The Budget Isn't the Goal. Building a Better Business Is with Zach & Chris

And so like one of the things that I use, I don't want to plug any one tool specifically, but like ramp has a feature where you can connect all of your different AI platforms. And they're adding more and more platforms to that. And you can see who, which API, which model, all that stuff, right? And so like, I connected our cursor to that. And then I saw that like we had one person that was just blown up our cursor bill. I could have gone into cursor and done it, but I had it nice, easy ramp. I'm in ramp every day, right? And so I popped that up and I'm like, oh my gosh, this one person is doing it. And they're using the most expensive model. And so I just went and said, Hey, I can see this. I see it every day. I went and talked to the engineering manager. I said, let's have a chat with them. That's not telling they can't use this model. But let's see if they can use this model for one part of what they're doing and the rest of the parts they're doing. They can use a cheaper model. All right, welcome everybody. We'll get started here in a few minutes. But if you're out there and you can hear us, let us know, tell us your name and where you're coming from. So go ahead and let us know. We'll get started here in just one moment. Give it a minute here. Let's see. Anyone have a good joke while we're letting everybody get settled in. I got one for you. All right. Do you introduce the hamburger meat patty? Well done. Chris, you got one for us while we're waiting. What is the two plus two? Five. Yes, that shows you're a F P and A and you're a finance person. If you were to set four, I'd have been like causing a count. Man, like he's a CPA, do two plus two, unequivocally equals four. That's a true F P and A finance person right there. Oh, I had a roommate that had a shirt set two plus two equals five for larger values of two. He was total nerd. So I always say fine. All right. We'll give it one more minute. Wait till you see kind of a few comments. Hopefully people can hear us, but we'll start here in just one more minute. Let's do one more joke. Does anyone know what the V look up put on their online dating profile? Seeking an approximate match, it's true. Yeah, I was going the same life. I was thinking looking for an exact match or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But then you see it's right where did the look up years ago? And I'm all X look up. No, I can't even think. I know you're cool. The rest of us are old school. Just one of those little self fuck out there. All right. Well, why don't we go ahead and get started and do introductions? We'll let us know he can hear us great. We're just going to start now. So I'll say it again. If you're out there and you can hear us, please let us know where you're coming from. Put that in the chat, let us know your name. You're welcome to ask questions throughout. We're going to be doing budgeting and forecasting some best practice chips and some advice. We got an expert panel here with us today. But let's start with my co host, Glenn. How are you doing, Glenn? Doing great, Paul. This is going to be fun. I'm looking forward to it. Do it live. No, I'm looking forward to. We don't get to do live very often. So we're looking forward to your questions. All right. Well, so I have Glenn co-host here with me, and I'll do a quick introduction of Zach. So I have Zachary Ryle here with me or Zach. He works for Ask Elephant, if I remember correctly. That's the company today, right? So why don't you take a minute and just tell us a little bit about yourself, Zach. So as Paul said, I worked for a typical Ask Elephant, which is here in Salt Lake City, Utah. Or start up taking kind of the revenue and conversation intelligence space. A little bit about me personally, you know, I might be putting my own foot in my mouth here for a little bit, but I don't consider myself as like a peer finance guy. I consider myself more as an athlete, who's very fluent in finance and speaks it well. But I love just helping to run businesses, plugging in wherever the need is greatest, and using my skillset that I've developed and growing up in the finance and FBA world as an operator, just to make businesses better. Along the more personal side, I have four kids. Oldest to seven, youngest is about five months old, so got our hands full. It's pretty crazy. Love to be outdoors when possible, whether that skiing, golfing, playing, watching rugby, you name it. That's me, everything. Thanks, appreciate it, Zach. Glenn, you want to introduce Chris for us? Yeah, so I'm very excited. It has been, I don't think in Chris about two, three years, if you and I were on a podcast together. Yeah, it's been a minute. We get a bunch. So my favorite guys to chat about F with FPNA, Chris Ortega, who owns and runs fresh FPNA, but Chris, I'll turn her over to you. Do it quickly. Yeah, Glenn, you're always the man, bro. That's how we always say that you're the man, right? But nice to see everyone. I hope everyone's having a good day. My name is Chris Ortega. I'm the CEO of Fresh FPNA, which is a global fractional CFO and advisor service company. We work with small, medium-sized businesses, typically between one and about $50 million in revenue, and including me, I have four other fractional CFOs across the globe. We're going to be based in the Americas in London and also Sydney. There's probably about 35 people at Fresh FPNA, serving 30 clients across the globe. That's what I do. And prior to starting Fresh FPNA, I spent most of my career in accounting, finance and financial leadership 20 plus years. Most of my background was coming into organizations, helping build, shape, scale, and exit those companies. I've had the fortune opportunity of taking three companies through acquisition, which has been awesome. And I'm based in Indiana, fun fact about myself, if you guys can't see, I'm a huge Dragon Ball Z fan. Vegeta is life. So I got Vegeta everywhere. And in Indiana, so shout out to the boosers as we won our national championship and looking forward to repeating this year. But yeah, that's a little bit about me and looking forward to this conversation. So any of you, if you want to address Chris, you can just address him as LB or Larry Bird. Yeah. Larry Bird. Yep. This is a topic we've had several people let us know we're coming from, so just some of the locations. Rwanda. Huntington Beach, California, Brazil, see Bay Area, India, Puerto Rico. So we've got a pretty global audience. I'm sure we'll see more of those coming in, keep them coming. Love to hear where you're coming from today. And to introduce our topic, we're going to talk budgeting. Everybody knows budgeting season is just around the corner, going to be coming up here real quick. So we're going to talk annual budget, share some thoughts. Some advice, both from kind of an execution, a leadership standpoint, how to think about it, some tips. You're welcome to ask your questions throughout. And I want to start just kind of a real basic question. And I think we'll get a little bit of the different answer from everybody. That's what I find interesting about this. So maybe we'll start with Zach here. Zach, if I was to ask you, what's the purpose of the budgeting process? How do you think about it? It's changed a lot over my career, especially as I've moved down into smaller, I think the way I would put it most simply is an annual budget is the plan that you're putting together for what you believe is going to be true and going to happen over the course of the next 12 months. And what you need to do to execute and make that work. And so that's the simplest way I'd put it. Obviously, there's far more intricacies and details involved in that and how firm and how well you alter that really depends on your leadership team and your board and things like that. But at its core, it's your belief about what the next 12 months looks like and how you're going to make that happen. Yeah, I kind of laughed for you said belief. Sometimes it's the wish of the leadership board, but that's another story. Everybody always elements of that, right? So you got to play that game. You do. Well, just locations we had Brandon join us from Planet Earth. So excited for that. That's what we have. Someone from Washington. Chris, how would you answer that question? I think budgeting for our clients is a checklist and it's a false sense of confidence, right? And we work with a lot of smaller S&B companies. So I always say the budget is the direction of where you want to go, but it's not things change so much in a business, right? Like there's acquisitions, there's new verticals you invest into. There's people that leave. So I think a budget is for a lot of companies that the S&B kind of space is really just that checklist of like, hey, here directly we want to go. And it also gives I always say, don't spend a whole lot of time in budgeting, right? There's no sense in making all this time. And when I worked at enterprise level companies, we would take, we would take months. It'd be September to December before we did anything and the budget's done and all that information is just played out. So for me, I think budgeting is for the S&B space, client checklist. Here's where we're going to go. And it's just a placeholder to look and see where you want to go with it. But I always say and I know we'll get to this topic as well too. I mean, it's just, you know, it's a nice way we want to directionally go forecasting, rolling forecasting is gold standard. All right, Glenn. I'm going to take a little different view on this and part of it is because I have worked for a lot of large companies in my career, although now I'm working a lot more small companies. But I see the budget is two different things. Number one, it's a guide. It's a guide for where the organization is telling each level, each business leader where they want them to go and how they want them to spend money. The second thing is it's a control. It's a control for the CFO. If you are a public company, you can't have business leaders going out, there's hire and a whole bunch of people who aren't in the budget, spending much money. It's a way that the CFO control how the company is actually spending to make sure they can hit their earnings goals. So to me, that's the big reason that budgeting exists is to one guide the business on where the board is telling them they want to be and to allow the CFO to have the control over the rest of the business for a financial perspective. I really like that. And I think that's why I kind of hit on the belief thing is like when businesses inevitably start to deviate from their budget, which is going to happen, right? The biggest thing I ask people when they say like, "Hey, I want to do this stuff for the budget," as I say, like, "Well, what changed?" Like, why did you believe this was true three months ago and now you do not? And you believe that something different needs to happen. And I think that it becomes that natural mechanism to have that conversation and it gives us the ability as the stewards of capital that we are and finance to really ask the questions [BLANK_AUDIO] be asked and feel that we have done our duty to preserve and try to follow that as best as possible. Exactly. I like that. In fact, maybe I think one other thing is it allows for accountability throughout the organization. When you go over and say, "Hey, this is where I think my business is going to be," and you are not there. The board executives, whoever to have to speak, can come and say, "Wait, why were you office by that much?" And it's a way that they can also evaluate how well do you know the business and how well are you managing that business? So, I think that that also kind of comes into mind. Yeah. I mean, I think, right, you're seeing a little bit different opinions. I think of our, I think, control definitely bigger the company and just in general CEO, "Hey, is it in a budget?" It's a way to have those conversations and to limit the cost that I need money for this or that or that, like, well, no, okay, well, let's talk about why we need it then. And so I definitely think there's a control estimate. I think the second biggest thing is it's really, it's part, it's just part of that planning process. It's preparing. The reality, have any of you exactly hit your budget, like, down to the dollar? Right? No, I once had a forecast where across the whole business, we came in, like, within $100 or something. It was like, millions dollars, a bunch of dollars. And everybody's like, wow, you're a genius forecast that goes, like, no, if I could actually forecast like that, I would be going to Vegas. I wouldn't be worked, like, I got lucky. And there was also a little party that didn't believe it. You're like, my God, it's something wrong. This is this can't be true. It was the way I got this right. I knew all the ins and outs. I came in close and total, but I could see this business was off by like 300,000, but the other one was positive by 298, you know, so I knew the insides and outs, but when someone looked at the total, they're like, what happened? It's like, yeah, I got lucky. So that's why I always say a big part of the planning. Paul, you know, it's funny because the budget is not about right or wrong. It's not about to hit your number or not. It's about the direction you're going and how you manage. And that's, that's really it. Well, that's why it's so important that you, you, you've had set out your strategic plan and your financial plan should help make that strategic happen and then your operational needs to tie in. Like, we've all worked for companies, abandoned situations where the financial plan is disconnected from everything. And it's just a mess because then everybody's like, I don't know where that number came from. I'm just focused on this. No, I mean, right. If you don't have people all rowing the same direction, why even have a financial plan if they're not aligned? It's just a waste of time. Thanks. And I think we've probably all been there where we've been through the budgets for like, that was a waste of time. Literally an example of that, man, having a client and it's like, we work through the budgeting process with them and then it's like, it's September and we got to kick these things off. And I'm like, do you understand? We work in bigger companies that smaller is a little bit different, but smaller companies, there's so much things that move around that, right? So spending two, three months to do a budget and you, you're happy. You do your, you do your report. You do your presentation. And then immediately that information is completely outdated, right? Now, enterprise level companies, and this is where I, I love like the balance of Glynk because he has that, you know, enterprise public company experience. And I do as well too. It is, it is different, right? And it comes down to what I, what I look at as agility, agility and precision, right? Agility is saying, yep, I'm directly accurate. I'm like 60, 70, 80% confident in where this is going to go. That's where you should have on your budgeting, right? Once you start to get to precision, that is like, I'm 95% confident in where these things are going to go. So budgets that that's always kind of how I've looked at it. And as we work with our clients that are more SMB focused, it's like, yeah, this is a placeholder. This is where we want to go. But it also shouldn't be like this, this is not the, the precision of confident interval we want to have with it. So I think that is that balance. And I love Glynk's point and Zach's point where they mention around the control. I think that is a great element of it because it kind of sets that sandbox and guard real where you want the business to go. Well, I think there's a lot of value in some of these beyond budgeting and other ideas. The budget action should really be about target setting, whether you do portfolio, you don't have to do the formal budget process, but you need some kind of plan roadmap, where you're going targets. The budget process often becomes political. So I get why some people like, I don't know if anyone saw this bear, their new CEO did away with the budget process all together. He said in the diverse of corporate America, and he went to a quarterly like planning sprints that they do when they allocate things every quarter. And look, if it works great, are there problems with that? Yes, the key is not that you have a calendar and a very tight rigid process, although you do need the controls. It's really about making sure you're able to help guide the business where it needs to go when you're on the same page. You know Paul, it's kind of funny because you guys talked about the strategy side of things. And I think that's very important. And we think back what is FKNA really doing, right? If you're a finance business partner, your goals are to help the business achieve their strategic goals while staying within the budget constraints of, you know, that the CFO is setting for the organization. Yep. And it's the combination of