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From DataRails, this is FPMA Today.
Welcome to FPMA Today, I'm your host, Glen Hopper.
Today, I'm excited to welcome Shannon Nash to the show.
Shannon is a Dynamic Finance Leader, Public Company Board Director, Investor, attorney, and CPA with over 25 years of experience across finance, operations, and governance.
Most recently, she served as CFO at Wing, Alphabet's innovative drone delivery subsidiary.
Shannon previously led Finance as CFO at Reputation .com, guiding the company through a major growth phase, including a $150 million fundraising round.
Beyond Finance, Shannon is also an award -winning filmmaker and a passionate advocate for storytelling.
telling. Her latest film On Board explores the journeys of black women in corporate board rooms. Shannon joins us today to discuss her remarkable career, how FP &A teams can strengthen their strategic impact, and how embracing diversity, storytelling and technology positions finance professionals for success.
Shannon, welcome to the show.
Glen, Glenn, thanks so much for having me.
I've been really looking forward to doing this podcast, especially and now we're gonna dive into the strategic power of FP &A, which I could talk about all day.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'm so excited.
But there, you've done so many things.
Like obviously yes, this is FPNA today.
I wanna dive into FPNA, but we've gotta talk about all this other stuff too.
Seriously, just looking at your your background.
I mean, your career is really remarkable because not only because you've served as CFO at innovative tech companies like Wing, but you've been an attorney, a CPA, a public company, board director, investor, advocate for diversity and inclusion, and a rare one off from all this that some people might think doesn't fit is the whole film maker bit.
but we'll talk about that later.
But as you look back at your career and think about where you are, how do you describe yourself now and going through that path and what your mission that's been guiding you through all this?
I think the common thread is that I'm a builder.
I like to build things.
And so whatever's interesting to me, I dive into it and try to think about how do I build it and make meaningful impact at whatever that is?
It starts with a strong foundation.
and so as I'm talking and counseling younger students, I give back a lot to my alma mater at the University of Virginia, the undergrad business school, I talk to a lot of students there and mentor them.
What I really talk about is get a really good foundation for me it was accounting, but could be finance could be marketing whatever it is, get a very good foundation because what that'll allow you to do is to go out there and figure out what are your passions, what drives you and then help build and scale those things.
And so if you you know you could have told me many many moons ago that by getting a CPA.
I would get Exposed all of these various industries because one thing every industry needs is you know Finance you would have told me that would lead into all these other Interests and career paths I don't think I actually appreciated it at the time But now I'm explaining to people know that gone are their days I know you remember Glenn where when you thought about oh what do you do as a CPA for 20 years?
When you're in a backroom, I'm dating myself pocket protector and your calculator, and you're just a necessary evil gone are those days.
Really the positions that we play are instrumental to really every industry and every business.
For me the thread has been just being able to take that solid foundation and help build, help companies scale, drive value and just really lead kind of that next generation of what's the next thing.
So that's been the common thread.
The combination of CPA and law, that gives you such a wide foundation and a difference.
It's two lenses to look through the business.
I imagine even in FP &A, law probably still has an impact and influence on your thought process there.
Yeah. You definitely don't turn it off.
What I will definitely say that not only law school, but then practicing law for a number of years, what it helps you do is really hone in your critical thinking skills.
At the end of the day, that's what I think is super important for any of these roles, especially in FP &A.
It's not the ability to do the forecasting, it's the ability to take that and be a critical thinker and then do something with it, like execute on it.
And so I definitely know that the legal training was super helpful for me.
Yeah, that's interesting.
So for me, before I came to finance, I was a journalist, and I took it for granted for years until people started talking about it in the industry.
It's, Oh, that actually made it so that I understood accuracy, brevity, clarity, the reverse pyramid of how you get information across and everything.
And it's it is interesting how all of the stuff that we do Molds who we are down the road and that's why your your broad careers is so fascinating And um, so we'll walk through the career a little bit more but after all that, what's your main focus today?
What do you what are you doing today?
Yeah, I mean i'm at so i've been able to take you know, like you said the 25 plus years of you know, starting out as a professional service advisor so really understanding how you help advise a client and going from client to client, the situation to situation, to going in -house to companies and working my way up the corporate America ladder.
I've been able to take all of those experiences, my operational experiences and turn that into something I'm super passionate about which is board service.
Again, if you go about 25 years one of the things when you are aspiring to what your career is going to look I don't know if people really talk about what boards do and why that's important.
So that's part of, we'll get into it, but that's part of my mission is to make sure that more, especially younger people, are exposed to this as an opportunity.
Because serving on the board has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my entire career, because you're really helping to shape the strategy of where a company is going.
