Jon Allen and Duke Heninger, of Utah-based Amplēo, have brought their finance game to fast-growing companies which are between $5m and $50m in revenue. They are “fractional CFOs” – that is experienced finance professionals advising these companies on a part-time basis. For instance, one business they work with, Korean barbeque restaurant Cupbop, appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank and got $1million from Mark Cuban in 2022. Other companies they advised include Burt Brothers (a tire and services company). Collectively Amplēo helped more than 3000 companies.
But they always find the same story when they look at financials at such companies.
“It’s always the data”, says Duke Heninger, Financial Partner at Amplēo. “It’s getting things put in a way so that people can understand what they’ve even spent. Most of my clients are on a very simplified accounting system. They aren’t classifying anything in separate departments. So it’s breaking it out, trying to understand who owns what, where should it go, and ultimately everybody just sandbags just so that they don’t trip a budget”.
In this episode of FP&A we meet Jon Allen Managing Partner, Finance, and Duke Heninger, finance partner at Amplēo.
They provide a masterclass on the value of FP&A at fast-growing companies, revealing:
- Our worst budget experiences
- Our journey through finance to CFO
- What we wish we had known earlier in our career
- Restaurants in COVID Times – how we used FP&A to help businesses
- The powerful value of FP&A in restaurants
- Why FP&A is a superb career choice
- Founding companies as finance leaders
- Teaching FP&A at University
- Why great FP&A must lead to actions and decisions
- How FP&A can become good business partners
- Reporting vs forecasting
- The importance of choosing a great finance leader to work for early in your career
- Getting out your chair and talking to people
- The last things we asked ChatGPT
Follow Duke Heninger:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dukeh/
Follow Jon Allen
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonnyallen/
Amplēo provides business professionals, such as CFOs, CMOs and CHROs, to companies on a fractional basis in order to help them achieve their full potential. https://ampleo.com/
Full episode and Transcript
Paul Barnhurst:
Hello everyone. Welcome to FP&A Today. I’m 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 have two guests with us that I’m delighted to welcome to the show. We have John Jon Allen. Jon, welcome to the show. Great
Jon Allen:
To be here. Thanks, Paul.
Paul Barnhurst:
Excited to have you. And we have Duke Ger with us. Duke, welcome to the show.
Duke Heninger:
Okay, thanks Paul. Good to be here.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thanks. So just a little bit about ’em. They both come to us from the Salt Lake City area. They’re along the Wasatch Front in Utah. They’re partners at Amplio, which is a large fractional services business. They do a lot of work in the Intermountain West, and we’re really excited to have ’em both on. So we’re gonna start, this is something we ask everybody, and we’ll start here with you first, Duke, on this one. What’s the worst or most challenging budget experience you’ve had in your career?
Duke Heninger:
Oh, man. It, keep in mind most of what I’m working on is five to $50 million companies. A lot of the times they don’t even have a budget. They’ve never done it before. And then, you know, we come in and they have, um, uh, like 10 teams for some reason, and they all want departmental budgeting, but never done it before, nor do they have good data. So all of the worst experiences are, are really many of, most of the experiences that I have.
Paul Barnhurst:
That’s funny. And, and what is so challenging in this situation? Is it the data? Is it putting the process in place? A little bit of everything?
Duke Heninger:
Oh, it’s, it’s, it’s the data. It’s getting things put in a way so that people can understand what they’ve even spent. You know, uh, most of my clients are on a very simplified accounting system. They have, uh, there aren’t, they aren’t classifying anything in separate departments. So it’s breaking it out, trying to understand who owns what, where should it go, and ultimately everybody just sandbags, uh, just so that they don’t trip a budget
Paul Barnhurst:
<laugh>. And what’s maybe a key takeaway from, you know, dealing with that kind of situation, those challenges? Any learnings from that?
Duke Heninger:
You know, a lot of it is just education. Getting people, people in a spot where they understand what this is for. Um, getting them to understand this is not like a big brother situation. Um, and helping them to understand, um, you know, the process. It’s really, if I can just meet with them one-on-one, walk ’em through it, then I can get the data that I need from them fairly quickly, um, hardly ever works if I just email them a spreadsheet and say, Hey, this is what you spent last year. Tell me what you’re gonna spend this year. You know,
Paul Barnhurst:
<laugh>. Yeah. That, that sounds about right. How about you, John? What’s the, uh, kind of worst or most challenging budgeted experience you’ve had?
Jon Allen:
Oh, man, I, you know, I was, you know, leading an FP&A department during covid, um, you know, and at that time was working in, you know, a big multi, uh, unit restaurant business. And so, you know, you kind of think about your worst nightmare in a restaurant business is, is one where your customers maybe, you know, are limited on their ability to come and visit your establishment. And so that was really challenging just because, you know, the inputs were so uncertain. Like, you don’t know, like we were running scenarios where we might be down 50% and we might not be right. And You know, fortunately, you know, fortunately things were able to recover and stabilize, and there was a lot of, you know, support for restaurants at that time. But that was really, really hard. And it was like, it, there’s the emotional side of it, something you’ve built up for, you know, six years and put all your, you know, passion and energy into getting to a point, and then kind of watching it, you know, take steps backward that you’ve gotta figure out how to fight to keep, keep the revenues and keep the people that you’ve, you’ve worked together with.
And, and so that, that was really a challenge, but it was really cool to see people come together during that time. So,
Paul Barnhurst:
Sure. I, I could imagine that was really diff difficult. What’s maybe a learning or something you took away of going through that experience that kind of helps you today?
Jon Allen:
For me, just that like, you know, the more, the more disciplined you can be about, like, finding creative solutions to hit targets, right? Because, you know, we, we definitely got creative with the teams of things that we could cut back on that wouldn’t affect anybody’s livelihoods quite as much. Right. And then, you know, and I think acknowledging the things that are outside of your control like that, that’s a big piece of like, you can do everything perfect. You can execute perfect. At the end of the day. There’s just gonna be things that, you know, limit your ability to hit certain inputs, um, or projections. And, and you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta figure out how to adapt. And versus the alternative is you can complain and kind of place blame other places, but there’s always gonna be, I like to call it gravity, you know, that kinda things out of your control. And it’s just, it’s just there, you know? And, you know, and so that, that’s, that, that’s what I learned through that process.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. Now that’s a really valuable lesson, and I like that, that it is so true. Sometimes there are things you can’t control. You could do everything perfectly and something comes outta nowhere that you could never anticipate. And you have to adjust. You gotta stop complaining and just realize, all right, it’s gonna impact our ability to hit some goals. What’s the best we can do here? So why don’t we, you know, kind of take a step back here for a minute. We’ve asked those questions. Next, I’d just love to get to our audience to get to know a little bit about each of you. So we’ll start with you, Duke, if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
Duke Heninger:
Sure. So, you know, I guess I have kind of a classic background of starting. I, I was an accountant for the government, um,
Paul Barnhurst:
I’m sorry, 15.
Duke Heninger:
No, just kidding. 16, 17 years ago. And, you know, they tried to keep me there. They offered me, uh, not a lot of money to do it. Um, but man, those great benefits, right? Um, I left, I was, I decided I will pursue my Mac from that. I went and did that. Um, I went through the recruiting process. I ended up joining, uh, one of the larger re uh, regional firms Mm-Hmm CPA firms around Salt Lake City. And the reason that I did that is because I’ve always had this entrepreneurial spirit, and I really wanted to be involved with companies that were maybe in their, you know, their earlier rounds of raising capital or, you know, they’re, they’re scaling, they’re improving. I wanted to work with founders, and I did, I ended up working with dozens of types of companies, um, and from doing every, everything from cash all the way down to equity.
And so I got a good view of lots of different areas. And then one of my favorite clients hired me out. Um, and I was in the manufacturing and brand, you know, lifestyle brand kind of space. Was there for nearly four years. Um, while I was there, I kind of started in, in the controller side. And then, you know, un unbeknownst to me, I was working in FP&A most of the time. I didn’t even know what that term was until, um, I went to a conference, an FP&A conference and everything that they were saying, I’m like, these are the things that I’m doing right now. Um, you know, and so it was eye opening me to see that this was even a thing. And then we went through some rounds of, of, uh, layoffs and, you know, shrinking budgets. And I ended up, um, terminating myself.
I chose myself as, as the head of my department to go. And it was a, it was a perfect timing. Everything, all the systems were set up really well. The people were doing a great job. And I thought, you know, it, it would be best if I left rather than them. And it was great. I stepped right into doing fractional CFO work, and that was in 2018. And, uh, you know, through, I’ve been doing fractional CFO work the whole time. Um, and, you know, it allowed me the flexibility to kind of do other things that I wanted. So during that time, I bought a company, um, grew it, it was kind of a turnaround opportunity, um, got, you know, tripled sales from that. And after three years, sold it to another, uh, another company, a larger company. Um, and, uh, now I’m just focusing a hundred percent on, uh, fractional CFO work.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. Thank, thanks for that introduction there, duke. Appreciate it. John, can you tell our audience a little about your background?
Jon Allen:
Yeah, yeah. So, I, you know, I’m the son of a college professor of accounting is, and so I, you know, I went through my whole growing up phase and career thinking, you know, and kind of thinking I was gonna work in public accounting and try and be a partner at one of the big fours. And my dad had seen a lot of his students be really successful in that career path, and had encouraged a degree in accounting and go the CPA route. I, um, you know, I went through school, got that internship in the big city and, and really, you know, it learned a ton, but like realized it wasn’t gonna be a good fit long term. And, and it, at that point, it, it’s kind of like those moments when you’re a college student and you’re trying to figure out what you want to do.
It’s like you have this identity crisis of like, oh, shoot, I thought I was gonna do this, and now I don’t know. And so what I ended up reverting to is I, I, I feel like I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit, was involved with the business plan competitions in, in college. Um, I ended up going and, uh, I didn’t internship with, uh, the university growth fund at the University of Utah. It’s connected to a few other universities. And then, um, I ended up out of that going to go work for a tech startup, um, that did, um, supply chain. It, it actually is, it’s a software solution that’s integrated with, you know, some pretty big retailers like Nordstrom. And, um, and we were building that kind of their backend for drop shipping. And it was, it was really a, you know, a huge shift from going to like a huge public accounting firm down to startup.
You know, and what was cool though is I got to do all of the finances there. ’cause, you know, at a startup, there’s not many people. And so, even though I was young and not qualified, they said, here you go. And, you know, fortunately, like my accounting background allowed me, helped me pick it up pretty well. And so I was, you know, closing out the books, doing balance sheet work papers. Um, I parlayed that into another startup opportunity. Amazingly, both those startups ended up being quite large companies, you know, um, huge exits. Um, and investors were happy. You know, they, they’re still around here in Salt Lake and doing lots of really cool things. And, and I’ve interacted with their products kind of outside. Um, out of that though, I realized in the startup world, I needed a little bit more big company experience. And so I really wanted to get into a role that would round out my accounting skills, um, and with a private equity backed company.
And, and so, funny enough, I, I had done a lot of research on FP&A and realized, I’m like, I don’t, I want to get an fp and a position. And so I just started applying, applied for some big companies. Um, but I really wanted to get mentored by some bigger people, some people who had been doing it longer and kind of gotta wear all hats at startup, go to big corporate and then maybe go back to startup land. Was, was my plan. And, and so luckily I was able to get one in, there was a big private equity back multi-unit, restaurant concept, uh, that’s really popular here in Utah. It’s amazing food. I love the brand, still love the brand. And, um, I was able to get a job there and I was able to learn from an amazing leader who was just an ace at Excel.
