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March 2003
Rob Wintz recently made the successful transition from working as a management consultant for Deltek Systems, Inc., to conducting business as the principal of his own consulting firm, RSW Consulting. We spoke recently with Rob about his experiences working with Kelleher Associates on his own personal career transition from employee to entrepreneur.
KAI:
Originally, your background was as a CPA - how did you become a management consultant?
Rob: About a dozen years ago, when I was the controller at an engineering firm, I brought a software solution, developed by a company named Semaphore, in house. The president of the Semaphore learned that I had once been an adjunct faculty member at Trinity College (Hartford, CT). He wanted to launch a national user-training program for Semaphore and asked whether I'd be interested in a joint venture arrangement to go out and conduct training seminars for his customers. I was excited by the prospect and over the next five years conducted hundreds of seminars and training programs on time billing and time costing systems for the architecture, engineering and construction industry. Semaphore was a leading developer and distributor of advanced financial and project management software and services for the architecture, engineering and construction industry as well as other professional services firms. Eventually, I became a managing consultant for that company, and was with them from 1992 through 2000. Semaphore was acquired in August 2000 by a larger firm, Deltek Systems (McLean, VA). After Deltek acquired Semaphore, I stayed on for another six months to finish a number of projects. From mid-2001 through August 2002, I worked on a number of miscellaneous consulting projects. In August 2002, I decided it was time to look for another position, and started working with Kelleher Associates.
KAI: How did working with Kelleher Associates lead you to the decision to start your own business?
Rob: I had spent a lot of time looking for another position, but working with the team at Kelleher Associates made me realize it made even more sense to develop my own position with my own business. They helped me learn how to network, and how to approach prospects with proposals and pricing. The whole experience helped me realize that running my own business was a nice place to be. After all, I had been a solution provider for Semaphore for a long time, and throughout that experience it was more like being "quasi-self-employed." Semaphore gave me training, leads and resources, but I took it from there on my own.
KAI: How did you come to work with Kelleher Associates in your career transition?
Rob: I had met some of the people from Kelleher Associates at an ExecuNet meeting, and got to know them a little bit. I had never been in an executive outplacement situation, but at a certain point I was not getting enough work from my consulting clients, and really wanted to make a living again. I decided to go to Kelleher Associates and get some help. Before I signed up in August 2002, I had gone out on some job interviews and had not done well. It was not something I had done much of in the past. Ed Kelleher and his associates, Al Kramer and Mitch Wienick sat me down, and told me I should worry less about getting a job, and spend more time deciding what to do with my life.
KAI: What were some of the things you learned in your career transition experience?
Rob: Ed Kelleher believes there is value in psychometrics, and did a number of interviews with me at first. They also explored with me what kind of network I had, and what I used it for. I was calling people to see if they had work or knew someone who needed work done. They showed me how to network by explaining what I did, how to get to know new contacts without any agenda. Before I had signed up with Kelleher Associates, I had gone out on a job interview and got along very well with the executive in the meeting. While they liked me, and what I did, they chose someone else for the full-time job. After working with Kelleher Associates for a time, I called that executive again and spoke with him. We got a friendship going, and they eventually retained me for a consulting position. Ed helped me get my proposal together for that project, and it actually turned into a rather lucrative contract. Ed and his team not only served as my sounding board, but they helped me surface other ideas I would not have necessarily come to on my own.
KAI: Did your relationship with Kelleher Associates change after you officially started your own consulting practice, RSW Consulting?
Rob: As my business started to grow, my relationship with Kelleher Associates evolved even more. I learned how to interview and network, but I also started spending more time learning how to approach prospective clients instead of employers. I used Kelleher Associates at that point more as a Board of Directors - it was a strategic use. If I had a larger company, I'd want someone like Ed Kelleher on my board. He has an ability to think outside the box, and get past stereotypes and expectations. Working with Kelleher Associates gave me permission to try different things, to be more creative.
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