We have an all-star panel getting into the Christmas and New Year spirit. Howard Tunnicliffe, Head of FP&A, The Economist, and Brett Hampson, Director of Finance, AllState, joinin host Paul Barnhurst, The FP&A Guy in this special edition of FP&A Today. They tackle the 12 most burning questions asked on reddit.com/r/FPandA in 2023. Mid-way we give you the end of year results of the top 5 Favorite FP&A Function for FP&A Pros, based on our 80 episodes!
Let us know your thoughts on your thoughts on these questions, what you want a panel to answer for 2024 (and of course let us know any Excel Function shamefully omitted from our top 5).
Special guests:
- Howard Tunnicliffe, Head of FP&A, The Economist https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardtunnicliffe/
- Brett Hampson, Director of Finance, AllState
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-hampson/
12 Questions Answered on this special Holiday episode:
- How difficult is it for someone to switch industries in FP&A?
- Do you need a CPA to get an FP&A job?
- How easy is it for someone or hard to break into FP&A that has a non-traditional background?
- Any advice on how you run/lead the annual budgeting process?
- How do you get your first VP of FP&A role?
- How do you develop KPIs from scratch?
- How do you decide on when you should upgrade to an FP&A tool?
- BONUS!!! The results of Favorite Excel Function (from 80 episodes)
- What advice would you give about management reporting in a turnaround situation?
- Can you explain how the headcount process works for budgeting? How have you typically seen it work?
- If someone knows nothing about FP&A, any advice you’d offer on how to teach it or learn it? Where do you start?
- Is FP&A certification actually worth it?
- How do you de-stress, especially during budget season?
Join Brett Hampson’s new weekly email newslettter, Forecasting Performance at https://forecasting-performance-2.ck.page/62f28563e1
Paul Barnhurst:
Hello everyone. Welcome to this special holiday edition of FP&A Today. I am your host, Paul Barnhurst aka the FP&A Guy. FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails, the financial planning and analysis platform for Excel users. Every week we welcome a leader from the world of financial planning and analysis. Today, we are lucky enough to have two leaders with us. I’m delighted to have Howard and Brett join us for the show. So, Howard, welcome to the show.
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Hey, thanks a lot, Paul.
Paul Barnhurst:
Brett, thanks for joining us.
Brett Hampson:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Paul Barnhurst:
So, Howard, this is your repeat of performance, right? The second time on the show.
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Yeah. So good you asked me back
Paul Barnhurst:
Exactly Data ELs and us We’re so happy we wanted you back. So we’re excited to have you for this episode. So we’re gonna do something a little different today. We have about roughly 15 questions that we’re gonna run through around FP&A a and we’re gonna have different people answer those. These are common questions that have been found on Reddit and other places that people have been asking throughout the year. But before we jump into the FP&A questions, since this is, this is a holiday episode and we’re all in the spirit, we’re gonna ask both our guests what their favorite holiday movie is. And we can see from Brett just put up a mug. Was that the Grinch?
Brett Hampson:
I’ve got Prancer.
Paul Barnhurst:
Ah,
Brett Hampson:
You’ve got a set of Christmas mugs with all the reindeer on ’em. So I picked Prancer for today. Yep,
Paul Barnhurst:
I like it. Yep. And how about yourself Howard? What’s your favorite for Christmas?
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Well, favorite Christmas movie. I’m not normally one that likes to watch movies too many times, which isn’t good at Christmas because you get the same 10, don’t you? But Love Actually, I think being a, being over here in London this is really kind of quintessential film. I think everyone in the UK likes it and I like the different stories. You know, it keeps me a little bit interested. There’s always something I’ve forgotten from having watched it 10 times. So that, that’s one I can put up with
Paul Barnhurst:
That. That’s a good one. You know, it’s hard for me to pick favorite. There’s a couple I it’s gonna be between, it’s a Wonderful Life and the Christmas story. Yeah, because that, that, that’s a fun one, both in a different way, but those are probably my two favorite. Alright, so we’re gonna go ahead and jump into the questions and we’re gonna give the first question to you, Howard, to get your thoughts on this. How difficult is it for someone to switch industries in FP&A?
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Yeah, I think historically, perhaps it has been quite difficult. When I’m thinking about hiring, quite often the hiring manager, the first thoughts are someone needs to have this experience, they need to have this certification, and they need to have done this job in the same industry for a couple of years. And that, that seemed to work in the past. But but I think now things are changing. You know, things are moving a lot more quickly in FP&A and for me anyway, when I’m hiring, I, I want someone smart and coachable. Like people can pick stuff up, right? And, and it’s, it’s a ton more interesting for those individuals if you’re learning about a new industry. You know, the thing that people most talk to me about when we’re hiring is they want to develop and they want to grow. And a great way of doing that is, is by moving around industries and learning about all sorts of different areas of business.
Paul Barnhurst:
I, I would agree with that. And you know, one thought I would add is when I’m hiring someone, much more important than industry is the mindset they have their attitude, their willingness to learn. Industry can be learned right now, yes, there are some industries where maybe you need somebody who with experienced certain roles and it’s gonna be very difficult to make that switch. But in general, I think much more your overall skillset, your willingness to learn and your attitude will help you switch, helps you switch industries than anything. Any thoughts, Brett, you’d add?
Brett Hampson:
Yeah, I’d say like by level two I found that earlier on in your career, it’s easier to switch. There’s just more universal stuff within FP&A that’ll apply. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like can you, can you do a forecast? Can you build a report? Like once you get to management and above, I do sense that it is just harder to switch because that’s the point where you like, industry specific context really starts to like play. It’s like a differentiator on your resume. So you’re, you’re gonna be competing against somebody who’s done 10 years of budgeting in a SaaS company. Like it’s just hard to stack up against them if all the other sort of pieces of you look the same on paper. So that’s, I think maybe just a little bit of nuance there. Analyst level, easier to switch manager level and above, maybe a little harder.
Paul Barnhurst:
And, and I would totally agree with that. And I think part of that is too, right? It’s a funnel. There’s a lot more analysts than there are VPs or CFOs. So it’s much easier to show somebody that you can do the work. The deeper you get down the funnel, the harder it becomes, you know, for a couple different reasons what you mentioned. And then just the fact that there’s a lot less jobs as well, so it becomes more competitive for those jobs.
Brett Hampson:
Yeah.
Paul Barnhurst:
Alright, so, so next question we have here. We’ll ask you this one Brett, and I think all three of us can speak to this one. Do you need a CPA if you land an FP&A ob right outta college, do you need your CPA?
Brett Hampson:
Well, I don’t have mine and I’m doing okay. So I’d say like, I’ll start there. There’s a, I know a lot more FP&A folks that don’t have a CPA than those that do generally. So, you know, if you just kind of look at where the cultural trends go, I don’t, I don’t think you need one. Does it help? Sure. I’d say like, don’t do a certification unless you’re interested in doing the certification. So I, I’d say that’s my perspective. I, I just don’t, I don’t know a ton of CPA FP and a folks. Those that do have it though, I will say this, those that do have it are really talented. Usually, like, I’m usually really impressed with their knowledge of accounting fundamentals plus the FP and ap. Like, it is kind of like a, a bonus if you’re able to do it and, and you enjoy it. So I don’t have mine though. So that’s kind of my official answer is like, I just sort of push against the sort of the, the concept that you need it in order to really land a good fp a role. I don’t think you do.
Paul Barnhurst:
I I don’t have mine as well. And Howard, if I remember right, you don’t have yours either, right?
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Yeah. Yeah. Same. Really. I think it’s that balance between did you know you wanted to work in finance from a really young age and, and you’ve taken that really linear path and you’ve gone deep into it. And, and that has some benefits, like Brett said. But also how about getting some broader experience? You know, we’re, we’re increasingly asked to be creative in FP&A, so actually drawing on some other different diverse backgrounds and maybe taking a little while to decide what you want to do and getting there a, a more roundabout way. Like there’s no harm in that either.
Paul Barnhurst:
Agree. And, and I’ll add one thought here. You know, ’cause people ask about CPA, but if you look there, there are many different paths into FPA. We will talk about that next. But you’re seeing a lot more people come from consulting or investment banking, right? They have very strong modeling skills, very strong strategic skills. You have some people coming from a CPA. So the reality is there’s many different routes. There are some more traditional than others. And sure, as a CPA valuable, yes, it helps you understand a deeper level of accounting. And if you can bring that with the business acumen, it’s great, but it’s not required by any means. I think we’re all aligned there. So next question, kind of along these same lines a little different, but from your perspective, Howard, how easy is it for someone or hard to break into FP&A that has a non-traditional background? You know, maybe they’re coming from teaching math or whatever it might be, but you know, something that you wouldn’t typically see.
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Yeah, I think this is becoming more common what I’m seeing. And yeah, I think the people are open-minded to it. If I think about kinda my dad’s generation job for life, linear pathway, you know, you’ve got a, you’ve got a cv and, and it’s shown exactly every step made perfect sense. Things are different now. I think the, the skills that we need to move up in FP&A, they’re not so technical and a lot of the technical stuff’s been automated away anyway. All the data science guys are doing it. So yeah, personally, I’m like really open to kind of different career paths. Actually had some, some CVs come through recently and there was one candidate had a background in dance and she’d done dance and then was ready to be a professional dancer and then broke her leg, injured her leg in a car accident, couldn’t dance anymore. And maybe five years ago I might not have kind of spoken to her thought maybe she’s not a great fit, but I thought, no, I spoke to her. And yeah, she was brilliant. She blew me away in the interview. So real learning for me to just be open and as we said before, if you’ve got the right attitude and the right mindset, then that really trumps kind of having a perfectly linear career path.
Paul Barnhurst:
I would agree. Brett, any thoughts you’d add to that?
Brett Hampson:
Yeah, I think, you know, the, the science backgrounds are really valuable in finance. I know that’s kind of an interesting thing to say, but a lot of the work we do in FP&A is very hypothesis driven. Can be at least where like you form a hypothesis, you like go down the different testing routes to say, did this answer the, it’s very systematic. In some ways, analysis can be at least. So having that like science background, I’ve seen that work really well because mm-hmm, <affirmative> that’s just the world that they live in. That’s, that’s one of my favorites. I’ve, I’ve had peers of mine who’ve been wildly successful who come from like a biology background. That’s really cool to see. So I’d say like science, math, very closely related. And I’d say like even that hypothesis testing within it’s, it’s a just a valuable skill to have.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I’d say some of the best I’ve seen have often come from engineering. They have that very logical, very math driven. But I’ve also seen some that come from totally different backgrounds, like you mentioned Howard, like the, the answer. So I think the, the basic answer is it can be hard to break in with a non-traditional background, but it’s doable. And I would say that’s where you wanna network and try to make connections so people can see your skills beyond that. ’cause If all you’re doing is applying and letting the applicant tracking system and the AI filter, you’re not gonna get interviews in a non-traditional background. So you need to, you need to stand out in unique ways, but you can be highly successful without a doubt coming from a non-traditional background. Alright, so next question. We have this one’s for you, Howard. Any advice on how you run slash lead the annual budgeting process?
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Yeah, and I wanna come from this from a slightly different angle and say how shouldn’t we do it? I remember an old manager of mine used to say, talked about creating an industry. So like we’ve created an industry around this budget process and it feels like if we’re not careful, we do some budgeting and then we just make it more and more complex, more and more complex. And then we end up with the budget being like an aim in itself. And we’re really losing sight of some of the fundamental things that we’re trying to achieve through budgeting. So do you need to create some financial targets and KPIs yet? Sure you do. Make sure that the shareholders are getting their return and know the, the investment is right. But actually, I, I like to say like a budget never made anyone a dollar, right?
So you can spend four months budgeting, but you’re not gonna make any more money. In fact, you’re gonna make less because all of your senior people have been drawn away, dragged into budgeting. So I, I’d say that the phrase about plans are useless, but planning’s essential really rings true for me. So what am I looking for in my budget process? Like, good enough is good enough, you’re never gonna get it right. You just need to be kind of right enough. So don’t obsess on accuracy because none of us can see the future crazy thought that we could do.
