Transforming Excel Competitions into Million-Dollar Events with Andrew Grigolyunovich

Written By Paul Barnhurst

This episode takes you to the heart of the Financial Modeling World Cup (FMWC) 2024, hosted at the HyperX Gaming Arena in Las Vegas. Known as the "Excel Esports Championship," this unique event blends competitive financial modeling with the energy of live sports entertainment. From electric arenas to engaging case competitions, discover how Excel enthusiasts and world-class modelers push the boundaries of what's possible in financial modeling.

This episode features an exceptional lineup of guests, including Andrew Grigolyunovich, founder of the Financial Modeling World Cup and a pioneer in turning financial modeling into an esport; Michael Jarman, the 2024 FMWC World Champion known for his innovative modeling techniques and leadership at Operis; Giles Male, a commentator and self-proclaimed “Most Humble MVP”. Klinsmann Langhanz, founder of FMWC Brasil and a passionate advocate for Excel training and community-building; and appearances from Danielle Stein Fairhurst and Jaq Kennedy.

Expect to Learn:

  • How the FMWC is transforming financial modeling into an exciting esport.

  • Insights from top modelers on preparing for high-pressure competitions.

  • The role of networking and community in fostering innovation and growth in the Excel world.

  • Practical advice for improving financial modeling skills through competitions.

  • Behind-the-scenes from the HyperX Arena, including hilarious moments.


Here are a few quotes from this episode:

  • "Financial modeling competitions make you better at work and expand your career horizons." - Andrew Grigolyunovich

  • "The FMWC community is about helping each other, not tearing each other down." - Giles Male

  • "The unthinkable becomes possible when you network and collaborate." - Klinsmann Langhanz


With the Financial Modeling World Cup 2024, we've seen how Excel has grown from a business tool to the centerpiece of a thriving global community. From the inspiring vision of Andrew Grigolyunovich to the insights of world champion Michael Jarman, this event celebrates the art, science, and camaraderie of financial modeling.


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In today’s episode:
[00:01:42] - Host Paul Barnhurst sets the stage
[00:03:59] - A recap of the event's atmosphere
[00:07:13] - Interview: Andrew Grigolyunovich
[00:12:14] - Vision for the Future of FMWC
[00:22:54] - Creating FMWC Case Studies
[00:34:13] - Michael Jarman's Journey
[00:49:50] - Commentary with Giles Male
[00:56:22] - Jaq Kennedy and Danielle Stein Fairhurst
[00:58:24] - Interview: Klinsmann Langhanz
[01:08:38] - Closing Thoughts 


Full Show Transcript
[00:01:42] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Welcome to this week's episode of the Financial Modelers Corner. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&A Guy. The Financial Modelers Corner brings you the art and science of financial modeling With distinguished guests around the globe. This week we have a special episode from the Financial Modeling World Cup, an event everyone should attend at least once if they get the chance. It really is unique. But before we jump into the episode, I want to thank my sponsor, the Financial Modeling Institute. FMI offers the most respected accreditations in financial modeling. That's why I did the Advanced Financial Modeler, and I'm a better financial modeler for it. And you should look to do it too. All right, let's jump into the episode. I was in Vegas for several days. It started out with a road trip. Before that, Giles Male, the self-proclaimed most humble MVP in the world. Well, he said, hey, let's make a road trip to Vegas. So he flew into Salt Lake. We spent the day seeing fluffy cows, having a little bit of fun, making bread, all kinds of unique things. Then Oz.


[00:02:56] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Mr. Excel. Mr. Power query. We love Oz. Oz du Soleil. He came up and we did a road trip together. Down to Vegas. That will be on Giles Channel. The road to Vegas. He's creating a video for that. So we'll share that when it's available. But today what I want to do is I want to go through several different clips that I received from Vegas. I have a number of different guests, and before I jump into that, I'm just going to talk a little bit about the event. So the event was really amazing. The arena was electric, starting with the arena, again going back to Giles, Giles created a song. He made all the lyrics for the Financial Modeling World Cup, and they actually took a song and played it on stage, ESPN everything. So I'm going to go ahead here and play a short little clip of it. You'll also notice the music in our trailers and kind of throughout the episode where it makes sense. So I'm going to go ahead and roll about a 42nd clip, let you listen to the little music.


[00:04:09] FMWC 2024 song: That everyone seems to know the score. They've seen Andrew do it all before. They just know they're so sure. But Dim is here to even the score. It's the Excel World championship. Who is going to win? It's the Excel World Championship. Who's going in the spreadsheet bin?


[00:04:52] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Wasn't that some fun music? You can find the whole song out on Giles LinkedIn, I believe. You can see it if you want. Alrighty. Some other things. Michael Jarman won the event. He's from the UK and then he currently lives in Canada. He came in first this year in the Excel Esports. The college competition was a guy by the name of Benjamin Weber. He came in first and then we also had the teen competition as well. And so it was amazing to watch all these different people in addition to the Excel Esports, which is the logic what you see on TV. There's also a financial modeling competition that goes on throughout the year, and they awarded Dim early the first place for that, for the work he did on the financial model. A few other things I'll say is the event has two and a half days chock full of training, and we'll have some different people who presented at. We had things such as dynamic arrays, Power Query, Dashboards, copilot, Python and so much more. World class people were providing training. If you get the opportunity to attend, I highly recommend it. The networking, the training and then the event. You're truly I competed, had a little bit of fun competing, didn't do very well in the last chance, but I did it because I was there for the experience and I'd love to compete more. If you want to get better at Excel, can the training compete in these events? It's a great way to improve your skills and to really become an expert at Excel.


[00:06:23] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I also managed to fall asleep. You'll get to see an image of that, so I encourage you, if you can, to watch the video of this episode. You can also listen to audio, but there are some fun little images throughout it with the trailer and the event. What happened is it was the first night: the semis, really tired. They've been talking to some people, sit down for a minute, started to fall asleep, had only been asleep a couple minutes. And of course Katrina on stage that works for FMWC. Caught a picture of it and sent it to everybody in the event with me snoring, so they were probably the most embarrassing moment. All right. On to the clips we have for you today. First one is going to be Andrew. Andrew is from Latvia and he is the founder of the Financial Modeling World Cup. Andrew G. A great guy. We'll have him role as their first interview. So we're going to go ahead and roll that clip. All right. Super excited here for this next guest. I have the founder of the Financial Modeling World Cup, a master financial modeler. Super smart guy coming to us today Andrew. And I'm going to let Andrew say his last name because I seem to always butcher it.


[00:07:31] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Yeah, it's Gregolyunovich. Andrew Gregolyunovich. As easy as that. 


[00:07:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Got it. I'll get there on that one. I'm going to get it. Yeah, I go with Andrew. So we're going to start by asking some questions about your trip. You just got back from Vegas, so, you know, I know you run. Look, said the Financial Modeling World Cup. But running that for a couple of years. How did you originally get involved? I know you used to compete. How did you get involved in the modeling competitions?


[00:07:59] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Yeah. I mean like I have like a 20 year plus background in finance. So I've been doing financial modeling back since the days it was not even called like financial modeling. I first encountered this term like maybe like in early 20 tens, but the first models were created in 2001. So that's when I started to learn Excel, learn finance, graduated from the school, got my CFA charter, and yeah, also got a good job right from the start. You know, like Latvia was an emerging country back then and you could really get high at the age of 21. Just thanks to my good education, Western type education, I was able to get the CFO position in a large company with retail companies, 70 locations, Several hundred people working there, and I was one of two candidates out of several hundreds who were able to put together a three way statement model. So that kind of was, you know, and the whole country was very young by that. Like our biggest bank was run by a bunch of 25 year olds. So and at one point so, by 2010, I found my own consulting company. I was doing the outsource CFO consulting, budget modeling, like a lot of modeling work for companies here in Latvia and also in the United States and across the world, mostly the United States. And by that time, I started to take part in the model of competition that was the predecessor, if you'd like, of the Financial World Cup. So that was an amazing competition for the players so you can solve, you know, lots of interesting, challenging tasks and learn on your way.


