Episode #2 - Karen McGrane - Embracing Adaptability in UX Consulting

Show Notes

Show Highlights:

• [00:05:46] Introduction to Autogram: Karen discusses her current consultancy, Autogram, which she started during the pandemic with Jeff Eaton, focusing on content strategy and management.
• [00:08:03] Reflections on Past Ventures: Karen looks back at her previous consulting firm, Bond Art + Science, discussing the challenges and lessons learned from running it solo after starting with partners.
• [00:10:05] Navigating Business Losses: Karen opens up about a tough period in 2011 when she lost significant business and had to make tough decisions regarding staff and the future direction of her company. The conversation delves into changes within the consulting industry, particularly how expectations around office spaces and employment structures have evolved post-pandemic.
• [00:34:08] The Impact of 2023 on Consulting: Karen reflects on the challenges faced by consultants in 2023, noting it as one of the toughest years, and discusses strategies for resilience and adaptation.
• [00:51:22] Partnerships and Collaborations: Insights into forming effective partnerships in consulting, as exemplified by her seamless collaboration with Jeff Eaton and the transparent profit-sharing models they implement.
• [00:55:32] Teaching and Sharing Knowledge: Karen shares her experience teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York and how it complemented her consulting practice.
• [00:40:18] Marketing in a New Era: The decline of traditional marketing channels like conferences and Twitter has prompted Karen to explore new ways of promoting her services and connecting with potential clients.

View the episode chapter links for the full list of topics that were discussed.

Links and Resources:

• Karen McGrane's Talks: Check out her insightful talks at: https://karenmcgrane.com
• Autogram: Learn more about Karen’s consultancy, Autogram
• Books by Karen: "Content Strategy for Mobile" and "Going Responsive"
• Recommended Subreddit that Karen co-moderates: r/UXDesign
• Book by Ethan Marcotte: “You Deserve a Tech Union”
• Recommended Podcast: 2Bobs
• Recommended Book: The Business of Expertise by David C. Baker
• Connect with the host: Follow or connect with Kyle Soucy on Linkedin
• Usable Interface: Learn more about Kyle’s UX Research consultancy, Usable Interface

Listener Interaction: Have questions or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes and/or want to share an anonymous consulting story? Submit your questions and stories here: https://bit.ly/uxconsultants-question-story

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Karen McGrane

Partner, Autogram

Transcript

Kyle Soucy: 0:15

Hello and welcome to the UX Consultants Lounge. I'm Kyle Soucy, founder of Usable Interface, an independent UX research consultancy. You can find out more about my work and the services I offer at my website, usableinterface. com. I'll be your host here at the lounge where I'll be providing a place for UX consultants to gather, share stories, and learn more from one another. So my guest today is Karen McGrane, a veteran consultant with over 25 years of experience. This interview was so great. And what was so great about it was just the fact that it even took place. Most people aren't willing to have conversations like this, ones that kind of let you take a peek under the hood. And when I approached Karen about being a guest on this show, I didn't want to scare her off, but I did want to warn her that. I really did want to lift the veil on consulting and talk about everything, the good and the bad. And not only was Karen game for doing that, she was down with that, but she brought it. She really let us in on how hard it can be and how challenging it can be at times, but also how rewarding. And I would say after talking to Karen, there's really only one word that. I think fits her perfectly and that is resilient. She will share information in this interview that is really surprising about the challenges that she faced in consulting. She has had two consultancies. Her current consultancy is called Autogram and, she had another consultancy called bond art and science, and that consultancy was at one point a 15 person firm. And then it switched to being solo, with just her running it. We also talked about the pressures of running a small consulting firm and how it can change the priorities of the business. And she had a lot of great tips about partnering with people. And how to deal with economic changes in the industry and really just balancing, the things that are enjoyable as well as challenging in consulting work. So before diving into the interview, let me just tell you a little more about Karen. As I mentioned, her current consultancy is called Autogram and she is a partner in that. Autogram focuses on the intersection of content service platforms, like a CMS. and design systems. She develops digital strategies and governance models to help these systems work effectively at scale. Before her time with these two consultancies that she created, Karen was actually the VP of user experience at Razorfish. And I believe that was for nine years. Karen has also contributed, to academia as a faculty member of the MFA in interaction design program at the SVA in New York. For 14 years, she was teaching design management. And she's also the author of two books going responsive, and content strategy for mobile published by A book apart. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Karen as much as I did. Enjoy. I want to start by just saying I am so honored to have you as the very first guest of this podcast. Truly, I really couldn't have hoped for a better first guest. Not only are you brilliant with amazingly deep consulting experience, but you have always been just open and transparent about your journey and your career. And it's meant a lot to me that you are letting people in, that you are willing to lift that veil and really talk about real things and that's exactly what I wanted for this podcast. I wanted to have these open and honest, discussions about what it's really like to be a UX consultant. So thank you for agreeing to do this.

Karen McGrane: 4:41

gosh, I'm so happy to be here, and I am so honored that I'm your first guest. I have been looking forward to having this conversation with you all week, and I even more excited

Kyle Soucy: 4:52

Oh, good. Good. And, it's also awesome to me that the first guest happens to be someone from Philadelphia as well, because that's where I'm originally from and where I started my consultancy.

Karen McGrane: 5:03

Philly is great. I think we all recognize that Philly is definitely the best city.

Kyle Soucy: 5:08

Totally. And I think we, we just missed each other. I moved up to New Hampshire in 2006. Is that when you left New York?

Karen McGrane: 5:17

No, I moved here in 2016.

Kyle Soucy: 5:20

Oh, okay. So I really missed you. All right. I thought you were there longer.

Karen McGrane: 5:25

No, it's a, you know, I mean, it's eight years now,

Kyle Soucy: 5:27

yeah. Thank you

Karen McGrane: 5:28

like a relatively long

Kyle Soucy: 5:29

Oh yeah.

Karen McGrane: 5:30

I was in New York for 20 years.

Kyle Soucy: 5:31

Wow. Is that where you're originally from?

Karen McGrane: 5:34

No, I'm originally from Minneapolis.

Kyle Soucy: 5:36

That's a big difference.