Really, for me it’s about alignment. So just getting all the people in the room aligning on what you’re doing. And then I think where FP&A can really add value is prioritization. So the amount of times I’ve seen a muddled strategy, because data science aren’t talking to product, aren’t talking to marketing, we’re in a great position to bring everyone together. And, and what people don’t always understand is that we can bring in FP&A is we can size things up. So we can say, look, there’s always a hundred things to do, let’s concentrate on these five because they’re gonna make the biggest difference. And, and yeah, that’s, that’s what I’m looking for, rather than having a really long process and coming out with some really detailed numbers.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I, I like, you know, I think everybody’s heard that the comment you made where basically planning is everything, right? If you don’t plan, you plan to fail. But the actual plan is it’s pretty much inaccurate from the time it was created. Nobody exactly hits their numbers. So I think you made a great point of one, don’t spend forever on the process, but make sure FP&A has the opportunity to bring people together. The one, the the two things I would add is one, make sure you have a detailed calendar when you start and hold people to dates and expectations. So make sure you’re clear with them upfront on templates. You’ve done the training that calendarization, because I’ve seen it where if you, if you have a loose calendar and you don’t communicate it, it can just become a nightmare. ’cause Everybody’s gonna submit things late. All your dates are gonna slide, then you’re gonna spend all night trying to get it done and wonder why you have this big plug at the end of the year that is just gonna come back to bite you in the butt.
Brett Hampson:
Yeah, I like taking what both of you guys are saying and just like putting it into a kind of my process. Like, I like to start out with just an underlying, I call it the base case forecast. Like what do we think next year’s gonna look like? Yep. I think Paul, to your point, like if you don’t start out with a healthy base case forecast, you could get into December and go, oh shoot, I forgot about this pick or this, you know, p and l account that I forgot to juice up because x, y, z, some tax, blah, blah, blah. Like, so really starting with a solid base case forecast, like I love to do that in the summer when you’ve got a little bit of breathing room, you, you give that a couple rounds because people don’t always think holistically about every single expense that they’re gonna have next year, how many licenses they’re gonna have for that software.
So I’d say like, that’s probably big tip number one. Big tip number two that I always do is like, put a plug in your expenses. I know that’s kind like a dirty word, but like, especially if you’re thinking about next year, like if you think about your own personal budget, there’s things that you know you’re gonna spend money on, but there’s things that like, we just un I, I can’t predict that I’m gonna spend money on that. So having a little bit of a placeholder, a slush fund, call it what you want, discretionary CEO account, like a few bucks for when next year you come up with some expense that you had no idea you owed, you can pull it out of there instead of saying like, Hey, we’ve gotta go cut this department or cut this thing because we’re over budget. And I’m not even advocating that you would do that anyway. But I’d say those are probably my two tips that like, very practically as you’re going through budget season, like those are gonna set you up for a little bit more success than, than not. And just having the, the, the battle wounds just to say like, Hey, you know, don’t make the same mistake I did early in my career.
Paul Barnhurst:
I, I like your point, I of wanting some padding, whatever you wanna call it. I’ve heard some people say one 2% maybe you often I’ve seen what happens is, all right, our typical churn in hiring is X. We’ll leave it, we’ll, we’ll we’ll assume a lower number so we have some extra room in there. You know, things like that. You adjust that. When you said slush fund, I had a laugh because from an accounting standpoint, we all, you know, a year slush fund and I was like, I go to jail, right? I worked for a company one time where they told us on a call yeah, we have the slush fund when we need revenue, we just pull from it. And the person who managed the accounting stuff said, ah, we’ll be looking at that and cleaning that up.
Like, no, that’s not how we do accounting. So that was what came to mind when you said slush fund. So it kind of made me laugh, but I I that’s funny. Know exactly what you’re talking about.
Alright, so next question here that we had, and I think I’ll speak to this a little bit and then you guy let you guys add any thought. So one of ’em was, any advice for someone out there who is trying to obtain their first VP of FP&A role? So the first thing I’ll add is none of us on the call have been a VP of FP&|. And a second thing I’ll say is, as some companies a director does VP work, a manager does VP work, you know, titles are not consistent across companies. And then in general, the best thing you can do to allow yourself to move up early in your career, it’s standing out in your work, but don’t, don’t sleep on building relationships and the networking and what Howard likes to call the soft skills that he preaches quite a bit, those human skills. Because at the end of the day, as I’ve heard it said, your your technical skills generally get you your first job, but your soft skills are what get you promoted. So any thoughts either of you would add to that? And I’ll just throw it out to both of you if either of you wanna add any thoughts.
Howard Tunnicliffe:
I just build on what you’re saying, Paul, but yeah, exactly as you said, I agree. I think the technical skills, it’s what we get taught early on and we think that’s gonna get us to CFO level and then quite quickly we figure out that it won’t do <laugh>. So yeah, but certainly networking and networking isn’t scary. It’s just talking to people really mainly talking to people that you already know and being open to new connections. So it doesn’t have to be something you do at a conference with a name badge on. Just go out there and talk to people have some lunches, make some connections, make some friends. Simple as that. Probably other skills I found you need stepping up. Communication for sure. I mean there’s a, that covers a multitude of sins, but communication will make a massive difference. And within that sort of subset, stakeholder management if you are, again talking about running the budget process or if, if you are senior in fp and a, you’re really gonna need to be able to connect with all of the senior business stakeholders and kind of bring them along with you. So somewhere between sort of stakeholder management and influencing in kind of subtle ways and, and making people feel heard and valued are, are all gonna kind of help you to succeed.
Paul Barnhurst:
Got it. Appreciate that.
Brett Hampson:
Yeah. the only other skill that I’d add, and I think you guys would nod your heads to this one, is the ability to set and execute a vision within your finance team. When you’re younger in your career, you’re really just taking orders. You’re doing what you’re told. You might push back here and there or you might have some opinions, which is awesome, but like developing that and having more opinions about how it should or ought to work. If you start having those feelings of like, this is how it should or ought to work within FP&A for finance, I think that’s like a director VP level skillset, because once you get to director vp, nobody’s really telling you how to do your job. For the most part. They’re just sort of expecting that it gets done, it gets done well efficiently.
So I think that’s, that’s maybe the, the piece that I’d say is like developing that ability to have a vision, have an opinion, and really move towards, and I’d say like us three probably have three different perspectives on how FP&A should run. And that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be the right vision, it has to be your vision that you have to really believe in it and be able to like cast that vision down to your team so that they can execute on the vision. So that’s the piece that like I’ve really sunk my teeth into over the last couple years of like, okay, I really need to have an opinion on like why, why should I think about reporting in this way or forecasting or analysis in this way?
