What I’ve Realized After Six Months as CFO

TRANSCRIPT

The path to the C suite is rarely linear, and the challenges don't stop once you get there. I'm Wasia Kamon, and I'm taking you with me on my journey as a newly appointed CFO, sharing the hidden challenges, unspoken rules, and lessons I wish I had known. So whether you're in finance, Working finance or just trying to get your budget approved faster.

There's something here for you. The purpose of this podcast is to make better leaders and help leaders be better at life. Welcome to the Diary of a CFO. Welcome back to the Diary of a CFO. Today there is no guest, it's just me, and I wanted to give you an update about my biggest lessons slash takeaways so far now that I have been a CFO for six months.

The learning curve is over, now it's all about delivering, so let's consider this my six month check in. My number one takeaway is the fact that dealing with a board as a CFO is very different than preparing slides for a board meeting. See, prior to the role, most of my involvement was preparing slides because I did FPNA for a while and providing information.

A couple points, I actually stepped in and talked and participated in the board meeting. But It wasn't the full thing because no one prepares you for how different the conversations are once you're in the seat. You may think you know, but you probably don't. And that's why I'm so grateful for Secret CFO and his newsletter and some of the things he's sharing.

If you're not reading, you definitely should. I'm like, Oh, I should have had it last year, but oh well. We're in the seat, it's almost like you have to be in it to understand it. Sometimes you have people giving advice on raising kids and they don't have kids. That's literally how it feels like you have to be in the seat to really understand the challenges and understand the preparation of preparing for an actual board meeting.

The meetings that happen before the meetings, the follow ups from the prior meeting, because you really need to know who are the members. how they will react to certain things. You have to be able to read the room because every board member has different priorities. Some care more about risk, others about growth.

Some just want high level insights, but the common theme is they're all very competent people in their field. The board here at ACE, they are rock stars. We are a lending institution. They are working for top lending institutions, so they know their stuff. They're lenders themselves. You can't just show up just because you have a cute slide deck and you have a few storytelling frameworks.

You're going to be fine. That is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to nurturing good relationships with the board. Because as a CFO, you are a trusted advisor. And when the board is there, it's not just to look at, Oh, these are the financial, this is an update. What they're also doing is evaluating you as a leader.

They are looking for confidence that the company is in good hand, that the company is financially secure and on the right path to deliver on its strategic plans. So couple things I realized I could have done better because I know sometimes you're like, Oh, this looks easy. I can do it too. And then you get in and you're like, Ooh, I didn't see that.

One thing I could have done better is attending more earning calls. So most of my career was spent in private companies. So I really never took earning calls, like something I should be doing at least once a month as a finance leader. But now I realize that at the executive leadership, it doesn't matter.

You should attend earning calls. My favorite platform is Yahoo Finance to learn when they're happening and how I can attend. But it is very important because it gets you to understand what else matters to the other stakeholders. So if you don't know, earning calls are public conference calls where public companies discuss their quarterly financial performance, as well as their forecast, their outlook, and where they're going on a strategic level.

Typical attendees are investors and analysts and they're coming to tune in and ask tough questions. So the CEO, the CFOs are like ready, they are ready, ready, ready, ready. Everything is tied up for those calls. How you can find the details because you can just listen in is through the company website, SEC filing, or like I said, the financial news platform.

Yahoo Finance is my personal favorite because I just like how things laid out there. You can then register to access the call. So it's usually a webcast. There is a dialing number if it's not, but usually the company will provide a phone number and an access code. And if you miss it live, you can also have replays.

What I'm doing now is acting like I'm part of the company. So what I will do is before the call, I would prepare for the call. I will review the earnings report because those are released before the call. And I'll also review the ones from the prior call. I'll also review any analyst expectations. And start asking myself if I was in that room as an analyst, as an investor, what would I ask ahead of time during the actual call?

I'll definitely some of the key takeaways. Also look for the interactions before the executives of the company and the analysts and investors, what kind of questions they're asking, because again, all those things are stretching. My thinking again, I'm all about having a growth mindset and growing is not because I'm now in this world that I have arrived.

