Syed Nadeem is a top finance leader in Saudi Arabia. But the director of Budgeting at listed telecom company, Zain KSA, says he considers his previous failures as pivotal to his position today.
He says: “When I was young [and experiencing failure] I felt so disappointed I thought my world was going to end. Sometimes you don’t get a promotion and you see other peers getting a promotion. I struggled after getting my CMA (Certified Management Accountant). Sometimes you are not getting good increments, or you are about to hire someone and they reject you. But what I learned is this failure actually makes you strong for the future role.”
Today, he shares his full breadth of experience-both good and bad and explains why he provides (free) mentorships to businesses on a daily basis and to his 15,000 followers on LinkedIn.
In this wide ranging interview Syed explains:
- Uncovering the power of FP&A in companies providing a “helicopter view of companies”.
- The role and limitations of certifications in FP&A
- How “selling” is the core to getting a good job in finance
- The power of technology in FP&A and “unlearning and relearning every day”
- The secrets to effective communication with senior leadership
- How bad experiences make strong finance business leaders
- The secret to talking to Investors in a Language they Understand
Paul Barnhurst:
I am your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka The FP&A Guy. And you are listening to FP&A Today. FP&A Today is brought to you by Data Rails, the financial planning and analysis platform for Excel users. Every week we welcome a leader from the world of financial planning and analysis and discuss some of the biggest stories and challenges in the world of FP&A. We’ll provide you with actionable advice about financial planning and analysis. This is going to be your go-to resource for everything FP&A. I’m thrilled to welcome today’s guest on the show, Syed Nadeem, welcome to the show.
Syed Nadeem:
Thank you Paul. Thanks for having me on this show and pleasure meeting with you.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, no thanks for joining us. So I think Syed is our first guest that comes to us from Saudi Arabia, so we’re excited to have you with us. And he is working as a head of finance. He as a finance director and he earned his bachelor’s degree from Karachi University and he has also earned his ACMA and CFM certifications. So maybe you could just start by telling our audience a little bit about yourself and your background.
Syed Nadeem:
Thank you Paul, for having me on this show again. And it’s a long story but I will try to make it short. I started my career from, I did my graduation. I have never wanted to be an accountant because my father has a dream that I will become an accountant. He was injecting me in my brain since I was in grade 10 that you have to go for a ACM. So when the time comes I cleared my graduation covers graduation and time comes to take admission in CM and then I asked my father, I’m not interested in CMA, I’m interested in I.T. So he was quite disappointed at that time. But what happened I went to the computer science diploma and I started some at that time there’s a debate Google box based food application I’m talking about. It’s a long time story.
And then what happened? We started Oracle. So I was learning Oracle 5 and I was during my learning Oracle 16, Oracle 17, Oracle 18. So I was just confused, is there, is this the right sit, right decision I have taken or not? So I qualify my certification of diploma but I decided to move finance because of that kind of circuit process tasks that I cannot continue this kind of education where there’s no end. So I went to my father again that I want to continue my finance but he was very happy. Then I took the admission in CMA and then qualified after some time I got married in between and it was a great experience for being a CMA because that is actually the great achievement in my life when my father was very happy.
Paul Barnhurst:
No, that’s great. That’s a great story. I appreciate you sharing that. And can you maybe talk about how you’ve made the switch from where you started to where you’re at today, being more finance and FP&A focused maybe kind of what interested you in that area?
Syed Nadeem:
I started my career in 1999. FP&A was not actively working on that part. At that time there is a management accountancy role. So management accountancy role was not like today. We didn’t have mode of technology there in, I used to work on Lotus Lotus 123. I started my carry with that kind of spreadsheet. Then my boss told me one day that nothing we are moving to Excel. It was so difficult moving from Lotus 123 to Excel. So windows were coming 98 9 2000. That was a vaccine in my eyes. So I started Excel and learning about Excel. Even then the FP&A role was not there. So when I grow there and I have lot of experience, I was working at manager finance, then I heard about FP&A finance business partner. So then I explored these parts and that was quite interesting cause today we are sitting in 2023 and last 10 years I have seen lot of transformation in finance function.
I have never seen these kind of changes in the last 20 years, which I have seen in the last four to five years. And again if you can see rapidly changing, every day is a new day for you if you go to your job. So I think accounting function is going to be automated and FP&A is much attractive for you because you are leading the finance, you’re sitting in the front end, you are not in the back office. Accounting team always sit in the back office and when comes to the credit they are not part of it. Everything is done by sales marketing, supply chain team because they are a friend office. So now FP&A has a person ready to work as a front office man, you have to be part of that puzzle where team is making a strategy, you are presenting something, you have the history, you have the present, you have the future, you transform everything into the financial numbers and this can really help for decision making. So this is really a threat tool for me for being FP&A in my profession.
Paul Barnhurst:
I can understand what you’re saying there and I agree that we’re definitely seeing FP&A a be much more front office. You’re seeing some other things automated as you mentioned. And so it’s a really good place to be right now FP&A has changed a lot over the last few years. It’s getting a lot more recognition. The pandemic has accelerated what we’re seeing in FP&A, so I can totally understand why that interest. It really, if you love seeing the business and being hands-on with the business FP&A is really good for you. If you like dealing with numbers being very precise, not having to deal with forecast process procedures, then there’s accounting roles in areas in there that make sense. So I can see what you’re talking about there.
Syed Nadeem:
One more thing I want to tell you Paul. Cause finance is the only department or function who has the helicopter view of the company. No department has this kind of luxury, this is a big luxury and we don’t have idea what we have today. Data is going to a biggest asset for the company. So you have your custodian of the data. So if you being a custodian of the data, you can’t present anything. You can see all the performance, all the function, you can understand how supply chain is going, how sales is going, how market isn’t going. You can have very, very different visibility of the company.
Paul Barnhurst:
A hundred percent agree. As I say it’s we get a 360 view. We’re one of the only organizations, only people in the company that really get to see everything. And not only do we get to see the business lens of it but we get to see the finance lens. So we’re in a unique position to bring value across the entire organization.
Syed Nadeem:
Very true. So
Paul Barnhurst:
I know recently you started offering some one-on-one consultations for finance pro professionals. Can you maybe talk about how that came about? How did that get started?
Syed Nadeem:
Actually I started in five or six months ago. I was thinking about this idea that I want to help people because I can see the rapid changes in finance and people are far away from this. They are not able to take a decision on time. They are planning and planning and planning. They’re not going into execution phase. So I just want to shake their mind, call now one on meeting with me and because I explore lot of things in FP&A finance business, but I know what is happening in finance, what is the future of finance. So at that time when I was young, nobody was there. Mentoring concept was not there. We have teachers, we have office, but they were not guiding us like a mentor can mentor. I am just honest with you because I’m not charging anything.
It’s free of cost. So I created the platform, I created the flyer and sent to the LinkedIn profile. So some people join one meeting, then set me a second meeting, they started commenting on my LinkedIn post. So gradually they start meeting with me and they are finding something valuable they discuss with me cause I’m just shaking their head, I’m just giving them the direction, what is right, what is wrong, where do you invest, where do you don’t want to invest, what do you have and how can you utilize your skills today because this is a problem. And the candidate, they are confused. They are very, very selective when they are making paying money for any certification cause there’s a huge value. So I’m just guiding them what to do and what not to do. So what not to do is much important for them because now they will take a decision.
So I create the flyers signed to the social media on LinkedIn. People start connecting with me, I credit them my slot on timing. I give them 30 minutes on a daily basis. Now after some time, one month through, once people are connecting with me without any advertisement, any marketing. So last three, four months I have met with around more than 100 professionals from different parts of the world including Dubai, America, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India. A lot of people are joining me and they’re really appreciating my effort because I’m not charging anything. It’s very free of course. So I’m very honest with them. I’m giving time, the time on a daily business. I have my slot on the weekends and working days. So if they have time zone difference, they can manage the timing within it, they can adjust time. So I’m just talking about finance, FP&A finance business partnering interview skills, carrier advancement. So this is really a need of this market and it’s going very successful and so far it’s going to continue us and I’m very excited on this journey so far.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great, thank you for sharing that. I think that’s a wonderful thing you do and we’ll make sure to mention your contact information in the show notes. I think doing that at this point for free for people is really nice of you. What would you say is maybe your favorite part of doing it? What do you like most about talking to all these different people all over the world?
Syed Nadeem:
See what I have seen in the people in my discussion, they don’t have the cake. Let me explain this analogy. We have a plain cake and there is a topping on this. Sometimes people has topping means your skills, your achievement, your experience, and that’s it. And I can refer cake as your professional certification, which is can be CPA. Sometime they have their plain cake and sometime they have toppings. So very few people I found that they have full cake because if you are selling your skills only you will not get that price. And if you are selling only certification without the skills, you will not get that price. If you go to bakery and find the cake, you will not find the good price of these things. When you buy cake, cake always has expensive price, it means it’s full of toppings.
So what I’m meeting with the people, they are not taking care of the topping, They are just taking care of the certification. So they think that we have invested and the bad part, they are again taking another certification. I don’t know why they’re doing it. Once they are done CPA, why they’re going for CMA and cpa. Why? Cause once you invest a hundred percent, you get a hundred percent knowledge. But if you go to again a hundred percent investment, you will not get a hundred percent knowledge, maybe 10%. So why are you investing this money to certification? Why don’t you invest in your communication skills, presentational skills, your FP&A skills, your lot of skills . There a lot of things are complimenting all these things. So I’m just trying to guide them. Please reinvest your money into the right area. You already have certified honest professionals, you don’t need anything else. So this kind of discussion I’m discussing are really, really benefiting people and giving them some direction. What to invest, what not to invest.
Paul Barnhurst:
Got it. That is really important for people to understand. What role certifications play. Funny enough, someone posted, Wasia posted on LinkedIn this week about certifications and I followed up and kind of said do you need ’em? And I said no you don’t need them. Can they be helpful? Can they open doors for certain roles? May they be required? Yes. But it really comes about being well-rounded, right? A certification can be really helpful but just continuing to add certification after certification as you mentioned, there’s a big drop off, there’s a big erosion in your ROI. It’s about having the experience and the right skillset and that’s more important above all, I never did a CPA, I never did any kind of accountant certification. I did an mba, A in finance and then went to work. So I can say that you can be successful many different ways and it’s about figuring out what’s the right approach and where you should spend your time. Not just, hey if I get enough pieces of paper I can then get the jobs I want because rarely does that work the way you think it’s going to work.
