Craig Barry has held senior finance roles at some of the most iconic companies in tech and entertainment, including LinkedIn, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Electronic Arts. At LinkedIn, he led central forecasting, supported more than 10 acquisitions, and played a key role in the company’s integration with Microsoft before becoming Head of FP&A at BioRender- building FP&A from the ground up helping the company scale ARR from $18 million to $50 million. Now Barry is principal consultant at ClearSightIQ.
In this episode
- My winding road to strategic finance
- Junior FP&A Analyst position at Electronic Arts as my first break
- Cost center focus in creative industries at EA with $3b sales
- LucasFilm (pre-Disney) run as a sole proprietorship by George Lucas
- Pixar head of finance for their Canadian operations and production planning
- LinkedIn and focus on “revenue, revenue, revenue”
- FP&A focus on modeling for acquisitions at LinkedIn and “virtual” P&Ls
- Strategy for building out FP&A from scratch at BioRender
- My fractional CFO life
Full transcript:
Glenn Hopper:
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Welcome to FP&A Today, I’m your host, Glenn Hopper. Today I’m excited to welcome Craig Berry to the show. Craig is a strategic finance consultant, fractional CFO and startup advisor. With nearly 20 years of experience helping companies scale, fundraise and navigate m and a, he held senior finance roles at some of the most iconic companies in tech and entertainment, including LinkedIn, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Electronic Arts. At LinkedIn, he led central forecasting, supported more than 10 acquisitions, and played a key role in the company’s integration with Microsoft. At Bio Render, he built the fp and a function from the ground up, helping the company scale a RR from 18 million to 50 million, and secure a major series A round with top tier VCs. Today, Craig runs ClearSight iq, where he works with SaaS companies and startups on strategic finance, fundraising and m and a readiness. He joins us to share his incredible career journey, how fp and a can evolve from reporting to value creation and what startups can do to truly understand their metrics and investor positioning. Craig, welcome to the show.
Craig Barry:
Thanks, Glenn. Really happy to be here. Really appreciate the invite for the show and, and, and happy to meet you and talk today.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, I just, you know, as we were talking before, uh, before the episode, you know, LinkedIn, Pixar, Lucasfilm, electronic Arts. You’ve had some cool gigs at some really exciting companies. I think about, you know, me <laugh> in a lot of service in industries and, and B2B kind of less, less cool companies, <laugh>. I think that, you know, a lot of times we think in fp a, it’s like, well, whatever, we’re just, you know, it, it’s fp a it, it doesn’t matter what the, what the product we’re selling, but it, it seems like, you know, if you’re at Pixar and Lucasfilm, it’s a little cooler than, you know, business advisory services, <laugh> or whatever. So, let’s back up maybe even before that and start with your story, you know, with your non-traditional path into finance where you, you know, you started in environmental studies and you were teaching abroad and you almost were pursuing accounting. Kind of walk us through that sort of winding road that led you to a career in, in strategic finance.
Craig Barry:
Yeah, sure. So, yeah, as, as you mentioned, I, I started out by going and doing an undergraduate degree in environmental studies, which was, um, almost by mistake as well. I actually did my first year in, uh, pure math. I, I’d always been, uh, a good math student in high school, and it seemed like the obvious choice. So I went to the University of Waterloo. I’m Canadian, uh, so Waterloo great math school, uh, great computer science school. So I went there to study pure mathematics, and what I discovered was that university math was very different from high school math, and one year was enough. I hated it. And so I did a complete 180 and went into environmental studies, uh, completed my degree there. And then, you know, quickly learned that there’s not a lot of, uh, need for people with undergraduate degrees in environmental studies.
And so rather than enter the job market or go back to school, I actually decided to go and teach English in Korea, as you mentioned. So I did that for a couple years, uh, about a year and a half. Um, did a lot of traveling throughout Southeast Asia and Southern Africa, and then sort of realized I needed to, um, you know, get a real job. Uh, so that’s when I started looking at, okay, well, what can I actually do? So reaching out to some friends from university and just seeing what other people had done over the sort of three or four years that I was traveling. And a couple of people had gone through the accounting path and had joined, uh, ca firms. Uh, and so just talking to them, it seemed like an interesting career path. I’d always loved math, so it felt like it was something that would fit with me.
And so I sort of explored that and, you know, found a program back in Canada at the University of British Columbia. And I moved back, moved back to Canada, moved to Vancouver, and then I did that program, which was sort of the best way to describe it, is a bridging program, uh, for people with a non commerce background. So if you want to become a CPA, or it was a ca at that time, um, you had to do this, uh, and then you could be eligible to go work in sort of big four accounting. So that was my career goal. So I went through that program was 12 month intensive program, and, you know, I wanted to get hired by a big four accounting firm. I got an offer from Deloitte, which was great. Uh, so perfect. I was gonna be able to do the thing that I wanted to do.
But for whatever reason, I sort of randomly had a resume in with, uh, electronic arts, and they called me for a junior fp and a, uh, analyst position. And so, even though I had the offer from Deloitte, this was happening at the same time, I went and interviewed with Electronic Arts, I actually ended up getting the job, um, despite having no experience, uh, which was great. Uh, you know, I, I don’t know if, uh, you know, the guy that hired me, his name’s Marie Kettle, he gave me my first sort of career break, and I’m always thankful to him for that. Anyway, now I was sort of faced with the decision, what do I do? Do I follow my dream of becoming a CPA or do I actually go and, and work in, you know, a much cooler industry like video games? And so I, I took the latter option. I decided to sort of pass on the Deloitte option and go and work for Electronic Arts knowing really nothing beyond sort of the academic, uh, piece of, of finance that I’d learned over the prior 12 months. Uh, so it was really a crash course in what fp and a did. I had no idea walking in the door on my first day. So I’m still, you know, surprised they hired me actually, <laugh> <laugh>,
Glenn Hopper:
You know, and, and, and we can talk about ’em because, ’cause they’re not here, but, um, fp and a, the math do is way cooler than accounting. Accounting, math is what, uh, you know, subtraction, it’s credit minus debit. If that doesn’t equal zero, it’s a problem. Other than that, but you not as much math maybe in accounting as there is in FDN.
Craig Barry:
Yeah, no, totally. It was based on, you know, what I’d done in the 12 months prior to working at fp a, I thought I’d spend a lot more time working on trial balances. Uh, but it’s something that doesn’t really come up in the world of fp and a. And so it’s something I’ve never really touched, um, you know, since those 12 months at U bbc, which was, you know, I graduated from there in 2005, so it’s been a while. <laugh>,
Glenn Hopper:
It’s, so, it’s got, it’s interesting that you say trial balance, because where I do see using trial balance in fp a as an m and a activity, sometimes, especially when you start getting into weird adjusted ebitda, it’s like, you know what, don’t give me your financial statements because I don’t believe them. Just give me your trial balance. I’ll put everything where it needs to go. But that’s the only time I’ve thought about a trial balance in an fp a man. But I, you know, if I had, if I were looking at w was it at, at Deloitte, was it gonna be in the audit group? Was is that
Craig Barry:
It was, yeah, it was. Um, so I would’ve joined as a first year audit student.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. You
Craig Barry:
Know, and, and most of my classmates, I think when I was at UBC, I think probably there may be about a hundred of us, uh, in this program. And I think, you know, everybody except me, I think went into audit. Uh, and so I’m, I’m well aware of what they went through over the next three years. Well, you know, because you’re, you’re working and, you know, you’re on a lot of different files at the same time, but you’re studying as well because you’re preparing to write, you know, the, the exam at the end, right. And so I think at the time it was like six modules. So it’s, it’s, you know, you’re, you’re working 60 hours per week and you know, you’re studying another 10 or 15 or something like that. So it was, it was really, um, quite intense, you know, not to, not to lean on those people too hard, but I mean, I ha I had probably a little bit better work-life balance and I got paid more. Uh, so it was definitely the right choice,
Glenn Hopper:
<laugh>, and I never do, I, I never do this, but I guess I’m just feeling like feisty today. I want to just knock on the, the straight accountants, because I mean, it’s, we’re, you know, they’re having a hard time bringing people into accounting, but so many people are, you know, there’s a lot, a lot of reasons for that. But so many people who maybe would’ve gone into accounting, they look at, uh, indeed or whatever, you know, or job postings, and I say, wait a minute, first year finance people are making more than, than, you know, regular, you know, audit or, or tax or, you know, whatever you’re doing in, in accounting. So it’s makes sense that, you know, that that’s drawing some people over too.
Craig Barry:
Yeah, I think when I was in school, I think the way that it was being sold to us was if you wanted to have, you know, a successful career in finance and, and, you know, reach either, you know, the, the C-suite or senior level, you needed to be a a a CA or a CPA. Whereas, you know, with, with this sort of experience I have behind me, um, I don’t think that’s actually the case anymore. I mean, I think people can be successful with without an accounting background.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And I was actually just talking to another CFO about this last week, and I wanna see the actual hard data on it, but anecdotally, what it feels like is the number of CFOs with CPAs as a percentage seems like it’s gone way down in, in recent years. And, um, I need, I need to find some, can’t be saying this all the time without data. I need to find some data to back that up,
Craig Barry:
<laugh>. Yeah, I know, I, I saw it firsthand at LinkedIn. We had, you know, the initial CFO that was there, Steve Sordello, the guy that took the company public, you know, he was a, he was a CPA, uh, and then when he retired, uh, it was actually our, uh, head of fp and a, the VP of fp a that took the, the role. He did not have, um, an accounting background. He actually had an investment banking background. And then, you know, about like eight years of experience at LinkedIn as well. Yeah. Um,
Glenn Hopper:
Gosh. But if, I mean, an investment banking background, if you’re doing a bunch of m and a, it’s kind of, that probably makes more, I mean, you still have to know how to account for the transactions, but the kind of stuff you’re looking at, the strategic stuff,
Craig Barry:
I think if you have a, a strong controller in place, I mean, they can, you can lean on them pretty heavily for, you know, the pieces that you don’t understand. I don’t think any CFO really gets all of it all the time. Yeah. Uh, you know, so you have to surround yourself with good people who are experts in their own domain. And, and I think this worked well for, you know, for this fellow at LinkedIn,
Glenn Hopper:
I wanna peel Lucas film off because as a Star Wars fan from, you know, from the original movie dating myself here, I, we’ll, we’ll talk about them separately. Separately, I guess, but, so ea come into that instead of Deloitte that, you know, I, I sort of understand the, the sort of mental math that you did in, in, in looking at that. And then, but ea and Pixar doesn’t feel like it was that you were, like, you, you didn’t set out necessarily to work in creative en entertainment heavy industries, but you ended up spending a lot of time there. And I’m wondering, and like I said, we’ll look at Lucasfilm differently, but the kinds of metrics or things you looked at, is there anything, I mean, I guess first maybe if you want to talk a little bit about the types of metrics you looked at, and then is there, I’m always, like, when I’m talking to guests and trying to build this sort of career arc, is there anything that you took, you know, ’cause it seems like a big move to go from the entertainment industry to somewhere like, like LinkedIn, but there is still social engagement with both and everything.
So I don’t know, what did you kind of take away from it? And was there stuff that you learned in there that kind of carried over to subsequent positions?
Craig Barry:
Yeah, totally. I mean, I think when I was at, um, you know, working in those creative roles or working in those creative companies, I was generally more cost center focused. So what, what did it take to build these products? Not so focused on the marketing and the, and the sales effort that went into actually, you know, bringing them to market and making sure that you’re, you’re moving a lot of units or you’re getting a lot of eyeballs on them. So in the earlier part of my career, working at those types of, uh, companies, we spent a lot of time focused on how do we make these games more efficiently over time? So it was really very much, you know, what, what is our sort of r and d spend or our product spend as a percentage of our revenue? How can we make this game better next year?
But for a lower cost, you know, a similar cycle, you know, you, you introduce kind of like one major feature, two minor features, you know, in the next iteration of, you know, MLB or NHL, whatever this, you know, sports game would be or whatever. Um, and so, you know, you kind of knew what you were going to do each year, and you would be in production on the, you know, if you’re putting up the 2010 version, you’d actually start production in 2008. So it was kinda like a 24 month cycle to build these games. So you’re always looking at, okay, how can we make this more efficiently? And so one of the things that we ended up exploring and actually spending a lot of, a lot of time on and a lot of effort on was outsourcing a lot of the artwork, asset development. So we moved those to Vietnam, or Indonesia was a big one. We did some work in India as well. Um, so having them build the assets for us at a much lower cost. And this was all part of the overall theme of, okay, how do we make these games for, for less money each year?
Glenn Hopper:
As you were sort of putting together sort of the project accounting is something that was ROI something that you were, you know, reporting on and, and accountable for? Or was it No, then it goes into market, it just becomes a marketing project and it’s kind of, we’re in the project of, of, or, you know, we’re tracking all the, the project spend and then, you know, trying to find ways to do it cheaper, and then we’re handing it over and it’s sort of tracked by another group.
Craig Barry:
Yeah, that’s right. So we had, so if you think of the, the video game business, you can break it into kind of like two distinct buckets. There’s the studio business, so that’s the people that make the games, and then there’s the publishing business. So that’s the people that market and sell the games. So we had two different arms at LinkedIn, so I was on the studio side, so when I was there, I think we had probably like close to 20 studios around the world. Uh, and then one major publishing arm, which was based in San Francisco. And so we, I mean, we had sales offices in different countries around the world, but most publishing work happened in San Francisco. That
Glenn Hopper:
Makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. Lucas film though, so that’s obviously pre the, the sale to, to Disney. And we’re, uh, I guess gimme a little bit of background on, on when you were there and what you were doing, because it was so Lucasfilm privately owned by George Lucas. And I’m wondering if there, if it was different, like managing finances in the company where the primary stakeholder was an individual rather than shareholders. Like, is it, how much did you know? And also an artist, so, you know, does how much does, and I, and well, that said, you know, Lucas had some very smart business deals with the, uh, you know, uh, the, the toys and the, and the products that went along with the movies and stuff. So I would imagine maybe the more so than a lot of film directors who probably had a pretty good handle on business and wanted to track that. But tell me about that. Yeah, yeah,
Craig Barry:
Yeah. You know, I, I, I, I never actually, uh, met George, but I did see him on campus once, so that’s the closest I ever got. Um, but, uh, it was very different. I mean, you go from electronic arts, which, you know, a large public company, and I think, you know, when I, when I left there, we were doing around 3 billion a year in sales. Uh, you know, so it’s, it’s not a small company by any means. And then you move to essentially what’s a sole proprietorship. And so the focus shifts from okay, how do you, you know, satisfy the public markets on, you know, what we’re doing and what we’re building, and how do we deliver predictability around this, you know, so shareholders are happy to essentially it boil down to managing, uh, Georgia’s personal tax situation. So how do we structure all of these different businesses, um, you know, such that it benefits George, you know, in, in, in him paying the least amount of tax.
And so it’s very complex, as you can imagine, because we had a video game business. There was the film business, uh, there was a licensing business. Uh, you know, there was, uh, there was studios in the uk. There were studios in Singapore and then studios in San Francisco. So it was really managing that whole world. So I wasn’t in like a corporate type of role there. I was in the video game piece of it because of my background at electronic. Gotcha. Yeah, I was sort of managing, um, you know, managing sort of like product p and Ls, uh, with the development teams, similar to ea sort of the studio side of the business, but we worked a little bit more closely with the publishing arm, uh, there, because then we were based in the same office, but very, very much a different world, as I mentioned. It’s really, you know, how do you, how do you make this, uh, the most beneficial for George at the end of the day?
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, it’s funny because I, uh, I work with a lot of, you know, some early stage startup, a lot of SMBs and a lot of them. But, you know, and especially on the consulting side, um, maybe they, they even haven’t had fp and a before. And I come in and a lot of times when I come to a business, it was basically the founder’s tax accountant was the one that was doing their, you know, air quotes fp and a for ’em. And it said that, you know, and then thinking about the way you manage a business, they were doing things like as cash management was, spend as much money as you can by the end of the year. And then they’re freaked out that they don’t have any cash in Q <laugh> in in Q1, you know, when it comes up because they had a tax accountant, uh, do running their business for ’em. Yeah. So I imagine, you know, a little bit more sophisticated than that, but you run, you run things differently if you’re trying to minimize your tax burden versus growing a business. Totally.
Craig Barry:
Um, I was just gonna add to what you’re saying. I mean, at, at at ClearSight iq, I, I, I see the same thing as well. People that are sort of, you know, either they’re doing it themselves or they use their personal account and who’s doing their taxes and, and you know, a similar kind of idea in that, you know, they’re not necessarily looking at it through the right lens, through the fp a lens. They’re really managing it from a, you know, a different point of view completely than maybe what’s best for the business.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Yeah. It worked out pretty, pretty good for George. What did he sell? Like 4.5 billion, I think was the sale
Craig Barry:
<laugh>? Yeah, he did. And I remember at the time he sold it, I was talking, so I reported to the general manager at Pixar, and I remember at the time, he, the business was sold when George sold it. My manager said, this is a terrible deal for Disney. And, and he was convinced that they had overpaid. And here we are, you know, it’s gotta be 10 or 12 or even 14 years later. And, you know, I think that, I think that investment’s worked out very well for, for Disney at the end of the day. Yeah,
Glenn Hopper:
There, Disney kind of that franchise along with, uh, Marvel there squeezing every <laugh>, everything they can out of,
Craig Barry:
They bought them both like a right around the same time. And they paid about the same for both. And I think, you know, Disney had a long-term plan in, in, in place for what they were gonna do with this, you know, fantastic IP that they got from both of these companies. And they certainly monetized it the best that, that they can.
Glenn Hopper:
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wanna get to LinkedIn, but before we do, so we, we talked about ea, we talked about Lucasfilm. What was your role at, uh, at Pixar?
Craig Barry:
So, at Pixar, I was the head of finance for Pixar’s Canadian operations. So when I was with electronic arts, my first role with them was in Vancouver. Um, and then I transferred to the head office in Redwood Shores, which is a suburb in the Bay Area. And I was actually recruited by Pixar to come back to Vancouver to head up their finance, uh, function. So that was my role there. I I sort of did everything. I mean, I had support from our, the head office for Pixar, which was an Emory bill, another suburb in the Bay Area. And they provided all sort of the back office accounting and, and, and that type of stuff. So I was really focused on production planning, how do we make these films? We were focused on short films. How do we make these short films? How do we do it, you know, effectively.
And then one of my main roles there was how do we keep everybody working all the time so that we could maximize our tax credits, which were paid up by the, both the federal and the provincial government in British Columbia. So one of the things we tried to avoid was downtime. So it was really slotting together all these different people that do all these different functions to make these short films such that everybody was always working on something because it was much more difficult to get that tax credits if they weren’t actually working on an accredited production, is what they sort of referred to it as.
Glenn Hopper:
Gotcha. So even at Pixar, would you say that your focus was more kind of that cost center management again, because you’re more on that side and not on the distribution, the publishing and distribution side?
Craig Barry:
It was, and, and what we were making, we were making sure films and sort of the cars and the toy story universe, and these would be anything from like 60 seconds to like four and a half minutes. You’d see these like interstitials on like the Disney channel. Instead of a commercial break, you might see one of these things. So there was no direct revenue, uh, time Gotcha. For these products. It was sort of the, the general idea was to keep these characters sort of top of mind for new viewers, as, you know, as they’re being born and they’re being exposed to the sort of, you know, the Disney and the Pixar universe so that they would, you know, see these interstitials on Disney Channel. And, and then the idea was that it would drive sort of pieces of the consumer products business.
Glenn Hopper:
Interesting. Okay. So you go from this, uh, you know, creative area where you’re really focused on projects and everything, you know, kind of this tight world to maybe a more traditional, you know, like revenue focused strategic finance when you move to LinkedIn. But also that said, the intense focus that you had on these projects, probably that’s a mindset that stays with you. And a lot of times it’s so easy to just think big picture and think forecast and, and budget to actuals versus getting down to the project level. So I imagine that there was a lot of, you know, strong stuff that came with it. But what, what were those mindset changes that you had to make, and what advice would you have to fp and a leaders making a, a similar transition or, or, you know, if they haven’t really been at that product or, or project level cost accounting in, in management, like, what’s the shift there and and what’d you bring with it? It
Craig Barry:
Was a big shift because as I mentioned before, you know, working in electronic arts and Pixar is a lot of cost center management. So really focused on, okay, how do we do things more efficiently here? And then moving to LinkedIn, you know, high growth, you know, I, I started, you know, shortly after the IPO, so a lot of expectations, you know, for what LinkedIn was gonna deliver. And the focus was revenue, revenue, revenue at all costs. How, how do, how do we grow revenue here? Not necessarily at all costs, of course we’re paying attention to the money that we’re spending, but at the same time, it was really, you know, the stock price is driven by how quickly the revenue is growing. So it was, you know, it took me a couple months or even a quarter to sort of adjust to that, you know, different frame of mind because I walked in the door and I, I, I knew some people there because I’ve worked with them in other companies.
So that was good. So I had good people like, you know, like no stupid questions, right? I could ask a lot of stuff in the first quarter until I sort of learned what was going on. But my first instinct in my first role there was sort of, okay, well how do we manage headcount? Because I spent so much time managing headcount at all the, you know, these other companies and not being the biggest sort of cost item. Okay, how do we manage headcount? And, and, you know, I sort of quickly learned it’s not that important at the end of the day. ’cause nobody’s asking about this. Everybody just keeps asking about bookings and revenue, uh mm-hmm <affirmative>. So let’s, let’s, you know, let’s put our focus on that. So it took a while to sort of adjust to that. But then once I sort of, you know, grasp that, Hey, this is really the important thing that, that we do here, you know, it, it, it sort of changed where I put my focus and, and you know, I would say I shifted, you know, focusing like 80 or 90% on top line and, you know, sort of 10% on expenses at the end of the day.
Glenn Hopper:
Interesting. So at that point, I don’t know where LinkedIn was on their, sort of their, um, you know, profitability, but it sounds like that aggressive revenue targets were the
Craig Barry:
Ultimate. Yeah. Alright. So I joined when the company was around a billion dollars in revenue and, and we were maybe just shy of, um, 4,000, uh, head count. Yeah. Fantastic experience. I learned so much. There are so many smart people working in a company like that.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, yeah. And you got stretched into areas that you hadn’t done before. So you’re doing central forecasting, you’re doing m and a, and then the post-acquisition work with Microsoft, and I am, I’m curious about that one in particular because whenever there’s an, an acquisition and you say, okay, well there were, you know, 20,000, uh, employees in, in this revenue. Like what, what synergies are gonna come from rolling it up under the Microsoft umbrella? And what, and then, then though you start to, maybe that’s when you shift focus from, okay, this is our revenue target to, okay, now we need to, um, come up with a, um, you know, with a, a profitability plan and figure out how it fits in the portfolio. So walk me through kind of those shifts and, and, and what you were doing there.
Craig Barry:
Yeah, so, um, the m and a is a good one because I, I supported, uh, our corporate development team from an fp and a point of view. So I, I, I worked with them on a lot of the modeling on any of the acquisitions we did sort of, um, you know, we had some pre, uh, acquisition by Microsoft and some after. So I worked on probably about 10 different, um, acquisitions there. And that was a new world for me. That that was, that was really interesting. I really enjoyed that actually, because everyone were,
Glenn Hopper:
You were in in the due diligence phase
Craig Barry:
Exactly.
