E4: Why weekly reporting matters - with Brandon Sullivan

What's one mistake you see finance teams make over and over again?

This hurts my heart being an FP and A person, especially going into this conversation we just had. But business doesn't happen in spreadsheet land. I think we we create these models and spend all this time in the model, and we think it's perfect. We have to beware of model worship.

What's your one hot take in the finance world?

I'm passionate about running our finance org on a weekly cadence rather than on a monthly reporting package. And so I think the next generation of finance talent is gonna have titles like financial prompt engineer, workflow orchestrator, and system architect. If you're sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, you can either course correct your ship twelve times or fifty two times. Which one of those is gonna give you the yeah. Better chance of landing at your ultimate destination.

You're listening to the 10x finance podcast. Quick, candid conversations with the people shaping modern finance.

Hosted by Albert Gozzi.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 10x Finance Podcast, where we dive into the real challenges and opportunities shaping modern finance teams. I'm Albert Gozzi, co founder and CEO of Aleph. And today, I'm joined by Brandon Sullivan, CFO at 2x Marketing. Brandon, great to have you here. Are you ready to jump in?

Yeah. Thanks for having me, You've had some some great guests on already, so I'll try my best not to drag the average down here.

You will you were certainly top the rankings. Can can we start, Brandon, maybe by giving the audience a bit of an insight in what two x is and what does the company do?

Yeah. Two x is a marketing as a service firm that provides fully dedicated b to b marketing teams to enterprise organizations, which then enables our CMO partners to and their their marketing leadership teams to step back from execution and focus on the strategic work of of their marketing orgs. And so we provide that through two offshore centers, About thirteen hundred employees that deliver world class execution in creative analytics, marketing ops, campaign management, rev tech, go to market engineering. And we do all that through a subscription model rather than the burden of having fixed dedicated internal headcount.

Perfect. That makes no sense. And how long have you been at 2x for?

I'm coming up on five years here, which is incredible. Time flies when you're having fun.

Yeah. I knew that. And I know that's probably longer than the average CFO tenure. So wanting to talk about that. All right, Brandon, as we jump in, we'd love to get what's your one hot take in the finance world?

Yeah. I learned this in my career, and I've become passionate about it here at 2x just because of the impact that it's driven. I'm passionate about running our finance org on a weekly cadence rather than on a monthly or quarterly reporting package.

So finance teams should run on a weekly basis, not monthly basis. That sounds great, and we'll have to dive into that. How long maybe first of all, just to give people context, how long have you been doing this for? Was it something that when you started at 2x five years ago, you were able to do? Or you worked your way up to that?

We worked our way up to it. It's something that I'd done in previous careers, or previous stops, but was not something that was on table when I first started at two x. One of those things where necessity is the the mother of invention. We had shortly after we got private equity investment, we had a couple bad months in a row where, you know, we were a little bit optimistic of a post investment boom that we would have introductions to PE firms and partners and all that kind of stuff.

And all those things materialized. They just materialized much longer than we were hoping for or we were anticipating. And so because we were looking at things on a monthly basis, we kinda missed things that we probably should have picked up on a lot sooner as far as pipeline builds and conversion through different elements of the sales cycle. And so after getting a well deserved and appropriate chewing from our PE firm, we decided to accelerate the pace at which we were doing our reporting and had to make a lot of improvements to to get there.

But it's totally changed the way that we run the business.

Nice. Makes a lot of sense. And it always reminds me there's a meme that I don't know if you've seen, that there's a guy talking about how his days have four days. Have you ever seen that one?

Can then add it as the clips every time you say it. Basically, the way that it goes is my first day is six am to pm, my second day so by the time a normal person has like one day, I have four days. So that's how I feel. It's like, you know, my year has fifty two months, not twelve months.

That's how I feel when you talk about that.

In terms of maybe just someone might hear it at ASMB like, Yeah, I should do it and I should start looking at my business on a weekly basis. What are the things that you think should be looked at weekly versus I imagine there are some things that either it's hard to measure weekly, or the impacts cannot be seen weekly. So you'll be like over measuring and maybe over correcting. So what's your mental model for which things you want to look at weekly versus on a different cadence?

Yeah, certainly depends. And weekly reporting, it's not meant to be like micromanagement. And and that's in two functions, like, one, overanalyzing things, or two, spending your entire week reporting only just to reset the next week and run all your reporting again. And so what I've what I found it to be most valuable is it's almost like an early warning system that helps us spot some of the trends and anomalies before they really become problems.

One of the superpowers that I've gotten feedback on my tenure here at two x is kind of my ability to spot problems when they're smoldering embers before they become blazing fires and, yeah, being able to see around corners, speak around corners. And so this reporting framework allows me to do that. And, yep, finance kinda sits at the intersection of all the data in the company. And so, like, we're we're uniquely positioned to offer this service to our business partners.

And so I think it's probably incumbent on CFOs and and finance teams to figure out what are the five to ten, you know, metrics that really drive the business and really engineer, a, your data and b, your processes to allow you to do something like this. To your point, Albert, like, you can't fully forecast the entire p and l on a weekly basis, I don't think. Yeah. You can't look at a hundred different KPIs.

I think that takes the k out of the KPI if you're looking at a hundred different things. Every business is different, and everybody sort of gotta dial in what's important to them. But find the five to ten things that really drive your business and following them on a trend basis. And so one of the other things that I found is I sort of got into this cadence was when you do things monthly and maybe look at something month over month, it's really easy to write one day point off as an anomaly.

There was a holiday in November. You know, it's Thanksgiving that caused this. Or, you know, our salespeople had their SKO last week or, you know, in a point versus point, you can always find some sort of anomaly. It's the trends that then really drive where performance is heading up, down, sideways, backwards.

And if your trend has to happen over three to four months in order for you to really connect those data points and find that line, you might be quarters behind actually identifying where a problem might exist versus, you know, when you're built to tackle that. And so two different ways that I I sorta answered that there. But yeah.

Makes sense. Is there Dive in. Without, you know, of course, going into confidential information or or things that you're, not able to share as a private company. Do you have any example of metrics that as you switch to weekly, you saw good impact and you're like, Hey, we started measuring pipeline weekly as a result of that. We made this decision and we saw the impact faster.

Yeah.

We're a hyper growth company. We're very top line driven. And so we looked at bookings, our pipeline coverage on bookings, velocity through different sales stages and where we might be seeing bottlenecks. Once those bookings were converting into revenue, our particular offshore locations where we have two weeks of notice here, they've got two months of notice. And so the ability to hire and get people staffed really requires precision in our forecasting. And so, actually being able to forecast better in future months based on what we're seeing today also allowed us to get our supply and demand a lot better in alignment and tighten up our gross margins. And so we were very top line focused when we went after this.

And and how much do you think this is a, you know, a process problem versus a tools problem versus a people versus, you know, a bit of of the mix?

Yeah. Tools tools are getting easier and easier these days. You know, this next gen of of fintech that's coming out, I think, is outstanding. Nobody's really beholden to some of these, you know, legacy monolithic platforms anymore.

People is is certainly a part of it. I think cultural resistance is a big hurdle that people find. We've you know, I've certainly found it when I've tried to accelerate things to weekly versus a a monthly or quarterly. I remember I was talking with a a fellow PE backed CFO about a year ago about this whole weekly reporting thing, and his eyes almost popped out of his head when I first mentioned it.

Like, just the sheer thought of doing whatever he was doing for reporting on a weekly basis was unimaginable to him. And so I think you can get your data right. Like, data quality is is paramount, which I think, yeah, everybody is just that's just business now. With with how AI is sort of coming in and automation, data quality, and system integration is just paramount to to running businesses these days.

But you have to have cultural buy in as well. It has to be executed for automation. Otherwise, it becomes unmanageable if it's a heavy manual lift. Like, you don't wanna turn this particular exercise into, you know, you're just always on reporting. Like, you you sort of lose the the business partnership value there. And so probably some element of all that people tech and and processes.

Let let's talk maybe for for a minute or so about the tools. Of course, you know, Aleph is part of your stack. That's kind of how how we met and how we're talking about.

Yep.

Throughout that, but also, like, what are the other tools that you are seeing good results with making this possible?

Yeah. So Aleph is key for us. Yeah. Not to, you know, to toot your guys horns too much here as I'm on your podcast.

But as I kinda mentioned in the beginning, like, finance sits at the center of all the state in the organization that nobody else can see. And so, obviously, we've got our ERP. You know, we were a NetSuite shop. And so, you know, we've got all of our financial data, but we've got Salesforce hooked in for all of our bookings and all of our sales stuff, which kind of the point that I was mentioning earlier.

Like, our data is also super clean in Salesforce, and so our CRO is, you know, very strict on his salespeople of, you know, when things enter certain stages and, you know, the definitions of those. And so actually having that architecture in place is as as important as actually having all the data available and the tools available. We have an HRIS system that pumps in. We have a payroll system that pumps in.

We've got manual offline spreadsheets that pump in, which I'd like to get read at some point. But, you know, I think as as an FBA person, I'll hold onto those as long as I can. So we have all these different tools that we use in different areas of the business, but having that one consolidated place where we can pull it all together and automate things has been a huge game changer for us.

Makes sense. Is there anything going back to the people side and going a little bit deeper there, like any resistance, any areas so it sounds like very top line focus, right, and any resistance from other stakeholders and people that even internally at 2X. Maybe you don't need to name names. Can talk about we're not going to judge fellow team members here so we can even talk about that hypothetically.

But yeah, and anyone that was like, Hey, this is too much. This is like, you know, because we're in the end, we're finance people. We love data. I don't think I can have enough data and I will always be okay with measuring more and reviewing more.

But yeah, how are some of those discussions and how do you navigate? And in the end, it's about proving the value, right? And the more now you have, you look backwards and you have data points of why it worked. Talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, nailed it at the end there, starting with the why. And so helping everybody understand that this empowers us to make better decision making rather than creating just creating more work for everybody and then actually sell celebrating, you know, some of those quick wins whenever you have them, whenever this weekly data maybe helps you solve a problem or capture an opportunity that you might not have otherwise. I think there are real big tangible benefits that you can probably gather as as you get into this process. So, one, you minimize surprises.

If if a stake moves one percent every week and you get to your board meeting, you've probably sort of the light on that stake moving with your board if you're reporting up to them like we are on a weekly basis. And so them seeing that happen in real time rather than just showing up at a board meeting like, ah, we missed our target by ten percent. Like, the dynamics of those two realities are are very much different. In the room with you, yeah, making them aware of things as they're happening, showing them that you're seeing them and addressing them, and then, yeah, sort of getting that cumulative accuracy improvements.

When I first started doing this, the, the analogy that someone imposed on me and that that I sort of took away was if you're sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, you can either course direct your ship twelve times or fifty two times. Which one of those is gonna give you the, yeah, better chance of landing at your ultimate ultimate destination? It's the, the fifty two times, obviously, if you get to course direct that. And, again, you can go overboard with that. But I think getting those quick wins and then just seeing sort of the improved dynamics it has in the business and with your board if you're PE back like we are, that's where you see a lot of the wins come from this process.

We talked about a few of these along the way. You know, if someone goes and sets up to do this, what are some of the, you know, mistakes that we might have not talked about that people might make? You know, we talked about measuring too many things, measuring the wrong things. What are some of the risks?

Yeah. There's certainly a few. One, if your data is not structured properly, I think, you know, there's this what gets measured, what is the is the saying on it? You know, what gets measured gets managed, something along those lines.

And so if you're focusing on the wrong things or focusing on the right things, but the underlying data is wrong, you can get yourself in a lot of lot of trouble. We think about this in marketing all the time. We know that I think I actually spoke about this in my journey to finding Aleph, that seventy percent of the journey to finding, you know, an actual company happens without them knowing it. And it happens in this dark funnel of podcasts and events and talk with peers.

And and so I know in marketing dashboards, you know, we try to at least I try to advise my peers that are dealing with our marketing counterparts of, like, don't just look at what you can manage or what you can measure because that's gonna only focus on thirty percent of the time journey. Like, you have to have the data that actually, you know, shows you the entirety of the journey or the impact of brand. And so I think if, a, your data's wrong or, b, you're focusing on the wrong things, you can get into a lot of trouble because, yeah, the weekly, then reporting is just gonna compound that, you know, compound the mistakes as you go.

So what you're saying is if you have a broken compass, course correcting fifty two times might be actually worse than course correcting twelve times.

Much better said than I did.

I like your ocean sailing analogy. I think we will then, Brandon, do an AI generated image of you sailing into the horizon like Aleph part of the podcast. Think the audience will love it.

Right, I think we're coming up on time. We always like to end with a rapid fire wrap up. Three questions unrelated to your hot take that we ask all guests. Are you ready for wrap up?

Let's do it.

Alright, so the first one is, what's one mistake you see finance teams make over and over again?

This hurts my heart being an FP and A person, and especially going into this conversation we just had, but business doesn't happen in spreadsheet land. I think we we create these models, spend all these time all this time in the model, and we think it's, you know, it's perfect. And we have to be aware of model worship. They're not sacred. The model shouldn't be the end goal. It should be, yeah, it should be providing insights. And so a lot of times, I think you end up with, like, this tail wagging the dog thing.

Yeah. I advise people that work on my team and FBNA, like, let's be a business partner first, be a modeler second, and directionally correct and strategically useful is better than, you know, an eighty tab, you know, model that you spend three weeks, you know, tuning absolutely perfectly. And so business doesn't happen in spreadsheet spreadsheet land.

What's one piece of advice you would give other finance leaders scaling their team?

Yeah. I think self awareness is paramount. So identify your superpower in the finance world and then maximize it. And then conversely, identify your weaknesses and fill those gaps with, you know, technology people.

And so I think a totally well rounded first time CFO is a unicorn. Like, it doesn't exist. For me, my superpower was FP and A. I leaned on that, brought in controller and accounting and FinOps around that.

So my recommendation there would be, know what you're good at, know what you're not, and then fill in those gaps accordingly.

What's one trend in finance and accounting that you believe will shape the next five years?

Yeah. I think I got kinda got two that are kind of interconnected. And so on, I know you had Aleph from Tabs on at one point. I imagine he probably talk spoke about this at some point.

I've seen him talk about this live, but I do think that legacy CFO tech stack is about to get turned on its head. I think that we're gonna have a lot of point solutions that are tailored toward a specific business or industry or might be more appropriate for some players rather than others, and and that's okay. I think that as a result of that, that do it all ERP is gonna get a lot of their market share nibbled away. And it's definitely sort of on the back of that.

I think the org chart is gonna fundamentally change in the next five years. I think staff accountant and financial analyst is gonna go away as sort of like that entry level or, you know, early stage job. I think it gets more into, like, adjunctive workflow orchestrators. And so, yeah, those those entry level jobs or, you know, that first one or two jobs that we all had at out of college, like, it was so task oriented that I think AI agents are gonna be handling those, you know, in the next couple years, if not sooner.

And so I think the next generation of finance talent is gonna have, you know, titles like, you know, financial prompt engineer or co orchestrator and system architect.

I think that's gonna be the org chart of the future rather than what I think, yeah, a lot of us grew up Yeah, very much agree.

I do think that typically finance is trailing other functions. We're seeing it a lot in go to market organizations, these go to market engineers whose whole job is working with agents. I think we're ready to craft the term, Brandon, the finance engineer. That would be equivalent. Maybe that's it. And we are just crafting it today for posterity.

Let's get a trademark before this goes out.

You know, we can buy the domain. That's why like, every every time I have a random idea, I just go go and buy the domain.

Love it.

Brandon, thanks so much for taking the time and and chatting with me today.

It's always a pleasure whenever I get to talk with you, Albert. Thanks again, and take care.