Alex Drost

I'm a CPA who ended up spending more time on strategy and operations than on accounting — which turned out to be the useful part. The finance background means I read a business differently than most advisors do. I can see where the numbers and the plan disagree.

I also founded and run Connection Builders, a community built around helping professionals build real relationships.

Behind that is fifteen years in M&A and private capital markets, including my years as Vice President of middle-market investment banking at Cascade Partners — leading capital raises and buy- and sell-side transactions across professional services, physician practices, multi-site retail, and telecommunications.

That's the part that shapes how I read a business now: where value actually gets created, where it leaks, and where the real constraint sits — which is rarely where the org chart suggests. Most advisors work inside one layer, business model or strategy or execution. The interesting work is at the seam where they meet.

These days that shows up two ways. Advisory work with professional service firms, and speaking — to audiences at the MICPA, the AAM Summit, the BDO Alliance, LEA, and ACG — on private equity's impact on the profession, business development, and making the case for growth. I also host Branch Out, where I've spent more than a hundred episodes asking people how they actually built what they built.

I speak regularly to accounting and advisory audiences — the MICPA, the AAM Summit, the BDO Alliance, LEA, and ACG among them — on private equity's impact on the profession, business development and intentional networking, and how to build the internal case for growth.

If you're programming an event and one of those fits, tell me about the room.