ClickUp CFO Dan Zhang on Frameworks to Level Up Your Decisionmaking and Communication

my morning time is what I call my writing room time and my afternoon time is my War Room time so every day is war room at starup you probably know that too one room you manage the forecast you

do the Business Review execute the change management structure deal interview customers rally your team resolve your conflicts with your CEOs and peers and all that just never a dull

day and then the next morning I will extract all the raw signals and material from this battlefield activity and I take that to my writing room so

that's where I built the framework for the long term and what is Click UPS act two act three maybe act four right how do we build a coherent metric story with

our board and our future investors so how do I be the keeper and the reiterates thing

on yesterday's price is not today's price [Music] thank you fat Joo and welcome back to run the numbers my name is CJ gustavson

and I just had three freezer waffles with lots of syrup which makes it really hard to do this intro on this podcast I interview world class CFOs operators in the investors who fund them on how to get the most out of your company's

performance this podcast is a Playbook of sorts for ambitious people in the world of Finance strategy and operations today my guest is Dan Zang the CFO of clickup one the most successful team

collaboration tools on the market I'm a customer H after starting her career as a journalist in Beijing Dan zigged and then zag to climb the finance and Ops ladders at Amazon zinga in app Dynamics

on her way to clickup on this episode we talk about why General life balance is a myth true Frameworks for managing emotional reactions in a high stress job prioritizing time for long-term planning

amongst the chaos of day-to-day Ops spotting top talent and coaching junior team members on how to effectively ask their boss for inputs being transparent about the company's financials with

employees and treating everyone like adults and I would say that Dan is a master Communicator she gets very tactical about how she's communicated both good and bad messages to the

employee base Dan also tells us an amazing story about her mom one of the first female Financial analysts in China who broke down walls for her to succeed in climb the corporate ladder talking to

Dan was really refreshing she pulls no punches and is honest about the level of stress you have as a CFO she does not gloss over the tough times and she makes sure to celebrate the good ones all this

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ass.com tell them your boy CJ sent you they'll hook you up boom welcome back to run the numbers Dan Zang thank you so much for joining me today hi CJ good to be on here thanks for having me so I

don't usually have people introduce themselves and go through their backgrounds but I have to make a special exception this time around you were a journalist but before coming in CFO do I

have that right wow my mom used to tell me that if you connect yourself with the numbers you will always have a job and I didn't listen to her that so my first

job out of college was a journalist in China and very quickly I realized that you should always listen to your mom I got very tired of reporting news and

only got to see you know just a snapshots of some semi true stories so I want to experience the time series of something remarkable I want to be in the

story and I believe that the business world is where the people built dreams shaped lives and have a deep impact on the global level so I came to the states for business goal and never looked back

so it took me some zigzag to get here and join your podcast today CJ my mom is always giving me advice and she's definitely listening right now so shout out to all the moms listening to run the numbers but it probably did teach you

how to ask questions the right way I kind of look at you know fpn people and finance people I'm stealing this from RAC jallow of flowcast but embedded journalists within the org to a certain

degree yeah that's right I think Finance inherently a very journalistic function in the business I like how you said though that business is kind of where the stories happen that definitely Rings

true and uh you've been out on on a really cool ride so far at clickup and and congrats on the promotion to CFO I was pumped to see that thank you thank you appreciate that I have to ask you

about your Ops background which kind of LED you there and so you told me that you expect more from Finance teams in just doing analysis and giving a recommendation can you go a bit deeper

on that statement yeah so I think that's come back into the the traits I I looking the talent I think that there's one thing that I looking the people is

caring like you got to care so much that you're obsessed with the results a lot of Finance people or team they tend to run a bunch of data analysis and they

end that with a recommendation right so they the very typical management consulting style and that just drive me nuts that making the recommendation ending is like keeping that glass door

between a finance team and the business reality I just feel like it's not personal enough right if everything is look at the data and then make the recommendation so I require my team to

be very intimate with the operations details what could go wrong if we go with this recommendation right how do we der risk that what signals can give us

the early indication that your recommendation is working if they don't have a solid answer and haven't thought through all this different scenarios

