We are joined by Jeff Duresky, Senior FinOps Commercial Architect, Amazon AWS. He is a finance leader who supports the cloud leader’s largest and most strategic customers – and has also held strategic FP&A roles at companies including Capital One.

“As a finance professional the more you understand cloud, the better the insights you’ll be able to drive” – Jeff Duresky

In this episode:

• Jeff’s worst budget experience (aka professional service accrual releases).

• The link between cloud financial management and FP&A

• Smart decisions related to cloud expenditures and management

• Common cost language – how to get it right

• Secrets to cloud forecasting

• Promoting the best finance and engineering team conversations around the cloud

• Finding reductions in costs for cloud users

• Core metrics to assess and unit costs (cost per gigabyte, cost per instance)

• First steps to begin forecasting cloud costs

• My biggest finance strategic moment

• The last finance thing I googled

• The importance of taking notes in a career in FP&A

The market for pet brands is enormous. Two-thirds of American households own a pet and collectively spent $136.8 billion on them in 2022. In this market, Chewy is winning the hearts of owners. The pet-food, health, and supplies company is famous for providing portraits, gifts, free food, and handwritten notes that delight pet owners. In this episode, Matthew Herbert, Chewy Director of Finance, reveals the FP&A undercoat that keeps this Fortune 500 favorite purring.

Herbert says customer service at the company is in “my opinion the strongest moat within the organization…it has its own finance arm, and it has the backing and support of technology and other resources to make it successful because we really believe that we’re here to provide a delightful experience for our customers. Pets are part of the family, and we want our customers to know that we view them that way.”

In this episode:

• How Chewy does FP&A

• What KPIs does FP&A manage at Chewy and how its set up

• Using data to help tell the story at Chewy

• How Matt overcame adversity, such as being laid off and team conflicts faced

• Leading FP&A at the fortune 500 high growth eCommerce company (i.e. Chewy)

• Secrets to effective business partnering

• Insights from 15 years of Investment Banking, Programming, Retail, Consumer Products, and eCommerce experience

• The impact of being a self-taught programmer on a career in finance

• Why finance remains the best role for strategic impact supporting C-Suite Executives

What happened when two highly-skilled Excel leaders took on the "best of the best" in the sport? Paul Barnhurst reveals the inside story when he pitted his FP&A-based Excel wits in the The Financial Modeling World Cup (FMWC). Taking the ultimate test alongside him is fellow-first timer “Excel Ninja” Ajay Patel, who teaches thousands of subscribers advanced Excel.

Giving his opnion on the two Excel jousters is Andrew Grigolyunovich, FMWC Founder and CEO of AG Capital. The trio talk Excel-at-speed, improving skills, and the functions they can't live without.

Getting to know Andrew Grigolyunovich: From being a CFO at 21 to founding the Financial Modeling World Cup

Ajay Patel (aka the Excel Ninja) a fifth degree black belt in Tang Soo Do talks his favorite Excel functions and his FMWC ultimate test

"I have been at the inception points of three companies Intuit , Netflix and Mozilla Firefox. And now I’m just trying to give back as many lessons as possible”

• Jim Cook

Jim Cook shares his front-row experience as the first finance hire at streaming giant Netflix. He reveals the finance business partnering lessons learned from supporting fellow co-founders Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings, building the company from obscurity to one of the biggest brands in the world.

How did finance at Netflix contribute to the design of the first red envelopes?

What are his lessons that can transform your FP&A?

In this episode:

• Coping with unrealistic budgets experience at fast-growing startups

• What it’s like as Finance Hire #1 at Netflix

• Rebirthing the browser market at Mozilla Firefox

• Lessons from M&A and IPO at Intuit

• Lessons to deliver blockbuster FP&A

• The FP&A as CEO

• The power of a “listening tour and finance partnership”

• Using your voice in FP&A

• What storytelling really means for a finance professional

• Two strategic finance moments that changed the game for Intuit and Mozilla

Drew Murphy nearly became a meteorologist. But he opted for a different type of forecasting, warning of impending storms as an FP&A professional. A fast-paced finance career saw him land a part role at Procter & Gamble (while studying)-his senior year saw him work 30 hours a week as a plant accountant. Following six years of FP&A at Procter & Gamble (including analysis for Gillette and Braun), he took roles at Vistaprint, Mimecraft (where he was central to their IPO) and a CFO gig. Drew then launched community FP&A Hey with his co-founder Yarty Kim . The mission of FP&A Hey is to “help time-starved FP&A professionals get their free time back, their personal freedom back” offering resources and mentoring for FP&A professionals.

Core to his career approach is a clear mantra: “Find best practices, find people that make you better, work on things you enjoy.” In this episode, he discusses the implications of this approach to upgrading your career and work-life balance in a busy finance role.

