Why Losing My Dream Job Made Me the FP&A Tools Expert with Paul Barnhurst
In this special solo episode of Financial Modeler’s Corner, host Paul Barnhurst, known as the FP&A Guy, takes the spotlight to share his personal journey from a corporate financial analyst to an influential voice in financial modeling and FP&A. This episode is packed with career highlights, trends in financial modeling, and a mix of humor to kick off the new year.
With over a decade of experience in corporate FP&A, Paul is a Microsoft MVP, a globally recognized trainer, and the founder of several successful podcasts. His personal story exemplifies persistence, continuous learning, and the value of building a personal brand.
Expect to Learn:
The career journey of Paul Barnhurst of creating a thriving business and gaining global recognition.
Key lessons in financial modeling, including best practices in designing effective models.
Trends shaping financial modeling and analytics for 2025, including the role of AI.
Practical advice on building a personal brand and leveraging LinkedIn to grow professionally.
A lighter side of finance with Paul’s humorous take on financial and Excel-related jokes.
Here are a few quotes from the episode:
"When I started my own business, I didn't have everything figured out, but I believed in taking the leap and figuring it out along the way."
"The ability to build a personal brand is a career game changer, especially for financial professionals."
"If you’re not having fun with what you do, find ways to bring your personality into your work—it makes all the difference."
Paul Barnhurst takes us on a journey through his career by highlighting the lessons he’s learned and the challenges he’s faced. With light humor and practical advice, Paul inspires listeners to embrace growth, take risks, and build their own paths to success.
Follow Paul:
Website - https://www.thefpandaguy.com
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefpandaguy
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@thefpaguy8376
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In today’s episode:
[01:13] - Introduction and Context
[02:14] - The Early Career Struggles
[04:50] - The Pivot to FP&A
[06:24] - Building Financial Modeling Expertise
[08:44] - Starting His Own Business
[15:54] - Career in Financial Modeling
[17:24] - Humor and Fun
[20:06] - Trends for 2025
[25:43] - Rapid Fire Financial Modeling Opinions
[28:14] - Closing Remarks
Full Show Transcript
[00:01:13] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Welcome to Financial Modelers Corner. I am your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka FP&A Guy. This is a podcast where we talk all about the art and science of financial modeling with distinguished financial modelers from around the globe.
[00:01:29] Host: Paul Barnhurst: The Financial Modelers Corner podcast is brought to you by the Financial Modeling Institute. FMI offers the most respected accreditations in financial modeling, and that is why I completed the Advanced Financial Modeler in 2024. Today's episode is going to be a little different than our typical episode. We don't have a guest here with us today. This is going to be an episode where I'm going to be talking to you. I am regularly asked to tell my story. How did I end up as the FP&A guy? How did I end up doing a full time podcast to go from corporate FP&A to hosting different guests all around the globe, doing webinars, training, becoming a Microsoft MVP. So here's a little bit of my story, and I want to go back before I started my own business to the beginning, because I want you to appreciate my journey and just a reminder that all of us can accomplish great things, and we're all going to face challenges. Having a positive attitude and sticking with it makes a huge difference. So for me, I did my undergrad degree from Brigham Young University. Go Cougars beat the buffs recently in bowl season, and I did a business management degree with an entrepreneurship emphasis. When I graduated, I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't do an internship, which is a mistake. I really didn't have focus in college.
[00:02:50] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I was the first in my family to graduate from a university, and so that was a new experience. And as I graduated, I graduated, I didn't have a job. I graduated in August of 2011. I thought, okay, maybe I'll find something in telecommunication. That's what I was doing in college, working for it and phone department or telecommunications. And so I started to look for things. September 11th hit. The job market turned. I ended up having to go back to work as a banquet server for several months, eventually getting a job with the United States Navy. I didn't have any other offers, so I thought, okay, this would be a good experience, and I went and worked as a contract specialist for four years for the Navy. Relatively quickly, I realized that writing contracts is not where I saw myself. I moved over into our business analyst side of things. I worked on a software requirements board, did some report writing and different things, and ultimately went back to grad school. I chose to go to Arizona State University. Excited by the dual degree program they offered. They had a masters of Information Management, Masters of Science and Information Management. You could do with an MBA. And I thought I'd do supply chain and come out as a business analyst, but I fell in love with my finance class. I still remember my first advanced finance course. How difficult the professor was.
