Kevin Appleby is joined by GrowCFO’s Founder and CEO Dan Wells to discuss CFO training and how GrowCFO tries to cater for everyone’s needs in their training programmes.

This links to why GrowCFO was set up. A lot of finance leaders asked Dan where they could go for CFO training and he had a look to see if there was anything on google etc. It was really hard to find anywhere. There were random courses and videos but nothing that pulled it all together. No businesses were dedicated to training CFOs. 

There is no CFO qualification, but GrowCFO has built a syllabus so that this doesn’t have to be the case. Lots of training programmes for accountants at the start of their career can be found. These can be helpful but people have different needs and require a different skillset to become a finance leader. As a head of finance or financial controller, you are the inward face of finance. Whereas, when you become CFO you are the outward face of finance. This is a very different set of skills. You are trained for the inward-facing roles but never the outward-facing ones. 

Most people who are delivering a proper CFO role spend at least 60% of their time on delivering strategy and change. We expect this to accelerate because over time a lot of the operational tasks will become automated. In 2 or 3 decades time, it is expected, this will look more like 95% of people’s time. Being a good right-hand to the CEO and being a valued member of the board requires strategy, confidence and the right skills to influence people and act as a leader. 

Often you are facing problems for the first time once you are already in the role which is why the way GrowCFO is laid out is so helpful. You can search for the topics you need to help you through the challenge. This will then show you relevant events, workshops and podcasts that will help you with this topic. 

Some people like the structure of a programme and going through it at a steady pace. Others prefer having quick access for when they need it and it gives them a safety net to know they have everything at their fingertips. 

CFO roles are often very different. Kevin describes the three types of CFOs he has identified; the operational CFO, the strategic CFO and the Wall Street CFO. People are increasingly coming to the CFO role from different backgrounds. Depending on what routes they come from, people will be very strong at certain aspects of the role, however, there will always be gaps. 

The GrowCFO Competency Framework allows you to scan across all of the skills you need to be a successful CFO and identify where your gaps are. The GrowCFO Competency Framework is something that GrowCFO has built in the past couple of years. It takes the perspective of people across the entire ecosystem. It consists of 9 competencies with 5 skills within each competency. People use our rating guidance pdf to determine whether they are at a beginner, intermediate or advanced level against each of the 45 skills. They are then provided with a benchmarking report to see where they rank for each skill against their peer group. There will then be links to multiple of the activities for each skill. You can take the competency assessment at https://www.growcfo.net/the-growcfo-competency-framework/

There are many different types of CFOs and people are also at different stages in their careers. We split the peer groups in two ways. It is easy to benchmark depending on what stage they are at in their career. This could be aspiring CFOs who are 3-5 years out from landing their first role. It could also be first-time CFOs who have been in the role for less than 3-5 years. Or, more experienced CFOs who may develop gaps as the role evolves. We look at the ownership structures of businesses, the sizes of the companies and the industry boots. 

This benchmark can very clearly show you where you are above and below the average of someone at your level at each of the skills. It also very clearly shows where your biggest gaps are. People could alternatively look to strengthen their strongest areas further. The skills you focus most on will depend on the direction you want to take your career. Focus on being very good at the things that are relevant to your role and not trying to be good at everything as it is unrealistic. 

Some people are happy to work within the platform, which they can do within their GrowCFO premium subscription. Others may want to go a step further and get involved in a programme that is very structured and easy to work through. People could also benefit more from one-to-one professional mentoring. Everyone is in control of their CFO training. 

The CFO qualification certificate was requested early on into GrowCFO. Anyone who does the Future CFO Programme or the CFO Programme will get a certificate at the end. This can be put in the qualification section of your LinkedIn profile and in your CV. This shows others you are motivated, aware of your gaps and you are working hard to address them. It will really make you stand out in your peer group. 

GrowCFO does not only focus on training but also offers support. This is done by allowing questions to be asked and having interactions with the members. A lot of a CFO’s challenges are not black and white and there is no right or wrong answer, it therefore helps to be able to ask specific questions. 

You have a chance to ask people in your peer group how they would deal with the challenges you are facing. They can also provide you with experiences of how certain things worked for them. This could extend to help with finance systems, for example, if you wanted to automate something or how they have done something before. The Finance Systems Survey really shows what people are using and what they like. 

Training doesn’t just mean structured courses but also includes having a chance to talk to your peers and other experts. The Situation Room held on every other Friday gives you a chance to voice your challenges. Here there is usually someone who can give you an insight or advice as to what you could try.

If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The GrowCFO show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. Why not subscribe there today? That way you never miss an episode.

GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars. 

Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes. 

You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

Kevin Appleby is joined by Clarity First Founder, Davina Stanley, to discuss the 5 biggest communication traps. Davina goes into these in detail and how we can avoid falling into them.

Shorter text is not always faster to read.  It is important to recognise that a shorter piece of writing may actually be more complicated to understand.  It can take the audience longer to grasp the meaning and join the dots.  Laying something out in clear steps may involve using more words.  However, this approach will be quicker to digest.  Delivering a logical clear message that is well-structured may double the length of the text, but it can be read in a quarter of the time.  Avoid fixating on the length of the document.  Instead, consider how fast somebody would be able to read and understand it.  Executive summaries are a good way to give your audience a choice of how much detail they would like to receive.  Users can either read the summary and grasp the concept from that, or refer to the main document to obtain more detail.  This works well if you use the same structure within both your executive summary and main document.

Bring the conclusion to the front. Structuring it by the way you did it forces your audience to go on the problem solving journey with you. Bring the finding to the front and then your audience will want to read on and you can include reasons why that’s true. Your audience does not have to go through the same process as you did to get to the conclusion so you don’t have to structure it that way.

We need to be aware of how our and our audience’s brains work. We know in our head all the analysis and thinking we did, our audience doesn’t know this so they only have only got the words that we have written or speak. You have to try and bridge the gap and this can take a lot of energy. If we don’t understand what someone is saying or you are finding it hard you have to fight to be able to pay attention. If this person is someone important you will fight hard to pay attention but if it is someone who you value less you may not make the same effort. Forgetting how our brains work mean our audience have to do the work to make sense of what you are trying to communicate. 

When discussing track changes in a group, the focus can end up being on the minute parts of the document that need to be changed, not the substantial changes. Think about getting the structure really right rather than trying to get into the substance of it. When you now share this structured way of doing it and get feedback on it you should then nail that down. Then create the document so you won’t need track changes. You will save a lot of time writing and reviewing your document and you will end up with a clear and compelling message. Track changes can create it a mish-mash. You can spend so much time making track changes that don’t add much value to your document. 

The human brain can only deal with 3 focuses at once. You should have a big idea and then 2-5 supporting ideas and these should be messages not topics. Using templates can be useful to make sure you look through the topic thoroughly, however, it doesn’t give the message of why. The finance update can also be a challenge. In this update there will be topics but it is useful to give a message with these topics that would give more of an understanding of why this has been the result.  

If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The GrowCFO show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. Why not subscribe there today? That way you never miss an episode.

GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars. 

Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes. 

You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

In this episode of The GrowCFO Show Dan Wells and Kevin Appleby discuss the 9 biggest challenges faced by finance leaders and what you can do to address some of the underlying issues. We hear about the biggest finance leader challenges all the time from our GrowCFO members, and its given us a great insight into the issues you need help with.

The challenges fall into 3 broad areas. The first one concerns making more impact. The issues that you raised with us include:

We covered those 3 topics in the first GrowCFO finance leader challenge in September, and a large number of you participated in the 3 30 minute events and then followed up with the tasks we gave you in the sessions.

The second is all about interacting with others, and you tell us the main issues are:

We are planning a series of finance leader challenges that cover these running from 1st to 3rd November and you can register here to be part of that event. https://www.growcfo.net/finance-leader-challenge/

The final three challenges relate to delivering your responsibilities and include:

There’s a further series of events coming up in January to help you with these.

This is the biggest issue raised by our GrowCFO community towards becoming the best version of yourself.  Around 80% of finance leaders suffer from this and 56% of our GrowCFO community identified this as being one of their top three biggest challenges towards delivering their full potential.
Here are the typical challenges highlighted to us:

The second biggest issue, and one that has a strong bearing on all the other issues
Here are the typical challenges highlighted to us:

This is the third biggest issue raised by our GrowCFO community towards becoming the best version of yourself.  29% of our GrowCFO community identified this as being one of their top three biggest challenges towards delivering their full potential.
Here are the typical challenges highlighted to us:

If you want to find out more then you can register for the following upcoming events. https://www.growcfo.net/finance-leader-challenge/

Finance leader challenge: Interacting with others – November 2021

Building relationships – Monday 1st November from 1pm to 1.30pm.

Communication – Tuesday 2nd November from 1pm to 1.30pm.

Gravitas, perception and being seen as a barrier – Wednesday 3rd November from 1pm to 1.30pm.

Finance leader challenge: Getting things done – January 2022

Feeling overwhelmed with tasks – Monday 24th January from 1pm to 1.30pm.

Maximising your team’s performance – Tuesday 25th January from 1pm to 1.30pm.

Influencing and obtaining people’s buy-in – Wednesday 26th January from 1pm to 1.30pm.

If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The GrowCFO show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. Why not subscribe there today? That way you never miss an episode.

GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars. 

Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes. 

You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

Kevin Appleby is joined by GrowCFO mentor, Susana Serrano-Davey, to discuss storytelling and how it is useful in the CFO role.

No matter what job you are in, you can think about becoming a good storyteller. Not only do you want to get your point across but you also want to make an impact and getting people on board.

You can use the recipe that storytellers use and apply it to our own communications. It is a presentation technique which uses stories that are memorable. You also want to give a vivid description in order to evoke emotions and insights from others. Using scenarios that people can relate to will make them pay more attention.

Susana gives us a mnemonic that shows the key features of good storytelling. This is HUSSLE:

Hero – This is where you have to set up context. The context is what makes the audience care. You can also help this by creating a rapport between the hero and the audience. You can make them feel there is similarity between them and the hero so they will care more about what happens to the hero.

Uphill struggle – This will start to build momentum and create drama. You should now present the problem. When presenting something and there is a problem within it you want to see the problem from the audience’s perspective so they can connect emotionally. This can link to a marketing technique used which agitates the problem before you give the solution.

Show – It is always important to put on a good show. Use words that are impactful along with body language and tone of voice. It is not just what you say but how you say it. In your story you want to have a wow factor. Susana suggests using colour or images, something that stands out. You also want to be aware of any unintended consequences of what you might show people as the same thing can mean different things to different people.

Solution – It’s essential to present or propose a solution. This brings the tone. Although there is a problem, it can’t be all doom and gloom but bring it towards a happy ending. When you think about the people you enjoy working with they usually are the people who will come to you with a solution and problem not just a problem. In a story this is where you include how the situation was solved.

Learning – The most powerful thing from the story is what can be learned. Fixing a problem on it’s own is pointless, you want to see the problem as growth for the future and preventing problems in the future. What can you implement to help you in the future? You need to be able to come clean about things that have been broken in the past, the important thing is what you are doing to prevent it from happening in the future.

Extraordinary – This is about making your presentation memorable. It is important to do this so your audience will go away remembering the key points. It will also help you remember what you are talking about. You don’t want people to forget your key messages and you can do this by using mnemonics, your imagination and imagery.

Storytelling is to make the message memorable as if you only show them numbers they will not remember as much. It will also help to get buy-in from people which, in the CFO role, you are constantly looking for.

Personal stories can be useful by giving examples or metaphors. The examples may appear not relevant as it may not be identical to your current problem but it may be similar giving you more insights.

At work we often shy away from sharing our personal information. Showing snippets of who you are as a person can be an asset as it shows you as yourself not just your professional side.

You want people around you to have the confidence that you can solve the issues. You can help this by showing your track record but including your problems in this too. The most powerful capabilities builders are the examples of very challenging situations and failures which will allow you to deliver it successfully next time.

If we have experienced similar situations it can help with the debate around what we do with a problem. Storytelling about doing something similar and then showing the results of it can be a useful way of adding to the debate. You are not disagreeing which can be emotive, but the story illustrates why you think it wouldn’t work and why it didn’t work in that situation. You can extend your analysis of a current problem by relating it to a previous story.

If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The GrowCFO show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. Why not subscribe there today? That way you never miss an episode.

GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars. 

Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes. 

You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

There’s a big gap between the skills and competencies you need as CFO to those you have as Head of Finance. The GrowCFO competency framework provides a great way of assessing your readiness for the top job. We use the framework as part of the Future CFO Programme. It usually highlights a lot of potential development areas for our students. One of the challenges for you as a prospective CFOs is prioritising your personal development plan to address the most important competencies. Module 3 of the FutureCFO Programme is all about that prioritisation so that you can effectively fast track your personal development plan.