Karen McGrane: 5:38

It really is. I love Minneapolis. It's a wonderful city, but my personality, I think aligns better with the East coast.

Kyle Soucy: 5:46

Yeah. Well, the first thing I want to do is to talk about your consultancy autogram, and I'd like for you to just tell the listeners a little bit about it and the services you offer.

Karen McGrane: 6:00

Sure. So with my business partner, Jeff Eaton, provide consulting services around content strategy and content management. So that I think sort of taken broadly includes information architecture it includes content modeling in support of a content management system, redesign or replatforming. Often get brought in by organizations when they need to replatform their CMS for some reason, like their current platform is End of Life, or are undergoing some other major I. T. Change. We also get brought in at certain inflection points during the for the business. So sometimes it's when new leadership is coming in and they need to take a step back and evaluate what they're doing with their with their with their product. content publishing and, you know, what they're doing on the web or in apps. it's during a merger or an acquisition when they wind up with two sets of content that they need to integrate and combine. And the services that we provide are around helping organizations figure out how to make their content more effective. how to streamline their internal organizational and operational processes for publishing and managing content at scale.

Kyle Soucy: 7:25

Okay. And autogram was started in 2020. Is that right?

Karen McGrane: 7:30

That's

Kyle Soucy: 7:31

Okay.

Karen McGrane: 7:31

Right in the, in the middle of the pandemic. I had, have, collaborated with Jeff Eaton for many, many years. I think we first met each other back in 2007. I had always wanted to work with him full time. But he had a full time job at the a Drupal integrator called Lullabot. And so when he finally got to the point where he was ready to go out on his own, I was like, heck yeah, we're going to do this thing. And so we've been working together ever since.

Kyle Soucy: 8:03

Nice. Nice. And you had another consultancy before that Bond Art and Science, right?

Karen McGrane: 8:11

Yes, so I started that with some business partners back in 2006 and that, that was a, you know, a long journey. So the business partners that I had there eventually fell off over the course of the next You know, I guess three, four years, and I wound up running bond by myself. There were points at which I had full time employees. There were points at which I was running it entirely by myself. There were points where I was the sole owner, but with a lot of freelancers. So running bond, I think I saw a wide array of different things that can happen when you're running a small consulting firm. I think a lot of those insights have served me well as, as now we're running Autogram.

Kyle Soucy: 9:01

That, to me, is so interesting, how you could have a consultancy that really, Kind of stretched and was flexible with its business model. Cause you have the big consulting firm with the team of employees and other consultants. And then you have that boutique consultancy, you know, more specialized partners, employees, subcontractors, and then also the independent solo consulting too, all like just kind of coming in and out of those different models.

Karen McGrane: 9:30

Yeah, it, it, it was interesting to see what can happen under the brand or the legal entities that you have running a business. It taught me a lot about I think understanding how to be effective in terms of running a business. And one of the things that, that happened to me was making the decision to go from having employees to not having employees. I think I've mentioned this before, but there was a year where I had about, 500, 000 of what I thought was, you know, a sure thing projects coming in and due to a variety of reasons, they all just happened to fall through. It, it had nothing to do with us. It had everything to do with, you know, business things happening on the client side, it came as a real shock. Like I had a lot of money that I was planning as revenue that simply didn't materialize. yeah, I mean, it was very painful at the time. wound up at that juncture deciding that I was just going to take over bond by myself, and that I wasn't going to have employees anymore. so I had to have hard conversations with everybody, and honestly, like, that, worked out remarkably well, like I was very, I tried to be as open as possible with everybody who was working with me did everything I could to help people find other jobs and, and to be perfectly honest, they went on to better jobs that paid better and gave them more responsibilities. I've maintained good relationships with everybody to this day. It wasn't like a You know, it wasn't like we left on bad terms

Kyle Soucy: 11:12

That's great.

Karen McGrane: 11:13

and turns out in many cases you can actually run a more profitable business if you have the flexibility to only work with freelancers. And a transition that I have seen happen in the industry as a whole over the past couple of decades. Like when I got started, there was this expectation that clients really thought you needed full time people on staff and they wanted the security of knowing that your resources were You know beholden to basically that they could have them full time or you know that their time wasn't going to be split I even had the sense that clients expected you to have an office like they wanted to go and see that you had a physical location that that Was what? Gave them a sense of trust and confidence that you were a real business that wasn't going to just disappear over time. I think that's shifted now. I mean, now, clearly an expectation for an office is has gone and that hasn't been around for a while, but. the idea that you're working with a network of freelancers has become much more of an accepted model in the industry. And I, I don't think I've gotten pushback from clients in a long time about working with subcontractors. And, you know, the knowledge that, yeah, I bring in the right people for the job. I have an extensive network of people that, that I know to work with. You know, I'll find the right person to help you out with your project, but I don't have to be paying them a salary in order to do that.

Kyle Soucy: 12:53

And how big was the consulting firm at its, at its largest?

Karen McGrane: 12:58

I think Bond had, I would say we had 15 people at its peak, so it wasn't very big, but that's a, I mean, that's a fair amount of payroll revenue.

Kyle Soucy: 13:11

yeah.

Karen McGrane: 13:12

to make sure you're bringing in regularly we weren't that big when I finally took it all over. I think it was maybe we had a handful of people at that point but still like the pressure to make payroll and the pressure to keep people busy Is challenging for a business and I think point I got to was that I was doing projects like web Design and development projects that weren't the types of projects that I wanted to focus on, but I personally wanted to do, but I was doing them because they would keep a team of people busy

Kyle Soucy: 13:48

Huh.

Karen McGrane: 13:49

so being able to say, all I'm going to do is work as an independent consultant and try to keep myself busy meant that I could focus more on the specific types of content strategy and information architectural projects that I enjoy. And so now working with Autogram, the benefit of me and Jeff Eaton working together is that both of us are very well aligned on the types of projects we want to do. And his background in development, he's a, you know, a software architect. Gives us the ability to do projects with more depth than I could do personally. he has the the knowledge of the back end that I don't have so that gives us some insight into Some of the you know, the real nuts and bolts of what's going on inside a content management system

Kyle Soucy: 14:41

It sounds like an ideal partnership where you compliment each other well.

