Episode 161: If You Don't Know What You Don't Know, Where Do You Learn It With Carl Seidman
What happens when a career in finance is shaped not just by business acumen—but by the legacy of a physician father, a social worker mother, and the values of resilience, emotional intelligence, and relentless curiosity? In this episode, Amy Vetter interviews Carl Seidman, Owner of Seidman Financial, to explore his unexpected journey from pre-med student to trusted financial advisor. Carl shares how pivotal mentors, life experiences, and his own curiosity led him to uncover what it truly takes to succeed as a CFO. Now a business owner and educator, Carl reflects on the lessons he's learned and how he's helping others navigate their own paths in finance and leadership.
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If You Don't Know What You Don't Know, Where Do You Learn It With Carl Seidman
Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs, where I interviewed Carl Seidman, CEO of Seidman Financial. Carl is a trusted business advisor specializing in financial planning and analysis, business strategy, and finance transformation. He advises Fortune 500 corporations and middle market companies, helping establish effective FPA practices, processes, and teams. At the same time, he supports financial professionals, positioning them for greater control over their careers by helping them build their competence and confidence, while eliminating time-wasting activities and mistakes.
He is a CPA and has earned other credentials, including the CRA, CFA, CFP, CGMA, AM, and the CSP, Certified Speaking Professional. He was a National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts 40 Under 40 Honoree. He holds a BA in Finance and Economics and an MS in Managerial Accounting. Carl lives in Metro Chicago with his wife and twin sons.
During this episode, we talked about how he started his journey in pre-med and eventually fell into the world of finance advisory work, where he found his passion, and also learn from people along the way on what it takes to truly be a successful CFO, and eventually become a business owner himself, and a teacher of others to share what he has learned along the way.
I hope you enjoy this episode with Carl. Make sure to share with your colleagues where you think it will be helpful as well. I'm very excited to bring this episode to you as Carl and I collaborate on a number of areas, including helping accountant advisors shift into that advisory mindset and create businesses that can scale.
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Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs. I am so excited to interview my friend Carl Seidman. Carl, before we get started, do you want to give a little background on yourself, and then we'll get right into it.
Thanks so much for having me, Amy. I'm Carl, based outside of the Chicago area. I spent the entirety of my career in FP&A advisory for national CFO and management consulting work. I began my career at PwC on the advisory side before going into the stress business advisory. Over a decade ago, I started my own practice working with small and mid-sized firms, helping them get to the next chapter of their growth.
We’re so glad to have you here. We're going to start back in the beginning and learn your story of how you got to where you are now. Where did you grow up? What did your parents do for a living, that sort of thing?
Career Beginnings & Transition To Finance
I grew up outside Detroit, in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. I went to elementary school, middle school, and high school. I went to college in Michigan as well. When I was in college, I began as a pre-med and then realized very quickly that I didn't want to study math, science, and physics for four years before I started to get to do the more relevant stuff.
It was very early on that I decided I wanted to go into finance, and realized through that experience that what I was learning was directly relevant to the kind of work that I wanted to do. Towards the end of my time there, I ended up getting a Master's degree in Accounting, my CPA. I’m a little bit different than most people, having been a finance undergrad. I ended up doing some audit internships, and when I was doing auditing, I said, “This isn't something that I want to do.”
When I went to an internship at PwC, I said, “Look, I know that there are all these advisory groups that you have that are not typically assurance, audit, or tax. I'd love to be able to get some experience doing that.” After I graduated from college, having gotten my Master's degree and my CPA, I ended up going into advisory work at PwC, doing intellectual property litigation, valuation, and disputes. A very niche practice, but a lot of fun stuff.
Let's go back to your parents. What did they do for a living?
Parental Influence & Values
Part of my rationale for being a pre-med when I was in college was that my father is a retired physician. He was formerly a pulmonologist. Growing up, that was a lot of what I knew about what my father had done. My mother began as a teacher and then a dental hygienist. When I was in Middle School, she went back and got a Master's degree in social work and became a social worker for the next 15 or 20-some years. I grew up in a dual-working household with people who took education very seriously. A value instilled in me very early on is the importance of hard work and education to be able to have choices later on in life, and choose a career that you want to have.
Did your father come from the physicians as well? How did he end up becoming or getting interested in the medical field?
It's a good question. My father also grew up in the suburbs of Detroit. He's the oldest of three siblings. His father passed away at a very young age, and my father was eight years old when his father passed away. He was having to grow up pretty quickly. My grandmother, his mom, was a full was working full-time, so she was providing for the family. My dad was, in some ways, helping take care of his siblings.
My dad, when he was younger in grade school, was a very high achiever academically. I believe that he had the highest grades and the best academic performance in school. He ended up going to the University of Michigan. I believe that he had his desire at a young age to go into the medical field because he accomplished a lot academically. He ended up getting a pass in undergraduate school to go to medical school after three years.
He uses the funniest term. He always says his a baccalaureate degree instead of a bachelor's degree, but he always says, “I don't have a baccalaureate degree. I don't have a bachelor's degree. He had 30-plus years of being a physician, no bachelor's degree, just a medical degree. When he was a medical school, I remember asking him, “Why did you go into pulmonary medicine?” He said, “I had a mentor. I had somebody who inspired me. They were in that field, and that's where I ended up.”
Did you ever go with him to work or see him in action?
Once in a while, he would bring me to his office. He had some breathing machines and things that he would show me. He introduced me to the other staff and the other physicians in his group. What I always found to be interesting was how enamored people were with what he did. Some people were like, “He's such a great physician. He's got such a good bedside manner. He's so caring.”
If you think back to medicine 30 years ago, it was very different from what it is now. He would get on the phone with people. If somebody needed help, he'd get on the phone. He wasn't billing people for their time. We'd walk through the hallways of the hospital, and people would say hello. It was almost like he was a mini-celebrity in that environment. It was an interesting exposure early on in my life of here's somebody who's gotten to the top of their profession, well respected, highly regarded, and does what needs to be done to get the job done, instead of unfortunately, in some ways where medicine has gone now, it becomes a lot more of a business.
I do think it is still unique to be that intelligent, as you're talking about him and have that emotional intelligence as well. He cares. Do you think that had something to do with him losing his father growing up?
I don't know. I'm not sure. I know that when people describe me, they will often say that. I have twin sons. Both of them do, but one in particular has a remarkable emotional intelligence that I would not expect somebody of his age to have. Maybe it's in our DNA to have some situational, environmental, and personal awareness. You might be right. It could be that he had to grow up.
He was a caregiver, taking care of his siblings.
That's something I haven't thought about. You might be right there. Especially when there’s a crisis situation, or when there's uncertainty and volatility, sometimes you need somebody cool as a cucumber to manage that. That could be true.
How did you see him regulate himself at home? If he's got a stressful job and taking on all that, did you see the same side of him, or did he have hobbies?
He enjoyed taking the vacations that we took as a family. I enjoyed doing the things that I was doing as a kid. I was in Cub Scouts and played baseball and soccer. He'd come to those things. I don't remember him having a whole lot of hobbies aside from enjoying spending time with us. I also do remember he was an extremely hard worker. He would work until 6:30 to 7:00 at night. He'd come home, he'd have dinner, and we'd spend a little bit of time together. He'd go back to work until 11:00, not at the hospital, but he had a study or an office at home.
I remember he was working a lot all the time. I think the part of that work ethic has rubbed off on my sister and me. We care about what we do. We care about delivering the highest quality that we can possibly deliver. Unlike some people who say, “I'm done at 5:00,” sometimes it's hard for me. It's probably hard for us to turn that off.
It sounds like your mother was very different as far as more of a free spirit of what kinds of things she loves or found passion in. Those are pretty extreme things she went into, from teacher to dental hygienist and social worker. What were those shifts? Do you know what caused the shifts with her?
She started out as a teacher. I don't think she did that for more than a year. It may have been student teaching. I'm fairly sure that when she was in school, she went through the pathway that she needed to be a dental hygienist. That was after., She did that, and the part of her motivation was to have the flexibility, to be able to be a mom to us. My dad, at least in the very beginning, was working crazy hours. When he first started out, I believe he was working over 100 hours a week for multiple years.
With young kids in the picture and my dad working crazy hours, my mom needed that flexibility. Being a dental hygienist, she worked mostly on weekends and also on a couple of days during the week. When my sister and I started getting a little bit older, I think I was in maybe sixth grade, she ended up going to a local university, a 45-minute drive away, and going to school a couple of nights during the week.
When she got her job in social work, it was being a school social worker. Her hours were the same as my hours, being a student. I think a lot of her motivation was not only doing the things she liked to do, but also being thoughtful of, “I still have grade-school age children. I want to make sure that I'm around.” If I get sick or my sister gets sick, she's able to jump away and do what needs to be done.
I'm seeing a mix of both of them. When you went to college, you would have had this vision of becoming a doctor, like your dad, because that's what you knew.
Carl’s Motivation & Value System
This is probably one of the few times I've admitted. It wasn’t that I wanted to be a doctor. It was all I knew. You may even know this about me, but part of my value system, and it's something that is always inside of me, is exposing people to things they've never seen before because you don't know what you don't know. That's true for everybody. There's so much that we don't know, but there's so much that we can do to get exposed to different things. Part of the reason why I went in that direction early on was that this is what I grew up with. This is what I knew. It was to be a doctor, a social worker, a dental hygienist, or something else. I didn't have a whole lot of exposure. It wasn't until I got to college that I started to see and hear and meet people who are doing different things.