In this podcast Kevin Appleby and Dan Wells give a preview of Module 3 of GrowCFO’s Future CFO Programme and show how you can successfully accelerate your development to get to your dream CFO job.

In Modules 1 and 2 of the Future CFO Programme, you complete the GrowCFO competency framework and identify your biggest issues. These give you powerful insight into your current skills and challenges; how these rank against your peer group; and where your opportunities for future development lie.

The competency framework is split down into 45 different things. Most people on the Future CFO Programme find that they score well in relatively few of the 45. The potential gap between where you are now and where you think you need to be becomes somewhat daunting.

Don’t worry. You don’t need to have expertise in all 45 to become a good CFO. The purpose of module 3 is to take that assessment, and develop a sensible development plan. This allows you to fast track the particular skills you need to make that initial step up to the CFO role. The techniques you learn in this module will also take you beyond stepping up. It will provide you with a way of planning your own development for many years to come.

The first thing to remember is everybody is different. You have your own unique set of strengths, skills and experience. You will build on these and that will make you a unique CFO.

The remit of the CFO can be wide – there is no standard job description. What the CFO does varies from company to company. The role of the CFO in a startup or high growth organisation might also be very different from that in an established corporate. 

The CFO will be the number 1 in the finance function. What the number 1 does is often determined by what your number 2, direct reports and wider team can do to support you.

The CFO is the co-pilot to the CEO. The role of the CFO is often determined by the support that the CEO feels they need, both to complement the CEO’s skills and to bring something extra to the business. 

In short, there is no one size fits all. So, in determining your development plan you need to decide what sort of CFO you want to become and prioritise what is important to you. Module 3 allows you to address this systematically.

There’s a 5 step process and we suggest you use the next 10 days to work through it to build your own personalised development plan.

If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The GrowCFO show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. Why not subscribe there today? That way you never miss an episode.

GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars. 

Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes. 

You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

Kevin Appleby is joined by GrowCFO’s Founder and CEO Dan Wells to discuss the launch of GrowCFO’s Finance leader support Forum.

GrowCFO’s community support Forums help finance leaders to share knowledge, seek advice and solve common issues. They allow free or Premium members to quickly benefit from the combined knowledge and experience of your finance leader community.

Many finance leaders are spending too much time delivering recurring finance tasks that add little value to your business. These Forums contain valuable insights regarding how you can automate, outsource, delegate or ditch such tasks. As a result, you will have more time available to make a bigger impact in your role.

As you get more involved in strategy, you will face challenges that you have never experienced before. In most instances, your community will have already conquered such challenges and can easily share the solutions with you. This will save you huge amounts of time and allow you to quickly identify the best solutions.

There are two finance leader support Forums.

Of these, the main Forum is called Finance Leaders Community and is designed for all GrowCFO members. This is where the majority of the community discussions take place and is the ideal place for you to discuss your specific challenges with the community.

There is also a Forum for the Future CFO Programme. This is designed to help you with your biggest challenges towards securing your first CFO role. Within this Forum, we also post regular updates for our Future CFO Programme activities to ensure that our participants don’t miss anything exciting!

We previously had various other Forums featuring The Situation Room, Women’s Finance Leaders and Startup/Scaleup Finance Leaders. However, we found it more effective to have one main community Forum and there is a tagging system to help you quickly navigate to the most appropriate discussions.

Our finance leader support Forums are available to all free and Premium members.

We recommend that everybody in the community joins the Forums as they will save you lots of time and help you get to a better answer.

In fact, it is hard to think of a reason why you would not want to join in the Forums…!

Any GrowCFO community member can access our finance leader support Forums within the GrowCFO website. Simply log in and click on Forums within your left-hand menu bar.

We also strongly recommend that you download your free GrowCFO mobile app by typing GrowCFO into your App Store. We have integrated GrowCFO’s entire platform into your App, which provides a fantastic user experience and is very popular!

Your starting point is to click on your Finance Leader Community Forum and introduce yourself to the community.

Tell them a few basic details about your job title, company, location and aspiration. You will be pleasantly surprised how friendly and welcoming people are!

Next, scroll through the various discussions and benefit from the insights offered by other community members. Think about your biggest challenges and click on New discussion to seek advice from your peer group.

You will receive tailored notifications when other members reply to your discussions. This provides you with an opportunity to enter into conversations across a number of members within a particular topic.

Don’t be surprised if other members also offer to support you in more detail through private messages or phone call – we are friendly and helpful bunch…!

We recommend that you scan through the latest Forum activity every few days and show your willingness to help others by contributing to their conversations. It is surprisingly quick and easy to stay informed by using GrowCFO’s mobile App.

If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The GrowCFO show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. Why not subscribe there today? That way you never miss an episode.

GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars. 

Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes. 

You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

Kevin Appleby is joined by Ian Kaye, CFO and executive coach, to discuss how to present with confidence and how to improve confidence.

Firstly, Ian trained as an accountant at one of the big 4 and worked in industry for 5 years. This led him to be based in Hamburg, returning after 2 years to do a full time MBA. Directly after his MBA, Ian moved to GE as a consultant.

Ian’s roles have usually been business as usual finance roles and in smaller businesses as finance director or as leading quite large bits of change. He has also been largely interested in personal development elements. This included him expanding his interest of neuro linguistic programming during 2014-2017 by attending many courses and becoming a doubly qualified trainer.

He explains how the benefits of this create a toolset for you to understand yourself and the environment and people around you. Also, you can understand drivers of how we show up in the world. This personal development in this area has lead to Ian being an expert at how to present with confidence.

While Ian admits he is not a therapist, he recognises that exposure therapy can be very effective at tackling any fear. Exposure therapy theorises that the more you expose yourself to your fear, the more you will be comfortable with it. This will mean your fear will become less intimidating.

If it is part of your monthly set up to give a presentation, you will be getting practice. It may not improve after the first 2 or 3 times, but Ian says, progressively this will reduce the fear of presenting.

This fear can come from many places. Ian gives an example of someone being made fun of when they made a presentation at school. This will make them associate standing up and speaking in public with an unpleasant feeling. There is somewhere in the unconscious dialogue that tells you you are not interesting or good enough. This roots from the incident at school. While you may not remember why you have those feelings, you still feel them.

Ian says a big part of moving forward is understanding where the fear came from. This will enable you to reframe what meaning you have associated with presenting.

You also have to pay attention to the skill side. This will include what formats you use for presenting, how do you build your confidence to hold your presenter status and how do you engage the audience. One side of being able to present with confidence is the skill you have. The other side is feeling comfortable trying to present or removing the fear.

There are many approaches. Ian suggests listening to your internal dialogue. You have to see what phrases you are saying to yourself when you are presenting. You should then be going down a timeline and identifying the root and where this started. This is when you try to question, challenge and reframe what it is. This will give you the resources to feel better about presenting. This will further lead to the ability to present with confidence.

There will not be an immediate, huge difference but you can increase confidence quite quickly after a few coaching sessions. It would also be useful to work on different presentation formats.

Ian also reiterates how important practice and knowing your subject is. This can lead you to being able to present confidently. He also suggests thinking about what is the worst that could happen. For example, if you are worried about being asked a question you don’t know the answer to. Ian explains how very rarely does anyone expect every person to have every answer at their fingertips.

It is human to make mistakes. You should be assertive to correcting your mistake. Ian does, however, recognise that it does take another level of comfort to be ok with making mistakes.

To get this level of comfort you have to present with confidence. This comes back to understanding where your internal dialogue has come from. Then further analysing how relevant it is today and reframing it.

Your comfortability can also be helped by putting the presentation in a format you are comfortable with. This format also has to be natural for the audience and take them on a journey. You want this journey to end at the follow up action point being addressed of what you want them to do after the presentation.

Kevin and Ian agree a good way to set a presentation into 3 points. These points should be similar to:

These points mean you only have to remember a few key words. These will be prompts to you remembering what you wanted to say for that point. It is thought that people only remember 3 things from the presentation so you have to make sure these are your key points.

In presentations, you want to share and provide solutions but it is sometimes too much. Less is more and it is usually better to keep your presentations clear and concise. This will avoid the people you are presenting to becoming bored.

If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The GrowCFO show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. Why not subscribe there today? That way you never miss an episode.

GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars. 

Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes. 

You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

Kevin Appleby is joined by Andrew Tapson, experienced portfolio CFO, to talk about becoming a CFO to fast growth startups.

As a teenager Andrew was surrounded by peers who were massively influenced by others and the group above. This is shown as 5 went on to be engineers and 5 to accountants! He at first wanted to be an accountant but then realised he wanted to get into business as he saw it as the place to be.

Andrew went to the big six (as it was then) for interviews. This lead to six offers. He decided to go with Arthur Andersen. This was because the people were interesting and they paid a bit more. The Big Bang then took place in London which led to Andrew working for a subsidiary of Bank of America. This set the tone for the next 30 years. It was all about finding a problem, finding a pragmatic solution and then executing it.

Andrew then became a finance director in Paris and then moved on to work for AT&T Capital. He continued to move to various places including Dutch bank ING. He then ended up as a CFO in 2011 and went on to be CEO.

You don’t go on courses in how to shut down companies. Andrew says it comes back to heads-up management. It doesn’t matter where you are in an organisation, walk around with your head up, talk to people and be intensely curious.

Andrew is not keen on job titles. It didn’t matter what his job title was, he just did what needed to be done. He used to call his job title the minister without portfolio.

Changing the description of a finance director to CFO puts it on the same level as CTO, CMO etc. This will mean you are looking across the business helping other people and your team as you are in it together. Andrew saw in larger organisations that the CFO became the focal point as much as the CEO.

Despite them having different skill sets, Andrew prefers when the CFO and CEO are walking side by side. This means if the CEO is seeing an issue, they have their trust lieutenant next to them. This will get them that different perspective and get better results. There needs to be a partnership there.

Start up businesses sometimes have a 5 people with all C titles. Andrew aims to make them all a team. At ING there was a scaled down board with four people together who trusted each other. Andrew describes a venn diagram where connections between people are in the middle. At this board in there were a lot of connections and complimentary skills.

Usually Andrew is found by fast scale startups when their Venn diagram isn’t working, or there’s a three-legged stool with one leg. Without balance there is bound to be mayhem. Andrew knows he is someone who understands team and partnership and has done a lot. He also knows how dangerous he is with all this knowledge but he is also good at knowing when to call another expert in. He emphasises that you need to know what you are not expert in so you can talk to someone who is more expert.

Kevin and Andrew agree on a general rule that a CFO needs to have 3 things that they know about everything and also someone who knows the detail.

CFO-ing in corporate land compared to portfolio CFO-ing is having that network behind you. In corporate life, Andrew didn’t really have that. Now his network is a lot more. This means he has people he would call on because they know something more in depth than he does. Within this network there is a strong degree of mutuality.

This level of trust comes from shared values. The key value with this is the trust. You hear about people going to help a founder and then stealing their idea. That is not what it is about for Andrew. It is more about helping younger people on their journey step by step. Andrew’s role here is to show them the way, add to their skill set and value set.

When you go in as an experience CFO, you’ve seen before the problems the CEO is facing and this can bring stability. Andrew will bring them assurance they are on the right path and can tell them they are going through similar problems to other people in their sector.

It does not matter what the product or sector is, the problems are similar. It is about the mindset. Andrew sees things in a particular was to help them. There is not a standard financial model. For each business it will be similar but different. Adaptation is key. You don’t have to invent the whole wheel every time, but a part of it. Andrew says that if you take a generic framework and put it through a twist it’ll work every time.

Andrew had a big corporate job come to an end and had one of those seminal moments where he thought whether he should stay or do something different.

He decided to do something different and moved from London to South Devon. He wanted to go back into work and he found there was nothing very corporate there, but there were a lot of small businesses. Andrew spoke to someone who was a portfolio CFO and decided to do the same. He started by going networking and going to events, finding small businesses and it has worked.

The transition to fast growth startups came during the pandemic. With zoom this lead to Andrew having clients in London, Cornwall, Bristol etc. He realised his mindset as well as his skill set was absolutely transferable from closing down £3 billion companies to starting up less than £1 million companies.

All the businesses Andrew has ever worked with are not run by robots, but people. It is about finding time to teach yourself one skill you can put on the table. The best one, Andrew says is being a really good listener.

Most good leaders are good listeners. Andrew advises people at early stage to become good at listening. It turns so many things into a different perspective. You can see things differently when you really listen. When Andrew was walking on the floor at ING he let people talk. He would ask how they’re doing and what’s bugging them. It is too easy as a leader to be in broadcast mode.

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Kevin Appleby is joined by Paul Marchant to discuss his fast track to CFO at the Rail Safety & Standards Board.

Paul qualified at a small firm in Birmingham and then proceeded to move into politics for a few years. The political world gave him certain skills that are still useful in his current role. He then transferred back to finance 7 years ago.

Paul’s role when moving back into finance was an management accountant role at the RSSB. Management accounting, Paul says, is a good step in. This is because you are dealing with decision making for the rest of the business and providing information for decisions that need to be made. It’s an opportunity to not only give data but also show you can provide insight and thinking.

Paul says a CFO massively needs to be a politician. Similarly to politics, as a CFO you have to deal with different stakeholders and you need to evangelise your position.

The biggest similarity Paul identifies, is the messaging. You need to take complicated concepts and communicate them in a way that people can understand and get on board with. As CFO you know all the numbers but you need to put them into key messages that are compelling.

One of Paul’s first tasks he was given after he made his fast track to CFO was to reform the pension scheme. Translating the complexities of a pension scheme to people on the ground is difficult. 2 or 3 clear messages would be most helpful. Within your communication you also have to be empathetic and understanding of the fact you are dealing with people’s lives.

When you join a new role it will take 6/12/18 months to get your head around the new business and how it operates.

Paul explains that he was possibly put on a talent list. 18 months into his role at RSSB, Paul was asked to become a senior management accountant. This was with a view for him to take on the role of head of finance 8 months later.

This is when Paul really felt imposter syndrome. RSSB brought in an interim head of finance with a view of developing Paul into this role.

For Paul, he experienced imposter syndrome when moving from management accountant to senior management accountant. This was due to him not having managed line before and suddenly he was in charge of his peers. Your peers can struggle to see you in a new role and this can make you question yourself.

When Paul reached the stage of head of finance on his fast track to CFO he saw the big task that was in front of him. This means he didn’t have enough time to think about imposter syndrome. The best way, Paul says, to overcome imposter syndrome is to chuck yourself in and expose yourself to everything. To mitigate it, the urgency around the need for action Paul faced meant he would have to sink or swim.

This is the first challenge you face that you did not pass exams in. Managing people is vital to having a successful team. The people side of things was Paul’s biggest driver of imposter syndrome.

Paul had a decent mentoring platform. These were mentors in and out of the business who he could discuss strategy with as he makes more difficult decisions. Paul mentions this being the first time he felt lonely in a role as you have previously been on the same level as others.

He also mentions reading around as being very helpful for him. These books can help you understand different characters and how to manage them.

Lastly, Paul’s previous experience in politics means he can spot an agenda being formed early on. You’re exposed to certain political environments where spotting warning signals early is very important.

Paul had his first board meeting as a young head of finance. He had to tell 13 board members the financial message of the business. Previous to the board meeting, he did not know the members of the board. This left him at a disadvantage as he did not know what angles they would be coming at the meeting from.

Warming up the board is important. It is useful to have certain board members understand your position before you go into the room so it’s not a cold delivery. As your confidence begins to build and you begin to the know the board members more in depth, board meetings start being easier.

When Paul first went to the board he went as head of finance. This made him feel almost a bottom amongst equals. There was no CFO position at the business previously. He had to prove he had what it takes to be the CFO. This gave Paul experience and shaped what the CFO role needed to look like going forward.

The CEO and Paul had a very strong relationship. There is luck involved with who your leader is and how they look after you. Paul’s CEO was excellent and made him realise he could do it so gave him that confidence. He also didn’t cover him too much so he still had a voice. The impact a good leader, like Paul’s CEO, can make shows how important the mentoring side of the business is.

Paul and his CEO joined their roles at the same time. They both had something to prove and both had a reputation to build. The nature of the issues they had to solve meant they were both bound by the same pains and give each other resilience. This laid the foundations of Paul working very closely with him over the next years.

As you put together a business team, you need a shared set of values. This was shared between Paul and his CEO. Their similar aims also made them work closer.

You need to share with the board where you want to take the business. It is also vital to do work outside the board room to really understand each board member. You need to know what each board member strives for so you can see if they share similar values. Some board members had early disagreements with Paul on strategy. However, you can overcome this by building trust and a value base with the board over years. For most of the time all of the board were rowing in the same boat.

Paul says he 3 key bits of advice he would give to himself at the start of his journey would be:

If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The GrowCFO show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. Why not subscribe there today? That way you never miss an episode.

GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars. 

Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes. 

You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

Kevin Appleby is joined by consultant, David Tuck, to explore how to set a transfer price. He also looks at transfer pricing advice and how effective it is.

David tells you there is a mystique of complexity around transfer pricing. It does not need to be that way if you have modest international aspirations.

Is transfer pricing all about tax? Or public image of company? David explains how there has been a real shift. Proactive tax planning to aggressively reduce tax liability is less prevalent now. The BEPS rules play a big role in this.

There has been a successful campaign in the media to show that it is part of you corporate social responsibility to pay the right amount of tax. Make sure you get it right and don’t fall foul of rules and regulations and potential complexity out there. 

Transfer pricing is much more about accidental consequence mitigation now. Making sure you don’t make mistakes or interpret the rules wrong. It is also no longer adversarial; “how can we beat the tax authority?”. The public outcry over Google, Amazon, Starbucks etc has been a part of this change.

It’s about navigating the rules. Expanding internationally because it’s in our commercial interest to do so, not to save tax. As David says, the tax tail no longer wags the business dog!

With transfer pricing, often start up finance leaders have heard it and they google it. They think they don’t need to do anything as there’s a UK SME exemption. This means from a UK perspective, there are no worries. They don’t, however, realise that if you have international operation the same exemptions may not apply. There is no exemption in the USA for instance.

As a result, that startup could be exposed when it comes to transfer pricing. This means you could build up costs and losses which exposes the startup to inquiries in the USA by the IRS. This bites when you’re going through funding round or an exit. There can an be serious consequences.

Operating in other countries may mean you need to see if you need a transfer policy. A US operation may expose start up to 6 years of going back in terms of enquiry instead of 3. The IRS can enquire into you when you are going through an exit. Any opportunity for a price shave will be looked for and they will see transfer price risk exposure. It can drop the value by 10%.

The way David comes at is that there is a false dichotomy at present when it comes to transfer pricing. Either you do nothing or ,what a lot of finance leaders do, cobble a policy together themselves. Alternatively, they go to a professional services firm.

There’s a middle ground here. The principle of reasonableness underlies the transfer pricing rules. David believes there is a gap for an OECD-aligned solution.

If you’re a startup the most important thing is to have a sensible transfer pricing policy, sensible mark-up, some documentation that looks the part, then some legal agreements to back-up this is a genuine commercial relationship. David sees a gap for an OECD-aligned solution that could get you 95% of the way there. It is ballpark accurate, and it’s more than reasonable. That’s what finance leaders in startups want, to have done something sensible without paying eye-watering sums for finance pricing advice.

Further down the line, you might go and pay for some specialist transfer pricing advice on top of that general policy to give you additional peace of mind. You don’t want to do this at an early stage, especially when your business operations are still fluid. 

There is nuance to transfer pricing. There are five transfer pricing methodologies. The three first considered are transactional indicators. You look at that sale of that good or service and requires knowledge of a business’s gross margin that you will realistically not ever be able to publicly find. So, in less than 5% of cases can you use these methodologies. Then you come to profit-based methods. In 95%+ of cases they use this same method of transactional net margin.

David believes to get the ballpark there and land on the right methodology, what is a reasonable margin or markup, some documentation to support that, and some legal agreements can all be delivered for a dramatically lower price than is usual today. 

Kevin wonders if there are any advantages in moving money in particular countries? David wouldn’t push an agenda of proactive tax management as direction of travel is against your ability to do that. Public opinion is also against this. Putting the ethics to one side, from a pragmatic perspective of the brand and how this would affect it, David says he would not invest energy into this area. He indicates to focusing on paying the right amount of tax and that you are not paying too much but strongly suggests against having tax as the driver of business decisions.

You might save money short term but any money you save from tax is outweighed by cost of professional advice and dealing with enquiries. The net beneficiary is the professional service firms offering specialist tax planning advice.

Now it’s about paying right tax in a complex world, rather than trying to game the tax rates and see it as a target to reduce. There is so much scope to help startups and scaleups within their limited budgets.

David explains how it is really tough situation to be in. Often you’re the de facto managing director of international operations before you have a country general manager. You may not be aware of the rules and regulations you need to be following.

David shows you why it is better to use local advisers brought up on local rules and regulations. But how do you find the right advisers? Is this permanent? Branch or subsidiary? When you don’t know it, it’s splitting the atom in terms of complexity.

David is going to be addressing these issues as well as transfer pricing. It is a real opportunity to serve finance leaders of growing businesses, who are going international, much better than they’re being served today. He wants to make that process so much more straightforward in terms of all the pain points. He wants the demystifying of expert knowledge. 

If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The GrowCFO show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. Why not subscribe there today? That way you never miss an episode.

GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars. 

Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes. 

You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net