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and now onto the show. From Data Reels, this is FPNA today.
Hello everyone, welcome to FPNA today. I am your host Paul Barnhurst, aka VFPNA 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 are
delighted to welcome to the show Tolga. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me looking forward
to our conversation. I am really excited to have you here. Just to our audience knows, I will give
a little bit of an introduction. I will give you an opportunity to add more to that here shortly.
He comes to us from the Ontario Canada area. He is currently the CFO at Lint Canada, earned
his bachelor's in business administration, and spent a good majority of his career working at PEPSE.
He was there for about 15 years. One of the first questions we like to start with with everybody is
what we call the budgeting question. Tell me about the most challenging or worst budget experience
you've had in your career. There has been a lot of good challenges over my years of budgeting.
I mean, I've been doing it for almost 20 years. I'd say the one that I learned the most is actually
my first. So a couple months out of university. I was in my first job as an FPNA analyst,
and I was tasked with doing budget. My biggest challenges were, as a lot of young people are,
a little cocky. I didn't ask a lot of questions. I made a lot of assumptions. I didn't ask for help.
I dove right in. I was in charge of doing all the planning for the warehouse part of the business,
the transportation, the fleet. It was quite a lot of costing that I was trying to do. It just
ended up terribly. Just went off the rails. My manager finally came in, saw where I was,
what wasn't going right. We really had to scramble in the 11th hour to redo everything. It was just
a terrible process. I felt terrible. I almost wanted to quit at that point because it went so bad.
But it was a great learning for me because having those coaching conversations,
me reflecting, it's like the need to never make assumptions. Ask a lot of questions.
Really, make sure you have the right training and you have a good understanding of exactly
what you're doing. Ask for help. If you are unsure about anything, it's better to take five minutes
to ask for help or ask a question. First is just keep going and wasting a lot of time. So
that first budgeting experience was foundational and I learned so much that that's allowed me to have
a much better thought process and approach for the next 20 years of doing budgeting, which I have
been doing, which is crazy to think back at now. It is. It's amazing how time goes a lot faster
than we realize as you look back. If you were to go through that experience again, like say,
somebody's going through their first budget, what advice would you give them from what you learn
from going through that experience? I guess I would say make sure you understand
not just what you're doing, but why you're doing it so that they have the context as exactly of,
hey, if you're doing a budgeting for the warehouse, it's not just a math exercise. I mean,
that was one of my issues. I was like, ah, it's just a math exercise. I know what the target is.
I just need to get there. But at the end of the day, when you're doing, for me, like 50 different
sites, I'm also talking about this is the bonus target for all the people in those 50 sites, right?
Me making a mistake, it's not just, oh, I made a mistake. It's fine from a total perspective. I'm
actually really impacting people's compensation the way that they're going to be working throughout
the year. Like I didn't truly understand the why, like why it was so important of getting it right
and doing it the right way because I was never taught that. So I would really say, hey, just ask
those questions of making sure that you understand exactly what needs to be done and why you're doing
it so that you can really set yourself up with the right mindset of tackling it the right way.
Really good advice and I totally agree with you, right? If you think of it's just a math exercise,
you're like, ah, no big deal. Long they get to the final number. But the reality is so many people
depend on different parts and there's incentives in there and has a much bigger impact. Then you
often realize until someone sits down and explains it to you and you're like, oh, okay, this really
is important. And just because you're given a target doesn't mean that that's a slam dunk there,
they're going to go through that. They want to know exactly, hey, where are my risks? Where are my
opportunities in hitting that target? If I have a big barrier to hit that, we should all know about
that before we even get into the year or, hey, we have a great opportunity to overshoot that target
and here's some of the reasons why and here's the easy overlaps that we have so that at least you
know that going into the year instead of it being a surprise. So that's another reason why to put
the due diligence in it and take it seriously. Yeah, I'm totally with you. So can you maybe just
tell our audience a little bit about yourself, your background, how you ended up where you're at today?
Yeah. So, uh, Borden raised in the Toronto, Ontario, Canada area. Like you said, I got my business,
my bachelor's in business administration. I did do my CPA in Canada as well after university.
I had over 15 years of experience at PepsiCo, both on the beverage side of the business and then
on the food side in pretty much any facet of the business. And that's something that I always
encourage people to do is understand their business as much as possible. So did sales finance,
marketing finance, apply chain finance, you name it. I've done my rounds of across to make sure that
you're well-rounded from a personal perspective, my lovely wife and my daughter, very active family.
So I'm very big into sports and cycling and doing other stuff as well as, you know, also
veging on the couch and watching TV like the like everyone else.
As I was going to say, I believe I see a blue J's jersey back there.
Yeah, so that is from the 93 J's that I have all their signatures on it and that's Jose Batista
and then Joe Carter. So some of the most more iconic. So I'm a very big blue J's fan.
Yeah, as you say, you had a good good year overall. Kind of been better, but you know, I'll take what I
got. Yeah, also could have been worse. Could have been worse, but we had ambitions to be
a lot more and actually get to the world series, but that didn't materialize, but there's always
next year. I understand. I'm a Dodgers fan and we've had a lot of good years recently, but not
quite world series. We should have a few, but that's another story. Well, you had the world series
of off seasons. That's for sure. Yeah, we're talking on a finance podcast. Imagine forecasting
all that. Would they spend 1.1 billion this off season? Yeah, and a lot of deferrals in that
payment as well, which again, for the countenance of their love to understand how that works in terms
of payments now and then the future deferrals, but that's for another podcast. I'm sure it is, but I'm
sure there's a lot of finance people, a lot of people listening that would be fascinating to do
F P and A and in the sports world. You just understand a little bit, particularly a team,
a franchise, right? Understanding those deferrals and payrolls like the bonuses in the NFL and
how all that, this much counts against the cap. How are you recognizing that against revenue? It
would be really interesting to see because I'm sure some of that accounting gets pretty technical.
Dan, I don't want you to want to start with the soccer in Europe and all of those clubs with
when your players are actually your assets and you've got to manage that on the books as well
and how that actually works as well. I've listened to a podcast on that and it was very fascinating,
but yeah, it's more complicated than I would want to work to deal with. Yeah, well, it'd be
interesting, but yes, I'm sure it'd be complex. So I know you've spent your trial career in the
food and beverage industry. So what is it that you've liked about that industry? What's kept you
kind of working in CPG? I'm sure there are a lot of industries out there. I love that it's a fast
pace industry. I get a chance to do a lot, learn a lot, but more than not is I want to work for
companies that I'm very passionate about and I was very passionate when I worked at PepsiCo,
not just for the products, but what they stood for as an organization and the same goes with
Lint right now. So Lint Globally or Lint Canada, I mean, extremely proud of what we do and how we
delight our consumers and chant the world with chocolate and just the products itself and being in CPG
having that tangible product that is out there is huge for me and that's why I love being in CPG
because again, that relatability I can actually enjoy my product with a lot of people and see the
joy that they have when they consume that. So do you have a favorite chocolate? Well, the milk
lindor is by far my favorite. My second favorite would be the Cessal Caramel for Girodele.
It's if you've never tried the Girodele brand, it is phenomenal. So I would highly recommend that.
First time I had the Girodele brand, there was a factory at this time, it was in the mid 90s in
Carmel, California and they had a big shop with it. I remember we went there and got some and I
thought I wasn't heaven at the time. Well, that factory still stands and you can still go to the shop
there and buy as much as well as get some milkshakes and other products there too because they do a
fantastic job there too. I'm curious within CPG, what are some of those key metrics that you kind of
look at as you're managing the business? What are maybe those kind of top two or three things that
you're always really paying a close attention to? The top two I've ever been talks about is
having a profit. But I mean, if I want to take it a step further than that, definitely what you
want to look at is gross profit. So not just the bottom line profit, but what's your gross profit
that you actually have on what you're selling? And then you actually have to look at your revenue
on a volume basis. So in our case, it would be tonnage, so kilograms. For the American listeners,
it would be more on the pound. So your revenue on a pound's perspective versus revenue on a
per kilogram basis. It's so that you understand exactly, are you generating more or less revenue
for the chocolate that you're selling? Right? Because there's only a finite amount of chocolate
that people can consume and you want to understand, are you actually generating more or less revenue
for that chocolate that you're selling? As well as the cost on a per kilogram basis, on a tonnage
basis of that to make sure that your revenue is increasing at the same rate as your cogs are,
just to make sure that you're not seeing any dilution in your gross profit.