[00:04:10] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Loved him, taught me so much and that is what made me decide to switch to finance for my degree. So I switched and again, I thought I wanted to work in investment banking. I graduated in 2008, couldn't find a job. It took me nearly six months out of undergrad. It took almost a year out of grad school. It took roughly six months for me to find a full time job. I ultimately ended up getting a job at American Express, making basically what I was making, or slightly less than before I went to grad school because I couldn't find anything in investment banking or where I wanted to go. So very frustrated. I took the job, started to build my way up. I was a financial analyst title, but really I was doing report writing, working in the business in our travel side, supporting our suppliers. So we had many preferred suppliers like Delta, United American that we would preference as an agency. As a travel agency, we try to sell those airlines, hotels, cars where it made sense. And so I supported the people who managed those relationships. I ended up having to manage a cash forecast for our ah team. And that's where I first got introduced to an FP&A team by the name of Matt Olson and some others, Trevor and other people. And with that, I started to manage that cash forecast. And about a year and a half later, I've been working in this role.
[00:05:34] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Was really tired of writing a lot of SQL, a lot of report writing, looking for something else to do, applied for some roles. Nothing had come in and FP&A role came open. I knew the hiring manager, Matt Olson, and so I applied. Really, it was a promotion, not because I wanted to be an FP&A or I wanted to build more financial models per se. It's just I felt like I needed to advance my career. I was starting to fall behind. So that opportunity came and I spent the next 12 years in FP&A. I worked for American Express, and I experienced many of the frustrations we all experience in our careers. I still remember working at American Express, applying for a job and being told, why are you applying for this job? You should be applying for my job. And I'm sitting there thinking, is your job open? Yes, I'd love to be a director because I had really good reviews and ratings, but I wasn't willing to move to New York and there were very limited opportunities. So finally I jumped. I went to a company called Solera. That's where I really started to learn how to build financial models. And I'll tell this story because I think everybody will appreciate it. I was okay at modeling. I was good at Excel, but not necessarily modeling. I'd never been taught good modeling design principles. We were asked to do this model using this offset ramp function, to build up the ramp for our sales team.
[00:06:50] Host: Paul Barnhurst: As you know, salespeople are not fully productive in month one, month one of being hired. It often takes three six months, nine months for them to ramp up and become fully productive. And so there was this ramp they want built. I really didn't understand it. It was a really complex business. So they brought in someone by the name of Manu, who had worked in investment banking, to help me build the model. We spent six months working together almost every day figuring out our billing data. It was very complex, figuring out how to build this model, what the business needed. And so we got the model built. And from that experience and learning from him, I became a much better financial model for him and my boss, Alberto, who was our CFO at the time. And he became my managing director. He had also worked in investment banking and had taught me a lot about building financial models. So that's where I started to learn some best practices and how better to build models. So remember a year later after Manu and I had built that model? Once I really understand the business and had the right data, I rebuilt the model and I finally got to the point where I could hold the business accountable. I had a model that I felt like could really be used to move the business forward.
[00:08:00] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It still wasn't best practice. I still think it was a poor model. Where I'm at today. But it was so much further than where I started. Just a reminder of how that journey goes in modeling. So that happened. I had this role in Solara and kind of stepping back from there, I went and worked for Digicert in a role. I was helping them convert to a SaaS business, didn't build many financial models, did a few more reporting, and then I started my own business. And so I want to share that journey of how I got into my own business, how I ended up taking the FMI. And then I have some fun humor. I want to tell some trends for the new year, and then we'll finish with me doing rapid fire, answering all the questions. So what happened along the way is about 2016. As I mentioned, I had that role. I applied for American Express where I told, look, you should be applying for my role. And I'm like, I'd love to, but they're not open. That's why I left and went to Solara. But along the way, I talked to a guy by the name of Ken Fick. I reached out to him and I said, look, I'll give you a Starbucks gift card for, you know, 30 minutes of your time. He goes, I don't want a Starbucks gift card. I want you to write an article for my website. I thought, okay, I can do that.