Ultimately, you're working at the top levels because you're working with all of the C -suite, you're working with brilliant, strategic minds on the board. And it's all about creating shareholder value.
It's bringing together all of those skill sets and taking it to that next level.
And so I serve on the board of NetScout Systems, which is a publicly traded security assurance and cybersecurity tech company.
I serve on the board of SoFi bank, which is a Fintech. And I serve on the board of a restaurant chain that's a regional restaurant called lazy dog restaurants, which is may seem extremely different then my other boards because it's not tech, but there is tech in restaurants, believe it or not.
But also it's just like it's a fun way to round out my experiences in terms of board service.
At the same time, as we talked about in the beginning of this podcast, it just goes to show that having that foundation, having that solid foundation and governance background allows you to go to multiple industries.
I'm doing a lot of that, and then I'm also, you and I have talked about this.
Working on a leadership podcast that hopefully I will be rolling out later this year so really my thought leadership is also the next thing I'm working on and then I'm an investor, a limited partner in a couple of funds and so I'm helping portfolio companies scale and doing some advisory work so it's just a fun time in life.
It just seems like when you find something you're passionate about in sync your teeth into it you go all in on it and so your passion in talking about being on these boards comes through but comes really comes through and that you've You made a documentary film about this with onboard that highlights the rise of black women in corporate boardrooms. And I'm just wondering like serving the boards and making the movie and how, which came first and really what inspired you to take on the project and what are the messages that you hope to get across in it?
Well, I had made movies before and I had worked as one of my earlier CFO roles was I was CFO of a small production company and I had gotten also the chance to run and I'm looking in on how many for the iconic Debbie Allen.
And so I knew a lot about the industry, like I knew if you know how to, I always tell people if you know how to raise money and film and entertainment I'll take you every day because that is so much harder than raising money and it's so much harder.
And I had to do that.
So I knew enough about how you put together like a project and how you make money off of it quite frankly, or how you would at least get it made in a way that makes sense.
I had been fortunate enough, there was an organization that was started by a woman named Marlene Santil and Robin Washington called black women on board. And they didn't start as an organization, they really just started as a way.
They themselves were what's called overboarded, meaning they were on a lot of boards, couldn't be on new boards, but kept getting the calls.
And they just wanted to make sure that all these other women that they knew were qualified to be on boards got the opportunities as well.
And so they put together a Zoom along with a VC from called Sapphire Ventures, this woman named Elizabeth Un -Patterson.
She had portfolio companies that were looking for board members and they thought, let's just do this Zoom and introduce these women.
If there are opportunities, we want to at least recommend them.
So it just started that simple, but you know what the power of the type of convenings is it took off like a rocket ship.
So there was 18 of us on that initial Zoom call, it was during COVID.
So it was one of those calls where you'd been working all day and you'd get on this empowering call at five o 'clock and by eight or nine o 'clock, you don't want to get off because you just feel like you're in a really amazing space after working all day on Zoom.
Guess what? Over a course of year, they helped every woman got on a board in public company boards.
I said, there's something in this story and I went to Marlene and said, how are you going to scale this and how are you going to tell this story more globally because I think you have something here and she actually she was like that's interesting but who how do you make a film like oh I know how to do that that part I know and I get the director we got an amazing award -winning director by the name of Deborah Riley Draper and kind of put together a thought of doing this film and then I went to someone who's a mentor of mine by his name is Barry Williams prolific serial public company board member
mentored a lot of people and I said hey we're going to make this film we're going to tell this story of black women on boards, which is now an organization.
And we're going to honor the first black woman, who got on a board, because that's a little known history fact.
And I told him who we're going to honor.
And Glenn, he said, I don't, she's that person you're honoring is a nice lady, but she's not the first. And I'm like, Google says she's the first. And he, and he, he, you know, he himself remembers because he was one of the earlier pioneer board members, back in, you know, long time ago in the 70s and stuff.
and he said, Google is wrong.
And so then I started doing, the lawyer and me, I started doing more research. He was right.
And so I knew we had to make a film if for nothing else to set history straight, to make it that when you do your Google search, you actually get the right person.
And if you were to Google that right now, you're going to get the right person, and her name is Patricia Roberts Harris.
So I knew we had to make a film if for nothing else that this would live on forever and ever to make sure that, like I said, history was correct.
Oh, that's great. That's great.
As we talk about this, and I know it's politically charged, but I do think it's important to talk about.
And so I'm just going to word this away and you can answer however, whatever you're comfortable with now.
But I do think it's important to discuss, but what practical advice would you give finance leaders about how to effectively build more diverse, equitable, and inclusive teams?
