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Dream ExchangeConnect with JoeFull Episode Transcript:Adam:Welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast that explores the ways management accountants drive business forward. I'm Adam Larson and my guest today is Joseph Cecala, CEO and co-founder of Dream Exchange, a company focused on building the next generation stock exchange designed for early stage growth companies. This is yet another podcast where I learned a ton, like how the rise of electronic stock training essentially shut down IPOs and equity stock market access for businesses worth less than $50 million. What's more, I learned how management accountants will play a critical role in making these new venture markets actually work. Whether you work at a small business, are interested in investing in small business, or wants to know more about the relationship between equity markets and innovation, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started with Joe Cecala.Adam:So Joe, I wanna thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. We're really excited to get talking to you about the Dream Exchange, but before we get there, I just wanted to hear a little bit about your story. I was reading your bio and I just think you've got a really great story starting off as a CPA and to where you are now. Let's start with your story and go there.Joe:Sure. And Adam, thanks for having me. I my story I like to say I Forrest Gumped my way through my career, right, I started as a CPA went to law school and became a shingle lawyer doing a lot of small business venture capital transactions. And you know, my accounting career really informed that quite well. I guess the big story of how we're here today is one of my clients, Jerry Putnam, founded a company which became Archipelago, actually the world knows today as New York Stock Exchange, Archipelago in the mid 1990s. It was the first company to actually carry equity security trades using the internet or among the first two. And I got this national market expertise when that was being born. And here we are 26 years later with a lot of legal expertise in capital markets.Joe:So several years ago I just decided that a new exchange model was needed to accommodate smaller companies. And we worked on legislation for that. It's still pending in Congress and we're actually building a national exchange as well. So everything that we're doing is born out of those early years of learning what a stock exchange is and does and how one is born, and the mechanics of that and adding the kind of practical business of how to run one to the legal expertise of how to create one. And really the other, I guess the other major portion of what we're doing that's different is that, you know, we're targeting what we call underserved markets. The entrepreneurial market, very small companies that don't really see interest from a stock exchange in the earlier stages of their business life cycle. And we're also especially concentrating in minority markets.Joe:The capital group that is financing the exchange and is the majority owner, our minorities, it's a black owned exchange, the first one in the history of the United States. So, you know, and we're in the licensing, we're in the process, we'll be hopefully licensed in about a year. So we're in that process right now, but things are going really well. And that's how I got here, was really starting as a financial professional and moving from financial professional to early stage company, venture capital lawyer. And so I really wanna help those small companies. It's more about the companies through my career I haven't helped or can't get access to capital than it is about the unicorn companies that have an easy time. So that's how we got here today. And hopefully the journey will be easier go in the next six years than it has been for the past 10.Adam:I sure hope so.Joe:Yeah, me too. So, and then I guess what I would say is the Dream Exchange today as it exists, as it perhaps might inform you know, the audience for this particular, you know, group. We're really concentrating on what are now gonna be known as early stage growth companies. That's actually a coined expression. It is in the Main Street Growth Act. And what that means is those are companies that are very small. They might have a valuation of, you know, 10 or $20 million, but they're gonna be seeking capital you know, for 10 or $20 million. And we're providing the mechanics of a brand new stock exchange environment for those early stage companies to be traded with customized rules and customized reporting and customized attention that the national exchanges really can't provide because the financial reporting and the cost of the coming public and Sarbanes Oxley and DOD Frank and the regulatory environment for very large companies is much easier to absorb the expense of doing that. But how do we maintain the same quality in investor protection in a small market while simultaneously making the cost less so that those smaller companies could get access to capital in a public market that's really the driver behind the meat and potatoes of the Dream Exchange.Adam:Wow, that's, there's so much there that I think we're gonna have to unpack a little bit of it. And I know that for me and I know a lot of other folks, you know, maybe we can start with, you know, how do you set up an exchange and what exactly is in exchange? Because we all hear about the stock exchange and stocks being there, but maybe there's a way that you can describe it for us that even a seven year old could understand it.Joe:Yeah, that actually, and thank you for asking that because that is, it really is not commonly talked about. Most people talk about the functions of an exchange without actually knowing what it is. So a stock exchange is merely a set of rules by which the buying and the selling of equity securities is conducting. That's all it is. And today those rules are primarily driven by electronics. So trading rules, what type of order, what type of sale, what the rules say about how the market participants have to conduct themselves fairly. Now, most people think stock exchange and what they're actually thinking about is what's called the secondary market, because you, the stock is already a public company and you wanna go and you wanna buy your shares of IBM and you have to go through a stock broker, some very large organization that is carrying trades to a stock exchange.Joe:Stock exchange is matching the trades that the order book and the matching engine of an exchange literally matches trades today in millionths and billionths of a second. And that's what people think. They see the Dow Jones averages and they see the New York Stock Exchange you know, set of listing is up or down. The function of the stock exchange is to match trades in a fair and equitable environment. Now, the other function that most people are, are familiar with is the initial public offering market, the IPO market. And they look at exchanges and go, they went public on NASDAQ, or they went public on NYSE. That's the capital formation part of exchanges. Now that's another kind of misinformed use of stock exchange because stock exchanges don't actually take anybody public. Investment banks do. So the investment bank has to make an arrangement so that when a company files publicly and sends its registration of its shares to the SEC, they can also take a registered share of stock to a stock exchange and apply to be listed on the exchange.Joe:Merely getting registered shares with the SEC does not automat...

Links mentioned in today's Podcast:https://www.thecareertoolkitbook.comhttps://www.cognoscomedia.com/brain-bumphttps://www.thecareertoolkitbook.com/resources Connect with Mark:https://www.linkedin.com/in/hershey/https://twitter.com/CareerToolkitBkhttps://www.facebook.com/TheCareerToolkitBookhttps://www.instagram.com/thecareertoolkit/Full Episode Transcript:Adam:Welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast focused on the issues, challenges, and characters shaping the management accounting profession. I'm Adam Larson. Today I'm joined by Mark Herschberg, serial entrepreneur, business innovator, and the author of the Career Toolkit: Essential Skills for Success that No One Taught You. Now, lots of people cover career and work best practices, but if you ask me, it all can start to sound pretty similar, but that's not the case with Mark. There's a good reason he teaches at MIT, which you're about to find out. In fact, Mark had so much insight and advice to share from his research and years of building companies and teams, we ended up recording two podcasts, the second of which will be coming out soon. But for now, let's get started with Mark Herschberg discussing the fallout from the great resignation and what he's learned about how to fix work.Adam:Mark, I wanted to just thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and today we're gonna really focus on the great resignation and we've all been hearing this term they've been writing about it since it started in 2021, but I wanted to start off by just you talking a little bit about what what it is and what it means for everybody today.Mark:Well, thanks for having me on the show today. The great resignation is really the term that is an umbrella term for what is the largest rewrite of the capital labor contract that we have seen in a century. Now certainly we are seeing people leave jobs quitting, finding better jobs, sometimes going back to their original job, but it's also a larger cultural change about what people are looking for in their jobs. And so we need to recognize this isn't just, well, we have to do a better job hiring or retaining. It is a shift in terms of what people want and companies need to adjust if they wanna stay competitive in the labor market.Adam:Yeah, it sounds like it, and it also sounds like companies really need to focus in on how do we keep employees as well? Because I'm sure during the pandemic employees were seeing, do I really still need to be here? And that they started asking themselves a lot of questions.Mark:Well, that's a really good point. And you get different answers depending on who you ask. When it comes down to any job, it's really about the communication needed. It's about who needs to communicate with whom and when and how best to do that. It's why we have emails, slack, phone calls, meetings, they're all channels of communicating, whether it's project updates or you and I coordinating and coming up with ideas. That's what a lot of work is. What we found is that certain types of work can be done from home. We don't have to be sitting next to each other. And people have speculated about this for years. I work in technology. We've certainly been on the forefront. I've been working with teams all around the world for years. You can do some of that, but there are limitations to that and it seems like we might be overshooting a bit in that people don't understand. At first we said No, you'll have to be in the office five days a week. It's like, well, we know we can work when we're in the office zero days a week. You can work in both modes, but is that optimal? And so there are different facets you need to look at to decide what is the optimal number of days for a particular team at which points.Adam:Yeah, and it also seems like it's more than just money that people are leaving because of a lot of times people leave because of money or because of culture, or all those things. But you can't just throw more money at your employees and say, Okay, you know, stay here.Mark:That's exactly right. Money is a bit of a factor. And as we record this at the start of the summer in 2022, we've been coming off some of the highest inflation rates that we've seen in a generation. And so you do need more money to stay competitive and other companies are throwing money at them. But here's the thing, you are probably not the highest payer in your market. One company is, and it probably isn't you. So if you're just competing on money, that's going to be a problem. What we saw is people are responding to these other dimensions, and this is what I meant when I said it's a rewrite of that capital labor contract. It's no longer I pay you money, you do the work. And so we're seeing employees, particularly younger employees, but we are seeing it across the spectrum. They're looking not just at money I'm using at Compensation General, or there's stock options of salary, but also work life balance, company culture, alignment to mission and support, just to name a few.Mark:We saw companies that back at the start of the pandemic in 2020, some of them said, look, it's tough for everyone. Suck it up and do it. And other companies said, hey, it's tough for everyone, so we're going to give you Fridays off for the next two months because this is crazy. Spend some time with your families. We all need the stress break or what can we do to support you while you are at home? And so the companies that were more supportive of their employees were the ones who basically had more loyalty and had employees say, I know you're looking out for me and are more likely to stay. So it's important that we really sell our employees current and future ones, not just on the compensation, but on all these other facets.Adam:So it what I'm hearing you say, it sounds like company culture is a huge part of avoiding the resignation, but also, you know, when you, when new people are coming on, you wanna make sure that they fit that company culture to make sure that they're gonna stay on.Mark:Culture is very important. Now by culture, I think a lot of companies get this wrong. They think the culture is the seven values. Someone in marketing put on the website that says customer first or whatever the mantra is. And I'm sure there is value to those, but the actual culture of your team might be at your company level. More likely it's at a team or department level is how you interact day to day. For example, I have a colleague who told me at a former company, the rule was whoever yelled loudest got their way in the meeting. I guarantee you marketing did not put that on the website. But when you show up, ...

IMA’s Neha Lagoo Ratnakar speaks with Oded Zehavi, CEO of Mesh Payments, about digital transformation of the finance team. They discuss how powerful new software tools and automation opportunities empower CFOs and their teams to streamline business partnering, sharpen internal controls, and simplify business operations.  The good news is it’s much less complicated than you think.Connect with OdedFull Episode Transcript:Neha:Welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast by and for management accountants. I'm Neha Lagoo Ratnakar from IMA, and today I'm speaking with Oded Zehavi about how the enormous potential of digital transformation is finally coming to fruition for CFOs and finance teams everywhere. As the CEO and founder of Mesh Payments, Oded has a bird's eye view into how accounting and finance professionals are utilizing and customizing powerful new software tools to streamline business partnering, sharpen internal controls and simplify business operations. And what struck me during the conversation was that how appropriate the word transformation is in this moment. It's like the buzzword I've heard a million times crystallized into something real for me. During the course of this interview, you'll hear how technology has clearly elevated the value the finance function is able to provide to the business in real time. Let's get started with Oded to see how businesses are leaning into this exciting new era of innovation.Neha:So let's start with the obvious question today. We are all witnessing a transformation in the way we work and finance and accounting is one of the functions that lends itself very well to remote working. How do you think the CFO's office has changed since the pandemic?Oded:So people usually speak a lot about the fact that everything is remote now, which is key, by the way, by the way that finance people operates. I will even go back in time and speak about something that less people are talking about, which is why the category, which I mean, which is spend management, have been really driving from the beginning of the pandemic. And in my mind it's always start by the fact that before the pandemic, the finance teams were really focusing about T&E. So everybody were a lot of fun. Various sales guys were traveling and it's all about how we collect received, how do we close the books? There was so much noise so many people involved. What does does it mean? And so many employees have been brought, and it's really beyond the fact that he's taken a lot of the time from the finance teams activities.Oded:It also created a lot of noise and camouflage some other problems that might have been bigger or different. And when the pandemic started, that was shut eliminated overnight. So now nobody travels anymore. No receipts have been chased. That noise have been gone quiet. Totally. And on top of it, there were two other trends which in my mind have really impact the way finance team operates. One, as you mentioned, is the fact that now companies are fully remote and distributed. So a lot of the processes that historically the finance team could have solved by telling the employees, you know, what? Come to my desk, yes, tomorrow and we'll make this happen have not been relevant anymore. And last, but not least, the fact that many of these companies move a lot of the infrastructure to the cloud. So now a lot of these old on premise licensing models have been shut down.Oded:And now everything move to more recurring models where you need to pay every month a much smaller amount with much more softwares. So the combination of all of that really made a huge difference when it comes to how finance teams need to treat spend or treat corporate spend. And what I'm seeing is that over the last two years, the space itself have been exploding. So many great companies have come into this space, which are now giving very new technology, amazing user experience will talk about it in the second, and last but not least, a new business model, which in our category, historically, companies have been used to pay for software that helps them control spend. I'm amazed there are still companies that are even considering paying for some of the very, very old legacy platforms on things they are not really using, where there are so many options like mesh in the space that enables them to pay only for what they use and sometimes not even pay anything because a lot of us have been using the model where we, the merchant that we are paying for are, are really paying for the service. So a lot of transformation and changes in the way finance team have looked at spend management and on top of it and you started by the remote and the fact that companies are now distributed. So it's not only that are distributed, they're also global. If we were talking, having this conversation few years ago, most of the US companies were usually around this very one site usually in one city in the US it could be San Francisco or New York or one of these leading countries.Oded:The pandemic really shifted a lot of the employees all across the US and now there are new places where employees from different reasons want to spend time in like Austin, like Miami, like all these places which are totally outside of the where traditional headquarters have been based and last than not least, why stay in Austin when you can spend the same time and work from a much more exotic place. And I've seen companies that have become fully distributed and fully remote. And for the finance teams, all of these challenges are really something that is transformational. And they have really invested a lot of time and effort in the last two years to be ready to give solutions or be, give service in such a changing world.Neha:Wow. I love that, Oded, there's so much that has been happening, and thank you for summarizing so well how work, softwares, platforms, our activities have changed in the last couple of years. Now let's talk about the mindset changes. What have you seen change in the last couple of years and is there anything that the CFOs or the finance departments can do to help with this mindset change?Oded:So it's interesting that we are talking today, which is more or less in the middle or the beginning or some people out the hand of additional neutrons to change in the mindset of finance team or finance people, if we can go back when the pandemic came, everybody stopped and tried to reduce cost and see what happens that very quickly after a month or two, the world, especially the high tech scene, have really shifted into growth. Just growth and growth and growth. And companies have been growing and bringing more to employees. They're more talents and spending more on media. And it was really about growth. Not all, but most of the companies didn't invest enough time about unique economics and controls and things that are fundamental when it comes to business. And we are in the beginning of a new transformation or new mindset change where everybody said saying to the same fine sense things that they will say to them a year ago, Grow, grow, grow, stop, stop, stop.Oded:And let's focus on the fundamental economics control and visibility. And it all comes back to the fact that now changes are happening much quicker, but then nobody knows if we'll talk again in two months, what will be the mindset then, that it will be just control, and it might happen the same way it was in the pandemic. The only thing that we know that is that we don't really know. From what the impact for finance teams is that they now need to have an infrastructure, which is ...

Connect with MatRead more about Online to OfflineFull Episode Transcript:Adam:Welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast that brings you impactful people and stories from across the world of management accounting. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and joining me today is Mat Boyle, CEO of Online to Offline, to discuss how businesses and management accountants can make a big difference in the world by shifting their focus from profits first to mission first. While this is much easier said than done, as you'll hear, Mat's inspirational story is an important reminder that it's possible to do well in business and even better than ever when you measure your success by something greater than the bottom line.Adam:Well, Mat, I just really wanna thank you for coming on the podcast today. Thanks so much for sharing your time with us. And to start off, I wanted you to kind of walk through a little bit of your story with us as we were kind of talking, coming up to this call, you mentioned something that you learned to focus, no longer focusing on profit, but on the impact your business was making, and that's not something you hear every day. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that with our audience.Mat:Yeah, sure. Adam, thanks for having us. So the sort of condensed version of the backstory, I'd built quite a large sales training business. So I had four offices around Australia. We had a stack of businesses that will help in their sales teams, really navigate through the changes caused by the internet. And from a profitability point of view, it was amazing, but there was this kind of hole inside me that it was really unfulfilling and my days was spent training sales people that didn't want help. They needed it, but they didn't want it. So it was just this horribly unfulfilling sort of thing. And I met this guy back in 2015 who was an Australian guy that worked with the Thai immigration police. And he started talking to me about the work he was doing over in Thailand and how he was involved in rescuing kids out of exploitive situations and women outta sexual slavery and human trafficking.Mat:And the more we got talking, the more things just sort of opened up for me and the, you know, my heart sort of went, I've gotta see this. So about six months into the conversation, and I eventually convinced him to take me over to Thailand, and I spent three weeks working with him and his team in Thailand doing the front lines rescuing kids outta brothels and women outta brothels and just seeing this depravity, which is human trafficking, and you know, that some of the sites and the sounds were just horrendous. But the thing when I was talking to all these women and that, that the stories were identical, that they all needed money and got caught up in this life because someone gave them a job that they shouldn't have lent to money from someone they shouldn't have.Mat:Or they were promised a job that didn't exist and they were all taken advantage of by their desperation towards money. So when I was sitting back in Australia and I'm sitting back in a boardroom a few days later, I sort of had this idea of, well, instead of businesses paying me to train their sales teams not to do the work that I've paid them to do, I've been paid to do. What about if I just could automate and outsource all of these elements of the sales process, businesses could pay me to build the systems and manage the systems and they're gonna make more money, but then I can go and create jobs in these developing countries where all these women are getting exploited and train them how to operate my system and actually be able to use my business as a way of making good.Mat:So that's what we started to do and started to develop all these systems that can automate and outsource big chunks of the sales process, but do it in a way that no one actually ever realizes it's not been done by you. And in 2018, we ended up opening our first outsource center in the Philippines, which has gone gone amazing. And then Covid has gone slowed down our growth and we are on track to open our second center in Thailand sometime sort of before sort of March next year.Adam:That's quite a story. I mean, to have something like that caused such an impact on you that you want to completely turn your business around, that can't be an easy decision to make. And it's a very risky one.Mat:It was a very easy decision to make because I made it with my heart, not with my head. It was an incredibly risky situation. And the journey between sort of 2016, 2017 when the idea came and where we are now, we certainly have faced the consequences of that, you know, of that decision. Because going through this said, I made it purely with my heart of going, I have to make an impact from there. And I kind of threw out all conventional business acumen around, well, what happens to your existing customers? What are you gonna do with everything you built up? And so over a period of a few months, we ended all of our contracts. I just stopped prospecting for new business and didn't replace them. And just focused our whole energy on trying to fix, solve this problem and, and tried to create these systems and open the center.Mat:And, you know, as is often the case, it always takes twice as long as you think it's gonna take and takes three times the amount of money that you think it's gonna take. And, you know, through all of that journey, the consequence is we actually went through complete financial meltdown and we lost our house, lost our cars, and basically went down to having $50 to our name at our kind of lowest point. And you know, that's kind of where we were able to kind of keep persevering and keep getting through. So like fortunately now we're in a much stronger financial position than we ever have, and the business is going great, but there certainly was a big journey from start to where we are now, which has been challenging.Adam:So maybe we can talk a little bit about that journey, about becoming to the success you are now. I know a lot of that contributed to getting the right people in place in your organization to make sure that you were doing the business in the right way. Maybe we can talk a little bit about that to how that became successful.Mat:Yeah, so there was a few kind of phases where I was first in that survival phase where it was just me. I was just hustling. I was just, you know, I was robbing Peter to pay Paul and I didn't really have a financial strategy in place other than how can I pay this week's bills type of strategy. And that, you know, although that was getting us forward, that was creating other holes with taxation and a heap of other kind of just areas that, because I was so single minded focused on the goal at hand and trying to do everything myself or being left behind. So I started to look for support teams and one of the sort of first pieces I put into place is actually bringing on a fractional CFO. I've been working with a lot of the accountants and, you know, all the accountants, all they kept doing was just filing my tax returns and telling me, because you've done A, B, and C this way, this is what we've had to do.Mat:So they're just telling me about their problems and how they've stuck a bandaid over it rather than actually working with me to try to solve the problems. And that just kept making, compounding the problems, you know, and just putting us deeper and deeper and deeper in a hole. So I'm, you know, one side, I'm, you know, busting, busting everything. I've got to ...

Connect with ToriConnect with DennyLearn more about the CMA CertificationFull Episode Transcript:Adam:Join us in this bonus episode of Count Me In, where IMA brand storyteller, Margaret Michaels sits down with two noteworthy CMAs to discuss the 50th anniversary of IMA's globally respected certification for accounting and finance professionalsMargaret:In this special Count Me In podcast, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Certified Management Accountant or CMA program, I will be speaking with two CMA exam takers, Denny Beresford, who earned his CMA in 1972 and made IMA history by becoming one of IMA's first CMAs, and Tori Heavey, a recent graduate of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, who won the CMA student award for the highest score on the exam in the June/July, 2020 testing window. Tori also recently won the Elijah Sales Award for her CPA score. Denny has spent a lifetime working in accounting and finance. He currently serves as a member of IMA's Financial Reporting Committee and as the executive in residence at the JM Toll School of Accounting, Terry College of Business at University of Georgia. Tori is a recent graduate of the Master's in Accountancy program at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and is currently working as a tax associate for KPMG.Margaret:Thank you Denny and Tori for joining me today. As we talk about your experience taking the CMA exam. Denny, you have the distinction of being among the first people to sit for the CMA exam in 1972. At that time, the CMA exam was administered with paper and pencil and the field of management accounting was not widely known. What do you remember about taking the CMA exam? How did you learn about management accounting? Was it through school or work experience and what are some of your study methods and tips?Denny:I had been a member of IMA, it was actually the National Association of Accountants or in earlier years since 1962, shortly after I graduated from college. And in fact, I'd been active in my local chapter back in Los Angeles, rising from a helper on some of the committees to become president of the chapter shortly before I transferred from Ernst & Ernst's office in Los Angeles to the national office in Cleveland in 1971. So I was very familiar with what was going on at, at the organization and the fact that the CMA exam was being developed over a couple of years before that. And I guess I was generally familiar with the management accounting profession, having again been participating in IMA for a number of years being involved particularly at the local chapter level and then also at the national level.Denny:And also having been an auditor and interacting, of course with many of my clients for that period of time. And when the exam was was first offered, I decided that it would be a good thing, first of all, to support the organization for by taking it. And I thought it would be something that would help build my self confidence, you might say, in dealing with, with clients. Since I was a public accountant, I knew that I had to be able to speak intelligently to controllers and chief financial officers and others who were involved in the management accounting profession. And so I thought that being able to pass an exacting exam like the CMA would again, give me both self confidence and also a positive credential that would show that I was on similar footing to them.Denny:What I remember about taking the first exam, I was in Cleveland in the National Office of Ernst & Ernst, and at that point, and I don't remember how many different settings there were, but the closest location that I could, where I could take the exam was Pittsburgh. So I had to I go there, drive over to Pittsburgh, which isn't too far from Cleveland. I had to stay overnight. And the morning of the exam, there was an ice storm in Pittsburgh. And another fellow and I were both gonna take the exam together and we had to drive from the hotel to the, I don't remember exactly the place it was being held, but it was a half hour or so away, and we could barely make it there because of the streets were all icy and it was just a terrible weather situation.Denny:But and it was in a cavernous location, some sort of a very large convention location, something like that. And it was large and very cold. And again I had no idea how to prepare for the exam because back then there hadn't been any previous exams, had nothing to to go on in terms of looking at what questions had been asked in the past. And for the first exam, what the organization had done was give a list of books that you could consider studying to prepare you for the exam. I thought that was kind of a good idea, but not a very good use of my time. I knew that a couple of the parts of the exam, particularly Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and some other parts were pretty much in my wheelhouse and I could do well on those.Denny:The other parts I wasn't so sure about, but I felt that trying to study them by going back and reading textbooks or the like, would not be a very good use of my time. So my strategy, if you will, was to try to do well on one or two of the parts, and then of the other parts that if I didn't do so well the next time when I had to take them over, I'd at least know what to study for. And as it turned out, I passed the whole exam the first time and had one of the 10 highest scores. So that strategy worked out pretty well and it didn't have to go back and study, but that's as much as I remember about preparing for the exam, why I took it and exactly what happened when I was there.Margaret:That's great. That's a great story about the ice storm. You really persevered taking the CMA exam a very rigorous enterprise indeed. Tori, now that you've heard Denny's experience, how do you think the way you've taken the exam is different from Denny and what did you do to prepare for the exam?Tori:Yeah, my experience was a little different. I did not have an ice storm to deal with, but I've kind of grown up through the shift to digital. I rarely ever used computers for school until I came to college, really. Freshman year, most of my exams were still on paper and pencil. And gradually more and more classes switched to exams on the computer. And this transition really helped me prepare to take the CMA exam electronically, specifically for the essay portion. It helped that I'd improved my typing skills tremendously over the time or the few years I'd started using computers more and got more used to typing papers online or even just using different software. I used the Wiley CMA exam question bank to prepare and study for both parts of the CMA exam. And it was totally computer based. All of my prep except for my own notes that I still write on paper and pencil.Tori:But seeing the exam simulated during my studying in this way definitely helped a lot. It familiarized me with the test software and it made actual exam day a lot less daunting just to have kind of more familiarity in being used to the situation that I would be in. Cause sometimes it can be so nerve wracking on the exam day to go into a testing center. Right now we use Prometric centers, which I'm not sure if y'all are familiar with those, but you have to schedule an exam slot online, a few, usually a few weeks or months in advance. And then the day of you show up and you are assigned a computer that has like the blockers all around so that everyone is, it's almost like small cubicles a...

Connect with Dr. Marsha HuberRead the report Thriving Amidst Challenges: A Guide to Small Business Resilience Full Episode Transcript:Neha:Welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast where management accounted stays center stage. I'm your host, Neha Lagoo Ratnakar. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Marsha Huber, who is IMA's director of research to discuss a recently published report, Thriving Amidst Challenges: A Guide to Small Business Resilience. I have to say, this report is such a great example of the timely and rigorous research IMA specializes in with the goal of providing practical insights and actions that truly help businesses learn and grow. We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, but make sure to download the full report using the link in the shownotes, because it's literally brimming with insights that can be put to use immediately. Now let's get started with Marsha.Neha:Hi Marsha, welcome to Count Me In. It's such a pleasure to have you on the show.Marsha:Oh, thank you so much Neha. I feel privileged to have been invited to talk about this IMA publication.Neha:Oh, it's all my pleasure, Marsha. And first of all, congratulations on your new report. Thriving Amidst Challenges: A Guide to Small Business Resilience and that's quite mouthful, but a very much needed topic. Can you tell us, our listeners, what this report is all about?Marsha:Yes. It's a report that was developed from interviews with business people, the small business development center, and various members of the small business committee at the IMA. And I spoke with people, read interviews and developed models with people and experts, and here's the report of our findings.Neha:Cool. And I'm glad you were able to do all that. And how did you come up with this topic? What's the story behind this report?Marsha:Yeah, it's really interesting. I was not the originator of this report. During the pandemic, the small business committee at the IMA had a heart for small business and they actually had another publication. And then this was the second of the two about resilience, small business resilience. And I was invited as a new researcher at the IMA to help the small business committee write this report. And that's what I did. And it was a excellent experience.Neha:Thank you for sharing that journey with us Marsha. So, let's talk about the resilience model. I found it very interesting. Where does that come from and how can it help businesses bounce back?Marsha:Yeah. This came from actually a lot of interviews with the small business development center, Youngstown State University, because they worked with small businesses and they worked with small business during COVID. And at that time, when this was happening, I was also a faculty member at Youngstown State. So I worked with them as well to work small businesses. And so we decided to think about companies that thrived, you know, this is a report about thriving during hardship and resilience, the very definition of it is bouncing back. So how can you bounce back when certain challenges come your way? And what happened was we found three elements among the businesses that thrive as well as the experiences of our small business committee members. These different three, there were three concepts that stood out. And would you like me to describe those concepts?Neha:Sure. Go ahead, that would really help our understanding of the model.Marsha:Okay. So just imagine three circles, and you can also look at the report as I talk about these things, because these are illustrated, but you know, I'm just gonna lay it out three circles and one circle is business focus. And of course, during COVID, and now, we still have a continuing pandemic. You know, business focus is important for everyone, but it's not everything. Okay. So what else we saw as a visionary leadership and the companies to thrive, they could see beyond they didn't lose sight of their goals. They kept their eyes on the goals, but they also had to be flexible and agile and they had to change for the circumstances and they could see things that they never saw before. So, and I might give some examples if you want some in a moment. And then the other element that was so important was a people-centric culture. That the companies that thrived thought about their people, they thought about them as family, you know, not worrying about, you know, we have to lay people off or we have to do this and that they're thinking about how can we keep our people here?Marsha:They're our family. And I think you see now even a heightened awareness of wellbeing, but before the pandemic, yeah, wellbeing is around. But right now it's very important. And I think it actually began at that time where everybody was in the same boat, we were all working from home, having kids at home, you know, things happening, dogs coming in our Zoom meetings, our animals and everything else going on, that we had to change. And some of those things brought humor into what we did. And when you bring these things together, the business focus with the visionary leadership and the people-centric culture, those items mixed together, came to what I called a zone of thriving.Neha:Wow. That was very insightful. And thank you for bringing the human bit in it. It is true that the pandemic did bring out that human side of us. We were more real on those Zoom calls than we are in the actual office setup.Marsha:Yes. Like I'll just give you example of one company, they were in the concession food truck business. Now during COVID, there was no food truck business to go to, people were not going out to eat. All their orders were canceled. And they were the top food truck company basically in United States and everything came to standstill. So they thought, how can we keep our people working when we don't have a business anymore for a while? And so they developed and they saw, looked at everything they had, they basically reenvisioned what they could do. And they started a hand washing station business. And they cuz they had the products, they had the manufacturing process, they had the people and that's what they launched. And then they started selling these hand washing stations. And the University I worked at, they put them in, people put 'em in venues and they're really cool. You don't need to touch anything. There's three stations, you're six feet from each other. And then you wash your hands and your, the soap is there. You wash your hands, you dry your hands. It takes like 20 seconds. And then the next person could go. So that's the very ingenious idea that came just because they cared about their people.Neha:Wow. That was pure genius, I agree, Marsha and thank you for also volunteering a bit ago to talk about some examples. And let's talk about the six Rs of resilience. That's something that also stayed with me. Can you give us some examples of what that means for a management accountant?Marsha:Yeah. And when we talk about the six Rs, let me mention them, under visionary leadership, there's reflect and reimagine. Under business focus, there's reevaluate and reinvent. Under people-centric culture is reconnect and recharge. And again, you know, it's the six RS, resilience, you know, was a way to model these things, these different ideas. So the first example already talked about was visionary leadership, you know, reflecting and reimagining, you know, w...

Connect with AnthonyFull Episode Transcript:Adam:I'm Adam Larson and welcome back to Count Me In, the podcast by and for management accountants. Today's guest comes to us from the forefront of the data automation revolution. Anthony Nitsos, a proud CMA, a consulting CFO, and the founder of SAS gurus shares the unique story of how he transitioned from pursuing a career in medicine to how he discovered the power and beauty of accounting. From explaining how accounting forms the spinal column of any manufacturing business to practical advice for writing the coming tidal wave of financial automation, Anthony's insight and expertise is important listening for management accountants everywhere. Enjoy the show.Adam:Anthony, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. We're really excited to have you on and today we're gonna be focusing in on automation and what that means for the management accountant. But to start off, I wanted you to kind of tell us a little bit about your story.Anthony:So thank you, Adam for that. And I really appreciate being on your program today. You know, I've had an association with the IMA for a long time, which we uncovered in our kind of a preliminary, so that'll be part of the story. But I actually started off in medicine of all things. I was accepted into an accelerated program at the university of Michigan at the age of 18, but several years into it, I realized I really did not want to be a doctor. So it was one of those kind of all right, well you're most of the way to a doctor and you've kind of got a bachelor's degree to show up for, but what are you gonna do with your life now if you've decided not to go in medicine. So I think by, you know, stint to the fact that they both started with am, I went into manufacturing right after medicine.Anthony:I don't know if it was anything more than that, just like, okay, I need a job. I need to, you know, make money. But the strange thing is, is what they had me do was really, you know, kind of the beginnings of process reengineering analysis and trying to figure out why in this particular case, you know, logistics were breaking down material, wasn't ending up where it went. So I got kind of a baptism in fire. What it showed me was that corporations are very similar to bodies. You know, they even, you know, means the same thing. So this training that I got in medicine actually translated pretty well into manufacturing. And so there, I, you know, from there I took off. After that, I did a stint where I was doing a lot of ERP implementations. If folks recall back around the year, 1997, everybody started panicking that their code would blow up when the year 2000 showed up.Anthony:So there was this huge, you know, Y2K, doomsday disasters, et cetera, et cetera. And at that time I was picking up accounting skills. It was one of those things where it was pretty clear that the impact of manufacturing was absolutely a financial one in that, you know, when you got right down to it, you're making decisions on the shop floor that impact profitability. So it was kind of a natural progression for me to just kind of move over into more of an accounting type of world. And ERP really brought that together, cuz that's where you really unify back then still in today, you know, the operations of the company with finance. And so that's where the accounting management accounting piece came into it. And it was right around 1996 where I actually got my first certification in accounting and it was the CMA.Anthony:And I remember that being really useful to me and still to this day, I'm not gonna say it really stopped being useful because whereas the CPA exam and I've taken that, and you know, I've also passed that and I'm also a CPA, but I became a CPA later. I was a CMA first because CMA was very broad based. And from my training, you can't look at one part of a body anymore than you can look at one part of a corporation it's an integrated systemic whole. And so how those pieces work together and how they work most efficiently together, the principles are very similar between medicine and, you know, process reengineering. They really are, you know, you go after the root cause the idea of medicine is not to treat symptoms. I know there's a big debate about that, but really what we are trained to do is find the root cause and fix it.Anthony:And manufacturing is no different and neither is IT. So moving from the physical body to the physical manufacturing now to a more, you know, electronic realm, bringing ERP and all the systems and how they touch everybody together and unifying that ultimately in a framework, which was based in accounting in my mind, because in my mind, the accounting pieces, like the spinal column of the body, you really build everything off of that. All of your reporting, all of your metrics comes off of that. And so focusing the attention to get to the numbers most accurately, most efficiently really became kind of the focus of my next position, which was a controller for a Japanese company. It was a company that was a manufacturing company that had been purchased by, was an English company that had been purchased by the Japanese, excuse me and the president at the time really wanted to have his own money guy rather than have somebody from Japan come in and do the numbers.Anthony:And so he quickly moved to hire a new controller and that was me. And so at that point we knew we were going to scale the company 10 times within the next three years. And so my experience in accounting, the fact that I also spoke Japanese, cuz I had actually studied there, helped out, I understood the cultural kind of the, you know, became kind of like the cultural liaison with the Japanese people when they showed up and then going over there. But that was kind of a side issue. The big issue was they gave me opportunity in a Greenfield implementation to design the entire data collection, information, reporting, financial reporting and whatnot for what was going to be a $50 million company that I had inherited at 5 million using Peachtree. So here I am, freshly minted CMA got his first controller job, applying all these skills and saying, okay, we now get to design a data collection piece for all the production data, all the manufacturing data, all the material data, all the labor, blah, blah, blah, in a way where we really kept the cost down.Anthony:So this was my first and in some ways, best experience scaling a company because I was actually given that power. I was given the authority to basically design the system. And so we had at the time when we started that 5 million, there was myself, a full-time accountant and kind of a half-time payroll person running, you know, the entire back office. When we reached 50 million, I had the same three people, only the payroll person was now full-time. And so we were able to, by applying Japanese manufacturing principles and techniques of totally total quality management, plus Six Sigma black belt process, reengineering analysis, plus my training in ERP systems and what could be done. And at that point, the state of automation was you drove everything off of barcode scanners. And so once everything was set up easily, so each person had their own badge, their own employee badge.Anthony:That was what they used to swipe in and out of the clocks and also what they were used to swipe in and out of jobs. And we made it easy for them to do that. We had readers everywhere and the jobs themselves had their own codes. And so all you had to do is just match the two up in a system and boom outfalls the data. So it was the principle of a sin...

