Building financial modeling skills while playing an E-Sport Game with Professor Eric Kelley

If you can't tell the story behind your model and what your model is communicating, doesn't really matter how good your model is, people have already lost you. They're not trying to find a loan payment, they're trying to build a system that is going to take in a flexible set of inputs and generate a loan payment as an output.

Talk about what it's like coaching students, because obviously coaching versus doing it yourself is very different.

There's an interesting twist to the coaching part that comes from the fact that Dr.

Eric Kelley is a professor of finance at the University of Tennessee's Haslam College of Business and a Microsoft Excel MVP. He teaches undergraduate, MBA, and PhD students focusing on quantitative problem solving, scalable financial modeling, and integrated curricula. He also leads the university's Excel esports team, promoting competitions and coaching the team to international success.

Just get your hands dirty and try a case. You can sign up for the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge, mecc.college. The things financial modelers need to know, even maybe 6 months ago, I would have said yes to Python, but I don't know. I'm not big on turning everything over to AI, but.

Financial Modelers Corner is the world's premier modeling podcast. It is brought to you by Financial Modeling Institute. The world's leading financial modeling accreditation organization. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Financial Modelers Corner. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst. This podcast is where we talk all about the art and science of financial modeling with distinguished financial modelers from around the globe. The Financial Modelers Corner podcast is brought to you by the Financial Modeling Institute. FMI offers the most respected accreditations in financial modeling, and that's why I completed the Advanced Financial Modeler. This week, I'm thrilled to welcome on the show Dr. Eric Kelly. Eric, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Paul. Good to be here.

Good to have you. No, and I think that's the first time I've called you doctor.

That's all right. Most people, most people don't.

Oh, I would imagine so. A little bit of, uh, his background. Dr. Eric Kelly is a professor of finance at the University of Tennessee's Haslam College of Business. Eric teaches finance students at the undergraduate, MBA, and PhD levels. He emphasizes quantitative problem-solving techniques and challenges students to create robust, scalable models. He is particularly passionate about developing integrated university curricula spanning multiple courses that teach students to build financial models from the ground up using the most innovative techniques available, which we'll spend some time talking more about today, which I'm excited about. He is also a Microsoft Excel MVP and a Faculty Fellow with the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge. He worked alongside other MECC leadership to create the organization's first regional competition in 2024 and continues to promote Excel-based esports competitions by writing and testing cases and creating instructional content. Eric also coaches his students' Excel esports team from the University of Tennessee that won the 2024 MECC World Championship and placed 6th in 2025. Again, welcome. I'm really excited to get to chat with you today. I love that you're repping your university. You got it covered.

Go Vols!

And I can see they're a Nike school.

Yes. Well, we were actually— it's June. I think on July 1st we're Adidas.

Oh, are they switching? Yeah. The local university here just announced they were Under Armour and I haven't heard who the new one's going to be, but they just end— the agreement ends at the end of the year. And so there that came out. So Yep. They all, they all have somebody's logo. You got to make the money. Whatever way you put it.

Those are big contracts. They stick around for several years. And, uh, yeah, it was a big deal when we changed.

Yeah. And they're just getting bigger and bigger as the money keeps getting bigger in college. It's pretty crazy. But sometimes you don't, you wish you could throw football a little further.

Uh, most times, yes.

All right. So we're, you're the first guest we're doing this, this with. First or second, we're doing a new career corner. So I have a couple questions kind of about your career around financial modeling. First one we're going to ask you is how did you decide you wanted to be a college professor teaching finance?

It was really kind of a perfect storm for me. A few things came together. I enjoyed the teaching and learning process. And so that applies both to classroom stuff as well as research, because we're— our job is to to generate new knowledge. I enjoyed math from really as long as I can remember. I was always fascinated with how financial markets work. And, uh, just generally I like variety in my day-to-day duties. And so the academic career, uh, the PhD and finance in particular, just all, it all just came together in that.

Makes sense. You love teaching, you love the math, you enjoy markets. Good, good combination to be a professor.

It works.