Is this something you feel comfortable talking about?
Well, here's the thing.
I know the term, D -E -N -I, is charged, is a charged term.
And I have various feelings about that.
But I have not met a leader who doesn't say they want the best, the brightest, the smartest people for their roles.
I've never met somebody to say that.
And so, what I say is it's really about making sure you are looking in the various networks that are out there, the various schools, the various firms, the various cities, et cetera, to make sure that the talent pool you're pooling from gets you that, right?
Gets you the best and the brightest. I don't need to use the term diverse, I don't...
I don't need to use any of the terms, because ultimately, what you want is the best and brightest for your company, for your position and you want it to be a process that was fair.
I've never met a person regardless of all the politics around this that says, yeah, no, I don't want that smart person.
I don't want the best person.
I just want to keep going to the same place I might get some good people.
I might get some bad people.
I don't care. I haven't actually met those those people and So to me, it's like I don't even want to focus on the word I want to focus on the process of how are you getting to the best and the brightest and then how are you keeping them that's universal as well that again who goes out of their way to do what i'm saying hire the best and brightest people bring to your company and then you're not doing the things to keep them because it's super expensive to keep replacing people.
You should be building your own systems for them to thrive in your company and to be promoted and to work on you know the things that you need them to work on because you need the best the brightest to do this to be successful so, I think that we are in a time where the term is just too charged to use, it's been co -opted and used for just, in my opinion, the wrong things.
Let's focus on why we're doing this in the first place, and that is to make sure we have the best workforce that we can have for our various companies.
I'm a big AI machine learning guys and I hope we talked about this before the show.
I hope we get to talk about that.
I hope we have time to talk about that later in the show, but to me, we've seen it in algorithms in social media and in advertisements and all that, where you get in this positive feedback loop.
And like you say, going into the same well in the same source every time you're getting this sort of that same positive feedback loop in the real world by not having that that broader view.
So I think very, very well said, you started your career and accounting attack and tax at KPMG.
And then you moved into law with taxation and corporate transaction work, and then you moved into startups and operations.
And then this is all before taking your first CFO role is a new you've hit on it a little bit, but tell me a little bit about the transition as you step through that.
Was there a shift in mindset or focus and kind of what drove the move to get you ultimately to the CFO state?
So a couple of things I think that I grew up with the mindset of especially going through you know, the various programs at school and undergrad in law school, thinking professional services, right?
And at the time, there was it was like a big aid accounting for actually I can get started at 10.
I remember when it was 10 then was eight now it's obviously four and then you've got the regional guys.
You were just ingrained to that's what you do.
Even in law school, you really think about either going into government service.
I knew I wasn't going to necessarily do that.
I mean you think about professional services.
I was just wired to do professional services, and what I will tell you is that I liked professional services, but I didn't love professional services, if that makes any sense.
You know what I mean, I didn't love it.
I wasn't passionate about, But I liked it, it certainly was great training and I had some amazing experiences.
And it wasn't until I went in -house to a company, I went in -house to Amgen, where I actually got more exposure so that you could actually not necessarily do professional, you could really do this for a company if you will and dive into the business model and the strategy of the company.
It wasn't until I went in -house that I got that exposure and when I got that exposure and I understood the operations of a business much more intimately than I did as a professional service provider.
I liked it, but I loved it too.
Like it was both lined up for me.
I would say no one makes it to the C -suite even if you're born into a family who owns a company, you don't make it there alone.
Somebody mentored you, somebody supported you, somebody pushed you on.
And so I saw, in that company, I saw that I had access to the CFO and the controller and I was like, I like that side of the business I liked it more so than practicing law, honestly.
And so that's kind of what led my desire to wanting to do more operational and finance type of roles.
Ultimately, I just felt like I was much more tied into the business and making the ultimate business decisions and that was just something I actually loved.
Yeah, that makes so much sense and it's funny.
So I know exactly what you mean about professional services and I did, in my career I did things backwards.
I was a CFO in -house for multiple companies before switching to doing consulting work in the professional services and like on one hand I love professional services because it's always new problems you're always solving things in it you're in the exposure to the different industries and public and private companies and this was actually my as a consultant was my first time working with public companies and I love that exposure but to really make a difference to have that deep like to be a true partner you know if there's somebody's paying you 350 bucks an hour they're trying to limit at your time,
you know, based on, and they're like, well, we'll bring them or her in whenever, whenever needed, but you know, not beyond that.
And then, but also if you're a part of a company, you, like you said, you're a builder.
And I think if as a builder, being in the company rather than just a consultant to the company it has to be a lot more meaningful.
So I get that. All right, let's get into some finance stuff here.
