The Wake-Up Call That Changed Everything

How One Comment at Happy Hour Reshaped My Career

“You seem like a nice guy… but until just now, we thought you were a jerk.”

That sentence hit hard. And, the word they used wasn’t jerk…it was much worse.
It stopped me mid-sip at a happy hour while I was working at AutoNation.

I laughed awkwardly, thinking, “Well… that escalated quickly.”

But they weren’t joking.

Two colleagues from the accounting department explained why they felt that way.
They said they had passed me in the hallway multiple times and said hello.
I never even looked up. They assumed I was intentionally ignoring them. They thought I was arrogant.

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t trying to be rude… but clearly, that’s how I was coming across. I was so sure they couldn’t be right that the next day I asked a few of they guys I worked closely with every day, “I don’t do that, right?” Unfortunately, they just echoed what I had heard already.

That conversation was my wake-up call.

The Real Problem Wasn’t Rudeness — It Was Blindness

After that conversation, it took a while for the realization to fully set in: I wasn’t aware of how I was showing up. I lacked self-awareness. At first, I became aware of the issue, but still didn’t know what to do about it. In my head, I was just staying focused — staying “professional.” But to everyone else, I seemed cold, distant, or just flat-out rude. That’s what unintentional arrogance looks like, and it ain’t pretty.

Part of the reason it hit me so hard is that I always prided myself on being able to get along with anyone. A part of the reason I had success in my career was that I could talk to the mechanics at an AutoNation car dealership just as comfortably as I could talk to the CEO. I had always been able to make friends quickly with anyone.

I think my ability to make friends quickly is that when I was young, my dad was in the Army, and we moved all the time. By the time I graduated high school, I had moved 12 times, and as I write this, I can count 25 different places I’ve lived. In my world, growing up, if you didn’t make friends fast, you didn’t have friends…period. For someone who values making friends as much as I do, being “that guy” was a bitter pill.

I Thought I Was Headed for a Promotion…Then the Floor Dropped Out

About a year into my time working at AutoNation, my entire business unit got shut down.
I was laid off, along with about 400 other people. As I sat at home trying to figure out my next move, the phone rang, and thankfully, it was good news. It was the Controller at AutoNation, and she wanted me to lead a complex financial reporting project. She told me they picked me because I had “a very particular set of skills.” (Yeah, I heard it in Liam Neeson’s voice too.)

What had changed? From being “that guy” that people thought I was a jerk, to landing a consulting gig working with people from all over the company.

Simple: I had changed.

By the time that offer came through, I had already started working on how I communicated, how I carried myself, and how I connected with others. My reputation had started to shift, and now, it was opening doors.

So… How Did I Make That Transformation?

How do you go from hallway silence and missed opportunities… to being hand-picked to lead critical projects? It didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen with intentional focus. And it comes down to a few simple, repeatable steps.

I’ll share exactly how I did it — and how you can too.

I developed a 5-part framework that covers some of the most important areas of communication for FP&A professionals like you. Here’s a quick look at the CLEAR Framework — a simple structure I’ll break down in future articles: