Walmart, Kraft Heinz, Blue Rock Therapeutics, and the Four Seasons hotels are just some of companies that regularly invite Ron Monteiro to coach their finance teams in storytelling. But Ron’s success followed a decade of fear in presenting and public speaking. Starting in accounting at Hitachi “it was actually the only job I could get”) the CPA and CMA was inspired by a manager who gave him direction and mentorship doing FP&A at Kraft, as well as daily work overcoming his debilitating fears. Now he delivers a playbook to teams across painting finance as “expected to be at the table, not just tactically, but strategically.”Ron is also the author of a new book: Love Mondays.
In this episode
- Fear of public speaking I’ve carried through my life
- Kraft Foods and a leap of faith from my manager
- 15 years at Kraft with 7 jobs and five promotions including FP&A manager, analyst and director
- Transforming Kraft FP&A into strategic value: Kraft Singles and “Getting Our Shit Together” meetings
- Brendan Flynn’s leadership of finance at Kraft developing future finance leaders
- The downward trend of FP&A post 3G Capital’s buyout
- CPG and the essential metrics
- Learning what you can do to grow – listening tour as business partnering and putting your hand up
Love Mondays! A Proven Process to Bring Joy Back Into Your Work Week and Life Paperback by Ron Monteiro https://www.amazon.ca/Love-Mondays-Proven-Process-Bring/dp/B0DPMTVYY3
Transcript from the show:
Glenn Hopper:
Welcome to FP&A Today, I’m your host, Glenn Hopper. It’s my pleasure today to be speaking with Ron Montero. Ron is a CPA and CMA, as well as a dynamic speaker, trainer, and author with a mission to transform workplaces and inspire people to love what they do. Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya. Ron moved to Toronto, Canada where he now calls home overcoming challenges with social skills and a severe fear of public speaking. Ron carved out an exceptional career in finance rising through the ranks at Kraft. His time there not only honed his technical expertise, but also gave him the confidence to thrive as a leader in 2021, Ron founded his own company dedicated to helping individuals and teams embrace every day with enthusiasm. Through his engaging keynote speeches and practical training sessions, he’s made an impact at major organizations, including Walmart, Kraft Heinz, blue Rock Therapeutics, and the Four Seasons hotels. We’re excited to dive into Ron’s journey, his insights into fp and a, and how he’s helping professionals find purpose and joy in their work. Ron, welcome to the show. Thank
Ron Monteiro:
You, Glenn. Very excited to be here.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, I love your story, and I, I’m, I’m really excited to, uh, to dive in. You know, I think about all the fp and a guests we have, and we have, you know, people that pivot from doing corporate FP&A to doing maybe training on FP&A or to something, uh, you know, in that realm. And it’s interesting how you’ve taken it and expand it out. And we’re gonna get into your book, which I didn’t even mention in the, uh, um, in the opening here. So, uh, we’ll, we’ll get into all this. So I guess maybe in your own words, kind of walk us through your career journey from starting out in accounting and then going into fp a and now, uh, you know, you current role where you’re, you know, a, a speaker and a trainer.
Ron Monteiro:
Yeah. Thank you for that. So you mentioned, I, I grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, and I moved to Canada, Toronto, uh, when I was a teenager. And the difference, you know, I, I faced was I, in Kenya, I was very academic. And look, I, I had great academic skills, but I had very poor social skills. And so I moved into an environment where I, frankly, really struggled. I was very nervous to talk. I had a bit of an accent, and it was a struggle, and I carried that struggle out. I mean, it was fine, but like right through high school, university. And I still had built up this fear of public speaking of, of communicating. And interestingly enough, I was pretty good at math. So I, I, I did my commerce degree. I ended up in an accounting role at Hitachi, and it, it was actually the only job I could get.
I, I really struggled at first, and I did three years of fundamental accounting, really good, good job to learn fundamental accounting, but it was still very backroom. And I didn’t have a chance to, you know, explore public speaking or even just participate much. It was just get the job done and move on. Great experience. But then I fortunately landed at Kraft Foods, and I got this interview, and I remembered the director saying, Hey, Ron, I don’t think you’re qualified for the role, but I’ll take a leap of faith in you. And that was a big turning point in my career because I went into this organization and had a phenomenal development program for finance and all the other functions leaders there as part of their develop, you know, as part of their evaluation were evaluated on how they developed their teams. So I walked into this environment accidentally, and they had a great technical skills training program, but they also had a good soft skills program.
And so I ended up staying there for 15 years. I probably had seven jobs. I got promoted about five times. And my first role was a corporate finance overhead role. Again, numbers, Excel just pounded out. And then I, I got promoted and I got put into an FP&A role, and all of a sudden I find myself around a table with marketing, sales, supply chain. My very first month, I’m in the president’s office presenting a pricing recommendation. And we literally got kicked outta the room. It was a very smart president, <laugh>, he kicked us out. He’s like, you haven’t thought of all these things. And it was like a red pen all over the preiss issue. And at the same time, in hindsight, great experience, obviously very, very much a baptism by fire. What I loved is I could now see my products on shelf. I could, I, I was starting to build confidence because people appreciated the technical skills I brought to the table.
And at the same time, it gave me so many opportunities to start communicating. So I, I ended up staying there for 15 years. I did FP&A as an analyst, a manager and a director, and I did several other roles, supply chain, sales, finance, and consumer packaged goods is a brilliant training ground for fp a because it’s so fast moving the investitures acquisitions, all these things. And we, we get to about 2015 and, uh, the company got bought out mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so 3G Capital bought them out, they transitioned. I was at a director level. I, I actually put up my hand and said, look, I’m ready to move on. It was a phenomenal chapter, but it was time to move on. And then I ended up going to a company as a VP of finance for a private company. And so I’ll give you an example with Kraft, it would take you one year to launch a flavor of cream, cheese, regulatory, all these things, but it was a slow moving organization, and it was a great organization.