Karen McGrane: 14:45

We work together

Kyle Soucy: 14:46

Yeah. Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 14:48

the, the real thing that matters to me is that we, you know, we genuinely like each other as people, like I'm close to his wife, we've known each other for decades now. And so there's a lot of real honesty and real trust in how we interact with each other. That to me is necessary. It's, you know, it's not negotiable when you're working with a business partner.

Kyle Soucy: 15:13

I have so many questions about partnerships and, and how that's structured before I dive into that though. I just have to say, just hearing that history of bond art and science, I'm like, wow. I couldn't imagine what that must've felt like to lose 500, 000. Like you thought you were counting on it and then it was gone and then having to let your team go. What was that like?

Karen McGrane: 15:38

It was a rough few months. I think anybody who runs a business knows the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night in a panic about, where's the money going to come from and what's going to happen if it doesn't. Those are feelings that I have been reacquainted with a bit more over the past couple of years as I think a lot of people in the tech industry have had a rocky time. But I, when this happened, I think it was 2011. was a difficult winter, and scrambled quite a bit before just coming to terms with the fact that things were going to change. I think once I accepted it, things got a lot easier. Like my, my first book, Content Strategy for Mobile, was published in 2012. And so, In retrospect, when I look back at it, it feels like actually more of a natural transition, I accepted that the type of work I wanted to do was changing. I accepted that the folks I was working with probably would be just as happy, if not happier. working with other folks we all moved on. And it turns out that once I made that transition the years from, I would say like 2012 to 2016 were probably the most interesting and, and lucrative years that I'd had in consulting up to that point.

Kyle Soucy: 17:07

And with the compromises that you described with having employees, I thought that was super interesting how if you have this team, you have to feed them. And that stress of making the payroll can sometimes make you take work that you necessarily Don't want to take. And I wonder what services was bond art and science offering. You mentioned web development. Was that mainly what they were offering or was it

Karen McGrane: 17:35

Yeah, pretty much. It was we made websites. uh, you know, back at that point, like this was late 2000s, it was, it was a very different market. And so, being able to be Web design and development firm that focused on user experience was a service offering that you could have and it wasn't all that differentiated. I think our expertise was an information architecture and particularly in working with publishers. I did a lot of work. With magazines and other publishers back in those days But honestly when you're working with who are full time they just expect that they're getting paid every two

Kyle Soucy: 18:20

sure? Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 18:22

For somebody running a An agency, a small consulting firm, the pressure to keep the business development pipeline going and to take on work that keep people busy was the primary goal. And shifting that to a model of working independently or working only with freelancers, it's not just that there's less pressure as a business person, it's that people that you're partnering with also have the same attitude about understanding where the revenue is coming from and understanding that both parties are there in sort of a mercenary sense to like, okay, we have this much money coming in and this is the amount of money we're going to get. I'm very transparent with everybody that I work with on a freelance basis on a contract basis where I just close, here's, here's the deal. This is what the client is paying. I'm, open about what percentage of revenue I'm going to take versus what they're going to take. I do everything as a fixed fee. So My expectation when I'm working with people is that Okay, this is the amount of time the clap project is going to take this is how much money we're going to get paid gonna get paid and work with people who, understand like, okay, it's my job to get this work done to an acceptable level of quality within the amount of time and amount of budget that we've outlined. And that's something that is pretty easy to do if you're working with experienced freelancers. The economics of it is very different when you're working with full time people, because they don't necessarily think of the revenue and what they're billing as what's driving their paycheck.

Kyle Soucy: 20:13

Right. Right. Your transparency is so admirable. I wish more agencies were like that with their relationships with subcontractors. I know. Oftentimes it's an unknown completely, what they're making, what you're making, how much they're making off of you. Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 20:30

It really is. I think everybody in this field has wound up subcontracting through bigger agencies. I've certainly done it myself and some I've had really great relationships working with and would love to do it again and others I would not do it again. And I think the level of transparency and the level of honesty that you feel you're getting about what rates they're pulling in what their markup is on your time or your hours that to me is, it's like, if you don't have that or you have a sense like, Am getting screwed here? That's not a healthy way to To have a relationship.

Kyle Soucy: 21:16

not at all. Not at all. And I was wondering with your employees, when you had employees, I imagine your role had to dramatically change. What was your role like when you had employees?

Karen McGrane: 21:29

When I was working with other business partners other partners were more responsible for her. The business and operations running bond. When I took it over myself and what Ben was managing more of the actual business aspects of it, one of my big insights was that the business aspects of it were actually pretty interesting and also not that hard. Previous to that point, sort of of it as. Like this mysterious thing, like I was the designer or the UX person, I had the subject matter expertise. And then there were other people who knew how to run a business. it turns out that running a small consulting firm is not that difficult from a business operations standpoint. It really isn't pretty straightforward. Money goes in, money comes out, and you want to make sure you have more money coming in than is going out. Yeah. And I, as I have now spent a good 15 years handling the business and operational management side of it, I find that I enjoy it quite a bit, but also It, it seems pretty straightforward to me and, I will say though, a big part of that is recognizing that you don't run a business without paying experts in their field. So you need a good accountant, you need a good bookkeeper, you need a good lawyer, and you know, you need to be able to trust those people that when you call them up and have questions for them, that they're going to give you good answers and timely answers.

Kyle Soucy: 23:11

That, that really segways nicely to the, the other thing I wanted to ask you is about your journey to becoming a consultant and how you did that. Before I do that, though, I I have to ask there are different there are different definitions of success, right? Some people enter this world of being an independent consultant and their end goal is to eventually have employees that they haven't made it, quote unquote, unless they have that office and they have a payroll and all of it and others just want to stay independent. For those that are thinking about having employees and actually having a consulting firm, what do you say to them? What's your advice there?

Karen McGrane: 23:51

I got some good advice from David Baker, who is somebody who's, I think, relatively well known in the,

Kyle Soucy: 23:59

Yeah, I have his book.