Glenn Hopper:
Modeling.
Craig Barry:
Yeah. So they, they bring me in pretty early on these deals. I mean, Corp Dev was always looking for, okay, what do we need? You know, what, what are we gonna bring in? What, what kind of, you know, what tech do we need? Or, you know, are we gonna do an acquihire or what is it that we’re gonna do here? So corp dev was always working on those types of things. And then what it looked like they had sort of a, you know, a bit of a green light, like this might be a good fit for us. And they’d usually loop in the fp and a team. And so that would be our head of fp and a and then myself. And then I had an analyst on my team that would help me with this stuff. So, totally different world. I never worked on m and a on the first one.
And then what I learned on the very first one, uh, we did, which actually went through and was this successful deal, was it’s go time all the time when m and a is happening. Uh, and so it was kind of, you know, some late nights and, you know, I don’t know, probably got up to like version 65 on the model, right? It was just constantly changing everything all the time to see how this was gonna fit into our business. So, super good experience, really enjoyed that. Um, really enjoyed that a lot actually. It was, you know, it’s some long nights and some, some, you know, hard work in there, but really interesting stuff to work on ’cause things are changing so quickly. So really enjoyed that. And then with the acquisition by Microsoft, that was different. Now we, you know, we were being bought. Um, and so it was really interesting because there was only a certain, you know, handful of people that were in, on what was going on in the very beginning.
So, uh, our fp a team, the people that got looped in that weren’t told exactly what was going on, we were told that we were under audit and we had to produce a certain set of documents for this. So that was kind of the first sort of six or eight weeks of it before we were sort of drawn in and, and told, okay, you’re, you’re now in the circle of trust. You know, Microsoft’s interested in buying us. There’s other potential buyers out there as well. Um, and it was a lot of, first of all, getting to the, the deal getting done. So that was phase one. And then we spent probably like six months in sort of, you know, the regulatory period and going through, uh, due diligence and having all of those things sort of like wrapped up to sort of finish the deal, which was also a tremendous amount of work. I remember the day it was announced, it was, it was, uh, super cool, actually. Everybody got, you know, pulled into the boardroom that we had in our sort of fp and a area and, you know, big announcement and, and area, well, it was already public at that point, ’cause you know, it, it was announced at the opening market, but very cool thing to go through.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And, you know, if you, if you’re building kind of the perfect fp and a foundation, you know, so starting with your, um, your accounting training, the intensive program you had there, and then, you know, several years of focusing on project accounting and, and you know, looking at that and then, and then coming into m and a, my first, um, fp and a role was in telecom. And this was in the early two thousands where, you know, very, uh, our company was very acquisitive and there was a lot of consolidation in the industry. And, um, we were doing one to two, like merger of equal size mergers every year, and then multiple tuck-ins, you know, um, bringing everything from very small, like almost acquihire can, you know, maybe a little more than that. But, you know, bringing in these deals just to try to, to grow that revenue line.
But getting that m and a experience both on the buy and the sell side, where you sort of understand, like you understand on a more tangible level business valuation and why they’re looking at certain things. And it helps you kind of, for me, it seemed like those were the kind of things that, and then I was in private equity backed businesses beyond that. So you, but it trains you to look at what are the metrics that are meaningful that actually are a lever that can drive something. I mean, did you, did you find a lot of your learnings through the m and a activity were around, oh, this is what businesses value and this is why I did it kind of beyond?
Craig Barry:
Yeah, it was, uh, I mean, I’d had some, you know, exposure to business valuation through my education, but it, you know, in the real world, it’s, it doesn’t hold up anymore. Everything changes very much when you’re actually looking at, you know, a real business that you’re gonna fold into a different business. So it was really interesting. Everyone was different. I mean, sometimes we were buying the company because, uh, you know, the biggest one we did@linkedinwaslinda.com, which became LinkedIn Learning, you know, and that was a billion and a half dollar, uh, acquisition. So a huge company and created a whole new product line for LinkedIn. Um, so that was a big deal. Uh, you know, you’re obviously gonna spend a billion and a half dollars. You can work very hard and make sure you understand how that’s gonna fit into the company. But then even smaller ones like acquihires of, you know, six people or something like that. Right. You know, they all, they all take on their own different flavor, uh, as you’re working through them.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. ’cause you’ve got the, you know, some that you built for the customer base or for a new segment. And, you know, there’s the different reasons, the strategic acquisition. So it is fun to see, you know, how those businesses are valued. And I think it perhaps, I mean, it’s probably good prep for what you’re doing now. I know maybe a lot of your businesses are much smaller scale, but it’s, they’re building to sell or whatever they’re doing, and you’ve already got that mindset.
Craig Barry:
It’s, I think it’s a fantastic experience for, for, um, you know, the sort of things I offer to my clients today. Because a lot of them are exactly as you said, they’re either looking to, you know, they’re looking for that strategic acquisition or perhaps, um, you know, a private equity buyer, but they all have some sort of exit plan in place. So being able to sort of help them figure out, okay, what’s the appropriate valuation here? Which is a, you know, it, it, it’s, it’s honestly a little bit more art than science at the end of the day, because no two companies are the same. You can do all the benchmarking you want, but you, you can never find that situation that fits exactly with your current client than you’re trying to do. Yeah,
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah.
Craig Barry:
Yeah. So that’s why it turns into a negotiation, I suppose. Right. You know, everybody’s got their number that they want. Yeah.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. So also at LinkedIn, uh, one of your key projects was creating the virtual p and ls we talked about before the show. And I’m wondering how did that change the way that the leaders made decisions? And kind of walk me through what you were building there and how other companies, maybe if, if that’s something you apply to your clients now or, or walk me through that.
Craig Barry:
Yeah, so virtual p and l, so this is something that was, um, you know, the, the concept of this was brought to us post acquisition by Microsoft. And so the way that they look at all of their businesses is through something called the unit of accountability. Uh, so they break all their businesses down into their own separate p and ls, and then everything becomes, uh, fully allocated. Uh, so you’ve got, you know, you can tie it every last dollar, and it ties back to your p and l. So, you know, after we were acquired, we were talking to them about, you know, how to manage these different businesses. And so they said, oh, why don’t you to take a crack at something like this? Um, so I spearheaded that project and built out the virtual p and ls across our sort of four main businesses, and then our consumer business as well.
The same idea. So the top line Pike piece, super easy because you, you know, you, you know where the money’s coming from. Um, when you get into the engineering and, and the product effort, you have a pretty good idea of, of what’s being spent. But there is this whole layer, um, you know, that needs to be allocated. So there was a lot of effort went into, okay, how do we figure out how to allocate these costs properly? And then of course, you have your overhead after the fact, which we, you know, you can talk about that, you know, how you wanna allocate that. But we tended to look at it without the overhead allocated. And then with the overhead allocated, because it really was kind of, it, it’s whatever allocation methodology you choose for the overhead doesn’t really have anything to do with the underlying business.
So we tended to look at it before the overhead was allocated. And the idea behind this was, uh, to give autonomy to each of the owners, um, in these business lines. So almost like a, a general manager, uh, type structure. Um, so we had a sales leader and a product leader, uh, for each one. And the idea was to move some of the decision making away from the CEO and the CFO and put the decision making on the general managers of these businesses. Um, so if, you know, if they were overperforming on revenue, we had a deal. We said, okay, 50% of that comes back to the company and the other 50% you can reinvest in your own business line if you want to, um, you know, if you can find something that makes sense for you to invest in there. Of course, we f fp a would support the analysis to make sure that it all made sense and everything else, but it was kind of like, okay, well, we’ll split the profits. And then the rest of it goes into the, you know, the coffers of the CFO for sort of larger initiatives. It took, as you can imagine, large business, it took like a year to get this thing sort of built out and up and running and, and everybody sort of bought into the way that it was going to work. And it was still running when I left. So I left there in 2022. I don’t know if it’s still going today, but it was still being used at the time that I left.
