Ep 3: Making Your Next FP&A Hire

Speaker 0 (1m 42s): Well, the thing that always just kind of baffles me, Jack is here, we are in, you know, we’re in the 21st century and we’ve got so many planning departments that still spend so much time doing various explanations. When everywhere you turn everything about the world is upside down and turning and twisting. And when you think you’ve got to figure it out, well, we think we’ve got, we’ve got the vaccine, but then we can’t get everybody to take the shot. And then, you know, the variant, the Delta comes on and everything goes crazy. It’s just the only thing that’s is the extreme unpredictability remains in the world.

And so FP and a teams have got to be off the back of the boat and up forward and being very, very agile. And it’s almost as if every time you put out a plan of what you think is going to have happen, you’ve got to almost be simultaneously playing. Here’s what could happen, that can make it better. And if it does, I need to run, grab it, or here’s what could really hurt us. And I needed to defend it amazes me how some fairly obvious things that are potentials for organizations to run into. They happen in the organizations like, oh gosh, how did this happen?

Speaker 1 (2m 48s): So I’m among my favorite Steve player imageries of course, is the boat. And I always see these, these finance people running to get to the, of the boat. It’s like they never quite get there. However, they, they either trip over the rigging or there there’s a big gust of wind that keeps them back at the stern, where there seems to be always this cluster, this big group of executives working on various explanations. And you can hear the CFO yelling get to the front of the boat.

Speaker 0 (3m 22s): No, it’s just kind of working. You have the most value. I mean, counting up the score afterwards there. Yeah, it needs to be done, but you want to do it as efficiently as possible. Get the robot to help as much as possible. You want the people with brain power to use that brain power and be focusing and thinking forward and thinking about what could come next. And if it did, what would I do about it?

Speaker 1 (3m 46s): Well, Steve, let me ask upfront here, what you made of the planing ACEs we’ll be featuring on this episode in what you believe might be the sort of overarching theme for this particular episode. What should it be?

Speaker 0 (4m 3s): Well, the, basically the theme is about hiring. How do you, what are you looking for in FP and a, we didn’t get much into the structure and the different roles. So we’ll save that for another time. But this was really about, about a lot about hiring and where the FP and a function fits within the organization, I think is, is, is really what I liked about these ACEs. It just helps kind of hone in on that piece of the thing.

Speaker 1 (4m 27s): So as you listen, you’ll find my voice popping up in a few of these planning, ACEs, audio clips that we’ll be sharing with you, but Steve so long as we have you here, I’d love to consult you on what I see as always the big challenge, you know, as we engage these finance leaders, we only have a few minutes with them. So at times it’s easier to ask the narrow question about, you know, F F P and a hiring for instance, but what is, I want to ask you, what is the bigger, broader question we should be seeking to have them answer.

I want you to help me with my homework assignment here. And w w what would you tell me?

Speaker 0 (5m 11s): But to me, it’s, it’s more two questions. The more macro question it’s kind of pervasive before you even get to FP and a is how well does the organization really understand what drives its business? So it’s really this pervasive, overarching need to, to, to understand what the business model needs to look like. How w what’s the cause and effect what’s the work? How, what is the driver base? If my idol, I know what my customer needs, how do I know how my product serves that needs?

And how do I know how to make the business system underneath the delivery that work very efficiently in terms of what’s out there? So how well do we know that? Because that’s what the FPA is trying to plug into and seed is that, can I answer? And then after you’ve kind of plugged that in and you have some idea what you’re trying to build and everything, how do I go about, you know, what’s the best way to structure that that gives me some key people that I can rely on, but also leverage is what may already be out there. So I don’t want to say, I got to go hire all this. If I got a bunch of good analytic people in the organization, you may easily be able to build something that just is a coordinating function of all the good analytics that you already have in the business.

And so there may be there, there are multiple ways to, you know, there’s not a one size is to fit all in all situations here.

Speaker 1 (6m 28s): Well, let me tee up our first planning, ACE, and I should mention Steve, I didn’t include this one upfront with you. So we’ll be putting you a little on the spot as you listened to it the first time, in fact, it’s somewhat removed from the others in that it doesn’t specifically focus on FP and a hiring. However, I know you’re gonna, you’re gonna find it interesting. And that’s why I thought it was worth including our first planning. A’s is Ian Charles, who has been a finance leader over time for multiple different tech companies.

He is today CFO of flex, which is a provider of law logistics technology solutions, or I think they put it that technology driven logistics might be their business, any case. This is Ian Charles, our first planning days.

Speaker 2 (7m 38s): I can’t take complete credit for it because I think as in most situations in finance, you’re partnering with other parts of the organization and I’ve had the good fortune of partnering with good CEOs and many, many engagements. I do remember a particular moment where Dave Kellogg, one of the, one of the best CEOs I had the opportunity to work with, and I were sitting down looking at our churn numbers, and we’re looking at our churn in comparison to the target customer that we were going after.

We were seeing customers churn out of our base at rates that were unacceptable. And so we started to take a deeper dive. We called it light from a distance star. And what that means is that contracts that were signed three and four years ago were churning. They were turning it because they never should have been a customer in the first place. When we looked at the types of customers, we signed the nature of the deals, whether it was a services side of it, or the air side of it, the requirement’s for the, for the business itself, we weren’t delivering, we were targeting the wrong customer.

And it wasn’t a mistake that other companies haven’t seen most startups will grow at any cost and find any customer they can to put the win on the, and the question is, is, is it sustainable? The analysis showed that it wasn’t sustainable. And we had to change course and strategies about where you are on the course, not the tactical implementation of a planning system or ERP system or something, you know, very specific it’s where do you want to put the company a year down the road, two years down the road, relative to the competition.

So we reoriented the company towards the larger enterprise, the deals that were more sticky that were more valuable on a longterm basis that were integrated into other systems that would mitigate the risk of churning after a short period of time, because we couldn’t deliver, we were targeting the types of companies delivering the kinds of solutions that we were capable of, not over promising and under delivering.

Speaker 1 (9m 54s): Well, that was CFO, Ian, Charles of flex making several candid comments along the way there, but like to hear what you thought, Steve might be the takeaways from what Ian shared with us.

Speaker 0 (10m 10s): Well, I think it’s, it’s fairly interesting Jack in that it’s also an interesting situation because I’ve met Ian Charles before. I do know Dave catalog. They’re very interesting people. And so when he describes what’s happening in his business, he’s really given us an inside look at what all companies have that as you’ve often heard me talk about my ship analogies what’s your organization really is, is a ship out on the ocean. And what you’re trying to do is convert it from the ship. It is into what the ship needs to be five years from now, in terms of where it’s going.

That’s exactly what he had just described that that light from a distance star is when they acquired those customers back 3, 4, 5 years ago, they basically took them then, but now they’re just not in position. It becomes almost impossible for them to retain because the company has not shaped itself in a way that, that pursues, that kind of a customer. So the company’s kind of grown and they had to make some really strategic decisions and go after different types of customers. That’s insight from really what’s happening in a, in a, an executive suite, trying to transform the organization, the ship from what it is, to what it wants to become.

And, and we, we often get hung up, particularly on the tactical side, you know, installing a planning system is an important tool, but it’s just a tool. I mean, it is something that enables your business. It’s not your business. Your business is what you do for your customers. So when we were thinking about all these things, improving our processes, those are to better serve how we reach our customers. So we have to have to make sure we keep those things in, in, in good order in terms of how we think about them and make sure first and foremost, we really understand what we’re trying to be for the customer.

And that also depends what kind of customers we’re really, really going after, and then make sure that we can stay with them because it’s all a lot easier to basically keep a customer than it is to go get one from scratch. So when we were thinking about planning, what I love about the FPI function is it’s the one that brings all that together. It’s what it basically puts. It, puts it together and gives it a lot of stickiness and, and says, okay, turn this into a business. And so that, it’s kind of right at the heart of it. And that’s what he was basically sharing,

Speaker 1 (12m 21s): You know, the FP and a organization. Again, some of our other CFOs we’ll be hearing from on this episode, they’re talking about how they structured their FP and a groups, or how they’ve hired or populated them at the same time. As we continue to interview CFOs, you realize there’s no one size fits all. It’s almost like the CFO gets to architect. How, whether there are people are imbedded and it’s a dotted line back to the CFO, or whether it’s all one central group.

And, and perhaps it changes as the, as the company does grow, but help us out understanding what this structure should be.

Speaker 0 (13m 4s): Jack FP and a is the one of the few places where the CFO has tremendous amounts of creativity allowed. In other words, if I’m doing a payables department or a cat’s receivables department, it’s pretty transactional. You know, if I’m running a general ledger, you know, there, yeah, you, you might construct a chart of accounts slightly differently, but those structures are pretty well known when I get over to FBNA though, the CFO has a lot of leeway in terms of how that gets structured. In most situations, the CFO really likes to have a right-hand person.

They want somebody that that’s really good to try it there, but then the need for the FP and a is pervasive. So it, it kind of goes out. So do you have everybody centralized, which concentrate the power, or do you put people in the field? And what we’ve seen is a lot of business partnering if, and a can have business partnering and get out there and work directly with the people that’s trying to support. They’re more knowledgeable, they’re better known. They understand the problems better because they’re closer to the customer, close to the sound of the guns. You know, you’re better off if you can create that kind of hybrid.

I think I may have mentioned one of our previous episodes. The most amazing thing to me is how small, most FP and a departments are. They FP and a, and most organizations are lean Thien, lean fighting machines. I mean, they are literally doing a whole lot of things. And part of that is because they’re in high demand. If you get a good FP and a person, that person is usually a candidate for promotion, and it’s not just promotion within finance, but promotion the operations, or indeed in the support functions, because that person understands what really drives the business.

And once you kind of captured that you can immediately see what you could do to potentially improve. So it’s, it’s just a tremendously impactful role that, that people have in terms of where we go and how we get things organized in terms of what’s out there. And so what I’ve enjoyed is, is seeing the different way things are structured. And as you said earlier, there’s no you’re right. There is no one way has your environment changes. You may need to adjust or change your FP and a function as you go when you’re doing a system implementation. It’s one thing once you’ve got the system in that role kind of shifts, the more, the better you are at reporting and visualization and making the numbers popped where people can see it, the better you are.

So there’s just a lot of different roles. And that’s, that’s, what’s excited about being an FBI right now.

Speaker 1 (15m 40s): And well, our next planning ACE is Beth climber, CFO of Jobcase. And now I’ll mention up front here, just some background notes prior to entering the C-suite at Jobcase. Beth had invested a decade with Bain capital, where as an operating partner, she had spent her days advising C-suite executives from Bain’s portfolio of it, mostly consumer oriented in her case or retail oriented businesses.

But anyway, just some background. This is Beth climber. Our next planning is,

Speaker 3 (16m 34s): Yeah. So I think the skill set of financial planning and analysis needs to live throughout the business, right? So I’m a big believer that you do absolutely want to have a strong core FP and a resource group, but it’s also a lot about what are the skillsets that live throughout the business. Jobcase is an incredibly analytical team, every, I mean, 110 million registered members, 20 million monthly active unique users. We have a lot of data. And so we have a lot of analytical folks that sit throughout the team.

So actually we’ve been able to really leverage those talents and our FP and a team works very closely with those analytically minded folks in each section of the business when they’re developing their forecast. In fact, sometimes some parts of the business we’ll be sending our head of FP and their updates to their forecast before he asked them for it, which is always a dream. Right. And so I think there is, I’m a big believer that that FPA mindset needs to live everywhere, but it doesn’t necessarily have to, you know, report up through the CFO on the org chart.

It’s about whether you have the people who are thinking about what’s happening in the business today. What can I learn from history and where are things going, you know, moving forward and making sure that mindset exists in every critical part of the,

Speaker 1 (17m 47s): As a finance leader, do you a role in developing those F P and a minded people throughout the organization though? It sounds like they’re not necessarily attached to finance or, you know, might not be thought of as a team member, but that’s the, that’s the professional, you know, you can count on part of that business unit or that business line while he’s not officially on my team, I want to help him with his talent development, because there are certain things he could learn and he would be much more valuable to us in a year’s time if he did.

Speaker 3 (18m 21s): Yeah, absolutely. Look, I think any senior executive, it’s all of our jobs to develop talent throughout the organization, regardless of whether they report to you or ever ever will. Right. So I absolutely believe that’s part of my job, you know, and, and many of these, you know, folks have, are incredibly strong from an analytical perspective already. And what we, you know, my head of FPA and myself have done is just really kind of help them figure out how to channel that into the financial model. And some of those things that did not previously exist at Jobcase, but it’s been a very natural thing given, given the way their, their analytical minds already work.

Speaker 1 (19m 7s): Okay. That was Beth climber, CFO of Jobcase diva Springs boards, nicely off your last thoughts, but what did you make of what Beth shared as far as her organization and those FP and a people

Speaker 0 (19m 20s): Meth is really points out. I don’t know if a lot of CFOs have thought deeply about it, but Beth is really trying to take advantage of what is a modern trend and that’s greater analytics throughout all the financing throughout all the business. So basically if the 21st century is going to require us to use data and we have more access to more data than we’ve ever had before then pervasively, it’s not just FP and a people that need those skills, it’s everybody. And if everybody has those skills collaboratively, can’t we have everybody working toward the same task.

So when we think about driver, you know, a driver based planning system that requires the operating people to understand those drivers and see those drivers, and look at those analytics, it doesn’t mean an FP and a person has to be the one calculating the formula or keeping up with the metric. It’s just that kind of integrated thinking so that the FP and a pervasive throughout the organization is a nice way to articulate that. I thought Beth was particularly well positioned, even though she hasn’t been a CFO that long her, you know, her work in the investment banking world spent 10 years working in investments that our firm had already made.

So she was working hand in hand with CFOs working on their processes, working on their capabilities. So she spent a large chunk of her career helping develop that. And so the FP and a function, she now has a job cases kind of clearly reflects that. And I’m gonna think you’re going to see more of that, of where you just look there’s analytics everywhere in the world. How do we plug that in and, and tap existing data streams that essentially if you tap them, it’s very, very low cost because they’re already being captured. They’re being captured as part of the operation. So it’s almost like you’ve got a lot of free information if you just you’ll hook up the meters to it and start looking at it and interpreting what it means.

So I think you’re going to see a lot of leverage off of that. And again, helps explain how you can do these functions by bringing a lot of people together collaboratively.

Speaker 1 (21m 14s): So as more companies add greater analytics capability throughout the organization, and as finance has more of its people working throughout the organization or embedded, as we like to say, finance really has to be alert when it comes to managing how things are being communicated out there. And what I’m getting at is even the language used to describe a business dynamic.

If that begins to vary from one part of the organization to the next, that could really be a problem. So, so again, I, this comment I’m making is, is in regards to language, Steve language matters. Yes.

Speaker 0 (22m 2s): Oh, well it, well, it does. Anytime multiple people are doing the same thing. You run the risk of them going different directions are what’s worse than the only thing, worse than not knowing what a word means is knowing it means, but what you think it means is something different than what everybody else thinks. So when you’ve got multiple people doing that, you’ve got to be really clear. So you need to up your communication game in some very, very simple techniques. Like for instance, you know, we always, you know, what’s the definition. What are the often things early in a project when I’m talking to clients is I always want to make sure that they know the difference between a forecast, a target and a projection, a target is where you want to go.

The forecast is where you’re headed and if done correctly, that’s all it is. It’s where you’re headed it. Doesn’t artificially bend up to the target. And so many people confuse the two and they think their forecast always have to hit the target. It’s really rare when your forecast exactly hits your target. Cause you forecast out to be a real reflection of where you’re trying to go, but getting people to get those definitions requires me to make them write it down and say, and then you overlay the term projection with what’s a mathematical protects you. Well, that’s just using the actual, it’s just pure math. If I run a linear regression, what is the pure mass say I’m going to do not with any adjustments or anything that’s coming in.

So just being real clear in those terms, in the more people yet diffusing it’s, it’s good to put out a glossary of terms. It’s good to just check people to make sure that they’re using in the same way and just have some things to come back together. The one version of the truth, you have to be very careful in making sure that that version also still con con considers all the complexity in the business. It’s the best way to do that is define it and say, here’s our version of the truth. Now this is how this differs. This is how this differs. And so you give ways of looking at alternative use of that, but with the same underlying data, that’s where the power comes from is being able to lock that in and not trying to oversee the simple side of the world, but to have that, that common elements clearly defined

Speaker 1 (23m 59s): Well, our next planning ACE is mark shifty. CFO of Billtrust mark shift gay was a wall street investment banker for, for a number of years, close to a decade. I believe he first stepped into a CFO role at a FinTech known as green dot, which is the company he shares some thoughts on today. When we were asking him about M F P and H he uses them as an example. So he’s going back a little bit in time, but certainly I think you’d find it interesting here is CFO mark shifty.

Speaker 4 (24m 48s): Well, so one of the, one of the areas at green dot when I stepped in was refocusing how FP and a went about its business in order for me to have a greater understanding of what the numbers were saying and having greater confidence in forecasting. So I have an approach to FP and a, we had a homegrown FP and a department that I thought was doing a great job. The head of FP, and a was asked to move into a corporate development and M and a role with them build trust.

So that opened up the opportunity to think of who the next leader should be. And, and I selected someone with public company experience. Who’s been doing FP and a, in this type of setting that could help us reshape how we are looking at FP and a, on a go-forward basis. So a lot more reporting around different areas than we had in the past, a change in presentation of the numbers, much more visual than in the past. And I think it helps people see trends and appreciate the direction the business is going.

Speaker 1 (26m 7s): So, Steve, what did you make of what are featured planning, a smart shifty had to share with us?

Speaker 0 (26m 16s): Yeah, well, I thought mark, it was very interesting in that he basically pulls out a couple of points we’ve made earlier in the presentation in terms of one, your FP and a team. If they’re good, they’re going to have lots of opportunities. So you just need to be prepared for that. You’ve always got to have, you’re kind of developing your, your, your succession plans. You’ve always gotta be thinking about who, you know, what’s, what would this need next, if, if to allow this person to move on into a bigger role, moving to M and a is obviously a good move up for the FNI person. So just a, you want to be thinking about that all the time.

The second piece of that is, is you notice when mark had the opportunity, he used the upgrade to shift the focus, because now they need more public reporting in the public reporting. I it’s much more visual than say tabular data. So he shifted the roles kind of functioning to emphasize more what the job needed at that point in time. And so that you want to be looking for those things about how you’re using your FP and a team and how you’re digging into that. And it’s really kind of the most important part of that is just getting into the deeper, always trying to get a deeper understanding.

What’s the business, how do I become knowledgeable about the business? What is the, what is the line of sight? What are the key drivers? What gives me the early warning signals? Because one of the things he certainly concerned about in terms of public reporting, if they’re going to have to disclose, you know, potential stock the price, you know, well, if there aren’t exactly any kind of earnings forecast, they want to be sure and get that kind of thing. Right? So the more you know, about your drivers of the business, the better off you’re going to be in that regard.

Speaker 1 (27m 46s): Okay. Well, I think we can tap into some synergies perhaps with our next planning A’s so I’m just going to tee this one up rather quickly. Our next planning, ACEs, CFO, Mike Rasic of sinaps. Now Mike was at PWC partner before becoming CFO of a mortgage company. And then he segues into the tech realm where he’s been a CFO, a few times at different tech startups. He created this wonderful short list of items when it comes to hiring.

I thought you’d find it interesting, Steve. And I thought our audience as well, would like to take note of this. This is Mike Rassic.

Speaker 5 (28m 44s): That being said, I am a big proponent of having as much control as possible over the infrastructure. So, you know, the way I’ve approached it is I’m going to start at the top. We just hired our controller. We’re in the process of bringing on an FP and a manager. So shameless plug, if anybody’s interested, reach out to me and you know, we’re going to fill in the gaps over time, as it makes sense, as we know really what we’re looking for.

And as we can find the right hires, you know, we have the luxury of not having to rush because of the outsource function. And my goal is to be methodical and to be very opportunistic in terms of getting what I need for the organization to help us be successful.

Speaker 1 (29m 41s): This is good. An opportunity to pass up here. What would you want to see? What types of experiences would you want to see on an FP and a managers, prospects resume? What is it that would catch your attention? That could,

Speaker 5 (29m 58s): I would say it’s really, it’s three things. The first one is just a quench and I desire to keep digging to really just, you know, always want to understand what’s driving things. You know, that mindset, I think is incredibly important, front FP and a person that’s number one. Number two is what I call a strategic mindset.

And so here’s the analogy that I, that I use for what I want, what I think an effective FP and a function needs to look like in today’s world. So the analogy I use is credit scoring. So if you have anybody can go pull a credit score, right? You can just call up Experian or there’s multiple services out there that can say, here’s your credit score. And what I work for, I refer to that as a tactical credit scoring company, right? They give you the number.

They don’t tell you anything about it. To me, what a strategic credit scoring company is, is here’s your credit score. And here’s what you can do to fix it and make it better. And to me, I need a strategic FP and a function. That’s going to do that, right. And FP and a function. That’s just going to say, yeah, I generated the reports. Here’s your number? That, that doesn’t cut it in today’s world. What I need is a team. That’s going to say, here’s the numbers. Going back to that mindset about digging. I digged into this, and here are the three or four things that we as an organization now need to do to be better.

That’s a strategic and FP and a function. And somebody that has that mindset is super important to me. And then the third thing is really a desire to grow. I, you know, I think that for an FP and a person to really be successful, they want to be, they need to be able to understand all aspects of the organization to really be successful with that strategic mindset that I just referenced.

And in order to be successful with that, you have to want to grow and learn about other aspects of the business, all aspects of the business that have a major impact on the financials.

Speaker 1 (32m 30s): So I have to say, just putting Mike Rasic on the spotlight that and producing that list of items I thought was, was pretty remarkable, but what did you, what did you make of Mike’s list for FP and a hires?

Speaker 0 (32m 43s): My advice on those looking is if he’s found one, keep sending the resume, he’ll probably be looking again, if he’s got one that meets those three criteria, because he has a pretty good layout there of kind of, you know, the criteria of FP and a, you know, an insatiable curiosity of what drives things. I mean, an FP and a person by and large is just trying to understand the world, trying to understand using all the analytics, the information, whatever I can get our hands on, help me understand this better, and then apply that this part to the strategic mindset is the application.

Okay. If, if I understand how things work, what could we do differently that would better positions that we would that allow us to take better advantage of that? So, so literally being able to think through not only just what’s happening, but what are the implications and what should we do because of that in terms of what’s out there. And then what that does as you begin to make those moves, it helps open up the broader world is third item there, the desire to grow, to grow into new areas. But that explains why if you’ve got a person like that, they’re always in training for a bigger and better role.

