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&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
Links from the Show
FP&A Hey. Because they don’t teach FP&A in school. Grow your skills, networks, and careers, all while having fun.
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How to impress sales executives with quarterly sales performance analysis: https://www.fpandhey.com/how-to-impress-executives-with-quarterly-sales-performance-analysis/
Contact Drew at Drew@fpandhey.com
Paul Barnhurst:
Hello everyone. Welcome to FP&A Today, I am your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&A Guy. FP&A Today is brought to you by Data Rails, the financial planning and analysis platform for Excel users. Every week we welcome a leader from the world of financial planning and analysis. Today we are delighted to be joined by Drew Murphy. Drew, welcome to the show.
Drew Murphy:
Thanks, Paul. Really good to be here.
Paul Barnhurst:
Excited to have you. So, lemme just tell you a little bit about his background. He comes to us from the Boston, Massachusetts area. He earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Merrimack College. And then he earned his M B A from Northeastern. He’s the co-founder of FP&A Hey, a community for FP&A professionals to level up their careers. And he also has experience across a wide range of businesses and companies from working with a Fortune 100, helping a company go public, you know, former CFO of an eight figure defense business. He’s also helped companies grow their profits and sales and been part of running dozens of different teams, not just FP&A, but also pricing, rev ops, you know, and other projects across the whole range there. So what I’m gonna start out with, this is kind of a fun question we like to ask everybody, then we’ll get a little bit more into your background. What is the worst forecasting or budgeting experience you’ve had in your career?
Drew Murphy:
Oh, you’re starting off tough.
Paul Barnhurst:
Let’s see. Not everybody has that one. We’re like, that was just awful.
Drew Murphy:
<Laugh>. Yeah. Oh, there’s lots of those. <Laugh> make a lot of mistakes in FP&A <laugh>.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, exactly.
Drew Murphy:
Let’s see. I would say one of the most memorable mistakes, because it kept me up at night for at least three nights in a row, was messing up a revenue forecast for a publicly traded company after you issued guidance. How’s that one one?
Paul Barnhurst:
That’s pretty bad.
Drew Murphy:
It’s pretty bad. <Laugh>,
Paul Barnhurst:
You know, what, what did you learn from that experience? You kind of, what did you take away from, from having that happen?
Drew Murphy:
Sure. So what I learned was don’t do that <laugh> and in absence of being perfect and mistakes happen. So I owned the profit forecasting team at the time. So we had revenue from three or four different areas mm-hmm. <Affirmative> call it. So our team members had their own individual responsibilities and our company had rolled out a new product. That new product ended up being in two different places in our profit forecast which we did not realize until after the fact. So we had a double count. So it was one of those things where you you look at the details and it bubbles up and it all makes sense, but then it’s like, huh. You look back and you get that sinking feeling in your stomach. Oh no, I can’t believe that. Just made it through all of our checks and it went through to our CFO.
So yeah, it was one of those things where it was an entire team kind of responsible and I owned it ’cause I owned the team. So it was my mistake. Sure. And it kept me up at night, not just because we made the mistake, but it was also one of those things where it was a team thing and it didn’t make my team look great, which all I want to do is make my team look good. Like I could care. I I don’t care as much about myself as I do my team. That was one of those things where man sleepless nights for at least three in a row until we figured out a solution, a way in which, not necessarily to fix the error because the error happened, but to alleviate the fact that, hey, we’re gonna be lower on revenue.
What can we do about it? And the the first place you go to is, well, what cost can I cut to get profit to neutral? Right. That’s the nice and easy simple algebra thing. We did it differently. We went on the offense. We had really good business partner relationships across all functions. So you can have business partner relationships with marketing sales, R&D, tax legal, all these places. So we went straight to marketing and said, Hey, let’s talk about your lead gen activities and let’s look at your schedule over the next two, three quarters. What are your best lead gen activities? And what can we pull in that we think could raise up our revenue growth? And at the same time, not necessarily sink profits. And we figured it out and we actually came up with a mix of things we could do to help drive a little bit more revenue, which would cover us from what we were missing.
And it didn’t change much to profit. So we ended up going to our CFO with, hey, we made a mistake. And we made that known very clearly and quickly, but we didn’t just stop there. We said, we’re gonna figure it out. Give us 48 hours and we’re gonna come to you with some sort of solution. And we did we also came with the solution of, Hey, cut, cut some costs so you can cover your your profits so to speak, and cash flows. But yeah, we went with, Hey, let’s go for more revenue. And we ended up hitting our, our forecast and met guidance and all was right with the world. But <laugh> man, was that those three days? I’ll tell you. Yeah. My wife at the time, my wife was at the time like, oh my gosh, like I’ve never seen you like this before.
And it truly was like, it wasn’t just making a mistake because in FP&A you need to be okay with those because you’re not perfect. You’re dealing with numbers, which are a very measurable thing I like to call it. Like comparing to meteorology, I almost became a meteorologist I was interested at the time and telling when what’s gonna happen weather-wise is important, right. Warning people of, you know, terrible things like hurricanes and monsoons, that kind of thing. But there’s always wiggle room in a forecast in a weather forecast, right? It’s like, Hey, it’s gonna rain tomorrow and it’s gonna rain four inches. Well, it might rain two inches. And it’s like, Hey, that’s okay. You told me it was gonna rain. In things like FP&A and profit forecasting, when you say, Hey, revenue’s gonna be a hundred million and it’s 99 million, 500,000, like you were technically wrong.
