Welcome to the very first episode of the GrowCFO Show. In this episode Kevin Appleby chats to GrowCFO founder, Dan Wells, about why he left the "big 4" to set up the GrowCFO network. We chat about GrowCFO and what it offers to both existing and aspiring chief financial officers.
Play the audio version
Or watch the video
https://youtu.be/IzGeW50AehU
Who is GrowCFO founder Dan Wells?
Dan is a chartered accountant with almost 20 years experience in the big 4. Latterly he was an equity partner in KPMG. His role made him a trusted business advisor to entrepreneurial businesses who have built and sold their companies for a combined billions of pounds. He is an FCA member of the ICAEW (ACA-qualified in 2004) and has a first-class degree in mathematics from Durham University. Dan has a great working knowledge of most common business challenges and opportunities, and a strong track record of supporting businesses and their key executives throughout their life cycles.
You can check out Dan's LinkedIn profile
Why did Dan Found GrowCFO
Dan met many CFOs as part of his last big 4 role. There was a common question that they all asked him. He found that CFOs always wanted to know what their peers were doing. Dan realised the finance community needed a easy way to collaborate. CFOs needed a place they could share their knowledge, network, and talk about shared issues.
Dan observed that CFOs often feel lonely, and have few people to turn to within their own organisation or immediate circle of associates for good advice or to debate issues. Dan decided to do something to solve the problem and started GrowCFO. The initial GrowCFO portal contained interesting articles and allowed the community to start talking and sharing.
GrowCFO arranged many Zoom session, allowing members to chat about interesting topics. These really developed during the early stages of lockdown when CFOs were keen to chat to their peers and find out how each other were coping in crisis.
These discussions lead to GrowCFO developing white papers, particularly looking at how individual industry groups were being affected by Covid-19.
Polls and surveys have followed, and these have been a great way of bringing together the expanse of members knowledge into easy to distil findings.
Who is GrowCFO intended to help?
Dan sees four distinct groups of GrowCFO member
Future CFOs; those that aspire to take on the CFO role in the near future.1st Time CFOs, still growing into the role and wanting to extend their skills and knowledgeExperienced CFOs with lots of experience to share with the communityPortfolio CFOs, working part time across a number of different organisations.
GrowCFO gives something specific and unique to each of the 4 groups, but the dynamics of these 4 types of finance leader collaborating and sharing with each other collectively is very powerful.
The role of the CFO is constantly evolving, and there are always new things to keep up with and learn about irrespective of your background or years of experience.
The Future CFO programme
The GrowCFO Future CFO programme has been borne out of lots of discussion with our community of aspiring CFOs. The next generation of finance leaders. We realised that something needed to be done to help folk who had moved up through financial controller and head of finance roles to transition from back office to boardroom.
Most business accountants qualify early in their career, and learned about the basics of accounting, law, tax, and financial reporting. They now need to be future facing and operate strategically at board level. The big challenge is learning how to become the catalyst of change in the organisation.
The Future CFO programme is mostly online self paced learning, and can be found in the GrowCFO learning centre. It contains lots of individual lessons, many with video input from our experienced CFO community.