He had like 20 tutorials of how to even like, down to like the formulas to shade your cells, like, um, a certain way so that when you add a line, it doesn’t mess up the other up the row. He did. He was just so good in that, like, I couldn’t imagine like a better environment to go learn. And so I did that for seven years, kind of worked my way from the bottom and sat in a lot of different types of FP&A and, um, accounting positions over that time. And, and after doing that, I realized I wanted to get back to the smaller growth companies and, and, and so, you know, um, jumped into consulting like Duke. So kind of little different story, but very similar between public accounting, corporate, bigger corporate, and then back into consulting. And it’s been so much the last three years have just been so much fun. And I just love what love what we do and love what we, the clients we get to work with every day.
Paul Barnhurst:
So that’s what you want is something that you love doing. It’s nothing’s better than when you actually enjoy work.
Jon Allen:
Yeah.
Paul Barnhurst:
Versus you kind of have to tolerate work. We’ve all had those days. So this next question here is for you Duke, you know, you mentioned, and you talked a little bit about this, right? You started your career in auditing, ran your own business for a few years, started a fractional CFO business, you know, how was that transition for you from accounting to FP&A? You mentioned you’d been doing fp a for quite a while before you even knew what it was, but maybe just talk a little bit about transition from counting to kind of fp and a to fractional services, how that kind of went for you. Sure.
Duke Heninger:
Well, it turned my world upside down. You know, my path going through the small business was that, you know, I went to this organization that really had no systems or processes set up around accounting or finance. And really in everybody’s mind, accounting and finance were the same thing. They didn’t even know what they didn’t know. Um, there I did have a leader, uh, there was a CFO there with a banking background. And, you know, he was really responsible for helping to, you know, finance all the equipment, you know, this was manufacturing and, and so, but, you know, and he was good at finding answers to things, but it was always very, you know, reactionary. And so it was getting into it, I didn’t even know what I was doing. I was just trying to solve a problem. And it was all very reactionary. And it was late nights.
Um, 80 hour weeks was very common. Um, you know, about that same time that I was getting into it more and more, that’s when we became the target for a possible acquisition. And, you know, we were under an LOI from a larger, a large public company. And, um, just getting all the questions that they were asking and seeing how they were approaching it, it was actually very, very eyeopening for me. And that’s really what was like the pivot point for me. And after a while, you know, they just handed me the models. They said, Hey, it seems like you can do this. Why don’t you just go ahead and start filling stuff out? And that’s really the thing that was the trigger for me. And, uh, you know, then getting into consulting work, it was, you know, you know, you know all this information and then really getting a consulting, you, you, it’s kind of, you work, you, you were working in this world and now you’re often working in this world and it’s needing to simplify, you know, the outcomes for people and, you know, what is it they really need and why? And coming up with, you know, things that are specific to the financial operation. You know, when you’re in, when you’re working internal to a company wearing many hats, you’re doing finance, but you’re also doing operations as well. You’re doing human resources a little bit. You’re doing sometimes IT, you know, and, uh, and so it, it was really nice for me to focus on that one thing that I knew really well.
Paul Barnhurst:
Got it. Makes, makes a lot of sense. And definitely small companies. You are doing a little bit of everything. I’ve definitely learned that over the last year and a half running my own business now. Yeah. Right. You do. You do everything. ’cause that’s how it works.
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So, you know, John, I’d like to get a little bit of your thoughts. You know, I know you’ve worked a lot in the restaurant industry. You spent seven years there. What, what in your mind do you think are some of the most important metrics for someone analyzing the industry? Like, kind of how do you think about the industry from an FP&A standpoint and kind of looking at that industry?
Jon Allen:
That, that’s a great question. And I should say I’ve been doing it for more than a decade because many of the clients that I work with, director, multi-unit and having a lot of success out there, uh, restaurants are hard, you know, and, and there’s a couple reasons. Restaurants are hard and, um, where FP&A is comes into play, but they’re, they’re operationally intense, meaning you gotta get people to show up to work and to do the same set of actions and then, you know, keep customers happy, keep tables clean, cook the food, you know, and it’s, it’s really small transactions. It’s not like you’re selling, at least most of the restaurants I’ve worked with have been, you know, it’s not huge tickets. It’s, you know, 10, $20 average tickets, right? Um, not, not to mention. So the operation is hard, but you, the other thing that’s really expensive is the construction.
So you actually have to, before you make any money, you spend six to 12 months doing construction, basically building like a new house and hoping, and, you know, praying that whatever concept or idea you have is gonna work in this spot. And once you build it, you can’t just, you know, pick it up and move it. t’s like you, you’ve built it, you’re, you’re already into this, right? And so, you know, I, I think restaurants succeed in two areas. They get the right spots, um, and then they run good operations. Um, if you get the wrong spot, you can run the best operations in the world and, and still struggle as a business. So, um, they’re both really, really important. But, um, getting the right sites and concepts that work in certain spots, and it’s different depending on what the people are like in those areas and how accessible those areas are.
So FP&A and data is a huge, huge part of being successful in restaurants. There’s a lot of data that goes into analyzing if a site is gonna work, you know, and some of that is cross-pollinating, you know, your existing customers, if you’ve been open a while, if you, you’re a new concept, you don’t have that luxury. Um, so it’s using the best data you have to say, am I gonna be able to get enough customers here? And then there’s the understanding, what are the inputs, right? Which is how much is this gonna cost to build out the concept? And then what are the outputs, which is how much is this gonna cash flow after I open? And so I like to call those restaurant unit economics, um, which is really a function of what was my capital expense, right? How much did I spend to build this store?