So you have to be wrong with telling people that you’re going to be wrong all the time. The trick is understanding why you’re wrong, and if the root cause is a mistake, we’ll figure out how to alleviate and make it better in the future. And if you’re wrong because of uncontrollable things, outline those clearly and, and articulate that you have a handle on the situation. Like foreign exchange rates market demand, you name it. So, long story short, that’s my memory on the three day sleepless night of missing a revenue forecast. But hats off to my team for coming up with ways in which to make up for that mistake and always right with the world in the end.
Paul Barnhurst:
And I’m glad it all worked out and I could see where that’d be rough. Yeah, we’ve all had similar stories, maybe something different where you presented something and you realize, oh, I messed that up, and you gotta own it. Or, you know, maybe it’s with your team and so then everybody kind of struggles with it. But I love how you shared the learnings and said, Hey, give us time. We’re gonna figure this out and work through it. You didn’t just be like, all right, mistakes happen, let’s move on. It’s no, what are we gonna learn from it? How do we help the business recover? How do we ensure we can get to this target that we didn’t really wanna sign up to, so to speak?
Drew Murphy:
<Laugh>. So, exactly.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. And it makes sense. So could you give us a little bit about your background? I mean, I know I gave a little bit of a run through it, but just kind of where you started and how you ended up where you’re at today.
Drew Murphy:
Sure. You already covered, I’m from the Boston area. I’ve got a, a wife and three kids, twin boys and a little girl. And fun fact, I played vintage baseball, so that’s1860s rules no gloves, wooden bats, and you catch the ball with your bare hands and it’s a legit baseball. So that might be a whole other podcast episode. So we can talk about that next year or something. But yeah, so from an FP&A and accounting background, so went to school at Merrimack College for my undergrad, small liberal arts school. And I did things a little differently in school, which really helped me propel my career and actually kind of get a cheating headstart versus all my peers. I got into their internship and their co-op program early. So after sophomore year, so summer after my sophomore year of college, I got an internship, technically they called it a co-op because it was a six month stint at Gillette, which was then just acquired by P&G, I think two or three months prior mm-hmm.
<Affirmative> at their plant, which was right down the street making shave gels and old spiced deodorants, all that sort of fun stuff. So what I did was I, I got this job and it was for six months, and then the idea was, Hey, after six months you go back to school full-time, and then if you want, you can come back and and do the whole thing again. Well, they wanted me to come back and work there part-time permanently while I went to school. And in my crazy mind I was like, Hey, yeah, let’s do that. So for the last two and a half years of my schooling, I went to school full-time and I also worked 20 to 30 hours a week as a plant accountant. So by my senior year, I racked up like three years of experience learning best practices from one of the biggest companies in the world.
Using Excel, doing forecasting, doing standard costing, walking the plant, and understanding how machines work and build the aerosol sprays and the cans and all that stuff. And yeah, I kind of got a cheating headstart going into like that 08 recession where nobody could get a job. I was really lucky. I had a job in hand that October right before graduation, and I didn’t realize it at the time, but that spring when I took the job and started talking to my fellow peers, and wow. Like it was tough to get a job. And then five years later I noticed, wow, I’m, I’m starting, I’m, I’m ahead of people that are in my class and, you know, worked really hard and got good grades. And it was because I built all that experience up and that network up. My first job outside of P&G was a referral from a P&G person that went to another company.
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So that whole thing like just spiraled into this, like, wow, not only did I get a head start learning skills and, and figuring out what I like to work on, which was accounting and FP&A and that type of thing, but my network exploded. So I haven’t really needed to use a recruiter since, because everywhere I go, I make sure I work with people and I, I really keep track of like, Hey, these types of people are the people that make me better. You, you latch onto those type of people. You, you create those like mentor relationships, if you will. And it doesn’t even have to be in FP&A, it can be in engineering. Like engineers are actually really good with data, so you can learn some tricks for them that, you know, accountants and fp a people aren’t the only people that know Excel.
So it’s those types of things where it’s just kind of snowballed into, I got a quick headstart. I met a lot of smart people who taught me a lot of awesome things and I did some good work for them too. So over time they were like, Hey Drew, I’d love to bring you along with me and do these things ’cause I know you’ve done this before. Let’s do that and then do more things. And that’s kind of how my career’s gone over the 20 years. It’s just rinse and repeat, go someplace learn a ton, meet really awesome people, and then just keep going. That was long-winded, but that was kinda how I got my start.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thanks. Appreciate the background there. And now we’re gonna do a section that I like to call kind of rapid fire, get to know you, you get no more than 30 seconds for each answer. I think on the first one, something you said in the last one may be the answer. You may go in another direction, but we’ll ask them here. So first one is, what is something interesting about you? Not many people know.
Drew Murphy:
Got it. I’d say the vintage baseball thing not many people know I play that.
Paul Barnhurst:
I, I figured that would be it. I’m like, I think I already know what that one is. I almost skipped that one, but I figured we’d give you the chance.
Drew Murphy:
You gotta
Paul Barnhurst:
Vintage baseball, you gotta something else. <Laugh>. So there you go. If you could meet one person in the world, dead or alive, who would you meet and why?
Drew Murphy:
I’d say Warren Buffet.
Paul Barnhurst:
Okay. And why, why Warren?
Drew Murphy:
He has a very long-term approach to things and simple things like reputation takes a lifetime to build and like seconds to, to shred and ruin and reading every day just a little bit and just getting a little bit smarter is great for the long term. So I try to live by those types of things.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. I like that. That was good. Good answer there. So next one here, what is the last thing you Googled? Looked up on YouTube or used generative AI for about finance fp and a or Excel.
Drew Murphy:
Ooh. Oh, a goal seek shortcut. I just looked that up today. Alt AWG. I, I forgot it. It was way back in the memory bank, but that’s what I looked up literally a couple hours ago. <Laugh>.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. Love that. Yeah, I, I looked up a few myself today is I was getting ready for the Excel eSports competition, looking at things going, okay, how do I do this? How do, trying to remember some shortcuts. So how’d
Drew Murphy:
That go by the way? You both
Paul Barnhurst:
Let’s just say I came in fourth, but it was out of four
Drew Murphy:
<Laugh>,
Paul Barnhurst:
You know, it was a good learning experience and I’ll talk about it more tomorrow we’re gonna do a and it’ll be released probably after this episode, but we’re gonna do an episode about it. But it was a good learning experience and I would encourage people to do it. I mean, I had no expectations. I knew I wasn’t gonna do well. It’s the first time I’ve done it, but it was fun. It was good. I’ll do it again. And last one here, since we’re talking Excel, what’s your favorite thing about Excel? Do you have a favorite formula function feature? What do you love about Excel?
Drew Murphy:
Oh, my first love VLookup, which I know there’s X lookup now, but vlookup, I remember in my plant accounting days in the, in my cubicle needing to use it for the first time. And I spent three hours just typing it out, trying to figure it out, and finally I got it. But honestly, I’ve used vlookup in honestly every day of my career. So vlookup
Paul Barnhurst:
<Laugh>, you’re not alone on that. A lot of people, that’s the first one that they’re like, oh wow, I can do this. And it just opens up a whole world with Excel.
Drew Murphy:
Yep.
Paul Barnhurst:
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We’ve mentioned earlier you have your website FP&A Hey kind of business. You have a partner there. Can you tell our audience a little bit about that and why you started it, kind of what it is and
Drew Murphy:
Sure. Yeah. So my co-founder, Yardi Kim and I started this about a year ago and we realized that fp and a professionals have this unique problem, that the demands of them are growing and their free time is shrinking as a result. And Paul, you help with this problem through your training and your LinkedIn content, right? Like, you’re helping people get better at their jobs. And so do people like Anders, Nicholas, there’s, there’s a lot of people that do really good things on social media to help people learn skills. Yep. so with no free time, an FP&A analyst manager, whatever level you can’t do what you want, which includes doing family stuff and you can’t learn new skills, which actually help you save time. So it’s counter counterproductive, right? So that’s why my co-founder Yardi and I started FP&A Hey.
It’s to help these time starved FP&A Hey professionals get their free time back, their personal freedom back. And we’re gonna, we do that now, you can go to fp.com and we provide bite-sized practical learning that’s fun to consume. So if you go to our website in under five minutes, you’ll learn a practical skill that you can use on the job today. And it’s a skill that will make you look good in front of your boss, your executives. And it’s a skill that will look really good on your resume, but even more importantly, it’s gonna save you time to help you get your personal freedom back and help create more job opportunities for yourself. So yeah, that’s why, that’s why we started fp and a, was to share our knowledge and to to give that back to the fp and a community.
Paul Barnhurst:
Got it. And I think everybody wants to have time back, so appreciate you doing that. Drew, I’ve, I’ve taken a look at the website, I know there’s quite a few how-to articles out there in different areas. So I’m curious, you’ve written quite a few. Do you have a favorite that you’ve written? Maybe an article that you, you know, have enjoyed the most so far?
Drew Murphy:
Yeah. I’d say the how to impress sales executives with quarter date sales analysis. And that one’s, that one I like because we’ve, we’ve done this at three companies now. It’s all about creating a chart, but this chart is a chart and call it a dashboard that your C F O and your C R O, they’re gonna put it on their desktop and look at it every single day to manage how their revenue performance is going to to manage their quarterly revenue performance. And this chart also saves you time because we created it initially years and years and years ago because we kept getting questions on, how’s the quarter going? Tell me about price. Tell me about customer accounts. Tell me about sales. Well, we figured out a way to measure that and analyze that on a daily basis, put it in a simple chart that’s consumable and help management manage the business accordingly to hit targets. So you avoid the whole ad hoc questions and you help manage the business, which made us look good. And we do it every company we go. It’s it’s cool. It’s like you just repeat the things that work. And that’s a simple one that makes a lot of people look good once you implement it.
