Financial Consulting into Growth Advisor | Aaron Brooks [49] - Transferable Skills

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Transferable skills, skills, skills from Caco Media.
This is transferable skills. I'm Noah, Michigan and today's
guest is Aaron Brooks who shareshis skills journey from
financial consulting into growthadvisor.
I hope you enjoy. I started in a family business.
My family owns a bakery supply, manufacturing and distributing
business in Chicago. So I like to say, you know, I

(00:20):
worked really hard. You know, I had to be at work at
5 O clock in the morning. There were no cell phones at the
time. Not to date myself, but I'm not
that old. But, but if I was there at 5 O1,
the phone was ringing for my dadchecking to see if I was there.
So it was that type of upbringing from a work
perspective. I started to bring in big
accounts, like Whole Foods was abig one, that type of thing.

(00:42):
It grew into a huge, huge account for my father's company.
He recently sold the company after 57 years.
I left in my 20s after getting married.
I had originally gone to collegeas a vocal performance major at
University of Illinois. I left my dad's company, went
back to school to finish my undergraduate degree, got an
undergrad in history, got an MBAin finance, went to Anderson
Consulting. When it was still Anderson

(01:03):
Consulting, it became Accenture.During the time I was there.
I did some interesting work there.
Most that I speak to specific tothe work I'm doing today is I
owned their business CAGE for their case for their
implementation of SAP, which is a large enterprise resource
planning system, basically the system through which you run
your business. What we were doing is was

(01:25):
transforming the finance function from being a
reconciliatory, very process driven, expensive as a percent
of revenue function to a beam, amuch more streamlined function
through the use of SAP. My, my role in this was to
determine what is the value of the implementation, right?
And it was not just from a software perspective, because

(01:46):
you don't buy software, you buy solutions and solutions are
delivered through people using software the right way.
So a, a huge part of the benefitstream that I considered was how
are we going to make people's lives at work easier so they can
do better work, which actually totally informs what I'm
currently doing. Fast forward to I, I wound up

(02:08):
rather than doing the work, all the partners said you're going
to do great when you sell the work.
You're a, a, a people person. They make you wait 15 years at
those firms to do that. So I decided to take a detour,
start in the staffing recruitingspace.
I work for a few different staffing recruiting firms that
call themselves consulting firms.
They behave like staffing firms.That's a longer story.

(02:29):
I wound up working for a large public, a large public
accounting consulting firm called Baker Tilley.
I did business development across all of the service lines
for Baker Tilley. That's not usual.
Usually for firms like that. You're doing business
development for your service line.
I'm a tax person. I sell tax.
I'm an audit person. I sell audit.
I was, I'm getting to know people, I'm meeting C level

(02:51):
executives, talking with them about their challenges and then
what are they? What do we need to do to help
them? If that's unique and most people
are very solid siloed in that experience, why were you not?
Why did they put you in? A because I it's interesting.
It's no, it's very interesting. You use the word silo because
silo has a negative connotation.Clients use that word or

(03:11):
prospects or targets use that word from a negative perspective
and they don't like, they don't like that.
So I don't, I never use that word when I'm very, very
specific about my words. We have specialty groups.
So specialty groups are, if we work with them together and we
collaborate appropriately, we can create uncommon value as a

(03:32):
provider to you or as a partner to you.
I use that word partner very loosely.
And you should use specialty because you are the individual
with the skills and strengths. And the reason I use Silo is
because you necessarily weren't put in that position.
You're often, especially at an early to mid stage chapter of
your career, you are put into a position, you are typically

(03:54):
said, hey, here's where we need you and here's where you're
going to typically stay. You're then you're going to be
considered a vendor and people only ask you.
At the end of the day, the only question that really matters is
what's your price because they're going to have to get it
through procurement. That's.
Somebody that's going to that's what you, that's what they think
matters. That's what they think matters,

(04:16):
but that's not when you get to it, what really matters.
And if you do this, and I'm not holding your mouth, that's why I
wrote the book that I wrote and the way that I wrote it, because
it's not about people. People don't want to be sold to.
They hate it. No, people are happy to be
helped to buy well from people that they trust.
And I have always been in the trust business.

(04:37):
And what people don't realize isthat we are all in the trust
business because if you are employed, somebody is trusting
you just like people were trusting my firm to come in and
do work for them. If you think about it and
unravel it and unpack it, it's really not that different.
So the question then becomes howdo you build trust?

