April 21, 2025 • 18 mins
Cut The Tie Podcast with Thomas Helfrich
From Finance to Founder: Rebuilding with Purpose | Patrick Coggins
Patrick Coggins, founder of CFO's Domain and co-founder of Gen9 Leaders, joins Thomas for an insightful conversation about legacy, leadership, and the hard decision to leave a successful career to build something better. Patrick shares how cutting ties with comfort and tradition allowed him to create a firm driven by purpose, experience, and impact.
About Patrick Coggins:
Patrick is the founder of CFO's Domain, a finance executive search and consulting firm. He’s also the co-founder of Gen9 Leaders, a leadership advisory practice that helps companies reshape culture and performance. With a background in public accounting and over 20 years in corporate finance, Patrick now builds values-driven teams and sustainable business systems.
In this episode, Thomas and Patrick discuss:
- Cutting the Tie to a Comfortable Career
Patrick shares what it took to walk away from a thriving W-2 job and the emotional moment he knew he had to create something of his own. - Why the Right People Change Everything
He talks about how his firm prioritizes deeply experienced talent over volume hiring—and how that changes outcomes for clients. - Lessons from Both Ends of Culture
After working at one company that over-indexed on mission and another that had none, Patrick built a firm centered on practical, purpose-driven values. - Building While Raising a Family
Patrick opens up about launching a company while raising three kids—including the chaotic early days of balancing fatherhood and entrepreneurship.
Key Takeaways:
- Excitement Beats Passion
Find the work that excites you consistently—it’s more reliable than chasing fleeting passion. - Don’t Underprice Your Value
Just because you can charge less doesn’t mean you should—know what your expertise is worth. - Your Tools Are Relationships
Start with mentors, hire better people, and never undervalue the human element. - Safety and Honesty Build High-Performance Teams
Psychological safety and a clear framework for tough conversations drive better culture and outcomes.
"You don't need to memorize a mission statement to build a great company—you just need to live one."— Patrick Coggins
CONNECT WITH PATRICK COGGINS:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickcoggins
Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/patrickgen9
CONNECT WITH THOMAS:
X (Twitter): https://x.com/CutTheTieX
Facebook: http://facebook.com/groups/CutTheTie
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cutthetiecommunity/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cutthetie
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cutthetie
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomashelfrich/
CutTheTie.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Cut the tie to anything holding you back from
success.
Welcome to the Cut the Tiepodcast.
Hi, I'm your host, thomasHelfrich, and in each episode,
we bring you real entrepreneursthat really overcame challenges
on their journey to becomesuccessful.
We look at the impact, themoment, how it affected
everything in their lives.
Follow us on Apple, spotify andYouTube.
Now let's meet our guest on Cutthe Tie podcast Today.
(00:25):
I'm joined by Patrick Coggins.
Patrick, how are you today?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm doing great, Thomas.
Thank you for having me.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Do you want to take a moment?
Introduce yourself?
You know who you are and whatyour business does.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Sure, absolutely so.
I run a company called CFO'sDomain.
We founded that company in 2019.
We do finance, executive searchand consulting broadly for
corporate accounting and financepositions.
I've been doing it for wellover 20 years.
Time goes by quickly whenyou're having fun.
Recently, we also co-founded acompany.
(00:56):
It's called Gen9 Leaders.
It's a leadership advisorypractice that pairs very well
with CFO's domain and I can talka little bit more about that a
little bit later if appropriate.
But that really gave us anopportunity to extend the range
of value and impact that we weredoing for our clients.
And so I'm based here inSouthern California, but the
firm we run is National in Scopeand we're having a lot of fun,
doing it, love it.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I always ask people what's the power statement?
Why do people pick you overyour competition?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Absolutely so.
There's a lot of search firmsin the marketplace, as I'm sure
you know right.
You've interviewed, I'm sure, afew of them.
What makes us different numberone is we are specialized in
finance.
So I'm a former reformedaccountant myself.
I worked in public accountingfor a little bit right, and
everybody that we hire eithercomes from accounting or has an
extensive accounting and financebackground.
And that's really reallyimportant because even as we see
(01:40):
, ai tools come on to the scenearound interviewing and helping
to enable those things they'renot specialized to get into the
details and the mechanics aroundhow one might build a financial
model right.
They don't have thosequalifications to be able to
have those conversations.
So we are really good at whatwe do in curating and finding
talent, but also how we screentalent and we also take a
(02:01):
long-term orientation aroundwhat it is we do right.
So it takes a long time tobuild these relationships.
You know, and I would say, thatthe industry as a whole is full
of a lot of largerorganizations that like to hire
people that are a couple ofyears removed from undergrad and
ultimately they're in and outof the industry pretty quickly.
It's a numbers game to them andit's very transactional, so you
actually don't have the qualityof relationships and
(02:22):
interactions that you wouldotherwise get when you work with
us versus some of those otherfirms in the marketplace.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
In your space.
People are the difference andwhen people say, hey, your
differentiator can't be people,I'm like, yes, it can.
It is the difference and, yes,everyone has their methodologies
.