Connect with LeahWorkman ForensicsFull Episode TranscriptAdam:Welcome to Count Me In, the podcast that explores the world of business from a management accountants perspective. My cohost Rouba Zeidan spoke with our special guest Leah Wietholter. Leah is a certified fraud examiner and the author of the new book Data Sleuth: Using Data in Forensic Accounting Engagements and Fraud Investigations. Leah began her career supporting forensic accountants at the FBI and has since branched out to lead her own forensic accounting and private investigation firm. Forensic investigations are the center of so many great crime shows these days, and it was exciting to hear how accountants expose fraud and other problems lurking in bank accounts, credit card statements, and payroll reports. I hope you enjoy the conversation.Rouba:Good morning, Leah. And thank you so much for joining us.Leah:Thank you so much for having me.Rouba:I'm really looking forward to learning more about your very kind of interesting arena and industry, which is and you have a wonderful background in the FBI. So maybe you can drop in some examples on that part of it. So can you tell us a little bit about forensic accounting and forensic accounting engagement? What does it entail?Leah:Yeah, so I work forensic accounting engagements as a private consultant. So I'm not affiliated with law enforcement or anything like that. I own a forensic accounting practice in Oklahoma, and the majority of our engagements are solving some sort of financial problem that's either in litigation or could end up in litigation. So we work a lot of embezzlement investigations or fraud investigations. Then we also work to help sort through partnership dispute or a shareholder dispute, so if someone believes the general partner or whoever's managing the money, usually, has been taking more than their fair share, we get involved there and kind of our third other largest category of a forensic accounting engagement is in divorce matters when the two parties are looking to get divorced and they need to split their assets. Then usually one party is not familiar with how the marital funds were handled.Leah:And so they wanna make sure that when they go to divide those assets, that they're getting their fair share. So we help them either get comfortable with the known assets or try to find any other hidden assets within that situation. And we usually only work divorce cases. If there's a business involved, there's a lot of opportunities when people have closely held businesses where they can hide assets or just, they own things that maybe their spouse doesn't know about. So those are kind of the three types of engagements that fall under the three types of cases that are typically involved in a forensic accounting engagement for us.Rouba:Interesting. I mean, that, that kind of implies that there are numerous kind of legal consequences and circumstances you know, that might come into the equation and most well known would be maybe investigating alleged fraudulent activities like you, you know, in your experience, how prepared is the average finance and accounting professional to handle such circumstances?Leah:I would say that the accounting and financial professionals that I run into, they're familiar with what fraud looks like. They're familiar with, you know, the concept of, we talk about this a lot, cuz we use data analytics, but a lot in our investigations, but we talk about what should have happened, the framework what should have happened versus what happened. And so finance and accounting professionals know what should have happened. And then they also know what happened, but taking that information and then putting it in a format that could be explained to a judge or a jury or even to the client themselves is where our specialty usually shows up. As opposed to, you know, maybe someone working in corporate or even in audit connecting those dots. One of the things that I've been focusing on lately with my team is, okay, I understand that these journal entries, for example, these journal entries look strange and we can tell the client, Hey, these journal entries look strange, but we need to tell them why that matters.Leah:Why should they care about it? And what is the risk to them? What is the financial loss to them? And being able to connect what we know about accounting to losses, to the story of what happened, because that's what helps in, if it does result in litigation, that's what helps communicate the findings. So we've gotta be able to connect what we know as financial professionals with a group of individuals that this is not their specialty. And so connecting those dots, understanding a lot of times finance and accounting professionals are very good at understanding what all the financial statements say and what that means, but then to translate that into, okay, why should my client care, which is usually connected to what actual dollars are missing which would be found on bank statements and credit card statements and payroll reports. So just knowing where to go for that information to best communicate what happened. And the corresponding loss is kind of where this forensic accounting niche comes into play.Rouba:Did you find that the need for forensic accounting has grown over the past few years and more specifically, you know, post the COVID era? And if so, how and why?Leah:So when I first started in forensic, so my background, I worked for two years with the FBI under the direction of a forensic accountant. And that's how I got into this niche so early in life. But then when I joined I started doing this from the private sector. It wasn't as popular and that would've been like 2009. It, it was becoming more popular. The more that technology has advanced and the access that we have that keeps growing to different kinds of data and understanding what that data can tell us. And you know, how we can use that to understand what's happening and just to understand and put our arms around those facts. Then I think forensic accounting is becoming more popular in the private sector. And I haven't really noticed a huge increase in the need of forensic accounting.Leah:I think a lot of people after COVID, I tell my team, I think people are just mad at each other. So we have a whole lot more like the volume of partnership disputes is so much greater than it was before. We're starting to see an uptick in divorces as well. So I don't really know that COVID affected how much forensic accounting or, you know, increased that need. But I have seen an increase in over the course of the last 12 years or 15 years of my career in that, because there's so much more information readily available, that it is possible to find out what happened without relying on law enforcement to get involved and law enforcement, especially in the US, they already have too much work as it is. So if people want answers to their questions and they want it timely, then I think the best resource for them is a forensic accountant in financial investigations.Leah:So that's what I have kind of noticed in, you know, this basically has consumed my entire career, this field. And so just noticing the trends that way, you know, and like I said, COVID, I don't know that it increased the need for forensic accounting. It's just that there seem to be even more disputes since COVID. And so then that means that there's a lot more volume for not just forensic accountants, but I like to ...

Connect with RachelFull Episode Transcript:Adam:Welcome back to another edition of Count Me In. The podcast that explores the world of business from the management accountants perspective. My guest today is Rachel Baesler, VP of financial reporting and technical accounting at FLEETCOR Technologies, a leading global business payments company. We talk a lot on this show about the need for accountants inside the organizations to partner cross-functionally with leaders and groups, driving business performance and growth as an accounting leader at a company that has completed over 90 acquisitions, Rachel is the perfect guest to help us better understand how accountants can overcome common stereotypes and thrive as strategic business partners. So let's get started.Adam:So, Rachel, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, and we're just gonna jump right in cuz we're talking about strategic partnerships today and when you're building those strategic partnerships, a common term or role today for accounting and finance professionals is business partnering. That's the term we've been hearing a lot. And so how do you ensure success when building these relationships across departments?Rachel:So to ensure business success, collaboration and partnership across departments is critical to the success of the organization, I was reading this Deloitte report that said that 83% of organizations want to increase the time spent on finance business partnering over the next three years. So it can be difficult to foster open communication with accounting. We're often seen as an impediment rather than a strategic business partner. So they understand that we handle the numbers and that we handle compliance, but it's up to us to, you know, articulate our value and demonstrate how we can be a strategic partner. A major component of FLEETCOR's success is our M&A strategy we've had over 90 acquisitions to date. Each of these require extensive involvement from accounting. So last year we purchased AFEX for over 400 million. They are part of our cross-border payment solutions similar to Cambridge global payments, which are all newly aligned under our court pay business unit.Rachel:We have noticed over time that we are getting similar accounting issues come up in these deals. So for our deal team, we created this quick reference guide and we shared it with them. So these matters that come up over and over again, they have them at the front of their mind versus the back. This helps, you know, demonstrate our value as a partner cuz they know every decision they're making and an acquisition, there is an accounting impact. It also helps just foster a relationship with them. Now they know, you know, they know my name, they know to come to me, when things come up, I can help them work through issues and they understand their accounting implications.Adam:So is that why it's so important for accounting and finance