Karen McGrane: 24:01

Yeah, yeah, I, I met David at a Harvard Business School conference. It was like a week long event for like a little mini MBA program for designers. And it was back in maybe 2005. so I've known him ever since, and we've stayed in touch. I have worked with him a couple of times over the past couple of decades, and has shared a lot of really interesting information with me about the operational side, the management side of running a small business. And one of the things that he told me that has always stuck with me is that the size of your business as an owner is entirely dependent on what you want your role as the owner to be. And your ability to be profitable is not at all based on the size of the business. And in fact, your ability to make as much money as you want as an independent person in many ways, is greater, you have more flexibility the smaller your firm is compared to having a larger firm. There's this sense that I think people have that in order to be really successful, but also in order to be really profitable, you need a larger team. And he was very clear that that, you know, in all of the analysis that he's done of hundreds of small consulting firms, that that's simply not true. And that what you need to understand as the owner of the business is what is it that you like doing? you like doing the hands on work? Then you should probably have a smaller firm, because the larger your business grows, the more time you're going to have to spend Doing business development and managing the growth of the business and not doing the hands on work of design or research or development or communications or whatever it is that you enjoy doing when that finally clicked with me, that was one of the big reasons where I realized that I'd probably be happier just being an independent consultant on my

Kyle Soucy: 26:16

Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 26:17

you know, we're having a smaller firm and that the people management side of, know, running a business and worrying about people's career growth wasn't what was motivating me and I actually like doing the hands on work a lot more.

Kyle Soucy: 26:34

And I love this myth busting of profitability being equal to head count, that you can have even just as much profit on your own or, yeah, there's, there's this idea. I've seen it in some conversations with other consultants that, oh, I want to make more. I'm just going to have a bunch of subcontractors and that way I can have lots of projects going on. And, and then. I hear also oftentimes when that's going on that it can be so chaotic, just trying to manage all the subcontractors and it can be a lot more stress as well. But sometimes it does work out for some

Karen McGrane: 27:09

Yeah, I think the, the upside of working with subcontractors only is that, at least for me, your ability to control costs is a lot easier, like I have a fixed price project with a client. I pay a fixed fee to my subcontractors and so the risk to me as a business is relatively low. you know, I mean there's always risk something could happen to the contractor or the contractor could, you know, demand more money but if I'm doing my job right there's not much risk there. Whereas the flip side of that is I think if you have full time people and, you know, I think unspoken thing here is if you're paying people on salary much less than you're billing them out for. So if you're paying them a salary and then billing them out at. three times their salary or four times their salary, your ability to get more work and more profit out of them is greater. That's I think a multiple of three or four is a pretty standard metric for how agencies operate. It's easier to get to higher multiples if you have a pyramid structure where you have only a few people at the top and a lot of junior people that you're billing out at much higher rates than their salary. Don't, I mean, that's not really a model that appeals to me. And I think some people, it might really appeal to them. They would like to have a team of junior people that they're mentoring and they're not paying them particularly well but they can shape the work and sell it to a client at a value that the client's willing to pay. To me, it's a lot easier to work with other seasoned experts, people who. Know what they're doing and they're not looking for me to manage them and we split things 50 50 Like that to me seems like a relatively fair and easy way to do business

Kyle Soucy: 29:12

And now revisiting that topic of how you learn to do this. So, you know, what was your, your journey to becoming a consultant? Why did you want to become a consultant and start a business?

Karen McGrane: 29:23

So, I've actually never done anything else. I joke that I'm feral at this point. Like, I don't know that I could work in house.

Kyle Soucy: 29:32

hear ya.

Karen McGrane: 29:33

I got my start right out of grad school at the digital agency Razorfish. I was One of the early hires there I worked there for about 10 years. When I started, I was the first person that they brought in with a user experience background. And when I left, I was the VP and national lead for user experience. And so during my time there, it, that was really a crash course in how to work for an agency and how an agency approaches sales and business development and people management and you know, the business of running a consulting firm. I learned a lot there. And so when I left Razorfish the folks that I left with were also ex Razorfish people. And when we transitioned to running Bond we took a lot of our knowledge and insights from what happened at razorfish there. And I've been independent ever since. I really like being an independent consultant. I enjoy it. I find it endlessly interesting to work with different types of clients and learn a little bit about how their business operates and learn a little bit about their challenges. Staying focused on the specific problems that I can solve, like from a user experience perspective, really looking deeply at content publishing and operations processes, looking deeply at the human side of content management, means that I'm looking at similar problems, but across different businesses and different industries. And I honestly think that's a fantastic position for. a consultant to bring in outside consultants Jeff and I have deep expertise in working with clients. We've seen how different businesses solve these problems over and over and over again and I think is that's why you should bring in an outsider is if you're going to be doing something like a content management replatforming or You know, you need to reevaluate your content strategy in light of some business changes, bringing in somebody who's done it, you know, 100 times before and can let you know where, you know, here's places to watch out for. Here's ways that you could make this go more efficiently. We'll really. help save pain and time and money. Sure you could do, you know, figure it all out yourself, but bring in an expert, we'll come in and help you out make it go more smoothly for you, and then we go away.

Kyle Soucy: 32:10

And it's amazing that you spent nine years at Razorfish and worked up to being the VP of UX. And that was fresh, from school that you were into a big agency. And I actually subcontracted for them like way back, like 2003. And they were massive and I think that's such a huge accomplishment to be the VP of UX there. And when you left, there was just never a thought like, you knew you were going to go out on your own.

Karen McGrane: 32:37

I really wanted to go out on my

Kyle Soucy: 32:41

Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 32:42

And I was excited about the challenge of being able to manage my own clients and manage my own business. You know, you look back on your career and some of it, It's like, I liked the idea. I don't know that I even thought it through all that carefully. Like, it was just something that sounded like a fun thing to work on. We had a couple of clients already lined up for when the business started and Things just kept going from there.

