“The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) is a non-for-profit with a really simple mission, which makes it really easy for me to wake up and know what I’m doing every day,” says Bryan Lapidus, Director, FP&A Practice at the Association for Financial Professionals. “We exist for the success of the corporate finance and treasury professionals. FPAC, our certified corporate FP&A certification has been in the market for about 11 years now and 5,000 people have earned it in more than 80 countries.”
Returning guest Lapidus joins Glenn Hopper as they discuss the climate for FP&A including:
- Evolution of FP&A and AI
- Certificates vs Certification
- Why business school doesn’t prepare you for FP&A roles
- The impact of Sarbanes-Oxley on changing the CFO role
- Why you need different CFOs at various stages of a company lifecycle
- Why FP&A professionals are so hirable and promotable
- How to become CFO from an FP&A role
Connect with Bryan Lapidus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-lapidus-fpac/
Full transcript
Glenn Hopper:
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Welcome to fp NA today, I’m your host, Glenn Hopper. My guest today is Brian Lapidus, director of the fp NA practice at a AFP. He spent over 20 years in finance roles at places like American Express, Fannie Mae, and private equity backed companies. Now at a FP, he helped shape the future of the profession, running the fp and a certification programs, leading industry councils, and creating resources that support thousands of finance pros around the world. Today we’re talking about certifications, the changing role of the CFO, and what it really means to be future ready. And fp and a. Brian, welcome to the show, Glen, uh, long time listener. Uh, glad to be on it with you today. Yeah, I’m <laugh>. So we were talking before the show. There’s no way we’re gonna cover everything that we wanted, that I, that we have set out here or not. We’ll, we’ll get to broad topics, but the 36 questions that I have listed out here, I bet we’re not getting all <laugh>.
Bryan Lapidus:
Alright, well, we’re already setting up the sequel. I like, I like how you played those Easter eggs out.
Glenn Hopper:
Yes. Perfect. Perfect. So the three things I want to talk about, you sort of, I don’t know, <laugh> and, uh, but the, this certification at at a FP and then the, the role of the CFO. ’cause we were having some really good conversations around this the other day, and I think our, our listeners will enjoy these. So let’s start with just for our, uh, audience members who are not familiar with, with you and what, what AFP is. You’ve had a super interesting career, American Express, Fannie Mae at the PE-backed companies, and now a FPI guess before we get into what you’re doing now, talk to me, let’s go back to the beginning. Tell me what drew you into finance and, and then eventually into shaping the profession through education and certification that you’re doing now. Yeah, it’s a, uh, a long and
Bryan Lapidus:
Winding road. Um, what really kind of put me on that road towards finance was I was working at a consulting company and I was looking at our clients and I was at how they were making decisions. And what I found is that the clients would often come to a, a decision or a or a challenge, and they say, well, we’ve done it this way in the past, or here’s our judgment, and here is our experience. And the consulting company that I was with was, they were really great at, was saying, well, that’s all interesting. Let’s talk about the data, let’s talk about the valuation of what’s going to happen. And I remember there’s one, one project in particular, we were looking at whether to make certain adjustments to, to boats on the Mississippi River, whether there should be double hold for safety and, and chemical spills.
And, you know, and watching the team, I was the young guy on the team, right? I was the, uh, I was the junior level, uh, you know, coffee getter among other things. But watching them take a problem and break it down to the assumptions, the valuation, just the people who were thinking critically about it. I said, I wanna be that guy, the guy with the answers, the guys that, with the, the right questions or the guys that bring everybody together. And so that really put me on the PO path of modeling valuation, which became finance and fp and a and decision support and all the, all the other things that, you know, that we know and love on fp a today.
Glenn Hopper:
Gotcha. And I keep, I, I keep doing the abbreviation. I didn’t, I, for forgot my journalistic roots and did not say Association for Finance Professionals. I’m just saying AFP. So your current role at the Association for Finance Professionals kind of puts you right in the middle of, of, we’ll call it fp a’s evolution. And I’m wondering right now, what are you seeing in the profession that feels like the most urgent or exciting or what, what are you seeing a across the fp a field right now? Um, and you’re
Bryan Lapidus:
Right. I mean, so from, you know, from my 20 years in the office of the CFO to now my seven years at, at AFP, right? I’ve seen how the profession has changed and how AFP has changed with the profession itself. So to your question, directly in these seven years, it’s funny, there, there are real trends, there are waves of thought that kind of wash over the consulting companies and the LinkedIn space and everything that’s out there. And so when I first sat in this chair, you know, I was, it’s funny because I was looking, I have the vantage point that I look at conference proposals that roll in every year. So I see what the market is thinking about. And when I first started, it was beyond budgeting, and then it was business intelligence and big data and business partnership and storytelling, right?
Literally, I can tell you by year what each co what was the theme of, you know, the, the gestalt in the world around all these different topics. And last year and this year, it’s all about ai and the flavor of AI has changed, right? So maybe two years ago, our AI was kind of, what is it? And you know, all about machine learning. And we’ve really have moved beyond that. We’ve, we moved from having AI as a separate track at conference to, it’s just integrated in everything, our financial processes, ai, our people, and, and team effectiveness. There’s an AI component there. So it’s gone from a standalone separate world that was a little bit mysterious to we’re doing this today and here’s how you do it, and here’s how you embed it in finance.
Glenn Hopper:
When machine learning first started catching on, you know, the sales and marketing team were the ones who latched onto it because they had a lot more data, I think. And I think maybe back then we were still thinking of fp and a is all we have is general ledger data and maybe some external information, but we weren’t thinking about making use of all the data in, in finance. So when you would talk about machine learning and algorithms and, and doing big data stuff, didn’t get a lot of attention in the fp and a community. At least that was my experience. I mean, did you see that? And did you, how is, how do you think, or why do you think generative ai and now suddenly it is getting all the attention and it wasn’t before.
Bryan Lapidus:
So one of the challenges, especially with machine learning, is because financial data is GAP or IFRS, right? Because it is accounting data, a lot of the actual operations of the company have been smoothed out for various recognition issues. And so when you try to take history and plan it forward based on accounting smoothing, you can’t, it’s much harder to forecast accounting smoothing when, you know, when that’s not how the company actually operates. So part of what’s happened is that, you know, whether you call it XP and a or just finance, moving more into operations, going upstream has allowed finance to get ahead of all of those accounting adjustments. I guess another element is finance, because it had that base of the general ledger as the data, there was a finite set at that point. It wasn’t dealing with big data, right? There was a lot of talk and people were trying to sell big data, but we really weren’t working with big data.
It’s when you, again, go further upstream and you can bring that an analytical view, that’s when you start getting into lots and lots of rows of transactions and you know, and sending or know what, what, whatever the data set you’re looking at, it becomes much larger once you move beyond the general ledger. And now the other thing I’ll say is what generative AI allows is just an, an interface that’s just more accessible, right? The early days of machine learning, you really needed a data scientist to help you manage that process and that, right? And it was a project. The, what we’re seeing with LLMs is that it’s allowing the individual to have and access the data in ways that they just couldn’t before. It’s just much more accessible to, to the layman.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And this is, I’m, I’m already championing it to bit to go to dive into the other topics we’re gonna cover today, but I do, before we get into those, you said something when we were talking the other day that that really resonated with me. You talked about the difference between a certificate and a certification, and I think that for our listeners, I, I do, because I don’t know, I don’t know how, uh, and we can talk about the numbers and everything. I don’t know, you know, how many of our listeners have the FPAC certification or, or, or know about it. So let’s go back and talk about what the A FP does, and then tell me a little bit, um, primarily for this audience, the fpac, but I know there’s also the CTP certification break. Break that down for me a little bit and for our listeners.
Bryan Lapidus:
So the Association for Financial Professionals is a non-for-profit with a really simple mission, which makes it really easy for me to wake up and know what I’m doing every day, right? We exist for the success of the corporate finance and treasury professional, and in doing that, we have boxed in who our market is and what we do, right? Accountants are great. There are accounting certifications and accounting associations, and you want CFA is great, uh, very rigorous. It’s great for portfolio managers and for banking, right? There are lots of certifications that are out there. Our target market are people who are working for the CFO people who work for the CFO and Treasury and fp and a and fp a has lots of different names and business controller in different parts of the world. But I look at fp and a as the people who help you decide where to put your next dollar of capital, if you’re doing decision support, budget, ad hoc analysis, uh, KPIs and metric and performance management, like all of that.
The next, where what happens, so I know what to do next. That is under our umbrella of fp and a. And so we’ve been in this business for about 40 years, and in those four decades, more than 40,000 people have earned our CTP, our certified treasury professional globally recognized. And that actually that’s our roots was we actually were the treasury organization. And I was, when, when I worked in treasury, uh, at American Express, right, I was actually a member. And then I was really excited when I had a job change and I moved over into fp and a that they were A, A FP was one of the first organizations to recognize that this was a field. And it started with conference tracks and content. And then we’ve now had our FPAC, our certified corporate fp and a professional, uh, that’s been in the market for about 11 years now, and there’s about 5,000 people who have earned it in more than 80 countries.
So this is, we are a global organization. We’ve been doing this for a while, and we understand the difference between a certificate and a certification. And so you asked about that. So specifically, I mean, we believe in continuing education, whether that’s in our conference or our certs or our webinars or our training classes, right? And we have certificates, we call them badges just so that they don’t get confused. But what a certificate is, is it says you have studied a course, it’s a moment in time, and you have taken a test and you’ve, and you’ve done well in that course, that’s great. And then you go on to your next, that’s an an important part of your continuing learning a certification is ongoing. It demonstrates mastery of industry standards. So our cert, our certification as well as others, shows that you have passed a proctored exam and you’ve met other requirements, specifically your time and experience in the field, right?
In order to get a certification, you have to have two years for treasury, three years for fp and a or a master’s or, or, or pa, right? You have to have all of those things that show that you’ve done the work, because what a certification shows is you have met a certain level of c commitment and competence to this role. The other thing that a certification does is it goes beyond just the test, right? You’re bringing your practical knowledge to work and you’re keeping up with it. So certifications have a continuing education component to it, right? And all of the certifications do right, to show that you are keeping up in the field so that whoever hires you knows that you are truly certified for a FP. For our, for our both our CTP and FPAC, it’s 45 credits earned in a three year cycle. So 15 per year or however you wanna break that out into your three year cycle.
Glenn Hopper:
I think you and I probably went to business school around the same time, and we were talking the other day about, um, you know, in, in the MBA program, you learn to read financial statements. And I, I took a bunch of courses where I learned, you know, high finance kind of stuff and, um, but my first FPNA role, I don’t even know if it was called FBA, I mean, I’m, I’m old as dirt, so I don’t know if I, I don’t even know if it was called that back then. But the MBA really didn’t prepare me. I, I mean, I don’t know, you, you, you kind, it felt like a lot more on the job learning, and maybe that’s just, maybe that’s still the case, but do you think have MBAs changed as FB and a has changed? Or why do you think it is that, at least when, when we were in business school, it didn’t feel like it prepared as well for fp and a as much as it did. Um, a lot of other roles
Bryan Lapidus:
As
Glenn Hopper:
An executive.
Bryan Lapidus:
So it’s not just your experience, then it’s today. And I can say that because I run our university partners program where we are actively talking about how to get our content into, in front of both undergraduate and MBA students, both of them. And the challenge that, and this, this really started our, our flagship program is with Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. And they came to us and they said, we’ve got this problem. And the problem is, you know, they are one of the largest, one of the largest and one of the top rated business schools, but their degrees, they have an accounting degree, which has a clear vertical, you go into accounting and they have a finance degree, and everybody who thinks that goes, everyone who takes that thinks they’re going to be on Wall Street or in personal finance, and so they’re all gonna be bankers, right?
But the truth is, when they looked at their numbers is that that wasn’t true. 50% of their accounting and finance people ended up working for the CFO. So, and, and we found this was also true at the MBA level, right? You learn finance, you learn high finance, but if you’re going to be working the office of the CFO, there’s different nuances and there’s different ways that you would apply that. But there’s this business schools just in general broad brush stereotype, are not teaching for the corporate finance track, which is a great opportunity to enhance your MBA with the FPAC or to, or if you are an undergraduate, you can pass the exam and then work and get and accrue those years of work experience in a, in a certain window so that you can really get that knowledge at the start of your career and then apply it and have a leg leg up in, in what you do.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, because it was, I mean, early in my career, trying to figure out what I wanted, you know, everybody said, well, if you, if you want to be a um, A CFO, you’re gonna have to go get your CPA. I didn’t want to get my CPA, I didn’t, I didn’t love account, I loved finance, not accounting. Um, and then the, the other certification was the CFA. And it was like, well, that’s not really exactly right either, because I, I knew working for the office of the CFO and ultimately being a CFO was my goal. So this, I mean, it does, uh, it does seem great. Tell me a little bit about, like, how rigorous is it, what’s, what’s the time commitment if somebody wants to do this? Is, are there ongoing, like CPEs, gimme a little bit more details about, about the program and the certification?
Bryan Lapidus:
Yeah,
Glenn Hopper:
Sure.
Bryan Lapidus:
I’ll speak specifically to the FPAC ’cause that’s the, uh, that’s the audience we have here today. Um, there are two exams, and I estimate about 35 to 40 hours to study for each exam. It was about what I did, but I mean, I also had experience in, in the field, but that seems about right. Today we have an online learning platform. We call it the EPP exam prep platform. And there are, you know, 850 pages of text, 20 hours of video pretest post test. So you could really figure out which areas you, you need to focus on flashcards, gamification, right? We just revamped it last summer. It really is a, you know, first class user experience in going through and studying the material. If you have a CPA or a CFA or our CTP, you can actually pass out of, you could wave out of the first part.
And the first part is really multiple choice tests, um, focused on financial acumen. And so we’ve done a side-by-side comparison, and there’s enough overlap that you can wave out of the first part if you have an active one of those other certifications. Part two is a little bit, it’s a little bit different. It’s a test, it’s task-based simulation and case study analysis. So you have to actually bring to bear and demonstrate in an Excel type tool what it looks like, and that you, again, you’re showing mastery of, of the core concepts of fpna. The ctp, I’ll just say quickly, um, is one exam, uh, multiple choice. Um, also candidates say that it’s also about 50 to 75 hours to study for that. Uh, but like I said, that that’s a one part test. And again, specific for people working in the treasury practice,
Glenn Hopper:
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You would think with fp and a becoming so much more of a role these days, that business schools would adapt, and maybe they eventually will, but it’s great that you guys are there to, uh, to fill the void in, in the interim. And I, and that was another part of our conversation that we had the other day that I really wanted to get to, is looking at how the, since you and I have been in, in the profession, how the CFO role has changed. And, you know, one of the things it feels like to me is what the controller is today, is what the CFO was, um, 25 years ago or so. I mean, it, the, the CFO role has really changed a lot. And, and when we were talking about today, you pointed out that it goes back, uh, even further than that, you said that the term CFO barely even existed in, in 1970. So kind of walk me through the history as you see it.
Bryan Lapidus:
Yeah, I mean, there’s data to back up your exactly what you’re saying. Um, uh, university of Chicago study looked at, you know, the 400 largest companies, and, um, in 1970, the term CFO just didn’t exist, right? There wasn’t a need for it. It was the accountant and or the controller, right? And it, that’s because the level of effort that it took just to pull all that historical information and get it in the gl, but nobody wanted more from that role. But really over the next two decades, I’d say there are three things that led to a need, right? You need to have this CFO. And so the first thing was increasing complexity of financial markets and financialization. So there were a series of laws that were passed that changed some of the accounting rules. And, and then there were, as companies move internationally, they were more impacted by FX rates and, and hedging and global markets.