And then how much cash did it produce after I build it? Hopefully it’s producing cash. Some I’ve seen where you make a huge investment and it doesn’t produce cash. Those are really expensive hard lessons. But, um, and, and we call those unit economics, um, cash on cash returns. Um, you can use those to do an IRR calculation, but at the end of the day, it’s the, it’s kind of the same idea of I invest a dollar, hopefully I get 30 cents back a year at least, and pay the construction off in two to three years, um, is kind of what the industry likes to see. If you can be better than two years, you’re kind of best in class. Um, and I’ve worked with concepts that have done it in a year, and, and it’s, it’s a magical thing when you can, you know, make a $500,000 or a million dollar investment and get that money back in year one, and then, and then every year forward, it’s just gravy, right?
Paul Barnhurst:
Sure. Yeah. Once you’ve paid off that investment, you’re, you’re earning at a much higher rate. You’re, that’s a really good situation to be in. I think. I, I like the way you explained that and thought through that and just kind of the unit economics, all the data and the stuff you talked about. It was a really good answer. I appreciate that. So, you know, next question I have for you here is, uh, I wanna ask John, you’ve, in 2020, I believe it was 2020 you started teaching, right? And FP&A course at the University of Utah. So tell us a little bit about that experience. How’d that come about, and what do you teach in the course?
Jon Allen:
Well, I, I’d been teaching for a long time, you know, weekend classes, things kind of more odd certificates, things like that, and gotten to know the people up there. They, I’d been teaching a financial modeling class, um, which was existing. And I, you know, I, I created a bunch of case studies and problems to get people using Excel and the tools to just like be an FP&A person kind of sit in the seat. It was really popular. Um, and one of the things that the department at the University of Utah started talking with me about that I think is amazing, um, was, you know, what else could we do? And we started talking about a concept of how do we encourage more people to go into fp and a positions when they graduate? It wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t know what it was when I was student.
Duke said the same thing, right? And it’s like, you kind of learn, it’s out there. A lot of accountants get into it, and then some data folks get into it. Um, but it’s this really unique cool position that you can do early in your career, get to work with lots of different departments and, you know, you can parlay that experience into becoming a leader. And, and many FP&A people go into hr, they go into marketing, they go on to be operators. Not all of them are gonna be CFOs like me and Duke. And so that was the concept of the class, um, that we discussed and got a lot of support. So I actually got a kind of a white label to, you know, create this course. Um, and I could do what I wanted. There was no textbook I had to follow. And that was a lot of fun.
So I would get speaker similar to your podcast. I think just more content and education out there is just good for the profession. I would’ve speakers every week talk about how they interact with FP&A, how they use data to make decisions. And every week we would do one, like we did an HR problem around turnover. We would do a marketing problem around CAC to LTV and, you know, customer metrics, um, with an e-commerce. We did a scorecard, bounce scorecard for restaurants. Um, and every week it was kind of like a different department of how do you support operations? How do you support finance? How do you support HR? And the student, the goal is at the end that more students will consider applying for jobs in fp a And what’s so fun is I’ve helped some of those students get jobs in FP&A a and I’ve had many of them reach out and say, I, this wasn’t on my radar, but now I’m applying for jobs within fp and a. And, and so for me it was really rewarding to just kind of help maybe steer the trajectory and get some students in in, and companies are trying to hire for these jobs too, but I’ll get some good talent kind of going for some of these opportunities that I feel like open doors down, they’re great early on, but they open doors down the road. So
Paul Barnhurst:
I, I think that’s great you’re doing that. ’cause there’s not many universities that are teaching fp and a, like you said, it, most people don’t know what it is in undergrad, I didn’t know what fp and a was. And you know, I have a, a friend of mine who’s been on the show before, a guy by the name of Derek Baker, and he was originally thinking, you know, I went to school, I’ll do investment banking ’cause that’s the route I need to go. Right? If you’re finance, you do investment banking. If you’re accounting, you go to the big four. Pretty common, right? That’s kind of the path everybody knows. And he, he did an internship and started to learn what FP&A was. And he is like, I don’t need to do investment banking. I’d rather do fp and a anyway. And so he is done fp and a now he’s, you know, a big believer trying to help people realize, okay, there’s other options here that you may not be aware of straight outta school.
That can be a really good option if investment banking isn’t really what you wanna do and you’re just going there because oh, hey, that’s what everybody does. I need to punch my ticket. Or you’re just going to be an auditor because well, audit’s what’s expected. Maybe there’s another option, there’s another way. And I think it’s great when we share that with people and so they’re aware. I was talking to a student last night who was kind of asking me, do I need to do this? I’m like, no, you don’t have to go that route, can you? Sure. But there are other options.
Jon Allen:
Well, and that, that’s what I would say is like, early in my career, I felt like the decisions I made of like, if I don’t do this now, I can’t do this thing 10 years from now. Like I was, it was always these absolutes, like, I can’t be an entrepreneur if I don’t like, you know, like do these things now. And I can’t be do a private equity deal if, unless I do investment banking. And what I’ve learned is that, you know, I think that, that those kinds of absolutes are just not true. It’s like you, you need to learn skills that make you valuable in the workforce and can, where you can solve problems. And I’ve gotten to work on private equity deals and have made investments into private companies. Right? That’s exciting and fun. And, and I didn’t do investment banking and you know, early on, I, I didn’t think I’d have those opportunities to kind of work in, in some of these fields.
And so it’s like, you know, yes, there are probably, if you want to do, you know, if you want to be like the CEO of like, you know, um, you know, a huge public company, you probably are gonna have to go work for some big companies. You’re probably not gonna like go from small to big. Like, there’s definitely like things, but for the most part, most careers, it’s like you just need to get skilled and educated and really be really good at learning and solving problems. And you will get opportunities. And, that I believe like Fullheartedly and I’ve seen it in in my career, it’s like the more you learn. And I, and so for me, the biggest thing that I focus on, and especially with students, is like, how do you become as curious as possible and just get really, really good at learning?