[00:09:37] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: But it has, you know, the drawbacks were that you basically had it only once a year. So there were like two stages per year and finals. So after that I made it finals twice, finished fifth in the 2017 competition in the world. But that was, you know, way too little for me. And also that was not streamed. The format was maybe not as exciting for the viewers. You didn't have the, you know, the crowds and the arenas and stuff. And I wanted this to be like bigger, more exciting, really, this to be an esport. So when at one point they, like the previous owners of this competition, have sold this to the new owners, and the new owners have ranked once and then discontinued, I really saw that it's going to be a good time to start my own and do it better, bigger, more frequently with all the adjustments and the improvements. Because we like when we started the Financial Modeling World Cup, we've introduced the solution models to the case studies. We've introduced the transparent ranking systems so that you see how many points you have scored and everybody has scored. It was not there in the model of and lots of other nice things. So yeah, I was a player that wanted to have more and bigger and better competitions than, you know. Now we have the competitions, but I'm not a player anymore.


[00:11:04] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. Hard to be a player when you're building cases and running the whole thing. That might be an issue if you build a case and then you're a player. Yeah.


[00:11:11] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: It's also a different mindset, honestly. Like when I get a case, I kind of see that I'm trying to solve it like very carefully, very slowly, not to lose any detail which is not what you want to do when you have only 30 minutes.


[00:11:26] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. It's a totally different mindset when you're under the pressure of a stage, especially. And you can speak to this, right? The events where you have a knockout, where every five minutes the lowest score is going out. Not only do you have to be fast, but you got to put points on the board. You can't try to solve it all at once and then just put the points at the end.


[00:11:44] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Exactly. Yeah. And that's an amazing format. Like it's a very tough format for the players, but it's such an exciting format for the viewers. So we've discussed that with some of the participants in Vegas. And yeah, they admitted that, yeah, it's tough, it's grueling, it's difficult. But we understand that it's really fun for the viewers and for the TV.


[00:12:04] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So you have to balance both. Everybody kind of gets that. So I'm curious, obviously you took over when Matloff died and started this and have built it into something bigger. But what's your ultimate goal? Where do you see this going in the future? Like, say five years from now? What would you want to see this look like? 


[00:12:22] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: I definitely see bigger and more exciting and involving even more people I don't like. You know, like, every time in my life I'm trying to plan something like, hey, in one year I'm going to be here, or in five years I'm going to be here. I reached those numbers, but that typically happens like a bit later. Yeah. So I wouldn't say like it's an exact five years. Maybe it's faster, maybe it's slower, but, I totally see that, like, even right from the start, I was saying that, like, like my vision is that at one point, I'm handing out the check to the winner of $1 million for the winner of the MEWC. And that's going to mean that these are crowds. These are big arenas because, like, you need to get some quite some sponsorship interests so that you have that type of sponsorship money. You have many more players, you have many more viewers. And that's an exciting, like a much more exciting thing. So honestly, at this point, I totally see we could be making a tour similar like in PGA tour or ATP tour in tennis or golf. Tennis, like we have, you know, different tournaments across different parts of the world. You can play, take parts, you know, educate yourself At the same time. Also, there are some money, and I see that, I was a bit hesitant at one point that like, do we really want to get like very big prize money so that the top talent gets drawn out of the economy? But then in a recent conversation, somebody persuaded me that, yeah, actually it's not a big deal because like, you will maybe draw, I don't know, like 5 or 10 people out of the economy, the real economy. Right. But at the same time you're going to make all the others so good or so better, thanks to the, you know, like attraction to that and their learning skills. That's, that's going to be the overall effect of the economy would be like very, very positive.


[00:14:13] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So sure. Yeah. No, I get it. Just like, you know, there's some people that have been drawn to poker now they play full time or other esports. And so I get what you're saying, drawing them out of maybe the modeling or financial economy where they've site full time to train for this. But at the same time, if you get ten times as many people to participate or 20 or whatever it needs to be to raise those type of sponsorships are a lot more people are learning better skills than they would without the experience. Exactly. I can see both sides of it where you have to look at it on the overall. Yes, this should be beneficial, but I could get that concern.


[00:14:46] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Yeah. And also we're going to be improving the skills across the globe because we see that like through this competition, many people from countries that let's say are not having as easy access to, let's say, you know, US type education or US way of formatting models, they can very easily get, and understand what's required there and improve the modeling skills, at home. That's exactly what happened to me back in 2016, 2017, when I was a player for Roblox. And this is what we're giving back to the community at this point as well.


[00:15:23] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I've heard from so many people like, Dim, Dim Early, right. He commented on my podcast, my first episodes. I asked him being a world champion. What that's done for you. And he goes from a recognition standpoint, not really anything. You know, people don't be like, hey, there's so-and-so. Like they would do with the Michael Jordan. But he goes from a work standpoint of being much better at building models. It's been tremendously valuable. And I've had others say similar things that it just makes them much better Excel. I mean, I've only done a couple cases, just been busy building my business and haven't dedicated the time. But even from just doing a few, I can see how much it will help to just study it. And it's a great way to learn and practice cases. I mean, there's obviously other ways you can get really good, but it's a great way out there. So I really like that. I'm curious for the whole competition from the week in Vegas. Do you have a favorite memory, something that really stuck out to you? Like just kind of that moment you're like, wow, this is really happening.


[00:16:18] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Probably like one of the moments was like, you know, there's a lot of different, like, moving parts in this thing and like, especially in the arena and probably at one point towards the finals when we kind of understood that, okay, all the technical glitches are all caught up and we going to have smooth finals and everything looks good. That was like laughter. And that was what kind of. I remember another thing that basically every time I saw Annalise, our CEO, who's the main person responsible for the tech setup, every time I saw him on the arena, that meant that, you know, something? Something's going wrong. There is a fire. And by that time he came into the room, I have this, you know, the awkward face expression like, hey, what? What happened again? He said, no, I think all is good. I said, okay, wow, that's that's the feeling. So yeah. And probably my favorites. My very favorite part of the whole thing is when, you know, like, the whole thing is over the finalists, like the cameras are off. And now you know that. Well, right now it's officially done. Sealed. And you can go celebrate.


[00:17:38] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, and I know there was plenty of celebrating going on, and a lot of people stayed up all night, you know, just visiting and celebrating the moment. So that was fun to watch.


[00:17:48] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: So for those who have not been there, I would I have to admit that it was all very, you know, nobody got into trouble or into something like it was very, you know, on a good level of celebration. Yeah.


[00:18:01] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Everybody had fun, but everybody behaved responsibly. It wasn't like, yeah, they got arrested or there was a fight or because. Yeah. You think Vegas sometimes thinks partying all night, like, okay, what happened? But you know, the Excel crowd is what I've seen. And I'd love to get your thoughts. Just thinking of the Excel crowd in the community. It's one of the best communities I've seen. Everybody's competitive. They want to win, you know, and they really want to win. But you can see there. They support each other. First is what I've seen. They're there to help each other. They'll help anyone, you know. They'll give things they congratulate. I haven't seen anyone, like, getting mad at another competitor or that, you know, kind of talking trash in a negative way. Have you felt any of that in the competition? It feels like it's just a really tight knit community, and that speaks volumes to the people and the work you've done. 


[00:18:52] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: It's an amazing community. I really have only compliments to the people inside the community. Just one simple example that's probably going to, you know, show how good the people are. Last year, you might recall that, at one point in the semifinals, we have accidentally, you know, excluded, eliminated the wrong player, which was Andrew, who eventually became the champion. Right. So what happened there was that he sold like his. He scored something like 500 points within the first five minutes, but it was only one bonus point that was actually going through due to the connection issues or something. So basically his model, his computer stopped connecting to the main server and we were not getting his scores. So what happened was we eliminated him. And then in the middle of the round, we see that, okay, he should not have been eliminated. There should be somebody else. And now we're facing this situation where we have only eight spots, you know, on the stage, and we have the other eight finalists who are sitting there and waiting to play. And basically what happened there, they all stood up and said, like, hey, you can't really you need to do something. You need to get Andrew back.


[00:20:05] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: That's unfair. Because of course for us it would be like, okay, say, oh sorry, sorry, Andrew, come on in. Next year we're going to pay you a free participation or something. That's not going to happen. Right? So they really all stood up for Andrew and said like, no, we need to find the ways to get him back. And we were really thinking on our feet. And that was in quite a tough way to set the things up. But we did that and we got Andrew back on the stage. And, the person who scored fourth place in his semifinal, which appeared to be Peter Shaw. He was into the, you know, one of those game bots, you know, next to the stage. And amazingly, Peter did a good job. He scored fourth overall at the end of the day. So he improved his position quite well. But my main takeaway there is that those guys, they were like Andrew was one of the main competitors for that, right? So they should be happy to get him kicked out even by a mistake. But no, they basically stood up for him and got him back. And then Andrew beat them all.


[00:21:08] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So yeah, I remember that well from last year. And you know, it was quite a long delay. And you talking to everybody and, you know, coming to an agreement. And I thought that was great to see because I do very much remember that if someone's listening to us chat here or listening to these episodes, why should they consider competing in this event? What's the benefit for the average user? Because most people aren't going to win a world championship. Most people just aren't going to put in that time or get to that level. Some might. But most, why should they do it? What's the benefit of doing this event?


[00:21:43] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: The main thing that's going to be learning. Training in a very fun and exciting way so you get exposed to an exciting problems, unusual problems you're not going to face in real life. And you will need to look for unusual ways to solve them. And you'll probably score some points, especially if you're a novice player. You're going to score some points. You're going to be able to solve the whole thing. But then you start looking around and say, how did this thing and that thing and Andrew did this and that, and the world champion, Michael Jarman, he did it in another way. And those guys they all post maybe except Michael, by the way. They do have their YouTube channels and they show their solutions. So you start learning and that's an exciting way to learn quite advanced features of Excel actually. And that's going to make you better at work. So why not.


[00:22:35] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Great point. And I agree with you. I think there's a lot of benefits. I tell people all the time they should compete. And you know, my goal long term is to free up some time so I can compete more. So I totally understand that before we go to a rapid fire that I like to ask every guest. It's kind of a fun section I'll talk about in a minute. I just want to ask you one more question. What's the process like when you create a case, you help create the case for the finals, which is around World of Warcraft with David Fortin. What's that process like of creating a case?


[00:23:06] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: So the process, when you collaborate with someone from like David, that's quite different from like let's rather an exception. So maybe I could like like a typical process.


[00:23:22] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Normal process, not so much collaborating. But what's it typically like when you create a case?


[00:23:26] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Yeah, I'll talk about the typical one, but then I'll get back to the collaboration because it's amazing, an amazing experience. So typically you just think of like, you know, you bump into ideas of what could be a nice, interesting case study based on, you know, like something, on a daily life or you spot some interesting game, or you spot some interesting problem that needs to be solved. Like, really like when I was flying back from Vegas, my flight was like, Vegas to LA, LA to Copenhagen, then Copenhagen to Riga. And we were on the same flight with Anders from Denmark on the two flights. So basically while we were sitting in the airport waiting for the next flight to Copenhagen, we discussed like his work and what he does and stuff. And basically he came up with a case that he almost wrote the like, at least the case outline right there, like in the airport while waiting. So he inspired like that. I know other people they got inspired by, you know, just I would imagine that, there was a case about treasure hunts underwater. So I would imagine the author was inspired by the, you know, probably scuba diving or maybe others, like I got sometimes inspired by, you know, just looking to different Unicode symbols, like and thinking of what could be done there with those Unicode symbols.


[00:24:57] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: So and when you have the case idea, you just try to lay it out to create some different, you know, sections. So you start with a solution model first, and then you just try to get this, to get to the case study. So the main idea is to get the case. Case idea with David Fortin for the World of Warcraft this year. And there was a Neil Staffer from Eve online last year. It was a different story. So there it was amazing that we like I'm not a player for any of these games. They are not case writers. They haven't competed in this competition. So essentially like our roles with David were like he was explaining what World of Warcraft is about. I was giving some ideas like, hey, how could we wrap that in like, like a level or so? And then he was trying to put me in like instructions like, hey, this is how the leveling up works in World of Warcraft. This is how quests work in World of Warcraft. And I was putting that, you know, as a case that's suitable for Excel Esports. And he was getting me the feedback and when everything was ready. We also needed to confirm that with Blizzard. Excited by the case. So yeah.


[00:26:16] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I can see where that's really different when you have someone kind of explaining the game and you're trying to convert it to a case versus having your own idea and just kind of running with it, so to speak.


[00:26:25] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: It's a much longer time commitment. So essentially I can write like a case maybe in a day or two days. The case for the files, that typically takes a month or a month of work.


[00:26:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I believe that that makes sense. All right. So I'm going to let you go here in a few minutes. But we first have what's called a rapid fire section. So these are common questions I'll ask financial modelers. And there's a couple caveats. One, you can't give me that famous answer of it depends. You have to pick yes or no. And then at the end if there's 1 or 2 you're like, but I want to add a little context. You can elaborate on the end on 1 or 2 of your most passionate about, because some of them you probably don't care. Some of you have a really strong opinion, a little bit of everything, so I'll go through them quickly. It's just kind of rapid fire answers. This is all around traditional financial modeling, so not case competition. Think you're building a model for a customer or you're a financial modeler working in finance. So first one circular references and models. Yes or no. Yes VBA and models yes or no. Yes. You prefer a horizontal. So multiple sheets are vertical. Kind of stacking it all in one sheet horizontal. All right. Dynamic arrays and models. Yes or no.


[00:27:39] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Yes.


[00:27:40] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Fully dynamic models. So 100% dynamic where you're using dynamic arrays and lambdas.


[00:27:47] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: It depends. It could be a very complicated rather. Yes. But sometimes it depends. Yeah.


[00:27:53] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah that works. External workbook links and models. Yes or no. No. That's usually the answer I get. Some people think no please. Named ranges. Yes or no?


[00:28:05] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Rather no. I'm working without them.


[00:28:09] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Do you follow a formal standards like Fast or smart, or do you have an actual formal standard you follow when you're modeling. FMI standards? Okay. Yep. Love that. I know they have some general standards there. So do you think financial modelers should be learning Python in Excel?


[00:28:27] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Not obligatory.


[00:28:28] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Okay. How about a Power query?


[00:28:31] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Again not obligatory because if you're forecasting then you don't really need it that much.


[00:28:39] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Okay. What about power BI.


[00:28:41] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Again for reporting. Yes. For forecasting no.


[00:28:46] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Makes sense I could see it on the reporting but on the forecasting that makes sense to me. Do you think Excel will ever die?


[00:28:52] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Well, we're all going to die at one point, so. But probably Excel is gonna live longer than most of us.


[00:28:59] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So not any time soon, but eventually.


[00:29:03] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: That's a great answer. Yeah. 


[00:29:05] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. Do you think AI will build the models for us in the future?


[00:29:10] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Probably, yes.


[00:29:11] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And then just a couple more. We're just about done. Do you believe financial models are the number one corporate decision making tool?


[00:29:19] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Yes, but it should. The best results are obtained when you put basically your intuition on top of the model. So if there is a decision maker who needs to make the decision, you'd rather have the model done, but then you basically have your gut feeling to say, do you really believe those numbers?


[00:29:38] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I agree, you need that human portion to it. All right. So which financial statement do you think is most important for financial modelers to understand PNL balance sheet or cash flow statement?


[00:29:51] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: All of them and none of them. The most important is that they actually balance out.


[00:29:55] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I like that answer. We haven't had that one yet. All right. What's your favorite lookup function in Excel?


[00:30:01] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Honestly, don't kick me out of this thing, but it's Vlookup.


[00:30:04] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And that's okay. You know Oz. Oz will always say Vlookup is like, this isn't a religion. This isn't a war. Use what works for you. If it works and you like it.


[00:30:15] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: That's a very fast formula. That's the fastest of all. It has the least number of components. And if you do that just for some quick calculations, it's all good. I'm not going to put. I'm not putting Vlookup for client models, but if I need to get something quickly done in my model, I'm using Vlookup. But please the community. That's kind of like a bad style, as if I'm, I don't know, like whatever.


[00:30:39] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I guarantee you we won't kick you out of the community for saying vlookup. I'm not one of those that what's wrong with you? You use Vlookup. Like I say, use what works for you.


[00:30:48] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: That was a confession from my side.


[00:30:51] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Thank you for that deep confession. I'm going to go put that on LinkedIn right now. I can't believe that, Andrew. I'm just kidding.


[00:30:57] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Exactly. Well, you can do like. Hey, Andrew, a confession by Andrew can he really be considered a financial modeler? He needs to, I don't know, like, yeah.


[00:31:06] Host: Paul Barnhurst: There might be there, might be a poll for that. I'll come up with something fun and then you can also share it with your financial modeling World Cup psych. We'll see if we can have some fun with it. So I'll come up with something there. I'm sure we'll probably show up in the trailer as well for this episode, but, any of those you want to elaborate any more on any answers where you're like, hey, I want to provide a little more context.


[00:31:28] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: I think there was a question about dynamic or fully dynamic. Yeah.


[00:31:33] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Fully dynamic. So should you be building fully dynamic models.


[00:31:37] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: At one point, like, I'm just recalling a scenario from one of the client models. So basically there was a very complex model, a big one, and they wanted to have like a huge number of scenarios. So basically the only way to do that was to basically have, a number of tabs where you basically store those scenarios. And I did it with macros where I had like scenario, save scenario. Do different things. So that's not really a fluid dynamic model. But you basically cut and paste that and save that. Also, there are other models like for example, if you have a like a big database, or not as big, but like, you know, like there are companies, we've got quite a few, let's say loan processing companies who are doing their PD calculations, probability of default calculations based on the hope of portfolio they have. And they're doing that in Excel. And that's basically gonna take, you know, a lot of calculations. So the approach for them is that they only leave the formula in the first row and then just paste values and redo that. So this is not fully, you know, dynamic. But if they did that the model would be you know calculating forever.


[00:32:57] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. Makes sense. So appreciate that elaboration there. Appreciate you joining me. You know, people, if you want to get a hold of Andrew, you can find him on LinkedIn. There's the financial modeling World Cup. You know, you can find the website. You can find the LinkedIn page. I think you're, what, about 100,000 followers now, or maybe even more on your LinkedIn page.


[00:33:18] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: And some more.


[00:33:19] Host: Paul Barnhurst: On the financial modeling World Cup.


[00:33:21] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: You know, it's 120,000 people. Okay.


[00:33:24] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, that's what I remember. You'd past 100. So, yeah, a lot of great ways to follow you guys. Any last thoughts or anything you want to tell the audience?


[00:33:32] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Yeah. Sign up for the Financial Modeling World Cup. Sign up for the Microsoft Excel world Championship, learn, train, compete and see you in Las Vegas.


[00:33:41] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Love it. So I'll see you in Vegas next year as well. Thank you for carving out a few minutes. Andrew.


[00:33:47] Guest 1: Andrew Grigolyunovich: Amazing. Thank you so much, Paul. Thank you for having me.


[00:33:50] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yep. You're welcome. What a great interview we had with Andrew. I love what he's done. He has turned this event. This competition into so much more than anyone thought it could be live streaming it, getting it on ESPN, hosting it in a HyperX gaming arena. It's really amazing to watch the energy and how it comes alive, so we enjoy getting to chat with him. Next, we're going to chat with this year's world champion, Michael Jarman. Fabulous modeler, fabulous person. Had a great interview with him. We had some fun and yet it was a surprise he won. As he said he thought he was competitive. He'd have a chance but didn't think he'd win it all. So he did an amazing job. He even won a WWF style belt that he was wearing with pride. I think six in the morning the next day as he celebrating. All right. So we're going to roll that clip. All right. So I'm here with Michael who's originally from the UK but now lives in Toronto. So why don't we start with having you tell us a little bit about yourself.


[00:34:54] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Yeah. So , Michael Jarman, I'm the head of model development at opera's, so I sort of oversee sort of building a financial models for generally sort of project finance and infrastructure transactions. And I'm here in Vegas to compete and hopefully win.


[00:35:09] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So you're not here in Vegas just to lose a bunch of money?


[00:35:11] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: No, no, I'm actually like I don't mind sort of like poker with friends, but I think sort of yeah. Like roulette is a fool's game isn't it? You never win.


[00:35:19] 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.


[00:36:25] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So you understand statistics is what you're telling me.


[00:36:28] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: I think you need to understand statistics to look at. I mean like also that valid point.


[00:36:32] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It doesn't take a lot of roulette.


[00:36:33] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Wheels here, right? They absolutely because like you have zero almost roulette wheels and then America there's double zero. So here there's A000. So I just think it's outrageous. So yeah. No, it's a mug's game.


[00:36:43] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Totally get it. All right. So you do the modeling for us. Yeah. And you're in Toronto. How did you get involved in these games? Like, what made you think, hey, I'm going to go compete in some Excel competition and put a bunch of stuff in a spreadsheet and hope I win.


[00:36:57] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Yeah, so when I started off, which was just over ten years ago now, I remember my first ever project was managed by Hilary Smart, who at the time was the reigning world champion.


[00:37:09] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I know she won it once I'd heard.


[00:37:11] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Yeah, yeah. So she won it in 2013. And I was like, oh my God. Like, my manager is my world champion at my job. That's intimidating. But yeah, she's very friendly and sort of got talking about it and, you know, got involved with the old model off in 2017, which is sort of when I thought I'd be able to have a good crack at it. I came third that year, which I was quite shocked by, and then won the year after, and then Muddle Off went away and sort of Andrews, sort of took over the reins. And now for some reason, we're in Las Vegas.


[00:37:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And how do you like having it in Vegas?


[00:37:39] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: I think like the arena and like the production is like so cool, like the fact that, like, you know, you're walking like you run down the hype tunnel, as cliche as it is, and then you're walking on stage and you're like the fact it's televised. Like, I think that's all incredible. Vegas. I do not like it.


[00:37:53] Host: Paul Barnhurst: But I'm not a huge Vegas person, so I like it. But what was it like last year? I know, so I'm going to kind of set the stage for those who didn't see go watch the video, but we see everybody running down the stage. It's this esports arena. You hear people cheering, big old screens, super nice computers. What was that moment like for you having competed before and being like, I'm in this arena with people cheering, like, did you ever imagine that's what it would be like to go work on a spreadsheet?


