Lindsey Martens, VP Finance at fintech company, Valera (Formerly PSCU/Co-op Solutions) talks about her transition from accounting to finance- and how she manages a remote FP&A team that has business partnering and storytelling at its heart. “Business partnering is my favorite thing about FP&A” Martens says, “I love being the translator. I think of myself as taking all this data, accounting data, and then all these other sources that come into it, and I’m packaging it up in a way that is very digestible by the rest of the organization, especially the leaders who are making decisions.”
In this episode:
- Making the pivot to FP&A – why and how
- Starting off in coding and the link to FP&A
- My career at Valera (ex Co-Op solutions)- a fintech leader with clients that are credit unions
- Opps and Challenges of managing a remote FP&A Team
- Small talk at the beginning of meetings (not so small)
- Using rolling forecasts at Valera
- Challenging budget experiences
- Why business partnering is my favorite part of FP&A
- My biggest FP&A success: rooting out the source of at “rise” in profits
- Storytelling in finance
- My biggest mentors and what they taught me about management
- My biggest mistake and how it still leaves me shaking
- Favorite Excel Function
Connect with Lindsey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseymartens/
Transcript below
Glenn Hopper:
Welcome to FP&A Today, I’m your host, Glenn Hopper. Today our guest is Lindsay Martins. Lindsay is at Dynamic Finance Leader who thrives on turning complex financial data into actionable insights. With nearly two decades of experience across accounting and fp and a, she brings a wealth of expertise in financial modeling, strategic planning, and process improvement. Lindsay has a super interesting background that includes leading a remote team of analysts and managing forecasts and budgets at Velera. She’s a change agent, focused on automation and innovation in the fp and a space. Lindsay’s another convert transitioning from accounting to FP&A. We’ll talk to her about this transition as well as building trusted partnerships and driving business decisions with data. Get ready to explore her favorite projects, biggest challenges and vision for the future of FP&A. Lindsay, it’s an honor to have you on the show. Welcome.
Lindsey Martens:
Thanks for having me.
Glenn Hopper:
So, Lindsay, we’ve been on kind of a run lately with people who made the transition from accounting to, uh, to finance to FP&A and it’s, it’s always interesting to me and it’s, I think that accounting skills would serve you well in fp and a, but, um, you know, it, it, it’s interesting that more people are making that move. And I’m wondering, even prior to that transition, if you could take me through your career and, and how you got into, uh, FP&A.
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah, so my career’s just been like a series of small pivots that got me to FP&A, you know, I started out back in college, thought I was gonna be a coder and got a computer science degree. Quickly realized that wasn’t for me. But what I had really loved was all the accounting classes I had taken in college. So, you know, right out the gate, I went and got a accounting job at a Fortune 500 company and quickly realized that at a company that size in accounting, you really end up doing a lot of the same thing day after day. And so I knew in order to grow my career, I wanted to be at a smaller company. So the next role, I went and got more of a generalist position. And, you know, the wonderful thing about doing accounting at a small company is that you get to do it all.
And that includes all the finance, all the accounting do, just dabble in everything. And, you know, even at the time, I was naive enough not to really understand that there was two tracks I could go into. And so I spent all this time in accounting, you know, then eventually as a controller. And what I had really loved about my job was the forecasting and the budgeting, you know, all of the ad hoc analysis, all these things that were truly finance. And so that’s when I made the pivot, you know, and it’s been 10 years since in finance.
Glenn Hopper:
So it’s interesting that you came from a computer science background, because I think even though you didn’t go down that as a career path, the whatever, the, that sort of intellectual curiosity that led you to coding, it feels like it’s that same, it’s scratches that same itch that the forecasting does and sort of the working with numbers and, and to get to it. Do you find now that you still, even though you’re not a coder, that things, whether it’s logic or approach to things that you learned in coding, do they still apply in in fp and a today?
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the things, first things you learn when you’re, you’re doing coding, it’s an if statement, which
Glenn Hopper:
Yep.