So first off from reputation .com, you had led significant scaling efforts there, including raising $150 million in funding.
And this is kind of a softball, and this is the question that we could talk about all day, because this is where being in the startup space and then being in Telcom before that and sort of working in M &A, the valuation of your company, the perceived valuation of the company is all about the story you can tell with the financials.
And you can't just give the forecast that has the hockey stick with no explanation.
I've seen so many startups do that and everything, but true, FP &A is so important.
But from a CFO's perspective, what critical role, And I know that there's the whole you know, it's much broader than than just the fpna part But fpna is, you know a big seat at the table But what critical role did fpna play in securing that funding and and really positioning the company more for growth?
Oh, it's critical. I mean we talked about this.
It's it's super critical You're not going to be able to even craft the narrative until you feel comfortable about the numbers And and the scenario planning around the numbers and anybody that's going to give you money Is going to actually is in part as part of their due diligence, right?
They are going to spend significant amounts of times with you on the numbers and the scenarios and the assumptions.
And so FP &A is the glue to all of that.
Every time I've raised money, whether it's been at a very small grassroots level to, like you said, hundreds of millions of dollars it has started with really diving in for weeks, maybe even months, with FP &A on all of our scenario planning.
It's just, it is literally the glue to make this all happen.
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You're really driving and helping shape with, these are the assumptions, these are the drivers, this is what's realistic, this is what we can justify you know this is kind of our maybe our pie in the sky of best case for our forecast and everything.
Like how, what was the work like with your team as you were building out these models and trying to show, you know, the sort of the future value of the company, you know, getting to that DCF based on what you're projecting?
Yeah, I mean, spending a lot of, intimately a lot of time on all of those assumptions that we were making, whether on both sides of this, this kind of viewpoint on assumptions on revenue, assumptions on costs, assumptions on market size, all of those types of things, especially when you're raising money, you're really diving into every single assumption and then you are kicking the tire on it, if you will, like repeatedly challenging it, coming up with four or five different scenarios based off of the assumption.
And then really landing on the argument that, when I say the best argument, it's not a hockey stick argument, the best argument is the one that is the most realistic based off of your set of back patterns, which means you've spent a lot of time with probably, for a tech company, the product folks.
You spend a lot of time with the sales folks, however you are, CROs or partnership folks or whatever, however you make your money, right?
Spend a lot of time with them.
Spend a lot of time with the operational folks.
What are those assumptions?
You think you can get to this many enterprise customers in this amount of time.
And here's why. because this product can scale this way, you're spending a lot, so you really have to understand the business.
You really have to be an expert in the business to even support those assumptions, yeah.
Once again, you are speaking my language completely because I know, so at InsideSource, you add the CFO and COO role, and I think that this kind of speaks to what you mentioned earlier, kind of the old school, what people thought of as finance and accounting is the green visor, the pocket protector, the nine key calculator, and the, you know, the print that receipt coming out and all that.
Slide rule or whatever.
But I think though, and you're seeing more now of this CFO, COO combo role.
And to me, like when I'd come in, like if there was a COO in a company when I came in, probably not his best friend at first because I'm immediately like poking my head into his or her business.
And because I'm thinking as CFO, what data do we have in operations?
I'm trying to get data from across the board for those forecasts and everything.
But I think that in doing that and in being this more strategic leader who has you can't just be in this ivory tower of I'm just counting beans here, you know, I don't care whatever the widget is, I don't care, because I think that one of the things that kind of changed the office of the CFO is, you know, post Sarbanes Oxley, you've got this responsibility in, you know, to step up and you're signing, you know, the financial statements and attesting to them.
And you can't do that if you don't understand the business.
But this is all just a bunch of exposition to say I think with that you talked about working with operations on the model that's so important and it does set up this kind of crossover that I think years ago would have been unfathomable but serving as that CFO and COO I can see how you get in that mindset of you combine the two and you think of them together so you're not doing finance in the vacuum but I wonder how did you balance kind of the finance and operations approach to it because a lot of times you know as operations person you're arguing for more money in the budget or you know they can and the CFO
traditionally is like, no, there isn't, you know, is that restraint there.
So there is this balance.
So I mean, how did you kind of find that line between both?
Yeah, so I have a mindset of that the CFO's office is not an office of no. It's an office of how can we make this work.
That mindset, for me, started fairly on and being exposed when I went in -house to Amgen, like many moons ago.
One of the things that, and I think a lot of companies they're doing this now, but this again was a long time ago, they had the thought that everybody who works this company should understand our drugs, right?
We're a biotech you need to understand, we don't really care what your job is, you need to understand our drugs.
They allowed you to go on ride -alongs with sales reps.
