Paving the Road to Become a World-Class CFO

Welcome back to CFO Weekly, where we're talking with financial leaders about how to build efficiency in their teams, create time for strategy, and ultimately get results, with your host Megan Weis. Let's jump right in.

Megan: Today, my guest is Steve Rosvold. As the founder and chief learning officer of CFO.university. Steve understands innovative, responsible financial leadership is critical for success in any business today. Whether the goal is to grow, exponentially, or achieve stable profitability. This core function needs to be handled with intelligence, skill, and unwavering commitment.

During his 30-plus years of experience in the world of corporate finance, Steve honed his ability to drive change, improve profitability and ensure long-term financial health for businesses. He spent a good share of his career in various CFO and other leadership roles. CFO.university was created using that experience and teams of experts who CFO-centric themes help finance heads stay innovative while exposing aspiring finance leaders to career-changing professional development.

The virtual on-demand platform is built around the four pillars of CFO success, accounting, finance, treasury, and leadership. CFO.university delivers practical performance-enhancing and convenient professional development finance leaders all around the globe. You can learn more about CFO.university at www.cfo.university. Steve also operates KRM business solutions and advisory practice that equips companies and their finance teams with the knowledge processes, systems, and tools they need for success.

Steve lives in Vancouver, Washington with his wife and enjoys his leisure time by cycling and spending time with his children and their families. Steve, thank you so much for joining me on today's episode.

Steve: Well, Megan, I'm really pleased to be here on the CFO Weekly. I think you've got a great program going and I really appreciate you invited me.

Megan: Yes, well, thank you. Today, we're going to be learning about you, your current organizations, and how we can utilize these resources to become better finance leaders, and even level the playing field for small and mid-sized businesses. I'm really looking forward to learning more about you as well as your solutions for CFOs. So let's get started.

Steve: Great.

Megan: Let's start with you, and if you can just share your story as to how it is that you ended up doing what you're doing today.

Steve: Sure, I had a finance and a business degree as well as a history degree when I got out of school and said, "How am I going to use this?" I spent 22 years in the corporate world. So I hired on webs out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and hired with a company out of Minneapolis and spent 18 years with a company called Cargill. Then went to a company called ConAgra, for four more years. Both multinational companies, that gave me a lot of experience in the finance accounting world. Did that for 22 years, like the corporate world, they were really good traders.

Then I left the corporate world and started my own journey, the entrepreneurial journey, where I started a CFO advisory practice. Did that for almost 13 or 14 years. Met a bunch of great people, a bunch of great companies worked for just a wide variety of some of raising money, someone was fixing problems and finance. Really got to know a lot of different aspects of different companies on the finance side. About five years ago, I looked at that and said, "You really have a fairly interesting background in various companies in many different industries."

I was on a one-to-one, my consulting practice was all one-on-one. I said, "Well, how do I make this one to many," and be able to share some of the experience I had with a broader audience. That's when we started CFO.university five years ago. In that, it went from a corporate world to an entrepreneurial spirit, to then trying to develop CFOs and great finance leaders across the globe.

Megan: As you look back on your career, are there stories or turning points in your mind?

Steve: Yes, there's a whole bunch but the first one started right when I was getting out of school. I had an offer from two companies both based out of Minneapolis, agricultural companies, and one had a $500 a year higher salary. I said, oh, that must be the one. I talked to my father, my best advisor, and, of course, he was smart enough not to give an answer. What he didn't do is he put me in touch with the president of his company, which is large agricultural coop in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul, because he knew I would listen to him.

He's smart enough to know that. This gentleman, the president of the coops, and well, there's no doubt that for $500, you ought to go with this other company, which happened to be Cargill, and it was a great choice. That was the first turn, is that I didn't take the high offer, I took the best company. I think that was an interesting learning on my part that I wanted the money because I wanted to pay off those student loans that he was much more practical. There was all other twists and turns I went through a division with Cargill, where I became nine years in one division, became my home when I started with the company.