In this episode:

• Drew’s worst budgeting experience in his career

• Shaving forecasting with Gillette and Braun

• how to impress sales executives with quarterly sales performance analysis

• Best practice for a monthly profit forecast and team management process

• Why you need to be at a place with “people you respect and admire”

• The importance of relationships in finance

• How the IPO process felt like a “wedding”

• His strategic finance moment delivering (at Mimecast) growth of 40%, EBITDA expansion over time as a percentage of revenue

• Why FP&A pros must learn accounting and a business model

This special edition of FP&A Today sees 1,524 finance pros join a LinkedIn Live session. In this episode Paul and a special panel answer all your burning questions on how Finance teams are practically using AI to advance their careers (and bring instant productivity to their businesses).

Joining Paul is Adam Shilton, Founder, Tech for Finance and a world expert on “Helping finance pros turn systems into superpowers with AI”. In addition he is joined by Sloane Kolt, Head of Datarails Labs, which recently launched FP&A Genius, an AI powered solution transforming FP&A.

Some of your big audience questions answered:

• What was the last thing you used Generative AI for?

• Ethical questions in AI and Finance (eg. Do we own the model that AI built?)

• What are the most common use cases for AI in FP&A, and accounting post ChatGPT?

• What are the differences between AI in big vs small companies?

• How should finance leadership use AI and adapt it in their team ethos and processes?

• Privacy, security, AI and Finance - what are the risks?

• What are the secrets of effective Prompting in finance?

• Clarifying tasks with your AI Chat

• Lessons from building a new finance AI tool

• Favorite non ChatGPT AI tools you have seen

• Best advice for getting started with AI in finance

• Rapid fire questions: favorite Excel function and person I would most like to meet.

Rick Warren , Chief Financial Officer & Chief Operating Officer, Innovation Care Partners, brings lessons from more than 25 years in Healthcare Finance. This includes roles as senior finance and FP&A roles at Ascension (one of the largest private healthcare systems in the United States), Banner Health, one of the largest nonprofit healthcare systems in the country, and CVS Health, one of the US’s largest retail pharmacy store chains. This is a must-listen for anyone who is interested in finance procedures in healthcare and the most important metrics in healthcare for anyone in finance.

This episode covers:

• How finance can help transform healthcare equity – the challenge of getting lower socioeconomic group fair healthcare coverage

• Rick Moving from a political science degree to finance and ultimately CFO

• The importance of Relevance over precision in FP&A

• The nightmare budget which crashed before it was saved

• Lessons from Boy Scout leadership positions

• Margins for hospitals still struggling post-covid

• The fundamental healthcare financial metrics including reducing hospital expenses, admissions per thousand, ER visits vs primary health care physician, SNF nursing home days spent, revenue and expense per member per month

• The secrets to effective business partnerships in FP&A

• Favorite Excel Function

Aarish Shah is the Founder of EmergeONE a Fractional CFO firm for venture-backed UK tech startups and scaleups (from Seed to Series B). He has spent nearly two decades operating as a CEO or CFO and now specializes in helping startups understand and act powerfully on their numbers.

In this episode, Aarish shares his insights on financial planning and analysis (FP&A) in startups and the fundamental lessons he has learned in his career.

• His “worst budget ever” when one of his factories burnt down in Papua New Guinea

• Who he would most like to meet

• His Nothing Ventured podcast and key lessons talking to players in the venture ecosystem

• Why he likes the constant “challenges” of Series B startups over other stage companies

• The difference between "building" the playbook and "running" the playbook in startups

• How to consider your finance tech stack scales pre-seed to Exit

• How FP&A should consider their tech stack

• Why you need to spending your money at pre-seed

• Investing in early stage businesses in the UK

• How do we go about creating a budget and forecast for a startup?

• Key metrics I use to analyze startups

• How startups can cope with the drying up of cheap capital

• How to get your CFO to say yes

• Favorite Excel function

• How AI understanding is the one skill every FP&A practitioner needs

Ashok Manthena has supported FP&A teams at some of the biggest and most well-known companies on the planet, including Google, GAP, and Ingersoll Rand. This included a period at Google which was striking because of “the amount of resources available for finance” particularly when it comes to killing manual finance processes. He says there is an in-built DNA to “automate manual processes”. He says: “This bubbles up naturally when they find there is a manual process and everyone comes together and thinks about how to automate that process.” In a second career stage, Ashok has been a leader in AI finance, carrying out practical research, giving keynote speeches and providing practical advice on transforming businesses through the use of AI.

“The male prison population in the United States is about 15% psychopaths. So if, if you’re a warden and you work all day with prisoners, and then at the end of the day you go to some award ceremony honoring local CEOs, you’re probably interacting with a similar number of psychopaths at each event." Jack McCullough – President of The CFO Leadership Council and 26-time CFO.

Jack MCcullough’s background gives him an unprecedented perspective on financial leadership. Having started his career at Big Four audit firm KPMG, he subsequently served as a CFO for 26 different companies, often in a part-time or interim roles, working with about 35 CEOs. In his words, “several geniuses, a handful of lunatics, and two or three who were both. But I learned from each person and became a more effective leader.”

Robin Kiziak is Financial Controller and Finance Business Partner at VF Corporation (home of outdoor brands Vans, North Face and Timberland). Previously he has been a finance business partner at Hotel Chocolat and UK home improvement leader, Wickes. He also runs the website, There’s Nothing Funny About Finance which aims to move finance away from stereotypes (think Dr No or Beancounters). In this episode, Robin reveals how he has used humor to disarm tension in meetings and become a finance business partner trusted by his colleagues

In this episode:

• Robin’s Favorite Finance Joke

• How to be a finance business partner (“with a part of the business that don’t want you there”).

• The negative stereotypes of finance and how to overcome them

• The power of soft (or human) skills

• The distribution metrics behind Vans and Timberland’s finance successes

• Costs vs service as the “holy grail” in retail

• How to start off in a new finance role – which financials to look at first

• The biggest financial surprise you found

• Snagging an unsung hero award

• Biggest advice to an aspiring FP&A professional

Tom Hood is one of the most influential leaders in accounting. The Executive Vice President, Business Growth and Engagement, at American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA has been named the Second Most Influential Person in Accounting since 2011 by Accounting Today Magazine (only pipped to the post by AICPA CEO Barry Melancon). In giving him their award the publication cited his “legendary energy, imagination and ability to foresee the future, and focusing them specifically on management accountants, helping them reimagine “the Future of Finance.” On Linkedin Tom has 780,000 followers and the platform recruited the accounting leader as one of their Top Voices. His passion for technological innovation in accounting has been evident since the early days of VisiCalc to Excel and ChatGPT. This combines with his rigorous enforcement against bad actors in the profession, and optimism about the future.

In this episode Tom Hood describes one of the biggest shifts in accounting as “The Great Join between accounting and FP&A”. Hood says: “We need accounting to make sure the numbers are right and to maintain our stewardship and trust. But we also need the financial viewpoint, which we saw big time in the pandemic. This is needed to reimagine what’s next in the profession.”

Jake Luerkens and Connor Frischmeyer are co-founders and partners at Auxo Partners, a finance advisory firm that helps startups make better decisions and grow strategically.

They have been in "the sidecar" as companies scaled from $2m to $50m, providing internal finance, FP&A, capital markets advisory and SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) support.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get ready to modelll! Broadcast on ESPN, watched by tens of thousands of people around the world, and featured across CNN,BBC, ITV, and The Atlantic, the Financial Modeling World Cup (FMWC) is the hottest esport on the planet. If you ever wanted to apply for the Excel Modeling World Cup against top stars, feature on ESPN, or wonder if you have what it takes, this is the must-listen to episode of the year.

Chief Operating Officer of the Financial Modeling World Cup, Maksims Sičs reveals the inside story of how the “Excel World Cup” was started and the success story ever since.

Maksims Sičs is himself an expert in Corporate Finance, advising customers on financial planning and analysis at companies including AG Capital, and PNB Banka.

When FP&A Meets Treasury with Mike Richards

“Spend 10 minutes a week on yourself. Nobody else is going to take charge of your career except for you. If you sit back, you are going to lose.”

Mike Richards, CEO & Founder of The Treasury Recruitment Company, has helped professionals in the US, UK, and Europe find dream treasury roles at companies such as CHANEL, IKEA and Porsche AG for two decades.

Mike also hosts the popular podcast, The Treasury Career Corner Podcast which has seen 250 treasury guests and more than 120,000 downloads

“You can throw me in any water. Stormy, cold, or hot and I’ll start swimming.”

And swimming is exactly what Jenny Fuss did.

Jenny Fuss, CFO of Boart Longyear, talks about the challenges of international experience, the importance of having a diverse set of skills in an FP&A team and how to achieve storytelling and influencing in FP&A.

Wassia Kamon, CPA, CMA, MBA Kamon built FP&A from the ground up at Intralot, a state lottery vendor behind the US Powerball lottery (as an insider she couldn’t play the lottery for nine years).

Her rapid rise has seen her become a finance executive with roles as VP of Finance at Boehringer Ingelheim From there, she moved on to more FP&A-focused roles at Boehringer Ingelheim, a global pharmaceutical company, as finance business partner for different business units, to VP of Finance at Low Income Investment Fund (the company manages $2billion of investments). She was recently recognized as an up the 40 under 40 honoree by CPA Practice Advisor.

Today's guest is…Paul Barnhurst. Usually sitting in the presenter’s chair, this special edition sees Paul Barnhurst, aka The FP&A Guy (and host of FP&A Today), reveal the highs and lows from his storied career in FP&A at American Express, Solera, Inc., and DigiCert, Inc.. Guest host is Annette DeYoung MBA, FP&A Solutions Consultant at Datarails, herself an FP&A veteran at companies including manufacturer, JL Clarke.

Danielle Stein Fairhurst literally wrote the book on Excel and Financial Modeling. Well two books, actually. Using Excel for Business and Financial Modelling and Financial Modeling in Excel for Dummies.

Hear, the Excel MVP from Australia provides her secrets to financial modeling.