So I’m not saying that’s bad, but then you move into a entrepreneurial experience where people are like, the owner wants to launch something in three weeks, and you’re like, what is going on? Or I’d bring him an idea to say, Hey, we should put some TVs in the plant to, to monitor a result. He’s like, go do it. He’s like, take my nephew and go to the Costco and do it <laugh>. And I was just like, so I was like a kid in a candy store for the, for that experience from the beginning. And then at the same time, I did miss some of the pieces of craft, like, you know, some of the processes, the talent, the, you know, the procedures we had. And so great, great chapter. And then I ended up doing another fp a role at Campbell Soup, where we closed a plant that was an 87-year-old plant.
So seeing a very different side of business. And my last corporate role was Kruger products, where the president of Kraft was now the CEO of Kruger. And he was just trying to bring a little bit more that business partnership mindset to finance. So in that role, I actually had a dual responsibility of corporate finance and training for finance. And I ended up loving that training side probably more than my day job. And that’s what catapulted me a little bit into this world where I live. And you know, your listeners will know Paul Barnhurst, me and him do a lot of training all over the world. And it, it brings me a lot of joy to share the skills I’ve learned in this FP&A world as well as in leadership and Excel and all these other things that we play in.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, that’s great. Whenever I, I, I talk to, uh, guests like you who’ve been been in the business for, for so long, I start to draw corollaries to my own experience. And I think about, and I was not, I was about half this amount of time, um, my first FP&A role and, uh, you know, like you kind of moved up through the ranks, but was at a telecom company and we had so much data and I learned so much. And I, same kind of thing when I came into it, you know, back then they weren’t FP&Aa wasn’t something we said, I was just the finance guy, <laugh>. And, uh, you know, it seemed like nothing was defined. Nobody, nobody was thinking about soft skills in 2000 or nobody at my company when <laugh> when I was, uh, going, going through that. But, um, seeing kind of when you have that much data and you’re at a larger company and you get to work with all that.
So I did that for about seven years. And then I went to, um, startups, very, very early stage startup, my first CFO, um, I guess that, well, that one wasn’t, it wasn’t a startup. It was a small business that we were leveraging and, you know, getting ready to, to grow and, and, uh, that’s when they brought me in. But, um, but being used to the way things work at that large company, and then at this small company, you are wearing all these hats and it was <laugh>, you know, you could be <laugh> doing, but it was the both of them had incredible learning, uh, associated with them. So I, you know, the sort of the, the mix of, uh, background that you bring to it is, uh, you know, I think that’s great. And it’s, um, certainly at a company as big as, as Kraft Heinz, I’m sure you, you know, could have stayed there another 15 years and learned <laugh> as much more. But, um, but taking that and then applying it to other businesses, and I think having those disparate experiences probably helps you as, as a trainer to be kind of, you know, not just we’re, we’re only talking about the Fortune 100 level companies here, but you’ve also seen the other side of it as well.
Ron Monteiro:
Yeah. Like, I, I always tell people, like, that year and a half that I spent at the private company was probably my most challenging experience, but was probably my best experience. And as you said, it’s a compliment, right? I, I do some university talks and they say, Hey, would you do a big company first or a small company? And I say, look, I think both experiences are great. Everybody’s different. So for me, it was a real benefit to start la a large great company like that, and then go to the smaller company. Other people might be the reverse, but I totally agree with you. It’s, you know, the compliment to the two is powerful.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. I wanna think back to Kraft, because I feel like the time you were there and the amount of experience you had could probably really informed, um, your training even more, because the role that you had at Kraft, you transformed fp and a into a function that added strategic value. And we think about, and it’s really the, as your career has progressed, I really think that between, and the kind of stuff you’re training on, um, you know, the soft skills, the business partnering, the storytelling and everything, fp a has really evolved. And I, I go back to early career and think about where, you know, finance and accounting were just considered this cost center and backward looking and all that. So maybe if you could walk through transforming the fp and a function at, at Kraft to where it was, you know, where the group is actually adding real strategic value. And if you’ve got any specific examples or kind of your methodology about that, I’d love, I’d love to hear about that.
Ron Monteiro:
Yeah, no, so it’s interesting. So when I joined back that example where I was in fp a and we got kicked outta the president’s office, I was talking before, so I used to sit on these brand teams, right? So Kraft Singles, for example, a brand that most people recognize. And we used to have our GOST team meetings, which, you know what GOST stands for. So it’s get our stuff together, but you can substitute that something else for the yes in there, right? And I used to go to there and, and I was kind of like a little confused because I was a very accounting back based, uh, background before. And we talk about innovations and flavors and pricing and all these things. And the marketing, uh, manager at the time, she would look at me and say, Ron, what do you think? And I was a little bit like, what?
And it was just in the DNA of craft to say, FP&A is at the table. Yes, we’ll take the, the lead on the finance, but it’s a well-rounded business. And I’ll tell you, my first three days of Kraft was a, was a brilliant orientation where they had an annual orientation for all new members. We went to plants, we went out to sales, we went out to, I went out to a commercial shoot for Philadelphia cream cheese. And so you’re starting to see a 360 view of the business, not just the spreadsheet. You know, there was an expectation for finance. Yes, you’re getting the privilege of doing that, but we want your opinion. I got to go one of my very first jobs, my sec, my third job at Kraft, I gotta go present pricing to a coffee company. And it was a formula based pricing.