I moved to a whole different division that was in a whole different marketplace. It was more like Wall Street before I was in the grain division, which was more like Midwest, US and all of a sudden, I'm tossed into Wall Street. That was a huge shift for me, a big change and a struggle to change my behavior. I came in thinking, "Hey, all this success that I've had in the last nine years is just going to continue." I ran into some brick walls. That was learning too that as you travel in new areas, make sure you stay humble along the way, because, things will knock you down once in a while.

When I left, I took my first full time CFO job. I've been with Cargill for 18 years, and then went to, I was hired by a company called ConAgra in their [unintelligible 00:06:29] company, but it was my first CFO job where I actually had treasury experience. At Cargill, there was no treasury experience, it was all accounting and finance, but they raised the money corporately, and just handed out the checks to everyone. My first real opportunity to take over the treasury function. The complete CFO suite of finance, accounting treasury, and then leading the company was in the corporate world.

After that, the next stage was the entrepreneurial side where I said, "Hey, I can use those tools that I learned in the corporate world to help smaller and midsize businesses, and that's when I started care and business solutions. A lot of steps along the way, and you heard the story about CFO.university. A lot of zigs and zags and I think, for me, it's been a great journey, and I've really enjoyed it.

Megan: How did you work up the courage to leave your stable corporate job and go out on your own?

Steve: Well, I'd like to puff out my chest and tell you how great I am and all that and how courageous I am. What really happened is, our company was based here in Vancouver, Washington, which is where Pat and I live in the home where we raised our kids after we left Cargill. The company wanted to move to Omaha and our oldest kids were in high school. I had a real good relationship with the CEO there. We ended up forming a joint venture later and always stayed in touch. Gary said, "Hey, we can make this work for a year and a half, you can figure out."

We had some financing to do, we'll find a replacement, you don't have to move to Omaha, which was a nice town but didn't fit in for us because our kids were junior in a sophomore in high school, and we just weren't going to pull them out of it. In some ways, it was forced, but it was made easy, because my direct boss, the CEO was really understanding. I worked there for about a year and a half on my replacement. That's when I started care and business solutions, my consulting practice after that.

It wasn't some big leap I made, it was the choice that was put in front of me that I can [unintelligible 00:08:30] the kids away from, from what they know, and their high school or I could try something else. I tried something else.

Megan: Yes, in my experience, those forced moves are sometimes the greatest learning experiences and business moves.

Steve: Well, yes, I would probably still be in corporate America, if I were to move Omaha. I probably would have never had the chance to take this change into the entrepreneurial side. I maybe had a doctorate, then fine but this has been an exciting run. I really enjoyed the entrepreneurial part of my career.

Megan: So let's talk about your current organizations. Let's start with the original one, KRM business solutions. Tell me a little bit about what it is that that organization does.

Steve: Well, I was described as a CFO advisory firm, and that covers a lot of area. It's sometimes I would act as the interim CFO. Other times I was advising the CEOs or the boards of companies on their financial situation. Other times, I would be coaching a CFO. It was a broad array of things. It was focused mostly here in the Pacific Northwest. It was just easier back then. That was back in 2004 when I started in '05. I built up a pretty interesting network locally, and were able to serve and meet some really interesting people, some great companies and all on financial advisory for the corporate world. Sometimes I was acting as a CFO and other times it was advising the CEO or the CFO or the boards.

Megan: CFO.University. When did you start that up and what is it?

Steve: The brainchild came to me in 2015, 2016. I'd been doing my consulting practice for 12 or 13 years, and I'd had such a variety. I was building up a pretty big portfolio or library of tools to help people and had the vision of what the CFO role is. How it's administered particularly in small and middle-size companies came to me. I'd come out of the corporate world. There was the multinational world a bit different. It took me a few years, but I figured out there's a model here that we can teach small and middle-size businesses how their CFO suite would work. That doesn't mean they all have CFOs, but they all have CFO functions.