Kyle Soucy: 33:11

Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 33:11

I've, it's certainly crossed my mind over the years, like, Ugh, maybe I should try to get a job, get a full time job someplace. Like, you know, I've interviewed a few times, but this point, this point I have to say I'm really grateful that I have the skills and the network that come from running my own business because, you know, I'm, I'm in my 50s now and I certainly see what has happened to the tech industry over the past couple of years and how many people with few decades of experience are struggling to find full time work. you know, there's this sense of like, oh, you can't get a full time job. Well, you could try consulting. Well, guess what? Consulting is its own challenging job and you don't just walk into it and start getting clients and know how to run a business. It's something that also takes skills and, you know, practice and you make mistakes along the way.

Kyle Soucy: 34:08

Yeah, that is such a good point. No, you, you do not just flip the switch and say, okay, my signs out. I'm open, bring on the work. It just, it takes a lot of work to get those leads and probably 10 times the amount of work to get the first client usually, unless you have some connections but you mentioned the current economy and it's such a good point. I would love to talk about that. Everyone. That I know in my consulting network and myself included, 2023 was horrible. It was one of my worst years. So to be perfectly candid, in 20 years in business, 2009 was my absolute worst. Cause after the 2018 crash, nobody had approved budgets going. forward. And also I had my first child, so that was a big deal in that year. So that was the worst one on the books. I think 2023 was either the second or third worst year for me. So curious to know for Autogram, for yourself, what has this been like for you?

Karen McGrane: 35:12

2023 was by far my worst year. I actually didn't do too bad in, in 2009. That was first, that was the year that my other business partners at Bond decided they didn't want to work at Bond anymore. And so that was sort of the first year that I was running the whole business myself. I took on some smaller projects. It was a much leaner organization. And, know, I look back on that and it was okay. Whereas 2023? Whoa! It was just a barren wasteland of, of, you know, hopes and dreams that didn't pan out. And the, the only reassuring thing was being able to talk to my other friends in consulting. recognize that everybody was going through the same thing. It wasn't just us, but yeah, it was, it was it's, it's been tough. has been a little better, but I think we are seeing, I don't know, a realignment and the tech landscape and with a lot of people laid off, you know, we're now in a, know, no more zero interest rate market. It's going to take some time, I think probably through the election in the United States at the end of the year to just really see where the market is going to wind up

Kyle Soucy: 36:42

Yeah, you know, I leaned on my network quite a bit to my, my community of, of independents and other people and it was comforting to hear like, okay, it's not just me. We're all slow. And, you know, it sounds I don't know, maybe a little odd to you, but to hear, names in the industry, like people like yourself saying, yes, I'm, I'm slow too. That's so reassuring. It really is. It's not good. We, none of us wants to hear that we're slow, but there is some comfort in that and, and I do appreciate you being willing to share that. I know you mentioned too before. So. Autogram started with three. So it was Jeff Eaton, you and Ethan Marcotte. Is that right?

Karen McGrane: 37:23

that is correct. It was the three of

Kyle Soucy: 37:24

Yeah. And then, so Ethan left recently.

Karen McGrane: 37:28

Ethan left recently and took a full time job and that was a difficult and and Painful transition i'll say i'm very happy for him. He is at 18 F right now And I recognize that that's You fantastic place for him. He is very committed to public service. He just published a book last year from a book apart called you deserve a tech union. So I know that he's really interested in, in doing work for the public good. but it was also very sad to lose him. And I've I've collaborated with Ethan also for more than a decade and I miss him, but you know, you need a paycheck. I get it. It's, it's tough.

Kyle Soucy: 38:13

absolutely.

Karen McGrane: 38:15

working as a consultant and having the pipeline dry up.

Kyle Soucy: 38:20

And it's a reality, right? It's a reality that we all face.

Karen McGrane: 38:24

It is. Yeah. I mean, you really have to have You have to, to recognize that when you're working independently, that there will be boom and bust cycles and, you know, save rainy day. Make sure that you're putting money away for the tough times. And I think what's was challenging about the market over the past year for, for everybody, whether it was people working independently or people looking for a full time job was that I think people did that. They, they saved money and, you know, tried to take care of himself. But year, you know, a year or so later, your reserves are running pretty dry. And, that, that I think is challenging. And it's something that I see people who are, who are openly looking for full time jobs right now, speaking about openly. And, you know, I'm happy to speak about it openly too. Like you couldn't. Have done a lot of things right and still be in a position where you're like, well, I saved for a rainy day, but has gone on long longer than I thought it

Kyle Soucy: 39:36

Yeah. Not a, not a rainy two years or three years or yeah.

Karen McGrane: 39:40

Yeah, exactly

Kyle Soucy: 39:41

And the The savings it's so important that you mention that it's one of the first things I mentioned when someone's like I'm thinking of going Out on my own. It's like have that Savings you need to have that savings because the moment you're slow, you're gonna be like, okay I guess I'm looking for full time work. You're not gonna be out very long because that illusion that Well, once I'm out there I'll stay out there. It's it's it's work staying out there and it might not be Always be there for you. And you mentioned the pipeline. What do you do when the pipeline is dry and the client work is slow?

Karen McGrane: 40:19

So I will say that one of the things that I found particularly challenging over the past couple of years has been that the two Biggest vectors for me for marketing and promotion were historically speaking at conferences and Twitter. And both of those are gone now. The conference market, I think, has essentially dried up since the pandemic. The energy around in person conferences has largely moved online and online events or online training sessions just aren't the same as being able to network in person at a conference. And Twitter, I mean, love it or hate it, like, I think we all have a love hate relationship with that place, but it was my, you know, professional home for a long time, and I met a lot of clients and collaborators and had a place where I could share my garbage thoughts,

Kyle Soucy: 41:25

You met your husband there.

Karen McGrane: 41:27

I met my husband on Twitter! I mean, I had a verified account and 50, 000 followers and it was fairly astonishing to see that vanish in, you know, the space of a few months. So What you do to start drumming up business has shifted quite a lot. And I think we're all, I mean, I know for myself, we're still trying to figure out how to operate in this new world. Like I have to be on LinkedIn now. I am a moderator on our UX design, which is just a very different place and it's anonymous. I do some online events, but again, it's not the same

Kyle Soucy: 42:17

Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 42:18

speaking at a conference. I honestly, I wish I had a good answer for you, but I think it, it really involves creative about how to get your message out

Kyle Soucy: 42:31

Mm.