But the example you're saying,I'll say it like if you work
with, let's say, some of thebigger firms, the KPMGs, the
whatever of the world, let's sayand I'm not slamming them
they're a great company, butthey do put junior people into a
situation where they're using alot of hours and mentors to
(02:50):
learn on your dime and where Ithink advantages you're
describing just I come from aconsulting world is to frame
that the advantage I see for youguys specifically is that
you're putting experiencedpeople relative to where other
firms would put very much soinexperienced people, and the
value of that for a business isthere's no waste.
They know how to think, talk,ask the right questions and give
you the right advisory andexecution in less time.
(03:12):
I mean I'm not trying tosummarize your value proposition
, but putting the better personin the right spot makes a
difference for a business.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That's very well said , thomas.
So really, again, there's twosides of our business right.
There's the executive search,retain search practice side.
There's the consulting offeringright.
So what you're speaking to is,yes, you're correct in that we
can identify people who haveindustry specific, fortune 1000
experience, that have sat in theshoes of our clients before,
and we can often deploy them ata rate that is a third to half
(03:39):
the cost of what the big fourmight do as well.
Right, so your total cost ofownership over that engagement
in terms of getting that workdone whether you're implementing
a new financial system,acquiring a company or
streamlining your month-endclose process, we can get it
done with somebody that willcost you significantly less and
also bring in total more yearsof experience.
Right, which helps you mitigaterisk as well.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
The other thing I would say, though, by the way,
is that, just from a businessstandpoint, you shouldn't be
charging less.
Yeah, unless.
I would say, though, by the way, is that just from a business
standpoint, you shouldn't becharging less unless it's just a
competitive advantage to win aclient.
Because the truth is, the valueis there, and you might charge
the same rate but have lesspeople, and if they can't afford
even that rate, then fine,maybe they're not your right
clients, but I don't think youshould have to charge less for
your value.
I'm a big person to know yourvalue and know that, hey, we're
(04:19):
as good as any one of those guysand we're competitively priced.
So if it's a hundred bucks lessan hour, I don't know, but if
it's half, you're giving it away.
Anyway, on your journey, I'msure you faced things that you
just had to let go people,situations, ways of thinking but
what is the biggest tie you'vehad?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
to cut, I would say quitting the W2 job and starting
my own firm.
I always had an entrepreneurialstreak in me For a long time.
I grew up wanting to play musicfor a living.
That's what I wanted to do andI ran dual lives up until I was
28.
So I used to work the corporatejob, work my butt off, but then
I would have After work.
We would commute into NorthHollywood.
(04:56):
We had a lockout studio, theband would meet and we would
rehearse to about 9, 10 o'clockat night.
We'd go home, we'd do that fouror five days a week and we'd do
that consistently andeventually, when I hit a point I
was 28, where I reached okay, Idid some really fun and
interesting.
Things Didn't quite get thetraction we wanted.
I went whole hog into my careerand that had a lot of benefits.
But five or six years afterthat now I'm in my 30s, my mid
(05:17):
30s I started to recognize thatthere was an opportunity here
for me to do some of thesethings better if I own my own
destiny, right, if I own my ownfirm.
It wasn't just a desire to makemore money or keep more of the
margin.
It was the ability to startover with a blank sheet of paper
and say, hey look, thesecompanies, they've been around
for a while.
They all suffer from likelegacy IT sort of issues, right,
(05:39):
their old technology stacks,and therefore every time they
try to make a change it was apain in the butt.
No one trusted the dataEveryone's running in Excel on
the side.
There's no collaborationbetween the groups, and so
getting to do it over againallowed us the ability to build
a custom developed stack on topof Salesforce, which allowed us
to be able to track ourcandidate data much more
(06:01):
efficiently, and that reallyattributed to a lot of our
success.
So that in and of itself wasreally really exciting to get
the opportunity to kind of dothat over again as well as to
design, like when I used to workfor my two former companies.
One company was they indexed toofar out around kind of mission,
vision, values, a purposestatement.
They asked everybody tomemorize all these things and
while it was well-intentioned,it was a little bit too far out
(06:24):
there.
And then my next company wasthe opposite.
I couldn't tell you what theirmission was.
Right, it was framed somewherein a kitchen wall.
Nobody knew what it was, nobodyknew where it was.
You know where it hung.
And I realized in operating myown firm that we were sort of
missing out on the ability to bea company purpose right and to
have principles and frameworksand things that really mattered
so we can maximize the output ofour folks internally and help
(06:45):
our clients.
The ability to be able to sortof author that right and to kind
of create that was reallyinspiring.
So that's why we, you know, Ithink cutting the tie was the
best thing I did in leaving myjob.
But I will tell you it's thehardest thing because you know
most people talk about.
Well, you know I was laid offor you know it was a bad
experience.
I didn't like my boss or ourcompany got acquired.
So one door closes, the nextone opens, that's great.
(07:07):
I had the opposite experience.
I was doing very well, I wasmaking great money.
The CEO would not let me leave.
It was a really hard decisionbecause I had a lot of success.
But I realized that I was alsomissing out on a lot of
opportunity.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, I mean, that is a tie to cut.
I mean that's to leave.
I was more in the layoff.
I was making so much money atthe time there's like no way I'm
ever quitting this.
And so the ideas ofentrepreneurship, though, there
they fade when you make a ton ofmoney for somebody.
But there's a moment whenyou're working and you're making
lots of money, You're like I'llactually never get wealthy
doing this, because you're likeand you're like I was making,
man, what's the exit?
