The CFO’s Hiring Playbook with Pat Sullivan

Hello, social media followers, LinkedIn, Facebook, and everyone tuning into our show. Welcome to Beyond the Offer podcast. I’m your host, Bill Gates, joined by my co-host and friend, Rosanna Snediker. Thank you for tuning in as we tackle the latest trends and challenges in talent acquisition and human resources.

Today, we are sitting down with Pat Sullivan. Pat is the chief financial officer at A-rent Test Equipment, where he plays a key role in driving financial strategy, building scalable systems, and supporting growth initiatives across the business. With a background in private equity, backed environments, operational leadership, Pat brings a unique perspective on how finance and talent strategy intersect.

Especially when it comes to building teams that can scale with the business. Pat, thank you for joining us, and welcome to Beyond the Offer.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to, participate in my first podcast. I know they’re becoming much more [00:01:00] popular these days. So excited to break the seal.

We’ll be easy

on you. Hey, this is a pretty casual conversation here. But well, first off, tell us a little bit about yourself. You know, you’re in the Chicagoland area, kind of career background, et cetera.

Sure. Yeah. So classic accounting background. I started my career at PwC. Spent seven years there in a couple of different roles.

Both audit and more financial due diligence. And, then I got an opportunity to go to a startup in early stage, at a company called Home Chef, which is a meal kit company. And you know, when I joined, it was, a $10 million business, and by the time I left it was a billion-dollar business.

And so it was a pretty wild ride for five years that, you know, included a, obviously a ton of growth and, a ton ofteam build out. So, you know, as you can imagine, a ton of hiring with that. We ultimately exited the business to Kroger and, I’ve moved on to a couple different roles [00:02:00] since then, and right now I’m at Arent Test Equipment and, in a not quite so fast of a growing environment, but, a growing, business and team nonetheless.

We’ve, about doubled our size both on the revenue side. A little bit less than that on the people side in the last year. And so, yeah, excited to, to talk about hiring and growth and, how my role, overlaps with that.

Absolutely. And A-rent, I know what you guys do, in that respect, but help, our listeners, kind of give them a little flavor of what…

It’s a very unique, unique business. But can you give me a little bit of an overview? Sure … In terms of A-rent and what they, what they do?

Yeah. So it’s, a bit of a mouthful, but we rent electrical testing equipment. And so our equipment is used to test the infrastructure of everything involved with the power grid, data centers, and renewable power generation.

So, we have a pretty wide array of equipment [00:03:00] that is, rented out across the US and even up into to Canada and down to the Caribbean. And anyone who’s building a new substation or building a new data center or, you know, working on repair and maintenance of those same, facilities and infrastructure may need to use, our equipment to do that testing.

And so, we’re here to kind of support all of our customers on a nationwide basis with the appropriate equipment to, to do their testing.

I bet your business is probably booming these days given the, the fact of,with all of the weather, incidents that have happened across the Midwest, I think there’s just been a huge hike.

Have you guys seen much of an impact on more rentals, due to some of the weather, tornadoes and some of the catastrophic… Maybe that’s just the Midwest, speaking, but I know a lot of places have been affected by, kind of the late winter, early spring.

Yeah. So we’ve been seeing a ton of [00:04:00] kind of tailwinds in our market.

It’s more to do with kind of the more macro trends and less about the acute weather events. And so, you know, all of the electrification of everything, is something that we most definitely benefit from. And you know, we have a aging power grid infrastructure in the US. There’s, roughly 40 million transformers that make up our power grid, and the average age is roughly 40 years.

And so we, we have this kind of aging infrastructure. We have additional demand on the power grid. And then, you know, with all of the, data centers being built up, that just all leads to additional need to do critical testing and additional need for, rentals. So less on, the tornado side but more about just some more macro tailwinds.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, you got quite a variety coming from the home chef with the, packed, meal kits and [00:05:00] whatnot to, testing equipment. So definitely excited to get you on. Well, one of the first questions I wanted to ask you about, you’ve definitely operated in a lot of high growth environments, which you mentioned.

How do you think about hiring differ- differently when a company is scaling versus stabilizing?

