00;00;05;01 - 00;00;39;29
Erica Machulak
Welcome back to the Hikma Collective podcast. I'm Erica Machulak. And today we're chatting with serial entrepreneur Bill Neill. In this episode, Bill talks about building relationships, keeping your work in perspective, opportunities in the tech sector, and what we really mean when we say coding. One of the things that I love about Bill's perspective, and that I hope you pick up on in this episode, is that he's a big believer in our capacity to figure stuff out and that process of learning is a core part of self-determination.
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Erica Machulak
I find his approach to entrepreneurship to be really inspiring, and certainly it has informed the way that I approach my business. I hope that you enjoyed this conversation.
00;00;54;14 - 00;01;14;18
Erica Machulak
Thank you for joining us today. Today, we are going to interview Bill Neill, who is the co-founder and chief operating officer at Carex Consulting Group. He's also the co-founder and chief executive officer at Talent Bandit. Bill is a Bachelor of Science from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. And we're thrilled to have him here today. Bill, thank you for joining us.
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Bill Neill
Yeah, thanks for having me, Erica.
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Erica Machulak
Oh, absolutely. My pleasure. Today we're going to talk about a number of things. But first, I want to get a sense of your career journey to being a double founder. So let's start talking about your origin story. So you grew up in the Bay Area during the tech boom. What was that like?
00;01;37;08 - 00;01;54;13
Bill Neill
It was pretty incredible just to see the amount of wealth that was being created in such a short amount of time. And I would pair that with the amount of innovation that companies were undergoing. I mean, it was a constant exchange of free ideas and new companies being started. There was tons of funding floating around, so good and bad ideas got funded.
00;01;54;22 - 00;02;03;15
Bill Neill
And at the time, both my parents were computer science engineers. And so I really had an inside look at to several different startups in the Silicon Valley area.
00;02;03;25 - 00;02;13;28
Erica Machulak
Wow. And so just to back up for a second for our audience, for a range of specializations, when you say innovation, what do you mean?
00;02;14;25 - 00;02;40;20
Bill Neill
I mean, hopefully this isn't totally new, but just the idea of that like early 2000, sort of a figuring out that suddenly we had this ubiquitous Internet tool and how many different areas can we apply that to create value for customers or users? And I mean all over the place, right? Like you see companies like like Salesforce, like Google, like I mean, at the time, Google was a was still a privately held company.
00;02;41;07 - 00;02;54;00
Bill Neill
And just to see what they have been able to do, I mean, they're one of the most dominant corporate entities on earth now at this point through through applying a lot of those innovative techniques to create customer value. So, yeah, great.
00;02;54;00 - 00;02;58;16
Erica Machulak
Interesting. And so tell us about your journey. How did you end up in Madison, Wisconsin?
00;03;00;10 - 00;03;22;23
Bill Neill
Yeah, for sure. I came here for the weather. Just kidding. So I grew up in the Bay Area. I was really interested in finance when I was in high school. You know, I was in finance club, all that good stuff. And so when you're talking about studying finance at the university level, I mean, Wharton's one of the, certainly got to be on your short list.
00;03;22;23 - 00;03;41;10
Bill Neill
And so I was offered a pretty good scholarship to attend there. And through my time at Wharton and one thing I discovered was that I don't like finance at all. And I'm not very good at it. And so I graduated the Wharton School in 2009 with a degree in finance and management. And I was kind of a lost soul.
00;03;41;10 - 00;03;59;11
Bill Neill
I was I was looking for a job that was going to really interest me, that was going to use my skills. I thought I had a lot to offer, but at the same time, I had a couple of different Wall Street roles and none of them really clicked for me. And so I was sitting on my couch, basically homeless or jobless, at least.
00;03;59;28 - 00;04;23;11
Bill Neill
And my cousin called me out of the blue and said, "Hey, I just took a job doing technology consulting at a company here in Madison, Wisconsin". I had to look up where Wisconsin was on the map. I thought it was Minnesota. But after I went through the interview process, I realized that technology had a lot of the things that I enjoyed about finance, like being quantitative, being analytical.
00;04;23;21 - 00;04;50;01
Bill Neill
But the application was quite different. There's a lot of systems thinking, and so I took the job and it brought me into the Madison, Wisconsin area to work at a large software vendor called Epic that makes electronic medical records for hospitals. And I spent some time there and and after I left, I continued to stay in the space and consult with various health systems for 8 to 10 years, somewhere in there.
00;04;50;02 - 00;05;14;27
Bill Neill
And lost track, which I still do to this day. I enjoy that kind of work. And it's fun, it keeps me grounded. But through my time there, I joined a startup consulting firm called Nordic Consulting, and we just had phenomenal success. I wish I could point to myself and say it was all me, but the leadership team there was really good and they grew to about 900 employees.
00;05;14;27 - 00;05;37;12
Bill Neill
By the time I had left, a really large entity had gone through several rounds of private equity funding. Lots of people made lots of money, and shortly after that, was it second or third round of private equity funding? I realized that, I'd love to have my own my own company and that I understood how the business worked and that it would be kind of fun to work for myself.
00;05;37;26 - 00;06;10;09
Bill Neill
So I started Carex Consulting Group with Rachel and with Casey Liakos. And we've been in business now for about four years. We have about 60 employees. So we certainly haven't made it made it rich or anything like that. But I think we've done all right. And then through a lot of my work in the air and talent acquisition space, I kind of became aware of a need in the space for a technology platform that staffing firms can use to connect with their clients.
00;06;10;23 - 00;06;12;14
Speaker 2
And that was the genesis of Talent Bandit.
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Erica Machulak
At what point did you decide that you were going to start your own business?
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Bill Neill
So when we had gone through several rounds of private equity funding at Nordic, it became apparent to me that the business was changing and that's not all bad. But I mean, the business was growing, it was maturing. The opportunities for just wild growth were diminishing because we were maturing and we were leveling off. And several of the folks that had large equity stakes in Nordic, we're kind of interested in taking some of their earnings and finding other businesses to invest in.
00;06;50;17 - 00;07;03;27
Bill Neill
So since I had those connections and I understood how staffing worked, I had the time of a really good talent acquisition person. We we're able to put together a package to fund a new entity and start Carex Consulting Group.
00;07;04;21 - 00;07;15;05
Erica Machulak
And so, given your formal business background and all of the things that you've told us so far, what surprised you the most about starting your own business?
00;07;16;03 - 00;07;48;03
Bill Neill
For me, it was just the sheer task diversity that was required from me. So, you know, I was accustomed to working in it departments and I work on a very large system in a very narrow sliver of that system is my responsibility. And I knew that area of front to back. And suddenly when I am the chief operating officer of a small company, I'm responsible for everything now, everything from understanding what our legal and compliance strategy and concerns are to building out our tech stack.
00;07;48;19 - 00;08;08;19
Bill Neill
Getting on the phone and calling a candidate or a prospective client to understand what their needs are. And so switching from a highly trained specialist to a jack of all trades, master of none was a challenge. But also one of the things that I enjoy the most about being an entrepreneur, you get to get your hands dirty and you're the expert.
00;08;09;16 - 00;08;18;15
Erica Machulak
So tell us about that idea of being an expert. Do you experience imposter syndrome when you started your business?
00;08;20;04 - 00;08;43;13
Bill Neill
Oh, yeah, for sure. I did. And I still do on a daily basis. I'm still waiting for my staff to figure out that, I have a very limited value and I think that's a challenge. And one thing that we spend a lot of time on in our business is thinking about and very clearly defining in writing what we are good at.
00;08;44;02 - 00;09;00;22
Bill Neill
And that's what I use a lot of times in my sales conversations is say like, look, it's a competitive environment. There are a lot of people out there that are good. And I'm not I'm not the best, but I know that me and my team can deliver on X, Y or Z, and that I can look you straight in the eye and tell you.
00;09;00;22 - 00;09;19;27
Bill Neill
Yeah, absolutely. And so when you have that comfort of knowing what you're good at, it made a lot of things easier for me. It made it clear what types of opportunities or deals I should turn down because we can't deliver customer value. And what things I should really fight for and try to demonstrate my value because I genuinely believe it's there.
00;09;20;06 - 00;09;22;20
Erica Machulak
And has your sense of what you're good at changed over time?
00;09;24;04 - 00;09;52;00
Bill Neill
Oh yeah, totally. So that like, you know, highly specialized IT resource to I can probably figure out, this sounds conceited and it's not meant that way. But sure,but throw me into a compliance discussion about H.R. law and the new, you know, PPP funding, how that impacts a business. Like I have that confidence that I can I can jump in and probably figure out at least what it means for my business pretty quickly.
00;09;52;16 - 00;10;17;05
Bill Neill
And there are new systems, new challenges that get lobbed over the fence all my time, especially in the operations space. And so, like, I'm just I just feel like I personally am a lot better at adapting to those situations. Having been through the small stage startup. And I would pull in my experience working at Talent Bandit kind of as a shining example of that.
00;10;17;17 - 00;10;31;18
Bill Neill
So we have I mean, the path to start Carex was arduous. We had to look up everything. How do you form a company? How do you get a bank account with talent? It I mean, it took like three days. We were like, okay, I'm going to call the same banker that I use. I'm going to call my accountant.
00;10;32;11 - 00;10;46;14
Bill Neill
I'm going to call my law firm. Boom, boom, boom. We were up and we were a corporate entity. And so it just having done it before, it was a thousand times easier. Like what seemed daunting and just full of uncertainty was no big deal.
00;10;47;00 - 00;11;00;10
Erica Machulak
That's really interesting. So with all of this benefit of hindsight that you have, what are the things about your formal business training that have carried over the most part?
00;11;00;27 - 00;11;25;06
Bill Neill
I think probably the most useful thing for me is just general management techniques about how to organize as a group, how to get sort of the most productivity out of a small team. That is been highly useful. And then the other things would just be like the hard technical skills, like how to use a spreadsheet, how to put together a professional looking presentation, send to a client.
00;11;25;26 - 00;11;45;26
Bill Neill
We don't have a finance department, so I am the finance department and I'm sure I don't do it full justice. But if we need to understand the profitability of a line of business, I'm the guy. And so I still use a lot of those techniques, not nearly as sophisticated as they taught us, as a much smaller business, but still, those parts are very applicable.
00;11;46;25 - 00;11;53;06
Erica Machulak
Great. So tell us about some of your first big wins as a business owner.
00;11;54;03 - 00;12;20;05
Bill Neill
Oh, yeah. And it's tough when you look back because I'm not entirely sure. I would love to pat myself on the back, but a lot of the early stuff feels like it, like we were a bit lucky. So one of the earliest wins that we had, we were like literally a three person company and there's a Fortune 1000 organization here that that hires a lot of people.
