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and now onto the show. From Data Reels, this is FPNA today.
Hello everyone, welcome to FPNA today. I'm your host Paul Barnhurst, aka the FPNA guy.
FPNA today is brought to you by Data Reels, the financial, planning, and analysis platform
for Excel users. Every week we welcome a leader from the world of financial planning and analysis.
Today we have two guests with us that I'm delighted to welcome to the show. We have John Allen,
John, welcome to the show. Great to be here, thanks Paul.
Excited to have you and we have Duke Kennedy, you're with us, Duke, welcome to the show.
Hey, thanks Paul, good to be here. This is a little bit about them. They both come to us from the
Salt Lake City area, they're along the Wasatch Front in Utah. They're partners at Amplio,
which is a large fractional services business. They do a lot of work in the Intermountain West,
and we're really excited to have them both on. We're going to start. This is something we ask
everybody and we'll start here with you, Vs Duke, on this one. What's the worst or most challenging
budget experience you've had in your career? Keep in mind, most of what I'm working on is five to
$50 million dollars companies. A lot of the time they don't even have a budget, they've never done
it before. We come in and they have 10 teams for some reason, and they all want departmental
budgeting, but never done it before. Nor do they have good data. All of the worst experiences are
really many of most of the experiences that I have as funding. What is so challenging in the
situation is that the data is it putting the process in place a little bit of everything?
It's the data, it's getting things put in a way so that people can understand what they've even
spent. Most of my clients are on a very simplified accounting system, they aren't classifying
anything in separate departments, so it's breaking it out. Trying to understand who owns what,
where should it go, and ultimately everybody just stand bags just so that they don't trip a budget.
What's maybe a key takeaway from dealing with that kind of situation, those challenges? Any
learnings from that? A lot of it is just education. Getting people in a spot where they understand
what this is for, getting them to understand this is not like a big brother situation, and helping
them to understand the process. If I can just meet with them one-on-one, walk them through it,
then I can get the data that I need from them fairly quickly. Hardly ever works if I just email
them a spreadsheet and say, hey, this is what you spent last year. Tell me what you're going to spend
this year. That sounds about right. How about you, John? What's the worst and most challenging
budget experience you've had? I was leading an FBNA department during COVID, and at that time
was working in a big multi-unit restaurant business. You think about your worst nightmare in a
restaurant business is one where your customers are limited on their ability to come and visit
your establishment. That was really challenging just because the inputs were so uncertain.
We were running scenarios where we might be down 50%, and we might not be. Fortunately,
things were able to recover and stabilize, and there was a lot of support for restaurants at that
time, but that was really, really hard. There's the emotional side of it, something you've built up
for six years and put all your passion and energy into getting to a point and then watching it
take steps backward that you've got to figure out how to fight to keep the revenues and keep the
people that you work together with. That was really a challenge, but it was really cool to see
people come together during that time. I can imagine that was really difficult. What's maybe a
learning or something took away of going through that experience that kind of helps you today?
For me, just the more disciplined you can be about finding creative solutions to hit targets,
right? Because we definitely got creative with the teams of things that we could cut back on that
wouldn't affect anybody's livelihoods quite as much, right? And then, you know, and I think
acknowledging the things that are outside of your control, like that's a big piece of like,
you can do everything perfect, you can execute perfect. At the end of the day, there's just
going to be things that limit your ability to hit certain inputs or projections and you've got to
you've got to figure out how to adapt and versus the alternative is you can complain and kind of
place blame other places, but there's always going to be, I like to call it gravity, you know,
that kind of things out of your control and it's just it's just there. And so that's what I learned
through that process. Now, it's a really valuable lesson and I like that. It is so true. Sometimes
there are things you can't control. You could do everything perfectly and something comes out
and nowhere that you could never anticipate and you have to adjust. You gotta stop complaining and
just realize, all right, it's going to impact our ability to hit some goals. What's the best we can do
here? Why don't we, you know, kind of take a step back here for a minute? We've asked those
questions. Next, I just love to get to our audience to get to know a little bit about each of you.
So we'll start with you, Duke. If you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and your
background. Sure. I guess I have kind of a classic background of starting. I was an accountant
for the government 17 years ago and you know, they tried to keep me there. They offered me not a
lot of money to do it, but man, those great benefits, right? I decided I will pursue my Mac from
that. I went and did that. I went through their recruiting process. I ended up joining one of
the larger regional firms, CPA firms around Salt Lake City. And the reason I did that is because
I've always had this entrepreneurial spirit. I really wanted to be involved with companies that were
maybe in their, you know, their earlier rounds of raising capital or, you know, they're
scaling, they're improving. I wanted to work with founders and I did. I ended up working with
dozens of types of companies and from doing everything from cash all the way down to equity.
And so I got a good view of lots of different areas and then one of my favorite clients hired me
out and I was in the manufacturing and lifestyle brand kind of space was there for nearly four years.
While I was there, I kind of started in the controller side. You know, unbeknownst to me, I was
working in FPNA most of the time. I didn't even know what that term was until I went to a conference,
an FPNA conference and everything that they were saying, these are the things that I'm doing right
now. And so it was I opened to me to see that this was even a thing. And then we went through some
rounds of layoffs and shrinking budgets and I ended up terminating myself. My show's myself as
they had of my department to go. And it was a, it was a perfect timing. Everything, all the systems
were set up really well. The people were doing a great job. I thought, you know, it would be best
if I left rather than them. And it was great. I stepped right into doing fractional CFO work
and that was in 2018. I've been doing fractional CFO work the whole time and, you know, allowed me
the flexibility to kind of do other things that I wanted. So during that time, I bought a company,
grew it. It was kind of a turnaround opportunity. Got, you know, tripled sales from that. And after
three years sold it to another, another company, a larger company. And now I'm just focusing 100%
on fractional CFO work. Thanks for that introduction there, Duke. Appreciate it. John,
Keto, or audience, a little about your background. Yeah. So I, you know, I'm the son of a college
professor of accounting. You know, I went through my whole growing up phase and career thinking I
was going to work in public accounting and try and be a partner at one of the big fours. And,
you know, my dad had seen a lot of his students be really successful in that career path and
had encouraged degree in accounting and go the CPA route. I went through school, got that internship
in the big city and learned a ton, but like realized it wasn't going to be a good fit long term.
And at that point, it's kind of like those moments when you're a college student and you're
trying to figure out what you want to do. It's like, you have this identity crisis of like, oh,
shoot, I thought I was going to do this. And now I don't know. And so what I ended up
reverting to is I feel like I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit was involved with the
business plan competitions in college. I ended up going and I didn't internship with the
University Grove Fund at the University of Utah. It's connected to a few other universities. And
then I ended up out of that going to go work for a tech startup that did supply chain. It actually
is, it's a software solution that's integrated with, you know, some pretty big retailers like
Nordstrom and we were building that kind of their back end for drop shipping. It was really a
huge shift from going to like a huge public accounting firm down to startup where, you know,
and what was cool though is I got to do all of the finances there because at a startup,
there's not many people. And so even though I was young and not qualified, they said, here you go.
And, you know, fortunately, like my accounting background allowed me, helped me pick it up pretty
well. And so I was closing out the books, doing balance sheetwork papers. I partly that and do
another startup opportunity. Amazingly, both those startups ended up being quite large companies,
you know, huge exits, investors were happy, you know, they're still around here in Salt Lake and
doing lots of really cool things. And I've interacted with their products kind of outside.
Out of that though, I realized in the start world, I needed a little bit more big company
experience. And so I really wanted to get into a role that would round out my accounting skills
with a private equity back company. And so funny enough, I had done a lot of research on FPNA and
realized I'm like, I want to get an FPNA position. And so I just started applying, applied for
them big companies. But I really wanted to get meant toward by some bigger people. Some people
have been doing it longer and got to where all hats at startup go to big corporate and then maybe
go back to startup land was was my plan. And so luckily I was able to get one in there was a big
private equity back multi-unit restaurant concept that's really popular here in Utah. It's amazing
food. I love the brand. Still love the brand. And I was able to get a job there and I was able to
learn from an amazing leader who was just an ace at Excel. He had like 22 tutorials of how to
even like down to like the formulas to shade yourselves like a certain way so that when you add a
line it doesn't mess up the other up for the row. He was just so good and I like I couldn't
imagine like a better environment to go learn. And so I did that for seven years kind of work my
way from the bottom and sat in a lot of different types of FPNA and accounting positions over that
time. And after doing that I realized I wanted to get back to the smaller growth companies and
jumped into consulting like to. So a little different story but very similar between public
accounting corporate bigger corporate and then back into consulting and it's been so much last
three years have just been so much fun. I just love what we do and love what we the clients we
get to work with every day. That's what you want is something that you love doing. Nothing's
better than when you actually enjoy work versus you kind of have to tolerate work. We've all had
those days. So this next question here is for you Duke you know you mentioned and you talked a
little bit about this right started career in auditing. Brand your own business for a few years
started a fractional CFO business. Now how was that transition for you from accounting to FPNA?
You mentioned you'd been doing FPNA for quite a while before you even knew what it was. But maybe
just talk a little bit of that transition from accounting to kind of FPNA to fractional services.
How that kind of went for you. Well it turned my world upside down. My path going through the small
business was that you know I went to this organization that really had no systems or processes
set up around accounting or finance. And really in everybody's mind accounting and finance were
the same thing. They didn't even know what they didn't know. There I did have a leader. There was
a CFO there with the banking background and you know he was really responsible for helping
to finance all the equipment. You know this was manufacturing and he was good at finding answers
to things but it was always very you know reactionary. And so getting into it I didn't even know what
I was doing. I was just trying to solve a problem and it was all very reactionary. And it was late
nights 80 hour weeks was very common about that same time that I was getting into it more and more
that's when we became the target for a possible acquisition. And you know we were under an L.O.I.
from a larger and large public company and just getting all the questions that they were asking
and seeing how they were approaching it was actually very very eye opening for me and that's really
what was like the pivot point for me. And after a while you know they just handed me the models.
They said hey seem like you can do this. Why don't you just go ahead and start filling the stuff out.
And that's really the thing that was the trigger for me. And you know then getting into consulting
work it was you know all this information and then really getting a consulting it's kind of you
were working in this world and now you're often working in this world and it's needing to simplify
the outcomes for people. And you know what does it they really need and why coming up with things
that are specific to with the financial operation. You know when you're in when you're working
internal to a company wearing many hats you're doing finance but you're also doing operations as
well. You're doing human resources a little bit. You're doing sometimes IT you know and so it was
really nice for me to focus on that one thing that I knew really well. Got it makes makes a lot of
sense and definitely small companies you are doing a little bit of everything. I've definitely learned
that over the last year and a half running my own business down. So you know John I'd like to get
a little bit your thoughts you know I know you've worked a lot in the restaurant industry he's been
seven years there. What in your mind do you think are some of the most important metrics for someone
analyzing the industry like kind of how do you think about the industry from an FPNA standpoint
and kind of looking at that industry. That's a great question and I should say I've been doing it
for more than a decade because many of the clients that I work with director multi-unit and having a
lot of success out there restaurants are hard you know and there's a couple reasons restaurants are
hard and where FPNA comes into play but they're operationally intense meaning you got to get people
to show up to work and to do the same set of actions and then keep customers happy keep tables clean
cook the food you know and it's it's really small transactions it's not like you're selling at
least most the restaurants I've worked with have been you know it's not huge tickets it's you know
ten twenty dollar average tickets right not to mention so the operation is hard but you the other
thing that's really expensive is the construction so you actually have to before you make any money you
spend six to twelve months doing construction basically building like a new house hoping and
praying that whatever concept or idea you have is going to work in this spot and once you build it you
can't just you know pick it up and move it right it's like you you built it you're already into this
so I think restaurants succeed in two areas they get the right spots and then they run good operations
if you get the wrong spot you can run the best operations in the world and and still struggle
as a business so they're both really really important but getting the right sites and concepts that
work in certain spots it's different depending on what the people are like in those areas and how
accessible those areas are so FPNA and data is a huge huge part of being successful in restaurants
there's a lot of data that goes into analyzing if a site is going to work and some of that is
cross pollinating you know your existing customers if you've been open a while if you're a new concept
you don't have that luxury so it's using the best data you have to say am I going to be able to get
enough customers here and then there's the understanding what are the inputs right which is how
much is this going to cost to build out the concept and then what are the outputs which is how
much is this going to cash flow after I open and so I like to call those restaurant unit economics
which is really a function of what was my capital expense right how much do I spend to build this
store and then how much cash did it produce after I build it hopefully it's producing cash some I've
seen where you make a huge investment and it doesn't produce cash those are really expensive hard
lessons and we call those unit economics cash on cash returns you can use those to do an IRR
calculation but at the end of the day it's it's kind of the same idea of I invest a dollar hopefully
I get 30 cents back a year at least and pay the construction off in two to three years is kind of
what the industry likes to see if you can be better than two years you're kind of best in class
I've worked with concepts that have done it in a year and it's a magical thing when you can you know
make a $500,000 or a million dollar investment and get that money back in year one and then and then
every year forward is just gravy sure yeah once you've paid off that investment you're earning
at a much higher rate I like the way you explain that and thought through that and just kind of
the unit economics all the data and the stuff you talked about is really good to answer I appreciate
that you know what it is like 13 different spreadsheets emailed out to 23 different budget holders
multiple iterations version control errors back and forth updates you never really feel in control
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next question I have for you here is I want to ask john you've in 20 20 I believe it was 2020 you
started teaching right an fpna course at the University of Utah so tell us a little bit about that
experience how that come about and what do you teach in the course I've been teaching for a long
time weekend classes things kind of more odd certificates things like that and gotten to know
the people up there I've been teaching a financial modeling class which was existing and I I created
a bunch of case studies and problems to get people using Excel and the tools to just like be an
fpna person kind of the seat it was really popular and one of the things that the department at the
University of Utah started talking about that I think is amazing was what else could we do and we
started talking about a concept of how do we encourage more people to go into fpna positions when
they graduate it wasn't on my radar I didn't know what it was when I was a student Duke said the same
thing right and it's like you kind of learn it's out there a lot of accountants get into it and then
some data folks get into it but it's this really unique cool position that you can do early in
your career get to work with lots of different departments and you know you can parlay that experience
into becoming a leader and many fpna people go into HR they go into marketing they go on to be
operators not all of them are going to be CFOs like me and Duke and so that was the concept of the
class that we discussed and got a lot of support so I actually got it kind of a white label to
you know create this course and I could do what I wanted there was no textbook I had to follow
and that was a lot of fun so I would get speaker similar your podcast I think just more content
and education out there is just good for the profession I would have speakers every week talk about
how they interact with fpna how they use data to make decisions and every week we would do one like
we did an HR problem around turnover we would do a marketing problem around CAC to LTV and you know
customer metrics with an e-commerce we did a scorecard bounce scorecard for restaurants and every
week it was kind of like a different department of how do you support operations how do you support
finance how do you support HR and the goal is at the end that more students will consider
applying for jobs in fpna what's so fun is I've helped some of the students get jobs in fpna
and I've had many of them reach out and say I this was not my radar but now I'm applying for jobs
with an fpna and and so for me it was really rewarding to just kind of help maybe steer the
trajectory and get some students and companies are trying to hire for these jobs too but
I'll get some good talent kind of going for some of these opportunities that I feel like open
doors down they're great early on but they open doors down the road I think that's great you're
doing that because there's not many universities are teaching fpna like you said most people don't
know what it is an undergrad I didn't know what fpna was and you know I have a friend of mine he's
been on the show before I've been named a Derek Baker and he was originally thinking you know I
went to school I do investment banking because that's the route I need to go right if you're
finance you do investment banking if you're counting you go to the big four pretty common right that's
kind of the path everybody knows and he he did an internship and started to learn what fpna was
he's like I don't need to do investment banking I'd rather do fpna anyway and so he's done fpna
now is you know big believer trying to help people realize okay there's other options here that you
may not be aware of straight out of school that can be a really good option if investment banking
isn't really what you want to do and you're just going there because oh hey that's what everybody
does I need to punch my ticket or you're just going to be an auditor because they'll audits what's
expected maybe there's another option there's another way and I think it's great when we share that
with people and so they're aware I was talking to a student last night who was kind of asking
do I need to do this I'm like no you don't have to go that route can you sure but there are other
options that's what I would say is like early in my career I felt like the decisions I made of like
if I don't do this now I can't do this thing 10 years from now like I was it was always these
absolutes I can't be an entrepreneur if I don't do these things now and I can't be do a private equity
deal if unless I do investment banking and what I've learned is that I think that that those kinds
of absolutes are just not true it's like you need to learn skills that make you valuable in the
workforce and can where you can solve problems I've gotten to work on private equity deals and
have made investments into private companies right that's exciting if I'm and and I didn't do
investment banking early on I didn't think I'd have those opportunities to kind of work in
some of these fields and so it's like if you want to be like the CEO of like you know a huge public
company you probably are going to have to go work for some big companies you're probably not going
to like go from small to big like there's definitely like things but for the most part most
careers it's like you just need to get skilled and educated and really be really good at learning
and solving problems and you will get opportunities and that I believe like full-heartedly and I've
seen it in my career it's like so for me the biggest thing that I focus on and especially with
students it's like how do you become as curious as possible and just get really really good at learning
like where you're always curious you're reading about things that are maybe a little bit outside
your realm and I read a lot like that's one thing I think I do more than the average person it
translates into my work and it helps me be a better consultant I would be if I just kind of
expected somebody to tell me what to do or somebody's get you all you didn't teach me it's like
I'm a big believer if you want to be really successful you got to learn how to teach yourself
valuable skills and so I push that a lot in my class talk about it a lot and I just believe it you
learn how to learn you're going to open doors for yourself I would 100% agree with that you know
the more curious you are the more willing to learn more proactive you will open doors you know the
more you put yourself out there you'll open doors I mean I've seen you know different area but I
seen the doors that opened me since I just started putting myself out there and sharing thoughts
and leadership and things like that I never planned on starting the business that I'm in today but
it's open to a lot of opportunities and I've learned a ton and so you know I'm a big believer in
everything you said there I think there's a lot of value in that I'd love to see more you know
universities do FP and ACORs and more focused there because I think it's a great area for people to
go into there's like a ton you can learn and I really like what a CEO said he goes a friend of mine
who has a CEO it's like there's really only two people or two two two areas to see the entire
business to get 360 view the CEO the CFO and FP and AC right you know everybody else usually sees
a part of the business they're not seeing everything that's going on it's a real opportunity to
learn and be curious like you said there's not that many investment banking jobs and Salt Lake like
I've met most of the bankers here right there are hundreds of FP or FP and AC like adjacent type
jobs if not like thousands or tens of thousands there's just a lot more of them available so like
as you're talking about universities things are like that was the point I made in university is like
you talk about like you guys should be preparing the people for the workforce not that everybody
can compete for the same 10 jobs it's like how do you qualify people for the jobs that are available
that will make huge impact in you know the business community and it's not just the business
community it can be the nonprofit community it can be you know education but those skills
translate so well across other types of industries and it's like that there's a huge amount of
demand so I just think like you know if I'm fishing right and yeah there's a big there's 10 big
fish in one pond yeah like I might be one of the lucky people to put my pole in the water and pull
up one of those big fish but there's this huge pond with hundreds of medium sized fish my odds are
actually probably a lot better for success in the medium pond not everything's that way and
certainly like I'm a big believer of like there's a huge amount of opportunity to be really successful
and yeah it might not be the biggest fish but it's still a pretty good size fish you can catch
that's great advice and I really like that I think there's a lot to that and especially
right if you look at most cities yes there are some that have lots of investment making
jobs you want to be in San Francisco New York some other places but in general you know there's a lot
more F P and A roles than just about every big city in the U S and there is investment banking
roles and I would say even in those roles they probably have a lot of investment banking there's
still going to be a lot of F P and A so I think it's helping people realize what's available so
this next question is going to go to you Duke I know you've been working on trading you know an online
course with you know your experiences so what is it you're hoping to teach people in that course
what is kind of you know you're hoping to help them understand about fractional CFO and the work
you do any type of thing you're going to teach somebody often best if you're looking at yourself
from where you were years ago where I was like I've explained it already I was I found myself
in a position I was a controller so mid-level management type person and I had a lot of
responsibility but the amount of oversight the amount of training that I had was really minimal
and I found myself in a situation where I needed to answer some pretty big questions and I didn't
really understand how to do it and so you know what I'm trying to come up with is more of a system
agnostic size agnostic kind of you know company agnostic industry and all that something that
will just help people that are finding themselves in this kind of position where they're like okay I
know certain aspects of this but I don't know the whole thing and you know looking at maybe a
holistic approach to the CFO system which is you know accounting F PNA and strategy you might break
those up into or group and together differently but if you look at accounting as like you know the
foundation and the purpose of it is to really support the F PNA which supports the strategy and so
tying everything together and just helping to like just give a framework of here's a way to start
thinking about things so that and you can apply whatever like I'm not going to be teaching you know
an Excel course I'm not teaching systems I'm not teaching you know the step-by-step approach of
every individual situation because there's just there's so many out there but it's okay take
yourself now and you feel like you're not quite there yet don't really understand but I want to
teach you how to start thinking about how to simplify the accounting how to focus and strengthen
the F PNA and even how to start approaching things like how do I go and support strategy we support
it before we drive it right and it's really hard to I don't think I could teach a course on all
the different kind of strategies but I can start talking about how to support you look at raising
debt and raising equity you know those are two things that like for someone I found myself you know
even five years ago get input in the spot where you know at these smaller companies of hey we need
debt we need equity and I go hey is there someone can help me and I couldn't really find a
whole lot of people except a few other mentors and they just said hey just do this this this this
it was like oh this actually seems really easy you know and supporting strategy can be fairly simple
if you think about it the right way so that's my hope is to create a system just to start thinking
about things and knowing okay where do I go from where I'm right now and what's the direction that
I should start focusing and you know a little bit of a step by step approach so it's not to have
somebody be a CFO right after you know and this might be for someone who's like a homegrown
accountant you know that's finding themself in that situation it might be someone who's left
public accounting it might be someone with a title of CFO and they just haven't seen certain things
before that you know they don't just don't know how to think about it so it's kind of a broad
approach but the focus is this like this underserved market where like if you go I was looking at
NAICS the other day the you know national association of like you know those like codes you put
yeah yeah I know them yeah and they come out with these reports to say well here's how many companies
are in the US and they kind of break it down by size and as you imagine you know companies that
are really small there's just a ton of them and you know this is like under a million dollars in
sales like really they they don't need like a CFO they're going to get a lot of their advice from
their like tax preparer or CPA or something like that and and they might not even they might just
have a bookkeeper keeping stuff and that's fine and you look at the large companies that you know
have a lot of robust support you know budgets and all of that and there's only just a few of them
really but there's this middle area where it's kind of this awkward area where you know there's not
your your CPA can't really do the work that's needed but you often don't have the resources to go
higher the people who know everything to do and this is partly why the fractional space has been
blowing up recently right to give that kind of experience but Paul like we look at the fractional
space and people say hey I'm a CFO and you start asking questions and realize you know you're
really not a CFO you're like a controller or you're a bookkeeper that knows how to you know
maintain a cash forecast or you know you might be doing some template type of things but like can
you really think through the strategy you know and helping them achieve the goals they want to
achieve it's more than just presenting information to somebody right and so how do you go and think
about that in this space of the middle market great well sounds like I'll be a really exciting course
and I like how you kind of frame that to help people you know think about those different areas
that you mentioned the accounting the FPNA and the strategy and how they support each other and
yes you see a lot of people in the space that you know you see the CFO term used loosely in
fractional work where hey they're really a bookkeeper or they really you know just doing very basic
things there's not the strategy there's not really helping create the value it was I always tell
someone when they say yeah I have services I'm like okay are you getting advice to help your
business grow or you just getting reporting and bookkeeping yeah I'm just getting a second then
you're probably overpaying or you're not really getting you know those services of where the value
comes and so I think you know some great things there and kind of speaking of that value in FPNA
John I'd love to get your thoughts what do you think is great FPNA what does that look like to you
yeah that's a great question to demonstrate that I would like kind of look at my models that I
build and FPNA models things now versus maybe what they look like a decade ago when I was getting
started right I think my formulas were like a paragraph long sometimes and it's like I took a lot
of pride and like I had a lot more hours back then and it's like you build out these intense
models big pivot tables and it's like early on it's like man I need a faster computer so it can
process all this data and what I've learned the more experience I've gotten the more I've
appreciated simplicity right is like how do you simplify how do you focus on the right couple
things and how do you get all the complexness out because a great FPNA person is going to
they're ultimately the models and the recommendations and the graphs and different insights you build
they need to lead to action and decision and if it confuses if it's a cool insight cool insights
are great but they don't necessarily drive action and decisiveness then you maybe haven't done your
job so I'd say like I have like maybe less cool insights than I I did 10 years ago I would find
else did you know this day this thing happened and this thing happened you know but I tend to focus
a lot more on just simplicity and actionable insights and so to me those are the things that I would
say great FPNA is going to be it's going to be simple it's going to be digestible by the
rest of the organization it's going to be actionable you know I would love to like open up some of
those spreadsheets and see some of these formulas and I see Duke smiling because I think everybody
who's had a career in FPNA can probably relate of like you know the huge paragraph long formulas
and then you get back into your own spreadsheet you you're like what did I do like how do I fix
this right it's like you're you're like you feel like you're like you have to be some like educated
like heart surgeon to like go in and like modify your formula and I don't experience that heartic
ever anymore because I just keep the model simple I keep the insight simple you know I still do a
lot with data and you know digging in and in having things tie back to you know really granular stuff
like you can do that but keeping it simple is just going to it's going to drive so much more
outcome for the organizations I love that there's three things I heard there right keep it simple
digestible and actionable insights not just insights for the sake of insights one of my favorite
quotes and I say this all the time now and I really have come to believe it is simple as hard complex
is easy it's often easier to write that long formula then think about how do I simplify this so
that it's not in this big huge formula whether that be creating a helper table or you know whatever
the situation is but we often default to that complex because oh hey well this sometimes it's
cool to build something complex and also sometimes just the nature like we'll start with this
ugly nested if because oh I know that versus thinking how do I not make this formula wrap around
the whole page or whatever that problem may be so I love that just really focusing on simplicity
because that's something I've had to work really hard on my career doesn't come natural for me I
tend to want to get into all the little weeds and be complex I have to remind myself that that's
not always beneficial and I see Duke smiling there I think he can relate a little bit to this
conversation oh 100 percent yeah you know I'd like to get your thoughts Duke you know how does FPNA
ensure they're good business partners you've worked with a lot of different companies I know John
has as well but I'd love to just get a little bit of your thoughts on how can FPNA really be a
good business partner I break FPNA into sections okay this is totally simplified but it's it's
reporting and forecasting you know and the reporting as well what's the information that we really
need to see what's important to us and you know the forecasting is as you imagine just if some
future look you know modeling out what where are we going what's going to happen you know what's the
if and then with this particular thought that we have right now I'm an accountant I'm a CPA
I used to think that I was really valuable by saying things that really weren't that valuable you
know jumping right into from public counting to industry I was building out these really great
depreciation schedules and I was writing down the processes and I had all this button stuff
that was buttoned up knowing I really cared about it and I came to realize over time that you
know accounting is super valuable you know it's like it's like the foundation but it's it's like
the foundation of the house where you don't show people your foundation when someone comes over
and you want to show over you nice new house you don't talk about the foundation but if there's a
problem in it then everything else crumbles right so with accounting you often don't know there's a
problem until you don't even know that it's really there until there's a problem but the problem
is that there's a less perceived value from the people that really matter where we go from doing
something that's important and really you know foundational to something to providing something
that has a high perceived value that's the FPA side of things and you know it's making things
visible it's helping to know where we're going it's navigating on a course it's helping to shake
support and drive strategy you know it helps with debt it helps with equity you know there's so
much that we can do with an FPA and besides it's much more fun than accounting but it's whatever is
perceived you know who cares about what rules there are about this that and the other no one really
cares unless there's like a problem you know it's not to say it's not important you know compliance
controls accounting it's important but to the people that really matter we have to understand
who is it that we're really serving you know are we serving ourselves trying to make our lives
simpler no we're trying to serve the people who are employing us who are our clients you look at
sometimes like what people get paid in different areas well go pay go compare like you know a bookkeeper
to maybe someone who is like a high level consultant for strategy and helping to raise capital you know
like you go talk to brokers you know the the the private equity guys investment bankers you know
you look at these big transactions with lots of money involved because there's a higher perceived
value associated with these types of things so helping people to go along a path and seeing what
that path looks like that's really valuable to them right so we want to serve what's important
to them I agree with you really want to make sure we're serving the people that we support and
we're providing value to them for what's important to them if we're not then we're missing something
we're really missing the point of what we're supposed to do so we're gonna we're gonna move on to
what we call our get to know you section so we're gonna start with you John on this there's four
questions the answer should be no more than 30 seconds so you know kind of keep in brief we'll run
through them and then we'll we'll go to you Duke so the first one is what is something interesting
about you something that makes you unique that not many people know oh man so to make money in junior
high I used to knit hats we started a boys who knit club and that was that was one of my first
entrepreneurial ventures I've knitted I think probably 30 or 40 hats and you know three or four
sweaters I have a couple of them here at my house still that's kind of a fun talent that I have so
I go well I might have to come to you to get into the hat one of these days so next one if you
could meet one person in the world get her alive who would you meet and why gosh that is a great
question and I probably should have read through this before I would love to be warm buff in
at some point or you know like I think it'd be fun to talk to him and you know about business so
like in the context of business I think he would be a really really fun and interesting person
to talk to and and you know learn from there's others I would want to meet that you know probably
less business related but that that's one that I think would be a lot of fun yeah I think for a lot
of business people you'd be a great one to just sit down and have dinner with right just kind of
have that conversation so this next one what is the last thing you googled looked up on YouTube
or asked chat GPT slash generative AI about as it relates to finance FPNA or Excel so I actually
use chat GPT a lot so actually last night somebody asked me a question about capital raise and
you know how a company is valued and how the operating agreement works with the number of shares
you know kind of with a convertible know and so I was able to kind of get actually I thought I
knew the answer and I said here's what I think the answer is but I'm going to ask chat GPT
and sent the chat GP to your response and it was like it was just like right on and so you've got to
be careful with those tools but they can be really helpful to just extract concise information
pretty quick so I use it all the time yeah I'm with you I use it quite a bit as well I think they
can be really valuable but you definitely have to be careful so the next one is what's your favorite
thing about Excel function or feature we've argued about Google sheets first Excel and there's been a
named ranges discussion I use name ranges all the time and index matches with name ranges in them
so I love name ranges some of our consultants are like anti-name ranges so there's some fun
internal dialogue but I'm on the side of name ranges I'm a big fan yeah I've definitely
used name ranges a lot and I debate whether I can ask Duke this question because I don't know if
a Mac Excel actually qualifies as Excel there's so much functionality still there you know what we're
going to go backwards with you Duke just to kind of have some fun so we're going to we're going to
start with the Excel one first what's your favorite function or feature in Excel well you know I have a
Mac so I have to keep it simple right I enjoy the simple like the simple things I use x lookup
summits unique eo month those are like stuff I use all the time I just love the simple stuff keep
doing the same thing over and over you you know the reality is you get there's 10 or 12 formulas
that you can often do 90% of what you need with right you get the occasional where you're like okay
I got to figure out how to do this but if you keep it simple there's not a lot of formulas you
need to learn so what's the last thing you looked up Google chat GPT it's a combination of things
it's um you know as I'm putting together my course I'm trying to create acronyms out of certain
financial things and uh it's really hard you can create lots of acronyms with really strange words
and so that's what I've been using it for but you know with client related things I've been
I recently used it to write uh going concern analysis you know I mean this is this is the time
where there's a lot of companies that are you know have been going down or continually going down
we hope that it's going to go back up but it's it's year-end and we've got to write that
going concern memo and it's so much easier than it was in the past just trying to think through
everything my head good bad yeah it's nice when you can use something like that so who's the person
you're going to meet dead or alive oh man it's this was a hard one for me as well but I was thinking
it would be really nice to go back and see Greek philosophers it doesn't really matter which ones
but what I want to go see is you know you guys talk a lot but do you really live it you know and do
your philosophies actually work for yourself in your life or or these just hopeful ideas that maybe
one day would help out that would be really interesting to have those conversations and to see that
and so did you did you knit hats in junior high no I sold I sold sodas I had a paper out my interesting
thing is twofold when I started I wasn't an accounting major I started in in music I was a vocal
performance major and I knew that I wasn't going to sing opera for my life you know but I got a
scholarship and so I went to school for free for a little bit until I decided yeah I got to get out
of this well fun well maybe next time we'll have you on and we'll have you sing something for us
there we go there we go so we're going to go ahead and wrap up here we just have two last questions
for you and we'll throw this one over to John first if someone was starting a career in FPNA today
and you could give him a piece of advice what would that be yeah I would say just when you're getting
started it really matters who you work with and who you learn from and even if it's if it's not
the coolest job tile or the coolest company but there's an amazing leader that you can learn from
it's worth getting that right early and it's not about being in like the sexiest coolest
company or position it's really about what can you learn and so for your first job I believe who
your boss is matters and it would be better to be at something that's a boring business with a
great boss or you can get the skills then a really cool business with a horrible boss so I
people don't always weigh that in I would weigh it over compensation with your first job with like
this is going to set the tone for your trajectory for the next couple decades get those first few
years right get the make sure you get a leader that you can learn from and that's going to
help you grow your technical skills because most of your technical skills happen in the first two to
five years of your career that's where you develop those and so to the extent you can really
make that those good RY it's probably worth it great advice there how about you Duke what's your advice
oh I would say it's getting yourself out of your chair and going and talking to people learning
how to ask questions and to see how you can really help and support them right that's what we're
all about but doing that saying what does it you need going and getting some information for them
it's really valuable for them and you'll you'll become a valuable person very quick but you want
to find yourself you know being the go-to person for many things so just talking to people but I
also echo everything that John said too great so that's great advice on both fronts make sure you get
the right boss with that first job you can really learn and get out of your chair don't spend all
day behind the spreadsheet get a max so you're not spending as much time thank you thank you all
right so last question and then we'll let you go here we'll start with you on this one Duke
because someone wants to get a hold of you or you know reach out to you what's the best way for them
to do that well I'm pretty active on LinkedIn to just reach out on LinkedIn to me happy to talk
right great how about yourself John I would say the same LinkedIn is going to be the best way to get
a hold of me you can also email me at my amplu email which you know is connected to my LinkedIn and
on our ampluo website but if you want to just chat or ask questions LinkedIn's going to be the best spot
perfect well thank you both for joining me today enjoyed chatting with you and spending some time
with you guys so thanks Duke and John for being on the show thanks Paul appreciate it thanks Paul
