Mike Smith - Manager at Ernst & Young

Mike Smith, Manager at Ernst & Young LLP, sits down with Ryan to discuss his career, consulting in large scale transformation projects, and his thoughts on hiring and being hired.

Connect with Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/masmith1/

The views reflected in this podcast are the views of Mike Smith do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the global EY organization.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
[MUSIC]

(00:02):
Welcome to the GoodFit Careers podcast where we explore perspectives on work that fits.
I'm Ryan Dickerson, your host.
Today's guest is Mike Smith.
Mike is a manager at Ernst & Young.
Ernst & Young, also known as EY, is a privately held professional services firm that generates
$50 billion in annual revenue with nearly 400,000 employees.

(00:25):
Mike focuses on technology transformation projects and M&A projects with insurers, banks, and asset managers.
Mike is also a venture capitalist with Scrappy Capital, a firm that invests in companies
focused on the future of work and the media distribution and logistics sectors.
Mike, thank you for being here.
Thank you, I'm happy to be here, Ryan.

(00:45):
I'm so glad to have you on.
So Mike, to get us all started and help us build our frame of reference, would you please
walk us through your work as you see it today?
Usually, my description is management consultant by day and venture capitalist by night.
And if I think about my career arc, first, third of my career as being an entrepreneur,

(01:06):
second, third was being self-employed, which I think is different from being an entrepreneur.
And then the most recent third is being a management consultant and a venture capitalist.
So today, I'm a manager at EY, which is one of the largest consulting firms in the world, actually.
And I service mostly financial services companies, so that's banks, insurers, asset managers.

(01:27):
And we help them mostly with what we call transformations.
So that's either a large-scale software change, put simply moving from an old system to a new
system, or an acquisition integration.
So bank acquires a bank.
A lot happens behind the scene to make sure that bank A is operating within bank B and
customers don't really see a difference.

(01:49):
And then on the side, I'm a venture capitalist at Scrappy Capital, where we invest in media,
distribution, and the future of work.
All right, Mike, that makes a lot of sense.
So to bring us back to your early life, would you tell us a little bit about what you were
like as a kid and what you wanted to be when you grew up?
Yeah, absolutely.
My grandparents called me my parents second, third, fourth, and fifth kid.

(02:10):
So I think rain bunches was probably the word that most people would use.
And then more about my career, I wanted to be premed.
So I became an EMT in high school, emergency medical technician.
Then I started taking a bio in chem, and I knew that was not for me.
So I went from wanting to be a doctor to wanting to be a sports agent, just like Jerry McGuire.

(02:32):
Then we segued to being an advertising executive.
And then finally ended up at this big bucket that is entrepreneurship, which means a million
different things to different people.
But to answer your question, did I ever envision being a big form management consultant?
Absolutely not.
It's funny how that plays out.
And what was schooling like for you, I guess, with all those different paths that you could

(02:55):
have gone down, how did you figure out what you wanted to study and how did it actually
play out?
I was lucky that I had directional interest.
I knew business was something I had always been interested in, and then communication,
so advertising.
So I started off in those two schools at Syracuse, and they gave me a really good general curriculum.
And I think the big thing was just trying out a bunch of things, having internships and

(03:20):
coffee chats and different little tastes at things I wanted to try.
And some things like medicine, I said, bio and chem, totally not my thing.
Realize that earlier, much better to realize that than being deep in medical school.
But I tried to do a buffet attempt at college, try a little bit of this, try a little bit
of that, and figure out what I don't want to do.

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So I think a lot of folks focus on what you want to do.
I think it's also important to try things and realize that's not for me or the other
thing isn't for them.
A lot of people go through life saying they want to be a doctor or a lawyer or some of
those major knowledge work professions.
How did you find out that medicine was not the right fit for you?
I think it was a mix of just the science.

(04:02):
I think when people think of doctors, or at least when I think of doctors, I think of
compassionate care, not client service, but bedside manner and caring about people.
And that's a real big part of it.
But the foundation of science, biology, chemistry, it's a, you're a scientist, and then you're
a doctor.

(04:22):
So I think I didn't realize how much science went into it.
And then two blood and guts.
I was an EMT for about 10 years.
I loved picking drunk people out of bushes and fun stuff like that.
But I mean, the blood and guts just, not my thing.
Good to know early on.
And I bet you had some pretty epic stories from those EMT days.
College EMS is a fun story.

(04:43):
I believe it.
When you graduated and you were trying to think about and figure out what that first
job was really going to look like, what was going to pay the bills, what was that transition
like from your master's level education into the workforce?
I'd say a non-traditional transition.
So I didn't go straight to a traditional job.

(05:04):
After college, I started a business with two colleagues of mine, did that for about three
years.
So I think the first thing was, hey, we have this idea.
Let's try and build it.
And I've been looking back at my career.
I now more admire and impressed by the people who do the entrepreneur thing later in life.
Because I think at 21, 22, it's really hard to understand the business and how the world

(05:27):
works.
So we can get into it more if you want to prod, but try to business, set it for a couple
years, and then to the working world.
I did the whole wham, my startup thing failed, cried, very upset about the failure and had
a whole summer of being sad.
And then eventually I got off my butt and I started just going to meetings, networking

(05:48):
events.
And I met someone who ended up being the first company I worked with just through networking
and then testing out the relationship.
I would say, Mike, having known you for a long time, you are one of the best networkers
that I know.
And it is no surprise that that first proper job came through the network.
To take a little bit of a tangent here, when you're thinking through the, "I'm a new graduate,

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I'm ready to go find a job, I don't really have a professional network."
Is there any advice you might have for folks out there who want to establish their network
or starting it for the very first time and would like to make use of perhaps the people
they know or don't know yet?
Yeah, great question.
I get that question a lot.
The first thing that comes to mind is the leverage of the student card.

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Everybody loves to talk about themselves.
I think at a college level, if you look at any of your professors, they are undoubtedly
one of the top 1,000 people in their field.
When I would guess lecture in classes, I would always ask the professor, "Hey, what's your
billable rate?"
Advertising professor goes, "Yeah, if I'm consulting, it's like 300, 400 an hour."
And students have access to one of the 1,000 best people in their field.

(06:57):
So email every professor that is remotely in your area and just chat with them.
They're paid to care about you and they're there and they are really mostly wonderful
people.
And then two, thinking a little more about networking, something I've gotten better at
with that is realizing who's a best friend and who's at arm's length, meaning if I email

(07:20):
Jeff Bezos or some luminary, like Jeff hire me.
That's not getting responded.
But if I email my best friend and say, "Hey, I'm interested in X, Y, and Z," they'll go
a lot further for me.
So I think I've realized the closer they are, the more you can ask for them.
And the further the person away is from you, you have to make it stupidly easy.

(07:41):
And I think one of the mistakes I made earlier in my career was thinking that these people
who are already busy are going to make time for me.
And people genuinely want to help.
But I think it's figuring out how it can be very bite-sized and say, "I want you to read
this one email.
Recommend a book.
Get coffee with me."
Because as I've gotten older, my life has gotten busier.

(08:02):
So right sizing the ask, I think is incredibly important.
And then I think the last piece is giving first.
I am shocked how many people go straight for the ask.
That's all fine to be direct.
But I forget, as someone at my firm said that, "You want to make it a deposit before you
make a withdrawal in your networking bank," something like that.