(04:58):
And that's what it is that that's so, so core.
But to back back to your question, I spent a lot of time
building trust with clients and friends.
And I always tell people, don't build a network, build a network
of friends and treat them as such.
And I created, basically createda process through which to do
that in all of the different professional services firms to
the extent that I actually created one for my firm for

(05:21):
technical people. Because interestingly, technical
people tend to be either introverts or ambiverts, OK.
And an ambivert is one that is kind of like ambidextrous.
You can exhibit the characteristics of somebody that
is an introvert at times or an extrovert at times, you know?
It's the hybrid model. Exactly.

(05:42):
And 40 to 70% of leaders are, and I don't remember the source
of that, but that is a good source. 40 to 70% or so of
leaders are ambiverts. People like LeBron James is
considered an ambivert, OK, So there are people that we can
point to in leadership that are ambiverts.
And they are, when you hand themthe leadership baton, they're

(06:03):
going to lead, right? But when they need to find it,
can they find it? Right now?
An extrovert is going to go findit.
They're usually going to be in sales.
And an ambivert can be a great subject matter expert to work
alongside tip of the spear, somebody that's going to go get
those relationships. The problem often is in firms
like these, as firms that are siloed, is they have people that

(06:26):
are introverts or ambiverts trying to represent their
experience as if that's what really matters.
And there's no such thing as thebest accountant that doesn't
exist. So you have to be the best
accountant that one trusts. That's why you're going to get
the phone call. So I spent my career doing this

(06:47):
and trying. And the reason I say trying to
help people to understand this is because it's a challenge to
get technical people to understand the importance of
this. But that's what I've spent my
career doing. And I've always had what I'll
call a traditional job, right? And by a traditional job, I have
a paycheck, right? I have, I, you know, I have

(07:10):
benefits, all those things, right?
So, but I, but what I've realized is that to do my job
well, I have to develop real, authentic, human, empathetic,
sincere relationships, right? And I have to define that
because a lot of people think and they say I'm in a

(07:30):
relationship based business, butthey never defied it.
So they think they're a relationship person.
They think everybody loves them.But people are when their phone
rings and they see, you know, ifthere's somebody they do
business with and they see that full Aaron's calling me.
What does that mean? What does that mean?
They don't define it. They don't.
Define what a real relationship means.

(07:51):
So a real relationship to me. People talk about networking and
people know that they should network, but they don't define
what this what success looks like in networking.
So success looks like. So this is what I mean as it
relates to defining it. When one is networking, you're
it's not defined by how many people they know.

(08:12):
And that's what most people try to make happen.
They want to meet as many peopleas they can.
That's not the definition of success because that's not going
to get you anywhere. It's going to get you a lot of
first conversations, but it's not going to get you a lot of
seconds or thirds or fourths. So you're going to plant a lot
of seeds and none of them are going to grow into anything.
So, So what? You still have an empty field.

(08:34):
I just came up with that analogy.
But it's true analogy. Right.
So therefore you have to feed relationships.
So the question becomes, how do you do that?
So you're, you're the definitionof a successful network is not
how many people you know, but how many people know one another
because of you. And if you approach it in that
way, that's why my profile says I'm a connector and I know what

(08:59):
that means. I can define that.
I can do that. Now I don't use LinkedIn
technology to, to connect peoplebecause that's AI have an
opportunity. I meet you, we develop a, a
relationship. I get to know you.
I know you've, I, I, we haven't even talked about your guitars.
Like that's a whole other conversation.
OK, what that we have to have bythe way.

(09:20):
But like, as I get to know people, it's really getting to
know them. We have to define what a
relationship is and then how we are going to develop it, and as
leaders, that's a lot of what weneed to do.
What is this career? We're about democratizing human
flourishing at work, and that's what it really is.

(09:42):
People think that flourishing and success and well-being, not
well, well-being, comes after you've been successful.
And it doesn't have to be that way.
You don't have to suffer at work, right?
You don't and don't, a lot of people are suffering at work.
A huge percentage of people are suffering at work.

(10:04):
So given that, that's what I'm here to change and I'm VP of
human centered growth. That's my title, my goal, my
role, because I like to words are we have to define them,
right? Like the word consultant.
A lot of people don't like the word consultant because CFOs and
C level executives and such feellike consultants often waste

(10:25):
their money. They stay too long, I can't
trust them. They go into a room and have a
meeting without me that they don't even realize that they're
hurting themselves in the way that they do things, and that's
a shame. Do you still consider yourself a
consultant now? No, I don't consider my consult
myself a consultant. I don't love the word coach,
although I'm I'm happy to use that word in the right context

(10:48):
because we and the reason I don't love it is because
everybody's a coach. Yeah, right.
I'm experiencing that myself. I I have a lot of people who
just solicit their coaching services.
To me and exactly. And A and a lot of people who
would self define. They self define, they've been
AC level executive, they've gotten to that point of their