So the next question I want to ask, and I'm curious to see what you say to this, what is one skill that you think most financial modelers need to have that most people would be surprised to hear you say that?

I would say oral communication skills. Like, I mean, I know modeling, it's a very technical thing, right? But, uh, at the end of the day, we gotta be able to communicate. We gotta be able to tell stories. And so I think the oral communication piece is, uh, essential. And, and when I say oral communication here, I'm not talking about, uh, preparing something and sort of delivering this, this speech. Rather, I'm thinking about the ad hoc thinking on your feet, answering questions in clear, coherent ways so that your audience can understand you. I think it's essential. If you can't tell the story behind your model and what your model is communicating, it doesn't really matter how good your model is. It's just people have already lost you.

100% agree. And I've been guilty of that before where I think I'm explaining something well and everybody's looking at me like, what are you talking about? And you're like, all right, I clearly did not communicate that well even though I thought I understood it. Yep. Definitely more important than a lot of people think. They all think we're just Excel nerds and we are Excel nerds, but there's more to it than that.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

What do you tell college students who are interested in a career in financial modeling?

Before we actually get into like the, the nuts and bolts of trying to build a model, I mean, I, I, I, I try to start with, let's just learn the thing that we want to model. Let's learn what is actually going on behind the scenes. And so. In a lot of ways, it sort of starts with things like just learning the financial statements, just how they fit together, the story they tell. And then once you kind of have an idea of the types of things that you want to model, then I pivot and try to get folks to think about efficient systems and processes. I mean, it's not about doing anything once. It's about creating a system and a, and a thing where you can, you can do tasks at, at, at scale.

And I'm curious, obviously you see a lot of students' first model ever, and you know, they're very early attempts. So what's maybe one of the biggest mistakes you see, or craziest thing you've seen, kind of as you're seeing those early models? Because I'm sure You know, it's very new for some of these students, might be their first time really ever using Excel.

I, I, I think it's just trying to solve a problem, whether it's big or small, just for the purpose of solving that individual problem. So how that translates into models, whether they're big or small, is gonna be like lots of just hardcoded values. Don't do that. Like when you're taking a test and you need to, you know, you're asked to calculate a loan payment or something like that. Yeah. You're solving an individual problem. But when we get into modeling, what the initial thing that, that I think people need to learn is they're not trying to find a loan payment. They're trying to build a system that is going to take in a flexible set of inputs and generate a loan payment as an output so that they can then go and change the inputs and then get the right answer and not have to resolve the problem. But yeah, so I mean, it's, it's, it's being very, very focused in, in, in solving individual problems instead of thinking about systems and process.

And that totally makes sense because that's usually how we work in school. You're just thinking, how do I solve this case? I want to get the answers in, whether it's accounting or whatever it is. And with the model, you're trying to teach them that, no, you're building a system. So if you change the inputs, you make adjustments. It will work continuously with you. It's an evolving document. You know, it's not something you just get the answer and move on.

Yep, exactly. Exactly. And it's interesting how long it sometimes takes that to click because we are so trained not to think that way.

Yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way, but that totally makes sense. It's, yeah. It's not the way we study. It's not the way we typically learn. Now, whether we should or not is a whole different debate that I'm sure we could spend the rest of the time on, but—

Oh yeah, yeah. We can talk a lot about the system.

And it's going to be interesting to watch how it changes with AI. I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts on that, but we'll get back to modeling for our audience. So I know you're a big fan of Excel Esports.

How did you first discover it?

What was your reaction? Kind of tell a little bit of that journey.

I learned about Excel Esports the same way a lot of folks have learned about Excel Esports, and that is they, they know David Brown. So David is a finance professor at the University of Arizona. And interestingly, I was— I met David. I was on faculty at Arizona at the time, and I was in the process of leaving, moving to Tennessee, and we were in the process of trying to hire him. And that was, gosh, 12 or so years ago. But I met David and I kept up with him over the years. And then maybe 5 years ago, we reconnected and spent a bit of time together. And he was kind of telling me the story about how Excel esports work. And David, for folks who don't know, he is the founder of the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge, which is the kind of the big network and the big competition. Competition at the college level. And David learned from Andrew Grigoriev— I have trouble with Andrew's last name.

Grigorievich, I think.

Yeah, I have a hard time with it too. But who actually is— so if David's kind of the father of college Excel esports, Andrew would be the grandfather of that, right? Because Andrew started the Financial Modeling World Cup and the Microsoft Excel World Cup, uh, or World Championship. And, uh, when, when David kind of told me about how all of these, these things work, I was like, hey man, I'm, I'm in. This is, this is awesome. It's, it's learning. It's the opportunity to display creativity. It's working under pressure and competition. We, we, we love to compete. It's, it's something that, something you can win at. So, so, so why not? Uh, but, but yeah, so I was immediately, immediately excited.

Love it. And for those who are interested, uh, David Brown was one of the first interviews I ever did. Funny enough though, I think it's episode 3 was David Brown, but back to back I interviewed two David Browns. So it's the University of Arizona one, not David Brown that runs a consulting firm out of Africa. 'Cause they were literally, I think, episode 3 and 4 of the podcast. So it was kind of funny 'cause I'm like, And this week I have David Brown, then the next week, and I have David Brown again. Tell our audience, what's it like competing? Let's start with that versus coaching. Cause I know you've competed in the event as well. Yeah.

What's it like? I mean, I've done, I've done a little, a little, a little competition, more coaching than competition, but I mean, I think the way to think about it is you're, you're going to walk in and you're going to encounter some type of problem like you've, you've never seen before. It's something completely new, maybe totally off the wall and. You're gonna have a few minutes to read, plan, digest, and then maybe 30 minutes to just go at it and make as much progress as you can. And I, at least, I'm very used to just typing, type all day long, but I get in there and just like all tensed up and you're making mistakes and trying to, you know, move around and get things done. And, uh, I'm trying to remember all the tools in your tool belt. It's, it's interesting what happens to you when you think you know everything and then you're under a, under a huge time crunch and you forget how to copy and paste cells sometimes. But it's an interesting beast. It's, it's, it's pretty cool though.

It is pretty cool and it is unique. I've competed a few times, not a lot. I think I've done 4, maybe 4 or 5 times in total. And it is definitely unique, especially the first time you do it.

Yeah. But I don't know, it just, it, it, it's addictive. Like, I, I mean, it's just like, I, I, I want to, I want to come back. I want to do more. It's, um, it's, it's just fun. A lot of fun.

Love it. So talk about what it's like coaching students, cuz obviously coaching versus doing it yourself is very different.

Very different. Very different. Um, so certainly there, there, there's techniques and, and, and skills that they need to learn, but there's, there's an interesting twist to the coaching part that, that comes from the fact that, so, so these students and students that I work with and the students that are, are, are into this stuff, they're typically gonna be high achievers, also highly competitive individuals themselves, but that brings this dynamic where you've got, you've got students who are very accustomed to, in all their academic career, studying very hard, regularly earning A's, oftentimes attaining perfect scores or near-perfect scores on their exams, and then just kind of keep on going. They just expect, they expect excellence and they're bright. And so, so this is not unjustified, but in Excel esports, this is, it's so different because Achieving perfection is rare, even for the best players. And so I've got to just drill it into my kids early and often to know that, you know what, you're probably going to see a problem that is too big for you to solve today, or for sure in 30 minutes. And in, in some cases, 50% may be like a really, really good score. And to a super high achiever, that's a hard thing to stomach.

And so somebody who's never got a B in their life to be sold, be happy with 50%. Yeah.

Yeah. But the thing that I try to use to hook them is this. While that experience doesn't look like a test that they're accustomed to taking. It looks a lot like real life. And, uh, that's a place where, you know, your, your, your life, your work life at least is one where a good goal on any given day is just to make as much progress as you can and just have a place to start, um, the next day. And so, so, so I think the cases are much more like real work than they are tests and good thing.

Totally agree. And I'm curious, how did you decide that, you know, making the learning— because I know you've— and we'll talk about this— you've turned several of the, uh, cases into esports learning cases for learning financial modeling, right? You've turned that into a competitive game. So you started saying, hey, let's do some of these esports. Then you said, how can I teach financial modeling as a competitive game, kind of an esports framework? So how did you first come up with that idea? How did you develop that idea. Well, my background is in FP&A. I am also passionate about financial modeling. Like many financial modelers, I was self-taught. Then I discovered the Financial Modeling Institute, the organization that offers the Advanced Financial Modeler program. I am a proud holder of the AFM. Preparing for the AFM exam made me a A Better Modeler. If you want to improve your modeling skills, I recommend the AFM program. Podcast listeners save 15% on the AFM program. Just use code PODCAST.

So, uh, well, first of all, I, I, um, I can't take credit for the whole, um, financial modeling in esports. So there are many greats that, that did that well before me, uh, specifically Andrew and David and that lineage. But I did focus really clearly on the FMI stuff. So that was, in some sense, it was new because it was a different set of material. But yeah, so I mean, I already recognized it just watching my students compete in more kind of generic cases that really didn't have anything to do with finance or more just general problem solving. I just, just watching how engaged they were, especially with things that they could do in Teams, because they loved it. They just thrived on working together and then putting a live scoreboard up so that they could see their progress. I was saying, okay, there, there, there is, there is certainly something here, but what I was lacking was, I hate to say it, but basically an enforcement mechanism to get them to a lot of students to do the cases because I mean, it's, it's really kind of sold as an extracurricular activity and these are busy kids. I've got a lot of things to do. And so, um, I set out to find ways to bring the competitions into the actual classroom. So it was part of their actual course. And so then, you know, I've got a captive audience and so it's great. And so in order to do that, I had to take the actual subject matter that was being taught in a given course at a given time and put it into the context of the models. But it's really, in many ways, it wasn't that hard because if you think of a model very broadly as just some mechanism that has some inputs, does stuff with those inputs, and then generates outputs. That are useful for decision-making. That's exactly what we're doing in many of our classes, especially those that have a quantitative bent. And finance is just, it's perfect for that, right? Because that's what we do in finance from a very basic level when we're learning time value of money, we're solving problems. And so I just started taking these ideas and putting them into the case framework, and I started really small with intro to finance topics like calculating loan payments, calculating retirement savings amounts, things like that, moving into bond pricing, um, stock pricing, some risk and return, building portfolios. And then this past spring, I had the opportunity to do an honors class with a group of second semester sophomores, all finance majors. And so this is really their first semester when they're even taking finance. And, and so I, I, I just, uh, had the, the freedom to just try stuff with them just to see what we could do. And, uh, we blew through all the material that, um, I had planned in the first two-thirds of class. And so end of, end of that, I had another month. I'm like, well, what are we gonna do? Well, um, I, I, I like the FMI curriculum. I like the, uh, the, the foundations package. I know it, it's, uh, um, it's a very good thing for them to learn. So let's, let's put 'em through that. And on Fridays for a few weeks in a row, let's just do a case based on that material. And so more complex than the original cases I was writing for them, but by that time they'd seen cases, they knew how they work, inputs and outputs and all of that. And so now they've just got a new set of material. And so now they're building a revenue schedule, they're building a cost schedule, and they're making it all the way down to EBITDA and incorporating taxes and CapEx waterfall and getting all the way through an income statement. So it was, it was pretty cool. Just, just kind of one layer at a time and just see what they could handle. And they, they delivered.

Sounds like kind of a little bit born on the FMI side of doing that outta necessity in the sense of, okay, I gotta go, I got a few more weeks of material I need to do. What am I gonna do? I like this material. I like the framework of competitions 'cause I know they can learn that way. So let's start layering in these lessons in the competitions.

Absolutely. And it worked. I mean, it worked very well hand in hand because they were, I know many of your viewers have, have, uh, been through the material and they're familiar with Ian's videos and, and, and some of his models that he's got in there. And so, so my students were watching all of that and, um, at the end of the week, it was time to show what you learned. We were gonna, we're gonna do a case on this.

That's great that you did that. I mean, I know we're both, I'm a huge fan of the FMI. I know as are you, and I think it's a great way for college students to learn because there's such good structure in it. And Ian is, you know, he taught for 20 years. He worked in the industry. He now runs the Financial Modeling Institute. You're not going to find a more connected, smarter modeler out there. You can find others that are also just as smart and connected, but you know, he's one of the foremost in the world. So it's just a. Really great way to have students to learn.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

What surprised you most throughout this journey as you started doing this? What's been kind of the biggest surprise?

So it was really just the, the continued hunger that I've seen in these students. Um, these are, these are impressive kids that, that, uh, I've gotten to know and gotten to mentor and and see grow, but, you know, I would push them and, and they respond and, and they're like, they're, they're excited. They're, they're like excited to come to class and try to beat their friends across the room. And they're wanting to, they're wanting to meet outside of class and learn more. I've got, I've got a call this week. This is, uh, for the time of our filming, this is what, June June 19th. I've got a, I've got a Zoom call tomorrow morning with 8 students just to touch base and see how they're doing over the summer and talk about some, some esports cases that they can work on as they continue to tune up over the summer and get ready for the fall competition. So that's cool. Huge, huge surprise. Very pleasant surprise. So just thrilled that they're responding the way they are.

That's awesome. What I want to do here, and I'm going to encourage anyone who is listening, if you get a chance to watch this section on video, is I'm going to ask you to just take us through a case example, kind of a little bit of how you built it, the levels, what the students are getting from it. So feel free here to kind of bring it up on screen and I'll bring it up and you can walk us through one. All right, so Eric, I know you're going to kind of walk us through a case here. So we have up on the screen, so for those of you who may be listening audio, we encourage you to turn this on. This is an Excel esports case. Revenue minus cost equals EBITDA. I like the Grid Professor on the side there. Nice.

Yeah, that's a brand that, that, uh, that, that's, uh, myself and, uh, David Brown. So we're putting this together and making some resources under that brand. But yeah, so this is, um, so just the, the backdrop here for those who are very familiar with FMI Foundations, um, we're at about chapters 3, 4, and 5 in their 10-chapter, um, course here in this case. And so what students have already learned is how to build a revenue schedule. And then, so there was a previous case for that. And this case is the next week where they also learn how to build a cost schedule. And so for the case, they're doing a revenue schedule and a cost schedule, and then putting them together and starting to build an income statement. But just real quickly, the way these cases always work is there's going to be 7 different levels and they're going to get progressively more difficult. So levels 1 all the way down through 7, and then in each level, there are going to be 20 different games. And so each row here is one of those games. And so you can think of each level as a model, and then each game within the level is representing a unique set of inputs that are going through that, through that model. And so the idea for the students is you want to build your model for the level so that the example works, and then you want to quickly iterate through all of the different games to do basically a sensitivity analysis really quickly. Going. And there's techniques that people follow with like data tables to get through, to iterate through really quickly. But there's always going to be some inputs out here and then the output or the solution is going to go here. And then this case is linked to some assumptions. And so these assumptions, this is an abbreviated version of what the FMI folks would put on their assumption tab. So it's just the ones that are needed here.

I'm very familiar from having done the FMI of the best, worst, I'm like volume growth, sales price, cost inflation.

I remember meeting Paul Barnhurst.

Yeah.

So we got our scenario. So we got scenario. So thinking, you know, you're going to have a scenario switcher in your model and you've got these variables that are going to switch with the scenarios and then maybe some starting values for, for, for some things. But here in Level 1, very, very simple. They're asked to forecast unit sales volume. And so I guess they've got the actual revenue. And so they're going to, they're going to divide that by price back here in their assumptions tab, and it's going to gradually get more difficult. 5 years of sales volume, 5 years of revenue, and then we're moving into costs. And so here we've got some starting levels of actuals and actual COGS. And so you're going to, you're going to, you're going to identify your, your variable costs per unit. Here we're going to start switching scenarios and it gets more complex. And so since you're doing a 5-year per unit variable cost, you'll have to, for each one of these, you'll have to pull in like an inflation rate from, from your assumptions tab. And then you're gradually getting more and more complex onto level 7 where here's your inputs. So you've got a scenario that's going to link to your, assumptions tab. You've got some actuals, revenue, COGS, and SG&A expenses, and you're asked to forecast the next 5 years of EBITDA. And then the answer is just some check value, like a sum of 5 years of forecasts. These cases, um, I had one group, they were in, students were in groups of 3. And for a couple of these cases, I had one group that finished the entire thing in 30 minutes. And so that was, uh, You know, that was impressive because the spirit here is just like the FMI spirit in that they've got to build these things more or less from scratch. So, so yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Yeah, I know. It's a great, great way for them to be thinking about it because I would imagine the more structured they build it early on, if they think about the 5 years and build it like a model and build it properly from step 1, the easier it becomes as they get down to levels. Versus if you just do what is the natural of, I just got to get the answer. I don't care what it looks like. When you get to level 7, you're like, oh crap, I got to build everything now.

Yep, exactly.

Level 5, you start realizing more and more, because I was thinking that even as I was watching, I'm like, okay, the way to set this up is do all 5 years, build my revenue schedule, and build the switches in place. So as I get further down the line, it's just a matter of adding one more thing, switching something, and I have the answer.

Yep, exactly, exactly. And I can even show you what a model, a final model might look like. So here I've got it, got my solution. Pardon my use of all sorts of tabs here.

You're all good. We know how Excel works. My audience pleasant, then I have the wrong audience listening. So you mentioned you're going to bring up the solution. So we have the solution here for each level. I think we're looking at level 7 solution. So kind of walk us through what we're looking at.

Yeah, here's level 7 where they're, they're basically working their way down to EBITDA. And you look over here to the, to the side, this is where I'd built out the model. And, um, I, I pulled in a one level of assumptions. So the scenario revenue, COGS, SG&A, et cetera. And then I just really quickly built the revenue schedule up here at the top, cost schedule below. Working all the way down to EBITDA here. And the way I work my way through it is I just set up a, set up a data table over here. I've got a control cell that determines which of the games I'm on. So here I'm on example, example 7. So I could switch to game number, say 121, and everything over here in the model updates. And, uh, have, um, have the bottom line EBITDA, which ends up being, uh, the answers. And so they iterate through the data table, copy and paste all their answers over into their green blanks, and, uh, they're done.

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I think a, a huge aha is when they set up their case in a way that they can quickly iterate through all of the inputs. And so typically it's done using a data table. So when they get their model right, they think it's right, because it's solving the example and they're matching the numbers. And then they quickly just run through every different scenario of inputs and they paste their answers and they see that they're all correct. That's, that's pretty cool. Right? It's, it's, it's going from Hey, I think I built a model that got a right answer to my model's actually robust. I just changed all the inputs and it didn't break. That's, that's a pretty cool accomplishment for them.

And, and that gets back to your point of that's when they realize it's a system, not hard coding, cuz they just changed inputs and everything still worked and they can validate it worked. Where in the real world, you don't get that luxury of instantly validating. You gotta go look at it and say, do I think it's still working right? And. Set everything to zero and go, why do I have $100,000 of EBITDA? Obviously something's wrong or whatever, right? There are ways you could do it, but it's not a simple validation. So I'm curious. Okay. So I'm going to switch a little bit here on these topics, but change from, uh, building the cases to the back to the students. What's the most memorable team name? You've shared several of them on LinkedIn. I know I've seen some fun ones from time to time. The students Totally fits for college. Have a lot of fun coming up with your name. So what's the—

Yeah, yeah. So, so just, just, just for, for context. So what we do is we have a scoreboard that is up on, on the board and it's a, it is an online Excel sheet where all of their answers are feeding into it. And so we're tracking their scores in real time. And so the students get to pick their leaderboard name, right, for their, for their teams. And so, well, I think the first competition I did in the entire semester, the winning team happened to pick the, the Dim Early Fan Club as their team name. And I thought that was, uh, that was pretty appropriate. And, uh, other fun ones. So gosh, look, this is, this is Excel. And so there's all sorts of fun things that you can do with Excel. So we would have things like Ctrl+Alt+Defeat, and then we would have Ctrl+Alt+Delete. One, one week we had Tough Sheet. That was, that was kind of fun. So gosh, back in April. So April, we all know what happened in June, but back in April I did have a team name that was Nixon Five. So a little prophetic there. But yeah, so they had a lot of fun with those.

Love it. Yeah, it's totally something students would have fun. What's the overall feedback been from the students?

Been positive. I mean, it's been really positive on the fly. You know, they'll hang around after the competitions and want me to look at their models and figure out what was broken and why they didn't, didn't make as much progress as they wanted to, which is great. Cause I mean, we all know that one of the best ways to learn is to fail, right? Cause you remember the things that you mess up. So on the spot, it's been good. After the fact, it's even, it's even better. It's like I'll have students email me over the summer at their internships saying things like, man, Sure, I'm glad we did all that stuff in the spring. It, my Excel skills are just, they're just paying off big time now. And, uh, so, so that, that's, that's neat, right? When you, when you hear students say, in my job, this thing that I'm trying to do, this thing that we did, it, it matters now and it's given me the leg up and, and, and putting me ahead. And, and I'm the person that people are, are, are asking, uh, for help on So that's nice.

No, that's really cool. I like that. All right. So I am curious, one more thing kind of on these cases and things is what would you recommend to someone else who may be considering doing it? What advice would you give them if you have a professor listening or someone thinking they could use it in a, in whatever scenario it might be? What advice would you give them? Because obviously you've put a lot of time into this. You've gone through a lot of that. So we'd love some of your thoughts. Stare at?

I would, first and foremost, I would say just get your hands dirty and try a case. And try a case is a, it's a tough ask in a lot of ways, 'cause you can end up in some pro case and you have no idea what even Level 1 is. And so you can, you can sign up for the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge, mecc.college, and get some of the archive cases there. In the, the most recent year or so, MECC has been producing junior varsity cases. They're all labeled JV. And they're designed to have very low barrier of entry and, uh, using basic, uh, basic skills. But the, but the, the real value of doing those is you, you just learn the process. If you can learn the process of kind of the way the cases work when the, the, the level of difficulty is pretty low, then you can move in and start, uh, start, start doing more difficult cases. Another nice thing that is provided, uh, would be walkthrough videos. So I, I've been very pleasantly surprised with how generous the Excel esports community is with their time in that people will just, they'll just record videos walking through a case and describing how they did it. And so many of the cases that folks can find and try on their own, you can find some experienced player that's put out a walkthrough video that teaches you how to how to work the case. So just jumping in and doing some and then watching other people do and it just kind of snowballs from there.

Yeah, I hear you on that. So I want to move on to kind of our standard section as we move toward the wrap-up. So the first one is favorite Excel shortcut.

Ctrl+Z.

And tell our audience, in case anyone doesn't know, what does Ctrl+Z do? Oops. Yeah, exactly.

It undoes. It undoes.

You know how many times it will undo something before you can't do it anymore?

Do I know how many times?

Yeah, there's a limit. Do you know?

I don't know the limit.

Here is a limit. 100.

What's the limit? Okay.

Uh, sadly enough, I tried once because I screwed something up quite a while ago and I wonder if I can get back there. No luck. So 100-year limit. What's the most unique or fun thing you've done with the spreadsheet? Kind of in your personal life, any kind of fun models you built or things you built?

In our first MECC regional competition, I worked with David Brown in case development, and we had a case that, that had a cornhole board on it. So there's a picture of a cornhole board on the case, and students had to track where the beanbags landed and score a cornhole game.

Fun. So how did the students like that one? I bet they really enjoyed that case.

We did. Now, some of them to this day chastise me because they didn't know the rules to cornhole and thought that put them at a disadvantage. But, you know, you'll learn somehow.

You can never learn. If you're doing Excel esports cases, there's going to be one where you're just looking at and go, I have no clue. I know that much. All right. So now we're going to go to our rapid-fire section. So how this one works is I'm going to ask you some quick questions around modeling. And you have to pick a side. You can't say it depends. Then at the end, you can elaborate on one or two, because I know there's nuance to almost every one of these, pretty much. So, circular references in models, yes or no?

Yes.

VBA, yes or no?

No.

Lambdas in financial models, yes or no?

Yes.

External workbook links?

No.

He said that with authority. Most people do. Should modelers primarily use keyboard shortcuts?

Yes.

Should models always be print ready?

Yes.

Is there ever a situation where merged cells are acceptable?

No.

That's the strongest answer. Should financial modelers learn Python in Excel?

No.

What about Power Query? Yes. How about Power BI?

No. Okay.

Ish. Should every financial modeler be able to build a fully integrated three-statement model? Yes. I can tell you're struggling with few. It's fun to watch. Will Excel ever die?

No.

Have you used AI to help you build a model in Excel?

Yes.

Okay. What financial statement is most important for modelers if you had to pick one? Income statement, balance sheet, or cash flow?

Cash flows.

All righty. What's your favorite LLM? Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT, or other?

Claude.

Claude. That's a pretty common answer at the moment. If you could pick only one for all your models for the rest of your life, which would you choose? Sensitivity analysis or scenario analysis?

Scenario.

You struggled with that, but I've only had one person say sensitivity. So it's interesting on that one. Do you believe financial models are the number one corporate decision-making tool?

Yes.

Okay. And then what's your favorite lookup function?

XLOOKUP.

XLOOKUP. All right. I know you hesitated on a few. Is there one or two of those you want to elaborate on?

The, the things financial modelers need to know, like even maybe 6 months ago, I would have said yes to Python, but I just, I don't know. AI can write some great Python functions for us. And I mean, I'm not big on turning everything over to AI, like most people are not big on that, but, you know, writing some Python is I don't know, I'm kind of okay with turning some of that over. And then like the Power BI, I know that a lot of the world uses Power BI, but I feel like the modeler just needs to be conversant with Power BI as opposed to really being an expert in it and sort of knowing what inputs and outputs need to be to work with it.

And I tend to agree with you on both those. Power Query, I say yes, because you're just going to deal with messy data, especially coming from FP&A. It was, you know, that saved my life. I can't even count how many times, so.

Well, and also just the idea of knowing you're gonna have bunches of files that are coming in that have the same structure and the ability to just drop them in a folder and have something done to them. That's a fantastic use of Power Query.

100%. I love watching people's eyes open open up and get big when they realize, you mean that thing I've been spending 6 hours a month on, I can do in like 20 seconds? Yeah, you just need to spend about 2 hours to set it up. You know, it's not that hard. And they get, they get really excited. So that's one of my favorite things to teach. All right, so as we wrap up here, kind of at the end of our time, any final advice, parting words you'd like to give the audience? Anything you want to share before we wrap up?

Well, I mean, I think, um, like, like many other things, getting good at modeling, it takes practice. You know, it's, it's like learning to hit a baseball or learn to shoot a free throw. You've got to do it. You've got to practice. There's, there's really not a whole lot of shortcuts to learning. And fortunately, we're, we're in a world now where there's all sorts of resources to help you learn.

100% agree. It's never been easier. The resources out there to decide you want to learn something. It's just a matter of you deciding you want to do it. Is really what it comes down to nowadays. So I really appreciate you carving out some time, Eric. You know, we'll put your link in and your profile information in the show notes you gave us so people can reach you if they want. And I'm excited for this episode to come out. Keep doing what you're doing with esports and teaching the students. I think it's a great way for them to learn. So thanks for what you're doing there for all those students.

Well, and thanks for the conversation today, Paul. It's been a lot of fun. Yep.

Enjoyed it. Thank you. Financial Modelers Corner was brought to you by the Financial Modeling Institute. This year I completed the Advanced Financial Modeler certification and it made me a better financial modeler. What are you waiting for? Visit FMI at www.fminstitute.com/podcast and use code podcast to save 15%. When you enroll in one of the accreditations today.