This is Audible FP&A (with Frank Aburto)

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Thanks for having me, Paul. Really excited to sit down and chat.

Same here. I'm really excited. So just let me give a little bit of an introduction from Frank. Frank comes to us from New Jersey, New York area. He currently works as a Senior Director of Finance at Audible. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Asian Studies from West Point. He earned an MBA from Cornell and a Master of Accounting from Rutgers. So that's just a little bit about Frank here. In a minute we'll give him an opportunity to tell us more about his background. But we're going to start with a fun question we like to ask everybody because if you've worked in finance, especially FP&A, we all have our horror stories. So what was the most challenging kind of budgeting forecasting experience you've ever had?

Well, Paul, I joined audible back in 2016 and within I want to say three months, still learning the company is still learning the KPIs. We embarked on a major product initiative comprising of maybe 15, 20 different items that all needed to be sized, forecast and included into the forecast for the following year. So not only was I still learning the company, still learning the people, still learning how everybody interacted with it, the app, but I was responsible for a major portion of what was going into the 2017 budget. So as a brand new employee, it was slightly terrifying, but it was a really good experience being thrown into the deep end and having to learn and survive.

Yeah, I think we probably all have some experience like that where it's like, all right, here you get to figure all this out. You're like, wait a second, I don't even know where the bathroom is. How do you expect me to figure out all these numbers? So what was the kind of the key learning or takeaway from that experience for you?

This really helped me developing my business partnership. It was understanding exactly what product and technology teams do, understanding how the marketers are going out to potential customers and current customers and how they're getting engaged. So it was really tying everything together that let's say I didn't learn in investment banking to understand and look at the company through the lens of the customer and what's best for their engagement and their entertainment.

Got it. Makes a lot of sense. It's so important to understand that customer and have that customer lens. So could you just give us a little bit about your background, you know, how you ended up where you're at today and a little bit about your journey.

Yeah, sure. So four years at West Point and then I started in the army. I did five years there, stationed in South Korea and then Hawaii, which no one ever complains about. At the tail end of my career, I did a 15 month tour in Iraq. When I came back, I started looking for alternatives. I realized I probably wouldn't stay in the army and I wanted to see what career might interest me. I realized giving a background in Asian studies probably was not going to land a technical role. And so business school was the best option for me. I had a close friend who was at Cornell, a couple close friends actually, and I spoke to them, learned about the program, applied and went that following year. So I settled on investment banking as my first career. Just because you learn so much, you learn about strategy, you learn about finance, you learn about accounting, you're really drinking from the fire hose, so to speak on what you need to be doing, how, how you're going to do it and how accurate slash precise it needs to be. After a few years of that, I really wanted to help companies drive strategy and react to what customers are doing and other, I don't want to say threats in the market, but changes in the market. And I realized I couldn't really, I couldn't do that as a banker. So I was, there was somebody who was working at Audible, spoke to them and understood that they were looking for a finance senior manager. So I applied there, went through the interview process and 7 and a half years later here I am leading the strategic finance team.

Great. Well, thank you for sharing that story. I appreciate it. And you know, kind of a few follow up first. I'll kind of Start with the military Again, thanks for serving, but what are maybe two or three key lessons you took from your. Your time in the military in West Point that make you a better finance professional today?

So I think it's a framework for problem solving. So West Point and your officer basic courses do a really great job of preparing you to be a platoon leader. Leading your soldiers right out of joining a unit where you're less prepared is when you become, let's say, a company executive officer or logistics officer, an operations officer, and you're faced with problems, especially in Iraq, that don't really come out of the textbook. And so you have to understand, what are we trying to achieve here? What's the task and purpose? What's the objective? And then come up with ideas on how to get there. How do you do that in an efficient way, in an effective way? What could be sacrificed between those two items? Having that military background really helps me out when I'm looking at something and thinking, how can I allocate my team's work against this in time? And how can we do this in the most effective way to give my CFO what she needs to understand to make a decision?

I really like that. I appreciate you sharing that. And there's something to be said there of trying to kind of optimize the time spent. Right. Being as effective as possible. Because we have enough tasks often that are manual, that are challenging. If we don't find ways to be effective ourself, it only compounds the problem.

Exactly.

And you mentioned a little bit, kind of how you ended up at Audible, but can you talk a little bit, kind of how Audible thinks about fpa, Maybe a little of, you know, how the organization, like what. What all do you manage? Or just a little bit about that.

Yeah. So when I joined, the team was very small, and in my interview with the CFO at the time, I specifically asked her, what is. What is your vision for this role going forward? And her response was, you can make this role into whatever you want it to be. So what I wanted it to be was the strategic partner to. At first I was working with the marketing team, and then it became the product team. And so how we look at the business is really through the lens of the customer. As I mentioned before. What are we trying to do? How are we make this the most entertaining audio platform, bar none. And how do we make sure that people can find the content that they love and come back to find more? So we're looking at the different customer journeys that individual customers or even prospects have we're understanding from a UX perspective what makes an app easy and how do we, how does that impact your KPIs which impacts your financial model, which impacts your P and L. So there's a couple different things there. It's not your traditional here's your variance, here's what happened. It's let's understand everything about the business and really be that trusted partner.

I love the term trusted partner and help strategically. I think, you know a huge part of FP&A is understanding the business and it's becoming much more strategic, commercial in nature. You know, I used to refer to it, you know, in the early days it was what I called FP&R financial planning and reporting. You put together a hundred page deck and somebody might have looked at it and now they really look to us as advisors or in forward thinking companies they do. And you're seeing more and more CFOs come from FP&A. So I really like how you talked about that because I'm totally with you. That is just so, so important. So you know, talking about FP and A, what are the organizations you support today? What, you know, kind of what groups do you support? You support the whole business. Are there certain kind of departments or how's that work?

So product, product management, the growth team. So including paid media and product marketing. So it's, it's a fairly large organization but it's all of the, all, all of the teams that are interacting or their work I should say interacts directly with the customer. So changes would be seen right away in how customers are using the product, using the app, which translates to work impacts that we would see on the P and L. Got it.

All right, so that makes sense. A lot of product and there's some marketing in there. And what do you feel are the most important skills you and your team need to meet the business's needs?

Intellectual curiosity. So as I've built the team out over the past seven years, one of the biggest things I look for in an interview is somebody who is approaching the problem to say not just here's what the number is telling me and here's what my model is saying. But does this make sense or if we're going to make a recommendation to the business, would somebody shop this way? And understanding the lens of the customer. What matters I think is huge finance and accounting skills. Obviously those are the building blocks of the positions but without that additional lens you're just not adding that high level impact that you could be. That really helps some of Your partners say, I didn't think about it like that. And let's try that and let's try it. Let's try to see what the customers think about it.

So I love the intellectual curiosity and I like what you said about the customer. So it kind of led me to a follow up question. Question here. How do you help your team really get to know the customer? What are you doing to make sure your people in finance? Right. We look at numbers a lot. We're managing the P and L all things. How do you make sure they gain that appreciation and understanding of the customer?

So a few different ways. One of the biggest, I think is making sure that our team's actually using the product. And you'd be surprised how many finance professionals and various companies aren't using the products that they're assisting with. In our case, we are all very dedicated listeners and when there's something that goes right for us, we understand, okay, this made it easy. This made it easier to sign up. This made it easier to find content that I would never would have found or this made it so if I'm on the go, I can pop my headphones in this two seconds for me to be listening and enjoying myself as opposed to longer. But I think making sure that you're using the product and then understanding what products and marketing teams actually do. So for a lot of us, we had no idea what product marketing or product management did. Not because it's nebulous, just because we weren't exposed to that before. So we actually, our entire team went to an online product management course. And so we're not experts now.

Sure.

We, we speak the language better than we did before that course. Understand customer journey, the product roadmap, why a product manager would do X versus Y, what the different considerations are there. And so it's, it's really being able to get out there with your partners and I'll use a military term here to get out there and win hearts and minds. We're here to support you. We're not here to check your budget or to tell you that this isn't going to work. We're here to help people think through this from a different perspective.

I really love the part there where we're, we're here to help support you, you know, not to kind of make sure you're following the budget, so to speak, and that everything's in line. Yes. If we're supporting you properly and you know, the business is running the way it should, the financials will take care of themselves to A certain extent, exactly. I mean, you know, obviously we have to make smart decisions with that, but that really goes from understanding the customer and being strategic, not from understanding the P and L per se.

Exactly.

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So very close, very closely involved. If there is a standup meeting, it would be surprising to not have of my team members there. In fact with with different marketing growth team members and different product team members. They all have developed different relationships with my team and so they will have a trusted go to person where they will say I'm having this meeting and this person needs to be there. And so we're involved from start to finish. What's sitting down for ideation offering our opinion which is another important thing that we not just that we have a seat at the table but our voice is heard and respected which it is at audible and to a certain point because we've demonstrated that we are here to help. We are here to help think through and not just be the team that just give us the inputs. We're going to hit F9. Here's your output. It works or it doesn't work. So we are closely tied into that. We are closely tied in with strategy team members as they work through through long term plans for the company.

Now I know I have a little bit of an Excel geek because you said hit F9. Yes, anyone in finance will appreciate that, right? So we've all been there. What I was going to say is so true that when they're in the meetings I've worked for you Know a number of different companies and I remember one when I first joined finance was in none of the sales meetings. We were given all the numbers I asked to join them.

Oh, we'll just give you access to our tools.

Like would never even invite me to any of the calls where on other ones I'm on all the calls. They would call me when they were working on certain deals that may not have made sense financially or wanted to get my thoughts. And we'd work through them and just seeing how different that relationship was and the challenges it created in the business, it made it really hard to be that strategic partner when you could clearly tell. And I've had other roles like that where, hey, finance is someone we have to deal with but we really don't want them in the room.

Yeah. Luckily we do not have that at Audible. Everybody is very open and very supportive of each other. But specifically with finance, they understand how we can bring value to their work. And frankly, we get out there and the work we do wins. Friends, they respect what we do. They respect us as professionals, not just because we can add up the numbers properly, but because we're trying to help them. We're all here to support the business. We're also here to support each other. Let's make sure this works. Let's make sure what you're trying to do is set up for success and is as clear as possible. When you're sitting down in front of a chief product officer, chief financial officer, chief growth officer and explaining why your project should have priority over another, you definitely need us in your corner for that. And I think they definitely appreciate some of the support as well as some of the rehearsals that we do. Someone will ask this question. Let's make sure you're ready to answer it. Here's. Here's some backup information for that.

I love that and couldn't agree more. It's so much of more enjoyable and just healthier for the business and not just people, but financial in every way. When you have that true partnership going on and you have those relationships where finance is seen as a value add versus a back office kind of support function, so to speak. And so speaking to that, you mentioned how, you know, you're very much involved in the strategical and the strategic and operational side of the business. Maybe can you talk to an example of a strategic project you worked with on the business and kind of the role finance played?

Well, some of the things in the past few years have been some of the updates that we've done to the app. So if you're an Audible listener, you and an iOS user, you know that you're able to sign up through iOS app now. And so my team and I were very closely involved with the marketing Org, with the product Org, on how we understood what the benefits were and the pros, the cons, how that launch could go and what we could be expecting from it. And so it really was sitting down with our business intelligence team, understanding if this is the benchmark KPI, where we are now, and talking to the product managers. Where do you want to take this? What is possible, making sure that we're connecting the dots between those teams and the growth teams to say, here's a realistic forecast that we can show you on what we anticipate. So you're a bridge, you're a connector. You obviously understand what is good for the customer and why you would do that. And then articulate this in a very clear package that you're bringing up to company leadership. Got it.

Thank you. I appreciate the example, and I'm sure we have some listeners that are big Audible fans and we'll be able to relate to that one. I will say I've listened to a little bit on Audible, but not a lot myself. My wife does listen from time to time. She does it a lot more than I do, but so appreciate that one, you know, next one. As you look at your team and just kind of, you know, the environment and finance, what would you say is the biggest opportunity and maybe the biggest challenge you're facing?

I think the biggest opportunity is when you look at technology that is coming out now. And so whether that's AI, which everyone is talking about, or even just new programs that you can insert into Excel and change, either the way you're looking at data, the way you're running an analysis, I think those opportunities are really. They provide a more robust path for the finance professional because you're able to upscale when you add in SQL, when you add in tableau, and think about how you can tell a story from start to finish for an executive level meeting. The opportunities there are immense, and it really provides a lot of Runway for, let's say, your juniors or your recent MBA graduates to carry that message, be able to present that clearly and have that understanding, especially with tools that make it much simpler than having to run through cases on your own in Excel, like might have done decade or so ago.

Got it. And so I'm curious, is there anything. I mean, obviously we've seen a lot of AI, but any kind of tool that you've seen over the last years, last year or so, that has you really excited or anything you're looking at and thinking, hey, that will really help us be more productive that you're seeing out there.

I think just for myself, I've really been diving into just SQL and tableau, which somebody might say that seems pretty basic, but when you look at the platforms, they're incredibly powerful. What you can show and how you can manipulate data in a way that just reveals certain patterns and trends, that if you're staring at a spreadsheet, you're definitely not going to see it. And more importantly, Echo most importantly allows your audience to see that. And I think that's the most important part. When you put it in front of a CEO or his or her directs, you get the question, wow, this is insightful. Instead of the question of maybe what am I looking at here, it speaks for itself.

And as I hear you say that whether it be tableau, power, bi, looker, domo, whatever visualization tool you're using, there really are some great things you can get from understanding those, from moving beyond Excel and being able to do some of those analysis. And I really like that you mentioned SQL because I'm a proponent that people should at least understand the basics of SQL. SQL, I don't think you need to be deep and writing complex statements, but I did report writing for about a year, year and a half before I moved into an FP and a role. And it was incredibly valuable in my career to be able to query something from the database if I needed. And it was a natural. It made it easy to learn power query and make that bridge. So I was able to transform and pull data and get insights that other people on my team couldn't because they didn't have that skill set. Yes, they were good in Excel. Yeah, they could put together a chart, but it just takes some things to that next level. At least that's what I've found. Is that kind of your experience there?

It is. Because if you really want to differentiate yourself and when, as you mentioned earlier, a lot of the CFO roles are coming from FP&A, it allows you to dig deeper and really think about strategy. So you're combining your knowledge of the P and L, your knowledge of the customer, and then enhancing that knowledge of the customer with a very in depth understanding of their actions because of all the data, when you provide all that, that makes it very easy for a CFO to step up to become a COO or even a CEO. And I think it's incredibly Powerful for people, people earlier in your career because it, it really makes you a very well rounded finance professional that is able to say, here's how we can help set the direction, strategic direction of the company or even tactical direction for certain items. And that is really adding value and really supporting the business.

Agreed. And I like how you said, you know, kind of helps prepare you CFO or coo, because we're definitely seeing a lot more of that where you know, cfo, especially smaller companies, they also have COO responsibility or you know, people from finance and FPA making that switch. Maybe you'll go over to revenue operations or sales operations because if you're good in fpa, you're going to understand operational metrics, you're going to understand some of that operation of the business because it's really hard to make good advice, strategic advice without understanding that. And so I think, you know, puts finance in a great position as you move up in your career. As I heard one person put it, you know, FPA is the only place outside of the CEO and the CFO that gets a 360 view of the business. And they get it from two lenses. They get it from a financial and they get to see it from the commerce, the business lens, the operational lens. And that's just incredibly valuable.

I totally agree. And that's what has made the past seven years at Audible fantastic for me, being able to have that perspective and really understand how a business of this size is run and how it grows.

Got it. Yeah, I know it sounds like you've probably seen a ton of growth and change over those seven years. I'm guessing.

Yes, especially when you, when you look at the pandemic and people trying to find ways to entertain themselves, streaming became. And listening and it became a pastime, especially in the early days, which. Because what else were you going to do? And so it's understanding that growth and how to keep that growth trend going.

Yeah, no, definitely. I mean the pandemic changed so much and I think many tech companies have, I will say, struggled to a certain extent to figure out how they keep the growth going. You know, some over hired, just trying to figure it all out because it's a new world. Even though, yeah, it's the same world, but things have changed and there's some things that fundamentally will never be the same after Covid.

I think so.

So I'm curious, you know, as you look at the business and just kind of in general, are there favorite metrics you like to look at to help you understand things? Maybe favor either kind of financial or operational, but just some metrics that really help, you know, how things are doing.

So I think at a high level, one of the things that my team really zeroes in on is just how our customers are engaging with the product. And so we want to understand that because if you're not using the product, if you're not listening, if you're not finding what you want, why would you stay? And so for us looking at that, really give. It's the voice of the customer without, let's say, a research session or feedback session, they're telling us what they're doing and how they value the product, product with their actions. And so when we understand that, we have a better sense of where the first, the value we're bringing to their lives, how they're using the product. But two, it helps us zero in on where there are opportunities where we can advise our partners to say, if we see this, this might be an idea, or this leads us to believe X, here's some potentials, or let's talk through this. And so we've had a lot of good discussions just looking at that and bringing that back to our product teams or to our product management marketing teams to really understand what do you recommend? How should we interpret this? Where should we go from here?

Yeah. And as you were talking about that, what it made me think about, and it sounds like you're really big on looking at the operational metrics and those leading indicators, whether that leading indicator, whatever it might be, that helps you give a trend like, okay, we're seeing people start to drop off on their time, there's an issue here, or we're starting to see something different with this app or that app. And I'm a huge believer that finance should be helping understand those leading and those operational metrics. Right. I didn't hear you anywhere in there say, well, I'm looking at EBITDA and our expense ratio and all these things on the P and L. And I see you kind of even laughing as they say that. So I'll let you kind of talk to that.

So we do spend a considerable amount of time on that, especially as you know, when you close the books at the end of the month and understand that you're getting leadership up to speed with what happened. But I think all of that is rooted in the customer behavior, those leading and I think you would be doing leadership disservice and I think for future FP&A professionals out there who may be listening, if you're bringing only the perspective of The P and L, the balance sheet, the cash flow statement, you're really bringing only half of the story because you wouldn't have any of those things without the customers. So you really need to understand the customers.

Agree. You know, the financials are, as a general rule, they're a lagging indicator. We need to, we need to look at them, we need to look at them closely, we need to understand them. But if we're looking at all the other metrics and we understand our business, we'll be less surprised with what we see in the financials. Right. We're always going to get some surprises. There's accounting adjustments, different things that we just didn't know were coming. But I think the more and more you know the business and the customer, the easier it is to kind of understand and see what's coming from a financial standpoint. Would you agree with that?

100%. It shouldn't be a surprise at the end of the day.

Yeah, it's always fun when it is. And then you got to go dig through it and figure out what happened. So what is it that you love about FP&A? I mean, what's made you decide to work in FP and A compared to other parts of finance? Because I'm sure you've probably had some opportunities. So what's kept you with FP and A?

It's really helping to steer the direction of the business. When you're understanding what the goals are for, maybe a long range plan, how you get there. It's, you're really filling in the blanks of what you could do, what has worked in the past, what is, let's say, a total moonshot. But it's a good idea and let's try it out articulating that risk. But most of all, it's really helped me to understand customer behavior. And so when something happens in the economy, I'm frankly not surprised by it because of the leading indicators. Understanding ways audible customers engage with the product gives me a better sense of how other customers engage elsewhere. Whether it be another entertainment service, whether it be something as simple as just retail stores. It's understanding what, how do they perceive value, other different price points, what matters to them, how are they finding that. And I don't know that I would really get that in many other areas of finance. But some of them, some of them are frankly limited and not in a bad way. But you're, if you're focusing on certain things, you don't always get a good sense of that. And for people who do enjoy Those things. That's fantastic. I found that this was something that I enjoyed that got me out of bed every morning in a hurry, start learning some more.

Yeah. And that's all we want is, you know, get out of bed and enjoy what we're doing. And like you said, you know, if you want a role that maybe is more process or you see a smaller scope, nothing wrong with that. But then that may not be fpa. Maybe it's better to be in an accounting role where it's very more processed. And the example I share on this is I had this great accountant that supported me. He was really knowledgeable, did a fabulous job, and I was hiring an analyst and I'm like, hey, interested in the job? No, no, no. He's like, I don't like dealing with that fuzzy math and making up numbers. Like, I'm an accountant. I know what it's all going to be. I understand the numbers and this is what I like. I'm like, all right, fine, enough. You do a great job. I won't ask again. But yeah, it was just kind of funny because he's like, I did it for like a year and I just felt like I was dealing with made up numbers and I kind of laughed and we moved on.

Yeah, I can see that. And I definitely understand that.

Yeah. And so, you know, kind of step back here for just one second. I was going to ask a question we talked about in investment banking. You know, one thing I was going to say and get your thoughts. It feels like we're seeing a lot of people when they leave investment banking similar to, you know, kind of auditing. You leave it moving into either FPA these days or kind of consulting. Do you feel like investment banking you mentioned? A little bit, but it's kind of a natural transition to move into FP and A when you want to start to know the business better. You've dealt a lot with, you know, kind of numbers and seeing the other side, but your thoughts of kind of that path for people. Do you think that's a good, good path?

I think, I think it is. And again, obviously it depends on the individual. But what you're seeing as a junior banker, you're sitting down with the managing directors and clients, whether it be a cfo, a treasurer, head of corporate development, slash corporate strategy. But you're understanding the motivations behind why a company would either buy or sell either itself or a subsidiary, or why they would raise debt through equity or, sorry, raise capital through equity or debt. And so when you have all of this in perspective. And you're hearing it directly from, from Fortune 500 companies. If you're in the bulge bracket, it really gives you a solid basis for understanding why companies do what they do, the thought process. And again, going back to it, that framework. And so if running the company and helping to set that strategic direction is something that appeals to you, it's just a natural fit. If you're a successful banker at that level, you know your accounting, you know your finance, you're probably fast in Excel. You've probably put together decks that make sense, that are clear, that CFOs and treasurers can read, which means within your first few months, you're able to put something in front of your managers and the bosses that is compelling, that shows you understand not just the business, but the environment you're working in.

I appreciate that answer. That was kind of my thinking. And so you helped clarify that. Obviously I didn't come from investment banking. I started my career in procurement and then went to grad school and then switched to finance. And so a little bit of a different journey. So I was just kind of curious your take on that. So next question here. As you look back over your career and this can, you know, it could be in the military, it could be work wherever you want to share. What's the accomplishment you're most proud of? What's something you would share if I asked you that question in a job interview?

That's a great question. The one that stands out for me was when I was actually in the military. So we were stationed in camp Taji from 2007 to 2009, and I was a logistics officer for the cavalry squadron that I was a part of. No real training as a logistics officer, and I was responsible for also constructing or designing concrete checkpoints along major highways in our area. I didn't really have a lot of mechanical or civil engineering training any, but I knew where to find the help and I knew how to ask people in a way that helped them understood what I was asked what I needed from them and that I had put in them work ahead of time. So the team and I designed a concrete checkpoint just north of Baghdad that would allow soldiers to stay safe, but allow us to control traffic in a way that we can stop and inspect cars. So at one point we were able to stop and arrest a major bomb maker who was heading from Baghdad north. I wasn't on the scene, but I was in our, our tactical operations center watching this unfold through a drone. And one. It was, it was really awesome seeing that happen. But two, it was fantastic that that was a design that the team and I had worked on with. As a New Jersey native. Slightly has some inspiration from the. The tolls on the Garden State Parkway, just how you effectively shut down traffic. But it was. It was cool to see that. Just because that's a problem. That's the problem solving I was discussing for what's my objective here? How do I achieve this? What is a good way to do it? How do I do that with the materials I have? Because I wasn't going to a major construction company here in the Northeast and saying, I need this entire bill of materials. I was finding what was out there, and I was getting it out there in a way that had other considerations. Again, you're driving down a highway in Iraq in 2007-2009. You just don't put trucks on the highway without realizing you could be risking someone's life. Looking back on it over my past almost 20 years, since West Point graduation, I will always come back to that one, just because of all the intricacies and that success that we had.

