A Day in the Life
How Myles Bugbee Balances Consulting, Research, and Innovation
Independent consulting offers freedom and flexibility, but it also requires intentional structure and discipline. For Myles Bugbee, founder of Persuasion & Pixels, finding that balance has been a journey of experimentation, adaptation, and growth.
In this interview, we explore how Myles structures his day, manages his workload, and pursues his passion for improving digital advertising effectiveness in the social impact space. His insights offer valuable lessons for any consultant looking to create a sustainable and fulfilling practice.
Meet Myles (courtesy of Persuasion & Pixels)
Myles and I first connected through our mutual friend Tareq Alani, but I've been following Myles’ work in the digital strategy space for a while now. He's spent more than a decade leading digital programs for campaigns at every level, from school board races all the way to the White House.
What I find most fascinating about Myles' approach is how he bridges the gap between online and offline organizing. During Senator Tester's 2018 campaign in Montana, he created this network of regional Facebook groups that generated thousands of shares through user-generated "Testermonials." His work has earned him some well-deserved recognition, including being dubbed "Mr. Technology" by Senator Tester, himself!
These days, Myles runs Persuasion & Pixels, where he's focused on bringing greater transparency to digital advertising. He's working on some really interesting research about how we measure effectiveness in political advertising. Myles, thanks for the great conversation!
The Journey to Independence
Myles' path to independent consulting spans 13 years in the political space, beginning with his work on President Obama's re-election campaign in 2012. His career took him through various roles in political campaigns, including working for Wendy Davis' gubernatorial campaign in Texas, Senator Jon Tester's (D-MT) 2018 re-election in Montana, Senator Michael Bennet's (D-CO) presidential campaign, and a stint as the digital director at For Our Future, an organizing-focused Super PAC during the 2020 cycle.
After spending the 2022 election cycle at an agency, Myles found himself at a crossroads. "I had this realization that there are things I can't do in a nine-to-five," he explains. "There are ideas that I wanted to pursue, and as long as you work for someone else, you're going to be restricted in what you can do."
Unlike many consultants who transition to independence due to job loss or a desire for better work-life balance, Myles was driven primarily by a vision: to reinvent how we measure the effectiveness of political advertising for persuasion.
"My very first client engagement was with an agency where I had a call with a person on the team and she said, 'Look, the thing I really want to know is, are our ads working?'" Myles recalls. "That stuck with me. I had this mental tattoo from then on: that's the question we should be asking."
Courtesy of Persuasion & Pixels
A Day in the Life
Without the structure of a traditional workplace, Myles has had to create his own systems for managing his time and priorities. "One of the big realizations that I had when I started this journey was that you own your calendar," he says. "That was exciting but also kind of scary because it means that every single day you are the taskmaster."
Myles has experimented with various productivity systems, drawing inspiration from experts like Cal Newport, author of Deep Work. But he's learned that the best system isn't necessarily the one that looks most impressive on paper.
"The realization I've had is that the best system is not the optimal system in Life Hacker journal," he explains. "It's the best system for you. What you find works for your internal rhythms, that works for how you go about your day."
For Myles, that system centers around a few key tools and practices:
Task Management
Myles uses Todoist to organize his work into different categories: client work, business development, administrative tasks, and professional development. The app allows him to flag high-priority items and set deadlines, helping him ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
"I'll map out on a Monday what the priorities are, and what the different areas of work are for the week," he explains. "But I'm working on being a little bit more intentional to see what areas are slipping."
Calendar as Source of Truth
"When I think about my day, the calendar is the source of truth," Myles says. "It's a way to orient what I've actually done."
He blocks time not just for client meetings but also for research, thinking, and administrative work. This helps him ensure he's making progress on all aspects of his business, not just the urgent client demands.
Morning Routines
Inspired by neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, Myles tries to get sunlight in the morning to regulate his circadian rhythm. He also uses morning walks to combine exercise with productivity, often taking calls while walking to "habit stack" these activities.
Energy Management
Myles has learned to match tasks to his energy levels throughout the day. "I found the morning is the best time to get the things done that I don't necessarily want to do," he says. "Get the hard things done before 10 or 11AM because I don't want to do that in the afternoon when my energy levels are going to be lower."
Digital Workspace
Myles' digital workspace is organized around quick access to his most-used tools. "The most important thing to me is my bookmarks bar," he explains. "I have folders for clients, business development, operations, news, and people I follow. I try to think intentionally about what is in that bar because I'm going to spend most of my time using those quick access links."
A look at Myles’ desk. He describes the scene, “I have a few awards (including the first one my company won this year), an LBJ bobblehead doll, a Gore 2000 button (a reminder of what could've been), and a painting of a blossoming tree that symbolizes resilience.”
Balancing Client Work with Innovation
One of the biggest challenges for any consultant is balancing immediate client needs with longer-term professional development and innovation. Myles describes his approach as a "cross-subsidy model."
"I have my life in buckets," he explains. "These are the projects I'll take on because I have bills and responsibilities. And then here's my baby, my passion project, the thing that I'm trying to pursue."
This approach allows him to meet his financial needs while still making progress on his research into advertising effectiveness. "If I can get paid and I can test out an idea, that's the best of all worlds," he says.
Myles acknowledges that this balance isn't always easy. "At the beginning, there were times when it was frustrating. Am I getting paid less than if I were an employee? What am I doing?" he recalls. "But then you realize that's essential to get to where you want to go. It opens up opportunities to do more of the work where you're using different parts of your brain."
Thanks for reading The Chorus Consultant Community! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Measuring What Matters: Myles' Research on Digital Advertising Transparency
Myles has spent years contemplating the effectiveness of advertising and communications. The trade runs in the family. His grandfather worked on Madison Avenue (and named Pentax, condensing the original name of the camera company – Pentaflex), and his mother was a copywriter with a knack for pithy one-liners. Over the course of his career, Myles has questioned why certain political ads resonate and others fall flat. Is it the message? The messenger? The medium? All of the above, or something else?
Look, the thing I really want to know is, are our ads working?
In recent months, he’s dove into a precondition for advertising effectiveness – efficiency. Namely, where are our digital ad dollars going, and are they actually reaching voters? Over the past year, he’s spoken to people across the industry and begun to piece together ways to bring transparency to an opaque and complex world of auctions, brokers, and submerged fees.
As part of this work, he’s building resources to help organizations gain visibility into their ad dollars to get more value from their investments. He’s sharing one such resource for the first time with the readers of this newsletter – a free guide for local campaigns and organizations. This living document, which includes questions and a sample vendor email, is designed for advertisers with small to mid-size digital ad budgets who are venturing beyond the walled gardens of Facebook and Instagram and into the Open Web (streaming TV apps like Hulu and Roku, streaming audio etc) and Google.
The Unexpected Challenges
When asked about the most unexpected challenge of running his own consulting practice, Myles points to the unpredictable nature of the work.
"One challenge would be momentum," he says. "There will be lull periods where I am wondering, 'Okay, what's going on? Is this me? Is this the market? Are there offerings or things I need to change?' And then suddenly things will pick up very quickly."
While he knew about the cyclical nature of the political industry, he wasn't prepared for the feast-or-famine pattern of independent consulting. "The 9-to-5, the typical job world, trains you in the sense of regularity and consistency," he explains. "This life is a lot less predictable, especially in the early stages."
Thanks for reading The Chorus Consultant Community! This post is public so feel free to share it.
Setting Boundaries
Another crucial aspect of Myles' daily routine is setting boundaries around his time and attention. He's learned to batch emails rather than responding immediately to every message, and he's thoughtful about when and how he engages with communication tools like Slack.
"One of the things that we all learn as independent consultants is the importance of boundaries and knowing when to push back," he says. "If we are constantly being stretched, then we're not going to be our best selves. We're not going to be able to solve their problems as effectively as they would want."
Myles has had to be particularly vigilant about working on weekends. "When you're your own boss, there is no off switch," he notes. "I've had to monitor myself for working on the weekends. My aggregate productivity is going to go down if I'm constantly working. You have to carve out time for family, for your dog, for nature, whatever it might be."
Advice for New Consultants
For those just starting out as independent consultants in the social impact space, Myles emphasizes the importance of finding a specific niche.
"If you're starting your own consulting practice, ask yourself what is the thing that you do that other people are not doing right now that solves a problem?" he says.
Myles suggests asking three key questions to guide new consultants:
Is this a problem that people are aware of?
Is this a problem that people are willing to pay to solve?
Is this a problem that they trust you to solve?
"If there's awareness of the problem or you can build awareness of it, if there are potential paying customers, and if you are qualified to solve it, then you've hit the trifecta," Myles explains.
He also emphasizes the importance of finding community and support. "Finding community is so important," he says. "Even if it's somebody who I'm not going to do business with, if they're willing to spend a couple minutes just saying, 'Hey, here's how you should think about this differently,' or 'I've been through this too' — commiseration, rapport, those human things are so important in the journey because it can be isolating when you're on your own."
Beyond Your Lane: The Mark of an Exceptional Consultant
One of the most valuable pieces of advice Myles received came from a former boss: "The most effective consultants are the ones who will step out of their lane when needed."
While respecting boundaries is important, the willingness to extend beyond your defined scope can set you apart as a consultant. As Myles explains:
"If there's a project where the client says, 'I brought you on to be X, but you have some capability or expertise or ability to help with Y' - if you go and volunteer to do that, clients really respect it. At the end of the day, we're hired to solve problems. And so even if we're only hired for one small part of the problem, if we can do a little thing that's going to help solve the whole problem, that can really help that organization."
This approach demonstrates that you're invested in the client's overall success, not just completing your contracted deliverables. It builds trust and often leads to expanded opportunities as clients see your broader capabilities. The key is finding the balance.
Myles sent over this image — a great representation of the valuable point he makes!
Defining Success
At the end of the day, how does Myles define success as an independent consultant? His answer is twofold.
"There's the success of finishing my to-do list, which is a very banal success, but is a success," he says. "And then the broader one is why I'm doing this in the first place, which is the effectiveness conversation: how are we more efficient in persuading people, and how do we better measure when our ads are working?"
Success is making incremental progress toward solving an important problem. "In the electoral world, the House of Representatives in the last three cycles has been decided by a handful of seats," he notes. "If you can find a lever to get from 49.5% to 50.1% of the vote, that makes all the difference in a zero-sum electoral situation."
"So that to me is the ultimate success: if there are things that are proven, they're borne out by the evidence that they move the needle and they help us win more elections, then that's success."
This interview is part of our ongoing series exploring the daily lives and best practices of independent consultants in the social impact space. If you'd like to share your story or have questions about independent consulting, reply to this email or connect with us on LinkedIn.