And as they moved, and somebody had to say, well, what does this, what does this mean? Right? There’s a great quote from, um, I think it’s Bob Iger, um, the C or Eisner, sorry, Eisner, the CEO of Disney in the eighties. He said, somebody has to convert all of this to English. Someone has to say what this means and the impact on the business of all of these tax changes and internationalization. So this, there had to build out somebody who could talk to the business and explain how their financially, how their business results would look in an increasingly sophisticated world. Second kind of milestone was, as was really as financial markets changed, there was a need to bring that financial view inside. And what I’m spec specifically talking about where the corporate raiders today, we would just call them private equity firms, but it was a threat in the eighties and nineties that you had these barbarians at the gate, right?
That was the book, barbarians at the gate, who were going to come in and raid your company and kick out the CEO and put it and kick out the board and say, there’s waste money, there’s trapped capital. You have the wrong, you know, you’re overly diversified and you have a, you’re a conglomerate with these different businesses that some are core and some are not. Right? CEOs turned around and said, well, who is it that’s inside my company that is thinking about maximizing the financial value of my company? Right? And it wasn’t marketing and it wasn’t tech, and it wasn’t hr, right? They all have incredibly important strategic roles to play, but who is sitting next to the CEO who could say, here’s the financial value. Here’s how you maximize the value in order to provide that strategy that the markets were demanding. They had to bring that inside.
And so the CFO kind of elevated for that, but again, it wasn’t, it couldn’t be nested in the accounting group, right? ’cause the accounting group was still doing that very critical job of financial control. So you start to develop these internal financial analysts, and I know I’m giving a long-winded answer, but there really was a third thing that happened. And the third thing we’re still living through today, and it’s only accelerating, and that’s the data revolution. The data impact that as it became easier to collect the data from different parts of the business, right? All those things I mentioned before about moving upstream to collect the data, or the ability to have your, your accounting done in more sophisticated ways, it actually freed up some of the resources in this CFO organization to move people away from the rear view control and get into the GL point and take some of those same financially focused people and move them out and have them forward looking.
And so now the CFO has more resources. They have a mandate to maximize fin financial value, and they have demand from the business to be that advisor. And you put that together, and we have this whole role of the CFO as a business advisor, and the CFO says, I need someone who could help me make these forward-looking financial capital decisions. And so that’s the creation of fp and a that we’ve built, that a FP built out has created the content and the exam, and now that we’re all living through, right? It is how do you bring that financial acumen on a forward looking basis so that the bus, the CFO can be a partner to the business.
Glenn Hopper:
It goes back to what we were saying earlier about, um, you know, the, the whole big data that everybody was talking about, but we weren’t sure how to access it, how to use it, how to apply it to finance. And it also feels like, and this is anecdotal, I don’t have data to back this up, but post Enron, Sarbanes Oxley that there was, so that would’ve been, what is that, around 2000? Was that, uh,
Bryan Lapidus:
I, I, I can tell you exactly when that was. ’cause you know, you’re, uh, you’re, you’re digging into the, again, the early part of my career, right? So Sarbanes Oxley came out of the wake of the Enron scandal, where, which is around 2001 or so, actually, my, one of my first jobs at American Express. I went through a financial rotation program, and my, one of my first jobs was in audit and risk, and it was to put in place the entity level risk assessment for Sarbanes-Oxley controls. And, and you’re right, that had such a huge impact because now you, right? So the goal was to look at all the processes that led to financial reporting. So the CFO had to look at a process view inside every company, right? It wasn’t just about the gl, it was certifying every step that gets to the general ledger. And the CFO now had a mandate to go and work with the business and to work beyond finance and beyond counting and really understand the business and set up systems and processes that would move data all the way through. And that opened the door for the CFO to say, well, that’s really interesting. Why are you doing that? How about this? Let me bring some of my financial acumen to bear on what you’re doing in the business and really expanded the purview of the CFO.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. I, I think prior to that, you could be, you know, a mile deep, but an inch wide. You, you could say, you could be in this ivory tower of, I, I’m just a beaten bean counter. I don’t, I don’t know ops, I don’t know marketing. I don’t care about all that. But when you’re signing those financial statements that, uh, you know, and, and taking ownership of everything that’s being reported, you suddenly do need to become that expert across the business. And that changes how finance, how people look at finance and how, I mean, I guess business partnering evolves out of all that. I mean, it’s just, you have to really get into the business. And it used to be, I, I could be an accountant for, you know, a CPG company or a, a service business or a SaaS company. It didn’t matter. It was just, uh, you know, it was all just the accounting part.
