Consulting Rainmakers Podcast

Steve Schaffer is the Chief Operations Officer of TalentThrive.Steve Schaffer has spent more than twenty years in talent assessment. He started out in banking, answered a newspaper job ad that mentioned behavioral science, and spent about 12 years at a firm selling behavioral assessments, learning how competencies drive success in a role and coaching people to grow into them. When his former colleague Nathan Guard started TalentThrive, Steve joined him, and together they built their own assessment, the TalentThrive Snapshot, and a dashboard simple enough that a hiring manager can make good people decisions without paying a consultant to read the results. The Snapshot went through more than two and a half years of third-party validation. In this conversation, Steve explains why assessments should never be a hire-or-fire switch, why soft skills matter more than credentials for most roles, and why AI-written resumes mean employers need objective data on candidates.Expect to learn how to introduce an assessment so employees see it as development rather than a weapon, what Steve learned when he moved from selling talent software to building it, which skills can be trained and which cannot, why using AI in the scoring itself can break a tool's validation and invite lawsuits, where AI does help in talent development, and why chasing perfect marketing held TalentThrive back, and much more…-0:00 Cold open0:32 Welcome0:44 From Banking To Behavioral Science3:05 Why They Built Their Own Assessment4:49 Assessments Are Not A Hire Or Fire Tool8:27 From Selling Software To Owning It11:22 Why Soft Skills Beat Credentials14:09 Why You Cannot Rely On Resumes Anymore16:48 How Far AI Should Go In Hiring Tools20:54 Waiting For Perfect Marketing24:29 Where To Find Steve Schaffer-🔗 Guest & ResourcesConnect with Steve Schaffer:https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveschaffer1975Website: https://www.talent-thrive.com-Get in touch:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/Email: [email protected]

Rashellee Herrera is the Founder and Managing Partner of RNB Capital.Rashellee Herrera is a CPA who took her first accounting class at 16, majored in marketing against her dad's advice, and then went back for her accounting degree. She built her career in accounting, internal audit and external audit, including audit roles at Lennar, and was recruited to build the internal audit function at Doma ahead of its public listing, where she was promoted to Internal Audit Director after the company went public. Seeing that small businesses and startups lack the resources large corporations have, she started RNB Capital to bring that experience to them. The firm builds the financial infrastructure behind the numbers: internal controls, close processes and audit-ready, GAAP-based financials that hold up in diligence. In this conversation, Rashellee explains why waiting to fix your accounting costs you at the sale, where AI helps in finance and where it fails, and why being ready beats getting ready.Expect to learn the two accounting misconceptions she hears from startups and small business owners, why an AI-prepared balance sheet that did not balance is a warning for every owner, why forecasts are only as good as the data underneath them, how her firm onboards a new client, when to start planning an exit, how processes and controls move both your EBITDA and your multiple, and what RNB Capital is building next, and much more…-0:00 Cold open0:33 Welcome0:49 From An Accounting Class At 16 To Her Own Firm2:27 The Accounting Misconceptions Founders Have4:30 Why Accounting Is More Than Compliance6:34 Where AI Helps In Finance And Where It Fails10:59 Forecasts Start With Clean Data12:36 How She Onboards A New Client14:34 When To Start Planning Your Exit15:59 EBITDA Times A Multiple18:11 What Is Next For RNB Capital-🔗 Guest & ResourcesConnect with Rashellee Herrera:https://www.linkedin.com/in/rashelleeWebsite: https://rnbcapitalcpas.com-Get in touch:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/Email: [email protected]

Claire Chandler is the Founder and Executive Advisor of Chandler Advisory Group and the author of Growth on Purpose.Claire Chandler spent about 20 years in corporate America, much of her early career in full-time employee roles. In 2011, at the top of her game and on the rise in her company, a cancer diagnosis forced her to step away. She beat cancer, went back to work, and quit, and in 2013 she founded Talent Boost around the idea that talent isn't born, it's boosted. About two years ago she rebranded the firm as Chandler Advisory Group when her husband joined as her partner, pairing her background in leadership and talent development, human resources, communications and marketing with his in growth, operations and efficiency. Her book, Growth on Purpose, is about how to expand your business without losing your best talent. In this conversation, Claire explains why growth so often stalls on how companies bring talent in and bring it up, why she starts every engagement with a diagnosis instead of a magic pill, and why the bigger risk of AI is not that it replaces people.Expect to learn why businesses cannot just sustain the status quo anymore, what she would tell a founder who has no time to read the book, why leaders who believe they are the smartest person in the room are in the wrong rooms, how AI could replace the early career experiences where people learn foundational skills, why we trust AI in ways we would never trust a human, and what she thinks AI cannot replace, and much more…-0:00 Cold open0:33 Welcome0:46 From Corporate America To Founder4:30 What Growth On Purpose Means6:43 No Business Grows Alone7:22 Diagnose Before You Prescribe10:10 Outgrowing Yesterday's Thinking12:04 The Real Risk Of AI15:44 What AI Cannot Replace19:03 The Vision For Chandler Advisory Group21:45 Where To Find Claire Chandler-🔗 Guest & ResourcesConnect with Claire Chandler:https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairechandlersphrWebsite: https://chandleradvisorygroup.com-Get in touch:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/Email: [email protected]

