Financial Modelers Simplify Spreadsheets to Reduce Errors and Succeed in 2025 with Myles Arnott

A lot of people don't think about design. People aren't thinking about that design process very often because they're just in a rush and they just want to get from raw data to output.

Tell me that horror story, that worst model you've ever worked with.

The worst was a Miles is the.

Co founder of Full Stack Modeler, an innovative online training platform that equips finance professionals with world class financial modeling, data analytics and Excel expertise. Miles has spent more than 15 years running a successful spreadsheet consultancy and training business. Beyond training, he serves as a fractional Finance Director, partnering with growing UK SMEs to provide strategic financial leadership. What advice would you offer to somebody who is trying to better set up their spreadsheets?

Simple, clear, consistent, three really straightforward rules to live by and they all help that lowering of risk and making sure other people can tell what's going on in your model.

You recently took the Advanced Financial Modeler from fmi. What was the thinking behind Hey, I.

Should take this in finance that's a really valuable skill to be able to do a three segment model. Not many people can do them.

What advice would you offer to anyone who's listening and they're considering taking the test? What would you say to them?

The thing I found most valuable was.

Welcome to Financial Modelers Corner where we discuss the art and science of financial modeling with your host Paul Barnhurst. Financial Modeler's Corner is sponsored by Financial Modeling Institute. Welcome to Financial Modeler's Corner. I am your host Paul Barnhurst. This is a podcast 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. I'm thrilled to welcome on the show this week Miles Arnott. Miles, welcome to the show.

Thanks Paul and thanks for having me.

Excited to have you. So, a little bit about Miles background before we jump into the interview. Miles brings over 25 years of Excel expertise with a background as a CEMA qualified accountant. He is a co founder of Full Stack Modeler and the owner and founder of Clarity Consultancy Services, a spreadsheet consultancy and training business. At Clarity. He works as a fractional finance director for UK SMEs, combining his technical knowledge with real world application. So we're really excited to have you and we're going to start with this question. Tell me that horror story that worst model you've ever worked with.

It's an interesting one, Paul. So as you from my bio there, you probably got a sense that I work in a mix of financial modeling and what I'd call operational finance modeling. So a bit of a mixed bag really. And I think the worst was a project I worked on where it's quite a hard thing they were trying to do. But we were looking to take a model that existed and turn it into a proper system. So turn it into a database that flowed through into an Excel file. So an Excel file at the front, collect data, load data up and then put it out. So I had to take the original file. So the thing that existed and then try and understand what was going on. And it was absolutely horrific. So the people that have built it, it was a one page wonder of what I would call it. So everything in one page for this enormous amount of work. And then they did that thing of taking every element of the source data and just moving it down and to the right so that you just kept on going down and to the right, down to the right. So when you clicked on a formula, what would happen is it would just explode in terms of where it was referencing things. So things above, things below, things down in the left hand corner, things down in the right hand corner. And so to try and unpick that was unreal. And it's one of the formula we use in our training courses for best practice modeling to show what not to do. Because it was like a full page size of formula with like 6 or 7 nested ifs, 10 or 12 vlookups. It's just like unfathomable and how anyone could ever work out. And that was just one formula. And it was throughout, poorly structured, impossible to unpick. And yeah, I had the job of trying to unpick that and rebuild it into something that made sense.

So how much were you actually able to unpick it versus forget it. I'm starting over and I'll go ask them the questions I need.

Perfect question for exactly that. Like literally that was it. I looked at it for about 30 seconds, was like, no one knows how that works. There's no way whoever built that's not going to know how that works. So yeah, straight away I was like, roughly what's it picking up? And then go and talk to the user. Yeah, absolutely not trying to unpick that for sure.

Yeah, we, we've all been there. I like what one guest said. He's like, build your model simple enough when you open them a Week later you actually understand the formula because how many have done that? You build a formula and then you open up a file, you know, sometime later, and you're like, what is this formula even doing?

Absolutely. Yeah. So. So it's what I always teach the same actually. So build something publicly about doing it because I thought that would push me to make sure I sat it this February. And yeah, I posted about it on LinkedIn and stuff. And then I did realize that moment where you, you have to pass because if I fail, I'm going to be in all sorts of trouble. So Giles will never let me bit down for starters, will he? So he, he's an mfm, so if I can't get afm, I'm in all sorts of trouble. So.

And, and how do you think it. First, let's talk. How did the test go? How did you. How do you feel about things? I mean, I know you're still waiting, but you're able to get your balance sheet to balance and kind of follow all the best practices you teach. You feel pretty, pretty good when you were done?