I can tell you nothing solidifies more about what you're doing every day than going to a dialysis clinic and watching your product being used and changing the lives of patients.
That type of connection and talking to the sales reps and understanding how they do their job.
I tell you, that was like a pivotal moment for me in terms of just understanding, oh, to be successful at any of these back office positions, you really need to understand the and the only way to do that is, go out, touch it, see it, do it.
You're seeing that more and more now.
And when I first started my career in finance, this wasn't anything we even talked about, but business partnering, where the FP &A folks are out there in the departments and everything, and you're not just sitting in that vacuum and in that, you know, sort of sterile area of just, you know, ones and zeros and trial balances and accounting where you actually do have to learn.
And it does, if we're gonna be more strategic, we have to understand the business.
So I think that's great.
Okay, so you also were CFO at wing which I don't know how many people in our audience are familiar with that But maybe if for those unfamiliar Can you share what wing does and what made it such a unique place to lead as a CFO?
Yeah wings a drunk commercial drone delivery company and commercial.
Don't delivery is real.
It's happening. It's happening globally It's happening in the US wing is operating currently in in Dallas So certainly people in the Dallas, Fort Worth area are familiar, right, with the ability to get their deliveries.
We partnered with a Walmart to do this.
So you today in those areas, you can go onto an app and decide that you want your delivery to come by drone and it comes quick and it's safe and it's here today.
I'm always drawn to things that are like helping advance a need for with technology that I really think will shape the future.
Then I'm also inspired by just new innovative things that are complex, involve regulatory and cutting in it, city planning, cutting edge tech, things of that nature.
So that was what was, to me, exciting about Wing.
One question for our audience is when you are looking for bringing on whether it's a new head of FBA or who's moving up in your organization in F .P .N .A., walk me through this, kind of the skills or qualities that stand out to you and the candidates.
What makes a good F .P .N .A.
person for you? Yeah, so, we talked about, kind of like we talked about, you know, gone are the days where finance and the CFO was just looking for somebody, who would just close the books and tell you the historical, you know, news about what happened the month before.
All that stuff is, honestly, table stakes.
I mean, we assume you can do that.
It's really about looking for that professional who's a strategic thinker, curious, adaptable, great communications build.
The CFO is looking for somebody who can take that historical data, be a fortune teller, take that, extrapolate that into what's gonna happen in the future, hence the fortune telling, and then put that together in a concise story.
and then come present that to the CFO, who's obviously got other stakeholders he or she needs to present that to.
That's what they're looking for.
The assumption is that you're good at modeling.
The assumption is that you know how to take complex data and piece that together into a story.
That's the assumption.
What they want you to do is then be curious about it and be able to poke holes at it.
And so a good like kind of VP of FP &A, they are their CFO like right -hand person, if anything.
And so they are coming to them and saying, here's what I think now as I'm prepping you and we're talking about this, let's kick the tires on it.
What if I change this?
I think that would mean we need to do, instead of going into this market, we need to tell the sales team to look at these markets, for example.
So they really understand strategy, and they work with the strategy team.
Like they they really work across those types of groups.
And so you're looking for somebody, that's why I said that cure the intellectual curiosity is also a super important part of this because they're not just looking for an answer, they're looking for you to also kick the tires or poke holes is a better way to say it into the answer because ultimately that's what's going to happen with the CFO when he or she is talking to the CEO, to the board, to investors, they're going to poke holes in your answer.
And that's what you want your head of FPNA to be able to really help prepare So in many ways the head of FPNA also has an investor relations type of role in his or her mindset as well Yeah, that makes sense and I this is I'm laughing because this is the part that my audience knows that's kind of inevitable I'm eventually gonna get here on every episode but I you know when you talk about the table stakes for FPNA with automation and particularly with AI lately and the table stakes are gonna be Increasingly I mean just how quickly aI is moving in particular But even you know just rule based and just
standard automation You used to be able to kind of rise up in fpna because you were really good at modeling and building You know you could do all these complex formulas and excel and and that's where you really stood out But now I mean especially I know it's early and it's not there yet But I you know copilot is going to nail this or Microsoft is going to nail this copilot thing We're going to find that all these formulas these nested if statements and complex You know formulas that we did that took us forever that we were so proud of in the coming months or certainly years You're just going
to be able to type to remember clippy from microsoft a little yes Little pop -up assistant you're going to have your ai version of clippy and you're going to be say You know, you're just going to type in I want to do this with the data and it's going to do it so all the things that we used to Really pride ourselves on are going to be replaced by either ai or standard automation I mean now you can put python in excel and you know It's gotten so much different than when I came up.