Makes sense. And do you see a pretty good change in mix throughout the year? I'm guessing with
big holidays and different things. So that revenue per can change quite a bit depending on
what you're selling and what's going on. Is that? Yeah, mixed management is huge.
So product mix, customer mix. So if you're selling to a Walmart versus a target versus a
Costco versus a whoever, that customer mix can actually play a role. So if you're more in an
upscale grocery store versus a discount banner, I mean, you're definitely going to have
different margins for that as well as products. So your everyday product versus your seasonal
products, you could have a different product mix there. So you do see those fluctuations
throughout the year and you just have to be able to plan and forecast that appropriately.
Sure. Yeah. I know. I would imagine a lot of seasonality, Valentine's, Christmas season.
So I mean, one thing that's in, you know, there's things that you don't even realize where it's,
you know, last year, very fortunately. So we have the gold bunny. And last year was a year of the
rabbit. So we saw a very big spike because of the lunar year and it was a year of the rabbit.
So a lot of consumers actually over index and bought that given it was the year of the rabbit.
So you do also see still have those micro seasons that you have to anticipate and, you know,
forecast appropriately as well. So you're not off guard in terms of, you know, a big spike of
demand for something that I like that as well. Yeah, exactly. So you don't go look at the P&L.
How do I explain this? What happened? Why am I sold out of my Easter gold bunny? It's in
January versus, you know, Easter is in March or April, right? So again, you want to make sure that
you anticipate those types of things as much as possible. Totally makes sense. So if someone was,
you know, looking to work in the CPG industry, you know, finance, F P and A, and wanted to kind of
start learning more about it, any advice you'd offer them? What would you recommend is kind of,
there's a key things they need to think about. Going into any role, I would say make sure that you
build out your 30, 60, 90 day plan to make sure that you have as good of an onboarding as possible.
But during that 30, 60, 90 day plan, I would say really lay out and make sure that you have
one-on-ones with everyone cross-functionally as much as possible that you are, that you're
going to interact with so that you have a better understanding of what marketing does and what
they do on a day-to-day basis, but also ask them, how does marketing coordinator work with finance?
How the same type of sales with conversations with sales and all the different parts of the business.
So at least coming into a new industry like CPG, you understand how all the different functions
work as well as how they interact with finance. Irregardless if your job is interacting with some
of those departments, it's still good to have that knowledge because it might help you better
in your job and understanding how the overall company works. So again, you might not do all of that
in your first 90 days, but at least carve that time out so that you can learn that so that you can
really understand that because CPG is completely different than tech or some of the other industries,
and it's just good to really have that understanding of how all the pieces play.
Yeah, I agree with you. It's amazing how different industry can be from industry. I've learned a
little bit about CPG since I started my own business doing a little bit of consulting for one
company and helping them build their plan, but before that, I really had no experience. So as a
sharp learning curve, as they're throwing out these things to help build a model, and I'm like,
you got to explain it to me. I don't know what you're talking about here.
And that's the thing is it's just asking a ton of questions, regardless if it's your manager
or anyone else is just be curious. Ted Lasso is one of my favorite shows and his key quotas,
don't be judgmental, be curious, and you're just asking a lot of questions and really understanding
of who you're dealing with and what they're doing, and that'll go a long way.
Yeah, 100% agree with that. I think regardless of industry, even role, but especially in any kind
of FPNA role, be curious. Ask a lot of questions, right? It's not about the time you spend in your
spreadsheet. It's about the time you spend getting to know the business so that you can be better
when you do need to do the analysis in the spreadsheet or put the numbers together. So you're not just
doing a math exercise, as you mentioned earlier. Exactly. Your spreadsheet will be 10 times better
because you ask those questions and you have a better understanding of the business.
Yes. 100% agree. So I know you have both responsibility for finance and IT in your role.
So I'm curious, what are some of the benefits you've seen by leading IT, you know,
benefits you've had kind of from the finance side being a CFO as well?