I don't believe in such things. I believe in becoming better from here. And that's something I've been doing now that I've realized that, Oh my God, should I have better preparation for board? I'm grateful to work with a board here at ACE. They're incredibly helpful and so understanding, but I realize it's something that we don't prepare enough or don't talk enough about as we are.

Drawing in our career. So the more earning calls you can attend, even if it's just once a month, once a quarter, trust me, anything will help. And then after the call, you can read the analyst report because most of them will publish a post earning report. And I love their analysis, especially when I was able to attend the actual call.

because you're able to see what was said during the call and how it was interpreted by others. So sometimes you're like, Oh, the person was trying to convey that everything is okay, but everybody panicked afterwards. Like, what were you guys saying? This is what we saw. This is what we felt. A lot of communication again, is not just what you intend to say, but what the person on the other side is learning from it is gathering from it.

That's definitely a big learning experience for me and something I actually switched in my first six months. I wasn't doing it again to me with private company, working for private companies, don't have to worry about the SEC. Or anything like that. But I now realize that as a finance person, actually right out of college, we should be requiring people to attend like two earning calls a year and actually prepare for it.

Definitely something I recommend, because again, dealing with the board as a CFO is very different than preparing slides for a board meeting. The other thing is, as far as my takeaway is learning how to lead without a roadmap. learning how to build from scratch. Cause in this seat, everyone expects results, but no one gives you the playbook, any C suite role, any, any top executive role, VP and up.

You are basically looking for clarity at the same time that you are creating clarity for others, because people look up to you. So you have to be comfortable making decision when you don't have the perfect information. You have to trust your gut, trust your judgment. To me, if you need constant direction, you likely not ready for the C suite because here at this level, you are creating direction.

And if you're trying to break through and be in the C suite, but you always need constant direction, it is a sign for your hiring manager that you're not ready for it. Same thing. If you're still waiting to be trained. Nobody trained me, kind of attitude, I'll keep doing things because that's the way they've always been done.

You're probably not ready for it either. You're probably not ready for it either. And that's the theme I've seen now that I have this podcast and I get a chance to talk to all these CFOs because yes, once we're done recording, we get to talk off record and I'm able to learn from them as well. And one of the common theme is They're all in that willingness to operate outside of their comfort zone because that's really what it is.

Being able to step into the unknown and deliver. Being able to connect the dots and ask deeper questions. Because again, you need clarity at the same time as others look up to you for clarity. And so what it made me realize the importance of leading without a roadmap and knowing how to build from scratch.

I look back at my career and I'm grateful for all those times where there was nobody to train me. Or no one willing to do so, because what I realized that it helped me build from scratch, which is truly a skill, how to start a scenario, how to start an Excel, not just an Excel spreadsheet and learning the formulas, but what is it going to be?

What are the inputs of your scenario of your model? All those things are important, right? It's not knowing there's a shortcut. Okay, you can do shortcuts all day long, but if you don't know what matters most and what are the input that should be in there in the first place, even when you're not sure where you're going to gather them first, but you have an idea of where it's going.

All those things usually come from stepping out of your comfort zone and be willing to start from scratch. Also you hire to bring change. So people don't want you to use a roadmap of the former CFO. They want different things that won't change. There is change happening all around us any given time. So this is so important.

And I didn't know, I'll say that one day, but thank you God for all the time, there was nobody to train me. And I remember when I started my career, I was a staff accountant and I think I was in the role for like. maybe nine months. And, uh, the accounting team at the time, we had the AP manager, a couple AP specialists.

And then on the GL side, it was just me. I was a staff accountant. And then there was my senior accountant and then the controller and the AP person reported to the controller and we're all reporting to the CFO. One afternoon I came to work and everybody was in the building. Everybody was assembled in the, in the middle of the cubes.

Now that was going on. The people in AP looked at me like, Oh, you're not aware. I'm like, what's going on? And so I see the CFO walking through and she said, The controller and the senior accountant just resigned. They were there the morning. I'm like, I saw that in the morning. They just left. Like, what do you mean left?

It was just the three of us that were really closing the book. So once AP closed, all the AP prepaid inventories and manufacturing company, we had a software development because it was also a technology company. All these stuff was on by the three of us. And now. The math is not my thing, right? Two out of the three are gone, and I've only been in the role for nine months.

That was a learning curve. I had, some had files, some didn't have files, there was no instructions, no policy and procedures, so I had to figure out things. on the go. And I look back at this experience, I remember fussing so much about it, but then I realized, oh gosh, thank you. I can do this. I can do this.

And it is so important to know how to do that because you need to lead without a road map. You need to know how to work without a road map and you have to get comfortable. with the unknown. You have to be comfortable navigating. And that was really the topic, too, of the session I led for the Wharton FBNA certificate program.

It was navigating change and uncertainty with confidence. It was two hours. And it's really talks about that because it's a topic we don't emphasize enough. Just like my first takeaway dealing with the board, I think dealing with uncertainty, leading change is also something we don't emphasize enough in our finance and accounting careers.

Which leads me to my last takeaway of my six month check in, which is a value of staying plugged into the right circles. I know we hear it a lot to the point where It's kind of deluded, grow your network before you need it. We hear it. But I think we are in political and economic times where you do need to be plugged into the right circle.

You do need that. No matter how experienced you are, you need a support system. You need to engage in other CFO groups, be in part of other networks, go to conferences, expand, expand your network. Because it's really a tough time to be in business with all these economic shifts and policy changes. I'm grateful to be part of the CFO leadership console, which I joined before I was a CFO.

I'm also grateful for being part of the AICPA future of finance group. We talking a lot about. Generative AI. We have people from Amazon and other Fortune 1000 companies coming in and talking about what they're doing at their level and advancing their finance function. I'm also part of the Women's Initiative Committee, so I make sure that I'm staying around sharp people talking about what's going on in the world.

Always grateful for my executive coach, my personal board of directors, because I do believe that no matter what experience you are, you need a support system. You need that support system as you're looking for clarity yourself, while others are looking up to you for clarity. One thing that helps me do it as well as being on LinkedIn, I know everyone is like, well, Sia, how do you still show up on LinkedIn like twice a week?

Okay. Let me break it down for you. And I actually wrote a book about it. That's called Stop Overthinking LinkedIn. It's available on my website, aWasiakamon. com. Grab it. I know some of you may wonder why is it not free? Because I believe that where your money goes, your attention and energy also go. So 10, get it.

And basically here's the system I'm sharing as well as a lot of other filling the blank templates. First, you have to know what you want to be known for. Pick three items. Pick three items. And so when you're posting, it has to be around those things you want to be known for. So if I wanted to be known for leading change, leadership development, and let's say process improvement.

For example, these three things in particular will be three posts I could post. So that would be three posts in a month that I can schedule once a week. Usually I do them on Tuesdays. And the one last post could be something personal. A book I read, a conference I went to, a best advice received, or whatever.

And I do have plenty of ideas you can come from, but that will be already four posts that I will have. The other one that I post in a week, cause I usually post twice a week, is the recap of my conversations that I have for this podcast. Now the diary of a CFO. I don't have to think much. I just talk to other great leaders.

It's a recap that you can go and read and that's it. I am doing two things at the same time. I'm staying sharp. I'm also expanding my network because after we record, I get to talk with them. We get to go to lunch for those that are local. I'm expanding my network at the same time, but it allows me to stay plugged in and know what's going on, learn best practices from others.

Because again, You have to be in the seat to understand some of those challenges because sometimes being a CFO may look easier when you're not in the seat. I felt that sometimes I felt sometimes like I would look at my boss and I'd be like, oh, I can do this job. And now I'm like, yes, that was not in the pamphlet.

I think it's so important. I think it's so important. So that's my six month check in. My three biggest takeaway was. Knowing how to manage the board, leading without a roadmap, and the value of staying plugged in. Thanks for tuning in. And that's it for today's episode of the Diary of a CFO. Thank you so much for tuning in.

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