Yeah, so.The biggest thing that I think about when I’m hiring into, you know, a growing organization is being forward-thinking. You’re not just hiring for the role that exists today.

You need to hire someone who, you know, is able to fill the role today and 12 months from now and 24 months from now. And so, you know, what I’ve experienced that meaning is you need someone who is ready to deal with ambiguity, someone who’s ready to build, something that wasn’t there before, and someone who can operate without a fully developed playbook.

Right. So [00:06:00] adaptability, learning agility, and the ability to take ownership are all super high on my priority list and something that I’m trying to suss out in the interview process. one area where I’ve had a little bit of success with this is trying to find those early career folks who may not check every box on the job description, but do show traits that, you know, suggest that they can grow into a bigger role.

So again, ownership, someone who appears to have been a rising star in their prior roles. Those can be, you know, really effective at translating to being able to adapt to a new role or a new process and, helping build kind of the future state of things. I think what is really important to go along with that is my ability to coach and mentor along the way, right?

Because if I’m hiring someone [00:07:00] who’s a little bit less experienced in that area or that role, if I just kind of leave them and let them do their own thing, they may not pick up on that as quickly. It may not come as naturally. But, I enjoy the coaching and mentoring part of, being a leader and leading a finance org.

So, that’s been something that’s worked really well for me.

Yeah. I love that you give people the opportunity to do that, ’cause so many managers do not. How long do you think it typically takes, someone who doesn’t have the experience to get up to speed? And, I know it depends on the role, but when you do take a chance on someone not having, you know, the 10 things you’re looking for, is that usually, like, a three to six-month ramp-up period, or what are you kind of hoping for when you do hire or take a chance on someone?

Yeah. So I mean, when I’ve been with growing organizations, that lead time needs to be pretty accelerated. Yeah … you know, I’m looking for someone who I think can come [00:08:00] up the curve pretty quickly.

Yeah.

And so, you know, in terms of training for the role that exists on day one, my hope is that within the first 90 days they’re fully functioning within that role, and then they’re able to, start taking that next step of, you know, building basically.

And so, again, that’s kind of what I’m looking for is someone who came from a fast-paced, ever-changing environment. You know, sometimes it might be, a person who just was able to jump around to a bunch of different teams and departments within their prior organization, or someone who got, multiple promotions, you know, in a pretty accelerated timeframe, or maybe it’s someone who was more in the professional services where they were, doing a lot of different projects, getting exposure to a lot of different things.

It can definitely vary, but, you know, ultimately I want them to come up the curve quickly and be able to start contributing in a meaningful [00:09:00] way in a relatively fast way.

Very fast. Yeah. So question for you. CFOs and HRs, they tend to… or sometimes they can butt heads because, you know, one is responsible for capital, the other is responsible for the people.

How have you found to be most effective way to interact with HR leaders in your role as CFO in finance?

Yeah. So when I think about working with my HR partners, the important characteristics that I always go back to are, transparency, clarity in communication, and a clear understanding of where we’re trying to go.

Because, you know, capital and people are not two separate things. People are oftentimes, and in my experience, in growing businesses, the single largest discretionary investment that, the business is going to make, during this growth period, right?

And so, Talent quality is one [00:10:00] of the biggest drivers of whether we can continue to put our foot on the gas and accelerate growth or whether, you know, the operations are gonna break down and we need to slow down and let the talent, catch up. So, I don’t think of HR as a cost control function.

And you know, I don’t want them to view me as someone who just blesses additional head count, right? I think we need to have clear vision and clear guardrails. I need to be transparent about what is important to me, what the business can afford, and, you know, what the head count decisions are gonna be based off of.

And then I want HR to bring a perspective to the table and not just, be a mouthpiece for whichever part of the organization is trying to add additional head count. I want them to, be thinking critically about whether this new role is a [00:11:00] fit within the strategy of the organization. And whether or not the business can, hire, train, and deploy a resource, you know, within that strategy basically.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it sounds easier said than done. I’m sure you’ve run into some circumstances along the way to where some HR folks have had a feeling about needing head count within one department and then, you may be feeling a little bit different on that end. So it’s definitely easier said than done.

