Episode 121:

Human Capital: 5 Guiding Career Principles

with special guest Mark Halloran

Keith Matthews: Welcome to the Empowered Investor Podcast, brought to you by the advisory team at Tulett Matthews and Associates. Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the number of voices telling you how to plan or invest for your future? We’re here to help you cut through the noise, bringing clarity to your investment decisions and helping you build lasting financial peace of mind. Learn more and subscribe today at tma-invest.com.

Welcome to the Empowered Investor. My name is Keith Matthews, and today I’m joined by our special guest, Mark Halloran. I’m super excited about today’s episode. I’ve known Mark for close to 40 years now, and he is the founder of Career Lion and is a leading expert in professional development and career management strategies. In my conversations with Mark in preparation for this podcast, I asked him, look, we should probably do two shows, two episodes, one for sort of the younger generation and one for later stage generation. Mark said, no, I’ve got a framework that works across age groups. Regardless of whether you’re at the start of your career, mid career, or near the later stages of your career, it’s essentially set on five guiding principles that will help you navigate, help you make better decisions, help you manage your career. Why are we having a show on career management on a wealth management or an investment show? We’re doing so because it’s critical. Human capital or managing your human capital is essential in your financial journey. If you learn how to manage it, learn how to grow it, it increases the odds of a successful financial outcome. So, with that in mind, we wanted to put together a show specific on this. Mark brings a ton of passion, and you’ll notice that all the way through today’s show, his insights will offer a clear roadmap for navigating your career with intention and with confidence. With that, we hope you enjoy today’s episode of the Empowered Investor, and we look forward to speaking with you soon.

Mark, welcome to the Empowered Investor podcast.

Mark Halloran: Thank you, Keith.

Keith Matthews: It’s amazing to have you here for our listeners. Mark has driven in from Ottawa in our Montreal offices right now, and it goes back in time, but Mark was the leader of Cobblestone, which was an organization that helped us hire four really, really important people in our team. So, Mark, welcome again. And why don’t we start by you telling us a little bit about your journey. How did you end up getting into the recruiting business? How did you end up getting into sort of career management? Because what we’re going to talk about today is phenomenal for all ages.

Mark Halloran: Yeah, I appreciate that question, Keith. How did it begin, I always had a big network. Used to get calls from recruiters when I was in Toronto working for a large company as a sales executive. Just always had a big network base. And then I got called from recruiters asking if I know someone who could fill a role here or fill a role there. And I was successful at putting people into the recruiter’s hands and they would get a job. And I was like, wow, this is kind of fun. If I could just connect people to roles and make a living out of this, that would be outstanding. So that’s what I did. And, you know, I’m fortunate. I’ve interviewed close to 5,000 people in my career at varying levels of organizations in various industries. Anything from back in the day, here in the early 2000s in Montreal, actually working in fiber optics and photonics to pharmaceutical to biotech, and now, you know, working with clients in the government and all over the place. Was very fortunate to have really good mentors in my life and good network of people that I could rely upon, and that’s what got me into recruiting.

Keith Matthews: And you worked for a large firm as a recruiter and then you decided to go out on your own and start your own recruiting and consulting business?

Mark Halloran: I did, yeah. Seeing things in the market that I thought were a little kooky about recruiting, I was fortunate. Like I said, I started my career as a sales guy, nothing related to recruiting in Toronto in the 90s. Got into working with a large firm that specialized in contract engineers. They were called Ian Martin, very large firm. And I was with their executive search branch. And so, I jumped in with these guys, learned really on the fly. Not a lot of experience in hr. In fact, none. And there you are with a job description in your hand and you’re having to interview John or Tanya about their fit for a role that you really don’t know a lot about. I saw some really crazy things. How am I supposed to know what someone is capable of in an interview when I haven’t even really met extensively with the company that was hiring. This showed me then how important it was as an individual trying to get a job to be able to communicate what they did well, to steer a recruiter in the direction that they needed to be steered in order for that person to have an opportunity to go out, if that makes sense, on a job interview. So, the experience I gained working with that large company for three years, and then I was recruited by a really neat boutique executive search firm to come back to Montreal at very senior levels, I was very fortunate to sit in interviews for CEOs, CFOs. And I learned then that, you know, whether you’re interviewing for a CEO or CFO or an administrative assistant within an organization, it’s all difficult. It’s tough. It’s tough for the person that is being interviewed to articulate in a cogent way what they do, how they do it, how do they differentiate themselves from others? And so, it was by virtue of me doing a lot of mandates and interviewing a lot of people that we created Career lion, which is a business that came out of Cobblestone as a recruiting firm with a goal to try to help those people that really couldn’t communicate well get their message across. I found that a lot of people that were getting jobs were able to get the job because they marketed better. And some of the really good candidates just didn’t get the role because they just didn’t interview well or they couldn’t come across with any level of sophistication. And that was the genesis behind building Career lion, was helping those individuals.

Keith Matthews: Well, you’ve had an amazing career, and I will say, you know, to go out on your own and start your own business, you know, typically the type of person that’s going to do that has a strong conviction, see something where they can improve the industry that they’re in. And you did that, you did that at a young age, and that’s not an easy thing to do. So kudos to you for that.

Mark Halloran: Appreciate that. Yeah.

Keith Matthews: So we’re going to focus today’s show on the framework that we discussed. And if we go back in time, Mark, I had asked you, look, I’d like to do two podcasts, one for individuals between the age of maybe 25 and 35. They’re starting, they’re trying to figure out their career. The career is the financial motor which will allow them to sort of gain the financial independence. And one would be for the older group, maybe mid career or later career. And you said, you know, Keith, I don’t think it needs to be that way. I think we could do one show. Because what I really want to talk about is a framework of five key components. And if these are components that are principles more than anything else and that should be used by anybody, regardless of if they’re starting their career, all the way to late-stage career. I thought it was brilliant and we’re going to focus on that. But just to highlight the five areas, the first one was continual development. The second one was tend to your career or take stock as to where you’re at. The third is manage up. The fourth was networking, and the fifth was gratitude. So I’d like to spend, if we could mark, five minutes on each of these areas. Get your thoughts, why you feel it’s a principle and what individuals need to do to really accelerate and to master that area.

Mark Halloran: Perfect. No, that’s good.

Keith Matthews: So, let’s start with continual development, continual learning. What’s your take on that?

Mark Halloran: It’s huge. Continual learning provides, in my view, the foundation for confidence. Confidence is what carries you in your career and it affords, affords you the ability to do the things that we talked about. The number two, the number three, the number four, the number five. A lot of that comes from confidence. Confidence comes from knowing things. I didn’t just open my business. I had to learn from some really smart people. While I was learning from those really smart people, when I worked at the large organization that I mentioned earlier, they had training and development that would go up on the wall. Who wants to take this course or this course? Professional selling skills? This course, it was free to those people that had earned their way into being successful in the career that they were in. So, for me, particularly as a sales guy, every course that came up, I took it. I put my hand up. I wanted to improve, I knew I needed to improve. It’s no different than playing a sport. It’s all about getting to the next level. Well, maybe if I’m playing soccer, I got to do better touches, or rugby, I got to be this or that or the other. The development that I did personally, and that’s all I have the right to speak about, was continued professional development. So, seeking out opportunities in your existing workplace to get better. Beyond that, investing in myself to take additional courses. Like for example, I took a Dale Carnegie course way back in the day, 12-week course on effective leadership and communication. That one course set me on a trajectory that I was not on before. It gave me more confidence to speak to a crowd, to individuals, to get a message across. So, all of those levels of improvement of courses, you know, you work in the wealth management industry, you’ve got, you’ve got people that work for you right now that are taking additional courses constantly. So those individuals are doing that so that they can go to the market with an expertise. So, I didn’t just open my business. I had an expertise that was garnered in taking courses and in being able to willingly learn and take constructive criticism along the way, ask for that criticism so that I could continue to develop so that the continued development cannot be understated. Take additional courses that support where you want to go in your life because that will provide you with confidence for the next step.