Path To CFO: There’s so much we don’t know, but there’s also so much we can do to get exposed to different things.
Making Career Shifts: From Uncertainty To Purposeful Direction
Was there anyone in particular that you can think of who was like, “I should go to accounting for five years?” How did you even make that switch?
It's a weird story. It was so long ago. I was so young and impressionable, to think back to what those moments were? I do remember when I was in school. It wasn't that I wanted to be a doctor. That was what I knew. I had this feeling inside of me. I was like, “What if I don't like this? What if there's something else that I might want to do? I'd better play a couple of science.”
What I ended up doing was, at the same time that I was doing some of these science and math classes, I had a conversation with the counselor. They said, “Why don't you take some of these elective classes and also these requirements that you're going to have to do to graduate anyway? It's going to help you figure out some other avenues.”
I remember I took some economics classes. At the same time, I was taking math and science, I was taking economics. I was like, “This is interesting because this explains what's going on with prices.” It was supply and demand. Why do prices go up? Why do prices go down? Why is there a demand for something? Why is there an excess of something? I was like, “That makes a lot of sense.” I started to get into the business side. I remember I went to the business college. I was there for my economics class, and there was this booth with a business fraternity. It was a non-Greek business fraternity. I said, “What is this?”
I talked to people, and they said, “You should rush this fraternity.” I said, “I don't know what that means,” but I went to the events and they said, “You have to be a business person to rush a business fraternity. I said, “I kind of am.” It was those moments of meeting these other kids who were studying economics, accounting, finance, supply chain, marketing, human resources, and all this other stuff. I said, “I don't know anything about this.”
I started to meet some people who were studying accounting, and they were very convincing to me, saying that there's so much demand for accountants. There are so many different things you can do with accounting. I said, “I don't know what accountants do, aside from taxes.” I decided that instead of accounting, I'm going to go into finance. Finance also does accounting. That was the next journey. I heard that accounting is in demand. You can learn a lot. It's very important to finance, but finance also has lots of applications. I started moving towards the direction of finance, accounting, and economics.
That makes sense. As you said before, you started out in audit and then went into the finance area at PwC. Is that right?
Yeah. That was the only non-accounting major to have an audit internship at PwC. Not knowing anything about what PwC did, I knew that it was a big, well-respected firm. I had this partner there, the partner whom I was working for, and he was such a sincere guy. I still remember to this day, he wrote me a handwritten note after the interview. He was like, “I know you're not sure about this. I know you come from a finance background. I want you to come here for this internship.” At the very end of it, a written note of like, “Thank you for trusting in me. Thank you for trusting in us.” That was a long time ago, and I still remember the details. I still remember the plot like he was the lead partner on a certain client. I still remember that. You meet somebody who makes an impression, and it can change your life.
It is so important that we forget those little things that make an imprint, but stick with us. We often don't even remember. Has no idea what an impression he left on you.
To your point, it's important to go back to those people and let them know. I could probably find him, but I've even had teachers, like high school teachers, whom I wrote letters to and emails twenty years later saying, “You might not realize this, but certain things that you said to me on a certain day change the way that I thought about something and it's been life-changing. I also think about that.
Not that I care so much about my own legacy, but I care about, “Can I have that kind of an impact on other people? Maybe I can say something, or maybe I can do something, or I can help in a way that it's like that one-spark moment, like my teachers had with me, or like that partner had with me. You open yourself up to other people. They open themselves up to you, and it can change somebody's life. It really can.
Path To CFO: It's not about my own legacy, but about the impact I can have on others.
Human Element In Business Relationships
Not to jump too far. I have that, and the work that you do now, and the advisory work we've done together to help teach people on this. Don't you think that's the difference? Some CFOs come in and do their thing, and everyone is uncomfortable around them and scared of them, and then there are the ones who take care and try to explain what they're talking about. Not making people feel stupid, and respecting their knowledge as well, and helping them to deliver the work they do.
It's interesting that you put it that way. In business, many, if not most, people say, “It's very transactional,” but there's the human side to everything. Even when we've talked about the term fractional CFO, most small business owners couldn't care less about the title or what that means. Back to when I first started doing the work, to my clients, I was Carl. It wasn't the title. It was, “This is Carl. He's our guy. He helps us understand our numbers and not make terrible mistakes.”
It becomes like this is somebody who we trust, who we've gotten to know my kids' names, and know the activities my kids are into. It becomes a lot more of a relationship of I'm doing work with somebody who I like and trust, who happens to be good at finance, versus somebody good at finance that I'm happy I like them too. I think that it's, it's important to bring more of that human side that comes with the technical side, than I'm going to go with the technical person, and I hope they're nice.
