How to Build a Well-Rounded Finance Career, with Bryan Lapidus

TRANSCRIPT

Wassia Kamon: Welcome back to another episode of the Diary of a CFO podcast, the space where you will always find real world insight to become a better leader and be better at life. I'm your host Wassia Kamon, and today I'm so delighted to have with me a special guest, Bryan Lapidus. He is the director of FP& A practice at AFB, the Association for Financial Professionals.

And he has more than 20 years of experience in FBNA and the treasury space working at organizations like American Express, Fannie Mae, and private equity owned companies. At AFP, he is a staff subject matter expert on FBNA, which includes designing content to meet the needs of the profession and helping keep members current on developing topics.

Thank you so much, Bryan, for being on the show.

Bryan Lapidus: Let's see, it's a pleasure to be here and it's always a pleasure to talk to you.

Wassia Kamon: So why don't we start with you telling a bit about your career journey and the story where you find yourself now as Director of Academic Practice at AFP.

Bryan Lapidus: Sure. So I have kind of a unicorn job.

You know, nobody would have, nobody would have drawn this up to begin with. I certainly had not. But it's one of those things, right? You leave yourself open to, to chance, you make preparations along the way and you find something great. I could start with getting my MBA. I was, you know, before that I had bounced around experimenting with different jobs in different fields.

I was actually a history major and a Spanish minor before I got my MBA. My first position was at American Express and I went through the rotation program there. It was a great learning experience, which I think is so important earlier in your career to have breadth of experiences because you just don't know all the things you don't know.

I'm a fan of going broad early and then finding an area of specialty and expertise. I went through the rotational program and my really, my favorite part was FP& A, although I did enjoy audit risk and treasury, but then my family and I decided that we didn't want to be in New York. We want to be closer to our family in Maryland.

So we came to Fannie Mae and then after that, I actually ran FP& A for about 5 years at a private equity back company. That I was in consulting for a couple of years and while I was in consulting, I was trying to build up the consulting practice and I got involved with AFP. I had been a member for years.

Right? And as a member, I followed the content. I want to be better. Actually, I was a member both 2 times once when I was in treasury and once when I was in. It's a little bit of, you know, I knew the company. I knew the organization. I knew what they were doing. And so I was, I started writing articles for them and teaching classes while I was consulting.

And at some point, I realized. Yeah. I just enjoyed that more than I enjoyed the consulting itself. It was mm-hmm that sense of education, of community, of building up, of teaching really. And so I talked to my boss, I said, we should just make this official. And so six and a half years later, here I am at, uh, at a FP.

Wassia Kamon: That is so awesome. And I love what you said about starting early, as broad as you can. So can you please share a bit more about what were the departments or functions you were involved with in that rotation program?

Bryan Lapidus: The first one was, was actually FP& A, but they didn't call it FP& A back then. Right. It was just, you know, financial analysis.

It was people who think about business decisions and do the budget and think about where to put your next dollar of capital. So I did that and we launched two projects overseas for a stored value prepayment card. I love the idea that I was working with the marketing team on how do we sell this and what is the total addressable market.

And I got to work with operations on how do we actually enact this and get this in play. And I found that because I was the 1 with the financial model, I was at the center of all the decisions. I was asking all the questions about. Yes, it's an interesting idea, but is it a good idea and how do you know, and what are your assumptions?

And I just love love that role.

Wassia Kamon: Oh, yeah. So relate to it because I didn't know I was doing FBNA until later in the career because nobody was using the term FBNA. So, when did you actually realize it was called FBNA? Because I know AFP does a lot of education about what FBNA is.

Bryan Lapidus: Right. It's funny. So AFP had.

You know, we've had our certification, the FPAC, in the market since about 2013, 2014 is really when the first test, where people could sit for that exam. And one of the things that AFP saw was that there was a need to define all these other people who are hanging around the CFO. You know, one CFO said, FP& A is everyone who reports to me who's not in accounting, audit, or tax.

And so. They were defining that space at the same time I was moving through that space. So I think the first time I ever really heard that term was when I became the head of FPNA for this, this private equity backed company, they had the role. And I said, well, you know, I've got those skills. I could do that.

And it turns out to actually have done a lot of that, right? It was the planning performance management. Decision support. It's really all that those questions about decision support. And what do we do next? They were developing the body of knowledge, the curriculum, and a whole platform at the time that I was moving into that platform.

Wassia Kamon: That's amazing. Like I said earlier, I didn't know I was doing FBNA, the term business partner. I didn't know any of that, even though I was doing it until after the fact. But now when I go on LinkedIn, I feel like it's. It's all about FBNA. I have so many people reaching out to me saying, I'm an accountant, I have to be in FBNA.

And I'm like, you don't really have to be necessarily in FBNA.

So why don't you tell us a bit about how, when you're an accountant, even if you don't have an FBNA role, how can you make that transition?

Bryan Lapidus: And I want to make sure accounting is incredibly important and we need more accountants as the, you know, the restatement last, last week showed, right?

We need more accounts. It's incredibly important and accountants make some of the best FP and a practitioners at our conference. Once I actually, I was running a workshop and we asked people, you know, who came from FP and a and about 50 to 55 percent of the room had said that their background was in accounting.

When people leave accounting, it's often because there's something that they want to do that accounting doesn't allow them, which is that forward looking aspect of where is the business going? What are we going to do? We have this information. So what and so when you talk about moving your career from accounting to F.

P. N. A. and it's not even moving a career because so many people, I think, want to. Become a CFO and I think it's important to have multiple roles in the office of finance, right? It's like getting a stamp in your finance passport and accounting is an important stamp and FPA is an important stamp. And in order to make that transition so that you can do it, well, there's a couple of things that I think you need to keep in mind.

1 is you have to have comfort with ambiguity. Accounting is all about getting the numbers into the and creating that book of record. FPNA is all about getting the numbers out of the system and saying, well, what do we do with this now? And the future is unknown. And so it's always probabilistic. Well, this could happen.

We're never going to have 100 percent certainty in our numbers or estimates. But this is the best information we have now, that's kind of a mindset shift for people who want to go from accounting to fpna. I would say a 2nd, really big difference is accounting. When you think about who their audience is, who consumes their product, once it goes into the right, it's it's so critically important to get the financial statements right for the auditors for the board for the investment community and the owners.

Right? If you're in accounting, probably 70 percent of the people who are going to consume your output are other people in finance or the finance community. When you're an 70 percent of the people consume, your output are the business, the business leaders, the CEO, the business lines, the line leaders who are looking at what you're doing and saying, okay, this is interesting.

This helps me to do X, Y, and Z.

Wassia Kamon: What are some of the things that they can also do in terms of continuing education?

Bryan Lapidus: So AFP offers a whole suite of opportunities, right? We have our own learning management system. So members can come in and kind of plan out what makes sense. There's some very simple things.

We have guides, we just put out our FP and a maturity model. We also have treasury content. We have a payment subject matter expert, right? So we have really a broad breadth of webinars, papers and articles. That's kind of the easy, low hanging fruit. We also have badges, so a little bit more in depth, you can get a badge that shows that you've taken several courses in this 1 area.

And then we have certifications. We have 2 globally recognized certifications, which I mentioned has been around for over a decade and we actually started out as a treasury organization. And so, since 1986, our certified treasury professional has been out in the market between the 2. There are 40, 000 people who hold, who hold our certifications across, I forget the exact number, but it's at least 80 different countries globally.

Wassia Kamon: That's awesome. And I like the part about treasury, who's don't talk that enough, right? Cause now I step into the role of CFO and I'm like, Ooh, okay. I'm glad I did some treasury before, but I don't hear much about the treasury aspect.

Like, what do you feel people wanting to be CFO should also consider when it comes to treasury?

Bryan Lapidus: Well, there's certainly different kinds of CFOs, right? If you're a small company CFO, that's very different than being, say, a line of business CFO versus a large company CFO. And when you're in a small company, it's the treasury function is really more about cash in, cash out, working capital management.

You're not going to have a dedicated treasury function as you would at a large multinational company. There are certain elements that are important all throughout, no matter where you are, but the more sophisticated the company is, the more sophisticated the treasury and the interaction with markets becomes our payments line of business sometimes fills the gap because in smaller companies, Treasury is really cash in cash out.

It really is payment management and that in depth direct cash flow management. So, yeah. I would say that we have content that is available at all levels, right? And so you can grow with the content as you grow in your role.

Wassia Kamon: Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Because what I'm finding out too is time. Time is of the essence, but time is very scarce.

And sometimes you want to train your employee. You want to coach them. But you don't always have the time and capacity to do it. And sometimes. You yourself as a finance leader are looking for time to invest in yourself.

What are some tip or best practices to be able to still do your job, but also learn as you go?

Bryan Lapidus: You have to be really intentional. There's passive learning, which is something that came into my inbox and I'll look at that and I'll read that. And then there's intentional learning, which is this is something that I really need to be good at and I, I'm going to dedicate the time to focus on treasury or on risk management or socks or whatever, whatever it is.

Right? So you dedicate the time to do that. And you really have to carve out the time and say, I'm going to do this every. Okay. You know, 1 hour a day or every Friday and it's hard. I mean, I say these things like it's hard for me to do it and I'm in the education business now, right? I'm not a finance practitioner like I was for 20 years.

I'm in the education business and I still so I know the value of it. I talked to the value. It's really hard. You have to do it. You have to have a boss that supports it. And if you are the boss, right? If you are the CFO, the best thing you can do is model that importance of learning. Get a certification yourself.

I remember. Yeah. Yeah. When I was at American Express when the, the CFO went out and got his six Sigma certification. That's a significant effort. You have to go through. You have to have a project. You have to take it through. And so I'm sure he was a lot busier than I was a lot more responsibility. But if he could find time, it really sets the tone for everybody else and says, this is what we value.

This is who we are. We invest in people and it's not just lip service. Our CFO is doing it. They're making time for it. I should do it too.

Wassia Kamon: Yes, I agree. Like, once you see that your boss is doing it, it's helpful. But then at some point, like, in my case. I have more letters behind my name than my name itself.

I have so many certifications. It's crazy. Then I saw the F pack. I was like, Oh, that's nice. Then I was like, Oh, my brain. So like, at which point is there a, I don't want to say I've made it. I'm done. But then, you know, you should do more like at which point you feel like you should reach that balance between, okay, I've done this.

How should I learn more? Like what kind of learning I should be involved with.

Bryan Lapidus: So if I were to turn your question around, it's a little bit of asking, when are you done learning?

Wassia Kamon: Yes,

Bryan Lapidus: and hopefully the answer to that is never. Hopefully, learning becomes a, and I'm thinking of a conversation I had with William Washington.

He was on our FPA advisory council. Now he's on our, our board of directors and he talked about his own learning journey. And I was just always really struck by this. Like he started out when he was relatively young and he was in this company in finance, but he found that he was interacting with a lot of people in the warehouse.

And so he decided he needed to learn another language so that he could communicate with them better. And another time in his career, he said he decided he needed to learn how to type because that just made him more productive. And he went on and he got, he got his BA, he got his MBA, he got a master's in law, so he could specialize in law.

He has a Six Sigma certification. He decided he wanted to learn how to play golf because that would, because somebody told him that learning golf is good for business, right? What I really respect, there's many things I respect about him, but one is That voracious curiosity and discipline to keep learning.

So whether you call it education that gives you letters after your name, or whether it's just the habit, I think about. That conversation I try to emulate that, right? There's always something to learn and always something to pursue.

Wassia Kamon: Yes, I agree. I agree. It's hard though. It's my part right now that I struggle and now you're going to be my therapist is how do you balance all that?

How do you balance, for example, putting yourself out there when it comes to personal branding, for example, because yes, you have the certification is great, but actually getting the roles you targeting is a different kind of learning as well. What have you seen in that area? Because I think AFP also offers help for job search and things like that of coaching.

Bryan Lapidus: We do work with coaches, whether it's through us directly, or at any of our events, like our conference or a forum. We believe in the power of the community and the networking. So, having those conversations being in the room, having the hallway conversations are just saying, tell me what you did. How'd you get there?

What worked, what didn't work. So, peer networking is, is incredibly important. Working with a professional guide and coach can also be very important. Getting input from different areas, whether, you know, we have at our conference, we have a career development track, right? Those kinds of things. The kind of thing you're going to talk about at the FP& A Forum, right?

Yes. You're a finance leader. Now what? And you're going to talk about what it takes to get there. These things, they don't tell you the soft skills. They don't tell you the hard skills that are the prerequisite. Right? Those kinds of things. Again, it's hard to do, but I think it's important to both have your head up and head down at the same time when your head down, you're looking at your work and what's in front of you and you've got to be good at what you do.

But when your head's up, you've got to have that breath, whether it's talking to people or learning about AI or finding out all the things that are not AI that could still make you good, right? You have to do both simultaneously, which is incredibly difficult.

Wassia Kamon: Yes, but it's so worth it though, right?

Because I feel like learning for me has been interesting. So like I said, I was done with the letters. I'm done with the letters, but I'm enjoying like public speaking. I'm enjoying learning more about personal branding and influencing and things like that more on the soft skill side, because I think at some point too, in your career, you have to have that balance between what you learn.

In terms of technical skills, but also in terms of soft skills, right? So, in your career, you transition from being in the weeds, an analyst, now being consultant and now being in education. Like, what are those soft skills that help you easily pivot in

Bryan Lapidus: all these functions? I think it changes at different times in your life, at different times in your career.

When you're early in your career, there's probably a little bit more emphasis on gaining the technical skills because you don't have that. But when you're young, those soft skills, I think curiosity. And growth mindset, those two will get you everything else. How do you get better at dealing with people?

Well, you can't, you have to be curious about what they do and who they are. You have to be willing to learn from them as you become more senior. When you're CFO, you're overseeing so many different areas. I have this image from Gartner. It's a graphic and it shows the 37 unique roles that a CFO oversees.

Well, you know, this, you can't be an expert in all 37 and you certainly can't do all 37 at the exact same time. So you need to be successful to manage through other people. You need a great controller so that, you know, that's taken care of. And you need someone who's great at F. P. and A. and treasury and tax and all right.

And investor relations all the way down the line. So then when you're senior, you need to be able to manage people. You need to be able to ask questions, which requires active listening, probing questions, patience. You need to grow and develop your people so that they can be better at their job and eventually aspire, whether it's CFO or whatever they aspire to.

So the skills that you need at that point are all about people management. You don't just become CFO and then turn it on. You've got to develop that throughout. So I'd say different skills. Maybe you want to look at what it takes to be a great CFO. Listen to this podcast, right and figure out right here.

I'll in here. What's important and then work backwards and say, that's where I want to get. And here's the path from here to there. And I can start developing these along the way.

Wassia Kamon: That's awesome. Yes, and I think mapping that path for me really clicked when I started going to conferences after I was like, okay, I need to meet people.

I wasn't. Extrovert. So COVID, I was like, Oh my God, bouncing against the wall. Then I started going at conferences and really now I plan my, my year ahead of time by the conferences I want to go to, because you get to meet those people that will help you map out. Okay. If this is where I want to go, listen from people that have been there and your conferences are amazing.

So what are some of the exciting things that you're currently working on

Bryan Lapidus: in that space? Try to remember you spoke last at our conference in San Diego, I think, right? So that was our big conference. Honestly, for us, working on the big conference is a year round effort. And so already we are accepting propositions and submissions to speak will be in Boston in 2025.

And that'll have 7, 000 people and 130 different sessions and keynotes and 250 vendors, right? That is the all you can eat buffet for corporate finance. We also have a separate conference that is, if not the All You Can Eat Buffet, but the Choice Cuts Just for FP& A, and that's coming up soon. That'll be March 17th through 19th in Austin, and it'll be 25 sessions, all focused on FP& A.

Usually when people come to this conference, they say, I found my tribe. I found my people, because everybody here is FP& A, and all the vendors are FP& A. It's a competitive process. We accept submissions. They're peer reviewed by practitioners. And then we put together what makes sense for a whole day and a half track.

And so that's the other thing that's consuming a lot of my time right now.

Wassia Kamon: Oh, wow. And I'm so excited to be speaking and I'm glad my topic got picked. Promoted to leadership. Now what? So definitely for those listening, I hope to see you in Austin next March 2025. But for me right now, it's hard for me to think about March 2025 because it's like, what happened in 2024?

Is it just me?

Bryan Lapidus: What happened to 2023? Right? You say that every year. Yes, yes. I'm a husband. I'm a father of two girls. And one of the things that somebody said that is truer and truer is that the days go slow, but the years go fast. You're busy every day and you know, you're grinding through every day and you turn around and you say, well, what happened to 2024?

Now we're in 2025. I'm going to do something different in 2025, right? I'm going to have my resolutions, right? And the only thing I can tell you is that at the end of 25, you're going to say, where did that go?

Wassia Kamon: So true. And that's why we have to start planning now, planning the conferences, planning the books.

You see all these, I have like four books. I've been that well on my list at the beginning of 2024.

Bryan Lapidus: How'd you do?

Wassia Kamon: Still on the list. Still on the list. Because I picked up other books. That's the thing. I got distracted.

Bryan Lapidus: Yeah, I've got, I've got a couple there, a couple there, and they just stare at you, right?

They stare at you and say, how about it? I don't know who it was. Someone on Instagram gave me permission, gave all of us permission to start a book and not finish. You know? Oh, okay. You don't have to read it cover to cover, especially if it's a nonfiction, right? You can pick it up and put it down when you want and when you need it, and it'll still be there waiting for you, whether it's 24 or 25.

Wassia Kamon: Oh, nice. Okay. I'm still doing that. I'll start reading 5 pages and be done and if you

Bryan Lapidus: look at it, they only have 5 pages worth of material. That's fine. You know, you don't have to prove anything to get to read the other 195. Thank you, Bryan. You made my day.

Wassia Kamon: And also, today's your day. It's your birthday. I feel so special that you came on my podcast on the day of your birthday.

What are some exciting things you're planning there?

Bryan Lapidus: Oh, that's just going to disappoint you. No, I don't, I don't have anything exciting. I mean, we just, you know, we just finished Thanksgiving weekend. My daughters went back to school. It's the time we're recording this. Some holidays are coming up, so we'll celebrate then when everybody's back, back all together.

Wassia Kamon: Okay, good for you. I always have cake on my birthday, actually two cakes on my birthday, so I can have cake for breakfast the next day, but that's another thing that you should not do.

So some advice you give to the next generation of finance leaders and definitely won't be have birthday cake left over, but what will be some piece of wisdom that you will have for the next generation of leaders?

Bryan Lapidus: I talked to a lot of students, a lot of finance students, I run AFP's, uh, university partners program. One thing that I'm always struck by is students who come to me and they, here's a real life example. This guy, he's a junior in college and he says, you know, I spent my sophomore internship working in asset management and I want to change over to FP& A, but I'm worried I'm not going to be able to make that transition because I have a career in asset management.

I looked at him. I said, you're 21 years old. You don't have a career in asset management. You had a summer internship in asset management. What I find, and I use this as an example, and this has happened at multiple schools, multiple conversations where people feel like they need to have mapped out exactly what they're going to do and when they're going to do it.

And what I found is you need to have both an idea of what you want and a willingness to do something else because so much in life is circumstance around you. We like to think everything we do is alpha. Right. It's our own individual initiative that gives us above market return. But beta is also really important.