Designed a model, how we teach and it has to do with the four pillars of CFO success, we call it accounting, finance, treasury, and leadership. We use that framework to put in all of our- help people understand their different aspects of their CFO roles that their companies have, and help them practically administer those. I call it practical, convenient performance enhancing learning is what CFO.University does. We're not trying to compete with the MBA schools. We're not trying to even compete with the undergrads. We're really trying to give a practical aspect to finance leaders on how to improve their performance and the performance of their units in the corporate world.

Megan: Just curious, is it a structure, like it's going to take you six months to get through it, or is it individualized or how does the program work?

Steve: We have courses under all of our pillars. The first thing we do is that we assess the individual. We're really still a B to C type activity. We assess the learners. The finance leader comes in, takes an assessment, and that helps them understand where they should focus their learning. The general idea is that the finance leaders are focused and become a CFO and a lot of our tools and things, and classes relate to young CFOs. Inexperienced CFOs can learn a lot as well, but we really focus on the finance leader trying to achieve that CFO role. We assess where can they use more help in development? We do that through our assessment. That's where it starts.

Then our platform after that is, we have our four pillars and each pillar has three core competencies under it. For example, our accounting pillar, we have governance and controls as one core competency where we teach that aspect. We have the recording piece. How to make sure the books and records are kept well. Then the reporting piece, which is all the financial statements. We have three of those under each of the other pillars of finance, and treasury, and leadership as well. We take people through that approach.

An example would be a treasurer, who's come up through the treasury rates, may not have ever been a controller. If they haven't been a controller, they don't understand a lot of those accounting functions so we help them. We'll identify that when they do the assessment and then we can help bring them through that control functions now they understand what a controller does. They're better prepared to take either a CFO role or even a controller role as a next step in their career progression.

Megan: What have been your proudest achievement since founding these two organizations?

Steve: I think we've helped a lot of small businesses, a lot of people, a lot of owners, a lot of CFOs, a lot of finance people. KRM, we had over 200 accounts that we served over the time that I really delved a lot in the advisory practice. I think what I really treasure about that was all the relationships we built with the companies and with the people that we help. I think really proud of KRM about how we help people step up their game, and frankly, in some cases, we helped save companies. There was some turnaround work that we did. That's pretty gratifying when you could come in and make a significant difference.

At CFO.University, it's been a little bit, it's a much wider scale. We're a global company that's attracted a lot of interest from finance professionals around the world. It's really gratifying to meet these people. We have 80 contributors at CFO.University that I all know now personally, and they are some of the most interesting people and caring people I've been around. They're all willing to share their technology and their intellectual pursuits with us and with our community. The relationships with CFO.University have been incredible, and I think we're making a pretty big impact improving the careers of finance people.

I think that's awfully rewarding for me and awfully fun to be involved in. It gets me up every morning to see a few notes from people that they really enjoyed either a class, or a tool, or something about us that we've impacted them. That's really fulfilling.

Megan: Yes. That must be really fulfilling. I'm curious again, most of your clients, first of all, is there an ideal client other than just being a small business, and secondly, how do they come to you? Is it word of mouth at this point?

Steve: I call them a learner maybe, or a student. Our ideal is somebody with a lot of intellectual curiosity regarding the finance profession. Normally, they're in a leadership role. They're one step away from either the CFO or the finance director, and how they get to us, I guess it'd be our main marketing piece is LinkedIn. We do a lot of work with LinkedIn. We have a newsletter on our website. We don't do a lot of advertising in journals and things like that. In fact, we don't do any. It's that network of people with a lot of curiosity about how to get better in finance. They find us through LinkedIn, they find us through our newsletters and it shows like the [unintelligible 00:16:50] are helpful too.

People become aware of what we're doing, but the ideal candidates are financial leaders who aspire to become CFOs. They have to have a lot of- the word intellectual curiosity is important to me because I think so many things revolve around having an intense desire to understand. I think in finance, there's so much going on in the finance world today. There's so many things to be curious about, so that's the people that we like to find because they help us grow. They not only learn from us, but they certainly teach us a lot too.

