The Complexity Trap in Finance for FP&A Pros to Escape Using Simpler Tools & Strategy - Matt Brattin

You need to snap out of it. That's nonsense. That's fairy tales. I've been accused of being an idealistic thinker when it comes to my philosophies on teams and team building. But I've developed my framing based on real world experience.

You've spent the last few years as a cfo. What are the top two or three things you learned from that experience?

One of the first things that I learned is that authentic leadership, there is no substitute for that. And then I would say secondarily, this almost feels contradictory in a sense, but. Matt Bratton is a CFO turned founder on a mission to save 1 million hours by eliminating corporate complexity. After two decades leading FP and A teams across companies of all sizes, he saw how talented people get stuck doing low value work. That insight led him to create Sylphy, a modern platform that simplifies sales commissions and empowers finance professionals to focus on strategy and performance. People want to outsmart the process and it's like you really don't. I press promise you it sounds great. Adding tiers and all sorts of stuff where it's like you don't earn anything until you get to here. And then once you get there, you earn 50%. It's like, no.

What's been the hardest part? Adjusting to no longer having a regular paycheck. A corporate finance job.

You know, I feel like.

FP and a guy here. And I'm excited to introduce you to our title sponsor. Meet Campfire, the AI native ERP built for modern finance and accounting teams. Automate revenue, streamline your close, and centralize accounting all on one unified platform. Learn more today by going to Campfire AI that is Campfire AI. Are you tired of being seen as just a spreadsheet person while others get a seat at the table? Well then, welcome to FP&A Unlocked, where finance meets strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst. The FP and A Guy. Each week we bring you conversations and practical advice from thought leaders, industry experts and practitioners who are reshaping the role of FP&A in today's business world. Together, we'll uncover the strategies and experiences that separate good FP&A professionals from great ones, helping you elevate your career and drive. Strategic impact. Speaking of strategic impact, our title sponsor is Campfire, the ERP that's helping modern finance teams close fast and scale faster. Today's guest is someone who's earned the coveted seat at the table. I'm excited to welcome Matt Bratton. Matt, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much, Paul. I'm like super pumped to be here.

No, really excited to have you. So funny story, Matt and I tried to do this before and we had a bunch of technical issues and not able to use the recording. So today I'm like, all right, Matt, we're going to test this. I'm going to listen to it. We're making sure everything working and not have the same problem as last time. So excited to have you back. Although as far as our audience concerned, it's a first.

It's a first and we're going to stick to landing for sure.

So Matt ritten is a CFO turned founder on a mission to save 1 million hours. How did you come up with a million hours?

I wanted to be ambitious, you know, and it sounds like a big round number that people can be kind of question like, what? Really? That's what you're going to do? I saw someone recently shared a bucket list and I was almost offended at how audacious and lofty the bucket list was. And then it made me stop and think, why am I troubled by this? Maybe my bucket list is just not ambitious enough. And so I really started taking to heart the idea. One of my favorite books recently is 10x is easier than 2x. And it's like, why not just shoot the moon? Figure out what's possible by thinking what if?

I love that. And so let me just finish your bio here. So it's going to save 1 million hours by countering corporate complexity. After a 20 year career building and leading FP and A teams at companies who large and small, he saw firsthand how the most valuable people often get trapped doing the least valuable work. Now he's building tools to solve these problems, including Simplify, a modern platform designed to simplify the chaotic process of sales commissions, a critical function often managed by FP&A team. Matt brings a unique in the trenches perspective on the evolution of the FP and a career path and the strategic importance of building simple transparent systems that drive business performance. We like to start every episode with this question. I'd love to get your perspective. If I ask you what does great FP and A look like, how would you define that? What would you tell me?

It looks like I really appreciate the 8020 rule and I think I can tell you what a not that good FP and A team functions like. And it's where they spend 80% of their time, like tinkering with the machine of FPNA. Like your models, your Excel files, your reporting, just kind of like gathering information about what happened and then you've got 20% left scrambling to try to do the work of would otherwise be what the good team is focused on. So if you float flip that and you've got an actual well oiled machine, they should be spending about 20% of their time doing the normal work, letting the machine crank out the things that need to be cranked out. And then the remaining 80% of your time really laser focused on digesting what happened so that you can be a good partner with the business and help them prepare for where you're headed. So being entrenched in the strategy conversations and really understanding what the needs of each department are so that you can be that, that right hand that helps them kind of see into the sheets and extract the valuable information and be that thought partner. I think everybody understands that finance should be that team. But when you're in the trenches and all you're doing is spreadsheets, like you don't have the bandwidth to do that thing. And so that's, that's the difference between a good team and a bad team is the degree to which they can live in the future versus the past.

Agree. And so it's really all about that business partnering forward looking. I heard someone describe finance this way as Stu west, former CFO of Grammarly, and I've shared this before, he said finance, our job is to help the business make better, faster decisions.

A thought that's kind of been in my mind a lot recently is the degree to which you can compress the time to action from data creation is the degree to which you're producing value. And that's not a plug for like real time dashboarding. That's a very different topic, although I can see how it's very similar. But the degree you can compress that timeline and take faster action, the more valuable that action can be.

Fully agree. It's why it's so important we understand operational data. Right? Because financial data is pretty much all looking back, make your decisions or you should. In the companies that are moving fast and getting quick insights, those decisions are being made mostly off the operational data, not the financial data. And so I'm curious, do you have a, maybe a situation or a time you could share where you've seen great FP and A in action and what was the result of that?

I've been accused of being an idealistic thinker when it comes to my philosophies on teams and team building and I don't like that necessarily because it's usually done in a Negative way, almost like you need to snap out of it. That's, that's nonsense. That's fairy tales. But I've developed my framing based on real world experience. And I can tell you that post mba, my first role out of my master's degree, I was in a team at a time where I don't know that we necessarily knew that we were in a very special time and place. But it was just, it was a very well oiled machine. It did all the things that I just described. Everybody was, we had a process, we cranked through that process and then we were working on ad hoc projects, developing strategy alongside the business. Any of the big decisions would kind of effectively fly, flow through our team to help drive the business forward. And you look back now, most of the analysts that I was alongside at that time, they're leaders, financial leaders throughout the country right now. And so I got to see that and live in it for four years. And that is where a lot of my idealistic tendencies come from is I've seen what excellent looks like and that's a world class team. And that's sort of been my belief system everywhere I've gone is I'm going to build another one of those.

I mean it's great to have those high expectations, what we call idealistic, and you get as close to it as you can. Just because you can't always achieve it doesn't mean you shouldn't still dream it. You've spent the last few years as a cfo. What are the top two or three things you learned from that experience? What did you take away from that?

It was one of those situations where they talk about the dog chasing the bus or the car and it's like, what does it do when it finally catches it? What is it going to do? And that's, that is definitely how I felt when I got the job. And I was like, oh man, I caught the bus. Now what? Like what am I supposed to do? And it turns out a lot. There was a lot to do, a lot to learn. And while you have a lot of reps in kind of making the machine run, it's taking that, that outside perspective and learning where to like let things go. And so I would say that the, one of the first things that I learned or that I've taken away is that authentic leadership. There is no substitute for that. Life is too short to act like somebody else. When you're at work. You gotta be yourself and you've gotta bring yourself because you are unique to your life experiences. And if you're selected for a position, they selected you, and it's up to you to then bring that to the table. Don't be somebody else. Like, be what you are. And that authenticity is going to be on full display for everyone to see. And I cannot tell you how important that is, having lived through that. And then I would say secondarily, it's. This almost feels contradictory in a sense, but your job is to sell. And I think that every job in some form or fashion is to sell something. It's just that the higher you go in corporate, the more lofty the things that you're selling and the more important it is that you get the story right. And you're at a place now where nobody gives a crap about the spreadsheet you built. They want to know the story like they really do. They want to know what's the story. Do I believe it? Do I believe you? And then what is the story telling us? And how do we have a conversation now about that story? And so, yeah, I think it's the importance of authentic leadership and the ability to sell at a high level. Those are probably two of the things I've really taken to heart after this experience.

And I can tell you, you'll use them a lot in your solopreneur journey.

No, I'm sure I will.

That's one of the things that I've heard from a lot of people. My content is they feel it's authentic. And that's something I've strived very hard for, and it's helped guide me. You got to be yourself. I'm like, I'm not going to be anyone else. I don't. If someone doesn't like it, it's their problem. And then selling. There's a great book, Daniel Pink. Selling is human. And that's what I thought of when you said it. We all sell. It's just sometimes we see it as a dirty word. And when you're a CFO or you're running your own business, you have to sell a lot more.

That's right.

So what's been the hardest part? Adjusting to no longer having a regular paycheck. A corporate finance job. I know you've always had side projects and you've been doing your own thing, so that's not so much new. It's just you're now doing it full time. So what's been the hardest adjustment? It's been what, a month now? Couple weeks.

It's been a few weeks. I feel like there was a lot of transition time. Afforded to me where the decision to exit happened earlier in the year and there were a few months of preparation. And it was during that time that I began really enforcing boundaries so that I could prepare for this and make sure that I've got a smooth landing once I got out. And now that I'm out, I'm having to come to terms with the idea that, like, I have workaholic tendencies. And it's not even so much boundaries needing to be placed amongst and across other people. It's with myself, it's with maintaining a schedule that actually makes sense for myself. Because, yeah, there's going to be time to grind. There's going to be time when I'm fired up and I want to do something. But what's the point of kind of working for yourself if you also don't have an opportunity to work on yourself? And I think those are the things that I've really let slip to the side throughout my corporate career. And I'm trying to rein those in and like, really focus on, like, where those boundary lines need to be so that I can really bring my best self forward to this endeavor.

I'm glad to hear you say that, because that's not something I did at first. I did the workaholic, and it's taken me a long time to find that right balance. I mean, that's how I was in corporate and how I've been in my business. And it's so important to find those boundaries right? Not just in solopreneurship, but in life and your jobs and your roles, when you can find balance, whatever you want to call it. Some people hate the term work life balance, but find that equilibrium that works for you so that you can be happy and recharged. You'll be better in all your endeavors.

It's a question that we can only answer for ourselves. And it's a variable. Like, what is going to work for me right now is not going to necessarily work for me in six months, and I need to be okay with that. It's. It's not a set and forget. I'm not going to read a book and implement a new lifestyle. Start waking up at 4am like, that doesn't make sense for me right now. So, yeah, I think it's important that we find that right fit for ourselves and recognize that it may shift over time.

Totally agree. So I know you have a lot of projects you're working on. I want to ask about a few of them. And then we're getting into sales commissions, which anyone who's dealt with those in fpa has that kind of response. Oh, boy. Or, oh, that was a nightmare. I mean, I have horror stories. I'm sure you do as well. But before we get there, you're working on a book called the Art of Analytics. Tell us about it.

I've been heavily influenced, I would say, in the last probably 10 years by. I think this is pretty classic, like, midlife sort of behavior where you. You're like, I'm gonna get into stoicism. So people like Ryan Holiday, who take a lot of this classic wisdom of old philosophers and make it relatable, bring it to the present and really discuss the different ways and means that you can incorporate some of this into your own life. And I think that ultimately these stories and this timeless wisdom, it's just a matter of making it relatable. Like, that's the only boundary is, like, how can this be relatable? And I once read a book called the Art of War for Managers. And, I mean, it sounds terrible when you really think about it. Like, I know there's a lot of people who rightfully don't appreciate the comparison between business and war. You need to give some creative liberties to the idea that there's strategy and there's leadership and there's a lot of great qualities that you can focus on, and that these are just really intense means of drawing out on those. And so that book, I thought, was really creative. And so over time in my career working in analytics and finance, I just thought, you know, I'm. I'm one of those people who's often said that I feel as though analytics is more art than science. There is a lot of science, and you need that technical component. And it's not even just the soft skills stuff. It's something in between. It's like that business, that human understanding, that behavioral understanding that really allows you to make an impact with data. And so I thought, what if we kind of tied these things together and said, okay, this isn't the Art of War for analysts. This is the art of analytics. And we're going to glean from the Sun Tzu Art of War as thematic areas to attack and break down, what it means to exist in and operate an analytics function in a business. So, yeah, it was really fun to write. I've been writing it for almost five years, and I've got the manuscript, I think, done, and now I'm just kind of reading it once a day just to see if there's anything that sticks out that I want to change and I'm excited to let it loose here.

Eventually FP and a guy here and I want to share a brief message from our title sponsor, Campfire, the ERP that's helping modern finance teams close fast and scale faster. Finance is changing fast. Are you keeping up? Campfire is hosting the first ever AI Summit for finance leaders in San Francisco and you're invited. Finance Forward will bring together 150 plus of the brightest minds in finance and operations featuring powerhouse speakers from Snowflake, Purcell, Anthropic and more. You'll get expert led discussions, hands on sessions and real world playbooks designed to help you put AI to work immediately. Can't make it to San Francisco? No problem. You can sign up to receive exclusive tailored post conference content aimed at equipping you for the future of finance. Learn more about this can't miss event at campfiresummit. AI Something you said in there that I found interesting, I want to drill into a little bit. You mentioned, you know, the art and science of analytics, which I totally agree, there's a big art part. But you also mentioned kind of a behavioral element there, right? Understanding behavior, would you say? Almost kind of like, you know, psychology, right? Is study of human behavior in many ways. Do you feel like that's a big part of being successful in analytics? Maybe. I'll elaborate kind of what you mean if there's an example or some way, you can go a little deeper there because that, that resonated with me and I just love to drill down a little bit.

You're opening not Pandora's box, but you're opening, you're opening a box for me. So you know, I, I don't know that I, I go around talking about this very often. But like I was a valedictorian in high school. I was, I graduated summa cum laude from school. I've, you know, gotten a lot of promotions. I, I would argue that I rose to the top of my field in what I was doing. And I attribute it nearly 100% to my willingness to focus on people first and understand the drivers of behavior. And it's kind of funny. Not funny, but funny that my wife, the person who I've been married to almost 20 years now, she's a board certified behavior analyst. And so she's like certified in the art of behavior. And so like I love to nerd out and talk about like the psychology of reinforcements and behaviors and things. And I think that there's a lot of good to be had when you really stop and think about like what is driving what is motivating this person? Like, what does this person want and what do I want and how do we get alignment and so that we both get what we want? And so through school, it was always a matter. It wasn't like, okay, what I want to get straight A's, I'm going to study hard and I'm going to just do my best. It was like, no, who are the people that are handing out these grades and what do they appreciate? What do they like to see? What do they want to hear about? This isn't about being a teacher's pet. This is about getting to know the person so that you could understand what they value and what they want to see as an outcome in their classroom. And then that translates into the real world. It's like, okay, what do these different leaders want to see and where are they going? Like, what ultimately is going to help them achieve their ends and means? And it's usually if they're good, aligned with the strategy of the business. And as long as you can stay aligned in that way, it's very easy to kind of work in that channel of moving forward, moving everybody forward up the line, as long as you're continuing to add value and you're not straying. And then if you catch or notice somebody who has interests or behaviors that are not aligned, you either get out of their way, leave them in the dust, or, you know, figure out where you're going to draw the line yourself, because those, those things exist as well. So, yeah, it's really understanding the person and their motives and making sure that you can find alignment. And if you can't, then move on, be like water flow around them.

It's amazing how often it comes back to understanding people. Right. We talk about all the design elements, all the science of dashboards, analytics, whatever you want to call all this. But so much is really about understanding incentives, understanding goals, understanding people, and designing with that in mind. And that is very much, like I said, there's a lot of art to that. There is science, but there's a lot of art as well.

Yeah, people just want to be heard and taken seriously. I think that's a, that's a big thing. And then if they're not confident enough to feel like their voice is valuable, show them it is. And, and that. That'll go a long way.

Thank you for, for sharing that. I really appreciate it. So I want to ask you about the two companies you started recently. You know, because one and a book and the analytics isn't enough. Right. You got to have a few different things going. So tell us about. I think it's Simplify and Close Pack.

Yeah, Simplify is. Well, Simplify and Close Pack are both born out of my 20 years of, of living in the trenches and feeling the pain and the burn of, of lots of different functions. And I think that what happens, what I've trained myself to do throughout my career is constantly ask the question, is there a better way? Or to always be looking for better alternatives. And it's the classic, like, just because you can doesn't mean you should. And there's so many analogies in this space. Like if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so the challenge with a lot of like really smarty pants finance people who are good with Excel is that you feel like you can take on the world. You feel like you can build software basically in Excel. And to some extent, one would argue you can. Like, you can do a lot of those things, but should you? Is the question. And I've, I've seen the stats, I've lived the life, I've felt the pain enough to know that when it comes to something like commissions, where nearly 70% of companies who run commissions do it in Excel, and I would say not unrelated, about Two thirds, nearly 70% of companies admit to having errors on any given commission run, you gotta wonder like, are you, are you using the right tool for the job? And finance people will retreat to the spreadsheet. And even if there's challenges, it's like you get stuck in the sock and that's just how you do things. And then you go out and you look at tools. If you have a system that's actually somewhat streamlined, you don't want to automate bad processes. So you get to a place where you're actually somewhat routine and then you start looking at tools. And these things are expensive and they take months to implement and then once they're implemented, they're God awful to change or modify. And we all know that the way the business works is like a lot of times you're managing by exception and that's just not, that's a recipe for disaster. And so I felt this pain. I've seen what best in class looks like. And so what I tried to do was build an engine around this best in class workflow and process that is fully CRM agnostic and it still allows you to get your spreadsheets and make sure you've got what you need and then you put it into the machine that you've configured and Then it's going to produce not only commission statements, but payroll statements and plan documents based around your configuration. And then if you need to make a change, you just make a copy of your existing plans and boom, you're off to the races. You can keep changing it. So it's, it's designed to accommodate what should be well thought out plans. And there was another stat that I saw that I thought was pretty nice, which is said that the simpler plan design leads to, I think it was like a 3% increase in performance to quota. So it's like this is a slam dunk. People. You get a lot of executives who have nothing to do with the plan administration and they come in and they want to add really complex rules around what gets commissionable. And they think that they're smarter than everybody. But it's like if it's confusing to the salespeople, they, they're not motivated. It's impossible or confusing for the administrators to administer. They're wasting time. The average commission run per month takes 89 hours of employees time. And you got to think that's like salespeople time. That's payrolls time, that's finances. These are high value people. Generating revenue and producing analytics and results like that is a tremendous waste and it could all be avoided if you just simplify. So like sales incentive planning simplified is the idea behind simplify. That was a longer answer than I expected to give. You want me to talk briefly about Close Pack? Because it's very similar except it's, it's in the financial reporting space and.

Sure. Give us a kind of quick 12 minute overview of close Pack.

It's similar in that another area where a lot of time was spent in my career obviously is in the construction of your financial statements and your financial packages and reporting that ultimately go to executives, the board or whoever. And there's a ton of FP&A tools out there, some of them very, very good. And I, I'm not necessarily trying to compete with those folks because those are going to be for businesses with lots of automation, lots of sophisticated tools and the discipline and I would say configurations that accommodate something like that and, and the time to implement intelligently. The idea behind Closed Pack is that you can just extract a transaction report, feed it into Close Pack and then you're basically creating a series of maps or lenses. And what that allows you to do is pick and choose what you want to present, how you want to present it, how you want to group things, and then you put together your presentations, be it like PDFs or slideshows or whatever. And that's it. Now every month, instead of taking like a transaction list or a trial balance and dropping it into an Excel file that produces a bunch of reports and then you've got to drag formulas and do all that crap, you're dropping it into this engine and you've already got all your views and if you need to produce something new, you just add a new lens. So that's still in development, but I've got some, some pretty slick things that I'm testing out and I think it's going to be, I think it could be really impactful for organizations where they need that, that oomph from a lot of times these teams are one or two, two people shows.

Thank you for sharing that. Excited to see where those go. Want to spend a little more time on sales commissions? First thing I, I like how you said, you know, 3% improvement for keeping them simple. I still remember we had a leader that tried to mathematically eliminate, you know, the, the curve, the bump you would see due to quarter close in a cell, try to make it complicated to smooth it all out. You'd have even cells throughout the year. And that thing was so complicated. So we just finally said, look, oh my God.

I can only imagine there's something to.

Be said for simple. I created some plans. I was in charge of creating them and worked obviously with some sales closely on creating them. And I learned a lot. I would do them very different if I did them again. I had some angry salespeople. So I've lived, I've lived the sales commissions and I spent years calculating them. When I first inherited it, the prior person was spending half of his time, the finance person, every month just doing commissions. And so the first thing I had to try to do to automate it, I paid wrong people more than once. All kinds of mistakes. So when you say you're trying to simplify sales, I really appreciate sales commission. So I'd love to have a, you know, kind of conversation. In your opinion, having, you know, Ben, CFO and I'm sure dealing with an fpa. What role do you think finance should play in sales commissions? You think we should be the ones calculating it, helping with the plans. What's kind of your general take? And I know some varies by company and different things, but I'd love to get your general philosophy there.

The right answer is it does vary by company. Right. So kind of acknowledging that where I would say that it's, it's almost easier to go down the list of like where it probably shouldn't live. But again, it depends on the company. But like I can tell you that you start at like the end payroll. Like these are not normal pay statements. Like these are complex calculations and probably not something that should be sitting with payroll. So I would take them out of the mix. They should be receiving of the outputs here. Then you think about the, the degree of either sophistication or maturation of the business. And if you're a business that has like a revenue operations rev Ops team, it's entirely possible that this could live there as long as there's an actual division between sales and Rev Ops. Right. There needs to be that, that independence in order to ensure that you're just, you're doing everything on the up and up. But Rev Ops is so close to the tech that it's possible that that could be a place for it to live. Especially if you're looking at tools, a lot of companies of a certain size and guess. And these are not necessarily going to have a rev Ops team. So that leaves finance. I think in a lot of situations it's going to fall on finance because they have both the technical skills and the proximity to the dollars and cents where it just, it kind of falls naturally into their lap. Now the challenge with that falling into their lap is a lot of times it's literally just falling into their lap. They're being handed this thing. They had nothing to do with the construction, they have nothing to do with the configuration in the CRM. They don't even know what the plan documents look like. And so it's it. It. Yeah. And so they're just relying on their technical savvy and taking for granted the idea that these people, they could probably figure it out and do it. But like, should they? And if they should, should we be looking at more of, you know, what's the problem you're trying to solve? And a lot of times it's not just the calculation, it's the whole process that needs to be evaluated. And I think people just don't want to eat that frog. But it's not as bad as you think. It's actually, it can be very rewarding having like you said it yourself, like you had a lot of these hard conversations with sales. But it's like, man, they would love to give their input on these plans and you would benefit greatly listening to them about what's going on in the streets, like how are they selling. You understand the margins, you understand the structure, the overall economics unit, economics of your products. Put those things together and come up with a plan that works for everybody. A lot of companies just don't do it. It's just like, this is the way it is. This is what we got to do. And they just live with it. And I think that's just a shame.

Now, as I heard somebody say, you know, that a sales commissions is a salesman's playbook, and, you know, they're going to figure out how to exploit it. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. There are times it can be. There's times when it just means they're maximizing their revenue and doing what you incentivize them to do. Just like in sports, right. You're going to try to exploit your.

Your.

The other team by figuring out, you know, what works best. And so I think design is so important of the plan and also always keeping in mind. Okay, because we can do this in the plan, and it makes sense. Is it even possible to calculate it? I had some plans that, you know, they were totally built on. Well, this is a great idea. And you had, like, 15 months of residuals, and the data was terrible. And, I mean, it took us months just to, you know, write all the logic to pull the numbers, and it was still never right, but it was close. And the salespeople were happy. It was better than paying them on an estimate that never happened, which was what was happening before. So they were getting paid money sometimes for, you know, us getting no revenue. I had one situation where we paid something like $60,000, and. And over the next year, we got 25 in revenue because we paid off estimates. It was a nightmare. And I'm like, when I. Yeah, I brought that to my boss, like, we need to fix this now. We're not running a charity. We're running a business. So I've. I've definitely seen all kinds of horror stories. I'm curious, what's your. I'm sure you have one from sales commissions. Any horror stories you can share?

Before I jump into that, I want to, like, echo or go back to something you just mentioned about. Sometimes salespeople can take advantage of or exploit the team, the. The plans. And I think that is how a lot of people view it. But this goes back to the psychology piece and the behavior. Like, what are the behaviors we're reinforcing? So, of course they're going to do the thing that you didn't want them to do, but you incented them to do it. And so, like, the only person to be mad at is the plan designer. And, like, how you've implemented the plan. And if you want to avoid that, then put out a better plan. Like, I, I don't know what else to tell you.

Yeah, it comes back to the incentives because you incentivize them to do that. You put it in the plan and took advantage of it, if you want to call it that, or utilized it, whatever word you want to use. Right. They applied it.

You quite truly get what you pay for. And if you're paying for X, you're going to get X. So onto the horror story. I would say one of the last times I was actually so kindly handed the reins to sales commissions. We were running it every payroll, which meant every other week we were running commissions. And these plans were not good. The data capture was not good, the ways and means by which dollars were earned versus paid was very different. And it had been done wildly manually up to the point that it was handed to me. And so as like an intermediary step, I tried to build some sort of modeling around the plans which proved to be just awful. So you talk about spending half of your time doing commissions. Like I was nearly doing half. Spending half of my time doing commissions because it was like every other week it's like, well, time to run them again. And then it takes a couple of days and you're going back and forth with sales and sales doesn't trust you because, oh, there was an error on your last sheet and well, heaven forbid, because this plan is being managed by exception and that one specific opportunity type with that flag and, and this time range was supposed to be X, not Y. And it's just, you know, it's pretty awful. And so inheriting that and then being tasked with making it better, the reality had to come out very quick that it's like, look, nobody can make a crappy plan better. We need a better plan. And eventually I, I did kind of earn the seat at the table of planning for the subsequent years and it got better and better over time, but that was awful. I had never seen a bi weekly commission payout in that way where it was like straight up deep calculations. Not just like, you know, I don't even know what to say. But yeah, it was pretty, pretty horrible.

I can feel your pain coming through the, the mic there of dealing with that one.

Yeah, putting it lightly, let's offer some.

Advice to our audience. So hopefully when they first get commissions, they don't deal with as much pain as you and I have dealt with. That sounds like on a few different occasions. So let's start with an fb and a person is just being given sales calculations. Let's just talk calculations for a minute. Not necessarily the plans. And they get it for the first time. What advice would you give them? Any advice on how to start or how to think about it? Is there, hey, here's this. You need to start calculating these sales commissions. Good luck.

I would say it's kind of like when you're a new person in an organization. Like, there's a limited window where you can be an idiot and people will forgive you. So that's what. Ask all of your stupid questions, like, do the newbie thing, because this is the time when you will be forgiven. I would say get all of the plans, read through the documents, and if there's anything that you don't understand, go and check with sales and check with whoever might either be the decider or a past administrator to understand how it works. Because if you don't understand it, you're not going to do it correctly. And there's a big chance that sales doesn't understand it and they probably hate it. And so it's almost like, fight the battle before the war. Like, win the. Win the battle before the war. You got to make sure that your table is set and that you're ready to eat, because it's going to be a painful run if all you're doing is just jumping into calculations. And like, this is doing the shoulder shrug. This is how I was told to do it. It's like, no, no, no, you own this now. So take ownership and read the documents front and back. Make sure that you feel good about everything. And then I would say secondarily, make sure the data exists. Like, you would be probably not surprised, but surprised how many companies will put together plans usually influenced by executives who know nothing about the trenches, who are putting commissions contingent on data that's not being captured anywhere. And it's just like, I just. Just figure it out. It's like, no, these are people's paychecks. Do you understand that you're messing with people's money? That's one of the things in life you just don't mess with. And that's the greatest way to burn a bridge. Lose trust, all of the things. And if you do that with your salespeople who are supposed to be generating revenue, you're just picking internal battles for absolutely no reason. It's just shooting yourself in the foot. So, yeah, I would say get to know your plans, get to know your salespeople, and ask all your questions up front because when you're in the heat of battle, it's too late.

Agree. Ask as many questions as you can. Talk to the salespeople. It's a person who developed the plans around. Talk to them, get to know the data, make sure you document all the data sources because you'll probably find out some of them aren't the right data sources. You get into it, or the data is being pulled wrong or whatever, because as you said, if this is all a manual process and it's being done in Excel and there's any level of complexity or multiple employees, something is being done wrong when you inherited it. Just trust us. It's a question of how much, how material, and that's what you're going to find as you get into it. And odds are you're going to make quite a few mistakes. But he said, get them out early and try to make sure you can put a process that minimizes it as much as possible and make sure you're getting the behavior you want.

You nailed it. And I think the one that I would highlight that you just said too was document. Because if you're not given like process, procedure, document, create one. That's a freaking great way to learn and to really put on display what's going on. So that was a good.

And it really ensures you know it. When you have to document something, you start realizing, I don't know it as well as I think I do. I want to ask one other sales commission question and we're kind of move on from there. You've also, I know you've done, you've helped do sales incentive planning, right? So we've talked about the data, the commission, doing the plan. What advice would you give someone in finance when they do get that seat at the table and they're asked to opine or be involved in the actual sales incentive planning with the quotas, with how the plans are structured, that type of thing. Any advice you'd offer there, don't overthink it.

Like, I think that is the problem. People want to outsmart the process and it's like, no, no, you don't. You really don't. I promise you. Like, it sounds great. Adding like tiers and all sorts of stuff where once you, you don't earn anything until you get to here, and then once you get there, you earn 50%. It's like, no. If you understand your product, you understand your market, you understand your unit economics, you understand what a normal ratio is of salary to commission, you understand what your targets are, your quotas, you Understand all of those economics. This almost becomes as simple as a math problem where you just need to derive what people need to move in order to achieve X. And then at that point you don't care how it accelerates through a bunch of tiers or anything like that. You can put carrots out there. And you do that when you're like exceeding expectations, right? But up until the point that when they're closing deals, what is the behavior you're trying to reinforce? You want to close deals, okay, you get commissions when you close a deal, Boom. You get paid your salary to make phone calls, to show demos, to do all of these things. But where you get your carrots is when you close a deal. And it's, it's like, let's keep it simple. If you keep it simple and you design those plans, then everybody is going to be a lot happier and overall healthier. And it's going to be a lot easier to fine tune from there because it's going to be very clear what is working and what is not. If you start getting fancy with the spices out the gates, it's going to be really hard because now you've got 48 levers that you're like, I don't know if this one's helping or earning or I can just do that, guarantee it's not helping. And so like, whatever simple looks like in your head, cut it in half. It's going to be a lot simpler than that. And so really challenge yourself to go as simple as like, what would slam dunk easy. Look like you sell widget, you sell a basic widget, you get 5%, you sell a hundred basic widgets, you get 10%, go sell, go sell basic widgets. Like, it doesn't need to be more complicated than that. Now I understand that every business is different. Every business has its own complications. And you can get more sophisticated where it's appropriate, but start there, don't start on the other end because you will never get back you. Once you're in the weeds, you're in the weeds. And so I would, I would say that that's something we need to be mindful of as you're navigating these, these waters and stand your ground because you will be challenged. People will say, no, no, no, I don't want them to sell this as much as that. It's like, okay, great, then don't even commission that. Is it that important? Go all the way to the end and then have them battle their way back like it's, you got to stand your Ground. Because if you're the one that's actually implementing or administering or doing any of this stuff, you better feel really good about the plans that you're standing behind.

There are two great lessons in there that I can echo. One, start simple. And I always say with modeling, and I wish someone had told me this when I did commission plans of the starting simple. When it comes to a model, start as simple as you can because the business will complicate it. Start as simple as you can with sales commissions because everybody will want to complicate it. And if you start complicated, you're going to end up with a monster when you're done. A great lesson. I wish somebody had told me that when I started. And then the second one there of stand your ground. I remember us having some battles like that where I'm really grateful we stood our ground. It's like, no, this doesn't make economic sense. We can't do that. We understand the sales rationale behind it, but from a financial perspective, it's just a non starter. And they finally came around to it after several conversations of that, you know, kept trying to push it, say, no, we have to do it that way. And my boss was very firm. I was giving a little bit more and I'm grateful he was, and I agree with you, he stood his ground and it was one of the better decisions we made. I'm with you. All right, we're going to move into our FP and A section. This is where we have a couple questions we ask every guest. Sometimes we adjust them for individual guests, but the first one here is one we ask pretty much every guest. If I asked you what's the number one technical skill FP&A professionals need to master today, what would you say?

It's the language of FP and A. Like, I don't know what else to say. It's. It is the medium through which financial information is translated and dispersed across the business. So the degree to which you are fluent in Excel and can make it do the things that it needs to do is going to be very, very important, especially early in your career. And I think the flip side to that is knowing when to let go and recognize when the hammer's not most appropriate. But yeah, master, that's part of mastery, right, Is knowing when to choose this over that. And so, yeah, I would be very interested to hear who gave answers other than Excel, because I, I think it depends also on how you define technical skill. Because you might say, like, well, actual unders. Like accounting could be an Argument.

All right, so number one soft skill, selling.

Knowing how to sell, like it or not. This doesn't mean you're going to put on a checkered coat with elbow patches and start like slapping the hoods of cars. Like, this just means feeling, not feeling, understanding what you're doing and having a compelling narrative around what you've done and why, and bringing something more than, you know, just problems or basic information to the table, but bringing value, insight and forethought. That is the art of selling when it comes to this stuff. And I think that, yeah, having good communication skills, obviously, like, but this is like that next level of communication is understanding that there's a why behind communication and always having one for yourself when you're doing so.

Got it. What Excel mistake taught you the biggest lesson as you look back over your career and how do you avoid it?

Now, the one probably that I think I got burned with just enough that it was, you gotta find a better way. And I did. Which was not dragging formulas all the way to the bottom of a data set. That happens just enough. Or it did before I knew about like tables. And now like with dynamic arrays, I'm curious. It's almost like the, the world's going full circle again, where a lot of people are almost against tables these days, but I, I still think they've got a place. But yeah, it was before tables. It was just like a. I don't want to make it sound like it was a constant when it happened. It was not good. It was always, oh my goodness, like, we missed 30, 000 rows of data with these formulas. And therefore this completely is. Is just wrong.

That's a great one. Been there, done that. I think everybody's done it at least once, if not a few times. But it's why I've been a big fan of tables. But you know, you make the point there on the other side of dynamic arrays and different things, but definitely something you need to make sure you do. I'm curious, what's the one thing you learned about FP and A as a CFO that you wish you had known prior to becoming a cfo? So, like, is there something that, you know, kind of hit you that you looked at differently or saw now that you're a CFO going, I wish I had known that.

Nobody gives a crap about your model. They want the story and they want the numbers to make sense. Like, that's it. And if the number doesn't make sense or the story doesn't make sense, then that's all that matters. So it's more about again, it goes back to the selling. The selling part. And you can't sell something if it either doesn't make sense or you don't fully understand it. And if you don't fully understand it, then you've built something wrong. So it's almost like it's that next level of technical skill where you're. You're confident that you did the right thing. You asked the right questions, you filled in the right blanks, you used the right assumptions, you did all those things. That is table stakes. It's just taken for granted. It's not something to, like, show off. It's something that's just assumed. And if it's not right, that's a problem. Right? So, like, it's almost like the most thankless thing that you can do is build a big ass complex model. It's like, as long as it's not wrong, it's like a goalie in soccer. They could block 50 shots and nobody bats an eye. They let one go through, that guy's worthless. Like, what is he doing? What are we paying him for? Right? So it's the degree to which nobody cares as long as it makes sense. And if it doesn't make sense, then they suddenly care a lot. And it is, I could argue it doesn't have anything to do with the model. It has to do with, you know, what you're doing and why you're doing it and how you did it. And nobody cares about how fancy your model is.

So you mean the whole Vlookup xlookup index match argument is stupid?

You know, it's. I'm going to make a really inappropriate analogy, but, like, I really tried to get into wine at one point and I just couldn't because the people who were into wine were just wine snobs. And they, they would scoff at my basic question. So then I got into beer before craft beer was like, blowing up, and there was nobody really to ask the questions. So I started brewing myself. And at some point, you know, I started realizing that the craft beer people were starting to act like the wine snobs. It just got, like, full of snobbery. And so then you, you start to look at all of these different areas in life. And I think Excel is one of those where it's like, now there's a bunch of snobs. And for me, my genuine belief is if you approach things with, like, sincere snobbery, like, there's a difference between, like, sarcastic and just being obnoxious. To, you know, whatever. But like there are people who believe so violently about certain things. It's like you don't actually care about what you're doing. You're just trying to be a jerk about it. Like it's just, it's intentionally annoying. And so the answer to that question is no. Nobody cares. If it works. Great. That's what we care about. If it makes sense to you and you can defend it, great. Stand behind it. If you want to learn something else, great. Learn it. Figure out where it makes sense to use. If you ever hear me talk crap on someone for Excel stuff, it's because I like them and I'm giving them a hard time. That's usually going to be it.

