Brandon Beeson is a Laurentian graduate from the class of 2007, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in the field of biomedical biology. He was born and raised in Sudbury, and is a consistent active member in the community. He currently works for Innova Wealth Partners, where he is an investment advisor. In this interview, Brandon discusses his career path, his volunteering experiences, the lessons he learned along the way, as well as his advice for any young students looking to follow in his footsteps. Brandon shows his authenticity, his high-energy, and his welcoming nature many times throughout the interview. These three qualities led him to the success he sees today.
You graduated Laurentian with a Bachelor of Science, was there a job you wanted to pursue before you were a financial advisor?
My long-term plan from as far back as I remember was to be in the medical field. I wanted to be a certain kind of doctor or dentist or something like that. My plan when I started at Laurentian was to get into a professional school at dental school or medical school. Something to that effect.
What made you switch from the medical field to finance?
The story I can remember was that I was sitting down after the year was done and saying this was fine. I did okay, my grades were acceptable, especially for first year since first year is always a challenge, but I just wasn’t enjoying it as much as I liked. I was always curious about how companies worked. I didn’t know that that was what my interest actually was, but I was always drawn in that direction and my parents sort of talked me out of it. They thought business was too risky and that I would see success in the medical field. They pushed me a little, so I finished the degree that I had enrolled in of biomedical biology. After three years, I had gotten a job at a local golf course and went from working in the pro shop, to managing the people at the desk. By the end of the year, I was actually running the pro shop. I was in charge of the golf operations for that location. I was around 20 years old, so they paid me hardly any money but it was a really interesting job. I got to work a lot, the golf was there, and there was a real business aspect to that. I figured out what I had to do to finish my degree where it was, without giving up the three years I had done, and I started managing a pro-shop for a couple years.
While you were at Laurentian, was there a valuable experience that you remember?
I lived at home and was a student. I am from Sudbury; I grew up here. I went to school at Laurentian. If I got to do it again, I would say that I would probably more fully participate in the student experience at Laurentian. That is the thing that sticks with me about my experience. I chose not to engage and from a career perspective, my grades didn’t suffer. Academically, things worked out just fine, but I see some of the contacts and the connections, both business and social, that some of my friends made just by participating and being there and being apart. I unfortunately don’t have that defining moment, which I think is maybe the defining moment for me. I thought there were other priorities. I was working, I had friends, and I did other things, so I think that I probably would have engaged a little more if given the chance.
You have had a few previous jobs. Are there any valuable experiences that you learned from those that led you to your job today or that you still use today?
As far as solid skills, I learned something different at every place that I’ve gone. I got really good at understanding institutional money management, how fixed income works, and how the markets operate from a mechanics perspective. I can tell you when we see a giant market dip on a Friday afternoon for four hours, it’s not because of something you heard on the news. It’s actually because it’s an option expiring day. People were gamma hedging and had to liquidate other holdings to offset this so they don’t margin call, but you can’t explain that to someone on BNN. I learned that type of stuff working for this one guy. An old school boiler room, 80s stockbroker, and he was evolving his business appropriately. This is how his brain worked. When things would go on, we would sit down or we’d have a coffee and we would talk about what really happened. For example, some CEO getting fired in Germany is not going to make Amazon drop 6%, that’s not logical.
I learnt planning at MD management like how to now take all of this investment knowledge that I have, and park it. Most of the people that I’m here to help, actually don’t need to know that, they need me to know that. They need me to communicate that in effective ways and tie it back to what it does. If I can get this information to you, in a way that it matters to you, that counts for something. I think MD management taught me a lot about that. IPC taught me how to run a business I think. Although it wasn’t my business per say, I was responsible for over $100 million in the client assets that we managed. I was the guy leading the way. If I didn’t tell someone to call Jimmy, Jimmy didn’t get called, we missed the trade, and we lost money. So, I learned how to delegate things to people in the right ways. I learned how to manage people in effective ways. That one was where I learned the most soft-skills and learned how to talk to people. The person who I reported to, told me that people want you to tell them what to do, and I think that’s a big differentiator in in our line of work. People are really good at explaining the options of you can do A or you can do B. Here’s all the important stuff, but then if I’m sitting across the table from a person, they think, great sounds good, what do I do? Just pick one. People want to know what you would do. I really picked that up there and it’s something that’s still important for me.
Can you take me through daily life at your job right now, at Innova?
It’s a little bit different every day, which is what I like. That’s why I was drawn to this group. That’s why I was drawn to this career. It is really different every day. Some days I come in and I spend time cleaning up prospect lists on Excel, making sure I followed up with client emails, making sure that payments are coming out when they’re supposed to, notes are in place where they’re supposed to be, and it’s tedious stuff. There are days when I come in and do that. There’s also a lot of days where I come in and I spend my days just trying to connect with people. There’s a balance to connecting with clients, but also connecting with even people who aren’t necessarily potential clients. I spend my day trying to make things better for my clients. I had a client tear her ACL, I happen to know one contact through another contact that there’s an orthopedic surgeon that I have contacts with, and she was able to help them. Long story short, I think this person is probably going to end up being able to get their knee surgery way earlier than they were before. I made no money for this. I was compensated in zero ways, but this client will now absolutely refer people to me because I helped her out. I guess if I had to boil it down, I don’t really have a routine but I have an MO when I come into the office for the day, and it might be different depending on the day.