From PWC To Turnaround Consulting (2007 Recession)
How did you move from doing what you were doing at PwC to your next?
This was around the recession of 2007. I loved PwC. I loved the partner I worked with, I loved my team. Unfortunately, around that time, with the recession, what happens when recessions come to be is that advisory work starts to go down. There's discretionary spending that the companies aren't willing to deal with. A lot of the work started to dry up. The quality of the work started to get less quality. At the same time, the partner I was with was reaching his mandatory retirement age. It was all of these things together. He was starting to pull back. The recession was impacting your good work coming in. I'm not feeling the kind of motivation. I’m not feeling the fulfillment that I had been having previously.
At that time, I started to research other groups in the firm and say, “What else is there that's not audit, that's not tax, but that might be busier or more stimulating than where I am, and that might be a little bit less impacted by the recession?” I remember having a conversation. I'm taking all the barriers here. I have not openly shared a lot of this. I remember I went to another partner and I shared my thoughts.
I said, “I love the firm, I love my group, but there are things that are out of my control or causing me to not be as enthusiastic.” He said, “You should go check out these different groups.” I said, “I did. I wasn't all that thrilled about them.” He said, “Then you should quit.” I was like, “Wait a second. This is a very senior partner telling me to quit the firm.” All the gloves were off. He was like, “If you can't find something that you are connected to that you're enthusiastic about doing here, don't play the game. Go do something else. Go somewhere else.”
Path To CFO: If you can't find something you're connected to and enthusiastic about doing where you're at, don't play the game. Go do something somewhere else.
It was around that time that I said, “What's going to be busy in a recession?” Business consulting. I started to interview turnaround restructuring, distressed business advisory, and bankruptcy consulting firms, and that's where I went next. I did a handful of interviews at the big firms in Chicago. I ultimately decided on the one that I thought was going to give me the best exposure, the best experience, and challenge me.
How long were you there?
I was there for 5 or 6 years, something like that.
Did you enjoy the work as much as you enjoyed the work prior?
Yes and no. It was different. At PwC, you know what those environments are like and that it's very professional, very polished, lots of process, and there's a structure to everything. They're across the world, and they’re affiliated with 200,000-plus employees. The one I went to had around 125 professionals. It was much, much smaller. For better or for worse, it was operated like a startup in some ways, an entrepreneurial company in some ways, where a lot of those boundaries weren't there, which was great and also bad.
It’s great in that whatever you need to do to get the job done, you do that. There are no guardrails that are going to prevent you or obstruct you from doing the work you need to do. At the same time, it was like, “Carl, you're on this engagement by yourself. Good luck.” Early on, I was like, “I appreciate that, but I've never done this before. They were like, “Then figure it out.” I said, “Who am I going to figure this out from?”
At PwC, you have a coach, you have a mentor, you have a team, and there's a support structure. They're not going to put you on something where you're going to fall on your face. Here was like, you'll fall in your face unless you are audacious enough and assertive enough to go find people in the firm who can help. What I quickly learned was it was very much like a sink or swim environment, where there were plenty of people who were sinking, saying there isn't the structure that I need, but then, for me, it taught me to be resourceful, to be assertive, to put myself out there, and to build relationships. I don't think I would have gotten that as quickly as I did there if I had stayed at a Big Four firm. It forced me to take over my future.
Going back to your father taking care of his patients, not just doing the work, I would guess that this kind of work, when you're restructuring a business, you're hearing some pretty awful stories.
Terrible.
How did you handle that? Is there anything you drew from watching your father and learning from him?
It's interesting you bring it up because I don't actively think about that. I haven't thought of the connections. I don't know if it was watching my dad as much as it was not a transaction. This isn't a business transaction. There's very much a human side to this. Even though I probably never saw it from my dad, he was dealing with patients who had emphysema and cancer and had terminal illness, where you probably had to level with somebody and say that it's about the quality of life now, it's not about the cure.
What I came to learn in the environment that I was in, and I say this often, is that half of it is business and half of it is therapy or counseling, where you're going in and you're taking a look at numbers, but the numbers represent somebody's salary. When you get rid of that salary, the company saves money, but you have completely upended somebody's life.
Path To CFO: Half of finance is business, the other half is therapy—because behind every number is a person, a salary, a life that can be completely upended.
Not only have you upended their life, but also other people who are still at the company who say, “This was my friend or this was my mentor, or I'm going to have to take on two jobs instead of just my own.” It started to take me some time. I was relatively young when I was there, but I grew up fast. Maybe the same way that my dad had to, of these are people who are looking to this relatively young, driven finance guy, but he's the only person who they can talk to about what the consequences are.
