserved market with no leader, and it provides a very important service to keep people informed and safe. My v-team is still finalizing market, customer research, and competitive work before we take the next step.

I better shut up now, I might give it away!