Glenn Hopper:
So those allocations are interesting because I, you know, when I was spent that part of my career that with the PE backed companies, I would come in a lot of the time where pretty long in the tooth on the investment, and they were looking to get out. And, you know, a lot of times I’d come in and the accounting would be, you know, that maybe they had departments or divisions or whatever, but the way they were, you know, maybe they weren’t allocating software you, you know, across the different departments for, and if you’re trying, especially if you have different business units or if you’re trying to set it up so you could potentially do a spinoff or, or, or something there, like trying to get those allocations straight. It’s, a lot of times it felt like it was more art than science because you have to choose what methodology, is it, you know, percent of revenue? Is it percent of total cost? Is it based on the number of people we have, the number of hours, the number, I mean, so doing those allocations and building those out. And then it becomes the justification because as long as everything looks great, the, the way you’ve allocated it, everybody’s fine. But if somebody feels like, well, now my p and l doesn’t look that good, then they wanna push back on it. Did you run into a lot of that as well, or
Craig Barry:
Every single day? Maybe that’s an overstatement, but I mean, I can’t tell you how many meetings we had on deciding how to allocate these things. As you mentioned, you know, you look at like a percentage of bookings or a percentage of revenue, um, or head count, uh, you know, those are all common drivers that you would use for this kind of thing. And, you know, there was always an argument for why this didn’t make sense for me. Uh, you know, whoever the person was that was gonna be eating this cost at the end of the day, it was hard to get everybody on the same page. Um, you know, as, as far as doing that, uh, because everybody would sort of, Hey, this hurts my profitability at the end, it makes me look worse than the other guy. Uh,
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Yeah.
Craig Barry:
So, so what we would, what we would find happened, actually, so we did quarterly business reviews, like a lot of companies do, and this, you know, this virtual p and l will be part of the QBR, uh, you know, presentation materials. And so there would be an fp and a team for each of these five business lines. And what we found is they would take the, the stock p and l, uh, which we would give them their virtual p and l, and then they would discuss after the fact, maybe some adjustments that would be made in there. Um, and so they would sort of try to highlight, hey, you know, maybe we’re a little bit more profitable that it looks because of, you know, A, B, and C, you know, and, and so we didn’t necessarily get involved and say, Hey, you can’t do that. We said, you have to start with the real view. And then if you want to talk a little bit about why, you know, maybe you’re being allocated something, it doesn’t make sense, that’s okay. You can include that in the discussion. And I didn’t see any of these Q bs go, you know, completely sideways on any of those types of discussions. Right. I think it would be caught, it,
Glenn Hopper:
It’s funny you’re giving me a, I’m, I’m just having flashbacks to some board meetings where, you know, being in there presenting in another, you know, whether C-R-O-C-O or whatever, being deciding that’s the moment that they wanna talk about <laugh>, why the, why these allocations don’t work and why their number is really the right number. And isn’t, uh,
Craig Barry:
Isn’t that so frustrating? I mean, I’ve been in, in lots of those scenarios as well. Um, and you know, you almost feel like you’re, you’re sort of blindsided and you’re sort of thinking, why did you pick now
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah.
Craig Barry:
To bring this up, you know, because I’ve run into this, you know, with different folks and people I have a good relationship with, and we could’ve discussed this ahead of time and come up with a better way to do it, rather than, you know, put me on my back foot in the meeting and have to sort of justify this in front of a group of people that, you know, probably don’t even really care a whole lot about this. And it’s really a distraction at the end of the day.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds like someone who’s been through the battles, <laugh> <laugh>. So you’ve gone through at, at these big companies and then you go to bio render where you’re brought in and this, I love this kind of assignment ’cause you’re, you’re brought in to build fp and a from the ground up and, you know, I’d, I’d much rather, if I’ve gotta do an ERP installation, I’d rather be starting from the beginning than trying to come in and inherit somebody’s bad implementation and, and take that over or whatever. And kind of with fp and a, like they, you know, depending on the data maturity and, and the, you know, where the company is, if you’re coming in and it’s bad, you know, if there’s data issues or data governance or don’t have a good, you know, everybody’s using kind of their own KPIs, it can be a mess to clean it up because then you’ve got sort of a change management thing.
But if you come in and you’re doing fp and a the first person to do it, you become it. You know, if you do it right, you’re a hero and everybody’s like, oh my God, you’re giving me such a, you know, great insights into my business that we never had before. So, you know, it’s a, as you know, uh, it’s a lot of work, but it, it seems it’s much more rewarding than fixing bad fp and a. So walk me through and maybe really focus on, uh, ’cause it’s al when you come in there, it’s like that first three months or that first a hundred days, whatever it is. Like how did you kind of break down the project? What did you prioritize first? What were, what were those first three months like?
Craig Barry:
Yeah, great question and, and I think you nailed it when you said rewarding. It is really rewarding to come in with sort of a blank slate and be able to build it up into something that makes sense. Um, so I really, it was fantastic work. I really enjoyed doing It was great. Uh, so first thing first was, you know, I spent my first week sort of sifting through data and just looking at what they had. Okay. Their CRM was on HubSpot, the data in there was a mess. They had just hired a director of rev ops, um, prior to me joining. And thankfully, actually she also came from LinkedIn. So we were sort of speaking the same language, um, which was great. So that was a great partner to have on that. So there was a lot of effort went into, you know, working with her to clean up CRM data and get that into a point where we could say, okay, this is what’s happened.
Let’s start using this to build out some models and look at what’s gonna happen in the future. So first thing was to build out a field sales model because we were making a big investment in a sales led motion. So that was where the growth was gonna come from. So we had a consumer business as well. Um, but that was sort of secondary. That was gonna be kind of, you know, it was gonna keep running and it was gonna be fine, but the real growth was gonna come from, um, you know, to sort of the enterprise side. So the first thing was to build that out. And then I focused next on the consumer business and then folding that all into a p and l and, you know, that that was showing adjusted ebitda, uh, and then regular EBITDA as well after that. And that really caught my, my manager was actually a, you know, a, you know, a guy who had come up through just sort of the controllership side.
And so he was, you know, it was really interesting. He, he, I think he was a little bit blindsided that I did this adjusted EBITDA thing and then, you know, broke it down to EBITDA after that. And he was like, what are you doing? And I’m like, no, no, we need to talk about what’s actually going on in the business. And so we ended up sort of chatting with one of the founders about it. He’s like, I, I, I agree, you know, Adjusted EBITDA is the right way to look at it because, you know, some of these things just don’t make sense to include in there or whatever. So that was when I, I sort of first knew, you know, I’m working with someone who’s much more on the accounting side as my manager. You know, I really was going to be sort of the fp and a expert.
So we started with that, and then we went to, um, building out, uh, reporting, uh, and then building out, uh, quota models. Uh, so we know what we were gonna do with our salespeople because quotas had sort of been set, you know, willy-nilly. Prior to that, as I mentioned, we were investing pretty heavily into sales led motion. So we were hiring BDRs, we were hiring, um, you know, AEs. You know, we had AE one through four depending on sort of the market that you were focused on. And then we had, uh, sales managers and the sales director and a head of sales. So we had to build out all these different comp plans. Um, you know, so everybody sort of knew what was going on. And then same thing on the, on the customer success side. We had, you know, renewal targets and, and, and, and things like that.
But there was no, not a lot of thought really being put into it. So it was kinda like everybody was kind of doing a little bit their own thing, and the business was going very well. Um, you know, they, there’s a company that had product market fit very early, um, you know, and they’d been cashflow positive very early, so that, you know, a, a great story, um, which sort of allowed them to maybe not be as buttoned up as they, you know, other companies might be if they really needed to pay more attention to, you know, how much cash was coming in the door. And I still remember one of the things, you know, after I built out the first sort of models, uh, going back to one of the founders and saying, okay, now share, do you mind sharing your model or whatever you have, I’m just curious, you know, are we in the same ballpark here?
And, and he said, oh, no, no, we don’t have anything. Uh, this is why we hired you. This is what you are here for. We don’t know what’s happening in the future, and that, that’s kind of your job to figure out where this business is going. So that was really eye-opening because they, they, they really had nothing, absolutely nothing. When I got there, it was like a blank workbook for me, and I could do whatever I wanted with it. So the autonomy was great. And that, you know, I think they hired me because I could draw in my experience from, you know, all those different companies and have the ability to sort of like, build out something that made sense. You know, I understood SaaS metrics and the SaaS business model and everything else, you know, so I, I think, um, I think that’s probably why I got the job at the end of the day.
Glenn Hopper:
And remind me what Bio renderer does.
Craig Barry:
Oh, so they, um, the easiest way to describe it is they make like a PowerPoint, uh, type product for, um, it’s cloud-based PowerPoint type product, uh, for visualizing science. Uh, so if you work in either academia, uh, or in, um, like a, you know, big pharma, uh, you’re doing r and d, and so they give you all the icons and templates to sort of visualize the science that you do. So it’s much easier to communicate. In the past, people would use PowerPoint and there would be all these ugly shapes and stuff like that. And so they sort of, um, you know, streamline the whole process. You got like a, you know, you got like a canvas and then you, I, you know, by the time I left, I think they were up to like, you know, 12,000 icons that you could use, you know, like, uh, T-cells and, and you know, different connectors and all this kind of stuff or whatever. So you’d use it to visualize your science. Gotcha.
Glenn Hopper:
And when they brought you in, so they were revenue, revenue and cash flow positive, they’d been, and they were kind of just bootstrapped founder led.
Craig Barry:
Yeah, exactly. You know, they’d done quite well up to that point, and they were really like, okay, this is, this thing is working, let’s like go full speed ahead Gotcha. Sort of thing. And so, you know, to do that, they wanted to do a, a, a fundraise. And so part of my job was to get everything in place, um, you know, so that we could go through the series A process.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. At that point, I mean, was their accounting pretty solid? Like they were audit ready and they were good to go there. It was just, they’d never done fp and a.
Craig Barry:
Yeah, the accounting side was good. So I joined, like I mentioned, the, the, the head of finance was, um, you know, a guy who comes from sort of, you know, a controllership type background. Um, so, you know, he would very, very strong, very good. And under him, there was a controller in place as well, and she was also very strong. So as far as, you know, the, their historical financial data and their closed processes and stuff like that, it was all buttoned up. They, they were very good at that. So that made it easy for me because I didn’t have to work quality of that data. At least I knew I could rely on that. CRM was a little different because there was no rev ops in place, uh, until, you know, I mentioned the woman that came from LinkedIn. Uh, and so you had reps just going in there and plugging in whatever they wanted.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah,
Craig Barry:
The pipeline is massive, but the wind is, yeah. So you couldn’t make, if anything, um, and, you know, so we to do a massive cleanup on that, you know, we, we eventually moved from HubSpot to Salesforce. We hired a Salesforce admin. And you know, like as you, as you grow as a company, these things all make sense. And so, you know, we, we brought some structure and some rigor to that, which made it a lot better over time, but at least the financial data was reliable. And I have one huge benefit, I think, uh, which was, I inherited the, he was, I think his title was Senior Accountant, uh, and they moved him over to fp and a, uh, when I joined as an fp a analyst. And he’d been there for three years already. And so he’d seen everything that had happened. And so he was such a great resource for me.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah.
Craig Barry:
You know, he, he’d worked through everything. He knew all the numbers inside and out. He, he, you know, he knew the consumer business well. He had a pretty good understanding of how, um, you know, the sales lab motion was gonna work. You know, he was very, very beneficial to have as sort of my first hire. I mean, I didn’t hire him, I got him, but he was, you know, he was super strong, very, very, very buttoned up.
Glenn Hopper:
So they were doing a series A when you joined, and they had good accounting, which is funny, I think about, like, in the VC world, the idea of a series a company actually having good accounting. It’s like, no, that’s <laugh>. That just doesn’t happen. It’s just a mess. It’s so, like, they’re in QuickBooks or Zero or something and everything is just kind of, you know, there’s a blend of like cash and accrual at the same time. And they don’t
Craig Barry:
Know. Kidding. Nobody knows. Yeah.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. <laugh>. So, um, but it’s funny though, because there’s, you know, head of finance at a startup, you know, those, the early stage startups, they, everybody wants to draw the chart that has the hockey stick, and they’ve got whatever model they’re basing on, you know, has so many assumptions. And, and Soons the assumes this inflection point. But I guess, you know, they, they had a, a, a business track record at that point and, and, and good accounting and everything. But what do you think it was that they, they knew they needed fp and a to do that series A? What did they think that investors were gonna be asking or looking for that they weren’t providing just with solid accounting?
Craig Barry:
Yeah, I think it was really having the forecast about what was gonna happen next. It’s great to look at what has happened, but that’s not necessarily what you’re buying. You’re buying what’s going to happen next. Uh, and so I think that was, um, that was the thing where they realized, okay, we need somebody in here with like, very strong modeling skills to be able to put together forecast and models, um, you know, and, and make them relatively bulletproof so we can talk about, okay, what’s expected to happen over the next, you know, two to five years sort of thing.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Craig Barry:
And, and I, I also find, I think with, like, accountants are great at, at accounting for sure, and they’re great at tying out financial statements, but they don’t necessarily have that, you know, similar, you know, sort of business acumen. So when it came to things like, you know, metrics and stuff like that, it’s almost like a different world for them because it’s not part of their, you know, gap training, you know what I mean? Like, it, it’s not something that they think about on a regular basis. So, you know, having to do, you know, bring some flexibility into like a CAC calculation, right? They would, they would wanna do it like a very structured way and where you’re like, ah, it’s maybe a little bit more nuanced than that. Maybe we should look at this a little bit differently. So I think it’s bringing that a little bit different lens, uh, to be able to sort of tell a, maybe a bit more of a, a compelling story to potential investors. Yeah.
Glenn Hopper:
So you had this long background of working for these big cool companies that everybody knows and, uh, LVA, and then you make the decision, you know, and then, uh, bio render, you’re, you’re, you know, setting up fp and a and I’m wondering, in that transition, um, I want to move into, like, you go from this corporate world where you have all these resources and all this data and every, you know, all these great things to use to now your own business and this, you know, working with maybe smaller companies, less data mature companies and everything. So first off, tell me a little bit about ClearSight iq, what, what you guys do.
Craig Barry:
Yeah, so it’s a fractional CFO consulting firm. Uh, and so I focus on sort of four pillars, uh, strategic finance, something called fp and a as a service, uh, fundraising support, and then m and a readiness. Uh, so those sort of the four pillars, uh, that I offer and working with, um, my clients are, are sort of, you know, pre-revenue up to about 25 million in, in a RR. That’s kind of the sweet spot. I think anybody beyond that has, you know, someone like me already on staff, uh, right. So they, they don’t necessarily need extra support. It’s sort of helping those companies, whether it’s founders or they might have some kind of finance function in place, helping those people, um, you know, sort of realize what they can get from an fp and a type function.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. So it’s interesting. I, I talk to a lot of, um, fractional CFOs and people that go out on their own, and it’s, it’s interesting, but I think that, that your focus, that 25 million in lower, they’re not gonna hire, they don’t have the, the, you know, resources to hire a full-time CFO, but they, you know, a lot of ’em, like I said, their, their, you know, tax guy has been doing, doing their books and, and doing, you know, air quote fp and a for ’em. So I think there is a, there is a demand there. And if you think just about the number of businesses that size versus the, the big logos, but what is it that made you, I mean, you could have gone to another, you know, big Fortune 100 company if you wanted, probably, and, you know, continued there versus now come into this kind of messy startup world and doing, instead of working for a big company doing the solopreneur thing. Walk us through that a little bit.