Syed Nadeem:
Well I can mention that this is the market actually unfortunately when you apply for a job, the certification is the first criteria. They will shortlist you unfortunately. So it’s like a key. When you open the door and you have key to teh back of the door, you don’t see it even so unfortunately key has some kind of value, you cannot open the door and if you go into the house, it’s a game of skills and achievement
Says about your softest skills, your communication skills about this. This is game, different game but unfortunately in our society, in our market certification has some importance. You cannot open the door because your HR team is hiring you because of self criteria. Cause they’re not finance expert. They are given some kind of criteria. Please go and check this candidate. They check for educationm, they check experience, they check industry experience. So this is unfortunately the part of that criteria. And LinkedIn has different search criteria. You will not part of that criteria if you will not fulfill the requirement. So unfortunately you have to do it.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah and I think it depends on market. Like I said in the US I never had to do a CPA you don’t need a C P A for most fp n a jobs. I think in some markets they want to see that. So I think the certification depends because you are right. I’ve had a few roles but I’d say very few where they’ve said look to do FP&A , we want someone with a CPA. That’s been very rare as long as I had an mba, you know have a finance specialization, I was good to go. So I agree. There are definitely screening criteria and I think they do vary by region and location and you have to understand for your market what’s the key to the door and then how do you develop from there? And that’s going to be a little different. I would imagine for the Middle East, maybe a little different in India than it is in Europe than it is in the US. Every country and every company frankly not just country but company can have some different requirements.
Syed Nadeem:
Exactly. We are very specific on candid hiring. They’re very specific. If you go back to 15 years ago, they’re just looking at if you are an accountant. That’s it. That’s the only definition of finance is accounting. Today we have multiple type of accountants, people, account receivable, accountant, reconciliation, accountant, customer accountant, supplier, accountant. So companies are very specific. That’s why people are having some problem in getting the job because they don’t have that kind of particular criteria that company is looking for. There are certain criteria of different company right here.
Paul Barnhurst:
Agree. So I want to move to a next question here and I think you’ve answered some of this in your earlier answers, but I’ll go ahead and ask it. So somebody comes to you, they’re asking for advice, assume they’ve done a certification, they have a base level qualification and they’re struggling to gain traction in their career. How do you advise them now? What’s the typical kind of advice you’d give?
Syed Nadeem:
See, I have seen my career, this kind of issues. I have qualified my CMA very early days, but even then I was not succeeding in my life. I have lot of things that stopping me to move forward. So the only thing I found in myself is the software skills. So you have all the knowledge, you have all the understanding of finance, supply chain, Asia, how they work, how they integrate together. Sometime you implement a ERP system multiple time in different companies. You understand all the businesses. The only thing, how do you want to sell yourself, you are a salesperson. If company is selling product like shampoo. So mobile, you have also have the product, you should know how to sell it. My product is my experience, my knowledge, my skills, I want to say it. So I recommend people to focus on the communication skills, presentation skills, sellngskills. Because when you’re going into the interviews, you are not going into any interrogation, we’re going into the communication session. You are equally responsible for your success and failure and company is looking for you something. So you have full right to reject the company and company has the right to reject you. So you are on the balance side. So where is the fear? So make yourself ready for the good communication. Sell yourself and your job is done. Rest is God is taking care of everything.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, great point. If you focus on the communication, focus on presenting yourself well then you’ve controlled what you can control. You know, can’t control who the other candidates are and you can’t control what the hiring manager thinks. It’s out of your control.
Speaker 4:
That’s a
Paul Barnhurst:
Good advice. I am a big believer that anything we do to improve our soft skills and continue to grow and communication, influencing storytelling, leadership, all those things will pay dividends. They’re really important, especially the further you get along in your career. Technical skills get you started, but they’re not what gets you to management.
Syed Nadeem:
You cannot sell your good experience if you do not have good communication skills . And sometimes if you have good communication skills, you can sell your bad experience in a good way.
Paul Barnhurst:
A hundred percent agree. People that are really good at communicating can sell even a bad experience and as a positive because they’re able to communicate the benefits and the things they’ve learned from it. So I’m a big believer that you can’t spend enough time on communication. There’s always more we can do there.
Syed Nadeem:
Well I have built my last post recently I posted on LinkedIn about how you can build your presentations skills, how can you improve at finance people? So I recommend them to start some kind of trainings. Training is the best tool to improve your soft skills when you are facing audience. Maybe you don’t have personal digital p content, you can go for free of cost. Just bring four or five people within your company, talk to your HR, bring in front of you and do some presentation present about finance for non-finance. There are a lot of topic in finance department. They will be excited and you will have a opportunity. So make lot of mistakes and ask the feedback and then conduct this training again. So after five training, I’m telling you first can be worst, then it can be good. That can be best, that can be excellent. So it’s a phasing. So if you can do this, it’s a great opportunity to work on your communication. You will improve your communication presentation, your respect, your negotiation, your leadership team management, lot ofs we develop together.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great point that there’s so many different ways you can practice getting the team together. I mean communication comes down to practice, practice and more practice and you need to make sure you understand what makes good communication so that you’re practicing the right behavior. So that’s great point there. I mean there’s so many opportunities. I’m a big fan. I did Toastmasters for years, right? It’s a great, great organization.