00;12;20;05 - 00;12;47;02
Bill Neill
They're a big consumer of contingent labor, which is what my business provides. And through just a series of personal relationships, they were rationalizing their vendors, determining who to cut and who to bring on board. And we were selected as one of the three firms that they chose to provide services to. And this is a three person company being a primary vendor for a Fortune 1000 company, which doesn't it doesn't sound that impressive.
00;12;47;02 - 00;13;06;16
Bill Neill
But when you sort of think about, whatever, 4000 employees versus three, it it definitely felt like we were playing with the big boys. So that was a pretty fun one. I think some of the other big wins that I would point to would be like just bringing on some staff members that were really highly sought after.
00;13;06;26 - 00;13;20;25
Bill Neill
And they're always challenges challenging to acquire because good people are, in short demand so convincing that person that they should take a shot on a three person company and work for less money. And those were definitely wins that I felt like were a feather in my cap.
00;13;22;14 - 00;13;40;24
Erica Machulak
One of the reasons I was so excited to talk to you in this interview is that you strike me as a person who's not what we think of as a born salesman. You're not a person who jumps into the limelight, and yet you've been effective at relationship building. You've been very effective serial business starter and owner.
00;13;41;21 - 00;13;48;13
Erica Machulak
What do you think? What are the qualities that make you successful at that, sir?
00;13;49;01 - 00;14;15;27
Bill Neill
Yeah, good question. It's been said so much that it's cliche, but I'll say it again. It's for me, it's knowing your strengths. So I'm not a phenomenal salesperson. I'm not the person you'd normally put on the face of your TV campaign. But I know enough to get in front of a client and be able to articulate our value proposition and marry that up to what their needs are.
00;14;17;09 - 00;14;39;03
Bill Neill
But it's more than that. It's understanding what you're good at and what you're not good at, and then bringing in people to fill the skill sets that you're not good at. And so our CEO at Carex, Rachael, is a phenom and a salesperson. She is on commercials all the time. She is. I think she's going to do Shark Tank and that's great.
00;14;39;03 - 00;14;48;22
Bill Neill
She loves it. She gravitates towards it. So having her as part of the team is extremely valuable. You need that front man, but it doesn't necessarily have to be you.
00;14;50;13 - 00;15;16;20
Erica Machulak
That makes sense. So on that note, let's shift the conversation a little bit to focusing on many of the people listening to this podcast are likely to be freelancers or people who are thinking about starting as freelancers who have mostly worked independently in the past. What advice would you have for someone who's just starting out and not necessarily at the point of being able to bring on a team?
00;15;18;21 - 00;15;48;29
Bill Neill
Well, there's a lot of directions I could take that question. My first instinct is to fall back on one of my most important principles, which is to understand what your goals are for the business before you start acting. So if your goal is to grow in scale and enormous enterprise, the list of activities that are going to be top of mind for you are going to be completely different than if you want to run a lifestyle business that lets you leave work every day at 3:00 and, pays you a good income.
00;15;49;18 - 00;16;11;20
Bill Neill
So I as as abstract as that sounds, I think that's probably the most important thing I would ask a budding entrepreneur to spend some time thinking about. And then beyond that, I think one of the most useful things that I did at the start of Carex was to reach out to other entrepreneurs and buy them a cup of coffee and ask them for their advice.
00;16;13;00 - 00;16;38;11
Bill Neill
It's because a small business operationally isn't that sophisticated. You're encountering tons of the same issues that other small businesses are. So it's everything of like what? What software should I use to pay my bills? And, should I do my own bookkeeping or should I hire a CPA? Those questions are things that fellow entrepreneurs have been through time and time again.
00;16;38;12 - 00;16;57;09
Bill Neill
And sometimes people don't have insight for you, but a lot of times you'll walk away from that conversation knowing exactly what you need to do next. And so that was my suggestion. I never paid for consulting help, but I feel like I got tens of thousands worth of free advice for the cost of a buck 85 or whatever a latte is going for.
00;16;58;18 - 00;17;09;05
Erica Machulak
All right. So take that down on a very elemental level. How do you ask someone for a meeting like that? How do you make the request?
00;17;09;27 - 00;17;31;27
Bill Neill
It's a good question. I mean, it kind of depends on the existing relationship. So if it's someone that I knew as like a colleague from, a previous employer, that's going to be quite a bit different than someone that I found on LinkedIn and has a cool background and just somebody I think you could, drop some knowledge on me.
00;17;33;02 - 00;17;54;24
Bill Neill
I think the one thing I learned from our CEO, Rachel, who I mentioned is a great people meeter, is, you know, use a little flattery and tell them specifically why you're interested in chatting with it. "Oh, my goodness. I've seen that you sold three companies and you took one public. That is so impressive. I would love to hear your story and learn how you did it".
00;17;55;07 - 00;18;17;15
Bill Neill
And everybody loves talking about the things they're good at and talking about their successes. So it's a really easy, low bar for someone to accept. Oftentimes that person will give you a referral and they'll say, "Hey, talk to my guy Jay. He's he's a phenomenal accountant". And so you can you can kind of just leapfrog from one contact to another through a lot of those conversations.
00;18;19;16 - 00;18;40;13
Bill Neill
Generally speaking, and this is my philosophy with entrepreneurship, and I know a lot of folks that I've interacted with share it. There's not really a ton of secrets, right? Like the hard part about creating a new business is executing well. It's not it's rarely do I find is it my strategy. So there's telling..giving someone advice doesn't mean you're truly giving them a leg up.
00;18;40;18 - 00;19;00;17
Bill Neill
You're really just telling them the things they should be thinking about. But creating a company that can do those things well is is hard. So, again, like, I don't think you should be bashful about asking questions about financials or try to try to keep anything close to the vest. Unless you've got some crazy proprietary technology that no one's ever heard of.
