140 - Brad Shaw - Director of InterFinancial Corporate Finance

Arete Podcast with Richard Triggs

In this episode, I interview Brad Shaw. He is currently the Director of InterFinancial Corporate Finance Limited, an independent corporate finance and growth consulting firm, specialising in the mid-market sector. Brad shares how their company is helping businesses find where their value creation is and deliver strategies to reach those goals and opportunities. We also get to know Brad’s passion in working with business, his career and experiences over the years, and his love for learning. Brad is also a member of my Champion’s Forum and shared his experiences with the group on this episode. Brad shares his professional responsibilities and more about his work as the Director of InterFinancial Corporate Finance Limited. The company mainly specialises in mergers and acquisitions, and some corporate advisory work for entrepreneurial businesses across Australia. Brad shares with us his personal background, specifically where he came from, his first failure early in his university days, his first job as a cadet estimator for John Hollands Construction, his different engineering field experiences, to working with WorleyParsons for 17 years, then to studying overseas and into the financial sector. Brad shares a bit more about his work with Ausenco and his learning opportunities there. Brad's experience when he went to Harvard Business School and the epiphany he had there. Brad generally shares his experiences while in Harvard, and his experience with his self-awareness coach there that led him to discover his personal epiphany. "I just think that a lot of us as executives rationalise things. We rationalise 'Why we did what we did'. “ "We think we're self aware and we think we know ourselves, but there's always more to learn. And there's always more to understand." Brad talks us through a couple of different case studies that would indicate how he added value to a particular business. He also shared how he helps businesses in the advisory space and in the financial world. "We do a lot of buy and sell advisory work, where we help businesses identify their organic strategy and find businesses that are the right fit for them." His 20 years of corporate work experience, and acquired skills and training from his corporate work everyday, helped him today and his work in the financial sector. "The most fun part of my day is finding great businesses. I'm very curious about what makes businesses work." Brad's preferred reality in 5 to 10 years? Brad loves the opportunities to learn and work with interim executives in small to medium enterprises, and to be influencing businesses for good. What is Brad when he is not at work? Brad's bucket list goal is to see a game of baseball in every stadium in America, and he is about halfway through that goal. He also shared more about his family life and next family holiday plans. Brad's experience with the Champions Forum "It's a fantastic opportunity in a confidential forum to be able to put a problem in the middle of the room. And it's amazing how much more clearly others can see your solution and way out than you can." "It's a group of caring people that'll keep your thing confidential, and are really helpful. And they've got no other interests other than helping you. I think that's really important." Richard shares that he thinks a business is your vehicle to express your full potential, and reveal your creativity. Brad Shaw on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-shaw-03aaa0b/ InterFinancial Website: https://interfinancial.com.au/ Richard Triggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardtriggs/ Arete Executive Website: https://areteexecutive.com.au