And so if the FBI director’s there now, if it’s the right person, if you did a good job of hiring six, 12 months later, once they’ve kind of got those things in place, they’re going to grow into a bigger role. And it’s going to create that if you’re a good person, you might want to get on board and become the first Lieutenant, you know, it could be the good number one, helping learn and see all that grows into that. You’re well positioned in terms of, in terms of what’s out there, but it’s just really thinking through FBNA is a little bit different in terms of what we’re looking for, but, but it it’s capitalizing those, those, those three things were a really good summary.

Speaker 1 (34m 23s): And so Steve, now that we have featured our planning, ACEs, I just want to circle back to that question. You supplied us with the macro one. How well does the organization really understand what drives its business? I think many finance leaders, as they evaluate whether to step into a new role, ask that very question and wonder, okay, does this company, does this organization, does this business really know what’s driving the business at this place in time?

And am I the one who’s going to be able to step in to the office and correct. If it’s not incorrect, what’s broken or, you know, get the organization to, as you just said, collaborate individuals in different business lines. You know, I, I just imagine that some CFOs may walk away from an opportunity to join a company because you know what, wow. They don’t know what’s driving it. And I don’t know if I can get to the bottom of it. And in any short amount of time, you know,

Speaker 0 (35m 30s): Well, that’s reason it helps that a lot of CFO or CFO candidates have taken a spin through the FP and a function. Because if you first has your intent up, you know, kind of what questions to ask. But if you look kind of, as we went through this, the, where these questions get asked, it’s always not just kind of an front situation. If you go back to mark, who’s in a kind of a startup situation, Mark’s basically he’s hiring, has the, has the need emerges. Now they probably would love an FP and a personnel, but they may not need a full-time person or a full-time team, so that they’re letting that evolve.

And so it’s kind of emerging as the business develops in terms of that you flipped that around the bath made best customer best, got hundreds of members. I mean maybe, I mean, they have a huge population, so it’s a much more mature business and that situation, there’s a lot more things to plug into and tie into. So it’s almost about your situation, you know, I think, you know, when you, when you get to it, you, you know, what kind of opportunity you want to walk into in, in one where the FP and a needs are there.

That’s good because you can have a lot of impact really, really quickly. I think so. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta be a little bit of venturesome.

Speaker 1 (36m 43s): So before I forget, and before we go, tell us, Steve, where are you going to be? What is happening out there?

Speaker 0 (36m 53s): Well, it’s, it’s very exciting, Jack. We’re we’re we’re in the midst of coming off of several lien events. My good friend, Mike DeLuca, Nick cat-cow, they just launched their new book, practicing lean accounting. So that’s out there available on Amazon and participate in the book launch of that. And I’ll be speaking at the lean accounting summit this month, talking about how you can move to a lean agile organization. Headline, traditional budgets are not lean and they’re not agile. So I’ve just covered my keynote speech there in 30 seconds for the list in case you missed it.

But, but we’re doing that. And then in November, when you, and I’ll be getting together, we’ll meet down at the, the association for finance professionals, annual conferences in DC this year. Hopefully we’re the Delta virus. We’ll take some retreat. We’ll be able to get together face to face and, and share some thoughts out there at the AFP. They’re always a great group promoting FP and a

Speaker 1 (37m 48s): Well we’ll look forward to that. Maybe we can record this down there

Speaker 0 (37m 51s): And I’d love to have, I’d love to, we got some of y’all gonna attend that AFP conference. Be sure to look for us. We’d love to love to meet you face to face. Cause we’d like, we’d like that personal customer interaction face-to-face as well.

Speaker 1 (38m 2s): Okay. Steve safe travels.

Speaker 0 (38m 5s): Okay, man. Talk to you soon. All right.

Speaker 1 (38m 9s): For planning, ACEs. This is Jack Sweeney and on behalf of my co-host Steve player and myself, thank you for listening….Attachments area