I started to understand that this wasn't just about finances. This was about people and not just about these are individuals, but what does this mean for the bigger stitching of this culture, of the dynamic that these people have? You're right. There are some pretty horrible things. You see people at their absolute worst, and it forced me in some ways to grow some thicker skin, but also to sympathize, as well as empathize with what these people are going through.
Managing Personal Emotions While Helping Others
It's a weird comparison to make, but when I have helped yoga teachers become teachers, part of the discussion is about how do you sit alongside someone, but not let it deplete you with whatever someone is going through. This is stuff they don't teach you in business school of the real stuff you see, the real things people are going through, and how you still take care of yourself emotionally when you're trying to help, but you can only do so much.
I think you're right, and I'm not sure how you would even teach something like that in school or an MBA. I don't know how you would even bring that up. I feel like it can be very circumstantial. With you working with other yoga teachers, it is like you can't teach that out of a textbook. You can't almost prime that like, “This is going to be the lesson that we talked about today.” It becomes almost circumstantial, like, “This is what we're going to encounter. These are examples of where I've dealt with this. You're dealing with that now. How does it come together?”
I think that's what's neat about this environment. There are so many unique dynamics that you don't learn in school. You encounter them when you encounter them, but you have to be mindful enough and slow enough to be able to say, “I realize that I'm in this moment. I need to look at this moment. I need to learn from this moment, but then it's not just about me. Who else could be learning from this moment as well?”
Where did you go from here? What made you decide to leave there?
Burnout & The Decision To Move On
As much as I learned there, I learned more in 5 or 6 years in that environment than I probably would have in 25 years somewhere else. It was so accelerated and so intense. I was hungry for that learning. I was hungry for that development, but at the same time, you can burn yourself out going at that pace. I'm on the road, 40 weeks out of the year. I’m not just working Monday through Thursday. I'm working from Sunday night through Friday night. Could I have kept going? Yeah, but I was looking at where my life was going and saying, “I'm dating right now and I like the person I'm dating. They don't want to be with me because they saw me.”
I remember I was dating somebody, and she was like, “I like you. I want to spend more time with you. I can't see you more than Saturday night. That's it.” I was like, “I know.” She was like, “I'm looking for more than a one-weekend night a week relationship.” I was like, “I get it.” It was that realization, looking at it from the outside, saying, “Is this the life and the lifestyle that I want to have?” I remember having a conversation with a colleague of mine. I said, “You know what? I like the work. I love the people. If I could work half the hours or be home half the time, it would change everything.”
I remember he said, “I understand. I agree with that, but I don't know that that's possible.” Eventually, towards the end, I was like, “I wanted to do the work with smart people. I just don't know that I can do that here.” Around the same time, I had a couple of clients who would pull me aside. They were as direct as they could be. They were like, “Carl, why don't you go start your own firm? You don't need this firm.” I said, “What do you mean?” They're like, “You're doing all the work anyway. What would you need this firm for?” I said to bring in the work.
One of these clients is like, “I'll give you the work.” I was like, “I can't work with you. I've got a legal agreement. I can't go to you and do the same thing.” He's like, “I've got plenty of relationships I can introduce you to.” I said, “I guess I never thought about that before.” That was this recognition where he was like, “You got the skills, you got the background, you got the ability.” He had the network, and I started to realize I had the network too. He said, “Quit and go do your own thing.”
I remember I left with no next job lined up. I did some world travel, and when I was traveling, I was building up, warming up my network, and reaching out and building a client base. While I was on the road, I had my email. I bought a tiny little laptop, and I was doing calls and emails from the road. Nobody had any idea that I was in Argentina, Thailand, the UK, and the Dominican Republic. I was all over the place.
Good for you.
It was around the time when doing things virtually was not normal, but I was like, there's no reason why this camping is normal. It’s like the beginning of remote work or virtual work, where you can service companies from all over the world. That was well over a dozen years ago.
That's awesome. What made you make the decision to start teaching other people?
It was around this time that I was involved in the turnover structuring. I had a colleague who took a few days off to do a financial modeling and forecasting training program. He came back and he said, “Carl, you should teach that.” I was very good at Excel, modeling, and forecasting. I said, “Was it that bad, or do you think I would be that good?” He was like, “It was good. I think you'd be good at doing it.” I went to the website for this organization. Coincidentally, they were looking for an instructor for that particular topic. They were teaching over 150 topics, but that was one of the three.
