Pitch Perfect Board Presentations – CFO Shannon Nash
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Welcome to FP&A Today. I'm your host, Glenn Hopper. Today, I'm excited to welcome Shannon Nash to the show. Shannon is a dynamic finance leader, public company board director, investor, attorney, and CPA with over 25 years of experience across finance, operations, and governance. Most recently, she served as CFO at Wing, Alphabet's innovative drone delivery subsidiary.

Shannon previously led finance as CFO at reputation.com, guiding the company through a major growth phase, including a $150 million fundraising round. Beyond finance, Shannon is also an award-winning filmmaker and a passionate advocate for storytelling. Her latest film, On Board, explores the journeys of Black women in corporate boardrooms.

Shannon joins us today to discuss her remarkable career, how FP&A teams can strengthen their strategic impact, and how embracing diversity, storytelling, and technology positions finance professionals for success. Shannon, welcome to the show. Glenn, thanks so much for having me. I've been really looking forward to doing this podcast, especially. I know we're going to dive into the strategic power of FP&A, which I could talk about all day. So thanks for having me.

Yeah, I'm so excited. But you've done so many things. Obviously, yes, this is FP&A Today. I want to dive into FP&A, but we've got to talk about all this other stuff too. Seriously, just looking at your background, I mean, your career is really remarkable because not only because you've served as CFO at innovative tech companies like Wing, but you've been an attorney, a CPA, a public company board director, investor, advocate for diversity and inclusion, and

a rare one-off from all this that some people might think doesn't fit is the whole filmmaker bit but we'll we'll talk about that later but i mean as you look back at your career and kind of think about where you are how do you describe yourself now and kind of going through that path and what's your mission that's been kind of guiding you through all this

You know, I think the common thread is that I'm a builder. Like I like to build things. And so whatever is interesting to me, I dive into it and try to think about how do I build it and make meaningful impact at whatever that is. It starts with a strong foundation. And so as I'm talking and counseling younger students, I give back a lot.

to my alma mater at the University of Virginia, the undergrad business school. I talked to a lot of students there and mentored them. What I really talk about is get a really good foundation. For me, it was accounting, but could be finance, could be marketing, whatever it is, get a very good foundation because what that'll allow you to do is to go out there and figure out what are your passions, what

drives you and then help build and scale those things. And so if you, you know, you could have told me many, many moons ago that by getting a CPA, I would get exposed to all of these various industries because one thing every industry needs is, you know,

You would have told me that would lead into all these other interesting career paths. I don't think I actually appreciated it at the time. But now I'm explaining to people, no, gone are their days. I know you remember, Glenn, where when you thought about, oh, what do you do as a CPA for 20 years? Well, you're in like a back room with your like...

I'm dating myself, pocket protector, your calculator, and you're just like a necessary evil. Gone are those days. I mean, really the positions that we play are instrumental to really every industry and every business. And so for me, the thread has been just being able to take that solid foundation and help build relationships.

help companies scale, drive value, and just really lead kind of that next generation of what's the next thing. So that's been the common thread. The combination of CPA and law, I mean, that gives you such a broad foundation and a different, I mean, it's two lenses to look through the business. I mean, I imagine even in FP&A, I mean, law probably still has an impact and influence in your thought process there.

Yeah, you definitely don't turn it off. I mean, what I will definitely say that not only law school, but then practicing law for a number of years, what it helps you do is really hone in your critical thinking skills. And at the end of the day, that's what I think is super important for any of these roles, especially in FP&A. It's not the ability to do the forecasting. It's the ability to

to take that, right, and be a critical thinker and then do something with it, like execute on it. And so I definitely know that the legal training was super helpful for me. Yeah, that's interesting. So for me, before I came to finance, I was a journalist and I took it for granted for years until people started talking about it in the industry. It's, oh,

that actually made it so that I understood accuracy, brevity, clarity, the sort of the reverse, you know, the pyramid of, of how you get information across and everything. And it's, it is interesting how all of the stuff that we do molds who we are down the road. And that's why your, your broad careers is so fascinating. And, um, so we'll walk through the career a little bit more, but after all that, what, what's your main focus today? What are you, what are you doing today?

Yeah. I mean, so I've been able to take, you know, like you said, the 25 plus years of, you know, starting out as a professional service advisor. So really understanding how you help advise a client and going from client to client and situation to situation to going in-house to companies and working my way up the corporate America ladder. I've been able to take

all of those experiences, my operational experiences and turn that into something I'm super passionate about, which is board service. And again, if you go back 25 years, one of the things when you are aspiring to, you know, what your career is going to look like, I don't know if people really talk about what,

boards do and why that's important. So that's part of, we'll get into it, but that's part of my mission is to make sure that more, especially younger people are exposed to this as an opportunity because serving on the board has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my entire career because you're really helping to shape

the strategy of where a company is going. And ultimately, you know, you're working at the top levels because you're working with all of the C-suite, you're working with brilliant, you know, strategic minds on the board. And it's all about creating shareholder value. It's bringing together organizations

all of those skill sets and taking it to that next level. And so I serve on the board of NetScout Systems, which is a publicly traded security assurance and cybersecurity tech company. I serve on the board of SoFi Bank, which is a fintech. And I serve on the board of a restaurant chain that's a regional restaurant chain called

called Lazy Dog Restaurants, which may seem extremely different than my other boards because it's not tech, but there is tech in restaurants, believe it or not. But also it's just like, it's a fun way to round out my experiences in terms of board service. And at the same time, as we talked about in the beginning of this podcast, it just goes to show that having that foundation, having that solid foundation and governance back

allows you to go to multiple industries. So I'm doing a lot of that. And then I'm also, you and I have talked about this, working on a leadership podcast that hopefully I will be rolling out later this year. So really my thought leadership is also the next thing I'm working on. And then I'm an investor, a limited partner in a couple of funds. And so I'm helping portfolio companies scale and doing some advisory work. So it's just a fun time in life.

It just seems like when you find something you're passionate about and sink your teeth into it, you go all in on it. And so, you know, your passion in talking about being on these boards comes through, but really comes through in that you've made a documentary film about this with On Board that highlights the rise of Black women in corporate boardrooms. And I'm just wondering, like serving the boards and making the movie and, you know, which came first and really what inspired you to take on the project and what are the messages that you hope to get across in it?

Well, I had made movies before and I had worked as one of my earlier CFO roles was I was CFO of a small production company. And I had gotten also the chance to run a company for the iconic Debbie Allen. And so I knew a lot about the industry. Like I knew if you know how to, I always tell people, if you know how to raise money in film and entertainment, I'll take you every day because that is so much harder than raising money in tech. So much harder. And I had to do that.

So I knew enough about how you put together like a project and how you make money off of it, quite frankly, or how you would at least get it made in a way that makes sense. I had been fortunate enough, there was an organization that was started by a woman named Merlene Santill and Robin Washington called Black Women on Boards. And they didn't start it as an organization. They really just started it as a way, they themselves were what's called overboarded, meaning they were on a lot of boards, couldn't be on new boards, but kept getting the calls.

And they just wanted to make sure that all these other women that they knew were qualified to be on boards got the opportunities as well. And so they put together a Zoom along with a VC from called Sapphire Ventures, this woman named Elizabeth Patterson. She had portfolio companies that were looking for board members and they thought, let's just do this Zoom and introduce these women. And if there are opportunities, we want to at least

recommend them. So it just started that simple. But you know what the power of those type of convenings is? It took off like a rocket ship. So there's 18 of us on that initial Zoom call. It was during COVID. So it was one of those calls where you'd been working all day and then you'd get on this empowering call at five o'clock and by eight or nine o'clock, you don't want to get off because you're just...

You just feel like you're in a really amazing space after working all day on Zoom. And guess what? Over a course of a year, they helped every woman got on a board in public company boards.

And so I said, there's something in this story. And I went to Merlene and said, how are you going to scale this? And how are you going to tell this story more globally? Because I think you have something here. And she, of course, she was like, that's interesting, but how do you make a film? And I was like, oh, I know how to do that. That part I know. And I get the director. We got an amazing award-winning director by the name of Deborah Riley Draper.

And kind of put together a thought of doing this film. And then I went to someone who's a mentor of mine, but his name is Barry Williams, prolific serial public company board member, mentored a lot of people. And I said, hey, we're going to make this film. We're going to tell this story of Black Women on Boards, which is now an organization. And we're going to honor the first Black woman who got on a board because that's a little known history fact.

And I told him who we were going to honor. And Glenn, he said, I don't, she's that person you're honoring is a nice lady, but she's not the first. And I'm like, Google says she's the first. And he, and he, he, you know, he himself remembers because he was one of the earlier pioneer board members back in, you know, long time ago in the seventies and stuff. And he said, Google is wrong. And so then I started doing the lawyer in me. I started doing more research. Yeah.

He was right. And so I knew we had to make a film, if for nothing else, to set history straight, to make it that when you do your Google search, you actually get the right person. And if you were to Google that right now, you're going to get the right person. And her name is Patricia Roberts Harris. So I knew we had to make a film, if for nothing else, that this would live on forever and ever to make sure that, like I said, history was correct.

Oh, that's great. That's great. As we talk about this, and I know it's politically charged, but I do think it's important to talk about. And so I'm just going to word this away and you can answer however, you know, whatever you're comfortable with now. But I do think it's important to discuss. But what practical advice would you give finance leaders about how to effectively build more diverse, equitable and inclusive teams? Is this something you feel comfortable talking about? Well, here's the thing. I know that the

term DE&I is charged, is a charged term. And I have various feelings about that. But I have not met a leader who doesn't say they want the best, the brightest, the smartest people for their roles. I've never met somebody to say that. And

And so what I say is it's really about making sure you are looking in the various networks that are out there, the various schools, the various firms, the various cities, et cetera, to make sure that the talent pool you're pulling from gets you that, right? Gets you the best and the brightest.

I don't need to use the term diverse. I don't need to use any of the terms because ultimately what you want is the best and brightest for your company, for your position. And you want it to be a process that was fair.

I've never met a person, regardless of all the politics around this, that says, yeah, no, I don't want that smart person. I don't want the best person. I just want to keep going to the same place. I might get some good people. I might get some bad people. I don't care. I haven't actually met those people. And so to me, it's like,

I don't even want to focus on the word. I want to focus on the process of how are you getting to the best and the brightest? And then how are you keeping them? Because that's universal as well. That is, again, who goes out of their way to do what I'm saying, hire the best and brightest people, bring them into your company, and then you're not doing the things to keep them because it's super expensive to keep replacing people.

So you should be building systems for them to thrive in your company and to be promoted and to work on the things that you need them to work on because you need the best and the brightest to do this to be successful. So I think that we are in a time where the term is just too charged to use. It's been co-opted and used for just, in my opinion, the wrong things. Let's focus on

why we're doing this in the first place. And that is to make sure we have the best workforce that we can have for our various companies. And, you know, so I'm a big AI machine learning guy. So, and I hope we talked about this before the show. I hope we get to talk about that. I hope we have time to talk about that later in the show. But it's to me,

it is, and we've seen it in algorithms in social media and in advertisements and all that, where you get in this positive feedback loop. And like you said, going into the same well and the same source every time, you're getting this sort of that same positive feedback loop in the real world by not having that broader view. So I think very, very well said. You started your career in accounting and tax at KPMG, and then you moved into law with taxation and corporate transaction work. And then you moved into startups and operations. And then this is all before taking your first

CFO role is, and you've hit on it a little bit, but tell me a little bit about the transition as you stepped through that. Was there a shift in mindset or focus and kind of what drove the move to get you ultimately to the CFO's feet? So a couple of things. I think that I grew up with the mindset of especially going through, you know, the various programs at school and undergrad and law school thinking professional services, right?

And at the time, it was like a big eight accounting firm. Actually, I think it started at 10. I remember when it was 10, then it was eight. Now it's obviously four. And then you've got...

the regional guys. And so you were just kind of ingrained to like, that's what you do. And even in law school, you think about, you really think about either going into government service. I know I wasn't going to necessarily do that, but you think about professional services. And so I was just kind of wired to do professional services. And what I will tell you is that I liked professional services, but I didn't love professional services, if that makes any sense. And when I, you know what I mean? I didn't love it. It wasn't like I wasn't passionate.

and passionate about, but I liked it. It certainly was great training and I had some amazing experiences. And it wasn't until I went in-house to a company, I went in-house to Amgen where I actually got more exposure to that you could actually not necessarily do professional, you could really do this for a company.

if you will, and dive into the business model and the strategy of the company. It wasn't until I went in-house that I got that exposure. And when I got that exposure and I understood the operations of a business much more intimately than I did as a professional service provider, I liked it, but I loved it too. Like it was both lined up for me.

I always say no one makes it to the C-suite, even if you're born into a family who owns a company, you don't make it there alone. Somebody mentored you, somebody supported you, somebody pushed you on. And so I had like I saw in that company, I saw that, you know, I had access to the CFO and the controller. And I was like, I like that side of the business more. I liked it more so than practicing law.

Honestly. And so that's kind of what led my desire to wanting to do more operational and finance type of roles. Ultimately, I just felt like I was much more tied into like the business and making the ultimate business decisions. And that was just something I actually loved.

yeah that makes so much sense and it's funny so i i know exactly what you mean about professional services and i kind of did in my career i did things backwards i was a cfo in-house for multiple companies before switching to doing consulting work in the professional services and like on one hand i love professional services because it's always new problems you're always

solving things and the exposure to the different industries and public and private companies. And this was actually my, as a consultant, was my first time working with public companies. And I love that exposure, but to really make a difference, to have that deep, like to be a true partner, you know, if somebody's paying you 350 bucks an hour, they're trying to limit your time.

you know, based on, and they're like, well, we'll, we'll bring him or her in whenever, whenever needed, but you know, not beyond that. And then, but also if you're a part of a company, you, like you said, you're a builder. And I think if as a builder being in the company, rather than just a consultant to the company has to be a lot more meaningful. So I get that. All right, let's get into some finance stuff here. So first off from reputation.com, you, um, had led significant scaling efforts there, including raising $150 million in funding. Um,

And you know, this is kind of a softball and this is the question that we could talk about all day because this is where being in the startup space and then being in telecom before that and sort of working in M&A, the valuation of your company, the perceived valuation of the company is all about the story you can tell with the financials. And you can't just give the forecast that has the hockey stick with no explanation. I've seen so many startups do that and everything, but true FP&A is so important. But

From a CFO's perspective, what critical role, and I know that there's the whole, you know, it's much broader than just the FP&A part, but FP&A is, you know, a big seat at the table. But what critical role did FP&A play in securing that funding and really positioning the company more for growth?

Oh, it's critical. I mean, we talked about this. It's super critical. You're not going to be able to even craft the narrative until you feel comfortable about the numbers and the scenario planning around the numbers. And anybody that's going to give you money is going to actually, as part of their due diligence, right? They are going to spend significant amounts of times with you on the numbers and the scenarios and the assumptions.

And so FP&A is the glue to all of that. Every time I've raised money, whether it's been at a very small grassroots level to like you said, hundreds of millions of dollars, it has started with really diving in for weeks, maybe even months with FP&A on all of our scenario planning. It's just, it is literally the glue to make this all happen.

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You're really driving and helping shape with these are the assumptions, these are the drivers, this is what's realistic, this is what we can justify, you know, this is kind of our maybe our pie in the sky, best case for our forecast and everything. Like how, what was the work like with your team as you were building out these models and trying to show, you know, the sort of the future value of the company, you know, getting to that DCF based on what you're projecting? Yeah, I mean, spending a lot of, intimately, a lot of time on all of those assumptions.

that we were making, whether on both sides of this kind of viewpoint on assumptions on revenue, assumptions on cost, assumptions on market size, all of those types of things, especially when you're raising money, you're really diving into every single assumption. And then you are...

kicking the tire on it, if you will, like repeatedly challenging it, coming up with, you know, four or five different scenarios based off of the assumption. And then really landing on the argument that when I say the best argument, it's not a hockey stick argument. The best argument is the one that is the most realistic based off of your set of fact patterns, which means

You spent a lot of time with probably, for a tech company, the product folks. You spent a lot of time with the sales folks, however you are, CROs or partnership folks or whatever, however you make your money, right? Spent a lot of time with them. Spent a lot of time with the operational folks. What are those assumptions? You think you can get to this many enterprise customers in this amount of time and here's why, because this product can scale this way. You're spending a lot. So you really have to understand the business.

You really have to be an expert in the business to even support those assumptions. Yeah.

Once again, you are speaking my language completely because I know, so at InsideSource, you had the CFO and COO role. And I think that this kind of speaks to what you mentioned earlier, kind of the old school, what people thought of as finance and accounting is the green visor, the pocket protector, the nine key calculator and the, you know, the print receipt coming out and all that slide rule or whatever. But I think though,

And you're seeing more now of this CFO-COO combo role. And to me, like when I'd come in, like if there was a COO at a company when I came in, probably not his best friend at first because I'm immediately like poking my head into his or her business. And because I'm thinking as CFO, what data do we have in operations? I'm trying to get data from across the board for those forecasts and everything. But I think that in doing that and in being this more strategic leader who has to, you can't just...

be in this ivory tower of, I'm just counting beans here. You know, I don't care whatever the widget is. I don't care because I think that one of the things that kind of changed the office of the CFO is, you know, post Sarbanes-Oxley, you've got this responsibility and, you know, to step up and you're signing, you know, the financial statements and attesting to them. And you can't do that if you don't understand the business. But this is all just a bunch of ex

position to say, I think with that, you know, when you talk about working with operations on the model, that's so important. And it does set up this kind of crossover that I think years ago would have been unfathomable. But serving as that CFO and COO, I can see how you get in that mindset of you combine the two and you think of them

together. So you're not doing finance in the vacuum. But I wonder, how did you balance kind of the finance and operations approach to it? Because they, because a lot of times, you know, as operations person, you're, you know, arguing for more money in the budget or, you know, making money and the CFO traditionally is like, no, there is no more, you know, is that restraint there? So there is this balance. So, I mean, how did you kind of find that line between both? Yeah. So I have a

a mindset of that the CFO's office is not an office of no. It's an office of how can we make this work? That mindset for me started fairly on and being exposed when I went in-house to Amgen, like many moons ago. One of the things that, and I think a lot of companies are doing this now, but this again was a long time ago. They had the thought that everybody who works at this company should understand our drugs.

We're a pharmaceutical, we're a biotech. You need to understand, we don't really care what your job is. You need to understand our drugs. And they allowed you to go on ride-alongs with sales reps. I can tell you nothing solidifies more about what you're doing every day than like going to like a dialysis clinic.

and watching your product being used and changing the lives of, you know, of patients. Like that type of connection and talking to the sales reps and understanding like how they do their job. And I tell you, that was like a pivotal moment for me in terms of just understanding like, oh, to be successful at any of these like kind of, you know, back office positions, you really need to understand the product. And the only way to do that is go out, touch it, see it, do it.

You're seeing that more and more now. And when I first started my career in finance, this wasn't anything we even talked about, but business partnering, where the FP&A folks are out there in the departments and everything, and you're not just sitting in that vacuum and in that, you know, sort of sterile area of just, you know, ones and zeros and trial balances and accounting where you actually do have to learn it. And it does, if we're going to be more strategic, we have to understand the business. So I think that's, that's great.

Okay, so you also were CFO at Wing, which I don't know how many people in our audience are familiar with that. But maybe for those unfamiliar, can you share what Wing does and what made it such a unique place to lead as CFO? Yeah, Wing's a commercial drone delivery company. And commercial drone delivery is real. It's happening. It's happening globally. It's happening in the U.S. Wing is operating currently in Dallas, California.

So certainly people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are familiar, right, with the ability to get their deliveries wing partnered with a

Walmart to do this. So you today in those areas, you can, you know, go onto an app and decide that you want your delivery to come by drone and it comes quick and it's, it's safe and it's here today. So I'm, I'm, you know, I'm always drawn to things that are like helping advanced a need with technology that I really think, you know, will shape the future. And then I'm also, you

you know, inspired by just new innovative things that involve, that are complex, involve regulatory and cutting it, city planning, cutting edge tech, things of that nature. So that was what was to me exciting about Wink.

So one question for our audience is when you are looking for bringing on, whether it's a new head of FP&A or who's moving up in your organization in FP&A, walk me through this kind of the skills or qualities that stand out to you and the candidates. What makes a good FP&A person for you? Yeah, so we talked about, kind of like we talked about, you know, gone are the days where finance and a CFO was just looking for somebody, A, who would just close the

close the books and tell you the historical news about what happened the month before. All that stuff is honestly table stakes, Glim. We assume you can do that. It's really about looking for that professional who's a strategic thinker

curious, adaptable, great communication skills. Somebody who, the CFO is looking for somebody who can take the historical data, right? Be a fortune teller, take that, extrapolate that into what's going to happen in the future, hence the fortune telling, and then put that together in a concise story. And then come present that to the CFO, right?

who's obviously got other stakeholders he or she needs to present that to. That's what they're looking for. So, you know, the assumption is that you're good at modeling, right? The assumption is that you know how to take complex data and like,

piece that together into a story. That's like the assumption. What they want you to do is then be curious about it and be able to poke holes at it. And so a good like kind of VP of FP&A, they are their CFOs, like right-hand person, if anything. And so they are coming to them and saying, here's what I think. Now, as I'm prepping you and we're talking about this, let's kick the tires on it. What if I change this? I think that would mean we need to do, instead of it,

going into this market, we need to tell the sales team to look at these markets, for example. So they really understand strategy and they work with the strategy team. Like they really work across those type of groups. And so you're looking for somebody, that's why I said that intellectual curiosity is also a super important part

part of this because they're not just looking for an answer they're looking for you to also um kick the tires or poke holes is a better way to say it into the answer because ultimately that's what's going to happen with the cfo when he or she is talking to the ceo

to the board, to investors, they're going to poke holes in your answer. And that's what you want your head of FP&A to be able to really help prepare. So in many ways, the head of FP&A also has a investor relations type of role in his or her mindset as well.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I'm laughing because this is the part that my audience knows is kind of inevitable. I'm eventually going to get here on every episode. But when you talk about the table stakes for FP&A with automation and particularly with AI lately, and the table stakes are going to be

Increasingly, I mean, just how quickly AI is moving in particular, but even just rule-based and just standard automation, you used to be able to kind of rise up in FP&A because you were really good at modeling and building. You could do all these complex formulas in Excel and that's where you really stood out. But now, I mean, especially, I know it's early and it's not there yet, but Copilot's gonna nail this, or Microsoft is gonna nail this Copilot thing.

We're going to find that all these formulas, these nested if statements and complex formulas that we did that took us forever that we were so proud of in the coming months or certainly years, you're just going to be able to type to remember Clippy from Microsoft, the little pop-up assistant. You're going to have your AI version of Clippy and you're going to be saying, you know, you're just going to type in, I want to do this with the data and it's going to do it. So all the things that

that we used to really pride ourselves on are going to be replaced by either AI or standard automation. I mean, now you can put Python in Excel and, you know, we're just, it's gotten so much more, so much different than when I came up. And I'm wondering,

as this, the table stakes get higher because if, well, if the, if the robots are doing all this sort of data entry and even some base level modeling, like there's so much software out there right now that just goes straight into your ERP and pulls out your information and can do real time, you know, forecast updates on the fly and stuff that we used to do. And I'm, I know there's still a lot of tweaking that you can go around it, but what, what happens to FP&A? What do you think, you know, where are we going with the evolving technology in the FP&A role?

I think a lot of people that I've spoken to and myself included are excited about that. Some of the most nerve wracking things is getting ready to present to board, whomever, and having somebody from FP&A call you and say, something's wrong with the model. It broke here. Yeah.

On one of the 17 linked workbooks that's 10 steps downstream. Right? And so the ability to use AI to handle that, I think people are excited, quite frankly, about that. Because really where I need their time spent is on that foundation.

fortune telling and what do we do and how do we execute? And that's where I think AI is going to help with suggestions, but a lot of that isn't based off of formulas or anything like that, right? It's really based off of intimately understanding the business, understanding your customer, understanding your market, and then

putting that all together based on the data and coming up with like this is plan a plan b plan c and that's where i want the fpna people focus is on that part of it that's where their secret sauce really is it's not on i'll date myself do you know how to do v look up like who cares so and yeah and it's going to be increasingly less and less important as that gets offloaded

Here's one. I've never been on a board before. I've had to present to boards through, you know, the last many years of my career. And it's to this day, it still makes me very nervous. And it depends on the board. You know, different boards have different, but there, I mean, it's very serious and you're, you know, you can, we were talking about a feedback loop within the management team. You can sort of get to everybody's kind of singing the same song and has the same message. But if you have the right board,

board, they're not drinking the same Kool-Aid there. They're coming in with this true objective lens on there. And it's great. And companies need that kind of oversight. And I think it keeps companies out of public or even a private company. Like having like an advisory panel or something I think is a

Great advice. But like every time I go into a board meeting, like you get, you know, after a couple of quarters, you get to know the board members and you know, the audit committee, you know, there's the one guy that's going to ask this specific question and you've got to be ready for that. And then there's certain people it's like, okay, well, I'm going to present here because I know they're going to ask, you know, two levels deeper and I need to keep some additional information in my head pocket for all that. But I've,

You know, having not been on the board side, I wonder, and I know a lot of our listeners have to present to boards too. Is there, what advice would you give either? This could be for a CFO or head of FP&A, anyone who's having to present to that level at the board level. What do you think about, you could tell them about effectively communicating at that level? Oh, I've got great suggestions for that, I think. Okay, first of all,

Be concise. We've been sent a board deck that has a thousand pages, two thousand pages, whatever. And most times, as much as you want to get it, you know, a week and a half in advance, we get it very close to the board meeting. So it's a lot of information to go through.

The last thing we want to do is sit in a board meeting where you, I've had to go through a thousand pages or more, and you want to come in and present 25 slides to me. I need you to actually be like, this isn't the deep dive, unless it's like one of those scenarios where you needed a deep dive with management. And then quite frankly, if you need a deep dive with management like that, it should probably be a separate meeting, like its own thing.

focused thing. And that does happen. But for a typical board meeting, you're not doing significant deep dives. They should be concise, quick, get to the point. So I always say, think about it like this. Tell me what the issue is. So this is the lawyer in me. We used to use this method called IRAC. It was like issue, rule, analysis, conclusion. That's what they teach you in law school.

So something very similar. Come in. What's the issue? What are you trying to... What do you want me to know about it? And basically do this in like a slide or two. How did you think about it? Like analyze it for me. What worked?

what's working, what's not working. Like open the kimono, tell me the warts, tell us what's not working so we can help you. And ask the board for if there is, the board can be helpful because most people on the board want to be helpful. We're all trying to get this ship to go the same way. Tell us how we can be helpful. But I should be able to know that like,

quickly and you should be concise about it. You should use data, obviously from a finance standpoint, we want to know data, but not data for just data sake. Know your data so you can answer my questions when I ask you about it. Know your data cold. But I'm not coming in here to be the data expert. You're my data expert. So answer the questions and then tell me what you're doing with the data. But don't hide around just being a data savant and just throw a bunch of data at me with no conclusion because I can't do anything with that.

And then

practice, practice, practice before you come to this board meeting. Meaning the CFO loves to do this with you, your peers, if you're the head of FP&A, talking to the board, anticipate all the various questions. That's where before the board meetings, especially most of the times FP&A folks are talking to the audit committee and maybe to the full board, that's where really having that like one-on-one call with the audit chair comes in handy before you get in front of the committee or the board. So I highly recommend developing that relationship as well.

Yeah, that makes sense. And it's, you know, again, thinking back to presentations that I've been part of, whether it was up to the board or I can remember early in my career, the first CFO I worked for at the quarterly meeting would just sit there and read financials, just the driest, like Ferris Bueller kind of just reading through facts and, you know, going through each market, talking about what our EBITDA was in each market. It's just reading information. If you're

If you're, you could hand someone a spreadsheet and they could see that there's no, you don't need to read the spreadsheet. So it's really, it's changed a lot. And a big part of that is storytelling. And this goes back again to like what you just said with, um, from the attorney in you to also being a creative storyteller. Is there with that background, are there specific examples you can link to on how you leverage storytelling in your, in your career, or just even more advice for our, for our listeners about using that?

Well, again, storytelling is a huge part of this, whether that's internal storytelling or external storytelling. It's not about just saying, here's what the numbers are. Like you said, just reading like this, you know, we subscription revenue grew by this percent year over year and blah, blah, blah. Like I can read, I can see it. It's on the slide.

Tell me what to do with that. What does that signal for you for the next quarter and the next quarter? Or are you seeing it like, does that signal to you that there's going to be a downward trend and why? Tell me, weave in the story for me. And I'll tell you, for me, surprisingly, it worked for me and I've heard other people that it's worked for as well. One of my earlier roles, when I said I worked for Debbie Allen, she was a

She had her whole, all of everybody, her whole team take an improv class. We did improv. And remember at the time we were doing the class, I was like, I went to law school. I did all these things. Why am I taking an improv? I'm never going to be like on TV. Like, that's not what I want to do. Why would I take improv? What a blessing taking an improv class did. Because what does it make you do? Tell stories off the top of your head.

Like you have to dive in to like continuing the story. And it helps break that shell of wanting, we all want to be prepared, but it also helps you think really quickly because you are prepared. Now you should be able to tell the story to the next guy. And then I should be able to take whatever you said and add on to it very quickly. That's a skillset that you're going to need in terms of whether I said again, it's that internal or the external storytelling, you need it for both. And so, yeah,

So interestingly enough, I can tell you that a big part of how that started working for me was taking an improv class. This is crazy, but you were the second guest in a row. Mike Dion, who I interviewed last week, also talked about taking his improv class and how important that was. Or I think that might have been his answer to the question of what's something not many people know about you. And I've never taken an improv class, but my son has. And we were talking about it. And he said that one of the biggest things in improv is...

you never say no, because you don't want to be the spot where the story ends. Everything that you do has to be in boomerang it back to the other person. And that's actually, whether it's communication or, I mean, a way to think about collaboration and everything, it's probably, I mean, I could see. So I think we're going to start a movement here. We're going to, maybe we need to start like an improv class for finance professionals. I was about to say, Glenn, I think we can, I think there's a business model for us right there.

So that's really interesting. And I think that there's something else that as you were going through that, I think about early in your career, you don't have the experience you do. You know, you learn how to do the modeling and how to, you know, build it, have this deliverable and you don't have the insights yet to sort of,

You don't even know the questions to ask it. You don't have the domain expertise. You've just got your school and then what you're doing. So you don't know those questions. And as you develop, a lot of our listeners aspire to become CFOs one day. And I'm thinking about that mindset that you have to have of,

delivering this information, but I'm not just a conduit for it. I have to be adding value to the information as it passes through me. Otherwise, I could be easily replaced by a bot. So I'm thinking about you. I mean, obviously, as you talk, I can tell that you have that mindset. And as a board member, even more so because you're this Socratic observer. Well, not Socratic completely, but you're out of the

mire of it and you're able to come in and get that 30,000 foot view and you have the questions. And I think that's a skill set that you have to, you have to be able to back out more and more, you know, from the individual trees to the larger forest as you go up in career. But what separates people who kind of are, get limited and stuck in a range and aren't able to move up to that CFO? What, what separates the people who do make good CFOs from those who never quite get there?

I think that the people who show that they are always lifelong learners and inquisitive in that way, I think that sets them apart. For most people listening, they are, I would say, used to the fact that there's some form of continued education you have to do, whether it's for a license or whatever. So the people that I think that really take that and show that they are just always

always like lifelong learners and trying to improve and not just like, hey, I know this job inside and out. I just want to do this job. Those are the people that tend to move up. The people that treat the business and what they're doing like they're an owner, like they're a true owner. Like if you own this, you would really want to understand every impact of the business on the financial health of the company and the future financial

future of the company. If it was your company, treat it like it is. For a lot of people, you have stock, you have options, things like that. So you are an owner. But it's interesting how people still don't have that mindset. I've met way too many people who don't treat it like it's their business. But I think the people that do stand out, quite frankly, I think the people that do work on, we just talked about that, that storytelling, which I got, that helps them develop an executive presence. I think the people who work on that are

Also, they stand out. And then a bit of it is taking some risks, right? All successful companies had to take some risk here and there. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I think the people that, you know, are willing to make some decisions that, you know, may not be popular, but here's how they back it up. They tend to stand out. And also, sometimes it works. It doesn't work all the time, right? But when I look at the people where it worked, they got a little bit of that in their background too.

Yeah. And it's like, you know, you have to, if you just stay in your comfort zone, you're, there's no growth there. So, I mean, you have to every now and then get out a little bit ahead of your skis, maybe feel that imposter syndrome a little bit and take those risks. So that's, yeah, that's a great bit of advice there too. So we're winding it down kind of to the, the personal section of the show. I mean, we, I feel like we've talked about so much here. I have no idea what your answer is going to be on this, but I feel like you're going to really surprise us, but

Our next question, these next couple are ones that we ask all of our guests. And the next one is, see, I think for a lot of people, the fact that you'd made a movie, this is probably where this would come in. But we already know that about you. So my question is, what is something that people might not know about you?

Some people know, but maybe not the extent of it. So I dance a lot. I do have a Zumba and U-Jam. So those are group fitness dance formats. So I'm an instructor. So I have my license to do that. And let's just say I have gotten my fair share of time. We live in the Bay Area and go to a lot of Golden State Warriors basketball games.

And I have gotten my fair share of time, even most recently, on the, what do you call it, the Jumbotron, where they show the dancing people. Yes, yeah. So much so that very recently, like last week, we have a friend that's a newscaster at ESPN, and I'm on the Jumbotron. And he's texting my husband saying, is that your wife on the Jumbotron at the game right now? Yeah.

That's so great. And you can see my husband in the Dumbletron, too, just like this. Just looking right here. That's me. There she goes again with the dancing. So much that they're putting her on TV. Oh, that's great. So, aside, I'm a Memphis Grizzlies season ticket holder. So, we might have to, you know, talk about your boy Draymond. Yeah.

Oh, I'm a huge Draymond fan. Huge. He's from a small town called Saginaw, Michigan. And I'm from that town. So like my aunt was his vice principal in high school. So shout out to Saginaw, Michigan. Yeah, actually, honestly, if Draymond were on my team, I would love him. But as, you know, as another Western Conference team, it's like, here he goes again. That's it.

But we had, you know, we used to have Zach Randolph, who was kind of, you know, you need that. Yeah, he's great. And actually, I love how kind of outspoken he is at this point in his career. And he'll just like, I don't know if you saw him at the NBA All-Star Game, just talking like this is garbage. I did. He's right. Okay, well, this is we're going to have a whole other podcast and we're going to talk about the NBA. That's going to be. Let's do that.

Okay, so our last question, and this is I always feel almost feel bad asking CFOs this question because it's been so long since we've really gotten into it. But I'm going to go ahead and throw out what is your favorite Excel function and why? Okay, so I put a lot of thought into this one because to your point, it's like, oh, so I mean, yeah, gone other days. Again, the whole VLOOKUP thing is like so like, you know, 1980s once it's like skill set back.

I'd say the most recent things for me that have been helpful. So there's index match, right? Where you're looking up like a specific value, like you want to find the sales for a specific product or something like that. I think index match is like, it helps you get to exactly what you want much better than, like VLOOKUP is just kind of like going from, you know, left to right. Whereas index match is like everything. Yeah.

And then also, even more so recently, I got into using some ifs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that has actually been helpful. And I was and this is a true story. I was really looking for it was all this data about like revenue and it was different regions and different categories. And that kind of helped me get to like if I'm looking for like this specific revenue and this type of category in this region, I could get to like the total that I wanted fairly quickly. So those would be my two.

Perfect. Perfect. So a couple of final questions before we let you go. One, how can our listeners find the movie Onboard if they're looking for it? And two, I know you've got the new podcast coming and everything. If they want to connect with you and follow your work, how can they connect with you? Yeah. Easiest place to, we talked about this as well. For me, the best platform that I'm on is LinkedIn. And I won't talk about the others because I'm not on them as much. Right.

for a whole host of reasons. But in particular, LinkedIn is my go-to one. And there are several Shannon Nash's on there, but I'm the one that... We'll put the link in the show notes. Perfect. But actually, I interrupted you though. So if they don't see the show notes, how can they find you on LinkedIn? Yeah, mine is Shannon Nash. And then afterwards, I'm the one that's the lawyer and CPA. The other ones are not lawyers.

lawyers and CPAs and it's in my title so you can see it. And then Onboard is on a platform called Vimeo. Okay, great. And we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Well, Shannon, this has been just incredible. I really, I was looking forward to the show all week. I'm so glad to have you on and I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Had a great time.