Summary: <br> The CLA Promise offers many opportunities to the CLA family. One such opportunity is Deep Industry Specialization but it doesn’t happen overnight. Hear how one CLA veteran became an expert in an industry that wasn’t part of his original plan and why he encourages all of us to explore unique opportunities in our path to specialization.<br> <br> <br> <br> [00:00:04]<br> <br> <br> <br> Jeff: Welcome, CLA Family, to our Industry Forward podcast designed<br> to tell the industry stories behind the CLA Promise. Many of you are on the<br> path of specialization. Others are just getting started. At CLA, we exist to<br> create opportunities. However, these opportunities may not always be aligned<br> with your current specialization path. Today, we’ll be talking with Cory<br> Rutledge, the MPI of our Senior Living practice. <br> <br> <br> <br> Cory’s 16 years at CLA have not<br> always been spent focused on Senior Living. Listen to Cory’s career journey,<br> including how he evaluated his various opportunities presented to him from an<br> emotional and career perspective and what he did to become specialized along<br> the journey. Cory, welcome to Industry Forward. Could you share some of your<br> highlights of your career journey at CLA? <br> <br> <br> <br> [00:00:59]<br> <br> <br> <br> Cory: Yeah, I’d be happy to. Thanks, Jeff. So I started as a<br> traditional CPA here at CLA about 16 years ago. I started actually doing<br> hospital work. I dabbled in kind of little jobs here and there, but really<br> started my career path in terms of industry specialization in our hospital<br> group, and I spent probably the first seven years of my career serving hospital<br> clients throughout the country and then actually was asked by you, of all people,<br> to change my career path and my industry focus and move to our Senior Living<br> practice which was probably about eight or nine years ago. <br> <br> <br> <br> [00:01:37]<br> <br> <br> <br> Jeff: A lot of information in there, Cory. I want to unpack a few<br> of those comments here as we go today. First of all, I’m just interested. As<br> you think about specialization, you think about whether it’s hospitals or Senior<br> Living or any of the other, but why healthcare? Why did you get involved in<br> healthcare when you started 16 years ago?<br> <br> <br> <br> [00:01:54]<br> <br> <br> <br> Cory: I feel like some people, you know, when they start in an<br> industry, they feel as though they have to have a passion for that industry day<br> one, and I know that there’re some people in our practice that do. You know, I<br> think of some people that I’ve talked to in our manufacturing group that grew<br> up in a manufacturing household, and so they’re drawn to that industry. That is<br> not the case for me. I started in healthcare literally because I was a job<br> fair. I wanted a job that paid me money, and someone said, “Do you want to<br> be in healthcare?” And so my answer was, “Yes.” So I did not<br> have any kind of intrinsic draw to healthcare. I basically just wanted a job<br> with a paycheck. <br> <br> <br> <br> [00:02:29]<br> <br> <br> <br> Jeff: I think many people probably at CLA can resonate around the<br> fact that, “Give me an opportunity. Give me a job, and we can make a great<br> career out of it.” So maybe let’s just dig a little bit deeper in sort of<br> expanding your industry, getting knowledgeable. You spent the first seven<br> years, I believe you mentioned, in the hospital industry, and what were some of<br> the key things you did to drive sort of that industry specialization, the<br> knowledge, the expertise, that as you were early in your career, you know,<br> years one through seven?