Well, having firsthand access to the developer, so if I want to change my analytics and
your way or make any system changes, I kind of make the decisions on if we're going to move forward
or not versus asking for permission. But no, definitely there's a lot of benefits to it.
I'm definitely going to see the benefits of it this year. I mean, we did a minor ERP change last
year and we're going to be doing another bigger ERP change next year. But really having
finance and IT under the same umbrella and then working very closely together and partnering
more than they would if they were separate goes a long way, especially when you're talking about
changing systems or you want to change your analytical platforms and so forth. You can really get
a lot more done and that there's a better understanding going back and forth between the two departments.
You know, as I heard you explain all that, all I kept thinking in my mind is do minor and ERP
change go together, even though I know what you mean, but it gets us by a small region or area.
But I was like, is there such a thing when you have to deal with changing an ERP?
Yeah, they're never minor, but when I say minor, it's like you're doing one module within SAP versus
major ERP implementation is really doing the guts of an ERP and switching from like an
Oracle to an SAP type of thing and doing a big bang versus just, I'm going to implement one piece
of an SAP module within the existing environment. Yeah, and I figured that's what you meant,
but just that was the thought because I know ERPs can be such massive projects as you well know.
And I'm very proud of my team because again, usually you hear about you add 50% to the cost and
add double the time and that's what one of those ERP changes are going to be in. My team did a
fantastic job with the one that we did last year who was on time on budget and you can't ask for
more than that with a big ERP implementation. No, if you can be both on time and on budget,
that's a huge win. That's a if you're within 10%, it's generally viewed as a win, right?
Yes, exactly. And I totally agree with you being close to the data for finance is huge,
having that influence and that say, you see more and more, you see it more in kind of mid and
smaller companies, you don't see it in really large companies, but a lot of time finance owning
data analytics or owning IT kind of like you have, it's becoming a more common trend because
for my view, finance is perfectly positioned to kind of help make sure the numbers are presented
the same way and there's not that, you know, we're cross-functional. So we don't have that dog in the
fight to say, okay, this is how it should be for marketing because this favors me or this is how
I view this metric because it favors my group. It's just here's a standard, here's how we report it,
let's all agree and move forward. Yeah, and it's not even just on the analytical side of things of
how you presented, but I think you hit the nail on the head where it's it's also data quality,
data integrity and making sure that when those two partner together, it's you're going to have
that much better data quality and integrity and things aren't going to change unexpectedly on you
because it's kind of in-house and you control it more. Agreed.
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So you know, this next one's going to switch gears here a little bit. I've been fortunate enough
to meet many of the members of your team. We've done some training with you over the years and
I've noticed you have a great culture. I know that's something that's very important. You
have heard you talk about that. How do you ensure your team has a strong culture? What do
things you do? How do you lay that groundwork from your perspective to maintain a strong culture?
Really driving that strong culture is up to the people versus myself. I can say and do as much
as I want, but they're the ones that live and breathe it. So for me, it's how do I try and set
them up for success and empower them to drive the culture that we want to have. So I can talk about
what my vision is, but at the end of the day, I got to say here, how do you guys make that vision
of having a great culture here and a great place to work? And how do you guys feel like we should be
getting and achieving that? And if it's increasing the number of activities or events that we do as a
team, great. Let's find the money and let's make sure that we do that. If it's about how we empower
and we partner and we support each other on a day-to-day basis, okay, great. How do we go do that?
And then you guys run with it and make sure that that's a key thing that we want to live and breathe
every single day. And really, it's them driving it and me just helping in power whatever they want
to do to make sure that we have the right culture in place. And was that something that naturally
came to you when you went into leadership or was it a hard process to let go and just kind of
empower and trust people to, hey, you do the work. This is the expectations. I'm here to support and
help you. I mean, I've read a lot of books and I've did a lot of understanding, but I mean,
firsthand is always better than not. And I've had a lot of great leaders in my past,
different managers, different presidents, different departments, CFOs, etc.
That I've been able to see exactly what I would want to do or not to do. And, you know,
one of the former presidents of PepsiCo Foods Canada really showed me exactly what I would want to
be like as a leader and how to build the right culture. And a lot of what I tried to do at
Lake Canada really comes from his teachings, his learnings and really trying to implement that
here. And his thing was all about asking questions, really being an empathetic leader and really
empowering people to drive what you want to do. Got it. I like what you said there, one, you know,
the being an empathetic leader. Yeah, a lot of people sometimes have this idea that, you know,
empathy is weak. And I've always thought empathy is the one of the most important things you can have.
It's really key because it's how people know that you they can trust you and they can relate.
If you're empathetic and understanding and really trying to understand your employees, you know,
I can remember really make her often, okay, I do it my way when I was first a leader. And it's like,
it doesn't really matter as long as you meet these requirements. I still remember one time sitting
with somebody and told him is how to do it. And they're looking at me and say, well, I want to do it
this way. And I had to stop myself from in it and think, okay, what really matters here? And I
feel like I came back as well. Okay, as long as you can meet these requirements, because I know this
is what the business wants do at however you want. And it was kind of a defining moment for her to
remind me of the importance of one, you know, trying to be not so much empathetic, but trying to,
you know, there's empathetic in there, but understanding and letting people do things their own way.
And remember, it's about the big picture, not how they get there, per se.
Well, you empower them, but also they're going to have a much better buy-in to what you're asking for.
If you give them the freedom, you tell me how you would best want to do it and achieve this.
And how do we achieve this goal together? And if they know that they can do it their own way,
then they'll have a bigger buy-in and, you know, lead the process a lot more than if you just said,
just do it my way and get it done. 100% agree. There is a, you end up with a better product, you get
better buy-in at the end of the day when you get diverse opinions and allow people to work the way
they work best. So you mentioned earlier, you talked a little bit about why. And I know you're a
big believer in starting with the why to something. You know, why something is the way it is.
I was asking that. Can you talk a little bit about your reasoning? Why is that so important that we
start there? I'm a very big fan of Simon Sinek, start with the why. That is absolutely instrumental to
me. And I think your example that you just talked about before is a big reason of why you'd want to
start with the why. Right? If you just tell someone what to do, you're going to get a certain result.
If you actually explain to the person why they need to do what they need to do and what result you're
looking for, then they can truly think about, well, should I change how I'm going to actually approach
this to actually achieve that why? So the what of how I'm going to go about doing it might be
completely different to achieve that why versus the way that you first told me how to do it.
So allowing them to fully take a step back, understand exactly what the true goal is and talk through
exactly what they could do differently about that makes the world of a difference. And it goes,
like I said, you have better buying because they understand the why and they're invested in the
process. They have the flexibility and the freedom to actually move and change how they're going
to go about doing that and irregardless of what their process is to achieve that. That could change.
But the how and the why is not going to change, especially the why and really you're going to get
a better result because you start it there. What about your run in the situation where you have
sometimes people that, well, just tell me the process, that's all I want to do. I'm kind of
here to punch the clock and I don't care about the why. Have you kind of experienced some of that?
And if so, how do you kind of manage that? Yeah, and not everyone is going to be career oriented
that wants to become a CFO or aspire to keep getting a promotion every two years, etc.
And there's going to be situations where you're time crunched and you don't have time to really
explain the why and you're just like, let's get it done. Yeah, in those cases, you just, you do focus
more on the what than the why, but you do try and have at least a brief conversation about it versus
just saying get it done do it this way, whatever. But again, it is person by person case by case
situation. And but again, if you just have that person continue to do exactly what they've always
been doing, never challenged status quo, it's never going to get better. They're not going to get
better. The process will never get better. And as business grows year after year, they're going
to start struggling every single year is the volume of their work increases. They're not figuring
out better ways of working and they're eventually going to drown. And so that's kind of why you actually
eventually have to take that step back and talk to them about that, but it might not be in every
single moment that you have to explain the why. Sure. Yeah, there's times when it's like, okay, we
just have to get this done. It has to be done by this time. Here's what I need go forth and do it.
And then there's times you really are able to spend explaining and that that makes sense to me.
You know, another thing that kind of goes with this, we talk about this why and empowering people
is the idea of a growth mindset, right? You know, Carol Dweck and that whole idea. So how has having
a growth mindset helped you throughout your career? And how do you make sure you know, your team that
you focus on that growth mindset with them? Yeah, I always encourage my team to challenge a status quo
and really understand what they could do differently and I'm big on self development and
that are in myself, but I also want to make sure that we create an environment that failing or
making mistakes is okay. Those are learning opportunities, learning situations, whereas I actually
had someone in some fortunate year end, but there was a one and a half million dollar reporting error.
Am I going to yell and scream and be mad at that person? No, we're going to have the conversation.
We're going to understand exactly what went wrong, what could have been done about it, what would they
do differently next time? What are the implications of this mistake and who do we have to talk to and so
forth and really taking the time and really approaching this as a learning situation of how they could
learn from this mistake. It's less likely to happen in the future. They're going to actually get
a lot of development out of this and they're not going to be afraid to own up to mistakes in the
future, whereas if you beat someone up for making a mistake, you're there more likely to hide
mistakes, not own up to it, not want to change their ways in the future and long term you're not
going to have a better situation. I always push for that growth mindset to say mistakes are okay
just as long as we learn from that. If you make the same mistake two, three, four times, then we
have a problem because you're clearly more of a fixed mindset, you're not learning from it,
you're continuing to make the same mistakes and we got to move in a different direction.
That makes a lot of sense to me. If it's a repeat pattern, you've got to address it at a higher level
than just educating and being, look, we're all here to learn. Mistakes happen. I think one of my
favorite stories I've ever heard is the CEO of IBM. I think in the 70s, one of the employees made
a big mistake and it costed the company 30 million. He was one of the executives. He got called
in the CEO's boss and he goes, I'll turn in my resignation and the CEO looked at him and he's like,
why? He's like, why I'm fired, right? He goes, no, I just spent 30 million dollars to train you. You're
not going to make that mistake again. That was an expensive learning. I'm not going to start over now.
Exactly. It's funny when you started talking. I knew the exact example because I would be my
number one example as well as that was just learning an opportunity and again, it's an expensive
mistake but it's still something we have to learn from. Yeah. If you have somebody with the growth
mindset, you're going to be better off for keeping them, especially if it's a one time, it's an
honest mistake that they learned from. Like you said, if it's a repeat pattern, that's a different
story. You got to address that differently. Yeah. One of the mistake was purely because of negligence
or whatever. Then yeah, that's also a different story as well. 100% agree. Like the process was very
clear. They've done it a bunch of times and they just chose not to follow it. It's like, okay,
now we got an issue because you cost us a bunch of money because you were doing what you were
supposed to, not because you made an honest mistake. I know I've had more than if my fair share of
those. I think most of us have. Fortunately, I've had good bosses like you that have generally been
really understanding. So I know you obviously spend a lot of time with other senior leaders being
a CFO and talking to people across the business. What advice can you offer to leaders about developing
meaningful relationships, those cross-functional relationships with your business partners?
Regardless of who you're working with, trust is everything. The one way that I've worked to really
build a trust and to improve the collaboration or the interactions that I've had with anyone
cross-functionally is learning about that person's business. When you actually come to the table,
you ask great questions. You're invested in their business. You're making an effort to learn about
it. They're more willing to talk to you about it. Be open, not be as defensive because a lot of the
times when finance comes to the table, people have their backs against the wall. They're afraid because
for many reasons, they're just afraid of finance because we're the money police and we're going to
take their money away. Be it the marketer is afraid of losing their advertising dollars because
finance is coming or so forth. But if you're actually at the table, you're asking good questions.
It's all about how am I a better business partner for you? Not a finance partner, but a business partner.
I want to have that seat at the table. When they know that you're invested, you're asking the right
questions. You build that trust and you're going to have much better interactions with them.
They know that they'll be able to call you in a pinch because they trust you. They're not going
to say, I got to call finance because XYZ. It's like, I'd love to get finances, perspective on this
because again, you've built that trust and they know that they can rely on you as a business partner.
So that's where my biggest advice is always to build trust. However you want to go do that,
if it's through coffee chats, lunches, being more into their business, whatever, just figure out
a way to build trust and confidence in that person so that you can interact better with them.