But since you have to know that full, uh, broad spectrum, and this goes in, I’ve got a whole other soapbox about the office of the CFO that I think we should own all, not determine them for everybody, but be the arbiter of and reporter of, um, all the KPIs and, uh, you know, for a company. And, um, because if you’re, if you’re trusted to report objectively the financial results, you should also, you know, that should carry over into the other metrics, the operational metrics and the sales metrics and all that. But that’s, um, that’s a battle for another day. <laugh>,
Bryan Lapidus:
That’s a separate rabbit hole.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Yeah. <laugh>. And I think, you know, you mentioned, uh, that sort of the, the corporate raters and all that too. And I’m thinking about you and I both coming up working for private equity backed companies. It was very stressful at the time, especially in my first CFO role. However, I think the, the way pe and I know they get a bad rap today and <laugh> all that, but it’s, uh, the way private equity looked at businesses really shaped the way that I looked at businesses too. And it helped me to understand, really to adapt that more, you know, put more effort and energy and focus into your modeling and understanding the levers that you pull that are gonna drive the results and understand just, it made me a different CFO than if I were not in that, didn’t have that pressure from the PE people constantly, you know, questioning everything <laugh> everything that I did.
Bryan Lapidus:
Yeah. There’s a little discipline that comes from the market, right? And there’s discipline that comes from the PE firm, the, the PE firm. There’s, you know, they’re, they’re never more than a call away, and they’re always, you know, sitting at their spreadsheets and kind of looking at you, and it a really, a black and white view of make this number move, report by the metrics, right? Because everything that they do is they want to get in, expand their multiple and get out. And so it forces a certain discipline on, uh, on the CFO to then push that out through the business.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And it, when we were talking the other day, you mentioned the, the, I can’t, the private equity backed company where the CFO eventually became the CEO. And, you know, thinking about how, what that says about how the role is changing, can you tell us little bit more about that? Yeah,
Bryan Lapidus:
Yeah. So that was my, my first stint at a, at a PE backed company. And the company went from, you know, it, it grew quickly, and the CEO at the time, um, kind of knew everything, a little bit of the jack of all traits, but he was also like, you know, a, a little bit of a visionary, but a little bit of, he never really knew where he was gonna go at a certain point in time. At one point, the sale of the company didn’t work, it didn’t go through, and the PE firm decided, okay, well, we’re gonna try this again. And what they did was they actually elevated the CFO to the CEO role. And some of the reasons really stood out. It was, they wanted somebody that had an operator mindset, right? That knew how to put together the company and understood on a quant, a quantitative numerical basis, how it worked, but also beca the CEO.
The CFO often is that role of the safe hands in the company. And so they wanted a little bit more stability, operational, uh, excellence. And, uh, this particular CFO also was really aware of the limits of what he knew, and that made him a really good manager. And so what he would do is he would say, okay, I recognize that I don’t know everything, so I’m going to really lean on the expertise in my marketing team. I’m really gonna lean on the expertise in the board and what they could bring. And so he did a really good job managing the company because his background wasn’t the visionary in that particular space. It was management, operations, financial control, and, you know, that view of, and that really the respect that he had of telling truth to the board. And so all of those things made him a very valuable and successful CEOI
Glenn Hopper:
Don’t know why this, whenever I hear stories like that, I think about, and, and this goes back to Sarbanes Oxley too, when the CFO had to become this, the voice, the adult in the room. And I, for some reason, the example I always get is that the CEO of WeWork, the guy that was running around barefoot, the long aired guy <laugh>, and they went through like three CFOs in like three years too. And I just, I think about that. Like, the world needs these visionaries and these sort of iconoclasts or, or, you know, whatever that come up with these brilliant ideas. But when you, you know, when the business gets to a going concern and you get out of that, you’ve gotta have that sort of professional. And I think I would like to see data on how many CFOs become CEOs today, because I think it is, it makes a lot of sense, uh, in that whole mindset of, um, uh, being A-A-C-F-O. It makes a lot of sense as a CEO of a company as far as being a, a steward of, of how to carry it. Now, I guess, you know, maybe someone on the other side might say, yeah, but we’re, you know, finance and accounting people, we’re too risk averse. We’re not, we’re not really wired for it. You need to be able to, you know, gamble and all that. And, you know, again, probably a, a topic for another show, but <laugh>,
Bryan Lapidus:
Someone gimme a, a really interesting viewpoint, uh, that the CF you need different CFOs at different times in a company’s lifecycle. And it’s probably also true of the CEO, right? When the company is smaller, you need the charismatic person who could rally the troops, and at some point the company grows to scale and need the operator, right? In the same way that the two CEOs of Google at some point new to step back and bring in Eric Schmidt as the experienced operator. There are sometimes when you’re, when you’re looking at the CFO, you need the capital person, right? Go out, raise money, talk to investors, get through your A, B, CD rounds, go or go public. And other times, and I’ve worked at other companies that have gone through, um, $6 billion accounting restatements, right? They brought in a specific CFO who had done that before, and he didn’t wanna be there for more than two years.