(08:26):
You and I have had a long relationship, 10, 15 years.
We've both made a bunch of deposits and we've proven that the other person is a quality
person.
It's easy for you or I to make a withdrawal.
But someone was emailing me the first time.
You've got to prove that you're not going to waste my time and above all, not going to
hurt my reputation.
I mean, I think that's...
I'm a very helpful person.

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But if there's a chance that I think you're going to make me look bad, I can't do business
with you.
Oh, sure.
And that early career person or that writer to school person saying to a stranger, "Hey,
would you recommend me for a job?"
That's a pretty big ask versus what's one thing that you learned or what's one thing
that you would do differently, giving them something that's an accessible bite size ask.

(09:09):
It makes a lot of sense.
I think one more point on that is it doesn't always have to be a meeting.
Maybe I'm on a meeting sale box lately because I work in consulting.
But if I was at a college and I emailed Ryan for career advice, you're a great person.
You might want to get on the phone with me.
But a lower lift thing is, "Hey, Ryan, I really want to be a career coach.

(09:32):
Like, what's one book you recommend or what do you recommend I do or here's my website?
Would you give me feedback?
Like finding a way for it to be asynchronous, meaning we don't have to meet like this.
It's so much easier for me to get feedback because I can do that at 3 a.m. or 3 p.m.
So it doesn't have to be a meeting.
It's a really good early takeaway as well.

(09:53):
Yeah, great advice, man.
So Mike, tell us a little bit about how you landed that very first job after your entrepreneurship
experience.
What was the hiring process and that experience like for you?
So I did my little pity party and my startup failed and then I knew I just had to start
meeting people.
So I went to a bunch of entrepreneur-esque events in New York City and met a gentleman

(10:17):
and just started to strike up a conversation and we stayed in touch.
I was reflecting on this because a lot of my, when I was self-employed, a lot of my
friends would ask me what my funnel was for getting clients.
I hate the idea of a funnel, but my primary job and career search strategy is helping
people with their stuff with no expectations of returns.

(10:39):
So I met Chris at a networking event.
I knew he had a business that was doing like data enrichment.
So I followed up and I said, "Hey, here's some ideas."
And my MO is always, "I'm going to try to provide some value for people and they can
say it's great.
They can throw it in the trash.
It doesn't matter to me.
I'm putting it out in the world."
And not with an expectation that I'm going to get a job.
I just, I think if you make more deposits eventually, it's going to be valuable for you.

(11:02):
So met Chris at a networking event, followed up with some ideas.
And then after a few weeks of just talking back and forth, we started with a small project.
And I think testing employment is something that's really underutilized in the workforce
today.
It's really hard for large companies to do this, but I think smaller companies have an

(11:22):
advantage in the sense that they can say, "We're going to time box this project together,
we're going to work on a website," or "It doesn't really matter what the project is,"
but it gives you a way to test how you work with someone.
So first we work together for a week, then a month, then three months, then six months.
So kind of similar to dating, the relationship gets a little bigger each time.

(11:45):
So now that you've landed that first job and you've been in the role for a little while,
I'd love to have you share a little bit about what the experience was like going from being
an entrepreneur to being an employee and learning how to do that job.
Sure.
I'm happy to talk about that.
So the first job, first company I worked with out of college was a company called Touchpoints.
They did and still do data enrichment, started by two great brothers working out of their

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apartment.
My role was mostly sales, but helping with growth and company building.
And this is someone I found through a networking event.
We became friendly, started working together first two days, then four days.
And I remember my first sales call and Chris, great guy who hired me.

(12:30):
I remember being on the first sales call and I bombed.
And I'm just like, buy our stuff.
It's so good.
You got to buy it.
It's so good.
Trust me, it's really good.
And then I was really grateful to have the opportunity to have a review of it and see
where I could have improved.
And I'd say one of the biggest things I learned from that role is how important sales is and

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how much it is not what you see in the movies.
It's not a boiler room.
So really good sales people are coaches, consultants, developers who ask questions and help instead
of just shoving things down your throat and forcing you to buy.
And as you went through and tried that job out and then got into data enrichment and I'd

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love for you to clarify a little bit on what data enrichment really means.
But what did you learn about yourself in that first job and how did it, how did you kind
of grow into yourself from that point?
So first what is data enrichment?
So if you are any company that has contact with consumers, you are Nike, you are the Red
Cross, you are anyone who has a direct consumer relationship, you have Ryan Dickerson at 123

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Main Street, you have his phone number.
Ryan moves, Ryan doesn't update his mailing address, Ryan doesn't update his phone number,
but still has affinity for Nike, Syracuse University, whatever the company is.
The data enrichment industry exists to update information on a customer's profile and augment
it.
Maybe I want to know Ryan is a fan of the Yankees or Ryan lives in this city.

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So deepening the connection between a consumer and a brand and providing more of a comprehensive
profile.
That makes a lot of sense.
And then would you learn about yourself once you got into that field?
I'd say the biggest thing I learned about myself was that sales was not something I wanted
to pursue.
It was being young and not really confident myself yet, but sales is 99% rejection and

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getting one person to say yes and being okay with it.
That was really tough for me.
I also learned a lot about sales not being a brute force effort.
There's a saying I like, there's no yelling at a Mercedes commercial.
Mercedes is not screaming about how good their car is.
Mercedes is just like, we got a great car.
You want it?
You don't want it?

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Whatever.
Great sales people do not need to scream.
They know their product is valuable and they're helping their customers understand that or
not.
And then while I learned about myself, I learned that I really enjoyed being able to whisper
in an executive's ear.
I think at these large companies, you're hundreds of rungs away from the CEO.

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At touch points, I was working with the CEO every day.
I could say, let's do a social media strategy.
He could listen, he could ignore, but I really valued being a consigliary or chief of staff
or right hand to an executive.
I've always valued that.
And you've had a few steps since this first gig to where you are now at Ernst & Young.

(15:28):
Can you tell us a little bit about what you carried from that first job into your work
today?
Something I carried a lot is the importance of having a balance of the micro picture and
the macro picture.
I think sales teaches you that.
That yes, you need to think about how you're selling this individual prospect, but how does

(15:50):
that fit into the overall organization?
And I find the leaders that I admire and look up to are very good at understanding and explaining,
this is the enterprise-wide strategy and this is what's happening on the ground.
Switching between those can be really challenging, but I find the good leaders are able to do
that.
The same thing that you're talking about, I've seen a few times where having the understanding

(16:13):
of the players in the field, being able to not only see what's happening from the macro
level, what's happening on the spreadsheets, but also having enough empathy and direct
understanding of what's happening for the individual consumer or the people lower down
in the funnel per se.
I feel like that's an amazing thing.
And I bet that in your consulting work, you get to rug shoulders with a whole bunch
of folks who have pretty exceptional visibility of the field.

(16:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
And your need to balance what does the CIO think?
And then what does the entry-level individual contributor need to do?
And almost universally across the board, they are misaligned, not through anyone's fault,
but just through big companies move slow.

(16:58):
Where were you or was there a moment specifically when you'd figured out that you'd found the
work that was a good fit for you?
Honestly, the answer is no.
And in the last few years, only been become comfortable with saying no, that I don't have
a defined vision of exactly what I want to do.
I think if I want to prod a little deeper on a good fit, I think it means going back

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to that balance of macro and micro, you're not only a strategist, you're not only an
executor.
And then something I think super important about a good role is not making it your entire
identity and keeping appropriate distance.
When I was an entrepreneur, it was I was the business.
I'm the only thing here.

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It's all about my success.
At UI, we're 400,000 people.
No one is looking at UI and saying, that's a Mike Smith production.
And having a healthy distance and being able to say, okay, it's six o'clock, I'm turning
off.
I think that's important for a good fit career, because otherwise you burn it, you burn out
and you're too deep into something.
So having balance is super important.

(18:05):
So Mike, once you'd found work that you enjoyed and that was objectively a good fit for you,
was there anything that you had to learn that was particularly challenging to master or
get a grasp on to become really good at consulting and good in your field?
I think the fundamental challenge of consulting is balancing two jobs.
Every consultant has the client job that pays the bills.

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You bill out an hourly rate, you do the work with the client, they pay you very straightforward.
But what's not talked a lot about is your practice job, your job to sell more work,
to write articles, to develop people.
It's really unique in consulting because they're almost an unintentionally antagonistic.

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Every moment I'm doing client work, I'm not doing practice work.
Every moment I'm doing practice work, I'm not doing client work.
And balancing those is a huge challenge if I'm working on an integration for a bank.
If that was my job full time, I could be fully focused on that.
With consulting, I have to have two jobs at all times.
So balancing those I think was a really challenging skill to learn.

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I've gotten much better at it, but it's really tough to have both of those jobs.
I believe it.
And the practice of mastering that and working through achieving that balance and figuring
out, I don't know, an intuition per se in that.
Were there any specific instances or moments where you started to feel like you had the
feel for it beyond just the technical mastery of that balance?

(19:36):
Yeah, what gives me comfort a lot is having some order of operations or prioritization.
And when I started, I would prioritize internal stuff, over external stuff.
And then you realize the client always comes first.
That's what pays your bills.
So understanding client, then internal was a really helpful organization of it.

(19:59):
And then one of my mentors talked a lot to me about personal ROI, which I think a lot
about.
I wanted to join our people advice report, which is like getting people together, Rara,
built in community.
Very important.
And you needed your counselor support.
So I went to him and said, Hey, I want to do this.

(20:20):
And he goes, listen, I'll support you, happy to develop you, but I don't think there's
ROI here for you.
It doesn't sell.
You're not hiring, you're not recruiting, you got selling more work.
So I'll support you, but this doesn't look like it's going to get you to the next level.
And that was a really impactful moment because it made me think about everything I take on,
I want there to be value for me or value for someone above me or who manages me who supports

(20:48):
me.
Mm hmm.
It makes sense.
Let's move forward to talking about your current job here.
And when we're thinking through your current role, Ernst & Young is an enormous company.
They do a very wide range of different things.
Can you help me understand what you do and where you fit within that broader macro organization?
Sure.
So you why one of the big four consulting firms, we have 75,000 people in the Americas, 400,000

(21:15):
people globally, and consultants get brought in for a mix of things.
One, there is audit and tax, which is not my area.
Every company needs taxes.
Many companies need to be audited pretty straightforward.
Consulting is a little more nebulous where consultants tend to be brought in are areas
where there's key knowledge that the firm might not have.

(21:38):
So for example, I'm working on a bank integration project right now.
It's not an ongoing need.
The bank needs to be integrated, which will take two years.
But after that's done, there's no more need for people.
So consultants really shine on project-based work.
Bank needs to be acquired, needs to be integrated, end of job.
And it doesn't make sense for the bank to hire people.

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And we've done hundreds, if not thousands of these projects.
So we talk a lot about what are known as transformations anyway.
A transformation can be, company gets acquired, company needs to be integrated.
Companies being split off or a large scale change within the enterprise.
Moving to sales force, moving off sales force.

(22:22):
Some not just changing one line of code, but a really dramatic change in the business operations.
Again, the company doesn't have that expertise in house and it's not going to be an ongoing need.
>> If I'm understanding you correctly, the basic idea here is that a larger bank might acquire
smaller bank or two banks of equal size might merge.

(22:43):
They have a whole bunch of different technology systems, software that they might use to do
their normal business operations.
And it doesn't make sense for the business to go on and hire, build a big team to do this,
because it's kind of a one-off.
It's a very specific, very targeted task that requires very specific talent.
And you and your team will essentially work through that process, guide them through what
they need to have done, and then move on to the next project.

(23:06):
Is that about right?
>> Exactly.
>> Tell me a little bit about how big the team is and who you would work with from the client
side or from the arts and young side with the players in the field per se look like.
>> I sit in a group that is called technology transformation.
So we deal with large-scale changes of technology, new software, companies acquired.

(23:29):
My group focuses on financial services, so that takes the 5 to 600 down to maybe 100,
150, depending on how you break up the organization.
The way to think about consulting from an internal perspective is we're often a team
of free agents that get placed at different projects.
So I've been on six engagements in three years.

(23:51):
I have worked with the same people on two engagements, so two of four, two of six, excuse
me.
Every other engagement has been a new team.
So I might work with Ryan in 2021, and then we go off separate ways.
And then maybe we come back together.
And a large driver of that is just what's available.
What bank needs to and is Ryan on vacation?

(24:14):
Does Ryan have expertise in this area?
So my group is about 100 and 150 people.
And our focus is really these technology strategy engagements, changing the technology
at a large bank, ensure something like that.
And we're focused around financial services.
One of our beliefs as a firm is that you're best able to support your customer when you

(24:36):
are focused in that industry.
So if I was a health consultant and then I started doing banks, I don't necessarily
know that there's a ton of transferable skills.
But if I worked at Bank of America, well, then Wells Fargo probably cares about that.
And so does Chase and Signature Bank and all these other banking institutions.

(24:57):
It's really relevant information.
And I would imagine that folks out there who don't have a lot of experience in the consulting
world might be kind of surprised that over the course of three years, you've worked on
six different projects and only two of which you've had similar colleagues or peers or
people that you worked with.
Was there an adjustment period for you to get used to working with different people every

(25:17):
few months and that, I don't know, how did you cope with that much change in terms of
personnel?
It's hard.
I've gotten better at it.
Absolutely an adjustment because if I was starting at a company today, what's the general
of thumb?
You're up to speed, you know, six months in, you feel like you're really an employee
there?
First few months are just, where's the water cooler?

(25:38):
How does this work?
A consulting engagement can be six months.
So you don't have six months to understand how things work.
You have weeks to understand how things are going.
So it's a balance of spending a lot of time in the early days getting to know who the players
are, what the work is, and then giving myself grace because every engagement mentally for

(25:59):
me goes the same way.
I'll get dropped in some new engagement and it'll be about, say, backup systems for banks.
A week or two and I'll be like, "Mike, why don't you know everything about a bank backup
system?
You're just so dumb.
You should know more."
Two weeks go by and I go, "Wait, there are people who spend their entire careers understanding

(26:19):
those.
It doesn't make sense that you'd be an expert a month then."
So I think it's knowing that you have to learn a lot and you have to get the speed very fast
and then also realizing you can only know so much in two weeks.
So it's figuring out what is the really important thing to focus on.
So I think one of the key skills of consulting is onboarding effectively because it's not

(26:42):
only is it knowing the subject matter, getting enough knowledge about bank backups, but it's
also building rapport with Ryan Dickerson, the CIO of BankX, which arguably is more important
in my opinion.
Interesting.
And we'll dive more into that in a little bit here.
But before we dive into your expertise specifically, can you tell us a little bit about what the
journey was like at Ernst & Young from considering the opportunity through your first promotion?