Do you have any advice for any young students attempting to get into the financial field?
My advice would be, first of all, take some time to do volunteer work, intern, whatever it is, in an actual firm where you think you might like to work, and look at some of the different rules. Say I want to be in the investment industry, it’s big, like it is really big. If you’re someone who, for example, loves investments like you love to watch the markets, track stats, numbers. I don’t know if being an investment advisor the way I’m an investment advisor is the best role for it. Can you do it or are their advisors who focus on that and are successful, there are, but there’s probably better jobs for you, where you’ll be happier. They’d be paid more and you’d be right, but you don’t know that until you dive in. A lot of people think that I do stocks all day. I spend a very minimal amount of my time actually, diving in deeply to investments. I’m really good at telling stories, so I have an analyst, I have a co-worker, who does enjoy that deep dive. They spit me, sort of a rough thing and my job is to make a good story that now a client can understand why we wanted to buy Alibaba when it was down 60%. My client doesn’t care about IBDA’s and the MACD convergence and where things are going. They don’t care about that, they just want to know that I know that. I would say before you make a decision, really get a good feel and experience of what part of the industry that you would like to focus on
You’re an active volunteer in the community, so I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about the volunteer work that you have done?
I’ve tried to do a lot of volunteer work from an early age. I actually started with the Alumni association at Laurentian. I came on board. I believe I came on board as the Treasurer. I was the President for about four years and I think anyway, that I sort of was a catalyst for a little bit of movement in that organization. Whether or not everyone else at the institution would say that about me, I don’t know, but I know I tried my best to answer the questions of, what are we doing? How is it helping everyone, and how can we make sure that people don’t forget who this organization is? How do we help the most people in the best way? That was a really interesting experience. I got a lot of insights as to how the institutional world operates.
Concurrently with that, I actually started a Non-profit with an acquaintance of mine, a former colleague in the golf industry. I was a golf pro for a few years and then eventually I did some industrial sales for a couple years, bridging the gap. When I got out, this guy started calling. A long story short, there were some youths from at risk communities, in his case they were in Toronto, so they lived in the East End, in sort of nastier parts of Scarborough. He would go to the community centers and he happened to have a masters in philosophy. That’s what he did after his golf career, and he went in and talked to them about the philosophies of life. Such as, what does it mean to be a good person or a bad person? He got into it with them, but then also tied it into golf. He brought (keep in mind this was probably a decade ago.) 12 people of color of all kinds of different ethnicities, to Scarborough golf and Country Club and paraded them up onto the 1st tee. There are things that golf teaches you that are really important. It teaches you all kinds of things about self-discipline and honor. Golfers call penalties out themselves. There’s no referee on the golf course, even at the highest level, there’s no referee out there. If you do something bad, you have to tell everyone that you did it and take the consequences. You know your score. You keep your score. No one else keeps your score. Don’t cheat. There are all kinds of stuff like that. We did that concurrently with finding jobs. We went and got trillium funding and we found Canada summer jobs funding. We found money wherever we could piece it together and we went to other golf courses and said, listen, how would you like an extra employee? But there’s a catch, and the catch was, we’ll pay them so you get a free employee, but you’re not allowed to fire them. You can ask us to stop sending them to your golf course if you like. A lot of kids from terrible communities who didn’t get a lot of support are just trying to do whatever it takes so the grownups bail on them again because they know the grownups. That’s what history has shown them. It was kind of a unique program where we were able to get them involved, and ingrain that we’re not going to give up on you, instead, you’re going to have to deal with the consequences of this terrible thing you did. It was an important thing for these people. We put a few of them through university, and we actually paid for some university for them as well. That lasted about three or four years.
Right now, I’m the president of the Sudbury Community Foundation which has been a challenge going through COVID. I’ve never lead an organization through a time like this, and that was one that was hard for me, but it’s also very rewarding. I really enjoy being out there. Even if I’m not the one giving millions of dollars, I’m a catalyst to people doing good for the community.
What advice would you give people that want to be more involved in the community like yourself?
Just go do it. Do what you’re good at, and do it with the people you like to do it with. I’ve made good friends along my volunteering days. There are people who will stay in your life. I don’t have any particular advice as far as, this is the right or the wrong way to do it. If you’re an accountant, go offer to help with their finances and sit on a board. If you are a builder, go offer to help someone to build something. If you plan events, go tell them you’ve got expertise. I can tell you that every organization I’ve ever been on, has a wide array of needs when it comes to expertise from board members and they don’t always need you to do it. We’re all very busy. Time is obviously very, very precious. They just need you to tell them what to do most of the time. They need someone smart, someone connected and someone who could pick up the phone and say you need something to happen. then let’s make it happen. So just do it is really that big advice. Dive in head first and do it doing something you enjoy.
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