So he was there for two years, redid the books, new processes, went off to his next one, right? At other times, you want the operator, CFO, you want the maximization CFO. Um, and what we see today is someone had just posted this, uh, yesterday on LinkedIn, um, it was, there’s a new title, it’s COFO, chief operating a Financial Officer, right? Because finance has that control mindset, and because they have the, um, the access to the data and as you say, the KPIs and the metrics and the performance management aspect, right? They’re blending of the role of the COO and the CFO together. And it’s just, you know, encompassing all of that in order to deliver the metrics and the management of, of the company.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And actually, a couple of the CFO roles I had were c CFO slash coo because there were turnarounds or whatever, and really the main driver was, we have to get the company financial stable, financially stable. So we want someone with that finance mindset to get into operations and, you know, maximize it and, and all that, and prepare the company for sale or, or raising money or what, or whatever it was. So that, that made sense to me. And it, um, you know, it, coming into a company as a CFO, I think I would always freak the company out, uh, because I would, you know, the first thing I’d wanna do is go look at the, uh, data and people and processes just outside of, obviously you have to understand finance structure, but then it’s, let’s look at <laugh> from the sales process to our, our prospects and leads and what, you know, look at the how, where the data’s going, data and process is going all the way from that first contact with a potential customer all the way through one and into the system and all that. And wanted to see all that data so that we could under understand it and be able to report on it and know which levers to pull and where the, uh, inefficiencies were and all that. So to me, the finance and operations were very tied together.
Bryan Lapidus:
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, you have to map the mission to the money, right? Yeah. Well, you can’t just be focused, well said, focused on the money. It doesn’t just appear there, it doesn’t just fall to the bottom line right there. It gets there through a certain path. So mission to money and the, the le the levers is that you have to move that are, are critical to understand. I think you’re, I think you would’ve made a great COL.
Glenn Hopper:
So, I mean, everything that we’re talking about now, we’ve got the CFO, you’ve gotta be part strategist, part technologist, part diplomat, you know, whatever’s depending on what the lifecycle of, of the business. So as we talk about all this, and as we’ve talked about the evolution, what does this mean for the next generation of fp and a leaders? Like what’s, and, and I think it would be interesting, I mean, you’re, you’re really right on the forefront of this with the certification, because you’ve gotta be thinking every day about the skills that fp and a professionals need that they can need to build now to kind of stay relevant in the years ahead. And I guess the certification has to sort of evolve with that as well. But what do you, what do you think those skills are and how are they different even than they were just a couple years ago?
Bryan Lapidus:
Yeah, I think it’s important to have a clear mindset of what the CFO does in order to, to fit everything else. And because you, you don’t wanna, you don’t wanna over index, right? I think of the CFO is the steward of capital managing its sources to uses, right? And that whole process, process. And so within that, that job breaks and the CFO job is getting bigger and bigger, which is a whole other conversation, but it, it’s, you know, there’s so much, so much a part of that. So then there’s the, where it was, we call that accounting and audit, where it is, we call that treasury and AP and how it circulates, and then where it’s going for fp and a. So if you are go in fp and a or you want to go into fp and a, I think you have to understand where you sit relative to the other parts of finance.
One of the great things about fp and a is people move throughout. They, you know, the idea that you’re gonna be, you’re on a ladder and you move up the corporate ladder and you take your boss’s job and you just keep going straight up. That doesn’t really exist anymore. Ladders are replaced by latts, and people are moving around to different parts of finance as well as different parts of the company outside of finance. So the best fp and a people have experience in fp and a and outside of fp and a, it’s really important to pull together that broader view within that, right? IT so fp and a, right? Your view is where do I put my next dollar of capital? You have to understand finance, right? You have to, uh, you have to know what finance is, what it does, and you have to understand the processes that you go through by which you deliver your finance acumen.
So if all you overdo is index on the technology, you’re going to forget the finance part. You go right at that. If all you do is technology, you’re a technology person, you have its technology to serve that goal of next dollar of capital to its best use, understand finance, understand finance processes, don’t leave that behind. There’s also the personal and team effectiveness component to this. You have to work with people. And if you’re in fp and a, you’re probably spending 70% of your time dealing with non-finance people. And that’s really different from being in accounting where you’re spending 70% of your time working with other finance people. So if you’re working with non-finance people, you have to brush up on your communication skills. How do you create a presentation that speaks to other people, whether you call it storytelling or communication, putting together a good slide, right?
It’s not just about the slide deck, it’s about getting the, the point of view across, right? We are delivering analysis and insight. We don’t deliver data, right? That’s called a data dump. We’re not the FDD department, we’re not the financial data dump. We’re fp and a, we deliver finance, planning, analysis, insight. So you have to deliver that. The technology side is what is the, how you get it done. It’s what you do backstage that makes you effective on stage in dealing with your partners. What I would say to people who are working in finances, all of this understand the, the whole role of the CFO, understand finance, understand technology, and understand the people component of your job. And that’s why these jobs are so hard to find. That’s why it’s a little bit of an apprenticeship, right? You need a good leader who can help you with all these things, because it’s hard and it’s hard to find one person who’s good at all three of those very different goals. Sometimes fp and a is about putting together the right team. Sometimes it’s about coaching people to be good at all those different elements. But honestly, that’s also why it’s the sexiest part, the sexiest job in the CFO organization.
Glenn Hopper:
It gives you such visibility into the entire company. You have an understanding of, of, if, if I work in IT or HR or, or whatever, I don’t get that visibility. And it’s, it’s, yeah, I, I agree with you. I mean, I mean, that’s where we’ve put our career. So I’m, I’m right there with you, <laugh>,
Bryan Lapidus:
<laugh>, you know, and, and, and, and people who are really good in fp and a will get poached, right? When I was at American Express, I had this job role, it was very central. We were developing a new product, and I was the person with the model. And in order to get the model together, I had to talk to the back office over here, and I had to talk to the people. It was an international product. So I was talking to people in different countries and time zones and the marketing team and, and all these things and putting together, right? And what we see is that people get pulled out and sometimes come back fp and a is a good way to seed other parts of the company with people who are quantitative and rational and understand business and strategy. And it also, it makes you a better fp and a person to have p and l responsibility to have that and then come back to finance because you understand what’s on the other side of that cell, right? What’s on the other side of that number and how it gets there. It just makes you a more well-rounded person, which is what the best fp and a people are.