Keith Matthews: So obviously those are additional professional courses. How do you identify those courses within your industry? How do you do that? What advice do you have for our listeners in terms of what courses they should take? Where do you find a list of courses?

Mark Halloran: Yeah, it’s a lot easier today to find the courses than it was back when I was looking for courses. But, you know, whether you’re on Google or Whether you’re using ChatGPT, what course might enhance my career trajectory to do this? It’ll produce a whole bunch of different courses for you. A key element to that.

Keith Matthews: Hang on, that’s interesting. What you’re saying is actually go to chat and type in what courses I should take. I currently do this. I would like to go here. What courses should I take? That’s interesting.

Mark Halloran: Well, my 14-year-old, it’s classic now he’s doing study notes, you know, I need to study for this type of exam, and these are sort of the course load and it’ll produce a study guide for him. It’s not, it’s not dissimilar today. Whereupon, you know, you go to ChatGPT to ask it some questions. But if you’re in an industry like finance, keep it in your world. If I’m someone who’s getting a finance designation or degree coming out of university, I might want to speak with Keith Matthews or I might want to speak with someone who works for your firm. So, I would reach out to that individual via LinkedIn. I would look at LinkedIn, and I would say, oh, Keith’s connected to my dad, who’s connected to this guy, I’m going to reach out to that person and maybe I can get five minutes with Keith. And then I would say to Keith, this is really where I’d like to go. What courses would you recommend that I take? Go to people that are already in the space that you’re looking at going into to find out more about courses you could take, to find out about the pros and the cons, about the industry. Take the initiative to do that and you will already differentiate yourself from so many others that you’re competing with for a role.

Keith Matthews: Fair enough. I often see young graduates reaching out to myself and they ask those questions. So, I totally get it. So, what you’re saying essentially is look to your HR department, look to your colleagues, look to mentors, look to Individuals that are ahead of you and find out what, what they took and then go take those courses and pursue that.

Mark Halloran: Yeah. And you know, there’s an old saying, fake it till you make it. Oftentimes that saying can get in the way of the continued development. Because what you want to also do is recognize in the role that you’re in. If there’s a deficiency and you feel the deficiency, you go to bed at night and you’re worried about it. Oh my God, I’m just really not good at this. I’m not good at this. Find a course that can support that. Maybe it’s something that you would like to do if you were better at it. So, by virtue of you taking more courses related to the deficiency, one of two things will happen. It will no longer be a deficiency because it’s something you like and you’re passionate about and you learn from it. Or it could just tell you, I really don’t like this. So, I’m going to go in a different direction in my career. It’s not that I’m deficient in it, I just don’t like doing it anymore. That’s the continued learning. You’re learning about you and what you do well and what you don’t do well, you’re trying to push through that. But it also will tell you along the way of which direction you should go in.

Keith Matthews: Fair enough. Is there any advice you would give somebody in the earlier stages versus later stages of their career with regards to continual learning? What are the differences depending on your career stage?

Mark Halloran: Experience, life experience, like talk with lots of people, but. Well, my kid might want to go in, you know, they want to do an MBA in this, or they want to, they want to go get a chrl, their certified human resource background and such and so forth. Well, if you’re doing that before you’ve actually gone out to the workplace, you could be just avoiding real life. My view is go out and work a little bit. When you work for a company, every company has silos. Sales, marketing, finance, different areas that you could look at and go, wow, that’s really interesting to me. I’m really detail focused. So maybe I want to go and get my performance improvement program, or I want to go and get this designation, my PMP or my MBA. But not in finance. Maybe I want to get my MBA in organizational development. If you’ve touched it a little bit, then you can learn, get experience and go, wow, I want to learn more about this. So, I would say for someone who’s young, starting out, go work a little bit, find out what is good, what is not good in your context, what you dig. Because then when you go and take the next piece of the pie, learning whatever that might look like in a post grad, you’re doing it because it’s something that makes sense to you and you’re down that. The amount of people that I’ve seen in my life who’ve gone on to do an MBA or what have you, they don’t start their career until they’re 27, 28. They think, well, I should just, I’m going to make 100 out of the gate because I have my MBA. It’s like, well, no, you don’t have experience. Meld that a little bit. And someone who’s later in life, we would with, with the programs that we have at Career Lion, we take them on a little bit of a journey of where they’ve been so that they can kind of get to the edge of the seat. We talk about. It’s like, are you on the edge of your seat? What gets you on the edge of your seat as an executive? Wow. Finance, okay. Or sales. Okay. Or this.

Keith Matthews: So, what would that, what would that later stage career person do then? Be specific, mark here, like 45- to 55-year-old. What are the continuous education concepts that you want them to explore?

Mark Halloran: Well, first it’s reflecting on where they’ve been. So, what do you want to explore if you’re in a business and you’re in finance within that business? I’ll give you a great working example. We had a client that we first started recruiting for a long time ago, 2008, I’m dating myself. We recruited for their organization and at the time they were just segueing from the CFO of the organization into a sales role. Now the reason this person was moving from CFO into a sales role was that the CEO had identified this individual’s ability to communicate over and above in terms of presentations. And he was also someone that people would gravitate towards. And you want that in a sales leader, someone who’s, who’s engaging. So, they said to this person, we want you to potentially look at becoming our vice president of sales. We need you to go take some sales courses. So, there were specific sales courses that they put this person on to get the fundamental undergird the sales process. But he already had the executive skills, the leadership skills, but he didn’t have that actual plumbing of what does it take to be a professional sales executive? You need to have that. So that would be a great example of a person already in their career, in their late 30s as a CFO, who segued over into that space and became very successful.

Keith Matthews: There’s a great example of a pivot. Somebody who’s got a great career and later on decides to pivot and move, but needs the extra courses, needs the extra experience, needs the extra training.

Mark Halloran: For their confidence. Right? The confidence so that the people knew that, oh, he’s actually done these things as well. Right. And the pivot is huge. You know, Keith, you and I have talked over the years, but of all the people that I’ve met with, some of the most successful are those that. It wasn’t a linear track in business. It wasn’t like they went from the pharmaceutical space or within consumer-packaged goods like the Frito Lays and these organizations, Procter Gambles, where there’s a regime, right. You get in as a junior salesperson, you go into sales and you touch a little marketing. Then you become a product manager, then you become a VP of sales or a training and development manager. And then. And then. And then. There’s a linear progression there. Many of the successful businessmen and women that I’ve met, it hasn’t been linear. They see an opportunity based on their skills. They take the risk they’ll walk through a door that’s unfamiliar to them, but they have the confidence to have mastered where they were, so that mastery lets them open up another door, walk through that door, keep the connections going, keep learning about themselves to the point where they become a business owner after they’ve garnered 10, 15 years of experience working in a sales department, working in an HR department. It’s amazing to see the backgrounds of some of these people.