Paul Barnhurst:
I couldn’t agree more. Repeat the things that works. There’s always things you can take from pretty much every company you’ve been at and implement at a new one that works and it’ll make things easier. So we’ll make sure to put the website in the show notes so people can go and look at some of those articles and see what you’re talking about there. And next, just wanted add a question. You know, you and I had the opportunity to email back and forth a few times and kind of discuss a few things before the show. And one of the things we talked about is over your career, you’ve had some kind of key lessons or learnings, and you really, you mentioned three that you would like to talk about. And the three were find best practices, find people that make you better, work on things you enjoy. So let’s just start with the belief that you should find best practices, then kind of double down on them. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Drew Murphy:
Sure. I found a best practice in how to do a monthly profit forecast. And I didn’t even know it. And that was at P&G when I first started my career, I was in profit forecasting for a regional business unit of of Braun. And we did a profit forecast every month. And it was one of those, like, it almost felt like a boring archaic, like, okay, I’m gonna take sales and apply cost of revenue and do the marketing spend and the commissions and all that stuff. And what I found was when I went to other companies that were smaller and not as organized, well doing a monthly profit forecast, like it’s not figured out. The systems aren’t in place the process isn’t there and the knowledge isn’t there of like, just how to do it and how to business partner to get information quickly in, in an, in an organized way. So that was an example where I took profit forecasting from a large company that had it figured out, and I’ve applied it to a a billion dollar e-commerce company. I’ve applied it to a that went that was pre I p o, and we did post and smaller companies when I was a CFO of a smaller manufacturing company, we, we put that into place. So that’s the best practice I’ve held onto and, and used pretty much everywhere I’ve gone.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. Appreciate you sharing that one. Are there any other kind of best practices that maybe you’ve carried with you that you could share with the audience? You talked about the profitability one, I think you’ve talked a little bit about the sales template and, you know, quarter to date. Anything else?
Drew Murphy:
Yeah, I would say when, when working with and managing teams best practices of the simple stuff like team meetings and that’s less about like Excel spreadsheets and all that sort of thing and more about communication. But I find that like those Monday morning team meetings where you just talk about like, Hey, what’s coming up this week? And you celebrate the wins from last week, it’s a really cool way to just create energy team energy and that whole bonding thing, it sounds kind of corny, but when you work with people eight to 10 hours a day, like you need to have that cohesiveness to be successful. So that whole team dynamic and team meeting thing and making sure you focus on teams and don’t just kind of do your own rogue individual stuff and you know, deprioritize team because you gotta build extra models or all spreadsheets or all these things like that was, that’s super important. And I, I try to do that. And honestly, that’s probably the thing I try to improve on everywhere I go. Making sure that team meetings, communication, that sort of thing are front and center.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I think that’s something that many leaders, you get busy and the the urgent, if you wanna call it that, not necessarily the important, but the urgent takes over and the meetings often get missed. And I’ve found the good leaders have that discipline. Is there always an exception? Sure. But it’s far and few between versus the exception is we actually have the meeting, which I’ve had some managers, like every single week you just cancel it and it’s like, okay, why do we even have it on the calendar at this point?
Drew Murphy:
<Laugh>. Yep. That’s exactly it.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I think we’ve all, we’ve all been there. So, you know, one thing you’ve mentioned before, we’ve, we, we talked about back and forth as we were preparing for this is just relationships. So can you mention the importance the, the role relationships have played during your career, and why is it so important that FP&A focus on relationships versus just the analysis we do?
Drew Murphy:
Relationships will man relationships do a lot. Relationships will introduce you to problems that people have, which then mean you with your unique fp a skillset can go solve. And the more relationships you the wider that net is cast. So you could solve a problem in marketing, solve a problem in sales, solve a problem with accounting to help them close the business fast the books faster. So being open to making relationships is super important because it helps you put yourself out there to help others, which then helps you work on things, learn things, grow your network. And that’s how, that’s how my career has progressed over time and I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve truly enjoyed working with not just the fp and a and and accounting folks, but everyone within a company learning a business model. So that’s, that’s relationships to me are just as important as being good in Excel, like connecting numbers to people, to business activities. Like it’s full circle. It’s you’re good at numbers. How do you communicate those numbers to people that do work every day to sell market, build product to then hit a company goal? And if you can connect all those dots, and again, in the middle of that is relationships. If you don’t have the relationships, then you’re probably throwing up numbers that may or may not be translated accordingly. And you may or may not have opportunities to, you know, work on interesting things because no one knows you exist.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great, great point of if you’re just caught in the spreadsheet and you may be doing great work, but you have no relationships, you don’t know people, they may not know you exist, you kind of just become the guy in the background guy or girl in the background. I mean, and if that’s what you want and that’s what you enjoy doing there, there’s room for somebody like that. But if you wanna advance, and I find there’s a lot more fulfillment for myself is have those relationships with the business, get to know them and help solve their problems and work with them. You can be so much more productive as an FP&A professional. And I really like the point you said of, you know, being able to connect those dots, right? Taking those numbers and explaining ’em, and not only explaining ’em, but then being able to relate ’em to the goals so you can help the business achieve them to, to make those adjustments and changes. I mean, that, that, that is invaluable for a business, a good fp and a partner that can do that. Absolutely. So I really appreciate what you said.
Drew Murphy:
Yeah, no spot on. And I, and like you said, every, everybody’s different with relationships. It’s not, not everybody’s the most social. There are people that are very comfortable in spreadsheets and that’s okay too. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> yeah, it’s yeah, it’s interesting how you can use relationships to build on your career and yeah, I just, I always harp on that.
Paul Barnhurst:
That’s great. And speaking of that, that kind of leads to the next question here, you know, with relationships is you’re a big believer in mentors mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So kind of two part question here and the first part, can you talk about what role mentors have played in in your life, how they’ve helped you in your career?
Drew Murphy:
Sure. so my first job as a plant accountant I was very, very lucky to come in contact with a fellow intern that had been there before I was. And he taught me the ropes of Excel. And selfishly I stuck to him very closely because every time I talked to him, I was getting better. I was getting smarter. And over the years we developed a really good relationship and I found that yeah, the more jobs I had and the more people I met there’s a lot of smart people out there. And selfishly, if you want to get better <laugh>, you gotta attach yourself to the people that are better than you. And it’s, it’s actually a really humbling experience because there’s a lot of smart people out there, and you need to honestly play the role of like the dumbest person in the room and just absorb all that learning.
And then you find the people that are willing to give you that learning. Wow, what a powerful thing. So with people in general, and, and mentors, like, it’s so important to find them because they’ll, they’ll make you better and they’ll help you navigate the career journey because everybody’s had careers. So why not get a playbook of somebody’s career that’s, you know, 10 years ahead of you, five years ahead of you, 20 years ahead of you. They’ll tell you what potholes they stepped in, and they may help you avoid some of them. You’re not gonna avoid all of them, and their path may not be your specific path either, but wow. You can learn a lot from people and what they’ve done over the years, and if you listen, they’re gonna teach you something and it’s gonna make you better. And the more you just engage with those types of people, wow, it’s powerful. You get really, really good whatever you’re focused on.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. And you know, one example is I look at the people I interview in some ways, almost a little bit like a mentor in the sense I’ve made a lot of good relationships. I get to learn from people that have had amazing experiences, you know, a lot of people that have been in their career many years. And for me, just listening to them and seeing how they do things and think about things, it’s made me think more about ways to do things better. And there’s so many different ways you can get a mentor. It doesn’t always have to be, you know, somebody at work. Some of that can come through a book. Some of that can, you know, come through something like LinkedIn. It’s always good to have someone you can physically talk to, I think. But not every mentor needs to be that, you know, one-on-one interaction. There’s so many different ways you can gain value from others and look at ’em as a mentor. Like you mentioned, you know, kind of Warren Buffet. I’m guessing in some ways you look at him a little bit as a mentor mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But you’ve probably never met him. I’m gonna guess.
Drew Murphy:
No, if you know him, please introduce me. <Laugh>.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. No, he’s, I don’t, I don’t think I’ll get him on the podcast. I’d love that if I could. But, you know, <laugh>, I don’t think I’m that big yet. <Laugh> or ever. But so next question on mentors. If we have somebody listening to the show and they’re trying to find a mentor, any advice you would offer there of how they could go about finding a mentor to help ’em in their career?
Drew Murphy:
Yeah, it’s it is a challenge When you first start out, I get asked this question a lot. Like, how do you start building your network? And I find over the years people that really just hustle to, to put themselves out there and around. So nowadays, like with LinkedIn it’s a powerful tool that you’re connected to people and they may be a second connection with somebody that may be a good mentor for you. So I would look at your, your, your social, your, your social connections, and don’t be afraid to ask, Hey, could you connect me to this person because they’re doing something that I think I’m interested in and I wanna learn more? You’d be surprised at how many cold reach outs you can do. Or how many people will be receptive to a cold, you know, reach out.
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> say, Hey, I need some help with something. Because there are a lot of people that, you know, wanna give back what they’ve gotten over the years, which is, you know, the, the mentor thing. So I would say don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and look for those opportunities where if you have relationships with people, well that’s a warm relationship in itself. Now connect that to another relationship, and that’s a very, that’s, that’s an easier path to go. And then there’s also the cold relationship of, Hey, I see you. I don’t know you and nobody that I know knows you, but I’m gonna ask you anyways and here’s why. You’d be surprised at how many people will, will entertain a conversation with that. You will get the nos and you have to be okay with that. But that’s how I would start if I was like coming out of school right now or going into college, like I get a lot of questions on, Hey I think I like accounting, or I think I like fFP&A how do I get into it?