Like where you’re always curious, you’re reading about things that are maybe a little bit outside your realm. And I read a lot. Like, that’s one thing I think I do more than the average person and it, it translates into my work and it helps me be a better consultant than I would be if I just kind of, you know, um, expected somebody to tell me what to do or somebody’s, well, you didn’t teach me. It’s like, I’m a big believer of if you want to be really successful, you gotta learn how to teach yourself valuable skills. And, and, and so I push that a lot in my class, talk about it a lot. And I, I just believe it, you, you learn how to learn, you’re gonna open doors for yourself. So
Paul Barnhurst:
I, I would a hundred percent agree with that. You know, the more curious you are, the more willing to learn, more proactive, you will open doors. You know, the more you put yourself out there, you’ll open doors. I mean, I’ve seen, you know, different area, but I’ve seen the doors that opened me since I just started putting myself out there and sharing thoughts and leadership and things like that. I never planned on starting the business that I’m today, but it’s opened a lot of opportunities and I’ve learned a ton. And so, you know, I’m a big believer in everything you said there. I think there’s a lot of value in that. And I’d love to see more, you know, universities do FP&A courses and more focus there because I think it’s a great area for people to go into. There’s like a ton you can learn. And I really like what a CEO said, he goes, A friend of mine who has a CEO, he’s like, there’s really only two people, or two pa two, two areas that see the entire business to get 360 view, the CEO, the CFO and FP&A. Right. You know, everybody else usually sees a part of the business. They’re not seeing everything that’s going on. Yeah. It’s a real opportunity to learn and, and be curious, like you said. Well, and so, and I’ll go ahead. Oh,
Jon Allen:
I’ll make one last point is it’s like, and I make this in the class as well, is like, there’s not that many investment banking jobs in Salt Lake. Like I’ve met most of the bankers here, right? There are hundreds of FP&A or FP&A adjacent type jobs, if not like thousands or tens of thousands. There’s just a lot more of them available. So like as we’re talk, as you’re talking about universities, things that, like, that was the point I made in the university is like, you talk about like, you guys should be preparing the people for the workforce, not the everybody to compete for the same 10 jobs. It’s like, how do you qualify people for the jobs that are available that will make huge impact in, you know, the business community? Um, and, and, and it’s not just the business community.
It can be the nonprofit community, it can be, you know, education, but those skills translate so well across other types of industries. And it’s like that’s, there’s a huge amount of demand. So I just think like, you know, if I’m fishing right, and yeah, there’s a big, there’s 10 big fish in one pond. Yeah. Like, I might be one of the lucky people to put my pole in the water and pull up one of those big fish. But if there’s this huge pond with hundreds of medium sized fish, my odds are actually probably a lot better for success in the medium pond. Um, and you, and not everybody thinks that way. And, and, but certainly like I’m a big believer of like, there’s a huge amount of opportunity to be really successful. And yeah, it might not be the biggest fish, but it’s still a pretty good sized fish you can catch in those ponds, you know?
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. That’s great advice. And I really like that. I think there’s, there’s a lot to that. And especially, right, if you look at most cities, yes, there are some that have lots of investment banking jobs. You wanna be in San Francisco, New York, some other places. But in general, you know, there’s a lot more FP&A roles in just about every big city in the US than there is investment banking roles. And I would say even in those roles that probably have a lot of investment banking, there’s still gonna be a lot of FP&A. So I think it’s helping people realize what’s available. So this next question’s gonna go to you, duke. I know you’ve been, uh, working on creating, you know, an online course with, you know, your experiences. So what is it you’re hoping to teach people in that course? What is kind of, you know, you’re hoping to help them understand about fractional CFO and the work you do?
Duke Heninger:
Well, you know, any, any type of thing you’re gonna teach somebody, it’s often best if you’re looking at yourself from where you were years ago, you know, and where I was like, I’ve explained it already. I was, I found myself in a position, I was a controller, so mid-level management type person, and I had a lot of responsibility and, but the amount of oversight, the amount of training that I had was really minimal. And I found myself in a situation where I needed to answer some pretty big questions and I didn’t really understand how to do it. You know, what I’m trying to come up with is more of a system agnostic, size agnostic kind of, uh, you know, company agnostic industry and all that. Something that will just help people that are finding themselves in this kind of position where they’re like, Hey, I, I know certain aspects of this, but I don’t know the whole thing.
And, you know, looking at maybe a holistic approach to, uh, the CFO system, which is, you know, accounting fp a and strategy. And you might, you know, know, you might break those up into, or, or, or group them together differently. But if you look at, you know, accounting as like, you know, the foundation and the purpose of it is to really support the FP&A, which supports the strategy, you know, and so tying everything together and just helping to like, just give a framework of here’s a way to start thinking about things so that, and you can apply whatever. Like, I’m not gonna be teaching, you know, an Excel course. Um, I’m not teaching systems, I’m not teaching, you know, the step-by-step approach of every individual situation. ’cause there’s just, there, there’s so many out there, but it’s okay. Take yourself now and you feel like you’re not quite there yet, you don’t really understand.
But I wanna teach you how to start thinking about, you know, how to simplify the accounting, how to focus and strengthen the fp and a and even how to start approaching things like, you know, how do I go and support strategy? We support it before we drive it. Right? And, and really, like, it’s really hard to, I don’t think I could teach a course on all the different kind of strategies, but I can start talking about how to support it. You look at debt, raising debt and raising equity. You know, those are two things that, like for someone, I found myself, you know, even five years ago, getting put in a spot where, you know, at these smaller companies of, Hey, we need debt, we need equity. And I go, you know, Hey, is there someone can help me? And I couldn’t really find a whole lot of people except a few other mentors.
And they just said, Hey, just do this, this, this, this. It was like, oh, this actually seems really easy. You know? And supporting strategy can be fairly simple if you think about it the right way. So, you know, that’s my hope is to create, create a system just to start thinking about things and knowing, okay, where do I go from where I’m at right now? And what’s, what’s the direction that I should start focusing? And, uh, you know, kind of a little bit of a step-by-step approach. Um, so it’s not to, to, to have somebody be a CFO right after, you know, and this might be for someone who’s like, uh, a homegrown, uh, accountant, you know, that’s finding themself in that situation. It might be someone who’s left public accounting, it might be someone with a title of CFO and they just haven’t seen certain things before that, you know, they don’t, don’t know how to think about it.
Um, so it’s kind of a, a broad approach, but the focus is this, like this underserved market where, like if you go, I was looking at Nicks the other day, the, you know, national association of like, you know, those like codes that you put to business And, and they, they come out with these reports to say, well, here’s how many companies are in the US and they kind of break it down by size. And as you’d imagine, you know, companies that are really small, there’s just a ton of them. And you know, this is like under a million dollars in sales. Like really, they, they don’t need like A CFO. Uh, they’re gonna get a lot of their advice from their like tax preparer or CPA or something like that. And, and they might not even, they might just have a bookkeeper keeping stuff, and that’s fine.
And you look at the large companies that, you know, have a lot of robust, uh, support, you know, budgets and all of that. And there’s only a, just a few of them really, but there’s this middle area where it’s kind of this awkward area where, you know, there’s not your, your CPA can’t really do the work that’s needed, but you, you often don’t have the resources to go hire the people who know everything to do. And this is partly why the fractional space has been blowing up recently, right? Youknow, to give that kind of experience. But Paul, like, we look at the fractional space and people say, Hey, I’m a CFO, and you start asking questions and realize, you know, you’re really not a CFO, you’re like a controller or you’re a bookkeeper that knows how to, you know, maintain a, a cash forecast. Um, or, you know, you might be doing some template type of things, but like, can you really think through the strategy, you know, and, and helping them achieve the goals that they want to achieve. It’s more than just presenting information to somebody, right? And so how do you go and think about that in this space of the middle market?
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. Well, it sounds like that’ll be a really exciting course. And I like how you kind of frame that to help people, you know, think about those different areas that you mentioned, the accounting, the FP&A and the strategy and how they support each other. And, you know, yes. You see a lot of people in the space that, you know, you see the CFO term used loosely in fractional work where hey, they’re really a bookkeeper or they’re really, you know, just doing very basic things. There’s not the strategy, there’s not really helping create the value. You know, as I always tell someone when they say, yeah, I have services, I’m like, okay, are you getting advice to help your business grow? Or are you just getting reporting and bookkeeping? Yeah, I’m just getting a second. Then you’re probably overpaying or you’re not really getting, you know, those services of where the value comes. And so I think, you know, some great things there. And kind of speaking of that value in FP&A, John, I’d love to get your thoughts. What do you think is great FP&A, what does that look like to you?
Jon Allen:
Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, well, to demonstrate that I would like kind of look at my models that I build and fp and a models things now versus maybe what they look like a decade ago when I was getting started, right? <laugh>. Um, I think my formulas were like a paragraph long sometimes. And it’s like, I took a lot of pride in like, I had a lot more hours back then. And it’s like you build out these intense models, big pivot tables, and it’s like early on it’s like, man, I need a faster computer so it can process all this data. And what I’ve learned, the more experience I’ve gotten, the more I’ve appreciated simplicity, right? Is like, how do you simplify? How do you focus on the right couple things and how do you, you know, get all the comple complexness out? Because a great FP&A person is gonna, they’re ultimately the models and the recommendations and the graphs and, and different insights you build, they need to lead to action and decision.
Um, and if it confuses, if it’s a cool insight, cool insights are great, but they don’t necessarily drive action and decisiveness, um, then you maybe haven’t done your job. So I’d say like, I have like maybe less cool insights, um, than I, I did 10 years ago. I would find all, did you know this day this thing happened and this thing happened, you know, but I tend to focus a lot more on just simplicity and actionable insights. Um, and so to me, tho those are the things that I would say, great FP&A is gonna be, it’s gonna be simple. It’s gonna be digestible by the rest of the organization. It’s gonna be actionable. Um, and, uh, you know, I, I would love to like open up some of those spreadsheets and see some of these formulas and I see Duke smiling.
’cause I think everybody who’s had a career in FP&A can probably relate of like, you know, the huge, you know, paragraph long formulas. And then you get back into your own spreadsheet and you, you’re like, what did I do? Like how do I fix this? Right? <laugh>, it’s like, you, you’re like, you feel like you’re like, you have to be some like educated, like heart surgeon to like go in and like modify your formula. And, and so, you know, now I don’t, I don’t experience that heartache ever anymore. ’cause I just, I keep the model simple. I keep the insights simple and, you know, I still do a lot with data and, you know, digging in and, and having things tie back to, you know, really granular stuff. Like, you can do that, but keeping it simple is just gonna, it’s gonna drive so much more, um, outcome for the organizations. So
Paul Barnhurst:
I love that. There’s three things I heard there, right? Keep it simple, digestible and actionable insights. Yeah. Not just insights for the sake of insights. One of my favorite quotes, and I say this all the time now and I really have come to believe it is simple, is hard, complex is easy. It’s often easier to write that long formula than think about how do I simplify this so that it’s not in this big huge formula, whether that be creating a helper table or, you know, whatever the situation is. But we often default to that complex ’cause Oh hey, well this, sometimes it’s cool to build something complex. And also sometimes it’s just the nature. Like we’ll start with this ugly nested if ’cause oh, I know that. Versus thinking how do I not make this formula wrap around the whole page or whatever that problem may be. So I love that just really focusing on simplicity. ’cause that’s something I’ve had to work really hard on my career. It doesn’t come natural for me. I tend to wanna get into all the little weeds and be complex. I have to remind myself that that’s not always beneficial. Yeah. And I see Duke smiling there. I think he can relate a little bit
Duke Heninger:
To this conversation. Oh, conversation. Yep.
Paul Barnhurst:
<laugh>. So, you know, I’d like to get your thoughts, duke, you know, how does FP&A ensure they’re good business partners? You’ve worked with a lot of different companies, I know John has as well. But I’d love to just get a little bit of your thoughts on how can FP&A really be a good business partner for the business?