(27:08):
Like most things in business, I knew someone in the firm.
So she told me they were hiring and she was kind enough to refer me in.
And I was so fast and coming from a land of startups and small companies, I was so fascinated
by how this big ship that makes billions upon billions of dollars runs and working with,

(27:29):
I mean, true name, we don't talk about clients publicly, but like truly the leading companies
of our time.
We work with a majority of the Fortune 500.
Working with these big companies was super interesting to me.
So I had an interview and the first one is a recruiter screen generally to make sure that

(27:51):
you're directionally in the right area.
You're not a accountant applying for a software engineering role or something like that.
So step one, you seem like a good person.
And then the recruiter is also making sure that you're directionally correct and also
could be a potential fit.
And with consulting, it's very hard to figure out because we're all, or a lot of us are

(28:16):
real free agents, you're not really hired because you've been doing bank backups for
30 years.
You're hired because you seem like you could learn how to figure that out in a month.
And what's it like to get promoted within Ernst & Young and within big consulting?
I just think about these, the big four, how both massive these organizations are, but

(28:37):
also really how exclusive they are and how hard it is to get into them and then how hard
it is to advance.
Could you teach us a little bit about what that was actually like?
Yeah, it is both comforting and terrifying.
On the comforting side, big companies, EY and beyond, have a very defined progression.
You're in this role for X number of years.
If you do a good job, you'll go to the next role.

(28:58):
You do a good job.
It's a ladder because you have such a large organization to remove bias and other issues.
You can't really say, "Well, Mike, Mike will get promoted in year one and Ryan.
We're going to wait until you're set."
An organization with a size can't work like that.
So it's comforting to know there's a ladder to climb.
And then two, it's terrifying because getting promoted is not a straightforward thing.

(29:23):
We all want it to be, I think everyone wants comfort that if you do A, B, C, D, you'll get
promoted or you'll get the job or whatever the thing is, but it's of course more opaque
than that.
And what we say with promotions is you generally want to be operating at the role above you
for at least six months to a year to show that you can do it.

(29:44):
So I joined in 2021, did a year as a senior consultant, and then a year later I was getting
ready to go out for promotion in the summer.
And I think something that's interesting about large firms or at least consulting, I don't
have a direct boss.
I have what's known as a counselor and the way to think of a counselor is kind of a

(30:04):
support agent.
So funny how that kind of came back into play.
Their job is not to hire and fire you.
Their job is to coach you and help you find cool opportunities and say, "I really want
to do bank backups.
Let's find some opportunities for that, help you develop."
But they're not the higher fire person.
So they're in a really interesting coaching and mentoring role.

(30:25):
So a year after I started to raise my hand to my counselor and said, "Hey, I'm ready
for this."
The next step is walking around the office and seeing who supports you, who has feedback
in any large organization, generally the highest person on the totem pole decides.
So getting face time with leadership is the thing that I didn't realize how important

(30:46):
it was.
So I went up for it and then summer comes around and again to make sure it's fair across the
board.
It can't just be one person decides.
There's a counsel and a box that have to be checked.
So I went up for it in the summer and getting good news, it looks like it's going to work
out well.
I didn't get it and I was devastated.

(31:09):
Oh man, I was just so crushed.
And this is not an EY problem.
I think everyone wants direct attribution.
But sometimes it's, we had three seats and you were number four.
Sometimes it's, you're not good enough right now.
Sometimes it's insert random edge case that kind of screwed you but wasn't your fault.

(31:33):
So I didn't get it.
Had my little pity party.
My mom has this rule.
You get a 48 hour pity party and then get off your butt.
Truth be told, it took me a little longer to get off of that.
And then a mentor of mine pulled me aside and he's like, "Hey, you didn't get it.
That really sucked.
But it's time to get over it."
I'm really grateful that happened because I think I would have wowed a lot longer.

(31:56):
And you need people who are going to do that.
Oh, and I was like, "Listen, it's totally right.
You got screwed but it's time to move on."
So didn't get it and then started walking around town and asking people for feedback.
What can I do?
What should I do?
And so on.
And then it's, a lot of it is marketing yourself.

(32:17):
When I talk to the folks that I counsel, I say being a good employee is being a balance
of a show horse and a work horse.
You don't want to be the work horse who works 80, 90 hours and never picks up their head
and doesn't market themselves.
You also don't want to be the show horse who at every firm I've ever been at, there

(32:39):
are people who I have no idea what they do, but they're loved by leadership in the advance.
So it's finding being a good worker and marketing yourself and not working yourself to burn
out and not being a person who only markets themselves.
So started thinking about marketing myself in a better fashion.
And then the big takeaway is what do the deciders care about?

(33:02):
What are the partners who are making these decisions?
What's important to them?
Finding something that is important to the people above you and making it your mission?
I think if I would have noticed that earlier, I would have advanced quicker.
And you did advance.
Even though there were some setbacks, you found a way.
You made it happen.
Way to go, man.
I did.
Thanks.

(33:23):
We'll get back to the conversation shortly, but I wanted to tell you about how I can help
you find your fit.
I offer one-on-one career coaching services for experienced professionals who are preparing
to find and land their next role.
If you're a director, vice president or a C-suite executive and you're ready to explore
new opportunities, please go to GoodFitCareers.com to apply for a free consultation.

(33:48):
I also occasionally send a newsletter which includes stories from professionals who have
found their fit, strategies and insights that might be helpful in your job search and content
that I found particularly useful or interesting.
If you'd like to learn more, check out GoodFitCareers.com and follow me on LinkedIn.
Now back to the conversation.
To transition over into your expertise and teaching the audience a little bit about what

(34:12):
you've learned along the way, something that we touched on earlier was getting up to speed
quickly with a new client.
And something that I'd love for you to spend just a little bit of time sharing your wisdom
about is if you're in a new environment, whether it's you're in a new company or you've started
a new project with a new client group, how do you begin to think about what are the most
important things to begin to get a grasp of as you get started up?

(34:37):
Great question because I've done that so many times.
The first thing is fact-finding, doing a tremendous amount of research around, and
this is applicable for starting a consulting engagement or starting a job.
Just beyond a Google search, talking with people inside the company.
If you're at Coke, maybe you want to talk to Pepsi and see how they see things.

(34:58):
So just a tremendous amount of deeper research beyond the Wikipedia page, and that's meeting
with folks who are at the company who might be a competitor who are formerly with a company
because you hear something once, okay, you hear something three or four times, you start
to build a picture that this company is struggling with X or this company is great with Y.

(35:19):
So I spend a lot of time when I start something new, talking with our team who's been there
for a while to understand that Ryan's a nightmare or Ryan is great and Ryan is really focused
on this obscure legislation or requirement we have to follow.
So because once I know that about you, I can go into a meeting and say, "Ryan, you're

(35:39):
really worried about the end of your deadline, aren't you?"
And once I can say that, you and I, we build a report like that.
So research from all angles is incredibly important.
And then I think an underrated thing about getting up to speed is something I talk a
lot about is defining the intellectual supply chain.

(36:00):
So if we were on the assembly line, very straightforward way to build the car, not straightforward,
but it's kind of linear.
With knowledge work, it doesn't really work that straightforward.
And I find most problems I've run into business or come across in business are a lack of alignment.
So let's pretend that you're the partner, Ryan, and you need the deck, the PowerPoint

(36:23):
review, you need it done by end of day Friday.
So I think smart consultants will build a timeline of what has to happen in order to
develop that.
So if the partner needs to be done with it Friday, it's got to be in their inbox Friday
morning, which means the senior manager has to be done with it end of day Thursday, which

(36:43):
means the manager should have it in a senior manager's inbox Thursday, which means the senior
consultant should do it on Monday and Tuesday and hand it over to the manager on Wednesday.
And I think it sounds very simplistic, but I think it's so easy to get misaligned because
teams zoom, there's so many communication channels.

(37:05):
It's very easy to have a meeting and say, yeah, I'll work on that deck, Ryan, and you
leave thinking it's do Friday.
I leave thinking it's not do for a month.
So one of the things I am incredibly laser focused at in general, but especially when
you start is leaving every meeting with, all right, Ryan, it's the 22nd, I'll have the
deck to you by May 1st.

(37:26):
Does that work?
And just making sure we're incredibly aligned because when it's just you and me, it's pretty
easy to figure out.
But when you're in a project with dozens, I mean, there are projects at consulting firms
with hundreds of people.
It is so easy for you to think it's coming in your inbox May 1st and then May 1st comes
along and I haven't started.

(37:46):
And then there's just so many ways it's no balls at control.
So I think being, I think I'm overly communicative with deadlines and expectations partially because
of that's who I am.
But also fundamentally, I think consultants jobs is to move the ball forward.
You need to come in and say, we did XYZ, not we were thinking about that.

(38:08):
What is a good indication of a great client or what are some of the behaviors and tendencies
of clients that help you as the consulting group achieve outstanding outcomes within
budget and on time?
One of the challenges of consulting is you don't always know what you're selling.
So if we talk about bank integrations, yes, the bank needs to be acquired.

(38:32):
But what's the level two version of that?
Are we worried about compliance?
Are we worried about data?
Are we worried about people?
So great clients have a very strong understanding that I'm being hired to remediate data or
satisfy some government requirement.
Great clients know what they're paying for and what that timeline looks like.

(38:56):
It's challenging because we're brought in to be the experts in that arena.
And then great clients also give enough leash to understand that they're paying for expertise
around this area that they may not know the best way to do it.
So none what they want giving enough leash to let the consultant work as they want.

(39:17):
I'd say it'd be the two big things for great clients.
Beautifully said, when you're working with clients to try to figure out what it is you're
selling or what it is you're delivering or whatever it is that they need actually done,
do you have any favorite questions that tend to really cut to the heart of the matter and
give you very strong signal on what it is indeed that they actually need?

(39:40):
The cliche question is if you could wave a magic wand, what's one thing you could solve
for?
And sometimes I'll say that as a joke because it's such a platitude, but I'll say that and
they'll laugh and then they'll usually give a straightforward answer.
And then sometimes I try to anchor clients on the gravity of the problem.

(40:02):
And then I'll say Ryan, is this a dollar problem, a million dollar problem or a billion dollar
problem?
And often you'll laugh and go, "Oh, obviously not a billion dollar problem."
But then you'll anchor me on, "This probably costs us two million dollars."
So I think making light of the situation and realizing we're not all robots is really helpful

(40:24):
to anchor on what's the problem we're trying to solve.
And then two, I asked them to paint what the next year looks like in terms of are we done
with this in a year?
Are we halfway done in a year?
Because that allows me to adjust expectations.
So if the client says, "Oh, the bank will be integrated in two days."

(40:44):
That's wildly unrealistic.
But if they give me an answer that, "You know, we'd like to be 50% done by 2025 and
then fully wrapped up by 2026, it helps me understand how they see it."
So I try to get their understanding of the time one.
To bring everybody along, we essentially have discussed the concept of starting a new project

(41:06):
and beginning to, in very short order, get a very rich and robust understanding of with
whom you're working.
And your advice tends to be seeing that from as many angles as you can realistically get.
So speaking with them directly, speaking with their partners or integrators, speaking with
people who used to work with them to get just a very clear sense of more broad observations.

(41:27):
And then from there, the big challenge is clearly defined.
What have we sold to you?
What are we delivering?
What needs to actually happen?
What pain point are we alleviating?
What are your expectations?
What is the timeframe?
Right?
Getting very granular and specific on all the necessary details.
From there, I would love for you to walk us through what a real project actually played

(41:47):
out as and thinking through, you know, a real example of when you delivered on something.
Can you walk us through one of those?
I think the best one is not like current project, but a prior project.
Bank was acquired and for lack of better phrasing wasn't like perfectly well managed.
And that created some tense relationships from old bank to new bank.

(42:14):
There was a bit of a regulatory pressure that it had to be done by a certain date.
So I think what we try to do is first start off with a skeleton of how this engagement
will go, not in terms of days because that's crazy.
In terms of weeks and months that for easy purposes, if we're starting in January, what

(42:34):
needs to be done by June, what needs to be done by September, and then we'll spend a
fair amount of time planning things month by month.
So first, we have to look at the old bank inventory, all the systems that will take
three months, we'll spend three to six more months planning, lining up the dots, does

(42:57):
the social media group match up to marketing or does it connect to customer communication?
Like how do we connect all to new and A to B?
And then we'll set up kind of milestones to check in.
And then one of the things that consultants are really good at is setting up governance
functions to make sure things are going across the board correctly.

(43:20):
Where clients and consultants tend to mess up is having too much reporting and having
a overall engagement reporting, a business group reporting, a lot of business, like having
too many layers can slow things down.
So generally it's identify, plan and execute are the phrases I tend to look at things in

(43:42):
terms of, and the forcing function is how fast does this thing need to be done?
Is this a sprint where we're doing this in three months or larger projects, firms like
EY and Big Four, they tend to be longer term because this is not company with five people

(44:04):
acquires company with four people.
This is bank with billions of dollars, acquires other bank with billions of dollars.
And when you're dealing with such large amounts and such large companies, things can't move
fast because a lot of times what happens, you need to both do the acquisition while maintaining

(44:25):
your regular business and balancing those is really challenging.
I think to go a little bit deeper on that when you were thinking through managing such
complex, such large dollar volume integrations, have there been any big surprises along the
way or any painful lessons learned or if someone else is also in the integration space
or in the consulting space, is there anything that you could share from your actual project

(44:48):
work that might be useful for them as they grow in their own careers?
The first thing that comes to mind is when you deal with banks especially and really
any company, the main focus is minimizing customer impacts.
So tactically what does that mean?
A system can't go down Tuesday at 3pm.
Everyone's using it, right?

(45:10):
But on Memorial Day weekend or July 4th or Christmas weekend, my really checking my bank
on the Memorial Day weekend maybe.
So they tend to cluster, planning happens 24/7.
They tend to cluster the execution of activities around times that are minimizing customer use.
So good because the customer is not impacted, bad because it means you're doing work at

(45:33):
odd hours.
And with that said, you're not deciding on May 1st that you're doing a migration Memorial
Day weekend.
You're deciding in your advance that because if we're going to do this thing, we're going
to move all bank to New Bank.
We have 72 hours to get it right.
So we have to make sure that every minute is accounted for.