Yeah. Good. Yeah. Like I said, I'm sitting here slightly concerned that you're going to hold this bit of content and release it just as like Miles fails then, but here he is saying that, yeah, I found it really easy, but now it's, you know, like you said, I've modeled for a long time. I follow the fast standard, so very particular way of modeling. My nature is to prepare very heavily. So I'm someone who practice, practice, practice, practice and then find it. Not find it easy, but train hard, fight easy is my kind of thing. So work really hard at that, that base bit. So I did a lot of prep. I did a lot of practice on the, on the day. I kind of got it done in two hours. So you got four hours to have it finished. So I had about an hour and a half to check a few things through. And I'm glad I did because I found a couple of things where I'd kind of breezed through and then realized I shouldn't have done. And they threw in a couple of curveballs this year, I thought. So this sitting in February. So there was a couple of little sneaky bits that took a little bit of different time to think about, which haven't been in previous exams that I've seen. So, yeah, it felt really good. When I started practicing for it, I realized the first thing I wanted to do once I built the structure was to get the balance sheet to balance and then every incremental step that I did. The balance sheet balanced and it was just if you get it wrong, you're going to see it in that small bit that you got wrong, not do it all and then try and balance it at the end and then start crying with 10 minutes to go. So, so that was my thing. Balance it early and then keep going.

Yeah, I was probably, I got everything done. My balance sheet didn't balance.

Oh wow.

And I don't know, I probably had an hour, a little over an hour left and I hadn't cleaned up a lot of little things. And so what I did is I went and you know, finished the executive summary, finished the form, made sure everything, the scenario, everything was a good place, everything was done, then came back to it and realized I had just, I was really, really tired. It'd been a long week and I put parentheses in the wrong place and that was it for it. And once I fixed that everything balanced there's about 10 minutes ago, I'm like, okay, I feel better now.

Nice. Yeah. I mean that's the risk. Particularly under, under pressure. And you know, we don't, when you're modeling, you don't tend to be under that kind of pressure. Yeah, we can be at pressure in a project but you don't typically read a case study and fire on so easy to just get signage wrong or put something in slightly the wrong place under that pressure. And that's why for me it was balance it straight away. I use a control flag as well so that you can always see if you're reconciled on every page and then that just means that you've always got that visibility and there's no surprises. Yeah, I would have been in all sorts of trouble if it didn't balance at the end. I would have been in mass panic. I think.

So, yeah, it had me pretty panicked. I was so tired. Part was like I don't even know if I care anymore. And they're like, no, no, no, you got to get this done.

What's kind of crazy though, I. I set myself a three month window which I felt was like a really nice amount of time to prep for it. And I laid out a plan of what I was going to cover. Like start a revenue down through the P and L, then into depreciation, go through the schedules. And there was one area that I hadn't done before which was the revolver debt. I've never needed to model that before. Had an interesting chat with Ian, Ian Schnur about that actually, because I've just never modeled it. It Kind of models in the uk, where I'm doing SME models, I leave the cash flow go negative because I want to know if it's negative, because then I need to know if I need debt or equity. So I've never done a revolver, so I spent a bit more time learning that. But the reality, I think, is what you were saying as well, Paul. The reality, as I got through going through my day job, I got distracted, got taken away with work and in the end I was quite limited on the amount of time I actually had to practice. I got kind of caught up in a few projects and a few deliverables. So if it had been a harder thing for me, I would have found that quite hard. So I definitely recommend a nice patch of about three months. So they're every three months, so it's quite a good little window of time to do, but that's what I recommend.

I agree. Give yourself some time. I, yeah, I would have liked to have put more time into the training and I completely relate to what you're saying. You think you're gonna have more time and life happens.

Yeah, absolutely.

As we say, what advice would you offer to anyone who's listening and they're considering taking the test? What would you say to them?

If you're a modeler and you're thinking about it, just do it, give yourself a bit of time. So depending on where you are in your journey, I guess, like for me, like I said, I find it relatively straightforward because I've been teaching it for so long, but get yourself to a point of comfort with the skill set and then take it, because it's one of those things we can just put off, particularly once we've got through our life a little bit. And, you know, you've got life, I've got two children, you've got work, you know, various jobs, I've got quite a mix of jobs. It's so easy to put things off. So I just recommend just go for it, make sure you've got the time and then just sign up and get on with it. Because it's such a good exam, such a good test of your ability to build a three statement model. And actually, like, I'm talking to a financial modeling audience, but outside of our, our little world in finance, that's a really valuable skill to be able to do a three statement model. Not many people can do them. A lot of finance directors, that's just not their skill set. So to be able to say that you can build a three statement model in Excel is A really valuable thing.

Agreed. There's, there's a lot of value to it. It's a great program. It helps you really think about design because you know if you're going to build something in four hours, you need to have good design. You can't be all over the place like your horror story. That's just not going to work. And so I think that's one thing I really like. How much time did you spend kind of studying or how much time would you recommend someone spend kind of preparing? And I know it's going to vary a little bit depending on how much somebody's modeled, but just kind of high level your thoughts?

Yeah, I think, I think that kind of three month window, so FMI's own content is really good. So Ian's got a load of recordings through. I think if you had three months just to like a number of maybe three or four hours a week to dedicate to that. Make sure at the end you leave a lot of time for case study practice. That was the thing I found most valuable was like get through the, the main skill sets. Give yourself enough time for that. Maybe three, four hours a week, some time at the weekends to do those case studies. I didn't do a case study in one run. I broke it up. So I, because I was doing it in broadly two hours, I did an hour and an hour because that just like trying to fit that around my life. I was breaking it. Breaking it, of course. But yeah, I think three, four hours a week for three months depending this year I thought so this sitting in February. So there was a couple of little sneaky bits that, that took a little bit of different time to think about, which haven't been in previous exams that I've seen. So yeah, it felt really good when I started practicing for it. I realized the first thing I wanted to do once I built the structure was to get the balance sheet to balance. And then every incremental step that I did, the balance sheet balanced. And it was just if you get it wrong, you're going to see it in that small bit that you got wrong, not do it all, then try and balance it at the end and then start crying with 10 minutes to go. So that was my thing, balance it early and then, then Kiko.

Yeah, I was probably, I got everything done. My balance sheet didn't balance.

Oh wow.

And I don't know, I probably had an hour, a little over an hour left and I hadn't cleaned up a lot of little things. And so what I did is I Went and you know, finished the executive summary, finished the form, made sure everything, the scenario, everything was a good place, everything was done. Then came back to it and realized I had just, I was really, really tired, it'd been a long week and I put parentheses in the wrong place and that was it for it. And once I fix that everything balance, there's about 10 minutes to go. I'm like, okay, I feel better now.

Nice. Yeah, I mean that's the risk, particularly under, under pressure. And you know, we don't, when you're modeling, you don't tend to be under that kind of pressure. You know we can be at pressure in a project but you don't typically read a case study and fire on. So easy to just get signage wrong or put something in slightly the wrong place under that pressure. And that's why for me it was balance it straight away. I use a control flag as well so that you can always see if you're reconciled on every page and then that just means that you've always got that visibility and there's no surprises. Yeah, I would have been in all sorts of trouble if it didn't balance at the end. I would have been in mass panic, I think.

Yeah, it had me pretty panicked. I was so tired. Part of it was like, I don't even know if I care anymore. And they're like, no, no, no, you got to get this done.

What was kind of crazy though, I. I set myself a three month window which I felt was like a really nice amount of time to prep for it. And I laid out a plan of what I was going to cover, like start a revenue down through the P L then into depreciation, go through the schedules. And there was one area that I hadn't done before which was the revolver debt. I've never needed to model that before. Had an interesting chat with Ian, Ian Schneur about that actually, because I've just never modeled it. It's not the kind of models in the UK where I'm doing SME models, I leave the cash flow go negative because I want to know if it's negative because then I need to know if I need debt or equity. I'd never done a revolver, so I spent a bit more time learning that. But the reality I think is what you were saying as well, Paul. The reality as I got through going through my day job, I got distracted, got taken away with work and in the end I was quite limited on the amount of time I actually had to practice. I got kind of caught up in A few projects and a few deliverables. So if it had been a harder thing for me, I would have found that quite hard. So I definitely recommend a nice patch of about three months. So they're every three months, so it's quite a good little window of time to do, but that's what I recommend.

I agree. Give yourself some time. I, yeah, I would have liked to have put more time into the training and so I completely relate to what you're saying. You think you're gonna have more time and life happens.

Yeah, absolutely.

As we say, what advice would you offer to anyone who's listening and they're considering taking the test, what would you say to them?

If you're a modeler and you're thinking about it, just do it, give yourself a bit of time. So depending on where you are in your journey, I guess, like for me, like I said, I find it relatively straightforward because I've been teaching it for so long. But get yourself to a point of comfort with the skill set and then take it because it's one of those things we can just put off, particularly once we've got through our life a little bit. And, you know, you've got life, I've got two children, you've got work, you know, various jobs, I've got quite a mix of jobs. It's so easy to put things off. So I just recommend just go for it, make sure you've got the time and then just sign up and get on with it. Because it's such a good exam, such a good test of your ability to build a three statement model. And actually, like I'm talking to a financial modeling audience, but outside of our, our little world in finance, that's a really valuable skill to be able to do a three statement model. Not many people can do them. A lot of finance directors, that's just not their skill set. So to be able to say that you can build a three statement model in Excel is a really valuable thing.

Agreed. There's, there's a lot of value to it, it's a great program. It helps you really think about design because you know if you're going to build something in four hours, you need to have good design. You can't be all over the place like your horror story, that's just not going to work. And so I think that's one thing I really like. How much time did you spend kind of studying or how much time would you recommend someone spending kind of preparing? And I know it's going to vary a little bit. Depending on how much somebody's modeled, but just kind of high level your thoughts?

Yeah, I think, I think that kind of three month window, so FMI's own content is really good. So Ian's got a load of recordings through. I think if you had three months just to like a number of maybe three or four hours a week to dedicate to that, make sure at the end you leave a lot of time for case study practice. That was the thing I found most valuable was like get through the, the main skill sets. Give yourself enough time for that. Maybe three, four hours a week, some time at the weekends to do those case studies. I didn't do a case study in one run. I broke it up. So I, because I was doing it in broadly two hours, I did an hour and an hour. Cause that just like trying to fit that around my life. I was breaking it. Breaking it, of course. But yeah, I think three, four hours a week for three months depending on where you are, this should be enough.

Yeah. So I mean if you're, you say 12 weeks, three, four hours, kind of what they recommend I think is 50 hours they say you need and that's kind of the range you're, you're coming in close to. So anywhere from 30 to 50 hours just depending on skill level. Obviously the less you've modeled, probably the more you need to put in.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. An interesting one for me was I'm a fast modeler, so model to the broadly the fast standard. Doing a fast model in four hours in the FMI exam is quite a challenge. So one of the things I did was just tweak the way that I worked a little bit to work around how fast works and dragging it into the schedules without. Because a full fast model in four hours is pretty hard going. So.

Sure, yeah, there's some modifications you may need to take. I mean, I think the challenge is with the time is to really, you really have to know what you're doing and be focused to be able to do it in that time. So it goes beyond just knowing how to model. It's knowing how things work inside out and being able to quickly work to pass the test.

Absolutely, yeah. You can't be. There's no time for trying to remember like what you're trying to do in there. It's. You're building and you need to be able to whip those things out. And I practice every schedule on its own individually over and over again so.

That I could just, I did the same each schedule four or five times, just kind of Running through them and I remember watching the videos quite a bit and so. Yeah, I hear you on that. So Full Stack Modeler, that was started in 2020. Maybe talk a little bit about how you were a part of that and what the experience has been like with Full Stack.

Yeah, so we started. Yeah. Five years ago. So we timed it perfectly just around Covid. So we kind of came up with the idea just pre Covid and the idea was to take. So Full Stack, the name comes from the idea of loading together core Excel skills. So everything that you need in Excel, which is a growing thing these days, with everything that's coming out from Microsoft. Yes, it is everything that you need in Excel. All the core stuff up into like solid financial modeling, so AFM level and then, you know, some of the higher stuff as well. And then thinking about visualization, so taking you on clients on that journey, but then also wrapping around that kind of tech. So we talk to tech companies about technology that can support financial modeling and just finance in general and then pulling around that even further. A community. So we've got a vibrant community of about 800 people and events. So we get. People come in. So usually Microsoft MVPs to come in and talk about a very specific subject to us and, and chat that through. So. So that was the concept, that's why it's called Full Stack Modeler, was to try and get to the point where we can give everyone a full stack of capabilities in the, in the finance modeling world. And yeah, it's been, it's been a great experience. There's nothing quite like running your own business. So I've had my own consultancy for years, but it's been very. I've never really thought of it as, as a business. It's like my business, you know, had a few people work with me in the past, but it's not running a business, it's a different thing. So Full Stacks been a great experience of actually living and breathing that, running a business.

Sure. Where you have both founders and it's much more. Yeah. Than a consultancy type. It's just different when you're doing the full training and all that marketing and just a different, a little bit of a different environment.

Yeah, exactly. And you know, the ups and downs of business and, and all that things is, is, you know, it's all, it's all life learning, isn't it? It's all great things to learn through that experience, for sure.

So at Full Stack you're lucky enough to work with what I like to call the world's humblest mvp. I believe his name is Giles. Mel. What can you tell our audience about him? Come on, give it. Give us some dirt on the man.

The world's humblest. I love it. So you've. You've upped him from the humble MVP to the world's humblest. He's going to love that. That's going to boost his ego.

Yeah, that's what I try to do. I feed Giles from G. Feed him.

You started wearing the. The gold jacket as well, so you're really feeding his. Feeding his shiny shoes. So. Yeah, so. So. So what you want me to do is tell the world the truth about the humble mvp? Is that what we're after?

Yeah. I'm sure there's something you can tell us about him. You've worked with him for five years now. You got to have a few. Few secrets here.

Yeah, so. So, unfortunately, so. So Giles kind of knew that this was going to happen, so he. I've got a prepared statement for you, so I'm just going to read it out because I'm not allowed to say anything else. So. So Giles, AKA the humble mvp, he is the most professional, nicest, and most humble person I have ever worked with. So that's. That's all I'm allowed to say. Paul and Frank.

Oh, come on. You can give us more than that statement. I know there's more in there.

No, man, you know. You know, he was very clear about it and. Yeah, I just can't, you know, he.

Won'T listen to this part. Okay, you got to give us at least one thing.

Just one thing. Maybe I'll start like. So when I met him, he was. He was a lovely guy. He was just, you know, nice, normal guy. We met. Was it eight years ago, actually. We met at a ICAW event, which is rock and roll. And. Yeah, just normal guy. And we got him really well. And it's only really last year that he. He kind of moved into this kind of strange. Strange personality. But anyway, yeah, I can't really talk about it too much.

Strange personality. Like, you mean the humble part or the going off on people on LinkedIn for cheat sheets or one day in.

A meeting, he just suddenly was wearing, like, his sunglasses. And I just thought that was a bit weird, to be honest. And. And then like a week later, he turned up in that, you know, the ridiculous white jacket that he wears and.

Yeah, his. Yeah, for his pretend fur coat.

Yeah. So, yeah, he, you know, it's just not normal behavior to, like, turn up in a meeting in sunglasses And a white top. And it just. Yeah, it just started to turn into, like a slightly. Yeah. Slightly stranger way to behave. And then really, it was like the MVP song, which I'm sure you've heard. When we released the MVP song, that was kind of it, really. He just went, like, megalomaniac and, you know, just all kind of went off the road. That from there, really, you know, every meeting that we have, we have to start with the song. So, like, when we have our team meetings on a Monday, he plays the song and we all have to just watch him dance around the room in the background on his zoom thing to the music, which is, like, pretty sad. I think Pete's got his coat on and his glasses. It's a. It's a hard thing. You know, he was such a nice guy at the start, and he's just. Just gone a bit. Bit over the top.

That explains a lot of his behavior in Vegas. I mean, he wore that coat the entire drive from Salt Lake.

And I presume he just sat in the back and forced you and Oz to drive. Yeah, in the video I saw, he looked like he was driving, but I'm guessing you were. You were the show.

He pretended for a little while, but he pretty much. Yeah, he made Oz and I do the real work.

Yeah, it's terrible. That's what he does. Just for the videos. He'll make himself look like a nice guy and then. Yeah, he just. I mean. Yeah, you spent a lot of time with the man. You. You had to deal with that a lot, I guess.

Yeah, I spent almost a week with them. It was enough.

That's crazy. I mean, to be honest, the worst. The worst thing, really, like, the most recent thing was David, if I can share this, but. So mine is Miles. His name's Giles. So you probably notice that Miles and Giles has always been a bit of a joke of ours, and customers have found it quite funny. They're like, really? Miles and Giles, and we used to both find it quite funny, but recently, now that he's like Mr. Humble MVP people, when people now confuse us, that really knocks him. So he really gets angry if people call him Miles and me Giles, because, you know, he's the humble mvp. So a couple of weeks ago, went as far as he told me I needed to think about changing my name. So he's asked me to think about what other name I could call myself so that it doesn't rhyme with his. You know, it's just. It's kind of crazy.

FP and a guy here and as you know, I am very passionate about financial modeling in the Financial Modeling Institute's mission. I have been a huge fan of the FMI for years and I was super excited when they decided to sponsor the Financial Modelers Corner. I recently completed the Advanced Financial Modeler certification and loved the entire experience. It was top notch from start to finish. I am a better modeler today for having completed the certification location. I strongly believe every modeler needs to demonstrate they are a qualified financial modeler. And one of the best ways to do that is through the FMI's program. Earning the accreditation will demonstrate to your current and future employers that you are serious about financial modeling. What are you waiting for? Visit www.fminstitute.com Paul Podcast and use code PODCAST to save 15% when you enroll in an accreditation today. All right, so for the rest of this episode, I'll call you Mikey.

Mikey. Okay. Is that where we're going? Is it, Mikey?

Well, I, I think that's probably enough dirt for one episode. We'll. We'll get back to modeling. Otherwise, our guests are. Our audience is gonna be like, guys talking about.

Yeah. A slight caveat. Everything I've just said is an absolute lie, obviously, because he's a. He's a lovely guy. You can cut that down.

He's a good guy. But we have to have a little bit of fun.

We do, we do.

Shifting gears here a little bit. You've always enjoyed working with businesses to improve systems and processes. You talk about the operational. I know you, you deal with a lot of data. What is it that you like about, you know, that side of things? Working on kind of systems and processes in that area?

Yeah, I think it's really like, it's right in the crux of my DNA, to be honest. So I realized when I was younger, I couldn't stay at a company more than two years. And. And the reason for that is I'd go into a company in a analyst or, or like a management accountant type role, and I just wanted to change everything. So anything that wasn't how I. How I liked it and was manual and awful, I just wanted to change it. And so from. From day one, I was always looking at ways to improve data flows and processes. And so I've always just wanted that. I've always. I probably went too complex at the start. So in my early days, I did that kind of classic learning curve, which is go super complex, put VBA into everything, automate everything to death, and then kind of came back off that learning curve, which is. Let's make everything simple and so kind of simple. Good data flows, best data you can have. All that kind of stuff has been the core of what I try to do every time. And so it's just built right into me from the very start when I started working in that kind of analyst, management accountant, Rob. So it's just been there all the way through since.

So you've always enjoyed the process and automation. I'm not surprised. I think we all go through that little bit of that curve where ooh, I can write this really complex formula, this is cool. And then you realize anyone else looks at your file, goes what in the world are you doing? And maybe I should scale this back. There's that definite learning curve that so many of us go through. Something you else mentioned in there is you talked about, you know, flow of data. I think that's an area we often struggle with in spreadsheets. It's one of the most critical areas to get right in design. What is your take? Why do you think that is such a struggle in so many models that the data flow is just is poor?

I think the reality is something you just said in your, in your question there, Paul, which is a lot of people don't think about design. So a lot of times what happens is we're asked for something. Very often we're under pressure in the reality of our day jobs and we're asked for an output and all we do is go, there's some data, chuck it in my spreadsheet. How do I, in the quickest possible way get that data to an output? And what we're not thinking about is like firstly start at the outputs. What do I need then what sources have I got? What's the bit in the middle? People aren't thinking about that design process very often because they're just in a rush and they just want to get from raw data to output as quickly as is humanly possible. And the spreadsheet kind of, particularly the what I call traditional grid based spreadsheet, you know, working in cells that really allows us to do that and almost encourage us to work in that way.

That's a really good point. It does the little bit. So what advice would you offer to somebody who is trying to better set up their spreadsheets? Managing data flow like what have you found works well or there's some best practices or what would you recommend?

The big bit for me is that starting with the design. So I kind of talked through that already. But thinking about what you're trying to get to as the outputs and then looking at the sources you've got, and if you need to transform those sources, see how far up the chain you can push that transformation. So can you push any of the changes right back up to the very, very source or not? Very often we can't. That's the reality of, that's why we're in Excel, you see. But we try and push them up as far as you can, then use a tool, if you have to, to transform them. Obviously, for me, that's Power Query, like Power Query is an amazing tool within the Excel environment. Absolutely love it. Go to for transforming data. So get everything as tidy as you can at that point. And then I'm a big fan of just dropping one table, so one Excel table of data into the model that's got everything in it. So bring all your data together, transform it, correct it, normalize it, bring it together, one set of data, single table, and then all of your reporting comes off that one table. And that way you've just got one central version of the truth that every report is coming from, and that version of the truth is coming through a structured transformational tool like Power Query.

So when did you first learn about Power Query and when did you realize that this tool could make everything easier?

So it's pretty much when it came out. So I was always been kind of on looking at Excel from day, as soon as I really got into Excel, I used to follow Chandu in the, in the early days and I've always been looking at what's coming out. So whenever things came out, I was a fairly early adopter, subject to like Excel versions, which now seems like a long time ago that you'd wait for a floppy disk to come out or a CD to come out, you had to upgrade and buy the disc back in the day. But, you know, I think it was 16, 17 that power query came out. And the first, as soon as I saw it, I'm that kind of person. As soon as I saw it, I was like, man, I've got to get me some of this. This is the best tool ever because the equivalent in Excel was VBA or doing it manually. So for me, Power Query just moved it into a different world. And it takes a bit of a mindset shift, I think. And that's where Excel has moved so much from grid based into tables, into Power Query into dynamic arrays. As Excel users, we've had to go on quite a journey, I think. And for me, when I first started looking at Power Query, particularly because it looks like Excel doesn't it? You've got the grid and you've got a ribbon at the top, but it's nothing like it. There's no, you can't go into a cell. So it was quite a journey for me. But yeah, instantly like I clicked on Unpivot and then my, my mind just exploded and I was like, this is me for the rest of my life.

And you make a good point about how Microsoft's changed from just the grid. Right. Tables, semi structured or structured data, which Power Query forces, Power Pivot, Python. Right. Almost everything it does, it puts in data frames, which is a data type and kind of tables and some structure. Oh yes, it's all getting displayed in the grid in some way still in some kind of grid format. Even Power Query, even Power Pivot, you still see a little bit of that grid, but it's so different from 10, 15 years ago to the way it operates today and how it's allowed you to better, I would say manage data and data flow in a more structured. Without having to use a formal database with, you know, connecting it necessarily to a database per se.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that the comparative for me is Microsoft Access, because Microsoft Access was a pretty decent database in the Microsoft world and it was available on your desktop, but almost nobody used it and it was kind of this terrifying thing that no one knew how to use. My observation, I don't know if it's actually the truth or not, but it's the way I see it is that Microsoft basically thought, well, no one's using Access, can we try and bring that into Excel? And so we've got Excel tables that we should now bring that tabular form and then Power Query which allows us to do the joint is also, like you said, the data model and Power Pivot where we can join data. So I kind of felt like they've done a bit of a no one's using Access so let's try and bring it into Excel. I don't know if that's the truth, but that's the way I see it.

So yeah, and I hadn't necessarily thought of it that way, but I thought of a lot of what I did in Access is no longer needed with Excel, with Power Query and other things. So yeah, opposite side of the same coin, so to speak. I looked at it a little differently, but same idea. Yeah. As soon as I learned Power Query I pretty much. It was just a matter of time until I stopped using Access. At first I'd hooked a bunch, I'd done a bunch in Access. And I'd pull it into Excel through Power Query and it's like, okay, how can I just get rid of Access altogether?

Yeah. And that the ability that you have with Power Query to combine data from all of the external sources, but then your own Excel files, the file that you're working in. I remember myself 20 years ago, if that had been put in front of me, I would have just been. My mind would have been blown because back then you just couldn't combine data sources from different places. So it was tough. Yeah, really tough. And I remember talking to group it in the company I was in, and they were having none of it of me being able to, like, create my own reference tables to give to them and then be able to pull those together in the. In the tool. They were like, not a. Not a chance. Whereas now you can just do it in Power Query. And that's. That's incredible. Really.

So now I can remember. Okay, I'm going to connect to Salesforce here. I'm going to connect to this over there. I pull it all in. I'm going to create my own manual tables and just build my whole process. And then at some point, maybe we'll figure out how to automate that and, you know, do it the proper way. But you can do a ton in with Power Query. All right, this isn't the Power Query question. So we're going to go back to more general Excel. Favorite Excel shortcut. I know you got to have one.

That'S like trying to choose between your children.

What is your favorite child? You can answer that, too. They won't be listening to the show. Don't worry.

Definitely won't be listening to this. I'm gonna go Control T. Just because I love tables so much. Like, I want all of my data in tables. So Control T. Let's go with that.

That's one of my favorite as well. Do you ever use Control L?

No. So that's the old list one, isn't it?

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I had someone say Control L one time and I had to think about it. I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess it did start as lists, didn't it?

I remember I posted a while back on LinkedIn and someone. I said, excel tables have been around since 2007, and they were like, actually, lists came out in 2004 or something.

So, yeah, you're. You put anything About Excel on LinkedIn and somebody will let you know there's more to it. All right, so as you look back over your career, I'm curious what's the number one lesson you have learned that's probably helped you the most in your career. I mean, outside of Giles humbleness.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. Outside of trying to emulate such a humble genius. Yeah. I think it's that keeping it simple thing that I've talked about a few times here. Just that, that trajectory that I'm aware that I've been on of, of starting off, loading up VBA into everything, very complicated single cell formula and then coming down off the back end of that and just rigorously trying to be as simple as I can in everything that I do. So making every single model as simple and clear as it can be, every formula in there, like, if possible, one function long, using Excel tables, all of that kind of structure and simplicity. And that's. Yeah, that's what I've used all the way through. It's what we teach at Full Stack Modeler to encourage people to work in that way. And that just means you end up with good models that are less risky and easier to share across your team. And that's what we should all be aiming at, I think.

Agreed. So this is more kind of a fun question. What's the most unique, funnest thing that you've created in a spreadsheet for your personal life?

For my personal life. So I'm. Yeah, I'm an interesting one, probably because I don't. As an accountant, I don't ever do any of my own accounts in Excel. I think probably the. The one that comes to mind and it's not. I don't know if it's particularly funny, but it's a bit of a weird thing to do. But early, an early job, I created again, VBA days like a countdown timer towards a holiday. And every day when I opened my computer, it would show like the next day and with the countdown and different pictures would be jumping up and stuff. It's like, when I think about it now, like, hugely unprofessional. Like, should have got the sack for that. But I spent time building this thing that every day would count down. I was going snowboarding and very excited about it and it just counted down every day. It's not a great use, probably, but hey, Excel can do anything, can't it?

So it can. I'm sure you're not the only one who's done something like that. There's been many unique things done. That's why we ask the question. We get some pretty fun answers with that one. All right, so we're gonna, as I.

Say, what's what's the best one you've heard, Paul? What's the. What's your favorite?

I think my favorite was Tim Vapond, who started cfi Corporate Finance Institute. He talked about how he prepared a dashboard in Excel to help discuss goals and how him and his soon to be wife, Fiance at the time, were aligned to help him track and see how they're performing, like in their, you know, in their marriage. And I did ask him. I go, and how did she like that? Well, we're not using it anymore, so that probably tells you. Or we're not using it. I just kind of laughed.

So at least he didn't say we're not together anymore.

No, no, no, no, no. They're. They're happily together. But she wasn't as excited about the spreadsheet, I think, as he was, so that was probably one of my favorites that made me laugh. The other one was someone created one about a tracker they were using, some kind of API, pulling it into Excel, that there's a show that was using a lot of profanity and they wanted to actually have it count how many times it was using profanity. And they built that in Excel for some show that they watched. Well, those are probably two of the more unique ones I've had. All right, so we're going to move into the rapid fire section. So no consultant answers. I know you've worked as a consultant. You can't tell me. It depends. You have to pick a side and then you can elaborate at the end on one or two of these because there's nuance to all of them. It's not as simple as one side or the other.

Okay.

Circular references and models. Yes or no?

No.

Vba, yes or no?

No.

Horizontal or vertical? Which layout do you prefer?

Oh, vertical, definitely.

All right. Dynamic arrays. Yes or no?

Yep. Yep.

How about fully dynamic models?

No, not yet.

All right. External workbook links?

Hell, no.

You're not the first one to say that. Named ranges, yes or no?

No. With exceptions.

I know the answer to this one. You follow formal standards. You do. Fast.

Yep. Yep.

All right. Do you think financial modelers need to learn Python in Excel?

Oh, no.

All right, what about Power Query?

Oh, yeah. Yep.

I figured that that's what you'd say. What about Power bi?

I'm going to say no, controversially. I'm going to have to explain a couple of these.

There's. There's a. There's a good mix on all these. Will Excel ever die?

No.

All right, what about AI? Will it build the Models for us in the future.

Oh, yes, I think it will.

All right. Do you believe financial models are the number one corporate decision making tool?

They should be. Yep.

Yeah, that's. I get that sometimes too. They should be versus I'd like to think they are, yeah. All right, what's your lookup function of choice? If you had to choose one lookup to use, you know, Vlookup Index, match, xlookup filter, choose whatever it might be. What's your. What's the one you go to?

Xlookup100. Pretty and functional.

All right, I like it. I'm. I like xlookup.

Yeah.

All right. Any of those you want to elaborate on? I know there are a few where you're kind of like, I'm going to.

Go no, but I'll rapid fire all of them. So let me pick a few. So vba. So I'm a no, because Power Query I think takes on most of that. But Micro Automations I really like. So I know you know OA Robot as well. So Eric from OA Robot is a fantastic tool and we've been working with him. We've actually worked on some micro automations for the FMI AFM exam as well, which I used when I sat it. So, yeah, those Micro automations where we just make those little jobs easy but not the big stuff. Yeah. Then Python and Power BI for financial modelers. I think not yet. What I've seen of Python so far is it's still got a way to go and the people I've spoken to still feel that you do Python in Python and then maybe bring some of the results into Excel rather than the other side. But I think the analysis of data and maybe some of the automation that we can do in Python might be something in the future. Power bi, for me, it's a business intelligence tool, so it's about in time reporting. But there are times where we can visualize a model and share it via Power bi. And just broadly, I think any, anyone in finance, anyone who's a financial modeler, the more of these skills we have, the more tools we know. We can then choose which ones to apply and see which one's relevant. If you don't know anything about any of them, then how can you make the right decision? Whereas I think having the knowledge is really important.

Now. Does that apply to Google Sheets? Should we actually learn about that?

Is that a real question or is that.

I'm just giving it.

You're just messing with me now.

Anyone pretty much messing with you on that one?

I try to think there were some other ones there that I was like, oh, I can't say no to that, but I've got to. But I can't remember what the other ones were now. But yeah, like you say, there's always nuance in there, but you force me to say yes or no.

And that's just it. And that's why I don't let people say it depends because it's kind of fun to see. Oh, you know, like, I believe your, your partner, you know, said yes on fully dynamic array models.

Nice.

He did. So, you know, just things like that, you see the difference in people that even work together, how they may answer a little different. I'm guessing if I went through all of them, there maybe one or two others that he might have gave a different answer on. And it, it shows that how much there is kind of science and structure, but there's art and there's opinion and there's not one right way. Like, depending on the type of models you're building, sometimes you have to use VBA for certain things. You know, I'm, I'm a fan of not using it, but there are some that are like, well, type models I build. You got to use it to some extent. Yeah, okay, fair enough.

Yeah.

Or, you know, whatever the answer may be on all those, there's definitely some opinions you get some that say yes on circular references or external workbook links. Haven't figured out why on that one.

But, you know, it's really important. So one of the founding principles of, of what Jars and I do at Full Stack is we're not prescriptive about you must do it like this because exactly, as you said, it depends on the environment you're working in. The industry model, client, everything is so dependent. But if you've got the right tools and the right skill set, then you can choose. And I think that's the important thing. Giles and I are both fast modelers, but we teach all of the standards and say, look, here are all the standards. In reality, they're basically all the same. They don't want to kill me for saying that probably, but 80% is the same. So most of this stuff, there's nuance and we can choose the right thing for the right situation. I think when you get really prescriptive and dominant about you must do it this way, I think that's when you've lost your way.

Actually, I agree with you. I think it's much more. Here's the guiding principles. Whether it's fast or whatever, it may be. It's about having some guiding principles using good structure, following some core principles, like, okay, hard coding and some other things that you just shouldn't do or you should do. But for the most part, there's a ton of nuance in all of it, and that's what you have to help people. So you say if you have the right tools, you've learned the right design, you've learned about structure, and you follow that, it will pay off.

Yeah, 100%. 100% agreeable.

All right, so I want to ask this question. If you could offer one piece of advice to our audience to be a better modeler, what advice would you give them other than taking Full Stack Modeler or listening to the world's mvp? Oh, come on.

That's what I was about to go. You could see the look in my eyes. Can you. It's like, join Full Stack Modeler.

There we go. It's an ad. Join Full Stack. And then what else should they do?

So, yeah, yeah. All joking apart, it's about professionalizing what you do. So if you're a financial modeler, have you. Have you kind of worked it all out yourself? Which is what I. I basically did until I got into FAST and then fmi and like, have you worked out yourself? Can you formalize what you do into some learning? So learn a variety of ways of doing things and get the toolkit to do what you need to do. Formalize that into an approach around a standard, maybe, or something like that, and then test yourself. So go for that formalization of your ability. So get some learning, come up with an approach, and then test your ability through things like the FMI AFM exam. We're also really involved in the financial Modeling World Cup. So I'm not. Because I'm not that brave, but Giles is going out there and saying, Casey's a commentator as well. As you know, we've just launched the UK chapter of IT as well. And those are another great way of just testing your skills in a pressurized environment. And we don't get to do that really, in. In our day jobs, because the pressurized environment has to deliver the real result. Where I think that going through some training, testing it out, really helps to develop you as an individual and as a modeler.

Some great advice there. So as we wrap up, if the audience wants to learn more about you, maybe get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, so LinkedIn's the main place that I'm at, and Full Stack Modeler, our website. You can get in touch with me through there. And yeah, be great to have people join us at Full Stack, obviously. And yeah, it's been great talking to you, Paul. I've really enjoyed it.

Yeah, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. Giles, I mean, Miles, thanks for being on the show. It was, it was a pleasure having you, and I'm excited for the audience to get the opportunity to listen to this episode.

Brilliant. Thank you. Really appreciate it.

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

Sam.