[00:09:12] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I'll write an article for your website. Even though I thought I'm a terrible writer. So I wrote him an article and I remember he said, hey, I'll give you 100 bucks if you write me another one. I wrote him a couple more. I found I liked them. A couple of them were quite popular. I started to share them on LinkedIn, all in the hopes of finding a job, never thinking I was going to start my own business or talk about financial modeling or do a podcast. And so what happened is I started looking for a job and found one. Continued to share things on LinkedIn from time to time, offered to be part of the LinkedIn group. They were looking for moderators to help manage discussions. That led to me being invited to be a member of a couple webinars for FP&A trends, where I was a speaker. I started to grow a little bit of following. I think I got a couple thousand followers on LinkedIn. Then again it came. I'd say 2019, 2020 kind of pandemic, probably 2020, looking for work again. And I wanted to work for a couple FP&A tools. And so now we're into 21 where I really wanted to work for FP&A, but I've been looking for work. And so again, had a few thousand followers. So I decided to write about some FP&A tools. I wrote about one of them I wanted to work for. I was interviewing for the job.
[00:10:25] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I was one of two finalists. They selected the other person. I remember being really devastated at the time and thinking, why did they not select me? But what happened is that led to a few people reaching out to me and asking me about software tools. Then what happened next is I wanted to work for another tool. So I again wrote some articles about them on LinkedIn with a few thousand followers. And at this point, all of a sudden, a bunch of people reached out to me wanting me to review their software tools, financial modeling tools for planning tools which have a financial modeling component. And that also led to somebody reaching out to me and asking if I'd help write the third gen guide, Anders Liu Lindberg, and Wouter born. And I ended up writing a software guide with them as a coauthor about FP&A tools. This led to me seeing over 100 tools over three years. So that happened again at this point, still hadn't decided to start my own business, but the ideas were there. I started to get a few thousand followers. Somebody reached out to me probably October November of 2021, wanting me to pay me something like $100 to do a collaboration, to share a post on LinkedIn for a software called grist. And I said sure. And so I had that. I had this guide also, what happened is a man by the name of Ron Monteiro, which is one of my best friends now, and my business partner for my training.
[00:11:42] Host: Paul Barnhurst: He reached out to me and said, look, six months ago I started my own business and I can sell this Excel course but I can't train it. Could you train an Excel course for me? And I said sure. How Ron and I met was through the webinars. We were on a webinar together and we had emailed once or twice, but really hadn't stayed in any kind of close contact. But we decided to do this course about the same time. This is late 2021. Three different software vendors in one week reached out to me and I talked to all three of them. One of them wanted to do a collaboration together, relatively big one asked about hiring me potentially to do a podcast, and the third asked if I'd be interested in a role working for them. And so this happened. Someone else reached out to me about a part time job, you know, ten, 15 hours a week supporting a company in their FP&A. And I looked at it and said, okay, I got some consulting, I got some training, I got some possibly content creation stuff people want to do. I have a few thousand followers at this point, and I went to my wife and I said, hey, I should start my own business. I think I can start my own business. And she was surprised and a little nervous, going, well, you don't really have enough there yet.
[00:12:52] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And we talked about it and I said, look, I want to make sure you're comfortable. This is a family journey. Let's discuss it and get on the same page. And when you're comfortable and it makes sense, I'll start my own business. We talked about it for six weeks. Then one day in February of 2022, she said, I'm comfortable. I said, are you sure? She's like, yes, I'm sure. I said, good, because I'm going to put in my notice today. I put in my notice that morning. A few months later I left and now I've been running my own business. I've started multiple podcasts, as everybody knows, one on FP&A, one on financial modeling, one on AI. And today I have a business with 100,000 followers on LinkedIn, 4000 YouTube followers. I've been able to do the FP&A certification from AFP, the Advanced Financial modeler from FMI, become a Microsoft MVP and been training all over the world. It's been a wonderful experience and I've got a lot of opportunities. Funny enough, one of those companies that wouldn't hire me to be their director of FP&A offered me a job after I started to build a following and other companies I couldn't even talk to. So if you remember, I used to have a really hard time finding a job a year out of undergrad, six months out of grad school, always hard to make transitions. Now I regularly hear from people about potential opportunities.
