How to Become a Finance Athlete with Zach Rial

What is the number one technical skill that FP and a professional should master?

Modeling. This can be wrong. They're always wrong. But if you're a good modeler, your modeler will teach you why we miss and what happens automatically in 2023, 1/3.

Of CFOs that left a Fortune 500 company left to become a CEO.

If you're doing finance the way that I think is right, which is understanding what drives the business, you're still focusing on those drivers and trying. That's what makes these CFOs so good and it makes them able to become a CEO of other companies is because find ways to automate or simplify or streamline what you're doing so then you have free time to go.

And I know you pride yourself on being able to manage tough conversations and really making sure transparency is front and center. Even if it's a difficult conversation. How do you go about doing that?

It's hard. I'm not going to miss words. It's not easy. And there's things you can do to make it easy. Learn what real communication is. We mistakenly believe that communication is what we're saying to somebody in reality. Communication.

FP and a Guy Here. Have you ever wanted to level up your FPA skills? Then check out the FP&A guys ultimate course bundle at the FP&A guy.com that's the fpanda guy.com and use code podcast to save 25% get started learning today welcome to FPA Tomorrow, where we delve into the world of financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and future prospects. I am your host, Paul Barnhurst, AKA the FPA Guy, and we will be guiding you through the evolving landscape of fpa. Each week we are joined by thought leaders, industry experts and practitioners who share their insights and experiences, helping us navigate today's complexities and tomorrow's uncertainties. This week, I'm thrilled to welcome Zach Ryle to the show. Zach, welcome.

Hey, thanks, Paul. Glad to be here.

All right, so a little bit about Zach before we jump into our first question. He comes to us from the Salt Lake City, Utah area. That's where I've got to know him, and I've met him several times. We both live in the area. He is a Senior Director of Finance and Strategy at Peak, which is a travel company. And then he has a bachelor's in finance from Utah State and an MBA from the University of Utah. So here's where we're going to start. First question I want to ask you, what does Great. FP and A look like to you?

You know, I feel like the loaded question, but to put it simply, great. FP&A is great partnerships. It's understanding the business, understanding what drives the different departments functional areas of the business and being a great partner to them to make all those things, whatever they might be better some way shape form.

I really like that. So great. FBNA is really all about great partnerships.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, we'll probably come back to that a little bit more later. But the next question I want to ask is tell, tell us about yourself and your background. Let the audience know who. Who Zach is.

Yeah, so we'll start with the fun stuff. So Zach is Zach, somebody who likes to read. There's bunch of books behind me, read probably about all of them. That's a lie. I hadn't read all of them. And my list of ones I haven't read are growing. My wife makes fun for it. But I love reading. I think just learning is fun and reading is one of the best ways to learn on the kind of opposite end of that. I've also loved physical activity and so I played rugby in college and ran track. Some things that I really love and enjoyed. I love being outdoors and just going and doing things. So I ski on a snowboard, I pretend to golf and most I'm just out there to be outside and hang out with friends and have a good time. So that's the fun stuff. On the work stuff, I consider myself, and I think I used to say an unusual finance person, but it's becoming much less unusual nowadays as finances evolve. But I consider myself an unusual finance person because I really don't approach finance from numbers and variance and dollars and cents method, but I really approach it from an operations perspective. And what does this mean perspective? I think that really got started with my first job. I did an internship and they liked me and they offered to bring me on as a financial analyst and then a weekend to being a financial analyst. I said, hey, we actually need somebody to be an operations analyst and run shop floor scheduling. And I was like, I could do that, not a problem. I had no idea what that meant and no idea what I was getting myself into. But I went out and I did it. And I beat my head against the wall for many, many hours and weeks and days until I figured out how to be ops management and how to to run a shop floor and schedule when things were going to be done and meet sales as crazy demands and motivate and inspire operations to get things done. Faster and better. But I'm really glad I did it because when I went back to finance, I had this mindset of like, well, how does this impact business? How does this make us able to fulfill orders or fulfill what we're doing to our customers and drive more revenue? Like, how is this going to change that? And what does this tell us about that? And that's really how I approached everything I do in finance is, is what is this teaching us and what does this tell us about business?

I. I've said multiple times, I think every finance professional would benefit from having some kind of operational, whether it's even just working on a big operational project or directly having that role. You know, I worked a couple years in the business. It was more as a business analyst, did a lot of report writing. I also supported some groups, did a little bit of cash forecasting and different things. But being in the more of that business role was very helpful when I moved into FP&A. So I'm with you. There's some huge benefit of really thinking from an operational standpoint. I know this is this episode one, things we want to talk about, we talked about is kind of structuring this to talk a lot about the finance athlete, which I think we'll get into some operations with that. But before we get there, I'm going to give you an opportunity to tell anything you want. Experience something about me that most people on social media wouldn't know since we've known each other for a couple years. Anything you want to share?

I racked my brain on this one, trying to spend time to think of something that was like so interesting and awesome, that would, that people would remember. And you know, I feel like, Paul, you're a pretty open book. People know a lot of things about you. You don't really hide up a lot. But I did just learn that Paul hasn't had soda, like carbonated SODA in what's 29 years, Paul?

29 years.

29 years. And you know, I, I started the beginning of this. But, you know, this message brought to you by FPA is I think pretty exclusively powered by caffeine. And so Paul, kudos have talked to you. 29 years without soda. It's impressive.

I'm sure I could come up with a few things others don't know about me. But we'll, we'll keep that. That's a good one to go with. I will say I met Jimmy Carter once. So there's one.

There you go. That's a, that's. That was the tree it was pretty cool.

I met him over in London.

It.

It was. It was neat. All right, so back to you. Since that's the interview you briefly. Early in your career, you briefly ran a window washing business that you owned. What did you learn from that experience? How'd that come about? You generally don't see window washing and then finance together.

Yeah. Yeah, Great question. I. So I came about because I changed my major to finance. I bounced around for a while and I changed my major. Finance did that before my junior year. So between sophomore, junior year. And I did it like right before summer. And I recognized everybody else had internships and I had no internships. And that wasn't, you know, apply when I tried to go look for internships next year. And I needed something to put on a resume that was more impressive, that attract attention. So I started trying to figure that out. And I also needed money because I had none and I needed to pay for school. And a buddy of mine came and said, look, we can get filthy rich cleaning windows. It'll be so easy. Here's the model. Here's the math. It's just we'll. We'll come home loaded. And I was like, yeah, that. That's what I want to do. Spoiler alert. We did not get the feature rich. We did get filthy. We did not get filthy rich. We did make good money, though. It was a good experience. What did I learn? So I learned that I don't want to be a salesperson. So I was supposed to be out selling and getting. Getting people to let us clean their windows. And after about two weeks of that, I said, hey, can I run one of the crews windows? Because I don't want to sell anymore. I don't like trying to convince people that they need something. I'm the kind of person that's like, hey, you have a need. I can address that need. Great. We'll do business. I don't want to try to convince you that you have a need. And so I switched to the ops side of things and I helped run the window washing crees that would follow the sickle people around and do all the things. And then I ran payroll and made sure everybody got paid. I learned that everybody has an opinion how they should get paid and that it was good to take that into account and let people's voices be heard. But ultimately we had to make a decision that was best for us. And. And what we did, I had my first exposure to scientific management, and we actually, without even realizing it. And so we did a piece rate where people got paid a portion of the jobs completed. And then later I learned that there was an actual philosophy and management method behind that, which was kind of cool. But really most of all, I just learned to keep myself busy and work hard to get things done and to make it happen. When it didn't seem like you had the answer right in front of you, just go out in the back, make it work.

Yeah. There's something to be said for just learning how to make things work, because I am going to guess what. You were sold. And the experience, as you mentioned, were quite different.

Big. It was not nearly as easy to sell. Yeah. Yeah. Not nearly as easy to sell as I thought would be a lot hotter. We did it in St. Georgie top. A lot hotter than we thought it would be. And the. Yeah, definitely different experience.

Yeah. And so just learning how to adjust and roll with that and figure it out and make the best of it. That's. That's a great lesson that we all need to learn. Because life never goes as we plan it. Let's be honest, it rarely ever does.

Yeah. Yeah. It's. I always tell people, men make plans. God laughs. And so here we are. Yeah.

Yes, I've heard that quote as well. So before we jumped on this, to record this episode, you and I talked about the term a finance athlete. I know that's a. Something you're a big proponent of and you wanted to talk a little bit about that on the show. So I'd love for you to explain to our audience what is a finance athlete? What does that mean to you?

Absolutely. Great, Great question, Paul. And I think. So let's first talk about what, like, an athlete is somebody who is prepping to go into college sports. Usually you see it in football. Right. And you. They are just good at sports. Right. Specifically, they're good at football. And then they don't have any really one set position. That's their position. They're not a cornerback, safety, or linebacker. They're just an athlete. And they can fill whatever role is needed for the team. And so that's where this comes from. Right. So applying that to business, a finance person is a finance athlete. Somebody who isn't, you know, oh, I do ap, I do ar, I do xyz. Right. There's somebody who says, I do finance. And that means many different things. And that means how do I help the business? How do I make sure that we're doing the things that are most important? Whether that's traditional at P and A, whether that's strategic finance, whether that's the accounting, whether it's, you name it.

Yeah, they, they do what's needed, a little bit of everything. And I love this sports example and I'll give a couple examples. Some people recognize it, some not. But I think some of the greatest examples, I think of those athletes, Deion Sanders, right, Or Bo Jackson playing two professional sports at the same time. You have to be an athlete to do that. The demand, I mean, Deion Sanders, I don't know if you remember as a kid, I remember it playing in a playoff, our World Series baseball game, and then flying that evening to play in a football game.

I can't believe that, like, I mean, if there's two sports to do, baseball and football are probably the right ones. But like, yeah, it's crazy, you know.

And then the other, there's two other examples I love. One is if anyone knows who Danny A. Is, he was the, he's the only person still in the, in the US to be a three sport all American in high school football, basketball and baseball. Not just playing them, not just all state. He was all American. I mean that, that, that's what I, that's like the definition in sports of an athlete. And then the one other that comes to mind right now is for the Saints, Taysom Hill, he's returned punts, he's played on defense, he's played running back, he's played quarterback, he's played tight end and he's played wide receiver.

That's done at all.

You know, I mean, that's fixed. And I think he's returned return kickoffs in there as well. And so it's like six, seven different positions. You just don't see that. And especially professional sports at that point, you're very developed. So I really like that term as athlete because so often we think in our career, yes, I need to specialize. And sure you have a, you may have a specialization, but that doesn't mean you can't be an athlete, at least the way I think of it. So I know you view yourself more as an, an athlete. What do you see as the main differences between that specialist and athlete? If you were to think of what's the biggest difference between the two.

I think the biggest difference between an athlete and a specialist, the specialist has. Might get in trouble saying this, but they have a set way that they're going to approach things and they're going to try and tackle things. And I think please get in trouble.

It makes for better radio, so to speak.

Controversy, St. Content. Right. So you know, specialists, they, they know how to do things, they know how to do a certain way. It's the way they, it's what makes them good. Right. An athlete is somebody who's, who I think is willing to and much more able to say, like, I don't know the right way to do this or the best way to do this. And so one, I'm going to go in and I'm going to try to learn that from whatever SME subject matter experts I have there. And two, I'm just going to figure it out as we go along. Right. And I see most people who I would define as an athlete in finance, they are very biased towards action. Right. And so they're going to sit, not go in there and say, I'm going to create the perfect plan, get everybody aligned on that plan. Then I'm going to execute. You say, hey, I'm going to create a good enough plan. And while I'm creating the plan, we're going to execute and we're going to learn as we go. Go. Right. And I think that's really, to me what one of the biggest differences.

So I'm curious, it leads me to a question. Do you think most, most CFOs are athletes or do you think they've got to that level because they've been really good at what they've specialized in and they've kind of switched to enough different areas that they have enough experience to get that role? What's your thought?

You know, I think that's changing. I think if you'd asked me this question five years ago, I would have said they're probably much more specialists and they've gotten to where they're at because they're specialists, if you ask me now. And what I see the next couple years looking like, I think that they're much more of athletes and they've filled many roles and they've, they've made it work. I think you're seeing more CFOs that are COOs as well. Right. And they're filling both the role of chief operating officer and chief Financial officer.

Yep.

I think the universe is true too. You see a lot of COOs who are filling CFO roles as well. And so it's the, the line between operations and finance, especially in smaller companies and startups. But just really overall it's becoming very blurred and finance is now being relied on much more to be strategy and you're seeing less, less chief strategy officers and that role is being really taken over by.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of that you're seeing some of the bi. The strategy. Finance is much more commercial. And I agree with you. I saw a report just this last week that said in 2023, 1/3 of CFOs that left the Fortune 500 company left to become a CEO. You have to be an athlete as a CEO. As a general rule, unless certain industries, yeah, specialist all the way, sure can get by. But I think if you're one of those that's switching between different companies in general business, you got to be a pretty good athlete to be a CEO in my mind. What's your thoughts on it?

I agree with that. So it's funny, you know. So one of the ways Paul's and I, Paul and I got to know each other was by creating a networking group in Utah area. And one of the first discussions we had was as a group was how do we get into SaaS? Help us find other finance people who aren't in SaaS. Get into SaaS. And I was really confused by that because I was like, what's, why is it so hard? What's different? Like SAS is just, it's just a different set of financial analysis you're doing at its course. Just finance. Right. And so that's what I, you know, I think that's leading to your question is like finance is finance, right? You're, you're. If you're doing finance the way that I think is right, which is understanding what drives the business and understanding the impact that you can have and the operations teams there, it doesn't matter if you're doing it at a software company. It doesn't matter if you're doing it at a consumer goods company. It doesn't matter where you're doing it at. You're still focusing on those drive thought about like we need to create opportunities for us to be bored. Because when you're bored, you're naturally going to look for something to fill your time. You're naturally going to start looking at things most of the time. And so I think there's a lot of things that we end up doing that don't give us that time to be bored. And it's hard to be curious when you don't have time to be curious. And so I think if you find yourself in a role where you can't be and you want to develop that skill, find ways to automate or simplify or streamline what you're doing, so then you have free time to go and be curious and, and you'll find that you, you want to do that because you want to be productive. You want to contribute to the overall success of the business. And I don't think if you're not born naturally curious, you can't come back to the curious. I think you can become. I think it's something you just have to want to do and make friends.

I, I totally agree with you. I, I think most things. There's a heavy component of nurture that you can use. You can learn to do it if you're, you're passionate enough willing to put in the effort. I mean, obviously there's some exceptions. You're not going to be Michael Jordan or LeBron James. If you're 5 foot 5 and you have no athletic talent, can you become a decent basketball player? Sure. But there's, there's barriers.

Was what I is Isaiah Thomas was play the Celtics. Was he correct?

Well, Mugsy BO G there's guys who get there, but they also usually have blazing speed or some. Something with it. You can overcome a lot. But I think there are, there are some natural things that become harder. Right. Not say you can't overcome them, but there are definitely some genetic things that make certain things harder than others. But I'm, I'm definitely on the nurture side. All right, now that we've covered science, nurture, nature, all that fun stuff, we'll get back to the show. So I, funny enough, I have this rev Ops question I want to ask you because I know you've been involved in revs Ops and just getting your thoughts on, you know, hey, where does rev Ops sit? You know, how should finance be involved in rev Ops? And I asked a guy that today, that's an FPA about rev Ops in a small company where you could use finance. He goes, sure, they could help do it, but they'll do a crappy job like basically keep finance away from rev Ops. But if you have to have someone build a role for a little while, go for it. What's your take on this discussion? Because I've had CEOs tell me that finance, you should sit in rev Ops, you know, and then you have others. Oh, no, no, that's a bad idea. So I know you've been involved in it. How do you think about it and how does finance and rev ops kind of work together? Just some of your thoughts on those two functions.

Yeah. So, so quick, quick answer here is, is I think you have to look at how your team is structured. If you have a CRO and they own RevOps and all they own is rev Ops and sales Alarm bets. That's probably not what you want. But if that CRO is really a cheap revenue officer and they're really heavily involved in owning things like marketing and customer success and sales, then I think that it's probably a really good idea to have Rev Ops under them. Right. Because they're owning that Go to market engine. And it's funny because, like, we default thinking of go to market as sales and marketing, but like your success team is part of your go to market engine. It's just go to market for existing customers. Right. But you're also selling success team, usually to your customers as well. So it's part of your go to market engine. And so, you know, Rev Ops, in my mind, you know, look at how you're structured and what's going on. Is finance going to do a terrible job at it? Maybe, if you have people who don't get the business and aren't intellectually curious and are willing to be an athlete. Right. But I helped set up our find our RevOps team. I actually. We decided that we needed to have a dedicated Rev Ops team and so we opened a position for director of Rev Ops and I actually applied for it. I thought, hey, maybe this will be a fun pivot in my career. I'll try it out. And I ended up withdrawing an application, I think, let's say where I'm at. But we hired this guy who I just love partnering with and he does a lot of things that I don't do very well. Really, really well. And that are very important, like making sure that we have proper process documentation, making sure that, you know, we've made everything really simple and easy to do inside our CRM and that our CRM is clean and clear and easy to use. And he doesn't just make it work, he does it right. Right. And he's really good at project management. He's implemented Asana and he's a wizard at it. And I suck at it. Right. I'm just very terrible at it. Right. But we partner really well together and we work really well together. And he reports to the COO. He doesn't report to the CFO. Could he report to the CFO and be just as effective? 100% he could, but at our business it makes more sense.

Yeah. I think a lot of it comes down to business, to people you have. And I've heard a lot of different answers. One of them that probably made the most sense to me that I like is Scott Stouffer, which I think a lot of things similar to you he's been a CEO five times taking companies public. He now is a CEO of a go to market startup. And he goes, if you have a true Chief revenue officer like you said, not a VP of sales, that's masquerading as a CRO, which I think a lot of small companies have because we have title inflation, let's be honest. And so what he said is if it's a true CRO, much more likely to put it there. And the second thing he goes, are they mo most more focused on process and systems or analytics? If I want deep analytics out of my go to market, I'm going to have it under finance. If it's really more all about the systems and the processes, I'm going to stick it under my CRO. And that made a lot of sense to me. That resonated with me and it seems that's similar to what you're saying here.

Yeah, yeah. My robots partner is really great at systems process and he sits with coo and I think that makes a ton of sense. And we rely on each other for the crossover there. And I've got some great members of my biz ops team that really helped the analytics side of things to help, you know, fill that gap. So I think, you know, it works really well. I also think it depends on what your, your company is obsessed with. I'm going to start obsessed with growth. Well, where does growth come from? Growth comes from sales. And so naturally as a finance person, I was being asked about growth in all the meetings and discussions we were talking about when it came to mbrs, qbrs and other things like that. Right. And so I went and plugged myself into sales as much as I could. So I have answers these things which was how I naturally began to build out somewhat of a robots process before we built a full robot team and handed it off.

Makes a lot of sense. And you know, as you said, right. If you're focused on growth, obviously cells becomes so much more important. As we've all heard the saying, you can't cut your way to growth. Doesn't work. Companies have tried, they're usually not around anymore.

Yeah, I mean it's the smart growth too though, Right. And so you can reprioritize and make, make decisions. I, I know there's a, there's a company here in Utah that I talked to and they realized that they were growing at a great rate but their firm wasn't changing. Right. And they, they weren't having the, the kind of like churn metrics that they wanted to have. And so they realized they were focusing on two new verticals and so they cut the other verticals and made them not a focus. That's constant sales team. But now looking at the numbers, they're doing phenomenal and they've grown rapidly and, and they're all their KPX positive and they're getting to the point where they're actual break even. So it's, there's, there's smart growth and I don't think that's cutting your way to it. I think it's just making smarter decisions.

Correct. It's making the right strategic decisions. I heard someone say today, asked about managing Burn and he goes, we basically manage kind of budget and things from a port portfolio standpoint. And every dollar we added we had to offset it. So we didn't, we weren't growing. If we weren't finding a way to do it within that framework of saying we're getting benefit for it, it's going to lead to, you know, $20 or a $30. I worked at a company once, I've got a new, new CEO. In one of the first meetings, he sat down and said, okay, here's how much we've grown over the last three years. We've grown, you know, 3, 4%, whatever it was last three years. Here's how much we've grown in expenses. And it was like a dollar and seven compared to that dollar and three. He's like, that can't continue. There will be changes.

Yeah. Math doesn't matter.

Yeah. Over the long run, if the bottom line's higher than the top line in growth, it's, it's not sustainable.

Yeah. I think especially in today's market. Right. When, when investors are looking to put money into companies, the mindset of growth at all costs is definitely, I don't want to say gone, but it's different.

Yes.

It's not so much at all cost anymore. And so you just need to be aligned with what, what you're trying to accomplish as a business too. Right. And what you're trying to do with your investors. And if you're going to need more investors and all those type of questions you have to answer.

A lot has changed. Someone told me the other day, last year was the first year, I think it was a year or two ago that we didn't have just, you know, continued growth in E commerce. So now they're figuring out how do I manage a business that isn't always growing. We don't have free money anymore. Yes. Is it still relatively cheap Compared to historical. For those that have been around more than 40, 50 years, that kind of experience, some of that, sure. But for many people, they've never experienced even 6, 7, 8% interest rates. And so that's expensive.

Yeah, it certainly is. My adult life 78% interest rate is incredibly high. And it scares me a little bit.

Yeah, no, I mean buying more.

I'm a student of history, so I recognize that that's pretty good actually. On the grand scheme.

Yeah. Like if I talk to my. My parents bought the first house in the 70s, before I was even born. Early 70s, I think they paid a 21% interest rate.

20? Yeah, I was like 2018 somewhere.

They paid $11,000 for the house.

That's a different story, you know, so.

The payments I know were like 200amonth or whatever.

Oh, yeah.

There are definitely some differences. But anyway, one more question I want to ask and then we're going to jump into the rapid fire. So this is kind of a little change of subject. This is something I know about you. I know you pride yourself on being able to manage tough conversations and really making sure transparency is front and center, even if it's a difficult conversation. So how, how do you go about doing that and maybe any advice you could offer to our audience, because I know that's something you're good at. So I'd love your thoughts on that.

Yeah, you know, there's. It's hard. I'm not. I'm not going to mince words. It's not easy. And there's things you can do to make it easier. And it really has to do with the security that you feel. Right. And so the best way you can to get this and be able to do it is to have a really secure work environment with people that you can trust and can be this of blunt and forthright with. That's the best look, in my opinion. Right. And so whether that's who you report into or your stakeholders or your team individually. Right. Building that environment where there's that trust that you can be that person. Right. And say those things. I think the other way you can get it is, is by being right. And it sounds a little egotistical, but like when you prove that you're correct, when you have consistently shown that what you're doing is correct and right, that's mostly mistake proof. You earn credibility. And that credibility allows you to say hard things sometimes because they know that it's credible and you're not just griping and running and groaning and complaining, but you're you're, you're probably right, right. And so you know, that's where I think the beauty of the traditional finance mindset does help out. And it was beaten to my head by a mentor of mine who went up through finance when you had to have a stint as a controller and you had to be perfect, you had to do all those things. Right. And he beat into my head, tie out all your files, tie everything out, foot it all, make sure it all works and it's all completely keep counted for. And so that's one of the first things I do when I take over some processes like is this right? Right. Because I want, I have credibility I need to maintain or build and I need to make sure that I have that so I can say hard things. Because if I can't say on things, I can't delegate.

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Yeah, I mean I've, I've ended many conversations with sales about quotas, about the things that, you know, finance and sales fight about by saying I hear you, I really do. I hear what you're saying, but that doesn't Explain these numbers. And I need to be able to defend this decision at least with numbers in some way, shape or form. And can you argue that this is correct or wrong? You know, like, tell me this is a right to. So that I can agree with you. And they're like, I can't. I'm like, okay, so I can't agree with you. Right. And. And then start to figure that out.

Yeah. I remember we had a conversation one time with the sales head, and we were developing new commission plans, and they wanted to have no clawback if a customer canceled early. And we're like, here's the economics. Explain to us how this is going to work. Like, well, we'll sell over it.

No, never have. Right, you never have.

Yeah, exactly.

Change.

All right, so we're going to move into two sections. The first, there's some questions. First section, I call it kind of rapid fire in the idea that. Give quick answers on this. Four of them around fpa. Four or five. And then we're going to do get to know you and we'll wrap it up here. So just a few more minutes. So what I'm going to start with, what is the number one technical skill that FP and a professional should master?

Modeling. Okay, that'd be a good modeling. Because. And what I say is not that you have to have the most complex model and has all the coolest formulas. Your model has to be useful, Right. It has to teach about business. And that's what I mean by modeling. Right? Like, because it can be wrong. They're always wrong. But if you're a good modeler, your modeler will teach you why you missed and what happened automatically.

Well, I'll sum it up. As George Box once said, all models are wrong. Some are useful. Make sure yours is useful.

That's a mantra I live by. Say that to my team at least once a week.

Love it. What's the number one soft skill?

Communication. No, I'm not going to do that one. Persuasion. I think you need to be able to persuade people and get them to believe you and hear the message that you're truly trying to send.

All right, so we got persuasion and modeling. All right, next one. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about fpa, what would it be? What would you change?