(11:09):
careers and I understand, but itoften happens.
These are people, they get referred to me constantly.
And this was a trend or do you think it was just called
something different before the coaching?
I, I'm asking this because let me back up for a second here
because this is a topic that's actually really interesting to
me. The sheer number of coaches that
I'm seeing has exploded. I get daily solicitations,

(11:33):
either e-mail or over LinkedIn. The number of people who I've
had the pleasure of actually interviewing for this are
coaches and rightfully so. And they are trained and
licensed and they, they're coaches for very good reasons
because they come from those backgrounds that they are
providing the coaching services and solutions for.
But the people that I don't engage with, at least the way

(11:54):
that they are marketing themselves, the language that
they have chosen or the ground that doesn't provide the
confidence to me to suggest thatthey have the authority and
experience to be coaches is justastounding.
So what it was coaching this saturated and prevalent in
decades past, it was just calledsomething different.

(12:16):
Or is this a trend? Because now we all have access
to the Internet and a camera andsuddenly we're all coaches.
What? What is it?
How do you see this? So from my perspective, and I'll
just give you my perspective, itseems like it's a trend.
It's you know, there's, there's a lot of different organizations
that will they will give you an accreditation of some sort as a

(12:39):
coach. Does that mean you're a coach?
I mean, I've been coaching people my whole career, right?
I've never been called a coach. I have my C level clients that
they don't know how to network, right, but they need to.
They think networking is about meeting a bunch of people, but
that's not what it's about. They're an introvert or an
ambivert. So they need, they need that

(13:00):
fuel, right, because they're notgoing to fuel it themselves.
That's what I can help them withand they need to find those that
can help them to do that. So I think the answer to your
question is I have, and this is very recent.
I've met with people. They are, I don't struggling is
the wrong word, but they're at that point in their career where
it's like I got to this point. I've been unbelievably
successful. I never really had to think

(13:22):
about things. And now suddenly my company was
bought. Maybe, you know, people are
bringing in their own people. I've been heads down all my
career. I don't really know a lot of
people. It's a tough market out there
for that level people, right? And it's maybe I'll go become a
coach, right? And all they need to do is go
and roll in a course and suddenly they're a coach.
Yeah. I have.

(13:42):
I have spent my whole career having a job and coaching my
clients and such. I don't want to say on the side
because it's part of what I do. It's part of it's part and
parcel of being a good. It's I'm not a vendor.
I've never been a vendor. So that's part of being a friend
to my clients. I've.
Been in the same position. If you are somebody who is

(14:03):
experienced and or a leader typically or a leader because of
the experience, you often find yourself by default coaching and
the word that's often used in businesses mentor, advisor,
manager. Supervisor, That's kind of what
I've always. Whatever.
Yeah, but I've never called it something because I've never
kind of need to. This is actually a conversation

(14:25):
that Ashish and I had, because Ashish and I are very much alike
in this way. He was with McKinsey, right?
It's same type of thing. He's got so many relationships
with people. A couple of weeks ago when all
this tariff stuff happened, he calls me on Saturday at 5:00, 2O
clock in the afternoon and he says, do you have a moment?
I've been thinking about all this tariff stuff.

(14:45):
It's like billions, 100, what doyou say $150 billion heads went,
I think I might be getting that off.
But, and he would have computed it for small and mid sized
businesses and they don't have the knowledge, the tools, the
people to go up. Because let's say you're
somebody that is a small mid sized business, you're making
apparel, specialty apparel and you sell through Amazon.

(15:08):
Suddenly you're hit with a 25 to40% tariff and you have to go
negotiate that with, I mean, you're out of business with
Amazon. If you need to go and have that,
how do you do that? So as she says, I called 5 of my
best friends and you cannot makethis up.
The chief procurement, former chief procurement officer of
Kellogg's, Kelinova, Fidelity, Nationwide, Coke Industries, OK

(15:30):
JBS, which is a large, large meat company here in Colorado,
huge, one of the biggest. The former chief learning
officer Ernst and Young, who is a virtual AI expert named
Getting Tal Goldhammer. And the top pricing expert in
the country named Tim Smith at DePaul.
He got all of these people on a call on a Saturday and he said

(15:52):
we're going to start something called Tariff Response Team this
Friday. We're going to have our first
webinar. And all of these people are
giving their time. Now, this is not a knock on
other firms, but what other firms would do, the technical
firms, the accounting firms, right, the consulting firms is
they're going to have webinars around that stuff, around what's
going on currently in the macro.And those webinars are going to

(16:15):
be their practitioners whose services they're trying to sell.
They're not people like like those that we had on these calls
that have lived with the resultsof this, the decisions that
they've made through times like this.
Who would, who would you rather talk with and hear from?

