The CFO Playbook

Now CFO of affiliate marketing network Awin, Virpy Richter has never been the kind of finance professional who prefers to hide in a corner with her spreadsheets. Not only has she worked all over Europe, for startups and big companies, she’s also held positions in human resources and legal departments.Diving into different cultures has taught Virpy the importance of local knowledge, especially in companies with a global reach. Understanding the similarities and differences between how things work in other countries underscored for her the value of adapting to an environment, while also standardizing frameworks and processes for the sake of efficiency.Far from stymying her financial career, these international insights into workplace culture make Virpy more qualified to hold the CFO spot. As she argues, CFOs today need to think more like business partners than number-crunchers if they want to claim a seat in the C-suite.On this episode of The CFO Playbook, Virpy explains the challenges and benefits of parachuting into a foreign workplace, why CFOs need to embrace technology for the sake of their employees and how Awin is rethinking its approach to work-life balance.Connect with Virpy on LinkedIn.Connect with our host Ross on LinkedIn.If you want a better way to track and control your team’s spend, checkout Soldo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lessons we cover in this episode: Successful CFOs look at the big picture. As the source of financial truth, CFOs need to be able to look at any number and know if it’s “true” or not. Decide where you want to be on the spectrum of strategic vs operational. A good CFO needs to be a thinker and business partner, but they also need to be a doer (able to build a team, get work done, etc.). When you first step into a new role, focus on people, process and technology. When you get it wrong, acknowledge it, fix it, forgive yourself and move on. Focus on 2 things as a CFO: growing yourself, and growing your team. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lessons we cover in this episode: As you progress in your career, your responsibility is increasingly to ask good questions - not have the right answers You should maintain a humble mindset as you grow in your career When you’re a CFO and have a firm grasp on the numbers, you often have the right answer on decisions. But in feeling that you’re right - there can be a temptation to not listen to what others think. You need to maintain a listening posture in your team, even if you don’t agree with all that’s being said As a CFO, you need to take responsibility for your team’s output, be aware of the big picture and the details, and be forward-thinking - you can’t rest on past successes, or simply repeat the plan that you ran last year Find out what your team’s goals are, and help them succeed by achieving their goals The top things that make a great leader To be a great CFO, you have to learn to prioritize and know what you should say “yes” to, and what you should say “no” to. You can’t do everything. The benefits of having 1 on 1’s with your team Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this brief episode, Rob passes the torch to the new host of The CFO Playbook, Ross MacKay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The CFO Playbook is taking a break until April 29th, but we’ll be back then with an exciting announcement followed by more interviews with some really incredible guests. Until then, we’d love to invite you to catch up on previous episodes at cfoplaybook.com or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and as always, thanks for listening. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After spending more than three decades in finance, Kelly Battles has come to appreciate that the budget isn’t the only balancing act CFOs have to master. The finance team needs to support the growth of the company, while also knowing when to implement limits. Kelly learned that lesson in her first operational finance role, at internet security company IronPort. Under Kelly’s six-year watch, IronPort’s worth grew from $2 million to $250 million. The company was eventually bought by Cisco for $830 million in 2007.To achieve that balance between growth and restriction, Kelly emphasizes a streamlined approach to data and robust company-wide communication.Data collection and utilization must be as simple, accessible, and connected as possible; this way, different parts of the business will be focused on the same information. As for the human element, Kelly says there are two levels of culture — culture with a “capital C” and culture with a “lowercase C” — both of which are crucial.On this episode of The CFO Playbook, Kelly explains why creating a positive workplace culture is more important than many people think, how to be a cross-functional business partner and how to build a technology infrastructure that best serves the company.Connect with Kelly on LinkedIn.Connect with our host Rob on LinkedIn.Full show notes and resources can be found at cfoplaybook.fm.If you want a better way to track and control your team’s spend, check out Soldo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Darrell Cox has 15+ years of senior leadership experience in finance and business development. As a former VP of Finance at FreshBooks, he is no stranger to growth-stage companies. His recipe for finance leadership success relies upon leveraging “Agile CFO” methodology, an iterative process adopted from software development. Now, as the CFO at Vena Solutions — a growing company specializing in cloud-based financial planning and analysis software — Darrell has worked to build a finance team that leverages technology to meet business goals and avoid rear-view mirror reporting. Applying