Finance Leaders and the Power of Audio Narrative

Note: CFO Thought Leader is an editorial venue for finance leaders. We do not pay finance leaders to participate, nor do we receive fees from participants. Finance leaders participate by invitation, CFOs interested in participating may contact us or have a media team member contact CFO Thought Leader host Jack Sweeney at Jack@cfothoughtleader.com

Food for Thought When Crafting Your CFO Narrative

I. Tell Us About Your Path to the CFO Office

Tell us about the key career milestones that helped to prepare you to become a finance leader. (We suggest three milestones.)

II. Tell Us About Your Arrival

When you stepped into your current role, what was the kind of job that you wanted to create?
What did you have to do to begin moving your team in the direction you wanted? Did you reorganize finance?

III. About Your Business

Tell us about the current competitive landscape for your firm’s products or services. What is your firm’s competitive edge?

Transcript:

Hi! It’s Jack Sweeney, host of the CFO Thought Leader podcast.

I am creating this video to help finance leaders and their team members better evaluate CFO Thought Leader as a media/editorial opportunity.

The fact is that we are very different from most other media in that we are an Audio Narrative opportunity specially designed for finance leaders.

For the moment, I’m going to break the phrase “Audio Narrative” in two and focus on the second word: Narrative.

Few leadership roles in business have experienced more change over the past decade than the role of the CFO. It’s been a steady theme for professional conferences for years, and forward-looking CFOs have now carefully distilled the theme down into their own individual narratives.

So, when we ask the question “How did you become a CFO?,” they may in part answer it by explaining their career roots as a CPA—but they quickly identify other, more broadening opportunities that they experienced on their way to the CFO office.

What’s more, when we ask the question “What gives your company’s offerings their competitive edge today?,” they don’t pause and wait for the CEO to answer—they understand that this is the question that they’ve been waiting for. This is where your Audio Narrative reveals to the world that finance is able to add some sizzle—create some buzz—just as senior sales executives or CMOs are frequently called upon to do.

Now let’s touch on Audio.

Helen Keller once said, “Blindness separates us from things, deafness separates us from people.” And when CFOs don’t use their voice, they are greatly diminishing their ability to connect with others.

Our listeners tell us that our audio interviews make finance leaders seem more approachable—less guarded—and far more versatile.

In the past, I have frequently told guests that when you study the media landscape, you see that podcasts or audio are perhaps the closest to networking events—where people are actually shaking hands and connecting directly with each other.

And that’s because the engagement is driven by Audio Narrative.

Thanks for listening!

—Jack Sweeney