But, which is a probably a good transitionary question, you know, and at a leadership level, what would you say is kind of the cost of a bad hire? You know, not necessarily just financially, but culturally, operationally. I know, even at Home Chef for example, you worked with a company that scaled very quickly of course.

But, I think we’ve all had some unfortunate hires, even us self-admittedly, and we’re in the recruiting space. [00:12:00]

Yeah. Beyond just the financial cost, a bad hire can create organizational drag. And what I mean by that is, you know, as a leader when there’s, someone in the seat who shouldn’t be there,

the cost is really the time and effort and energy spent onredirecting resources to other people or, clarifying the expectations with that person, right? So, you know, again, coaching is a core part of the role, but when you have to kind of rinse and repeat the same talking points and conversation and feedback points over and over again, it can really pull away from, you know, making step change progress.

And it becomes a distraction, right? Which is just a significant opportunity cost in my mind. And so, you know, there’s that drag, and then there’s also [00:13:00] this credibility dynamic within the organization. And what I mean by that is, if we have two people and one’s a really high performer and one’s a low performer and we treat them exactly the same, ultimately that high performer is gonna feel like their effort and output is being discounted in some way.

And so, in order for me to maintain the highest, performing team that I can, I need to maintain the credibility with my high performers and make sure that I’m driving accountability, with my poor performers. And obviously, that takes time and energy. And so, the most important thing when a bad hire is made is to acknowledge that, something needs to change and, whether that’s coaching the person along and getting them up to the point that they need to be at or, acknowledging that it’s not [00:14:00] the right fit and making a change, I think that’s important in maintaining that kind of organizational credibility and also minimizing that drag that I mentioned.

How often do you think it takes to recognize if the hire’s gonna work out or not typically?

You know, I’ve been surprised before, but I also think that, when I’ve joined organizations and there’s an existing team in place, I can tell pretty quickly, within the first 60 days. Yeah.

If there’s certain changes that need to be made. And then I think on the hiring front, I think within that first 90 days, you have a pretty good sense of, good, better, best in, in terms of what type of hire you made and, I think within six months for sure is kind of the honeymoon period is over.

And if someone is gonna sink or swim, you know, that can be made. Yeah, for sure. [00:15:00]

So how do you ensure alignment between the business strategy and the hiring strategy? And where do you really feel like companies typically break down

there? Yeah. So what I focus on as, you know, CFO is trying to make sure that we’ve built, a KPI and metric-led process where, you know, whether we’re tracking, a cost per head or a cost per process or an activities per hour that there’s the right KPI in place to help inform hiring decisions and so that it’s not just, “Hey, you know, my team feels busy,” or, “I think we probably need another person.”

We can point collectively, as a leadership team to a certain metric and say, “Hey, in order to accomplish [00:16:00] X, Y, or Z on our growth plan, this metric is gonna be impacted by this, and so therefore we think that we need to make that additional hire before things get out of whack.” Alternatively, if we see that things do get out of whack, we can reference that data point or series of data points to make a data-driven decision as opposed to, you know, these subjective conversations where someone feels this way or, feels that way.

But maybe it’s that, you know, what the metrics tell us is maybe they s- have a couple or one underperforming resource and,that’s the thing that maybe needs to be addressed in tandem with the hiring decision, right? And, you know, ’cause I’m all about adding fuel to a fire. But if there’s not, a solid [00:17:00] foundation there, the last thing I wanna do is just kinda continue to throw resources, at it.

At the

problem. Yeah. Right. Yeah, which is always interesting too. It’s likehow do you find the balance between, is somebody stretched too thin versus just giving them another headcount? Right? And, which leads me a bit to that next question, which is how do you evaluate whether a team is built to scale versus just built for the current moment?

I mean, I know Ro and I deal with this a decent amount when we’re working with particular clients on, “Hey, we need to hire a director of FP&A,” or, “We need to hire a, you know, director of HR, and we’re gonna hire 30, 40 or so people in the next period of time.” How do you make sure or ensure you’re hiring, to really get up to scale versus having the company outgrow that potential individual you may hire?

Sure. Yeah. So, I think the three ways that come to mind, in terms of [00:18:00] assessing the scalability of something are like is the department being run because of a single person’s, or a team’s heroic effort, right? Are they having to like constantly go above and beyond in order to make today’s process, work?

You know, do they have a ton of tribal knowledge that if they were to leave, we would have a huge gap in? And I think what that feeds is, helps us look at management depth to say is there a good number two within this organization? Or, you know, when this person’s gone, do things just bottleneck?

And then again, I go back to like the systems and data. We don’t need to be perfect but, we should have some level of systems-based processing so that it’s not just this, so that labor isn’t this variable [00:19:00] cost that, you know, as we add $1 of revenue, we need to add $1 of, headcount costs, to it.

Obviously we wanna experience some economies of scale over time, and I think that having, that always being looking at and reflecting on our systems and data is an important way to, unlock some of that scalability and make sure that, we are building

meaningful depth with additional hires.

Yeah. I like that. Yeah. No, I like that a lot. Good three-prong approach.

Yeah. We’ve talked a lot about kinda teams and process. Let’s talk more kind of specifically about just hiring managers.

What do the best hiring managers do differently from average ones, and how much does that impact recruiting outcomes?

Yeah. And I would couch this with I don’t know that I’m the best assessor of the quality of a hiring manager, but, you know, a couple things that I’ve seen, in people who I admire from their ability to hire is, they [00:20:00] are pretty clear about what they’re trying to solve for, and that they’re not just, looking for a off the shelf job description, that they can, you know, give to the HR hiring manager or the recruiter and have them just funnel a ton of candidates.

They’re really clear on what do they want out of this person? How do I articulate what that either skill set or need to fill is? And then, you know, the other thing is moving with a sense of urgency. Strong candidates have options. And I think being ready to identify the fit between a candidate and the role, and being able to pursue someone quickly and efficiently is an important, part of the hiring process.

You guys probably see that all the time where, clients will hem and haw and, [00:21:00] you notice that, hey, this is the candidate based on everything you’ve told me, they fit it to a T, but that indecisiveness can really, in my opinion, kind of impact the speed with which you’re able to fill a role with a really good person.

For sure. Yeah, I always, I think we definitely, see that regularly. I think the most tricky thing is when you’re starting off and you’ve got one candidate, and there’s no issues with them at all. They really like the person. They can’t find one thing, but they want to see comparison candidates because, oh, how could the first person be the best one?

And I always use the housing analogy. It’s like, if you found the house at the right price that has everything you want in it, why wouldn’t you buy the house? Why wouldn’t you make the hire, right? I think there always could be a better place potentially out there, right? And I do think the ones, the hiring managers that can be a bit more decisive, tend to be better hiring managers.

Or maybe they’re the [00:22:00] least picky, and they have the most issues on the team. So there are, I do think there’s a balance between just probably pulling the trigger right away, versus, you know, kind of waiting for that next person. But if we do find somebody right out of the gate and they are great and they can’t find any issues with them, we always try to, you know, encourage a hire or, right?

‘Cause you never wanna be sitting on the sidelines either, and you gotta streamline that interview process accordingly so that person who you couldn’t find anything wrong with doesn’t wait two to three weeks before they hear anything.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you certainly don’t wanna shoot, point then aim, right?

But, if you find someone who fits a lot of the categories that, that you’re trying to solve for, I don’t see any issue with, hiring the one person, that you get presented with.

For sure, yeah. Well, another question, in regard to evaluating leadership talent, how would you personally assess leadership talent beyond the resume?

Like, what [00:23:00] signals matter to you most? And I’m not just talking about your folks on your team, but maybe when you guys are hiring for a COO or somebody else maybe at your level, outside of just looking at their resume, what do you typically do or what’s kinda your, strategy to dive into things that are not maybe necessarily on theresume to draw if they’re gonna be the right fit for your organization and leadership team?

Yeah. So  I think what I oftentimes look for is, or am trying to solve for when I’m interviewing someone is trying to understand how someone thinks. Listening to them describe past projects or roles, trying to listen for how self-aware they are. So, obviously the experience that’s reflected on the resume matters, but I think that two people with similar past experiences

can present, vastly different, [00:24:00] ways when you get them into, assessing their level of judgment, ownership, leadership potential. And there’s times when someone can look stronger on paper, but then you have both conversations, and you actually think that the less experienced person is the right person for the role.

And you know, I think, a big measure for me is, how they’re able to explain situations clearly, point to measurable accomplishments, and identify, limitations in their past. So, you know, if you’re able to take a complex situation and break it down in a very short period of time and explain, what mattered, what trade-offs you faced, how they made decisions, that gives me confidence in your ability to carry that characteristic to new problems that you might face, when you’re a leader or a [00:25:00] COO of

within our organization, right? And so, to me, that storytelling capability goes a long way. And then the other thing is, like, being part of growth organizations, I like builders. I like people that are not only able to bring intensity and, effort, but they can build strong teams, that are,durable and focused on, effective, like, processes and scalable processes and systems extend beyond just their self.

I think that can, again, create scalability and, is a really strong trait of someone who’s gonna add a ton of value beyond just their kind of, they’re able to run a lap the fastest. So that and [00:26:00] then, the self-awareness piece is definitely important. I think people who are able to, be reflective and understand that they’re not perfect, can help, bring some humility to the equation as well, which I think is importantin leadership.

I think it’s, yeah, it’s important at any hire. Self-awareness is always something I think that hiring managers and clients we’ve worked with is just they value so high. But there’s varying degrees of self-awareness too, you know? And, I do think if, you can reflect and realize you’re not exactly perfect and you’ve made mistakes, which you in- indicated in your answer is, you know, a pretty good sign of self-awareness to take whatever you had learned and learn from it and, take it to the next problem that you’re looking to solve.

Well,

and that’s, the important piece in my mind is the ability like, you, you can’t learn from a mistake and properly improve on it if you don’t first acknowledge that a mistake was made. Yeah. And so if [00:27:00] you’re constantly trying to kind of, tune out or overlook areas where, you know, myself or others could have done something differently or improved, I’m not gonna do it any differently or improve on the way I did it, the next time I’m presented with something like that.

Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah, acknowledgement. Yep. So we’ve seen just a lot change in the recruiting market over the past 5 to 10 years. What’s something that you’ve changed your mind on when it comes to hiring over the past 5 to 10 years?

Yeah. So I think one thing that, you know, when I joined, my first non-professional services role at Home Chef that I overvalued was industry experience. I think that has, shifted. I think there’s certain roles that, you know, industry experience is still critically important if the role is super technical.

If I’m hiring for a sales role and I expect them to bring customer [00:28:00] relationships to the table or, if it’s a, there’s some regulatory considerations like food safety. But, you know, I’ve also been part of hiring processes where we over-indexed on industry experience, because, you know- Someone might know the industry really well, but they may not be able to operate effectively in a different version of the industry or, you know, at a company that is at a completely different scale where maybe they’re used to a more mature environment where someone is used to operating with a very clear playbook and, you know, they work for the market leader of an industry, but they’re not able to flex down to a company where processes are more ambiguous, excuse me, and there’s, you know, not nearly as much structure.

And, you know, the other thing is being able to make decisions quickly. Being part of a high growth environment, [00:29:00] we have to make a lot of decisions very quickly, and someone might have a ton of industry experience, but they’re used to, you know, getting feedback from everyone across the organization before they have to make that decision, almost to the point where they absolve their, themselves of the responsibility of making that decision.

And so, that’s definitely something where I’ve found that if you can find someone who’s adaptable, agile, a next level thinker, you can generally find someone that the industry doesn’t necessarily matter as much. Those qualities are something that, especially in a high growth business and environment, I would rather place a bet on someone who doesn’t have, you know, a day of, testing equipment experience but has all those other traits because I know I can teach them this industry within a relatively short period of time and then extract more value [00:30:00] from those other qualities that, don’t require that industry experience.