Syed Nadeem:
I have been part of Toastmaster and I learned a lot from this platform. Really?
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. So that’s one. I encourage people. So I I’m with you. Anything you can do to improve your communication skills will pay off an investment that’s always worth it.
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So I’m going to change gears here a little bit and ask a different question. So obviously you talked a little bit about this earlier, the last five years you’ve seen a lot of change in FP&A. So in finance, how do you see it changing over the next few years? How do you see technology continuing to play a role in finance and FP&A?
Syed Nadeem:
Technology is taking over everything I’m planning, technology is taking over everything. If you have seen last four to five years technology, this four to five years will become one year, maybe two year maximum. So things are changing rapidly. So we have to understand the market, we have to align with the technology and if you are not aligned day by day, you are going far away from that opportunities. So crisis can be the opportunity. Today people are seeing this environment as a crisis. There are some people they are seeing as an opportunity I see as an opportunity. So you have to reinvest with yourself, you have to redesign your career strategy. It’s not like you have done ACMs enough. Everything has expiry rate now it’s time coming. You have to reinvest on few things. FP &A has a lot of new ideas. Even FP&A is far away from the reporting.
Reporting is part of it, but its more advanced than reporting. So try to be part of FP&A part. Try to understand what is happening with the RPA. RPA is taking over a lot of functions. Reputative functions go to business intelligence, learn about power BI, what they are, how they’re working. Try to understand data analytics because tomorrow your company has to provide live information. Your investor, your management doesn’t have time to wait for three months quarterly reporting, six months reporting because things are rapidly changing. The volume of data was not before like today. Variantce arose you cannot download in Excel. You have to understand advance E R P systems. So things are changing. If you are not part of it, you be far away from it. Either you are being disrupted or you can be disrupted. So you have to select carefully who you are. So I am trying to disrupt everything from my skills, from my new skills. I’m trying to unlearn things and relearn things every day. So every day came with a new way for you. So this is seem very excited and I can see very, very exciting career in finance that was not before And this is the only department. It’s very exciting. I can tell you and you should be excited. Believe me, you should be excited and a lot of new things are coming.
Paul Barnhurst:
No, I can completely agree. A lot of new things are to coming. I talk to a lot of different companies and just excited to see where technology’s heading. RPA, AI, machine learning, all of it, like you mentioned, there’s times when you got to deal with billions of records and knowing how to deal with that. BI tools and presenting data. Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming. And so I like to remind people yes it’s important to understand the technology and to have to be able to speak the language and to use it to your advantage. But just remember you don’t have to learn every new tool that comes along and spend all your time on the technical there. Again, just like with certifications, there’s a baseline you need to understand and then there’s a point where there’s diminishing returns. Unless that’s really what you want to do. Do you want to be known as the BI specialist or do you want to be known as the implementation guy Then by all means go deep. But if you’re really looking to get the leadership and you want a broad experience, it’s important to, like you said, use it to your advantage but keep yourself well-rounded which can sometimes be a challenge. So what do you think about that?
Syed Nadeem:
There is a very thin line, you know have to understand this thin line. You don’t need to cross it because you are finance professional, you have 15 years, 20 years experience. This is your life you have given to this profession. You cannot move to language, python language. Suddenly it’s a new world. You cannot move as a developer in power BI . But you need to understand these things strategically. If you are sitting in a board meeting and your IT is deciding something, you should speak something about it. You should share something. If you are going for Oracle, why not SAP? If you’re going for power bi, why not Tableau? So these kind of understanding you should have what tool is doing what. So I’m not asking finance profession, leave your professional go to the development side. RPA is a different different profession. Yes cannot not work as RPA available but you have to work with RPA developer, this is the change.
Paul Barnhurst:
Agree. You have to be able to speak the technical language. We’re not asking you to do a technical job. Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. There are a few people, there’ll be data scientists that will do that but for the vast majority of it we just need to be able to speak strategically and intelligently about the tools and understand the baseline of how we need to use them to be more productive.
Syed Nadeem:
Understand your limitation and don’t cross it otherwise you will lose yourself.
Paul Barnhurst:
So yeah, no I agree. It is definitely a thin line and everybody asks to decide where they want to be but you got to at least be able to speak the language and understand how to use it at a minimum. For sure. So next question here, I know you’ve worked quite a bit with senior leadership, the C E O and some of the C-level leaders in different roles. So what advice would you offer to FP&A professionals when interacting with senior leadership?