(07:51):
Like you know what else?
The only way to do it is go onyour own.
So I appreciate it.
Do you actually remember,though, the moment, the aha
moment, when you're like I'mleaving, I'm definitely leaving?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I'm not sure if it was the moment that I found out
we were getting acquired, but itwas a private equity
acquisition, so it's not likethey still wanted us right to
kind of hang on.
But the moment I found out thatthe deal was all about inked and
that we were pretty close tothe precipice of kind of moving
on, I sort of knew I'll tell youwhat actually I've been feeling
(08:18):
this way for a while, but I doremember a moment where it sort
of solidified it for me.
I was sitting in the meetingroom of a hotel where the new
owners of our company, also PE,sponsored.
I remember the CEO getting outof his chair and walking around
the corner and putting his handon my shoulder, trying to sort
of compel me as to why I shouldstay.
But I remember in that momenthow uncomfortable and how like
(08:40):
inauthentic that conversationwas and how it felt and how the
CEO just didn't really know alot about me, right, or sort of
what my future was, and wasn'treally asking a lot of the right
questions, so to speak, and Iknew in that moment that it was
time to go.
They had done what they couldto sort of get me to stay, but I
, but I knew in the moment thatI had outlived my time here and
I needed to go climb a newmountain.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
I love the instinct piece of that.
Since the change, since cuttingthe tie and you've committed to
it, describe the impact to yourlife, your family, your
relationships.
Yeah, Look.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I mean mostly good, some bad.
On the good side, I have allthe creative freedom in the
world.
I don't technically, on paper,report to somebody, but I am
accountable to my businesspartner.
I'm accountable to my employees.
I'm accountable to my customers.
Right, the buck stops with youwhen you run the business, but
it's so interesting because Ilove technology so much, and
when you think about arecruiting firm and a search
(09:28):
firm, you normally don't think alot about technology, but the
fact is is as a differentiatorinternally for us.
If we lean into how we leveragetechnology to make our job more
efficient, so that we can getto candidates more quickly and
we can keep in touch with them,at scale, we can be better than
our competition.
And so running my own businessgives me the ability and the
freedom to do those things, toimplement those things.
(09:51):
I love that part of it.
But on the other side of theequation, I mean you, especially
in a service business, you needto be prepared for the fact
that you're probably going towork.
You know you're probably gonnawork more hours, right, and
depending upon what cycle youare in your life phase.
For me, I started the businessin 2019, when I had my daughter
and you know she was an infantand I was learning how to adapt
to that situation while alsostarting a business, and it was
(10:14):
really, really hard and thatfirst year was really tough.
Like I would just be on thesleeping on the floor of my
office and my wife would come inand take the baby and, like you
know, she was up all night withthe baby.
She put the baby in my arms atlike 3 am and it was like that
kind of thing for a year andthen of course we got through it
and eventually you hire morepeople, you get stability, you
learn from your mistakes, and soit is a net, net positive.
(10:36):
But you better be prepared towork.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I mean, I tell people this if you're starting a
business in your late thirties,forties and you're in the throes
of you know I've done it aswell, like you got mortgages now
and you got kids get ready.
You just complicated it evenfurther, even if you're
successful.
So it's a reality you're goingto see that is not.
You'll have a lot of free time,but you will be working way
more because you won't beefficient, because you don't.
You probably don't know whatyou're doing.
(10:58):
I tell you, the easiestentrepreneurship if you can get
your focus away from otherthings is definitely when you're
just truly single, not evendating anyone.
I think you can just fullyfocus on what that is.
You'll probably get the mostresults at that point.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Totally agree.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
I totally agree, I think grounding, though it might
be good to have someone elsethat's supportive, like a spouse
or someone else, whatever it is, a partner, I would say that
could be.
If you've got the right personthat can enable that's probably
your best case scenario isactually someone who could be
emotional and actually give youa different perspective for
support.
But you had kids and mortgagesand cars and God knows what else
.
You are complicating the hellout of your life.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, and it's a trade-off, right?
I mean, a lot of this isdependent upon what business and
sector you're going into.
If you had a pathway in lifewhere you're going to go work
for a white combinator and gowork for an accelerator and
incubator, you're going to takein venture capital money, you
can do that when you're younger,but statistically the odds of
you being successful are lowerdue to the nature of that
(11:56):
business and the fact that,quite frankly, you don't know
that much.
You might be really smart andyou might've gone to a great
school, but you don't.
You have very limited years ofexperience, right, and you're
just trying to work with mentorsaround you and go as fast as
you can.
And you're right when you, whenyou're single and you have no
children, you can do the eighthour, 80 hour work weeks.
The trade-off when you're olderand you've got those
responsibilities is now you havea business that it's more
(12:18):
bankable, there's less risk, youhave a network, you know what
you're doing, people trust you,you've grown a reputation and
you have a little bit of moneyin the bank.
I mean, we didn't take out anydebt to fund our business.
I mean our business, we don'towe it, we're not in anybody's
pocket.
These are all trade-offs,depending upon the kind of
business you want to go into andwhere you're at.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Just be honest with yourself what you're getting
into.
I think it's the lesson there.
I mean, speaking of lessons,how would you summarize, kind of
your journey in the form ofadvice?
