Trust and Leadership Lessons for FP&A From 100+ Top Leaders with CFO Jon Laudie

The numbers should drive the day. The model should win. I've always believed you can solve the world's problems with a good Excel model. Like everybody, that should resonate with most finance people in the world. But I think that what changed for me was when you talk about guiding and leading an organization, that stuff just doesn't matter that much.

Today we're joined by John Laudy, President and CFO of Xero Res. After building his career across M&A, FP&A, and investor relations, John now leads both finance and broader operations. He's also co-author of Roots, Relationships, Results, a book exploring what more than 100 accomplished leaders say truly matters in leadership.

The model and the plan and the strategy and the forecasts, the financial strategy sometimes is so disconnected from the actual operations of the business and what's actually going on and the way people are actually executing and what actually motivates them. The idea that the financial objectives of the organization really so often aren't attached or connected to the operational reality of what's going on in the business. And trying to bridge those 2 things has been fun and hard.

What's been the hardest part, the biggest challenge of trying to bridge that?

I think an observation is definitely that the communication and the vision casting hasn't been fully there. And I think the communication that like, here's where we're going, here's the why behind what we're doing, here's the strategic objectives of the organization. Financially, I think the connection behind all of those, they're not that far off when they're laddered up to the broader company vision and objectives.

What's probably the biggest thing it changed your mindset on something, and what have you done because of that?

I think that what changed for me was this understanding that—

Welcome, FP&A Unlocked, where finance meets strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&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, this week's guest has the opportunity to drive a lot of strategy as CFO of ZeroRes. So John Lottie, welcome to the show.

Thank you. It's great to be here. Good to catch up. It's been a little bit since we talked.

Yeah, I think you were— when I started this show, it was FP&A Tomorrow at the time. I want to say you were my 4th or 5th interview. You were very early. You were one of the first 5 or so.

Before you even knew what it was going to be and how I didn't ruin it, I guess.

Nope. I haven't ruined it yet either, I guess. People still listen to me, so I must be doing something right.

Love it.

Why don't we start with your background? Why don't you take a minute and just introduce yourself to the audience?

I have a career that started in M&A and valuation work in an advisory capacity, and then quickly after a few years jumped in-house to corporate FP&A roles and built my career up through there and through that track. Primarily, I started mostly in technology companies, consumer and technology companies in California, and Then moved to Utah shortly after, I guess a few years into my career and kept that going. There's kind of a big tech hub in Utah. So lots of opportunities to grow within roles here. Spent time in corporate FP&A and in operational FP&A with different departments across the organizations that I was a part of. And for a minute, it even transitioned into supporting investor relations and working really closely with quarterly earnings process and reporting to investors and sort of leading that effort around investors and roadshows for investors and so on. So kind of a breadth of experience that was super fun. For me and got me cemented deep into that finance world. You know, most recently joined Xero Res, I guess a little over 4 years ago now. Started there as a CFO and about 2 years ago actually stepped into the president's seat as well. So president and CFO at Xero Res, which has been a very kind of big transition in terms of my role and what the things I think about are every single day. But it's been awesome that the foundation that was laid throughout my career really has enabled me to do some fun things everywhere I've been, but notably really right now where I am, it's been awesome to dig into the other areas of the business. Spent a lot of time there as well. So that's a bit about me.

Love it. We'll definitely dig into that a little bit. We're going to dig into your book, but before we get into the question I want to ask you as we get started, tell our audience, I think we've mentioned this on a podcast before, but I don't know that everybody's listened to the first one or remembers it. First time we met, kind of a fun story. So I'm going to let you tell it unless you want me to.

No, happy to. So you lived in, still do live in Utah, but I don't know if you ever left at some point, but you were in Utah. was in Utah and we were both connected to, I think I had created a LinkedIn group called like Utah FP&A Professionals.

Correct.

Yeah. And it was a lot of years ago at this point.

8, 10 years, about 10 years ago, probably.

Yeah, probably. I don't know that there's much activity in there, but it was, the goal was FP&A in Utah felt young. It felt like there were a lot of new kind of fresh upstart companies that were just starting to hire FP&A. And it was a little bit of a, let's create a community and learn from each other and sort of build what good FP&A looks like in Utah with each other helping. And so you were in that group. I was in that group. I think that's how we first connected, but it was a, hey, let's grab lunch and just catch up. And so we did. You recommended a place. I had no idea what it was called or what it was, but it was like the Jail Time Cafe or something.

Yeah, something like that. Someone told me it was a good place and it was totally different. I'll let you explain more. And I was like, ah, let's give it a try. It's in the middle. There's nowhere else that's in the really in the middle.

Yeah, I was in Provo. You were in Salt Lake. We're like meeting in the middle, half an hour away, and So it was, you know, I punch in the GPS and I'm pulling up and suddenly I'm at the prison and we pull in the parking lot. I'm thinking, this cannot be it. But, but sure enough, there was a little cafe at the prison and we walked in and I remember feeling incredibly uncomfortable. Like, where are we and what are we doing here? But there was just a bunch of normal people who showed up to have lunch there. It was, and the food was actually pretty great.

Yeah. And the staff is all prison inmates that are on good behavior.

It was the most unique experience, the most unique first lunch that I've ever had with anybody. So congratulations to you for picking the best spot in Utah.

The food was quite good. That's what it was, really a good little place. But it was, I kind of felt a little weird when I pulled up as well. I think it was the first time I'd been there. Someone recommended, oh, let's try it. And I'm pulling up going, I wonder what John's thinking.

Who is this guy? And what are we doing here? It was great. And that was fun. I remember at that point being impressed with what you were doing and what you had. You weren't doing, you know, this yet. I think you were still a corporate practitioner. And so it was great to get to know you a little bit and love the conversation, even though the venue was a little bit You know, different. It was awesome.

That's why you remember it. It's kind of like, that's why I have the beard. It just makes me stand out. You know, it's all about being remembered, right?

Yeah, that's the truth.

What they say with marketing.

True. And you're doing a great job of it, Paul. Well done.

And I have fun doing it. All right, let's jump into the kind of the questions we have here. I'd love to start. So you've been a CFO now for about 4 years, CFO and president for 2 years. I would love to know, how has your view of the role of FP&A changed? So let's start there. How's it changed?