The funny answer is actually for FP&A, there is no major in FP&A <laugh>. Yeah. you gotta learn accounting, you gotta learn systems, you gotta learn data, you gotta learn how to talk to people. But that conversation in itself, that person talking to me like I can then connect them to other people. So, and they totally put themselves out on a limb to do that. So don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and use warm relationships when you can. And when you can’t really articulate why you want to talk to the person and that it would really be an incredible thing if they could reach back out to you and just tell you just five minute spare you five minutes and tell you about their careers you’d be surprised at how many people you can meet.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. I wish I had learned the power of networking and relationships earlier in my career. You know, LinkedIn has changed my career and it’s been, you know, I’ve met many, many people through LinkedIn and through connecting with them. And I get a lot of people reach out to me today, like you said, they, they’ll cold outreach me and ask for advice on different things. And I always try to respond. There’s, I’m sure there’s a few I’ve missed ’cause I get a lot of messages. But I try to, you know, I try to respond to everybody and help where I can. ‘Because I feel like any way we can give back is good for community. It’s good. It’s feels good for us, it’s good for the profession. And, you know, the, the main thing I wanna see is I wanna see it be easier for those to go after me, you know, learn from the mistakes that we’ve made and I’ve made more than my share. Right. And so I wanna, you know, help others. And so I think it’s great when you do take that and like you said, be be thick skinned enough that you can accept a no, ’cause you’ll get some or you won’t get a response or whatever the case may be. I mean, that’s definitely something I’ve learned and, you know, asking people to be on the show. I’ve been rejected for, you know, a number of people and that’s just part of the process. Some people say yes, some say no.
Drew Murphy:
I will say this is a lot of fun. So if those people are listening right now, they made a big mistake. <Laugh>.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you. I appreciate that. I, I’m gonna clip that out and make sure I send it to all of them. I’m just kidding. <Laugh>.
Drew Murphy:
Please do.
Paul Barnhurst:
Alright, so, you know, there were three things we mentioned. We’ve talked about the first two best practices and relationships. The third one I wanna talk about is, one thing you mentioned is focus on things you enjoy. You know, some people have the idea that hey, work is work and it’s not enjoyable. So maybe talk a little bit about that. Why do you say it’s so important to focus on the things you enjoy?
Drew Murphy:
So throughout your career, you’re gonna work on things that you enjoy and that you don’t enjoy. There’s gonna be ebbs and flows, right? Just like with anything and every day. I’d say there’s one example in my career where I took a new job and I left it within two months. And that was very rare for me. I usually stay at a place for 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years. And somebody asked me that. They said, why did you, why’d you leave so quickly? Why didn’t you give it a shot? And it was a great company and had great people, but just the combination of what I was working on, the commute and all these things, I, I I, what did I, how did I put it? Oh, it was like having a sunburn. You’ve had a sunburn before Paul,
Paul Barnhurst:
I’m guessing. Yes. <laugh>. Yeah,
Drew Murphy:
<Laugh>. They’re not fun. But when you get a sunburn and let’s say, then you have to go to the beach with that sunburn. Like that doesn’t feel good. It’s draining. And you’re gonna feel that way throughout your career, but hopefully it’s in small pockets, not the every day. When you’re in a job where you feel like that every day, and there’s no umbrella for you to run under, there’s no way in which to alleviate the sunburn. It’s always gonna be there. No matter how hard you try, that’s where you need to take a step back and say, am I really enjoying what I’m doing? Again, on the day-to-day, there’s going to be things, ah, this is tough, or I really wish I wasn’t doing this. But on the long, what you gotta look at in the long term, if it’s, if it’s a place where you don’t have an opportunity to learn from people that that you respect and admire.
If you, if you’re in a place where you’re just not working on something that you’re interested in, or if you’re in a place where, man, the commute is so long you lose time at home. Any one of those things, like, it’s like going to the beach with a sunburn every day with no end in sight. So that’s what I mean by enjoy your career. It’s all comes down to the, the people, the learning and, and just trying to have a good time with it. Like, if you, if you reach out to people, find their problems and help them solve their problems you’re gonna have some fun because you’re gonna get that energy from helping others and they’re gonna connect you to other people that you can help. And if you pick a company that you truly respect and admire and you’re like, yeah, I use this product.
And just like the Braun company, like I use a bra shaver. And I remember working at that company, I was like, this is like, I literally can see the next generation bronze shaver, which sounds really nerdy, right? But <laugh>, I’m looking at that thing like, Hey, I’m gonna buy this thing over the holidays, <laugh> this is gonna be incredible. And I get to profit forecast for this thing, and I’m gonna be one of those units of sales that they get in December. So I’m gonna contribute to my own accuracy. So there you go. <Laugh>. That was fun. So I guess I, I digress, but that’s fun. Like, finding things you’re interested in, people that will make you better. And overall, just a situation that feels good. It feels like you’re gonna the beach without that said sunburn.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. I think all of us can tolerate a sunburn to a certain degree, but I think that’s a good analogy. Because if it gets bad enough, we’re all gonna try to find relief.
Drew Murphy:
Exactly.
Paul Barnhurst:
<Laugh>, right? And that, and that’s kind of with work. And sometimes that could be culture, sometimes that could be the task you’re doing. It’s just not a good fit for you at all. Sometimes that could be a boss, you know, I was in a job where there’s definitely some cultural challenges that, and workload, you know, and eventually I finally left, but I was learning a ton. I was challenged by the work every day. And so it was kind of just, it’s trying to, trying to weigh it. It’s like, all right, there’s, there’s these sunburn areas. Is it enough that I, I’m out. Like I’m done. I mean, I can’t handle it anymore. Can I, am I learning enough that this is beneficial? So I definitely think everybody has to decide where that line is for themselves. You know, like, what’s the commute you can handle? Yeah. And if you, if you’re comfortable with it, great. You know, if you’re not, then look to make a change. And so I think that was a good analogy there. I appreciate that. So, one thing I wanted to ask you that I, I saw you had the opportunity to push the button for an IPO. What was that experience like? How, how did you get the opportunity to be the one pushing the button? And what was, what was that like?
