Starting Strong as a New CFO, with Matt Ziegler

TRANSCRIPT

Wassia Kamon: Hello and welcome back to the Diary of a CFO. Today I'm super excited to have with me Matt Ziegler. He's a CFO of GovExec, a company providing sales and marketing solutions to government contractors. Matt manages finance, sales, ops, and IT. And so, so excited to have you, Matt, here. I know this is your second role as a CFO, so tell us more.

Matt Ziegler: Thanks. We'll see you. Good morning. My second run, my first run. Well, I'll just give you a background on myself. I mean, I mostly been FPNA in my career, right? So I've supported 50 million organizations and multi billion dollar organizations, and I, I ran corporate FPNA when AOL spun off from Time Warner. So I'm comfortable with, you know, very large organizations, although I don't know everyone's names at that point, which is sometimes a challenge.

So my, my first CFO gig, I came into a hospitality tech firm right before COVID started. Got a battlefield promotion in June 2020 to CFO, try to bob and weave as the company, try to learn the new rules and then the newer rules as all the things moved around from getting grants from the government to figuring out, you know, what the new, uh, remote work policy should be.

Back in June, I joined GovExec. So I'm about 90 days in as of actually as of tomorrow. It's been really exciting. I mean, I, I, my first job, as I said, I was promoted into the role. So I knew the business, I knew the team, I knew a lot of information already. And so this is my first kind of onboarding as a CFO.

And it's, it's been, it's been a good, good journey so far.

Wassia Kamon: Awesome. Awesome. So what are some things that you will say were easier the first time? I know you just mentioned you were in the company, in the industry. What are some things that maybe caught you off guard in this first 90 days?

Matt Ziegler: GovExec is a, is a complicated business.

It provides a whole spread of different kinds of services to us, customers, from media, to research, to surveys, to events, to custom content, the data. So just a lot of different business models, right? So my prior company was. Smaller company. It was really one business model SAS model. So SAS model is easy to understand.

Easy to model, right? There's only a few, you know, factors in terms of, you know, churn and new bookings. Whereas this company has multiple business models, different kinds of customer needs. And so that was the biggest thing that was. You know, really new to me coming up in FP and a, you know, have to be quickly understand the business and how it works.

That's, that's kind of job running FP and a, so that part I was used to, but there was certainly a lot more pieces to learn coming to a much more complicated business.

Wassia Kamon: What are some of the things that accelerated your knowledge of the business? Because, you know, now that you have several business models, how did you connect with people?

Like, how did you accelerate your learning there?

Matt Ziegler: I actually gave 30 days notice leaving my last firm. And so kind of compromise was I started onboarding before I even left my old firm. So I had several meetings with my CEO, some of my key peers, several of my directs. And so even by day one, I mean, they sent me, you know, board decks and, you know, all these things.

So I was able to get a pretty good idea of what I was walking into by day one. And that really helped a lot. I really encouraged that. I mean, it was, you know, 30 days I thought was appropriate as a CFO to give that notice. Right. But it also gave me time to be flexible to have some conversations with my, you know, my new employer.

And that helped a lot. Right. I felt like I was walking in with a much higher sense of what I need to do. Where the problems are and that, and I was also able to talk to my, my predecessor, which also helped, right? So that doesn't always happen so that I was definitely lucky in that regard. Uh, he was retiring, so he was, it's not always the case.

You get to talk to your predecessor, right?

Wassia Kamon: Yes, I had that privilege to be able to talk to my predecessor and he gave me a handover document and gave me his phone number. I was like, so grateful because this is my first CFO role. So I was like, Ooh, okay. All the help I can get.

Matt Ziegler: And it's helpful to know what their to do list was.

Everyone, everyone has a to do list. They just haven't gotten to yet. Right. So if you kind of probe there, it's like, well, what, what would you have done in the next year? That gives you a good sense of what business needed or still needs. Not that that becomes your own to do list immediately, but obviously considerations for the future.

Wassia Kamon: That's a great insight too, for those who. Come in and may not know what to ask the predecessor. These kinds of questions definitely help.

Matt Ziegler: That's what I found coming in day one. I had a pretty clear idea of what the business needed, what the team needed. You know, when I started with the onboarding process, they were very clear about simplicity and scale being what the company needed, right?

So being able to, uh, the company has, uh, acquired several companies last few years. And so there's been some, uh, not full integration, some integration, of course, but not complete integration. So finishing some of that is, is kind of also part of the impetus for here's what you need to focus on. Let's get these things finished so we can build a foundation for the next level of growth for our investors.

Wassia Kamon: Were you also overseeing IT and sales ops where you were or just finance?

Matt Ziegler: No, no, I have all three. So I have all three. I just picked up it two weeks ago. So I'm still learning that piece as well. It is really interesting because in one way, it definitely is a control function, right? Like how you think about security and access and even things like procurement, like, you know, do you allow people to buy whatever they want?

Or do you? Require them to only buy this model of laptop, right? To make the service easier. So, you know, that's definitely a step beyond what I have managed before. I managed HR, I managed sales ops before, but uh, I'm really enjoying getting to know IT and I like to learn. I like to learn new things. So IT is definitely, definitely an area where as much as, maybe even more than finance, it's a balancing act, right?

Like you could be, you have to find a balance between what is the business How? What can the business support? You could have very tight I. T. Controls where you basically can't do anything. We'll get without getting I. T. S. Permission as a user, right? You can only buy one thing. Everything's very centralized.

But you know, there's a the business would struggle right to be under such restrictions. So you gotta find what is the appropriate balance between You know, complete freedom for the business to do what it wants to do to drive growth and, you know, policies that are, you know, always well intended, but sometimes maybe a little too restrictive based on that exact that businesses need.

So just, uh, I'm learning about that sort of, I hate to call it a battle, but I mean, it is sort of a battle, right? The right balance balance of power, let's say.

Wassia Kamon: Yes. And I'm seeing more CFOs taking on IT as well. Like before it was like finance and accounting, but now it's almost feel like scope creep, right?

You, you get IT and some HR. Like, do you feel the same way that when you started your career, did you see a lot of CFOs overseeing IT versus now?

Matt Ziegler: I saw some, but I would say more, uh, the, the CTO would have I. T. And in larger companies, HR would report directly to the CEO. Um, I've seen HR, I've managed HR at my last, you know, firm.

And, and it's very interesting, you know, it's a whole different perspective on the company and there's also a controls element. So it makes sense to have a report to the CFO, but, you know, people are challenging, right? You never know how they're going to react. I think there's a tendency, at least for myself, as a CFO working with a CEO, it's like, well, I see, I see all the pieces on the board, and I know what needs to happen to make them all more successful.

You can get a little bit inflated, you know, sense of self where I can say, well, I know what all these things need to happen. If all these people just do what I told them to do, everything will be great. All those pieces, you know, are people, obviously, right? So, you know, you need to figure out how to communicate and how to, you know, provide, provide that sense of here's why we're doing it this way.

Here's where we're heading. Here's why it makes sense as a company, right? So there's that sense of over communication. Coming up through FP& A, over communication was not a strength, right? It was like budgeting and strategic projects. Like it was more who's in the know. Who is allowed to know this project we're working on?

It's only four people who are working with HR, which is the opposite, right? Where you're supposed to communicate to, you know, as widely as possible and give people the why. So that's been a learning for me. But I don't have HR in my current role, but just something I learned in my last role,

Wassia Kamon: hoping not to jinx yourself either.

But you bring up a good point, which is. When you start your career in finance and accounting, so whether you came through FPNA or accounting, you don't really think about those people's skills you're going to need later on in your career, right? Because you're in your silo, you're in your team, you're using jargon like a cruel reserve.

You don't have to explain that to anybody. And it's like, okay, VP of finance, CFO, and you really need those soft skill. So can you tell us a bit more about how did you learn? How did you adjust? Because that's, that's probably not in your, Educational background, if I can say.

Matt Ziegler: You're right. I mean, coming out through FP& A, I mean, the largest team that I managed was 20 people, half in Bangalore and half in Virginia, but they were all again, FP& A people, right?

So we all spoke the same language, you know, effectively, right? You know, and going beyond that, it is a challenge when you're managing people where you haven't experienced what they've experienced. If I said to somebody, close the books 20 percent faster. I've never closed the books. I don't really know what's involved with that.

I mean, I know, I mean, I know what's involved, but I don't know all the specific steps where they're like, it couldn't possibly be done 20 percent faster, maybe 5 percent faster, right? And then it becomes a challenge of, well, what would it take, like, what would other people in the business have to do differently to accomplish what I just suggested, right?

Like, it may be possible, but it'll only other people also change, right? And so one of the things that I try to guide my team to is, are other areas where we're accepting I have to say subpar, but, but we're accepting the inputs other teams give us and just accepting that they're never going to change the timing and the quality, whatever, whether it's the planning process, the accounting process, the HR process, any process, right?

We're just accepting that those things are never going to change. And once you get to the CFO, you can be a little more like they're going to change. Don't worry, we're going to change that, right? We're going to, those processes. Nope. No, we're going to, we're going to, I got your back, right? So back to your question though, it, it is a challenge to learn how to manage teams where you don't know.

How they've operated. And actually my last company, it was a bit of mixed blessing that I inherited a really strong accounting team because we were in COVID. So many other challenges to work on that. I didn't learn as much about accounting as I probably should have because. They had it, right? They, they were really skilled.

They've been doing it for a long time at this company. And so I didn't have to dive in on accounting. I just accepted it. It worked and I moved on. Whereas now I would say just in retrospect, it's, I should know the functions better than I do learning what the, what your team in terms of communication, you know, I do weekly one on ones, but also bi weekly skip levels, and so that helps me learn a little more about the team and what they're interested in.

Like, I really probe on like, where are you heading? Like, what is

what are you

looking to do next? Right? Like, right now, you're the head of billing, right? Well, what do you do in the next role, right? And how can I help you develop the skills and the knowledge? And so that's also learning for me, right? So I learned more about the billing process by just understanding what they're doing and where they want to go.

And I really recommend that because A, Okay. The feedback that I get is like, I mean, I hate to be too self serving, but it's valuable. It's valuable for me to have that, I care about you and your career mentality, right? It's viable for retention. It's viable for the company. And it's good for my learning, right?

As I learn more about people and I learn more about what they, what they're interested in and things that wouldn't have occurred to me. Just as my team gets larger and I, and I've. A more broader spectrum of skills on the team, you know, that kind of questioning and some people are very open to that, but people never been asked that question before in their career by their manager or their manager.

And I find that a little depressing actually, right? It's like, you don't want to show any interest in your career, right? That's, that's. I've had very supportive managers, but on the other hand, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, so it was maybe easier to support me because I knew I could tell you exactly where I was going.

Right. So someone who doesn't know needs a little more, you know, kind of handholding and support.

Wassia Kamon: Yes, but it also speaks to how sometimes we are promoted to management because of our technical skills, and then we get them, we don't have how to, how to be a manager, we don't have that kind of leadership training, and in turn, we can become bad bosses, right?

And not ask people those right questions. And it's really sad, like you said, very depressing sometimes.

Matt Ziegler: There's definitely the people skill element is something that, for example, having a manager one on one course is really important, right? You know, just your first time as a manager, and it should be taught by people at the company, right?

People that have been, you can hire a consultant and they may definitely know some of the buzzwords and all that. But people that actually have been through it at the company that you're going to work with every day, I find it's the right approach, right? And, and then I have people in my last company that, you know, they aspire to be managers.

And I said, okay, well, I'm happy to give you the same training that the other people are getting because you're going to need it sooner or later, right? And so that was always my goal to have that. And I haven't even looked at this company yet. If we have the same kind of thing, it hasn't been that high on my list, but now that I see what I am curious.

As a manager of managers, then it's difficult. Like we just got our semi annual reviews coming out, like the review process. And I need to really encourage my team, my managers to care about it. You're not, not, not caring, but they're, they're very busy. Right. And so it's like, how much, how much effort should I put into this?

And I need to set the example. I have yet to, but I need to set the example that you do need to care about this, right? This is an important, not because HR wants you to do it, although that is important, but also because if you're not in touch with what your team is doing, particularly when everyone's remote, right?

Like that's, that's a whole new level. Like, you know, 10 years ago, if someone wasn't happy, I could just walk by their desk and I I could see the unhappiness on their face, right? So, so it becomes much more important to have those. Kind of check in whether it's a formal review or not to be, uh, especially become a manager of managers.

You need to enforce that kind of and, and, and model that kind of behavior, which if anyone's watching this, I promise that we'll get on right away. Yes. I'm also busy.

Wassia Kamon: Yes. I mean, you're played. Every day I have something added and nothing removed from my to do list, right? You come in, you have five things to do, you end the day, there is 10.

So being able to connect with your manager is important, but then how do you? ease that transition, right? Because the first time manager doesn't have the same challenges at being a manager of managers, right? Especially in finance and accounting. Can you tell us a bit more about what that transition was for you when you first became a manager and then when you became like director manager of managers?

Matt Ziegler: Oftentimes you just manage starting out like one or two people at most, right? And so it's very easy to do it. You spend a lot of time with them. You may have known them already, right? And so you kind of know some of their personality issues and you know what they're good at. We're not so good at what they like, what they don't like.

And so as a manager, you can almost take too much of that in, right? You're, you're working with them much as. Oh, well, Fred doesn't like when I schedule meetings after four, so I'm going to try to schedule meetings after four, where your next employee, you may not know that, right? So you have to consider that, I think.

But as you become a manager of managers, then the delegation is really challenging in some cases. At this point, I have people who manage, manage, manage. So there's three levels, right? So, I mean, it's even more like, okay, what are you working on? The thing I struggle with, honestly, we'll see is, can I just look at your calendar?

Can you just tell me where all your time is being spent and let me fix that. Maybe it's working for my stuff. Maybe it's meetings, other people's schedule. Maybe it's you're too much in the weeds of what your team is doing and you need to delegate to them in order to let them, you know, learn. I don't think I've ever asked that question, but I always want to.

It's like, can I just look at your calendar? Can we just address it? Because there's something, something that needs fixing where you're not using. And I'm the same way. I'm sure my boss has the same feedback looking at my calendar. Right. But I feel like that, how you use your time and how you delegate to people and just respect the fact that you have to let them.

Do the project and come back to you as opposed to you don't need to be on the project team. You want to be in every meeting, you have to be in every check in, right? You're not going to get anywhere. If you're in everything, right? You're just going to be stuck. So educating people about that approach. And modeling it equally importantly is, I think, really important when you get to be a manager or managers, right, is that you're, you don't need to be in all the meetings and you shouldn't be in all the meetings because your team isn't as able to grow as a result.

If you're the most senior person in the meeting, probably speak a fair amount of the time, right? You know, it's just nature, right? It's like, oh, well, you my opinion on that. Yes. I don't need your opinion on that.

Wassia Kamon: Yeah, they may not even be able to speak or actually say what they wanted to say, because now they're like, who, what, what is the boss going to think?

Right? So it is a delicate balance.

Matt Ziegler: And it's even harder on my FP and a team, I think this is my first budget cycle in 20 years where I haven't been the person running it day to day. Right. And my, now my head of FP and a is doing it. Yeah, I saw the

Wassia Kamon: post.

Matt Ziegler: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's harder than when my kids went to school because I mean, I'm just so used to like, I need to step back and I'm not, I'm, I'm not that great at it, to be honest with you.

It's like, Oh, I know what this is. I know what we need here. I know what this needs. It's stepping back from something you've done for so long. Yeah. And letting someone else run it and, and, and show you what they've learned is, you know, they've learned different things than you. Right? And they've had different skills they can bring.

It is hard to learn about new teams, but it's also hard to give up the thing that brought you where you are today. Right? That's whatever that set of skills was.

Wassia Kamon: I'm struggling too with that because I came from the controllership route. So I came from CPA controllers. So I'm all about internal controls and all that.

I did head FPNA at some point, but back in my mind is that CPA internal controls controller. So I'm all in that accounting function, like, yes, let's get to it. So I'm wondering from your standpoint, since you came up from the FPNA route to now CFO, how is it? Dealing with the accounting team, because I know now you said it's hard to let go of FB& A, so how are you doing it with accounting?

Matt Ziegler: Like I said, at my last firm, I inherited a great team. I didn't focus on it as much. At this firm, we're, we're building out the team. It's a combination of in source and outsource actually. So it's working. That's good. You know, there's always coming into new firm. There's so many things to learn. And so like you can imagine a business that has a lot of different business models.

Has a lot of different Revrec policies as well. Like there's not just one policy. There's one for each business and different kinds of customers. And so this is an example that's something where I need to spend more time on to say, well, I'm not trying to challenge how you did it, but I do need to understand the why.

I feel I'm just accepting that it's right is not good enough. I need you to explain it to me. And honestly as a layman, right? I've never been an accountant. I don't have a CPA, right? So, you know, I'm not going to understand all the technical Well, the sec rolled this and blah, blah, right. It's like, just, just help me understand the practical, why do we do it this way?

Because I have to explain to somebody else, like there'll be times where I'm presenting the results. And they'll be like, well, why did the revenue do that? And I was like, oh, because we have this policy, which says, right. And I have to be able to explain it. Right. And, you know, and look credible while I do it.

Right. So I find that working with accounting or any new team that I didn't work with, it's really about understanding their deliverables and what they need to be successful. Right. So accounting, of course, primarily is the monthly. And then the annual deliverables and what do they need, what are they not getting, where are they being challenged, like going back to the closed process, you know, I've had, I've worked with, even before I was the head of a CFO, you know, just, I worked with accounting teams quite a bit, sometimes they wouldn't get key information from the business team until day one, day two, day three, and it's like, well, that obviously the closed cycle gets held up as a result because the business team isn't providing Right.

Right. Right. You know, key information when frankly, the day, the day minus one information would have been good enough, right? I mean, we didn't learn that much from day minus one and day two that we could have delivered it on day minus one and gotten there faster.

Wassia Kamon: So as CFO, really, you are facilitating and helping remove the, all the roadblocks from your team so that they can be their best, essentially.

Matt Ziegler: That is the goal, right? Where you prioritize the time and how you spend and which roadblocks and how, how much to remove them. Is one of my biggest challenges now is like there's so many parts of my team working on so many different projects and so many different business deliverables. Right? So, and they all have blockers to a certain extent.

I mean, you can always have more talent, more resources. More tools, more time, more support, whatever. But it's hard to get any or all of those things sometimes. Right. So, you know, trying to figure out which team's problem I need to focus on and, and in some cases burn some political capital. We have to make a change and some of my colleagues aren't going to be happy about this change, you know, but this is what we need to get this, the simplicity and scale that I've been asked to deliver.

So, so I'm standing there blockers and I'm sure there are many blockers that they have, but I'm like, I'm sorry, I can't help you with that one right now. I have nothing to add, right? I mean, we have to live with it a little while longer.

Wassia Kamon: I mean, it's just a cycle of finance and accounting, right? There is always something going on.

There's always a reporting that's due. Every time you look around, it feels like, okay, more work. How do you balance, you know, in your first 90 days, things that you should start doing or stop doing, do you start a new project or are there things like, you're like, do not do this in your first 90 days as a CFO.

Matt Ziegler: I mean, my biggest win. Was putting the team in the right positions. Right. And so I was, I was, I had a couple of things going for me. Right. So first of all, I mentioned I had that sort of pre onboarding because when I had, even before I hadn't left yet, I had some key conversations, right. I'm going to think about what was needed.

When I got here, I was very happy to find it. Wasn't a question of that. I had underperforming talent, the talent was good. Right. And the third benefit, which I only thought about until recently is. If I'm bringing my FP& A knowledge or what I've experienced with sales ops or collections or whatever prior company to a new company, I don't really need to consult a lot of people to say, what is the collections that team need to bring to be successful here at this company?

Or what does the FP& A team need to bring, right? It's a pretty universal thing that we need to bring to companies to be successful, right? So that's very translatable where. Sales ops a little more complicated because, you know, the sales teams, sales teams are different products are different, but the other parts of my business, you know, are very translatable.

So it wasn't a question of really, how do I think about how to bring value and accounting, right? It's, I know what that value looks like, right? And since I had, I felt that I had the right people, there was also, but there was some reorganization that was needed to give them a clear view of. What their role was, what their go forward projects look like, and then how to organize the team so it was a little more scalable than before.

And so that was really my first focus is, are there gaps on the team? There was one, that person's first day is today, I'm very excited to have him start. So I'm 90 days in, I actually worked with this guy before, so I mean, I knew, I knew the gap. I'd filled it before with similar resources. reached out to him actually before I even started the job and said, I think I'm gonna have a job for you if you want it.

So that was helpful to have that, you know, network to tap into to say, we'll let you meet that have good kinds of skills and hopefully they want to work with you again. Right. And so And yet, Oh, I, this might be a job for him. That was my main focus, getting the team organized. And also there hadn't been like an all CFO team meeting before there hadn't been bi weekly skip levels of four.

So some of those things were just bringing in a new perspective on this is what a CFO organization looks like. And so having me talk about what I focus on, how I work, my quirks and how I work, everyone has them. It was valuable, I hope. To my team to hear directly for me in a town hall for the CFO organization, if you will, to gain the team organized and align and thinking about how to drive growth definitely was, it was the first project I would absolutely recommend.

And then the second, of course, is if you are coming into a brand new industry, actually I was, but having the FP& A background, I've been very quickly digesting business models and what, what they need all throughout my career. So I think I'm pretty good at it. But in some cases that might be the second hurdle is if you don't understand and you can't articulate, if you couldn't stand up at a customer conference, As a CFO and talk about the business and talk about the value and talk about the products.

Right. Then you, you shouldn't be the CFO, right? Like you may not be able to speak for an hour, but you should be able to speak for at least 10 minutes on why this company drives value, why do customers come back, right? And what, why do they like what business, you know, what they get out of it. So I've been trying to go to customer conferences and events.

And, and, and again, I'm lucky in that this company has those kinds of things. Not every, obviously every customer, every company does, you might have to get on sales falls. Maybe you don't even announce yourself as the CFO, right? Cause that sends a whole different tone of the conversation. Of course, if you're on a call, right, but you have to listen to the, what the customers are saying and, and, and hear what the challenges that they're trying to face are.

So you fully understand what this business business is purposes. And so you can help it achieve more of that thing or question, are we achieving what we thought we were achieving, right? So that's sort of. A business understanding and hearing from the customers and what they want, I think is really important.

And every business is different in how you would accomplish that, but you got to find a way to do it.

Wassia Kamon: Awesome. Awesome. Like you said, first, making sure your team, your, the structure is right. And then secondly, How you are building your team now in terms of your personal life, right? Because there will be a lot going on at work because you're starting this new role.

What are some things maybe on the personal side that kind of helped you do that? Did you have monthly massage? Like, what are you doing on the side to keep your sanity as 90 days?

Matt Ziegler: Well, I guess I'm luckier than I think looking back on all these different elements that have come to this point of my career.

So, as I alluded to, my kids are in college, I'm an empty nester, my wife and I are empty nesters, right? And so, you know, I don't have the specific time constraints where I've got to go to the soccer game or I've got to go to the ballet or whatever, or even just picking up and dropping them off, right? So, I try to respect the fact that my younger colleagues Still have those things.

Okay, there you go. And I mean, I remember when I had them, I have two kids, I remember those days. Part of my challenge is I've told my team very clearly, you don't need to work the way I work. I might be online half a day on Sunday and sometimes I send the messages on delay. They show up on Monday morning and sometimes I forget or I don't, right?

But I've tried to clear like you don't need to be online Sunday because I'm online on Sunday, right? And then I might decide to go for a walk Tuesday afternoon at three because it's a nice day. There's a working from home. I think if I was working in the office all the time, I would definitely have more of those, maybe not massages, but something like that, that were helping me, but, you know, working at home all the time.

The work life line is erased, right? And so, but what I do then is I, you know, I have had Thursdays where it's like, I've got a free hour. I'm going to go back to the book I was reading, you know, and it's like, I don't have a meeting for an hour. I'm going to take some time off, right? Because. I'm pretty confident I'll be working Saturday afternoon or the big project is coming tomorrow.

I know or, you know, whatever. Right. So trying to find that balance where I take time off where I can to sort of decompress and go for a walk or whatever workout. Right. Those are sort of, uh, The things that I do, but you know, like I said, I try to tell my team, many of them are trying to focus on that nine to five because they have, you know, activities and things with their family.

I respect that. Like I said, I was there. So that's the hardest thing I think is most important. Maybe is you don't need to do. You don't need to mirror what I do because you get an email from me Sunday afternoon. It doesn't mean you have to answer in the next half an hour or whatever, right? It can just, and I try, I really do try to, even when I go out that on Sunday, it's like for Monday, right?

Wassia Kamon: Yes. Delay, delay delivery.

Matt Ziegler: Exactly. Because I try to try to do that because I know that there's a, some people have the, Oh, it must be important if you send it to me. It's like, no, that's just when I, that's just when I chose to work. But hopefully if you don't, if you're not working on Sundays, which is fine.

Hopefully you're not reading books on Thursday afternoon either.

Wassia Kamon: Yes. Yes. Understanding that the role of the CFO is not just about the numbers, right? You have to know, like you said, being able to stand and talk about the business model, being able to build a team that's leadership. So that's business strategy and all these things. What are some advice that you will give to aspiring CFO, aspiring people, whether they're in accounting and finance, like what are some of the things that should be doing along the way?

Matt Ziegler: The thing that I would recommend. It's twofold. One, I already spoke to it's like understanding your team and where they want to go. What are they trying to accomplish? What are they focusing on? And also just it's a little more challenging. Maybe, you know, you can't be too direct in how you ask about their personal life, but just understand it a little bit.

You know, you just try to pick up on those clues, which is like, okay, she has kids. Good to know. And you talk about those things, right? I mean, I, those are shared experiences, right? So, but you try to talk about in a way that is not suggesting that they're doing the wrong thing in their work life balance.

So it's like, oh, that's great. You know, you went to a Ballet rehearsal or ballet performance last night. That's fantastic. How'd it go? Did you, did she respond? Right. But then in the work side, I'm going to say order to cash, right? Order to cash to me is the area where converting prospects to customers, revenue to cash, but then also making sure you're building good recurring relationships.

It touches so much of what we do with CFOs in terms, especially if you have those ops. The aspiration of the sales ops team should be is that they do everything that the sales team could possibly do, except actually contact customers. Right. But everything else they do is sales, nailman, sales, support, sales, collateral, and all those things that they could be doing to make the sales team more effective, providing data, you know, looking at the pipeline, providing guidance, sometimes providing a little kick in the butt and it's like, you know, this reps, the pipeline performance is a lot worse than these other people.

Understanding how quickly you convert prospects to customers, because all of that is a marketing cost you're incurring where you have salespeople that are, you Nurture relationship as opposed to closing a deal and moving on to the next phase and then your ability to recognize revenue and then collect the cash is obviously a key part of what, you know, the CFO organization does.

But then also your team to think about that recurring relationship. Well, you want to be the kind of company that your customers want to do business with. It's two through four 19 times down the road, right? So part of how they engage with our team, the CFO team is gonna be part of that decision that they make.

Making sure the tools are easy to understand. The process is easy to understand. Right. We may not be directly overseeing the, you know, the onboarding process or implementation process if there is one, but we should definitely understand it very, very clearly because it's one of those many pieces in that chain of order to cash.

Right. And I want to collapse that as much as possible. I'm making an investment in sales and marketing. I want to recruit that investment in terms of cash in the door as soon as possible, I would really encourage, you know, all people that want to be the CFO to really understand that process and, and, and there's a lot of tools being developed to improve it.

Right. I mean, there's a lot of, of innovation in this space where, you know, you look at. New software coming out. You're like, I really think that would work for us, right? So part of my job is to be, you know, kind of aware of those those improvements in the space, right? And say, would this be right for us, right?

This may be a tool we should look at to make our billing process more effective.

Wassia Kamon: Nice. And so with order to cash and you brought up very good point, your difference between revenue and cash, like they're not the same, but a lot of people, especially I don't know if it's outside of finance and accounting, like we get it, but then you have to explain to the business, maybe like, what is the difference between those two?

What are those things that, Hey, we should be. Explaining it better to the rest of the, of the organization. So they understand like, what are some of the things maybe you've done to help the business understand where you were coming from as a finance person.

Matt Ziegler: In my last firm, I mentioned that hospitality tech was obviously very challenged during COVID.

So we had a lot of customers that were. Delinquent, right? And at some point, the AR team, the collection team, you know, their ability to move the needle on those accounts that are maybe 90 days or more past due is minimal, right? Like, they've already sent out all the cadences and all the playbooks. And at that point, you either, you write it off or, you know, you send to, you know, send to collections or maybe you keep working on it, right?

One of the most interesting balances that I think is, it's hard to find, but it's important to find is if you have larger accounts, not every company has this, but my last company, my current company, there's a very good relationship between the sales rep and the customer, right? There's a lot of conversations about what is needed.

And then the delivery of that product at the end of the day. And so you develop that kind of, well, the finance team probably wouldn't, but the sales and delivery team has a rapport with the customer. So you have to figure out how to engage that rapport and say, well, can you ask the customer, can you ask where we are?

Why are they not paying? Are they unhappy? Did they not get a PO is something, is there some approval they're missing? Right? Like. Working with the sales and delivery team to be your eyes and ears to say, and I don't mean for every deal with some of the larger and more complicated deals. It's like, can you help us out here?

And it's a tricky balance for them. And also for me as a CFO, because frankly, I want the sales team more focused on new revenue and they only have so many hours in the day. So if I asked them to be my, now my collections agent, obviously that's less revenue they're bringing in. Right. But there are times when you need to figure out a way, and we've been pretty successful here at GovExec, but, you know, in figuring it out, but it's a balance with every customer, because a sales rep doesn't want to be a collections agent, and they're not really incentivized to be a collections agent unless you figure out a second incentive for them to be a collections agent, in which case they're happy to be a collections agent, right?

So that balance of how much time and investment do you put into the reps and the delivery team helping you with accomplishing those collections is really a key part. And I don't know there is one answer. It's just you keep, keep taking a run at it until you think you've got the right balance where at some point in, in the zero days past due to X days past due, when this has been no longer from the collection team's primary responsibility to collect.

And now it's sales and deliveries, primary responsibility to continue the conversation and probe the customer when they can and say, Hey, what, what do you think about when can we get paid? Right? Like you guys are 90 days past me. What the heck? Right. Can you help us out here? Right. Or whatever this thing, maybe there's a piece of paperwork missing or who knows what that to me is essential part of the business success is finding that balance.

And then really run that playbook over and over again to minimize the time to collect and minimize the gap between revenue and cash.

Wassia Kamon: Yes. And I love how you, you kept going over things that we see on the back end in the financials, right? But how are they impacted in the front end? What's going on with the customer?

So you really have to have that broader view as a CFO, not just looking at the numbers, but what affects the numbers and how can you get your team to think? Think that way, because sometimes we all in silos, we're just like closing the books, reconciling the sub ledger, doing that forecast. How do you get your team to start seeing the bigger picture?

Matt Ziegler: It's challenging, right? So that's one of the reasons why I do, at least I assume what people do. Like, and I, I've been in many or my career where. I have a weekly CFO directs team. So all the directs are on the call or talking about what they're working on. And so they kind of hear about other business challenges and some of them are interrelated.

Right. And so I'll say, okay, the two of you go sort this one out. Right. Or, or I'll ask one of them to help another one. It's like, I know you can help here. So for example, one of the challenges I'll go back to order to cash. The problem is. The contracting is as clear as it could be up front, right? If the contract isn't clear, then it makes collections more challenging on the back end.

Sometimes customers might say, well, our default is to pay net 60 or our terms and our approval process clear that we actually are signing for net 30. So there's often going back up the chain and revisiting and doing better for the future. This constant, okay, well, what do we learn how to push it back?

And so that's a having a whole team come together to understand it. So if your functions team is suffering, it might be your sales ops team that can help them out. Right. At least in the long run, by changing the contracts in a certain extent or changing the expectations with a customer up front. But I think to your larger question, how to get the team thinking the larger way and thinking about the overall challenges of business.

The thing that I do is. It's not just my direct telling me about what they're focused on the problems they're having, where they are in solving various project. We've. Talked about. It's also what am I seeing? What am I seeing from my seat that they don't see and where appropriate bringing it back to my team?

And sometimes I will tell them this is only for you. You can't share these down below for many reasons, right? But it can be valuable by people that I confidence in and confidence in this team to say, Well, here are some things that I'm seeing that I'd like you to be aware of. But I don't need you to tell 20 more people, you'll do your better if you have this information and you'll have a little more color as to why we're doing the things that we're doing doesn't affect you directly kind of affects what you're seeing in the business.

And so having that context, which I can bring, cause you know, I have that seat that they don't have. And then. I benefit the same way from being in the CEO's leadership meetings, because I hear things there that I didn't know, bring those things down to my team and say, yeah, we're gonna have to work on this, or we're gonna have to make time for this, or we're going to deprioritize this thing over here because we got to focus on this new thing.

Wassia Kamon: And so my last question is now that you are in the seat of the CCFO and you're seeing, okay, a lot of things are going on. What are some of the blind spot you think that maybe we're not thinking as CFOs enough, maybe we should be considering doing better in this area versus another. What could be some of the blind spot that we should be aware of?

What should be in the back of our minds?

Matt Ziegler: It's a great question, right? You always think about what you don't know, what you should know. I think for many CFOs that, you know, support private equity, Or any other sort of shorter term hold investors, right? Whether, you know, sooner it's not a private company that is not found to run.

The founder is going to die there, right? I mean, there, you know, so a lot of this work companies that are going to get sold in the next 1, 2, 3 years, 4 year, who knows if you haven't been through the sale process of a company, right? Knowing for kind of how much time you have left and prioritizing the things.

That are going to make you as successful as possible in that process is essential. Again, if you have not been through it, you wouldn't know, right? But, you know, one of the things that I've piece of advice I got from some conference I went to that I've yet to follow, but I promise you I will at this company is you should always have a data room stood up.

You should always have that information in a place that's clean, it's organized. Because you never know we're gonna need it every quarter. You should update it, right? Because it's always a pain point, you know, finding cleaning the data. So, for example, whether it's this year or three years from now, I know I'm gonna need it and they're gonna want to look at multiple years backward, right?

So it's, it's, it's worth it to kind of stand one up, keep it clean, keep it current and be ready. And that's something that I would suggest is a blind spot. But the other thing I'm going to say it. On the positive side as a blind spot is that speed is relative. So if you ask how I am doing I am moving far too slow.

Things are not getting done at the speed. They need to be, need to be done because I can see where we are. I can see where we should be and we're not there yet. It sounds a little silly, but like how happy we're all going to be once all those projects are completed. And I wish I was that happy today. I look at these projects and that's nothing, nothing on my team, nothing, anybody doing anything wrong.

It's just. I want them to be done faster, but if you ask my team or you ask my directs, their feedback is it's the energy and it's the direction setting a clear direction, which is what they value and it didn't say, well, he's moving too slowly. They look at it and say, he's set the energy that we're going to fix these things and we're moving in the right direction of why we're doing these things.

And that is about that is value, right? And that is something that they appreciate that I don't like I'm looking at the end. They're looking at the journey, right? And so I'm like, well, that's good. So I'm glad I didn't know that. I mean, I didn't really think about that until I was preparing for this, but that I have learned that, that people tell me, you know, you're, you really appreciate everything you brought.

And it's like, all I brought is a bunch of things in progress. Like nothing's done. Except the team realignment, but in terms of my peers, that's only the foundation to build value. It doesn't actually deliver a tremendous amount of value to them directly, but they will. They're like, no, no, I really appreciate the energy and the focus you brought.

I'm like, oh, okay, good. Glad to hear it,

right?

Wassia Kamon: Yes, yes. The journey. Wow. I can see myself and see many. Yeah, being a bit impatient, right? Like this should be here. We should get there by this day. But. That's a great perspective. Thank you so much for sharing.

Matt Ziegler: You're welcome. And for that.

Wassia Kamon: Wow. Thank you so much, Matt, for being on the show.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You share such great advice, such great tips that I think will benefit our community. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed the episode as much as I did. I will drop the link to Matt Ziegler LinkedIn profile in the show notes and also on my website. site. I was see a command that come.

You also find them in the edition of the diary of a CFO newsletter on LinkedIn. If there's any topics you'd like me to cover in the future, don't forget to email them at ask at the diary of a CFO. com. Again, the email is ask. at thediaryofthecfo. com. Thank you so much. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review so that others can benefit from such great insight in this episode.

Thank you and see you soon.