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. great point you added there. I’m really glad you added that one. ’cause Yes is as you move up, being able to think of the vision and how things should be set up and how they should work is really important because you’re gonna spend a lot more time on those type of things than you are in the day-to-day, weeds, every level. You move up as a general rule. You spend less time on the analysis and a little more on people and relationships and all those other things that are so important. Alrighty. So ne next question we have, and this one’s for you Brett, how do you develop KPIs? How do you think about them for a company? You come in, there’s no KPIs, what do you do?
Brett Hampson:
Yeah, so in that scenario, if you’re coming in with no KPIs, it’s probably the wrong approach. I’ll go, I’ll, I’ll pull a Howard on this one and go like, what not to do. The wrong approach is to set up a hundred KPIs and just burden the organization with administrative pulling KPIs, right? If there’s no culture of KPIs, then you’re not gonna change culture overnight. You’re gonna want to introduce a few.And from a finance perspective, and really like within FP&A we try to be stewards of the business, not just financial KPIs, but financial KPIs are a great place to start. So like revenue, operating expenses or operating expenses as a percent of revenue. So there’s some really typical big financial KPIs that you can really anchor to. As the culture gets developed, let’s just play this out and assume like we’ve been there for five years and we’re starting to develop this culture of KPIs.
They’re asking for more, they want more. So then what I’m typically doing is I’m going down to like my revenue model. So I’ve probably got a revenue model as an FP&A analyst, and I’m gonna say, okay, what’s really driving revenue here? Is it, this is like a website direct to consumer business? Is this like website visits are driving revenue? Is it my conversion rates, driving revenue? Those are some cool KPIs that you’re gonna start to pull in to really help the senior leaders understand like, hey, if that KPI goes up, revenue goes up, that’s a good thing. Okay, I can focus on this KPI. So for me it’s all about start high level. If you’ve got a culture of not a lot of KPIs, but then as you drill down, the drill down is, in my opinion, really going into your financial models and your revenue model, your expense model. Like what are those key things that like when they move the whole business moves, those are gonna be the KPIs that I’m gonna track.
Paul Barnhurst:
A hundred percent agree is what are your leading indicators and what are those drivers that really move the needle? You know, if it’s something that’s pretty immaterial, why do you really need to track it? You gotta ask yourself, what’s the time commitment, what’s the value? Does it align with the strategy? Can people influence it? Right? And if the answer is yes to those type of things, then it probably should be a KPI. If the answers are no, it may be something you track, but it’s not really a KPI. It may be that occasional thing you look at for, you know, whatever reason. So I think you make a great point. And then starting small, if you don’t have the right culture, if it’s not something people are used to, if you start with a hundred, you’re just gonna overburden everyone and it’s gonna fail under its own weight. We’ve probably all seen that in projects we’ve worked on. I know I have.
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So the next question we had here is, how do you decide on when you should upgrade to an FP&A tool? Who’s ever been in Excel? Hell raise their hand. All right, great, that’s the first sign. But what is that? I think there’s a few things that lead to that. One, you know, if you’re finding it impossible to collaborate, you’re and you’re sending files constantly back and forth over email, that’s a sign.
Yes, there’s ways you can manage that through using Power Query and using SharePoint or you know, using Google Sheets or whatever. But if you’re really struggling and there’s a lot of, lot of back and forth, you have a lot of linked files, you have, you know, 50, a hundred spreadsheet models, those are signs that it’s probably time to upgrade if it, you know, if you’re working late night, really late nights every night during budget because of the model, not because of meetings or other things, but because you’re trying to get the model right, you have big errors. Those are all signs that you wanna look at adding something that can help with those things. Is a planning tool gonna solve your problems? No, as I like to say, it’s people process and then technology is an enabler. It’s not your solution. So I think that’s important to keep in mind because most transformations fail. Many software projects fail. Most people who implement a tool still use some level of spreadsheet. So make sure you know what you really want. You’ve thought about the strategy, you start small as you implement it. So those are the thoughts I’d add. Anything you guys would add to that?
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Well, I, I’d say if you wanna find out the problems in your business, then go and talk to customer services. And if you wanna find out the problems in your planning and consolidation, then go and talk to the teams that are pulling that together. Because I think what quite often happens is you get kind of well-intentioned people in those teams that know where the issues are and they spend a lot of late nights kind of stitching it together, <laugh> and probably the senior people don’t see the, the challenges that go into kind of manually planning and consolidating. And probably the only time or the time they feel the pain, the senior people is because they’re asking questions that they think they should be able to get the answer to. That’s not possible from the system. So I think a dual approach kind of have an honest conversation with people about how much time they’re manually spending. But a good indicator for a senior person is people kind of blown out their cheeks when you’re asking them for you know, a fairly simple piece of information.
Paul Barnhurst:
That’s a great point. A good sign for a senior leader that you need a tool is I’ll have to come back to that for everything, right? That’s also a sign sometimes that you don’t have a dynamic model built. So there can be some training to address that, but it’s some combination. And then you have the average worker, it’s really okay, how long is it taking them? Because management doesn’t always see the hours to go in and a real appreciation for how difficult and painful it is. ‘Because Sometimes if you have a really skilled person, they can mask a lot of those issues. And someone who’s willing to work really hard and you probably, if that’s the type of person you have, one, you’re gonna lose them if you don’t do something. And two, they’re probably someone that could give you a lot more value working on other stuff. So, you know, those are a couple things to go with.
Interlude:
Now for the part you’ve all been waiting for, we’re gonna talk about what Excel functions or features have been most popular on fp and a today. I have here the list of all the functions and features that people have voted for through over 80 episodes. And we’re gonna talk about the top five as part of this special Christmas episode. So I have my festive festive hat on, I got my beard ornaments on and I’m ready to go. So I just need a drum roll. Give myself a drum roll. And we’ll start with number five. So the fifth most popular feature or function for Excel is X lookup. X lookup is the new dynamic array lookup function. Personally, it’s my favorite of the lookup functions. So that’s in fifth place X lookup. We have in fourth place power query. And the words of Kathy Svetina, when she learned a power query, it was like the heavens open, the angels came down.