And I'm wondering, as the table stakes get higher, because if the robots are doing all this data entry and even some base level modeling, there's so much software out there right now that just goes straight into your ERP and pulls out your information and can do real -time forecast updates on the fly and stuff that we used to do.
I know there's still a lot of tweaking that you can go around it, but what happens to FPNA?
what do you think? where are we going with the evolving technology in the FPNA role?
I think a lot of people that I've spoken to and myself included are excited about that.
Some of the most nerve -racking things is getting ready to present to board, whomever, and having somebody from FPNA call you and say something's wrong with the model.
It broke here. on one of the 17 linked workbooks that's 10 steps downstream and.
Right? And so the ability to use AI to handle that, I think people are excited quite frankly about that because really where I need their time spent is on that fortune telling and what do we do and how do we execute.
And that's where I think AI's going to help with suggestions but a lot of that isn't based off of formulas or anything like that.
It's really based off of intimately understanding the business, understanding your customer, understanding your market, and then putting that all together based on the data and coming up with this is plan A, plan B, plan C.
That's where I want the FP and A people to focus, that's on that part of it.
That's where their secret sauce really is.
It's not on, I'll date myself, do you know how to do VLOOKUP?
Who cares? So in that end yeah, and it's going to be increasingly less and less important as that gets offloaded.
Here's one I've never been on a board before I've had to present two boards through, you know, the last many years of my career.
And it's to this day, it still makes me very nervous.
And it depends on the board, you know, different boards have different, but they're I mean, it's very serious.
And you're, you know, you can we were talking about a feedback loop within the management team, you can sort of get everybody kind of singing the same song and has the same message.
But if you have the right board, they're not drinking the same kool -aid there, they're coming in with this true objective lens on there.
And it's great and companies need that kind of oversight.
And I think it keeps companies out of public or even a private company, like having like an advisory panel or something, I think is a great advice.
But like every time I go into a board meeting, like after a couple of quarters, you get to know the board members and you know the audit committee, you know there's the one guy that's gonna ask the specific question and you've gotta be ready for that.
And then there's certain people it's like, okay, well I'm gonna present here because I know they're gonna ask, you know, two levels deeper and I need to keep some additional information in my pocket for all that, but I've, you know, having not been on the board side, I wonder, and I know a lot of our listeners have to present to boards, too, is there, what advice would you give, either, this could be for a CFO or a head of FPNA, anyone who's having to present to that level at the board level, what do you think about, you could tell them about effectively communicating at that level?
Oh, I've got great suggestions for that, I think.
Okay, first of all, be concise.
We've been sent a board deck that has 1 ,000 pages, 2 ,000 pages, whatever, and most times, as much as you want to get it week and a half in advance, we get it very close to the board meeting.
So that's a lot of information to go through.
The last thing we want to do is sit in a board meeting where you ...
I've had to go through 1 ,000 pages or more, and you want to come in and present 25 slides to me.
I need you to actually be like this isn't the deep dive, unless it's like one of those scenarios where you needed a deep dive with management, and then quite frankly, if you need a deep dive with management like that, it should probably be a separate meeting, like its own focus thing.
And that does happen.
But for a typical board meeting, you're not doing significant deep dives.
They should be concise, quick, get to the point.
So I always say, think about it like this.
Tell me what the issue is.
So this is the lawyer and me.
We've used to use this method called IRAC.
It was like issue, rule, analysis, conclusion.
That's what they teach you in law school, so something very similar come in.
What's the issue? What are you trying to what do you want me to know about it and basically do this in like a slide or two?
How did you think about it like analyze it for me what works?
What's working what's not working like open the kimono tell me the warts tell us what's not working So we can help you and and ask the board for if there is the board can be helpful because most people on the board Want to be helpful?
we're all trying to get this ship to go the same way.
Tell us how we can be helpful.
But I should be able to know that quickly, you should be concise about it.
You should use data.
Obviously, from a finance standpoint, and we want to know data but not data for just data sake.
Know your data so you can answer my questions when I ask you about it.
Know your data cold.
But I'm not coming in here to be the data expert, you're my data expert.
Answer the questions and then tell me what you're doing with the data.
But don't hide around just being a data like savant and just throw a bunch of data at me with no like conclusion because I can't do anything with that.
And then practice, practice, practice, where you come to this board meeting, meaning the CFO loves to do this with you, your peers if you're the head of FPN a talking to the board. Anticipate all the various questions.
That's where before the board meetings, especially most of the times FPN a folks are talking to the audit committee and maybe to the full board. That's where really having that like one -on -one call with the audit chair comes in handy before you get in front of the committee or the board So I highly recommend developing that relationship as well.
Yeah, that makes sense and it's you know again thinking back to Presentations that I've been part of whether it was up to the board or I remember early in my career the first CFO I worked for it the at the quarterly meeting would just sit there and read financials, just the driest like Ferris Bueller, kind of just reading through facts and you know, going through each market talking about what our EBITDA was in each market.
Or without really, it's just reading information.
If you could hand someone a spreadsheet and they could see that, you don't need to read the spreadsheet.
So it's really changed a lot and a big part of that is storytelling.
And this goes back again to like what you just said from the attorney in you to also being a creative storyteller, is there with that background, are there specific examples you can link to on how you leverage storytelling in your in your career, or just even more advice for our for our listeners about using that?
Well again, storytelling is a huge part of this, whether that's internal storytelling, or external storytelling.
It's not about just saying, here's what the numbers are.
Like you said, just reading, like this, you know, subscription revenue grew by this percent year over year and blah, blah, blah, like I can read.
I can see it, it's on the slide.
Tell me what to do with that.
What does that signal for you for the next quarter and the next quarter?
Or are you saying like, does that signal to you that there's going to be a downward trend and why?
Tell me, weave in the story for me.
I'll tell you, for me, surprisingly, it worked for me and I've heard other people this has worked for as well.
One of my earlier roles when I said I worked for Debbie Allen, she had everybody, her whole team take an improv class, We did improv and remember at the time we were doing the class.
I was like let's go I did all these things.
Why am I taking it in?
I'm never going to be like on TV Like that's not what I want to do.
Why would I take improv?
What a blessing taking an improv class did because what does it make you do tell stories off the top of your foot?
off top of your head like you have to dive in to like continuing the story and it helps break that shell of We all wanna be prepared, but it also helps you think really quickly, because you are prepared, now you should be able to tell the story to the next guy and then I should be able to take whatever you said and add onto it very quickly.
That's a skill set that you're gonna need in terms of what I said again is that internal or the external storytelling, you need it for both.
And so, interestingly enough I can tell you that a big part of how that started working for me was taking an improv class.
This is crazy but you were the second guest in a row.
Mike Deon, who I interviewed last week, also talked about taking his improv class and how important that was, or I think that might've been his answer to the question of, what's something not many people know about you?
And I've never taken an improv class, but my son has, and we were talking about it.
And he said that one of the biggest things in improv is, you never say no. Because you don't want to be the spot where the story ends.
Everything that you do has to be in boomeranging it back to the other person.
And that's actually, whether it's communication, I mean a way to think about collaboration and everything.
I mean, I could say so I think we're going to start a movement here.
We're going to maybe we need to start like an improv class for finance professionals.
I was about to say Glenn, I think we can I think there's a business model for us right there.
So that's really interesting.
And I think that there's something else that as you were going through that, I think about early in your career, you don't have the experience.
you learn how to do the modeling and how to have this deliverable.
And you don't have the insights yet, just sort of to ask that.
You don't even know the questions to ask it.
You don't have the domain expertise.
You've just got your school and then what you're doing.
So you don't know those questions.
And as you develop, a lot of our listeners aspire to become CFOs one day.
And I'm thinking about that mindset that you have to have of, I'm delivering this information, but I'm not just a conduit for it.
I have to be adding value to the information as it passes through me, otherwise I could be easily replaced by a bot.
So I'm thinking about, obviously as you talk I can tell that you have that mindset and as a board member even more so because you're this Socratic observer, well, not Socratic completely, but you're out of the mire of it and you're able to come in and get that 30 ,000 foot view and you have the questions and I think that's a skill set that you have to, you have to be able to back out more and more from the individual trees to the larger forest as you go up in career, but what separates people who kind of are get limited and stuck in a range and aren't able to move up to that CFO?
What separates the people who do make good CFOs from those who never quite get there?
I think that the people who know that they are always lifelong learners and inquisitive in that way, I think that sets them apart.
For most people listening, they are, I would say, used to the fact that there's some form of continuing education you have to do, whether it's for a license or whatever.
So the people that I think that really take that and show that they are just always like lifelong learners and trying to improve and not just like, hey, I know this job inside it on, I just want to do this job.
Those are the people that tend to move up.
The people that treat the business and what they're doing, like they're an owner, but they're a true owner.
Like if you own this, you would really want to understand every impact of the business on the financial health of the company and the financial future of the company.
If it was your company, treat it like it is.
For a lot of people you have stock, you have options, things like that.
So you are an owner, but it's interesting how people still don't have that mindset.
I've met way too many people who don't treat it like it's their business, but I think the people that do stand out, quite frankly, I think the people that do work on, we just talked about that, that storytelling which that helps them develop an executive presence.