What's the short 30 second?
Here's my advice to anyone.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Plainly speaking, I think the best advice I got was
you know, people are trying tofigure out like what to chase,
what to do, and there's so manyoptions.
Right, you really should chasesomething simply just excited
about.
I like that word excitementover passion.
Passion feels a little bit morearbitrary, ambiguous to me.
But if you just go back to sortof what made you excited as a
kid, what makes you excited asan adult, just go do those
(13:07):
things, pull on those threads,see if there's economic value
there and see what comes fromthat.
That's what I'd say.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
It's the Venn diagram of passion or excitement,
performance or capability toperform and impact.
And impact can mean, like youhelp people, you can make money.
There's Yep, you're a hundredpercent should be in that focus.
So if you have no market butyou love it, you're not gonna
probably make money or have anyimpact.
And if you don't have anypassion for it or excitement, or
you don't have the ability tobecome really good at it or
(13:33):
train yourself to be really goodat it Like I love golf but I'll
never get the performance highenough to make that then big
enough to it's going to be,there's going to be a three bend
bubble.
The point being is that that'swhere you should be right.
In the middle of that, let's dosome rapid fires.
Who gives?
Speaker 2 (13:47):
you inspiration.
Elon Musk Very controversialfigure right now, but if you
were to step away from thepolitical side of it, the guy is
just amazing.
He's one of our I mean next toSteve Jobs, who unfortunately is
no longer with us.
He's one of the greatestentrepreneurs of our time.
I mean you just think about howquickly his companies innovate,
how fast they move what they'redoing.
Take the values out of it for amoment.
I mean, what the guy has beenable to do is just amazing.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I mean because of him , you're going to see electric
cars and you'll then see changesto full grid of energy.
Because of it, because ofsupport that move.
I mean you can hate him orwhatever else, but for someone
who can make effective change ordo something, it's really
undeniable.
You don't like him, or maybeyou cannot deny the fact.
The guy has made change.
What is the best businessadvice, though, you've ever
received?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
The best business advice don't ever get over
leveraged.
And if you're going to take outdebt, just make sure there's an
ROI there for you.
If you don't have money, don'tgo on the vacation.
But if you want to go fund yourbusiness and there's an ROI
there, go take out some debt.
That makes sense.
Just make sure the cost of thatdebt is lower than your ROI.
That's just make sure the costof that debt is lower than your
ROI.
Yeah, that's great.
I like it.
Who gave that advice to you?
(14:49):
Probably a number of people.
I think my father gave it to meand then I heard it from
somebody else as well.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
What book for entrepreneurs is a must read?
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Radical Candor by Kim Scott.
Kim Scott worked for Google,for Apple.
Early on in her career sheobserved rather shockingly
dynamic conversations betweenLarry Page and Steve Jobs,
between the employees.
They would really dish it tothe employees and the employees
would dish it back to them.
So what she did was she sort ofreformulated that approach and
she came up with this frameworkaround radical candor and it's a
(15:18):
great read.
It was really successful inSilicon Valley.
I don't know how broad based itgot, but I recommend it's an
easy read.
It's a wonderful book If youwant to learn how to address
performance feedback.
It's something that we've divedinto because we've kind of
evolved.
We've expanded some teachingsaround that for our own advisory
practice.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
If you had to start over, what would you do
differently when I started mycompany?
Anytime, actually, you can pickthe time and frame.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
on that one, I probably would have gotten a
mentor earlier in, because Ithink during the time that I was
focusing on music so much, Iwas working hard in my day job.
But I would have also gotten amentor.
I would have talked to morepeople.
I would have networked moreoften.
I realized later in my life, asI got a little bit wiser, that
the quality of the people youhave around you is just it's
(15:59):
everything.
I probably would have gotten myCPA just early in just to add a
little bit of credibilityaround the knowledge base,
around accounting and financefinance based on what I spent 20
years doing.
That would have been helpfuland I would have started my
company with more people.
Yes, that would have added toour costs, but I think it would
have given us a bit of aspringboard to go a little bit
faster.
Instead, we took more of acautious approach and we were
(16:19):
extremely lean.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I like that.
I got a new book that I've askyou today and I did not.
What would that question havebeen and how do you answer it?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
What is the most important thing in building a
high performance team?
It's so.
It's actually two things.
Number one, it's psychologicalsafety among the team.
Right, so people can be honest,transparent, speak truth to
power, innovate, take risks,take micro failures.
The other thing is having aframework for how to have
(16:55):
difficult conversations.
Don't avoid conflict.
Have the difficult conversation.
Most people avoid it becausethey don't have a framework or a
tool set on how to actually dothat.
If you have a framework, youcan have those conversations,
you can address performance, youcan get much more quickly to
vetting out the truth.
To do you keep that employee,do you not?
Are they going to improve?
We have an issue in ourrelationship.
We should sit down and addressit.
I need to bring this thing upwith my friend.
(17:17):
Whatever it is, have theconversation, but have a
framework so you know whatyou're doing.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Thank you so much, patrick, for taking the time
today.
Shameless plug time for you,though.
Who should get ahold of you,and how do they do that?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Certainly, if you work in accounting and finance
if you happen to you're welcometo reach out.
Obviously, we place accountingand finance professionals as
we've talked about, so we'll seeif there's any intersection
there.
If you happen to be anaccounting finance leader and
you've got people that report toyou and you want us in your
back pocket as a potential firmthat you can work with, reach
out as well.
If you work for a company andyou feel like the culture of
your company is in the toilets,having issues or problems, reach
(17:50):
out.
We can walk you through what wedo with our leadership advisory
practice and see if there's anyintersections of value there.
Awesome, where do they go to dothat?
You can find me on LinkedIn.
The name of my company is CFOsDomain.
I am on X at Patrick Jen, that'sG-E-N nine, the number nine.
So at Patrick Jen, that's G-E-Nnine, the number nine.
So at Patrick Jen, nine.
If you want to reach out to meon X.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I appreciate it.
We'll put the links in the shownotes as well.
Patrick, thank you for joiningme today.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Thank you for having me, thomas, appreciate it
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Cut the
Tie.
Let's stay connected.
Please hit that follow buttonon Apple, spotify or YouTube and
, if you're ready to advanceyour entrepreneurial journey
even further, join our freecommunity at facebookcom.
Slash groups, slash, cut thetie.
Cut the tie to everythingholding you back from success.
Cut the tie to anything holding you back from
success.
Welcome to the Cut the Tiepodcast.
Hi, I'm your host, thomasHelfrich, and in each episode,
we bring you real entrepreneursthat really overcame challenges
on their journey to becomesuccessful.
We look at the impact, themoment, how it affected
everything in their lives.
Follow us on Apple, spotify andYouTube.
Now let's meet our guest on Cutthe Tie podcast Today.
(00:25):
I'm joined by Patrick Coggins.
Patrick, how are you today?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm doing great, Thomas.
Thank you for having me.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Do you want to take a moment?
Introduce yourself?
You know who you are and whatyour business does.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Sure, absolutely so.
I run a company called CFO'sDomain.
We founded that company in 2019.
We do finance, executive searchand consulting broadly for
corporate accounting and financepositions.
I've been doing it for wellover 20 years.
Time goes by quickly whenyou're having fun.
Recently, we also co-founded acompany.
(00:56):
It's called Gen9 Leaders.
It's a leadership advisorypractice that pairs very well
with CFO's domain and I can talka little bit more about that a
little bit later if appropriate.
But that really gave us anopportunity to extend the range
of value and impact that we weredoing for our clients.
And so I'm based here inSouthern California, but the
firm we run is National in Scopeand we're having a lot of fun,
doing it, love it.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I always ask people what's the power statement?
Why do people pick you overyour competition?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Absolutely so.
There's a lot of search firmsin the marketplace, as I'm sure
you know right.
You've interviewed, I'm sure, afew of them.
What makes us different numberone is we are specialized in
finance.
So I'm a former reformedaccountant myself.
I worked in public accountingfor a little bit right, and
everybody that we hire eithercomes from accounting or has an
extensive accounting and financebackground.
And that's really reallyimportant because even as we see
(01:40):
, ai tools come on to the scenearound interviewing and helping
to enable those things they'renot specialized to get into the
details and the mechanics aroundhow one might build a financial
model right.
They don't have thosequalifications to be able to
have those conversations.
So we are really good at whatwe do in curating and finding
talent, but also how we screentalent and we also take a
(02:01):
long-term orientation aroundwhat it is we do right.
So it takes a long time tobuild these relationships.
You know, and I would say, thatthe industry as a whole is full
of a lot of largerorganizations that like to hire
people that are a couple ofyears removed from undergrad and
ultimately they're in and outof the industry pretty quickly.
It's a numbers game to them andit's very transactional, so you
actually don't have the qualityof relationships and
(02:22):
interactions that you wouldotherwise get when you work with
us versus some of those otherfirms in the marketplace.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
In your space.
People are the difference andwhen people say, hey, your
differentiator can't be people,I'm like, yes, it can.
It is the difference and, yes,everyone has their methodologies
.
But the example you're saying,I'll say it like if you work
with, let's say, some of thebigger firms, the KPMGs, the
whatever of the world, let's sayand I'm not slamming them
they're a great company, butthey do put junior people into a
situation where they're using alot of hours and mentors to
(02:50):
learn on your dime and where Ithink advantages you're
describing just I come from aconsulting world is to frame
that the advantage I see for youguys specifically is that
you're putting experiencedpeople relative to where other
firms would put very much soinexperienced people, and the
value of that for a business isthere's no waste.
They know how to think, talk,ask the right questions and give
you the right advisory andexecution in less time.
(03:12):
I mean I'm not trying tosummarize your value proposition
, but putting the better personin the right spot makes a
difference for a business.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That's very well said , thomas.
So really, again, there's twosides of our business right.
There's the executive search,retain search practice side.
There's the consulting offeringright.
So what you're speaking to is,yes, you're correct in that we
can identify people who haveindustry specific, fortune 1000
experience, that have sat in theshoes of our clients before,
and we can often deploy them ata rate that is a third to half
(03:39):
the cost of what the big fourmight do as well.
Right, so your total cost ofownership over that engagement
in terms of getting that workdone whether you're implementing
a new financial system,acquiring a company or
streamlining your month-endclose process, we can get it
done with somebody that willcost you significantly less and
also bring in total more yearsof experience.
Right, which helps you mitigaterisk as well.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
The other thing I would say, though, by the way,
is that, just from a businessstandpoint, you shouldn't be
charging less.
Yeah, unless.
I would say, though, by the way, is that just from a business
standpoint, you shouldn't becharging less unless it's just a
competitive advantage to win aclient.
Because the truth is, the valueis there, and you might charge
the same rate but have lesspeople, and if they can't afford
even that rate, then fine,maybe they're not your right
clients, but I don't think youshould have to charge less for
your value.
I'm a big person to know yourvalue and know that, hey, we're
(04:19):
as good as any one of those guysand we're competitively priced.
So if it's a hundred bucks lessan hour, I don't know, but if
it's half, you're giving it away.
Anyway, on your journey, I'msure you faced things that you
just had to let go people,situations, ways of thinking but
what is the biggest tie you'vehad?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
to cut, I would say quitting the W2 job and starting
my own firm.
I always had an entrepreneurialstreak in me For a long time.
I grew up wanting to play musicfor a living.
That's what I wanted to do andI ran dual lives up until I was
28.
So I used to work the corporatejob, work my butt off, but then
I would have After work.
We would commute into NorthHollywood.
(04:56):
We had a lockout studio, theband would meet and we would
rehearse to about 9, 10 o'clockat night.
We'd go home, we'd do that fouror five days a week and we'd do
that consistently andeventually, when I hit a point I
was 28, where I reached okay, Idid some really fun and
interesting.
Things Didn't quite get thetraction we wanted.
I went whole hog into my careerand that had a lot of benefits.
But five or six years afterthat now I'm in my 30s, my mid
(05:17):
30s I started to recognize thatthere was an opportunity here
for me to do some of thesethings better if I own my own
destiny, right, if I own my ownfirm.
It wasn't just a desire to makemore money or keep more of the
margin.
It was the ability to startover with a blank sheet of paper
and say, hey look, thesecompanies, they've been around
for a while.
They all suffer from likelegacy IT sort of issues, right,
(05:39):
their old technology stacks,and therefore every time they
try to make a change it was apain in the butt.
No one trusted the dataEveryone's running in Excel on
the side.
There's no collaborationbetween the groups, and so
getting to do it over againallowed us the ability to build
a custom developed stack on topof Salesforce, which allowed us
to be able to track ourcandidate data much more
(06:01):
efficiently, and that reallyattributed to a lot of our
success.
So that in and of itself wasreally really exciting to get
the opportunity to kind of dothat over again as well as to
design, like when I used to workfor my two former companies.
One company was they indexed toofar out around kind of mission,
vision, values, a purposestatement.
They asked everybody tomemorize all these things and
while it was well-intentioned,it was a little bit too far out
(06:24):
there.
And then my next company wasthe opposite.
I couldn't tell you what theirmission was.
Right, it was framed somewherein a kitchen wall.
Nobody knew what it was, nobodyknew where it was.
You know where it hung.
And I realized in operating myown firm that we were sort of
missing out on the ability to bea company purpose right and to
have principles and frameworksand things that really mattered
so we can maximize the output ofour folks internally and help
(06:45):
our clients.
The ability to be able to sortof author that right and to kind
of create that was reallyinspiring.
So that's why we, you know, Ithink cutting the tie was the
best thing I did in leaving myjob.
But I will tell you it's thehardest thing because you know
most people talk about.
Well, you know I was laid offor you know it was a bad
experience.
I didn't like my boss or ourcompany got acquired.
So one door closes, the nextone opens, that's great.
(07:07):
I had the opposite experience.
I was doing very well, I wasmaking great money.
The CEO would not let me leave.
It was a really hard decisionbecause I had a lot of success.
But I realized that I was alsomissing out on a lot of
opportunity.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, I mean, that is a tie to cut.
I mean that's to leave.
I was more in the layoff.
I was making so much money atthe time there's like no way I'm
ever quitting this.
And so the ideas ofentrepreneurship, though, there
they fade when you make a ton ofmoney for somebody.
But there's a moment whenyou're working and you're making
lots of money, You're like I'llactually never get wealthy
doing this, because you're likeand you're like I was making,
man, what's the exit?
(07:51):
Like you know what else?
The only way to do it is go onyour own.
So I appreciate it.
Do you actually remember,though, the moment, the aha
moment, when you're like I'mleaving, I'm definitely leaving?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I'm not sure if it was the moment that I found out
we were getting acquired, but itwas a private equity
acquisition, so it's not likethey still wanted us right to
kind of hang on.
But the moment I found out thatthe deal was all about inked and
that we were pretty close tothe precipice of kind of moving
on, I sort of knew I'll tell youwhat actually I've been feeling
(08:18):
this way for a while, but I doremember a moment where it sort
of solidified it for me.
I was sitting in the meetingroom of a hotel where the new
owners of our company, also PE,sponsored.
I remember the CEO getting outof his chair and walking around
the corner and putting his handon my shoulder, trying to sort
of compel me as to why I shouldstay.
But I remember in that momenthow uncomfortable and how like
(08:40):
inauthentic that conversationwas and how it felt and how the
CEO just didn't really know alot about me, right, or sort of
what my future was, and wasn'treally asking a lot of the right
questions, so to speak, and Iknew in that moment that it was
time to go.
