Paul Barnhurst built his first financial model before the 2024 ActiveCell Conference, then sat through Ian Schnorr's talk on modeling mistakes and realized he'd made every single one. His model was terrible, his projections worse, but that's how you learn.
The worst model that I ever had to deal with was— I was wearing this sweater when I was creating my first financial model, and I think I was making this financial model before the 2024 ActiveCell Conference where I got to meet you and chit-chat a bit more and then watch Ian Schnorr's presentation on all of the financial modeling tips, tricks, things that people hide, all of the hidden cells and all that. And I was doing every single one of those little things that he said was horrific. And so the nice thing is, in the middle of me creating one of the worst models, I actually created the second worst model. Which was our 5-year projections of what we think our business could do.
Trust and Leadership Lessons for FP&A From 100+ Top Leaders with CFO Jon Laudie