It was not subjective, it was objective. And the guy receiving it was still yelling at me, I, what is going on here? <laugh>. And so then you start understanding, here’s what a salesperson goes through, even in a very objective situation, here’s what marketing is doing. They’re up all night helping do the creative. And so for me, I got a brilliant combination of, yes, I own the numbers and there’s all kinds of numbers and ways to do it, but we were at the table, right? Making decisions, providing input. And look, I slowly got there. At first I didn’t know what to say, but you start saying, how do I do it? And then another great example is we had a strap plan for our cheese division. So our marketing director set it up full day offsite finance, you’re gonna be there and here’s your time slot to present your ideas.
And at first we’re like, whoa, what, what’s going, what do we do? And we started just doing simple things like, let’s do a skew ranking and say, what percent of SKUs, you know, 80, 20, things like that. And what was pretty amazing is the marketing team would look at us and say, wow, we didn’t know that. And, and so you’re, you’re expected to be at the table, not just tactically, but strategically. And, and look throughout my career, lots of examples like that. Like I went out across Canada presenting the importance of profit to a sales team that was completely revenue based, that they didn’t care all about the bottom line, and they weren’t incented on it. So now I’ve gotta go across the country and try to convince them. Like, and so that is one of the things that really built my softness. So how do you engage an audience that maybe is at a resort and they’ve got a golf game right after this <laugh> and the finance guy gets the last time slot. So it, it was just a brilliant example, and it was just an, it was in the DNA of craft, which was so cool. It was, again, a fortunate circumstance that I landed there that completely changed me.
Glenn Hopper:
That’s incredible. And you think, you know, for a company as, as big and as as old asraf is to be that focused on employees and, and so the training and the exposure and kind of the, the, just the culture around there, um, it’s, uh, I wonder how much of that survived the, uh, the, the buyout when, at the time that you left, if that, you know, if they were able to keep that. Yeah,
Ron Monteiro:
No, it’s interesting that we, we were still very busy even before the buyout. And our, our, we had a brilliant VP of finance names Brendan Flynn, and many, many leaders have developed because of his vision and, and, and the other leaders. But he would always double down on things like training, even in busy times. And it was a little counterintuitive to say, Hey, when you’re busy, should we cancel all that? And our engagement scores were off the charts because we continued to do that. So the 3G comes in, they basically cut all of that. Yeah. And it was a, Hey, how do we get to a prostate number that’s way higher and short term. It did deliver that, but then it didn’t last. And so now what I’m hearing, again, this is my opinion and my, what I’m hearing is now they’re starting to rebuild a bit of that culture. 3G is, is out of that world for now. Mm-hmm. And so it’s now, you know, it’s, it’s quickly, it’s, it’s very quick to, to dis I shouldn’t say destroy, but to change a culture. And now it’s like it takes time to rebuild that muscle, right. Which was pretty amazing.
Glenn Hopper:
There are a bunch of case studies, uh, Harvard case studies on it. I dunno if you’ve seen any. And I, I, I’ve got a couple of ’em actually. So if you’re Oh, fantastic. Interested in reading <laugh>.
Ron Monteiro:
Yeah, definitely
Glenn Hopper:
Know post, yeah. That’s, that’s the level of geek I am that I love reading <laugh>.
Ron Monteiro:
No, but
Glenn Hopper:
It’s
Ron Monteiro:
Case studies. But it’s, it’s a brilliant case study. I mean, Warren Buffet was all in on that deal too, right? So that was one where he technically had some egg on his face, and I think he said it, but it’s, it’s a good reminder to us in finance to say, it’s not just about cutting the cost, it’s about the top line as well, right? Because it, the downhill started the downhill slide started with a goodwill write down, right? Yep. And, and that’s what started it all. And, and then, you know, you think about what transpired. So it’s such a brilliant case study. I would love to read it.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, I’ll, I’ll send that over to you. To me, it was a perfect example of, you know, we hear about m and a and, uh, you know, especially in, in Buffet and sort of a conglomerate kind of business, but, you know, 75% of all mer of mergers. I just, maybe that’s not the exact number, it’s something close to that, but 75% of mergers actually destroy value. The spinoffs are better at creating, uh, value than, than mergers are, which is, if you think about it, I guess it lets each group get more efficient. But, um, yeah, craft was, uh, yeah, a lot of, lot of problems beyond from the goodwill, right down to the, uh, culture and, and everything that happened since it’s a, a lot, a lot of learnings to come from that. Absolutely.
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Cpg obviously there’s the key metrics that you track there, but one of the things when I talk to people about metrics is, you know, you ask people in, in corporate finance about the, whether it’s the board deck or the management reporting or you know, what they’re putting together, and you’ll frequently hear, yeah, every month we put together an 80 page deck with, I don’t know, with how many, you know, uh, charts and graphs and all that. And it, at that level, it becomes, you know, like driving by billboards on the interstate. Yeah. You just, you filter it out, like when it’s just information overload. And I think with KPIs, it’s important to focus on what are the ones that actually, you know, that are the levers that actually drive business value. Yeah. And I wonder, you know, with all your time in, in CPG, whether it’s at cKraft or at at Campbell, you know, what the key KPIs for CPG are, and then maybe if there are just some key KPIs that you talk about in your training, just in, in, in business in general, or things you look at. Yeah,
Ron Monteiro:
No, and, and look, I’ve seen the gamut of like really small scorecards and scorecards where you could barely read. And so I think for me, a couple of examples that worked really well was we had this one document, and it was our, our marketing VP named Danell Sandra, brilliant man. And he used to love what he called the quad chart. Okay. So it was a picture of one pager, top left was your volume, how, how many pounds do you sell of each of brands? And we’d have this for each brand on the, on the right, your revenue. So in, in that time, both were important. Bottom left is your investment, so advertising consumer and trade, and bottom right is your variable margin and your overall profit. And we tracked that. We’d actually have another report that was linked to that, which was, what’s your last six years on each brand in those categories?