She said it was a transformative experience. That’s how I feel about Power Query number three. And this one had nine votes in third place is pivot tables. Good old standby, able to aggregate all of our data and look at it in many different ways. Number two with 10 votes is Index match. It’s a favorite among many people. We often see the argument, Hey, what’s better X lookup index, match or choose or VLOOKUP or some other function. So it’s a very popular one that a lot of people love to use. And number one on the list with 13 votes is VLookup. I think a VLOOKUP is old faithful. It’s how many of us first learned to do lookups. I think many of us when we first learned VLOOKUP was like, wow, I don’t have to manually do this. And it opened a whole new world to Excel.
I’ve heard some people say it’s kinda like that gateway formula that opens Excel opens the door to learning new and exciting things. So, you know, in addition to those top five, we had people vote for many other features and functions outside of the top five. The most votes anything got was three. So we just had a a long list of different formulas and features. We had one that you could relate to above. We had someone vote for lookups. So let’s talk a little bit of who voted for these, some of the people. So you know, on the index match we had Chris Riley, Christian Wattig, CJ GustafsonParth, Sruthi among others, you know, at Pivot table, some of the people that voted for that. Francesca Ryan Abdullah, Jeanette Derazio, some of those people who voted for Power Query would be me on my episode.
We had that one mentioned in our accounting FP&A episode. Sayed is a big power query and as I mentioned earlier, Kathy on vlookup, you know, a lot of people mentioned that. And many people said it was for nostalgic purposes. It was one of the first functions that really helped him gain power in Excel. And so some of the people will mention there, Amy Omond, Ben Murray, drew Murphy, Glenn Hopper – Mr AIIn our marketing episode it was mentioned, I think it was Christian Wi Tig in that episode. Nick Brignola and others, you know, mentioned VLookup Nicholas Boucher. And then we had a few people that mentioned X lookup as a favorite. Asif Masani, Matthew Berna, some people in our data visualization LinkedIn live. So, you know, we have a lot of, a lot of different functions and features that people love about Excel.
Finally, as we wrap up, and we’d just like to mention, it’s been a fabulous year and it’s only been possible because each of each of you. So I hope you guys all have a happy holidays. I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about the Excel functions and joining us throughout the years. We’ve had guests all over the world. You know, we’ve had guests from Europe, from Asia, from North America, south America, Australia, you know, pretty much the globe. And we’re really proud of that. We’re really glad that we can bring you great people from all over the world. And we just ask if you enjoy FP&A today, you know, as a gift back to us at the end of the year, this holiday season. If you could take a few minutes and give us a rating. We’d love if you can give us five stars. If not, give us whatever you think the show is worth and leave a review, write what you like about it. It helps us keep going. It helps us grow the podcast so we can have more listeners.
So next, next question we have here. This one’s for you, Howard. What advice or thoughts would you give around management reporting if you’re in a difficult kind of turnaround situation, you’re in a situation where things aren’t going well. Any, any thoughts there?
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Yeah, so I had this example seems like a long time ago in a property company. Notorious for having kind of cashflow issues. So what we did there was really just focusing on the short term. So get your cashflow forecast as, as good as it can be, that’s gonna be critical. I’d also say kind of an element of realism about how it’s gonna be. So you probably want to come up with a range of scenarios and be prepared that the bad case scenario like that may well happen. So yeah, what are you gonna do if that does happen? And again, we really pulled it back to fewer metrics. So you’re looking at a much shorter timeframe. You are, you’re trying to get through the month effectively. And yeah, I would say in in that instance, the, the interesting thing from my perspective was it, it’s a good time to be in finance even though it’s, it’s really tough. Like we had four or five rounds of redundancies. Lotsof people that I knew well went but as a learning experience in finance, we had kind of a lot of influence and a lot of say in that purely because we were so close to kind of the numbers and, and what we needed to do to hit kind of banking covenants and all of those other things which become critical in those difficult times.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, and I’ll add a little bit. I wasn’t so much a turnaround situation, but we had a situation where all our growth over the last three years, we’d spent more than a dollar for every dollar we gained, which that will put you in a turnaround situation if that goes on long enough, right? That a clear sign is if you have multiple years where your expenses are growing faster than your revenue, that’s a sign that eventually you’re gonna run outta cash. And so I think what that taught me there is, you know, really that turnaround situation. We went back to the basics. What are the right ratios? Where are we outta line? How is this industry set up? And then we slowly went through each function, how do we streamline this, how do we improve processes? And there was some consultants brought in, it was a private equity situation and it was a couple year project where we restructure the whole company and rightsize the, you know, the p and l and the expense base. And so I, I totally agree with you, the idea of really watching what’s important, streamline, reduce things, get back to the basics. ’cause It’s amazing. Growth will cover a multitude of sins. And I see Brad and Howard both nodding their head, right? I’ve seen situations, well, we’re growing, so just spend, it doesn’t matter. Yeah. But it’s not a good use of our money.
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Yeah, Paul, there was a, there was a great saying from around that time that our CEO used to say, and it’s, it’s only when the tide goes out, you see who’s not what wearing swimming shorts. Yeah.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yep. Right? You see who who has done a poor job of managing everything when that tide goes out. Exactly. Who’s, who’s exposed Any thoughts? Brett? I see it kind of nodding your head there. I think,
Brett Hampson:
Yeah, you guys are, you guys are both saying it, but I’ll, I’ll call it out. Like, preventative approaches to this is the best. Like if you’re in a turnaround situation, it’s already sort of too late. Like finance can really help and get you out of it. Kind of to Howard’s point, like it’s not the end. But if you really understand the, the value chain of like how to, how a customer comes in and then what happens, and like if you truly understand the business and you’re an fp and a and you just see some things that just don’t look right, like that’s the time to start to talk about it. Like, hey, we’re spending more money than the customers are bringing in. Or Hey, we’re shifting towards our least valuable customers. There’s some of these KPIs that you can really set up early on to say things aren’t shifting well. And I think I’ve always been fortunate enough to work in companies where we have like a really sort of sophisticated early warning situation. So we just don’t find ourselves in turnaround situations. We see very quickly when, when some little KPI starts to tweak the wrong way, we go and turn a dial to help it like turn back. So I’d say like, you know, preventative medicine on this one is the best. Obviously not all companies are following that, which is why fp and a is so needed in turnaround situations, but yeah.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I, it it’s like health. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the best way to prevent having health problems is preventive eating, right? Exercising, taking care of yourself doesn’t mean you won’t end up in a turnaround situation with your health or a business, but it’s much less likely you’re better prepared. So I, I think that’s great advice is always looking to prevent it if possible. Sometimes you can’t, but a lot of times you can.