Megan: Absolutely. I think it's important to be a lifelong learner and that's one of the reasons I enjoyed this podcast. I'm always learning from my guests, and it's something. When you stop learning I feel like you stop growing, and at that point--

Steve: I think you're right. It gets [unintelligible 00:17:50], I don't know, that's where you go on vacation. When you come back, you're ready to go again. You're re-energized but some of that I think is because you missed the opportunities to learn. I don't know maybe that doesn't happen to everyone, but I think vacations are great to re-energize and enjoy some new experiences and get away from it all. When you come back, part of the fun is, "Hey, I get to start all over again." We want that from the people that we deal with that they love finance, they love people, and they want to make a difference.

Megan: You offer next-generation CFO training. What does it mean to you to be next generation?

Steve: I think what's really important is that you have a people focus. I think that there's a big move for automation, data analytics enabling things through technology. I think that's with us, and there's a lot of really positive things about all those aspects, about the finance role. There's also we get things done through people. Bringing those people along and understanding what their needs are as we're, mechanizing the accounting function or whatever it might be, the people need to come first. If that doesn't happen, it doesn't matter how well you mechanize, if you don't have people to run your programs you're not going to be successful.

I think that it's really got to be based on people. A forward-looking is great communication skills. We talked about intellectual curiosity. They do have to understand technology. I think their EQ has to be really high. They have a lot of constituents that they understand how to deal with. I look at it maybe one way to think about it is the world-class chief financial officer is a conductor of an orchestra. They have a really high IQ. The sections include each of their stakeholder groups and that can be their direct reports, the executive team they work with, the board of directors, their investors are another stakeholder group. The vendors and customers, and each one of those has to be handled differently. That's where this high EQ comes from. You have to treat them, they're different. They play different roles within the company and the CFOs need to be able to play to that and make sure that they're addressing the needs of each of those different constituents. That's where I think the conductor of an orchestra is a pretty good example.

They need to be forward-thinking. I look at that as they need to appreciate history, they need to get your financials right, you need to [unintelligible 00:20:43] the audits important and all that. When it comes to really making a difference, they have to have a deep drive to shape the future. That means you have to be willing to start putting yourself out there, figuring out how to better use data and people to predict what's going to happen and shape what's going to happen. That's a huge part. I think of the forward-looking, the next-generation CFO. The big part of that is keeping people with you, making sure that you don't leave them behind. That's what I worry about.

In some cases, when I see so much written on automation and AI and technology, we got to be careful that all that doesn't really work if you don't have the people and so really important. I think that's what's changing about the CFO role. There's a lot more focus on the people side of things and not just human capital metrics, but human capital behavior. How to make sure people want to work. One of the biggest challenges we have right now is talent. [crosstalk].

Megan: Yes, absolutely. It's hard to come by to start with and then I can imagine that keeping people with you is more important than ever.

Steve: Yes. The challenge is you read about in the paper just generally, in all the businesses is struggling, but there's the CFO suite's no different, keeping talent in the CFO suite's the same issue. I still work with some clients on the consulting side. That's a number one struggle. CFOs as well as their direct reports, as well as the bookkeepers and the clerks, it's widespread. There's such an opportunity there for people who can make sure that resource that we have is really treated as the most important resource that we have in the company.

Megan: When you look at the role of a CFO, is this the area that you find you have to work most with people because as accountants, we can be introverts. Do you think a CFO is just naturally like an extrovert, or a people person? Which area do you find them needing the most coaching?

Steve: I think leadership is probably the most important and frankly it's the most popular. There's this imaginary old accountant out there that everyone pictures in their mind, the green eye shades and sitting down with a worksheet running a pencil on something. That's a pretty-

Megan: Also protector.

Steve: Yes, I got the [unintelligible 00:23:17]. There are still accountants that come out of that engineering. There is an attraction to working with numbers that you'd say, "Hey, how do we make sure we have the same traction working with people?" I think the leadership part is the most popular. What we find is people who get to CFO.University, they know finance, they know accounting. They only need the practical aspects of how to implement a team in those areas. They've already had the training from their university work from their previous corporate life. What they really crave is the leadership side and the communication, and how to create mindset, how to create influence.

