Speaker 1: 0:11

Welcome to Unfazed Under Fire, a podcast designed to elevate your leadership and amplify your impact. Each episode offers valuable insights to help you transform your vision into reality, cultivate high-performing cultures that attract top talents, and navigate the complexities of today's uncertain, chaotic world with confidence and clarity. Now tuning into your needs, here's your host and moderator, seasoned executive coach and leadership alchemist, david Craig Utz.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Welcome back to Unfazed Under Fire. I'm David Craig Utz, the leadership alchemist, your host and moderator for the show Now. This show is dedicated to helping executives amplify their leadership impact, gain fresh insights that aid them in meeting their priorities, and to build the resilience needed to live and succeed in this unpredictable world we're in today, and we feature two types of guests on the show thought leaders in leadership development, organizational culture and team dynamics, who share strategies tailored to executive challenges. And seasoned executives, like we have today, who will embrace their own leadership development journey and who recognize people and culture are keys to maximizing organizational value. Now, at its core, this show is about pioneering breakthroughs in leadership and culture development, ensuring you are meeting your core purpose as a leader, which is creating an environment that brings out the best in your talents in service to your vision, mission and KPIs. Now, on this show, we stand in the truth that authentic leadership starts from within, that it's by mastering yourself that grants you the clarity and confidence to lead others effectively In today's disruptive world. Self-mastery isn't just a nice to have, it is a must. When everything goes sideways, it's that presence, confidence and deep inner knowing that helps you navigate any crisis or challenge and when you tap into your inner resourcefulness and lead from the inside out, you unlock the true power of collaboration, generating the unity required for extraordinary results.

Speaker 2: 2:18

Now, today, I'm excited to welcome a longtime client and remarkable leader, stuart Brown, to the show. Over the past 18 years, I've had the great privilege of serving as Stuart's executive coach and supported him in developing his teams, and during that time, I've witnessed firsthand his unwavering commitment to his own leadership, development and growth, as well as those that he led. Stuart's career spans over three decades, with significant roles across diverse industries, from Deloitte to CFO positions at Aold, red Robin, iron Mountain and now 4D Path, where he serves on the board as the founder and principal of Ellingwood Advisors. Stuart has guided both early stage companies and established organizations through periods of growth and transformation. Stage companies and established organizations through periods of growth and transformation.

Speaker 2: 3:05

Now, beyond his impressive resume, stuart is known to have his key eye on talent. He's always invested in the development of his teams, fostering high-performing environments where individuals are empowered to excel, and his dedication to nurturing talent builds cohesive teams has been a hallmark of his leadership. Stuart also does volunteer coaching and mentoring at his alma mater, university of Georgia Go Bulldogs. He works with finance students in underrepresented communities and he lives in Boston with his wife, ingrid, and has a daughter in college. Stuart, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks for making the time.

Speaker 3: 3:46

Great to be here and an honor and humbled to be associated with these great guests that you've had on here before.

Speaker 2: 3:52

Yeah, you're welcome. It's great to have you. It really is, and I hope I got all that right, or got most of that right, that I just shared Anything you'd add to that or anything I missed or messed up, anything you wanted to correct.

Speaker 3: 4:03

No, no, no, that's all true. People may wonder how somebody needs 18 years of executive coaching out of a 30-year career, but you can imagine where I started.

Speaker 2: 4:13

And.

Speaker 3: 4:13

I'll share a lot about that journey, probably year over the next.

Speaker 2: 4:18

Well, and that I realized when I was in the industry. It's not solid 18 years. We've known each other for 18 years and I've jumped in and jumped out, so I haven't been holding your hand along the way. Thank goodness for that. So, anyway, I know you were very well and I could share a lot because of knowing you for 18 years. Yet, as with most of my first time guests, I'd really love you to talk about your journey in your own words. How did you get to where you are today and what are some highlights along the way that are near and dear to you?

Speaker 3: 4:52

as you think back on your career, david, I guess it probably starts with. We're all influenced by people we met early in our careers, people we worked with and role models. I think it's probably the same to me, and literally it started off with a high school internship at a hospital where I was working for the CFO a guy named Charlie Lawson who was the CFO of this nonprofit hospital and this internship was arranged to my English teacher, which says probably more about my English than anything else. And that's really what set me on the journey is understanding sort of what accounting is and working with somebody who was a mentor to me very early on, and you got to understand the type of impact that a CFO can have. And so that set me on the path to public accounting at University of Georgia.

Speaker 3: 5:41

From there I was with Deloitte Touche for a few years in the US and then actually worked in the Netherlands on an exchange program.

Speaker 3: 5:51

And from there I went to Ahold, which at the time was the third largest retailer in the world, behind Walmart and Carrefour operating globally, and I got to work with some amazing finance leaders there who gave me exposure and experience at an early point in my career that I would normally probably not have had at a lot of companies, and so I got to learn corporate finance at an early point in my career investor relations, m&a and acquisition analysis and then, as part of that, I've had a few different jobs but also spent some time at Giant Food in the US where I really got to learn operational finance, and there's some great organizations the PepsiCo's and the Kellogg's of the world, ge's that teach operational finance really well.

Speaker 3: 6:36

I got to learn from a great boss and mentor at Giant, a guy named Bob Evans Bob Evans and so I got to see some things early in my career and see people to try to see what really what the impact of what a CFO can be in an organization, how you help set strategy, how you can align teams and maybe we'll talk about this and I learned from a lot of peers as well, so the type of impact and how to have a greater impact, and so I think I have sort of a natural curiosity, a little bit of a restlessness and an interest in learning and problem solving, so taking things apart and putting them back together in a better way Certainly made a lot of mistakes along the way and a lot of the best advice and learning came again from peers, people that ran operations or people in HR who, when you make mistakes, have your back, and I realized, hey, that's an important part of it, right? You don't go to school, people don't teach you how to mentor or coach, motivate. They don't teach you how to communicate with people, and I learned it's a lot better to motivate and build up than it is to tear down. It's a lot more fun.

Speaker 3: 7:42

And so I've been a CFO primarily in public companies. Over my career I've changed industries a few times, from retail real estate back to retail Iron Mountain, which is big business services and doing consulting. Now interim CFO work in board seats, and it's all really about the same, right? How do you motivate people, align goals and using finance not about keeping score, but about changing the score. How do you make a business perform better?

Speaker 2: 8:05

And it's great. Yeah, you highlighted that. Really it's the mentors that came along the way, that kind of whether it was the early connection with the gentleman at Giant or it's HR that's helping you through some challenges with your team. It's through learning from others along the way that really helps us. And one of the things you said is about, like you know, the appreciation for the CFO role. Do you remember when? How early was that? Because in 2004, I knew you had a burning desire, when I first met you, to become a CFO. That was already implanted in you. Do you remember when that first gave birth and what was about that that set you on that course?

Speaker 3: 8:47

Yeah, I mean I think probably the biggest piece of it was in the operational role at Giant. I mean, up until then it mostly sort of had to be more corporate finance, treasury, investor relations, which is exciting because you travel a lot with the CEO or the CFO. You go around globally. Exciting because you travel a lot with the CEO or the CFO. You go around globally. You can get very full of the high life when you're with a successful public company. But I think it was a role at Giant where I got real operational experience to come say how do you run a business, how do you motivate people?

Speaker 3: 9:19

It was a company going through a lot of transition, a really strong brand in the Washington DC area if you're not familiar with giant food and Ahold had acquired it while I was with Ahold and brought some new people onto the management team. And it was there. We start to realize wait a minute by providing insight, information that people hadn't uncovered before, that you can really change the business and change people's lives. So you know able to. You know way before there were a lot of the data analytics that we have today. We built an activity-based costing system to understand profitability by category and you start to think about inventory differently and margins differently and sales velocity differently, and so I think that sort of unlocking for me was a big piece of how I sort of really became to be passionate about the impact that the finance role, finance team, can have as a business partner to the rest of the organization.

Speaker 2: 10:17

Yeah, it's critical. Well, you've left the corporate world since and now you have this consulting firm, ellingwood. Is it Ellingwood Advisors, right, right, and you act as a CFO, interim CFO, or you provide other consulting to those organizations. Can you share a little bit more about the aim of your firm and, beyond that, what you're trying to leverage from your experience to provide to those organizations Probably similar to what you were as a CFO, but maybe with a little different twist?

Speaker 3: 10:50

Yeah, I think a lot of people go through phases in their careers right. A lot of people change careers by the way as well, and that's people who start off in one area and realize that's not really the right fit for them and go to school and go do something else right, there's lots of people who do that. For me, I was fortunate enough to sort of like fall into finance and accounting early and I spent really the first 30 years I sort of describe it as writing a novel right being a finance executive across multiple industries. But the novel sort of had a beginning where I learned right the first 10 years of your career you're only just learning and growing and the next 10 years you're.

Speaker 3: 11:26

You know there's a lot of urgency around. You know, changing the business. For me, the last part of my career and this sort of CFO roles switch from, you know, a big global organization to an early stage startup and that was great. I learned a lot. It sort of got to the point where okay, that novel, I wrote that last chapter and I said you know I'd describe it. Now I want to go write short stories. Right, how can I help organizations and teams come in and have an impact in a shorter period of time? Right, in part it's recognizing that actually, over time, I think the 10 years that CFOs have has been shortening, certainly over the last 10, 20 years, and probably accelerated a little bit with COVID, and so there's always organizations that have some turnover or some need, or maybe it's a younger CFO who needs some additional help.

Speaker 3: 12:21

You know getting certain, you know performance pieces in place and it's a way for me to come in, scratch my itch to learn and have an impact, but do it with a sense of urgency. I'm coming in for three months or six months as sort of that short story. Maybe it's a novella. I'm on a project right now that's actually lasting a little bit over a year, where you want to come in and really make a difference and build a team and hand it off really well, and to me that's really exciting to sort of come in and be able to do that work with great people. That's the other benefit, I think, of doing it as an advisory role is you get to pick a little bit more who you work with and as being advisor, for me personally it allows me to be more transparent and honest and direct in communication that you may not feel if you have a W-2 paycheck, that you may feel a little bit more beholden to the person that's, you know, doing your performance review, versus being able to sort of give them the straight O.

Speaker 2: 13:15

So come and quickly learn, make a difference, help implement a game plan and then coach and hand off is sort of the phase I'm in yeah, was there anything challenging about making that shift, and if, from that interim role and consulting, from being in the seat, and if so, what were those challenges for you personally, maybe, they weren't done. I'm just curious if there were some challenges in it initially, in that there's always challenges right.

Speaker 3: 13:41

It's because some of it's about like, building the relationships. I've built relationships over time so I was able to sort of get some really good advice for going into this when I started to make this move right. How do you find these types of opportunities? How do you build that network? Some great consultants, great CFOs, who are on boards now and come and say I'm thinking about doing this, give me advice. I've got I may talk about it a little bit more A friend of mine, denny Post, who was the Chief Marketing Officer at Red Robin, and so she's doing a similar thing in the marketing side, and she gave me some good advice. She's like don't take a job just because somebody is your friend. You'll end up taking something you don't really like. So you've got to really be selective, and so I think it challenges a little bit the mindset of coming in. Maybe a separate question Onboarding is really important on these, just like onboarding in any job or any career.

Speaker 2: 14:41

Any job is critical.

Speaker 3: 14:42

We can talk about that a little bit more. But it's important to come in, learn, listen, help make decisions quickly, have an impact. Don't come in thinking you know it all right away, because again, you can learn from your mistakes and also realizing what I'm not good at right. I haven't worked in, you know, recurring software technology businesses, so I don't want to pretend that somebody's going to come hire me to come do that. Or if somebody says, hey, we've got this company going bankrupt, we need somebody to help wind it down, that's not something I want to go do. That's not the fun and the growth and the impact I want to have. So part of it is trying to figure out what you want to do and what you don't want to do.

Speaker 2: 15:22

Yeah, that's exciting. Well, let's just point to that Something you just said about onboarding. I think that is you know. My experience is that many organizations miss the opportunity of that investment of onboarding that it is. I know that most executives going into the organizations that I work with on onboarding appreciate the slowdown that is forced in that process and you do have a formal onboarding. Appreciate the slowdown that is forced in that process and you do have a formal onboarding process, because I don't know if it's true, but the experience is that you know I better get in here and I'll make a difference as quickly as possible and sometimes that can trip you up in a certain way long term. So talk to me a little bit about the importance of onboarding and do you believe that that's still something that organizations miss for the most part and what that missed opportunity?

Speaker 3: 16:15

is to be a successful leader in whatever department that you're in, and I think some organizations to your point are really good at it and have very formal programs, and you and I have worked on this over time as well. As I've changed careers you sort of talked about sort of me. I've shifted between industries. How do you come in and learn a new industry or learn a new business?

Speaker 3: 16:41

It's a especially when you're coming in and having an impact, one of the things I've learned I don't have all the answers right, so there's generally the people who know what the answers are and having a hard time getting the solutions in place. And so coming in and learning the business, and I go back to you know where there's supermarkets, at Ahold, where you know you go and say, okay, I want to go bag groceries, I want to go ride around in a truck and work in the warehouse Red Robin, bussing tables and I'm not that good at cooking burgers, but I spent some time in the kitchen. And to Iron Mountain, where I spent time shred trucks, emptying shred bins, spending time with salespeople, a lot of time with salespeople globally. You just learn the business and what drives it better and makes you a better sort of you know leader across the organization when it comes to setting strategy and and into learning the.

Speaker 3: 17:34

The company is really important early on um which I think also shows empathy to the organization to say this is somebody who cares about learning the business, um. And then really critical which I think is often, usually, which I find a lot of times overlooked, is building the relationships. Yeah, right, and you and I have talked about this and it's something going back to my coaching and mentoring that I do at UGA and people earlier in their career. You know building relationships is so critical.

Speaker 3: 18:01

Building trust is that foundation, right? You go back to whatever the five dysfunctions of the team, it starts with trust and knowing that you're you know I mentioned Denny Post at Red Robin, like we didn't always agree on everything and that's good, right. The finance guy like me, who's coming in and always fact-based, and the chief marketing officer, who's creative and trying to make an exciting environment for customers, is figuring out how well to work together and having a high degree of trust. So we know we both have each other's best interest at heart and trying to get to the best answer, and so building those trusting relationships is really critical and and what I didn't know earlier in my career is actually being planful about it and so I coach and advise people today when they're going into a new job or a new company is like you know if you're new or earlier in your career, right, who gets picked for those interesting projects?

Speaker 3: 18:52

who gets promotions? Right, you're not in the room for those conversations, right? So who knows you well enough, knows your skill set, knows what you bring to the table, knows who you are inside in your core, to have your back in that meeting, in that room. And even now, when I go back to taking on a new role the company I'm doing consulting for now it's like, okay, I want to have a strong relationship with the CEO because I'm here to make sure that the company is successful, but I also want to know who does he go to for advice, who does he listen to?

Speaker 3: 19:25

And not because I'm trying to be political or anything else- yeah, yeah it helps me understand that if I have an issue which there may be some sometimes I have something to communicate or something you want to work. It's like, okay, who do they go to? Can I go to that same person and ask them for advice or learn from them as to what makes the person tick Right, and so being really thoughtful about what you're doing? So I think that's on the onboarding piece that often falls to the cracks, and so, whether you're getting promoted treating a promotion like it's really a new onboarding because you're going to have to change your mindset, or you're moving to a new company or a new industry, it's learning the business as well as building those type relationships, I think, is what's really critical and usually not done that well, and most companies basically just throw you into the job and give you a mop and a bucket until you get to work.

Speaker 2: 20:14

Yeah, get to work, you're already invested and you're paying the big bucks. Here's the plan Now go do it. I mean, and you keep on bringing this issue up of relationships over and over again. That doesn't surprise me, because one of the strengths I think you bring to the table is your attention to relationship. It's one of the things that you even indicated in the short-term engagements you're doing.

Speaker 2: 20:35

Now. You have to kind of leave sooner than maybe you want, because you're building relationships with people and you spend a lot of time and being planful about it. And, as I always say, it's like core productivity is relationships. That's it, because that leads to the level of quality of commitments and execution right, and so that is a key. And being planful when you're onboarding about who you have to build those relationships with. How do you build that trust?

Speaker 2: 21:02

And, as you know, with everybody there's a little bit different twist on what has to happen for them to trust you. Some people want to be left alone, some people want to talk about what happened on the weekend, some people want to get right to work. You have to learn their styles and value that to build that rapport and that trust initially. So that's really good. Anything else you would say about things in onboarding that you feel you gained the benefit from when you were more strategic about it. In addition to building those relationships other things that obviously you talked about also learning the business and taking time to learn the business by being on the shredder trucks or flipping the burgers or whatever. Anything else you'd say about what's really critical in the onboarding process for you.

Speaker 3: 21:47

The other thing I thought about more generally and I think it holds to whether you're CFO, chief marketing, it, whatever department is understanding the objectives of the company, like where the company is in its life cycle and what's important. Sometimes you may enter an organization and, quite frankly, there's not time to build relationships and invest in that the way you want to, because something's on fire. And so trying to find the right balance between doing that and building the trust and building the relationships, to making urgent calls too if you have to. So it's not always about just coming in and kumbaya either and building teams. Sometimes you've got to make hard decisions to stabilize a business or stabilize a company, or the other way around it may be a you know it's a great company, but there hasn't been enough innovation and the growth isn't there.

Speaker 3: 22:33

that needs to be there and so really coming in and being more, coming as a strategic role. And how do I think about it differently? Bring new ideas to the business and work with the team to implement. Here's the next growth vehicle of the company, or here's how we take out costs. So just the situational awareness is probably a good way to say it as to what's going on in the company and factoring that in in terms of the onboarding process.

Speaker 2: 22:58

Yeah, you've been. We'll talk about this in a moment. You've been in so many different kinds of companies, from early stage to very mature Fortune 500. So you've had different situations you've had to step into and figure out how to get the pulse of that quickly and make the impact you needed to make as quickly as possible. So you have some really good experience there. I want to step back and look at the CF role in general. Right now. The finance function is so critical to the organization Financial planning and analysis, cash flow management, cost control, financial reporting and compliance, risk management, et cetera. There's a lot of components to the role that you have to keep the balls in the air, make sure the company's financed especially if they're a growth company and investor relations, etc. But how generally has the role changed over the 18 years that you've been in the seat?

Speaker 3: 24:02

And what do you see as kind of the growing edge for this position today and the main challenges that are emerging for the role as a CFO today? Honestly, I think at the core it hasn't changed that much honestly. I mean it depends upon one's perspective and what the company situation is. Some people do just want I just need a CFO who's going to come in and keep score and make sure that people get paid at the right time. To me that's not really what a CFO is anyway, but some organizations are that way.

Speaker 3: 24:22

I think over time, emphasis of what the role is changes and so that's where people use the word ambidextrous. I'm not sure I could spell it or define it, coming from Georgia, but the emphasis changes over time. Right Early on people you know, after Exxon crashed, right, there was Sarbanes-Oxley and it was all about controls and who had material weaknesses and getting those cleaned up. Reg FD with the you know disclosure requirements as to why you can't give, from an investor communication standpoint, you can't give you know people different levels of information. But then you go to the things like you know, the great financial crisis in 2008, right, the emphasis there was you know how do you preserve the company and not run out of cash, and I think a lot of startup CFOs right in technology and biotech learned the same thing in whatever 2021, when funding dried up and they were still growing, and so what you need to do at a particular time may change. We have to over index in certain areas, but I think the core part of the role hasn't changed that much.

Speaker 3: 25:31

Maybe going back to the comment earlier, where I think that the tenure is shortened, so CFOs are changing roles more often than they used to. I don't. It's not that common to see somebody with a company for 20 or 25 years anymore. They still exist. There's some out there that are great. So if you're an executive recruiter, this is great for you because you get paid more often. Searching for finance execs for finance execs, it's not great for companies because you may have lost some talent of somebody who's like okay, I lived through this cycle once before and so I'm seeing the same cycle again, because if you were, I go back. You look at Peloton and other companies who really took off during COVID and didn't understand or didn't think through. Wait a minute, you can have this big growth spurt, but there's a cliff at the other end, and am I going to have a parachute or am I going to crash?

Speaker 3: 26:28

Lots of businesses took off and if they didn't plan for the other end of it, they got themselves in a little bit of a vice, and so not having people who've been through those different economic cycles in the business may have struggled. That said, you can find people who've been through economic cycles, maybe in other ones, and come and say listen, this is a different point. I need to. You know, maybe the CFO role is becoming a little bit more specialized, in the sense that I come in in this phase, I come in in the growth phase or come in in the restructuring phase, and so maybe that's how the role's evolving a little bit.

Speaker 2: 27:02

I'm wondering how technology? Have you seen technology affected? Because you've seen innovations in technology throughout your 18 years and now we have AI, which I've talked to other CFOs. It's really just saving us a lot of time right now Because really most people are still just investing in our legacy systems we're not going to. The closer it gets to the customer, the less likely we're going to use it. Right now, we're going to look more like how do we crunch the data and get that out faster or produce a report or whatever. But how do you see technology that technology potentially impacting the role and the finance role? Any thoughts on that?

Speaker 3: 27:46

I've spent a little bit of time with you know consultants and things like that for you know AI and finance. I'm actually going to a conference here in Boston in a couple of weeks the same topic. I guess I'm probably still within finance. There are certainly some, as there always are operational improvement opportunities right that you can use AI for. We've been improving technologies around whatever cash applications and billing and things like that that are pain points for customers. Are there things that you can use to take away pain points in your business using technology? I haven't fully unlocked it with AI yet. I've seen companies really successfully starting to use it with identifying new customer groups so sort of prospecting for customers and identifying customers differently than they have in the past. I've got a friend of mine who's a senior executive developer in Silicon Valley leading for a large company their AI initiatives.

Speaker 3: 28:54

And in his view maybe I'll let it jade me a little bit is that you think about AI as a very qualified intern, right, so it's going to take things that you can automate and use.

Speaker 3: 29:08

It's going to pull in different resources, it's going to do it faster, it's going to do a little bit better, but it's not going to think for you and he's like maybe at some point in the future, but for the next five years it's just a really high-skilled intern that those types of repetitive processes and things like that that you can hand off to somebody else it'll help with, but a lot of the critical functions it's not going to help you figure out your strategy, and so that's why, from the more so, yeah, we'll be able to continue to optimize and take cost out of finance right.

Speaker 3: 29:40

Before it all had to be local and cash, and then you've got lockboxes and we went to shared service centers, worked for regional, and then we had good companies outsourced to India and took cost out that way, and then we got rid of those jobs by just using technology. Right, you see more and more of the accounting firms you know using overseas lower costs. So technology will keep allowing those types of things, and I think AI will be a little bit similar. Maybe I'm missing something, but still learning.

Speaker 2: 30:06

That sounds good, that's good. Well, I want to shift a little bit to your integration of finance and corporate governance, because you had a strong background in those, especially in your roles in Inari, I think, in Iron Mountain, especially in your roles in Inari, I think in Iron Mountain. How do you think about integrating financial strategy with a broader corporate governance so you can drive organizational success more effectively? How do you think about the integration of those two?

Speaker 3: 30:32

Yeah, it's a big question so I'll try to answer it and maybe I can talk a little bit. So one of my interim jobs I took was Casper Mattress, and where I was CFO, the CFO had left unexpectedly or had recently gone public and the CFO took another opportunity and so they needed somebody to help bridge while they look for a permanent CFO. But they were newly public, a number of the board members had not been there that long a period of time, and so, as a CFO, part of the role I think is working with the board to help understand or set, clarify the business strategy, because this is what you think about the impact of finance and finance strategy and governance. Finance strategy, in my mind, lives in service to the corporate strategy, right, and so that business strategy and that corporate strategy is really one of the key roles of the board, going back to the governance side of it. And so how does the cfo um work with the ceo? Right, it's the. There's hopefully a partnership there, and maybe we should talk a second in terms of like what the role of the cfo is, maybe at least in my mind. So, once you've sort of clarified and everybody understands what the business strategy is, working with the board.

Speaker 3: 31:49

I think the CFO has a role to play at the table, absolutely With the strategy and then it's okay. What are the objectives? You sort of drill down. What are the objectives, what's the timeframe to get those done? Because some things you can get done very quickly. I need to take costs out. Some things take a lot longer. I need to build a new business line. That may take years. So what's that timeframe? And I see the CFO of having sort of a critical role at the table, facilitating those discussions, understanding what capital may be available for different initiatives, prioritizing those.

Speaker 3: 32:19

And I don't know, maybe the analogy you and I have talked about this a little bit in the past and that was going back to athletic training analogy right, when you're in the season, you know there's certain things you can do to get better. Right, I can if I'm a baseball player, maybe I can read better about. You know who the batters are and what their strategy is Are they going to steal or not steal? There's certain things you can do to get better in the season. But, david, I've talked about this my daughter was a figure skater and had the fortune to train with an Olympic level figure skating coach, and there you learn that Olympic athletes they think in four-year cycles, right. So that was one of the benefits I've had is sort of like reframing planning cycles, both from a personal development standpoint, but also from a business development standpoint, and so that's where I was also sort of like working with the board to say what's the timeframe to get this to happen? And no confidence is here. I mean Iron Mountain.

Speaker 3: 33:21

When I was there, um, starting in 2016, we wanted to do a cost takeout reduce cost and, at the same time, start building what the next growth vehicles of the company are, and so you know, company's been very successful at, you know, doing cost takeout, restructuring, taking advantage of technology, driving profitability, reinvesting that back in a data center business. That in 2015, 16, we were just starting and at the time there were a lot of skeptics saying, like, how do you build this adjacent business? Are you going to leverage it? A lot of investors were skeptical whether it would play out. And here they are now.

Speaker 3: 33:56

You know, one of the largest, you know whatever, eight years, seven, eight years later, one of the largest data center providers in the world, taking advantage of their global scale and relationships, customer relationships. Some things take those type of planning cycles and that's where the CFO, the board, has to filter that down and the CFO has a role, I think, to play in sort of laying that out and, working with the management team to, you know, identify what the priorities are to deliver these things. That are sort of shorter term and longer term, and so I think there's sort of broadly corporate governance and finance overlap in other areas as well. That's probably the one that seems to be the most impactful to me.

Speaker 2: 34:35

Well, it seemed to me that if you're a CFO and you have some deeper cut into the governance, as you're pointing to A, the job is richer and more interesting, more rewarding, because you're adding more value because of that integration and it also increases your value as a CFO to the organization. Would you agree to that?

Speaker 3: 34:57

Yeah, no, in my view, that's what makes it fun, right. It's like what's the role of the CFO? And I have people sometimes say, well, would you want to be a CEO one day? And it's like, okay, I'd like to think I can do it. To me, I think the heart of the CFO role is really being the business partner to the CEO and the executive team.

Speaker 3: 35:16

Absolutely, because we're the ones there's probably some Star Trek analogy here, right, we're the ones there's probably some Star Trek analogy here, right, we're the one watching the dials and gauges, understanding is the business performing right? And so when there's something not hitting on all cylinders, to come and say there's something here not performing to expectation, and how do we go in? Right, because the finance function should sort of see that first and help be able to, of course, correct as needed, right. And I think then, with that sort of uncovering where the opportunities are and creating alignment across the team, right, so it's helping. Usually the finance function is very involved in sort of setting what the targets are, right, and then so with that, then we got to understand, like where we need to be investing, so helping set capital strategy, and then so with that, then we got to understand, like where we need to be investing, so helping set capital strategy, and so that's where that CFO partnership with the CEO and the leadership team is really critical, while, at least for me, while recognizing that we don't make any money in finance right, but it's not just about keeping the score we do.

Speaker 3: 36:18

We live in service to making the marketing team better, making the operations team better, giving them the insights and information they need to perform better. Do a labor. You know if you're looking at okay, how do you all? Right, operations team. We need to find some cash to invest in something else. Let's look at labor right.

Speaker 3: 36:36

Okay how much time? How much overtime are you running? Is it better to bring people on board? Is it better to have more overtime? Is it all our employees Can you outsource? Are there things we can do for sort of cost takeout to do things more efficiently? That may take some investment. The payback period is short enough where it makes sense to do those investments. I think the finance function needs to be in the room asking those types of questions and being that business partner questions and being that business partner and when you're coaching students at the University of Georgia.

Speaker 2: 37:05

are you talking about this integration piece? Is this a piece that you say you ought to be involved in If you're an upcoming finance executive? Is that something that you would highly recommend or do you think that's a natural course that happens as?

Speaker 3: 37:21

you develop in that role. I'm not sure it's natural or not, but the coaching I'm doing is probably still, I would say, a little bit more early on right. How do you find the culture that works for you? How do you build relationships? How do you? You know what's All important stuff.

Speaker 3: 37:35

Yeah, exactly, I'll, you know, I'll point them to. I'm not sure if, David, you've ever, if you've ever, listened to Carla Harris, who was a banker at Morgan Stanley, and she's got, you know, she's got some YouTube videos that are great and she says things really. So I'm sort of the you know talking about sort of performance credits. Right, Working hard and getting good results is one thing. Building relationships then is the other one, and so the whole. Like you know, important decisions are made and you're not in the room I stole from her, so I give her full credit for it, but it's so, it's a little bit different. But then over time, as you continue to coach and mentor, it's like helping, it's more in the development phases.

Speaker 3: 38:16

So what's the next? What's the first role? Who are you going to work for? Are they going to train and develop you, Especially post-COVID? Get in there and how do you learn? And then for the next role after that I've been doing this long enough now, where people are moving into their second or third roles You're like, okay, how do you think through what the next career path is and where do you want to go over time? Maybe sometimes taking a step back is more important to get what your end goal is as you want to grow in your career.

Speaker 2: 38:41

I had blinders on early in my career.

Speaker 3: 38:44

One of my mistakes was I was like I got to do this and this and then this, and I didn't take a step back to think like, oh, maybe I should have gone completely sideways and learned something very different first, and that would have helped me longer in my career.

Speaker 2: 38:56

Yeah, very well said yeah. As you can rise in the role becomes more important. As you maybe go into VP level or even senior director level, you might start thinking more about those things and about the business in a different way. And you know, we've talked about this also and I'm looking at like, how do you increase your value as a finance person and raising to aspire to be a CFO or, as a CFO, to become a more strategic, impactful CFO? We've talked about that one issue just around corporate governance.

Speaker 2: 39:28

You've transitioned across a lot of different industries, from Ahold to Giant to Casper to now you're connected to 4D Path. You're with Inari Iron Mountain, which is a whole different experience. You were with Inari Iron Mountain, which is a whole different experience. And there's challenges and we talked about those personally as you went through those, you know of learning the business, learning the distinctions of it. You know what are your thoughts on. You know CFOs maybe consciously creating a diverse path like that, or would you not wish that on your worst enemy? I don't know. You know what was that, what was the challenges of those moving in those different environments and how did it make you a better CFO to do that?

Speaker 3: 40:14

Yeah, I think it just depends upon sort of somebody's nature. One of the challenges is people like to put you in swim lanes, so the people that I know that are executive recruiters.

Speaker 3: 40:22

Going back to building relationships people, I know I feel personally well at all of the big executive search companies and it's easiest for them to put you in a swim lane. Okay, stewart is a biotech cfo or he's a business services cfo, so I'm going to go show him the cfo client because that's how they're, that's the easiest for them and so. So one of the challenges is people don't necessarily know what to do with you.

Speaker 3: 40:47

Um, you need to grow their career, have people you know either have a good reason is to wait them, and I've been doing you know x, xyz up in whatever the restaurant industry. Now I want to go into you know, the automobile industry. You've got to have a good reason how you want to do that and to make that change in what you bring. That's different. I do. Even now I'm doing consulting. I mean it's been again, wasn't conscious about it.

Speaker 3: 41:15

One of the things I bring is I can sort of I've seen problems from different sides, right. So in real estate I've been a tenant and I've been a landlord. Labor, I've hired lots of people, I've done labor management in restaurants, I've outsourced stuff to India and I've made a lot of mistakes and I've seen things go well and not well and so people are sort of, you know, looking for people who can solve multiple problems or see problems from a different angle, right, or a business from a different angle that people haven't seen. I think it's sort of one of the side benefits. Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily encourage anybody to do it For me.

Speaker 3: 41:53

It was lucky. I mean I love part of it's me like I love complex businesses and so any business I can take apart or put back together. Interesting that I sort of think through it talking to a CIO where I'm consulting today. If you're in IT or maybe HR, you know people, don't I don't think think twice about putting you across different industries. Right, hr people are great. You know managing people across lots of different things, but somehow in finance they feel like, oh, you know you're, you know you're you should stay in your swim lane Very good.

Speaker 2: 42:33

Yeah, it's like something about going deep and broad and all that. I think you know you love variety and learning, so that was part of what drew you into these different things too. You had opportunity. But there's also you have enjoyment of being kind of thrown in the deep end and figuring it out. I think I've seen that about you, yeah, and this is going to go another direction as we, as we proceed to kind of last you know, third of this time we have together. We worked together for nearly two decades and I do want to emphasize to everybody that it wasn't all the time. Stuart was fine with that. I felt very grateful and fortunate to be in a 20-year relationship with this man and I've learned a lot from him as well. But over the two decades of doing that and being in a continuous kind of leadership development journey throughout your career, how has that benefited you in having impact on the outcomes you have had to have as a CFO? Where would you say that has helped you be even more effective as a CFO?

Speaker 3: 43:34

Yeah, yeah, a couple of different ways. I could probably take the question in terms of, like you know, business impact versus team, and maybe team and development is where you're going with that, david, and wherever you want to take it.

Speaker 2: 43:46

Wherever you want to take it, yeah.

Speaker 3: 43:48

David, part of the reason you and I have worked together for 20 years is because you've helped a lot of people in my groups and me also. Take it there right. It's as you. One thing I learned is as you grow in your career like my daughter, who's in college now early on asked me what I do, and over time you do less and less honestly.

Speaker 1: 44:08

In the sense that earlier in your career.

Speaker 3: 44:10

You know you are, you've got the mop in the bucket and you're cleaning up or you're booking journal entries or whatever it is you're doing. And as you grow and become a manager, then you're spending more time when you're managing and less time, less percentage of your time doing. And as you move up and now that I'm become a CFO, the majority of my time, honestly, is helping other people be better. Are they working on the right things? Are you setting the right goals? Do you have the right people on the right seats on the bus, those types of things and so getting that right is really important.

Speaker 3: 44:43

Making decisions is really important about people and getting the right structure, because you can only get so much done yourself. Really. Your impact is largely through other people. So the higher quality your team is, the better prepared they are, the more that they're aligned with goals, the better that organization is going to be and the better you personally are right, I can't again, I'm not going to. I don't. You can't fix everything yourself. You'll. I mean, you saw me early on in my career right, you go into a situation where you know it's not the right team, they don't have the right systems, and you end up almost having a heart attack, collapsing on the factory floor trying to hold it all together, and you're like, okay, this is not going to do it.

Speaker 3: 45:25

You learn early on that, okay, I've got to learn how to build teams, impact of words, how do you motivate people. And then I learned as part of this was the satisfaction you get for making other people successful. Yeah Right, be it on your own team, not taking credit for it, but making sure other people get credit. Shining light on other people who have done successful things is much more rewarding, and I didn't really, and to me, that's what felt good. Right, when I go back to like okay, when I'm completely done working, I think the legacy I want to leave behind is how many people did I help? You know be successful? And it makes me feel good, right, and people, somebody I'm sure could say, hey, well, listen, it's really altruistic of you. I'm not sure it's altruistic, but it makes me feel better. I'm doing it for my own good anyway, right, it makes me happier? I think it's not. You know. You go back to like research into charity and things like that.

Speaker 3: 46:23

Like people who give money to charity are happier than people who aren't right, so I've right not not thoughtfully, but you know, realize, hey, I feel good if I can help somebody else in their career in. In general, you're helping people in their career be more successful than they realize they could be, because they're not challenging themselves enough, they're not getting pushed enough. And I'll dive in a quick. I mean this consulting role I'm doing now, a leader of the procurement department, a great person. But I think I sort of came in and he had there was a function that hadn't given a lot of direction. So you know, I worked together and I'm like let's change the perception of the procurement department.

Speaker 3: 47:06

And I was like for the next three months, let's run, I want you to run an Ironman. Like how much can you get done over the next three months that people think are going to take you the next year or two years? People think are going to take you the next year or two years. And the person responded great to it. He was like that's awesome, that's great. I appreciate you helping me set the direction. And I was like well, as part of this, do you want to do a 360? And some people run away from a 360. They're like oh, 360, they, you can unlock more out of them personally, which is great, and help the organization and it's so satisfying.

Speaker 2: 47:43

Yeah, and that's the hallmark to me when leadership boots up in the human system is when people are starting to enjoy the process of developing others and seeing what happens for them and having an impact on their lives.

Speaker 2: 47:57

Others and seeing what happens for them and having an impact on their lives and saying my legacy is the people that I've that have been underneath of me, that now are CFOs or moving on in their career or or, you know, I'm still in touch with and we still have a meal every once in a while because we just enjoyed working together so much.

Speaker 2: 48:09

And it's every time I see them, I see their growth and I feel like it feels good. You know, and I think you know, the CFO job is so complex at times, right, and there's a lot of pressures on you from the top of the organization, from the market, from within the stakeholder groups, and I do find that there's still a group of CFOs that emphasize the technical side more than the people side, emphasize the technical side more than the people side. But what I see in the people that are more attentive to the people side, not that they're not attentive to the technical side, but they don't have to worry so much about it if they have good people and they're developing good people, and it makes the job a lot easier and a lot more rewarding. When you do that, I think you've always been a natural at that. Some people have a more difficult transition in the finance area or in any technical area. It could be in the information technology area to see that. I don't know if you see that as well.

Speaker 3: 49:08

I see that I disagree, that I'm a natural at it.

Speaker 3: 49:11

I mean I've made a lot of mistakes and had a lot of people help me. And again, you sort of learn lessons over time. I'm not great at asking for help. So even though I've got good relationships yeah, if I've got a problem or some technical issue, I've worked with great people. I don't have any problem calling a former board member or former boss and saying I've got this issue, how have you dealt with it in the past? Can you give me some advice? Or sometimes people call me and I'm not the best person to answer either and I'll be so a former colleague of mine at Iron Mountain who retired.

Speaker 3: 49:41

Today. I'm looking for some board seats. I'm trying to learn more about private equity and I'm like I could help you a little bit. I know somebody great who does this and is really good at it, and I introduced that person to another friend of mine and now that person is doing consulting on the board of a company. Someone's just building those connections. But it also goes back to having a little bit, to having sort of peers that have your back right. You need to have other people's back and I'll call it. Going back to my relationship with Denny Post is you know, I've become more balanced over time. Earlier in my career. You know, I'd get frustrated, stressed. Not only did people physically see it, but I would, you know, react violently, but, you know, not in a way that I really wanted to behave and like one light bulb for me and I'll just share it again.

Speaker 1: 50:33

Is you know when?

Speaker 3: 50:33

I was at Red Robin, there was, you know, somebody in one of the departments who made some you know marketing decision or something else I can't remember what it was exactly. That you know wasn't the best financial decision, and so I was really frustrated with it. And so I was talking to Danny, my chief marketing officer, about it and venting and she was like well, how would you treat that person? What would you, you know, if that person was your, was your, if you were their mentor and they were your mentee, it like completely changed my perspective, right, because it's like normally you think about your own team and protecting them and building it up. And it's like what if everybody was?

Speaker 3: 51:13

If you sort of thought about everybody's you're, you're, I own the fact that that person made a decision, that maybe there was a better one, either A I need to learn something anyway. Maybe it was the best decision at the time, but yeah, maybe there's a better one coming to me that I didn't teach them. And that was like a big light bulb for me to like not get frustrated, but like to take ownership, you know, across an organization to say, like, how do you make other people better?

Speaker 2: 51:43

And so having people, peers, in an organization that have your back and will tell you when you're screwing up is important, Absolutely, Absolutely Great comments. So going to kind of the more the personal side of the spectrum. You know the CFO, as I said, is a demanding job. You have to move a few times. You know you have to move a few times in your career, work long hours, have to be on a call at night sometimes because of the demand of the job. How do you manage to maintain a balance between your personal commitments and your personal life? You know, I know you adore your wife and your daughter and you guys do a lot of great things together, but the job can pull you away sometimes and it's a challenge. How do you draw the line and deal with that? And have figured that out over time.

Speaker 3: 52:29

Yeah, my 19-year-old daughter doesn't hesitate to remind me of missed birthdays and things like that. So it's not easy, right? A? I enjoy being busy. Well, busy is probably not a good word. Busy is when you're trying to look productive, maybe, and you're not always.