those two things. It's how, how do we go over and get the company to where it needs to be without going crazy on how you're going to spend the money? And that's oftentimes what FPNA is doing is having that conversation to solve that problem. How do I get the business to do all these great things, but keeping them within a cost perspective that the CFO wants or the board board? Well, you lead this kind of next discussion. We're going to talk a little bit, kind of core differences in the process, kind of depending on the company you're at, like size-wise. Yeah, absolutely. So, so obviously, you know, Chris has already kind of talked a little bit about the difference in his background, from my background. And we love having this debate because I think there's insight into both. And there's no right or wrong answer here. But certainly, when you go over and you think about a budget process. And, you know, and I saw Brandon had some comments about, you know, when budgets should start. And Chris has talked about, you know, multiple months process and so on. Certainly at large companies, oftentimes you start with a strategic plan and sometimes you're on a calendar year, you're doing that in May, June, you're forecasting revenue in July, you're putting expense targets together in August, so that you could roll out and figure out all of your detailed budget in September, October, you do anything else that like, you know, polishing it up before in November, so that in December, the board can approve and you hit the ground running in January. And you're like, oh my god, I can spend eight months out of the year doing this thing. And in a few more months, I got to go back to doing it again, right? Chris, I'm like, shoot me. That's like the hamster I do. That's like, right. Now, don't get me wrong. There is, sometimes there's value in going through that. But the thing is you have to, you, you don't go through a process for the sake of doing a process. You've got to recognize what the value is you're trying to take out of it. And I've also been at small companies where you're trying to go over and just do a rolling forecast or a budget and you're like, okay, you know what, we're going to do something every single month because the business is constantly changing. But then at the same time, all you're doing is you're just updating your models and you're not really engaging with the business either. So it's, how do you find the right balance through that? So I'm going to turn up to Zach. I'm going to flip this over to you. Give, you know, your perspective on approaches to putting a budget together timelines. You know, how do you do it? Who do you engage? How often those types of things? And then we'll roll it over to Chris as well. Yeah, it's a great question. And to start out, the big thing is identifying who your key players are and what people want out of this budget, right? And going from there. I remember I joined an organization and, like, it drove me wild. For the first, like, two months I was there. Every was like, we do our monthly reporting and I'd say, like, okay, sales was supposed to this number and the syrup arrow go, what? Oh, oh, that's the finance number. Never mind. Yeah, yeah, it's fine. Whatever. And then, like, we should move on. I'd be like, what? What? Like, that's your number. He's like, now it's the finance number. And so, like, what I did when I got full control over the budget and reforecast in the business was I just sat down with the CRO and was like, what do you wish the forecast in the budget told you about your team? And we built the budget the forecast in that way, right? Because I'm going to have to spend time building it anyway. So I might as well build it in a way that, like, the CRO gets some value out of it, then I give value out of it, right? Because at the end of the day, it's time spent, right? And so we just blew up process, it started from scratch. And I just asked CRO, what do you wish you knew about your team? When we got to the end of the month and you have a number and you beat it or you missed it, what would you like to know automatically so that you can go explaining this? Because ultimately, you're going to have to explain it. I'm going to tell you missed or you beat, but you got to explain it. And that's how we started the process. This is just identifying what's the most important elements of the business at that point in time. We were in that growth growth at all costs era. And so revenue and new revenue was what mattered most. And so I spent the bulk of my time with the CRO talking about sales, right? And then I spent the next little bit talking about retention. And then there is very tiny bit talking about off-ex and the rest of the business. And because that was what was most important to the business of the time. And so I think it was the overall cost. Yeah, yeah, money was freeback then. So it was a feed delivery. But so I think that's it is like first identify what is most important to the business? What are we trying to accomplish tying into that strategic plan? Then not identifying the players and then sitting down and saying, what do you wish this did for you? Like, let's make this because it's going to suck. They're not going to want to do it. But if you can make it beneficial to them, suddenly they're they're meaning it and saying, well, I get input. Here's how I actually like to do that. FPNA guy here. And I'm really excited to tell you about an event I'm excited for. If you work in FPNA or enterprise planning, you're going to want to check out the EPM summit this November in Vegas. What makes it different is that it brings together the entire enterprise planning ecosystem. Software providers, implementation partners, analysts and practitioners for independent in discussions, hands-on learning, and real conversations about where AI is taking enterprise planning. If you're evaluating platforms, planning a migration, or simply want to stay current, it's definitely worth a look. It's November 16th through 19th at the Bellagio in Vegas. Who doesn't want to hang out in Vegas? Go to epmsummit.com/register to learn more and register for this exciting event. It's epmsummit.com/register. I like that. I mean, Zach, I think you hit on something that's absolutely key. If not, exercise that's just refinance. It's about the business. And especially if you want to go over and hold people accountable, they got to be part of the process. They have to understand what went into the budget. How do you hold to my accountable? They don't understand how it was put together, right? So I think going out and making sure you're talking and you're being upfront and opening it up to the business that's saying, "Hey, we're going to do this together. It's not a finance exercise. It's an organizational exercise." It was crazy, just because I mean, we just broke down so simply like, I remember sitting there and we said, "Well, let's look at like, what does this imply that each sales rep is going to be able to close in ARR?" And then we looked at that and we said, "That feels like a good number." And then we compared it to the prior year and we were like, "Okay, this doesn't feel like a good number anymore, right?" And we need to change this because this is not telling the story that we want to go and defend and tell to the CEO and say, "Oh, our reps are going to be 50% less productive than last year." And we don't have a good debt defense for why, right? And so, I think when you get to that level, then it really actually helps you be accurate because now you can say, "Well, what real results do I have to anchor us to?" And who is the person that's actually driving those results and do they believe that? And if they believe it, then at least I've got that going. Absolutely. Chris, what do you think? What's your take? I have a client portfolio of six clients on my portfolio where I'm their CFO. And like, this may be a while take on this, but I don't even start with the numbers. Like, don't even start. The conversations that we have and the kick everything off is conversational about the business. And specifically, we're focusing on sales, marketing, operations, people. Those are the four drivers in any business. Revenue you're bringing in, how you getting those customers, how you fulfilling it, and the people that are doing the work, right? So when we kick off right now for my portfolio, as we kick out that process, we're having conversations about the business. What's going good? Like, let's just have a, what's going good in the business? What's going good in sales? What's going good in marketing? What's going good in operations? What's going good for our people? What are things that we need to improve? What do we think's going bad? So all of the, that conversation, that alignment, that viewpoint, right? Before you even talk about a number, is probably for me, and what I find is the most valuable aspect of that process. The budget, the forecast, the P&L, the cash flow forecast, all that other stuff is the outcome of that. But having those discussions, challenging those points, what are people seeing? What are we seeing in the market? Like that time spent, as they, and Glenn, you talked about this, that time we spend, and what we do, and what I tell my CFOs do, go spend that time with your client. Like, I'm literally going to sit in a meeting with them on site. I'm going to New York. I'm going to Denver. I'm going to where my clients are. We're going to spend a day, and none of that outcome is going to be, oh, yeah, I'm going to work on your plan, right? Like my FPN-18 would go do that. I'm spending that time to read a line on the business. Where are we going? What opportunities we see? What challenges, right? Like that conversation is much more important and fruitful, because now you can take that. And you can say, hey, sales is feeling really good. Here's an opportunity if they have. Here's some opportunities we can make some investments in. Now you start to put a plan together from the direct insight and feedback that you got from that leadership team. Right now where a lot of, and I failed in this, guys, I'm going to raise my hand and say, I failed in this, right? Both my hand. Paul race is up, right? I don't know what you're going to say, but I know I failed. I grew up. You're bringing up what it felt. I just raised both hands. It's not in the chat if you failed at this, too, because I'm like, I failed at this. You start the budgeting process, and here's where the failure happens, right? You're like, all right, let me get the business this run rate plan and say, I'll look at the last eight months. And if we run this out, and let me just give them a baseline to operate from. So the entire conversation that first time you're talking with sales, marketing, operations people is from a financial lens. It's like, I gave them this baseline because I want to get started on it, right? I've done this. And now the conversation is less about, it's quantitative than the qualitative aspect of it. That's where we start. That's where I'm in ongoing conversations with my six portfolio clients, where it's like, I'm getting in the room. We're going to spend a day. We're going to talk about the business first hour. We're going to talk about sales second hour. We're going to talk about marketing third hour. We're going to talk about operations fourth hour talk about people. We go have a break. We go have lunch. And then we have the plan around that. That's been super insightful and it shows you're connected. It's like, yes, that's our CFO and then he's going to his outcome is going to give us these plans and stuff, but you're learning the business. You're learning, you're getting that direct post. That is so important. You're right Chris, because at the end of the day, if you're putting together a budget and it doesn't connect to the business, it doesn't matter. It's not about the numbers. It's about what's going on with the business. And again, if you're a sales leader, if you're an operations leader, if you're the HR leader, your budget is supposed to be guiding you to where you supposed to be taking the business. It does not connect because you started off in the wrong place or you're ending in a place that doesn't make any sense to the business, your budget is not going to be any good. It's not an exercise in numbers. It's an exercise and understanding. That's a gym. That's a fire. Paul, we should do a fire emoji on that one. That's a fire emoji. You don't keep that in mind. Well, it's an exercise and something. I'm kidding. All right, so I think we've had a good conversational around purpose, how to think about it. I want to get a little practical. You just kind of get thoughts when you get into a budget, the key starting is you have to end up understanding you have to tie it to the plan. You got to have, you know, operational and think about what the business needs. It shouldn't be a finance exercise. Now you're into the budget and you're doing it. I'd love any thoughts you have of kind of how should you think about that process? We all hear top down, bottom up, lots of different methods, any advice on how to think about kind of that forecasting and things that have worked well for you. And I think company size, a lot of different things make a difference here, but any kind of thoughts you'd like to add to that, we'll start with you, Chris. For me, I think top down, bottoms up, the driver bay, all those things, right? For me, it's very simple, right? What are the four most important KPIs in an entire business? For us, what it comes down to, cash burn, cash run rate, revenue growth, right, profitability? That's it. That's it. Right? So, all these extra, now everything in the business feeds to that, right? So when I'm sitting down with my clients, we're focusing on those. And also, it's not the first time for my portfolio clients or refresh up P&A that we do. This is the first time hearing this stuff. We're constantly reporting these things. So when you walk into that budgeting process, they already have an idea. Like, I know Chris, he's going to talk about cash, he's going to talk about burn, he's going to talk about revenue growth, he's going to talk about profitability. So for me, in that, I'd like to keep it on what drives the business, what should drive a decision in the business, right? Sometimes too many people measure stuff and it's like, you've got 20 different things you're measuring, like realist take a step back, right? If you're measuring 20 different things in the budget, if you break that down over a quarter, right? That's like, what, my math is like, that's like four or five of those you have to be successful every quarter to do. It's unrealistic, right? So for me, getting that practical sign when we sit down with clients is like, you already know the things we're going to talk about. So now, let's align the business, the operations, the investments, the strategies that we want to have it around that, right? To me, it's a very clear funnel, strategy, tactics, metrics, milestone, execution. That's it. That's what you got to do, right? And that's what we're going to bring into because agility is in, we're working with, I'm working with the S&B companies, right, one to $50 million rapidly growing, expanding, buying new businesses, they're constantly moving. So agility is really important. And when you anchor it on those four things to be agile about, it makes it more where like the business can understand that and like, I know how this ties out. And I know if we invest in the salesperson, this is going to help, this is going to hurt our burn, but it's also going to help the revenue. They automatically start to see how those levers move. So that's where I see it to be real successful from a practical execution perspective. FPNA Guy here. 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You know Chris it's funny because I think you and I were going to come from a different angle. I think everything that you talked about from us from a small company perspective is spot on because of all the movement and the uncertainty that you have in that type of business. You go from a large company and Paul time back to it. I think it's a combination of both top down and bottom up and the reason is is that you got to start with first get your strategic plan and you got to align to that then you got to be looking at your revenue. Once you have your revenue if you're a public company the next thing is hey CFO if you agree to this revenue what do you need earnings to be you know because you got to hit those earnings targets and then it's okay now I have my bottom line and I have my top line how do I back into those expenses and then you build the expenses bottoms up saying what are we already committed to and people in contracts that we've signed and so on and then how much money is left over and you start filling it in and so that's kind of fpnad before you go out to business you business units with hey here's your budget target or whatever you got to have that perspective so you start top down with the you know with the