different permutations meaning that this Finance team or the analyst they haven't partnered deeply enough with the business stakeholders so highly likely the recommendations was just made in the

corporate office you know spreadsheets analysis in the Ivory Tower so I just really want to see people putting that emotion that excitement back into their

analysis or business case yes usually finest is the more objective judge on the Playfield but I truly believe that they need to run with the players and be part of the business right because at

the end of the day it's your credibility on the line there it's kind of like if I wanted recommendations I could just hire McKenzie but if you work here we need follow through exactly Finance needs to

also breathe in that business oxygen right together with the peers in the trenches I really think it's important how you pointed out the risk assessment

that goes along with it like what could go wrong if we make this recommendation it's kind of like I'm not just delegating that out to you and like hopefully it all works out have you ever seen this in action have there ever been

scenarios where like someone didn't think through the risk part but had kind of this bright shiny idea that they gave the org to run with I think that that's

what I see the most in my first three FPA job in the big companies so I started out my finance career in a large

tech companies Amazon Zinga then nedia and that's mostly the pattern that you've seen right so based on you know the trending based on this upcase and

lowercase scenarios that this is like to throw the D on the board so what you can see is just this very vanilla approach right they don't dig the pain enough

right so every Finance people they want to be the strategy voice in the room you've heard that a lot right they change your title from FNA to strategic Finance but what does strategy really

mean right so strategy to me that has to start from a problem statement a challenge and a diagnosis right so how can you do an accurate diagnosis if you

don't even understand the symptoms all right so if the strategy doesn't start with a diagnosis then meaning that you're even trying to heal the Run disease so that's often the case and you

see that they don't get it wrong because they start the strategy session from a framework not something like this is something burning this is something bleeding in the business what was it

like working at Amazon what what did you learn there any Frameworks or principles that came out of it that still impact you today absolutely I think the number one is work ethic no one works harder

than Zia I still remember this one sentence that the trainer told us how can you be big and not suck right so like they're at this that be a bumper

sticker that's awesome yeah they they still are having this very deeply believed and ingrained

principle is there's no small details or nothing is small and Amazon they deeply care about every customer and VPS right basos expect every VP to know every

single detail about his or her function right no matter how many hundreds or thousands of engineering or business person this person is managing you're walking through a meeting with Jeff you're supposed to know every single

detail you can never delay with I'll get back to you or let me ask my team so I think that that's a very important principle as well and the third thing is having a backbone and this extreme

ownership I'll give you an example I was invited to probably 30 people Business Review as a entry-level Analyst at

Amazon and I was just like okay I'm here now I'm just listening right seems like people are saying important things and after the meeting someone tapped on my

shoulder and say hey I didn't hear you say anything so what was your opinion what was your inputs so I was like I I got added last minute and I was probably the lowest on the rank right in this

meeting and he was like no no no you're here for a reason that ownership mentality is so strong that constantly people will hold each other accountable right you're not the passenger you're an

owner you're here to make a change not the passenger the owner that's a clip I think ownership of the numbers and whatever your category is that you're

working in at that time like nailing that and just knowing it better than anybody else I've always said that's the expansion path to get more responsibility we had talked to uh James

Courier who's a partner at nfx and he was talking about Marketplace businesses it reminds me of how he said they start small but he said you you may have this vision of like what you want to do eventually as a company and it goes back

to personal development too but like you can't just say I'm going to be the best company in the world someday like if you want to be a convertible someday you have to start on a skateboard and you have to wake up every day loving the skateboard and I kind of take that back

to personal development in the sense that if you want to be the best fpna person if they stick you with the product team to build out their budget like you should know the product team stuff better than anybody at the drop of

a hat that's how you get to own both product and engineering and now you have R&D and you can kind of go from there but you have to love the skateboard before you can become the convertible

that's very well said Amazon's famous for their recruiting their business cases that they put people through how do you think about recruiting for good talent today and did work at Amazon

impact that at all I don't know if you've noticed that there is a famous picture of the whiteboard in the conference room of Amazon that says the Amazon way of communication right so

basically is very precise you are only allowed to have four answers to any question either yes or no or number or I don't know I'll get back to you by when

and it better be a number so those are four things are only thing that's allowed in the Amazon conference room so I think that's the biggest kind of

learning of mine is communication this is such a cliche word and when you say what are you looking for in pal and you say communication I bet you 10 bucks like every Finance people's resume have

communication skills on their resume right so what do I mean by making communication a differentiated skill sets for a professional is when you can

present your thoughts specifically visually and most importantly contextually right so in the context of a deep understanding of other people's