Syed Nadeem:
Let me share my experience with his part because what happened actually we have to be align ourself in the direction of the CEO. Sometime the CEO wants to go to the right? And we are going left. So most of the profession are facing these kind of difficulties and they say we are not aligned with the strategy of the company. So we have to see the bigger picture of the company. When you’re sitting in the board meeting, you should be the observer there. What’s going on, what is the language, what they’re trying to do, what they are trying to achieve. So if you have this kind of understanding of business in the next meeting you will bring reports and analysis based on the discussion happened in last meeting. So you will be aligned with that. This is the part if you are listing from your board member, they want to in increase their sales, bring the report that will help them to increase the sales, right?
So you have to bring your different kind of analysis, right? Region sales, customer sales. What is my new customer? What is happening with my old customers? What is happening with my organic growth? What is happening? non organic growth. Each kind of analysis you have to create. So you have to be observant in the meeting. Obviously you’re not part of discussion on the active way but you should help them to execute the strategy. And you have the only person as I said before, that you have the data custodian so you can be the best presenter to help them. So try to listen the meeting conversation, try to understand the minutes of the meeting, what’s going on and try to have one-on-one meeting with your CEO sometime you know us look the opportunity when you have the discussion with the leadership, sometime you will find leaders on the lift sometime you will find leaders in the parking area.
Don’t lose this opportunity. Try to bring something valuable with them trying to discre about the business. They will be, you should be passionate about the business and understanding of the business. They will see in you something maybe they will be bringing you in that kind of meeting as well. So if you’re a junior you have to have a different strategy. If you’re senior you should have different strategy first depending on the position you have. So not everybody has a chance to see in the board meeting, but if you have a chance, don’t miss it. Go there, try to attend these kind of meetings sometime you don’t take serious on these meetings. Make a note, what kind of discussion is going on? Try to help over help free of cost. Present the report. I have some idea I can present you some reports. Is this good for you? Maybe they will ask you please give me the support every month. So that can be changed for you. So try to be part of those meetings, business meeting, one-on-one meeting and discuss with them about the business. So if you understand the business, you’ll understand the strategy of the business and direction of the business, then you will have full alignment with the CEO sometime.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I like the part you said try to attend the meetings and learn if you can attend them because they’re really good opportunities for people to understand and focused on being aligned, bring the data they need. All good points and good advice there. I appreciate that. So another question I have when I reviewed your resume it had showed that you had led a couple rounds of VC funding during your career. So maybe can you talk a little bit about that experience? What was that like? How did you prepare for that
Syed Nadeem:
I joined a startup company, it was a B2B startup. The idea was to connect supplies and the customer through these applications. So what is happening? We created the application. We are bringing different kind of products because our target was restaurants. So restaurants has lot of products. We are bringing on the application. We are just taking part of the value chain because it’s a big value chain. We are just connecting suppliers in the buyer from this applications. So customer is registering themself to the application and they’re finding lot of product from the suppliers and we have different agreements with the subsupplier where they’re keeping their product to the applications. So what happened, obviously every startup needs some investment. There is some bootstrapping which is done by the co-founders and when you want to run this company regarding working capital, the reinvestment, your marketing strategic cannot do it by your own money.
We need money. So I have a chance to work with the VC round first round which is you can proceeding around with the investors and there’s a very good investor invested the money. We pitched the idea of the company, we have presented the whole process of the company. What is our idea? Because we were trying to help customers cause there are a lot of problems in the restaurant industry cause they are dealing with multiple suppliers, multiple paper. So this application will give them the one point where they can buy anything they want the one payment. So this was the idea and investor was very much excited on this. We have many investors and Saudi Arabia and they were very excited and I was very fortunate to be part of that kind of process and this is the real time why my lifetime achievement that I can say because when you go into the big companies you will not see this kind of process. When you go to startup you will face these kind of issues. So this was the opportunity I got. I worked for a few months, nine, 10 months and that company and there’s a really good learning from this.
Paul Barnhurst:
So what advice would you offer to somebody else who’s preparing for a funding round maybe what were the top lessons you learned from that experience?
Syed Nadeem:
See every new startup should have the potential because what investor is looking in the company because company has make is making loss. There is no profit. Maybe we will not two, three years. So why we’re investing in the lost company, this is the point we need to understand. So investor always see the potential. If you have your company has a full potential, they can see they can flourish in the market, you are helping customers, you are disrupting something, they will definitely invest because initial round is very important. Cause whoever come to the initial round, they will take benefit after second round because the market sprice will go up. Every round is different. So every round is very important and you have to make hard. If you can successfully take some initial investors good names, your next round investing will be easy for them because you have the big name on your board. So this is the learning you have to create the potential. First round is difficult always because you have to show your potential. Who is the investor, who is the co-founder? What is qualification experience of co-founder? This is much important than the company because they’re trusting these companies, they’re investing on their behalf. So the trust should be sustainable. There are a lot of companies, they are going out from the company and they’re not sustainable. But if a company is sustainable, investor will come and invest in this money.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great point about one I think you mentioned being sustainable but that they invest in the leader, not necessarily the company but a lot of it has to do with do they believe that the right person is leading this company and careful and do they think he can be successful? Because ideas are a dime a dozen. Everybody can have an idea but they need to believe the team can execute on it and that the market’s there for the high growth that they want to see. Because as you mentioned in every one of these cases the companies aren’t making money, you’re investing in something that’s losing money. So you’re investing with the idea that in the future they can make a lot of money and so you can get a big return. And s
Syed Nadeem:
Everybody has a belief this technology is the future, this belief plus potential plus leadership, these thing things push investor to invest here. So everybody believes this technology is the future. If you are bringing some startup with alignment with the technology, they’re excited because they can see because people has a lot of money. I’m telling you they’re looking for opportunities. That’s it. So if you have a good startup opportunity, you have good idea, you will find a lot of investors, they will come with you in their journey.
