Silegra and Dr. Argelis A. Ortiz

We would like to introduce Dr. Argelis A. Ortiz, Founder & Principal Consultant of Silegra, which has grown from a small part-time operation into a well-established organization with several team members on board. We are honored to have Dr. Ortiz describe a little bit about how this was achieved.

What gig work do you do? What made you decide to do this? How long have you been doing it?

For the past several years, Dr. Ortiz and his business partner, Ricardo Lopez, MSW, had been working on various consulting projects (e.g. strategic planning, community needs assessments, capacity building, etc.) as Independent Consultants. They agreed that unifying forces in 2020 to launch their organization would be strategic and rewarding. Collectively, the Silegra team has 75 years of content expertise that bring balance and professionalism to the organization.

Our focus is to empower clients in optimizing opportunities and to support them in addressing emerging challenges pertaining to strategy & partnerships, communications & marketing, organizational management, leadership transformation, mergers & acquisitions, and sustainability across all industries.

What started off as "side-gigs" have has become formalized. The team is expanding capacity to take on larger projects with longer-time frames and this is now the norm for us.

What training or education did you have? How did this inform your career path and/or your side-Gig?

Dr. Ortiz is a bilingual (Spanish and English) compassionate executive that is eager to develop leaders and non-profit organizations to maximize their own potential! He obtained his B.A. from San Jose State University, and his Master’s in Social Work and Doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Southern California.

At Silegra, he directs and leads the coaching, training, and consulting projects for which he applies two decades of direct social work experience, five years of graduate teaching experience, and ten years in organizational development, direct management, and fiscal oversight.

What is the best part about gig work?

The best part of this role is being able to work with highly professional and efficient colleagues. They are reliable and extremely knowledgeable, which makes the projects and work fly by.

We utilize technology and productivity tools to communicate, track progress and for accountability purposes. Dr. Ortiz prides himself on being a practitioner of productivity tools such as ASANA, #Slack, keap.com, Google Suite, etc. Working collaboratively in all aspects of the consulting world is a cost-savings (time and money).

What was the hardest part about starting with gig work? How would you advise others about this?

At the moment, as we are formalizing our organization, and pulling our various networks and resources together. What has been difficult is to be seen as a group and not as an individual. For years, many of us were solopreneurs, and our professional connections were the source of value for our work. As we are forming the group, we have to ensure these connections as well as new leads are organized, accountable, and efficient.

The advice I would give is to have open and constant communication with the founding members about all the aspects of the group/organization. Ricardo and I hold weekly meetings, every Tuesday, to talk about "Old Business, New Business, New Ideas, etc." Some weeks we have less to discuss, other weeks, we have plenty to discuss. We are in constant communication on which projects and upcoming gigs we are open to taking on as an organization.

Other great advice I can provide is to be open to fill-in in knowledge or expertise gaps with that from colleagues, classmates, and/or new connections. You are only as strong as your last project. So, if you realized you are missing a "data expert" or a "sales-type individual" then bring one into the fold for the betterment of the group/organization.

How have you leveraged social media and the web to grow your gig work?

At the moment, we are utilizing Linked In heavily as this is where a majority of new coaching, training and consulting gigs are coming from. We are making a considerable push in the next couple of months to utilize tools like StoryChief, to be able to market our services and success stories via other major social media platforms. We also have a website that people stop by, but most of our networking and connections have been either with people we've worked with over the years or via Linked In.

Many people start doing gig work to reach financial freedom. Has it been profitable?

As a collective, we take on projects that are within our capacity (time, effort, skillset). That being said, we are learning what our capacity is as a team. For some of us, Silegra is a 2/3 gig, for others, it is a 1/5 gig, for others on the team it's all project-based. We aim to be consistent and equitable in how each of us is paid for expertise, effort, and time invested.

We do have a fiscal projection plan set in place for the next 12 months, where we fully expand the coaching, training and consulting services. It is a lofty goal but very manageable and doable for the Silegra team.

How do you balance your gig work with your personal life (family, vacations, leisure-time, etc.)?

Many of us have partners, children, and other professional commitments while we take on Silegra gigs. We tend to utilize technology to be able to keep the team up to date on project status, make swift decisions as needed, and to avoid having a task holding someone back from enjoying their family time.

The work that is done with Silegra is very independent and utilizes our best performance time. Many of us are "night-owls," others prefer early morning work, and some carve-out specific hours throughout the week for the work. That being said, we do help each other out tremendously when someone is ill, has a family emergency, a planned vacation, etc. We all have the ability to "pinch-hit" as needed.

As we get to work with each other more virtually than in-person, we get to know about go-to-self-care strategies. For example, Ricardo loves to go fishing, which re-energizes him and motivates him to finish his portion of the project as efficiently and timely as possible.

How has your business adapted to the sudden changes of the past couple of months?

For the past several years, our work was primarily done remotely and independently. We do have client meetings and presentations that occur in the "typical 9-5" timeframe. What we have noticed is that many of our new and existing connections were not necessarily prepared mentally, physically, and fiscally to provide virtual services and to be primarily a remote workforce.

We have been very transparent with our clients about the mode we operate in, the speed, the trust and collaborative sprints in which we manage all of our projects. For some, it almost feels unheard of that we can accomplish so much and so quickly without having the traditional "weekly or daily" in-person 90-120 minute meetings. We are experts in our craft and with that can divide the work, delegate tasks, learn new skills, and quickly provide a comprehensive product to our clients.

What is your goal in the next 5-10 years?

We are currently 7 core members with a few coming in and out for special projects. We would like to maximize at 12 core members which would round us off with very strong clinical, analytical, and creative skills.

The goal would be for Silegra to have a consistent and recurring clientele that we can grow and see prosper over the years.

You can find out more about Dr. Ortiz and the silegra Organization via:

email at drortiz@silegra.org, their website, and via Linked In.