I think FP&A, it's had an evolution over the last 10 years for sure. I feel like, you know, and thanks to folks like you and others who are doing a great job evangelizing what FP&A can be and should be, and just generally the best practices and the AFP and all of these resources that have now come together to create sort of a playbook for what FP&A should be and can be and is, I think that's evolved a lot over the last 10 years. I think If I look specifically at over the last 4 years or 5 years in my current role and at ZeroRes, when I first joined, there was no FP&A. And so we've had to create that and have hired a director of FP&A now who sort of leads that effort for us. It's really been fascinating to watch the organization that did not know how to use FP&A, did not know what FP&A was. Um, and then we brought someone in and it was almost like this, what is this person doing here and why, or why do I have to engage with somebody about these things? I, I don't, I don't wanna think about that. I wanna think about running the business. I wanna think about, you know, doing this. I don't need somebody else to tell me what's going on or, or how to think about things. Um, and credit to our FP&A leader and, and the way he's been able to build relationships. Um, now fast forward, he's been with us 2 and a half, I think, years. Almost, and the team is is completely reliant on what he's created, the data sources he's pulled together, the dashboarding, the the visibility into what's working and not working in their part of the business, the forecasting and the planning that's now taking place that never was before. We've been on a journey, and and it's been fun because I grew up in my career in FP&A, and I spent time at bigger companies that already kind of were doing this and knew how to do it, and we had a cadence, and we played the played the role. And then I was at a smaller company where I sort of was building the team, but they had all come from other places where they were used to it and knew what we were going to do and how we were gonna provide value. Well, this was the experience where it was like, we're creating something. The organization isn't really sure how to use us or even if they want this. And now it's morphed from that all the way to this is a critical business function at Xero Res. And it's— It's adding value every single day. You know, when people start saying, I don't have enough data, or I need more of you, I need more of you, I need more of you. I mean, we've morphed into that from, I don't know why you're here, get out of my way at the very beginning. And obviously nobody was hostile in that way, but it paints a picture of the journey that we've been on as an organization and how FP&A has changed this organization that I'm a part of today. And I think it's been Really fascinating to see that journey. I also think the technology has changed so much in the last, you know, 5 to 10 years. You know, 10 years ago in FP&A, we were on an instance of Hyperion Planning, which is that Oracle product. And I've been through multiple sort of over the last 10 years, multiple evolutions of technology implementations with Anaplan and Adaptive and Vena and insert name here. I think I've been involved in some kind of a ripout or replacement or install of one of those along the way. And, and at our most recent here at Zero Res, we actually went with Abaqum, which is a little bit of kind of the new wave of planning tools. And it's been great. It's so different. There's pros and cons to all of them. But it is enabling the business in a way that, that it couldn't before. And I think that's been incredibly powerful for us. So. That's a, that's a quick answer. Maybe actually not a quick answer to your question.

No, it's good. I think I'm going to email their CEO and say, hey, I got a clip for you for an ad. I'll sell it to you for— I'm just kidding.

There you go. Just tell them to give us a discount. We'll be great.

Yeah, exactly. I'll tell them to give you a bigger discount. No, I'm not. In all seriousness, I love kind of hearing the journey. And the follow-up question to that is we have a lot of people that experience that journey, whether head of FP&A, you know, first FP&A hire in a small company, maybe it's CFO and they have to bring it in. What's the advice you'd give to somebody? Are there critical things you did or things you wish you didn't do that kind of helped transition from that, why are you here? I don't see what value you add, to we want you in the room, we need you, we want more time. Because that's just, that's a journey many people have to go through at some level.

I think the most important thing that, that we have done to make this hopefully be successful And again, credit to our FP&A, you know, leader and team. It's meeting the business sort of where it is in terms of its, where it's come from, where it is today, and meeting there as opposed to expecting the business to come and meet FP&A where best in class exists. I think starting on day one, you know, All of us would probably look around the table if we had a group of FP&A professionals all sitting on this call right now and say, yeah, the right way to plan is to do a rolling 12-month forecast or 18-month forecast and be adaptive and adaptive, not the software, but be adaptive and evolving consistently. And we weren't ready for that as an organization at all. I don't think that like we had set budgets historically and then, you know, in November it was still like how we track into the budget and obviously every single week, it, the budget becomes completely irrelevant when you're further into the year because everything has changed. Teams might not even exist anymore that existed at the beginning of the year, yet the budget is still the same. I think, I think meeting the business where it was and not pushing those things too quickly was actually key. Day one, it was data visibility. It was tables. It was, it was dashboards. I mean, data's kind of been a big issue for us. There, there was a lot of data in an underlying CRM that was really hard to surface out. And so Creating the infrastructure and the tables and getting a tool that people could interact with that data was step one. The second that they started to trust and see their data in a way that was, you know, new and insightful to them that they couldn't get before, then it was like, okay, there's actually, there's something here. Build me more of that. It was the beginning. It was one thing that the business needed. It wasn't changing all the processes at once. I think from there, then it became, we're going to tighten up a little bit around the budget planning process. We're going to introduce a quarterly reforecast sort of cadence. We're going to start educating. But by the way, I, we almost had it. We even had a misstep on that quarterly reforecast process because when we got to the end of Q1 that first year we wanted to do that, it was, it was almost too disruptive to even do it because it felt like the goalposts were moving and like the organization wasn't ready yet for how do I even think about an original forecast versus a budget? And my teams are executing to one thing and now they have to shift and execute to another thing. So Again, I think it was just this process of, okay, we're going to pause. We're not going to do it next quarter, but we're going to keep educating and learning about what this process looks like over time to get to a place where, you know, now we're looking forward at next year and saying, you know, we're ready to roll some real things that we haven't been able to roll yet. And every year we've been able to sit and say, okay, now we're ready for this. Now we're ready for this. And so it's bringing that those people along with you. If you're not bringing the people along with you. The change management is nearly impossible and FP&A is not gonna be successful.

So what I'm hearing here basically is the key is change management, understanding where your organization is at, what they can handle, and slowly moving toward what the ideal, what you believe the ideal is, what you believe the business needs versus I know what the business needs, let's just push it all out. And everybody's like, go away.