Glenn Hopper:
You know, with all, everything that’s come along in fp and a, so much automation has also changed our, I’m, I’m not even talking about AI yet. I mean, I just mean SaaS tools that are everything from AP to AR to expense management. I mean, there are automation tools out there that it’s, it’s been the story for the last decade or more, more definitely. Um, where so much of what we used to do was data entry, and it was not, you know, maximizing, oh, nobody goes and gets a, a master’s in finance or accounting to, because they love entering data. You know, it’s, uh, so as that goes away, we’ve been able to focus more on what we, you know, went to school for and, and really add that, uh, strategy and value. And I think the interesting thing right now is automation continues, it’s getting more and more is being automated now.
When you throw generative AI in it and this talk of agents, there’s gonna be whole swaths of positions. I think that in the very near future we’ll be able to be replaced with automation. How do you see, I mean, I don’t know, it’s, it’s, it’s early and there’s a lot of talk about it now, but we’re riding that hype cycle up. I don’t see a, I don’t see the massive impacts happening today. I think we all just kind of sense this is the direction we’re going, but how do you see AI and automation reshaping the way that fp and a teams operate? And, you know, uh, obviously human judgment is still a big part of that, but what do you, what are you seeing? What do you, if you look in your crystal ball and let us know <laugh>. Yeah.
Bryan Lapidus:
You know, at a FP we have a DA wide range of companies and members, and they’re all across the spectrum from some of the most technologically advanced companies that, you know, uh, uh, that are out there to people with one person finance. And so the distribution of where people are is on the spectrum. One of the fun parts about A FPI, I like to think of my job. I do a lot of recycling. I talk to some of the people who are on the most advanced parts, and I, you know, put them on webinars and bring ’em to conference and then take what they say and try and move the media, right? That’s what I think is how do we take the best of what we’re doing out there in fp and a and finance and bring it to everybody and move everybody forward. We really are at a wide range, and our survey research, uh, shows this, that there’s a small group that’s on the leading edge, the bleeding edge, the leading edge.
Um, in 2025, you know, 40% of people said, responded to our survey and said, this is it. This is the year we’re really gonna start our pilot, right? I mean, we’re two and a half years into the GPT, you know, go, go live. And people are like, all right, now we’re gonna do our pilot. People are all over the place. And that’s really the, the challenge that they face. And there are different flavors of AI and there’s different ways to use it, but when people really ask me like, how do you get started and what do you need? The first thing I do is I quote this guy, Glen Hopper, and he says, you need bi before ai. You need to get your data right, and your processes, right? You need to understand your infrastructure before you can use the tool. I believe that the technology is there today to do a lot of the things that people dream about, but it’s held back.
It’s like having a, you know, having a Ferrari, Ferrari driving through a school zone. Um, it’s being held back by poor data, poor processes, um, concerns about security policy that inside companies, that doesn’t, that really limits what people can do, right? What we’re trying to do at a FP is show the art of the possible and give people an opportunity for tools and engagement with the, with AI outside almost a third space, right? Give people an opportunity to play with the data and the tools outside their company using safe data sets and safe spaces so that they could bring that back. But companies are all over the place. It’s not built into our processes today.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And it’s, um, I don’t know, you as you know, I’m, this is, I live and breathe this stuff, and I’m trying to figure out ways to make it, you know, work right now, whether it’s, uh, productizing some of this stuff or doing bespoke implementations, and really it comes back, it’s data engineering right now, it’s data governance. It’s getting the data foundation straight. And then once you do that, sure, you can put a chat bot on top of anything and interact with the data that way, but it’s, we gotta have the data right first.
Bryan Lapidus:
Yeah. AI before bi,
Glenn Hopper:
I’m sorry. Yeah,
Bryan Lapidus:
Bi bi before ai.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Yeah. <laugh>. So I wanna kind of, I wanna put a bow on this whole, uh, part of the show. What’s your advice to someone, say they’re five years into their fp and a career and they want to be tomorrow’s CFO with everything we’ve said, like what are the key takeaways? Where would you tell them to focus right now and to be sure that they’re on the best track to do that?
Bryan Lapidus:
Oh, I think that for people’s careers, I think that in your first five-ish years, it’s important to understand the breadth of what finance does, what’s out there, what it means, how it comes together. Somewhere between five and 15, you’re really developing expertise, right? You kind of have, you’re kind of have your head down, and then when you become the CFO, I think then you are in management and you’re trying to be successful through other people, right? And management through other people. So there’s a bit of an hourglass shape to your career of breath expertise and then breath again. But because things are changing so fast, you kind of have to be head heads down on your job and on your company, right? You have to be good at what you do, and you have to make your boss happy. You have to be productive and add value where you are.