I remember I put my resume together. I didn’t even have an updated resume, but I put one together, put it into the online portal. I was like, “Nobody's ever going to look at an online portal.” Six months later, I get a call or an email from the Director of Education who says, “You're exactly what we're looking for.” They had me come in and audit the one instructor they had who had been teaching this for ten years, and the instructor was like, “This is hard, isn't it? Is this beyond you?” I said, “No, I do this every day. This is right up my alley.” He said, “I'm retired. I get the first dibs on these opportunities.” I was like, “That's fine. I have a full-time job where I'm working 60-plus hours a week,” and so I would take vacation days away from work to go teach.
I would take three days off once a year, twice a year, for the first three years, and I was doing this for fun. As the ratings were coming in, the organization was like, “You're good at this. Your ratings are very good. Do you want to do more?” I said, “I can't do more,” and then they said, “Do you want to do different topics?” I said, “Okay,” so I went from financial modeling and forecasting to doing cost accounting, to doing finance for non-financial people, to doing organizational expense planning, and things like that.
It was through that experience that I was teaching their content, and I said, “This is a little outdated. Would you like me to update it?” It’s a little cliche. It was like, if it's not broken, don't fix it. They're like, “We appreciate it, but we're not looking to update the materials.” I said, “There's a lot of improvement that could happen here. How about I build my own stuff?” I started to build my own content, my own library, my own curriculum, and I started to put that in front of a company, and they said nothing like this exists.
It was through that experience of seeing what's not in the market, what is there that's not working, but bringing more of a practitioner angle of I do this for a living. I'm not a retiree, I'm not a professor, I'm not a real trainer. I'm teaching you how to do what I've done in my career. That connected and resonated with people, and I found that most other trainers or providers weren't doing that.
Path To CFO: I saw what was missing in the market—too much theory, not enough practice. I teach what I actually do, not what I used to do.
Importance Of Real-Life Experience In Education
I think what's so important is that real-life experience and people are so hungry for it. You and I collaborate on a course, but most of it is all on our experience of having our own practices and what we didn't know.
You bet, and I think one piece of feedback we've gotten from multiple people, but what I can think of for sure is that there's no book about this. Their response was that they're teaching what they do. They teach this profession, and there's no book that was written about how to be successful in this profession. It's what comes about through these discussions and the Q&As, and the demonstrations, and taking off the gloves, getting a little bit vulnerable about what's not working and what does work, and using those as data points instead of a script or recipe.
This is the part in school that's not taught, just getting back to that advisory mindset, the human side of the work. It is something that we spend so much time talking about, even though we’re talking about structure, but we're also talking about real situations that people are getting into, and then how do you figure it out from a human perspective and a behavioral perspective?
It's not something that's taught in every school. I don't want to say it's a disservice, but I think that it can be a rude awakening for students. Especially in the university environment, a lot of professors come from academia. They don't come from practice. They're teaching more from academia and not from practice, until you get a professor of practice, then it changes the game. These students learn almost like a recipe or a script, they find themselves in a job, and it's like, “I didn't learn that in school? What do I do?” Even going to the very beginning of this conversation that you and I are having, it's like if you don't know what, you don't know, where are you going to learn it from?
Path To CFO: When professors teach from theory, students learn a script. But when they teach from practice, it changes the game and prepares students for what’s ahead.
The best people to learn it from are the people who are a few steps ahead, doing the kind of work that you wanted to do, who understand where you're at right now because they were theirs ago or maybe decades ago. I'm an adjunct professor at Rice University. When I was asked to teach, I was like, “I don't have the specific academic curriculum that fits the exact title and description of the course.” I was told, “You know what? That's fine because if you can make this practitioner-focused rather than academic, that's going to be a win for these students.”
I brought the curriculum that I teach to FP&A's at Fortune 500s to these students, and they were like, “This is totally different than anything that we've ever done, and I can see the relevance to my job when I graduate from school.” The whole point is the relevance of what you're trying to learn to where you're trying to go.
Why do you do it? Why do you educate other people to do these things?
There are probably a couple of reasons. It's not something I share regularly, but I do think about it. For one, I didn't have it. Even thinking back to their earlier parts of this conversation, I started as a pre-med. Why? Because that's all I knew. Had I known more about what was out there, what the possibilities were, and that there are these few routes that I could go through in my career, it probably would have caused me to think a little bit differently.
The Power Of Skills, Experience, & Confidence
At the same time, this is something that is deep in my soul. When you were younger, you took the opportunities that were given to you because that's all you could hope for. It wasn't until I started getting more skills, more ability, and more experience, I was much more assertive and much more proactive. It was what was ultimately giving me power in my opportunities.
They are saying that knowledge is power, experience is power, network is power, giving those kinds of intangible assets to people of I want to help you get a network. I want to help you get skills. I want to help you get experience. I want to help you build your own confidence. All those things stitched together mean that you're more in charge of your life, rather than waiting for a firm, a boss, or a parent to create the opportunities for you. When you're so good with your skills, network, experience, and confidence, people can't ignore you, and they want you. You get to pull out the opportunities that you want and turn down the ones that you don't. That has been a lesson that I've learned throughout my life. You're more in charge than you realize you are. It's up to you to decide what you want that to look like.
Thank you so much for sharing your story because there's so much there that I think people will take away. I like to end this with some rapid-fire questions. You pick a topic. It's either family and friends, money, spiritual, or health.
Let's go spiritual.
I love it. Okay. Things are actions that I don't have that I want spiritually.
I guess this is kind of spiritual and vocational, but I would like to be able to increase my calm and my sense of peace when I have very pressing demands on my life. Even though I know that something needs to go and and get done, I sometimes wish I could be calmer and more present with what's coming down the road.
Things are actions I do have that I want to keep spiritually.
I would say that calmness. When I was in that business fraternity, I remember I had gotten an award. That was the person you would most want to be next to in battle. At the time, I was like, “It was funny, it's goofy.” I didn't think much of it, and it has meant a whole lot more to me twenty-plus years later than back then, where Carl is this steady, reliable, calm person who, in the face of crisis and chaos, I would want to be next to me. I don't know why I have it, but I do have that ability to stay calm in the face of craziness.
That grounding presence. Things or actions that I don't have that I don't want to have spiritually.
I am not an overly reactionary person. Even going back to what I said, when something bad happens, I tend not to overreact. I tend not to get angry. I tend not to lash out. I think that's something that is a real differentiating factor in my personality. Some people get very stirred up, and they lash out, they get hyper-emotional, and get very reactive. I'm not like that. I don't want to be any different.
That has probably helped you in some of those businesses. Last one, things or actions that I do have that I don't want.
I can sometimes tend to dwell on things longer than I should. I don't like even singing the word should, but something will happen, and I'll think about it more than I likely should. Maybe I don't have control over it, where it’s not a big deal. I dwell on it. It's also something that's a great trait, but it's also a terrible one. In some ways, I'm an extremely loyal person. I tend to stay in some relationships, work relationships, longer than I should.
It's good that you qualify that before your wife listens to this.
Flexibility & Building A Strong Network
I'm not talking about a romantic relationship. Nothing there. Sometimes I probably should have left before I actually did. I was like, “I think this is going to get better, or something is going to change.” Oftentimes, you have it in your gut, where you’re like, “I feel this is not going to change. Nothing is going to get better here. I'm loyal. I'm optimistic. I'm positive. I'm like, “It will if I bring it up.”
You want to see the best, like if they have potential, they can get there.
I've got to think about my answers to your questions now. I realize that's who I am. Some things are worth being proud of, and some things are just acknowledging I got it.
That's the way it is. Anything before we close this conversation that you want to make sure that you've said that you haven't said, or anything you want to reiterate or stress to the audience?
Reflecting on what we've talked about, there's no perfect path through work, and there's no perfect path through life. I think that the more a person thinks there is or wants to adhere to a linear path, the more challenging that can be. Especially in our world today, where it's moving very quickly. There are virtual elements or globalized. Things are changing very rapidly. It's extremely important to take note of your surroundings and how quickly it is moving, and stay flexible. Stay present. Keep a warm network, talk to people about what they're doing, talk to people about what you're doing, and take advantage of the belief systems, the knowledge, and the experience that other people have that we don't. As I said before, building up your skills, building up your experience, and building up your network. I think many of us are more in charge of the direction of our careers, which ultimately means being more in charge of the direction of our lives. I live that every day. I hope that lots of other people I come into contact with think about that as well.
Awesome. Thanks so much for joining me and sharing your story.
Thank you so much. Thanks, Amy.
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Now for my Mindful Moments with my interview with Carl. We talked about his beginnings of having a father who was a physician, and that being an example that he had as he grew up. Seeing what his father did as he grew up, and took that example and assumed that was his path as well, to be a physician. What was interesting, and I always find it interesting when we go through these life stories, is how things shift along the way, and what things we learned, even when we do shift from our original idea.
One of the things that Carl noted learning from his father was that he took the time to get to know his patients, was extremely well-respected, and people sought him out and understood that, more than being a physician, he cared. That kind of care and human side to doing the work that he did was also something that I can tell you from working with Carl personally, he has that human side to what he does in finance.
We talked about how, eventually, in college, he wasn't sure if this was the right path. He went and took economics, and found a love for that, and joined the business fraternity, and learned about accounting and finance, which set him on the path to eventually go to PwC and other firms, and start this finance career. One of the cool things that we talked about was that when Carl had interned at PwC, when he left there, he had gotten a note from one of the partners. It was a handwritten note saying that they appreciated him trusting his internship and choosing PwC as the place where he was going to learn.