Correct. Yeah. I mean, nobody wants to be pushed on and said, this is what you have to do. Sometimes that's the reality. We have to do that as leaders in any organization. But I think that to effect change, we, you know, there's the analogy of get everyone inside the tent. Like, here's, here is the, here's the vision. Here's where we're going. Everybody needs to be inside the tent for us to be effective at even moving forward. You know, FP&A, that exists holistically as a North Star. FP&A has their own unique challenge of going to those respective people who are going to be those champions in the organization who care, who are going to be able to affect change in their respective teams and departments. And it's getting those people inside the tent so that they can then expand the tent and get the people, you know, in their orgs inside the tent. It's a journey and it doesn't happen overnight. And it depends on where you are in that lifecycle. I think once upon a time AFP did this like FP&A lifecycle thing. I don't know if that's still a thing or not, but—

I know they have a maturity model.

That's the one I'm talking about.

Probably similar to like, yeah, they have one. FP&A Trends has one. I actually did one kind of similar to all theirs that I have somewhere, but yeah.

Love it. Yeah, I think that is critical because not everybody is at the same place and you absolutely just have to like point to wherever you are and then give yourself plenty of runway to like affect change, improve and add value to the business and influence people. But not expect that you're going to be at X level of maturity tomorrow because you just won't. That'll actually be the first step to failure.

And one of the big things I've emphasized about that maturity model is not everybody needs or should be at a 5. If it's a scale out of 5, should be at a 5. You're going to be at different areas on different things based on your business's need, where its data is at. If your data and foundation is a complete mess, there's no point of trying to be a 5 in technology for your For just FP&A, you got to go back and bring everybody along again, the change management, and maybe you need to get to a 5 as an organization, but FP&A as a 5 doesn't do you a whole lot of good if everybody else is a 2 in their technology.

Right. Then I think where you're actually adding value is by influencing the rest of the organization and helping guide them to get to a level of maturity where then the FP&A process can apply and be relevant. Um, and so you actually get to play a role outside of finance in driving the organization towards What you're able to then add value after they get there. It's it's actually pretty awesome to think about how that trains you as an individual if you're on that FP&A team. Having to do that trains you and coaches guides you down that path of actually operating the business as opposed to just reporting on and or doing analysis on the business. It's a totally different mindset, and that's why FP&A is positioned so well to. to become kind of those operators down the road is because they have to do that along the way.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. All right, so I want to ask a question before we get in. We're talking a little bit about your book here in a minute, but you're in a really unique position. I'm not sure I know of any others I can think of where they're both CFO and president, right? You don't see that very often. You see CEO and president, or president and then the CEO as separate roles. But you don't see CFO and president. So I'd love to know, we'll start with this. What was the biggest surprise when you became president? Last time I asked you the biggest surprise when you became a CFO, like what you weren't expecting. How about when you became president? What surprised you most?

Well, I think the biggest surprise when I stepped in, I guess there wasn't a moment in time where it was like, okay, now it's officially a new title. Yesterday was different. Now today's new. This was a journey and an evolution that sort of naturally just happened and made sense. I think that the if I were to draw a line in the sand and say, okay, what was different point A to point B? It was it was that the model and the the plan and the strategy and the forecasts, the financial strategy sometimes is can be so disconnected from the actual operations of the business and what's actually going on and the way people are actually executing. And what actually motivates them. So I think stepping into a president's seat in addition to wearing the CFO hat really forces you. And by the way, I want to talk about that for a second if we get there in a minute, but it feels like this is becoming more, more common, but it's not been common historically. Like I think Salesforce now has a chief operating and financial officer. And I think that's becoming more, more common and I actually love it. And I think FP&A actually fits perfectly into that kind of track. But I think that this feels a little bit like that as well in terms of what it is. And we can come back there, but the idea that the financial objectives of the organization really so often aren't attached or connected to the operational reality of what's going on in the business and trying to bridge those 2 things has been fun and hard.

I like how you said both fun and hard because I would expect Definitely to be a challenge. What's— so let's dig into that just for a minute. What's been the hardest part or the biggest challenge of trying to bridge that? Was there kind of eye-opening moments where you're like, wow, I thought the business was using the forecast a little better? Or was it more moments of, well, we didn't give them enough information? Or kind of what was the things you saw that you said, we really need to bridge the gap? Maybe just dig into that a little. I'll let you take that where you want.

So we're still definitely figuring that out and are not— there's no, like, we've solved it in any of this. But I think an observation is definitely that the communication and the vision casting has, I think, hasn't been fully there. And I think the communication that, like, here's where we're going, here's the why behind what we're doing, here's the strategic objectives of an organization, of the organization financially, here's the Objectives of the organization sort of operationally. Here's the objectives of the organization for marketing. I think the connection behind all of those—it actually—they're not that far off when they're laddered up to the broader company vision and objectives. And so, I think spending time on mission, vision, values—like I think tightening all of that up at the highest level and then creating those those annual kind of—we we even did this this analogy about a year and a half ago where. we sort of created the peaks. So Everest is kind of this perpetual out there in the distance where we're hiking Everest, right? But like, you're gonna have Matterhorn and you're gonna have, uh, K2 and Denali and these other peaks along the way if you think about like hitting the peak of the world. And, uh, so we, we created this concept to sort of cast a vision around what the view looks like from the top of one of those peaks. And when you define what the view looks like from the top of one of those peaks and you, and you say that's 2027, For example, like that you want to— it's when we look back and say, what have we achieved? And we're now at the end of 2027. What do we look like as an organization? What have we— what does our customer base look like? And what does our service offerings look like? I think creating that vision and then the laddering of the objectives each year to that vision has been an exercise that then is aligning those teams underneath. To the financial objectives of the organization, because ultimately those peaks also represent some kind of financial outcome. And we all have boards and investors and people who care about what the financial profile looks like along the way. So laddering to those objectives and then saying, here's what that looks like financially, then pushes down and says, everybody, we have to ladder to this. And everything that you do is going to ladder to one of these things that achieves the objective of the peak. And that peak has a financial outcome that we're all going to be really happy about. So I think the communication around that doesn't happen well enough in lots of organizations. There's these just silos of information that aren't getting, they're not connecting to that bigger company vision. And maybe executive teams would say, no, we do a great job of that. And I think there's probably plenty who do. I think there's probably plenty who really struggle with it. And our experience was definitely, this is something we needed to get better at.

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Totally. Yeah, I agree.

So it's just, it's always been funny for me. So, and let's take 1 minute before we get to the book. I think the whole chief operating finance officer, you know, smaller companies has been really common. CFO and COO. I know when we met last time for lunch recently, we talked a little bit about this. Share a little bit more of your thoughts. Obviously you're a president, so I'm guessing in some ways you've kind of been a little bit of that operating officer, even though you don't officially have that title. But why do you think that's becoming so much more common for CFOs to get that title or be so involved in operations? Now, having been a CFO for 4 years, kind of share a little bit of your thoughts there.

I think that there are so many, so many valuable— what am I even trying to say? There's so much alignment between what the finance function is trying to do and the way that the organization is trying to execute on the operational side. And if there isn't, then there's something broken, but there has to be so much alignment there. If you look at our organization, We sort of 4 years ago, we did a really, really big transaction. We brought in outside institutional private equity sponsorship and capital and concurrently on the same day closed 12 M&A deals all at once. Like, and it was a massive M&A effort.

Welcome to your first CFO role at the same time, right?

Seriously, it was wild. But that journey from the CFO seat really required deep integration and understanding of so many different aspects of the business, understanding how we operate, what the systems and processes are, what the best practices are in the organization to even just do a day-to-day, you know, service that we provide. And so by having to be so deeply embedded in that, which any good finance organization should be, and any good FP&A team absolutely should be in that and right alongside their operating partners. I think that naturally led to me having a lot of, a lot to say around marketing and a lot to say around the backend systems and procedures and the payroll process and the way we commission folks and all of that sort of had to be thought through because of the unique circumstance we were in where We were building this massive integrated thing out of a ton of different M&A deals that came together at the same time. So that, I think for me, naturally pushed me heavily into the operational side of the business. Now, FP&A, I think like we've talked about, is the perfect training ground for that because you spend your life with the CMO or with the COO or with whoever, the business GM, and you are literally managing the business alongside of them, providing the analysis and thinking through where things are winning and losing and And understanding the economic engine behind the business, and how the operations affect that economic engine. So any good FP&A kind of function is going to help instill that in their people. And and then when you get into the CFO seat, you start to do that at a little bit of a higher level. Add on top of that M&A integrations and and capital allocation and the other things that a CFO has to think about. Suddenly, there is a absolutely a world in which operations and finance. Absolutely need to be hand in hand. And in some ways, creating that at the top, like, I love what Salesforce did with their, with their new hire there. I hope that's working for them, by the way. If it's not, then, you know, failed experiment or whatever. But I believe that it drives the alignment from the top down around everything that we do needs to have an ROI and it needs to have a formula behind it that drives economic value for the organization. I believe organizations need that. And I think that it breaks some silos down. And I think finance and ops in alignment is in practice super powerful.

Great. I couldn't have said it better myself. I love the way you explained it there. I'm fully with you. I say again and again, the best thing FP&A can do is deeply learn the business. You obviously have to know the finances, all those type things. You have to be the translation. But if you don't understand the operations, you cannot be the partner the business needs. You will fall short. I think it's as simple as that. So I really appreciate sharing that. And it makes sense that if that happens, especially as more and more CFOs come from FP&A, we're seeing a switch in that. I think it's almost a natural because they've come from an operational mindset. If they've done true, what I'll call modern, whatever you wanna call best-in-class FP&A, they've come from knowing they have to have a deep understanding of operations. Which has become so important to the CFO role now as they've become more commercially minded over time.

I also think it shouldn't devalue the importance of a good COO too. Like, I think there is still an immense value in a good, strong COO who's going to come in and challenge that CFO leader. And so what it requires, if you're going to be a leader who oversees both of those, an operating and finance leader, you have to be able to thread that needle and actually see both perspectives and represent both sides. Because there does need to be some push and pull, and there does need to be investment in the future that, you know, there does need to be operational kind of rigor behind the business that maybe not every finance person is equipped to do, but bringing those 2 functions together and having a really strong operating leader and a really strong finance leader who are then collaborating. under one leader who's helping drive that alignment, I think can be really powerful. But, but yeah, I don't think every finance leader is going to be a great COO. And I certainly don't think every COO can be a great finance leader. I think the role itself, bringing those 2 functions closer with strong leaders underneath that can guide their respective functions is where the power can be.

And 100% agree, more complex the role, more manufacturing, there's certain industries where it doesn't make sense at all. There's others where it may be great. There's different businesses. But I think you made a really good point. If you do bring it together, you talked about you have to be able to have push and pull. And I think that shows the importance. So you got to have people around you that aren't yes people, people that will challenge. Because if you get someone who's doing both CFO and COO role and they don't have those people that will challenge them, you're going to make suboptimal decisions. It's human nature. If you make all the decisions by yourself and don't really listen to others and let surface what's best. It's going to hurt you in the long run.

100%. Yeah. I mean, there has to be push and pull. There has to be challenge. I mean, that's, that's how, that's how organizations improve and get better.

Today's episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Lineos. Lineos brings live ERP data directly into Excel, allowing your team to build reports with fresh data. No stale files in sight. More on that in a few minutes. Yeah, one of the best answers I ever got on great FP&A was actually— I know you've worked with Adaptive before. He's the general manager of Workday Adaptive. And he said, I want my FP&A to challenge me. I want them to tell me when I'm wrong. I don't want them to sit in the room like, here's the numbers. If they're not doing that, then something's wrong. I need to be aware of things and they need to challenge me. When they think it's the right situation. And so it kind of goes along with what you're saying. You got to have that push and pull. And that doesn't mean disagree or be disagreeable, but it means bring diff— allow different viewpoints to be surfaced and make sure you're discussing the different angles.

Agreed.

All right. So you wrote your first book. First, what were you thinking? How did you, how did you get into writing a book?

Well, it's, that's funny. It's funny. Anybody who asks me that question, I say, You know, if you rewound, in fact, I had a friend who I texted. No, I think he saw something on social media about it. I didn't even text him. And he texted me and said, this is the most bizarre thing I've ever heard. If anybody knew who you knew you in high school would have, would have like, you know, the high school rankings, most likely to whatever, most likely to write a book, I would have been literally the last in the entire, you know, state that I was, that I was in, in high school. So I have the privilege of working with a very remarkable partner at Zero Res today. He's our CEO and my friend and mentor now, and we work very closely together running the business. He had a long career before joining Zero Res as CEO in leadership training and management consulting, and he's already written multiple books and just has this ability to take a concept and an idea and bring it into something that's really valuable and impactful for others. So what was I thinking? You know, Shawn and I had some conversations and he said, I really think this would be a fun thing. Let's work on this together. And I fell victim to, you know, the respect I have for him and the excitement of a project. And, you know, I'll say that it has been so fun and fascinating and, you know, really remarkable to spend time on this journey, on this project. And we can— I can share more about what that is in a second here. But it has been nothing like I ever thought it would be, nothing like I ever thought I would do. And also, it has changed everything that I, you know, changed and reinforced. I'll say that. changed a lot of things and reinforced a lot of things that I believe about, uh, leadership and organizations and what matters the most to people. So, uh, that's maybe— that's, uh, yeah, we can go from there.

Yeah. So just for our audience, the book's called Roots, Relationships, and Results. It comes out late August. By the time this has been released, it will be out. We're recording this before it's come out. And so what I want to ask is Something you said just a minute ago, I want to go there. You mentioned it completely changed the way you see some things. It also reinforced things, but let's talk about the change. What's probably the biggest thing it changed your, your, you know, the way you thought about your mindset on something and what have you done because of that?

So I'll give an example and, and maybe I'll set the premise first of kind of what, what we did in this project. So there was a, there was a Sean, Sean sort of kicked this idea off. And I think this had been ruminating on his brain for a while. The idea that— so there's this, there's this— I'm in circles here. There's this guy named Randy Pausch, who was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

Okay.

And he, he taught—

Is that the guy who died from like, was it the kidney he gave his last— his left— go ahead and tell the story.

Yeah, you got it. So He was a professor, well beloved at the university, and he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And it was like, that's, that's, you know, that's the one that goes quick sometimes. And it, you know, is, is very low sort of recovery rate from— I might be describing that wrong. But he, he was— had the decision to make, which was, do I teach my last semester or not? Because I've been given you know, 4 or 5 months to live probably. And he chose to then teach his last semester at the university and, and, uh, and then sort of built the whole semester around this concept of his last lecture and then had his last lecture at the end of the semester. Um, and then he wrote, he wrote a book about this as well. He even did a, uh, uh, TED Talk where he was up on stage and, and talking about how, you know, doing push-ups on stage, talking about how I'm, I'm really healthy right now, I feel great, And in 5 months, I'll be gone. I'll be dead. And it was just this powerful idea of what do I distill everything I've learned in my life? What do I distill down into my last lecture for my students? And that concept is really the premise of the book, which is that idea of a last lecture, that idea of this is what matters the most. And for him, it was like more broadly just in life in general. Um, we had— Sean, Sean had started thinking about this more in the context of if I had my loved ones around and I was passing tomorrow and I, I had been a successful leader, what would I tell my kids about leadership? What's the one thing in leadership that mattered? You, you know, you— we interviewed over 100 CEOs, senior leaders, uh, professional athletes, politicians, you know, member of British Parliament, like a broad spectrum across kind of the globe of people who have seemingly arrived at the top of their field. And, and the question we then asked all of them was, you know, looking back now, you have your family around you, you're, you're, you're, you, you've made it, if you will. What was the one thing in leadership that, like, you learned? You learned a lot of things along the way and you learned a lot of great things, but what was the one thing that mattered the most? So that's the premise of the book. And we, and we gathered all of, all kind of all this research by talking to all these people and everything distilled down into one of, uh, one of kind of 11 themes, 10 themes, if you will, that sort of everybody ultimately, after around, you know, interview 30 or 40, everyone started saying something that was similar. And so we started to kind of aggregate those concepts and those ideas together. And, uh, there were 3 overarching themes. One was kind of like the inner work, the roots. And so the title of the book, Roots, Relationships, and Results. The, the, the, uh, a number of folks talked about roots and the, the ordered life, the concept of leading an ordered life and focusing on your inner the inner work of yourself first, and that being what matters the most. Um, then the second kind of group of themes was, was in relationships. It was the interpersonal. It was mastering the work between and those, you know, engaging cross-functionally and, and helping guide people and people for people and what that actually means. And then the third was the concept of results, and it was how do you actually go win? And so I, you know, the, the most important leadership lesson was here's how you win, and here's how you get results with your team. And so the research sort of guided down to really 10 distinct attributes that ultimately everybody sort of laddered to. And so really fascinating. And I guess now to your original question, what changed? I think there— I've always been somebody who I think leaned more into the people are important at work side. Even though I'm a finance guy and I know that that's maybe a little bit counterintuitive, the numbers should drive the day, the model should win. I've always believed you can solve the world's problems with a good Excel model. Like everybody, that should resonate with, you know, most finance people in the world. But I think that what changed for me was this understanding that from talking to all these folks, that stuff just doesn't matter that much when you talk about guiding and leading an organization. It does matter. You do have to hit your quarterly guidance. You do have to close the books and get your audit and hit the numbers for the board and everything. Like that all does matter. But what really matters in driving an organization and when you're a leader at the CEO and above level, and when they're talking about what mattered the most in their career, it wasn't anything about that. It wasn't who made the best spreadsheet and what the best hotkey was. And like that stuff just never bubbled to the, this is what really matters level. And I think for me, what has changed is this broader perspective now around the core principles and themes that motivate people and that I have to work on for myself personally to be a better leader for those around me. And I think it's just changed the way I approach leadership. It's changed the way I approach my team, and it's changed the way I think of what a leader really should do. It's not hold people accountable and I mean, it is that, but it's not only that. I think it's also motivate, inspire, trust, be grateful. I mean, some of these core principles that emerged, and I'll just read a couple of them, like gratitude.

Go ahead and read the 10. Go ahead and read them.

Yeah, sure. So the inner work or the ordered life, the work that matters, which aligns to that, but it's moving beyond outcomes to kind of people, and then gratitude. The next one, leading when no one hands you the mic. So leadership without having a title, which is so powerful. Trusting leadership. I love chapter 6, the irrationality of love. This concept that actually love is so powerful and like who would ever talk about love in a business context? But the reality is that's so much of the leaders that we talked to. It was like it came back to Love it irrationally, irrationally in business setting. Love is actually the most powerful thing that you can build and instill in your organization. Listening, full presence. It was the next one. The next one was failure, grace, and the long game. So how failure can actually how having failure and and receiving and giving grace can can really play into the the right long game for the organization. The 9th was define winning and then build humans. So lay out the vision. It's a little bit what we were talking about before, the idea of casting a vision that's so clear that everybody's aligned to it. This is what winning looks like, and then people can align and ladder and win. And then the last being sort of the power of small wins, stacking small win after small win after small win to build momentum as an organization. So, you know, I think for me, what changed the most was sort of this concept of the roots, those first few around the ordered life and the inner work that you have to do as a leader to be able to Then go and affect actually the interrelational work, uh, and, and then get the wins, this arc of leadership. Um, I think that my inner work has, has, uh, needed work and I've been approaching it differently since these conversations.

Really interesting. So as I, as I listen to what you share there, it feels like it starts with, it starts with yourself. What are the things you need to change? What are the things you need to be doing? What's that foundation? Then it goes out to others. And there are some principles you have to do. One of those core being is actually really caring and loving people. That's a part of great leadership. And then there's that vision and setting them— some of the things you talked about where you got the building blocks that allow you to translate that in a way that allows you to be successful in an organization.

Absolutely. You know, we met with Stephen M.R. Covey. We interviewed him for the book and he's kind of this—

The Speed of Trust.

Yes, speed of trust, world-renowned sort of leader in that capacity. And, you know, one of the most remarkable humans I've ever met, actually. It was fascinating. And he actually spoke at a conference that we did for Zero Res a few years ago. And so when we had called him up based on that connection we had, and he talked— speed of trust is his known— is his thing, right? And he speaks on this every week, probably. And he wrote a book and it's really impactful. Check it out. But The Speed of Trust, it talks about being trustworthy and gaining and earning trust in the workplace. Like, that's the whole premise. As we talked to him for this book and he was sort of thinking, you know, what actually is the one thing I would tell my kids? He's like, you know, trust, that's what I do. It's what I talk about. It's what I teach. It's what I know and I believe in it. And he said, what I mostly talk about is being trustworthy and earning and gaining that trust. And he said, that's only part of the game. You know, as I think about this, the real thing is actually getting beyond that to actually being a trusting leader, not just a trusted leader and earning that trust, but actually now extending as a leader from being trustworthy to actually being trusting. And to hear him talk about that and sort of this unlock in his mind around what that actually means, he told some very great stories about leaders who had done that for him. And it, it caused me to think about, uh, stories where people— leaders had done that for me. And every single time that happened, it was this moment where everything changed. Like, this point in time, someone extends trust in you in a different way as a leader, and then everything changed for you beyond that. Or, or I could— for me, at least, I can tell that story. And he had examples of that story for himself. I think most people could probably think of a moment in time when one leader did something that shifted this model of trust and gave them a completely different trajectory and perspective on life kind of coming out of it. And, and I— it was powerful. And, and so, you know, trying to approach conversations with people you work with, with some of these kind of leading guiding principles, there was nothing about, you know, let me help you with your analysis in, in, in the meeting where these life-changing moments happen. It was It was this moment of, I'm extending trust to you in this way, and it's going to put you in an uncomfortable position for a minute and also going to give you a moment to really lean in and shine. And you're never going to have that opportunity if you're just focused on the day job and churning out whatever you have to do. And you're— and you as a leader are helping your people do that. That's great. That's table stakes. That's the day job. But like giving somebody, extending that trust to somebody to do something different and take something to an entirely new level. and, and break the model, um, that's, that's where real change happens. Uh, and so anyway, that was one that stuck out to me as we were talking.

So as you said that, I can't help but think of when I was 20 years old, missionary. I served a mission for Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in our— we have a mission president and the wife was speaking to all of us, reminding us of things we should and shouldn't be doing, mostly shouldn't probably. And she said something that always stuck with me. And I think it goes along with what you're saying and As I listen to you, I kind of take a different angle on it. So she goes, and she said, you use the term elders, like elders and sisters, it's better to be trusted than to be loved. And her point was, I'm going to love you guys no matter what. Doesn't mean I trust you. But as I heard you say that, I think you can flip that and also say it's better to be trusting than to just be loving. Like, yeah, the people that love everybody in the organization and they're great, but they don't. You're not being trusting of them and they're not inspiring and they're not pushing the best out of them. It's like, you have to have both. You have to have the trust. You need to be able to trust somebody, but you also need to be trusting, not just the loving side. And never thought I'd have this long of a conversation about love and trust in a podcast on FP&A.

Sorry about that.

You kind of, no, I love it. I think it's great. Pun intended. It's great. But your thoughts on that? I don't know if you've ever heard that quote, but just if you have any thoughts there, as I shared that, that's kind of the thoughts that came to mind to me as I heard you

Yeah, no, I love it. I think, I think it's great. It gets at a broader theme, which is like, we're all humans here having this human experience together. And we're building an organization together. And these, these, these interpersonal themes like trusting, loving— loving is sort of not conditional, you know, to your point, you were talking about what that, what that looks like. I think it all gets at a broader concept, which is People are people, and at work sometimes we forget to see people as people. I think, I think we start to see people as resources and people as, you know, uh, tools that can get a job done for me. And I, I believe, and what these leaders have, you know, validated with all of the, you know, conversations we had, that isn't what wins. That's not effective leadership. That's not what matters. And the way you build people to get a win in your organization is to not— is to break that. And it's to have the trust. It's to extend kind of the love and see people as more than just a resource. Um, and I think trusting and loving, like, those, those go together into that concept specifically of the human experience, if you will, the personal experience that we're all having together.