Lindsey Martens:
You write in Excel.
Glenn Hopper:
Yep. I still love my, I love my ifs in Excel. So <laugh>. Yes,
Lindsey Martens:
Absolutely.
Glenn Hopper:
So through your career inFP&A, you ended up at Valera and you’ve been there, what, about seven years now? Uh, tell us a little bit about Valera. What’s the company and what, what industry is that?
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah, so Vale’s actually a relatively new company. I have spent, you know, the last six plus years at Co-op Solutions, which merged on January 1st, 2024 with another company. And Valera is the new name of the merge company. So Valera is a credit union service organization. And basically what that means is that the company’s clients are credit unions. Um, and we exist in the FinTech space. So we do, most of our products relate to payments. So any sort of, you know, tool or program that’s running through a credit union that touches payments, we provide some sort of solution for.
Glenn Hopper:
Well, tell me about some of the, some of the projects you’ve worked on and some of your achievements at Valera. I think you know, one that, uh, when we were talking before the show that really, it’s kind of a statement on where we’ve, where the world has been sort of post pandemic and now into 2024, but leading, um, a remote team of financial analysts, uh, in, in doing the forecasting and budgeting all remotely. So tell us about you, you know, well, the remote team and then just some of the other cool projects you’ve worked on while at Valera now and, and previously at co-op solutions.
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah, so, you know, COVID hit in 2020 and they said everybody go home. And so our team has been remote ever since then. Um, I think that was a very natural change for our team. You know, financial analysts are thinkers by nature, and so to have quiet space to do that, um, was very, very easy for them. And so many companies are all over the place anyways. It’s not like we were all in one office together to start with. Um, so really small team, small but powerful team that I work with at Valera. Just, just a great group of people, but it does kind of change the way that you work. You have to be a little bit more intentional about the things that you do and the buildup of the team for sure.
Glenn Hopper:
So I think back early in my career when I was, uh, starting out as a, as a financial analyst, um, and I was in telecom and we were merging with a different company every couple of months it seemed like. And I went from having my own quiet office where I could think and, and, uh, you know, really go heads down and work on these models to being in this massive cube farm where the cubes were, they all had low walls too, so there was no privacy. You could see just across like, it was <laugh> like, uh, prairie dogs, you know, just <laugh> a sea of people across. And I, that was very hard to do the kind of work because you’d get, you’d go head down into your model, and then there’s people walking by and then people, you know, and all the cubes were like in these little pods of four.
So at any time, any of the three people that were in the pod could be talking to someone, it was actually really hard to do like that deep work of, of building out a big model. And I would’ve given anything to be working remote then now, later in my career as I’m managing teams, it seems like the, the team’s fine with being remote, but I’m, it, it kind of, I feel like I’m at a disadvantage because I can’t just walk up to somebody’s desk and interrupt ’em while they’re making their model or whatever. But, uh, do you find, are there challenges, um, to managing remotely? Like how, like training or, or kind of one-on-one mentoring and coaching? How do you handle that, um, from a remote setting?
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah, so again, you just have to be very intentional about it. So one-on-ones become very important. I’ll tell you that, you know, one of the things that used to drive me crazy is you’d start a meeting with a group of people and they would spend five, 10 minutes chitchatting in the office, and it’s like, oh my gosh, you guys, we can do this after the meeting, right? Like, I just wanna get this meeting done with a move on. And now the, the script has flipped. In order to build trust and really get to know people, you have to build that time in. So do the water, you know, the water cooler talk at the beginning of a meeting, get to know people, spend time during your one-on-ones, you know, asking about their family and their weekends and those sorts of things. And then when it comes to training, again, like people maybe aren’t just gonna hear things, they’re not sitting next to you.
So, you know, one of the things that my team loves and that I was kind of surprised by is we’d have these kind of like, smaller group meetings. Not every week, nobody needs another weekly meeting, but maybe once a month. And one of the topics is always, um, share a tip or a trick that you have learned recently, like, bring up Excel and show me the new formula you’re using. And then on the flip side, we do tell me a pain point. Tell me what you’re dealing with lately, that’s just driving you crazy. And let’s all together try to solve that. And the things that we learn from each other are the things that we’d probably be picking up if we were in the office together, but you just have to make, you know, make purpose, make time for that.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, that’s <laugh>. It’s funny when you mentioned the small talk at the beginning of meetings, I, I didn’t really think about that until we started using those AI note takers in meetings and <laugh>. So I’ll go through, I actually, I, I have this like elaborate note keeping system that I have from all my meetings where I, I take my transcript and I, you know, get the action items and I run it through GPT and kind of get the key takeaways. And I, I save all the notes from the meetings, but every one of my meetings, I mean, it could be a 30 minute meeting. And the first 10, like yesterday, I was trying to find an answer in one of these transcripts, and I realized we’ve spent 10 minutes talking about Chris Christofferson, then the movie Convoy, then Smokey in the Bandit, and we were so far off the rails of anything <laugh>. And I wish I need to, I need to train the, the note takers to, you know what, you don’t need to record this part. This is, uh, but it was pretty funny going through and, and seeing that, uh, recorded in the, uh, historical ledger, I guess <laugh> <laugh>.
But anyway, as much as I’d like to, now actually, now now that I’ve mentioned it, I, I wanna keep talking about Chris Christofferson in seventies trucker movies is <laugh> <laugh>. But instead, let’s, let’s get back to fp and a. Hopefully everybody’s getting near the end of budget season where the budget numbers are like the 12.2 a slash final, you know, or what <laugh>, you know, and we’re hoping that we’re not, uh, not having to create any more budgets, but it is, is, uh, top of mind for all of us right now. Walk me through your kind of approach to budgeting and, and forecasts, and are you, you know, have you historic historically been more of a, a, a top down or, or bottom up building the budgets and what’s, what’s your approach in, in working with departments and doing the forecast and, and run rates and all that?
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah, so, you know, we use rolling forecasts. It may makes sense for our business. So we’re updating those models every single month. And what I’ve found is there has to be sort of a balance there. There isn’t a need to publish a budget or publish a forecast every single month, but how much of the work do you do on a regular basis so that when it comes time to budget or forecast, you’re not needing to work 68 hours to get everything updated. Right? Um, so there’s kind of a balance there that we’ve learned. You know, even if you’re not gonna publish it, still get things updated, you know, reach out to your business partners, kind of check in on how things are going. And then during budget season, we’ve already got this like really solid foundational forecast that we’re using that we’ve been updating all year. And then it becomes this like, very intensive, having lots of meetings with business partners, getting everyone on board with the numbers, you know, setting goals with the sales team, and also working with that exec team for their, their, their top number that they’re trying to hit. You know, it’s definitely a mesh, I would say of the two.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. As I’ve been talking to people right now, it’s funny because at the, you know, usually Q4 we’re scheduling events and trying to do webinars and everything, but our lowest, our lowest attendance in, um, uh, in all this, and even even the podcast listening numbers, like people are so deep in, in budget season, the last thing they wanna do is, uh, hear somebody <laugh>, here’s somebody else, uh, talking about budgeting. However, we have found as we’ve, and, and folks out there that they do like hearing about sort of, uh, triumphs and things that our guests have overcome, because then when they’re, um, in the, in the heat of budget, it, you know, it’s like, it feels like kindred spirit. So I’m wondering if you have any, uh, any challenging budget experience stories or things that you’ve faced in your career during budget season that you’ve had to overcome, things that were particularly difficult, anything that jumps out at you on, on that front.
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah, you know, it’s only happened one time in the midst of budget where I’ve thought to myself, yeah, I cannot do this. I’m, I’m done. Right? <laugh> only once. Only once has that happened. And of course it was 2020 and, you know, at the time, everyone’s budgets were blown out of the water.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. How do you forecast in a Black Swan event? Yeah,
Lindsey Martens:
<laugh>. Yeah. You know, and it just, the world was upside down. And then we’re trying to come up with 2021 numbers, like that just seems so far away. But then add on top of it, we were trying to roll out, um, a new consolidation tool . And so just add like one more thing on the top. And what I learned is like, this is, this is a bad idea. That is a bad time to be rolling out. A new forecasting tool is like right in the middle of budget season in the middle of a pandemic <laugh>. Um, this is not something that you just kind of like do off to the side, right? So, really tough, you know, nothing tying out, spending all my time trying to get everything to match rather than focusing my efforts on, you know, building, you know, an answer that everyone feels good about. So never again, I learned my lesson.
Glenn Hopper:
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We did talk about the, uh, the OneStream implementation before the, the show. And we were in that talking about working with the different groups and, um, and we, we kind of got into business partnering a little bit, and I love this term, and it, it really, when I started out in fp and a that we, we didn’t call it this, but the whole idea of, you know, finance coming out of the, sort of the ivory tower of we’re just the numbers people, we don’t get involved in the other. But fp and a has really changed in recent years to lean more into business partnering where we’re showing value from stepping out of our seats and, and accounting and finance and going and working with sales and marketing, with operations and, uh, HR and all the other groups to, to help them with their reporting and help them have better visibility into their side. Have you done a lot of business partnering and what’s, what’s kind of been your approach to it?
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah, so business partnering is actually my favorite thing about fp and a, I love being the translator. I kind of think of myself as, you know, I’m taking all this data, accounting data, and then all these other sources that come into it, and I’m packaging it up in a way that is very digestible by the rest of the organization, especially the leaders who are making decisions. And business partnering, partnering is such an important piece of that. I have to have trust and relationships with people, um, across the organization so that there’s like this mutual benefit, right? I learn from them about the business, and then I can take that and tie it back to the financials and share my findings. And I actually think this is just gonna continue. Finance is just gonna keep becoming more ingrained in the daily business, if you will, and really becoming a part of all these little organizations within the organization if you’ll
Glenn Hopper:
I see that too. And I think, you know, as, and not to get into the whole AI piece, but you know, we’ve, we’ve talked especially in recent years about how automation, and we’ll say not just ai, but automation in general is, is gonna take jobs away from us. But I, I think that it’s really an opportunity. So maybe some data entry, you know, some, some sort of, um, frontline entry level jobs, maybe they will go away, or whoever’s being hired in that position is going to have to, instead of being hired as a a data entry person, they’re gonna have to add that level of value above it. But, um, I think we’re fp and a people, we love building models and I think it’s not there now, but even tools like copilot and, and Microsoft, I mean, at some point, all of our favorite formulas and things that we do in Excel and things that make us stand out, people are gonna be able to do just by typing natural language.
And instead of, you know, typing out a, a function, they’re gonna just type, Hey, I, I need to do this. And co-pilot’s gonna do it in Excel, which a lot of us, you know, that that’s, it’s gonna be, uh, like people who throw away their mouse ’cause they only wanna use keyboard shortcuts and all that. I think a lot of us are still gonna, uh, build Excel tools the old fashioned way, but I also think that because it’s sort of gonna be a democratization of this ability, that that part, that partnering is gonna get stronger because it’s gonna free us up from all the data entry time to spending more time working with those teams. And I think if the data collection and data cleaning and the model building, if we’re spending less time doing that, I could see even more partnering in in the future. Does that kind of go along with what you’re saying?
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s for finance adds value, right? It’s not, we’re not adding value by doing calculations in Excel. Um, and so I think about even
Glenn Hopper:
Though that’s the fun part, that’s <laugh>, right? Right. <laugh>. So on one hand there are fewer people coming into accounting, and I haven’t seen numbers as extreme in FP&A, but it’s sort of, you know, the whole accounting and finance industry. But what do you think are some of the challenges, uh, for FP&A in general and, and maybe the opportunities and kind of where you see the field going in the next few years?