Karen McGrane: 42:32

And the one thing I will say, like, if I'm thinking of things that I would advise people, you really, really have to have a niche. Like, the more specific you can be about the problems that you solve, and you know, to be precise about why a client should hire you, the better off you're going to be. And This is a classic user experience thing like trying to appeal to everybody means that you don't appeal to anybody solving a specific niche problem mean that you are not the right vendor for the majority of clients, but for the subset of clients that have the specific problem that you're going to solve. You're going to be an obvious

Kyle Soucy: 43:19

Right.

Karen McGrane: 43:20

obvious choice to be considered. And so I, I sometimes look at people or their firm and their positioning and it's way too generic. It's, you know, just like I do user experience work. Well, how do you differentiate from every other person out there that? Does user experience work? You don't,

Kyle Soucy: 43:42

Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 43:42

You need to have something that's like, I solve, you know, I make the best websites for dentists out there. Like, you know, that's probably not what you want to focus on. But at least if you are looking for dentists that need a website, they're going to have to consider you or, you know, recognize that they have a problem and you solve that problem.

Kyle Soucy: 44:02

You have hit on probably one of, I want to say my biggest fears that I need help with. When it comes to specializing, I've had this conversation so many times with so many people about the importance of it and about whether or not, you know, you know, I should do it or other people should do it. I really go back and forth in this and I, I'd love to get your, two cents on it. So with my work, so I'm a UX researcher and I, over the 20 years, it has been everything from medical devices to kitchen appliances to, you know, mobile apps, web apps, whatever, so many different industries. And I love that variety. And I feel like, as a qualitative researcher, that That's like kind of how I specialize is that I do qualitative versus quantitative typically. But I don't know, there's fear. There's real fear to be honest about saying, okay, from this point forward, I am going to be the UX researcher for medical or for e commerce or for financial or whatever it may be. When you say specialist, do you mean that like choosing an industry? Are you thinking in a broader term?

Karen McGrane: 45:08

No, I don't necessarily mean industry

Kyle Soucy: 45:11

Okay. Okay.

Karen McGrane: 45:15

that some folks take is to do, you know, to specialize by, You know, industry vertical, but I think other folks do more of what you're describing as like a horizontal specialization. Like, I'm going to take, I'm going to do qualitative research and, you know, perhaps a particular spin on qualitative research. Like, we, you know, are looking for problems in, you know, questions that you're trying to get answered in, you know, these types of problems. In these types of situations,

Kyle Soucy: 45:51

yeah.

Karen McGrane: 45:52

but I think it's like, your prospective client has to be able to see their problems in what you say that you do Mm. Yeah. it's gotta, it's gotta resonate with them, like, oh, okay, these, these, This firm, this person talks about problems that our business has in a way that makes me feel confident that they know how to solve those problems. And so it's, it's not about necessarily just saying we only do healthcare work. It's about having something specific enough that a client can grab onto it and say, Oh, I get it. You feel my pain.

Kyle Soucy: 46:34

That is so true. I am often, pitching work and what I find is, I've got a lot of experience in a lot of different areas but what you said, they want to see their problems represented. So let's say someone has an intranet. It's like, but did you, you know, work on this specific thing, you know, this community building aspect of it. How do you have anything, any similar projects like that, that you can talk to? It's like, no, but you know, I have 20 years of other things and you know, I'm using the same methods and whatever, but they still, they want to, they want to see Yeah. Oh,

Karen McGrane: 47:15

like being able to somebody's pain point almost better than they can understand it themselves. I think a lot of my most successful You know, sales work, I almost don't even want to call it sales, but it's being able to talk to that, that have pain around their web publishing or digital publishing what they're trying to accomplish online and talk to them about where those problems stem from. And. I can do to solve them and to make them feel comfortable like, oh, I, I can describe their pain back to them almost better than they can, because I've seen it, you know, they're in the middle of it, like, they don't have the perspective to really diagnose where it comes from, or see past the pain into how you, how you get to a different future. I. seen it a hundred times before and can give them the sense of like, Oh no, I get it. Like, you know, I, I sometimes joke a lot of the sales process is really just, giving your client a hug and saying your problems are painful and difficult and I've seen them before and I know what to do.

Kyle Soucy: 48:40

I love that.

Karen McGrane: 48:41

you know, if, if, It's like you can, if you can convince somebody of that, they almost have to hire you

Kyle Soucy: 48:50

that. That is, that is so perfect. Yeah. And you, a few minutes ago when we were talking initially about the, the pipeline being slow and, and, you know, talking at conferences, I feel you completely like the virtual conferences, just, they're not the same and you. are such a brilliant speaker. So that's how I first found out about you and knew about you. Your amazing talks and anybody who has not seen Karen in action giving a talk go to her website karenmcgrane.Com and look at her talks. It's just so much passion. You're. So great with sharing your wisdom. And I remember watching you a few different times in person. There was the IA Summit keynote and other times. It took a lot for me to. Really honed my public speaking craft. And I feel like it, it really got there in a lot of ways because I watched people like you really bring it and I'm like, okay, this is how it's done. I've got to bring it, you know? So I think you're a brilliant speaker. And I just wanted to mention that,

Karen McGrane: 49:52

That's so nice of you to say. I, you know, I always really loved speaking. I love being on stage and at a virtual event as, as great as it is for, the ease of, like, you know, the ease of people being able to To watch and participate from their homes just doesn't have the same energy and doesn't have the same, for me as a speaker, doesn't have the same feeling as being on stage. And I, it's like, I, and the thing is, I haven't done it in so long. I, you know, I'm, I find myself wondering like, gosh, what's it going to be like when I, I speak at a conference again, because I can't, I can't even remember the last time I did

Kyle Soucy: 50:36

Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. And it's a shame. It really is. I hope, I hope that comes back. Yeah. Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 50:47

a new generation of people. I think many of us got, got our message out there and, and, you know, we're able to connect with colleagues and friends and potential clients. On, you know, at events like that. And I, wish for the same for people who are, you know, a generation younger than I am now to have the same chances to, to learn and to grow and to hone their message.