Absolutely. Yeah, no, those are all good points too. And, like, even back to your Home Chef example, Pat, it’s interesting ’cause, like, I don’t know how long if, and if you were even… how long were you a part of necessarily the integration with Kroger, for example, but a behemoth like a Kroger or a Walmart or a Tyson Foods, right, that have been around for years and Home Chef’s this new meal kit company that’s in building growth mode.

Hey, they have industry experience to a certain extent, but will they be able to build because they’re so used to the playbook of doing whatever it is and operating in the massive machine of a place like that? So. Yeah.

That was… I mean, that’s a great example of clashing of cultures, they had some really smart people that worked there that had a career’s worth of grocery experience.

We were doing something very different than that. Yeah. And, you know, the way that we made decisions was different. The [00:31:00] timeframes… You know, I mean, and look, when you’re the size of Kroger, you’re trying to protect what exists, right? Yeah. Whereas our orientation was always we want to disrupt what exists.

Yeah. And so they’re thinking in terms of, you know, three, five years down the road. We’re thinking about, “Hey, how are we gonna, you know- Three to five years … disrupt this next thing in the next six months?” You know? Oh, yeah. And so, it is really just reflects how different cultures require different skill sets.

And, do I think if I hired a bunch of Kroger finance people onto my team, like we would’ve been more successful? I don’t, I don’t think so. I think what I needed in that moment was, a different set of skills in order to enable and unlock what we were doing at Home Chef.

Yeah. Yeah, we usually see people, like size of company matter more than industry.

For sure. Yeah, I think that’s, a way more effective way [00:32:00] to, kind of, I guess, disqualify candidates.

For sure. But you lived- Yeah … you lived and you learned here. Yeah. So well, last question here. From where you sit, like what would you say is the biggest inefficiency in today’s hiring market, and who’s responsible for fixing it?

Yeah. So I feel a little bit out over my skis when we talk about like kind of the market in general. Yeah. One of, one of the things that resonated with me as I thought about this question, that we’ve experienced here at A-rent, has to do with the market broadly.

Which, I think is that it’s a pretty difficult labor market generally right now for job seekers. And I think one of the things, one of the, outcomes of that is that some candidates are applying to, you know, a high number of roles in order to [00:33:00] get noticed. And so, as an employer, I think what that, what we’ve seen is that we can get some really attractive candidates that apply for some of our roles.

People with great experience, strong credentials. In some cases, like we get overqualified people, over-degreed people, and it’s- Really, you know, on the surface that’s awesome, right? Like, hey, I can get this, person with an engineering degree into this entry-level role. Where I think we have to be…

What we’ve experienced and we’ve learned is whether that extra experience actually fits, you know, the role, the level, the compensation, day-to-day workload that, we have to offer and fits within that person’s longer term aspirations. So, you know, if someone’s significantly overqualified, they may just be trying [00:34:00] to, you know, get a paycheck now, right?

Where they either, accept an offer and then before they even start, they say, “Hey, I’m no longer interested. I got this other offer,” right? Which is an indication that, you know, they were, following multiple different tracks, and they weren’t gonna let this pass up because they need the job. But, they accepted this other role that more fully utilizes their experience or degree or whatever it is.

I think even worse than that is when we hire someone, they join, we train them for 90 days, and then they accept a role. Which indicates that, you know, not only were they not fully bought into the role and excited about the role, but like they continued to interview even after they started. Which just more fully highlights the issue to me, which is there’s a disconnect between what we’re looking [00:35:00] for and what we need done, and what that person’s skills and interests and goals professionally were.

And so, we’ve lost people in both of those ways here. And what that’s done is led us to be really focused on, okay, what are the skills that we need? And let’s, you know, be really careful before we start advancing someone who seems like they’re too good to be true maybe from an experience standpoint.

Or someone that, says, “Oh, I’m willing to drive 90 minutes, for this role.” It’s like, I get it. You need a job, but there’s no way that that’s sustainable. And so, that’s one of the maybe inefficiencies is the right word that we’ve experienced where we’re getting overqualified candidates because maybe the labor market is a little bit more difficult right now.

Yeah.

Yeah. We see… I mean, we see that definitely all the time. There’s no question about it. And yeah, [00:36:00] I mean, things that you really can’t change about a particular job, whether it’s a commute or compensation, or it’s

Yeah, that’s a good one. The comp people are willing, “Oh, I was making this

and now I’m willing to take this,” and you know. But

then another job- Yeah … let’s say the market changes and then, you know, they get back another job that’s 25% more than whatever it was they were making.Then you’re thinking back on it like, “Wow, yes I may have got that person at a discount but how could I not think that they may have left me if the labor market improved or something like that?”

Right? So.

Yeah. And as the CFO that’s when, someone turns around to me after 90 days and says, “Hey, I need to give this person a meaningful material raise.” And it’s like well, wait a second, you know, what has changed since that 90 days ago when we presented this person the offer?

And

you know, again those feel like those conversations that don’t have a lot of, clarity maybe in them and that’s where, I [00:37:00] think sometimes that internal conflict can come from.

For sure. Absolutely. No, good answers. Well now we’d like to wrap up with, really our unfiltered, question segment where we ask a little less, formalized questions to you.

But, Pat I know you’re a golfer. One of your hobbies is certainly to golf. What golf course or what’s one of your favorite golf courses that you’ve played either in and around Chicago or somewhere across the globe?

Yeah. That’s a good question. I like to try and golf.

Not, not very good at it. But it’s certainly a fun way to kill an afternoon. So, the place that I would point to is, a club called Lost Dunes in Southwest Michigan. I have a couple close friends that, have connections there and so I’ve gotten to play it a number of times.

It’s a really fun golf course, great facilities, caddies are super helpful. And you know, the course kinda makes you think. There’s a lot [00:38:00] of undulating greens but if you play it, following the strategy that your caddy, tells you, you can be successful there. And I would say more than anything it’s just, the fact that we started playing that course, in my early 30s before, you know, we were of the age where we were getting a bunch of private club invites.

Yeah. And so it was kinda one of those places that I was looking around and saying- Man, I probably shouldn’t be golfing here and, was still, playing, golf with, a pretty good group of guys. And so yeah, that, that place is special. It’ll always be special. And

Love it

it’ll be kind of hard to recreate that, I’m not sure I belong here mindset- Love it … that I attribute to that place.

I love that. Last question for you. I’m sure you dreamed of being a CFO as a kid- … but if you could pick a completely different career tomorrow, what would you do, and why?

Yeah. So I actually picked being, an [00:39:00] accountant, like, when I was in 11th grade or something like that. My school offered an accounting course, and they said you make a bunch of money being- And so, that’s why I picked it. But, my brother chose the exact opposite path. We, went on a bunch of outdoorsy vacations when we were growing up, went and visited a bunch of national parks, did a ton of hiking trips.

And so he, you know, kind of followed his heart and went into the forest service as a forester.So he gets to work out- outdoors all the time. And I always thought that, if I could go back and do it again, that I might choose that, if not accounting. Now I do tease him because as he’s gotten more senior with the forest service and worked his way up, he now spends more and more time behind a desk and not, you know, outdoors and things like that.

But I think-

Right …

yeah, so everything has its trade-offs. But if I could work outdoors and, have an alternate career path, that’d probably be [00:40:00] it.

So every job eventually becomes somewhat of a desk job.

I wish that weren’t true, and I still hope it’s not. But yeah, it does feel like sometimes being the boss means being available in an office.

Yeah. That’s cool though that he did that. Well, we really appreciate you coming on, but that is all the time we have for today. So thank you for tuning into our episode. Today, we sat down with Pat Sullivan, CFO at A-rent. We covered everything from hiring strategies, shifting in high-growth versus stable environments, to how CFO and HR leaders can better align, and the real cost of getting leadership hires wrong.

We’ll be back again next month with a new special guest. Quick reminder again of how you can support Beyond the Offer podcast. You can find all of our content on our Hirewell social media platforms, which you can access through hirewell.com. Take care, everyone, and thanks for tuning in. See you next month.