Lara GuevaraSupply Chain expert (Product and Service)

Finance Is The Conductor

22 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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1:21

In this brief conversational excerpt, Lara Guevara emphasizes the necessity of expert financial guidance for Direct‑to‑Consumer (D2C) businesses. She warns that without a knowledgeable finance leader, companies may miss critical signals until problems become irreversible. The co‑speaker expands on this by likening finance to the conductor of an orchestra, coordinating marketing, sales, and supply‑chain functions so they play in harmony. He explains that finance ensures all departments follow the same strategic tempo and scale, preventing each function from operating independently with conflicting goals. The absence of this ‘conductor’ creates a dangerous environment where disparate teams act like musicians playing different songs, leading to misalignment and operational risk for D2C brands.

Chapters

Um, if you don't have an expert guiding you where to look at and to, um, teach you what to understand, then you wouldn't know until it's too late.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, to, to your earlier point about the, the way that our two functions work together, the, the, the model that I would encourage you to think about is that finance is kind of like you know, the conductor of the orchestra. You could be the best violin player in the world, but if you don't have someone else like telling you how to fit in with the rest of the group and what you need to do when and, you know, how loud you need to be and whatever, it's very, very difficult to make music. So, you know, finance is kind of the function that ties marketing and sales and supply chain together, and it makes sure that everything's synchronized. Everything's, you know, everyone's playing from the same hymn book and that, you know, the whole machine is working at the correct scale. Where you run into real problems is when there is no conductor and there's no one kind of tying all these different functions together and everyone's just making up their own song and, you know, has different goals and priorities. That's, you know, a very, very dangerous situation to be in for a D2C brand.