Kyle Soucy: 51:17

To make a name for themselves. Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 51:20

Yeah, exactly.

Kyle Soucy: 51:22

So I want to talk about partnerships and that's probably the thing I'm so keen to talk to you about because you have so much experience with this.

Karen McGrane: 51:32

Yeah.

Kyle Soucy: 51:32

So I mentioned to you before that a few times I have been approached by other consultants and I get the, Hey, we should partner. And I'm like, Hey, what does that mean? Like, I don't know what that means. Yeah. I, how do you divide the work, the responsibilities, the profits? I, you started autogram with three people was, if you don't mind me asking, you know, do you feel comfortable sharing? Like, was it a third, a third, a third, or how did that work?

Karen McGrane: 52:02

Yep. Yep. So we were very clear. Everything is just a third, a third, a third. So business ownership was, you know, equal thirds and profit sharing was equal thirds. There wasn't any. complication about that at all. So when Ethan left that month that we had to get the lawyer involved and, and, you know, update the operating agreement. And so now for Jeff, it's 50 50 between us. that, that to me is, is the easiest way to go. If we work with freelancers, again, we're very transparent about How we're dividing up the money and have open conversations about it. So it, in those cases, it might be a third, a third, a third, you know, we might negotiate something different for a subcontractor working with us, but, you know, it's always, it's always out in the open.

Kyle Soucy: 52:55

Oh, interesting.

Karen McGrane: 52:57

yeah, and, but, you know, you're right. It doesn't have to be that way. As far as partnership goes, I guess the big question there is, are you setting up a legal entity together? Like, are you opening a joint LLC or? You know, some kind of actual business partnership, and if that's the case, are you You know, what's the operating agreement? Like, how do you handle taxes? Are you gonna get insurance? Like, all of that invites a much broader question about, like, what is this business we're running versus are we just collaborating on a project?

Kyle Soucy: 53:37

And I think the fear that I have with partnerships, what do you do if one of you is slow and the other one is busy and, I would feel bad. Like, did I earn my third or half or whatever? Like, does that ever come into play?

Karen McGrane: 53:53

No, not really it certainly, Autogram, I don't feel like that was an issue us at all. I think we, We all recognize that we're all collaborating on the project and bringing our unique skills to bear. And don't, don't, I guess maybe it's just the types of projects that we're doing that all collaborating on them equally and contributing to the work relatively equally. So I, I haven't felt like that's an issue. Potentially if the types of projects that you're doing lend themselves to different types of work and There is a sense like someone's, you know, one partner is, you know, working flat out 40 hours a week, and the other partner is working 10 hours a week. That might make sense. Lead to some conflict, but again In scenarios like that. There's an easy way around it and it's called time tracking like if you really are wanting to sure that Contributions and and payments accurately reflect the amount of effort they put into the project. You can just track your time you don't have to bill hourly order to also do time tracking as a metric for determining what percentage of the income you're going to distribute to each person.

Kyle Soucy: 55:32

I see. Yep. And I also wanted to touch on your teaching experience. So I know you taught in the MFA

Karen McGrane: 55:40

School

Kyle Soucy: 55:40

program in Interaction Design at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and that was 14 years. Is that right?

Karen McGrane: 55:49

14 years. I started teaching the program launched in 2009, and my course was the very first course on the very first day of the program, and it was, I will say, it was a great experience. I really enjoyed teaching. I will also say that one of the major reasons that I stayed teaching for so long was that I was able to get health insurance through, the school. Got on a, a good group plan. you know, another, you know, Another thing to advise anybody who wants to go out on their own, if they work in the United States, you're going to have to figure out where your health insurance is coming

Kyle Soucy: 56:30

Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 56:30

So SVA gave me access to a good health insurance plan. So one among many reasons that I don't teach there anymore is that I was able to go on my husband's plan. So, once we got married. That was the end of an era for me. But the class that I taught was the management class. It was called design management and goal in that class was to teach people who were going to be working as UX designers or interaction designers a little bit about how thinks and operates and Essentially, like, I think the core thesis of the course was to try to explain how does a business value design, or, you know, how do you evaluate the work that a designer does in terms of the value that it brings to the business? You know, why, why hire UX designers? Why hire UX researchers? What are you as a business expecting you're going to get out of that? And the answer for everything in our. Our late stage capitalist society is money. Businesses want money. And they are in existence to make money. so working through as a designer how you understand the profit motive and Different, different ways that you can think about that from an individual standpoint, like, why do they hire you? How do you talk about your work when you're applying for a job or, you know, writing your portfolio, your resume, in a way that will make it meaningful to an employer to see how you will provide value to their business? how does a business think about the work that you're doing in terms of. You know, what it does to drive their profits, drive their bottom line. And how do they measure that internally? How do they think about perhaps hiring an agency or to, or an outside firm to come in and do work for them? How do they think about paying those people? All of that is really trying to connect up the, the, the value. of designers and what designers care about with what the business cares about.

Kyle Soucy: 58:45

Absolutely. And all of those topics are so important. It's awesome that you were teaching that for so long. I know a lot of independent consultants that will do some kind of adjunct professorship or something. And I'm curious to know for those that are considering that, you know, how do you fit teaching in how much of your time is spent teaching

Karen McGrane: 59:07

yeah, that's a good question. And It is a, it is a significant time commitment. So the course that I taught was a three credit course and that meant that it was three hours once a week. In class time was three hours once a week for 15 you're teaching, I'm pretty sure this is true for all schools, you're, you're only getting paid for in class time. So think I made probably 7, 000 a semester, maybe 8, 000 by the time I left. Nobody's doing it for the

Kyle Soucy: 59:47

Right.

Karen McGrane: 59:49

And so that three hours of in class time, I think a good metric that people use is that you should be spending like two to three hours outside of class preparing and, and, you know, evaluating assignments or, you know, doing work outside of class. I would say it probably wasn't that much for me, particularly as I had taught the class, you know, several times before. Like, my syllabus evolved certainly over the years, but there were things that were relatively consistent from year to year. As I, taught more and more. I learned that more time should be spent in class discussing the assignments that they were doing and less time with me outside of class doing grading and feedback. So I learned over time to reduce the amount of that I would have to grade and give feedback on outside of class. And there's still some of that, but You don't have to, you can make it easier on myself than I did for some of the earlier years.