Keith Matthews: That’s outstanding. So basically, you’re also saying you can pivot at any time in your career.

Mark Halloran: Anytime, if you’re open to it. Bit of a joke. There’s an old. It’s not a joke, but there’s a band out of Vancouver. I don’t think they exist anymore. It’s a female band called the Be Good Tanyas. They created a song that resonated with me years ago. And I use this all the time when I talk with people, keep it light enough to travel. You know, I see a lot of people come out of school, they think or they believe that, well, I want what my parents have, but they’re 22 years old, and they never saw all the things that their parents did to get the house and the two cars and the struggle and the living in apartments with their buddies. As I did. As I’m sure you did in Toronto. I know you did. We have some people we know in common. It was the struggle, the experience you gain in the struggle, the people that you meet along the journey that open up the doors for your future. And a lot of people don’t keep it light enough to travel. They come out of school; they buy themselves a car. They got a payment on the car, so they have to take a job they don’t necessarily like, and they can’t move on or take a risk in their career because they’ve saddled themselves down way too early. They’re trying to live a life without really finding out what they want to do.

Keith Matthews: Yeah, no, those are outstanding points. Okay, Mark, let’s move to the second principle right now, which essentially is tend to your career. Or like you’d mentioned before, take stock as to where you are.

Mark Halloran: Yeah.

Keith Matthews: What do you mean by that exactly?

Mark Halloran: Okay, another working example. I was out for dinner the other night in Ottawa. One of my clients had come to town, and I said, let’s go out for a bite. It was really an interesting dinner. He brought his son, who’s in his third year of university, out to dinner with us. So, the three of us chatted about this, what we’re talking about right now. The tender your career. They wrote an article years ago, you know, tender your career. Businesses do it all the time with suppliers. They look at it and say, well, we’ve been using this courier company. Let’s review against three other couriers to make sure we’re getting the same value or a better value. Not to say you want to leave that courier, but maybe there’s a better courier out there at a discounted rate that you can use depending on relationships. What this gentleman said to me in front of his son was, hey, dude, you know, I’ve been doing what you told me. And I said, what’s that? He said, I’m taking two interviews a year. As much as I love what I’m doing right now, this is a very senior guy. And when he first came to us at Career Lion, this was a guy who was 20 years in business with a particular company, had risen right up in the linear fashion I spoke about before. Wasn’t looking to move from where he was. But finally, he calls me and he says, listen, man, I’ve been thinking about what you’ve been saying over the years. It’s time for me to just understand what I do. And it’s amazing to think that someone at the very senior level of an organization you know, they just do what they do, man. You know, you run a business. How often do you, Keith, go home and take stock of what you’ve built here, the team you’ve built, the team you’ve assembled? You just do it. It’s just. It’s natural you do it. You don’t often take stock of it. Well, while you’re going through your career, this gentleman, we rebuilt his resume, put him through the program to really take a deep dive into where he’s been by asking a series of questions in a very thoughtful way. He brain dumps it, and then he’s like, wow, cool. We put up his LinkedIn, and then he gets a call from a head-hunter, and six months later, he’s in a new job. And that was five years ago, and he’s now, you know, COO of a large organization. And he says to me in front of his son, as a learning experience for his son. I take two interviews a year, not because I want to leave, but because I need to talk about what I’ve done so that I can stay close to my career. And I know that what I’m getting is the right value. And he said, last year, one of those interviews turned into becoming a job offer. I didn’t take it because it didn’t have all the things I needed it to have. But I might not have known that if I hadn’t been taking stock of the things I really do well and what I want to do on my next move. And those are things that are often left. People don’t tender their career enough.

Keith Matthews: So, when you say tender the career, you’re talking also review objectively your strengths and weaknesses. So how do you actually do that? Objectively review your strengths, your weaknesses, your gaps, the opportunities as an individual in today’s society. You know, you’re working hard. How do you do that?

Mark Halloran: You hire career line. You know, look, at the end of the day, you know, I don’t have a business degree. I have a political science degree. It’s an arts degree. But, you know, my wife has a business degree. My brother’s my father. Most people I know have business degrees. You do SWOT analysis, Right. You do it on companies. You’re being as objective as you can be, asking questions to get that strength, weakness, opportunity, tactics. Right.

Keith Matthews: Okay. I used to use threats.

Mark Halloran: Yeah. They’re smart, objective, all kinds of things. But it’s very difficult, Keith, what you’re asking. We all know this. Everyone listening to this right now has at one point in time written a resume they just have or a bio, an overview. Very hard to sit down at your computer and do it objectively. Right. It’s such a subjective thing. What might Keith be looking for if he wants to hire? So, when you’re writing a resume, you’re writing it to sort of be like, what does someone else need to see? As opposed to what do I need to bring to the table? So, you have to do a real thoughtful analysis of your career by virtue of just asking simple questions. What was I hired to do? How large was the company that I worked for? What was I hired to do? Who did I report to? What was I asked to do from an accomplishment perspective and did I accomplish it? Write it out, every role you’ve had and start thinking about it. It’s going to do a few different things for you. It’s going to obviously revisit where you were. Times when you did different things with different teams. But it should also be thought provoking enough to say, man, when I worked for that company, that sucked and here’s why it sucked. I was working with a manager who was a micromanager. What I’ve discovered about myself over the years is I need a macro manager. Not someone who asked me what I did every day, but someone who asked me what I did every week and someone I can go to and manage up, which will be something we talk about, but the tendering your career is about reflecting on where you’ve been, what you were asked to do, what you did, and then how you move forward. So, if I’m going to do an interview with somebody.

Keith Matthews: And you should be able to do that throughout your career, it’s almost like it’s an awareness.

Mark Halloran: It’s all awareness. Yeah, it’s awareness and it’s confidence. Right. So, you have to again, the continued learning, it all fits together. The awareness, the ability to sit with somebody and interview. If I’m interviewing Keith, I don’t want to hear about how bad last bosses were. I want to hear, well, this is what I was asked to do. Here’s what I was able to accomplish. And prior to me leaving, these were the things that I suggested. I realized the environment I was with just wasn’t conducive to me being to where I wanted to go. So, this is why I’m sitting in front of you today and I’m asking you the questions. In this role you’re hiring for, will I have the opportunity to do this, this and this? Because that’s what really fires me up. Well, that’s by virtue of tendering your career. You get to practice your talk track. These are the things I’ve done well. These are the things I haven’t. This is why I’m here today talking with you.

Keith Matthews: Yeah, I think this is so important, this whole idea of being aware as to where you’re at, what are you good at, what are your strengths, how do you move forward? Mark, you’re aware of the Dunning Kruger effect.

Mark Halloran: I’m not.

Keith Matthews: Oh, well.

Mark Halloran: So here I’m not going to give me. Hit me there.