[00:14:09] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I just had a company reach out to me recently and ask if I was interested in the job, and they come to me, and that's what's happened from building a following. That's my journey and I love it. I love talking to people. I get to talk to people all over the globe. Financial modelers, CFOs, consultants, controllers and so many others. I mean, I've got to talk to the CFO of Oracle and of many other companies, and it's a lot of fun. Both CFOs of public and private companies, other influencers, you know, people have written books and it's a real journey. And so that's a little bit of my background in my story.
[00:14:48] Host: Paul Barnhurst: FP&A guy here. And as you know, I am very passionate about financial modeling and the Financial Modeling Institute's mission. I have been a huge fan of the FMI for years, and I was super excited when they decided to sponsor the Financial Modelers Corner. I recently completed the Advanced Financial Modeler certification and love the entire experience. It was top notch from start to finish. I am a better modeler today for having completed the certification. I strongly believe every modeler needs to demonstrate they are a qualified financial modeler, and one of the best ways to do that is through the FMI's program. Earning the accreditation will demonstrate to your current and future employers that you are serious about financial modeling. What are you waiting for? Visit www.fminstitute.com/podcast. And use Code Podcast to save 15% when you enroll in an accreditation today.
[00:15:54] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Now my story around financial modeling. I didn't learn financial modeling out of school or even grad school. I really didn't know how to build a model. Yes, I'd done some basic stuff, but had never learned best practices, never really learned about color coding, about linking all back to one place for your calculations about inputs, outputs, structure, and so many other things. Good design. And so I floundered along and I decided I wanted to work for a small company. And I thought, If I'm going to work for a startup, I really need to be able to build a good model. So I signed up to take the FMI Covid hit. It got delayed. I ended up not taking it until 2024, as it was part of my contract to take it for this podcast with FMI being my sponsor, and I'm really glad I did. I learned a ton. It had always been on my radar to take because Lance Rubin, when it first came out almost six years ago, said, look, if you want to get better at modeling, take the FMI. He was a huge fan of that program. And I'm now a huge fan of it. I encourage people to take it. I think it's a great way to demonstrate your skills. So that's kind of my journey, one into starting my own business, being a content creator, a trainer, a podcast host, a speaker. Also, my journey as far as financial modeling. I didn't build my first three statement model. I just want to tell a little bit more there.
[00:17:11] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I started my own consulting practice. I remember I got really a complex one and had to get some help with it, but got through it and that again, that experience made me a much better modeler. So that's a little bit of my story on modeling. Next, I want to have a little fun and tell my favorite jokes. Or we'll say for 2024, just kind of some of my favorite jokes. I'm going to start with a top ten EBITDA list. Now EBITDA is a lightning rod. Some people love it. Some people hate it. I started my career at American Express in Finance, and if anyone knows who the number one shareholder of American Express is. You'll know that person is not a fan of EBITDA. As Warren Buffett who said, hey, the number of companies that will buy the talk about EBITDA are zero. He's like, just no interest. He's like, you got to consider depreciation. What do you think those CapEx costs are paid for by the tooth fairy. So he was never a fan of it. So that's kind of how I grew up. I was never a fan. And I went into private equity and saw that's all people talked about. So I've always had a little bit of fun with EBITDA. And recently I saw a list. I put together a list of ten different definitions, kind of funny definitions for EBITDA, not in any particular order, but I'm just going to read them all here.