[00:38:19] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: No. Like when Andrew said he was going to start streaming this whole thing, I thought he was insane. Like, nobody's going to ever want to watch this. And the fact that it's now televised is even more insane. But as for doing it like it the first round, especially like luckily the first round really suited me, but the first five minutes was just like a blur of like, just everything that you thought you knew about spreadsheets. You just sort of forgot because you know you're there. And the limelight is all quite new for most of us. So I'm hoping this year, you know, there are a lot of returning people, but some of the fear will be new and maybe, you know, that sort of couple of minutes, if they have the rabbit in the headlights moment, will give me a, you know, a bit of advantage because it's going to be a really tough field this year. It will be a tough final.


[00:38:59] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, there's a big group of sure will be a challenge. So what got you into modeling? Why financial modeling. How did that become your career?


[00:39:05] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: So many stupid story.


[00:39:08] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That makes for a good podcasting. So the stupider, the better.


[00:39:12] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: So I was going to the last year of my degree. I did economics at Cambridge and had absolutely no idea why I wanted to do it. It was maybe something to do with finance. So I was going down like the Careers service at Cambridge, sort of like, you know, literally alphabetical order applying for jobs. No idea what I'm doing. My mate was doing this as well as finance, but he was far, far ahead of me. And he sort of found opera and was like, yeah, there's this really looks like it's up your street. I said, oh, it does sound interesting. I'd always liked a spreadsheet, so I applied, turned up, got the job, and yeah, I never looked back. I've sort of it's a bit.


[00:39:44] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Like the same place your whole career, right? 


[00:39:46] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: I started there from Australia, from Scare School and I've been there.


[00:39:49] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And so UK and then Toronto. Yeah.


[00:39:52] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: So I started in the London office and moved over to Toronto about seven years ago. Fun.


[00:39:56] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. So this is a fun question. I think I asked you this last time because for those who don't know, this is our second recording because, well, I'm a professional. We'll leave it at that. What's the most unique thing you've ever built in Excel like? Kind of funny. Funniest model. Not necessarily for work.


[00:40:11] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Yeah, so I don't build that many spreadsheets outside of, I mean, between work and then doing all this competitive stuff. I think that is more than a spreadsheets for most people.


[00:40:21] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I would hope so.


[00:40:22] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: I do remember at university, like building an overly complicated spreadsheet for our FIFA league. Yes, FIFA, the video game. And I was really bad at FIFA and had lost so many games and it was done like by like, you know, points per game because people played a different amount and I lost so much that I had no hope of being at the bottom. So I made some sort of complicated thing that weighted games further back less so I could maybe improve and catch up, which didn't really help. But maybe if I spend less time spreadsheeting, I would have.


[00:40:48] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Been worth a try. Yeah, waiting in the back, going okay, forget about the past. I'm better now. Unfortunately, everybody else got better throughout the season. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. So worst financial model you've ever seen? This is one question we ask usually all our guests. I know you have a horror story. Yeah.


[00:41:07] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: I mean, I've seen some absolute shockers or probably obviously I can't know who it is, but it was all names. It was a model that was built to model the operating costs of some roads, but in like, excruciating detail. But all the model really did was sort of, you know, price, times, quantity, but then retimed every single cash flow about six times, all of them slightly differently and incorrectly. And it was just such an irony to it. And, you know, the classic thing of we'll have 12 months of workings and then annual summary, then a gap from 12 months of working Danielleson Gap, and at no point the person building it decided that would be a bad idea. So yeah, it's probably the worst model I've seen. Some, you know, some truly nasty triple nested vlookups or something. But yeah.


[00:41:55] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I'm sure she's seen some nasty stuff. I'm sure you've seen some hard coded a little bit of everything. You know.


[00:42:01] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: That doesn't even faze me anymore.


[00:42:02] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. All right, another hard code. I believe it, like how many models you've done. All right, so we're going to do the rapid fire section now. Yep. You know how this works. We've laid the ground rules. No. It depends yes or no. At the end you can elaborate circular references and models. No VVA yeah. Dynamic arrays. Yeah. Fully dynamic models.


[00:42:24] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: What's all the timelines? Yeah.


[00:42:26] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Timelines. Everything. So if you adjust anything the whole model updates.


[00:42:29] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: We're not there yet. It doesn't work.


[00:42:30] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. It's extremely hard to make. Yeah. Yep. Agreed. All right. Will AI build the models for us in the future? 


[00:42:37] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: It'll help. But you still need someone to look over them.


[00:42:38] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So you're saying we're still important? The robots won't do everything for us.


[00:42:42] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: No, no, they'll help a lot. And I think certainly, you know, if you're an entry level model at the moment, like you need to sort of pick it up pretty quickly because we're going to, we're already approaching the gap where like an AI could replicate somebody straight out of school. So, you know, you need to sort of really start picking stuff up quickly I think. Yeah.


[00:43:01] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So Excel will never die. We got an AI. Let's see which one do I want to ask next most important financial statement, a balance sheet or cash flow. Cash flow. And what did you say last time about someone who's selecting PNL.


[00:43:14] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Yeah, I mean, so balance sheet, like, they're fine. No qualms with them, like PNL. It just shows you how many accountants you've hired. I think so.


[00:43:24] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You need to talk to David Fortin, who said PNL earlier today. I mean, just kidding.


[00:43:30] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Next time you want to. You think the PNL is important? I think you're like, you know, if you're hard up for cash and you go to the bank, you need to pay the rent, you go, oh, I haven't got any money, but I can pay you with these profits of these revenues I recognized. You let me know how far you go. Yeah.


[00:43:42] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So one of my favorite episodes I did, the guy was like, I had a manager that always said. It's like cash is king. Yeah. He goes, you can't pay your bills with an IOU. Can't pay your vendors with an IOU. You can't run a business with an IOU. Yeah, you either have cash or you don't have a business. Yeah.


[00:44:00] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: And yeah, I think cashflow, you know, tells you how you got there. And balance sheet shows you where you are. So from those two, it's pretty close. It depends what you want to see. But yeah sure.


[00:44:07] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And I did that in that we had a great debate where we had everybody debate it. We had one person PNL balance sheet cash flow, and it was fun watching them all kind of argue. So I totally get it. And it's interesting. Most people say cash flow. I'm a balance sheet, but totally get that one. All right, so we got a few more to run through. Should financial modelers learn Power Query?


[00:44:26] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: I don't think they need to. I think, I mean, I know how to open it, and that's about it. I don't want to sit here and being Luddite and be like, you shouldn't learn something, obviously, but Expert.


[00:44:38] Host: Paul Barnhurst: But just to be a good model, you think it's something they have to learn? Kind of. The answer is no. What about power BI?


[00:44:44] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: No, I don't think so. Similar sort of reason. I think for me, I know power BI can do a lot of really powerful things. But it is a better visualization tool. And for me, like in the modeling, I do, I think a correct answer that looks a bit ugly is much better than a wrong answer that looks so pretty it must be right.


[00:45:04] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Python and Excel.


[00:45:06] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: I don't know Python, I don't.


[00:45:08] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I think that answers that question, at least for now. Our financial model is the number one corporate decision making tool.


[00:45:14] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Yeah, I remember that. That was a tough one. I think they can be. Yes.


[00:45:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Okay. Oh we'll go with that. Yeah. Everybody kind of thinks about it, but some say yes immediately. Some say no. But you have some thought. My favorite answer was someone said no, it's politics.


[00:45:31] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: But that's a very good point. I think if you're making an important decision, you haven't built a model. That is problematic, but you should consider other things as well.


[00:45:40] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Agreed. If you're 100% just relying on what the model told you, that's a bad idea. Yeah, yeah. And if you were ignoring the model 100%, that's a bad idea as well.


[00:45:48] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Yeah, it's the toughest, I think one of the quickfire ones, I think it depends, is like, you should do both.