Paul Barnhurst:
I agree that there’s plenty of money out there to be had for the right team, the right idea as you mentioned, believe potential leadership, they’re looking for those things. And if you have those three, you’ll find somebody that will invest in you obviously is everybody going to, of course not because everybody has a different opinion on who they believe in, what they see in leadership, what they think of a potential. I might look at one idea and say yeah no thanks and you might look at it and go yeah let me invest. That’s just difference of opinion and you’re going to get a lot of that. But at the same time, like you mentioned, if you get the big names in the early round it makes it a lot easier. So I think as I listen to that from a finance perspective, it’s really just helping the leadership team I would think to polish things and make sure that the assumptions around any numbers are realistic, that you can support them just to help give the investors that confidence that there’s somebody there to help guide that side of things. Would you say that’s true?
Syed Nadeem:
One thing I will tell you, when any companies start as a startup, the first person hire is an accountant, is a finance. And when companies close, the last person leave the company is the finance. So finance always has the leverage for a lot of things. And really in a startup company a accuracy, you cannot achieve it initially. It’s so difficult to foresee you for next four to five years. Yeah you develop some financial models. Yes based on the information you have, based on the market you have, based on the customers you have. But is so difficult to make this forecast most accurately, it’s so difficult. It’s next to impossible. People are making this but I don’t believe on this because these numbers are just attracting the investor to invest in this company. So they are trying to achieve the bottom line. Believe me, if you will show the profit on the first year, investor will not invest.
Paul Barnhurst:
Good point.
Syed Nadeem:
They don’t want to see the profit, they don’t want to see. They know they will never achieve profit in first year, even second year. So you have to stick what investor want to see in this financial and cash flow. So what is the flow of cash flow is much important than the P&L. So they focus on cash flow because investor is not an accountant, they will not understand your language and what is happening in IFRS , what is tax and what is the position? They are mostly interested in the cash flow. Where is money is going and where is going. That’s it. If you are successfully trying to achieve this target and convince them the cashflow part which is working capital. So that can be your turning point on this part. So balance sheet is clear, I understand what balance sheet is not understandable for everybody. P&L, yes they will give you some bottom line, the top line and every company they drive not from the bottom line. Every evaluation a of company is coming from the top line. They care about the bottom line first two, three years. But they care about the top line. Top line is most important than the bottom line.
Paul Barnhurst:
No I agree early on it’s all about the growth potential. Yeah, they know they’re funding something that’s going to lose money. So as you mentioned, cash flow is as we always say, cash is king, right? It’s so important to understand that. So that’s great advice and some good points there. Appreciate that. So I’m curious, when you come into a company, I know you’ve worked at a number of different companies when you first get in there, what are some of the metrics or some of the things you like to look at? What do you like to analyze?
Syed Nadeem:
See I always would like to analyze a P&L first thing because while if you ask me as a finance person, balance sheet is much important than P&L if you ask me. But unfortunately when you go into any industry, we are not selling balance sheet as a product. Finance is not selling it. We are selling always a P&L because P&L justification is much easier than vanes. This is the part we have. So in my experiences we always analyze a P&L n terms of sales, your gross profit, your expenses, then you drill down to the branches, you drill down to the supplies, you drill down to the locations. A lot of things you can do. But always I enjoy the P& Lanalysis. I would like to have the analysis of balance sheet but I don’t have this audience today. I don’t have any customer.
I can say I am the service provider but I don’t have any market where I can see my balance sheet. My entrepreneur doesn’t understand the benefit sheet. But the way you have to understand the benefits so difficult for them. So P&L is the most important report which entrepreneur want to see and they’re always excited to see this. So if you go into this detail, you will enjoy it. I enjoy it because there are a lot of tools that are available Now you can use power query, you can use power Power, you can use power bi download data. It’s so exciting. It’s not about the numbers, it’s about the process you are working on. It’s really enjoyable if you have tons of data and you can transform it by a power query in a very clean way. You love it, you see some achievement, you did something you know have excel some attachment with you, you have some emotion with Excel, Excel is working as assistant for you. So you always have emotion for Excel. So I enjoy this process when you have data process, data transformation, analytical things, reportings, I enjoy it. Thank
Paul Barnhurst:
You for sharing that. I enjoy that process as well. And I get what you’re saying is it’s very easy or easier I should say, to understand the p and l for the founder for the leadership team often than the balance sheet. But the balance sheet can help you understand some things from a finance perspective that you’re not going to get from the P&L alone. You can’t build a cashflow statement from just a P&L . You need that balance sheet. You need to be on unwind things. And so there’s so much value in seeing what’s changing time over time, what’s building, what’s not building from a finance perspective. But I can see the first thing to do is to go in and let me help understand the P&L, right? Starting there makes a lot of sense. So we’re coming up toward the end of our time and we have a few standard questions we like to ask people and so we’ll go with the first one here. And this question has to do with the failure. I like to look at failures as learning experiences. So we like to ask this question, can you describe a time you had experienced a failure at work and what did you learn from that failure? Yes, I have a lot of ’em too, right? We all should. If we’re trying, we’re going to have them.