revenue and then the CFO from the earnings and then you got to go bottoms up really on the on the spend side of the business and connect all the dots. So I think it's kind of that that combination. Now of course if you're somewhere between that large enterprise and that's well business you're probably going to land somewhere in between that too and my guess is Zach you're going to probably where you're going to be sitting. Yeah I mean I'm going to share a thought before you go Zach real quick at my can. So I think you know what if you guys get say I didn't interview with a guest and I really like the way he thought of this it wasn't so much top down bottom up but he said look get your revenue plan right start with your revenue and almost everything else because kind of what Glenn said you have an earnings you want to hit or you have a number the rest of its math where do the expenses need to be based on where I want to go how much cash I need whatever the outcome may be what profitability I need to hit. So you figure out that revenue make sure you have that really really good and then expenses kind of a natural outcake of that unless you have a business like it did I supported travelers check then all that mattered was reducing expenses. What do we have on the balance sheet that nobody's in cash yet very unique business to support but that's another story. So I mean it's not so much about the method you can land in between sometimes you need to be really detailed sometimes you need to be bottom up but what's most important how do you start with that and then what needs to be built to support that. Okay go ahead Zach. Listen I don't care about massively anything new to it but anybody said to you right that's all true and where you land is the combination of what you're comfortable with with business physical with what works for the business right. You know one of the fun things that I've done recently is I've I just let people ask where the heck they want right and I'm like sure yeah go forward ask for that ask for that put it all in let's put let's put full let's you get whatever you want and we put it into a budget and then I show what happens right I'm just like all right well sales ask for this and you ask for this we put it all together we're out of business in three months all right yes you see yeah any questions you know and then people are like oh right and so then the conversation turns into like hey sales you know you're asking for more than really you should get why do you believe that you're more important than CS why does why should why should I tell CS they actually have to do less and they get less money than you do like give me a reason to go and have that conversation with CS and not feel like I'm just being told jerked I'm in fact I'm gonna have you join that conversation with me and you get to tell them that you get to take some of their money and they're like oh well I don't I don't want to do that it's just really like you got to know your people you got to know what drives them right it's I don't think of it too dissimilar from like creating a commission plan for a sales rep right like when you create a commission plan you know roughly how much money you want to pay out for a specific deal right and you then know a behavior and an outcome that you want to drive so you write a commission plan if you write a good one that drives to that behavior and makes that happen while making sure that you're not paying out more than you're comfortable paying out it's the same concept right so when that how are you designing your budget process you have an outcome in mind you have a goal of someplace you want to land right and now you want to design your process that incentivizes and encourages people to align to a behavior set that's going to keep that outcome I like that I like the way you set it there I think that makes a makes a lot of sense so we'll let anyone know feel free to put any comments questions you have in the chat we've seen several there so appreciate that we'll address any of the questions we can so we talked a little bit about method and you know more than the approaches what are you trying to accomplish I think Zach got to what are your goals and what will best help you get there and it's going to be different in different businesses there is no one right way yes usually it's a mix of bottoms up and top down and if you start with bottom up like as X said you you pulled all together and it's never anywhere close to what management's thinking especially if you take the approach of putting everything you want you start with the wish list then the conversation and the fun begins Glenn's nodding his head everybody's like yeah right we've all been there and if you do it that approach that's really where the budget process starts is when you have to start negotiating and figuring out how you get a cohesive plan that everybody can get behind that management can accept and it's an almost you both I agree I mean and it's you know it's about the trade-offs oftentimes right I like the idea yes start with a wish list and you know but go in make sure if you're going to go to your business partner and say hey give me your wish list let's see what we can do make sure they understand they're not getting everything on their wish list right just because you're asking for it doesn't mean it's going to be in the budget but you start with it and then you go over and say okay how do we solve for as much as it's possible given that you can't spend more than you know I know you in bucks in this team or you know whatever it is so now you got to say well where's the trade-offs kind of right you want it maybe you shouldn't go over and do that team off site in Hawaii and instead that will allow you to go over and do this other thing that you want to do and so that's the trade-off and that's the discussion and it's where it's really more about that connection with the business partner understanding what their goals are that they're trying to achieve and again saying how do we get you there without going nuts on how you're going to be spending money because it's not just you know and it's not a money tree you don't get to go over and keep on picking dollars off the branches you've got to go over and make sure that you stay within that constraint that finance puts on you which is that budget but you've got to say all right here's how I'm going to achieve those goals and it's that trade-off that connection with this does exactly right I mean like finance has this better app of being the people to say no or because we're tipping the people have to say no but I think you know as you go like what makes a good budget process work is that you've spent the year before building trust and showing that right you you you are trying to make that you know not just say no you're trying to you're trying to say like what are you trying to accomplish what are your goals let me use the budget as a tool to help you accomplish those goals throughout the year and then when it comes to budget season and actually creating this budget putting it all together suddenly there's a lot more trust there a lot more willing to say I don't know for sure that I need another head count but I know that I would like to have that because it's a tool I can use later this year to help us accomplish our goals and now you have more information you have this more trust you have greater buy-in because they know that if I say five heads and we end up only hiring four I might be able to use that fifth heads money for something else and Zach will let me he will let me do that because he knows that well accomplished business needs so I don't have to be as like fighting tooth and nail for everything to be perfectly in the right spot yeah in effect ash and in the thing is when you are building out that trust you're not doing this budget exercise at one point in the year or one time you're doing it throughout the year you're having those conversations it is an ongoing conversation that you're building out there and I always like to to say that you know if you go over you have that partner status with your business partner where you know they're coming to you proactively and talking about what they're doing that to me is that that's kind of that FPNA Nirvana part where it's like they think of FPNA as part of their business and they trust you as you are you know that trusted advisor I had a I had a person who I was supporting and she went over and just his feedback to my boss that she was saying about me and she said I