I think the people who work on that, also they stand out.
Then a bit of it is taking some risks.
All successful companies had to take some risk here and there.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
But I think the people that are willing to make some decisions that may not be popular, but here's how they back it up, they tend to stand out and also, sometimes it works and doesn't work all the time.
right? But when I look at the people where it works, they got a little bit of that in their background, too.
Yeah. And it's like you have to if you just stay in your comfort zone, there's no growth there.
So I mean, you have to every now and then get out a little bit ahead of your skis, maybe feel that imposter syndrome a little bit and take those risks.
So that's it. Yeah, that's a great bit of advice there too.
So we're winding it down kind of to the personal section of the show.
I mean, I feel like we've talked about so much here.
I have no idea what your answer is going to be on this, but I feel like you're gonna really surprise us.
But Our next question these next couple are ones that we ask all of our guests and that the next one is See, I think for a lot of people the fact that you've made a movie This is probably where this would come in, but we already know that about you so my question is What is something that people might not know about you some people know but but maybe not the extent of it So I dance a lot.
I do have a Zumba and you Jam So those are group fitness dance formats.
So I'm an instructor.
So I have my license to do that, and let's just say I have gotten my fair share of time, we live in the Bay Area and go to a lot of Golden State Warriors basketball games, and I have gotten my fair share of time even most recently on the, what do you call it, the Jumbotron?
Where they show the dancing people?
Yes, yeah. So much so that very recently, like last week, we have a friend that's a newscaster at ESPN and I'm on the jumbletron and that and he's texting my husband saying, is that your wife on the jumbletron at the game right now?
And my husband - That's so great.
And you can see my husband in the jumbletron too, just like this, just looking right there.
That's me, that's yeah.
There she goes again with the dancing.
So much that they're putting her on TV, so.
Oh that's great. So aside, I'm a Memphis Grizzlies season ticket holder.
so we might have to talk about your boy Draymond.
Oh, I'm a huge Draymond fan.
Huge. He's from a small town called Saginaw, Michigan, and I'm from that town.
So like my aunt was his vice principal in high school.
So shout out to Saginaw, Michigan.
Yeah. Actually, honestly, if Draymond were on my team, I would love him.
But as, you know, as another Western conference team, it was like, here he goes again.
And that's it but we had you know we used to have Zach Randolph who was kind of you know, you need that yeah, he's great and actually I love how kind of outspoken he is at this point in his career and he'll just like I don't know if you saw him at the NBA all -star game.
Just talking like this is garbage this is He's right Okay.
Well, this is we're gonna have a whole other podcast and we're gonna talk about the NBA that's gonna be let's do that Okay So our last question and this is I always feel almost feel bad asking CFOs this question because it's been so long since we've really gotten into it, but I'm gonna go ahead and throw out what is your favorite Excel function and why?
Okay so I put a lot of thought into this one because to your point it's like, yeah gone other days again the whole vlookup thing is like so like you know 1980s once it's like skill set back um I say the most recent things for me that that have been helpful is so there's index match right where you looking up like a specific value like you want to find the sales for a specific product or something like that.
I think index match is like it helps you get to exactly what you want much better than like V lookup is just kind of like going from you know left to right whereas index match is like everything and then also even more so recently I got into using some if.
Yeah, like that has actually been helpful.
And this is a true story I was really looking for.
There was all this data about revenue and it was different regions and different categories and that kind of helped me get to like, if I'm looking for this specific revenue and this type of category in this region I could get to the total that I wanted very quickly.
So those would be my two.
Perfect. So a couple of final questions before we let you go.
So one, how can our listeners find the movie on board if they're looking for it?
And two, I know you've got the new podcast coming and everything.
If they wanna connect with you and follow your work, how can they connect with you?
Yeah, easy as place.
We talked about this as well.
For me, the best platform that I'm on is LinkedIn, and I won't talk about the others because I'm not on them as much for a whole host of reasons, but in particular, LinkedIn is my go -to one.
And there are several Shannon Nashs on there, but I'm the one that's - We'll put the link in the show notes.
Yeah, yeah, but actually I interrupted you though.
So if they don't see the show notes, how can they find you on LinkedIn?
Yeah, mine is Shannon Nash.
And then afterwards, I'm the one that's the lawyer and CPA.
The other ones are not lawyers and CPA's and that's in my title, so you can see it.
And then Onboard is on a platform called Vimeo.
Okay, great. And we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well.
Well, Shannon, this has been just incredible.
I was looking forward to the show all week.
I'm so glad to have you on, and I really appreciate your time.
Thank you so much. Have a great time.
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