Drew Murphy:
Well, that was a party. And I wasn’t expecting it. And to be totally clear I didn’t actually physically push the button. I was one of the 40 people behind the said person pushing button. But I got the, got it, got it. I got the close enough
the confetti ran down my head, which was kind of cool. But yeah, it was it was a lot like a wedding. And you, you don’t expect it like that. And you’re probably like, you’re crazy. Whatcha talking about a wedding? Well, you, you go to New York and what do we do? We, we, we got on the bus in the morning and we drive to New York. And this was the day before and we had a nice party the night before. And then you get to the Nasdaq the next morning, bright and early before, you know, it opens up mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And you get in this room and you’re behind the button and all of a sudden you push the button, confetti reigns. And yeah. It’s one of those one of those moments where you’re like, holy smokes.
Like, this is a really cool thing. And it took, this isn’t an overnight success. It took two years to get to this point. Sure. And you’ve gone through so much with so many people to get to this point. And then after that’s over, it’s like, okay, I guess we’re gonna go back to the office. No, that’s where the wedding comes in. They have champagne in the back. They’re showing your ticker symbol on the, on the screen <laugh> hopefully it’s going up. And if it’s going down well luckily ours stayed stable. So <laugh>, that was cool. But yeah, it was like a wedding and yeah, we just had drinks. We had snacks. Your picture goes on Times Square, so wasn’t expecting that. So they walked us outside and there’s my face on a billboard o out of the blue, and I’m like, holy smokes.
So I have tons of pictures of my phone, me taking selfies of me with myself, which sounds kind of stupid and crazy, but hey, it was cool. Like, I literally had my face on Times Square for like 20 seconds. That’s my 15-20 seconds of fame. And yeah, it was, it was a really cool thing. And it wasn’t just because of the button being pushed and the stock price eventually doing really well. It was about the whole doing something really, really hard with a team that you really believed in. And I can honestly say like that, that FP&A team, that accounting team, that pre i p o team, that we call it the I p O readiness team, that was the 10 to 20 people that they invited plus some other people. Like we did, we did some really good work together and we had each other’s backs.
That was a hard, hard process. And looking back at those days that the company was called Mimecast, like you look at, you know, how it did and it did really well. And, you know, we helped set that up. And yeah, it was, it was a really cool experience that I wouldn’t trade for the world. I met some really good people, learned some things, and yeah, I always look like looking at those pictures and those selfies of me back in, I think it was like 2015 of like, holy smokes, I was on that billboard <laugh>,
Paul Barnhurst:
I, I love the selfie story. I, I can relate to that one at one time, seeing a webinar that I was giving all of a sudden came up on Google, an advertisement for me to attend it, you know, with a picture of me <laugh>, you know, it was kind of, you know, definitely not like being in Times Square, but it was kind of my, on a smaller scale, my moment of, oh wow, wait, they’re advertising me like <laugh>, what’s this all about? But that’s, that sounds like an amazing experience and I love how you talked about the relationships again, with the team. I can see how important that is to you in your career and how you always wanna make sure, you know, people realize that it’s a team effort and there’s so, it’s so much rewarding, so much of a rewarding experience when you do something with others than just yourself. When you get to enjoy it with those that you’ve worked hard with, you’ve sweated you’ve put in many hours. ’cause They can relate, right? They’ve been through that that experience with you together and you got through the other side stronger, so to speak.
Drew Murphy:
Yeah. You’re, you hit the nail on the head. Yeah, it, FP&A very much a a team sport I like to say. So yeah, that’s exactly right.
Paul Barnhurst:
I like that team sport. It’s good, good way to put it. I would agree with that. So next question here, this is one we like to ask people is, can you tell me about a time in your career when you experienced what we’ll call a strategic moment, you know, I e a strategic insight that later empowered you to drive change within, within the organization?
Drew Murphy:
When we were working on customer profitability at Mimecast, that was, that was a game changing thing for me personally. Seeing how that related to our long-term strategy and how it kind of unlocked what we wanted to do at the company. And what I mean by that is companies grow revenue and try to try to grow revenue, try to grow profits and try to grow cash. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it’s a very hard equation to figure out because to grow revenue, you got to spend money. And to spend money means you are lowering your cash. And especially nowadays where the cost of borrowing and things are more expensive it’s a very big challenge to say. And what we did at Mimecast was we said, Hey, we’re gonna grow, I’ll call it modestly, 30 to 40%. We’re also gonna see our EBITDA expand over time as a percentage of revenue, and we’re gonna see cashflow always be positive every quarter.