want Glenn at the table with me whenever I'm making a decision and I'm like I think I'm like that's it I'm like I'm done I can't go any further because that's where you want to be and you know and it having that when you are going through a budget process when you're at that point it's not adversarial it's not about you want this and I want this and you know you know I'm going to force you into these different situations it's about hey you know what we're in this together and that's really what if you do your budget the right way it's not about finance of pushing this on me it's about no no we're all moving in the same direction trying to achieve the single I always tell my analysts and my team members like I'm assigning you to this person go make yourself indispensable right and if every FK NA work suffers a little bit from that that's fine and like what do you mean I'm like I mean if they have some stupid spreadsheet that's broken and takes them forever to update and it doesn't have anything to do with FPNA you're really good at spreadsheets go fix their spreadsheet and make it automatic like just do that and they're like oh and I'm like if that takes away from your FPNA time a little bit so what you've built trust you've built this you've become invaluable so that when they say, "Hey, I need to make a decision," they're going to call you into the room. And now I have eyes and ears in that room that I might not have been a part of and I have trust in that process, and you can come and share that with me. - Absolutely. In fact, the one thing I would caution you on, and I had a senior VP I rolled up to who warned me. I was like, Glenn, I think you're a little too close to the business. And what he meant by that was sometimes the business wants you to do things that takes you away from where the finance organization wants you to be. And I've always told him, I said, look, when you do it right, you have one foot on each side. It's a balancing act. You have to go over and say, I recognize what is needed by the corporation overall and what my role is in that. But I'm also out there to make sure that each business I'm supporting that I'm working with is going to be successful. And that's when sometimes you got to be that good business partner and you got to say no to the business. And it's not about just, hey, no, you can't do it. It's no, you can't do it like that. But let's talk about how we can get you there. And that conversation. So you make sure you're maintaining that finance discipline while helping the business achieve that. - If I add to that too, right? Like it's, like when fresh F PNA is my company's name, right? But F PNA for us is not financial playing analysis, right? We are financial partners and advisors. And I think this is what we're talking about. It's important first to be the financial. Yeah, I mean, I like literally I created this five years ago and I was like, what, what? I wasn't just great at financial playing analysis. I'm like, and honestly, like if we're being 100, like clawed right on the table, technology should be doing your financial playing analysis, right? The true value added kind of what we're talking about and all this. And I think this is the value that our client see with us is like, no, Chris is our finance partner and advisor. Like that's exactly what you want to be looked at. And that's what Glenn talked about. Like you don't want them to look at you and be like, yeah, like Chris does, you know, Chris is team indeed, no financial partner and advisor first. Then the outcome is going to be the financial planning and analysis, right? Like that's, that's the goal. That's where you should be striving for because in Glenn's situation, now you're in both of them. I'm giving my finance, right? The financial playing analysis and I give the business the financial partnership and advise me and that that's been like my philosophy and how I approach the conversation, how I tell my team to approach it. Like, go be that person for them. Like if they come to you and like, man, Chris, I don't know how to like, like you said, Zach, make there if you can make their job. If you can turn them from paying to productivity, you created value. That's this is simply it. It's like, I know the business is paying. I can turn it into productivity. I created value. And there's a business owner for me. It's my job to monetize that, right? So that's that's the whole piece of it. It's a mind, it's less of a skill set thing, right? Like it's more of like, how do you approach that conversation and be like, I want to be this sales, this marketing, this operations for me. I want to be that CEO owner or founder, right? I'm going to be their financial partner and advisor. And that's exactly how they look at my team as their CFO's like, yes, that's not the people that's doing our budgeting and our forecasting. That's the people helping die in the business, right? Like they're helping us with international expandance. They're helping us with raising our safe note. They're helping us with this acquisition. They that's what they do. And that's, I think that's an important point to highlight is that's truly where you want to be. Hey, Chris, what you're just described is the exact same whether you're in a small business, a medium sized business, a large business, global business, regardless of industry, it's the approach that you take that matters and that goes across everything. You have to be a partner regardless of all the other stuff that goes with it. So, you know, when you were talking about sometimes saying, one of the best ways I've heard it is don't say no, but say it's more of a no end. Like this way doesn't work, but here are the opportunities. Here's what has to be true. Here's what we can do. Here's what has to be true for that to work. And they'll come to their own conclusion of, oh, so you mean it's not a good idea to spend that much money for a really bad return. Yeah, it's not, you know, whatever it might be, but I want to get a little tactical for a minute, and I want to touch one area that I know you've dealt with Zach, and I imagine you have as well Chris supporting some tech companies, tokens, AI, I think everybody's going to like you. And give you a little more tactical. How do you think about forecasting this area and you advise you to offer people because it's new. And if you watch yellow, if you watch Yellowstone at all, no, no, I haven't watched it, but I've seen like the clips. There's this clip where they're like talking about like how to get the cattle into the growl and like it's always messy and and the owner comes out, he's like, hey, if we feed out a better way to do this, the people aren't getting like, you know, beat up and just like this, and he goes, and that's forget it. Because of the, you know, effort, just just go. And he's like, all right, well, effort, let's just go, right. That's kind of how I feel about tokens right now. But, you know, we're all figuring it out. I don't think anybody could tell you that they know it. I think we all think like, you know, Uber's a great company. We're all like, what a smart, awesome, incredible company. They're an entire token budget before the end of April, for the full year, they put all the gone poof, right. So like, we're all figuring this out. And it's crazy because like an experience we had here is like, our margins, we're not where they needed to be. I started pushing the team on margins and costs and what models are we using. Why are we using this model is the best model, what value is it creating. And then, you know, the next day. Chad, you're just like, hey, we're cutting Luna prices by 80%. And I was like, okay, I guess a huge portion of my problem just got solved, push everything to Luna, right. And it's like, I can't even control that right. I have no, I had no idea that was coming. I had no way to prepare for that. So the AI is this like, I'm glad we're talking about it. I'm going to do my best to tell you how I think about it and how I do it. But at the end of the day, like, man, it's, it's, it's, when we talk about changing market and changing environment. AI is changing every week every every day, every month. It's just constantly different. Yeah, I mean, it's so dark set the wall. Yeah, with your eyes closed, you might, you might, you might have goals, like, you don't know. Our acts ask Jim and I where to throw the door. It's like, Jim and I, where should I throw this door. And it, you know, you ask Jim and I and it'll be like, that's a great idea, Chris. I'm all boards that help you to do this, right. No, but like the AI piece of it, we had a client, we have a client, they're token usage. So where it all came down to is a philosophy. So like, 10,000, like, not in the tokens. You have this strategy of shadow AI, right. And what we found with this client was they had people using copilot. They had licenses. They were paying with copilot. They had the shadow people using Jim and I and chat GPT and caught and they were just like, it was everywhere. And it was on credit cards everywhere. So don't even get me in the spin side of this stuff. But like, it was everywhere. It like, oh, got this MX card and got this. And it was, it was over the course of three months. That element, 10, 15 X. And I was like, something's wrong here, right. And what we found out was this shadow IT is, here's the thing. As CFO's finance professionals, you have shadow IT running ramp it in your organization. No doubt about it, right. And the first place we started to solve this for that client and for this business was like, we needed to have governance around just AI, right. Like, we need to come in and it was a partnership. They didn't have a CTO at the time or chief information officer. So it was a partner that we worked with, worked alongside me, worked alongside the client. And we developed an AI governance framework. Here's how it's going to be used. Here's the tools we're going to use. Here's how we're going to monitor this, right. So the first step in that is like, you have to identify and know shadow AI is running ramp it in your organization. How do you partner with your technology, your information. Sometimes maybe you the CEO to say, we need to set governance and guard. We need to set the sandbox that people can operate in, right. And like, a lot of it was just people using car tokens that had no, they're using car, they're using the highest, you know, the highest algorithm in version of and it's talking, it's causing the business so much money. So a lot of it is just you have to address shadow IT work in setting the governance framework and that sandbox of tools to operate and monitor that because like that is going to balloon. And that's what these AI companies want you to do. That's why it's like they want you to prompt as much as possible because they want you to use this stuff so you have to buy the additional card. We've all been there, right. I've been there and called uses and I hit my limit and I'm like, I can't wait. I can't wait till tomorrow. Like I need to, I need to drop this 25 bucks like right now to do this. You know what I mean. So that's a critical area. And also here's the other for CFOs out there, right. To monitor this, move that to cost of goods. So move that to your gross margin right now is sitting in your op X. You don't see it. You're doing your run rate forecasting on it. Move that to your cox move that's a gross profit. Then you're going to have a lot more inspection on that. I think the other thing too is like it's just that I think you're hitting on this is this visibility. Right. And so like one of the things that I use. I don't want to plug any one tool specifically but like ramp has a feature where you can connect all of your different AI platforms and they're adding more and more platforms to that. And you can see who which API which model all that stuff, right. And so I connected our cursor to that. I could have gone into cursor and done it, but I had it nice easy ramp. And so I pop that up and I'm like, oh my gosh, this one person's doing it and they're using the most expensive model. I see it every day. I went and talked to the engineering manager said, let's have a chat with them. That's not telling they can't use this model, but let's see if that they can use this model for one part What they're doing and the rest of the parts they're doing they can use a cheaper model I want you know cost cut in half just overnight just cuz we made a quick tweak quick change So it's like visibility is a huge part of this is I think you need you need to have that visibility So you're not surprised you can see these things on a daily basis Most of them will let you see usage on a daily you can API in you can connect through other tools You might be already be using but the best thing you can do is get it all in one place You can look at it. You can see what's happening because you know ours Constantly changes one month that open AI will be the most expensive build and next month and for topics the most expensive build So I'm just my optically looking at anthropic and say oh it went down. We're good. I might be missing that It didn't go down. It just moved over to open AI I'll say just a couple brief thoughts here Then we have a question and they want to cover a little more and we'll wrap up so Christian elder on the whole governance thing you have to have good governance You have to recognize there's gonna be shadow if you don't put those policies in place People are gonna doing whatever they want they prior a little bit. We talk about bottoms-down top-up AI's been a lot of bottoms up People are gonna use it so you if you don't get in front of it. It's gonna be a problem Tracting is huge. I was talking to a guy and I'm gonna have mon of future episode just last night He had to develop the entire process of how they monitored it allocated it managed it for all of Instagram and threads That made it and it all sits in op-ex Chris So you can imagine the fun of a company like that managing it all they don't put any of it in in cogs But so I'm excited for that conversation but everybody's struggling with it and so you know the advice I give is like you said The more you can understand what's going on you can have conversations because like anything there's probably an 80-20 20% of the people are driving 80% of the cost Start there, but make sure you have a holistic picture one model one little thing isn't good enough That's true of all many expenses, but I think that's what I'll say on AI next Trinity right like let's say the thing is like we none of us know we all have little pieces find your community talk to them Like I know it's one thing I love about find its people is like we know so much about what's going on We're so willing to talk to each other be so open about it Just we just don't do it enough and we should be doing it Pick up the phone and talk to your someone at another kind of community find your slack group find your network Whatever it is like go find that place and just talk to people like I'm so much through that Zach you talk to I'd be quick Zach you talked about a really great area And I don't want to discount that it was really important right a lot of it for these rising costs We found the same thing with our client when we dove with it They just don't know how to actually use these tools So it's like the prompting knowledge It's like one thing that we did is like we talked to him We did a session and this is in our warehouse, but this is you know being a partner to them We had the office the office partner we worked with the IT person We have them just come to a one hour session to teach this organization How to effectively do prompts right because a lot of it is just like people don't know what they don't know And they're using the highest version of of any one of these models that's draining these tokens And a lot of it starts with awareness of it So it's not only just the governance policy the sandbox to operate in But it's also that way to take it a step further and teach people how to do it right Teach people how to leverage it here's where you need to use this So you did that and that's what led to that person saying oh I have more awareness I shouldn't be using this and then it's a direct driver And Zach what I love that you did you didn't go to that person and say we need to stop them from using this You like help me understand right you came from a place of curiosity like I just want to understand how you're doing this right seek first to understand and find it They'd be understood you crushed it broke. I'm going to switch gears here So there's a question that was asked and I'm going to send this to you Glenn And then I'll kind of wrap up with kind of one or two kind of hidden tips to just help with the budget process Kind of his take away so be thinking about that So Julio here asks he says in terms of execution How do you strike the right balance between maintaining Regis you know rigorous budget governance preserving the agility to rapidly Real arcade capital during market shifts or emerging opportunities