So what he was looking at, okay, how’s my top line doing? How’s my bottom line doing? How’s my variable margin doing? Which was very important, and how much my investing in the business, the combination of trade spend, which is what you pay the retailers and advertising, which is long-term brand building. And so that was a brilliant report, and he would, he actually made t-shirts outta it, right? Because, because it, it was a way for him to really gauge the, the different aspects of the business. And then the other thing that was quite prevalent in most of my career is it was very p and l focused in cpg. And so we had this one time where we started saying, cash is king. You know, the whole mantra mm-hmm <affirmative>. And we actually started changing to show DIOH days inventory on hand and DSO day sales outstanding.
And you know, the old term, what gets measured, gets managed or gets measured, gets done. I saw it in action. I saw salespeople who initially didn’t care about DSO because they didn’t know what it meant, and they weren’t incented on it, to now they know what it means because we did the education and they’re actively going after it, instead of some finance person in AR making a call that no one picks up. So again, I think it’s, it’s incumbent on what you’re trying to do as an organization. And I like that quad chart example, but I also like the tactical approach. Say you’re trying to achieve something, what are those metrics that are gonna help you get there, that are gonna get not just finance on board, but the whole organization going towards it?
Glenn Hopper:
So <laugh>, you, you’re bringing up something that regular listeners may, uh, be annoyed with me talking about this, but I’ve been, uh, <laugh>, you know, I was CFO at several small companies, and it’s a lot different at small companies, and it is at craft, and you can’t really get away with this, but because I came up through fp a I was always hungry for data. I was always trying to find different pieces of information that could help, that I could find correlations that would help me with my forecasting or, you know, and you’re, you’re doing your, you’re trying to explain variance or why, you know, why are cogs creeping up and you’re just always in data and you’re always trying to look further, you know, up the stream to figure out, you know, what’s going on in different parts of the business. And I think this is from starting out in telecom where there was just data on everything from, you know, network traffic to, uh, you know, customer calls to, you know, all the churn issues and, and just very, uh, very data rich environment. Certainly when I was in telecom, we didn’t have that, but when I was in small companies, I would push for finance is if you’re trusting us to be an impartial reporter on the business’s financials, then you should trust us to be the impartial reporter on the rest of the KPIs. Because, you know, if, if you’re a department head and you’re bonused on, um, DS, or, you know, maybe that’s a good example what, you know, you’re bonused on customer retention or install timeline or what, whatever it is.
Ron Monteiro:
Yes.
Glenn Hopper:
Um, you, there’s a chance you might, you know, there might, you might find a better way to measure whatever metric you’re tracking, but have you seen in companies of any size, what do you think about the argument that finance should be the keeper of all keeper and reporter? You know, they agree upon what they are with the other departments, but the keeper in the reporter of, of all company KPIs?
Ron Monteiro:
Yeah. No, it’s a very interesting question because, so when I was at craft, we were actually also incented on profit on the same metrics as our cross-functional team, which led to a lot of buy-in and skin in the game and passion and things like that. And I remember this one VP of supply chain coming in, and I started providing my perspective on inventory and cost and all these things. And he is like, dude, you’re in finance. Stay out of this. It, it was a philosophical difference that he had had at other companies where finance was, call it the scorekeeper
Glenn Hopper:
Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And,
Ron Monteiro:
And that’s an important role, but they weren’t really too concerned about the score itself. Like they were just like, you know, reporters, as you said. So I, I’d like to find that healthy balance where there’s still skin in the game, but you’re still able to be impartial, right? There’s a certain ethical component of it, and
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah.
Ron Monteiro:
And doing the right thing, right? Like, you know, do you write off inventory or can you, is there a gray zone there? Like, you know, that’s where I saw that in action. And it’s fascinating to see different companies and how they employ that approach.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that’s interesting when you are, and I guess kind of going along with that, uh, is, uh, you know, you, you can report the data. You build the reports that you do every month in your management reporting and your KPIs and all that, and you just fill in the blank and you do that. But there’s times where adding that strategic value, you have to be able to communicate your findings. And maybe, you know, it’s a little bit different than just your, your regular, uh, monthly reports and it’s, or ad hoc or whatever. This is something where you’re doing a deeper dive analysis and you could build the best analysis, the best spreadsheet in the world, but if you don’t have the storytelling skills to convey that message, it’s gonna, you’re gonna get kicked out of the room <laugh>, and you know, it’s gonna be go back and think about this and get it together. And
Ron Monteiro:
Yeah,
Glenn Hopper:
It’s been a while since I’ve, I’ve been in school, but I don’t remember go, you know, other than like a, you know, basic, uh, speech 1 0 1 course or whatever, but I don’t remember real, really a lot of courses on the business side that talked to you about storytelling. And maybe there are now, maybe it’s evolved, but, um, it’s become so important to our job. And I know you guys teach this, so can you walk me through the importance of storytelling and, and how finance professionals can develop this skill and, uh, and what, you know, maybe a, a couple of tips around that?
Ron Monteiro:
Yeah, and I’ll give you a very specific example. So I was hired as the senior director of corporate finance in one of my roles. And the CEO knew me pretty well. So he, he, he told me, look, my finance team is not delivering what they need to be delivering. And, you know, his impression was it was just in shambles in that department, right? And so I ended up getting hired, and I went in there expecting it to be, you know, a bit of a challenging situation. What I found was there was amazing competence on a technical side. There was great information. I’ll give you an example. A 60 minute month end meeting had 60 slides, and it became a race to the end. And, and so all I did was based on my previous learnings and experience, okay, we’re gonna trim this down to 10, 15 slides, the same information per business unit, and we’re gonna tell a story.