I think we underestimate the power of taking that moment to write a personal letter such as that, especially when you're even more impressionable, and having someone at that level take notice and appreciate the decisions that we all make, no matter what level we are in our lives, and what effect that has on the decisions that we make. As you can see, because of that, it brought him closer to making the decision to stay with PwC and grow his career there.
He did that for many years and eventually left there during the recession, and joined a restructuring firm, which was a very different type of work, working with businesses that might have been struggling, and how to get them out of it. That's where he realized that this isn't just about a transaction. There is very much a human side to this work. Much like when we talked about his father, caring about the impact that a diagnosis has, or the mindset that someone has. It's not different because when we go through financial hardship or trauma, we need that person who is going to understand what the impact of certain decisions is, and how hard that is for each person to make those decisions, and be able to save their own families, especially when they're in situations like this.
This was another point where someone came in, and another whisper of where he should go next. A client said to him, “You could do this on your own. You start up your own practice.” At the time, he had nothing to look to and knew how to run a practice like this. The client was willing to give him contacts and so forth, and so that got him set on his way to starting his own practice.
One of the important things that Carl talked about was that if you don't know what you don't know, where do you learn it from? It's important that we look for that outside guidance, whether that be coaches, classes we take, online learning, or research. It's important that we take the time that we need to learn whatever it is that we want to go into, so that we make sure to not get ourselves in trouble or not have the right experts involved.
I can tell you, as a consultant for many years, that a lot of people try to save money by not hiring the right professionals along the way, especially when you're newer and have less of a budget. That is actually the most important time to have those experts around you, so that you understand what it takes to ensure that you don't hit those pitfalls. When you do, where do you go to ask the questions to make sure that you can get yourself out of it as well?
The other thing that we talked about was the confidence that comes along the way as you move through your career and maybe look backward on the experience that you have. A lot of us are set in that mindset of when we began, and we don't realize the expertise that has grown over time. Those choices that you make are the ones that we have to be very intentional about what things we do not want to do, and what things we do want to do. If we are just open to anything that comes our way, we start getting pulled in directions that aren't intentional. We might be doing work we don't want to be doing. It might not be producing the future result that we want. We want to make sure that we do take that time to understand what our purpose is, what our intentions are with our career, with our work life.
We talked about that for a good deal of time about letting work take over and get in the way of our personal relationships, and how we can step back and decide what the things are that we can control versus what we can't control. One of the things that Carl is very good at is having that sense of peace when things are very stressful, bringing a sense of calm, not being overtly reactionary. Those are skills we need to learn or even identify that we’re good at it, or maybe someone that we work closely with is good at it, and one to bring in the right person at the right time if we are not the right person.
That is something to have confidence about, too. We're not going to be 100% great at everything, but when we can use our resources, when we can use the right people for the right situation, it helps us accelerate our success along the way. Understanding that no matter what path we put in front of us, it may not work exactly as we think it's going to work out. What's important is that we stay flexible and network. Use our network of people to help us to that path of success and be open to the opportunities that come our way.
I want to thank you so much for tuning in, for sharing the show with your colleagues, and talking about it. It's so important that these people who give their time to share their stories have people to make sure that it gets to the right people. Even if we help one person, that's the whole reason we do this show, so that there might be something that someone says that resonates with you right now that will help you in your own life. Remember that whatever energy you want around you, it's important to be intentional about your own because we are contagious, and to think about what the path is that we want to be on, how we want to show up each day. Thank you so much for tuning in. I look forward to having you tune in to our next episode.
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About Carl Seidman
Carl Seidman is a trusted business advisor specializing in financial planning & analysis (FP&A), business strategy, and finance transformation. He advises Fortune 500 corporations and middle-market companies, helping establish effective FP&A practices, processes, and teams. At the same time, he supports financial professionals, positioning them for greater control over their careers by helping build their competence and confidence while eliminating time-wasting activities and mistakes.
Carl is 1 of 35 U.S.-based Microsoft MVPs in Excel. His Excel and FP&A development methodologies and curriculums have been implemented by leading organizations as part of their financial leadership development programs (FLDPs) for top talent and emerging leaders. More than 13,000 corporate finance professionals globally have attended his training programs, workshops, and seminars.
Carl serves as an adjunct professor in data analytics at Rice University and as an FP&A advisor, fractional CFO, and management consultant to entrepreneurial businesses throughout North America and Europe, assisting them with strategic financial planning, value enhancement, and revitalization.
Carl is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA); has earned other professional credentials including the CIRA, CFF, CFE, CGMA, AM (Accredited Member in Business Valuation), CSP (Certified Speaking Professional), Certified Anaplan Model Builder; and was a National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts (NACVA) 40 Under Forty honoree. He holds a BA in finance and economics and an MS in managerial accounting.