professionals? Because you have to be a seat at the table, no matter what's happening, whether it's an M&A, or the strategy that's being run or FP&A like all those different things are happening. Why is it so important for accounting and finance professionals to be a part of that?Rachel:Well, there's, you know, the compliance matters, obviously it's our job to ensure that the books and records are accurate, but also, you know, in the business environment today, all departments are being asked to demonstrate their value and partnering with other departments is how we demonstrate our value in an organization. And this also helps us, you know, foster culture of governance and compliance because you know, we have a seat at the table and we know what's going on in the business. It also helps us, you know, understand what's going on in the business. So we can better communicate with our stakeholders. You know, I'm the one preparing a lot of investor documents, right? So knowing what's going on across the organization helps me communicate more effectively with our investors.Adam:So what skills have you had to develop to be a successful relationship builder in this process?Rachel:Okay. So I read another Deloitte study and it was talking about the main competencies you need to be a successful finance business partner. And it talked about you know, being able to challenge negotiate, have, you know, commercial acumen, strategic thinking. And then one, I think for me has been critical, which is relationship management, such a simple thing, but building interpersonal relationships with people in other departments helps foster open communication and builds trust. You know, we live in an environment where we receive lots of emails. Whenever possible, I try to meet with people in person or have a face to face video call even pick up the phone, you know, you're not, you don't really have the opportunity to build a relationship when you're communicating over email, this, you know, just helps facilitate an open dialogue and create a trusted relationship. I'll give you an example.Rachel:I was working on this project with, you know, it was KPIs and I was having to talk to different leaders of the businesses. I'm sure it felt like an incremental ask. One of our lines of business leaders I was working with on this project. We just started chit chatting about Disney world. He has kids, I have kids, he was giving me some tips. I haven't taken my children yet. They're a little too young, but we built this, you know, great rapport fast forward a few months. And we acquired a business and he didn't understand, you know, how the revenue recognition pattern was working with one of the new products. Fast forward a few months later, we acquired a new business and we have a new product and there's trouble with the business leaders, understanding how the revenue recognition pattern works for that new product. You know, now they know my name, they know my face. They know to reach out to me, I can help them, you know, translate the, you know, the product to the accounting impact. So it helps me, you know, I'm getting to know the business that we've acquired from the business leaders and from the target itself. And you know, I'm at the front end of the issue they know to get me involved and it's just a really productive relationship and it, you know, helped us get involved early. So.Adam:Yeah, it's almost like you've you learned how to connect on a human side with your other collaborators and then because you connected, you developed the relationship and that allowed you to, when that you needed their help or they needed your help, you were able to connect in a better way.Rachel:Absolutely. I mean, you know, if I'm just shooting an email, so I'd be like, give me this, you know, or even asking politely. You know, I'm not gonna be the front of their mind when a problem comes up. So, you know, just spending a little bit extra time with folks, you know, building that connection, it really helps create a good relationship. And you know, it enables you to have a strategic partnership. I think that's really hard to just like force that on someone.Adam:Yeah. I was thinking, you know how it's always easy for us to talk about for as accountants to say, how do we partner with everybody else? What advice would you give to somebody who is not an accountant? How do you best partner with the accounting team? We've already talked about the human side and building that relationship, but are there other elements that we can say, Hey, this would, this would be best way to communicate. This is the best way to kind of ...

Connect with Amanda:https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-cohen-0b4b81a6/https://www.linkedin.com/company/resolver-inc/ https://twitter.com/Resolver https://www.facebook.com/ResolverInc https://www.instagram.com/resolverinc/ https://www.youtube.com/user/ResolverGRC Full Episode Transcript:Adam:I'm Adam Larson and welcome to Count Me In, the podcast focused on all the ways management accountants can help businesses thrive through smart financial management and data driven decision making. My guest today is Amanda Cohen, the vice president of product at Resolver, a software company helping businesses manage complex interconnected risks. We talk about the image problem that governance, risk, and compliance functions or GRC have at many businesses; namely, that they're tedious, repetitive and restrictive. Amanda explains how this negative perception of GRC actually hampers innovation and growth. The good news is Amanda has tips to transform this frog into a prince at your company, making GRC a more dynamic and valued partner to business operations and performance. I hope you enjoy this modern day fairytale featuring our favorite stars: management accountants.Adam:Amanda, thank you so much for coming on our podcast today. We're really excited to have you on and today we're gonna be focusing a lot on risk or governance, risk and, compliance, kind of the big three words governing organization. And one of the biggest things that we kind of wanted to focus on is, you know, there's an image problem that you've said a number of times that there's an image problem with with GRC. Can you kind of talk a little bit about that as we get started today?Amanda:Yeah, certainly. So I think a lot of it, well, I think there's a couple different angles that the governance risk and compliance space has a bit of an image problem. First and foremost, I don't think a lot of the organization understands exactly what they do and how they provide value to the organization. And so often they're seen as a barrier that maybe comes in a little late during the project or, or something that's preventing you from getting to your objectives. And really, I think that's all just in terms of the order of operations. If we can flip that around a little bit and bring these teams in earlier, it's not that person who's getting in your way of completing your project or helping you complete or achieve your objective. Really what you're starting to do is you are bringing them along for the ride and helping or using those teams to help guide your project and make sure that it's operating with the realm of what's appropriate for the organization.Amanda:And then they're gonna help you find really creative, suggestive alternatives to help move things. So that's kind of one area of the image problem is, you know, there's a barrier specifically that they seem to be imposing. And then the other one that we hear a lot from our customers is really that it seems like these teams are constantly asking me for the same information. And so, you know, you might get a request from someone in audit and they're looking for a bunch of documentation on how you run a particular process. And then two weeks later, two months later, someone from compliance is coming in and they're you the exact same question, you know, your internal controls team, same thing. And so it's like, why can these teams not just get together come up with some kind of strategy on how to collect that information and then reduce the onus on me because the business is really just trying to accomplish their job. It's not their job to provide you with the documentation. And so when there's more synergy between those teams it also reduces a little bit of that friction that you often get from the business.Adam:It almost seems like when you're looking at risk management from an organizational perspective, the organization's mission kind of needs to be the foundation of that. And the focus of that risk management, because otherwise everybody won't be on the same page if it's not there, how do you get there?Amanda:So, I mean, there's a couple ways to help be a part of those strategic decisions, be a part of what the organization is trying to accomplish. It really helps when you have buy in from the top. If your executive endorses and believes that risk and compliance has a place at the table during those discussions, it's gonna be a lot easier, but in order to, it's a bit of a chicken and egg, because it's also in order to be included in those conversations, you need to be providing insights. And so something that, you know, if all the risk function or the compliance function, whatever it may be is there. And they're just, you know, showing up at that board meeting, showing up at that executive meeting to present their five minutes on their findings and, you know, maybe their last regulatory audit, like, okay. But what have you uncovered what's in your data to help us understand, you know, how the organization is gonna achieve their objectives? Are there potentially a couple alternatives that we could consider or that we should be thinking about as we're making these strategic decisions? And so when risk can bring more valuable data that also helps propel them forward and allows them to be a part of that conversation and that'll help get that executive endorsement and then allow them to be, you know, help the organization achieve that mission that they're trying to accomplish.Adam:So I know that you know, it's probably rare that, you know, your CMA, your certified management accountant, your management accounting will lie awake at night thinking, oh no. What about that regulatory compliance document? It is something that's important. And a lot of times culture pl...