100% agree. I couldn't have said it better myself. That's one of the core things, whenever I
teach business partnership, is I have some concepts around trust and just saying that's core to it.
It's core to any relationship and it's true with the business partnership and you want to get to
that point where you want them to want to call you. You want them to want your advice versus,
hey, can we do this without finance? Trying to go around and like, okay, we got to
nearby, even though it's not exactly nearby, it will just spend the money and deal with it later.
That just never helps strengthen the relationship. I knew one partnership I've had and I've had
some that I've not been good, but I knew in one of them was doing you really well when the
gentleman manager commented that he's like, you help me shape the P&L. You don't just report it.
Like, you're here, you're making a difference to the business. I trust you. I want you in the room.
Let's talk. That's what you want. That's when you know you're doing things right, but without trust,
that isn't going to happen. Yeah, and when you look at the triangle, the hierarchy of the five
dysfunctions of a leader or a team, sorry, trust is at the foundation. The second level is
conflict. You can't have productive conflict and really challenge each other and have good back
and forth conversations unless you have that foundational trust. And then if you can't have
the trust, you have the conflict and you have accountability, commitment, and results.
How are you expected to get to the top of making sure you get the best results if you don't go
through those other levels and the foundation at the very bottom is trust? Yeah, totally makes
sense. And I agree, when you have trust, you can have healthy conflict. Because when you know
someone has your best interest at heart and that they care about the relationship,
then you can trust what they're going to say. Even if you may not like it and you can work through
it versus if you don't trust them, it's just kind of off and you're like, okay, whatever.
And just like, let's get this conversation over with. Or you're overly defensive because you don't
trust that person. Yeah, that's the other, right? They immediately will know, no, that's not right
later, whatever. I've seen both sides of that for sure. That's really good advice. I like that.
So here's a question we like to ask our guests. Can you tell me about a time in your career when
you experience what we call a strategic moment? So IE strategic insight that later empowered
change within the organization to help drive change. I'll use something much earlier in my career.
And this kind of talks to the mixed management that we talked about before is when I was a sales
analyst earlier in my career, I did a lot of different reporting. And again, I saw different
accounts that did better, not from a sales perspective, but from a gross profit perspective.
And when I had conversations about, hey, how do they approach this and how do they manage it?
They actually leverage the reports that I was putting out there, but in a different way,
to really look at their mix and how do they maximize not just their sales, but the gross profit.
And then when we actually had those conversations, it was more about how do we share those best
practices with everyone else? And really, I think that's in my career when I understood how big of an
effect mixed management could have. So actually talking to the rest of the finance, but also the sales
team, more so the sales team, hey, look how XYZ account approached their business to maximize the
gross profit. They really over indexed. They changed their the future program that they had.
They actually featured these products instead of these products. And it actually, from a consumer
perspective, it made sense this way, but from a PepsiCo perspective, it actually helped us because we
actually make higher revenue on a per liter basis on this. So you know, you have that conversation
to give them real life examples of how they can change their promotional activity or the way that
they set their shelves up to maximize their mix and their gross profit. And hopefully from a sales
perspective as well, because they got to keep the consumer in mind. And that's what that account
did a lot better is, hey, I noticed a trend of consumers wanting more port and control. So I did
this, right? So they actually focused on minicans. Hey, minicans is actually high revenue on a per liter
basis, because it's a smaller can, but it's a, you know, people wanted to do it from a portion control
perspective. You know, consumer was happy. That's what they're getting PepsiCo is happy because,
again, they're getting, you know, shifting the sales to something that worked a little bit better
for them on a, on a business perspective. So really seeing that aha and then sharing that out was
absolutely huge to the sales team at that time. I can see where that would be really beneficial,
right? Creating a win-win in that situation, especially in the last example you gave there,
where hey, the end consumer's happy. You're getting a higher margin and probably the middle person's
doing a little better, because there's usually better margins all the way across on those type of
things, not just one side getting it all, especially in those type of volumes. And so I could see
where that would make a huge difference, because yeah, you know, changing a sales approach to maximize
that margin can be huge. And then if you want to reinvest those extra margins into more activity,
to drive sales, then you have that ability to do so. And then that person actually not just
increased their profit margins, but it also increased their sales, because they could play
with their variables a lot different than everyone else.