(16:36):
We have relationships that we can, we can get to people.
But if you're going to, I don't want to get to people and waste
their time trying to sell them something.
And that's not who I am. That's not who I've ever been.
And I don't have to be anymore. So my career transition or
pivot, if you will, is taking those relationships.
And now I am. I have to feed my family, right?

(16:57):
But I don't want to, like, sell stuff.
There is a huge value proposition in what we do.
And let's share in that value proposition because what we do,
if we do it right, it's sustainable.
It takes some time to get to that sustainability.
Yeah. What makes you good at this job?
What makes me good at it? That's a great question.

(17:18):
I've never been accused of not being passionate.
I am, certainly, and I'm not holding them down.
But I'm a people person. I do truly care.
And I don't think that you can fake that, right?
But the other thing that makes me good at this, I believe, is
that it's not Kumbaya. It's not about me selling

(17:40):
projects. It's not what it's about.
It's about changing the world and having an impact.
Ashish likes to say, and I love this, this is a stretch goal,
but it's he wants to impact a billion lives.
And it's about impact. Yeah, right.
It's not about like, let's go sell a bunch of projects.
Like if, you know, if we impact that many lives, maybe we can

(18:01):
change a small part of the world.
And I believe that. And maybe that's another answer
to your question. Did he did he specify the
difference between direct directly or indirectly?
What do you mean? You can impact a a billion very
quickly. If you go and improve the
potential at a company like say Google by way of that, you're
impacting more than a billion. Well, I thank you.

(18:24):
There's, I thank you for that distinction and that is very
much appreciated because it's true this and I think this is a
movement. This could be a movement.
I haven't thought about it usingthat word.
So that's a little bit half baked, but it, it kind of is,
right? Because this is not the way that
most companies think. Most companies are not designed

(18:47):
for human flourishing. They're designed to get stuff
done. So when you think about Maslow's
hierarchy of needs, there's wants and there's needs, right?
People need money so that they can live.
What they want is engagement andcommunity.
What if we could give them both?Why does leadership struggle so

(19:08):
hard to understand the direct correlation between human growth
and the and their EBITDA? Why don't they, recognizing the
opportunity to help humans within their organization,
flourish and therefore satisfy what is important to them?
Because they don't have any mechanism through which to
measure it. That's one of the reasons.
That's where I struggle in a bigway for many, many years between

(19:31):
the balance of hard data, where organizations and I come from
one that had made decisions thatwere they quote a quote,
data-driven. We make decisions based on data
and I fully support that, but there has to be other elements
besides hard data. In there.
That is motivating and driving your decision making an
operating system. There's that is absolutely the

(19:52):
case because again, and that's even more important when you're
dealing with people. Are there any actual good
metrics for for the stuff that'sintangible?
Or what do you mean like engagement and your?
Description, your description ofleadership and companies that
organizations that struggle to invest or recognize the direct
correlation between human growthpotential and then the outcomes

(20:14):
for their to satisfy the needs of the business.
And because those things are hard to measure.
And so I'm curious, are there any good ways to measure that
stuff to satisfy the needs? So there are because certain
companies are more important than have certain other
companies and we can help to uncover that.
And there's actually some very interesting ways that we can
show that visually or we can show that for your company

(20:35):
engagement is not as big a problem.
So let's not go and look at that.
Let's not go and attack that. Let's look at community like
what, whatever it might be, thisis what we're going to try to
impact because we know based on our initial assessment, how you
score. So then we know how, where, what
kind of where we can get you to and we're going to continue to

(20:55):
assess it over time. But again, if you're not, if
you, if you are getting, if you have high engagement scores, why
are we going to go and, and try to make that?
But and I think that's what a lot, a lot of these things apply
across all of these different things rather than getting to
these individual things that we're trying to get attack.
You asked me before if I was a consultant, maybe better
advisor. I'm.

(21:16):
Going to ask you a question thatI've been asking for a while
now. Given your natural strengths and
your learned skills. Natural strengths and learned
skills, what job might you excelat but are also exceedingly
overqualified for? What are your guilty pleasures
that a job that you'd love to have, that you know you'd be
really good at, but you're also overqualified for?

