BROADCASTS.com

During the early years of his finance career, Dan Fletcher was accustomed to being the executive from somewhere else.

When he first joined the asset management team at Allstate Investments, he was \u201cthe auditor from Price Waterhouse,\u201d and when he landed in an interim management role as a private equity advisor, he was a former investor now turned operator.

Fletcher\u2019s early career journey stands out not just for its navigation of the financial triad of auditor\u2013investor\u2013operator but also for the speed at which he was able to leap from one to the next.

\u201cI did not look like everyone else,\u201d recalls Fletcher, who doesn\u2019t try to cloak the burdens of his first pivot.

He continues: \u201cThese are two totally different disciplines. Whereas from an auditor\u2019s perspective you\u2019re viewing the business from the outside in and mainly trying to validate financial statements, from the investor\u2019s perspective you\u2019re mainly concerned with returns.\u201d

Meanwhile, Fletcher makes it clear that his ability to transition was dependent on regular outreach along the way.

\u201cHaving people place a bet on me required the careful fostering of a lot of relationships beforehand,\u201d comments Fletcher, who tells us that his switch to the operations side required both individual initiative as well as passing muster with a rigorous future employer.    

\u201cIn addition to completing a lot of prep research on my own, I underwent a lot of vetting\u2014I think I interviewed with probably 20 different people,\u201d remembers Fletcher.

Reflecting on his research, Fletcher adds: \u201cThanks to the Internet, there was no shortage of material out there with regard to how to thrive in different roles\u2014from both the hard skills and soft skills points of view.\u201d

Still, one career pivot that Fletcher put in motion had more to do with narrowing his focus than widening it: Nearly a decade into his career, he decided to interview exclusively with private equity technology firms\u2014thus ending his days as an industry agnostic.

Says Fletcher: \u201cI just slowly fell in love with tech. I started to understand how technology was really where more innovation\u2014and therefore more value creation\u2014was happening relative to what was going on in older industries.\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney