Carrie Schochet is the Founder and CEO of Purple Squirrel Advisors, a boutique executive search firm specializing in senior-level placements for private equity and family businesses. Purple Squirrel Advisors is renowned for its personalized, “white glove” recruitment process, emphasizing cultural fit and long-term success in placements. Beyond her professional endeavors, Carrie founded CFO Next in 2013 to support transitioning senior financial executives through networking and resources. She also serves as Co-Chair of the Career Services Committee for Financial Executives International (FEI), advancing professional development for finance leaders.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [4:49] Why Carrie Schochet pivoted from pre-med to finance and ultimately into executive recruiting
- [6:37] Lessons from Nordstrom and how retail shaped her approach to customer relationships
- [9:59] How returning from maternity leave pushed Carrie to make a bold career move
- [14:59] Starting over in Michigan with no local business network
- [18:23] Strategic decision to target private equity and small to midsize businesses
- [21:57] Why Carrie launched CFO Next to support executives in transition and how it became a growth engine
- [25:19] The origin of the name “Purple Squirrel” and its relevance to hiring
- [28:24] Impact of the COVID-19 on Purple Squirrel’s business
- [31:46] How a devastating ski accident forced Carrie to let go and trust her team
- [36:57] Why retained search offers deeper partnership and better results than contingent recruiting
In this episode…
Leaving behind a stable corporate career can be terrifying, especially when you’re the primary breadwinner with a young family. Many professionals stay in roles that drain them because they fear the unknown or lack a clear path forward. What does it take to pivot from a high-pressure corporate role into a fulfilling entrepreneurial journey?
Carrie Schochet, an experienced executive recruiter, faced this exact dilemma and chose to take control of her future. After an unsupportive return from maternity leave, Carrie left her job and moved her family to a new city, where she rebuilt her career from the ground up. She focused on serving small to midsize businesses, built strategic relationships within the private equity space, and launched CFO support groups to add value to her network. Carrie emphasizes the importance of authentic connection, value-driven leadership, and building a resilient team that can thrive through personal and economic challenges.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Carrie Schochet, Founder and CEO of Purple Squirrel Advisors, about the nuances of executive search. Carrie delves into the significance of cultural alignment in hiring, the evolving dynamics of the talent market, and her firm’s unique “white glove” approach to recruitment. The conversation also touches on remote work trends, building long-term client relationships, and Carrie’s philanthropic efforts.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Carrie Schochet on LinkedIn
- Purple Squirrel Advisors
- The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg
- Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)
Quotable Moments:
- “Cultural fit isn’t just a buzzword; it’s the cornerstone of successful executive placements.”
- “Our ‘white glove’ approach ensures every client and candidate feels valued and understood.”
- “In recruitment, transparency and communication build trust and lead to better outcomes.”
- “The ‘Purple Squirrel’ represents that rare candidate who perfectly fits both skill and culture.”
- “Building long-term relationships is key to navigating the evolving landscape of executive search.”
Action Steps:
- Prioritize cultural fit in hiring: Beyond skills and experience, assess how candidates align with your company’s values and culture. This alignment leads to higher retention and overall organizational harmony.
- Implement transparent communication: Maintain open and honest dialogues with candidates throughout the recruitment process. Transparency fosters trust and ensures mutual understanding of expectations.
- Adapt to remote work trends: Recognize the shift towards remote work and adjust your recruitment strategies accordingly. Flexibility can widen your talent pool and attract top-tier candidates.
- Engage in philanthropic initiatives: Encourage leadership to participate in community-focused programs. Such involvement enhances the company’s reputation and employee satisfaction.
- Invest in long-term relationships: Focus on building enduring connections with both clients and candidates. Long-term relationships lead to better placements and sustained business growth.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today, we’re talking about how you can walk away from a ruthlessly competitive corporate environment and actually start your own business. My guest today, that is her story. Her name is Carrie Schochet. I’ll tell you more about her in a second, so stay tuned.<!–more–>
Intro: 00:16
Welcome to the <em>Smart Business Revolution Podcast</em>, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:33
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of this show. And you know, every week we talk to smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. And if you look at the archives, we’ve got Netflix and Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinko’s, lots of great episodes there for you as well. And before we get into this interview, this episode is brought to you by our company, Rise25, where we help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you to run your podcast and content marketing. We are an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast.
We do three things which are strategy, accountability, and full execution. And we even invented what some are calling the Wix of B2B podcasting. It’s our platform Podcast Copilot. And you know, Carrie, I know from researching your background, from our previous conversations that for you, relationships are incredibly important, and have been incredibly important throughout your career. And that’s how I feel as well.
And I love the ability every week to be able to talk to smart entrepreneurs and founders and share their stories like we will here today. So anyone who wants to learn about what that looks like, you can go to our website at Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. All right. And so my guest is Carrie Schochet. She’s the Founder and CEO of Purple Squirrel Advisors.