So I’m gonna start with an executive summary. I’m gonna lead that, I’m gonna start with that. I’m gonna hit the, the important points upfront, and then wanna tie all those in. And again, when I talked about that GOS team meeting, like get our stuff together, meeting, what was interesting is when you attend non-finance meetings, you start seeing the connections to the other parts of the business. So when I’m presenting the business results, I can present it not just from what I see in the numbers, the, for I’m hearing on all the conversations this happened at Walmart or Loblaw’s or whatever it is. And this happened in the, in the plant. And, you know, if you’re attuned to what’s going on, you’re part of the, you know, unofficial communications is what I’m saying. And people buy into you much more because they see you care about the business.
So I’d, I’d say, you know, the previous, you know, finance approach would just present a whole bunch of data and people would come outta that room being totally confused. Now it’s like, here’s what we have. And then what we do in our training sessions, we try to have, what’s a framework to use? I’ll give you a couple. One is ace. So audience content execution. So how do you ace your presentation? Number one, understand your audience. So Glenn, if you were in sales or if you were in marketing, I would start by, okay, how do I focus on what matters to you? If you were a corporate finance person, I would say, okay, let me go a little bit more detailed. Here’s what I do. Content insightful, interesting, impactful. Think about that in a finance context. And then the execution piece, which I agree with you, it’s not taught as my voice, my body language.
How do I show up in that meeting? And I’m naturally introverted. I’ve learned all this to say, how do I command a room with the CEO and an executive team? And then the other one we love sharing, and I do this a lot, is there’s the what, the, now what the, so sorry. The what? The so what, the, now what, right? Most times in finance, we concentrate on the, what, what’s really important is of course, the, so what, the implication, but what are we gonna do about it? What’s the action coming out of this? And, and it’s funny, just that little change in length, it’s like, how can we impact future results? Is where that ability to communicate comes back, right? So I think it’s such an important skill to compliment the great technical skills we have and impact the business, which is ultimately what we want to do. Yeah,
Glenn Hopper:
That’s great. It’s something to think about. And I’m, I’m thinking back to my first, uh, CFO job where we had a very involved board, one of the board members, uh, finance guy and, uh, much older ended up becoming kind, kind of a mentor to me. But I, we would go in and I would present, you know, the, uh, the, the financials. And I, the first couple of times I would basically, I was trying to throw everything at him just to show, I’ve gotta handle this. I’m gonna, we’re gonna go three levels deep on everything. But I, what I learned was he, he was paying attention, and he would be looking at the, um, you know, at, at, at the financials as I was talking about ’em. But if I gave everything all at once, he was always gonna have questions. And if I had, you know, showed all my cards, <laugh>, I had nothing, uh, you know, nothing left to say.
So what I learned is focus on what, you know, what I’m telling him, what he wants to know, but also know that I’ve gotta hold some back because he is gonna ask questions no matter what. So I had to have some level of knowledge beyond what I was I was sharing there. And a lot of it really becomes trial by fire. But it’s, if you can go through a, you know, an organized, coordinated training program and have the practice and, and work up to it, it’s much better, uh, much better results, I think than, uh, you know, that trial by fire where you’re kicked outta the pro, but maybe everybody has to have that moment. Yeah.
Ron Monteiro:
<laugh> no, and, and look at that stage, I, I think our brand team was somewhat immature. We didn’t understand the dynamics, and there’s lots of things we could have learned. Of course, we were upset at the time. We did our best, but we learned a lot, right? So totally agree with sometimes those tough experiences teach you a lot if you’re willing to listen. And then, you know, as you were talking, what I, I always encourage part of storytelling, actually, one of the most important part is listening and not just listening to what people say, like watching their body language. And I, I just had a vision. I was sitting in this room one time, my finance director is presenting something very technical in finance, and there was a sales director in there, and he was just <laugh>. He was like, sucking on a straw. He was just like, <laugh>. He’s like, he couldn’t understand one word, <laugh>. And, and so like, I, I’ve got all these moments where it’s like, hey, are the, is the audience actually paying attention? Are they engaged? Are they interested in what you’re saying? And sometimes by default, I like exactly what you’re saying. We’re trying to get through so much financial information and the consumer’s not looking for that. They want mm-hmm <affirmative>. Hey, what’s going on? And what can we do about it?
Glenn Hopper:
The interesting part to me is if you, early in my career, if, um, because I was a journalist before I went to business school, awesome. And so it seemed like two completely different tracks. But even after I went to business school, and even after I switched to finance, if you had asked me, I would’ve said finance, uh, you know, numbers and math and the models and all that we do over here is a completely different, you know, right brain, left brain. It’s a completely different skillset than the storytelling, the creative part, but realizing as the career went on, how entwined they are and how important that ability to communicate is to finance. Because if you’re, if all you’re doing is just reporting the numbers and not adding any value and creating a narrative around it and, and helping, then you’re not adding value to the business.
And what I think is interesting to me is the number of finance people who have written you among them. Um, if writing a book is something that you had thought about before, ’cause your, your latest book, love Mondays, which which we’re gonna talk about, but how did that come about? And did you find that, and, and this is a, seems like a crazy question, but I think you’ll know exactly what I mean. Did you find that your communication and storytelling that you did in finance actually helped you when it came time to write the book?
Ron Monteiro:
Yeah, I know. And, and honestly, I think it’s back to like the whole track of, Hey, I went into craft and I had to learn much more than technical skills. I had to learn how to engage people. And then, you know, it, it was a growth mindset type culture where it’s like, look, I, I was not good at presenting and probably struggled through my first 10 years of presenting. And, and, and so I learned. And so what I also started doing over time is I started reading a lot, right? And probably in the last 10 years, I would say, and I just got fascinated by, look, you can take a book, and that could be like Warren Buffet’s biography. Like he, you know, he might, here’s his thoughts and investing in 300 pages, think about the value that has. And so over the last 10 years, I’ve just committed to doing that.