Oh, gosh. I would change the need to do variance analysis on everything. You should do variance analysis on only the most important things. Everything else, just let it go.

Put a materiality threshold on there and move on.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Let's apply the Audit mindset here. Is it in my materiality threshold? Yes. No, great. Move on.

I like it. I've seen a little bit of that done and definitely there's times we could use more. Are you currently using generative AI?

No, not, not really. I mean I use it like I know people get asked this question. They're like, well, did you ask me the question about blah, blah, blah. So I, I, I will use it as a sounding board or I'll use it to say like, hey, where's g this information? But I'm not using it in any of my what I'll call hard finance or hard finance skills.

Fair enough.

I want to haven't figured out how to use it best yet.

I think a lot of people are trying to figure out the direct use cases. Sounding board is great. Email a lot of those things. Others are still trying to figure out. We talked to a guy today that he was teaching and within 30 minutes after his course, he has people up and using profits, machine learning with their data, using AI and Python. And so it's, it's there. And that, that just made me go, all right, I need to learn more. Because I think there's a lot of use cases. But it's trying to figure out how we're all so busy. It's a commitment.

Well, and you got to convince, you know, your, your, your IT compliance. It's okay for me to give it this information so you know, it'll be safe, don't worry.

Yeah, you have to figure out. Yeah, and that's why he's doing teaching. Hey, you use the AI to write the Python, then you do the Python script to give it your data.

Right.

It's a little different approach, but I, I know what you mean. There's definitely don't, don't, as I always like to say, don't give any public open AI your company's data. Just don't do it. You wouldn't, you wouldn't put it on Google. Don't, don't give it to the AI. All right, so we're going to move on to the get to know you section. What's your favorite hobby? You mentioned sports before. Is there one in particular? You had one hobby or faction?

Well, so favorite sport is I actually. So a lot of people don't know this. The United States has a major league rugby. Mlr. This is my shameless plug. Find your local team, go out and support them. I want to see it grow. I love rugby. So Salt Lake has a local team. I go watch them. I'm a season ticket holder. It's a ton of fun. I've gotten a lot of my friends into it. My brother comes with me. It's a great time. I'd say my other one would be reading. I usually use that to de stress. I've been doing a lot of reading. A gift that we got family this year was a hot tub. I love hot tubs. So I go out in the hot tub after a long, hard day at work, sit in that, come into your.

House to play catan and sit in the hot tub.

Let's get a floating table. I'm in, Paul.

And then we'll go to a rugby game.

So listen, you just described the perfect night.

All right, well, we'll figure it out sometime. I'm in. All right. What's the one book you're going to recommend to our audience? If you had to pick one?

I will say I think that the one that I've enjoyed the most, especially relating to business, is called the Five dysfunctions of teams. Check out the name. Right. Actually, I don't have a book in my loan to ask something. It's a pair of talks about five things that the teams typically are dysfunctional on and how to fix them. And I have found that it is almost a script written about most interactions. I have dysfunctional teams.

I like it. Alrighty. So the five. Five dysfunctions of teams.

All right.

Favorite travel destination. You can go anywhere in the world tomorrow. Where are you going?

Iceland. I went to Iceland as a graduation president to my wife and I. We graduated at the same time. We loved every minute of it. And I would go back into the heartbeat. Got it. Love it.

If you could have dinner with one person in the world, who are you taking? I mean, other than me, of course.

Well, I've had dinner with you, Paul. Well, just. Just lunch. And it was good. It was. All right. If I had one shot to call, I don't know if I would call you back in. Sorry. You know, I. I would really like to. More of a recent thing. I'd really like to have dinner with Barack Obama, actually, I. My parents, if they're listening, apologize for the slander. I'm about to try you. But my parents are pretty conservative, and so I grew up when Barack Obama was running for office under the mindset that he was the worst person ever. And I have since grown to appreciate all the things he's done that I would just love to see it pick his brain and talk to him for a while, because I think he was one of our not to get too political, but one of our last great presidents.

All right, well, if you can, if you make that connection, ask him to come on the show. We can talk government budget. That could be an interesting FDA discussion.

Oh, goodness gracious. I don't want to go anywhere near that.

Yes. But I got a good authority in that case. All right, so if you could give one piece of advice to our audience, either something to start doing or to learn to be a better business partner today, what should they do?