(45:54):
A lot of my role on my current project is making a run of show of what happens day one,
minute one, hour one who's doing what because we have a very fun out window to get the thing
done.
And I imagine all that choreography and all that planning and the test runs, I think you've
learned a lot about the projects that you've been working on kind of as you're running through

(46:14):
the practice test.
Absolutely.
The fun part now is this is my second bank integration.
So getting to do it a second time.
There's a lot of transfer of knowledge where, oh, my last project, we did that.
And it is a lot of building the plane while you're flying or whatever metaphor you want
to use.

(46:35):
But I think the big thing to think about here is long term planning is so important here
because when you're talking about billions of dollars, which is a ton of money, you do
not have room for error in a way that you might with smaller amounts of money.
So that means the planning becomes even more important.
Mm hmm.

(46:56):
Transitioning to the concept of misperceptions, misconceptions, the way that people perceive
your work and being a big for consultant, can you tell us a little bit about how you believe
the world sees your company as well as your job therein?
I think consulting is one of the most misunderstood careers because consulting is so nebulous.

(47:21):
Accounting and audit are pretty straightforward.
Consulting is anything from technology, people, systems, data, infrastructure.
To say you're a consultant, it means you are a person who sends email.
It doesn't mean anything.
I think people tend to look at consulting.
There's a saying, you know, you steal people's watch and tell them what's time it is.

(47:42):
And I think the thing that's lost about that is consultants are not stealing people's watch
and telling them what time it is.
The real truth is the client often has 10 different watches all going at different times
and our job is to figure out one, two, three watches important and we can ignore four,

(48:02):
five, six and the biggest thing, I think one of the biggest things that consultants do
is create alignment across the board because our job is to come in, something is messed
up, fix it and then leave.
So consulting is very nebulous, but a lot of what we do is come in to fix a problem
that the enterprise does not have the capability to solve themselves.

(48:27):
How interesting.
So then it sounds like the endless zoom meetings and conference calls and all the coordination
is absolutely necessary to get all 10 watches clicking at the same second and have a single
source of truth.
Is there any way around all that?
Lately I've been on a pretty heavy no meeting kick, but I try to be intentional about what

(48:48):
I'm taking people's time.
I think the important thing is to make sure that all levels of the enterprise are aligned.
Right.
So if you were at a large bank, there's not just one line of business.
There's probably 10, 20, 30.
And there's a monitoring function bank wide.
So at the CEO level, there's one at the line of business level.

(49:08):
There's probably one for customer impacts.
So it goes across the board and each one has a different lens.
So making sure that they're all aware without being overly burdened.
You know, I've had some projects where I feel like my entire day is to ask reports,
but aligning it both horizontal the enterprise and also vertical is a lot easier said than

(49:31):
done for the people out there who see your job, the role that you currently hold today
as their kind of mid career destination.
Right.
Let's say they're just about to finish school.
They're just about to enter the job market and they want to work for a big fork insulting
firm.
They want to have been promoted.
They want to be in a senior role there.
How would you help set expectations for people who are interested in your work?

(49:57):
Such firms like UI all have campus to firm pipelines.
I think I'm pretty good at consulting.
A lot of my friends at my age and rank very often say we could not get in as an external
hire.
I managed to get in mostly through referring, but leveraging a or existing campus relationship

(50:19):
where there's a recruiter at dedicated pipeline of every year, we're taking 10 new consultants
from Syracuse, Harvard, wherever the school is.
So first step is leveraging the campus community because there's a process and a form and a
way that things are done.
And then joining externally, probably once a month, give or take, someone finds out I'm

(50:43):
an UI.
They say, I want to work there.
My answer is always I'm in a group of 500 people at a firm of 4,000 people.
I'm very happy to look and make a referral, but understand I don't decide here, but make
it incredibly easy.
So once a month I hit up my business card and I one out of 10 times, I'll get back a.

(51:10):
This is exactly the role I want.
Here's why I'm qualified.
Very often it's like, I do anything.
I just want to work with the company.
I want to be a consultant.
It's like going back to when I said at the start of the conversation, the easier you can
make it for me, the more likely I am to help you.
If I'm hiring a bank consultant and you say, I did this for Bank of America, I did this

(51:34):
for Chase and this for Wells Fargo, for my people, I want to get you in.
But if I hear, yeah, like, you know, it's the social media marketing and some accounting.
You think a lot of times the mess up is not making it incredibly easy or putting work
on me.
If you are coming to me for a job, if you're my best friend, I will look through all the

(51:58):
job searches and I'll find something for you.
But if you're a person I met at a networking event, don't make my job finding you a job.
Make it easy for me.
It sounds also like the four the people who are still in school that taking those career
fairs a little bit more seriously, taking the internships a little bit more seriously,
leveraging, you know, the what's available to you early on is actually worth considering

(52:23):
and not just, you know, just not just move and past it.
I am always amazed how underutilized the career center is.
I know when I was a student, I would walk in and it felt like there were cobwebs.
I mean, if you think about what we're buying with an education, it is a pipeline to a job.
Career centers and career fairs exist to do that.
And it's so much easier to build a connection that way than a cold LinkedIn message, your

(52:49):
uncle who sort of used to work at the firm.
So there are real pipelines from school to well regard employers that I think often are
ignored.
It's such a fascinating path.
For the folks out there who are lucky enough to know what they want to do as they're finishing
up school or even know what they want to do early enough to choose a major that's going

(53:09):
to be relevant to their work.
It is nice to hear that for big consulting firms, the most admired companies in the world, the
ones that people broadly pursue aggressively, that there is a real path and that if you are
a student, that they're using the resources available to you may be a surprisingly underutilized
track.
It's surprisingly reassuring.

(53:32):
And then I do have to add on the other end of the spectrum, there are also no rules.
What would comfort me a lot in the job search market was I saw a lot of parallels between
dating and job searching.
I would freak out, you're getting a job at EY, oh my god that's so hard.
But if you boil down, what you're really looking for is one person inside of enterprise who

(53:54):
is important enough to believe in you and can open the door.
We are not winning an election, getting 300 million people to vote for us.
Getting a job is very challenging, but it is getting the important partner and getting
your recruiter and maybe one or two other people.
It is not convincing thousands of people that you need to be hired here, especially at the

(54:15):
earlier stage.
Ryan, you did executive recruiting for a while, placing a CIO is not a one interview deal.
But at the earlier stage of your career, you're not impressing a thousand people, it's a handful.
It's great advice.
And there are no rules.
I mean, people get hired for in so many different ways for so many different reasons.

(54:39):
And I think something that I often ask and that we'll talk about here in a minute is what
would convince you or compel you to take a chance on someone.
But before we get there, in whatever capacity that you're involved in hiring today for your
team, not just being hired, can you tell us a little bit about the philosophy for hiring
that you've developed thus far?
Like we mentioned earlier, I think hiring has a spectrum of expertise at the entry level,

(55:07):
little expertise needed at the executive level, deep expertise needed.
At the entry level and middle manager level, I think my philosophy is generally looking
for what I call tofu or white bread, something that can work in a lot of contexts.
Tofu takes the flavor on of what it's surrounded, white bread can be turned into a million types

(55:27):
of sandwiches.
I think what I'm looking for is some negative initiative or proof that shows that I'm going
to parachute you into an uncomfortable situation.
You will not know about this topic.
What I'm testing for is, can you figure it out within the bounds of your role?
A staff consultant is never facing off directly with a CIO and making a bank integration plan

(55:52):
for a $30 billion, $1 million trillion portfolio of loans, right?
That's not happening.
But they get one little piece of the puzzle as a manager who oversees a number of staff
consultants.
I want to know that I can say, go figure out a first draft.
I know that it's not going to be perfect, but come back to me and we'll refine it together.