Keith Matthews: I’ve seen this. We used to see this in managing athletes. The Dunning Kruger effect, and I’ll see if I can get this right, is individuals are not accurately aware of their strengths. And ironically, people who are very strong at certain tasks, technically strong, they’ll test strong, underestimate their strengths, they’re humble. And the Dunning Kruger effect is the opposite, is when individuals are actually technically inferior, but they feel they’re super strong. And those are very difficult athletes to train up and would be very difficult individuals to be in a team because they always feel that they’re better than they really are. That’s not a good trait to have as a professional or anybody going through their career or anybody who’s in a performance environment.

Mark Halloran: I would assume then, based on that model, what you’re speaking about, that those types of individuals might end up with what is known as imposter syndrome when they’re in roles too. Because over time you may not have the awareness, but you certainly know when you’re overmatched and you know you’re looking to blame someone for not being as successful as you thought you would be. It’s always somebody else’s fault. We can find those people out in interviews, right, by asking a lot of questions. And that’s why it’s so important when you tender your career, you have to be valid and authentic and you have to know what you do really well because a really trained recruiter or hiring director or manager will peel the onion so much that those people will get found out because they haven’t achieved what they say.

Keith Matthews: Fair enough. That’s good.

Mark Halloran: And a lot of what we do with our clients, that goes back to the premise of why we began. So, my partner in Career Lion Rob, is a marketing expert and has built marketing campaigns for large organizations. And it was years ago when I went to him and said, here’s the problem. There’s a lot of pretenders getting roles when the good cats aren’t getting them and the good people just, they’re so humble. They don’t say I enough. They say we a lot. And that’s fine, but you got to say a little bit more I. And the people that go through the program that we have developed is those individuals, when they come through it, go, holy shit, I’m pretty good. It’s like, yeah, toot your horn a little bit more. And oftentimes, and you know, not to go down gender roles, but a lot of times it’s our women clients, when they go through the program and they come out the other end, it’s like, wow, I’m good. I’m like, yeah, honk your horn a little bit. You know, toot your horn. Like, it’s okay. We’re Canadian. We’re a little bit humble. Add to it that you’re a woman in business and you, you know, you don’t brag. I mean, it’s funny. A lot of men will apply to a job that has. That requires five different levels of competency, and they might only have one of them, but they’ll apply. Some of our executive women clients, no, they won’t apply because they’re like, well, I don’t have. I don’t have enough of them. They might have four, they might even have the fifth, but just not acknowledge it. So, you know, it’s about, again, back to the confidence level, taking the time. And it’s really difficult to do it on your own. If you’re going to do it on your own, those are the type of questions you have to ask, what was I hired to do?

Keith Matthews: Fair enough. Those are tender your career. That’s fantastic. As principle two, we’re moving along to principle three, manage up. When you first said to me, manage up, I’m like, what do you mean by manage up? And then you explain it to me. I said, you know what? I totally get it. In your words, what exactly is managing up for anybody, no matter what stage of their career they’re at?

Mark Halloran: Let’s go back to your sports analogy. What was the effect you were talking about?

Keith Matthews: The Dunning Kruger effect.

Mark Halloran: Dunning Kruger effect. That’s a great example from an awareness perspective. If you can get this early enough in life that you can go to your coach and say, coach, I’m on the second line right now. I’m a second line center. What do I need to do to get first line? Well, you need to improve your shot. You need to do this, you need to be a little bit faster, whatever the case may be. That’s managing up to a degree, because you’re letting the coach know that you care. You’re letting the coach know that you’re not satisfied with where you’re at. But you’re also asking the coach, what do I need to do to get there? And then you can say to that coach, what would you recommend I do? Is there a course on effective shooting? Like, something I can do. Go to an outside shooting guy to help me with my wrist shot or my snapshot or whatever the sport is. That’s pretty powerful for a young person to do that in sport. It’s no different in the workplace. You have employees. How many employees do you have here now at Tulett?

Keith Matthews: We’re 15 in total, including myself.

Mark Halloran: So, think to yourself, how impressed are you? This is rhetorical. I don’t want to call anyone out. But by individuals within your own firm that might come up to you and say, hey, I want to go here. Based on our discussions, I understand that I might need to do this, that, and the other. Can you be more specific with me about what I need to do in order to earn that next opportunity within this firm to get into this role? How would you feel about that conversation?

Keith Matthews: It’s happened. I’ve got individuals and they ask phenomenal questions, which is what you’re saying, what do I need to do to get to the next level? What do I need to do to increase my responsibility? And you know, when we were talking offline before, to me, when you said manage up, it’s very different than an individual just sort of asking for a promotion or asking for a raise or, you know, asking. What you’re saying is you don’t just ask. You manage up.

Mark Halloran: You manage up.

Keith Matthews: And that’s a very different approach all the time. What do I need to do to get to. You’re asking the question, which, then you’re going to get clues as to what you should do. You’re going to. You’re going to start to get good feedback as to what you can do.

Mark Halloran: And you have to be ready for the feedback. You know, people have come to me over the years or come to our firm and something as simple as a resume. Can you take a look at my resume? Like, well, do you really want me to take a look at your resume? Well, what do you mean? Well, what if I tell you that there’s some things wrong with your resume? Am I going to get into a pitch battle with you? Because I’m not up for a pitch battle. You’re coming to us for expertise on this. I don’t need you to defend what you’ve got. There’s already, you know, you already realize there may be some things wrong with it. Are you open for the, for the feedback? So, when you’re doing the manage up, you got to be open for the feedback. You can’t be in a situation where you go to Keith and say, what do I need to do to do this? And then it gets into, well, I’m already doing that, Keith. And it’s argumentative. No, it’s, wow, okay, maybe he’s seeing something. My boss is seeing something I don’t see, I have a blind spot. And this goes back to point one, continued development. There are a myriad of opportunities for someone in the world today to go to an executive coach, to go to modules that exist out in the marketplace to give you a sense of blind spots. Personality assessments. I personally have gone through, I don’t know, 10, 15 personality assessments over my life with an executive coach to understand different things about me today that I didn’t know 20 years ago. But my goodness, I’m so glad I did it because it taught me about my way of communicating so that you can go to a boss, give you a great working example. We had a wonderful client. He passed away way too young. He was the head of a lot of company that your listeners would know and came to us and he was like; I’m having trouble in some of my interviews. And so, we had him do a taped interview with an executive head-hunter that we knew. And, and so they, they did that. And then we went through it and what it was was this guy, it was a process thinker. That’s what made him successful. Guys and girls in your life who some people just give you an answer and some need to think. Is that fair to say?

Keith Matthews: Absolutely.

Mark Halloran: So, this is a guy that wasn’t getting through some of the, the big interviews when they were panel interviews, because he would pause and think. But the next person in the panel interview wanted to hit him with the next question before he got the chat. And it came out in the interviews that we were looking at and listening to for him anyways. We said to him, what if you could just go into that meeting and do an interview and say, hey, I want you to be aware. Thanks for having me here, but I want you to be aware that I’m a process thinker. And what that means is I’m going to take some time to digest your question before I answer it, I hope I don’t frustrate you, but that’s been a hallmark of my career and it’s what has made me so successful, executing against the things I do. You’re knowing yourself, you’ve taken the time to take stock of what you do well and you’re communicating that with confidence. That’s an important part of the process. And it’s also important to go to your manager and say, hey, boss, I think I sometimes I can be a little fly, fly by the seat of my pants over here, or a bit of this. I’m, I’m noticing that about myself. Do you see that? Well, actually, I do. You know, there’s a course I’ve been looking at that can help me with that. Would that be something that, that I could get sponsored here at this job with this company If it’s going to help me and it’s going to help you? They might look at that and say, that’s kind of cool. That’s. That’s really neat of you to do that.

Keith Matthews: Yeah, it’s interesting. So, managing up can also mean bringing back continual education.

Mark Halloran: Right.

Keith Matthews: So, it’s a bit loopy here in terms of you’re asking the questions, you’re getting some feedback and then you’re taking action.

Mark Halloran: Yeah, it’s all so connected. It’s the human condition, recognition and understanding of what you do. Well, what do I need to do to improve and constantly improve on myself? If there’s a pattern, if you’re in a new job every six months, it starts to be a pattern. Is that pattern the people you’re working for? Is there something inherent with the way you’re doing things? It’s a bigger question, but it’s all part of career management. Taking stock is so important, you know, as companies from an HR perspective, because we also deal at career line with HR, HR advisory, risk and compliance. And a lot of organizations, when they’re terminating someone or someone’s leaving, they want to do an exit interview. Well, what if you could do those exit interviews but call them stay interviews, you know, some people call it. Well, it’s. I do performance management once a year. I sit down with my employees and go through what they did. Well, and that’s kind of old school, you know, like you should be doing that every week. You should be. Every time you have a chance to talk with the boss, having a coffee, it’s like, hey, Keith, am I doing a good job, man? Am I making your day easier? How much would it be? How much better would it Be back in the day; we used to call that kissing ass. Brown nosing. It’s not brown nosing. It’s like, hey, dude, being up, It’s managing up. It’s managing up. Guy’s a brown noser. He goes and talks to the boss. No, he wants up. You know, the amount of people in my life that I’ve heard come, oh, I just didn’t get the promotion, and this guy got it and I didn’t get it. I’m like, would you ever tell your boss you wanted it? Well, no, they should have just known. No, they just don’t know. You got to make people aware of what you want to do or not. That’s your choice. But, you know, the people that succeed are the ones that make others around them aware of where they’re going and what they want to do. And they’re willing to do what is required to continue to learn to get that job.

Keith Matthews: Well, I think that’s an amazing principle, managing up. I’m not sure if everybody really grasps it because it does take a bit of courage to ask those questions.

Mark Halloran: Confidence.

Keith Matthews: It takes courage and confidence. And sometimes you hear things that you may not want to hear. But that’s life. You’ve got to embrace it. Let’s continue. Mark, we’re going to go to point four now, which is a classic concept that most people will have heard about, but you’re going to add some new twists. Networking. And when we first started speaking about this, you said something that really hit me. You said that you have to invest in your network big time to stay connected. You never know when you need it. And sometimes later in your career when you need it, if you have not kept your network up, it’s just not there for you. So, it’s one of these things that requires constant work, energy and commitment and an investment. So, I mean, that’s my intro to networking. And based on our conversation. Yeah, jump in and start talking about.

Mark Halloran: It’s an investment in yourself again. It’s like you’re investing in yourself by staying close to the people that make you comfortable and people that you want to be part of your life. It has to be authentic. You don’t network for the sake of it. You network with people because it makes a lot of sense.

Keith Matthews: So, I got two questions here. One would be, how does a younger person start networking and then later stage career, maintain the networks? Let’s talk about two different areas here. So, let’s start with the younger person. How does a younger person start building a network?

Mark Halloran: My 14-year-old.

Keith Matthews: Didn’t quite mean teenager nature, but go ahead.

Mark Halloran: Because it’s all the same. He’s 14, he cuts grass in the neighborhood, he plays competitive sport, I work on him. It’s, it’s not like, it’s like, dude, you got to do this, like build your CRM, your customer relationship management software now. You’ve got Google, it’s there. I didn’t have this when I was your age. I had an old, you know, we had what, a Palm Pilot Keith, back in the day. If, then Notepad. Notepad, right. You have the old book with the numbers in it written and scratched out with. So, today’s world there’s free customer relationship management software. So as an example, you play a sport, you play with 15 people. If you’re playing rugby or whatever those people, you capture their names in your CRM. Who are your friends on that? Keep in touch with them, let them know where you’re going. With my son, who’s 14, you got five clients. Put them all in there, send them a little, you know, merry, merry Christmas, happy holiday note. Build that out. Okay. And at the end of the day, you build your network so that people know what you’re up to, but you also let them know you’re there for them. It’s a two-way street when you network with people. If you just go to your network, it’s kind of like going, whatever your religion is, going to mass once a year at Christmas. You’re not getting the most out of it with your network if you’re not there. If Keith Matthews calls me and says, hey Mark, I need to talk with you for a minute, I’m going to pick that phone up because you’ve invested in our relationship over the years and if I call you, you’re going to do the same. Well, that only happens if you’re consistent in your communication with people. And you know, I tell my boys 12 and 14, in order to have good friends, that is good network, you have to be a good friend so that when someone’s there to call, you pick it up and you can communicate in today’s world so much more effectively with emails and WhatsApp and such and so forth. Because the people that you meet along the way, you don’t know when you’re going to be able to help them or they will be able to help you. Start when you’re young, nurture that. Keep people in touch with what you’re doing and do the same. It’s so important.

Keith Matthews: Well, I’m going to ask you a question now that you’re going to say, well, it’s just obvious, but where does that younger generation, not necessarily the teenager, think now, the 20- to 35-year-old, where do they find opportunities to network?

Mark Halloran: University.

Keith Matthews: Okay, let’s just go through examples.

Mark Halloran: College, university, anywhere you meet somebody, do I like this person? Are they pretty cool? I’m going to put them into my Rolodex. Rolodex today, maybe not the term. I’m going to put them into my iPhone or my Samsung. I’m going to keep in touch with that person. So, you know, I used to have a saying when I was at university, memories don’t fall on you. You got to go make them. So, some people aren’t naturally driven to network. So, it’s very hard. So, if you have a friend who’s really good at that, stay close to that friend. They’ll continue to network. And it’s like that’s what used to happen to me. Like I mentioned getting into recruiting, I had a lot of buddies that weren’t networkers, but I was a networker. So, I’d get a call from a head-hunter, and he would say, hey, do you know someone? And funny story, I was in Toronto. I had lunch with my boss at the time; it was the mid-90s before I got into recruiting. I was on an elevator downtown and I introduced him to this guy Tony. He said, you know Jim, this is Tony. And we got off the elevator and Jim, my boss says to me, who’s that guy? Well, that’s my head-hunter. He said, that’s your head-hunter. He said, you have a head-hunter. I’m like, yeah. Said at any moment in time, things could go sideways in this role, and you could fire me or I find something better. I’m always keeping options open. I say, you don’t have a head-hunter. He’s like, no. I’m like, well, maybe you should. That’s networking, right? So Tony is the guy at the firm that I eventually went to work with and got into recruiting. But I kept in touch with Tony because he was friends with my oldest brother. They’d gone to St. Thomas and went to Bishops. And we’re buddies and I know a lot of guys that went to Bishops. I had my house open in Toronto. A lot of our friends when they first came to Toronto lived on our couch before they got their first jobs. And I was saying this to a couple of members of your staff earlier. I would venture to say, you know, most stats are made Up. So, take this with the grain of salt. 60, 65% of the revenues generated by the businesses that I’ve been in and are a part of were directly related to my time at Beacons field Rugby Club. Working in Toronto with it was pure later courier. It was a large organization I worked with as a sales exec. The people I met there I stayed in touch with and they’re part of the world I’m in today. Part of the new club that I just built with a couple of buddies that we went to high school with. Think about that. So, I went to high school with my buddy Rob, who’s my partner in Career lion and my buddy Donato who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. And the three of us started a business in 2022 together. And we have people that are part of the club we built together from high school that went to Beaconsfield High School, when we went to St. Thomas, that went to John Rennie, LCC, Loyola. They’re all in this club that exists in Toronto. Networking, networking.