What it takes to lead that function. It's not that they're any worse or any better than anyone else at it, but it takes practice. I think that's what we allow people through space to practice those leadership skills. That's the key area. I think when it comes to what's really changed over the past call it 20 years. It's always been important, but in the last two years, the CFO's taken over all kinds of different responsibilities. There's been a burnout from that, but there's also been a realization that CFOs, how valuable they're in these companies. If they do a good job they're indisposable.

Megan: Yes, just having done this podcast over the last two years, I've seen a lot of CFOs on my show that haven't come up through the normal ranks. It's not a traditional route. I've seen people with marketing backgrounds, people with engineering backgrounds. Yes, I don't think there's [crosstalk] one way to get there.

Steve: No, I think that's a good point that there's more options to get there now. I think particularly bigger companies that have specialties if you're an engineering firm, a big Boeing or whatever. Depending on the expertise need in the company, a lot of times CFOs and then it's a bit of risk to a financially trained CFO that has deep accounting. Take a CPA partner, for example, from a firm goes to CFO, their focus is on the accounting and finance and the audit side. Sometimes they have a harder time getting to some of those general skills that I think some companies need.

I think where there's a risk from a CFO coming through the financial ranks, there is more, and I think it's partly driven by the people. Can you lead people, and then do you have enough financial skills to lead those people? I think we are seeing a shift in what that CFO, what core skills a CFO needs. The number one piece of that is definitely leadership.

Megan: Let's talk about the self-assessment tool that's offered at CFO.University. What is it assessing and what variables is it taking into account?

Steve: People can take it for free, and we don't charge anything for it, but it's called the CFO Readiness Assessment. It covers our four pillars. We have, I mentioned accounting, the accounting pillar but the finance pillar covers budgeting and planning, it covers forecasting and it covers investment analysis. All the forward-looking pieces of a company we test through a number of questions. I think there's about 60 questions and it's very experiential. It takes about 15 minutes to go through, but it'll give you accounting finance and our treasury pillar. The three core accountings under treasury are cash management, fundraising, and then risk management which is very related to governance and controls.

Once you take on third-party money, a treasury operation, you end up with a lot more risk management because you're dealing with investors. Then our fourth area is leadership and leadership is a stair-step approach. We take self-awareness as the first step and team building is the second, and then strategy, and culture. The real things that the leaders of a company need to be familiar with. We use a stair-step approach as the three competencies in leadership. That's what we're testing on and a report comes out that shows where you're. We've had about 7,000 people take the test so we have a good database on how people have done and where people show up.

We compare people to that and you can see assess yourself against the other 7,000 people who've taken the test. That's one way. That helps us identify for the learner what they should focus on, where their weaknesses and strengths are. A lot of times, I rarely get arguments. People say, "Oh yes I didn't do that. I haven't had that experience. This makes a lot of sense." I think it helps people identify the next steps in their professional development. That's a CFO Readiness Assessment. We also have an assessment that is a similar thing on teams. It's much more intense. It takes a lot. There's a shortened version we have, that's only eight questions. It just gives you a real summary overview.

That happens to be one of the tools on our website. Then there's a longer version that we do in the consulting practice that helps us go in. We interview the leaders. They fill out a bunch of different schedules, and we do a gap analysis on that. What they think's important versus where the strengths are in the finance, call it the CFO suite, but you're not measuring just the CFO, you're measuring the whole performance of the finance team. Those are some areas that we worked a lot and I use the assessment probably 20 times. It's the big deep-dive assessment. It takes quite a while but it's pretty valuable and shines a real bright light on what's happening in the finance and accounting function.

Megan: Just on that comment that you made about the assessment for teams, so is that looking for gaps in talent where your team might be lacking?

Steve: Mostly, we're looking similar to what we do on the individual assessment. We're looking to see how your accounting function is working, how your finance function is working, how your treasury function is working, and then we're looking at the leadership side. Specifically, we look at the team aspect of it and call it the CFO suite or the accounting and finance function. How are they working with their colleagues outside of finance? We're measuring many of the same things but we're getting feedback from the executive team. It normally happens when there's a changeover, we've got a CFO coming in, and they want to understand the perception of the executive team on the whole finance group.

It gives them the feedback and the gap part of it. Here's a perception of our team. Here's what I think of the team. We'll do this with however many executives that they want, and we include board members or whatever. Then we'll say, "How important is this?" We don't care if their perception is low in some areas, but it isn't a very important area. If the team agrees, it's not very important, then that's not. That's okay. It's when there's a perception of low performance or low quality of delivery, and the gap and it's important. That's what we identify. Then we can help the CFOs develop programs to make sure that they shore up those gaps.

Megan: What advice would you offer for CFOs, or finance leaders that are just looking to be better at what it is they do?

Steve: That's a good question because there's so many different places for people to go. If they want to be a finance leader, so they want a continuous CFO career, there's a lot of different groups that can help in that and including CFO.university. In the US, there's the financial executives international, there's the CFO leadership council. If they have a real bent towards the FP&A world, the Association of Finance Professionals as [unintelligible 00:31:30] organization. I would get involved in one of those. For somebody that's looking to grow personally and professionally, the networking part, can't beat that. You're making sure you're networking with the right people. You are who you hang around with.

I think those are great opportunities. Obviously, CFO our community I think is a strong community. I think if you want to take the next step, CFOs are if you want to become the CEO or if you wanted to have board roles, then getting involved with organizations that lead in those areas. The National Association of Corporate Directors, those places, if you want to become a director. What's your next step? If your final step is the CFO role. I think those first institutions are great places to hang out.

If you want to become a CEO, then I think there's some real work that needs to be done on developing a general oversight of a business. There's places, there's organizations that can help with peer-to-peer leadership on that. I think for me, a lot of the learning comes with who you're around, and the development comes with that intellectual curiosity. I have a question, I want to become a CEO, how do I do it? You start asking a few people who are CEOs, how to do that. All of a sudden, you have a plan. Use your curiosity to take your next step.

Megan: That's great advice. Lastly, what is keeping you up at night? Or what out there do you see keeping your clients up at night, as far as the CFO role?

Steve: I think we talked about talent earlier. Your career is based on who you hire when you become a CFO. As much as we like to think it's our smarts, it's our financial acumen. It's really the people we hire and how we treat them. I think talent in today's world, that's so important. Understanding why people work for you, why they want to work with you, and making sure you don't give them reasons to leave. I think that's really important right now and important all the time, but really important in today's market. I think that a second area is this triple threat we have going on. It's understanding our margins deeply.

The triple threat is we have these supply chain issues that are making it tough to get products from A to B, we have inflation, that's making the pricing. We're really putting a lot of pressure on margins. We're going to have our interest rates are going up, and the cost of carrying working capital is going up. I think this triple threat on margins, and I'd call it supply chain issues, inflation, and interest rate to something that the CFOs are taking a close look at. How do they manage that and manage their margin appropriately? I think there's a real-time issue in financial performance that is being threatened by some of these issues.

I think the last area I would say is advice is staying strategic. It's easy to these tactical things, like how do we fight inflation, supply answers, they can get us in the weeds. We have to remember to take that breath step back, and strategically take the time. For me, that means putting it in my diary. If I don't put it in my diary, I couldn't get caught up with a million tactical issues a day. It means taking that time and that maybe some people may just naturally run the strategic side. I'm very tactical. Unless I make that time I can get caught in the weeds. During this time, where we're really worried about margins and what's going on in the economy, make sure you take a breath, take time for the strategic outlook in the business.

Megan: Great advice, Steve, thank you so much for being my guest today.

Steve: Megan, it's been wonderful. You asked great questions. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on CFO weekly.

Megan: I really enjoyed speaking with you and hearing about your experiences. I definitely wish you all the best. It sounds like you're doing wonderful things for the CFO community.

Steve: Thank you, Megan.

Megan: To all of our listeners, please tune in next week. Until then, take care.

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