Name: Patrick Healy
Website: http://www.phacient.com
Bio: Patrick Healy is the founder of the New York based management consulting firm, Phacient, a company dedicated helping organizations to operate like their larger competitors Their mantra is Simple is Better.
Phacient’s premise is straightforward: we wrap ourselves around your business and handle the activities that your organization either cannot or doesn’t want to perform in order to free up your resources to focus on the core of your business. Whether it’s marketing, technology, infrastructure, operations or process, Phacient handles activities that distract you from growing better and more cost effectively than you would believe.
Personally, Patrick is a husband, father, son and brother. He’s passionate about family, food, and technology. He gives his loyalties to sports teams that don’t deserve them. He is infatuated with decision making, consumer behavior, and the human condition. He’s also a veteran of the United States Army.
Blogger Since: 2007
Question #1: Thinking specifically about technology and tools – what is the one thing that has had a significant and positive impact on your success and in what way?
Picking one just won’t work for me. I’m sorry, that’s like Sophie’s Choice. Instead, I will give you one concept that has really worked for me big – interconnectivity. I live in the space where I do something on one device/computer and it is easily absorbed into the system and I can access it from another instantly. Any cloud backup, the Google ecosystem, file sharing, – all of it. I’d say I do most of my best stuff based on this principle. Why? Because I never know when the idea is going to hit me or how long I will have to work on it. I can start something on my phone and finish it on my desktop rig – or vice versa.
Question #2: What is the one thing that you do that your competition does not?
This one is a tough one, Mike – and I’d expect nothing less from you. I think the one thing that obviously separates us from anyone that could be considered a competitor is that we FINISH every part of the job. I have a term that I use as an insult sometimes to people that don’t finish. I tell them “they just 80 percented me”. From soup to nuts, we finish every task completely. We feel this is important since half-assing any of the steps you take to get to the end is building on a bad foundation. It keeps us grounded, on-time, and predictable. Our clients love that.
Question #3: SuperMan is a comic book. So is WonderWoman. Everyone has a weak area. What is that one area that you feel could use improvement? Do you avoid it, struggle through it, or know when to call in the Professionals?
I hate this question. I, like everyone, have flaws that I don’t like to think about too much let alone discuss. My worst ones in business? I am a player-coach. It’s really hard to do. In business, there are two types of people: those that do work and those that manage it. Rarely do the two activities meet in the same brain. I’ve been getting more and more out of the doing of work but I fear there will always be things that only I can handle. Those activities are what I consider my weak spot.
Another weak spot is time. I don’t have a whole lot of it to spare. Because of this, I don’t do some of the things I really would like to – like blog the way I used to (I’m working to change that though), exercise like I want to (working on that too), or rid us of nagging activities at Phacient. As I get more out of the player role I am optimistic I will be able to plug this hole and attend to more of these things the way I would like to.
Question #4: How do you plan to grow? Continual growth is important. As it pertains to learning and staying on top of the business, what is it that you continuously do to ‘sharpen the saw’?
We’ve been growing more in the past year than the first four years we were in business. It’s exciting. Due to the nature of what we do for businesses, we have to be careful in our growth plan. Right now, we’ve been very much focused on partnerships with good companies that we think provide great value, we can reasonably learn their business as it suits our clients’ needs, and bake them into our offering. This kind of true partnership is so much more than a referral or affiliate based one. We are working with their teams to craft custom solutions that simply cannot be replicated – which we feel will give us a competitive advantage for some time to come.
Question #5: Not looking for the “Abe Lincoln” answer, so Presidents, Candidates, Authors and Wayne Gretzky are out. Amongst your friends, coworkers, and others in your industry – who is it that your really admire? What is it about them (or their business)?
This is tough. There are a lot of people I respect and admire in business. The top one was certainly my grandmother. It may sound hokey but she went from seamstress to executive for a big company at a time when women got little respect. A lot of times, when I am making a tough call I try to think about what the conversation would go like with her. If it results in a slap in the head, I rethink my call.
Another, living, person, I really admire and respect is Gary Vaynerchuk. I’ve learned a lot from him as he’s constantly reminding me of where my core is. I identify with him very much so usually this is the way I’m making use of what he’s spitting. I learn a bit but am reminded a lot more and I think that is really important. We all know the right answer much of the time, we just need to be reminded of it – regularly.
Thanks Pat! Even though you had multiple questions to choose, you took the first five and nailed it.
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