Like that was our challenge and that’s what we told people we’re going to do. And the customer profitability work that I was initially hired to do, plus the IPO readiness was to figure out what do our customers tell me about our, our customer base, who’s profitable, who’s not? Tell me me why, and then figure out how can we make that better? And the insights we got were really interesting. Like you can segment your customers by industry and depending on the type of product you have, they will use your product differently and they will use your support hours more or less. And you can look at the type of products people buy and you can see trends and patterns like, wow, everybody with this product asks this question and it takes up case hours. Well, what can you do with that information?
Well, one, you can report it, that’s one thing, but the other thing is to actually do something about it. So what did we do? We created a whole center of excellence page dedicated to some of the things we found in that analysis to help alleviate the case hours that then led to not having to hire as many people as we grew, which led to revenue growth and profitability growth. And all that came to fruition as we started doing this customer profitability work. And it mapped really nicely into our CFO’s vision of we’re not just gonna grow revenue and, and burn cash. We’re gonna be a sustainable company that has a long-term future. And I always remember that. And yeah, it was, it was one of those things where I was like, wow, this is really, this is what, where strategy meets operation and execution and just watching all that come to fruition.
And after the fact our CFO put me on this what do we call it? A finance for non-finance training program. So basically every new hire that came into Mimecast would go through a training program that I would run with hr. It was called Finance for Non-Finance. And we went through the scorecard, that was our company and we said, Hey, we sell stuff, revenue we spend money and we net the two profit and we manage cash flow. And here is how you new hire or manager in the company in marketing product sales impact this equation. ’cause Everybody impacts it in some way, shape or form. And at the end of it, the call to action was all about how can you, let’s take an example, customer support rep, get us to our cash flow target, and we’d go through an actual example of tell me about your day.
How are you spending it? How can we save you time to free your own time and get you home quicker, but also hit company goals, which then influence things like bonuses, which makes everybody happy. So it’s all this like, it’s this whole loop of like, it was really cool to see this one analysis, customer profitability linked to a strategy and then link it back to the day-to-day activities to get people to be more effective in their jobs. And honestly, not just to make the company look good, but make people look good. Like, do your jobs better, go home earlier. Your teams will be happier. And a lot of those yeah, a lot of those people we helped over the years, I stay in touch with them. And honestly, they’re probably future job opportunities I may have because I helped them and my team helped them, which is really cool.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you for giving that example. I really liked how you walked through all of that and even including, you know, putting in that course that you did of, you know, finance for non-finance people and all started out of customer profitability. So you never know how far something can go or how much of an influence an analysis you’re doing can have. So thank you. I appreciate you sharing that. So we’re coming up on the end of our time. Just two questions left here for you. First is, what advice would you offer to someone starting their career in FP&A today?
Drew Murphy:
I would say learn accounting. That’s the language of all business and it’s something that you can use in any job, FP&A or honestly marketing, sales, whatever it is. So learn accounting, learn a business model, like, and I, what I mean by that is don’t just know the numbers. Like understand what’s in the numbers. So like when I worked at a plant, my mentor told me, you should walk the plant floor for 20 minutes every day. And that’s what I did. And I learned a ton about how things were made and I could actually, like, it’s almost like neo in the matrix where you see like these green numbers, that’s like your spreadsheet. I could see the production happening and like, wow, like this is cool now I can help, you know, save money and all these things. So learn your business model or a business model that you’re working on.
And then I’d say just be curious all the time, like the, the opportunities to learn something new every day or, or everywhere. Especially with this thing called the internet, right? And this thing called now ChatGPT which is supposedly gonna take over the world in the next couple years, right? Which it kind of is <laugh>. So you can learn a ton and just like if you carve out five minutes in your calendar a day, and I, I do this now, like on my calendar, it’s a 15 minute block when I wake up, like learn something new and I tell myself that. I’m like, all right, what’s something new I didn’t know yesterday that I’m gonna know today that’s going to help me just make me a little bit better? And yeah, just so yeah, be curious all the time and just learn something new every day. I would say would also be something to do for somebody venture out in their FP&A career.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you. Great advice there. I appreciate that. You know, learning something new, accounting, understanding the business, all really good advice that would help anyone in their career. So question, if someone wants to get ahold of you, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Drew Murphy:
Find me on LinkedIn. There’s actually a lot of Drew Murphy’s out there, but yeah, I’m the one that looks like this. Or you could you could email me at what’s my email? Drew, drew@fpandhey.com. And yeah, feel free to reach out. I, I love hearing from, from people whether it’s people just starting out or people just with problems in general that, Hey I saw you did this thing. Like how, how can I think about things differently? I just had coffee with somebody who lived across town actually. I met on a lunch and learn and it’s like, where do you live? Melrose, Massachusetts. No way. I literally live across town. Let’s grab a coffee. And it was one of those things like, hey, let’s talk shop and talk FP&A and we talk pricing strategy. So anyways yeah, looking forward to anybody who wants to connect <laugh>.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great, well appreciate that and we’ll definitely put your contact information in the show notes and just wanna give you a huge thank you for being on the show. I’ve really enjoyed chatting with you today. Appreciate it. And so thanks for your time, drew.
Drew Murphy:
Thanks Paul. This was a lot of fun. I really appreciate it.