Yeah, got it. No, great on that. So next, in a minute here, we're going to get to the FP&A and the get-to-know-you section. I think I could go for a couple more hours, but I know we both have jobs to do. So there's— I want to ask 2 things. Was there a, I can't believe I'm talking to this person moment, or one of those moments where you're just kind of like almost fanboy, or like, am I— I'm actually interviewing this person? And you're laughing because I can tell there was. If you interviewed 100 pretty famous people, what was that moment like for you?

You know what, there were 2. You know, I grew up as a I grew up as a Kansas City Chiefs fan and I grew up in Kansas City. So I'm not just one of those bandwagon people who jumped on in the last 10 years, but there's room for everybody. But in that growing up, I had 2 teams. Kansas City Chiefs were always my diehard number one, but I was a massive San Francisco 49ers fan and they were in the NFC and the Chiefs were in the AFC. So it was okay to have a fan, a team in both divisions. And I loved the San Francisco 49ers because their quarterback was a guy named Steve Young. And, uh, you know, before that, you know, Joe Montana. There's so much legacy there. And, and I— but Steve Young specifically was somebody who I just idolized as a kid. And so we, we met with Steve, we talked to Steve, and he was a, you know, a contributor in this book. That was one of the best interviews we had. In fact, he, he really— he wrote a book recently on love.

And he's an incredible storyteller. I've watched him present. He's great.

Unbelievable, right? So he had written a book about love. And it was funny, as we were talking about this book and this concept, it just went deep into, he's like, no, I'm really thinking about love a lot right now, but I feel like I didn't quite get there with my book. I feel like I missed a certain aspect to it. And now we're really getting into some of the stuff that I missed in this conversation around what that actually looks like in an organization. And so it was a really fascinating conversation. And the other one that I, you know, from a finance upbringing and somebody who came up in the finance ranks in the corporate world, Gary Crittenden, who was the CFO of Citibank in—

Yeah, he was at American Express when I— yeah, I know exactly who he is.

He was somebody who I had known about, read about, and sort of followed from a distance for a number of years. And we were privileged to be able to spend some time with him and interview him as well. It was just fascinating and remarkable. And again, example of some of the people who made it to the pinnacle, if you will, of their profession. And then looking back and he was just so thoughtful and insightful in what his learnings were.

I could see where those would be fanboy moments, both of those getting to interview. That's awesome. Love those. Last story I want to share before we get into kind of some of the more standard FP&A section questions. One of the leaders shared something that you said really kind of impacted you when we had lunch. And they said the whole idea of saying, as soon as, they talked about that concept. Lay that one out for us.

Yeah. So, you know, someone who we talked to, one of the CEOs talked about this idea of, you know, I don't live anymore and I would tell my children to never say this phrase, as soon as I X. The point was we let less important, urgent tasks crowd out the really important stuff, um, but less urgent people and priorities. So people and priorities in our lives are really important, more important but less urgent, and we sometimes let the less important but more urgent tasks override all of that. And, and this idea of as soon as I do this, then I'll do Y. As soon as I finish this project, I'll hit— uh, as soon as I hit financial security, as soon as I get my degree, as soon as I have more experience, As soon as, and I'm a victim of this in my, a victim, maybe, I don't know. I've done this in my life over and over again in my career. Well, as soon as I get a few years into my career, I can, you know, I'll spend more time at home or as soon as I whatever. And as soon as I start reach X income level, then I'm going to finally feel like content and happy. And I think it's so easy to do those things. And this, the CEO just talked about, this is a complete, you know, lie. Uh, the milestone will always move. Uh, the person and the priority that you're neglecting will always be left waiting. And, uh, you know, this, this concept I think was actually something else that really resonated with me a lot. Um, and has— I saw myself in this, and, and I continue to even now see myself in this, and it's something that I will always have to challenge.

Yeah, even as I listen to you talk, I was I'm thinking of things where it's kind of changing how I might spend the rest of my day. Or, you know, because I get caught up in that as soon as— it's been for the last 4 years— as soon as I get the business to this point, as soon as the revenue's at this level, as soon as I have this time. We all do it. I'm very guilty of it. So I— that one really resonated with me. So I wanted to make sure we got that one in because I think it's one that if we're not careful, if we're not actively watching against it, we all do it. Or most of us do. It's just, it's so easy because we think, you know, or the grass will be greener when— that whole idea of when this happens or when— life is always happening. You have to live to a certain extent in the moment.

I agree. And if you can't carve that out, it doesn't mean that there aren't certain times and priorities where they're gonna, you know, certain times you're gonna be really, really busy in a certain thing because that's true. But also, You, the, as soon as I game, we'll just keep going. I think specifically to the beginning of, of, to the beginning days of my career. And I did a lot of as soon as I storytelling to myself, because we're all crafting this vision of, okay, here's how my career arc is going to go. And here's what I'm going to do. And, and here's how I get to my whatever, insert freedom here. And to the absolute detriment of my family, my children, my daughter, who I didn't even hardly see when she was her first couple years of her life, because I was just never, I was never home. And that's not, that's not to say that it was wrong. I don't, I don't know if it was right or wrong. I know that I was investing in early, early in my career, I was investing in myself and the learnings and all the things that came with my first job. But I also know that it had a high cost. And I think if I had had a different perspective, in some ways, I might have measured the return on my time a little bit differently.

So I'm going to share, you know who Larry H. Miller is?

Yeah.

You know, he's been dead now for 20 years, whatever, 15 years, quite a while. But he taught a class when I was at BYU, an entrepreneurship class, and he brings in his wife one day so entrepreneurs will have an understanding what it's like being the spouse of an entrepreneur. But he shared, he goes, I worked 80 hours a week every week. He was diabetic and he would leave the house with a candy bar and he'd often come home with nothing but the candy bar, having not eaten. Part of why, unfortunately, he didn't live as long as he should have. But that was his obsessive work nature. He had to outwork everybody. He goes, during that time, I was a terrible parent. Like, I made a lot of sacrifices to get where I'm at. And he said, was that the right thing? It's like, yeah, I should have been more at home. Of course I should have. At the same time, I now have opportunities to serve and give people and donate millions of dollars and make a huge difference in the world. And that also matters to me. So kind of like what you said, it's like, should you have been— if you go back and do it again, and the answer is yeah, I should have been more at home. But at the same time, are there things I'm able to do now because of that? And you'll never know. That's just kind of the intertwine of life. So all you can do is look back and say, what should I learn from it? What can I do going forward? Absolutely. And it was a really good learning lesson as a young, you know, 20— I was 22, 23 at the time, to kind of hear that perspective because it helped you realize the importance of Balance, but also it's not always as clear-cut as everybody thinks.

That is true. And therein lies all of our unique story, right? Because some people are going to choose a certain direction and some people are going to choose a different response to any given situation. And, and that's how we get different outcomes in all of our individual journeys. It's really, it's kind of fascinating. My favorite thing to do is talk to people about those specific moments in their lives when it's like winded When— how did you choose to handle this situation? And how did you choose to handle this situation? And what did that result in 5 years down the road for you? And none of them are wrong. It's just, it's just you— it's choose your own adventure book.

I remember those as a kid.

Yeah.

All right. So I'm going to switch up the questions I typically ask because I've asked you a couple of these before a few years ago. So I'm going to tweak them a little bit. FP&A, what is the number one technical skill FP&A professionals should be focusing on or need to master with the idea of one day they want to be a CFO. So not necessarily for their job today, but with the goal of being a CFO.

It's always going to be, I guess, tech, we're saying technical only, not soft. So—

We're doing technical. I'll get to soft next. You get both. So let's do technical first, soft next.

Yeah. I don't know how I answered this the last time we talked, but—

I'd have to go back and listen. I don't remember exactly either.

Maybe it's the same. Maybe it's not, but You know, what I think of right now as the most important thing, if you want to become a CFO one day, to understand is actually a simple thing. It's not a simple thing. It's a thing that I think everyone can do. Master the 3-statement model. And specifically, it's understand what an income statement is, what a balance sheet is, and what a cash flow statement is, how they work together, but then build a DCF. discounted cash flow using that model and understand how one change in your P&L or one change in your balance sheet affects the value of an organization in a DCF. Those, that one thing, it's not one thing. It requires a lot of like different skills to be able to do that. But if you can master that thing, build a 3-statement model, build a DCF, and then play with scenarios of what happens when I change something here or there. I think that's exactly what a CFO's job includes a lot of the time is thinking about what happens to the business value when I do X, what happens to the equity value when I do Y, and being able to articulate that, understand that, speak to that in board meetings is a critical skill. So it's a technical skill I think everyone can do and should do.

Good answer. I, there's so much value in understanding those levers that you can pull. You learn them by really understanding the interaction between those 3 statements.

Yep.

Soft skill.

This one's going to be, we probably hit it 10 times already. It's partnering. It's building trusting relationships. I didn't say trusted, by the way. I said trusting based on our conversation with Stephen and Mark Cubby. It's building trusting relationships cross-functionally outside of finance and accounting. You know, a CFO isn't just someone who's controlling the books and delivering accurate forecasts. You have to be a strategic partner at the executive table. And that has to run consistently through the whole finance org. You have to build a culture of that is who finance is at this organization. It's the single skill that compounds the most over a career. So 100% building trusting relationships cross-functionally outside of finance and accounting, which I hope and believe everybody in FP&A now understands or believes that to be the case as well. I think there's probably other answers to it, but this is the one that I think stands out.

Great answer. All right, here's the get to know you section. So I have 3 questions we have, and then we'll wrap up here. First one, if you could have any job in the world for 1 week, what's it gonna be and why?

This one's so easy for me. Wimbledon ball boy.

I figured you were gonna say quarterback of the Chiefs.

Well, that would be fun too. No, I grew up playing and watching tennis, and now every year I watch Wimbledon. I am genuinely in awe of these people who work on the court as the ball boys and ball girls. It's a genuinely hard job to land. I think I looked it up a few years ago, under 20% of applicants actually even get a spot. They have to do training. They, you know, I've always wanted to be right in the middle of the action instead of watching from the stands. That's what I'd want to do.

So you're still a big tennis player?

I don't play as much as I would like to.

Got it. Okay, if your life had a theme song, what's that song gonna be? What's your theme song?

You know the song Landslide by Fleetwood Mac?

I'm gonna have to go listen to it. I'm not familiar with that one.

So Stevie Nicks wrote this before Fleetwood Mac was really a thing. But look, she was in Aspen looking at a mountain and wondering if she could handle whatever was coming next. And that's kind of the context of the lyrics. And I think, you know, one of the chorus lines is, can I handle the seasons of my life? I think that resonates with me, is sort of being a little bit introspective and thoughtful about what's coming and how am I going to handle it. And, and then having a little bit of like a triumphant moment, you know, I made it type of concept. So not that I've made it, I'm not saying that, but that journey Is what resonates with me.

So whoever's listening, John has arrived. He made it.

Scratch that part.

All right. So last question. If someone wants to get ahold of your book, you know, get in contact with you, best way to do that? Go ahead and plug that.

Sure. So I guess by the time this comes out, the book will be available. Roots, Relationships, and Results. Major book retailers. Amazon's probably the easiest, but it's available on, you know, Barnes& Noble and other places as well. Got a website out there, rootsrelationshipsresults.com. Also So just find me on social. LinkedIn is probably the easiest. I'm always somewhere on social.

And you can't invite him to the Prison Cafe. It no longer exists. They moved the prison and shut it down. So if anyone was thinking they would offer him Prison Time Cafe or Serving Time, that was the name, Serving Time Cafe.

That's right. Well, yeah, I'm happy to go to lunch anywhere else, but that one's out.

All right. Well, thank you so much, John. A real pleasure having you on the show. We'll have to do it again sometime. Good luck with the book. I'm sure it will do great. Love the examples you shared.

Thanks a lot, Paul. Appreciate it. Good to spend some time.

That's it for today's episode of FP&A Unlocked. If you enjoy FP&A Unlocked, please take a moment to leave a 5-star rating and review. It's the best way to support The FP&A Guy and help more FP&A professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmarkcpa.com. Downloading the app and completing the quiz. If you need continuing education credits for the FPAC certification, complete the quiz and reach out to me directly. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Barnhurst, the FP&A Guy, and I'll see you next time.