Duke Heninger:
Well, I, I, I break, I break FP&Ainto two sections. Okay, this is totally simplified, but it’s, it’s reporting and forecasting, you know, and the reporting is, well, what’s the information that we really need to see, um, what’s important to us? And, you know, the forecasting is, as you imagine, just if some future look, you know, modeling out, where are we going? What’s going to happen? What, you know, what’s the if. And then with, with this particular thought that we have right now, and I’m an accountant, I’m a CPA, and I used to think that I was really valuable by saying things that really weren’t that valuable. You know, jumping right into, from public accounting to industry, um, I was building out these really great depreciation schedules. And, uh, I was writing down the processes and, you know, I had all this button stuff that was buttoned up.
No one really cared about it. And I came to realize over time that, you know, accounting is super valuable. You know, it’s like, it’s like the foundation, but it’s, it’s like the foundation of a house where you don’t show people your foundation. When someone comes over and you wanna show over your nice new house, you don’t talk about the foundation, but if there’s a problem in it, then everything else crumbles, right? So with accounting, you often don’t know there’s a problem until, uh, you don’t even know that it’s really there until there’s a problem. So, but the problem is that there’s a less perceived value from the people that really matter. So, you know, where we go from from, you know, doing something that’s important and really, you know, foundational to something, to providing something that has a high perceived value. That’s the FP&A side of things.
And you know, it’s making things visible. It’s helping to know where we’re going. It’s navigating on a course. It’s helping to shape support and drive strategy. It, you know, it, it, it helps with debt, it helps with equity. Um, you know, there’s so much that we can do with an fp a and besides it’s, it’s much more fun than accounting. Um, but it’s whatever is perceived, you know, who cares about what rules there are about this, that, and the other. No one really cares, uh, unless there’s like a problem. You know, it’s not to say it’s not important, you know, compliance, controls accounting, it’s important. But to the people that really matter, we have to understand who is it that we’re really serving? You know, are we serving ourselves, trying to make our lives simpler? No, we’re trying to serve the people who are employing us, who are our clients.
And really, you know, that’s where you look at, at sometimes like what people get paid in different areas. Well go pay, go compare, like, you know, a bookkeeper to maybe someone who is like a high level consultant for strategy and helping to raise capital. You know, like you go talk to, to brokers or, you know, the, the, the private equity guides, investment bankers. You know, you look at these big transactions with lots of money involved because there’s a higher perceived value associated with these types of things. So helping people to go along a path, um, and seeing what that path looks like, that’s really valuable to them, right? So we want to serve what’s important to them.
Paul Barnhurst:
I agree with you really want to make sure we’re serving the people that we support and we’re providing value to them for what’s important to them. If we’re not, then we’re missing something. We’re really missing the point of what we’re supposed to do. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna move on to what we call our Get To Know You section. So we’re gonna start with you, John, on this. There’s four questions. The answer should be no more than 30 seconds. So, you know, kind of keep ’em brief. We’ll run through ’em. Yeah. And then we’ll, we’ll uh, go to you Duke. So the first one is, what is something interesting about you? Something that makes you unique that not many people know?
Jon Allen:
Oh man. Uh, so to make money in junior high, I used to knit hats. We started a Boys Who Knit Club <laugh>. Um, and that was, that was one of my first entrepreneurial ventures. And not a lot of people. So I, I’ve knitted I think probably 30 or 40 hats and, you know, three or four sweaters. Um, I have a couple of them here at my house still. Um, and that’s kind of a fun talent. Um, you know, that, that I have. So
Paul Barnhurst:
I go, well, I might have to come to you to get knitted hat one of these days, <laugh>. So next one, if you could meet one person in the world, dead or alive, who would you meet and why?
Jon Allen:
Gosh. Um, that, that is a great question and I probably should have read through this before. I, I would love to be Warren Buffett at some point, or, you know, like, I think it would be fun to talk to him and you know, about business. So like, in the context of business, I think he would be a really, really fun and interesting person to talk to and, and, uh, you know, learn from. Um, there’s others I would want to meet that, you know, probably less business related, but that, that’s one that I think would be
Paul Barnhurst:
A lot of fun. Yeah. I think for a lot of business people, you’d be a great one to just sit down and have dinner with, right. Just kind of have that conversation. I agree with you. So this next one, what is the last thing you Googled looked up on YouTube or asked chatt slash generative AI about as it relates to finance fp and a or Excel?
Jon Allen:
Um, so I actually use Chat GPT a lot, um, to add, so actually last night somebody asked me a question about capital raise and, um, you know, the, how a company is valued and how the operating agreement works with the number of shares, you know, kind of with a convertible note. And so I was able to kinda get, actually, I thought I knew the answer and I said, here’s what I think the answer is, but I’m gonna ask chat GPT and sent the chat GPT response. And it was like, it was just like, right on. And so it’s a, I think you have to, you know, you, you’ve gotta be careful with those tools. Um, but uh, there’s, they can be really helpful to just extract, you know, concise information pretty quick. So I use it all the time.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I’m with you. I use it quite a bit as well. I think they can be really valuable, but you definitely have to be careful. So the next one is, what’s your favorite thing about Excel function or feature?
Jon Allen:
Um, I, we, we’ve argued about Google Sheets versus Excel and there’s, there’s been a named Ranges discussion. I use named Ranges all the time and index matches with named Ranges in ’em. So I love named Ranges. Um, some of our consultants are like anti Name Ranges, so Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, there’s some fun, there’s some fun internal dialogue. But I’m, I’m on the, I’m on the, you know, the side of named Ranges. I’m a big fan, so
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I, I, I’ve definitely used named Ranges a lot and I debate whether I can ask, uh, Duke this question. ’cause I don’t know if a Mac Excel actually qualifies as Excel
Duke Heninger:
<laugh>. Oh, it, it’s, there’s so much functionality still there. <laugh>,
Paul Barnhurst:
You know what, we’re, we’re gonna go backwards with you, Duke, just to kind of have some fun. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna start with the Excel one first. What’s your favorite function or feature in Excel?