(56:13):
I think initiative is really, really important in finding a way to demonstrate it.
Then a mentor of mine always said, "Act like you have the job."
That costs you nothing.
I'm impressed by people who come to interviews with, "Here's my 90-day plan on what I would

(56:33):
start with."
I had these five ideas for what the firm could do and maybe they're great, maybe they're
garbage.
It just shows me that you're not doing a spray and pray approach.
When I was interviewing an UI, I made a deck of opportunities for the business.
They weren't all great, but it was very clear that I was not putting this effort across

(56:56):
all the companies.
I showed this is something I really want.
If you're going to get a way to act like you have the job and demonstrate it and show
that you've done this before, or at least are in the right direction.
To use one of our favorite platitudes, if you had the magic wand, how would you design
your ideal hiring process for people on your team, those staff consultants that you mentioned?

(57:21):
Ideally there would be some small test period to start.
For a bunch of reasons, regulatory and beyond, it's very hard to say, "Rine, I'm going to
test you out for a week and then a month and then six months."
If I can work with you for a week, I can pretty much figure out if you're a solid fit for
it.

(57:41):
Hiring is very weird across the board in the terms of most jobs.
I don't really know if you're good before.
I can read blogs you've written or do reference checks, but ideally, waving magic wand, finding
a small project to work together on.
It can be so simple redesigning a website, very, very low stakes.

(58:02):
I'll learn more about, "Oh, Ryan sends me a status update every day.
That's really good."
Ryan came to me proactively with an issue he was facing.
I didn't have to go chase him.
Ryan drafted the deck that I had to put together in advance.
You can pull a lot of things through working with someone, even on a small, meaningless
project that is indicative of how they'll operate.

(58:24):
Wave magic wand, small way to test the relationship to start.
I can also see how it would be so operationally complex to begin to bring someone on board,
both in terms of their compensation and benefits, but also in terms of the confidentiality of
your clients and the things that you're working on.
I imagine that also is in part why so many people today lean on the coding test or the

(58:47):
sample of work assessments, the presentations, the case studies.
As painful as they may be, I guess, at least hearing it from you at Ernst & Young, it sounds
like that really does matter.
Putting in the extra effort there is clearly noticeable.
Yeah.
Especially in a world where something ended up at my LinkedIn feed this morning and the
job was posted when I saw it 15 minutes ago and there are already 38 applicants, that

(59:13):
means in an hour there's going to be 300.
My job as an applicant, or your job as an applicant, is to find someone who's going to
pull you from the big pile of 200 resumes and say, "Mike O'Rine is the guy.
Give them a second look."
Especially in a world where knowledge workers, where our jobs are sending emails and doing

(59:36):
Excel, I think sales is straightforward in the sense where you say, "I was told to sell
a million dollars.
I sold five."
"Well, great.
Of course, I'm going to hire you."
I think I have this language and this competency.
The more knowledge working the job, the harder it is to evaluate.
Along that same line, so let's just say that we don't necessarily have the opportunity

(59:57):
to do the week or the month of a test period to contract a hire per se.
Is there anything in someone's professional positioning, their resume, their LinkedIn profile?
However, they're presenting themselves to you that might compel you to take a chance
or either move them forward in the screening process or grant them an interview?
First level is, "Do I have some sort of connection to them?
I'm assuming I don't, but I want some proof that they understand the role and have some

(01:00:21):
ideas that separate them from the pact."
Then I think in our remote environment, it matters how you present yourself.
I'm really surprised when I see people at all levels of an organization putting no effort
into their Zoom background.
I'm not at my home right now.
Usually I have a better background.
I see people with t-shirts on interviews or their kitchen table on the back.

(01:00:47):
During the pandemic, totally fine.
Life was crazy.
We're in a very virtual world.
If you're not taking time to show up your best self on camera and that is independent
of race, creed, gender, religion, body type, anything, it shows to me that I believe what's
behind me is indicative of how I'm presenting myself to the client.

(01:01:09):
Taking time to present yourself correctly on video.
Then also online that your LinkedIn is descriptive of what you've done and what you've accomplished
and that you act like you have a job.
It's something that keeps coming into my mind.
If I'm at Coke, I want to hire someone who's done the exact job at Hep C.
That makes sense.

(01:01:30):
That reassurance, that pattern of confidence, is something that I talk with clients a lot
about where it's like, "Oh, yeah, of course you could solve this problem.
Of course you could help me with this painful challenge that I'm facing."
Before we move on to our discussion about the future and what you're excited about, I wanted
to just open the door and give you the chance to talk through a little bit about scrappy
capital and your venture capital side of your life.

(01:01:53):
Perhaps how you think about this, what you look for in your investments, to whatever degree
you want to go into it, the floor is yours.
Back story of venture capital had always been so interesting to me.
I didn't really touch on it earlier.
I think the idea of investing in a company when you have slim to know data about it is
fascinating.
I can look at Coca-Pepsi's market and finances and stuff, but when it's five people in a

(01:02:15):
whiteboard in a room, there's so many intangibles that you're evaluating that I find it to be
such an interesting intellectual challenge.
Everyone now knows Uber is a good idea, but 10 years ago, to prove that that's something
that makes sense to invest in is fascinating.
So had been interested, had interviewed leading firms, couldn't get across a threshold, and

(01:02:38):
then a number of years ago, a mentor of mine and I sat down and said, "Let's do it ourselves."
So we set up a very small fund.
At this point, we've made 12 investments.
One has been acquired.
All are operating pretty well.
The challenge of venture is we won't know if we're good until minimum five, more likely

(01:02:58):
10 years from now.
It's a game where you start investing on a 10-year horizon.
So venture is really interesting like that, but it's also very challenging because I can't
tell you in 2025 how I'm doing.
I can't tell you in 2026 how I'm doing.
And something I really, if I think about my career, I think there's something really exciting

(01:03:18):
about doing your entrepreneur and side hustle on the side, side hustle, because I think
it gives you a freedom to experiment.
I know a lot of people who go all in an entrepreneurship and then it becomes really stressful that you
got to pay rent.
Keeping it in a sandbox of outside of work, nights and weekends, I know when I was self-employed

(01:03:40):
and I had to pay rent with my entrepreneurship, it was really stressful.
Keeping on the side I think makes it a little pure where I have the freedom to invest in
something that's going to take 10 years because EY is paying my rent or I'm earning my rent
3 watt.
And more about investing in small private companies, I think so much of it is jockey

(01:04:02):
over horse.
At that early stage, there's not enough data to say, "Well, yeah, of course Uber is going
to make sense."
The people who invested in early in Uber, it was a regional, a city-based cab company
in San Francisco that had a lot of regulatory burden.
They were not investing in numbers, they're investing in people.
And that challenge intellectually is fascinating to me.

