Finding success in your first 100 days as the new CFO

So I guess maybe let's switch gears a little bit and dive into the specifics of the secrets of Rockstar CFO book that you wrote. I think as part of that you interviewed a number of Valley, startup CFOs, as well as fortune 50 CFOs as well. Can you maybe provide a bit more context in terms of, you know, the types of businesses they were involved in? And in particular, how did they prioritize what they did in a new role? As soon as they were joining a new business, what were their top priorities in the first 100 days?
Sure. And I tend to I, my own personal background, I worked in venture backed tech companies when I was a CFO. So even though I had a reasonably broad range, I probably had disproportionate venture back CFOs that I interviewed in the book, but I did interview, you know, one, CFO, I think it was fortune six at the time, and at least one other than the fortune 50. And I got, you know, a good cross section a few nonprofits well respected. But are you familiar with the expression horses for courses? Yeah, it's, it's, um, I don't know anything about horse racing, except that one phrase, but the idea is, not every horse is going to win on every track. Like, there's some horses that are really good on a fast track over short distance, this sprinters. And then there's this other horses that are actually they're slow horses, but for whatever reason, they run well in muddy conditions, or they do well in long races. So each situation courses for courses, right, the CFO of a relatively small growing company, may not be the same person who's going to be successful in a fortune 500. tech company, it's just a different game, even though they both CFO types of jobs, if that makes sense. So, so I tried to get across section and overcome my own little bit of a tech bias, as I did that, so. But you'd also asked about, like the early stages of being a CFO
know what, I guess.

So to your point, you said, you know, the size and the growth, and also, I guess, the complexity of the business, right, if you're in a hardware business versus a software business, that impacts how the role of the CFO operates. So coming into new role, how do you really prioritize what you do in the first 100 days to demonstrate the value as a strategic leader?


Yeah, you know, it's interesting, because I, I tend to talk about 90 days, or 100 days a little bit. And when you think about it, that's roughly the length of a semester in college. And it turns out, academics actually know what they're doing a little bit, because 90 days, 100 days, it's actually a great time to learn a lot of stuff very intensely. And I encourage CFOs, in the first 90 days, not to necessarily try to accomplish that much, but to learn, because it's, you know, once you sort of living it, you know, you, you're not gonna have time to ask questions, and people are going to be wondering why you're doing it. But sort of step back, don't feel like you need to accomplish a bunch of things your first week, or even your first few weeks, you can't do nothing, I mean, you've got to move the ball forward. But you know, I tell people, you know, learn the business a little bit, get to know, you know, if you have a reasonably sized finance accounting team, get to know every one of them a little bit, you know, get to know cross functionally get to know the salespeople, get to know the customer support people, get to know your board of directors, understand your business as best you can. And again, in the long run, you'll be extremely well served for having taken those 90 days. And just, again, I'm not saying don't do any actual work, but take it as a learning opportunity. And another thing is, you know, build alliances to, you know, don't just spend time with the salespeople, but bond with them a little bit. And, you know, get to understand what's important to them, get to understand what your marketing people are doing. To the extent it's possible, get to understand the engineers, I know, sometimes they're a little engineering folks can be a little bit technical in a way that it's tough people with a finance background understand, but you know, just just get a grasp of what it is that they do on a daily basis, if that makes sense. And do that, you know, so build those relationships, learn as much as you can about the business. And you know, if your typical CFO in the job for four to five years, you'll be well served having gone through that educational process.