But you can’t be so focused on that, that you forget to pick your head up. And this is where things like listening to your podcast and coming to conferences and reading outside is so important because if all you know is what you do on your day-to-day job, you only know one example. You have got to pay attention to your career and to your constant learning. And so going to a conference allows you to have input from so many other people from so many other sessions, right? We’ve got a, we have our, our big conference coming up. There’s gonna be 130 different educational sessions in Boston in October, 2025, right? And all different matters ca you know, all the different tracks that we have, and that’s great. It’s the ri of everything. And you get to see that we have another event that is just fp and a focused, it’s gonna be next March in Indianapolis. And that’s going to be like a deep dive on everything that’s fp a, right? You’ve gotta get out from behind your desk. You’ve gotta get, get out from behind the one instance that you see at your company and see what other people are doing. Listen to other people and take advantage of the practitioner network that’s around you to keep those sources of input coming to you so that you keep growing. Perfect. Really well said.
Glenn Hopper:
We’re at the time of the show where, um, we, we delve into our, our boilerplate personal questions here. So the, the first one is, uh, you probably, if you’re a listener, you know the questions that, that are coming. But, uh, the first one is, what is something that most people don’t know about you that we couldn’t find, uh, you know, by looking you up online?
Bryan Lapidus:
Um, I’m not good at like, talking about myself online, so that’d probably be almost anything. Uh, but it’s, it’s springtime here and, um, it is biking season, so I had my bike on a trainer all winter. I’m gonna take it out. Uh, I get outside, get up through the, uh, kind of the wine country in Maryland, and I’m gonna work towards a, uh, a, a DC a a big ride in DC over Labor Day weekend where they shut down the streets and everybody’s out. And so it’s been a while since I’ve done a, a metric century ride, but I’m, I’m looking forward to, uh, to trying that again.
Glenn Hopper:
Very cool. I actually was, uh, on my trainer this morning doing a Zift ride because I had, my first meeting was at seven 30 and the Sun’s not up till about six 15 here right now. So I had to get my, uh, you know, watching a <laugh> watching a sci-fi show and sitting on the trainer in my, in my game room, uh, for the ride this morning. But looking forward to getting out some more too, and we’ll, we’ll have to ride together. I’ll have to <laugh>.
Bryan Lapidus:
Sounds good. And, and now that I put it out there and it’s public now, now you gotta hold me to it. So,
Glenn Hopper:
Uh, and, and now we gotta connect on Strava, I guess, right? Are you, are you on Strava? Are you,
Bryan Lapidus:
Uh, when I, when I ride with my daughter, she’s on Strava, um, ah, okay. She’s now old enough that she puts me to
Glenn Hopper:
Shame <laugh>. Alright, next, everybody’s favorite question. Um, what is your favorite Excel function and why?
Bryan Lapidus:
So, I’m try, I’ll, I’ll try and give one that I haven’t heard on previous episodes of your show. And you know, it’s the combination of the watch window or the ability to, or the, which is one way to do it, or just when you’ve, you click on view and you can have two different instances of the same model on the same at the same time, right? Because so often you’re working in one part and you wanna know what’s happening somewhere else. And so I’ll just take my screen and I’ll have, you know, call it my inputs in one place or outputs, or I’ll just use the watch when feature as well. And I’ll just be able to see and fine tune how things are working, uh, whether the calculation’s coming through correctly, but that ability to, uh, to see two parts of the model
Glenn Hopper:
At the same time is really valuable. That’s the first time I’ve gotten that one. And I actually, being a former CFO, it’s been a while since I built a, a big Excel model and needed that functionality, but I was having flashbacks too. You know, you’ve got all your assumptions and drivers on all these different tabs and you’re changing it here and you’re having to click back and find, well, where was it? And you know, sometimes it’s not even in the same spreadsheet <laugh>, where you’re trying to run down the, with the impact of all the, uh, um, the formulas. Yeah. So that’s a, that’s a great one. I guess last question, where can our listeners, uh, go to learn more about the fpac and how can they connect with you or a FP directly?
Bryan Lapidus:
So, for a FP, obviously we have, we have our website, uh, afp online.org, and from there there’s links to our, our FPAC, our CTP, our conferences, uh, our webinars, right? We have a ton of stuff in front of a firewall that’s free and accessible to everybody. So, uh, our website is there. Uh, I also post content several times a week, and so I’m easy to find on, on LinkedIn. So Brian Lapidus on LinkedIn, Brian with a y there are a couple other, Brian Lapita is out there, interestingly, they’re great guys. But, uh, make sure you get the one who’s, uh, working in fp a. Alright,
Glenn Hopper:
And we’ll, we’ll put a, we’ll put your LinkedIn in our show notes too so they can find you. Um, and you and I, we should plan, I think we missed, we missed it this year, but the, uh, Stokes Strata uh, is in March, it’s a hundred. It’s a, they’ve got a metric century and I not, I think you can either do 31 or, um, or, or the metric century. But, uh, it’s a, it’s a gravel grinder race. We could, uh, go, we’ve trained for that for next year. We can go do that together. <laugh>, rl. Alright. The, I’ll put some shocks on my bike. Yeah. <laugh>. Well, Brian, really, uh, always loved talking to you, loved your insights and really appreciate you coming on the show.
Bryan Lapidus:
Great talking to you. Great to catch up and, uh, looking forward to, to this and future episodes of fp and a today.