Craig Barry:
Yeah, it’s a great question. You know, I was at this sort of 20 year mark in my career, and really what I was looking for at that point was, you know, like you said, I did some big company stuff, you know, private company stuff, you know, the startup world, like all fantastic experience. Uh, and really what I was after at the end of the day was not doing more of that, uh, right. So it’s always about growing and doing different things. And so I wanted to do something completely different. Uh, and so I decided to sort of, you know, branch out and, and do my own thing, uh, with ClearSight IQ, really as almost like a lifestyle business. Um, you know, I’m not trying to grow it into a, you know, a large consultancy where I’m gonna have, you know, 20 employees or something like that.
I really just wanna do my own thing and ideally, you know, build it up to like a 75% capacity sort of thing. Uh, you know, my kids are getting older, uh, you know, I wanna spend as much time with them before they go away to school. And so it was really just a, a question of, okay, well, how do I, how do I keep working and do stuff that’s interesting to me, but still have the flexibility to, you know, spend time with my family? Like in the startup world, you know, burnout’s a real thing there. Uh, right. So if I was gonna go to another startup, you know, I’d be staring down, you know, more 60 or 70 hour weeks kind of thing and working, you know, very hard to, to, you know, help the company be successful, which is great, and I enjoy that work.
But then when I sort of looked at it and in terms of, okay, my whole life and how does this fit together, you know, is this really what I want to look back on and say, you know, this is what I spent, you know, all these years doing. So I love the work. It’s really interesting to me. But being able to do it and then also being able to have sort of, you know, the lifestyle piece of it as well, um, you know, this seemed like the best way to, to go about it. So, you know, when I was thinking about leaving Bow Render, I talked to my wife about it and sort of pictured this idea, and, and she’s been very supportive. She’s like, yeah, go for it. Do, you know, do whatever, do whatever you think is gonna be good. And, and, you know, she sort of said, you know, try it for a couple years.
If you don’t like it, go back and do one of the things you did before. You know, having that backing for my wife and the flexibility to kind of, you know, figure out what I wanna do myself, um, has been fantastic. Yeah. So I’m, I’m very happy with how it’s going. I’ve given myself sort of very reasonable, you know, targets for the first couple years for this business, and I’m on pace to achieve my, my sort of first year sales target. Uh, so I’m, I’m really happy with how it’s going. I, I think it’s been a good move.
Glenn Hopper:
It’s funny, and maybe this isn’t an, a fair stereotype, and especially with business partnering and all that, and fp and a, it’s different than, you know, sitting there with a 10 key and the green visor and going through and entering credits and debits. But that said, for a finance person, biz dev and sales are hard. So you talked about hitting your sales targets and you know, now you have to spend a fair amount of your time, I would imagine doing the biz dev part, did you find that was something that came naturally to you? Or how are, you know, how do you approach it and
Craig Barry:
Yeah, it did not come naturally at
Glenn Hopper:
All. Yeah.
Craig Barry:
Uh, you know, I’m a, I’m a finance person through and through, uh, you know, I’m very much an introvert. So, you know, throwing yourself out there and, and, and talking to people and, and trying to sort of pitch what you’re doing in a salesy but not salesy kind of way is, is, you know, it’s, it’s a learned skill. It’s not something that anybody’s good at, right outta that, right outta the gate. You know, before I decided to go down this path, I reached out to a, a, you know, a number of peers, uh, that I’d worked with and, and just sort of said, Hey, I’m thinking about doing this. What do you think? And they’re like, yeah, I think it’s a great idea. You can totally do it. Like, go for it. And then the next step was to reach out to other fractional CFOs, people I didn’t know, and just say, Hey, what’s your experience been like?
This is my background. Do you think I can be successful? And so what I found was that sort of fractional CFO world, uh, is everybody’s very helpful and very supportive. Uh, and so people were, you know, even though you’re, you’re maybe even competing with them for clients, you know, everybody was kind of like, yeah, you have the right background for this. You’re gonna be successful for sure. You know, don’t get, don’t get stuck, right? If you don’t get, you know, if you’re not doing a lot of work in the first, you know, three months, don’t give up. Like, it’s gonna take some time to get some clients and stuff like that. Um, and I was very fortunate. I, I, you know, I got a couple of small clients right away, so I was sort of like, okay, this is easy. It’s not actually easy <laugh> to keep your foot on the gas with the biz dev effort for sure.
To make sure you have, you know, more clients coming in. It’s gone well, but it has been, you know, taking me outta my comfort zone for sure, uh, to do that. You know, I go to networking events and I do, you know, I, I reach out to random people through LinkedIn that I think might be, you know, either could use my service or know someone who can use my service. And so, you know, you sort of have to be ready for the rejection that comes along with that. You know, I’ve had a number of good introductory calls with potential clients that look like it’s going somewhere, and then they ghost me, um, which hurt me a little in the beginning, <laugh>, uh, and, and, and, and now I just realized that’s just part of the game. Uh, and so, you know, it, it, it doesn’t affect me like it did, uh, you know, even six months ago sort of thing when I was trying to get this in off the ground.
Glenn Hopper:
That’s funny. So not, you know, not a lot of my time is spent on business development, but when it does, like, I, I’m still in that phase where, um, you know, when I do get ghosted, I thought, I thought we had this relationship. What’s going on? I thought, <laugh>. And, but then when I talk to the, uh, sales team in our company, and like, I will, the other funny thing is that I just, I could never make myself do. They will just keep like pestering and driving <laugh>. There’s like a sales person out like that doesn’t have the sort of cringe factor that I do of like, I don’t know, I’ve already emailed that person three times and they haven’t responded. The fourth would be too much. And, and the sales guy’s like, oh no, we’re just getting started. We’re gonna hit ’em again. <laugh>. And then it’s crazy how many though, actually can end up converting after, after that.