00;19;00;27 - 00;19;13;09
Bill Neill
Like I would be an open book. Just candidly, share what your problems are and like, ask them how they handled it. Well, you're talking to me right now and like this is exactly the same kind of thing. I love talking about myself.
00;19;15;02 - 00;19;32;14
Erica Machulak
Okay. Real talk, straightforward question. Say you're a consultant so you're not relying on any proprietary information or patents. You're relying on your brain as the service. How do you figure out what you are worth?
00;19;35;06 - 00;20;00;20
Bill Neill
I mean, the easiest way to do that is to look around in the market and find other people that have similar services and find out what they charge. And good advice is when you're first starting out, try to charge less and maybe you can charge more, but you're an unknown entity. You don't have much of a brand behind yourself, so you look to discount yourself 20%.
00;20;00;20 - 00;20;22;25
Bill Neill
Just, I don't know, as a rule of thumb. And then as you start to build from there, of course, you can increase your pricing, you have more cachet. Maybe you've got people on staff, maybe you've done some high profile engagements. That's the easiest way to think about it. Each business is different. Sometimes you can price it in terms of the pain or the problem you're solving for them.
00;20;22;26 - 00;20;41;13
Bill Neill
So if you did this and you outsource it to a PR firm, it would cost you, you know, $16,000 a year. I'll do it for 12. Right? So there's just a couple of ways. But but if you're truly just knowledge consulting, somebody else almost certainly does it. And so just copy their prices.
00;20;42;15 - 00;20;49;23
Erica Machulak
Do you charge by the hour or do you charge by the project?
Bill Neill
Me personally?
00;20;49;24 - 00;20;53;02
Bill Neill
Yeah, usually by the hour.
00;20;53;17 - 00;20;57;18
Erica Machulak
Okay. And why?
00;20;57;18 - 00;21;28;17
Bill Neill
And it insulates me from changes that the customer has. So when you do it, project work or statement of workbase work, where it takes a lot more to assess the project upfront and to price it properly. So you have to really understand what they're trying to do. You need to have safeguards in place that say, "Well, if suddenly we decide instead of building a car, we're trying to build the next hoverboard that that like, okay, well, then we're going to renegotiate the price".
00;21;29;01 - 00;21;45;13
Bill Neill
Whereas when you charge hourly, I'm working on a car, suddenly you want me to work. Suddenly it's a hoverboard. Okay? It's going to take a lot longer, but there you go. And so that right there is like it's just much more simple to do hourly based work. And you know that you're not going to end up upside down.
00;21;46;28 - 00;21;55;10
Bill Neill
Typically, you I mean, SOW based work can have a higher margin, but you really have to know what you're doing. Otherwise you can price it incorrectly.
00;21;56;22 - 00;22;20;01
Erica Machulak
Okay, that's helpful. So to give you some context from a very different perspective of a typical business that a humanist might have, you know, many humanists will go into grant development and editing kinds of work. And if you look, for instance, at Editors Canada, here in Canada, they have a breakdown of different kinds of rates that you would charge for different kinds of services.
00;22;20;01 - 00;22;40;09
Erica Machulak
So an hour of light, line by line copyediting, you would charge a lower rate than really structural, conceptual developmental editing. Is is there an analogy in your field for that? And how do you how do you have those conversations when you're working with clients on new project?
00;22;40;26 - 00;23;07;27
Bill Neill
Yeah, I mean, that's completely accurate. Like, I kind of fall back on like typical H.R. language. So we talk about the complexity of the task, the expert, the expertize required. We talk about years of experience required to deliver that, and that's going to help you articulate your value proposition, and especially if you have something like what you just said, like the listing from Canadian publishing of like what these rates are.
00;23;08;04 - 00;23;31;26
Bill Neill
There's kind of, you have ammunition, there's there's an established precedent for this being tougher and this requiring a higher rate. And you see that all over the place. I mean, in IT department, there might be a senior analyst role which is probably closest to what I did when I was consulting. And that role is going to pay, whether it's consulting or full time, that's going to pay quite a bit more than a helpdesk tier one type role.
00;23;32;00 - 00;23;33;10
Bill Neill
So that's pretty common.
00;23;34;16 - 00;23;39;12
Erica Machulak
How do you position yourself for having those conversations with a first client?
00;23;42;13 - 00;24;07;22
Bill Neill
Yeah, I mean, for me, the a big part of it is the fact that I've done this before for another consulting firm. So for me, it was really easy because I said, Hey, when I worked at X, Y, Z Consulting Company, they charged $150 for my time and $50 an hour for my time. How about you and I agree on $120 an hour because I don't have to worry about the overhead.
00;24;07;22 - 00;24;28;06
Bill Neill
And I want you to give me a shot. That's that's a pretty easy conversation to to have. And you sort of anchor them to 150 and then explain that you're giving them a discount from it. So I think it really just depends a lot on the scenario. But one thing that I would use heavily is if you have a list of established prices that you can work based off that.
00;24;28;06 - 00;24;41;05
Bill Neill
You can say, you know, the average price for a copywriter is $60 an hour. But I've been doing this for 15 years for X, Y, Z University. So it's 65. And I think that's a steal, you know?
00;24;41;13 - 00;25;13;15
Erica Machulak
Yeah, that's really helpful. And all right. So we're going to change gears in a minute, but I want to ask you a couple of things based specifically on your expertize, expertize, working in the recruitment and staffing space. So, Bill, both at Carex and at Talent Bendit, you are working in the recruitment and the staffing space. Can you tell us a little bit more about the qualitative skills that are in demand right now?
00;25;13;15 - 00;25;41;21
Bill Neill
Qualitative skills that are in demand. What I've noticed in the recruitment and staffing space is that there is a lot of consumers of technology labor are still very much interested in someone that can come in and do the job that understands the specific IT tools that they're using. So a bad example, would be like we use Microsoft Excel to do all these things.
00;25;41;21 - 00;26;11;22
Bill Neill
I need someone that knows Microsoft Excel, but a new shift that we're seeing because technology talent is so tight. Looking for, a lot of companies have started to shift towards people that understand the space and understand the function, but don't necessarily know that exact tool. So I've worked on enterprise resource planning systems many times in the past, but I've never worked on Oracle's product, and that's complicated.
00;26;12;00 - 00;26;31;00
Bill Neill
A lot of companies are now switching to will train you. You understand what the business is trying to do with this system. And so we just need to teach you this specific tool, which I think is a great is a great opportunity for folks that don't have a traditional background to get into some pretty lucrative opportunities.
00;26;32;13 - 00;26;54;23
Bill Neill
The other thing I would tack on there would be just communication skills. If you are in a consulting role, if you're an individual or even with the larger firm communicating with the client, being able to convey issues and challenges and what you're doing to overcome it is going to be of central importance to you. And so those a lot of those business fundamentals, are always in demand, right?
00;26;54;23 - 00;26;57;12
Bill Neill
You need those regardless of what industry in space.
00;26;58;02 - 00;27;19;13
Erica Machulak
Interesting. So Hikma works with a lot of PhDs, particularly for some of the career development work that we're doing now. And so many of the people listening to this podcast are likely to be early or mid-career PhDs. They may be students, they may be academics, they may be people who've taken their PhDs to other sectors or are trying to make that transition.
00;27;19;13 - 00;27;29;13
Erica Machulak
Now, how do you position yourself as a good learner for a job application?
00;27;29;13 - 00;28;09;18
Bill Neill
That's a really good that's a really good question. I think first you have to find the right company if if that's your if that's the route you're going to go. So I'll use an example. Like I worked at a large software vendor, Epic Systems, and they hired tons of PhDs, but not necessarily specifically for their discipline. The idea was that they were a talent acquisition strategy that relied on finding, high IQ people, highly motivated people, folks that can't sleep if the job isn't done and train them on specific tools.
00;28;09;18 - 00;28;28;12
Bill Neill
And so I've seen that strategy work really well. And I've worked with companies that are like, we need somebody that has 8 to 10 years of experience doing this specific thing. And and if that's the case, then you're just barking up the wrong tree. You're wasting your time trying to trying to convince them that you could be a good fit here.
00;28;28;21 - 00;28;50;11
Bill Neill
So finding those companies that are more open to to somebody who's smart and motivated and a quick learner is just is just going to be easy and you'll get that from doing company research and things like that. I think the other thing is there are lots of opportunities to learn a new skill set outside of like a traditional four year degree.
00;28;50;21 - 00;29;06;27
Bill Neill
So if you're interested in computer science, you can go to a coding bootcamp, invest 1 to 2 weeks of your time and at least show that you may not be an experienced software developer, but you know enough to be dangerous and you're interested in it personally.
00;29;08;18 - 00;29;32;29
Erica Machulak
That's great. I one thing I really like about that approach, so there's a common sort of aside to call it a joke. But for instance, when I was a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature, there was this narrative when I started looking for other career paths. This was, 2016, 2017. The career development landscape has changed a lot, but at the time it was, you're a PhD in English.
00;29;32;29 - 00;30;05;05
Erica Machulak
You can go into publishing. You can go into teaching or you can learn to code, right? Because your skills, the inherent skills that you have are not market ready. And I think that narrative is changing. And so I wonder and when we talk about these career transitions, having worked in contexts where people are looking for those professional learners who may not know this particular industry backwards and forwards, but are coming into it with a unique perspective.
00;30;05;28 - 00;30;16;20
Erica Machulak
Have you observed any particular growing pains that you would want to prepare someone for who's looking to make that leap?
00;30;16;20 - 00;30;48;12
Bill Neill
And yet there there tends are growing pains. I think you're right that the market has shifted towards towards being more open. And that's, people don't stay in their job for 30 years anymore. So the expectation is that you're going to move around, you're going to be retrained. And many companies now have a pretty well built out sophisticated learning and development department for just that reason that they know even within the company, people are going to change roles and they're going to have different needs.
00;30;48;12 - 00;31;19;10
Bill Neill
And I think, this is not the question you answered. So let me you can stop me at any time. But one of the challenges that I've seen is if you go into consulting and you're you're new and hungry, that can be very challenging because typically companies hire a consultant because they have pain now. So they're not interested in a development project in somebody that will be really good a year from now when they've gotten their sea legs.
00;31;19;11 - 00;31;45;10
Bill Neill
They want somebody who is an expert now. And so if I were looking to make that move, one of the things that I would look for is a company that had a pretty involved training program and probably not a company that's looking to slap their logo on me and then immediately rebuild me to customers. And then the challenge with that is like, I'm going to have a very difficult time because it'll be apparent that I'm inexperienced in that engagement.
00;31;45;21 - 00;32;02;27
ERica Machulak
All right. So going to start to transition toward the end here and wind down, but I want to leave this a little bit open ended and ask you, is there any other advice you would give to someone who's just starting out as a freelancer trying to get their sea legs, as a business owner?
00;32;03;28 - 00;32;31;11
Bill Neill
I'm yeah. So it's cliche, but it's true. Networking is king, especially if you are looking to freelance and sort of be in a very specific space that maybe you got a lot of training in school. Do not underestimate the value of your network. You might think of yourself as someone who isn't that prototypical salesperson archetype, but you would be surprised if you really sit down and think through it.
00;32;31;19 - 00;32;56;02
Bill Neill
How many good contacts you would have to leverage. And so starting that like sales effort is as simple as reconnecting with many folks in your Rolodex. Having a cup of coffee and talking about what's going on in their professional life. Because through that discussion, you'll encounter problems they're having. And then the source of any good business is solving problems for your customer.
00;32;56;17 - 00;33;20;19
Bill Neill
It really is that simple, I think, being flexible. And the other thing would be don't get too daunted by the operations portion. I've known some really, really good consultants that would easily, create their own business and be very successful. But when I talk to them over a beer, it's "I don't know how to do those taxes".
00;33;20;19 - 00;33;38;14
Bill Neill
"I wouldn't want to screw that up". And and in reality, that's, that's an hour and a half worth of learning. You got to talk to an accountant. But then, and it's no big deal and they're effectively leaving a lot of money on the table by working for someone else just so they don't have to figure out a couple of those nitty gritty things.
00;33;40;02 - 00;34;00;06
Bill Neill
You know, just through networking, lots of folks that are interested in starting businesses will talk to me. And that is a recurring theme of like, Oh my God, I don't know, do I need insurance? Oh, my God. You know, again, find somebody that's done it before. Ask them. Ask them for, you know, an hour of their time. And I bet you anything you'll walk away with an insurance broker, you'll know exactly what coverages you'll need.
00;34;00;06 - 00;34;03;16
Bill Neill
You know how much it needs to cost, and it's not that bad.
00;34;04;28 - 00;34;16;16
Erica Machulak
And so you've talked a lot about the value of mentorship and the importance of those early conversations. Can you tell us a little bit about how to treat your mentors down the line? How do you maintain those relationships?
00;34;16;16 - 00;34;44;00
Bill Neill
Yeah, so definitely something I should be better at. But one thing I always try to do is to share my business successes with my mentor and tie it back to them too. So Carex Consulting Group was named to the INC 5000 list for, fastest growing entrepreneurial companies or something like that. When that came out, I reached out to my network and share it with a lot of my mentors and said, "Thank you, I wouldn't have been here without you".
00;34;44;26 - 00;35;04;01
Bill Neill
And what that does is that let's just be a part of your success. Everybody wants to be the person that backed a winner. That was, you know, that was whispering in the ear of someone who became very successful. And so I think that's that's a source of value that oftentimes people don't think of. And think of it more like a friendship than it is a transactional thing.
00;35;04;01 - 00;35;25;06
Bill Neill
Like if your friend had a question about how to get to the drugstore, you would explain it, right? It's not like you're looking to get something out of it. And so it's just a genuine friendship doesn't have to feel like, Oh my goodness, I'm asking this very impressive entrepreneur for her advice for an hour of her time. But I'm not giving anything of value back.
00;35;25;06 - 00;35;47;24
Bill Neill
Like, I think that's the that's the thing that we have to overcome is that, like, you will always have insights to contribute. You have great questions. You can pad their ego bite by sitting and listening and saying, "Wow, you're an incredible entrepreneur". And so all those things are things that you bring to the conversation and you've got to remember that, it's a two way street.
00;35;47;24 - 00;35;53;10
Bill Neill
So it's not just being a taker because you ask someone to be a mentor.
00;35;53;10 - 00;36;15;15
Erica Machulak
I like that a lot. I wonder if you would agree with the point that I'll end on, which is what I have observed about talking to entrepreneurs throughout this process. Different business owners or people who are working in other kinds of sectors, not running their own businesses, but have insights into the field. Is that when you're starting something new, people love to be a part of the process.
00;36;15;15 - 00;36;26;24
Erica Machulak
And so it's not just about the flattery, it's also about including them in your thinking and helping them share in that excitement about creating something new. How does that resonate with you? Is that been your experience?
00;36;28;03 - 00;36;53;02
Bill Neill
Oh, absolute. That is how I got some really phenomenal staff members on early is by selling them and it sounds underhanded but it's not like really articulate how they could be part of something new and how that provides them with a lot of agency to make decisions, to do things better than they've seen done in the past, that that resonates a lot and we hire people for start ups quite a bit.
00;36;53;02 - 00;37;25;13
Speaker 2
It Carex And that's one thing. I mean startups typically don't pay as well, but that's one thing that that typically makes up a pretty large pay gap. It's like, I'll take $15,000 a year less, but I'm going to be this department and I run the entire sales department. That's really cool. Satisfying feature of any job. And like here, I'll give you a for instance, I had a contact of mine who is just incredibly experienced in supply.
00;37;25;13 - 00;37;46;07
Bill Neill
He's worked with Fortune 100 organizations. He gets paid tons of money to do this. And I had some what I thought were pretty simple, like questions about how we can improve our processing efficiency at Carex, and he's really good at systems thinking. So I asked him if he would have coffee with me. We had coffee, we were chatting.
00;37;46;07 - 00;38;15;21
Bill Neill
He came back to the office and he gave me a two hour review, an in-depth analysis of what we were doing, how we could make it better. He gave me principles. He gave me materials to read. He shared some old stuff that he was allowed to from his company, and that was just tremendously valuable. I got ten times more efficient and then when my wife is looking to start a a product company and she has great sales skills, but maybe doesn't understand the supply chain around product very well.
00;38;15;29 - 00;38;33;24
Bill Neill
He was the first name I thought of. And so now he's in business with my wife and he's a 50% owner and a pretty promising venture. So again, like there was nothing in it for him at this at the start. But but down the line, it hopefully it paid back in spades.
00;38;33;24 - 00;38;49;07
Erica Machulak
Great. That's a that's a really great example. So, Bill, you're a family man. Tell us a little bit about the people around and how your relationships with them have shaped your career.
00;38;49;07 - 00;39;08;25
Bill Neill
Yeah, so I think there's probably a little joke in there. I have five children, soon to be six, so definitely a pretty busy household over at the Neill residence. And for me, it definitely contributes to the to the workload, no doubt about it. Like I come home from a busy day and I can't put my feet up.
00;39;08;25 - 00;39;27;19
Bill Neill
I've got to be dad. But it also keeps me grounded and it really helps me find perspective. So when I'm an entrepreneur, so much of the weight can be on your shoulders and usually you feel that way when things aren't going well. There are going to be times when things are low and you don't feel great about it.
00;39;27;28 - 00;39;47;26
Bill Neill
And when you're the boss, right? There's no business hours. Like things don't just end at 5:00. So you at least for me, I have a habit of like letting my mind just run over these problems. That's not always productive. And so for me my family really helps get me out of that headspace and just focus on other things because it's staring you right in the face.
00;39;48;21 - 00;40;15;13
Bill Neill
So rather than sitting and being frustrated about a client engagement that isn't going the way I'd hoped, I'm sitting there reading to my daughter and I think that humanizes me a lot. The other thing is there's a great network around being a parent. And you certainly meet contacts through that. So a lot of the professional contacts that I have, great contacts, are simply because our kids go to school together, they play soccer together or whatever.
00;40;16;10 - 00;40;37;07
Bill Neill
And oftentimes meeting people through their kids is a great strategy because their defenses aren't up. They're not like, "Oh, this guy's trying to sell me something". It's just a friend from school. And oftentimes kids with or people with kids are a bit later in their career maybe have reached a higher corporate title, and now they're in a position to buy.
00;40;37;07 - 00;40;44;24
Bill Neill
So there's there's a lot of benefits there. And yeah, I just think it's what makes life worth living, I guess.
00;40;45;17 - 00;40;56;26
Erica Machulak
That's great. Any any parting thoughts or advice about preserving your own well-being while making a new path for yourself and a career?
00;40;56;26 - 00;41;18;27
Bill Neill
Yeah, I mean, a couple of things that I would suggest was, would be to, to be honest with yourself about throwing in the towel. Like I have had businesses that have not been successful. And probably one of the best things that I did was to see the writing on the wall and realizing that it was time to shut it down and do something else.
00;41;19;18 - 00;41;47;13
Bill Neill
And I think once you do that, it also makes entrepreneurship a lot less scary. So people are like, "Oh, aren't you worried your company will go under?" Sure I am. But if it does, I'll just go get a real job or I'll start another company. So it does take a little bit of the pressure off you when you kind of can look at it as like a temporary asset rather than this like holy grail that you've taught your soul to and you will pull it for your soul in.
00;41;47;16 - 00;42;01;17
Bill Neill
But hopefully it gives you a little bit of perspective, right? Even the same thing. If time comes to sell your company, it helps a lot. If you sort of think about it as like, let me try to get the most value for this asset I have rather than I'm selling my baby.
00;42;03;03 - 00;42;14;21
Bill Neill
So if I'm hearing you right it's keeping that critical distance from your work and maybe also just remembering the things that you learned along the way that prepare you for your next steps.
00;42;14;21 - 00;42;39;29
Bill Neill
Well said. Yes. The other thing that our CEO does extremely well is when things aren't going well, she reaches out to everybody all the time for advice, just, "Hey, things aren't going well. I just want to tell you about it". And you would not believe the incredible solution she comes up with because she's so communicative about it. It's it's the exact opposite of my instinct, which is things aren't going well.
00;42;39;29 - 00;42;58;13
Bill Neill
I kind of want to hide in a corner and work really hard and fix it. And she's like, Let me tell everybody in shouting distance what's going on and ask for help. And sometimes it's not even a specific ask, but you'd be surprised at the amount of help that comes out of the woodwork. So give it a try and see what happens.
00;42;59;06 - 00;43;06;12
Erica Machulak
Great. Well, thank you so much for your time, Bill. This has been a wonderful conversation and I think it's going to bring a lot of value to our listeners. Really appreciate your time.
00;43;07;24 - 00;43;14;23
Bill Neill
Oh, thank you. And thanks for listening to me ramble.
00;43;14;23 - 00;43;57;29
Erica Machulak
This is the Post script. We hung up the phone and kept talking. And now I have another question for you. And so all right. Well, we've just gone on a tangent about is this idea of learning to code. And as I told you, it was a little infuriating to me after doing a PhD in Medieval Literature, learning several languages, writing a dissertation, teaching for courses to have the most prominent career development advice at the end of my PhD be "Learn to code and then maybe you can get a job" that a lot of humanists have had incredible success going that route, doing these data accelerator programs and things like that.
00;43;57;29 - 00;44;27;16
Erica Machulak
So there's a stereotype that if you just learn to code, you'll be employable. And I resist that narrative personally alone up to it because as someone who spent so much time trying to do something else, I resist the idea that I need to do this other thing in order for my skills to be valuable. But based on your experience in the tech sector, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what it means to learn to code and what jobs where you learn to code actually look like.
00;44;27;19 - 00;44;35;07
Erica Machulak
So if you become a coder, what does that mean? What does that career look like for you?
00;44;35;07 - 00;45;10;10
Bill Neill
Well, first, it's painting with the broad brush. So being a coder, or is, one specific area within the technology sector. But I think the application for humanities PhDs is wider than that. I mean, at its base level, it's someone that writes software code. And that goes back to the answer that I gave earlier, where companies are starting to care less about whether, you know, that specific software language, that code and really just like whether you can think properly about the problem and solve it in an efficient way.
00;45;11;03 - 00;45;41;23
Bill Neill
And so I think a lot of the times the resistance that I'm hearing really comes from the way you frame it. Like, I don't want to be sitting in a corner, you know, just just writing this lame syntax, all day because I understand syntax because I'm a Ph.D. There's so much more that comes into the equation when you're applying it in a real business setting where you're thinking about business requirements and how people are going to use it, how we're going to solve the problem, how systems are going to talk to each other.
00;45;42;01 - 00;45;59;18
Bill Neill
Like you can really pop your head up a level. And that's where I think someone who's incredibly intelligent and accustomed to systems thinking and how things are going to interact, like that's when you can really provide a lot of value. Like learning the syntax is literally something you can do at a coding bootcamp. Like that's why it only takes a couple of weeks.
00;45;59;27 - 00;46;24;23
Bill Neill
It's really just, it's the other stuff that takes a long time and people get paid a lot of money for it. But just for context, like I routinely work with software developers or folks with Python skills, stuff like that. And those people could will demand 160,000 a year with five years of experience. Not always. It depends on the role.
00;46;25;01 - 00;46;53;22
Bill Neill
But like, when I'm pushing it, when I'm pushing towards the technology sector, like that's where the money is. That's those companies make a ton of money. And it's not surprising that their staff is well paid, too. And those companies also have the pockets to invest, deep pockets to invest in employees. So again, like if you're coming from a humanities background and you work at Google, they're the kind of company that can invest in you for six months and teach you how the systems work and teach you to code and play the long game with your skill set.
00;46;54;09 - 00;47;14;04
Erica Machulak
And so when you say the long game, if you picture someone who say they graduate with a Ph.D. now they do one of these bootcamps, they get one of these jobs that has a training component. What is their career look like ten years from now? What are the actual opportunities that are available to them?
00;47;15;02 - 00;47;38;29
Bill Neill
So there's a myriad of applications for coding. It can be everything from, working for a municipal wastewater department to working at a Silicon Valley tech startup that's making the newest, greatest app like just like anything else. Just like saying you are a manager or you're an accountant. There are so many applications to what that means?
00;47;39;07 - 00;48;00;12
Bill Neill
But ten years down the line, to even the entry level roles tend to pay pretty well. And if your goal is to to interact with people and make more strategic decisions, maybe you see yourself as a VP of IT Or maybe you've started your own technology company that understands customer's problems and writes custom software to solve them.
00;48;00;25 - 00;48;12;04
Bill Neill
You know, there's so many opportunities, but it's just a big growing sector that generates incredible returns. And so I would encourage anyone to think about about being a part of that pie.
00;48;13;06 - 00;48;22;28
Erica Machulak
So, Bill, based on your understanding of the tech sector, what efforts do you see to work toward inclusion in the tech space?
00;48;24;21 - 00;48;53;11
Bill Neill
Okay. Every company that I work with at the moment is falling over themselves to bring in nontraditional candidates. Nontraditional, meaning female, minority veteran, disabled... technology has a labor shortage. So the the economics are already with you. If you're a nontraditional candidate, there's just incredible demand. And they're trying to figure out how to fill it. But 2020 is the year of BLM.
00;48;53;11 - 00;49;24;05
Bill Neill
And there's there was me, too, before that. I think there's a recognition within large corporate America that they need more diversity, and it is a push for every single talent acquisition department. And so I think, if you play your angles right, you can say, "Hey, I am a woman who is interested in technology and I have this incredible mind and background that makes me a potentially great fit, but I don't have those immediate skills", and companies are looking for ways to invest in that.
00;49;24;05 - 00;49;39;01
Bill Neill
I mean, there's you can you can go on any Fortune 500 website and and find their diversity and inclusion initiatives. And and they commit to it to varying degrees. But many are quite serious about about incorporating more nontraditional folks into their workforce.
00;49;40;01 - 00;50;12;29
Erica Machulak
Great. Thank you. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Hikma Collective Podcast. I'm your host, Erica Machulak, writer, medievalist and founder of Hikma. The production of this episode was led by our fearless creative director, Sophia van Hees, in collaboration with Nicole Markland, Dasharah Green, Eufemia Baldassarre and Matthew Tomkinson. Matthew composed the original music you hear now in his capacity as the 2022 Hikma Artist in Residence.
00;50;12;29 - 00;50;36;25
Erica Machulak
This podcast has been made possible with generous support from Innovate B.C.,Tech Nation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. You can find show notes, links and transcripts at www.hikma.studio/podcast. Hikma is situated on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the ən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking Musqueam people.
00;50;37;24 - 00;50;51;21
Erica Machulak
We are grateful to be here and to share this space with you. Our speakers, team members and listeners are based all over the world and wherever you are listening, we encourage you to learn more about whose lands you're on.
