Jim Cook, Netflix co-founder, former CFO of Mozilla, early employee at Inuit, executive coach, and author of Substack Cook’s Playbooks, returns to the podcast for the third time. In this episode, he breaks down the evolution of the role of CFOs from traditional scorekeepers to more strategic and operator roles, before looking ahead at what’s to come. This episode is packed full of helpful advice about transparency, building trust, authenticity in your executive role, and why “fake it till you make it” is actually bad advice. Looking at the future of the CFO role, Jim explains why he believes there will be no need for both COO and CFO roles in an organization, the biggest mistake a CFO can make at this time, and how CFOs should be adapting in order to succeed in this next era.

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SPONSORS:

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FOLLOW US ON X:

@cjgustafson222 (CJ)

LINKS:

Cook’s Playbooks

www.benchboard.com

Jim Cook on LinkedIn

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TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Preview and Intro

(01:37) Sponsor – Planful | Brex | Vanta

(05:49) CJ’s Career Growth Since First Interviewing Jim

(08:35) Making Finance Transparent

(14:40) Sponsor – Tropic | RightRev

(17:07) The Influence of Bill Campbell

(18:57) How to Get to Trust Faster

(20:32) Letting Your Freak Flag Fly in Your Executive Role

(23:06) Is “Fake It Till You Make It” Bad Advice?

(25:25) Why CFO Tenures Are Getting Longer

(28:16) The Evolution of the CFO Role and Technological Capability

(32:45) Scorekeeping and Actuals Don’t Matter Anymore

(34:38) The Era of the Strategic CFO

(36:48) SaaS and the Operator CFO Era

(41:09) Jim’s Prediction on the Next Era: The CFO Architect

(49:47) The Biggest Mistake We Could Make in This Era

(51:48) The Era of, “I Need a COO and a CFO,” Is Over

(55:41) Where a CFO Will Spend Most of Their Time in This Next Era