[00:45:53] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. Agree with you. And that's why these questions are the way they are because there's nuance to all of them. Your favorite lookup function.


[00:46:00] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: It used to be index match. I'm getting more ex lookup now, although I'm still so like in my muscle memory that, you know, I go to look up something, but I start with the array that I'm trying to return rather than the thing I'm trying to look up. Yeah, I totally.


[00:46:15] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Seven months with Xlookup. Every so often I would throw in a Vlookup column and like two of like, wait wrong formula. Yeah, yeah. Do you do nested ex lookups? Have you done that?


[00:46:25] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: I think I might have done one once where you do.


[00:46:27] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Like an index match match, you can do the nested xlookup.


[00:46:30] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Oh yeah. But one of my lambdas which I probably won't use because it's very unstable. There's one line of the lap that I think has an index with three of the nest nested indexes and a matching, which I thought was funny.


[00:46:42] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Oh, fun. Yeah. Because you want to say, all right. If someone wants to get better at Excel, better at financial modeling, what advice would you give them? Let's start with Excel. Then we'll do modeling.


[00:46:53] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Yeah. So I think with Excel itself, I think actually like this competition is a great way of learning.


[00:47:01] Host: Paul Barnhurst: 100% agree. Come to Vegas next year.


[00:47:03] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Yeah, absolutely. Like get involved in the road to Las Vegas battles because you can do those online. And I think, you know, even someone like myself like financial modeling for like pretty complex transactions. We do. But it's only like a handful of formulas. I haven't really needed to use. It's more knowing how to use them. Whereas the sort of diversity of cases we get with the competition, it's like you learn so much more about Excel. I mean, I never have had to, in my job, manipulate a text string, particularly to do much.


[00:47:32] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I mean, you have to do a bunch of maps and directions for your model. 


[00:47:35] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: No, I've done that. Rarely comes up. So I think, you know, just to the creativity and sort of, you know, seeing what Excel can do and like learning so much, like learning all the different functions, I think that is the best place to start.


[00:47:49] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Got it. All right. And what about modeling best thing to get better at modeling.


[00:47:52] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: So I think with modeling, the thing I always say to our new analysts is, or to anyone who really asked me this question, is it's very easy in this day and age to go online and find a load of tutorials to tell you what to do and how to do something, or you go on ChatGPT and it says how to do something. I think it's good to try and learn what you shouldn't do. Sometimes you have to learn that by trial and error. But like, you know, there's principles of best practice and there's general things that you should avoid. And if you'd only take like or you can build this deck with these formulas and doing this, but you don't have like a strong underlying principle of how you should approach these things and things that traps to avoid where if you fall into them, you're just going to have a terrible time. That is where I think people who are new to modeling new analysts in a bank, that's where they're staying up till 2 a.m. because they have no idea what they're doing, and they've not had a chance to really think about what they're doing and how they're going to approach the problem.


[00:48:48] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. So who are you betting on winning tonight?


[00:48:51] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Well, yeah. I mean, do I think I'm a lock to win? Absolutely not. Do I think I'm a favorite to win? Absolutely not. Do I think I could win? Yeah, absolutely.


[00:49:00] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And you've won before he came in second last year. Yes.


[00:49:03] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Yeah, I got a chance, but we'll see.


[00:49:05] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I'm very hopeful. Good luck. I hope it goes well for you. If someone wants to learn more about you and maybe get in touch. I think you mentioned Operis, the website, right? If you go out there and find your bio and email you from there. 


[00:49:14] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: Operis website has my bio on and in general, sort of. If you mess with me on LinkedIn, I would not claim to be the most active LinkedIn person, but I will eventually respond. So yeah, probably LinkedIn or there. Yeah, it's a professional thing. Like, yeah, you need a model building. Come to me through the website.


[00:49:29] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. Perfect. Well thank you. Appreciate it. And good luck tonight. Hope to see you holding a trophy or what was last year a big belt. Yeah I want to wear the belt.


[00:49:37] Guest 2: Michael Jarman: That's what I want to win. I want the belt.


[00:49:38] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right, well, good luck getting the belt. Thank you. All right. Thanks. Great clip from our world champion. He had no idea that he was going to win that night when we interviewed that great guest. Great person. Next up we have Giles Males. I mentioned I did the road trip with him. He was a commentator with Oz for the event. He got asked to do that last minute. We talked a little bit about our road trip. Hope you enjoy this clip. Giles is a great guy. He is the self-proclaimed most humble MVP in the world. So we're going to go ahead and roll his clip next. Mr. humble MVP Giles. Male, you announced the finals tonight. What was it like?


[00:50:19] Guest 3: Giles Male: Crazy. I mean, you know, I was doing it a few days ago. John Acampora got sick. So I got asked to step in, which, I mean, it would have been nice to do it under different circumstances. Not sure for that.


[00:50:30] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You hate that a friend is sick.


[00:50:31] Guest 3: Giles Male: Yeah. So, yeah, but it was great. It was bonkers. It was great. It was really good fun. 


[00:50:38] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Tell people what this event is like. If they've never been to something like this, what was it like? This is your first time? Was it bigger than you expected or was it what you expected? What was the experience like? 


[00:50:50] Guest 3: Giles Male: It's this sounds really cheesy, but it is about the people. So there's lots of training going on. You've got the main event, which is a bit amazing. But for me personally, I've met lots of people over the last few days that I've been talking to for years but not met, and us like we did our big road trip. We met in person before. That's been the biggest thing for me and the craziness of tonight that was to bear in mind. This is an Excel competition that was electric in there.


[00:51:16] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Isn't it crazy to think you had 1000 people in there, people screaming and cheering, you know, and we're sitting there playing with the spreadsheet.


[00:51:25] Guest 3: Giles Male: Yeah. But you know, I think for everybody Michael Jarman said it at the end with his speech. You know, we're all Excel nerds. And we probably don't find ourselves surrounded with many people like us in our normal lives. And now you're in a room with a thousand people who are all just as geeky us. So yeah, it's been a thing.


[00:51:44] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So what was the hardest part about announcing, like, you're announcing an event where you got 12 people up on stage, sometimes more, depending on which round it is. We're splitting screen to screen. What is that like? What's the hardest part? 


[00:51:58] Guest 3: Giles Male: Well, so we were co-commentating. So there's a whole production team here, you know, run a proper esports. Sure. So, you know, our job is to talk about what people are doing, which is surprisingly difficult or maybe not as surprising when they're just flicking across a spreadsheet. So I don't know, I've never done anything quite like that before, so I was just getting used to it in the end. We just had fun. So, you know, I was with Oz. Oz is crazy, Oz is Oz. So hopefully we bounced off each other. Yeah, ours is great. Yeah. 


[00:52:27] Host: Paul Barnhurst: He's crazy. He loved his dancing. And so what would you tell people who are listening to the podcast? And they're like, I want to learn more about this. What would you tell them?


[00:52:37] Guest 3: Giles Male: I mean, we first thought you can watch lots of the kind of prior finals and things like that on the FMWC YouTube page. So I look there. Dim early, and I did a free boot camp specifically to help people if you want to get into the Esports. So Excel Esports. So if you look at Dim's YouTube page, search for our boot camp and it's specifically television format.


[00:53:01] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So Dim now has three world championships. The FMWC twice in the model of. Jarmin now has two.


[00:53:09] Guest 3: Giles Male: You know it's really hard to put into perspective how good these men and women are here. I think I'm good at Excel and I can't get near these guys. They like it at a different level and Dim is right at the top of that.


[00:53:24] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So someone asked me, he goes, do you think if I practice eight hours a day, a day for the next year, I could win this? I said, no.


[00:53:31] Guest 3: Giles Male: To be honest, if you practice eight hours a day for a year, you could. You could probably get on the stage. 


[00:53:36] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That's what I said. I think you could probably get on the stage. Yeah.


[00:53:37] Guest 3: Giles Male: I just think that there are an elite group of these players that are on another level. They've just got every part of the package that you need. But also they're lovely people. Like you can go and chat to Dim and Andrew and Michael, they're, you know, they're just another part of the community.


[00:53:54] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I totally agree, this is a lot of esports. Community is toxic. Yeah. Just watching those people. They're friends. Friends first. They're competitors. But I can guarantee you every one of them would do something for somebody and risk losing this event to help out a friend. And that's what makes the community amazing.


[00:54:12] Guest 3: Giles Male: Dim and others have been doing it. You know, the Lambda topic is a big one. Dim has been shared, not just sharing his lambdas, but Putting together videos that help other people get better at them. He's helping every other potential competitor get better. He doesn't have to do that. And he might be out there now winning the competition year after year. So he said, yeah, everybody in the community.


[00:54:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So how did you get here to Vegas? I heard you had an epic road trip, a hangover scene, all of it, a knife. Tell the audience a little bit about this night.


[00:54:46] Guest 3: Giles Male: You in? So I flew to Salt Lake City, met you. We made our own flour, which was epic. Had some homemade waffles.


[00:54:54] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Did you get to see some fluffy cows?


[00:54:56] Guest 3: Giles Male: Fluffy cows?


[00:54:57] Host: Paul Barnhurst: The bison, you know, fluffy cows.


[00:55:00] Guest 3: Giles Male: Yeah. So you spent a whole day taking me around Salt Lake, which was wicked. Oz joined us and we did a six, nine hour road trip from Salt Lake to Vegas. It will be an upcoming episode of Excel on the road, and it's really like a nice story between what you're doing and I'm doing where my episode is going to take us from Salt Lake to Vegas, and then you're going to follow on the all the action from Vegas, which is wicked.


[00:55:25] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, it's going to be great. So it'll be fun to kind of tell people, put a trailer in there to kind of, hey, go watch a little bit more of the next event and I'll tell people you want to see the pre-knifing. Go watch.


[00:55:38] Guest 3: Giles Male: We'll explain the knifing.


[00:55:40] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You have to watch Giles' video to understand the knifing. That's a tease right there. That is a tease. Anything else you want to say before I let you go? To have a few more beers and party for the night?


[00:55:52] Guest 3: Giles Male: No, I just come. If you're interested in Excel and competitive Excel, just take part. And if you can get to Vegas on any year, it's worth it. This is just a community of people that will sit down and talk to anyone and say, try and get here if you can and compete.


[00:56:11] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. Well, thank you, Giles. I'll let you go. Have fun.


[00:56:14] Guest 3: Giles Male: All right.


[00:56:14] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Thanks. Hope you enjoyed that clip with Giles as much as I did. Great character. A lot of fun. Fabulous modeling. Next up we have a very brief clip. It's just a minute and a half with Jacqueline Kennedy and Danielle Stein Fairhurst, two people who attended the event. One competed, one presented. And we just talked for a brief minute about what we're seeing in the event. What it's like is it's going on and we're sitting in the HyperX arena. A lot of noise in the background, but hopefully this gives you an appreciation for how electric and fun this environment is. All right. We're going to go ahead and roll that clip. Hey Jaq who's going to win.


[00:56:51] Guest 5: Jaq Kennedy: My money's on Benny Weber.


[00:56:54] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. How's he doing? I mean.


[00:56:55] Guest 5: Jaq Kennedy: He's ranking first at the moment, but it is getting close. There's a few people kind of, you know.


[00:57:02] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And why? Why do you think, Benny, other than the fact he's in first?


[00:57:06] Guest 5: Jaq Kennedy: I mean, his scores have been phenomenal in the build up to this. He is I think the only one that's qualified that is still in the main Microsoft Excel World Championship and he is just a genuinely nice guy. He's two doors down from me in the hotel. We've been walking down together in the mornings and it's just such a chill guy.


[00:57:25] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Nice, I like it.


[00:57:28] Guest 5: Jaq Kennedy: Did you see your name on the screen?


[00:57:30] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I did see my name. I got a picture. Was your name on the screen? Danielle? 


[00:57:33] Guest 6: Danielle Stein: Yes it was. And I got a picture too. You got a picture as well? I did, yes.


[00:57:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Who do you think is going to win? 


[00:57:39] Guest 6: Danielle Stein: I don't know, but this. I can't imagine what they must be thinking about being up there with the noise and the excitement. I just think it's.


[00:57:51] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yes. Yeah. It has to be a little intimidating. Yeah.


[00:57:53] Guest 6: Danielle Stein: Yeah. And having this knockout every five minutes must just really add to the stress of, you know, I think especially.


[00:58:00] Host: Paul Barnhurst: If you're closer to the bottom right. If you're up at the top, it's not as much stress.


[00:58:04] Guest 6: Danielle Stein: Yeah. Yeah. And just having like that extra pressure of okay I've got to kind of keep up. Yeah. I can't imagine what they must be thinking right now.


[00:58:16] Guest 5: Jaq Kennedy: Look at that.


[00:58:19] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Really excited for our next guest. Hope you enjoyed that brief clip there. Next up I have about a ten minute interview with Klinsmann. Langhanz's. Love Klinsmann. Great guy you'd like to call Mr. Manual because he collects Excel manuals, spreadsheet manuals, VisiCalc, Lotus one, two, three, Quattro Pro, whatever he can get his hands on, and you study them to be a better trainer. He comes to us from Brazil. He created one of the cases that had one of the funniest moments in the event when a guy by the name of Jacob, who came in third, tilted his head sideways because he had tilted the grid in Excel for the case. So everything was kind of off center in the way it was created. You had to try to solve it, so it was kind of a funny moment. We'll go ahead and roll that clip. Great guy. Super smart. Shares a lot of really good thoughts about networking, about getting better in Excel. And again, his thoughts on rapid fire. So here we go. We're going to roll the clip. I have Klinsmann with me from Brazil. He's what I call Mr. Manual. That's going to be my nickname.


[00:59:24] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Okay okay.


[00:59:25] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So why don't we start with a little fun there? What? Why did I call you Mr. Manual?


[00:59:28] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: I mean, you're calling me Mr. Manual because I have this strange, I don't know the word in English, but I collect, like, vintage electronic spreadsheet manuals since the VisiCalc 1979. And I think it's because of that.


[00:59:46] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yes, exactly. So you collect manuals. So tell me. 1979. I heard you built. So let's start with. What are you doing here? Tell us about that. Why are you here in Vegas with me?


[00:59:56] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: I'm here in Vegas because I was invited to be a speaker to talk to the younger generation. How to prepare for the championship. I was talking about, of course, tech stuff like lambdas and stuff, but also like Networking, problem solving capabilities, personal branding. And I'm here as well because I was a competitor and I also run the local chapter of this championship in Brazil, the FMWC Brasil. I'm the founder of it, so lots of stuff.


[01:00:22] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Perfect. So you're founder of FMWC. You run your own training business?


[01:00:25] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Yeah. Of course.


[01:00:26] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So how did you get into Excel? I think you came from an engineering background. Right? Civil engineer. So tell us. Tell us a little bit about how you got into modeling in Excel.


[01:00:33] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Okay, so I'm a civil engineer, and because of that I worked on construction companies but I wasn't the construction site guy. I was always the back office guy. And I got hired because I knew Excel back in the day, like 2014, I was still in my graduation and I was into the quality department to check the goals of the departments of each construction. How were they on schedule? And as soon as the people in the company realized that I was really good at Excel in comparison to the colleagues, they moved me to the real estate department. So they're my knowledge on Excel was applied to business, like buying land, talking to investors, like soccer players, like landowners. And that's when it started.