Syed Nadeem:
No actually I went by when I was young and I see the failure, I felt so disappointed at that time because I always think my world is going to end. So that was the mindset I had in my young age. So sometime you don’t get promotion, your other peers getting promotion, you feel your failure. Sometime you are not getting good increments, you feel failures, right? Sometime you reach to the point where you are about to hire and they reject you. You feel failure. The lot of point comes in your life, you go to examination. CMA I have a lot of failure. So what I learned as a conclusion, this failure actually is making you strong for the future role. I see like this now, but what I’m meeting with the people in my one-on-one meeting, I’m trying to tell about my failure on them. I have lead off, I have lot of failures, I have multiple time.
I did not get any promotion, no increments, no growth. It happened with me. But what I’m learning from my future today, I’m in this position today as the head of finance or finance director. Because of that failure, because I don’t want to repeat those failure, I have learned a lot, I have very bad stories and bad stories develop into strong people. If you have always good story, you will not become good strong people you know should want to be strong professionals you should have the badest stories in your life. So don’t be worry about bad stories. It happens in your life and it is part of the process. If you go to the ECG of the heart, this is your life. Sometime it’s going up sometime down. If this is straight, you are dead. Dead, right?
Paul Barnhurst:
True.
Syed Nadeem:
So I always learned from the ECG where it is going up and down, the problem counts when you are up. Problem is not when you are down. So because next stage is down so it will happen. Don’t be afraid of this but how we have to manage this failure. This is the point. If you can manage these failures by your experiences, by your knowledge buyer skills, you can succeed for any part of your life.
Paul Barnhurst:
Tha thank you for that answer. I really like the heart analogy, right? If it’s doing this, you’re dead and you got a problem, life is going to be up, up and down it. That’s how it works. And you need to prepare yourself from that and learn from those down periods. Not let them control you. Because as you mentioned earlier in your career, and I’ve had some of those where you freak out, you’re like, I’m going to get fired, right? I screwed up, they’re going to terminate me. And I’ve told this story many times and it’s one of my favorite is IBM, I think it was back in the sixties, one of the senior leaders made a 10 million mistake and he went into the CEO’s office and he goes, you’re going to fire me. I should pack my bags. He goes, why would I fire you? I just paid for a $10mlearning experience. I don’t want to pay someone else to learn that lesson
Syed Nadeem:
Been you couldn’t consider the cost of learning. That’s it. Yeah,
Paul Barnhurst:
Really failures are within reason. They’re the cost of learning. Obviously if you’re making big huge mistakes again and again and not learning, that’s a problem. The key is the learning aspect
Syed Nadeem:
Perfectly. You should be treat yourself as a student all the time.
Paul Barnhurst:
Agree, but give
Syed Nadeem:
You feel to be always.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yep. So this is next question we’d like to ask is a little more personal question and I always have fun seeing the different responses we get. What is something unique about you that you can share with our audience? Something we wouldn’t find online?
Syed Nadeem:
This is really a question that I would like to answer because my unique things is I want to be a generous person. I’m always generous, I help people. I offer this kind of services, not now. Now LinkedIn is there, social media is there. That’s why you are much visible now. But I used to be like this. I help people always and I want people to be educated. I want to help that because the only weapon you have for your future is your education. There a lot of people, they are not understanding the power of education. Sometime they, they’re doing businesses and they compromise their education sometime because the father is there and you are a student of the father, you become the businessman. So I always focus on the people because I always keep myself updated on the things. I see myself as a mobile.
If you are Nokia, 3310, it’s not there. How you treat yourself, you should be a mobile. Mobile, have multiple application in yourself. It’s a time sometime you have to delete some application sometime you have to install some new applications. So you have to word yourself like this. It’s not only learning, learning new things, it’s about I learning as well. You have to believe something. There is a time I have lot of Lotus 123 you’re doing, you need to delete this application from your life. You cannot carry it for a long time now new time. So treat yourself as a mobile, update yourself one time. I keep myself updated. This is a unique thing. I can see myself and I’m very conscious about this. Anything is coming new I try to catch it. I don’t feel something coming new is not the timers always. Always the time I have to keep myself available for this learning. I spare my time, I spare my learning always. And this is the thing, I am updating myself all the time. So if you will not update yourself, your mobile will not work to sometime.
Paul Barnhurst:
[inaudible] appreciate that example and unique. I like that about always updating yourself. So next one, obviously Excel data rails, big fans of Excel and Excel is something everybody in finance is used in most every role they’ve been in. Occasionally some companies might have another tool, but today it’s pretty ubiquitous with finance. So what is your favorite, let’s just say Excel. What’s your favorite thing about Excel? Formula function kind of feature.