They had done what they couldto sort of get me to stay, but I
, but I knew in the moment thatI had outlived my time here and
I needed to go climb a newmountain.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
I love the instinct piece of that.
Since the change, since cuttingthe tie and you've committed to
it, describe the impact to yourlife, your family, your
relationships.
Yeah, Look.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I mean mostly good, some bad.
On the good side, I have allthe creative freedom in the
world.
I don't technically, on paper,report to somebody, but I am
accountable to my businesspartner.
I'm accountable to my employees.
I'm accountable to my customers.
Right, the buck stops with youwhen you run the business, but
it's so interesting because Ilove technology so much, and
when you think about arecruiting firm and a search
(09:28):
firm, you normally don't think alot about technology, but the
fact is is as a differentiatorinternally for us.
If we lean into how we leveragetechnology to make our job more
efficient, so that we can getto candidates more quickly and
we can keep in touch with them,at scale, we can be better than
our competition.
And so running my own businessgives me the ability and the
freedom to do those things, toimplement those things.
(09:51):
I love that part of it.
But on the other side of theequation, I mean you, especially
in a service business, you needto be prepared for the fact
that you're probably going towork.
You know you're probably gonnawork more hours, right, and
depending upon what cycle youare in your life phase.
For me, I started the businessin 2019, when I had my daughter
and you know she was an infantand I was learning how to adapt
to that situation while alsostarting a business, and it was
(10:14):
really, really hard and thatfirst year was really tough.
Like I would just be on thesleeping on the floor of my
office and my wife would come inand take the baby and, like you
know, she was up all night withthe baby.
She put the baby in my arms atlike 3 am and it was like that
kind of thing for a year andthen of course we got through it
and eventually you hire morepeople, you get stability, you
learn from your mistakes, and soit is a net, net positive.
(10:36):
But you better be prepared towork.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I mean, I tell people this if you're starting a
business in your late thirties,forties and you're in the throes
of you know I've done it aswell, like you got mortgages now
and you got kids get ready.
You just complicated it evenfurther, even if you're
successful.
So it's a reality you're goingto see that is not.
You'll have a lot of free time,but you will be working way
more because you won't beefficient, because you don't.
You probably don't know whatyou're doing.
(10:58):
I tell you, the easiestentrepreneurship if you can get
your focus away from otherthings is definitely when you're
just truly single, not evendating anyone.
I think you can just fullyfocus on what that is.
You'll probably get the mostresults at that point.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Totally agree.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
I totally agree, I think grounding, though it might
be good to have someone elsethat's supportive, like a spouse
or someone else, whatever it is, a partner, I would say that
could be.
If you've got the right personthat can enable that's probably
your best case scenario isactually someone who could be
emotional and actually give youa different perspective for
support.
But you had kids and mortgagesand cars and God knows what else
.
You are complicating the hellout of your life.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Yeah, and it's a trade-off, right?
I mean, a lot of this isdependent upon what business and
sector you're going into.
If you had a pathway in lifewhere you're going to go work
for a white combinator and gowork for an accelerator and
incubator, you're going to takein venture capital money, you
can do that when you're younger,but statistically the odds of
you being successful are lowerdue to the nature of that
(11:56):
business and the fact that,quite frankly, you don't know
that much.
You might be really smart andyou might've gone to a great
school, but you don't.
You have very limited years ofexperience, right, and you're
just trying to work with mentorsaround you and go as fast as
you can.
And you're right when you, whenyou're single and you have no
children, you can do the eighthour, 80 hour work weeks.
The trade-off when you're olderand you've got those
responsibilities is now you havea business that it's more
(12:18):
bankable, there's less risk, youhave a network, you know what
you're doing, people trust you,you've grown a reputation and
you have a little bit of moneyin the bank.
I mean, we didn't take out anydebt to fund our business.
I mean our business, we don'towe it, we're not in anybody's
pocket.
These are all trade-offs,depending upon the kind of
business you want to go into andwhere you're at.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Just be honest with yourself what you're getting
into.
I think it's the lesson there.
I mean, speaking of lessons,how would you summarize, kind of
your journey in the form ofadvice?
What's the short 30 second?
Here's my advice to anyone.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Plainly speaking, I think the best advice I got was
you know, people are trying tofigure out like what to chase,
what to do, and there's so manyoptions.
Right, you really should chasesomething simply just excited
about.
I like that word excitementover passion.
Passion feels a little bit morearbitrary, ambiguous to me.
But if you just go back to sortof what made you excited as a
kid, what makes you excited asan adult, just go do those
(13:07):
things, pull on those threads,see if there's economic value
there and see what comes fromthat.
That's what I'd say.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
It's the Venn diagram of passion or excitement,
performance or capability toperform and impact.
And impact can mean, like youhelp people, you can make money.
There's Yep, you're a hundredpercent should be in that focus.
So if you have no market butyou love it, you're not gonna
probably make money or have anyimpact.
And if you don't have anypassion for it or excitement, or
you don't have the ability tobecome really good at it or
(13:33):
train yourself to be really goodat it Like I love golf but I'll
never get the performance highenough to make that then big
enough to it's going to be,there's going to be a three bend
bubble.
The point being is that that'swhere you should be right.
In the middle of that, let's dosome rapid fires.
Who gives?
Speaker 2 (13:47):
you inspiration.
Elon Musk Very controversialfigure right now, but if you
were to step away from thepolitical side of it, the guy is
just amazing.
He's one of our I mean next toSteve Jobs, who unfortunately is
no longer with us.
He's one of the greatestentrepreneurs of our time.
I mean you just think about howquickly his companies innovate,
how fast they move what they'redoing.
Take the values out of it for amoment.
I mean, what the guy has beenable to do is just amazing.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I mean because of him , you're going to see electric
cars and you'll then see changesto full grid of energy.
Because of it, because ofsupport that move.
I mean you can hate him orwhatever else, but for someone
who can make effective change ordo something, it's really
undeniable.
You don't like him, or maybeyou cannot deny the fact.
The guy has made change.
What is the best businessadvice, though, you've ever
received?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
The best business advice don't ever get over
leveraged.
And if you're going to take outdebt, just make sure there's an
ROI there for you.
If you don't have money, don'tgo on the vacation.
But if you want to go fund yourbusiness and there's an ROI
there, go take out some debt.
That makes sense.
Just make sure the cost of thatdebt is lower than your ROI.
That's just make sure the costof that debt is lower than your
ROI.
Yeah, that's great.
I like it.
Who gave that advice to you?
(14:49):
Probably a number of people.
I think my father gave it to meand then I heard it from
somebody else as well.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
What book for entrepreneurs is a must read?
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Radical Candor by Kim Scott.
Kim Scott worked for Google,for Apple.
Early on in her career sheobserved rather shockingly
dynamic conversations betweenLarry Page and Steve Jobs,
between the employees.
They would really dish it tothe employees and the employees
would dish it back to them.
So what she did was she sort ofreformulated that approach and
she came up with this frameworkaround radical candor and it's a
(15:18):
great read.
It was really successful inSilicon Valley.
I don't know how broad based itgot, but I recommend it's an
easy read.
It's a wonderful book If youwant to learn how to address
performance feedback.
It's something that we've divedinto because we've kind of
evolved.
We've expanded some teachingsaround that for our own advisory
practice.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
If you had to start over, what would you do
differently when I started mycompany?
Anytime, actually, you can pickthe time and frame.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
on that one, I probably would have gotten a
mentor earlier in, because Ithink during the time that I was
focusing on music so much, Iwas working hard in my day job.
But I would have also gotten amentor.
I would have talked to morepeople.
I would have networked moreoften.
I realized later in my life, asI got a little bit wiser, that
the quality of the people youhave around you is just it's
(15:59):
everything.
I probably would have gotten myCPA just early in just to add a
little bit of credibilityaround the knowledge base,
around accounting and financefinance based on what I spent 20
years doing.
That would have been helpfuland I would have started my
company with more people.
Yes, that would have added toour costs, but I think it would
have given us a bit of aspringboard to go a little bit
faster.
Instead, we took more of acautious approach and we were
(16:19):
extremely lean.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I like that.
I got a new book that I've askyou today and I did not.
What would that question havebeen and how do you answer it?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
What is the most important thing in building a
high performance team?
It's so.
It's actually two things.
Number one, it's psychologicalsafety among the team.
Right, so people can be honest,transparent, speak truth to
power, innovate, take risks,take micro failures.
The other thing is having aframework for how to have
(16:55):
difficult conversations.
Don't avoid conflict.
Have the difficult conversation.
Most people avoid it becausethey don't have a framework or a
tool set on how to actually dothat.
If you have a framework, youcan have those conversations,
you can address performance, youcan get much more quickly to
vetting out the truth.
To do you keep that employee,do you not?
Are they going to improve?
We have an issue in ourrelationship.
We should sit down and addressit.
I need to bring this thing upwith my friend.
(17:17):
Whatever it is, have theconversation, but have a
framework so you know whatyou're doing.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Thank you so much, patrick, for taking the time
today.
Shameless plug time for you,though.
Who should get ahold of you,and how do they do that?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Certainly, if you work in accounting and finance
if you happen to you're welcometo reach out.
Obviously, we place accountingand finance professionals as
we've talked about, so we'll seeif there's any intersection
there.
If you happen to be anaccounting finance leader and
you've got people that report toyou and you want us in your
back pocket as a potential firmthat you can work with, reach
out as well.
If you work for a company andyou feel like the culture of
your company is in the toilets,having issues or problems, reach
(17:50):
out.
We can walk you through what wedo with our leadership advisory
practice and see if there's anyintersections of value there.
Awesome, where do they go to dothat?
You can find me on LinkedIn.
The name of my company is CFOsDomain.
I am on X at Patrick Jen, that'sG-E-N nine, the number nine.
So at Patrick Jen, that's G-E-Nnine, the number nine.
So at Patrick Jen, nine.
If you want to reach out to meon X.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I appreciate it.
We'll put the links in the shownotes as well.
Patrick, thank you for joiningme today.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Thank you for having me, thomas, appreciate it
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Cut the
Tie.
Let's stay connected.
Please hit that follow buttonon Apple, spotify or YouTube and
, if you're ready to advanceyour entrepreneurial journey
even further, join our freecommunity at facebookcom.
Slash groups, slash, cut thetie.
Cut the tie to everythingholding you back from success.
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