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah, you know, the thing about fp and a is that it can be kind of abstract, you know, whereas accounting is like a science. FP&A and a is more of an art form. It’s not just X plus Y. We’ll see, there’s, you have to add the insight on top of it. And where do you get that insight from? I mean, the options are, you know, endless. There’s so many places where you can pull assumptions from. And so I, I think that’s just like in general, the biggest challenge in fp a, just ongoing. And as far as opportunities, you know, there’s so many new tools coming out, and I think for me, it’s really exciting. I always like to learn a new tool, but I do think, you know, just like the rest of the world, we’re gonna see just a lot of evolution in the future.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Yeah. It is amazing how many, whether with AI or not, just sort of the ability to quickly aggregate data and, and use it and put it in with our GL data and, and build, you know, better track KPIs and, and modeling and forecasting, especially at, at larger companies. I mean, you’re, you may start out in Excel, but, uh, or end up, you know, putting your, your presentation together in Excel, but just being able to have access to this data much easier than you used to from all these different systems. It is, it’s, it’s pretty cool to see the evolution happening right now. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Thinking back on your career, what would you say is, is the best achievement of yours? Like a forecast or analysis or, or system implementation, something you’ve done that would be like, something you would give as an example in a job interview could be, uh, analysis or strategic piece of advice that drove action. You know, uh, an example of one of the companies, uh, or, or, or a place where you’ve done this. Uh, we’d love to hear, uh, you know, we always, we like hearing about challenges, but we also like hearing about, uh, successes here as well. <laugh>.
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah. You know, one of my favorite examples, which is so, so simple, but that’s the beauty in fp a, is that it doesn’t always have to be complicated. I had this situation once where, uh, particular line of business, all of a sudden the profits just kind of like increased over a few months. And so we had, you know, leadership just so excited, like, yay, look at these great profits, we’re doing so wonderful. How exciting. Um, and then on the flip side, I’m hearing from my operational partners, they’re screaming, they’re crying, like, things are awful. You know, the world is on fire. And I was like, wow, what is going on here? That there is such a disconnect between the two, and this is where FP&A comes in, right? So what we did, super simple answer here is every time we showed the financials, um, or a P&L for this particular line of business on the same page right next to it, we would show the service levels and you’d see profits go up, service levels go down, and all of a sudden, like it clicked, anybody who looked at it went, oh, I understand now I can see what’s happening.
Um, we’re, we’ve got short term wins that are gonna turn into, um, some very long term problems, right?
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Yeah.
Lindsey Martens:
Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So that’s my favorite. It’s such an easy one, but like all things, they don’t always have to be complicated.
Glenn Hopper:
So big phrases that are being thrown around now. And I, and I love it because it really, it, it’s what makes fp a so exciting. So the business partnering that we’re already talked about, but also storytelling, and storytelling is, it’s not just in the words you use, it’s almost, so a million years ago before I got into finance and accounting, I was a journalist and the, uh, you know, in, in a newspaper you would have the editorial page where people are explicitly stating their opinions and views, but there’s also choices in which stories you run. That is the overall editorial view of the paper. So you decide, you know, these are the stories we’re gonna run, we’re gonna bury this on page seven, below the fold, whatever. And then these are the, the key things. But you have that opportunity in fp and a where you’re <laugh>, you’re just, you’re taking two disparate pieces of information, you know, that relation. And if you can simply present them together, you’re creating a narrative that you don’t even have to explicitly state. It’s just, it’s there if you see those two together and there’s that clear correlation between them. And that’s powerful. And that’s, that’s, I, I can see why you picked that one, because that’s, that’s a big win.