Great answer there. I appreciate it. All right, so now we have a couple questions to get to know you a little better. First one, if you could spend a day shadowing any leader besides yourself, who would it be and what would you hope to learn?

John Wooden. The late, great John Wooden. So for people who don't know who John Wooden is, he was the multi time NCAA champion basketball coach of the UCLA Bruins from back in the day. And he's got a book called Wooden and he's got a few other books on like leadership and things like that. But if you watch Ted Lasso like the Try the pyramid, that's. That's all him. And I would love to just see how he interacted with Pete. Like be a fly on the wall. See how he actually interacted with people. People. Because what I understood reading his texts and, and hearing interviews from people talking about him, it was that he made it so clear to people the role that they played, no matter what their job was, the important role that those people played in the ultimate success of what everybody was building or doing together. And it went so deep that it was like this is like the classic thing people tell talk about. It was like he had a way for how you are supposed to put on your socks. Like there was a purpose behind every single thing and it wasn't just about the socks. It was like every one of you has a role to play and you have to do it to the best of your ability and that is going to contribute to the greater good. And he made sure that everybody understood that so that they could execute with excellence. And I would just love to see, you know, how he did that. And I like to think that I, I tried to operate in a similar way, but man, he, he had results. And, and I just, I would love to, you know, have seen something like.

That arguably one of the greatest, if not the greatest college coach of all time. He's on everybody's Mount Rushmore for basketball, for sure. Of greatest college coaches, without a doubt. Amazing individual. Yeah. No, no question. So anyone who doesn't know basketball, he won many, many titles, had undefeated seasons, and accomplish something that hasn't really in a 10 year decade that we haven't seen since and I'm not sure we'll ever see in college basketball again. That many. What was like eight and ten years or something.

Yeah.

All right. If your life had a theme song, what theme song would it be?

The Eye of the Tiger. Eye of the Tiger, I think I said earlier. And I've been. I've been all about mantras lately, like just having. I go into, like, sensory deprivation tanks and I, like, do a lot of thinking and that kind of stuff. But, like, I had a thought come to me recently which was channel the chip. And what that means is I feel like everybody's got some sort of a chip on your shoulder. Maybe you've got several. And you can let that just continue to corrode and eat at you, or you can take that energy that it produces, because it produces energy. And if you direct it outward and channel that, it can help you achieve things just of greatness. And I believe that sincerely. I think that, you know, people talk about, like, oh, you shouldn't have a bad attitude or you shouldn't, you know, let things fester. And I think there's some truth to that because there's a certain unhealthy boundary. But oh, my goodness, like, there's something to be said about the. The fuel that's produced in some of that, like, you know, I want to show them or I want to prove them wrong sort of spirit. I think it. It's actually healthy to like, take that and like, make it positive and not destructive. And so channel the chip. And when I think about that, I just think of, you know, Rocky preparing for battle to go and, like, avenge and prove that he's worthy and that he can do the thing. And maybe that's cheesy, but it's like you cannot hear that song, just the beginning of it, and not just get fired up for anything, whatever's in front of you.

I appreciate that. I. The Tiger, that's a song I really, really like. And I get the message behind what you're saying there. All right, this is kind of a fun one, and I'm curious to see what you say. Would you rather live in a world without Excel? Shortcuts or without coffee.

Sorry, folks, coffee is non negotiable. I'll, I'll bring back the mouse if I have to. It's a sad truth. I can't function if I don't have my coffee. And so coffee's gotta stay.

All right, we're going to go ahead and wrap up here. This is the last question I always like to ask. If you could offer one piece of advice to our listeners to be a better business partner, you know, an FPA business partner. What would be that advice?

Take ownership of your position. Take serious the fact that you've been enlisted in this position for a reason and recognize that you have something of unique experience that's valuable and you should speak up, you should share that. And I think too many of us are. You learn too late in life that a lot of people have the same questions, a lot of people have the same feelings. And if you can be the one to sort of like elicit that or bring it out and then offer your own perspective along with it, like that is building character and it's adding so much to the machine that you're part of at that point in your career. So I would say speak up and never stop learning.

I think I could talk for another hour. I'm not sure our audience would want to listen that long, but I've really enjoyed it. I've learned a lot. I love your, your philosophies, you know, art and science and human behavior. And I think there's a lot people can learn because so much of so many roles is around humans and incentives and behavior. It doesn't matter if we have a technical role or a human communication type role. You're always going to be better as you understand people. So I really love how you emphasize that throughout. I just want to give you a moment, share any of your resources. I know you have Excel training. I know you have your businesses, you have your book coming out. Your audience wants to learn more about you or any of the resources you offer. Just take a minute and tell us about that.

Before we finish, I would say let's keep it simple. Find me on LinkedIn. I think that will be your jump off point for not only connecting with me and maybe communicating via DM or something like that. And then from there you can see all the, all the crazy stuff that I'm all, all up in as far as what I'm building and where I'm going. And so, yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn and let's talk. I'd love to meet. I love meeting new people.

Perfect. I know that's how you and I connected a few years ago. It's been what, four or five years now? It feels like it's been quite a while before you were a cfo. I know that. Yeah, I remember also seeing you got a CFO role metager. It's fun to watch and I would encourage people to hit you up. So keep up the great work, enjoy the solopreneur journey and thanks again for coming on the show.

Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much.

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