And then I, I think as I did that, I started getting fascinated with the concept of what is an author like. And I didn’t believe I could be one. But then what happened over the last three, four years is that I’ve actually unintentionally surrounded myself with people written books. And there’s another fp a influencer Asani, you probably know. He and I connected on a Zoom call and I was like, Hey, what, what doing? And he’s like, I’ve just written my second fp a book, and we just got to talking. And he is like, here’s my publisher. If you want me to contact, uh, them, let me know. And one thing led to another, and it, you know, it’s funny, I was looking at one of my old vision boards, like, I, I do this thing vision boarding, not consistently. I had like a book which had a heart and Mondays on it three years ago, which I didn’t even remember. Wow. So it’s like, you know, it’s, it’s one of those things that sometimes these things are buried deep in us, and somehow it came to the surface and I surrounded myself with people who have done it. So, you know, that it’s not like, it’s a very clear plan I had. It’s just kind of evolved.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Wow. So, well, tell me about, uh, tell me about Love Mondays. So you were inspired to write the book, had it on your vision board, you decided to go through and do it. So what’s, what’s the focus of the book? What are you, uh, what, what, what’s the points you’re getting across? And bonus question, <laugh>, anything from the book that would, we could apply specifically to fp a teams
Ron Monteiro:
<laugh>? Yeah, no, it, you know, it’s interesting. So, and I’m sure you’ve seen this, one of my observations through my 20 plus year career, if people are really down on Mondays, oh, it’s Monday, and then you get to Wednesday and it’s like, oh, it’s hump day, there’s a little bit of optimism, and then Thursday’s now happy junior Friday is what I’m hearing. And then Friday everybody’s excited and I’m just like, I’m a math guy. The math doesn’t work. I don’t wanna be excited for two or three days out of the week and plow through the rest of the week. I wanna love what I do. And so I started getting fascinated with this concept. One of my friends at Kraft actually used to say, make Mondays as, as Friday, you listeners were truly excited on a Monday, how much more powerful the world would be. And, and so what interesting is through my podcasting, through my training, I started to meet a lot of authors, CEOs, you know, teachers, Buddhist monks who love what, like, truly like, you look at ’em on a Monday and they’re like, let’s go like 4:30 AM they’re jumping out of bed.
And so the whole concept is how can we all find that? And look, I’ve just gone through a massive career transformation, and I love my Mondays a lot more than the end of my finance career, so I believe it’s all possible. So it’s really a guide to say the first part’s for individuals, how do you find more joy fulfillment in your life Mondays and every other day? The middle section is a guide for leaders to say, how do you build a team where people are excited on a Monday and every other day? And the last section’s just 20 people who I consider Monday mavericks people who love what they do. And, and so your bonus question, so here’s my answer to your bonus question, is I’ve probably got at least five fp a leaders who are now probably in a CEO or CFO job in the book.
And I’ll give you a couple examples. There’s one gentleman, Brian Kerr he’s the CEO of a famous Canadian ice cream company, Kawartha Dairy. And he was as a 15-year-old, he was working in the plant and he just loved it. Right? Fast forward 20 years later, he did a lots of fp and a, then he did sales, then needed the CMO Chief marketing officer, he’s now the CEO. I’ve got like at least two, three other CEOs or CFOs who started an FP&A. And so back to your point about fp and a, I think it’s probably the best, one of the best roles within a company, because you get that 360 view of the whole company, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So then, you know, back to your earlier question around stock skills, if you can harness that and you have the, the 360 degree of the view of the business, FP&A is unstoppable, right? So that, that’s the whole concept. And I think it’s fp and a is where I did love my Mondays. So when I looked at my finance career, my first three years at Hitachi, I was clock watching on non month end pieces. Yeah. In my 15 years of Kraft, I never watched the clock. In fact, I probably was like, how can I stop working at a certain time?
Glenn Hopper:
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. <laugh>. Yeah. Yep. I don’t know how relevant this will be be because if, if you’re listening to this podcast right now, you’re an fp a geek, you love this stuff, you probably love your mind notes <laugh>. Um, so I’m, I’m gonna ask this question anyway though, just to, you know, get a little bit more insight to the book and then we’ll, we’ll come back to some traditional fp a. But I love, I love the topic of your book and the approach to it, and just kind of leaning into that side of it, because there’s work-life balance and all that, but there’s what happens when you actually are passionate about the work that you do, and then you also have the work-life balance and all that. And so I think for a lot of us, you try to keep the balance, you try to keep the interest and, and keep things interesting.
But for any of our listeners that are, you know, maybe they’ve been stuck in the same role for a long time or their company’s stagnant or, or whatever it is, if they’re looking to find more fulfillment in their work, work, you know, kind of with the, the advice from the book, what advice would you give them to help kind of align their, their career with their purpose and and passions? And I know for you, it, you got to a point where it’s, I’m gonna shift completely and go focus on training and all that, but you know, with your FBA background, there’s, that’s probably not, that’s a very dramatic shift. There’s probably some smaller steps people can take along the way.
Ron Monteiro:
Yeah, no, and I love that question. So for, I’ll give you an example. When I was in fp and a, I would often, and this was at first almost volatile to me, I would try to pick up a project outside of my regular scope example, Hey, let’s do a competitive assessment on a competitor X and cheese. And what it would do is just say like, how can I start building some skill sets outside of my day-to-day, month end budget, all these other things mm-hmm <affirmative>. And you can start crafting, Hey, is that something that that’s interesting to me? Or is it maybe an AI project or something else? So I always tell people like, where, like if you, if you do an inventory, if you’re weak, and see where do I feel the most alive, the most joy? It could be budgeting, it could be <inaudible>, it could be a project.
Like I said, start leaning into that a little bit more and try to impact your business a little bit more. And, and one of the things I do up front is talk a lot about purpose. You just talked about purpose, and there’s a cool Japanese concept. You may have heard of it, ikigai, have you heard of it? So, no, no. So basically people who have found their Ikigai never retire because they found this thing that they just wanna do. So four questions you ask, what do you love to do? What does the world need? What do you get paid for? And what are you good at? And so imagine an fp a person who’s like, okay, that’s my iki guy, right? You know, think of, think of Paul Barnhurst, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. That’s probably his iki guy. So it’s like, I think it starts with introspection to say, look, our careers taken off by the tide.
Sometimes, like we, sometimes you stop and you’re like, how did I get here? It’s stopping to say, what do I love about my job? And what do I not love about my job? And how do I start trying to edge a little bit more while knowing there’s still parts of every job that you don’t love and start doing more of that. So for me, it may, it might be like, how do I start working on a different category or a different part of the business? How do I work with, you know, somebody else who I haven’t worked with before? I, I was listening to a podcast, a friend of mine, brilliant analogy. She used to talk about, are you in tall grass or are you on a pavement? And for me, the analogy that works is like the tall grass. It’s, it’s, it’s rough out there, but you’re carving out a new path.
And so it’s a very clean, paved road, and you know exactly what’s gonna happen Monday to Friday. To me, that’s a pretty good sign to say, is there something that I can learn or grow? So I think it’s, and it becomes a way of life. Like even for me, and I’m sure in your life now with a podcast and all the other things you’re doing, you become much more open and excited about change, right? And, and, and taking a much more intentional approach instead of saying, oh, I can’t do this because my boss. All these things that we often do complain, I do do too, saying, what can I do and how am I gonna put myself in the best position to do that?
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, and I like the idea. It, it’s similar to an approach. I take on a lot of things, uh, and, and have for years, uh, mostly thinking about, um, getting older. And, uh, there’s a natural tendency when you hit a certain age to get kind of mentally lazy. Like you’ve worn these grooves, you’ve, you’ve, you know, your, your neural pathways Yeah.
Are, are set. And you’re like, this is the way I do it. But then you get, you start to get more rigid and you start to think, Nope, I’m not gonna hear any new information. I’ve been around the block. I know this is the way we do it and all that. And it’s, um, so by trying something new and expanding and getting outta your comfort zone there, it’s invigorating on one level can be very frustrating. But also you’re forming new neural pathways there. And I think by doing that, you’re more engaged and you’re, you become, you just keep that intellectual curiosity, uh, going. And there’s studies that say, you know, by keeping that brain plasticity, it’s, uh, you know, your longevity and, and mental health going into older age, which I dunno, I’m showing my age a little bit, but that’s the kind of stuff I’m starting to think of.
Ron Monteiro:
<laugh>. No, I, I totally agree with it. And even for me, my energy’s way higher than it was when I plateaued and my engagement, like, I’m actually excited to do stuff. And, and the other point about that is it’s not from zero to a hundred right away. It’s like, what’s the baby step? What’s the smallest step you can take to do that? Right? You’re gonna do a LinkedIn pulse, what’s the one paragraph you’re gonna write? What’s the first sentence? Right? And, and I love that concept, like, you know, James clear atomic habits type approach, say it’s about consistency. What’s that small thing I’m gonna do every day to start moving towards my goal?
Glenn Hopper:
You know, on that note, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna bring this back to, to fp and a and into, uh, you know, a a lot of the training you’re doing as well. I think with, with all that is set up, what are some critical skills beyond this table stakes that you need to, you know, come into fp and a, but some critical skills that maybe you would recommend our listeners start working on, or expanding or getting better at to become better at fp and a, but to expand how they’re thinking and, you know, what, what would be some approaches to developing these skills and, and, and like driving them forward to become more of leaders in the area?
Ron Monteiro:
Yeah, I, I, I think for me it’s like, you know, sometimes we just get dropped into a role and we just start doing the role without doing what I call listening tour, right? To say, go speak to all the other functions. Go build relationships outside of fp a like into marketing, sales, supply chain, whatever your industry is, and start learning about that, find a mentor. And then for me, it’s, it’s, it comes down to, look, we’ve got core skills, financial modeling, forecasting, budgeting, excel, all the technical skills, of course, keep sharpening that, like AI and all these things are going on that’s necessary. We talked a lot about the soft skills, but then it’s like the business partnership. It’s like, what can you do to be that business partner? And then, you know, things, little things like, I shouldn’t say little, but, you know, taking initiative, like signing up for a Toastmasters club or doing these little things to say, how can I sharpen up my skill?
And, you know, you could even say, I’m gonna go learn piano. Like I’m take it away from fp a too to say, what are the skills I’m gonna learn to build that neuroplasticity to say, what can I do to grow? And I think it’s, it’s the classic case of how can I grow and what can I do? And I, you know, it, it was cool. Like I got chucked into this environment where they were like, go watch a marketing shoot. I’m like, what? What <laugh>? But you know, you reflect on that. You say, okay, now you’re building a much better business knowledge. I, I went in as an accountant, a craft that came out as a business leader, not just a finance leader, a business leader, right? And any opportunity I say to lead or co-lead a project, like, I’ll give you an example. One of my last companies, our CEO asked for a competitor analysis. And I, I asked the 25 people on the team who wants to do this, two people put up their hands, okay? And I’m, I’m not blaming them. Everyone else was busy. Those two people were in front of the CE O2 weeks later. And, and they had an opportunity to really say, okay, how can I connect with somebody who I ordinarily wouldn’t do?
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah.
Ron Monteiro:
I think it’s that like initiative that people can have that’s not always present.
Glenn Hopper:
Like, as you were talking about that, I was thinking, another thing from early in my career that we didn’t talk about was business partnering. That is now every good fp and a team is, is doing that business partnering. And you are, you know, you’re like, you going to a, a, a marketing or an ad advertising shoot or, or working with operations or whatever it’s you’re doing that’s outside of finance. You, back in the early days of my career, you could be in this ivory tower of finance where you’re, you’re like, I don’t know, I’m just counting the widgets <laugh>, and I’m just in my spreadsheets. I don’t, you guys do what you’re doing and all that. But now you’re, you are getting that other value. And I think, you know, I I, I can’t remember the exact stats on this, but you’re seeing more, uh, CFOs become CEOs Yeah.
Than ever have been before. But I think it’s because the way A CFO is now, you, you know, you used to be able to be, you know, um, I guess this is the opposite of the way they normally say it, but you’d be a mile deep in sort of your control, your financial controls and accounting and all that knowledge, but, you know, an inch wide Yeah. ’cause you didn’t really understand the rest of the business, but now you have to be able to speak to the rest of the business and report on it and all that. So I think it’s that business partnering is what’s setting up, like you said, not just a finance leader, but you become a business leader with, if Warren Buffet’s, you know, Warren Buffet said, accounting is the language of business. You are fluent in the language of business, and now you’ve been exposed to the rest of it. So it does work very well together.
Ron Monteiro:
Yeah. No, I love that.
Glenn Hopper:
We’ve talked about all these soft skills and human skills, and everybody’s talking about AI right now, and you know how it’s gonna change things. Do you, and I think we’ve highlighted some of the human skills that are gonna stay important and or really as more and more of our job is, is automated by tech. Those human skills are gonna be important longer than, than a lot of those other are. But as you’re going around and doing the training, I know you talked to a lot of companies a lot, are you seeing anything now in AI and machine learning that’s you see as already impactful in fp and a or, or what’s, what’s your read on the, uh, environment right now?
Ron Monteiro:
Yeah, I think there’s a lot brewing, right? And I think there’s still a lot of confusion to say, what can an organization use and what can we not do? What information can I put into chat GPT or is my company developing our own ai? So there’s a lot going on and it’s, I think it’s incumbent on fp a individuals to really understand the landscape and say, how can I use this to my advantage? And, you know, simple examples, like I, me and Paul were doing a, a case with a group of people and, and Paul used Claude and Chat GBT to analyze a publicly available quarterly report for a competitor of, of some of the folks in the, in that room in seconds. And, and we, we would also run a simulation of, we’d give people a case, we’d let them work on an hour, for an hour, then we’d run it through chat GP and Claude. And it would be very similar in like seconds. Yeah. So, so the implication again, ties to, okay, yes, there’s gonna be some real progress there. How do we continue to add value with our business partnering soft skills, all the things we talked about. So it, it points me like, and look, I’m a soft skills kind of guy at this point, but it points me back to yes, let’s be really fluent there, but are soft skills gonna be even more important in my opinion?
Glenn Hopper:
Yep. Yep. There’s two questions we gotta ask all the guests. And, um, I’m always, uh, always excited to see what, what kind of answers we get, but the first one is, um, what is something that most people dunno about you?
Ron Monteiro:
So I, I think I, I might show, I might have mentioned it a little earlier, I, I am naturally introverted. So for example, when I do a training session or speech or I wanna just go and crawl into bed and see, and so what I always tell people is like, some people assume that people who are public speakers are natural at it. You know, they have the gift of the gap. I don’t, I learned it. And you know, another thing is I’ve written, I’ve ran a three or four half marathon, so that, that might be something people dunno, nothing. Not a full yet <laugh>.
Glenn Hopper:
Oh, that’s great. That’s great. Uh, as a, as a runner, I appreciate that. And as a runner and an introvert, I appreciate both of those. So, <laugh> awesome. Well, uh, I’ve got a couple of events on my, my calendar for this year, but not as, not as many as I used to. But, uh, I dunno, it’s, it’s a, it’s a great, uh, way to get out and, uh, talk about that work life balance. You stare at spreadsheets all day or, or training all day and all that and be able to just get out on the road and get some miles is great. Amazing. Okay, well now everybody’s favorite question. <laugh>, what is your favorite Excel function and why?
Ron Monteiro:
<laugh>? Yeah. No, it’s, so, it’s interesting. So I grew up in this culture in finance where we had a huge team so our leaders would act, actually tell me when as a manager, senior manager, get out of the system and let your team do that. So I had a team of analysts doing things. The landscape has changed a lot now, right? So I kind of finished my career in that type of mentality. And then lately the last few years I’ve been watching Paul and other people train Excel and I’ve learned how to do X lookup. So it’s probably not as sophisticated other guests, but like, you know, just being aware of all the cool things that, you know, have come up, like text before, text after all these little formulas that can save hours, right? Format pasting one graph onto another. It’s possible. I spent hours doing that. Like, you know what I mean? So I, I know I’ve given you a few more, but I just think it’s just being that open to learning because the progress is so fast.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s funny that you mentioned X lookup because I was, I was talking to another CFOA few weeks ago and he said, um, if you answer that question, the lookup, you immediately are telling people how old you are <laugh> back in the day. That’s, that’s all we, Hey, I was, I was a v lookup guy. Yeah, <laugh>. Alright, so the book is Love Mondays. We’ll, we’ll put a link to it in the show notes. It’s available on Amazon and wherever you, uh, get, get your favorite books. Um, how, if our listeners wanna get in touch with you, learn more, learn about the training and all that, how can our listeners get in touch with you? Yeah,
Ron Monteiro:
I think, I think the best approach of this point is just LinkedIn. Just connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m, I’m quite active on LinkedIn, so always love to engage with listeners and, and understand what’s going with them as well.
Glenn Hopper:
Well, we really appreciate you coming on the show,
Ron Monteiro:
Glen. Thank you. It’s fantastic conversation. Thank you for having me on.