Next question here, and this one’s for you Brett. Can you explain kind of how the headcount process works for budgeting? How you’ve typically seen it work? I know headcount is usually the biggest expense. It can be very painful at times. I know I’ve been through more than one reconciliation where nothing quite ties and you’re trying to get it to work. So any, any thoughts there? Anything you, you know, to kind of help explain how you typically have seen that work?
Brett Hampson:
Yeah, I’d say there’s, there’s usually two, two levels to this. And this is a differing opinion. This is my opinion, so I’ll start there. There’s companies where you plan headcount by person, literally , person by person. If they’ve got an ID and a name, they’re on a spreadsheet and they’ve got a dollar next to ’em and you can plan them out by month for the next X number of months. So that’s one way, that’s usually smaller companies or just companies that wanna have a tighter grip on their expenses. From a headcount perspective, usually head count’s like 70% of a company’s expenses, so you’re gonna wanna have a tight grip on that. There’s companies, once you get large enough where you’re doing it more at a team or a department level or like kind of a, I’ll call it like a top down.
Like, we’ve got this number of people in this department and they cost this much. So I’d say there’s just two different approaches. Neither right nor wrong, you’re gonna have more control on the first one, but more administrative burden on the first one. Second one’s a lot easier to plan for, frankly, but when things don’t line up perfectly and they ne they really never will on the second one, because you’re not dealing with specific people in specific months, you’re always gonna be a little bit off. Your margin of error is gonna be bigger. That’s probably the best way I can say that. So sort of knowing what your approach is and then having good expectations around, it’s probably the first like, key to headcount planning. I’d say next is like, I’ll go back to what I said earlier. Have a good base case. Like make sure you’ve got the right people in there to start your budgeting process.
If, if people have termination dates, make sure those are updated. If, if there’s future hires that are already planned for, make sure those are coming in. And what I’d say is like from there, there’s, it’s just this game that you play, which is like, how much revenue do we need? Okay, well how many people within sales are gonna help us get that? Okay, well we just need, we just added 20 more people. When are they gonna start? How fast can you hire ’em? Are we gonna do external recruiting, internal recruiting? So really going through the process takes a while. It takes months to do usually. And then the end result that you want to be in, at least personally is, hey, if we need to increase sales next year and we need to increase some starting January 1st, that means we need people in their seats in October ramping up.
So that way in November, December, they can start to be productive. If this is like a sales culture and so that way they can actually produce January 1st. So you’re not actually just starting behind the eight ball and Q1, you’re already behind budget and you mismatched when people would start versus when they’d be productive. So there’s this so whole sort of like spiderweb of interconnected financial modeling that I think is critical to understand underneath your business. But again, it goes back to like what we’ve been talking about, which is if you understand the business and if I add a salesperson, here’s when they’re gonna be productive and here’s when they’re gonna add this sort of revenue, but that’s gonna drive more volume to my customer service team three months later. But then my implementation team needs to be staffed up to anticipate.
Like it’s a whole spiderweb of it. And I’d say, as long as you understand that spiderweb, you’re in a good spot. If, if you’re sort of like eyes glazed over right now and going, what is he talking about? I’d say this is a really good time to start to think through like, how does this whole spiderweb work when I add a person here or I add a revenue dollar here, what’s it do downstream with my whole financial model? So no easy answer there. But say that’s sort of the overall picture that I like to think of when doing headcount budgeting.
Paul Barnhurst:
And I like that. And I, and, and I’ll add just a little bit of my thoughts. So you know, first is getting the baseline right, making sure you have all the existing employees in the right cost centers, departments, whatever they may be, The right titles you know, if you’re going at a salary level, the salary. But make sure you have a clean understanding of your baseline picture next, especially if you’re in a big company. Make sure everybody’s using the same assumptions for merit increases, for timing, for bonus, for tax, for all those things. Those, if you don’t get those aligned, it can cause a lot of headaches. So at least agree on those. So if you’re right, you’re all right together. If you’re wrong, you’re all wrong together and you’re not spending time going, well, why did you use 8.2? And I used 8.1. And so I’d say align your assumptions at a corporate level if you can.
Then the third thing is what you got, you mentioned Brett, is understanding the relationships, the drivers. Okay, if I add fit, if I’m gonna add 20 customers, my plan, I need two more customer support person, one, implementation person, well that means I need this. And then the last thing is really around what I will call the assumptions with the business, talking to hr. Can you realistically hire those many people, understanding capacity? And then the last is just what methods you use, which you talk about is this capacity planning, is this person planning, is this role-based planning? Is it a mix? And I’ll give an example. One of my first year supporting a new business, we had a call center with about a hundred people and I didn’t have a model for a call center, so I just staffed it with people. And that’s not the way to forecast a call center. You wanna forecast it based on capacity, how many calls can they handle and how many people does that need to be for that? Then at a role level, I actually did it at a role. So next question I have for you, Brett, this is one for you. If someone knows nothing about fp and a, any advice you’d offer on how to teach it? Where do you start?
Brett Hampson:
Yeah, it’s a great question because set up to this question is like, you need company financials in order to forecast and report on company financials. And people go, well, where do I get that? How do I learn that nobody’s gonna give you their company financials. So I mean, there’s a tricky way, like you could get like a QuickBooks, like fake company data file and use that and start to forecast. But truly, I think the best way that I found is just to do a personal budget. So, so like it’s gonna force you to think about the things that are actually important and a personal budget is very similar to a corporate budget. Obviously there’s differences, but if you can, if you can make it your goal to forecast what your cash is going to look like in 12 months from now, I can almost guarantee you you’re gonna be as sophisticated if not like 80% as sophisticated as a lot of companies out there.
And if you can get reasonably close to forecasting that cash and you have to think through like, okay, when’s my paycheck coming in? When are my expenses going out? Do I use the credit card expenses or do I use the cash expenses? You’re gonna start to think about like, well, am I accrual based accounting or cash based? And there’s words to this that we use that are corporate and like financy that might throw you off a little bit, but like you’ll have gone through the thought process that a lot of thought process that a lot of people do when they go through fp and a. So that’s sort of my trick. If you can create a really cool personal budget that forecasts your cash, I think you’re, you’re pretty darn close to what most companies do from an fp a perspective.