Speaker 3: 52:44

But I like being engaged. I got a lot of energy. I'm not a golfer, right, I don't go out, I don't enjoy. I'm not somebody who goes and sits on the beach either. So I like being engaged, I like doing things, and so, luckily, I've got a family that's been incredibly supportive of that and generally patient, and so it's. You know, traveled a lot, missed some birthdays, but then, when you are around, trying to be as engaged as you can, how much time I spent with my daughter driving back and forth to, to figure skating, uh lessons before school. So, and not only so, if she's willing to get up at 5 15 in the morning to go to the skating rink at whatever age eight or nine, I sure sure well, better be there too or you know, making sure that I'm sort of reading to her at night when she's going to bed at five or six.

Speaker 3: 53:34

So you sort of built that bond early on and the wife is supportive. It's really hard and I do think these younger generations, the expectations around that, have changed and are changing, Having spent time in Europe where the expectations are also different, where you know okay you get eight weeks vacation a year in Holland, holland and people take it right in the US.

Speaker 3: 53:58

That's what it looks like and they, and if you call in, you get. You know you get your, your, your, your fingers tapped for for, for interrupting everybody else's vacation because you called in. While it's on.

Speaker 3: 54:09

Things have changed a little bit there over 20 years, but it's hard and I think it's hard because you know going back and initiatives around. We want, you know, bringing more, creating more leadership opportunities for women and for underrepresented groups. It's difficult for both parents to work right. We don't, nationally, don't have a great pre-K system. We don't school systems aren't that reliable. Covid made that harder. So I think you know, as a nation, we need to keep investing in building and improving. You know opportunities and it starts with some really foundational things that allow families to both participate in the workforce equally.

Speaker 2: 54:58

Yeah, I think you know we have to remember that the family structure has been around for thousands of years and when it's solid, everybody seems to do better, you know, and when you're supporting that in the right way and supporting families and the parents and the families in that way, that that's very pretty critical. So as, as we begin to wrap up today, it's been a great conversation, but anything you want to say about what you hope for in the future and where we're going, where the role is going, where corporate leadership needs to go, anything you want to say about what your hopes are for the future, you can, you can. That's a big question, so you can pick any little puzzle piece out of that you want to talk about.

Speaker 3: 55:46

No, I guess what I'd encourage people is is, you know, to take time to give back, which is the opposite side but the most rewarding side of what we just talked about, right, in terms of like how much time do you have and where do you allocate it. And sort of reminded quickly of the sort of the Catherine Graham she was the owner of the Washington Post and her autobiography where you know you spend the. You know her. I think it was her father's philosophy. I'm going to paraphrase and not get it right but you know you spend the first third of your life. You know learning the next third of your life, sort of you know building wealth and relationships and community and the last third giving back, and it's the giving back piece.

Speaker 3: 56:30

I think you don't have to wait till the last third, going back to the sort of the mentoring program we've got at University of Georgia.

Speaker 1: 56:37

I mean people that are two or three years out of school.

Speaker 3: 56:39

The value that they bring to people who are juniors and seniors is really important. Take a second to sort of thank organizations like the large banks, the large accounting firms particularly the number of folks from the University of Georgia, underrepresented groups that have gone to work at Bank of America and JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, and PwC and Deloitte not that I know, I shouldn't call names out those organizations take time. If you work at one of those organizations organization who can make a difference or create an opportunity for any young student to learn and work earlier in their career or just taking time yourself, uh, not that hard, um, it just takes a little bit of self-motivation or initiative and to make a difference you don't have to go out and try to make a difference in 10 000 people's lives. Take one or two people and that's it's the. It's the proverbial like pebble in the pebble in the lake, right, you throw it, you impact one or two people. That's going to impact. You know there are three or four people and it just sort of ripples out and has that impact.

Speaker 3: 57:41

So, uh, I'd like to encourage everybody to sort of go back to your alma mater, um wherever, and see where you can lend a hand and then, going back to sort of relationships and things like that is, uh, you know, encourage people to go back and take the time to thank people who helped them right, people who had an impact on their career, their previous mentors. I've been able to try to stay in touch with most everybody. There's one high school teacher that passed away before I got a chance to thank him for kicking me in the butt and realizing that I wasn't meeting expectation, but I really try to make sure that people understand, even very early in my career and university, that the impact they had helped keep them going too.

Speaker 2: 58:25

Yeah, that's really well said. I mean, and through the threads of it, I really want to thank you for sharing your insights today on how to maximize the CFO role and the finance function, but also these pieces of developing and the importance of that and take care of yourself. And also, the thread to me through today's show has been about relationship and basically in all that you spoke on, yes, it's about getting to know people, understand the business, but it's also about how can you contribute to people, and you do that in a number of different ways through your direct reports, the organization, to giving back at UGA and other things. And you know you don't do that. You do that kind of selfishly because of what it makes you feel like, which is which is great.

Speaker 2: 59:07

But you've discovered that and I think that is the key, the key to leadership is because you know every day you've shown up at work. Why are you showing up? And, like I say, and I've said many times on this show before, are you sending people home to kick the dog or hug their wife? Which one do you want? And obviously it's the latter you want to do, so that's great. So thank you very much for coming on today. I really appreciate it, stuart.

Speaker 3: 59:34

David, thank you for doing this and again, I haven't listened to a number of your podcasts before from this season, from previous seasons. You've had a lot of great people on and learned a lot from those as well. Thank you for spreading the word.

Speaker 2: 59:45

I'm very honored that you said yes, as well as other people, and I really want to thank everybody for listening and thank you for joining us on this journey. Your time and attention is truly appreciated. If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd really be grateful if you shared this with others who could benefit your colleagues, friends, anyone that's seeking to lead and be more impactful. You can catch this episode and all other episodes via YouTube on video, or you can listen on Apple Podcasts, spotify, amazon Music and many other platforms, and the link to the full list of those platforms will be below in the description, so you can see the 19 platforms we're on now. And, as we close, please remember the incredible value you do bring when you invest in the growth and development of those around you. As Stuart said, until we meet again, keep leading purposely and creating value for your organizations, and I'm wishing you a fantastic rest of your day. This is David Kragos, the Leadership Alchemist, signing off. Until next time.