Pam:               I’m Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative, or to provide specialized skills and knowledge for a temporary period of time.

BT:                  Welcome to Business Today brought to you by Cerius Executives, one of the largest interim executive and management consulting firms in North America. Today we are joined by Donald Nobel, a technology CFO who has spent a portion of his career as an interim executive. How are you doing today Donald?

Donald:            Oh terrific, terrific! Nice to meet you Raj.

BT:                  Nice to meet you too! So you actually have a pre-existing relationship with Cerius Executives. We’ve kind of tapped into you to be one of our interim executives and a CFO for some of our clients. That just leads me to wonder. When you work with companies, are there types of leaders or companies that you enjoy working with specifically? Do you like have a sweet spot with personalities or industries?

Donald:            Well let’s start with industries if you don’t mind, and in with regards to that even breaking it down further, I prefer the challenge of really high growth companies. Where you walk in the door and they are doing a 100, 200, 300 percent a year, and those are very exciting and challenging for me and I love them. I love being in the door and I’m already hit with 5000 questions. Those are amazing. When you expand that to the industry, one of the things I love most is technology companies and today that’s a very broad term. A technology company could be software, it could be medical devices, it could be professional services. There are so many types of companies lumped under technology but again, love it because they are very fast moving and they are usually challenged a lot. As regards to people, leaders and CEOs, I tend to work best with those that have an organization where they trust the people below them, they trust that a CFO coming in can be part of the team and not micromanage ever single detail. The worst thing in the world is for a CEO to micromanage his team. And I think its best if I and the CEO are on the same page. That there are functions for the CEO and there are functions for the CFO and that’s the best atmosphere to work in.

BT:                  And what do you do if you walk into a scenario where the CEO is micromanaging and doesn’t have a whole lot of trust with the people that work with him?

Donald:            I probably try to do the best I can, but then shortly I recommend somebody else coming in. Again my job is not the long-term type job situation. My job is to do best for the company and sometimes the best for the company is a change.

BT:                  When we look at the interim executive industry the consulting work that comes with it, it can be challenging, obviously, which seems to be a driving factor for a lot of executives who do this type of work. But at the same time it also, it could probably have its nuisances, constantly having to look for new clients or customers or contracts or... How do you do some of that, how do get yourself out there in the market place? So people know that you’re there and these are the services you have to offer and basically how does an interim executive in today’s day and age market themselves?

Donald:            A very good question. I chuckled a little bit because I remembered something that a colleague said to me once and he said, “You are either working or looking for work, you cannot do both.” And I find that to be true in the interim game where again I think a common theme of our conversation today Raj is that interims do tend to get put into situations where they have to work very hard and they have to get a lot of things accomplished in a v