Keith Matthews: Mark, what’s the percentage of jobs that are won through networking versus other types of ways to get jobs? So, application online, you’re mid career and you see something online, you apply the internal resource companies you know, have application, have positions and you apply. Do you have any stats that speak to the power of networking, what kind of percentage of jobs are getting are won through networking?

Mark Halloran: That’s a great question. I can only speak anecdotally to it. Someone can, can fact check this. It’s huge. And I’m going to say honestly, it’s over 60%. It has to be. Based on my own information as you know, someone who’s interviewed as many as I have who am still very close to recruiting firms. I have a lot of good close friends and business associates in the recruiting industry. It is huge.

Keith Matthews: How do you use networking to your advantage to find those job opportunities?

Keith Matthews: How do you reach out to you?

Mark Halloran: You need over 500 people on your LinkedIn.

Keith Matthews: How do you reach out to your network and say hey, you know, I’m looking for my next opportunity?

Mark Halloran: Yeah.

Keith Matthews: How do you actually make all this work?

Mark Halloran: Well, to be a key opinion leader sometimes to put something out that’s relevant through your own LinkedIn that is something that is an innovative message potentially so that someone connects it to someone else and forward something to another person that they know. It’s all about connecting. It’s algorithm searches, it’s connecting. It’s back to what I said earlier. It’s reaching out to friends of your dad, to your mom. Connect. Building your network. How many times do people reach out to you? They don’t have a picture on their LinkedIn. It’s not really credible. They want to join you. Do you accept that person if you don’t know anything about them?

Keith Matthews: Not really. They’ve got to be organized and set up.

Mark Halloran: This is how you network on LinkedIn. You make it such that it’s very easy for someone to say, I think it’s important for me to connect with this individual. So, you have to create the brand. It’s all about brand in today’s world. What’s your brand? What are you communicating? How do you network? Mr. Matthews, I’d like to have a cup of coffee with you. All of a sudden, I’m connected to Keith Matthews. And then the natural algorithms of LinkedIn, you’re now connected to three degrees of separation from Keith without even buying the premium service from LinkedIn. Now you’re part of his connections. So, when Keith sends out an email or a key opinion piece on finance, it comes into my LinkedIn. Oh, Keith just put this out. Well, I’m going to comment or I’m going to like that. And then I see five other guys like it. Oh, and one of those is working for a company that I’d like to work for. I’m going to reach out to him and say, hey, I saw that you liked Keith Matthews post, you must be buddies with him. I’m really working hard at trying to do this or that or the other. Would it be okay if we spent five minutes together? There’s a process to it, but it all goes back to the early stuff about communication.

Keith Matthews: That’s interesting. That is a very specific process that’s kind of creating activity and thoughts and awareness and statements and then reaching out and connecting with individuals and saying, hey, we’ve got this in common. I’d like to, you know, move into this area, do you have any thoughts or ideas.

Mark Halloran: And if you’re not yourself, the one that feels comfortable. Not everyone’s a sales rep. You’re selling yourself. But maybe someone, you know, knows Keith really well. So, you reach out to that person and say, hey, I’m a bit shy, but I really love the work that Tulett’s doing. I’d love to be able to get in. Can you maybe introduce me to him? That’s the power of the network. Right?

Keith Matthews: Okay, fair enough. So, look, we’ve covered off the networking for the younger individual going through early-stage career. Let’s talk later stage career, the importance of networking and some tips that you want to share on this area.

Mark Halloran: Again, back to, you know, real life example, examples we built in concert with this client of ours. This guy is as well connected as anyone you’ll ever meet. Not a linear career, but a very thoughtful individual. So, when he was leaving the organization he was with at the time he hired us, it wasn’t about him knowing how to network. It wasn’t about him being afraid to make a call. He just really didn’t know what he represented in the marketplace with the eclectic background that he had. So going through the process with us to understand what he did well and what he didn’t do well, he was able to then go through it and go, wow, I’m really good at these things. So, start looking at different jobs on Indeed.com or different websites and go, these three jobs really resonate with me. And then we’d say to him, well, why? Well, because this, that and the other. Okay, great. So now, now you can go to your network. You know, it’s the classic Jerry Maguire, you know, help me help you. Your network wants to help you, but you need to help them understand what they can do for you. By virtue of understanding what you did well, communicating it to your network and then saying to the network, if you are out in the marketplace of ideas or you’re out at a pub having a drink or you’re having a dinner with someone, this is the type of role I’m looking to line up for. And here’s my credentials to support it and buttress it, right? So, the LinkedIn is powerful, the messaging is clear. Here’s how you can help me, help your network help you. And within a short amount of time, this dude had a really cool job within the space he wanted to go in and now he’s moved on from that one because he kept up with his career management and now, he’s doing some other stuff that’s really neat.

Keith Matthews: Well, it’s very interesting because what you’ve just linked back tender your career and be aware of where you’re at for a later stage career person. So be aware of where you’re at, be aware of what you’re looking for and then effectively communicate that to various members of your network. It just goes to show you how interrelated these principles are that you’re sharing with us today.

Mark Halloran: And don’t be a clown, because along the way, if you’re not back to what I was saying, sincere with your network and keeping in touch with them for the right reasons, with the intention to potentially at one point in time, help them. It’s inauthentic and doesn’t work. But with this guy, if I called him right now, he’d answer the phone, and he’s got a big job because he knows it’s authentic, right? And that’s an important part of all of this. It’s doing it because it’s the right thing to do. And then your network wants to help you. If you’re just a good cat along the way, don’t mess anybody over. You know, pay your bills, do the things you need to do, and that’s all building your network, because your network is more than just the people you know. It’s the supplier that you work for. Hey, did you know this guy? Well, I’ve, I’ve never met him, but as far as I know, they paid all their bills. Well, that’s good, right? Like, your network extends beyond just the people that are in your own LinkedIn. Those people know a lot of people. And conversely, someone might reach out and say, hey, I know you know, Mark Halloran or, you know, Rob Van Blockland. Are they good guys? Well, yeah, man, they never messed me up.

Keith Matthews: Again what struck me of our conversation before we got on recording was this idea that you have to invest in your network and you have to put good things out because, you know, you could be 55 years old or 60 and looking for, you know, one last really good career move. Bu if you haven’t invested in your network, it’s very hard for you to go to individuals. It’s harder. It’s harder to go to individuals and start asking for favors and start asking for introductions.