I would say learn what real communication is, and this is a talk I gave to a lot of people when I first started managing them, is we mistakenly believe that communication is what we're saying to somebody in reality. Communication is what they're hearing. And so you gotta learn. When you learn that lesson and truly embody it, then you can start to really change how you communicate. Communicate, talk to people. Because you're now focusing on how do I ensure that they're hearing what I want them to hear. And I think the best way to do that is to play dumb and ask a lot of questions. And by asking a lot of questions, you get a lot of information. And then by having that information, you become a better communicator, more effective at what you do.

You had someone say the number one skill is learning to ask questions for FP and a professional. So there you go. Ask lots of questions, play dumb. I'm naturally dumb, so it comes easy for me. Last, last thing. If someone wants to learn more about you and get in touch, how should they do it?

You know, I'm happy to connect on LinkedIn. Send me a message there. You can reach out to. To me directly via my email. It's z rile1992gmail.com. So first initial, last name 1992. I'd be happy to chat with you. I. I love talking to people. I'm a pretty social person, so.

All right, great. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Zach enjoyed chatting and looking forward to the audience getting to listen to this.

Hey, it's a pleasure, Paul. Thank you for inviting me. I'm honored to be here. I think you're doing great things for the community and I love tuning in and hear what I can hear when I've got some free time and see what you work on.

Right, well, thank you. I appreciate it.

Cheers.

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Let's just go to market for existing customers. Right. But you're also selling and success team usually to. To your customers as well. So it's, it's part of your go to market engine. And so, you know, revops, in my mind, you know, look at how you're structured and what's going on. Is finance going to do a terrible job at it? Maybe, if you have people who don't get the business and aren't intellectually curious and are willing to be an athlete. Right. But I helped set up our find our RevOps team. I actually, we decided that we needed to have a dedicated Rev Ops team and so we opened a position for director of RevOps and I actually applied for it. I thought, hey, maybe this will be a fun pivot in my career. I'll try it out. And I ended up withdrawing application. I think once you can find it, let's say where I'm at. But we hired this guy who I just love partnering with and he does a lot of things that I don't do very well. Really, really well. And that are very important to robots, like making sure that we have proper process documentation, making sure that, you know, we've made everything really simple and easy to do inside our CRM and that our CRM is clean and clear and easy to use. And he doesn't just make it work, he does it Right. Right. And he's really good at project management. He's implemented Asana and he's a wizard at it. And I suck at it. Right. I'm just very terrible at it. Right. But we partner really well together and we work really well together. And he reports the COO, he doesn't report the CFO. Could he report the CFO and be just as effective? 100% he could. But at our business it makes more sense to have.

Yeah. I think a lot of it comes down to business, to people you have. And I've heard a lot of different answers. One of them that probably made the most sense to me that I like is Scott Stouffer, which said a lot, I think a lot of things similar to you. He's Been a CEO five times, taken companies public. He now is a CEO of a go to market startup. And he goes, if you have a true Chief revenue officer like you said, not a VP of sales, that's masquerading as a CRO, which I think a lot of small companies have because we have title inflation, let's be honest. And so what he said is, if it's a true CRO, much more likely to put it there. And the second thing he goes, are they most more focused on process and systems or analytics? If I want deep analytics out of my go to market, I'm going to have it under finance. If it's really more all about the systems and the processes, I'm going to stick it under my CRO. And that made a lot of sense to me. That resonated with me and it seems that's similar to what you're saying here.

Yeah, yeah. My robots partner is really great at systems process and he sits in the CEO and I think that makes a ton of sense. And we rely on each other for the crossover there. And I've got some great members of my biz ops team that really help the analytics side of things to help fill that gap. So I think it works really well. I also think it depends on what your company is obsessed with. I'm going to start a process with growth. Well, where does growth come from? Growth comes from sales. And so naturally as a finance person, I was being asked about growth in all the meetings and discussions we were talking about when it came to mbrs, qbrs and other things like that. And so I went and plugged myself into say as much as I could. So I have answers to these things, which was how I naturally began to build out somewhat of a rev ops process before we built a full rev ops team and handed it off to them.

Makes a lot of sense. And as you said, right. If you're focused on growth, obviously cells become so much more important. As we've all heard the saying, you can't cut your way to growth. Doesn't work. Companies have tried. They're usually not around anymore.

Yeah, I mean it's the smart growth too though, right?