Right so that balance of the budget is often obsolete by day one and you need to shift Yeah, so you know you got to look at it to it so first of all Recognize that your budget is approved by your board of directors So you and the business might be thinking oh this thing's obsolete But the CFO was thinking every single quarter I'm in front of the board I am held accountable to that number so you can't really get rid of that budget You've got to still you know the CFO and the CEO stop to answer to it But that's what forecasting is for that's where you go over and you forecast throughout the year And it's a balance between whether or not you're managing to the budget or the forecast And I think a really great example is covid right when you went over and you 29 the end of 2019 you did your budget for 2020 Nobody had covid in their budget right And all the sudden by april may every time if you're a retail shop If you're you know if you're breast-wronged if you're you know as a service Organization that's interacting with people you have a big office full of people That come in every single day your entire business model is shot Going over and holding people accountable to that budget would be moronic Right and you got to recognize hey, you know what we're in a different environment now You've got to reforecast and so what really what you need to do is understand Yes, there is a budget and the budget has a role to play and you still always have to be accountable to the board But there are times when the forecast has greater value and that's when you need to pivot at other times If you happen to be you know here you are in 2026 and you're working at you know proctor and gamble Chances are their budget still going to be pretty good because proctor and gamble could probably budget everything down to one percent Because overall company revenues are probably going to be moving with a in a single digit number and you could forecast It's not like you're one of Chris's clients where they're looking up anywhere from 30 to 70 percent revenue growth And where they land that's going to drastically change what's going to happen throughout the year So understand the company where you're at the value that the budget still holds even if the company has changed or the environment has changed But when to go over and apply that forecast and say you know what at this point in time It makes more sense to apply you know measure people against their forecast because of these External events one other thing. I'll say about this It's when I worked at a company and every single quarter we were doing a forecast and they only wanted to help people accountable to the forecast And that was a horrible approach in my opinion It's a large public company because all that did is to let people make mistakes in their forecast And then they get to reset every quarter and they didn't have to own those mistakes And so you never got better at forecasting and you never had the accountability because everyone got every three months got to reset So that's the value of sometimes having that budget if you're more of a stable company and holding people accountable So uh, so Julio, I hope that answered your question because I think there's value on both sides And you just kind of have to evaluate where is their greater value to the company Is it in the forecast or in the budget great answer appreciate that when you mentioned how everybody's budget group A blew up one of my good friends my training partner. He was corporate managing a toilet paper company his blew up the other way That why don't we spend six months on this budget That was that was fireball. I love that That was good. That was good. Oh, that was so good All right, like you got to have a little fun here and we're gonna wrap up now, but first we need a joke Let's see since we talked about toilet paper and blow up does anyone know Why the spreadsheet was constipated Chris because they had too much formula No Zach any guesses I was gonna say something about the formula spill and you think of that's probably off on not on the right track Well done, but no Glenn. My first thought was the eight letters to talk about the Not the problem Yeah, I think it was appropriate What's one key thing more from an execution kind of hidden gem in the forecast process managing the calendar whatever It's really helped you in your career that you wish you would have known earlier So kind of think about that one piece of advice you gave that's really kind of helped you Why don't we go Zach Chris Glenn be wrong more often More so be willing to be wrong because you're smart. I'm smart. I like to think that smart anyway And I have these like preconceived ideas of like here's the best way to do this here's best way to do that but I find that when I Just Going with this attitude of I think Chris used to do a curiosity and humbleness and saying like I'm willing to change the way I do things If your way makes more sense it is better. It just improves everything so much more And I think in the era of AI as well like getting an idea to 80% now is so much easier and so much faster than it was two three years ago So by not experiment. Why not be wrong more often? Why not be open to that great advice one of the best lessons I learned when I was 20 someone said to me I've never had a failure in my life. I've only had a learning experience At a similar idea be willing to be wrong be curious be willing to fail it will help you a long way Chris By the way own the fact that you're wrong. Don't want to fear somebody else A hundred percent accountability is key there you go for me quick spectrum low This is high time energy effort resources low time energy effort resources high budgeting should be here Balance of the year forecasting. We call them boy forecasting should be here sit So I'm going to go a little more tactical. I'm going to throw out a concept that I know Chris heard me say a couple of years ago But still a lot of people don't use it just around vacancy Understand that companies have turnover If you have a, let's say, a group that has 100 employees, but on average, they only have 95 there because the turnover don't give them a budget for 100 people. You're wasting company resources in that budget. It's being tied up in compensation for that department that's not going to be used. Understand that gap. How long it takes when somebody leaves to get that position refilled if people have open positions. When do they actually hire if they have a position scheduled to be, you know, they budgeted a position for July 1. They don't open the wreck until June 30th. They're not hiring somebody on July 1. You're going to be, you know, don't lock up that extra budget. I have been at companies where we have saved 20 to 30 million dollars in the budget process just by recognizing the turnover that's going to be there and not budgeting it. And that was money the company was able to use for new hires, other initiatives, types of things. So you give the company a lot greater flexibility when you budget vacancy. The one thing I'll say is don't go nuts. Be very conservative because you don't want to overshoot and make the company spend more money and now you perk earnings, but find the right balance. Great one there. I will just share this real quick. When you're building your calendar, build in time. Don't give yourself no time to review things. Don't think well, they have to get it to me by this day and I'll get it to the person the next day. Build yourself some time knowing things will slip. And so just give yourself that flexibility throughout the process. All right, we're a little bit over. So we're going to wrap there. Thank you so much for joining us. Great conversation everybody. Thanks Glenn, Chris, Zach, appreciate it. Thank you everyone. You're the main glean. Chris is Larry. Yeah, you're Larry. I'm just here for a good time. I'm currently you're mowing the situation of Chris. Zach's drag because he's here for a good time. Not a long time. Alrighty. See you guys. That's it for today's episode of FPNA Unlocked. If you enjoy FPNA Unlocked, please take a moment to leave a five star rating and review. It's the best way to support the FPNA guy and help more FPNA professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmarkcpe.com downloading the app and completing the quiz. If you need continuing education credits for the FPAC certification, complete the quiz and reach out to me directly. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Barnhurst, the FPNA guy, and I'll see you next time.