PICA Member Spotlights

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

Ken Hertz spotlight image.png
 

Q: Please introduce yourself!

A: My name is Ken Hertz and the name of my business is KTH Consulting. My specialty is optimizing medical practice performance through strategic planning, visioning, governance, operational improvement, and executive search work. I work in the healthcare sector.

Q: Who are your target clients?

A: It’s really a broad range. Some are small practices with one to four physicians and then some are larger practices with 30, 50, or 80 physicians. I’d say the sweet spot is probably a practice with 12 to 40 physicians. That seems to be the practices that are comfortable working with a solo consultant versus working with a larger consultancy.

Q: What do you mean by working with a solo versus a company?

A: Prior to becoming an independent I worked with the consulting division within a larger organization. The really large practices that have 100 to 500 doctors and the multi-hospital systems prefer to work with a larger consultancy that may have 100 consultants, because they can offer consultancy expertise in a broad range of areas. I can do that, but it requires bringing other people into the engagement.

Q: How did you get into this very specific niche of work?

A:  In my former life, for about 25 years, I managed symphonies and ballets. At one point the symphony I was managing shut down. I had developed a network of friends and was introduced to a hospital CEO at a luncheon. He asked me if I had a master's degree, I said I did not. He said, "I can't hire you because you don't have a master's degree, but I'll keep your resumé." 

Four months later I got a call from a doctor and he hired me to manage his medical practice, and that was my introduction to health care. From there I moved through his practice, worked for a larger company after he sold his practice, then worked for some larger companies, and then into consulting. Basically, I fell into the healthcare industry by networking.

Q: Why and how did you decide to go independent then?

A: I went independent about 15 or 20 years ago, for about a year. That was because the healthcare group I was managing had decided it was time for a divorce and they split up. I had a lot of connections in the healthcare community. A lot of people said, "Well, we could use your help here. We could use your help there," so for about a year I did healthcare consulting on my own. 

I also reached out to some consultants that had worked for the group before it split up.  I just told them I was doing some work on my own and should they have any opportunities I'd be interested. They brought me on a couple of engagements and seemed to like what I did, and ultimately they offered me a position. I worked with that group for almost 20 years. In my opinion, that is proof of how important networking is. 

I became independent the second time when the parent organization decided to make some changes and they essentially blew up the consulting group as it existed. So I was kind of “out on the streets again” and I talked with a lot of consulting companies. But at the end of the day, I thought, "Well, it's risky, but I'm going to give this a go on my own." I had a colleague who is about 20 years younger than I am, and that's what he was going to do. He said to me, "Well Ken, that's what you need to do." And I said, "Nick, you're a kid. I'm an old man already." I mean, that's crazy. Who wants to go from having a steady paycheck to, "Oh my God, where's the next paycheck coming from?" But I did it and I've never looked back.

Q: How many years ago was that?

A: Almost three years ago, I was in my late 60's at the time. Frankly, that’s why when I came across PICA’s Getting Started Bootcamp I thought, "Wow, I need to do this. This is going to be terrific." For most of my career I’ve come in as the top person, so I’ve never worked for anybody and had coaching and mentoring. Then when I got into healthcare I was managing a practice. I didn't know what I was doing, but I figured that managing a medical practice was similar to managing a ballet company. That all worked out and then I got into consulting and it was like, "Okay, now what do I do?" So, the ability to handle the foundational steps was really critical for me.

Q: When you came across PICA's bootcamp, why did you say, "I need to do this"? By that point you had already been independent almost two years, right?

A: Yes and I had been doing pretty well. To be perfectly honest, I'm one of those people that occasionally suffers from the notion of the imposter syndrome. I'm working as a consultant and I'm thinking, "Well, what don't I know about this?" I didn't even know what I didn't know. I mean, that's the thing. You don't know what you don't know, and so you're thinking, "I know there are things I'm missing here." No matter how much work I did with medical practices, dealing with your own business is very different. So when I saw the PICA opportunities, I said, "Wow, this sounds great. I'm going to do this."

Q: Tell me about your KTH Consulting business. What are you doing differently now that you've been involved in PICA, than you did before?

A: I made several changes to my personal page on LinkedIn. I have to admit that I have not done a business page on LinkedIn yet, but I have been much more aggressive in marketing. One of the things you talked about was how we could access our contact list on LinkedIn. I don't know why I’d never thought of that, but as we went through that in one of the workshops all these bells were ringing. I know I'm not the guy that kept specific detailed records of every client I've ever had over the last 20 years. Hindsight tells me I should have, but I didn't. When I accessed my LinkedIn list and began to go through it and apply what you taught us, I would email two or three people a week. It was mostly just to contact them, find out how things were going, and I’d send some articles I thought would be of interest to them. It was several hours of effort doing those reach-outs, but I got three clients out of it and I think that's pretty good.

Q: That's awesome. Sometimes people are hesitant to reach out to people they haven't talked to in a long time. What would you tell somebody who might be uncomfortable about reaching out to someone that they haven't talked to in four years?

A: I am that person. In my former life I spent almost 30 years fundraising. That meant I'd have to go to people I didn't know and it was always hard to ask for money and things like that. I'm the guy that will put off doing a report because, "Oh my God, it's not going to be right and the client won't like it," and you go through all those things. It’s the same thing when you reach out to people. What are they going to say? They haven't heard from me. They're going to say, "Who are you, why are you writing to me?" I didn't write and say, "Oh hey, I'm looking for business." It was more like, “How are you, how are things going?, it's been a while since we've talked, here's some things that have happened to me, and here's an article I thought would be of interest to you.” Some people responded with, “Great to hear from you, glad things are going well, thanks for reaching out, we're good.” Some people didn't respond and that's okay. But enough people replied and conversations were started and I got new business from it. 

I think one of the big takeaways from the Bootcamp itself, and from talking with you and the other Bootcamp participants, is that you need to spend time working on your business, not just in your business. As obvious as that sounds, most of us don't allow ourselves time and permission to do that. 

Q: You’ve already shared with us how you worked on your business by doing outreach. What else do you suggest?

A: The other thing is really trying to be visible. For me, that’s on social media, in terms of commenting, and having discussions with people about posts they make. I haven't done as much article writing as I would like to do, but that's on my to-do list, as I work more on my business. But I've done a couple of podcasts and that’s been a great opportunity to talk about what I do and have people see it, so that's exciting.

Q: Hopefully sharing your experience will encourage others to make the leap to independent consulting, particularly those that are in the second half of their careers. But like you, they're probably a little bit scared. I call this FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) – “I don't know how to do it, I don't know what I don’t know” as you said earlier. PICA’s Getting Started Bootcamp is all about overcoming the FUD, don’t you think?

A: Absolutely. When you go from being that person who always had benefits, sick days, regular paychecks, and then all of a sudden you’re thinking, "Where's that regular paycheck?" and, "how do I pay for health insurance?”... you just have to change your mindset, refocus, and really work at it. You have to recognize that this is your new job and realize the results from it. There's a lot to be said for that.

Q: If you had one piece of advice for somebody who was on the fence about whether or not to go into independent consulting, what would it be?

A: I think the most important thing is to understand who you are individually. To me, that includes your tolerance for risk, your resiliency, and how hard you are willing to work at this. Yes, you have to get this and that together, make sure you have three to six months of living expenses covered and other things, but ultimately it comes down to you. If you go three months without an engagement, how are you going to handle it? Personally I'm going to redouble my efforts and go after it, but it’s all about understanding yourself.

Q: So what's next for KTH Consulting?

A: As a result of my outreach efforts, I've got a couple of proposals in the works. I have committed to working on a company page for LinkedIn, so I definitely want to do that because I think it's important from a marketing perspective, and I've also been dabbling with what my website needs to look like. 

I know in one of the Bootcamp sessions we talked about working with other organizations, especially when just starting out. There are some other consulting groups that will occasionally develop a relationship with an independent consultant. I've reached out to several of those people to get my foot in the door, explain what I like to do and how I work. We'll see where that goes. I'm not ready to retire, so I want to keep generating new business. The other thing I've learned is you have to ask for it – you have to ask for referrals and you have to ask for help. I've gotten much better at that with my clients and have asked them to refer me. We'll see how that goes as well. So much of my comfort zone (and it’s probably like this for everyone) was driven by fear of failure and rejection. I'm learning that it's okay that this or that didn't work, I'm on to something else.

Q: If somebody wanted to find out more about you or to connect with you, what would be the best way to do that?

A: Probably an email, or follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, those kinds of things.

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Related PICA resources:

Whether or not to go into consulting...

How to do outreach and leverage your LinkedIn contacts...

How to use LinkedIn as part of your marketing strategy