Duke Heninger:
Well, you know, I have a Mac, so I have to keep it simple, right? So I actually enjoy, I enjoy the simple, like the simple things. Um, and uh, I use X lookup SUMIFs, unique EO month. Those are like stuff I use all the time. I just love the simple stuff. Keep doing the same thing over and over. Dude,
Paul Barnhurst:
You know, the reality is you get, there’s 10 or 12 formulas that you can often do 90% of what you need with, right? You get the occasional where you’re like, okay, I gotta figure out how to do this. But if you keep it simple, there’s not a lot of formulas you need to learn. So what’s the last thing you looked up? Google Chat. GPT.
Duke Heninger:
Oh, it’s, it’s interesting there, there’s, it’s a combination of things. It’s, um, you know, as I’m putting together my course, I’m trying to, uh, create acronyms out of certain financial, um, things. And, uh, it’s really hard.
<laugh>, you can create lots of acronyms with really strange words. And so, um, that’s what I’ve been using it for. But, you know, with client related things, I’ve been, um, man, I recently used it to write a going concern analysis, you know, um, I mean this is, this is the time, uh, where there’s a lot of companies that are, you know, have been going down or continually going down. We hope that it’s gonna go back up, but it’s it’s year end and we’ve got to write that going Concern memo, and it’s so much easier than it was in the past. Um, just trying to think through everything in my head.
Paul Barnhurst:
I bet. Yeah. It’s nice when you can use something like that. So, who’s the person you’re gonna meet? Dead or Alive?
Duke Heninger:
Oh man, it’s, this was a hard one for me as well, but I was thinking it would be really nice to go back and see, you know, Greek philosophers. It, it doesn’t really matter which ones, but I, what I wanna go see is, you know, you guys talk a lot, but, but do you really live it? You know, and, and do your philosophies actually work for yourself and your life? Or, or are these just hopeful ideas that maybe one day would, would help out?
Paul Barnhurst:
That would be really interesting to have those conversations and to see that. And so did you, did you knit hats in junior high?
Duke Heninger:
No, I sold, I sold sodas. I had a paper route. Um, uh, you know, my interesting thing is, um, twofold. When I started, I I wasn’t an accounting major. Um, I started in, in music and I was a vocal performance major, and I knew that I wasn’t gonna sing opera for my life, you know? But, uh, I got a scholarship and so I went to school for free, uh, for a little bit until I decided, yeah, I, I gotta get out of this <laugh>.
Paul Barnhurst:
That’s cool. Well fun. Well, maybe next time we’ll have you on and we’ll have you sing something for
Duke Heninger:
Us. There we go. There we go. There we
Paul Barnhurst:
Go. So we’re gonna go ahead and wrap up here. We just have two last questions for you, and we’ll throw this one over to John first. If someone was starting a career in FP&A today, and you could give ’em a piece of advice, what would that be?
Jon Allen:
Yeah, I would say just, you know, when you’re getting started, you know, it really matters who you work with and who you learn from. And, um, even if it’s, if it’s not the coolest job title or the coolest company, but there’s an amazing leader that you can learn from, um, it’s worth getting that right early. Um, and so I would, you know, it’s, it’s not about being in like the sexiest, coolest company or position. It’s really about what can you learn? And, and so for your first job, I, I believe who your boss is, matters. Um, and it would be better to be at something that’s a boring business with a great boss where you can get the skills then a really cool business with a horrible boss. So I, people don’t always weigh that in. I would weigh it over compensation with your first job of like, this is gonna set the tone for your trajectory for the next couple decades. Um, get those first few years, right? And get the, make sure you get a leader that you can learn from and, and that’s gonna help you grow, um, your technical skills. Because most of your technical skills happen in the first two to five years of your career. That’s where you develop those mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, um, you know, and so to the extent you can really make that, those, you know, good ROI, it’s probably worth it. Um, really, really important.
Paul Barnhurst:
So great advice there. How about you, duke? What’s your advice?
Duke Heninger:
Oh, I, I would say it’s, it’s getting yourself out of your chair and going and talking to people and, and learning how to ask questions and to see how you can really help and support them, right? That’s what we’re all about. But doing that, seeing what is it you need and going and getting some information for them, it’s really valuable for them. And you’ll, you’ll become a valuable person very quick. You want find yourself, you know, being the go-to person for many things. So just talking to people. Um, but I also echo everything that John said too.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. So that’s great advice on both fronts. Making sure you get the right boss with that first job. You can really learn and get outta your chair. Don’t spend all day behind the spreadsheet spread, so get, get a Mac so you’re not spending as much time.
Duke Heninger:
Actually <laugh>. Thank you. Thank
Paul Barnhurst:
You. Alright, so last question and then we’ll let you go here. We’ll start with you on this one, dude. ’cause someone wants to get ahold of you or, you know, reach out to you. What’s the best way for them to do that?
Duke Heninger:
Well, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. Just reach out on LinkedIn to me. Happy to talk.
Paul Barnhurst:
All right, great. How about yourself, John?
Jon Allen:
Uh, I would say the same. LinkedIn, you know, is, is gonna be the best way to get ahold of me. You can also email me, um, at my amp blue email, which you know, is connected to my LinkedIn and on our amplio website. But, um, if, if you want to just chat or ask questions, LinkedIn’s gonna be the best spot, um, to get acquainted. So.
Paul Barnhurst:
All right. Well, perfect. Well thank you both for joining me today. Enjoyed chatting with you and spending some time with you guys. So thanks Duke and John for being on the show.
Duke Heninger:
Thanks Paul. Appreciate it.
Jon Allen:
Thanks Paul.