Paradigm and concerns you can significantly increase the speed of advancing in your career as I'll give you example so I'm the guest speaker for

some business school and here's a question I always ask the students I give them a scenario when you find the issue that is blocking you what do you

do a complain to your manager of course everyone smartest like that's not the right answer B flag it to your manager in a professional way and ask what do you want me to do and C is do the

research collect the data bring your solution to your manager and say hey here is what I suggest we do next let me know what you think so of course

everyone raise their hand say see but I always ask is there a forth answer do you want to go extra mile so once in a while not in every class there would be

a student do the extra mile communication it sounds like this so one student his name is Mike really stood out he said before I go to my manager I

would try to anticipate his concerns I I would guess what my manager would ask me about and I'll try to address it before he even asks me and given my

understanding of my manager scope and his priorities I will be very explicit about what I need I know that my manager might be very busy so I will say things

like I'm looking for you to help me influence CMO to unblock this purchase decision so like to the doc and after the chat I will probably push for the

next steps to take on some of the cognitive load of the decision- making for my manager even I'm not the decision maker in this situation I think it helps my manager

and my team to make progress and arrive at a stronger decision so that is the kind of communication they consider things in a very rich context and they

are taking control of the possibility that really stands out and I think that's a skill set like everyone can practice and get better at I want to

hire Mike wherever Mike is I is my turn now oh come on on all right we got competition for Mike now the forethought that goes into scenario planning what

somebody's going to ask back to you that's like very higher level thinking and it takes away like the burden that you're putting on someone else I think early in my career I would know that there was a problem and before like

trying to solve it on my own I would almost just like go Pirro it back to my manager and tell them about it eventually remember the manager was d' and she's like yeah I know but like what are you going to do about it once the recommendation like did you just get up

automatic and come tell that to me and I was like I definitely did that like I was I was pretty useless in giving you the context around this or even going three steps deeper so that example brings to light like not just the first

way you can think through something and make it better but like three degrees after that to make it an easier load for your manager yeah there's a key difference between the linear thinking

and the second degree even third degree thinking like I said this is a skill sets everyone can practice right from the low stake decision in your life to

the most important decision in business and you can visually see the progress I just pause and trying to think that three more four more deeper questions

about the situation in front of you do you think you can test for that because I've fallen victim in the past to hiring like extremely smart people on paper but then like they're almost too smart and

get in their own way when it comes to like trying to give them something to work on and they come back with just like like I said just giving you the problem back without it through yeah I

think this is probably not that directly related to the IQ the force Power but it's more like a attitude right so that

I own this problem and I am honored to own this problem so if I cannot solve this problem that hurt my pride right so that Obsession that you have over the

quality of your output over the quality of the results that you can drive I don't think that's like I Q per se but if you're a smart person and coupled

with that trait then you're unstoppable I love how you framed it as attitude cuz it's not linked to IQ it's just how you go about approaching the problem and I can't believe I'm actually going to

quote my pelaton instructor this morning because I hate all the Quasi woow woo stuff they say but she said I don't have to I get to and I think it's the same way with work a lot of times if you take

ownership like I don't have to do this like it's a burden it's like no I get to do this this is exciting and like you said I'm honored to be able to take it on yeah it's all about rewire your your

mind that's powerful hey thanks for listening we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors as a SAS CFO I know firsthand how difficult it is to report on SAS