Syed Nadeem:
Different features at different timies. I cannot say one thing that can give me my whole journey. Cause Accion is now more advanced than before. Yep. Oh yeah. You have Power Query in the recent time. I love Power Query because it’ll give me away from lot of formulas. I don’t need to apply IF function, I don’t need to apply vehicle function. I don’t need to apply a lot of aging function. So today in time I can say I can rate Power Query is the most important thing. Everybody should learn. Everybody. And because Excel always had the limitation, 1.4 million lines are there, but Power Query doesn’t have any limitation. You can have million, 25 billion lines you can manage very easily. You can create different kind of analysis. It has actually BI function. You’re recording all these traps one time and just upload the data. It trigger everything automatically. So what else you need, Excel has so much power today. So if I will ask people to learn about something from Excel, go directly to Microsoft Query.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I’m a huge fan of Power Query, so I appreciate that answer. And I have often talked about the importance of people learning it. I think it can save a ton of time and I wish more people would learn power query. So I thank you for that answer with you. It’s one of my favorite things in Excel as well. Let’s just say somebody was starting their career tomorrow, so maybe they just graduated. They’re getting ready to start. They know they want to start their career in FP&A. What advice would you give them?
Syed Nadeem:
See when you starting your new career and you find the job, obviously you have to understand your technical skills. This is your core area, which is finance and accounting. With the IFRS, everything is, you have to touch it, but it’s not enough. When you are going into any company, try to spend some time with understanding of business, core business, how companies making money. Who is your customer? Who is your, what is the market share you have? So these kind of understandings we have to develop with you sometime you don’t have an opportunity. I understand this part, but you focus should be there, right? Maybe you will not understand. Maybe in one, two months maybe you will learn in one year. Give the time. No problem. You are just starting your career. We will learn these things after 10 years of their career because we are the example.
We did not focus on business in my initial experiences. But now today we are experiencing. So I have spent a lot of time not understanding the business. Today we are focusing on this, but you are as a new generation, you have lot of inspiration, lot of examples, social medias here. Try to connect with the FP&A people, join the groups, join the Whatsapp group and be part of it. Sometime you are in the wrong pool. Maybe you have an opportunity in the company where they don’t have any vision of FP&A n your company. It happens sometime in the small companies. But how you can learn these things, you have to be part of that pool. You cannot jump to that pool but try to connect you on a weekly basis. On a monthly basis, try to join these groups, try to attend the webinar, try to connect with the people one-on-one meetings.
So be yourself and try to be part of it. So what will happen gradually, your mindset will change automatically. If you are sitting with the people they go to gym on a daily basis, after three months of time you will start going to the gym. This is the mindset is working. So if you want to make your mindset to the right side, be a friend of the right person. You have to be with the right person. If you are not in the role, if you are not with the right person, try to be. Today is a time of social media, LinkedIn, words of Facebook. You can connect anybody anytime. So if you want to learn business, try to learn business, try to connect with the people they are in the same business. Try to connect with the people. Try to have a meeting with your company. Try to attend the meeting or take some appointment with your leaders.
Please. I want 30 minutes with you. That’s it. Try to ask some questions. That question will create something in your mind. What’s going on in the business. So business understanding is important. Create soft skills. Soft skills are very important. You have to focus on it. If you cannot, you don’t have these skills, try to learn it and practice it because technical skills, you can learn from the books. You don’t need to practice. You can memorize it easily, but I don’t see anything that you can learn from the books as a soft skills. Soft skills cannot be learned from the books, just learn from the practice and it’ll come graduate by the time. But don’t lose your focus on this.
Paul Barnhurst:
Thank you for that answer. I appreciate that. So I’ve really enjoyed our time today. Appreciate you being on the show. Last question here. If someone wants to learn more about you or get ahold of you, what is the best way for them to do that?
Syed Nadeem:
I’m very visible on LinkedIn. I’m very active. I’m posting a lot of things on LinkedIn. You can connect with me. If you go to my page, you can find my link. You can connect with me in one-on-one meeting. I have my slot available. You can just book and then it’s very easy. You will receive the message automatically in your inbox. I will receive the message and we will connect through the link from the Zoom or team link. It’s multiple links out there. So it’s so easy to connect with the people if you are sitting in any part of the world. So take a benefit on this. And not only me, there are a lot of people are there Paul is here. So I can see many people are helping people here. They are very much answerable, very much. You can connect with them very easily. You can send them answer Christian, they will answer you. So it’s not their time. There is no excuse today for not having this kind of learning. Yesterday there were a lot of excuses because of social media was not in the market. Whil now because of social media knowledge is there. People are here, is just need you actually. That’s it.
Paul Barnhurst:
All right, well great. We’ll make sure to put in the show notes how they can connect with you and take advantage of your generous offer there to meet with people one-on-one. And thank you again for being on the show. I appreciate you making time for us today and excited for the audience to listen to this. So thanks again for joining us, Syed.
Syed Nadeem:
Thank you very much, Paul. And thanks a lot for this opportunity that I can express myself through you and I’m looking forward your shows and I’m excited for this. Thank you.