Yeah. I can only imagine how rewarding that was to know you were able to capture a bomb maker and save people's lives. I mean, you know, that's. There's work and then there's life. And when you're able to do work that saves people's lives, there's just a different level of rewarding. Not that work can't make people's lives better, but I could just see how that's very meaningful. So thank you. I appreciate you sharing that, and I'm. I'm glad it worked as well as it did. That had to be a very rewarding moment, seeing that kind of come to fruition and watching that unfold.

It did. And I think just to close that one out, it's. It's a very high bar to clear. When I think about all the amazing stuff that we've done at Audible or I've done in my finance career, which I have some very great stories, and my team and I have done some fantastic work, it's really hard to compare to that one, though.

Yeah, totally agree. I mean, there's just a difference. Even if it's like, hey, we made the listening experience easier for people, that's great. But there's just a different level, so I can see that. So speaking of audible and listening, what do you currently have on Audible going today? What's your book you're listening to?

So I went down a rabbit hole of classics of Science fiction very recently. And so I just finished the original the Android Stream of Electric Sheep. So Blade Runner, fantastic story. Narration was really good. But as you sit there listening and I tend to listen while I'm running and the story, I'm sitting here contemplating what, what it means to be human while I'm at four miles into a run. But it's just a fantastic story.

Thank you. Appreciate that. So do you have a. Maybe a favorite one you've listened to on Audible or even just a favorite book that's helped you in your career?

Favorite book on audible, hands down. Ready? Player one, narrated by Wil Wheaton. First of it's Child of a Child of the 80s. I got all the references. Will Wheaton's a fantastic narrator too. Anytime I get to listen to something that he's narrated, when whether it's a good story or not so great story, I will listen to it just because he's a great, he's a great narrator. When I think about some of the books that I have that I, that I've read over the course of my time that have helped my career, there are a couple ones from the military that have really been helpful, like on leadership, just to when I think about how I work with my team and what I want to do in terms of their development, the opportunities they receive and how they should be getting the credit for the work they do in front of leaders. I think a lot of those books that are on let's say the Superintendent or the Commandant's List from West Point have really helped me in bringing that leadership and management style to my team. And so I guess short answers, there may be too many to actually list.

Fair enough. I mean, it sounds like you're an avid reader and listener from is what I'm hearing. And you love learning from books. We can see the collection there behind you, I think, on your, on my right there. And yeah, as you mentioned, it sounds like you do a fair amount of running, so you get some listening time. If, if you're four miles in, you're doing some pretty good runs. I've, I've run a few marathons, so I know a little bit about running, so I can relate to that one a little bit. So as we, we're nearing the end of our time, we're going to move into what we call the get to know you section here in a minute. But one more question before we do that. So lots of people are big fans of Amazon and Audible. I know there are a lot of people that like to work there any Advice for somebody looking to, you know, get a job in finance or FPA with, with Amazon.

I think going back to what I said before, that intellectual curiosity, when you're looking at a problem, when you're helping the business work through something that will benefit the customer, it's more than just being able to do the numbers and the accounting is correct and your calculations make sense. It's really tying that back to how does this work for the customer, how does this work for the company? And if you're in the interview, you need to be able to clearly articulate that, that and show examples, because we're always asking, why? Why? Let's go one more level. Let's dive deeper. What are the root causes of this and what can we infer from them?

Got it. So it sounds like really having that curiosity to, to dig deep and to be able to understand something at that kind of fourth, fifth level. If you talk about the five whys, not just here's the surface.

Exactly.

Great. So here, this is a section I really like. It's called our get to know you section. You get no more than 30 seconds to answer each question. So the idea is to, you know, relatively brief. And we just kind of run through these. So I have four of them. And so the first one is, what is something interesting about you that not many people would know. Something we wouldn't find online.

Something that we wouldn't find online. So I've always been an avid drawer, so any chance I get, I'm pulling, pulling out a pencil, I'm doodling. It's been doodling since I was a kid. So even now, even in the margins of some of the notes that I take at work, you'll see some doodles. Just to keep my brain fresh.

Love it. Thank you for sharing that one. So next one, if you could meet one person in the world, dead or alive, who would you meet and why?

I'll answer this from a finance perspective. So I think I would like to hear from the original JP Morgan. So want to understand, like, tell me about what you did that helped the direct the direction of the nation in a time when we needed finance most.

You know, that's the first time I've heard someone say JP Morgan. I love that. I love that answer from a finance perspective. That's a. That's a great one. So next one here, and I'm going to modify the question a little bit, I think, from what I sent you, but what is the last thing you googled, looked up on YouTube or use generative AI ChatGPT or any of these others that are coming out. It seems every day, you know, that you use to research something around finance, FP and A or Excel.

So for that one, I think I was trying to do something with a very complicated listing and I think it was some kind of array formula to give me some returns. And it was at. It was very complex and YouTube did a really good job explaining it to me and I did a very poor job implementing it into my Excel.

I'm laughing because I can relate on more than one level, both watching the YouTube and doing a poor job of implementing it. So kind of speaking of that, in Excel, what's your favorite function or feature? What's your favorite thing about Excel?

So I think my favorite function, I think I'm an indirect lover just so I can plug in all the different things there, go find matches across this massive database, return the rows and columns and give me all these items. Maybe that's just a holdover from my banking days from spreading public comps, but I found that I'm able to use that still to this day to give me some. Some returns that make data presentation just that much easier.

Yeah, there is some pretty amazing things you can do with indirect. And if you know how to use it and you use it sparingly so your file isn't full of volatile references, it can be a great tool. Yeah, I am an indirect fan, so I get that one. So we're heading up here to just kind of wrap up. So we have two questions for you. The first is what advice would you offer for someone starting a career in FP&A today if you give them some advice, what would it be?

Hands down, know your accounting and finance code. Just that's, that's the. Those are table stakes. But the advice that I have that will really differentiate junior team members is have that framework. What am I trying to. For problem solving? What am I trying to solve? Why does it matter to my stakeholders? And how do I present this in a way that makes sense? Because that's where it ties all of your accounting, your finance, your Excel skills, your chat, all the stuff that you could use. If you're not clear on that, you're providing a really cool chart that probably misses the mark.

I really like that is kind of understanding. It's being. It's a. It's the application layer, so to speak. It's know. Know the technicals, know the base that you need to do the job and know it well.

Exactly.

Then know how to bring it together to, to solve problems. You know, I've heard it sometimes said a little bit you said is, you know, it's the what so what now what exactly Framework. Right. There's plenty of them out there. But it's, it's all that, that idea. So, last question. If someone wants to get a hold of you, what would be the best way for them to connect with you?

So I'm a Prolific Connector on LinkedIn. Find me on LinkedIn. Drop a note, have some patience there. I get quite a few inmails on a daily basis, but yeah, LinkedIn is definitely the best. I'm more than happy to chat with people about careers, about working at Audible, Amazon, many different things.

All right, well, thank you so much for being on the show today, Frank. We really enjoyed chatting with you and I know our audience will enjoy listening to this. So thanks for being on FP and A today.

Thanks again for having me, Paul. I really appreciate it.