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“Be conscious of your tradeoffs…if you’re perpetually doing things not aligned with your priorities, that’s a recipe for unhappiness.”
Today Sid and I got to sit down with our friend Brent Holley, Senior Finance Manager of Data Center Construction here at AWS Infrastructure.
This episode was like a fireside chat (a campfire actually). Brent talked to us about adding value as a finance partner and shared his philosophy on being conscious about how you spend your days. He told us a about a recent vacation too – no, not Cabo. Try, getting dropped off in the middle of the Alaska wilderness by a plane.
We left much wiser than we came! This is truly valuable. Please enjoy!
2:40 | Getting dropped off in the wilderness above the Arctic Circle
5:40 | a chemist business guy makes his way to Malaysia
8:30 | Life in Malaysia
12:20 | Returning to the states, MBA at Texas A&M, a good fit for finance
13:30 | What does finance do? Act like a business person with a broad perspective.
16:00 | Brent’s Leadership philosophy – empowerment
20:45 | First years at Amazon (2016). Learning & scaling the finance team for AWS
23:15 | 4 years experience in the role – investing in understanding the business, thoughts on rotating versus staying in one position: what do you want out of your career?
25:30 | Long term view of career & post-career life – being deliberate about how you want to spend your time
29:00 | Making transitions – you’ll figure it out
31:00 | Career philosophy – work from the end backwards, think about the future. Don’t kid yourself, you can only be in one place at a time, prioritize and be conscious of your tradeoffs.
34:55 | Focusing on ‘what’s next’, not spending time dwelling
36:30 | A culture of humility at Amazon is really useful
37:50 | Consuming content outside of work – Altering between Intense & Goofy. History (A cool recent book, “Empire of the Summer Moon”), sports, funny movies (‘Shawn Of The Dead’, ‘Hot Fuzz’)
41:30 | Big groups vs. small? Small.
Brent on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-holley-357692/
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Theme music by Good Baby. ‘Rose Colored’ (instrumental version). You can peep the full music video here: https://www.goodbaby.band/musicvideos
The music video to the theme music for the show: ‘Rose Colored’ by Good Baby
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