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on your first year with maxio that's maxio dcom slun the numers next one for you you you have a really unique view Dan of the org you

manage Finance revops it and a bunch of other functional areas how how do you possibly balance taking a short-term view of the company versus a long-term

view I think doing a high growth stage there is no long-term if you're not obsessed over the short-term execution you really cannot develop a unique

insights for longterm accurately if you're not deep enough in the thick of things every day so that being said short-term execution is like air it just

fills up the room no matter how big the room is so we really need to keep the long-term thinking in a separate room not in the same room otherwise it will just like be occupied with the the

short-term air so that's how I structure my day my morning time is what I call my writing room time and my afternoon time is my War Room time so every day is war

room at startup you probably know that too war room you manage the forecast you do the Business Review execute the change management structure a deal interview customer first rally your team

resolve your conflicts with your CEOs and peers and all that just never a dull day and then the next morning I will extract all the raw signals and material

from this battlefield activities and I take that to my writing room so that's where I built the framework for the long term hey how do we make sure that we're making investment to drive the durable

growth I how can I not go wrong in the business I need to have a keep a very close eye on that and is Click UPS act two act three maybe act four right how

do we build a coherent metric story with our board in our future investors so how do I be the keeper and the reiterates this kind of things can be

just once a year or even once a quarter you need to continuously refining that and just practice that okay Dan I need some tactical advice here because I'm

going broke on the writer room part at the moment I'm letting too many meetings where it's just purely oxygen oxygen oxygen short-term stuff take up my day how do you schedule this is it like

every morning take me through it yeah so I block my morning and I told my EA that this is my sacred time right so only the highest you know priority a lot of things are like the sky is not going to

fall if I don't have this meeting if this meeting wait for two more hours right Dan address that in the afternoon you just need to safeguard it and let people know that this is not just

important for you it's important for the business because the CFOs are the people who need to constantly climb the tree and they must live in the longer term of

the view more than anyone else any other Executives in the business right this is not just a Dan thing this is like clickup needs this unfortunately you're almost always out of sync with the rest

of the company so it's not it's not just me that feels that way yeah right it's like I'm like that kind of kid I don't know about you CJ it's like when the trip starts I'm already

bombed out because I'm thinking about the ending and when it's actually ending other kids were like bombed out I'm already excited about the next trip so it's like when the business is hitting

the challenge like CFOs needs to cut through the noise and look for that green shoots to carry the business out of the tough time and while everyone is was down you got to be The Optimist in

the room right look them in the eye say heyy we've got this like we're getting there but when everyone is celebrating you the CFO really needs to look out for what the issues are out there right how

do I resolve them before they become problems so you need to be the sober one in the room in that case it's incredibly challenging but like I said never Ault day and makes it incredibly fun to me

I'm going to come back to that in a second about being the optimists but when you think about how you spend your day I had Rec Rec learned about this thing called the Eisenhower Matrix and it's where you split up what's urgent

versus important and it's very tempting to work on what's urgent in the day versus sketch out what's important but the higher you rise in the org you're

paid to make the big decisions on the things yes yeah climb the tree is a good one we we talked to Jenny Decker the CFO of front and she had described it as playing eagle and playing Mouse so part

of the day is playing Eagle at a higher altitude and then part of the day is playing Mouse and actually getting into the weeds there there a lot of animal analogy for the CFO mentality another one is Dolphin right you got to be above

the water and down below the water above the water constantly doing that damn that's a good one dolphin I'm stealing that Dan you'd mentioned being The Optimist in hard times and then also

being the rational sober one in like over exuberant times being The Optimist in hard times how do you deal with that do you find it difficult or is it easy

with your personality I think that I can tie that back to my early career journalism a little bit is I always

carry this principle that when in doubt lean towards telling the full story right so I think this is extremely important when the time is tough everyone's looking at you and they're

trying to pick up any signal that you're panicking and so when I joined clickup in 2021 the company was at turning point we just raised a massive run of funding

and it was the peak of the go- go time everyone was thinking about raising another round in the year large large spend plan was put in place to drive a very ambitious gross Target right so

it's not kind of strange to you and two month in the market just turned and the CEO pulled me aside and said damn the board is asking us to cut right cut cut

fast so the challenge really for me and my CEO was we need to do it fast and get to the efficiency fast but not causing the Panic or the doubt about the

fundamental health of the business because that's going to be a slippery slope right we will lose our good our best people so at that time there was a lot of internal debate right over how

much transparency we should have with our company so if they want to play it safe they don't want to talk about macro environments so that we don't scare people but my belief was when you're in

doubt link towards telling the full story during the very volatile time right during the war time yes people will pay some attention to what you're saying in all hands but they're going to

pay extreme attention to what you're not saying in all hands right so what are you hiding why are you hiding when people understand it it's so much easier

to get them engaged right they will feel like soldiers not victims if we're preparing them well for the war no one should be surprised so I convinced my

leadership team and I did a serious of almost like information sessions just to educate the company with the macroeconomic change right with some humor with some light-hearted hey here

is some slim down version of if this happened that can happen what kind of position when we're in and I just openly share our cash flow projection in

variety of like Market scenarios right that was a bold move when I talked to like a lot of CFOs and they're like oh you share your cash protections why not it's a range right it's a scenario and I

share what we plan to do if each of the scenario comes true the employees even give me a nickname they call me a Ecom Professor Dan and I asked hey is that

because you fall asleep in my class because I bore you that much anyway after all those sessions people told me that hey I have always thought that Finance was hard right you make me

really understand what it means to us and why we need to do what we need to do and then I'm telling you C amazing things happen so when my finance team went on to

execute the reduction right the cost reduction projects that usually we trigger very unpleasant interaction some frictions including cutting marketing and pulling back the hiring plan

governance in corporate spend and all that we removed over 50 million of the cost from our cost structure in a very short period of a time yeah and we

pivoted from this grow at all cost to this Ling Ningbo fighting machine there were some tough moments there my CEO and I had to do a layoff in q1 last year and

we looked at our employees in the eyes among the four scenarios we shared with you we're trending towards scenario two right based on a missed a quarter so we need to make this difficult decision to

get the efficiency back on track riff was never easy but the transparency and the constant context sharing contact building with your employees definitely made it more truthful right so I

wouldn't say that I'm just the blind optimistic the room but I say that hey we're going to get through this here are the upside the downside let's just be choose for about that some would say it was a bold move how much you were

transparent but I think at the end of the day people want to be treated like adults and even if you don't know the answer you can say these are the scenarios yes absolutely if you were a

firsttime CEO hiring for a new CFO Dan what's the number one quality you would test for if I me my CEO's choose oh I

hire someone like me but yeah other than you the trade that I was looking for is flexibly persistent it's a a little interesting comble there I'll explain

what that means many people are saying that CFOs shouldn't change your mind right they they should be like very firm but I've seen a lot of CFOs through my

career the ones that haven't worked out are usually the those who seek to get their power from the rule creating they say that we can't violate this we cannot

risk that and they they evoke some rigid policy way too early and those people they don't last long right anyone can say no anyone can can be the one kind of

f the gate and not letting other people's in but how do you move the business forward so how do you be that flexible and also persistent people providing that balance in the business

so I think that it's the ones that are flexible they seek the truth and they say yeah let's see how big we can make this thing right here are some risk in doing this and we're going to mitigate

this risk I'm all bought in on the upside here great let's see also just do a downside analysis just for fun right you have to bring the persistent into

the room and then you level set with the CEOs and other peers hey if I see the risk increasing I'll will let you guys know right we can call a code yellow if

x is over 30% a code red if x is over 70% and we actually codify that I train my executive team codify that in our executive communication hey I'm raising a cat yellow here I'm raising a Cod red

there right so they know exactly what I was referring to in terms of the risk tolerance there so level set and it might be that we have to change something later but we'll get to that

when that happens right let's just get going go go team and I'm going to repot someone that I follow very closely Joe Sai so he is the first CFO for Jack ma

the founder of Alibaba so Joe famously said I don't tell Jack what to do I ask him what do you want to do I will help you do it in a much much better way wow

so for CEOs the CFO should be that one constantly watch out for the risk of course but yes you're persistent but you're not a blocker right so you're moving the business forward with your

CEO that's powerful it reminds me of the saying strong opinions held Loosely that's right you know what Joe became the CEO of ala

nowadays very inspiring I like how you said anyone can say no there are a lot of people who I think do rise in organizations by being the one who points out why things can't work but

I've always been of the mind that it's a lot more fun to work with the people who find a way to say why something can work like it's so easy just to be a Critic and sit on the sideline and say smart

things and throw stones at an idea yeah it it's funny remember I used to walking through the room it was a CFO meeting earlier in my career is that CFO setting

the one side of the table everyone else sit on the other side of the table they were so afraid of him or dislike him and it's just like you can't imagine the Dynamics in the meeting is

just like he keeps shooting people down right and just like saying no that end of the meeting we got nothing like nothing constructive nothing actionable moving business forward so I SAR myself

I would never never be that person being alone on one side of the table our listeners love Frameworks do you have any that you rely upon for big decisions

the framework I use the most is actually not about how to make a decision right it's more to address the root cause of the difficulties of making a decision

right so you know those moments something you're gut right something you just don't feel great when you're about to to make a high stake decision so how do you how do you address that so the

framework I want to share is a trust the formul so in in my job usually the high stake decision was stuck it's not because we haven't see enough data or we

haven't hear enough reasoning right we still can't get to that alignment with the important stakeholders when you really dig deep there is what's going on

it's about the trust deficit right when the Trust balance is high you will make the decision with the imperfect information right you know that like you can get it done with this person but

when the Trust balance is low you will always always ask for more data more analysis even after decision is made you constantly try to relitigate it right it

will become a very low quality decision so how to build trust with your team with your peer your CEO I use this

formula a lot it is intimacy times credibility times reliability divided by self-interest so I'll go yeah I'll go over them that's hot that's good let's

do this okay intimacy is the level of emotional security around you so sometimes I will have Team coming in presenting a case and they openly talk

about their concerns their fears and the obsession with the results right they talk about that they thought about scenarios so I feel like I can trust them it will be a easy decision but if

that's missing and I feel like I've been pitched too I've been sold to right the Trust balance is low I usually seek out the other people's Humanity in the more

one-on-one intimate setup hey we've talked about today we've seen a lot of upside let's have a more open dialogue what can go wrong right so when I pressure test this risk today you're a

little dodgy about it so bring me into your world what concerns you something can blow up right so what is it like I'm not quite hearing that once I get the

onset part being said I feel much more confident in the decision that I'm about to make there right that's the first one intimacy and the second one The credibility credibility is how competent

you seem right how much confidence you inspire in others so that's why I emphasized on the details I'm really dig into the details to test the credibility

right so people sometimes call that executive getting to the weeds right I don't care that's just testing their credibility for a VP I expect them to hold all the details let's take it

offline let me get back to you that's yellow flag right I learned that from Amazon Amazon days in those high stake decision-making meeting if the case is that important to you then you should be

obsessed you should be sweating over every single detail about that that's how I can trust that because you have the credibility reliability will you do what you say and do you have the

consistent track record to do that so it's pretty hard to change that so when someone come in and Pitch to me do I see this person or team always deliver on

time with high quality if not why would this time be different and I I will even openly ask them hey how did your last project go right they'll be like oh missed the de line but we're okay we're

on track again so I asked her question a lot I S said it right insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different results how can I hedge the risk how can I expect this

time will be different you didn't even finish your last project so from my side if I want to give it a green light I usually will pair them up either with

someone with higher reliability or have a more buttoned up plan B so with my concern of reliability address I usually feel much much better about the decision

then you kind of just eliminate that and see gut fill lastly is I think that the hot one that the self-interest one right that's the motive I can trust you care about the business health and the

company success versus some of your personal self orientation I think the best example is for a sales leader to propose for a comp plan change and supposed to be good for the business and

realize that is just to open a loophole you know for his team to make more money right at the cost of the business so that's a truck bankruptcy that type of situation requires confrontation right

get ready for that heated conversation so usually after a quick scan I can evaluate the Trust balance and if all those four things we just talked about

in trust formul agreeing I will be more confident and more assured in the decision that will make for the business that's an amazing formula do you think that there's one element of the formula

that's more important than the others I think the intimacy part is what's usually being ignored especially for the people in in the finance organization

right because in their eyes everything is numbers is empirical evidence I love how you describe trust as like banking credits because you really do have almost like a bank account with each

person and depending on how high the balance is you trust them implicitly and you can operate with less information I love how you put it that way yeah it's a credit line in a day a credit line there

we go we're all Finance people there we go credit line I have a friend shout out Mitch he says that he always tells his team I look a lot at your say too ratio

what do you say you will do and do you actually go out and do it I think reliability is a huge relability exactly yes you had written down one other framework the empty boat test I'm very

curious where this one's going to go okay this is more for ourselves DJ so CFO is a high demanding job you're the only one playing defense most of the

time on Executive teable it's good the only Defender everyone else is play go go go yeah it's like let pleas keep listen to me so your number one job is

to safeguard the business allocate the resource in the most optimal way we all know that naturally that will lead to a lot of Confrontation right a lot of

conflict so how do you navigate the conflict sometimes is really energy draining right so when I cck myself in those reactive moments for example like

being triggered by a statement or idea you know usually stupid statement or stupid idea or Finance mind I use this empty test it is actually from uh

ancient Asian philosophy you're on a boat in a fog and you've seen another boat from far away heading your way you're waving at the boat no no no no no

you're you're about to crashing me don't come here and the boat didn't listen and heading straight your way and even faster so you're so angry what kind of

idiot is driving the boat and then when you can see it clearly crashing into you there's no one in the boat it is an empty boat do you still feel angry right

so the angry is all from within it's just totally it can't be controlled by you so I use this a lot to like see especially very high intense interaction

as an empty boat opportunity for me right you don't make assumption you don't make judgment anymore right as finus sometimes we we hold ourselves to a higher moral standard right we see

everyone's trying to take the company money and trying to maximize for themselves but those is not helpful to have a high constructive and authentic conversation

we need to constantly check ourselves hey did I pass my empty build test I'm just angry at an empty boat right so if you do that you're PX more effective at

your job I promise you yeah I get angry at empty boats empty cars empty bicycles I got to work on this I'm writing this down I'm going to relisten to that so those are two excellent Frameworks two

that I got to work on contrarian opinions do you have any contrarian opinions worth sharing work life balance work life balance is a myth right work

is always on I think Business Leaders are professional athletes we need to stay in our career shape we need to feel a bit overwhelmed every day otherwise

the job is not stretching us right the job is not growing us and someone out there can do your job better than you do if you don't kind of keep yourself in a

career shape feeling overwhelmed I think is different from feeling stressed out stress can be managed so one thing I always tell my leaders is trust that our day-to-day challenge or the friction

will someday be all forgotten and replaced by the memories of year-to-year progress of building a great business together so if you choose this path the

hustling and you know like being the career athletes I think that the work will just occupy a bigger chunk of your time right it just can't change that but that means you need to be more

intentional in your life for example I have two young kids I know that I can not spend four hours a day to play with them every day but I'm very intentional

in being a highly engaged mom in that one hour that I get to spend with them every day I'm very playful I'm creative I get them rolling on the floor laughing

if you think about your best childhood memory when you grow up right it's usually those snapshots right that's stuck with you right that r prank that your your mom played with you and the

brilliant bedtime story that your dad made up right that basketball game that it took you to it's not how long they spend with you every day it's really that kind of the quality or the intentional the intentional love that

you put into also building a great life so yeah there's never be a balance but you got to make your choice there to go back to something you said Dan about the stress and actually needing it that

resonated and I I'm saying this out loud and it may not sound right but I almost have this like emptiness or a bit of like feeling of depression or being down if I don't have this like low burning

functional level of stress in my life I almost feel like empty without it I don't know if that's kind of messed up to say though yeah don't have Micro stress right just like I need something there like to keep me on edge I can't I

can't just be you know totally relaxed but maybe that's a me thing yeah you're not alone I wanted to ask you've worked at some great companies you've had a awesome and meteoric rise up the ladder

to CFO along that way do you have any super fun surprising or crazy stories from your career that you want to share I I do have a story to share but this this is a story not about me it's not my

story but has a huge impact on my career 40 years ago in China there was a young woman who was the first Finance hire at

a pre-ipo company that sounds familiar I so Chinese economy was just opening up at that time and the market was like Red Bull due to all this pent of demand so

this young lady she was a rising star in her company cfo's right-hand person super bright very hardworking however just a few years later she transferred

to a much less demanding team because she had a kid and she decided to give her best to this little kid and now you can probably guess that this young lady

back then is my mom and the crazy part is I've always thought my mom as this chill administrative lady so I found

that out one day I was chatting with my mom's best friend who is now a CFO at a public company so I said hey like you taught me so much about business and

wish my mom was like you and she looked me in the eye and she said your mom was the best Finance leader among us when you were born and she shared my mom's

early career story with me my mom never mentioned to me and she said your mom decided to choose you over her career and your mom said yes to you so you can say yes to whatever dream path that you

chose to pursue it was a very different time back then so from that moment on I knew that I wanted to be the CFO that my mom deserves to be the story comes to

Full Circle remember at the beginning I said my mom said if you associate yourself with the number you will always have a job yeah moms or Pros wow story

brought the heat that was great that was great and it definitely impacted you today on your journey all right I'm G to take us into what we call our long ass

lightning round so the first question I'm going to ask you can you give us an example of something you've messed up in your career before showing my

homework yeah I'm grateful for this pretty hard charging VP if you finance at Amazon because he called me out while I was early in my career I would never

get that I needed to present a business case when I tried to break down my hypothesis which I think is so smart and he said D I don't care I get to the punch line and I will let you know if we

need to dig into this details so I really took it too hard and I pass it down as a gift just I don't care like so show me your home or I can pass it to the next Generations of the animist

that's good that's really good roll the theme music producer Nancy and with that it's time to rep your stack sponsored by Tropic the

NextGen procurement platform helping modern CFOs take control of their budgets and bottom line by combining approval workflows supplier management

and pricing benchmarks all in one place Tropic makes savings opportunities easy to find and act on visit Tropic app.io to learn

how Dan can you walk me through what tools you used to get the job done today what's your finance software stack look like well using that suite at the Erp we did a migration from like this small you

know QuickBook early stage startup to net suite for planning tool we're just going live with pigment uh which is also a startup but the rising start in the

FNA community and we are building all the three financial statements a lot of scenarios models in pigments it is very executive business reporting friendly as

well and we just clickup so I have to do a plug here yeah I use clickup to manage my annual planning process right the beauty of that it has so much Rich

context I'm a contact person in case you haven't noticed in my throughout my interview is because you're storing all this you know back and forth questions and you know sign off and all that in

one place for anyone comes later for example we have a new hire of finance and this person can go into your annual planning task or project and click up you have all the communication and

contact data stored in that right I think that's the best tool for CFO to manage a complex multi-dimensional project and then we use click up to close the book making sure we don't miss

a bit so it's very powerful for the CFOs wants to have the operational excellence in your organization I never thought about using clickup to close the books I'm actually going to try that now because we are clickup customers that's

a good recommendation oh okay I'll hook you up with some of the Consultants from our team to share some of the best practi T this with you family and friends discount look at that yeah okay last one I got for you what's the

craziest thing you've ever had someone try to expense and get by you in finance sales Reb having recurring charges at liquor store and here's the

best part on his paternity leave so I rejected it shut down his card man life is rough I think his friends should give him a call or

something just the man I think it's a cry for help if anything yes this was full of wisdom and insights and laughs thank you Dan so much for making time

for the Pod well thanks for having me CJ I had a great time and you're creating some amazing things here keep it up roll the credits producer Natalie run the numbers as part of the turpentine

podcast Network it is produced by Natalie torren and edited by Justin golden album artwork by some AI think yelling an intro by Fat Joe if if you

made it this far please give us five stars I really need this