May the FP&A Be with you: a hero’s journey from Pixar, Lucasfilm, and LinkedIn (with Craig Barry)
01:02:39 Share

If you would like to earn CPE credit for listening to the show, visit earmarkcpe.com slash FPA. Download the app, take a short quiz, and get your CPE certificate. Finally, if you enjoy listening to FP&A Today, please go to your podcast platform of choice, click the subscribe button, and leave a rating and review of the show. And now, on to the show. From Data Rails, this is FP&A Today. ♪

Welcome to FP&A Today. I'm your host, Glenn Hopper. Today, I'm excited to welcome Craig Berry to the show. Craig is a strategic finance consultant, fractional CFO, and startup advisor with nearly 20 years of experience helping companies scale, fundraise, and navigate M&A. He's held senior finance roles at some of the most iconic companies in tech and entertainment.

including LinkedIn, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Electronic Arts. At LinkedIn, he led central forecasting, supported more than 10 acquisitions, and played a key role in the company's integration with Microsoft.

At BioRender, he built the FP&A function from the ground up, helping the company scale ARR from 18 million to 50 million and secure a major Series A round with top-tier VCs. Today, Craig runs ClearSight IQ, where he works with SaaS companies and startups on strategic finance, fundraising, and M&A readiness.

He joins us to share his incredible career journey, how FP&A can evolve from reporting to value creation, and what startups can do to truly understand their metrics and investor positioning. Craig, welcome to the show. Thanks, Glenn. Really happy to be here. Really appreciate the invite for the show and happy to meet you and talk today.

Yeah, I just, you know, as we were talking before the episode, you know, LinkedIn, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Electronic Arts, you've had some cool gigs at some really exciting companies. I think about, you know, me in a lot of service industries and kind of the, you know, B2B kind of less cool companies.

I think that, you know, a lot of times we think in FP&A, it's like, well, whatever, we're just, it's FP&A. It doesn't matter what the product we're selling. But it seems like, you know, if you're at Pixar and Lucasfilm, it's a little cooler than, you know, business advisory services or whatever. So I guess, you know, let's back up maybe even before that and start with your story, with your non-traditional path into finance, where you, you know, you started in environmental studies and you were teaching abroad and you almost,

We're pursuing accounting. Kind of walk us through that sort of winding road that led you to a career in strategic finance. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, as you mentioned, I started out by going and doing an undergraduate degree in environmental studies, which was almost by mistake as well. I actually did my first year in pure math. I'd always been a good math student in high school, and it seemed like the obvious choice.

So I went to the University of Waterloo. I'm Canadian. So Waterloo, great math school, great computer science school. So I went there to study pure mathematics. And what I discovered was that university math was very different from high school math. And

One year was enough. I hated it. And so I did a complete 180 and went into environmental studies, completed my degree there, and then quickly learned that there's not a lot of need for people with undergraduate degrees in environmental studies. And so rather than enter the job market or go back to school, I actually decided to go and teach English in Korea, as you mentioned.

So I did that for a couple of years, about a year and a half, did a lot of traveling throughout Southeast Asia and Southern Africa, and then sort of realized I needed to get a real job. So that's when I started looking at, OK, well, what can I actually do? So reaching out to some friends from university and just seeing what other people had done over the sort of three or four years that I was traveling. And a couple of people had gone through the accounting path and had joined CA firms. And so just talking to them, it seemed like an interesting career path.

I'd always loved math, so it felt like it was something that would fit with me. And so I sort of explored that and found a program back in Canada at the University of British Columbia. And I moved back, moved back to Canada, moved to Vancouver. And then I did that program, which was sort of the best way to describe it as a bridging program for people with a non-commerce background. So if you want to become a CPA or it was a CA at that time,

you had to do this and then you could be eligible to go work in sort of big four accounting. So that was my career goal. And so I went through that program was 12 month intensive program and, you know,

You know, I wanted to get hired by a big four accounting firm. I got an offer from Deloitte, which was great. So perfect. I was going to be able to do the thing that I wanted to do. But for whatever reason, I sort of randomly had a resume in with Electronic Arts and they called me for a junior FP&A analyst position. And so

Even though I had the offer from Deloitte, this was happening at the same time I went and interviewed with Electronic Arts. I actually ended up getting the job despite having no experience, which was great. You know, I don't know if you know the guy that hired me. His name's Murray Kettle. He gave me my first sort of career break. I'm always thankful to him for that. Anyway, now I was sort of faced with the decision. What do I do? Do I follow my dream of becoming a CPA or do I actually go and work in a much cooler industry like video games? And so I took the latter option. I decided to sort of pass on the Deloitte

option and go and work for Electronic Arts, knowing really nothing beyond sort of the academic piece of finance that I'd learned over the prior 12 months. So it was really a crash course in

what FP&A did. I had no idea walking in the door on my first day. So I'm still, you know, surprised they hired me actually. So, you know, and we can talk about them because they're not here, but FP&A, the math you do is way cooler than accounting. Accounting math is what? You know, subtraction. It's credit minus debit. If that doesn't equal zero, it's a problem. Other than that, but, you know, so that not as much math maybe in accounting as there is in FP&A. Yeah, no, totally.

So based on what I'd done in the 12 months prior to working at FPNA, I thought I'd spend a lot more time working on trial balances. But it's something that doesn't really come up in the world of FPNA. And so it's something I've never really touched since those 12 months at UBC, which was I graduated from there in 2005. So it's been a while.

So it's got it's interesting that you say trial balance, because I'm where I do see using trial balance and FP&A as an M&A activity sometimes, especially when you start getting into weird adjusted EBITDA. It's like, you know what? Don't give me your financial statements because I don't believe them. Just give me your trial balance.

I'll put everything where it needs to go. But that's the only time I've thought about a trial balance in an FP&A. Man, but I, you know, if I were looking at, was it at Deloitte, was it going to be in the audit group? Was that? It was, yeah, it was. So I would have joined as a first year audit student, you know, and most of my classmates, I think when I was at UBC, I think probably there may be a hundred of us in this program. And I

I think, you know, everybody except me, I think went into audit. And so I'm well aware of what they went through over the next three years. Well, you know, because you're you're working and, you know, you're on a lot of different you're on a lot of different files at the same time. But you're studying as well because you're preparing to write, you know, the exam at the end. Right. And so I think at the time it was like six modules. So it's it's, you know, you're working simultaneously.

60 hours per week and you know, you're studying another 10 or 15 or something like that. So it was, it was really quite intense and not to lean on those people too hard. But I mean, I had probably a little bit better work-life balance and I got paid more. So it was definitely the right choice. Yeah.

And I never do. I never do this, but I guess I'm just feeling like feisty today. I want to just knock on the straight accountants because, I mean, it's they're having a hard time bringing people into accounting. But so many people are, you know, there's a lot a lot of reasons for that. But so many people who maybe would have gone into accounting, they look at Indeed or whatever, you know, job postings and they say, wait a minute.

First year finance people are making more than regular, you know, audit or tax or, you know, whatever you're doing in accounting. So it makes sense that, you know, that that's drawing some people over too. Yeah, I think when I was in school, I think the way that it was being sold to us was if you wanted to have, you know, a successful career in finance and, you know, reach either, you know, the C-suite or senior level, you needed to be a CA or a CPA. Whereas, you know, with this sort of experience I have behind me, I don't think that's actually the case.

anymore. I mean, I think a lot of people can be successful without an accounting background. Yeah. And I was actually just talking to another CFO about this last week and I want to see the actual hard data on it. But anecdotally, what it feels like is the number of CFOs with CPAs as a percentage seems like it's gone way down in recent years. And I need to find some, can't be saying this all the time without data. I need to find some data to back that up. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I saw it firsthand at LinkedIn. We had, you know, the initial CFO that was there, Steve Sordello, the guy that took the company public. You know, he was a CPA. And then when he retired, it was actually our head of FP&A, the VP of FP&A that took the role. And he did not have an accounting background. He actually had an investment banking background. And then, you know, about like eight years of experience at LinkedIn as well.

Gosh, but if I mean, an investment banking background, if you're doing a bunch of M&A, it's kind of that probably makes more. I mean, you still have to know how to account for the transactions, but the kind of stuff you're working at, the strategic stuff is. I think if you have a strong controller in place, I mean, they can, you can lean on them pretty heavily for, you know, the pieces that you don't understand. I don't think any CFO really gets it.

all of it all the time. You know, so you have to surround yourself with good people who are experts in their own domain. And I think this worked well for, you know, for this fellow at LinkedIn. Yeah. I kind of, I want to peel Lucasfilm off because as a Star Wars fan from, you know, from the original movie, dating myself here, we'll talk about them separately, I guess. But so EA come into that instead of Deloitte, that, you know, I sort of understand the sort of mental math that you did and looking at that. And then, but EA and Pixar doesn't feel like it was

that you were like, you didn't set out necessarily to work in creative and entertainment heavy industries, but you ended up spending a lot of time there. And I'm wondering, and like I said, we'll look at Lucasfilm differently, but the kinds of metrics or things you looked at, is there anything, I mean, I guess first, maybe if you want to talk a little bit about the types of metrics you looked at. And then I'm always like when I'm talking to guests and trying to build this sort of career arc, is there anything that you took, you know, because it seems like a big

move to go from the entertainment industry to somewhere like LinkedIn. But there is still social engagement with both and everything. So I don't know. What did you kind of take away from it? And was there stuff that you learned there that kind of carried over to subsequent...

positions? Yeah, totally. I mean, I think when I was at, you know, working in those creative roles or working in those creative companies, I was generally more cost center focused. So what did it take to build these products? Not so focused on the marketing and the sales effort that went into actually, you know, bringing them to market and making sure that you're moving a lot of units, you're getting a lot of eyeballs on them. So in the earlier part of my career, working at those types of companies, we spent a lot of time focused on how do we make these games

more efficiently over time. So it was really very much, you know, what is our sort of R&D spend or our product spend as a percentage of our revenue? How can we make this game better next year, but for a lower cost? And so some of the things we looked at, I mean, it was pretty much, you know, a similar cycle, you know, you introduce kind of like one major feature, two minor features, you know, in the next iteration of, you know, MLB, you know,

or NHL, whatever this sports game would be or whatever. And so you kind of knew what you were going to do each year. And you would be in production on-- if you're putting out the 2010 version, you'd actually start production in 2008. So it was kind of like a 24-month cycle to build these games.

So you're always looking at, okay, how can we make this more efficiently? And so one of the things that we ended up exploring and actually spending a lot of time on and a lot of effort on was outsourcing a lot of the artwork asset development. So we moved those to

Vietnam or Indonesia was a big one. We did some work in India as well. So having them build the assets for us at a much lower cost. And this was all part of the overall theme of, okay, how do we make these games for less money each year?

Were you part of, kind of back into it, if you're, you know, spend less and the ROI gets easier to get, but were you, as you were sort of putting together sort of the project accounting, was ROI something that you were, you know, reporting on and accountable for? Or was it, no, then it goes into, it just becomes a marketing project and it's kind of, we're in the project of, you know, we're tracking all the project spend and then, you know, trying to find ways to do it cheaper and then we're handing it over and it's sort of tracked by another group?

Yeah, that's right. So we had so if you think of the video game business, you can break it into kind of like two distinct buckets. There's the studio business. So that's the people that make the games. And then there's the publishing business. So that's people that market and sell the games. So we had two different arms at LinkedIn. So I was on the studio side. So when I was there, I think we had probably like close to 20 studios around the world. And then one major publishing arm, which was based in San Francisco. And so we I mean, we had sales offices in different countries around the world, but most publishing work happened in San Francisco.

That makes sense. That makes sense. All right. So Lucasfilm though, so that's obviously pre the sale to Disney. And I guess, give me a little bit of background on when you were there and what you were doing, because it was, so Lucasfilm privately owned by George Lucas. And I'm wondering if there, if it was different, like managing finances in a company where the primary stakeholder was an individual rather than shareholders, like, is it?

How much did, you know, and also an artist. So, and I, well, that said, you know, Lucas had some very smart business deals with the toys and the, and the products that went along with the movies and stuff. So I would imagine maybe then more so than a lot of film directors, he probably had a pretty good handle on business and wanted to track that. But tell me about that. Yeah.

Yeah, I never actually met George, but I did see him on campus once. So that's the closest I ever got. But it was very different. I mean, you go from Electronic Arts, which, you know, a large public company. And I think, you know, when I when I left there, we were doing around three billion a year in sales. You know, so it's not a small company by any means. And then you move to essentially what's a sole proprietorship. So the focus shifts from.

Okay, how do you satisfy the public markets on what we're doing and what we're building and how do we deliver predictability around this? So shareholders are happy to essentially boil down to managing Georgia's personal tax situation. So how do we structure all of these different businesses such that it benefits George in him paying the least amount of tax? And so it's very complex, as you can imagine, because we had a video game business. There was the film business.

There was a licensing business. There were studios in the UK, there were studios in Singapore, and then studios in San Francisco. So it was really managing that whole world. So I wasn't in like a corporate type of role there. I was in the video game piece of it because of my background at Electronic Arts. I was sort of managing sort of like product P&Ls with the development team, similar to EA, sort of the studio side of the business. But we worked a little bit more closely with the publishing arm there because we were based in the same office.

but very much a different world. And it was really, as I mentioned, it was really, you know, how do you, how do you make this the most beneficial for George at the end of the day?

It's funny because I work with a lot of, you know, some early stage startup, a lot of SMBs and a lot of them, but, you know, especially on the consulting side, maybe they even haven't had FP&A before. And I come in and a lot of times when I come to a business, it was basically the founder's tax accountant was the one that was doing their, you know, air quotes FP&A for them. And so that, you know, and then thinking about the way you manage a business, they were doing things like a

cash management was spend as much money as you can by the end of the year. And then they're freaked out that they don't have any cash in Q1, you know, when it comes up because they had a tax accountant running their business for them. So I imagine a little bit more sophisticated than that, but you run things differently if you're trying to minimize your tax burden versus growing a business. Totally. I was just going to add to what you're saying. I mean, at Clearsight IQ, I see the same thing as well. People that are sort of, you know, they're either doing it themselves or they use their personal accountant who's doing their taxes and

And, you know, a similar kind of idea in that, you know, they're not necessarily looking at it through the right lens, through the FP&A lens. They're really managing it from a different point of view completely than maybe what's best for the business. Yeah. Well, but it worked out pretty, pretty good for George. What do you sell? Like 4.5 billion, I think was the sale. Yeah, he did. And I remember at the time he sold it, I was sorry. So I reported to the general manager at Pixar. I remember at the time the business was sold when George sold it.

my manager said, this is a terrible deal for Disney. And he was convinced that they had overpaid. And here we are, you know, it's got to be 10 or 12 or even 14 years later. And, you know, I think that investment's worked out very well for Disney at the end of the day.

Yeah, there you bet. Disney kind of did that franchise along with Marvel. They're squeezing every everything they can out of the bottom, both like right around the same time. And they paid about the same for both. And I think, you know, Disney had a long term plan in place for what they were going to do with this, you know, fantastic IP that they got from both of these companies. And they certainly monetized it the best that they can.

So I guess, and I want to get to LinkedIn, but before we do, so we talked about EA, we talked about Lucasfilm. What was your role at Pixar?

So at Pixar, I was the head of finance for Pixar's Canadian operations. So when I was with Electronic Arts, my first role with them was in Vancouver. And then I transferred to the head office in Redwood Shores, which is a suburb in the Bay Area. And I was actually recruited by Pixar to come back to Vancouver to head up their finance function. So that was my role there. I sort of did everything.

I mean, I had support from our, the head office for Pixar, which was in Emeryville, another suburb in the Bay area. And they provided all sort of the back office accounting and, and, and that type of stuff. So I was really focused on production planning. How do we make these films? We were focused on short films. How do we make these short films? How do we do it effectively?

And then one of my main roles there was how do we keep everybody working all the time so that we could maximize our tax credits, which were paid out by the both the federal and the provincial government in British Columbia. So one of the things we tried to avoid was downtime. So it was really slanting together all these different people that do all these different functions to make these short films.

such that everybody was always working on something because it was much more difficult to get the tax credits if they weren't actually working on an accredited production is what they sort of referred to it as.

So even at Pixar, would you say that your focus was more kind of that cost center management again, because you're more on that side and not on the distribution, the publishing and distribution side? It was. And what we were making, we were making short films in sort of the cars and the Toy Story universe. And these would be anything from like 60 seconds to like four and a half minutes. You'd see these like interstitials on like the Disney channel instead of a commercial break, you might see one of these things. So there was no direct revenue tie in for these products. It was sort of

The general idea was to keep these characters sort of top of mind for new viewers as, you know, as they're being born and they're being exposed to the sort of, you know, the Disney and the Pixar universe so that they would, you know, see these interstitials on Disney Channel. And then the idea was that it would drive sort of pieces of the consumer products business.

Interesting. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. So you go from this, you know, creative area where you're really focused on projects and everything, you know, kind of this tight world to maybe a more traditional, you know, like revenue focused strategic finance when you move forward.

to LinkedIn. But also that said, the intense focus that you had on these projects, probably that's a mindset that stays with you. And a lot of times it's so easy to just think big picture and think forecast and budget to actuals versus getting down to the project level. So I imagine that there was a lot of

you know, strong stuff that came with it. But what were those mindset changes that you had to make? And what advice would you have to FP&A leaders making a similar transition? Or, you know, if they haven't really been at that product or project level sort of cost accounting and management, like what's the shift there and what'd you bring with it?

Yeah, it was a big shift because, as I mentioned before, you know, working in electronic arts and Pixar is a lot of cost center management. So they focus on, OK, how do we do things more efficiently here? And then moving to LinkedIn high growth. You know, I started, you know, shortly after the IPO. A lot of expectations, you know, for what LinkedIn was going to deliver. And the focus was, you

Revenue, revenue, revenue at all costs. How do we grow revenue here? Not necessarily at all costs. Of course, we're paying attention to the money that we're spending, but at the same time, it was really the stock price is driven by how quickly the revenue is growing. So it took me a couple of months or even a quarter to sort of adjust to that different frame of mind because I walked in the door and I knew some people there because I've worked with them in other companies. So that was good. So I had good people like no stupid questions, right? I could ask a lot of stuff in the first quarter until I sort of learned what was going on.

But my first instinct in my first role there was sort of, okay, well, how do we manage headcount? Because I spent so much time managing headcount at all the, you know, these other companies and not being the biggest sort of cost item. Okay. How do we manage headcount? And, and, you know, I sort of,

quickly learned it's not that important at the end of the day because nobody's asking about this. Everybody just keeps asking about bookings and revenue. So let's let's you know, let's put our focus on that. So it took a while to sort of adjust to that. But then once I sort of, you know, grasp that, hey, this is really the important thing that we do here, you know, it sort of changed where I put my focus. And, you know, I would say I shifted, you know, focusing like 80 or 90 percent on top line and, you know, sort of 10 percent on expenses at the end of the day.

Interesting. So, yeah, so at that point, I don't know where LinkedIn was on their sort of their profitability, but. Yeah, we were. So I joined when the company was around a billion dollars in revenue and we were maybe just shy of 4000 headcount. So to put that in perspective, when we got by when we got bought by Microsoft, we were at around 20,000 people headcount.

And I think we were just short of $10 billion in revenue at that point. Gotcha. Yeah. So the company grew quite a bit over my tenure there. Yeah. Fantastic experience. I learned so much. There are so many smart people working in a company like that.

Yeah. I mean, and you got stretched into areas that you hadn't done before. So you're doing central forecasting, you're doing M&A, and then the post-acquisition work with Microsoft. And I'm curious about that one in particular because, you know, whenever there's an acquisition and you say, okay, well, there were 20,000 employees in this revenue, like what synergies are going to come from rolling it up under the Microsoft umbrella? And then though you start to, maybe that's when you shift focus from,

OK, this is our revenue target to OK, now we need to come up with a, you know, with a profitability plan and figure out how it fits in the portfolio. So walk me through kind of those shifts and what you were doing there. Yeah. So the M&A is a good one because I supported our corporate development team from an FP&A point of view. So I worked with them on a lot of the modeling on any of the acquisitions we did there.

We had some pre-acquisition by Microsoft and some after. So I worked on probably about 10 different acquisitions there. And that was a new world for me. That was really interesting. I really enjoyed that, actually. You ran in the due diligence phase? Exactly. Yeah. So they bring me in pretty early on these deals. I mean, CorpDev was always looking for, okay, what do we need? What are we going to bring in? What tech do we need? Are we going to do an acqui-hire? What is it that we're going to do here?

So CorpDev was always working on those types of things. And then when it looked like they had sort of a bit of a green light, like this might be a good fit for us, then they'd usually loop in the FP&A team. And so that would be our head of FP&A and then myself. And then I had an analyst on my team that would help me with this stuff.

So totally different world. I never worked on M&A on the first one. And then what I learned on the very first one we did, which actually went through and was a successful deal, was it's go time all the time when M&A is happening. And so it was kind of, you know, some late nights and, you know,

I don't know, probably got up to like version 65 on the model, right? It was just constantly changing everything all the time to see how this was going to fit into our business. So super good experience. Really enjoyed that. Really enjoyed that a lot. Actually, it was, you know, it's some long nights and some hard work in there, but really interesting stuff to work on because things are changing so quickly. So really enjoyed that. And then with the acquisition by Microsoft, that was different. Now we, you know, we were being bought. And so,

it was really interesting because there was only a certain, you know, handful of people that were in on what was going on in the very beginning. So our,

Our F&A team, the people that got looped in that weren't told exactly what was going on, we were told that we were under audit and we had to produce a certain set of documents for this. So that was kind of the first sort of six or eight weeks of it before we were sort of drawn in and told, okay, you're now in the circle of trust. You know, Microsoft's interested in buying us. There's other potential buyers out there as well. And

it was a lot of, first of all, getting to the deal getting done. So that was phase one. And then we spent probably like six months in sort of, you know, the regulatory period and going through due diligence and having all of those things sort of like wrapped up to sort of finish the deal, which was also a tremendous amount of work.

I remember the day it was announced. It was super cool, actually. Everybody got pulled into the boardroom that we had in our sort of FPNA area. And big announcement. And it was already public at that point because it was announced at the opening market. But very cool thing to go through.

Yeah. And, you know, thinking about if you're building kind of the perfect FP&A foundation, you know, so starting with your accounting training, the intensive program you had there, and then, you know, several years of focusing on cost, you know, project accounting and, you know, looking at that and then coming into...

My first FP&A role was in telecom, and this was in the early 2000s where our company was very acquisitive and there was a lot of consolidation in the industry. And we were doing...

one to two merger of equal size mergers every year and then multiple tuck-ins, everything from very small, almost acqui-hierarch, maybe a little more than that, but bringing in these deals just to try to grow that revenue line. But if getting that M&A experience, both on the buy and the sell side, where you sort of understand, you understand on a more

tangible level business valuation and why they're looking at certain things. And it helps you kind of

for me, it seemed like those were the kind of things that, and then I was in private equity-backed businesses beyond that. So you, but it trains you to look at what are the metrics that are meaningful that actually are a lever that can drive something. I mean, did you, did you find a lot of your learnings through the M&A activity were around, oh, this is what businesses value and this is why I did kind of beyond? Yeah, it was, I mean, I'd had some, you know, exposure to business valuation through my education, but it, you know, in the real world, it's, it doesn't hold up anymore.

Everything changes very much when you're actually looking at, you know, a real business that you're going to fold into a different business.

So it was really interesting. Everyone was different. I mean, sometimes we were buying the company because, uh, you know, the biggest one we did at LinkedIn was lynda.com, which became LinkedIn learning, you know, and that was a billion and a half dollar, uh, acquisition. So huge company and created a whole new product line for LinkedIn. So that was a big deal. Uh, you know, you're obviously gonna spend a billion and a half dollars. You can work very hard and make sure you understand how that's gonna fit into the company, but then even smaller ones like aqua hires of, you know, six people or something that, right. You know, they, they all take on their own different flavor, uh,

as you're working through them. Yeah, because you've got the, you know, some that you've got for the customer base or for a new segment. And there's the different reasons, the strategic acquisition. So it is fun to see, you know, how those businesses are valued. I think it perhaps, I mean, it's probably good prep for what you're doing now. I know maybe a lot of your businesses are much smaller scale, but they're building to sell or whatever they're doing. And you've already got that mindset and thinking. Yeah.

It is it's fantastic experience for you know, the sort of things I offer to my clients today, because a lot of them are exactly as you said, they're either looking to, you know, they're looking for that strategic acquisition, or perhaps

you know, a private equity buyer, but they all have some sort of exit plan in place. So being able to sort of help them figure out what's the appropriate valuation here, which is, you know, it's honestly a little bit more art than science at the end of the day, because no two companies are the same. You can do all the benchmarking you want, but you can never find that situation that fits exactly with your current client that you're trying to do. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. That's why it turns into a negotiation, I suppose, right? You know, everybody's got their number that they want. Yeah.

So also at LinkedIn, one of your key projects was creating the virtual P&Ls we talked about before the show. And I'm wondering, how did that change the way that the leaders made decisions? Kind of walk me through what you were building there and how other companies, maybe if that's something you apply to your clients now or walk me through that. Yeah, so virtual P&L. So this is something that was, you know, the concept of this was brought to us post-acquisition by Microsoft.

And so the way that they look at all of their businesses is through something called the unit of accountability. So they break all their businesses down into their own separate P&Ls and then everything becomes fully allocated. So you've got, you know, you can tie it every last dollar and it ties back to your P&L.

So, you know, after we were acquired, we were talking to them about, you know, how to manage these different businesses. And so they said, oh, why don't you take a crack at something like this? So I spearheaded that project and built out the virtual P&Ls across our sort of four main businesses and then our consumer business as well.

the same idea. So the top line piece, super easy because you know where the money's coming from. When you get into the engineering and the product effort, you have a pretty good idea of what's being spent, but there is this whole layer that needs to be allocated. So there was a lot of effort went into, okay, how do we figure out how to allocate these costs properly? And then of course you have your overhead after the fact, which you can talk about that, how you want to allocate that. But we tended to look at it without the overhead allocated and then with the overhead

allocated because it really was kind of it's whatever allocation methodology you choose for the overhead doesn't really have anything to do with the underlying business.

So we tended to look at it before the overhead was allocated. And the idea behind this was to give autonomy to each of the owners in these business lines, almost like a general manager type structure. So we had a sales leader and a product leader for each one. And the idea was to move some of the decision making away from the CEO and the CFO and put the decision making on the general managers of these businesses.

So if you know, if they were overperforming on revenue, we had a deal. We said, okay, 50% of that comes back to the company and the other 50% you can reinvest in your own business line if you want to. You know, if you can find something that makes sense for you to invest in there. Of course, FP&A would support the analysis to make sure that it all made sense and everything else. But it was kind of like, okay, well, we'll split the profits and then the rest of it goes into the, you know, the coffers of the CFO for sort of larger initiatives.

It took, as you can imagine, large business, it took like a year to get this thing sort of built out and up and running and everybody sort of bought into the way that it was going to work. And it was still running when I left. So I left there in 2022. I don't know if it's still going today, but it was still being used at the time that I left. Those allocations are interesting because I, you know, when I was spent that part of my career that with the PE backed companies, I would come in a lot of the time where, you

pretty long in the tooth on the investment and they were looking to get out. And, you know, a lot of times I'd come in and the accounting would be, you know, that maybe they had departments or divisions or whatever, but the way they were, you know, maybe they weren't allocating software, you know, across the different departments for, if you're trying to, especially if you have different business units or if you're trying to set it up so you could potentially do a spinoff or, or there's something there, like trying to get those allocations straight, it's,

a lot of times it felt like it was more art than science because you have to choose what methodology is it, you know, percent of revenue, is it percent of total cost? Is it based on the number of people we have, the number of hours, the number, I mean, so doing those allocations and building those out and then it becomes the justification because as long as everything looks great, the way you've allocated it, everybody's fine. But if somebody feels like, well, now my P&L doesn't look that good, then they want to push back on it. Did you run into a lot of that as well? Every single day.

Maybe that's an overstatement, but I mean, I can't tell you how many meetings we had on deciding how to allocate these things. As you mentioned, you look at like a percentage of bookings or a percentage of revenue or headcount. You know, those are all common drivers that you would use for this kind of thing. And, you know, there was always an argument for why this didn't make sense for me.

you know, whoever the person was that was going to be eating this costs at the end of the day. Yeah. So it was it was it was hard to get everybody on the same page, you know, as far as doing that.

because everybody would sort of say, this hurts my profitability at the end. It makes me look worse than the other guy. So what we would find happened actually, so we did quarterly business reviews like a lot of companies do. And this virtual P&L will be part of the QBR presentation materials. And so there will be an FP&A team for each of these five business lines.

And what we found is they would take the stock P&L, which we would give them their virtual P&L, and then they would discuss after the fact, maybe some adjustments that would be made in there. And so they would sort of try to highlight, hey, you know, maybe we're a little bit more profitable than it looks because of, you know, A, B and C, you know, and so we didn't necessarily get involved and say, hey, you can't do that.

We said you have to start with the real view. And then if you want to talk a little bit about why, you know, maybe you're being allocated something that doesn't make sense. That's OK. You can include that in the discussion. And I didn't see any of these QBRs go completely sideways on any of those types of discussions. Right. I think everybody caught it.

It's funny, you're giving me a, I'm just having flashbacks to some board meetings where, you know, being in there presenting in another, you know, whether CRO, COO or whatever, being, deciding that's the moment that they want to talk about why these allocations don't work and why their number is really the right number. And,

Isn't that so frustrating? I mean, I've been in lots of those scenarios as well. And, you know, you almost feel like you're sort of blindsided and you're sort of thinking, why did you pick now to bring this up? You know, because I've run into this, you know, with different folks and people I have a good relationship with, and we could have discussed this ahead of time and come up with a better way to do it rather than, you know, put me on my back foot in the meeting and have to sort of justify this in front of a group of people that, you know, probably don't even really

care a whole lot about this. And it's really a distraction at the end of the day. Yeah, that sounds like someone who's been through the battles.

FP&A Today is brought to you by DataRails, the world's number one FP&A solution. DataRails is the artificial intelligence-powered financial planning and analysis platform built for Excel users. That's right, you can stay in Excel. But instead of facing hell for every budget, month-end close, or forecast, you can enjoy a paradise of data consolidation, advanced visualization, reporting, and AI capabilities.

plus game-changing insights giving you instant answers and your story created in seconds. Find out why more than a thousand finance teams use Data Rails to uncover their company's real story. Don't replace Excel, embrace Excel. Learn more at datarails.com.

So you've gone through at these big companies and then you go to BioRender where you're brought in. And this, I love this kind of assignment because you're brought in to build FP&A from the ground up. And, you know, I'd much rather if I've got to do an ERP installation, I'd rather be starting from the beginning than trying to come in and inherit somebody's bad implementation and take that over or whatever. And kind of with FP&A, like they, depending on the data maturity and the, you know, where the company is, if you're coming in and it's bad, you know, if there's,

data issues or data governance or don't have a good, you know, everybody's using kind of their own KPIs. It can be a mess to clean it up because then you've got sort of a change management thing. But if you come in and you're doing FP&A, the first person to do it, you become it, you know, if you do it right, you're a hero and everybody's like, oh my God, you're giving me such a, you know, great insights into my business that we never had before. So, you know, it's a, as you know, it's a lot of work, but it seems like

it's much more rewarding than fixing bad FP&A. So walk me through and maybe really focus on, because it's all, when you come in there, it's like that first three months or that first hundred days, whatever it is. Like, how did you kind of break down the project? What did you prioritize first? What were the, what were those first three months like? Yeah. Great question. And I think,

you nailed it when you said rewarding, it is really rewarding to come in with sort of a blank slate and be able to build it up into something that makes sense. So I really, it was fantastic work. I really enjoyed doing it. It was great.

So first thing first was I spent my first week sort of sifting through data and just looking at what they had. Okay, their CRM was on HubSpot. The data in there was a mess. They had just hired a director of RevOps prior to me joining. And thankfully, actually, she also came from LinkedIn. So we were sort of speaking the same language, which was great. So that was a great partner to have on that.

So there was a lot of effort went into working with her to clean up CRM data and get that into a point where we could say, okay, this is what's happened. Let's start using this to build out some models and look what's going to happen in the future.

So first thing was to build out a field sales model because we were making a big investment in a sales-led motion. So that was where the growth was going to come from. So we had a consumer business as well, but that was sort of secondary. That was going to be kind of, you know, it was going to keep running and it was going to be fine, but the real growth was going to come from, you know, to sort of the enterprise side.

So the first thing was to build that out and then I focused next on the consumer business and then folding that all into a P&L and you know that was showing adjusted EBITDA and then regular EBITDA as well after that. And that really caught my manager was actually a guy who had come up through sort of the controllership side.

And so it was really interesting. I think he was a little bit blindsided that I did this adjusted EBITDA thing and then, you know, broke it down to EBITDA after that. And he was like, what are you doing? And I'm like, no, no, we need to talk about what's actually going on in the business. And so we ended up sort of chatting with one of the founders about it. He's like, I agree, you know, adjusted EBITDA is the right way to look at it.

because some of these things just don't make sense to include in there or whatever. So that was when I sort of first knew, I'm working with someone who's much more on the accounting side as my manager, that I really was going to be sort of the FP&A expert. So we started with that and then we went to...

reporting and then building out quota models. So we know what we're going to do with our salespeople because quotas had sort of been set, you know, willy nilly prior to that. And as I mentioned, we were investing pretty heavily in a sales led motion. So we were hiring BDRs, we were hiring AEs, you know, we had a one through four, depending on sort of the market that you were focused on. And then we had sales managers and the sales director and a head of sales. So we had to build out all these different comp plans, you know, so that everybody sort of knew what was going on.

And then same thing on the on the customer success side. We had, you know, renewal targets and things like that, but there was no not a lot of thought really being put into it. So it was kind of like everybody was kind of doing a little bit their own thing and the business was going very well.

You know, there's a company that had product market fit very early, you know, and they've been cashflow positive very early. So, you know, a great story, which sort of allowed them to maybe not be as buttoned up as they, you know, other companies might be if they really needed to pay more attention to, you know, how much cash was coming in the door. And I still remember one of the things, you know, after I built out the first sort of bottles,

Going back to one of the founders and saying, okay, now share, do you mind sharing your model or whatever you have? I'm just curious, you know, are we in the same ballpark here? And he said, oh, no, no, we don't have anything. This is why we hired you. This is what you're here for. We don't know what's happening in the future. That's kind of your job to figure out where this business is going. So that was really eye opening because they really...

had nothing, absolutely nothing. When I got there, it was like a blank workbook for me and I could do whatever I wanted with it. So the autonomy was great. And that, you know, I think they hired me because I could draw on my experience from, you know, all those different companies and have the ability to sort of like build out something that made sense. You know, I understood SAS metrics and the SAS business model and everything else, you know? So I, I think, um, I think that's probably why I got the job at the end of the day. And remind me what BioRender does.

Oh, so they the easiest way to describe it is they make like a PowerPoint type product for it's cloud based PowerPoint type product for visualizing science. So if you work in either academia or in

like a big pharma, you're doing R&D. And so they give you all the icons and templates to sort of visualize the science that you do. So it's much easier to communicate. In the past, people would use PowerPoint and there'd be all these ugly shapes and stuff like that. And so they sort of

you know, streamline the whole process. You get like a, you know, you get like a canvas and then you, you know, by the time I left, I think they were up to like, you know, 12,000 icons that you can use, you know, like T cells and, you know, different connectors and all this kind of stuff or whatever. So you use it to visualize your science.

Gotcha. And when they brought you in, so they were revenue and cash flow positive, they'd been, and they were kind of just bootstrapped, founder-led. Yeah, exactly. And they had, you know, they'd done quite well up to that point. And they were really like, okay, this thing is working. Let's like go full speed ahead sort of thing. And so, you know, to do that, they wanted to do a fundraise. And so part of my job was to get everything in place, you know, so that we could go through the series A process.

At that point, I mean, was their accounting pretty solid? Like they were audit ready and they were good to go there. It was just they'd never done FP&A. Yeah, the accounting side was good. So I joined, like I mentioned, the head of finance was, you know, a guy who comes from sort of, you know, a controllership type background. So, you know, he was very, very strong, very good. And under him, there was a controller in place as well. And she was also very strong. So as far as...

you know, their historical financial data and their closed processes and stuff like that. It was all buttoned up. They were very good at that. So that made it easy for me because I didn't have to worry about the quality of that data. At least I knew I could rely on that.

CRM was a little different because there was no RevOps in place until, you know, I mentioned the woman that came from LinkedIn. And so you had reps just going in there and plugging in whatever they wanted. Yeah, the pipeline is massive, but the win. Yeah, so you couldn't make sense of anything. And, you know, so we did do a massive cleanup on that.

You know, we eventually moved from HubSpot to Salesforce. We hired a Salesforce admin. And, you know, as you as you grow as a company, these things all make sense. And so, you know, we brought some structure and some rigor to that, which made it a lot better over time. But at least the financial data was reliable. And I have one huge benefit, I think, which was I inherited, I think his title was senior accountant, and they moved him over to FP&A when I joined as an FP&A analyst.

And he'd been there for three years already. And so he'd seen everything that had happened. And so he was such a great resource for me. You know, he'd worked through everything. He knew all the numbers inside and out. He, you know, he knew the consumer business well. He had a pretty good understanding of how, you know, the sales led motion was going to work. So he, you know, he was very, very beneficial to have as sort of my first hire. I mean, I didn't hire him. I got him. But he was, you know, he was super strong, very buttoned up.

So they were doing a Series A when you joined and they had good accounting, which is funny. I think about like in the VC world, the idea of a Series A company actually having good accounting. It's like, no, that just doesn't happen. It's just a mess. It's like they're in QuickBooks or Xero or something and everything is just kind of, you know, there's a blend of like cash and accrual at the same time and they don't know

It's funny, though, because there's, you know, head of finance at a startup, you know, there's the early stage startups. They everybody wants to draw the chart that has the hockey stick and they've got whatever model they're basing on, you know, has so many assumptions and assumes assumes this inflection point. But I guess, you know, they they had a business track record at that point and in good accounting and everything. But

What do you think it was that they knew they needed FP&A to do that Series A? What did they think that investors were going to be asking or looking for that they weren't providing just with solid accounting and trends? Yeah, I think it was really having the forecast about what was going to happen next, right? Because, I mean, you know, VCs, it's great to look at what has happened, but that's not necessarily what you're buying. You're buying what's going to happen next.

And so I think that was the thing where they realized, okay, we need somebody in here with like very strong modeling skills to be able to put together forecasts and models, you know, and make them relatively bulletproof so we can talk about, okay, what's expected to happen over the next, you know, two to five years sort of thing. Yeah.

That makes sense. And and I also find I think with like accountants are great at accounting for sure and they're great at tying out financial statements, but they don't necessarily have that, you know, similar, you know, sort of business acumen. So when it came to things like, you know, metrics and stuff like that, it's almost like a different world for them because it's not part of their, you know, gap training. You know what I mean? Like it's not something that they think about on a regular basis.

So being, you know, having to do, you know, bring some flexibility into like a calculation, right? They would they would want to do it like a very structured way. And whereas you're like, it's maybe a little bit more nuanced than that. Maybe we should look at this a little bit differently. So I think it's bringing that a little bit different lens to be able to sort of tell up maybe a bit more of a compelling story to potential investors.

So it's interesting. So you had this long background of working for these big, cool companies that everybody knows and all that. And then you make the decision, you know, and then BioRender, you're, you know, setting up FP&A. And I'm wondering in that transition, I want to,

move into like you go from this corporate world where you have all these resources and all this data and every, you know, all these great things to use to now your own business and this, you know, working with maybe smaller companies, less data mature companies and everything. So first off, tell me, tell me a little bit about ClearSight IQ, what you guys do.

Yeah, so it's a fractional CFO consulting firm. And so I focus on sort of four pillars, strategic finance, something called FP&A as a service, fundraising support, and then M&A readiness. So those are sort of the four pillars that I offer. And working with my clients are sort of, you know, pre-revenue up to about $25 million in ARR. That's kind of the sweet spot. I think anybody beyond that has...

you know, someone like me already on staff, right? So they don't necessarily need extra support. So it's sort of helping those companies, whether it's founders or they might have some kind of finance function in place, helping those people, you know, sort of realize what they can get from an FP&A type function.

Yeah. And it's, so it's interesting. I talked to a lot of fractional CFOs and people that go out on their own and it's, it's interesting, but I think that, that your focus, that 25 million and lower, they're not going to hire, they don't have the, the, you know, resources to hire a full-time CFO, but they, you know, a lot of them, like I said, they're, you know, tax guy has been doing, doing their books and, and doing, you know, air quote FP&A for them. So I think there is a, there is a demand there. And if you think just about

the number of businesses that size versus the big logos. But what is it that made you, I mean, you could have gone to another, you know, big Fortune 100 company if you wanted probably and, you know, continue there versus now coming to this kind of messy startup world and doing, instead of working for a big company, doing the solopreneur thing. Walk us through that a little bit.

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I think, you know, I was at this sort of 20 year mark in my career. And really what I was looking for at that point was, you know, like you said, I did some big company stuff, you know, private company stuff, you know, the startup world, like all fantastic experience. And really what I was after at the end of the day was not doing more of that.

So it's always about growing and doing different things. And so I wanted to do something completely different. And so I decided to sort of branch out and do my own thing with ClearSight IQ, really as

almost like a lifestyle business. You know, I'm not trying to grow it into a, you know, a large consultancy where I'm going to have, you know, 20 employees or something like that. I really just want to do my own thing and ideally, you know, build it up to like a 75% capacity sort of thing. Uh, you know, my kids are getting older, uh,

You know, I want to spend as much time with them before they go away to school. And so it was really just a question of, OK, well, how do I keep working and do stuff that's interesting to me, but still have the flexibility to, you know, spend time with my family? Like in the startup world, you know, burnout's a real thing there.

right so if i was going to go to another startup you know i'd be staring down you know more 60 or 70 hour weeks kind of thing and working you know very hard to to you know help the company be successful which is great i enjoy that work but then when i sort of looked at it and in terms of okay my whole life and how does this fit together you know is this really what i want to look back on and say you know this is what i spent you know all these years doing

So I love the work. It's really interesting to me, but being able to do it and then also being able to have sort of, you know, the lifestyle piece of it as well. You know, this seemed like the best way to go about it. So, you know, when I was thinking about leaving Bauerender, I talked to my wife about it, sort of pitched this idea, and she's been very supportive. She's like, go for it, you know, do whatever you want.

do whatever you think is going to be good and and you know she sort of said you know try it for a couple years if you don't like it go back and do one of the things you did before and so you know having that backing from my wife and the flexibility to kind of you know figure out what i want to do myself

has been fantastic. Yeah. So I'm very happy with how it's going. I've given myself sort of very reasonable, you know, targets for the first couple of years for this business. And I'm on pace to achieve my sort of first year sales target. So I'm really happy with how it's going. I think it's been a good move.

It's funny, and maybe this isn't a fair stereotype, and especially with business partnering and all that. And FP&A, it's different than, you know, sitting there with a 10 key and the green visor and going through and entering credits and debits. But that said, for a finance person, biz dev and sales are hard. So you talked about hitting your sales targets. And, you know, now you have to spend a fair amount of your time, I would imagine, doing the biz dev part. Did you find that was something that came naturally to you? Or how, you know, how do you approach it? Yeah.

It did not come naturally at all. You know, I'm a finance person through and through. You know, I'm very much an introvert. So, you know, throwing yourself out there and talking to people and trying to sort of pitch what you're doing in a salesy but not salesy kind of way is, you know, it's a learned skill. It's not something that anybody's good at right out of the bat.

right out of the gate. And so, you know, before I decided to go down this path, I reached out to a, you know, a number of peers that I'd worked with and just sort of said, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. What do you think? And they're like, yeah, I think it's a great idea. You can totally do it. Like, go for it.

And then the next step was to reach out to other fractional CFOs, people I didn't know, and just say, hey, what's your experience been like? This is my background. Do you think I can be successful? And so what I found was that sort of fractional CFO world is everybody's very helpful and very supportive.

And so people, even though you're maybe even competing with them for clients, everybody was kind of like, yeah, you have the right background for this. You're going to be successful for sure. Don't get stuck. If you don't get if you're doing a lot of work in the first three months, don't give up. It's going to take some time to get some clients and stuff like that. And I was very fortunate. I got a couple of small clients right away and then was able to. So I was sort of like, okay, this is easy. It's not actually easy to keep your foot on the gas with the biz dev effort for sure to make sure you have more clients coming in.

But it's gone well, but it has been, you know, taking me out of my comfort zone for sure to do that. You know, I go to networking events and I do, you know, I reach out to random people through LinkedIn that I think might be, you know, either could use my service or know someone who could use my service. And so, you know, you sort of have to be ready for the rejection that comes along with that. You know, I've had a number of good introductory calls with potential clients that look like it's going somewhere and then they ghost me. Hurt me a little in the beginning and now I just realized that's just part of the game. Yeah.

And so, you know, it doesn't affect me like it did, you know, even six months ago sort of thing when I was trying to get this thing off the ground. That's funny. So not, you know, not a lot of my time is spent on business development. But when it does, like I'm still in that phase where, you know, when I do get ghosted, I thought, I thought we had this relationship. What's going on? I thought. But then when I talked to the sales team in our company and like I will, you

The other funny thing is that I just, I could never make myself do, they will just keep like pestering and driving. There's like a sales person out, like it doesn't have the sort of cringe factor that I do of like, I don't know, I've already emailed that person three times and they haven't responded. The fourth would be too much. And the sales guy's like, oh no, we're just getting started. We're going to hit them again. And then it's crazy how many though actually can end up converting after that.

Well, that's the funny thing. One of the clients that I'm working with right now, you know, I reached out to the one of the first people I got sort of a warm intro from, from somebody that I knew here in Victoria. And, you know, we had a call and, you know, great conversation. And he was like, you know, maybe sometime I might need some of your help or whatever. And that was sort of it. I sent a couple of follow ups, you know, a couple months later, hey, how's it going sort of thing. And

and respond, everything's great. And that was the end of it. And then out of nowhere, three weeks ago, they're like, hey, I need a ton of help on this project I'm working on right now. I need some help with putting together some board materials and I'm doing a pricing analysis and can you help?

And so you just never know where the business is going to come from. So I think, you know, the advice you're getting, which is to like, just keep it warm, you know, with the people that you're dealing with, you never know when they're going to come back to you again. So, you know, I just try to stay top of mind with people that look like they could use my service at some point.

And I guess we've drifted a bit astray from FP&A, but I just, on that point, a client that I've been working with for a year and a half now, finally, finally, this Friday, we're kicking off a project. And it's the same thing. And the sales guy that worked with me on it said, you know, no's come quick. So if you don't get that no, you just keep going.

You know, that's a great point because, you know, you're talking about sending the follow-on emails, three too many and then four, you know, and so, you know, you space these things out and you try to stay top of mind. And so I had a great introductory call with a potential client and to the point where, you know, I thought we were going to work together for sure, sign an NDA, set up a shared folder, moving some documents around and stuff like that, and then nothing. So I keep following up and I keep not hearing no. So I'll just keep following up, right? It might turn into something at some point.