forward-thinking Agile CFO methodology to Vena Solutions, Darrell looked at the company’s five-year trajectory and thought about: 1) where the company wanted to be, and 2) how it could get there while balancing spending and growth. On this episode of The CFO Playbook, Darrell discusses his principles for applying an Agile approach to finance, how it can help you become a proactive CFO, and how to cultivate empathy (and why it’s necessary for finance leaders). Plus, he shares what he’s learned about managing and motivating a world-class finance team. Connect with Darrell on LinkedIn.Connect with our host Rob on LinkedIn.Full show notes and resources can be found at cfoplaybook.fm. If you want a better way to track and control your team’s spend, check out Soldo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Talita Ferreira always dreamed of becoming a CFO before turning 30. She missed this target by five years, but she’s OK with that because she became the CFO of a company far larger than she could’ve ever imagined: BMW Group Financial Services.Talita spent more than 11 years with BMW, where she managed a team of 45 and landed amongst the top 300 leaders of the company worldwide. She served as the CFO of BMW Group Financial Services before becoming the CFO of BMW UK. And she wasn’t just the CFO. Shortly after her promotion, the company’s CEO approached Talita to also head up the people function (HR), which she admits pushed her entirely out of her comfort zone.Even so, Talita excelled, and she learned a lot from her experience — so much that she left the company, wrote a book on leadership and launched her own company, Authentic Change Solutions, where she works with individual leaders.Lately, Talita’s been building online leadership courses, which has involved interviewing 27 of the world’s top leaders. She has distilled her findings into seven shifts and five areas, which she reveals on this episode of The CFO Playbook.Talita also dives deep into her time at BMW — what she learned and why she ultimately left the company — and explains her approach to leadership. (Spoiler: She was able to cut recruitment costs within her first year of implementing this approach because people were sticking around longer!)Connect with Talita on LinkedIn.Connect with our host Rob on LinkedIn.Full show notes and resources from this episode can be found here.If you want a better way to track and control your team’s spend, checkout Soldo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you enjoy nerding out over numbers but also consider yourself a people person, Anders Liu-Lindberg, co-founder of the Business Partnering Institute, has a new finance job for your consideration: business partner.“Unlike other roles in finance, business partnering is an interaction between people — whereas if you're an Accountant or a Controller, you mostly interact with the numbers,” Anders says on this episode of The CFO Playbook.Another incentive: more companies are hiring CFOs with business partnering experience instead of finance alone, because the skill set lends itself so well to a high-level role.“You need to be able to influence decisions, communicate assertively, build relationships with people,” Anders says of both the business partner and CFO roles. “That's how you build trust. If you're not trusted, you cannot influence any decisions.”Anders previously worked as the business partner for the Europe and Middle East region for Maesrk, the largest container-shipping company in the world. For him, the feeling that came from providing real support to stakeholders brought a rush totally separate from career advances.“It gives you a high on adrenaline: it's a fantastic feeling when you have these successful breakthroughs within business partnering,” he says. “I wish everyone could experience this rush of, ‘I was a great partner, I created value and I got great feedback from our stakeholders — this thing rocks!’”Also in this episode: the power of a 30-minute lunch, and why good business partners don’t send reports.Connect with Anders on LinkedIn.Connect with our host Rob on LinkedIn.Full show notes and resources from this episode can be found here.If you want a better way to track and control your team’s spend, checkout Soldo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Raxita Kapashi has worked in private equity for more than 15 years. Along the way, she did a stint at fintech consolidator TruFin, where she served as the group’s CFO. While at TruFin, she brought through an IPO and raised 70 million GBP ($96 million USD) in 2018. With this accomplishment under her belt, it’s no surprise numerous venture capital firms sought to bring her onto their team. However, it was the inclusive company culture of Dawn Capital that dazzled and ultimately won Raxita over.An early-stage venture fund, Dawn is Europe’s largest specialist B2B software investor. As the company’s first official CFO, Raxita oversees its $1 billion in assets and 50 investments. That means her day-to-day is filled with financial planning, budgeting and forecasting, cash flow management and performing valuations — plus, tons of meetings. She also monitors Dawn’s portfolio investments to help them get acquired. In this episode of The CFO Playbook, tune in to hear Raxita discuss the process of working on an IPO, her daily leadership framework, the challenges faced by portfolio companies and the metrics and KPIs she tracks. Raxita also breaks down possibilities for the CFO career path and shares tips for working your way to the top.Connect with Raxita on LinkedIn.Connect with our host Rob on LinkedIn.Full show notes and resources from this episode can be found here.If you want a better way to track and control your team’s spend, checkout Soldo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices