The CFI Certification for Finance Professionals to Master Excel and Power Query with Landon & Clark

Any investment we make in ourselves is worth it. It could be personal or professional, but anytime you try to learn and expand and you're doing it from a good place, there's going to be benefit and it can help you in your career. What advice would you offer to someone considering the program from cfi?

I would tell them Clark Carter is.

A senior accountant in the healthcare industry.

Focused on FP&A, analyzing budgets, guiding planning.

Cycles and helping leadership make informed decisions.

And Landon Kortenbach is a seasoned finance executive who's helped companies from early stage startups to Fortun giants scale smarter and operate stronger. How did you finally come to the conclusion, hey, CFI is right for me.

Some other programs I had looked at kind of the big draw for me in terms of choosing cfi, in terms of the knowledge and skills I need to have.

It makes a lot of sense, right? It's self study, it's affordable, CFI is great. What advice would you have for someone listening that wants to do more FP.

And a work, first and foremost, masterful technical skills, specifically Excel.

What advice would you offer someone who's listening to this podcast thinking, I want to be a cfo?

One for me it was.

This week's episode is brought to you by Corporate Finance Institute cfi, the global leader in online corporate finance training and certifications. With CFI's FMVA program, you'll learn how to build three statement models, perform DCF and comparable valuation forecasting and presenting insights with clarity the exact skills you need to move your career forward. And right now, you can get 30% off when you sign up. Visit corporatefinanceinstitute.com and thanks to CFI for sponsoring this episode. Hello everyone. Welcome to FPA Tomorrow where we delve into the world of financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and future prospects. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, and I'll be guiding you through the evolving landscape of fpa. Each week we're joined by thought leaders, industry experts and practitioners who share their insights and experiences, helping us navigate today's complexities and tomorrow's uncertainties. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your journey in fpa, this show has something for everyone. This week I'm thrilled to welcome on the show Clark Carter. Clark, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Paul.

You're welcome. And I also have Landon Kortenbach with us. Welcome to the show, Landon.

Thanks, Paul. Pleasure to be here.

Yeah, really excited to have you. So we're going to be talking a little bit today about some of the programs CFI has. Both of these gentlemen have taken different programs and were willing to speak about their experiences. Before I do that, I want to give a little bit of their background. So we'll start with Landon here. Landon is a distinguished financial executive with over 20 years of experience driving financial transformation, scaling operations, and delivering exceptional results across industries including technology, consumer packaged goods, restaurants, and professional services. Landon excels at building the people, process and technology infrastructure needed to achieve financial and operational excellence, with a focus on platform roll ups, portfolio companies, and private funds seeking to scale efficiently and enhance operating leverage. Throughout his career, Landon has consistently delivered transformative results, including enhancing operational efficiencies, driving revenue growth, expanding margin profiles, and implementing scalable financial systems. He holds a Bachelor's of Business Administration in Accounting from Concordia University where he was the team captain in baseball and an All American IA school. He is a Certified Public accountant, a Six Sigma Green Belt, an FMVA certification holder, and an AWS Certified Cloud practitioner. A sought after speaker, Landon regularly shares insights on data driven financial innovation and process optimization. Did I miss anything?

No, you didn't. You did a much better job than I would have.

All right, and we'll do the same here for Clark. So, Clark currently works as a senior accountant within the healthcare industry. His role encompasses tasks associated with a traditional FP and a function such as analyzing actual results versus budgeted results and presenting that analysis monthly to corporate leadership. More recently, he played a supporting role in facilitating the annual budgeting process by organizing cross functional meetings and leveraging planning tools including Workday's Adaptive Insights to build up the annual budget. Clark holds an active CPA license from the Tennessee State Department of Commerce and Insurance, as well as a CMA certificate from the Institute of Management Accountants. He holds a bachelor's degree in accounting and a master's degree in accountancy from Belmont University. He also created a Mandarin Chinese as an undergraduate. Might have to ask him to give us a sentence or two here. In a minute. Clark obtained first place in the Middle Tennessee State University's Chinese Language Writing Contest in 2014 and passed level three of the HSK exam that measures proficiency in the Chinese language. All right, I gotta ask, how did that come about? You don't strike me as a typical person that would go to college to study Chinese with accounting. So I'm curious the backstory before we get into the podcast.

A lot of that is kind of.

Driven by family background. My family is predominantly from Europe and there's a lot of French and German influences there. My grandmother was actually born in Paris, 1942 during the German occupation. So Chinese kind of came out of a desire to do something completely different, kind of solely my own and expand into that area of expertise.

Give us a sentence in Chinese, maybe something, a finance sentence if you can. Something that would tie to finance.

Means I can speak Chinese language. Keep it simple for you, Paul.

I like it. I won't remember, I won't remember how to say it, but I like it. You do have to keep it simple. You should talk to me like you would talk to your 5 year old if you have one. Just see.

We'll keep that in mind, Paul.

All right, well let's, let's jump into the questions we have. So this first one I'm going to ask you, Lambden, when you think of FP&A, what does great FP&A look like to you? How would you describe it for me?

Great FP&A is it's a function deeply embedded in the operations of a business. And the reason I don't go into like graded Excel modeling, you know, assumption driven forecasting is because I feel like those are table stakes. I find what separates really great FP&A groups is building those partnerships within the business to help drive maximum value for its constituents. And so every time I'm, you know, at a company or analyzing the FPA function, I'm often looking for how embedded are they with the operations of a business and are they look to as value added business partners.

I really like that you said what value are they adding to the business? Are they value added business partners? I had a lot of people say, look, the technical stuff is table stakes. Everybody has to have it, which is financial modeling, failed assumptions, you know, analysis, Excel. But I've always thought, and I agree very much with you, where you separate is really the operation focus to being able to partner and drive value from the business and understanding it, not just understanding the numbers. But I'd love your thoughts on this, Clark. Anything you'd add or any thought you have on it, I would add.

Probably adjusting the way that we use jargon mo very commonly in finance, accounting in particular, and kind of condensing that down to a way that any person could understand to tell the story of what's going on. A particular model, a budget forecast, making it as accessible to you as it is to everyone else.

Yeah, I love what you said there, the jargon because. Right. How many times have we been in a meeting where they're like, what are you talking about? Like, you guys can see my hat. Ebitda. I went to the Doctor's office and was wearing it the other day. And he just gave me that look like, what in the world was Evita? And I thought I was explaining it at a level that he would understand, you know, kind of referencing to cash and how it's not the way to look at it things. And he looked at me and he goes, you're speaking doctor to the doctor. Like, you know, way over my head. And I was like, all right, I need to work on that a little bit. So it was that reminder of exactly what you were talking about, Clark. The importance of making sure we speak the language of our audience, not the language we speak to our counterparts and our, you know, in finance. All right, so I'd love to jump in. First question here around cfi. We're going to start with Landon, who took the fmva. I would love to know your reasoning for earning the fmva. What kind of drove you to take. Take the program?

Yeah, it's. I'll have to take you on a quick journey. Majority of my career has been in finance and accounting. From 2016 to 2020, I went on a detour where I actually worked in operations and finance. So deploying enterprise tech, SAP, ARIBA, SuccessFactors, also standing up a business intelligence function and team. And as I was coming out of that, relocated to Tennessee looking for my next job. One of the things I really wanted to lean into because I had my CPA very proficient on the pure accounting side, was really polishing my skills on the. On the FPA side. And so I went down the journey of looking at different certifications and trainings and you know, I was looking at cfa. Didn't really trigger anything for me. And for whatever reason, I came across CFI and saw their fmba. I took a kind of an introductory course and just fell in love with the way they lay out the curriculum, the way you can go self paced. Kind of the accessibility of fusing theory to real world application was the thing that I was really drawn to because the thing I struggle with often is there's a theory of things, but there's no real way to drive how you practically apply that. And that was the thing I felt was the real differentiator for cfi. And so, you know, after the first one, I think I whipped through that thing in two weeks. It was just like, you know, I fell in love and just kind of leaned in and find myself continuously going back to CFI to kind of polish up my. My modeling skills or my Excel workbook skills. And yeah, it's just been A wonderful, wonderful company to, to engage with.

Great. Sounds like it's been a really good experience for you and you know, like to hear that, appreciate you kind of sharing some of that story. And it sounds like you spent a lot of time in those two weeks if you cranked it out that quick. So that's, that's impressive. Clark, tell us your story. What was your reason for doing the FP and a specialization, which I know is you did from cfi.

Very much both a learning experience, desire to learn modeling and FP&A skills as well as a practical component as well in terms of kind of adjusting to the fact that I was going to be called upon to kind of support the budgeting process this past year and making sure that my skills in both excel and modeling in general, we're up to snuff and ready to meet that challenge. And very much kind of to echo what Landon said, always kind of come away from any of CFI's courses with easily at least one thing that I can integrate into my daily job and kind of bring into the office and add value to help others around the office and build new templates and things of that nature.

Great. Makes sense. You'll want to expand your learning. And two, it sounds like you're starting to do more of a hybrid role where you're doing FP and A. So getting some training makes sense. Totally understand that one. So what I'd like to know, and we'll start with you on this one, Clark, and then we'll go to Landon. I'd love to know, were there other programs you considered? What all did you look at, you know, and how did you finally come to conclusion, hey, CFI is right for me.

Some other programs I had looked at Advanced financial modeler from FMI as well as AFP's FPAC credential. Those are the two other ones I can look at. Kind of the big draw for me in terms of choosing CFI was just the immediate accessibility of the courses in terms of getting me up to speed very, very quickly in terms of the knowledge and skills that I need to have for those kind of job functions.

It makes a lot of sense, right? It's self study, it's affordable and if you want something to, you can immediately dive in whenever you want. CFI is great. I've. I've done afm. I know the FMI team, I've done the F pack. I'm now trained to certify it. And I would say you know CFI from just a boot up and get Going is easier in the sense of they have, you know, a thousand courses or whatever it is, a couple hundred courses there and you pay it and you have it for a year. So I can totally understand that. Landon, you did mention you looked at cfa. What else did you consider or how did you kind of come to your conclusion?

Yeah, those were the two biggies. And then, you know, I started with cfa, felt a little heavy for what I needed at the time. And once I landed on cfi, it was one of those things where it just, you know, when something just kind of clicks. And then I was like, there's no point in me looking elsewhere. If I need to do additional trainings after this, fine. But it's much like Clark said, it was like, you know, kind of just as soon as you log in, you pop open the first course, you look at some of the materials and it just, it all makes sense pretty logically.

Right?

And then kind of the self paced nature, the cost effective price point, like all of the things were just like, yes, buy me and start studying now.

You know, I, I hear you and it's funny you mentioned CFA. I did level one back in 2014, I think, and I just realized I'm like, all right, if I stay in corporate finance, it really doesn't make sense.

To do level two and three.

This isn't the right certification. I think a lot of people do it because, you know, if you don't want a CPA or CMA for a long time, that's what everybody kind of thought was the other option in finance. But it's not really geared toward the traditional corporate finance professional. And today we have so many more options. Not that it's not a great program. I mean, if you earn it, you've put in the time and you've shown you're dedicated, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to use it in your daily job and it's a lot of time to put in. At least that's kind of the conclusion I came to. All right, so you hinted at a little bit of this earlier, Landon, but I'd like to get a little deeper in this. I know you had several senior roles before enrolling in the CFI program, the FM VA program. So how do you feel like maybe the, the training helped you advance your career? You said you fell in love with the material and you learned a lot. But maybe talk a little bit of how it helped you when you're in a more a senior role. Because typically you see people earlier in their career taking the program. So I'd love to get your perspective because I think it's a little bit unique to when most people take it.

Yeah, you know, as I mentioned, like I grew up in more of your traditional accounting, deep accounting, technical accounting, audit, did a little bit of FP&A, but not a ton.

Right.

And kind of coming out of this operations and technology role, what I was really looking for was something to help me become a bit more well rounded from a finance and accounting perspective. Sitting in operations and tech, I was exposed to more like the hidden levers of a business to drive either revenue growth or margin expansion. And now it was kind of attaching this financial discipline from an FP and a perspective to what I had learned operationally to really round out kind of my broader finance and accounting skill set. And that was kind of the key. There was just, I'll call it addressing a weakness based on, you know, if you were to just binarily look at my resume, heavy accounting, not as much on the finance side. This was really my, my approach to solving some of those gaps I might have from a skill set perspective.

And speaking of that, I'm curious, do you get people asking about it kind of when they see the resume or you say you wanted to build out know, kind of round that out maybe what has been the response you get from people when they say you did the fmba?

You know, I, I have not created or submitted a resume in some time and so I don't get a ton of feedback there. Well, relative like the, the people who have gone through CFI and see the fmva. It's kind of like, ah, you get it. Like you, you understand. And then there's other people who don't and they're like, you know, what is this? And I always, you know, I'm probably anna and so CFI's biggest advocate of like just go spend the money and do it. It's going to work wonders for your skill set even if you're not looking to go deep into finance. Even my accounting folks, I'm like, it will teach you Excel structure like I have not learned before in a way that is highly digestible.

Right?

Yep. When I asked them for a name for the podcast, I think they came back with U Landon immediately. And then I asked for someone in FP and a specialization which is fairly new and it took a little while to find the right person. So I would imagine you've been, you know, quite vocal with just how quick they responded because I've done a number of different programs where I've talked to people to evaluate them and help FP&A professionals make that best decision for themselves. And I think yours is one of the quickest turnarounds I got. So. Yeah, I think they're a big fan of the way you talk about the program. Right. You want those promoters?

For sure.

Yeah. Anna knows I'm an auto. Yes. Anytime she needs me to sing the praises of cfi, I love it.

So, Clark, I'd like to get, you know, kind of your thoughts a little different of a question. So you did the cpa, then you also did the cma, which has some similarities to FP and a. What were some of the differences or things you learned from the FP and a specialization that maybe you didn't learn from the other degrees that have really helped you.

I would say bridging the Excel and modeling gap and then more specifically kind of introducing other tools into the mix, specifically within Excel, but Power BI as well. In terms of Power Pivot, Power Query items that you would not see coming up through either the CPA licensure or the CMA program in any.

No. Thank you for that answer, Clark. That makes a lot of sense. And I'm a huge fan of like Power Query, Power Pivot, you know, the things you can do. When I created a course for one of the programs, I really focus on what I call modern Excel. Hey, learn Power Query, learn about dynamic arrays, learn about tables. Because I can imagine once you started learning about Power Query, how much time did it save you on some of your processes?

Good.

Several hours at least.

Yeah. And see that, that's common. And so I think that's great they have that in there because that's very practical. Some don't have that practical level. And I mean, I'm going to guess if I ask both of you, over your career, how much of your time have you spent clean, cleaning and preparing data? Take a guess, Landon. What?

Yeah, like number of hours in total.

Just percentage, just kind of above part.

I mean probably a good 30 plus percent of, you know, any body of work, you're spending 30 to 40% of the time cleaning data, gut checking the data, completeness, quality, etc.

Yep. Right. Yeah, that. I, I figured you'd be somewhere in that range. What about you, Clark? What would you estimate it at? Okay, so you're both in that same range, right? I mean think about that. You know, if you, if you work 2000 hours in a year, which I'm guessing you work more than 40 hours a week on average, but we'll do simple math, you know, 40, that's 800 hours a year, right? Think if you get 10% of that time back, that's two weeks. You don't have to get much out of Power Query. And the reality is you can often get 20, 25, 30%. Now you may have to. You have to invest up front, but that's true of anything, right? That's where the learning takes place. So a little bit of a side conversation there, but I'm a huge fan of Power Query, so I appreciate that one. I want to ask a question before we get to some of the others we had kind of laid out here. I'd love to know, did you have a favorite course? Was there like one course or module or something that really just like resonated with you, where kind of stood out compared to the others? And I'll give you a minute, Landon, I can see you kind of thinking there. You're like, which one is it, Clark? What was yours?

Probably Duncan Maheen's seven part horror section of the FPA series. That one I think was really well done and generally brought everything home and full circle. And it was great to see all sections of an FPA model being built up from start to finish, end to end.

So was it like a budget model? Is that what you did? You went through and built like 12 month or couple year or whatever. But a full budget did have like different cost centers and everything. Like how was it a 3 statement or what was kind of the level of detail? I'm just curious.

Broken out into a number of different schedules across different areas for contractors, payroll, fixed assets, depreciation schedules, and then kind of amalgamating them together into a final consolidated output.

Okay. No, that's great because. Yeah, I mean that's a huge. Having that skill is huge in FP&A.

For sure.

What about you, Landon?

Yeah, I'm trying to think, you know, it's been a minute. It was like one of the earlier ones, the intro to the three statement modeling.

Right.

And I'm not as advanced as Clark. And so mine, that was the real eye opener and aha moment for me of like something that feels intimidating, doesn't necessarily have to be. There's a logical structure to it all that kind of fits really nicely together. And it was kind of at that moment as I completed that where I was very motivated to keep going.

Right.

But it was a lot of the one that pulled all these pieces together that felt a lot more intimidating to me earlier in my career. That kind of demystified a lot of that that I really loved.

Don't you love when you're learning something, it demystifies or becomes clear to you? Yeah, because I. I know I used to. I have a. I had my calculus class and remember half the time I'd turn to my friend or he'd turn to me, and we'd look at each other and go, I feel stupider for having come to class today because we just laugh, Completely confused. You know, you build study forever to try to understand it. So I love those moments when something that feels complex really clicks and it all comes together and you're like, I get it. I can keep going. So that's great. I. That. That was my story of calculus. That's what we used to always say after every think, almost every lecture. But I did survive, so. All right, so, you know, Clark, what has been the response among your kind of peers and coworkers of you earning the certification? What kind of questions you get? You know, how has it been recognized? I just love just your thoughts in general since you've done it.

It's been a lot of. Just kind of a barrage of Excel questions, kind of. Once you mention CFI in general, there are some folks in my particular neck of the woods who are very familiar with it. And it's a lot of, you know, they might have done one or two courses in it, but maybe didn't go through a specialization or the full F&VA program as Landon did. But there's a lot more in terms of.

Well, do you know if it would.

Be possible to kind of rework this to make it like this? And how would you kind of modify this file here in terms of making it better for the budget or the forecast? Just a lot of ad hoc stuff that kind of comes up as a result of those conversations.

So you're now kind of viewed as that Excel expert. So you get a lot of questions. You know, I. I couldn't relate. Last year I got. Someone nominated me and I got selected as a Microsoft mvp. As soon as someone sees mvp, they think you know everything about Excel. And no, nobody knows everything about Excel. So there are times I get questions like a guy I was trying to help today, and I. I had to think about it for a while. I was trying to do it. If I said, I'm just restructuring his entire data because this will be much easier to do because I couldn't think of a good way to write the formula. So I. I get being kind of the person they come to. It can be a blessing. And a curse. So I would love to get both of your thoughts on what advice would you offer to someone considering taking a program from cfi? I know how it works and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you pay an annual fee and you're able to take whatever courses you want for the next 12 months and then you can renew if you want. Is that your understanding of how it works today? Right.

Okay, perfect.

So what. What advice would you offer to someone considering that? Why don't we start with you, Landon? What would you tell them?

I would tell em don't think about it, just do it. And you'll thank yourself for it later. Only if it's, you know, you're looking to polish up on your Excel and kind of finance FP&A skills. Obviously if you're looking for something different, I wouldn't tell you to do it, but it's really like jump in head first and dedicate the time to really learning the practical application of what they're teaching you. Because I think there's so much value to yield from going through that coursework that will pay dividends over the course of your career.

So yeah, I mean that last part, like anything put. Put in the time. Don't try to just skate through it. Right? We've all. We've all done it the cram the night before the final exam.

Well, you said it earlier too, right? Like invest the time up front to get that scale down the line.

Right?

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I would say daily consistency. Try to schedule a little bit of time for whatever course you're working on from CFI in the beginning of a do it in increments, make sure it doesn't sneak up on you and just kind of slowly build your skillset so you don't kind of have a information dump at once. And try trying to say, well, I'm going to go try and crank through this one course and you know, one stretch in an hour. Just break it up into chunks and kind of absorb the knowledge piecemeal in that way.

So don't do it. Like I've done it. I've done both the F Pack and AFM start since I started my own business and it on one of them, I pretty much studied only the week before because I was just so busy on two of them, two of the three tests and fortunately I passed somehow. But I would not recommend it as the way to study. For him it was like, all right, hopefully I pass, especially given one of one of the programs. You know, I, I work with them closely and so it was part of a requirement of me working with them that take the certification. So I would add it, like tell everybody publicly. Yep, I failed. Not, not, not good. So that was, that was an interesting experience. But, you know, so I love that advice. Just take it. CFI is a great program. One thought I want to get from both of you. I think what I've heard is their real strength is around Excel, the financial modeling, those type of things, you know, with the FP and a special issue. We'll start with you, Clark. How about some of those soft skills? Did you find much on the way of storytelling or data visualization or how do they cover some of those?

They go in depth with PowerPoint and kind of storytelling as well. And then there are some other dedicated courses specifically for kind of interpreting and presenting data analytics associated with FP&A and kind of adjusting those to properly communicate your message to your audience. Really helpful.

Great. No, that's good to hear. I appreciate that. What about with the FMVA land and what was kind of your take on that is it feels like it's really focused on the modeling and the Excel side. Is that kind of your.

Yeah, a lot. Focuses a lot on, you know, structure of Excel workbooks, which again, I really appreciated where you're using, you know, assumption driven modeling set up in a very specific way to drive a lot of downstream calculations. And like, that was the piece. I, I just couldn't get enough of it. Even still to this day, I love.

Instruction on building a, a really good model because it. Structure is so important. As I like to say, I've built plenty of what I call Franken models, right, where they're just awful. And you, as you get better and better at it in your career, you look back and you're like, what was I thinking? Or as one person I interviewed one time said, put the model away for three days. If you open it and you can't remember the formulas you built, then it's too complex. Simplify it. And I thought there's a lot of truth to that because how many times have you opened a model and you're like, what was I thinking here? What's that supposed to be doing? And you're both laughing because I'm sure you've done it.

I still do it.

God, I'm not the only one. The next question I'd like to ask, just how much time do you find you kind of studied in a week or kind of for the program? Do you think it's similar to what they tell you? You put in more time, just kind of give a thought on kind of expectations? Let's say, you know, if you're doing the program over, you know, kind of the normal period they recommend. Now, Clark, what did you find you were putting in kind of time wise for the program?

Several hours a week, just kind of broken up each day into, you know, 30, 45 minute increments on average.

Okay. And I know you did it all in two weeks, Landon. So were you kind of transitioning between jobs or do you just like staying up all night?

Yeah, I was in a bit of a lull, transitioning out of an old company during COVID and.

Ah, that makes sense.

I'm. I'm probably more of a sprinter than I am a marathon runner. And so the minute I've got motivation, passion, a real interest for something, I like to go as deep as I can, as fast as I can. And then once I kind of get through that coursework, I'll come back to it. And start to polish up the things I either don't remember or I'm not as good at. And so mine was really just writing the motivation that I had over that two week period, and it was less, hey, I have to do that and more. I would just take it, be super excited, and then move on to the next one and then on to the next one. I don't know that I would recommend that unless your personality is structured as such. I think Clark's. Clark's kind of like very methodical, slow and steady. Don't overwhelm yourself. Probably a better approach for most folks. But also, if you're kind of like me and you're a sprinter and you've got that bug, take advantage of it because it'll. It will pay dividends for you. There's. I don't know that there's one right way. A lot of it is contextually relevant to your personality.

No, I completely agree. I'm actually, I've run marathons. I am not a sprinter in, you know, running or in life. I'm much more kind of the plotter and just keep going. I've never had speed, so that was a great analogy for me having done a few marathons. All right, so I appreciate that advice. You know, Landon, I want to ask a question. Kind of changing subjects a little bit. We've talked about cfi. You've been a CFO now for several years. You know, we got a lot of people in our audience that one day want to become a cfo, you know. Right. It's common coming a more and more common path to go from FP and A to eventually cfo. What advice would you offer someone who's listening to this podcast and thinking, I want to be a CFO one day?

Yeah. I think for me it was really get curious about the business and understanding the business. I think oftentimes we can get lost in. You know, I'm great at preparing financial statements or I can whip up a financial model. Again, a lot of these things are table stakes. When you get to that level of your career, what starts to differentiate you not just from your peers, but the folks that, that you work with on the front lines is how well do you understand the business? Can you meet them at their level? So that's where I tend to advise folks, is you're not going in to tell people all the things you think they need to know. You're going in to be very curious to learn about what they're doing, how that impacts operations, what things could be done Better once you've accumulated enough information and understanding about those processes or those operations.

Right.

And so, you know, I tend to focus on more of the broader business understanding. I sat in a role that was called business engineering once upon a time, kind of fusion of operations technology. And that always stuck with me because the emphasis there was always on understand the business deeply. And if you can do that, then you kind of leverage your skill set in the background, whether it's FP and a accounting, what have you to tie that into your, your depth of understanding of the business business. And so that's usually where I recommend folks to spend time is, you know, really, really lean in there.

Great recommendation. I really, I like that one. I would agree with you. How, how would you recommend they do that? Like what's some of the things you do when you first go into a company to really start understanding the business?

Yeah, look easy enough. Start with whatever process, documentation, organizational charts, org modeling is available and then it's just being curious and going and meeting with folks that are either running the business.

Clark, I would love your thoughts on this question.

I would say daily consistency. Try to schedule a little bit of time for whatever course you're working on from CFI and you get into a do it in increments, make sure it doesn't sneak up on you and just kind of slowly build your skill set so you don't kind of have a information dump at once. And try trying to say, well, I'm going to go try and crank through this one course and you know, one stretch in an hour. Just break it up into chunks and kind of absorb the knowledge piecemeal in that way.

So sitting shotgun with people running the business or people that are running parts of that business. And you're really trying to assemble the puzzle of kind of macro operations across an organization.

Right.

To figure out how you slot in from a, either an accounting or a finance perspective. And so like I don't have one playbook. I've got, you know, a checklist of things that I want to, I want to learn and get access to. But every company is a little different. Some don't have great document. So you've got to spend a lot more time sitting with people. Some don't have enough time because it's so busy that you have to default to the documentation.

Right.

So don't do it. Like I've done it. I've done both the F pack and AFM start since I started my own business. And it on one of them, I pretty much studied only the Week before because I was just so busy on two of them, two of the three tests. And fortunately I passed somehow. But I would not recommend it as the way to study for them. It was like, all right, hopefully I pass, especially given one of one of the programs. You know, I, I work with them closely. And so as part of a requirement of me working with them, they take the certification. So I would add.

And so it's kind of just being resourceful in learning about the business and obviously reading about industries and other like, companies and benchmarks and, you know, there's a lot of ways that you can figure out how to learn about a company, even if it's not within the company, such as other industries. And, you know, common nomenclature, which I know we talked about jargon earlier, that's always pervasive in any company, right. And then specifically when you get into very niche industries. And so it's again, just being curious and like being relentless in kind of your quest for learning.

I love that last term, being relentless in your quest for learning. Just keep asking questions and find ways to learn the business. Every business is going to be a little different. There's some similarities. But like, they like, tell everybody publicly, yep, I failed. Not, not, not good. So that was, that was an interesting experience. But, you know, so I love that advice. Just take it. CFI is a great program. One thought I want to get from both of you. I think what I've heard is their real strength is around Excel, the financial modeling, those type of things, you know, with the FP and a specialization. We'll start with you, Clark. How about some of those soft skills? Did you find much on the way of storytelling or data visualization or how do they cover some of those you mentioned? Some have great process documentation, some have none or very little. And so you have to adjust.

They go in depth with PowerPoint and kind of storytelling as well. And then there are some other dedicated.

Depending on the company. I think that's a really good point. So, Clark, I would like to ask you, you know, for someone who's working in accounting and started to do a little bit more of an FPA role, what advice would you have for someone.

Listening that wants to do courses, specifically early kind of interpreting and presenting data analytics associated with FP&A.

Do more FP&A work. Any suggestion or ideas for them?

I mean, first and foremost, master the technical skills, specifically Excel. I feel like that's kind of a given in terms of mastering that, but all kind of adjusting those to properly communicate your message to your Audience really helpful.

Great. No, that's good to hear. I appreciate that. What about with the FMVA land and what was kind of your take on that is it feels like it's really focused on the modeling and the Excel side. Is that kind of your also kind.

Of looking for cross functional opportunities. Volunteer your time, express your interest to other groups in the company that are more at least historically closer to that kind of analytical work and kind of shadow them where appropriate. Have those conversations and really kind of.

A lot focuses a lot on, you know, structure of Excel workbooks.

Take what Landon said in terms of relentlessly learning, relentlessly asking questions and kind of run with it is how I work.

Which again I really appreciated where you're using, you know, assumption driven model.

Kind of summarize that.

Yeah. And Clark, if I could just add on. I absolutely love what you said and Paul, sorry to modeling set up in a very specific way to drive a lot of downstream calculations. And like that was the piece. I. I just couldn't get enough of it. Even still to this day, I love.

Instruction on building a really good model because it structure is so important. As I like to say. I've built plenty of what I call Franken models hijacked.

I think one of the other things is you guys have come across this where there's a big hairy problem that needs to be solved. Everybody's kind of putting their head down because they don't want to solve it. Usually that's my cue. Just raise your hand and then Google figure it out.

Right.

And so finding things other folks don't want to do because it feels difficult.

Right. Where they're just awful. And you as you get better and better at it in your career, you look back and you're like what was I thinking? Or as one person I interviewed one time said, put the model away for three days.

If you cult is usually where you can separate yourself pretty quickly. Plus within that pain, you're often learning at a much faster pace than you would doing something you're very accustomed to doing.

Yeah, general we're thrown in the you open it and you can't remember the formulas you built then it's too complex. Simplify it. And I thought there's a lot of truth to that because how many times have you opened a model and you're like what was I thinking here? What's that supposed to be doing? And you're both laughing because I'm sure you've done it.

I still do it.

Deep end, so to speak. You, you often learn quicker as Long as you have a life preserver and you don't drown, because there are times when you're like, okay, there's just no hope here. I need some help. But in general, I completely glad I'm not the only one. The next question I'd like to ask, just how much time do you find? Completely agree that I. I've had that happen more than once. And usually some of the most painful times are also the ones you learn the most from. Without a doubt. All right, so now we have a fun section. This is the fp and you kind of studied in a week or kind of for the program. You think it's similar to what they tell you. You put in more time, just kind of give a thought on kind of expectations. Let's say, you know, if you're doing the program over, you know, kind of the normal period they recommend. Now, Clark, what did you find you were putting in kind of time wise for the program? A section? There's a couple questions I ask every guest.

The first two.

So we'll start with you, Clark, on.

The first several hours a week, just kind of broken up each day into, you know, 30, 45 minute increments on average.

Go ahead. And then we'll go to Landon. Then we'll flip it for the second one here. So, Clark, in your view, what is the number one technical skill that FP and a professional should master?

Excel, without a doubt. Because it's still okay.

And I know you did it all in two weeks, Landon. So were you kind of transitioning between.

More than 20 years since its debut, still carrying the backbone and the infrastructure.

Of the business jobs, or do you just like staying up all night?

Yeah, I was in a bit of a lull. Transitioning out of an old world.

In particular FP and A in finance.

Yeah, we're even over 40 years now. Yep, yep.

Company during COVID And that makes sense. I'm. I'm probably more of a sprinter.

Pretty crazy. What about you, Landon?

Yeah, I won't use that one. I would say like peripheral tech that then I am a marathon runner. And so the minute I've got motivation, passion, a real interest for something, I like to go as deep as I can, as fast as I can. And then once I kind of get through that coursework, I'll come back to it and start to polish up the things I either don't remember or I'm not as good at. Optimizes what you're doing in Excel and your workflows.

Give an example, like just kind of love to hear just a brief example.

I think you guys talked a little bit about it. So let's use like Power Bi, right. So just be being able to lean in with other more advanced tech to help you with either data quality or data mining. And so mine was really just writing the motivation that I had over that two week period and it was less or visualizations.

Right.

I think technology proliferation is so rap to do that and more. I would just take it, be super excited and then move on to the next one and then on to the next one. I don't know that I would recommend that unless your personality is structured as such. I think Clark's. Clark's kind of like very methodical, slow and steady. Don't overwhelm yourself probably right now that if you don't understand how to leverage technology and kind of work your way through a better approach for most folks. But also if you're kind of like me and you're a sprinter and you've got that bug, take advantage of it because it'll, it will pay dividends for you. There's. I don't know that there's one right way you're going to get left behind. And I also find that that's one of those areas, you know, that a lot of finance and accounting folks can differentiate themselves is when they have this real knack for, you know, leveraging technology to do work better, faster, smarter.

100% agree. It's a great way to stand.

A lot of it is contextually relevant to your personality.

No, I completely agree. I'm actually, I've run marathons. I am not a sprinter in, you know, running or in life. I'm much more kind of the plotter and just keep going. I've never had speed, so that was a great analogy for me having done a few marathons. All right, so I appreciate that advice. You know, Landon, I want to ask a question kind of out whether it's learning SQL, taking advantage of AI, a little bit of Python, vba. There's different things. It's going to be different in each job. The more you have multiple tools in your tool belt to changing subjects a little bit. We've talked about cfi. You've been a CFO now for several years who solve something the better because, you know, Excel is wonderful and we can do just about anything in Excel, but that doesn't mean we should do everything in Excel. Right. And so it's knowing the right tool for the right jobs. I think that's a great point. All right, so you get to Go first here, Landon. So this time Clark can't steal your answer. What would you. We got a lot of people in our audience that one day want to become a cfo. All right. It's common come in a more and more common path to go from FP and A to eventually cfo. What advice would you offer someone who's listening to this podcast and thinking, I want to be a CFO one day?

Yeah, I think for me it was really get curious about the business and understanding the business. I think oftentimes we can get lost in, you know, I'm grab the number.

One soft skill that FPA professionals need to master.

2 Answers. I would say curiosity and communication. You know, curiosity to learn, curiosity to understand, function great at preparing financial statements, or I can whip up a financial model again. A lot of these things are table stakes. When you get to that ends people's roles, you know, soaking up as much knowledge as you can to better your level of your career, what starts to differentiate you not just from your peers, but the folks that you work off in your job. And then I think Clark touched on this earlier. I think communication and then, you know, further extended out storytelling. Very important. And kind of meeting people where they are and not, you know, talking jargon that finance folks tend to do, but really getting into a common business language that kind of breaks down those barriers that tend to exist, you know, for certain finance and accounting functions.

Great. Those, those are good answers on the.

Front lines is how well do you understand the business? Can you meet them at their level? So that's where I tend to advise folks, is you're not going in to tell people all the things you think they need to know. You're going in to be very curious to learn about what they're doing, how that impacts operations, what things could be done better once you've accumulated enough information and understanding about those processes or those operations. Right. And so, you know, I tend to focus on more of the broader.

Clark, what's yours echo all of what.

Landon said and also probably understanding some business understanding.

I sat in a role that was called business engineering once upon a time.

Kind of the emotional intelligence implications involved with FP&A. You're working with a lot of different personalities across potentially multiple areas of the business. And then kind of understanding the interpersonal.

Dynamics, fusion of operations technology. And that always stuck with me because the emphasis there was always on understand.

How each person might have different motivations for one reason or another and how those all connect and interact.

Yeah, emotional intelligence is a huge one I've had, you know, various in the.

Business deeply and if you can do that, then you kind of leverage your skill set in the background whether it's fpa, accounting, what have you to tie that into your. Your depth of understanding of the business.

Fluency, kind of building relationship, all kinds of things around that. I've had emotional intelligence. People say that before empathy.

And so that's usually where I recommend folks to spend time is, you know, really, really lean in there.

Great recommendation. I really. I like that one. I would agree with you. How. How would you recommend they do that? Like what's some of the things you do when you first go into a company to really start understanding the business?

Yeah. Look easy enough. Start with whatever process documentation, organizational charts, org modeling.

The right. Really understanding people and being able to relate to them is critical in an FP A role. So it's a great answer. I appreciate both those answers. All right, we got one more question in the FPA section. Then we'll go to the get to know you section, grab a kind of some fun questions for you to get to know you a little bit more personally.

So we'll is available and then it's just being curious. I'm going and meeting with folks that are either running the business.

Start with you on this one, Clark. How do you see AI changing FPS.

Or sitting shotgun with people running the business or people that are running parts of that business and you're really trying.

To over the next few years just maybe AI and technology in general. What's kind of your thoughts? I know there's no right answer.

The puzzle of kind of macro operations across an organization.

Right.

To figure out how you slot in from either an accounting or a finance perspective. And so like I don't have one playbook. I've got, you know, a checklist of things that I want to. I want to learn and get access to. But every company is a little different. Some don't have great documentation. So you've got to spend a lot more time sitting with people. Some don't have enough.

We just all know it's changing quickly.

I think some, I mean obviously the default is automating a lot of the busy work in terms of potentially, you know, any manual updates you're having to make in models. That's. I feel like it's kind of a given but hopefully seeing more in terms of advanced forecasting algorithms and that sort of thing kind of carrying down into more company software tools so more people can use them effectively.

Yeah and I definitely time because it's so busy that you have to default to the documentation.

Right.

And so it's kind of just being resourceful in learning about the business and obviously reading about industries.

And I think we're starting to see that. I think those are both great points. And we all want to bring down that 30, 40% number, right? Yep.

Wouldn't we all other like companies and benchmarks and you know, there's a lot of ways that you can figure out how to learn.

I love it to be more like Ken or 15 or 5 or whatever, but definitely not 30 or 40. Landon, what about you?

I mean, everywhere I read we're not going to have jobs in five years. So.

You all have a universal basic income.

Yeah, I have no point of view. This thing is moving so fast. I tend to look at the brighter side of things about a company, even if it's not within the company, such as other industries and you know, common nomenclature, which I know we talked about jargon earlier, that's always pervasive in any company.

Right.

And then specifically when you get into very niche industries. And so it's again just being curious and like being relentless of just better enabling people. Yeah. I tend to align with what Clark said in kind of your quest for learning.

I love that last term, being relentless in your quest for learning.

Just keep asking, you know, kind of your advanced analysis and interrogation of data, like we're seeing that now, but that's the one that probably rings most true.

Right.

Like you've got massive data sets. Being able to interrogate that in a very mindful or meaningful way quickly, you know, in five years asking questions and.

Find ways to learn the business. Every business is going to be a little different. There's some similarities but like it's going.

To be like years ahead of where it is now. But that's one of the areas that I could see just really exploding.

As you mentioned, some have great process documentation, some have none or very little. And so you have to adjust depending on the company. I think that's a really good point. So Clark, I would like to ask you, for someone who's working in accounting and started to do a little bit more of an FP and a role, what advice would you have for someone listening that wants to do side of.

What you guys mentioned of just more AI driven modeling and forecasting?

Sure. I mean it's do more FP and a work. Any suggestion or ideas for them?

I mean, first and foremost, definitely an.

Exciting time to be alive. Sometimes a little scary with how quick it's moving you're like, oh, wait, it's that good now. Yesterday it wasn't that good. Like, did I miss something? That's what it feels like sometimes.

So the technical skills, specifically excel. I feel like that's kind of a given in terms of mastering that, but also.

So it's an exciting time and definitely it's something we can lean into because it is going to make us more.

So kind of looking for cross functional opportunities. Volunteer your time, express your interest to.

Other groups, more efficient.

And that's where we have to focus. Because, yes, we all hear the doomsday, right? AI is going to take over the world.

Companies that are more, at least historically, closer to that kind of analytical work.

They'Re going to conquer all of us, or it's going to take every job or whatever. And it's like, okay, let's just all.

Step back, shadow them where appropriate, have those conversations and really kind of take what Landon said in terms of relentlessly learning, relentlessly asking questions and kind of run with it is how I would.

And, you know, focus on what we can control.

So.

All right, so here's the personal section. Got two questions for you, Landon. Then I have two for you, Clark. And they're different for each of you. So we'll start with this one. Landon, if you could have any job in the world for. For one week, what job you taking and why?

Kind of summarize that.

Yeah. And Clark, if I could just add on, I absolutely love what you said. And Paul, sorry to. Yeah, mine would be. I would want to be the GM of the Dodgers for a week just to see what goes on. Hijacked. I think one of the other things is you guys have come across this where there's a big hairy problem that needs to be solved. Everybody's kind of putting their head down because they don't want to solve it. Usually that's my cue. Just raise your hand and then Google figure behind the scene scenes.

I'm a Dodgers fan.

Yeah, I'm a huge baseball nerd. Always have been. You know, when I went to college originally, I was, I was going to be a sports agent. I very quickly realized this thing for me, but always had a love for baseball. And kind of the, you know, the business side of the game is super entered out.

Right.

And so finding things other folks don't want to do because it feels difficult is usually where you can separate yourself pretty quickly. Plus, within that pain, you're often learning at a much faster pace than you would doing something you're very accustomed to doing.

Yeah, General.

We're thrown in the interesting to me.

So I'm going to take it. You read Moneyball?

Oh, yeah.

What was your favorite part from that book?

Oh, I don't know that I've got one favorite part. I think you know the thing.

Deep end, so to speak. You, you often learn quicker as long as you have a life preserver and you don't drown. Because there are times when you're like, okay, there's just no hope here. I need some help. But in general, I.

That I always come back to is, you know, baseball historically has been about feel.

Right.

Completely agree that I, I've had that happen more than once. And usually some of the most painful times are also the ones you learn the most from. Without a doubt. All right, so now we have a fun section. This is the FPA section. There's a couple questions I ask every guest.

The first two.

So we'll start with you, Clark, on the first.

Like there's just no replacement for experience and being around the game and knowing what to look for. But really it was like this fusion of that feel, experience, instinct with data that I thought was really fascinating.

Right.

And not that data can be the end all, be all. Because I do think there are some faults with just running a data driven team. Only because you're still dealing with humans at the end of the day.

And then we'll go to Landon, then we'll flip it for the second one here. So Clark, in your view, what is the number one technical kind of that.

Fusion was the thing that I always get drawn back into of like it's.

People and hard skill that FP and.

A professional should master.

Excel, without a doubt. Because it's still more than 20 years since its debut, still carrying the backbone and the infrastructure of the business.

Core data and analytics. That is really wild and I agree.

So what position did you play in college?

This world in particular. FPA and finance.

Yeah, we're even over 40 years now. Yep. It's pretty crazy. What about you? Landon?

Yeah, I won't use that one. I would say like peripheral tech that. Oh man, everywhere in the infield, third, short, second, first, second, hit a little bit. So they were just finding a way a place for me to play a little bit of a utility player. Yeah, I would fancy myself a utility guy.

Mostly in the infield.

Yeah.

Okay. And then I think I know who your favorite team is. I'm going to guess the Dodgers if you want to be their general manager. Who's your favorite player?

Oh, favorite player.

Right.

Optimizes what you're doing in Excel and your workflows.

Give an example, like, just kind of love to hear just a brief example.

I think you guys talked a little bit about it. So let's use like power Bi. Right. So just being able to lean in with other more advanced tech to help you with either data quality or data mining now. You know, I've got a ton on the Dodgers right now. It's probably Freddie Freeman, mostly because it's. Or visualizations.

Right.

I think technology proliferation is so rapid. Like, making something look that easy consistently is very difficult.

Right.

And I think, like, my wife is a big baseball fan. She's like, I don't like Freddie Freeman because he's boring. I'm like, well, that's kind of right now that if you don't understand how to leverage technology and kind of work your way through the point. He's so good. He makes it look boring.

Like, yeah, there are people who just make it look effortless.

You can't. Like, it's hard to understand that if you haven't played and know the nuance and how, like, how genuinely different you're going to get left behind. And I also find that that's one of those areas, you know, that a lot of finance and accounting folks can differentiate themselves is when they have this real knack for, you know, leveraging technology to do work better, faster, smarter.

100% agree. It's a great way to stand it.

Is to hit a baseball. And he's just like, making it look super easy. I could go to Shohei Otani route. I could go that.

Whether it's learning SQL, taking advantage of AI, a little bit of Python, vba, there's different things.

It's gonna be Mookie bets route. There's a bunch of great players, but he's the one that stands out because it just, it almost looks boring. And I'm just like, wow, that's just a next level of hand, eye coordination and skill set that is premier.

I. I probably have to go Tani right now as my favorite, that Marlins game last year where he just had, I think, the greatest game ever played.

Most exciting guy to watch, for sure.

Yeah. No, you never know what's going to happen, so it'll be fun to watch. All right. Enough different in each job. The more you have multiple tools in your tool belt to solve something, the better. Because, you know, Excel is wonderful and we can do just about anything in Excel, but that doesn't mean we should do everything in Excel. Right. And so it's knowing the right tool for the right jobs. I think that's a great point. All right, so you get to go first here, Landon. So this time Clark can't steal your answer. What would you call the number one soft skill that FPA professionals need to master?

2 answers. I would say curiosity and communication. You know, curiosity to learn, curiosity to understand function.

Baseball talk. Clark, we'll go over to you. The show isn't about baseball, so there'll probably be a few people it turned off, but that's okay. I don't mind. All right. What did you want to be when you grew up, when you were a.

Child, when you were people's roles, you know, soaking up as much knowledge as you can to better yourself?

Child, what was the profession you wanted?

It was kind of a two way tie between artist and historian. So pretty much the polar opposite of what I ultimately settled on.

So you do much art stuff today, often your job.

And then I think Clark touched on this earlier. I think communication and then, you know, further extended out storytelling.

I do not.

That was very much something that kind of was very intense in my childhood.

And very important and kind of meeting people where they are and not, you know, talking jargon that finance folks tend to do, but really getting into a common business language that kind of breaks.

Down adolescence and then kind of gravitated more towards business and economics as a.

Teenager started those barriers that tend to exist, you know, for certain finance and accounting functions.

Great. Those, those are good answers. Clark, what's yours?

Echo all of what Landon said and also probably understanding some of the emotional intelligence implications involved with FP&A. You're working with a lot of different person. Out of tuning into CNBC squawk box, I kind of started to the spark that kind of ignited the interest there and then kind of gradually move far multiple across potentially multiple areas of the business and then kind of understanding the interpersonal dynamics more towards accounting and finance and college. Most creative thing that I do now is probably just the VBA macros. That's kind of my opportunity to create on a day to day basis.

You're a VBA artist in terms of.

How each person might have different motivations for one reason or another and how those all connect and interact.

Yeah, emotional intelligence is a huge one. I've had, you know, various influencing, kind of building relationships, all kinds of things around that. I've had emotional intelligence. People say that before. Empathy. Right. Really understanding people and being able to relate to them is critical in an effort. I am not.

But I do enjoy creating Them.

Yeah, we know, we know we have an Excel nerd when the P and A roll. So it's a great answer. I appreciate both those answers. All right, we got one more question in the FPA section, then we'll go there. Creativity. And I'm, I'm including myself and the creativity is right, doing something in Excel. So love it. So if you could recommend one book to our audience. Is there the get to know you section? Grab a kind of some fun questions for you to get to know you a little bit more personally. So what's a book you'd recommend that they read?

Probably Banker to Be Poor by Muhammad Yunus, famous professor of economics from Bangladesh. Kind of tells the story of Microsoft.

Start with you on this one, Clark. How do you see AI changing FPA over the next few years? Just maybe AI and technology in general. What's kind of your thoughts? I know there's no right answer. We just all know it's changing quickly.

I think some. I mean, obviously the default is automating a lot of pro lending and how that kind of transformed the economy, that country. And I read it back in college as part of a joint statistics microeconomics course. So definitely left an impression and quite an interesting subject matter.

Love it. Thank, thank you for sharing. That sounds like a great book.

I busy work in terms of potentially, you know, any manual updates you're having to make in models. That's.

I've heard a lot about it. I haven't read the book, but I know what you're talking about in that movement and when I have to pick that up one of these days. All right, last question for you to each of you. You know, any parting advice you'd like to give our audience around you feel.

Like it's kind of a given, but hopefully seeing more in terms of advanced forecasting algorithms and that sort of thing, kind of carrying down into more company software tools so more people can use them effectively.

Yeah. And I definitely think we're starting to see that. I think those are both great points and we all want to bring down that 30, 40% number. Right. Wouldn't we all love it to be more like 10 or 15 or 5 or whatever, but definitely not the CFI program or FP and A in general. Just want to give you kind of a last chance to share any last thoughts before we wrap up. We'll start with you. Clark and Landon will give you last words, so go ahead.

Clark would say just again, consistency and taking initiative and being very diligent and kind of working through and Picking up a little bit every single day.

Love it. That's a great one, Landon.

Yeah, I would say, you know, find your passion for learning, fall in love with learning. And the reason I say that is, you know, I wasn't 30 or 40.

Landon, what about you?

I mean, everywhere I read we're not going to have jobs in five years, so.

You can all have a universal basic income.

Yeah, I have no point of view. This thing is moving so fast. I tend to look at the brighter side of things, of just better enabling people. Yeah, I tend to align with what Clark said. I think, you know, kind of your advanced analysis and interrogation of data, like auditor. Early in my career, I always joke, like, your job as an auditor is to fact check people way smarter than you, especially when you're coming out of college. So if you're not, if you're not careful, you can develop a little bit of arrogance, which I certainly did, which kind of stunted my love for learning. And so it was really when I started to fall in love with learning that my career took off. And so I always advise people, like, find something you love to do and then fall in love with learning because there's just. It'll take you so many places and you don't know where it's going to take you. Totally, we're seeing that now. But that's the one that probably rings most true.

Right.

Like you've got massive data sets. Being able to interrogate that in a very mindful or meaningful way quickly, you know, in five years, it's going to be like years ahead of where it is now. But that's one of the areas that I could see just really exploding outside of what you guys mentioned of just more AI driven modeling and forecasting.

Sure. I mean, it's definitely an exciting time to be alive. Sometimes a little scary with how quick it's moving. You're like, oh, wait, it's flagry. It's. I think that's great advice. You know, one of the best things we can give anyone and we can give ourselves is that gift of learning. Because if you're not learning, you're stagnant. And it doesn't have to be just work. That applies to personal, professional, all those things. Why I almost always ask in an interview, tell me something you're learning about. I go, it can be personal, professional. Course you're taking something you're doing just to see is this someone who's always trying to learn new things, develop it gives you an idea of their mindset. I don't really care if it's that good. Now, yesterday it wasn't that good. Like, did I miss something? That's what it feels like sometimes. So it's an exciting time and definitely it's something we can lean into because it is going to make us more efficient. And that's where we have to focus. Because, yes, we all hear the doomsday, right? AI is going to take over the world and they're going to conquer all of us or it's going to take every job or whatever. And it's like, okay, let's just all step back and, you know, focus on what we can control. So. All right, so here's the personal section. Work related per se. It's more to kind of just see. So I'm, I'm with you. I think that's some great advice. And thank you, Clark and Landon for carving out some time talking to me in the evening. I really appreciate it. I know it took us a little while to get this coordinated. Few little fun things happened. But thank you so much for joining the show. It was a real pleasure. I got two questions for you, Landon. Then I have two for you, Clark, and they're different for each of you. So we'll start with this one. Landon. It's having you both on.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks, Paul.

Thanks for listening to FP&A tomorrow. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star rating and a review on your podcast platform. You could have any job in the world for one week. What job you taking and why?

Yeah, mine would be I would want to be the GM of the Dodgers for a week just to see what goes on behind the scenes. I'm a Dodgers fan, so yeah, I'm a huge baseball nerd. Always have been. You know, when I went to college originally, I was, I was going to be a sports agent. I very quickly realized this thing for.

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But always had a love for baseball and kind of the, you know, the business side of the game is super interesting to me.

So I'm going to take it. You read Moneyball?

Oh, yeah.

What was your favorite part from that book?

Oh, I don't know that I've got one favorite part, I think, you know, the thing that I always come back to is, you know, baseball historically has been about feel, right? Like, there's just no replacement for experience and being around the game and knowing what to look for. But really, it was like this fusion of that feel, experience, instinct with data that I thought was really fascinating, right? And not that data can be the end all, be all, because I do think there are some f.