Things happen to you. Markets move up and down. You go to conference and you meet people, you put yourself out there. Your boss goes off on a new venture and pulls you with her. So my advice is have an idea so that you're progressing and not stuck in a grind, but also be open to serendipity and change and things that you hadn't seen.

Wassia Kamon: Wow. Yes. And it's so, it's so aligned with your career journey, Bryan, of how it is you started and where you are now. And you, you sound and feel always fulfill when I talk to you, so you must be having a blast,

Bryan Lapidus: in your role. , my job is literally to talk to interesting people who are doing interesting things in the world of finance and then find ways to package it up and recycle it and send it back out to the rest of the community.

So I'm talking about interesting things. I'm having fun. I'm putting people on stage at conference and writing guides and doing webinars, right? If I do my job, right? The community benefits. And honestly, I just find that very fulfilling. I know it sounds a little bit corny, but I really do find that fulfilling.

Wassia Kamon: It is. It does sounds fulfilling. And it also shows that having that finance background allows you to do so many things. It allows you to do so many things, and I think that's something that we should also remind people, you know, how to do finance and accounting, you can find your ways in so many great opportunities, right?

Because it will always help.

Bryan Lapidus: There's, uh, one of our member company that we do a lot of work with. She explained to me that she has this wonderful problem, which is the rest of the business constantly poaches talent. So she gets them in, she trains them, but because they understand the business so well and because they understand how money is made and the value chain that they go out to the business.

And on one hand, she's like, I hate to see them go. They were, you know, they're so good and valuable. But on the other hand, she recognizes. That she is seeding the company with people who understand not just the business, but also how they make money. And that makes her job better in finance because she knows who she's talking to on the other end.

And it helps the entire company. Certainly finance in general, in general, certainly FP& A is a net talent feeder and exporter of talent.

Wassia Kamon: I agree. I've seen so many people that would say, Oh, I was a CPA. Now I'm a marketing development. Executive and I was in F. P. N. A. And I'm in the business in operations. V.

P. Of operations coming from F. P. N. A. From finance. I mean, what have you seen? I can share share more about that

Bryan Lapidus: in my own journey in between the consulting and the F. P. N. A. Consulting. I actually was V. P. Of operations for a medical testing company. So it was very easy to make that leap. I know I've talked to other people who leave finance and then come back and they often come back at a higher level.

And what they say is that when everything is just a number in a cell. You think you can manage by pushing numbers around and changing assumptions. You think you can manage the business when you get out in the business when you're responsible for a P and L, when you're responsible for that income line on the bottom, it changes how you think and the best CFOs that I know have experience in the business and then coming back and they see the business differently.

The other thing that I see, and this is really a big company phenomenon, is as part of their talent development, they move the executives around, right? And sometimes it's a little bit awkward. I know one person at a very large bank told me about a boss who came from marketing and was the CFO. Okay, so that's clearly someone who thinks you can good managers can manage, but that they were also trying to train up that person.

So, as you move up, if you want to be CFO or CEO, and you build relationships, getting out of finance, and then coming back to finance is incredibly powerful.

Wassia Kamon: Wow, and he goes back to what you said at the beginning rotations. Being able to see the word from different lenses so you can be better projecting and driving change.

Bryan Lapidus: Yeah, absolutely.

Wassia Kamon: So powerful. Thank you so much, Bryan, for being on the show. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I will definitely share all the good things you're doing at AFB with our audience. And I'm so excited to join you next March in Austin.

Bryan Lapidus: Well, thank you for having me. Always a pleasure to talk to you and look forward to seeing you in Austin and March.

Wassia Kamon: That's it for today's episode of the Diary of a CFO. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to leave a review, subscribe, and also share with your family, friends, and colleagues. If you have any topic you'd like me to cover in the future, you can email it at ask at thediaryofthecfo. com. Again, the email address is ask at thediaryofthecfo.

com. See you soon.