Lindsey Martens:
Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. I love that. I love the storytelling piece of finance. Uh, sometimes I think like we, we dog on reports, like don’t spend so much time putting together reports, but like a beautifully well done report that tells a story is such a powerful tool when you’re working with a partner or a leader in trying to translate what’s happening. Like there’s so much value in that still.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And it’s so different than like, I think, I mean, dashboards can be awesome, but they can also be so many data points that become like billboards that you just drive by on the interstate and you ignore ’em. So if you’re opening up your ERP, you get the same dashboard every day. And if it’s, especially if it’s just, if it’s things you can’t control, maybe it’s a lagging indicator or maybe it’s, you know, whatever it is, if it doesn’t represent a lever, something that you can take action on, you start to just tune it out. And in some of these board reports or management reports that you put together that I’ve talked to people about, you know, every month they’re putting together an 80 page KPI report, and it’s just who’s, who’s reading that? Yeah.
Lindsey Martens:
Or
Glenn Hopper:
Are, you know, and, and if they are, maybe they’re just flipping to page 34 because there’s a, there’s the one metric they care about is, is buried there. But I think that the storytelling is great, and then there’s also just the information overload. So to your point, I think it’s finding those key items in that just sea of information and saying, let me pull these out and give you something of value. There is, I mean, that’s kind of the art of what we do, because you’re not gonna impact change. You could be reporting on every minute detail in the business, but if it’s not creating a narrative or showing where we can take action, then, you know, what, what’s the importance of, of reporting the data?
Lindsey Martens:
Yes. Yes. I love the stuff. It’s so exciting to me to people to like boil it down and just give people what they need, you know, if they want everything else, give it to ’em in the appendix, give it to them in a separate report. Give them the important stuff right upfront and just that.
Glenn Hopper:
Exactly. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Well, what’s top of mind for your career at the moment? What are, are you trying to learn or master anything new? Where where’s your focus these days?
Lindsey Martens:
You know, I’m always trying to learn something new. Um, I don’t have anything in particular I’m working on right now. I’m like, been doing a lot of research on what kind of tools are out there for an fp and a, because there’s so many of ’em right now. And I’m just really excited about where the market’s going with all the new things that are coming out.
Glenn Hopper:
Is there a person or thing that’s had the greatest influence on your, on your finance career?
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah. Gosh, I’ve been so lucky in my career to have just some really fantastic managers that were also mentors. And, you know, that’s not always the case for everyone. I had one early in my accounting career who was really just like a cheerleader for me, really wanted me to try everything, you know, pushed me into doing my first presentations, that sort of thing. Um, and most recently at Co-op Solutions, I had just a fantastic manager. I just learned so much from her about how to lead a team, and she really just involves me in a lot of decision making, letting me see like the ins and outs of things and just, um, someone who shares that much information from you. Uh, you know, I just soaked it all in.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, that’s, that’s great to have, have someone like that because so many times, so this is another remote challenge to me. It’s, and I, I found myself doing this and I have to like step back and re remind myself, these are people, because I guess, and this, you may <laugh> appreciate this as a, as a computer science person as well, but when you’re working with people remotely, especially if you end up just talking to them in teams or, or Slack or whatever communication you’re using where you’re not even doing like Zoom or, or, or teams, you know, video conferencing or when you don’t have people, when people aren’t turning on their cameras, I find when I’m talking to people that are remote and I haven’t seen them, and especially if I’m just texting with them, that humanity like gets kind of washed away. And if I don’t stop and say, wait, this is a person I need to actually reengage and talk about, uh, Chris Christopherson or whatever, <laugh> before a meeting, like, the danger is that you just treat everybody like a computer program or like you’re, you’re talking to them the same way you would chat GPT and you forget that there’s a person on the other side.
So when you have a manager, whether remote or in person, that’s actually bringing you into the fold and not just telling you, Hey, go do all this stuff because it’s your job, whatever. And you don’t know, you know, where that report goes or, or what it’s done for, that’s how, as a manager, that’s how you can build people. And as <laugh> as an employee, it’s how you want to be treated and not just as, you know, as a computer program, here, go do these, uh, do these tasks and, and give me your response. So that’s, that’s great. And hopefully not exceedingly uh, rare to have, uh, managers who will give you that sort of back and forth, uh, feedback loop of communication on it.