Kyle Soucy: 1:00:59

Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 1:01:00

I brought in guest speakers from all over the world. People that I, you know, have known for years in the UX space who have written books and asked them to come in and, and give a talk. About their book I really enjoyed that. I felt really lucky and grateful that I, you know, know people in the field who were willing to volunteer some of their time to do that. And, you know, it's like the more guest speakers you can bring in, the less work it is for

Kyle Soucy: 1:01:29

Right. Right. It's so smart. And I've done that a few times being a, a guest speaker and two of the times, no money at all. It's just something you're doing just out of the goodness of your own heart. But one person they were able to give me a couple hundred and it's, you don't do it for the money, right? You're doing it just for helps your credibility, the whole thing. Yeah

Karen McGrane: 1:01:48

yep. It's true.

Kyle Soucy: 1:01:49

Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 1:01:50

it's like, I, we definitely had a little bit of money that we could give out, but it's on the level of.

Kyle Soucy: 1:01:57

Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 1:01:58

So it's

Kyle Soucy: 1:02:00

you're not doing it for that.

Karen McGrane: 1:02:01

really more about being able

Kyle Soucy: 1:02:03

Yeah. Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 1:02:04

to say you did it.

Kyle Soucy: 1:02:06

So I want to wrap up now with just a couple rapid fire questions or actually it's more like a few. If you had to describe UX consulting in one word, how would you describe it?

Karen McGrane: 1:02:19

Therapy?

Kyle Soucy: 1:02:20

Therapy. That's so good.

Karen McGrane: 1:02:22

I describe it that way. a fair amount, like you're really coming in as almost like a therapist to help an organization work through their problems, give, you know, learn how to articulate their problems, and maybe reframe some of their problems for them, and then hopefully work through their issues and leave them with some, some practical skills that they could use in the future.

Kyle Soucy: 1:02:56

And what's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?

Karen McGrane: 1:03:01

I think one piece of advice that, that has stuck with me that I've tried to, pass on to other people is that you have to accept the parts of the work that you don't like,

Kyle Soucy: 1:03:17

Mm.

Karen McGrane: 1:03:18

and even recognize that you need to, optimize for the downsides. Everybody has things about their job they don't like, and that's why they have to pay you, is because if you loved every bit of it, you would do it for free. And, you know, I sometimes have said to people, like, you know, imagine you're a rock star, right? I mean, you have this, like, dream job, like you're on stage and you're famous and, you know, whatever it is that you love about, you know, being a famous rock star and performing. How much of that is, I mean, how much of that do you actually do? Is it like 10 percent of your time? 25 percent of your time? Maybe, you know, let's say the, the absolute peak of on stage and the adulation of your fans and, you know, the beautiful people, it's 25 percent of your time. What's the other 75 percent of your time? going to be stuff you don't like. You're in the tour bus. You're fighting with your bandmates, you're struggling to create music, it's not great all the time, it's, it's not, it's never great all the time. And that's if you're a rock star! I mean, if you're just an ordinary person, doing ordinary work, you're gonna have to do a lot of things that you absolutely don't enjoy. That's okay. Recognize you're going to have to do stuff you don't like all the time. And but if you accept that and recognize that, it, it helps you be aware that There's maybe some things that you dislike a little bit less than you dislike other things. Like, for me, it turns out I did not love people management. And I would be more willing to take on unpleasant things about managing lawyers and banking and than I would be willing to take on managing know, junior

Kyle Soucy: 1:05:16

Yeah.

Karen McGrane: 1:05:17

a, you know, neither one of those is fun, but I like one of them better than I like the other. But then, in contrast to that, it also allows you to make sure that you are optimizing for the things that you really do like making sure that you get to do the things that you absolutely. Need in order to feel like your job is satisfying. And again, that's going to be different for other people. You

Kyle Soucy: 1:05:44

Right. Right.

Karen McGrane: 1:05:48

their hands in doing some of the hands on work, like you absolutely love conducting interviews, or you absolutely love, you know, doing a content audit, or, you know, you love being able to open up Figma and you know, do the actual design work. If you don't recognize, like, that both sides of that have to be attended to, and you have to make sure you're doing the things that you love, so that the things that you don't love are tolerable you can wind up in a position where you're doing stuff you hate and not getting to do stuff you love, and that's no way to run a Especially if you own the business.

Kyle Soucy: 1:06:28

No way to run a business. That's so wise. And lastly, what consulting resources have been most helpful for you? Whether it be books, podcasts, coaches, articles.

Karen McGrane: 1:06:40

I will, I will recommend again David Baker's books and his podcast Two Bobs has been running for a long time. I think he has great advice and is, mean, I will say he's one of the people who I thank. Extremely honest and extremely knowledgeable about interior workings of how independent consultants and people running small services firms operate and he really tells it like it is.

Kyle Soucy: 1:07:13

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Two Bobs is awesome. I will definitely add links in the show notes to both his book and that podcast. Well, Karen, this has been so fantastic for the listeners, you can check out Karen's consultancy at autogram. is you can check out the UX design subreddit that she moderates, which is a thankless job and she does an amazing job of it. It's awesome. It's the largest UX group on Reddit. And like I mentioned, Karen's talks are on her website, karenmcgrane. com and her two books she has content strategy for mobile as well as going responsive. You can find them on abookapart. com. And Karen, thank you so much again for taking the time out of your day to share your wisdom with us. It was again, an honor to talk with you and I hope we can do it again.

Karen McGrane: 1:08:07

Thank you so much. I had such a great time talking with you I will look forward to continuing our conversation in the future.

Kyle Soucy: 1:08:12

Oh, good. I look forward to it too. Take care. All right. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for joining me. So do you have a topic or a question that you would like us to explore on a future episode of the UX consultants lounge? Perhaps there's an anonymous consulting story you want to submit. If so, click on the link in the show notes to submit your story or question from the podcast website. Until next time, keep that consultancy going. I can't wait to have you back in the lounge for our next episode.

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