Paul Barnhurst:
A hundred percent agree. And Chris Riley, who teaches a ton of financial modeling always tells people how I learned to model and where I started was my own life. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>.
It’s like, if you’re asking me where to start, start by modeling your, your life, your expenses, you’ll start learning about cash and assets and liabilities and how the three statements work together. And so it’s, it’s a great place to start because at at its base, if you’re doing your own story, you are doing planning and you’re also looking at actual, so you’re experiencing those things on a personal level that go into a corporation. So great advice there. I like that one. Alright, Howard, what, what resources have you seen out there that are available to help people become better at fp and a? Any kind of favorite resources or thoughts you can share there?
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Yeah, yeah, this is a, a really interesting one ’cause it’s changed so much recently. As we spoke about earlier on, I think the, the technical side’s pretty well covered. That you’ll see lots of resources for that. But the soft skills is really where you can kind of make a difference and put yourself ahead of your peers. So resources are all around you for sure. So if you’re interested in working on a certain skill, say presentation might be a good one to work on or networking, just find someone that you know that’s good at that and just watch how they operate. Talk to them. People are, you know, people like to talk about things that they’re good at. You can say, look, I’ve noticed you’re a really good communicator. Where do you think I can improve? What are your tips? How have you kind of learned to do it?
So it’s not a resource that you might think about all the time. You’re probably think about looking in a book, but actually watching and listening to people that are skilled in things you want to get better at is just a, a perfect way to learn. And, and if you’re working with ’em even better ’cause you can see them what they’re doing every day. And, and you get that really nice feeling of learning from someone that’s good at something and, and then you can start the trial and error process and make a few errors, but you’ve got the support of that person that is kind of helping you to improve at the skill.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thanks. I think having somebody is great. That’s a great resource to look around those. I’ll put a plug in for listen to FP&A Today, right? See I got, I got some nodding ’cause they’re like, we’re on your show, so of course we’re gonna say yes. But you know, I think there’s a ton of resources. I think a great place, like you mentioned Howard, is to start with the people around you. And then beyond that is look at the subjects. You know, you can go out to LinkedIn, you can go to Reddit, you can Google it. There, there are so many things you can find a book. The reality is the resources are not the problem. It’s determining what’s important and then finding out, you know, finding the way you wanna learn about it. At least in my opinion, I think in today’s world, data and learning is never the problem. It’s figuring out how do you focus and what are the best resources and use of your time.
Brett Hampson:
And real quick, I think it’s pretty specific too to each person. So, and like I, like, I’ll say this for myself, reach out to me on LinkedIn and say, Hey Brett, here’s where I’m at. Here’s what I’m doing. Where, what should I start with? And like I could probably fire off pretty quickly exactly where you should start. I’m sure both of you could do the same. There’s a ton of people out there that are willing to give you those next couple steps? And then if you’re willing to take initiative and go, hey, we just pointed you to a LinkedIn learning course or some other sort of course out there you can go hit that. Otherwise like we, we can give you that path the next couple steps. There’s a lot of people out there that are more than willing to, to assist you.
Paul Barnhurst:
A a hundred percent agree. I mean, I get, people ask me questions all the time and I do my best to, to give them advice. The one thing I’ll add if you’re gonna ask someone on LinkedIn, the more specific you can be, the more we’re able to help you. Don’t just send a note saying, can you please find me a job? Or how do I get a job? The, those are so vague that it’s really difficult for us to provide you any meaningful advice. So the more you know about what you want, the much it’s much easier for us to point you in the right direction. And I saw both of you kind of smile when I said that because I’m sure you’ve received some messages like that where you’re just like, I have no idea where to start because you’ve given me no information.
Well the next question people ask are FP&A certificates worth it? You know, there’s obvious gonna be a lot of different opinions on this and there are different certificates. Certificates out there. I just did the FP&A certificate from AFP. What I will say is a general rule, certificates can help set you apart and they can show a level of competence. Are they required? By no means, Plenty of very successful people have never got a certificate. In some cases, not even a college degree. Can they help you, especially early in your career, set you apart? Yes. The more senior you get, I would say the less valuable they become. And so those are my thoughts there. And there’s, there’s a lot of good certifications out there. Some people wanna do the CPA and that’s a great route to go. Some people wanna get their FP&A certification, some people want an MBA, some may get a financial modeling certification. There are different reasons for all of those. It’s really about where do you wanna be, how do you wanna set yourself apart, and then deciding what makes sense for you.
All right, so that’s all we’ll say on certificates. We’re gonna jump into the next question, and this is kind of a fun one ’cause I’m sure we’ve all struggled with it from time to time. So I’m gonna ask all of you this one, both you Brett, both you Howard, and then I’ll share my thoughts. So we’ll start with you Howard. How do you switch off work? How do you de-stress, especially during budget season?
Howard Tunnicliffe:
It’s a challenge in theory exercise, but I don’t do enough exercise, so that’s not, that’s not really a, an an answer being true to myself. One thing that I’ve found really helps is what’s called digital minimalism. There’s a book by a guy called Cal Newport and it’s all about just kind of managing the amount of time you are online. But not only that, it’s also the complexity. So even the number of apps you have on your phone, the number of newsletters you’re signed up to you know, the, the way that you receive your notifications. So here’s kind of mantra is just dial it all back. You know, we, we get stressed out, we’ve been on a call back to back calls all day working remotely and then we’re chilling out and we are like looking on our phones and checking all our notifications and clearing them all down.
And, and I used to do that. Generally I found there’s a path to a bit more peace by almost like managing the peaks of your kind of overload in the modern world. And what I found myself, sometimes the behaviors that I use to get myself at a stressful situation actually make it worse. So a good example might be I’ll just be on my phone checking the sports scores for half an hour, but what I actually need to do is just go and talk to my wife or I need to go out for a walk or I need to just think about something else. So yeah, that’s one I’ve found. It gives me a little, little bit more balance.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thanks. Appreciate that Howard. That’s good advice. Brett, how about you? What’s your go-to when you need to turn it off, so to speak and de-stress? Yeah,
Brett Hampson:
I’d, I’d echo everything Howard said. I’d say I’ve taken it to pretty big extremes at times too, from like a positive extreme perspective. For a while when it was stressful I did a digital Sabbath. So I would Friday evening, turn off my phone and not turn it back on until Saturday at sundown, do like a full 24 hour sort of call it a detox from my phone. ’cause I just, I’m with you Howard. I sense like the always on, especially with notifications on my phone, on my computer, it just feels like you’re always getting pinged. So I think that awareness and, and that’s different for everybody. Some people are more okay with the stress that comes with the notifications and they can manage that. For me personally, I wasn’t so I had to, I had to do what I had to do to manage that.
So that’s maybe an extreme. I’d say like don’t be afraid to go extreme if you need to. I’d say the other thing that I’ve really worked on over time has been the perspective of like I forget who said it earlier, but it’s like the budget has never made a dollar. I forget what what the saying was, but I really liked it. And just reminding myself like, hey, if I really mess up this report, what’s the worst that can happen? Okay, the number’s wrong, I look silly. Okay, then what? Then what? So for me, you know, I think a lot of the stress comes from the thought of like, what if I don’t do well? What if I don’t perform well? So putting myself in that sort of worst case scenario and finding out like, oh, it’s actually not that bad if I mess up this report.
And then reminding myself how many times have I messed up a report in the past? A bunch? Are things okay? Yes, okay cool. I can move on with my life without carrying that stress throughout the day. So I think part of it’s a little preventative of can I, can I just carry less stress through the day and then I won’t need as much sort of extreme measures nights and weekends. But I would echo echo everything Howard said, take a walk, exercise, get outside. Like there’s a lot of science out there that’s gonna back up. Like that’s the best way to reduce stress.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I I will agree. I find when I find time for exercise I do a lot better and I’ve really tried to push that this last year. Alright, so we’re coming near the end of our time. We just have a few more questions and we’ll wrap up. One I’m gonna do is kind of a, a fun one that we like to ask people is just a couple questions to get to know ’em. So you get about 20 seconds to answer these, so these are gonna be know, try to make ’em quick and short. If you could meet one person dead or alive, who would you meet and why?
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Christmas time. I’m gonna go for the, the emotional one. But actually my, my dad passed away when I was quite young, so whenever I hear this question I’d be like, yeah, let’s have have a drink together. That’d be cool.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, you’re, you’re not the first who’s gone with that one. We had someone else saying, can I pick my mother? Right, because yeah, there there’s nothing as important as family, especially holiday season. You miss ’em. So I appreciate that answer Brett.
Brett Hampson:
That’s great. I mean that’s really sentimental. I was gonna go with like Eric Clapton like <laugh>, I’m a guitar player and for years I would like practice his riffs and like sit in my room and play his song. So I just think it’d be cool to understand like, it’s such a different world. We were in the corporate world, he’s in the music world. That’d be really cool to like understand like what’s it like, how was your life was, how cool was it?
Paul Barnhurst:
Thanks, appreciate that one. So the next one I’m gonna skip you on this one Howard ’cause we have your answer on a previous episode. So someone wants to know Howard’s favorite Excel function or feature. They can listen to his prior episode. Brett, what’s your favorite thing about Excel?
Brett Hampson:
Favorite? It’s gotta be like the index match combo. And I know I’m a little old school here, I’m dating myself, like I just won’t touch anything in the last five years because I have my old habits and they die hard. So like x look up, <laugh> deserves no place on my keyboard. It’s all index match. And I know I’m gonna catch flack for this, but look, I’ve been around for 10 years and I’m just, I’m a dinosaur.
Paul Barnhurst:
I get it. Lots of people love index match. You’re you’re, you’re in, you’re in good company there and it’s a good function. I, I like using x lookup most of the time, but I totally get it. So I appreciate that answer. Alrighty, so now we’re gonna move on to last question before we let you guys tell us how people can learn more about you and any last thoughts. So we’re gonna a, we’re gonna split this one, kind of be fun. Howard, I’m gonna ask you, what has been your biggest challenge in FP&A this year for 2023? What’s been your biggest challenge?
Howard Tunnicliffe:
I’d say prioritization. So too much to do. How do we make sure that we are doing the right things in the right order?
Paul Barnhurst:
Prioritization is always a tough one. All right, so this one’s for you Brett. You get the second half of this question. What do you see as the biggest trend going into 2024 for FP&A or maybe biggest prediction?
Brett Hampson:
Yeah, there’s a lot of really cool tools that are out there. Like, I’m not just saying that I, like, I see things launching every day of the week that’s like this new tool that solves this problem. So I think there’s a lot of really cool stuff out there that’s like from a technology perspective that’s really fun. I’d say like people really wrapping their heads around like, does this tool solve my specific problem and how can I implement it? Kind of Paul, to your point earlier, like there’s not a high success rate in implementing tools or transformation. So I’m, I think, I think more people are gonna wake up to the fact that there’s a tool out there that solves their problem and they just gotta go find the right tool to plug into their problem.
Paul Barnhurst:
Got it. I appreciate that all. So now we’re gonna go ahead and wrap up. So the first thing I just wanna do is thank both of you for being on the show. Really appreciate your time today and just ask if somebody wants to get ahold of you or reach out to you, what’s the best way for them to do that? So Brett, what’s the best way for somebody to contact you?
Brett Hampson:
Yeah, so I’ve got a website that I started in newsletter. It’s called forecasting performance. It’s forecasting performance.com. So it keeps that easy. You can sign up for the newsletter there. I try to respond to everybody via email. So I get a lot of people on a daily basis that talk about their situation, what’s going on, any advice, and I’ll try to point them in the right direction. So that’s a fun way to, for me to connect. And then every week I share sort of a, a tip or trick through my newsletter totally free. It’s just sort of a fun way for me to sort of share my 10 years of FP&A experience with people that are interested in that.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. So make sure you send us all that and we’ll put it in the show notes for everybody, the newsletter and your website. Howard, how about you?
Howard Tunnicliffe:
Yeah, so best place to find me is on LinkedIn. Yeah, just come and say hi. You’ll find me posting content about finance soft skills. That’s my passion helping to improve that area, which I think is a, a huge growth area for for many people in finance.
Paul Barnhurst:
Right. Well thank you guys both for being on the show. Really appreciate the time today and we’ll hope everybody has a good holiday season, whether that be Christmas or whatever holidays you may celebrate. You can see we got a little bit of festivity going. I got the beard, he has the mug, Howard has the hat. So we’ll wish everybody a happy holiday season and thanks again for joining us. Howard and Brett.