Mark Halloran: And you get to a point, I think, like, in life, we all know this. Like, it’s. I haven’t talked to this guy for so long, I’m embarrassed to reach out now. And you don’t reach out to someone who could probably help you because you know yourself, you haven’t. You haven’t done what’s required to stay in touch with that person. And in 2025, 2026, there’s no excuse not to think and do it, you know?

Keith Matthews: Well, you know, I’ve heard some people say, you know, networking, I’m always trying to encourage people to do that. And sometimes you hear it’s a lot of work. Well, yeah, of course it’s a lot of work, you know, maintaining friends. It shouldn’t be work, but it takes time and energy.

Mark Halloran: We’ve talked about this. You know, let’s just say you make $60,000 a year, $100,000 a year. Extrapolate that by 10, 15, 20 years. That’s a lot of money. You are your own for all intents and purposes; you are your own business as an individual, that’s what we believe. You’re your own business. What’s your marketing budget? How much work are you putting into you as an individual business? This is part of it. You got to invest in yourself. You got to invest in the marketing, the understanding, the coaching, the going to people for advice. You need to do all of that in order to network properly and have confidence. It’s all part of the. It’s all intertwined together. You got to invest. And the amount of times over my career that I’ve had people in interview process, well, like, okay, you’re now in your third interview. They’re probably going to be coming towards an offer stage. Oh, you know, I haven’t really talked to my wife about this yet or my husband. It’s like, what. People spend more time planning a Dominican holiday than their next career move. Like, you got to talk about this stuff with the people that are in your life. What do you need to earn? How much travel do you want in your life? This is all so important to career management and marketing, all the things we’re talking about. People don’t spend time on this. This is what helps you.

Keith Matthews: It’s interesting you say that because I can feel it. I can sense your passion around it. I use the same line. People spend more time, you know, deciding on what TV to buy than taking the time to do due diligence for the right financial advisory firm. And we’re seeing things change a little bit. You just said exactly as what I’ve been saying for 15 or 20 years now. And I see it with regards to managing your career.

Mark Halloran: It’s crazy.

Keith Matthews: And managing your career takes time and energy. It’s essentially the message.

Mark Halloran: And humility. And humility. A lot of people don’t have humility. The humility is such a huge part. I don’t know it all.

Keith Matthews: Last principle, Mark. Gratitude. When you first told me that was part of your five principles and your framework for managing your career, I was like, wow, I’ve never. I wouldn’t have thought that would be on it. But then you started talking about it. I said, well, this is just. It’s obvious. So, let’s take a few moments. And then after this, we’re going to wrap the show up, but let’s end with gratitude.

Mark Halloran: Yeah, yeah. I think gratitude comes from experience. I think that.

Keith Matthews: And why it’s important. Why it’s important in career management.

Mark Halloran: Well, it’s important. I mean, look at you and I sitting here today. You know, we first met at the Edgewater in 1984. 84. You had your idea. How thankful am I to have you in my life as a mentor. You know, and we look back to coaches in our lives at St. Thomas High School. Fred DeGraff, you know, you look at. At Roman Yarmovitz at St. Thomas. I look at Bill Tierney when I was at John Abbott or Ed Carty when I was playing rugby at Saint fx. Instrumental in my life. I’m not here today without the gratitude of knowing that these people took time in their life to make an impact on my life. And, you know, I think that if people take stock of that throughout their life and appreciate the people in their life and just whenever you’re sitting there, there go, wow, how thankful am I that I have these relationships? And how thankful am I that I’m working and I’m getting a paycheck in your career, you know, when you’re working as one of our divisions does the HR risk and compliance. And our HR lead is she’s a very, very, very powerful woman. Very smart, very smart, very capable. She plays chess where others play checkers. She could sit here and talk with you about HR at infinitum, about the amount of people that complain when they don’t recognize how good they have it and they don’t have the gratitude to say, wait, wait a second, there’s a business here that’s willing to pay me this much money for this and I’m going to sit around and complain and not do something about it, not manage up or if I’m going to leave, I’m not at least leaving knowing that I had left everything behind properly. You got to have gratitude or you’re going to end up in a really dark place. That’s my view. And those people that have gratitude in their careers, I’ve met lots of them and a lot of them are in my life to this day. They just live a full life, man, a lot better because it’s not someone else’s fault.

Keith Matthews: Well, gratitude is, I think, is often mentioned for activities that individuals should do to increase their happiness level, their awareness and their positivity. So I thought it was interesting that you put it in one of your five principles, part of the framework to manage your career.

Mark Halloran: Yeah, my experience, again, it’s all I have the right to speak about the people that I’ve seen the most fulfilled in their career. Therefore, those that have been most successful and success is driven by, you know, some people’s pocketbook, well, look at how successful that guy is. But at the end of the day, I think it’s driven by when you’re sitting alone, you feel pretty good about things. And if you have gratitude and you work through these steps, these aren’t novel steps. These accumulated knowledge from others that have influenced my life and our lives at lion and such, it’s just be authentic, man. We all have so many layers of solid battle armor that we wear. If you’re in specific industries or if you’re in name a Fortune 500 or Fortune 150, you got to play a crazy game in those businesses to get forward. But if you can play it properly and you can do it with humility and follow these steps that we’ve outlined here today, you should be in a place of great gratitude when it’s as it’s going on, not just reflecting at the end of the day, but the gratitude throughout. Because if you’re thankful for where you’re working and you go to the people around you, not everyone’s going to warm up and say automatically they’re going to love your manage up style and that. But if you can get into that style, you realize you’re doing it for yourself and your own growth. You may not get the answers you want or the answers that are going to get you propelled in the right direction within that company, but you’re building your career narrative so that when you’re sitting with a head-hunter or a hiring manager and they say to you, well, why are you leaving? You can say it all with conviction and you can say, I was really thankful for the time I spent with Purolator for me or with the 500 and working with Bill Fretz, my boss there, who I was brought in by Tony Power. Tony still runs a firm, a great pharmaceutical recruiting firm in Toronto. I spoke with Bill from a Starbucks parking lot at my kid’s soccer. I dropped them off the other day. I spoke with my old boss; he’s like 75 now. And I thanked him. You know, I still talk to my boss from the 500 from when I worked with Emerson here. I talked with him two weeks ago. Thank you. Now, he and I butted heads when I worked there a lot. He didn’t my style was not his style, but my God, I grew up a lot under him, and I had to look at it and go, wait a second, second there’s some real gems from this boss. So, I have gratitude and thank him for willing to butt heads with me. I’m not here today without the headbutt and the heavy conversations and, you know, holy shit, the reflection. And man, I remember doing a PowerPoint presentation that I had to deliver to a pharma company here in Montreal. I was asked to do it on recruitment to their senior executives. And I had built this PowerPoint, and it was all really cool and did it on my own and asked if anyone wanted part in it. And I, I brought it into him and day before I delivered it, and he tore it to shreds. And I was like, oh my God, this is heavy. And it went from pretty quickly from me like thinking, what a, you know, what a, what a jack for doing that to like, okay, wait a second. Was this really the best effort? Should you be doing this? And I went and I said, dude, can you help me put this together properly? And we did. We sat up really late that night doing that together. And I went in and I killed. And it was a lot of fun, but I had to get over myself and I had to realize that he was just trying to do something right for the business. I think a lot of people today aren’t willing to hear that. Then when they, when they go through it, they, they look back and blame instead of going, what did I learn there? Everything’s a chance to learn, man.

Keith Matthews: Well, that’s a nice way to sum up the gratitude. So, Mark, listen, we’ve covered off five main principles, five principles that you put in your framework in terms of how to manage through the business, how to manage your career. Take a second here. Share with listeners exactly what you do now with Career Lion. This is an opportunity to take a couple minutes and explain sort of the purpose of Career Line, what it does for your clients, how you’re trying to help.

Mark Halloran: Career Lion creates lions. What’s a lion? Lots of different cultures. Lions represent lots of different things. We tend to look at it as sort of an actualization of how good you are at different things, helping you come to a self actualization. You need to be in control of your career. We don’t tell you what you need to do. We provide you with the room to be the best that you can be. And we do that by asking you questions in a thoughtful way to get out of your head. What needs to be put onto a whiteboard and then we build the documentation to support that. We talked a lot today about confidence and about learning and things of that nature. You have to bring all of that together in your own personal brand. So, career lion originally set out to do just that. We did resumes, we gave consulting on resumes, we did consulting. We realized, wait a second, this is really a core competency. It’s marketing. What makes you a successful entrepreneur like Keith Matthews? What makes you a great CFO? I tend to lean to finance because I recruited a lot in finance, so I use CFO a lot. What made you great in those things doesn’t make you great in the marketing component and your ability to communicate it. So, Lion’s mission is to engender confidence, put people through a program that they’re going to come out more confident with where they’ve been, and clarity. So, confidence and then clarity. Clarity for yourself to communicate your confidence, but clarity also for others who are going to read your branding and read your marketing and interview and talk with you. You’re going to give them clarity because you’re being clear. It’s cogent messaging that’s so hard to put down. When we work with someone, we build a document that’s upwards of 25 pages in length. Okay, think about that. Customized to the person’s career history. They have to, on their own time, answer those questions. It’s a cued recall document. Go to bed, wake up, write a few answers, go to bed, wake up. Cued recall. Most interviews, you walk out going, oh, man, I forgot I even did that or mentioned that. Our process is developed to get this cued recall out so that you, at the end of the day are still part of the making of the resume. But we synthesize a 25, 30, 35, 40 pages of notes coming back to us into a two-to-three-page document that speaks to your career. That’s hard to do on your own, man. So, lion built ourselves to do that. So, we take the best of HR recruitment expertise, meld it with marketing, and build your LinkedIn with an optimization. So, the LinkedIn sends the same message as your resume and your bio. And then we have another division that helps you with talk track led by, you know, a dude who is. He’s a bit of a drill sergeant in the way that we communicate with our clients. We do an 8-to-10-hour boot camp on preparing for an interview process, whether it’s a panel interview or individualized interview.

Keith Matthews: And mark, you work with individuals throughout their career.

Mark Halloran: Throughout their career.

Keith Matthews: Early stage, mid stage, late stage.

Mark Halloran: Those junior, intermediate, retiring, retiring, you know you want to leave. I see there’s AI out there nowadays because there is for everything. And by the way, we engage and embrace in AI, but we’re still fundamentally a difference between lion and the AI world. There’s a nuance that is required, but AI can support a lot of different things. You could just say, write me a traditional resume for a CFO and it’ll happen. But you miss that element of getting your own particular brain dump. All the things that are in there that you don’t realize are relevant. That’s what we get out of your head. The ability to take 25, 30 pages of notes out of your head and put it up on a whiteboard and have someone else develop the messaging. That’s marketing. So, we market you effectively, but you own it. You’re still an active participant in the building of the resume as opposed to having someone do it for you. We do the final document, but it’s all of your information. So, it’s top of mind. That helps you communicate it effectively. And then based on that, we have a program, it’s a boot camp, an interview mastery program that will take you through relevant questions to help you prepare to answer those questions in a cogent way.

Keith Matthews: So essentially, it’s a combination of Career lion, combination of personal brand understanding, getting a marketing plan around you and your personal brand, and then effective communications.

Mark Halloran: Yes, we’re a professional service firm for the individual. So, if you look at hiring a consulting firm, they’ll go into companies and work on their finance and they’ll work on, you know, their sales and their manufacturing capabilities and things of that nature. We do that for both the individual and companies. Okay, so companies will hire us and our leadership module team, so we go and do workshops, they’ll hire us to help with their employees, do accountability and leadership and we can work on eq, emotional intelligence and things of that nature from a coaching perspective for companies. For the individual, we work on the branding component, the professional service. So, one of our coaches will actually work with individual executive clients on things such as what’s your finance plan for next year? How are you going to attain these goals? Do you have a service provider that will help you with your money management? What are you doing with your family? What are you doing with your kids? Are they finishing university? What’s your retirement plan? Now we don’t help them with a retirement plan, but we put it on the whiteboard for them, and we say go and talk with someone about that, but individuals need guidance. I need guidance. I mean I sit here and figure.

Keith Matthews: Individuals need guidance and coaches 100%.

Mark Halloran: I have my own executive coach, Karen. She’s unbelievable. She’s so good. She worked with us for many years before she retired. You know, I went to a psychologist, psychologist in Montreal because part of learning about myself, hey, what is it? Help me understand. Psychology is an important part of this that goes back to the continual development, no stigmas, man. Like you got to, if you want to live a good life, you got to understand it. You got to understand why you’re doing it. You have to understand why you’re doing it. Then you have to learn how to communicate it. You have to continue to learn. You have to tell others what you’ve learned. That’s the branding piece that we’re talking about, about how do you communicate what you’ve learned to the marketplace in a way that makes sense to you. It’s all intertwined.

Keith Matthews: Well, you’ve got a fantastic service, Mark. And for our listeners, we’re going to have Mark’s LinkedIn page online as well as Career Line online as well website. So, for anybody who’s interested in doing a follow up with Mark or the professionals at his firm, please check the show notes. Mark. Here’s our final takeaway right now. We talked about a framework today around career management. Five steps. What’s your, what’s your takeaway for the listeners?

Mark Halloran: Invest in yourself. Invest in yourself like a good financial steward. Like to Tulett, Matthews would say to you, and you know, do the right things to understand how good you are at what you do. Understand it’s important for you to invest in yourself and take that message to the market and don’t be afraid.

Keith Matthews: Well, this has been a fantastic show, Mark. Very important. Career management, it’s the financial engine for most individuals in Canada and managing that process takes time, energy and thank you so much for coming and driving in from Ottawa and sharing, sharing your insights, sharing your experience. It’s a fantastic framework and we really appreciate having you here.

Mark Halloran: Well, dude, really appreciate you thinking enough of us to bring us in to talk to your clients and I know how important they are to you as an extended family. So, thank you.

Keith Matthews: You’re very welcome, Mark. And to our listeners, thank you so much and we’ll see you next show. Thanks for listening to the Empowered Investor podcast brought to you by Tulett, Matthews and Associates. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to follow or subscribe and share it with somebody who wants to invest with clarity and confidence. To learn more about how we help investors build lasting financial peace of mind, Visit us at tma-invest.com until next time. Stay informed, stay empowered, and stay on track to your financial goals. Goals, investment and investing strategies should be evaluated based on your own objectives. Listeners of this podcast should use their best judgment and consult a financial expert prior to making any investment decisions. Based on the information found in this podcast