Well, that is, and also, I mean, just the, if you like different challenges, I mean, when you're doing the fractional, you kind of get to do everything you did before, but sort of at scale in that you're just, you're doing it at different companies and all that. So I think that's right. I think one of the things I really like, and I know this is probably like my inner nerd coming out here is I really like building stuff in spreadsheets. Like I enjoy that kind of work. And then, you know, if you look back to my time at LinkedIn, you know, leading central forecasting, I was managing, uh,

a revenue forecast of about 13 billion dollars when i left i was not in spreadsheets doing anything i had a team of people working on that stuff you know i would be reviewing things asking questions and saying you know is this how this really works and maybe we should dig into this and and that kind of so using a totally different skill set from you know that actually like banging on the keyboard and building stuff so going to bio render was was great because there was nobody else so i had to go and do all that stuff and i really enjoy that kind of work and i got to a similar position with them that i had

a team of six by the time that I left. Again, I moved out of doing that work. So doing it for yourself. I mean, I'm right in the spreadsheets every single day. And like I said, maybe this is my like, you know, inner nerd coming out, but I, I really enjoy that kind of work. I like building stuff in spreadsheets. It's fun for me. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because I, you know, when I was

I had moved so far away from actually putting anything together. And I used to pride myself on my Excel skills, but you know, when you're, when you're more of a recipient than a builder, they tend to go down. And I did, I'd been a CFO for a decade at the,

at this point and I decided I'm going to go get my FMVA from the Corporate Finance Institute. And I went and I did this intensive thing just so I could get back in and build a three statement model again. And I probably never actually built one all the way by myself again, but it was like, all right, I still got it. I remember the keyboard shortcuts and, you know, and how to carry it through. So yeah, I get you on that because it's, you know, at some point you stop doing and you start managing and it does feel good. That satisfaction of,

actually building something and seeing that part of it too.

Yeah. I mean, I like doing the analysis piece of it. I had, when I was at BioRender, one of the analysts on my team was a CFA and he was a very good modeler. And you sort of realize, oh, I've kind of, I've lost some skill over time here. And we actually did at BioRender, we did two-way performance reviews. I would give him a review and he would review me as his manager. And I remember he put in my performance review that I was an okay modeler. And I was like,

I'm kind of stoned a little bit because I thought I was pretty good. I mean, he was night and day better than me. I'm not going to debate that, but just that he said I was okay, it kind of was like, oh, maybe I got to brush up on my skills here.

Yeah, that's funny. So, well, we are, uh, we are getting to the point of the show where I'm supposed to start winding it, winding it down. I think before I took over, I think these podcasts ran about 40 minutes. I feel like I'm getting into like Joe Rogan or, uh, the three and four hour podcast people out there. As much as I love FP&A, I don't know who's going to commit to the, uh, three hour podcast. Yeah.

So as I wind it down, we've got our, our, uh, you know, sort of switching over to the personal side, uh, questions. And the one that we ask all the guests is, uh, what's something that not many people know about you, maybe outside of your work interests and that we couldn't find from, from quickly Googling you or whatever. Yeah. Um, at, at LinkedIn, when we did introductions, you would, you would introduce yourself and you would say something that's not on my LinkedIn profile to sort of answer this question. So something that's not on my LinkedIn profile, um, actually lived in Cambodia for a year, uh,

At the time that I mentioned before, I worked as an English teacher. I lived in Cambodia for a year and I worked for the World Wildlife Fund there. This is not on my LinkedIn profile. Not that many people know that about me. I was hired to build a database for all of their library materials for researchers that were working in Cambodia.

and it paid 600 US dollars per month. Doesn't sound like a lot of money, but in Cambodia, $600 goes a long way. Yeah. And so that that's something that probably not a ton of people know about me. Well, very cool. And since you are now getting back into Excel and you are in the models a lot, I'm curious and I'm going to so I'm going to ask you the question, but I wonder if maybe it has changed from back in your early days in Excel. But

What is your current favorite Excel function and why? So I use a lot of index match match to be able to sort of consolidate, you know, a bunch of raw data into a way that I want to be able to work with it. In the in the olden days when I was sort of learning my chops and modeling, I was big on I was big on some if and the lookups and then X lookup was a game changer when I came in.

So, I mean, I could talk about this for hours because I mean, I'm in there doing all this stuff all the time. Something I will say is I rely on ChatGPT quite a bit now to help me write formulas.

it's very effective if you sort of tell it what you want it to do. Because I might, you know, there's in Excel, there's, you know, 15 different ways you can do it, right? And maybe, you know, maybe you're going to do the thing that has, you know, six different functions tied together and chat GPT can do it for you, you know, in one and make it a little bit more streamlined. So I'm actually relying on that quite a bit when I'm building stuff these days. Yeah. And I, you know, on that note, I use chat GPT occasionally for formulas, but it's kind of,

you know, you have to come out of Excel and you have to say which cell and what you're referencing it. So it's a little bit clunky, but I'm telling you, I mean, and you know, you know, working for LinkedIn and as they rolled into Microsoft, Microsoft didn't spend $15 billion investing in AI so that people would have to come in. I know Copilot's getting there, but I, you know, when they get to that, we're,

You know that what they're picturing is Clippy's revenge. They're finally going to bring back. So you can just be in Excel and all that stuff that, you know, those of us that have been in the industry a while that we prided ourselves on coming up, you know, all the cool things that we could do in Excel and the models we could build and the sum ifs and the nested if statements and just these super complex things.

models, that's all going to be replaced when someone can just type in, hey, build me a pivot table with slicers on this data and show it this way. And then it's just going to spit it out. So you know, that's where it's going. I think that's totally I think that's totally right. I think that's where we're headed. I've tried using Copilot within Excel, and it never does the thing I want it to do. So it's not there yet. I mean, I have no doubt they're going to figure it out. But if you go or you know, if your listeners go and they look

They have to go back probably maybe 18 months and search. There's a 30-minute presentation by Satya Nadella on what Copilot was going to do for PowerPoint and for Excel. There's a fantastic example of what it could do or what they envision it doing there inside Excel, which is its marketing material right now. But I do think that they'll get there.

Um, just the ability to sort of type in questions like why, why did sales suffer in Q2 in this region? And it's like, Oh, these three customers churned and whatever it was, right? Like it's able to sort of, it knows what you're looking for. It's able to figure it out for you. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, again, $15 billion invested, you know, they're going to get there. So yeah. Yeah.

So, well, I really appreciate your time on the show. I guess before we let you go, where can our listeners connect with you and learn more about the work, you know, find out more about ClearSight? So you can find me on LinkedIn, obviously, so under Craig Berry. And then I have a website, clearsightIQ.com, and you can reach out to me there. There's links on the website, or you could just reach out directly, info at clearsightIQ.com. All right. Well, Craig, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks, Glenn. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for the time today.

you