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, there’s so much, like, it’s just such a different world when you’re working remotely. You have to really learn like how to balance that. Like what kind of questions do you ask over teams versus email versus just calling someone. Yeah. And there’s definitely an art form to that, that you really have to teach each other for sure.
Glenn Hopper:
Alright, so we already talked about the budgeting side. Beyond challenges and budgeting, would you say the, the most challenging or worst fp and a experience in your career, biggest mistake you’ve made, what you learned from it? What’s the saying, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger? Um, or that it, what doesn’t kill us? We’ll come back and try again. <laugh>.
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah.
Glenn Hopper:
I dunno. But what, what has been a, a challenge that you’ve had to overcome or mistake or something like that in your career?
Lindsey Martens:
Oh, I remember, I remember the one that just had me shaken in my shoes. Um, and it’s, you know, when I had first started a new job about six years ago, and, um, I’d come from a smaller company moving into more of a mid-size to large company. And we got through budget season, my first budget season with a new company, and it was just like two, three weeks after we had finished the budget and we were still completely in Excel. And I find an error in an Excel model, um, and, you know, it was a formula that hadn’t gotten updated in some time and it really needed to be. And so I, I do the math and I, I figure, I think we overstated revenue in the budget by about a million dollars. And I thought, I’m gonna lose my job for this. This is so bad. <laugh>,
You know, coming from this tiny company where like a million dollars is, I mean, a million dollars is a lot of money, right? But it’s all relative. And so then it’s like, oh gosh, what do you do? You know how many people will just be like, I’m gonna forget that. I saw that. Um, I thought, Nope, I gotta fess up. I gotta, I gotta go admit that I did this wrong. I messed up. So I take it to my manager, the same person that I’ve talked about who’s been so great, and she looked at me and she was like, Lindsay, I make a million dollar budget mistake every single year. It’s no big deal. Just forget about it. <laugh>. I was like, what? <laugh> here? I think I’m probably gonna get fired too. Don’t worry about it. Um, you know, and she’s right. The cool thing about fp and a and budgeting and forecasting is that nobody’s ever right. We’re always gonna be wrong. It’s just how wrong are you? You know? And so it’s okay. It’s okay if there’s mistakes in there, you’re not ever gonna get everything right. And she’s right. I’ve, I’ve made a mistake every single year in budget since then. It all turned out okay.
Glenn Hopper:
If we were doing a video edit of this, I would love to drop in that picture picture, um, of from Austin Powers where Dr. Evil goes, a million dollars <laugh>. I think that’s, it would be the perfect image, right? <laugh>, I, I had a over a million dollar mistake at a company that wasn’t that small, but it was in the.com boom and VCs down our neck, and it was the same kind of thing. Um, well, we had mis miscalculated a, a purchase order or classified it wrong. And at the end of the year as we were about to report to all these angry investors, it was actually, it was about a million and a half dollars. And this was early, early. It was my first sort of managerial role and fp a and I thought for sure I was about to lose my job. But we survived at a, a couple long weekends, got beat up by some VCs, and, uh, we ultimately survived and it was fine, but, uh, I don’t know those mistakes. Um, they, they put things in perspective and, uh, and you learn from ’em and they make you, uh, more cautious going forward, but they’re, you know, it’s, we’re <laugh>, we’re not gonna be perfect. And, uh, there’s always stuff like that to miss. So mm-hmm <affirmative>.
Now we’ve gotten to the, the kind of fun part of the show where, um, we have two questions that we ask all of our guests, and I always love hearing these answers. The first is, what’s something that not many people know about you? Something that we can’t, uh, find by googling you online real quick?