(01:04:24):
And what I enjoy is at the scrappy capital level, I get to work with tiny small companies.
At the EY level, I'm working with the biggest company in the world, companies in the world.
So having that balance is really interesting to me.
What do you look for in the companies that you would like to own a part of and help along
their own growth journey?

(01:04:46):
Similar to what I look for in hiring, I want proof that they've done it before or proof
that they could solve it.
So for me, I tend to look at primarily where the market is going.
To use a terrible example, I don't want to be selling VHSs in 2024, 2004.
I want to be selling streaming services because I know it's going to grow.
So knowing that the-

(01:05:07):
And for the kids out there, VHS is a tape.
Yeah, sorry, I should have given that disclosure.
But primarily it is driven market opportunity.
Is this something that's going to grow in the coming decades?
And then does the founder have an ability to execute?

(01:05:28):
And they don't have to be the technical genius, but they have to be able to recruit someone
who knows.
There are so many people starting technology companies without technology backgrounds.
And I made that mistake at my career.
I started my first tech company and we had no technology team, and that was a mistake.
So big market opportunity, founder who ideally has done it before.

(01:05:51):
One of the founders we invested in sold one, two, three businesses.
So at that point we're like, yeah, like you know what you're doing.
Of course, I trust you.
And then it doesn't always have to be that straightforward.
Knowing that you are building a company in the soda industry, if you work at Coke for
ten years, that's a super valuable experience.

(01:06:12):
So playing in a sandbox that you have expertise in is really valuable.
And then we talk a lot about, we try to be in the passenger seat holding a map.
You know, one of my pet peeves of investors is pretending that they built the business
and that they were along like the founders of Uber built the business.
The investors gave them money and helped along the way.

(01:06:34):
I think I understand my role as an investor is to give you some money and say, hey Ryan,
I'm here to help you.
However, I can.
But I know this is your company.
I know this is your journey.
I'm happy to navigate, but I know where I sit in this organization.
How interesting.
Thank you for sharing.
So Mike, as we bring the conversation here to a close, I'd like to spend a minute talking

(01:06:54):
about the future.
What are you excited about in terms of the future of consulting?
I think the most interesting and exciting thing for me in consulting is the movement away
from hourly billing.
I could spend an entire podcast telling you why hourly billing is incredibly challenging.
Ryan, if you're hiring me, you want me to work in one hour.

(01:07:17):
I want to work in a thousand hours.
Our interests are not aligned.
I think a really interesting thing that started to get developed in the large consulting firms
is project based billing saying I'm hiring you to build a website.
A thousand dollars a million dollars.
Like you hand me a website.
It's over.
It's done.
So, I think the models tend to align success across clients.

(01:07:39):
And then having alignment with a client on a shared win is really impactful.
And then as we get into the world of AI, large language models, I mean, really disruptive
technology, I think what's going to start happening is consultants are going to be moving
towards more of a advisor and strategist role that there are everyone and their mother starting

(01:08:07):
a company that has AI in it.
So how do you separate the signal from the noise?
It's having expertise in a domain that you can say this company is full of it.
This company is legitimate.
So I'm excited by that.
And I think what is also starting to happen is we will see a lot more joint ventures or

(01:08:30):
partnerships where consulting firms are not just doing a service and leaving.
They're building spin-offs.
They're investing in companies.
There's a lot of regulatory burden and hurdles there, but I'm starting to see the seeds of
that thing happening.
Those are really interesting and exciting to me because when I started EY they said big
four firms are probably the only place where you have a top tier auditor, a top tier accountant,

(01:08:58):
a top tier technologist, a phenomenal people consultant, like all under one roof.
Google, phenomenal organization, they're mostly tech driven.
You know, most religious, phenomenal organization, very people focused.
Consulting firms are one of the very few places in this world where you have such a
diverse roster of talent, which means I said is to a lot of people who start anything that

(01:09:21):
exists in the business world.
EY and the big four do in some shape or form.
And that's super exciting.
How cool.
And to make things a little bit more broad and perhaps to weave in some predictions, what
do you think your field is going to look like in 20, 30, six years from now?
I think consulting is going to move very much towards a, what they are calling human-alupa

(01:09:46):
technology.
Transformations are challenging because you're changing bank one to bank two.
So it's inherently not automatable.
But let's say you're doing a monitoring project.
I'm already starting to see the seeds of we don't need Mike there 24/7.
We have a really good software or AI or something that is listening 24/7 and it says, hey, Mike,

(01:10:09):
there's a problem, go fix it.
So we call that human-alup because the software is listening all the time and bring in the
human when necessary.
I think that's going to be really, really changing the consulting landscape.
And then I think the smart companies realize we are in a global workforce.
I think EY has a very strong job of bringing teams from across the globe together.

(01:10:31):
We're going to see more of that is I think very reductive to think we only compete in
America.
So having, if I'm working on an engagement in Germany, having someone who knows German
business customs plus support from Asia plus whatever my expertise is, we're going to see
more cross-country teaming for sure.

(01:10:55):
That's interesting.
The last couple of questions here are really going to be focused on advice and inspiration
and recommendation.
So do you have any words of inspiration or advice for the audience out there?
And the folks out there who are listening tend to be very focused on being in your role
or trying to find their own way or just generally curious about the work that you do.

(01:11:18):
I think starting my career in sales has really made me think a lot about many things in life
are pipeline problems.
You know, when I was single, I would think about this a lot that if you're talking, if
you're swiping one person, you're odds are terrible.
But if you spend an hour on the apps, your odds get a lot better.

(01:11:39):
And the same is true of jobs and career.
If you're only applying to EY, all your eggs are in one basket and that's stressful.
And so I come across in interviews.
But if you're talking to EY and Deloitte and PFC and McKinsey, your odds get a lot better.
So I think a lot about in any scenario where you're trying to change your life, increasing
the number of opportunities you're chasing.

(01:12:02):
And that does not mean do a large spray and pray campaign to everyone and get the hire
you.
It means have a dozen different ways you're trying to find opportunities linked in well
found networking, alumni associations, Twitter, like the larger your pipeline is, I believe

(01:12:23):
the larger, the better your odds are of getting what you want.
So just expanding your universe of opportunities is incredibly important.
That's great.
Are there any books, podcasts or other content that you'd like to recommend for anybody who's
curious out there?
A book I keep coming back to, I think it's 10 things successful leaders do.

(01:12:43):
It's by Kevin Cruz, and he outlines like 10 hallmarks of leaderships and how they manage
their time and their people.
And I come back to it often.
And one of my big takeaways is successful people don't have to do lists.
Earlier in my career, I would have analysis paralysis over which tool to use and I realized

(01:13:05):
the best tool to use is the one that you use regularly.
So I think just reducing the amount of shiny objects and drum you have and looking for
all the cool toys allows you to narrow your focus and get more done.
That's great.
Thank you so much for joining me and sharing your perspective.
It was really a delight to have you on.

(01:13:27):
My pleasure.
If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe for new episodes, leave a review
and tell a friend.
GoodFit Careers is hosted by me, Ryan Dickerson, and is produced and edited by Melo Vox Productions.

(01:13:49):
Joining is by Story Angled and our theme music is by Surf Tronika with additional music
from Andrew Esperon-Sena.
I'd like to express my gratitude to all of our guests for sharing their time, stories
and perspectives with us.
And finally, thank you to all of our listeners.
If you have any recommendations on future guests, questions or comments, please send

(01:14:10):
us an email at [e-mail].
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