It’s a boutique executive search firm. They’re based out of Michigan. She went to University of Notre Dame and spent her career, spent the beginning of her career in Chicago, including at one of the nation’s leading recruitment and staffing firms, and eventually decided that that was not the long term plan for her. Moved back to the Detroit area and founded Purple Squirrel Advisors, and now she specializes in connecting C-level and senior executives with leadership positions in finance, accounting, human resources, and a bunch of other areas. And we’re going to dive into her story.
And, Carrie, so excited to have you here today. And I love to get to know what people were like when they were growing up, because a lot of times I think that feeds who we are today. You are a competitive soccer player, traveled around the world. That was kind of your background. And something else that jumped out at me is you skied down trash dumps.
You had trash dumps that were turned into ski hills, you said, which sounds traumatizing, but the way that you put it, it wasn’t. It seemed like it wasn’t as traumatic as it sounds, but sounds like a Slumdog Millionaire kind of story, but tell me a little bit about what it was like slaloming down these trash dumps.
Carrie Schochet: 03:02
So you would never know that they were. So they were essentially landfills that got covered in dirt and turned into little ski hills in southeastern Michigan. So we’ve got 2 or 3 of them. Certainly not traumatizing at all. Many people don’t even know the backstory.
I just know it from having grown up in the area. But yeah. So essentially, yeah, they just take these landfills and they repurpose them and, you know, put lots of dirt and I’m sure they sanitize them in other ways. I would, I would hope, but yeah, when you’re skiing there, you have no idea what the history of that land is. So I will say as a skier, I don’t really prefer to ski on those hills.
I don’t really spend my time there today as an adult. If I want to ski, I, you know, I like to go out west. I’ll go up to Northern Michigan. We’ve got some decent skiing in Northern Michigan. So I’ll put in the extra effort to drive that distance or jump on an airplane if I really want to ski.
John Corcoran: 03:54
Yeah, and skiing does play a part in your story a little bit later, so we’ll get back to that. But it certainly seems like a great gift for your kids, because everyone has to have a story of, you know, walking to school both ways, uphill in the snow that you tell your kids. And so like, you know, kids, we’re skiing at this nice resort. Now, look, when I was a kid, we were skiing down trash dumps. At least you’re not skiing down a trash dump.
Carrie Schochet: 04:18
Exactly. Yeah. No, I love to tell those stories to the kids. And certainly, being a parent, I have to dig into some of my stories and figure out ways to connect with each of them and inspire them and all that. So, yeah, but that’s good. Yeah for sure.
John Corcoran: 04:33
So tell us a little bit about you. You, you start down the corporate route and you are doing recruiting and you worked at a couple of larger firms. Tell us a little about the early days of getting involved in recruiting. What drew you to the field?
Carrie Schochet: 04:49
Yeah. So that’s a great question actually to back up just a little bit. So when I started at Notre Dame, I was actually pre-med. That didn’t last very long. And then I pivoted to the business school.
And so I ended up starting out with finance. I love math, it came naturally to me. I really kind of enjoyed that, that analytical type of work. But I also had a career, and have always had a creative interest, creative side. So I also started taking classes in the art school and just for fun.
And so I took 18 credits every semester. I actually graduated with dual degrees, and I think that plays into my story a little bit . I really didn’t know what I wanted to be like when I grew up. And I think that’s a challenge a lot of kids have, and I’m actually passionate about it today. Like, how can we educate kids at a younger age just to really know what the career paths are? And what does it mean to be an, you know, an accountant? What does the day to day activity look like?
What does it mean to be an investment banker or an engineer? Anyway, I just didn’t, you know, have a lot of that context. And so I ended up starting my career in litigation consulting, which has the potential to be very interesting for certain types of people. But it wasn’t interesting to me. And I was really miserable in my first job.
And I spent like about a year and a half doing that. It was a grueling 100 hours a week like. And I like to joke it was investment banking hours, and I wasn’t making investment banking money. And after about a year and a half of doing that, I decided to quit. I actually worked in retail for a few months. I felt like I needed a reset, like you.
John Corcoran: 06:27
You worked at Nordstrom, right? Which of course.
Carrie Schochet: 06:30
Is.
John Corcoran: 06:30
Famous for over the top customer service. There are these crazy stories about it. Did you experience any of that or did you learn a little.
Carrie Schochet: 06:37
Sure. Yeah. And yeah, for sure. And I definitely learned some things about myself. Even in that retail experience, I was good with customers. It kind of came naturally to me. I liked it, I liked that interaction, I liked the pace. So I was kind of learning as I was going, you know, and I did the retail job for about six months. And then I realized, okay, like, this isn’t what I’m going to do forever. A friend of mine had been placed by a recruiter, and again, I didn’t know anything about the recruiting industry.
And so I showed up at an interview at Robert Half, and they recruited me to work for them. Like kind of on the spot. They were like, okay, you’ve got a finance background, you’ve got this like a little bit of sales experience, you’ve got the personality to talk to people. And they recruited me to work for them. And like literally two weeks later, I found myself liking working, learning and working a full recruiting desk, meaning I was, you know, split between interacting and trying to bring in clients and, and recruiting.
And so that’s kind of how I landed in recruiting. I joke that I’m like an accidental recruiter. A lot of, a lot of people end up in the field exactly the way I did. But I just really liked it out of the gates because of the variety and talking to all these different people. I liked the fact that I was more in control of my destiny in that role than I was in litigation consulting as an example.
So that’s kind of how I ended up in the field and really just just, again, loved the pace, loved the variety, loved learning about all these different businesses and the people.
John Corcoran: 08:13
And controlling your own destiny piece. Explain to me what you mean by that. I’m assuming what you mean is that you get commissioned if you make a placement. Right. So it’s.
Carrie Schochet: 08:23
Exactly. Yeah. So. Yeah. So it was a grind. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was a little bit like that movie, like the stock like what’s the stockbroker movie from Wall Street? Yeah. I mean it was, it was cubicles and people with headsets on, and you’re pounding the phone like it was not an easy job. A lot of rejection and boiler room.
John Corcoran: 08:45
Boiler room. Yeah.
Carrie Schochet: 08:46
Yeah. A lot of rejection. A lot of internal competition.
John Corcoran: 08:50
Were you, like, cold calling?
Carrie Schochet: 08:51
A lot of cold calling? Yeah. And so we were measured by how many cold calls we made, how many contacts we made, how many visits we set. I mean, lots of metrics and lots of activity. And so.
But I liked it because if I hustled and I worked hard, I would get paid for that. And whereas in my first job I worked a ton, I had worked tremendously hard, I worked lots of hours and I was on a salary and I got a small bonus. So that was very demotivating for me. I was like, gosh, if I put in 100 hours of work, you know, and end up with X, like I’m essentially.
John Corcoran: 09:29
And they’re definitely this, this definitely shows signs of that. Entrepreneurship would be a good fit for you because it’s much more eat what you kill type of environment. So you did this for a few years, and then you have one child and then a second child. You go out on maternity leave the second time, and this time you have a very negative experience coming back because of dynamics with a partner at the company you came back to, the firm you came back to. So talk a little bit about that.
Carrie Schochet: 09:59
Yeah. So again, I mean, there’s a lot of great things about Robert Half or I’m sure the culture is similar at other large firms. You know, again, internally competitive. That’s how they drive results. And so but as you kind of go through there I was there for almost ten years.
It is difficult to be gone for a period of time. Who’s going? How is your book going to be managed? All of those types of things. So there were some dynamics that went on.
And ultimately, you know, my job wasn’t protected while I was out on maternity leave. And I had a difficult conversation the day I came back. And there had been signals for me along the way that I was, I wanted to do something different or I wanted to do it a different way. But it’s hard to leave. You know, you start, you know, you have again a book of business, a track record.
And I think for me, the fear of the unknown, I just didn’t know what was on the other side. I hadn’t really spent the majority of my career there. And I’ll never forget, I had a boss at once said, because I actually had taken a counter offer or I’d taken a new job at one other point in time, and Robert half came back and gave me a counter offer. And I remember my boss at the time saying, listen, Carrie, it’s a decision between the devil you know and the devil you don’t. And that really stuck with me.
And for whatever reason, I decided to stick with safety at that time. But then rolling forward the tape and coming back from maternity leave and feeling really unsupported, I was like, enough is enough. Like I’m going to see what’s on the other side, like, this is it. And there had been a desire for me and my husband. We had been kind of contemplating moving back to Michigan, and this was kind of the push that I needed. And so I look back on that moment. It was incredibly difficult. I was actually my husband who was a stay at home dad. I had two little ones.
John Corcoran: 11:49
So that makes it even harder.
Carrie Schochet: 11:50
Yeah. So we were living on a single living like I was the breadwinner. I had three people counting on me, and so there was a tremendous amount of pressure. But, you know, I’m really close with my family. My parents said, come back to Michigan. We moved in with them for like a period of time with two kids. With two kids.
John Corcoran: 12:09
Oh, man.
Carrie Schochet: 12:10
And we have stories about that. But yeah, it was I was so lucky to have that support system and we came to Michigan and, you know, I started figuring it out.
John Corcoran: 12:22
Before we get to that, I want to go back to that day that you came back from your second maternity leave, because my wife and I have four kids, and so she’s come back for four different maternity leave because she still works. And what was that like for you coming back. All the emotions that you get from leaving your second child, leaving your husband there. I know that moms experience a ton of emotions and guilt going back to work, and you go back in the day, you get back you you alluded to a harsher, difficult conversation, right? What was that like?
Carrie Schochet: 13:01
Yeah. No, it’s interesting. Like I almost feel like I was operating on adrenaline. I can practically, like, put myself back in that desk and in that room. And it was I’d only been back for like an hour, and I was having a call with my boss, and he told me he was putting me on a pip. And I was like, what? And my first reaction wasn’t to be sad, or I was just mad. And I was like, this is.