(21:36):
Non for profit fundraising. Are you over qualified for that?
I don't think so. In some in For some roles I am,
for some roles I'm not. Yeah.
Listen, I'm going to push back. I don't think you're
overqualified for that job. You know, the other thing, if
you might find this interesting,I used to wait tables when I was
young. I sometimes, I sometimes say,

(21:56):
you know, if I could still wait tables, be around my family and
friends during the hours that I want to be and make the money
I'd like to which you actually can make not bad money as a
waiter. I would do that because it's fun
and I like making people happy. And you step up at a table and
you spend an hour, an hour and ahalf with a table and you have
the opportunity to make them happy.

(22:17):
If they're in a bad mood, you can change their day.
And you know what? If they're not going to be in a
good mood, that's fine. You move on to the next one
because they're going to be gonein an hour to an hour and a
half, right? Why didn't you give me that
answer? That's a good answer.
Because I hadn't thought about it as much, because you provided
me a little a little bit more tothink about.
And it's true. I've I talk about this is
something I've discussed. That's the perfect answer.

(22:39):
That's the perfect answer. Thank.
You I didn't mean to give the perfect answer.
It's exactly what I'm talking about.
You're going to, you should think about that for a while.
I'm not suggesting that you go do that.
The point of this is not to say I'm going to quit my job to go
do this thing that I'm far overqualified, exceedingly
overqualified to do. It's what is it about that role
that brings me joy, happiness, fulfillment, and I'm very good

(23:00):
at it because of all of these things.
Because of who you are. Strength.
That is actually part of what you asked me another question
earlier in this what makes me good at this current job?
I think it's this a lot of it's the same answer, right?
We are who we are. We can't escape from who we are,
right? So there's people that I know

(23:20):
and people say they do business with people they like.
I differ from that. You do people business with
people that you like and trust. There are people that I like
that I'll go have a beer with. I'll go see music with something
like that. I like them.
I trust them enough to do that. You know what I'm saying?
I probably am not going to do business with them.
Maybe some of them might do sometype of business, but not other.

(23:44):
That's something maybe you develop that as you get older,
more of that understanding of people, I'm not sure.
I agree, and most of the people by design that I'm speaking with
on this show are midway through a career at least, if not more
than halfway through. The point of that is because a
lot of it comes down background,experience, knowledge, journey,

(24:06):
but also we're talking about transitions and pivots here.
We're talking about what have I learned over these years and
that that is the point. Ultimately, I think whether
you're 25 or 65, being able to do a skills audit and listing
your inventory of skills as wellas strengths, interest, values,
purpose, intention, hopes and dreams.

(24:27):
Go find whatever that is and follow.
Follow your passion, your heart.That's why I do this.
I don't. I'll tell you it takes me about
15 hours to produce a single episode every week.
I do it because I love doing it and it doesn't feel like work.
We should love our work. We should.
And this goes back to like spiritual stuff, deep proper

(24:49):
type stuff. Work should be something that we
enjoy. It's a necessity unless you
independently. Welcome.
So is. So is eating somebody?
Somebody had to work for that, right?
Like correct. So you know.
Eating is is necessary, your body needs that that sustenance.
But there's ways to do it to make it pleasurable, and that's
why culture lifestyle often surrounds food.

(25:11):
It's actually interesting because it goes to like if you
create a great culture for people to and this, it's trite
because people say it all the time.
It's a question of how do you actually do it?
Yeah, of course we want to create a great culture.
Yeah, of course we do. And then you go and you look at
their work engagement scores andthey're, they're abysmal, but
they're talking a good game. So you, we, we have to stop

(25:34):
talking in a good game. And we have to give leaders the
tools to be successful, to be resilient, to find engagement at
work. All of the things that, that
we're doing in helping people, whether it's people don't sleep
well at work, right? Sleep, if you don't get good
sleep, it's almost akin to beingan alcoholic.

(25:55):
So we don't people let people come to work in that state.
Why do we let people come to work sleep deprived?
Why do we put them in the position to even?
To be sleep deprived, exactly. So that is, these are the
things, but we have to understand first what is going
on with our teams. So we understand where we need
to get them to. And that's where a lot of our

(26:17):
assessment, assessment kind of digs into.
So it's fun. Yeah, I love it.
It's building the cars. We're driving a toddler for a
start up mode and we're getting a lot of interest which is
awesome. Well, you're doing good work.
This has been an awesome conversation.
I appreciate you being here, giving so much of yourself and
time, and so thank you so much for being here.
It's a pleasure, my friend. I.

(26:38):
Want to thank Brian Babander forrecommending Aaron as today's
guest and to you, our listeners,for joining us on this episode
of Transferable Skills. Remember, the skills you've
gained can take you anywhere. Until next time, keep exploring
those transferable skills.

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Financial Consulting into Growth Advisor | Aaron Brooks [49]

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