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah. So, um, you know, one of the things that I guess I’m passionate about, um, I read this book back in 2018 called Blue Zones, and it’s about longevity, but that’s not exactly the point, you know, I read it though, and I felt so inspired and I thought, I have to build a community for myself. Um, and I think it’s, oh gosh, especially in this field where, you know, in the CFO org, we tend to be a lot of introverts, kind of like in our own little space. Um, and it’s just so important for people to get out there, build a community, you know, make friends, find your people, especially when, when you’re not like living close to family or you’re estranged or whatever it might be. So that book really inspired me, and I did two things after I read it. Um, first I decided I’m gonna go get my MBA, um, if something I never thought I’d do, but I, the next year went and signed up and I thought, why not?
You know, it’s been 20 years since I’ve been, you know, an undergrad, but let’s go do this. Oh my gosh, what a good experience. I was actually like already managing a team, and I had all this experience. I was taking the lessons I learned right back to work the next day, um, and using ’em right on the spot, which you, you know, I just, you don’t get to do that in undergrad for sure. So, and I met a lot of cool people, a lot of local people. And then the other thing I did was I thought, I gotta find a lot more friends. I gotta, I need to have people like in the town that I live in, you know, all my friends are located all over the US and I’ve gotta have people who I wanna, you know, meet at the grocery store, <laugh>, or like, you know, just do life with.
And so I started a book club and it seems so simple, but we still meet, it’s been five years. We get together at a brewery every single month and chitchat. And I just, I’ve like found this group of like-minded people that I can lean on. And you know, what it all comes down to is like getting over your fear. And so this is just something that I talk to my friends a lot about is that there’s a lot of things you can do in life that seems scary. Like go on a podcast maybe, um, and if you could just push through it, like, you know, there’s like safety precautions in place, you know, it’s not like anything’s gonna go that bad, but just getting over that hump. And so we really like to all push each other now to do those things. I think that’s important.
Glenn Hopper:
That’s great. And I think the timing of, of you reading that book right before Covid was probably pretty significant because the Blue Zones, I guess it, it talks about longevity, friendships and, uh, and they go into maybe diet and genetics and stuff too, but they talk about the, the social part of it. And, uh, there’s also the, the Harvard Happiness Study that’s been running since like the thirties and it shows that how important relationships are. And I think, you know, especially in post covid world and, and now with everybody working remote, it’s harder to have those. And that’s to, uh, to your point, one of my favorite things about these podcasts is it forces me to talk to and meet new people and not stay in my pod and stay engaged. And, um, but it’s, it’s great that you, I mean, the continuous learning going back, so you’ve got your brain plasticity there, right? From going back to school and, and learning from it and then having the, the social groups and everything. So you, you’ve probably added, what, 15, 20 years to your life just by <laugh> by following those. Yeah. No, that’s great. Um, okay, so, uh, here’s, here’s the big question. What is your favorite Excel function and why?
Lindsey Martens:
Well, gosh, there’s a lot of ’em, right? Um, I think the most common one is probably SUMIF or, or SUMIFs. Um, I like that one a lot. I use it all the time. Um, but the formula that I’m always surprised that more people don’t use is actually EO Month. Um, and all it does is like tells you the last day of the month has related to another cell. And I use that every single day. Every time I bring up a new spreadsheet, input months across the top, that’s what I use. I like how it standardizes the date and it’s easy and quick. Um, and that’s my go-to.
Glenn Hopper:
Yep, that’s great that all the days, uh, for some reason it’s easy to, if, especially for someone like me who’s not in Excel as much as I used to be, all the days functions in Excel, I forget about, but they’re, so the EOM and all that are so nice <laugh> to have, you know, especially if you’re doing cashflow forecasts or, or whatever you’re doing. Anything on a, um, routine basis like that, being able to, uh, alter, alter the day is, is key. So that’s a great one. Yeah. Yeah. Glad you brought that one, <laugh>. Alright, well this has, this has been great. If our listeners wanna connect with you, follow you, what’s the best way for, for people to follow you and stay in touch?
Lindsey Martens:
Yeah, please look me up. I’m on LinkedIn, I’m gonna love to connect with people.
Glenn Hopper:
Lindsay. Well I really appreciate your time and thank you for coming on the show.
Lindsey Martens:
Thanks for having me.