Zoryna O'Donnell is the Founder and Director of L&M Plus Consulting.Zoryna O'Donnell spent more than 30 years in strategic and operational leadership across public, private and voluntary sector organisations in different countries, including transformation and change programme roles at the Isle of Wight Council, before going full time into her own consultancy, L&M Plus Consulting, which she founded in 2011. The name stands for Leadership and Management Plus: leadership and management development, change management, project management and wellbeing programmes, all built on insights from applied neuroscience and behavioural science. She holds an MBA from Warwick Business School, is a featured columnist for The Maverick Paradox Magazine and is working on a book about living, leading and succeeding with the brain in mind. In this conversation, Zoryna explains why being lonely at the top is a sign a leader is doing something wrong, what happens in people's brains when organisational change takes place, and why rushing AI adoption without bringing people along backfires.Expect to learn why the threat state, not stubbornness, sits behind most resistance to change, how change unsettles even the people who only watch it happen, what a mindful and human approach to AI adoption looks like, why leaders who run ahead of their people are not really leading, how co-designing change builds ownership and collective intelligence, and much more…-0:00 Cold open0:32 Welcome0:46 From 30 Years In Leadership To Her Own Consultancy2:18 The Myth That Leadership Is Lonely3:50 Why Leaders Need To Understand The Brain5:34 Brain Hacking And Her Writing8:54 Her Book On Leading With The Brain In Mind9:57 Why Change Programmes Stall13:30 Rushing Into AI Adoption16:47 Leading Change Instead Of Running Ahead19:02 Where To Find Zoryna O'Donnell-🔗 Guest & ResourcesConnect with Zoryna O'Donnell:https://www.linkedin.com/in/zorynaodonnellWebsite: https://lmplusconsulting.com-Get in touch:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/Email: [email protected]

Henry McIntosh is the Founder of Twenty One Twelve Marketing.Henry McIntosh started out as a copywriter in central London, on an intern's pay that barely covered his train fare, while picking up freelance copywriting and journalism on the side. When a blog he wrote for one of his freelance clients won a UK Blog Award, he turned that win and the clients he had built up into an agency, and Twenty One Twelve was born in 2016, when he was 24. Today the agency works with B2B companies in complex, regulated markets, mostly financial services and life sciences, that need to reach senior leaders at enterprise companies and other hard-to-reach buyers. Its Growth Engine methodology runs from brand and positioning through CRM, data and segmentation to thought leadership, events, LinkedIn and partnerships. Henry has also co-founded Be Noteworthy, an AI product spun out of the agency. In this conversation, Henry explains why he uses AI as the baggage handler rather than the pilot, and why it is most dangerous exactly where you lack the expertise to judge it.Expect to learn how to win enterprise clients when you are young and unproven, why niching by sector beats niching by service, how partnerships open doors to audiences you cannot reach directly, the three things to fix in your marketing funnel, why only a small share of your market is ready to buy at any one time, why Henry has not seen AI SDRs work, what AI is doing to entry level marketing jobs, and why taste and judgment remain the last edge of human marketing, and much more…-0:00 Cold open0:31 Welcome0:43 From Copywriter To Agency Founder2:34 Starting An Agency At 244:27 Why He Niches By Sector, Not Service6:58 Three Ways To Fix Your Marketing Funnel11:49 AI SDRs And How His Agency Uses AI13:26 Why AI Fools You Outside Your Expertise17:30 The Future Of Marketing Teams19:55 Will AI Stay This Cheap21:01 Where To Find Henry McIntosh-🔗 Guest & ResourcesConnect with Henry McIntosh:https://www.linkedin.com/in/hwmcintoshWebsite: https://twenty-one-twelve.com-Get in touch:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikulaszach/Apply to be a guest: https://consultingrainmakers.com/Email: [email protected]