Craig Barry:
Well, that’s the funny thing. One of the clients that I’m working with right now, um, you know, I reached out to the, one of the first people I got sort of a warm intro from, from somebody that I knew, uh, here in Victoria. And, you know, we had a call and, you know, a great conversation and he was like, you know, maybe sometime I might need some of your help or whatever. Uh, and that was sort of it. I sent a couple follow ups, you know, a couple months later, Hey, how’s it going? Sort of thing. And, and, and, you know, respond. Yeah, everything’s great. Um, and that was the end of it. And then outta nowhere, you know, three weeks ago, they’re like, Hey, I need a ton of help on this project I’m working on right now. I need some help with, you know, putting together some board materials and I’m doing a pricing analysis and like, can you help? And so you just never know where the, the business is gonna come from. So I think, you know, the advice you’re getting, which is, is like just keep, keep, keep it warm, uh, you know, with, with the people that you’re dealing with, you never know when they’re gonna come back to you again. Yeah. So you, you know, I just try to stay top of mind with people that look like they could use my service at some point.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And, and I, I guess we’ve drifted a a bit of, you know, a astray from fp and a, but I just, uh, on that point, a client that I’ve been working with for a year and a half now, finally, finally this Friday, we’re kicking off, kicking off a project. And it’s, and it’s the same thing if I, and the sales guy that worked with me on it, uh, said, you know, no, come quick. So if you don’t get that, no, you just keep <laugh>. You just keep going. And now,
Craig Barry:
You know, that’s a, that’s a, it’s a great point because you know, you’re talking about sending the follow and mean it’s three too many and then four, you know, and so, you know, and you space these things out, you try to stay top of mind. And so I had a great introductory call with a potential client and to the point where, you know, I thought we were gonna work together for sure, sign an NDA, set up a shared folder, moving some documents around and stuff like that. And then nothing. Uh, so I keep following up and I keep not hearing No. So I’ll just keep following up. Right. It might turn into something at some point.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. So, um, well that is, and also, I mean, just the, if you like, you different challenges. I mean, when you’re doing the fractional, you kind of get to do everything you did before, but sort of at scale in that you’re just, you’re doing it at different companies and, and all that. So
Craig Barry:
I think that’s right. I think one of the things I, I really like, and I know this is probably like my inner nerd coming out here, is I really like building stuff in spreadsheets. Like, I enjoy that kind of work. And then, you know, if you look back to my time at, at LinkedIn, you know, leading central forecasting, I was managing, uh, a revenue forecast of about $13 billion when I left. I was not in spreadsheets doing anything. I had a team of people working on that stuff. Yeah. You know, I would be reviewing things, asking questions and saying, you know, this, is this how this really works and maybe we should dig into this. And, and that kind of, so you’re seeing a totally different skillset from, you know, that actually like banging on the keyboard and, and building stuff. So going to bio render was, was great because there was nobody else. So I had to go and, and do all that stuff, and I really enjoy that kind of work. And I got to a similar position with them that I had a team of six by the time that I left, and again, I’d moved out of doing that work. So doing it for yourself, I mean, I’m right in the spreadsheets every single day. And like I said, maybe this is my like, you know, inner nerd coming up, but I, I really enjoy that kind of work. I like building stuff. It’s spreadsheets, it’s fun for me.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. It’s funny you mentioned that because I, you know, when I was CFOI had moved so far away from actually putting anything together and I used to pride myself on my Excel skills, but you know, when you’re, when you’re more of a recipient than a builder, they, they, uh, you know, they, they, they tend to go down. And I did, I, I’d been a CFO for, I don’t know, a decade at, at this point, and I decided I’m gonna go get my, um, FMVA from the Corporate Finance Institute. And I went and I did this intensive thing just so I could get back in and build a three statement model. Again, <laugh> and I probably never actually built one all the way by myself again, but it was like, alright, I still got it. I remember the keyboard shortcuts and, you know, and, and how to carry it through. So, uh, yeah, I I, I get you on that because it’s, you know, at some point you stop doing and you start managing and it does feel good that satisfaction of actually building something and, and seeing that
Craig Barry:
Part. Yeah, I, I mean, I like doing the analysis piece of it. When I was at Buyer render, one of the analysts on my team was A-A-C-F-A and he was a very good modeler. And you sort of realize, oh, I’ve, I’ve kind of, I’ve lost some skill over time here. Uh, and we actually did, at Byron, we did two way performance reviews. I would, I would give him a review and he would review me as his manager. And I remember, uh, he told, he put in my performance review that I was an okay modeler and I was like, <laugh>, I’m kind of stung a little bit. ’cause I thought I was pretty good. I mean, he was, he was night and day better than me. And I’m not gonna debate that, but, you know, just that he said I was okay. It kind of was like, oh, maybe we get a brush up on my skills here.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah, <laugh>. That’s funny.
We are getting to the point of the show where I’m supposed to start winding it, winding it down. I think before I took over, I think these podcasts ran about 40 minutes. I feel like I’m getting into like, um, oh, who’s, who are the, uh, you know, like Joe Rogan or, uh, the other, um, uh, the, you know, the three and four hour podcast people out there. I don’t know if I don’t, you know, as much as I love fp and a, I don’t know who’s gonna commit to the, uh, three hour podcast, but we’re <laugh>. So as I wind it down, we’ve got our, our, uh, you know, sort of switching over to the personal side, uh, questions. And the one we ask all the guests is, uh, what’s something that not many people know about you, maybe outside of your work interests and that we couldn’t find from, from quickly Googling you or whatever?
Craig Barry:
Yeah. At, at LinkedIn when we did introductions, you would, you would introduce yourself and you would say something that’s not on my LinkedIn profile to sort of answer this question. So something that’s not on my LinkedIn profile. Um, I actually lived in, in Cambodia for a year, uh, at the time that, you know, I mentioned before I worked as an English teacher. I lived in Cambodia for a year and I worked, uh, for the World Wildlife Fund there. Uh, wow. This is all on my LinkedIn profile. Not that many people know that about me. I was hired to build a, uh, database, uh, for all of their library materials for researchers, uh, that were working in Cambodia, and it paid 600 US dollars per month. Uh, <laugh> doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but in Cambodia, $600 goes a long way. Um, yeah. And so that, that’s something that probably not a ton of people know about me.
Glenn Hopper:
Well, very cool. And since you are now, um, getting back into Excel, and you are in the models a lot, I’m, I’m curious, and I’m gonna, so I’m gonna ask you the question, but I wonder if maybe it has changed from back, uh, in your early days in Excel, if, uh, but what is your current favorite Excel function and why?
Craig Barry:
So I use a lot of index match match to be able to sort of consolidate, uh, you know, a bunch of raw data into a way that I want to be able to work with it. Uh, in the, in the olden days when I was sort of learning my chops and modeling, I, I was big on, uh, I was big on some if and, and d lookups, and then X lookup was a game changer, uh, when I came <laugh>. So, I mean, I can talk about this for hours ’cause I mean, I’m in there doing all this stuff all the time. Something I will say is, uh, I rely on, uh, chat GPT quite a bit now to help me write formulas. It’s very effective if you sort of tell it what you want it to do, because I might, you know, there’s, in Excel, there’s, you know, 15 different ways you can do it, right? And maybe, you know, maybe you’re gonna do the thing that has, you know, six different functions tied together and chat. GPT can do it for you, you know, in one and, and make it a little bit more streamlined. So I’m actually relying on that quite a bit when I’m building stuff these days.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. And I, you know, on that note, um, I use chat GPT occasionally for formulas, but it’s kind of, you know, you have to come out of Excel and you have to say which cell and what you’re referencing it. So it’s a little bit clunky, but I’m telling you, I mean, and you know, you know, working for <laugh> for LinkedIn and, and as they rolled into Microsoft, Microsoft didn’t spend $15 billion investing in AI so that people would have to come. And I, I know co-pilot’s getting there, but I, you know, when they get to that, yes, you know, that what they’re picturing is clip’s revenge they’re finally gonna bring back. So you can just be in Excel and all that stuff that, you know, those of us that have been in the industry a while that we prided ourselves on, um, coming up, you know, uh, all the cool things that we could do in Excel and the, the models we could build and the, um, sum ifs and the ne nested if statements and just these super complex models, um, that’s all gonna be replaced when someone can just type in, Hey, build me a pivot table with slicers on this data and, and show it this way, and then it’s just gonna spit it out.
So, you know, that’s where it’s going.
Craig Barry:
I think that’s, that’s totally, I think that’s totally right. I think that’s where we’re headed. Um, I’ve tried using copilot, uh, within Excel and it never does the thing I want it to do. Um, so it’s not there yet. I mean, I have no doubt they’re gonna figure it out, but if you go, or, you know, if your listeners go and they look, uh, they have to go back probably maybe 18 months and, and search, there’s a 30 minute, uh, presentation by Satya Nadella on what, you know, copilot was gonna do for PowerPoint and for Excel. There’s a fantastic example of what it could do or what they envision it doing there in inside Excel, which is, you know, it’s marketing material right now. But I do think that they’ll get there. Um, just the ability to sort of type in questions like, why, why did sales suffer in Q2 in this region? And it’s like, oh, these three customers churn and whatever it was. Right? Like, it’s able to sort of, it knows what you’re looking for and it’s able to figure it out for you.
Glenn Hopper:
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, and you know, at, again, $15 billion invested, you know, they’re gonna get there. So <laugh>. Yeah, <laugh>. So, well, I, I really appreciate your time on the show. I guess before we let you go, where, where can our listeners connect with you and learn more about the work? Uh, you know, find out more about ClearSight?
Craig Barry:
Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn obviously, so under Craig Berry. And then, uh, I have a website, ClearSight iq.com and you can reach out to me there. Uh, there’s links on the website or you could just, uh, reach out directly info at ClearSight iq com.
Glenn Hopper:
Great. Alright, well Craig, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Craig Barry:
Thanks Glen. Uh, I really enjoyed it. Thanks for the, thanks for the time today.