Yeah, makes a lot of sense to me. So we're going to move into this section. It's called the Get to
Know You section. You get 30 seconds free chance or here. And we have four questions. It's kind of
just a fun section we do here for the end. So the first one is what is something interesting about
you, something that makes you unique that not many people know. I would say for people that don't
know me post university, I was actually a radio DJ during university. I had a very big passion for
music. And so I was a radio DJ at my university at the time. Cool. And what type of music?
Do you have his favorite genre or something you like to listen to? Yeah, more on the rock alternative
at that time. I'm more into the EDM and dance now, but at that time it was more of like the
email rock type of music. So do you still do any DJ stuff now or is that a long, long, long past?
Long past, long past. I put that behind me after I left university.
That's fun. That's a fun one to do. So next question here, if you could meet one person in the world,
get or alive. Who would you meet and why? I'm going to limit it to just people alive,
just because it's complicated. I would go with Mark Cuban. I think Mark Cuban, just out of all the
different business people, investors, et cetera, he just seems to be the most empathetic,
well regarded, just thoughtful leaders, investors. He just has a great approach. The way that he
wants to take on big farm, how big into sports he is. Like I am like owner, well, prior owner of
the Dallas Mavericks, et cetera, there's just so many commonalities there that I would love to
just sit down and have a conversation about everything with him. He would definitely be a fun
one to have a conversation with. It's amazing all that he's accomplished. Yeah, he's so down to
Earth as well, which is amazing compared to a lot of other big business people out there.
He's definitely a lot of people can relate to him and he was great. You know what he's thinking.
He's very willing to share his thoughts and express things versus kind of being one of those.
It's very just polished and you always get the corporate answer, so to speak.
This next one is kind of a fun one we've added and it's what is the last thing you googled
looked up on YouTube or use chat GPT or any other generative AI related to finance, FPNA, or Excel?
Well, my team tried to keep me out of doing Excel models these days, so I can't imagine why is
a CFO? Yes, I mean, it's still a passion. I love doing my own models and so forth, but I would say
if I go back to the last thing that I did research myself, this would be a while ago, but leveraging
the index match. So it's such a powerful formula within Excel that a lot of people don't know or use.
No, I agree with you. There's a lot you can do with index and with match and that's a great one.
So that may naturally lead into our next question. We might get a similar answer. What's your favorite
Excel function or feature? Well, this came from the training that I did with you that you,
when you came in works with my team, it was actually learning and using xlookup.
So I've always been a V lookup kind of guy in my past, but I just saw the power and the useful
ness of an xlookup versus that and I've been using that ever since.
Great. I'm glad it's worked for you always love to hear that somebody's using something I've
taught because you never know, right? You leave and you hope they gain something out of it, but you
know sometimes some people aren't going to. So I'm glad it's working for you and I'm a huge xlookup
to great formula. All right, so we're nearing the end of our times. We just have two questions here
to kind of wrap up and then we'll let you go. First one is what advice would you offer to someone
starting their career in FPNA today? I'll go with what I said before, but I'll add on to it. I mean,
ask as many questions as possible and be curious and then the second one is be open to as many
opportunities as you can be. So don't limit yourself to say, hey, I just want to be on the marketing
side of the business and work only in marketing finance or be very silo. Like try every part of
the business and be curious to really, truly understand what you like or don't like and as well as
it'll really help you long term in your career if you are well-reempted.
If there's great, be curious and ask questions. It's so important. Can't understate that one
enough. So last question, if someone wanted to reach out to you or get in hold of you,
what would be the best way for them to do that? I would probably just say LinkedIn. People can
reach out to me and start a conversation if they want on LinkedIn. So Togo Hogan on LinkedIn,
probably one of the only ones in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. So it should be easy to find.
Yeah, it's because I probably not a real common name. I wouldn't imagine there's a lot of those
in Toronto. Well, great. Well, thank you so much for joining us Togo. I really enjoyed chatting
with you and spending a little bit of time with you. So thanks for carving out some time for us.
Thank you so much for having me.