[01:01:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Awesome. So that's how it started. And so I know you started FMWC in Brazil so people can compete on these cases right. These Excel esports and financial modeling cases. How did that come about. How did you end up doing that in Brazil and why did you do it?


[01:01:33] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Okay. First thing. Last year I was here in Vegas, the World finals, and I was the only Brazilian here last year. So I got a lot of attention from the media, like newspapers, TV shows, got to my house. And Andrew Grigolyunovich, like, the CEO of the World Championship, he got interested into that. And I was interested also in bringing the format to Brazil. So it was like me and him had this convergent thought about that. And we had a talk here in Vegas. We signed a deal here in Vegas in a bar talking about that. So that's how we started to bring the format to Brazil. So we could like show people that you can learn in a fun way. The community is awesome. Very helpful. I mean, different from other esports. Like this is Excel esports, but some other esports that have this very toxic community. It's not.


[01:02:22] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yes, I've heard about that.


[01:02:24] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Yeah. In Excel, it's not about that. I mean, you have the world champions, showing their lambda's, their formulas, how they solve things for free on YouTube. 


[01:02:33] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Well, give an example. So last year as I was recording, I tried to get Andrew and a couple others to come on talks and, you know, trash. Yeah. And none of them could do it even just fake because they're just all so nice. It's like nope. Yeah. We're just here and it's so helpful. Yeah. An example. You know, we all know. Damn. He's sharing his cases all the time. And others to share every case on YouTube what they're doing. So it's really a community about learning. Yeah. Even though we have very competitive people and that's what I love. They put learning above, you know, competition. Perfect. Even though they want to win, it's just it's fabulous to watch.


[01:03:04] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Yeah, yeah. It's great to be part of that because you can feel that here. Like  every single person here, like they're sharing. They're like talking about their problems. And we were trying to solve some problems from this random girl over here. So yeah.


[01:03:17] Host: Paul Barnhurst: On the way here, we're getting ready to rerecord, because the first time I recorded this, I didn't have sound on. Speaking of problems, I'll admit that everybody's like, wait, you do podcasting for a living and you don't know how to turn your sound on. But anyway, some girls asked us, can I do this? And we're like, well, you can, but it's going to be messy. It's not really going to work what you want. And it's probably a simple redesign. The spreadsheet, I'm sure if we saw that's what it is.


[01:03:38] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Do you have a picture?


[01:03:39] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, exactly. That's why you both like if you messages to us, we can actually look at the file. I bet in ten minutes we could tell you. Okay, if you make this change, it will work.


[01:03:46] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Probably. Yeah.


[01:03:47] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I'm pretty sure because you can almost do anything you want. It's just of how it's all so often it's designed.


[01:03:54] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Yeah.


[01:03:55] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It's amazing how critical that is. We've all seen those hideous models where you're just like, yeah, who built what?


[01:04:01] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: You did that?


[01:04:01] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So you talked to the college kids a lot about networking? Yeah. Talk about how doing this has opened up opportunities to network. You know, you got to meet Dan Bricklin.


[01:04:11] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Yeah.


[01:04:11] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Who for all those who don't know, founder of VisiCalc, which is now 45 years old. 1979. Yeah. So tell tell a little bit about networking and maybe the Dan story real quick for it.


[01:04:23] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: So I'm into the case designing thing as I run the local chapter in Brazil. And I'm also into this vintage collection thing and like mixing both worlds I thought of, well, VisiCalc turns 45 this year. It would be nice if I could like, develop a promo case, like showing what it would look like back in the day. What were the quirks of the software. So I had this idea, but I wouldn't like just to create a case and like publish it. I would like to like receive the blessing of the creator. So I thought, well, it would be interesting if I could show that to Dan Bricklin and to also Bob Frankston. They're both creators of VisiCalc. And I had that idea in June this year and I could email. Dan Bricklin, he answered me. But after that we kind of lost contact. And I thought, wow. About networking. Right. I did this post on LinkedIn and I saw people, if you can share it, like it. Comment it so we can like, reach more people. You did that. And I mean I got to Dan Bricklin again. And we had this very cool, chat session. It would have been like 30, 30 minutes, but it ended. It ended up being 70 minutes. He was so excited and enthusiastic that I was not just me, but the vintage is cool again. And that, he heard of the Microsoft Excel Word Championship. So I explained to him how did it work? So that's unbelievable. Thinkable.


[01:05:59] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Crazy.


[01:06:00] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: If it wasn't the people I got to meet to meet here last year and this year, this, I mean, with the community, that wouldn't have been possible.


[01:06:08] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, but tell us what happened on your plane ride over.


[01:06:11] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Yeah. About the networking. So, I'm from Brazil, so I flew here to the US and in the customs during. While I was waiting in the customs line, I got to meet the Brazil voice actor for Jackie Chan. He's the same guy, Jackie Chan. SpongeBob SquarePants. Goku or Kakarot from Dragon Ball? Yeah, Payne from Naruto. So he's this guy. Is this living legend? His voice is amazing, and he's a very well known person in Brazil. And if it wasn't for the Microsoft Excel World Championship, I wouldn't have been here and I wouldn't have met him in the line. So, I mean, the unthinkable way happened. That was the sentence on my slide when I showed that to the guys here. And I mean endless possibilities whenever you can. I mean, we, that use Excel or every person into technology, they tend to be like introverts. They prefer to talk to their screens than to the person beside them. So if I could give you a suggestion or an advice is try to reach out to some people. If you are an introvert, send a message on LinkedIn, on, comment on some YouTube videos. Try to get closer to people that will open doors and possibilities for you. I mean, I said that to the younger generation here and I think you should do that. You won't regret, I mean, yeah.


[01:07:34] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Totally agree. Thank you for that. We're going to do rapid fire here real quick, and then we're going to head back to the arena. Yeah. All right. So you know how this works. So no day it depends yes or no. We'll go through them quick. You can elaborate at the end. Circular references in financial models. No. VBA in financial models. Yes. External workbook links. No. Password protection?


[01:07:55] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Yes.


[01:07:55] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. Dynamic arrays.


[01:07:56] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Yes.


[01:07:57] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Fully dynamic. Like three statement financial models.


[01:08:00] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: No no no no.


[01:08:01] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So will excel ever die?


[01:08:03] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: No.


[01:08:04] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Will AI build the models for us?


[01:08:06] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Yeah.


[01:08:06] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. Should financial modelers learn Power Query?


[01:08:09] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Yes.


[01:08:10] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Power BI?


[01:08:10] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Yes.


[01:08:11] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Python in Excel.


[01:08:12] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: No.


[01:08:13] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right, there we go. Are corporate models, Financial models. The number one decision making tool.


[01:08:18] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Yeah. Of course. Okay.


[01:08:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. And then what? Your lookup function of choice.


[01:08:23] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Lookup function of choice.


[01:08:24] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Like Vlookup, Xlook up.


[01:08:27] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Index.


[01:08:29] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Index Match or index x match.


[01:08:30] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Index x match.


[01:08:31] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. We can tell your dynamic arrays guy. All right. Thank you for joining me. Loved it. Let's head over to the arena.


[01:08:38] Guest 7: Klinsmann Langhanz: Thank you very much.


[01:08:39] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Hope you enjoyed that episode. We had several different guests on Andrew, Giles, Jackie, Danielle, Michael Jarman, Klinsmann, and they were all fabulous. Loved having them on this episode and visiting with them in Vegas. Hope to see you next year at the Financial Modeling World Cup. Please come join us. Get some great training, get better at Excel Network and be with nerds like me. Let's embrace it. If you're listening to this show, you're probably a financial modeling nerd, so come have some fun and thanks for listening to this episode.


[01:09:13] 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.

Paul Barnhurst
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