Leaving FP&A at billion dollar companies to become a top Fractional CFO: Rosemary Linden ‘s amazing career journey
Leaving FP&A at billion dollar companies to become a top Fractional CFO: Rosemary Linden ‘s amazing career journey
Rosemary Linden more than earned her stripes in FP&A over twenty years. Her roles included VP FP&A at Alliant Insurance Services. Director of Global FP&A at WD-40 Company and at Solera.
But after two decades in corporate finance she moved to being a fractional CFO serving small businesses (typical annual revenue of around $10million) managing an assortment of responsibilities.
This episode is for anyone in finance who may be looking to escape the corporate grind and set up as a Fractional CFO.
But Linden warns it is not for everyone.
“One of the first things I’d say to think about is, do you really want to be a fractional CFO? Because that’s different from being a full-time CFO at one particular company and comes with its own challenges.”
In this episode:
- Moving from corporate finance after 20 years to dealing with “astute” small business owners as a fractional CFO in San Diego
- Why FP&A is an ideal training ground to become a CFO
Secrets for telling a good story - Getting to what you want the people in a room to “walk away knowing”
Cash flows at small companies, opportunities and challenges - Dealing with seasonal variances at small businesses
- Advice for starting your own business as a fractional CFO
- Moving to a more analytical mindset
- Difference between, strategic planning and financial planning (Case Study San Diego Civic Youth Ballet)
- My most dangerous deep sea dive, being team Excel and Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Follow Rosemary Linden on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosemarylinden/
Doing Capitalism Better: Cotopaxi CFO Gary Bowen
Doing Capitalism Better: Cotopaxi CFO Gary Bowen
Most CFOs don’t build models where 1% of their company’s net sales (not profits) are given away instantly “right from the top” to help alleviate poverty. But then Cotopaxi is not like most companies. In this episode Cotopaxi CFO, Gary Bowen, explains the pivotal role played by finance and FP&A in “doing capitalism better” while also seeking to become a billion-dollar brand - alongside other outdoor names such as Patagonia, North Face and Columbia. This includes an ambitious new strategy explained by Bowen to move beyond digital sales and into retail–and FP&A’s central role in making this happen.
In this episode Gary Bown CFO of Cotopaxi reveals:
- Starting as operations in customer service and lessons for finance
- How I began as a CFO
- When good finance talent leaves
- Doing fractional CFO services and when businesses need to bring in a CFO
- Being a "Let’s Go" CFO (vs Department of No)
- 1% of Net Sales (not profits) given away, and working that into the model
- Cotopaxi digital retail metrics explained vs retail metrics
- Moving to opening up retail stores and a four wall profitability model
- How to balance investors with giving back principles
- Getting Cotopaxi to a billion dollar company
- Flipping the script from private label to branding at Ogio (and learning the power of branding)
- Flying airplanes, Iron Man competition, and George Washington
Follow Gary Bowen on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-bowen-769a7/
From Leading Data Science at Facebook to becoming a CEO: Kat Orekhova
From Leading Data Science at Facebook to becoming a CEO: Kat Orekhova
Kat Orekhova is Co-Founder & CEO of Vareto, a planning and analytics platform for enterprise teams. In her own words Kat has an “unusual backstory” leaving the world of math academia to build Facebook’s first-ever data science team within FP&A. At the social media giant she was Responsible for financial reporting, forecasting, and planning activities for Facebook’s core business. This was followed by stints as Head of Product at IronClad, a $3billion legaltech company, Sequoia Capital Scout, General Partner at Darkmode Ventures and co-founder & CEO of Vareto.
In this episode Kat reveals:
- The challenges of long range planning as Facebook scaled massively and trying to predict growth across countries from the US to India with more than 100 people contributing to the planing process)
- Being at the beginning of data Science at Facebook
- The move from data science and product into finance
- When should companies start looking at FP&A
- Being a Sequoia scout and what it entails and what she looks for in investment opportunities
- How (now) Meta CFO Susan Li “an absolutely outstanding” mentor insisted on a finance team with data science skills led by Orekhova
- The right blend between data science and FP&A who are “Living in Different Tools”
- Her take on the amount of data science that FP&A teams need to boost their career
- The impact of AI in finance
Follow Kat on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katorekhova/
FP&A Bliss from Pepsi to Lindt: Tolga Hocanin
FP&A Bliss from Pepsi to Lindt: Tolga Hocanin
Tolga Hocanin, CFO & Vice President, Finance & IT at Lindt & Sprüngli (Canada) gives a masterclass in CPG FP&A from his experience at PepsiCo and chocolatier, Lindt.
In this episode:
- Lessons from 20 years of budgeting and how my first budget was a nightmare
- Why budgeting is not just a math exercise
- The main metrics you need to know in CPG
- Why mix management is crucial
The 30-60-90 day plan to succeed in finance in CPG - Running both IT and finance as CFO and why this makes sense
- Building a strong culture in a finance team
- Starting with why in finance
- A $1.5M reporting error and how I responded to it
- Building cross-functional relationships with business partners
Follow and connect with Tolga Hocanin on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tolga-hocanin-cpa-cma-2958008/