[00:18:23] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So number one EBITDA stands for earnings before I totally deny accounting. Number two earnings before I throw dollars away. Number three earnings before irrelevant tedious details arise. Number four earnings before I try desperate adjustments. Number five earnings before I trick directors again. Number six earnings before it tumbles down again. Number seven earnings before I take delightful amnesia. Number eight. Earnings before investors throw dollars away. Number nine. Earnings before I tricked debt auditor. Number ten. Earnings before interest, therapy, depression and anxiety. Last one came from Amber Johnson after building her first financial model. Someone bought her that shirt. Now, a couple of my favorite Excel jokes. Number one is see if anyone knows this one. Does anyone know why the spreadsheet was constipated? Because it couldn't budget. Get it. Budget. Budget season. Haha. Number two: where should you store your Excel error messages in? Where's the best place to put an Excel error message column? Go over to column F U. Row two. And then last but not least, what does a statistician look for in a spouse? A normal distribution. All right. Now I'm going to go ahead and talk about what I think are some of the big trends for 2024, for what may be some of the big things that are coming that relate to modeling or questions we have to answer. The first that has me really excited and I think, sorry, not 2024, 2025, we're into the new year. So I'll go ahead and leave that in so you can see, hey, it's January.
[00:20:26] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It happens. So the top trends for 2025. First I think we'll see more from Microsoft. They've created an LLM that's designed to read spreadsheets. Typical LLM struggle with spreadsheets. It takes a lot of data. It has a much higher cost. So they've been able to compress it quite a bit, but it still struggles. It doesn't read some formatting and other things. So I think that's an area we'll see a lot of progress in. And I believe that's really necessary for AI to build the models for us to get great benefit from Llms, to really get to the point where they can help us in our models at a much more granular and detailed level than they can help us today. So the first one I'm really excited to see the progress Microsoft makes on its spreadsheet, LLM, and I imagine some others will come out with them. I think we'll see some big announcements in the back half of 25 early in 26. The next is the continued progress on AI building the models for us. AI is great at building forecasts, particularly machine learning, not LLMs. So there are a lot of machine learning models and I think that will get better. I think, well, forecasting models will get better. Google recently released a model they built that was better than any model out there at predicting the weather? It was substantially more accurate. It used many different methods. I think models like that will get applied to forecasting and the forecasting will get better.
[00:21:49] Host: Paul Barnhurst: The question is, will AI build a full model for us? We're not there yet. I think we have a ways to go, at least for a complex model. Very basic stuff. Sure, it can do that, but can it help us? Will it help with structure? Are we seeing things that can make us better from AI? Yes. So I think in 25 we'll continue to see development. But I don't think it's the year. We'll really see. I start building models for us on any type of scale. I think that's probably 26 or 27 would be my guess. So that's my take on AI models. Next, dynamic array models. This is a question I ask every guest. Fully dynamic models. Yes or no. Some say yes. Some say no. I don't think we're there yet. You know, from talking to a lot of people, you either have to use lambdas to manage corkscrews and some of the other challenges with fully dynamic models or very complex math. I think the average modeler is not there on either front. Craig Hatmaker is doing some great things. The Hay brothers are using fully dynamic models. You can do it. I think we're a few years away from it becoming the standard, because there's still enough things we need to overcome that I'm just not sure it's worth the lift yet. Doesn't mean people shouldn't learn dynamic arrays. They should. Doesn't mean you can't build them sometimes, but you shouldn't build them. But really, mass adoption. I think we're probably at least two years, three years, maybe even more away.
[00:23:16] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You think of Power Query. Still haven't hit that curve where most people are using Power Query and it's been out 13 years, I think 2011, 2012, something like that. And then the fourth trend, I think we'll see some growth in and I think we're seeing it with Excel. But this idea of connected spreadsheets, I refer to it as next generation spreadsheets. Right. Microsoft Python is all calculated in the cloud. None of it is calculated on your desktop. It's an example of kind of going toward that connected spreadsheet, putting more and more in the cloud, and more and more on the server and less on the desktop. Also, there are some new connected spreadsheets that we're seeing some progress from. Equals is an example of one. And equals allows you to connect your data warehouse easily. Dashboard SQL right in the grid. It's all in the cloud. So that's some cool use cases. Another one I've seen recently is source table. Source table has almost every formula. Excel has close to 500 formulas. You can do a database on the back end. You can deal with gigabytes, billions of records in a spreadsheet. And I think that's really cool. I think that's what I mean by connected using that server to process things. Schematic does that. There are others who use servers to process what's in Excel through add-ins. And so I think we'll continue to see the connected, the add-in the last one.
[00:24:41] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That isn't really a connected spreadsheet, but I think we'll make some progress. There was a college student in her early 20s who's created a spreadsheet called paradigm, and she's deliberately trying to do something different than Excel's strength. She's taking a bunch of different AI bots, taking a bunch of AI agents, and allowing it to answer questions in a spreadsheet and really help you quickly build whether maybe a CRM or lists or pull in data. It's a pretty cool tool. It's in beta. I think we'll see some exciting things with that. But what you're seeing with almost all of these, none of these are tackling Excel directly. Excel isn't going anywhere. They're usually focusing on certain use cases or somewhere where Excel is weak. So when it comes to financial modeling, the vast majority of us are still going to use Excel. Some will use Google Sheets. I know some that have used equals. You could do it with others such as source table. You know your PS that's used in China or whatever, but Excel's not going anywhere. So those are a couple of my thoughts for the coming year. And then let's jump into the rapid fire questions. I've never put myself on the spot. So I'm going to go through and give my quick answer for each of these, and I'll elaborate on 1 or 2 at the end. Circular references. No VBA. No. Horizontal or vertical. Horizontal dynamic arrays. Yes. Fully dynamic arrays. No. External workbook links. No. Named ranges.
[00:26:08] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yes. Follow the formal standards board. No. Should financial modelers learn Python in Excel? No. Should financial modelers learn Power Query in Excel? Yes. Should financial modelers learn power BI? No. Will Excel ever die? Yes. Will AI build the models for us in the future? Yes. Should we use sheet self-protection in your models? Yes. Do you believe financial models are the number one corporate decision making tool? Yes. What is my lookup function of choice? X lookup. All right. So I'm going to elaborate on 1 or 2 of those. I think you know kind of like the guests get to do. There's a lot of nuance in all of these. So the first one is VBA. You know, my view is only if you have to avoid using it as much as possible. People don't understand it. It's a point where models can easily break. Most models can be built without VBA. Are there exceptions? Yes. Are there people who have to use it? Of course there are. But that's my view on VBA as far as financial modelers learning Python. Sure, it would be helpful. Python in Excel is a great tool, and I think over time finance professionals will need to learn the basics. With AI and Python, you can do a lot more than you could before. But do I think we have to learn it to model? No. Do I think it's a top skill or one of the top priorities we need? No I don't. I still think we're a little bit away from it becoming, you know, a requirement by any means.
[00:27:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: But I think it's good to learn. But I don't think we need to learn it. So those are my thoughts. Those are my thoughts on a couple of those. Now I'm going to answer a few other kind of fun questions. My favorite shortcut in Excel. Probably Ctrl T. I love my cable. If not that. Control C, control V. Favorite function or formula? Oh, this is a tough one. I'm going to go with unique. I really just love unique. Although I'm excited by Group By. Group By is really fun. The new Group By and Pivot By. So I hope you guys have enjoyed this podcast as I told you my story. I've answered rapid fire, some trends, a little bit of humor. I'm going to close by saying, I'm really excited for 25, and I would love to hear more from you, the guest. If you reach out to me with a guest you have in mind, or reach out to me with some questions I should ask, I would love that I've added questions of people have given me, and I want to keep asking more and more questions that you give me. I want to involve you more. So feel free to reach out with people I should interview with. Questions you have with ideas. Questions you want me to answer on the show. All of the above. And let's make 2025 the best year yet. So thanks for joining me and have a great new year.
[00:28:54] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Financial Modelers Corner was brought to you by the Financial Modeling Institute. This year I completed the Advanced Financial Modeler certification and it made me a better financial model. What are you waiting for? Visit FMI at www.fminstitute.com/podcast and use Code Podcast to save 15% when you enroll in one of the accreditations today.