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And now, onto the show. From Data Reels, this is FPNA today.
Welcome to FPNA today. I'm your host, Glenn Hopper.
Today, we welcome Joe Knight to the program.
Joe is the author of Financial Intelligence, a manager's guide to knowing what the number is really mean, named one of the top 100 business books of all time, as a partner and senior consultant with the Business Literacy Institute, Joe delivers key notes like the Leva Fair with Ipidda, and the secrets of finance revealed.
He has worked with clients, including NBC Universal, Electronic Arts, and McKesson.
Previously, as CFO of Setpoint Companies, Joe spearheaded financial education for the engineers at this automation and roller coaster company.
He has also appeared as a guest on radio and TV programs discussing finance.
Joe co-authored financial intelligence with Karen Burman, and till her untimely death in 2013, Karen was also a force in engaging employees to improve company finances.
Joe, it's an honor to have you on the show.
Thanks for having me. Appreciate the opportunity.
Something I was thinking about.
Actually, I was laying in bed last night and thinking about this, as I do the nights before recording.
The idea of storytelling has been a big part of FPNA in recent years.
When I first started in the field, we didn't talk about storytelling.
We were doing it, but maybe it wasn't labeled as such.
As a matter of fact, data rails, we recently hosted a webinar entitled Getting to a Winning FPNA Story.
I think that this is interesting to me, because my first career before I went to business school was as a journalist.
I've always seen journalism and finance as two distinctly different things.
It's kind of left and right brain, if you will.
But I've since realized, and I think this is what's going on in the community now, that good finance folks aren't just numbers people.
They're not just delivering reports.
They're using the numbers to craft a narrative.
Why I was thinking about this, despite initially thinking we've got words on one side, numbers on the other, now it seems natural that many of us would be writers.
I'm thinking now back to nearly two decades since you first published financial intelligence.
I want to get in your mind of where you were when you decided to write it, and why you decided to take this on, and what your focus was, and what you're thinking was when you started the book.
Yeah, let me make a comment about what you just said.
Karin and I, literally, my office manager, Karin, I were just talking about how funny it is that I'm a finance guy that just tells stories.
One thing that's really funny about that is, we just did a training this morning with a company called Jent Thurm, a tier one supplier in the auto industry.
A lot of German people on the call with us on this training.
I'm just telling one story after another, and Karin logs the stories because since COVID, unfortunately I had to start training virtually, which is really hard, and so Karin would always run the technology, and she would write down stories in a book every time I told the story, and she's north of 40 now of all these stories I tell because I've always taught and explained finance by using stories.
And so, kind of how I got into this, this kind of an area, is I got my MBA, you mentioned that, you did as well, and finance from Berkeley.
I went directly to Ford Motor Company, and last three years there and just hated it.
It just didn't work in a big company.
It couldn't not a rule follow or just like to do my own thing.
So I left Ford, moved back to Utah where I had family and was from, had a young family, and just started looking for something in small business, even consulting.
And that led me to meet these two engineers.
An electrical engineer and a mechanical engineer that basically worked at what they considered their dream job, they worked at a company that designed and built roller coasters, and it was like, and amusement park rides.
In fact, they were working on the Kong ride for universal studios when I met them, and it turns out I consulted for a little bit with this little company.
It was a disaster of a company, and as engineers they were never told what the numbers were, but they knew it was a disaster of a company.
And I kind of the consultant kind of, you know, Link, Link said, yeah, you guys, I'm going to look for something because this isn't going to last long.
And they knew it. They were smart.
They've been there for a lot of years.
They love what they did.
And so they quit, and they started their own business.
I had a off-guard on my own working in the Utah area with different groups and doing consulting work, and doing pretty well with it.
And they called me up and said, you know, and I'll call him big Joe.
One of these two engineers, 6, 7, Joe Cornwell, who loves Moa.
We were talking about Moa before the colleagues, big, more sports guy, and loves all these kind of stuff.
He loves designing things and everything else, but he also loves business.
So I came in to meet with him and he said, hey, listen, he told me the story I just told you, and he said, I know we met a little bit on the consultant gig.
I want to start this company in a different way.
I want the books to be 100% open.
I want to do a P&L every week if I can.
I want to do month-end financial reviews, and I want somebody to help me figure out and do it because my accountant and my attorney, who helped me set up the business, said that's the worst idea they ever heard.
If you share your numbers with your employees, one, if you're losing money, you're losing money.
