Jack McCullough: What Does It Take To Attain Full CFO Leadership?

Most of the time, the work of a Chief Financial Officer goes beyond the money and numbers. Especially in a start-up business, CFO leadership means becoming a jack-of-all-trades, dipping into various business areas whenever and wherever needed. Tony Martignetti sits down with Jack McCullough to delve into the ups and downs of the people who take on this particular position, which he has experienced for many years. Jack talks about the importance of excellent communication skills in a CFO's role, how beneficial they are in a team in terms of problem-solving and critical thinking, and what's at the top of their minds at present. He also talks about the wins and challenges in his work at The CFO Leadership Council, focused on empowering individuals in such a position.

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Jack McCullough: What Does It Take To Attain Full CFO Leadership?

It is my honor to introduce you to my guest, Jack McCullough. Jack is a recognized thought leader in the field of financial leadership with a career that has included CFO positions at 26 companies. He’s the Founder and President of CFO Leadership Council, a global organization dedicated to empowering senior financial executives through innovative professional development programs and peer networking. Jack published his first book, Secrets of Rockstar CFOs, which is based on conversations with more than 40 of the world's elite financial officers from Silicon Valley startups to Fortune 50 multinationals. He's a senior contributor to Forbes.com where he writes a bi-monthly article for the Forbes Financial Network. His other accomplishments include sharing the MIT Sloan CFO Summit and creating the vision behind CFO Week, a one-of-a-kind learning and networking experience jointly executed by the CFO Leadership Council and MIT Sloan. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two teenage sons. I want to welcome you to the show, Jack.

Thanks. It's great to be here. We've been trying to put this together for a bit. Two busy, important people, so getting us together is great.

I had the pleasure of getting to know you over a number of years and have seen you make such an impact in the financial world. I've been honored to see the ripple of impact that you've made. I think it's amazing. I'm thrilled to have you here and I'm looking forward to digging into your story and hearing a lot of your insights.

It's been a fun journey. Not one I would have predicted and I didn't have a master plan, but it seemed to work out okay. I had a fun little ride for myself.

To give you some insight as to how we roll, we tell your story through what we call flash points. These flash points are moments in your life that have ignited your gifts into the world. There may be one or many. As you're telling your story, you share what you're called to share. We'll pause along the way and see what shows up. With that, I'm going to give you the floor and let you start to go from where you want to start.

When you always tell the truth, it's easier.

I started my career journey pretty typical for CFOs of my generation. I studied accounting undergraduate, and then I worked for a big eight accounting firm. That's how old I am. They were eight when I started, I know young people think there are four. It was Peat, Marwick, and Mitchell, which a lot of people now know as KPMG. I worked in their audit group. I then went to work for a software company called Gensym Corporation. Probably a lot of your readers haven't heard of it, but we were a cool company. We were the first artificial intelligence company that was ever profitable. The first Terminator movie came out when I was there. I wanted to be a CFO. I was second in command there and I knew I wasn't going to get it so I went back and got an MBA from the MIT Sloan school. That's one of those things. Before the MBA from Sloan, I went from being a nice, seems pretty bright guy to being, "This must be some financial genius,” because I had this MBA from an elite school. It's just the perception of me totally changed.

I then went to work for a startup in the Top Layer Networks. I lasted there for five years and after that, that's when I started my consulting practice where I worked as CFO for 26 companies. A lot of people look at me like, "How old are you if you worked for 26 companies?” I was a part-time CFO for most of them. In the venture world, a lot of companies need the skills of a CFO, but they don't have the budget or the need for 40-hour, 50-hour week CFO. There's an independent contract. You can have some fun working with 2 or 3 startups. That was fantastic. I met many interesting people, VCs, entrepreneurs, other executives, incredible network, but the feeling I had was I was alone out there. I was usually the only finance and accounting professional in the company. I wanted to start a network of my peers. There wasn't one for CFOs of fast-growing companies. There were some good groups out there. FEI is a great group that have been around since the Great Depression. They're doing a few things right. At the time they were more focused on large public companies. It just wasn't a fit for me. I didn't even qualify for membership. I have to admit, I lied on the application so that I could join them and they snuck right by.

I started the CFO Leadership Council to create a peer network. It was a hobby for ten years. A few years ago, I had to make the decision of love of money. I had a career that I liked and was making some pretty good money as a CFO. In between, I became a business development executive or doing something like running a member organization for CFOs, which doesn't pay as much as the CFO job itself. The fool that I am, I pick level over money, but I'm not looking back. It's been a great run. I've been doing it as my main focal point for about five and a half years.

Do you miss anything about your prior life as the acting CFO?

I do. Working with venture capitalists and fellow executives, and growing a company rapidly, there are a few things more exciting than that from a career perspective. It's an adrenaline rush. It was incredibly stressful because I work with some startups that was successful and others that were not so successful. I don't miss the stress, but every day was exciting. As much as I love what I do, it's a different type of excitement. We're not a big company and five years from now, we're not going to be a big company, I wouldn't think. I'm not in a high-growth industry. It's an important one, but it's very nichey and small and whatnot. I missed being on that rocket ship and all the excitement that comes along with it.

That's what I often hear people around this. It’s like being part of the small teams and being part of the rise as companies move up, especially in the early days of startups, as they nimbly move up the ladder to become a full-blown company.

I never worked with a company that became Facebook or Apple computer or anything like that. After the CFO stint, I returned to KPMG in a business development role. I was a little nervous because I'd been a small company guy for a long time by that point. I remember there was a business meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona. First of all, the fact that I was being flown to Scottsdale, Arizona was cool. I remember my flight was late and I got off the plane. There was a guy with a sign with my name on it. There's a limo waiting out front. He’s like, “I'm going to take you to the hotel.” I'm like, "I'll get my bags.” He’s like, "We'll get that for you.” I was like, "Big companies aren't so bad after all,” but I'm a small company guy. Most of our members are similar to that. We’re agnostic on those things, but our DNA is the venture back CFO and that's the majority of our membership.

I'm going to take you back. We're going to rewind and see where this love of numbers or the love of being a CFO came from. How are you wired as a child? Were you somebody who was destined to become a CFO or were you something completely different? How about for your father or mother, were they in this space too? If you're willing to share, I'd love to hear.

In high school, I was a little bit of a misfit. I’m a square peg in a round hole. It's not that it was a miserable experience, but I wasn't a mainstream kid. I was smart, but maybe not as smart as I thought I was with hindsight. I wanted to fit in and I picked accounting as my major, thinking it was a bit mainstream and there's part of me that liked to control things. As I understood accounting, when I was seventeen, it seemed like it was a profession that if I was good at it, I could control it. That's the thing about accounting, if you do it right, it works. I almost picked it as much to fit in as anything else. I was good with numbers. I wasn't that good communicator. I was slightly below average. As seventeen-year-old boys, we struggle sometimes with words, but I caught up.

That's why I picked accounting, and then I did like public accounting. At Peat, Marwick, and Mitchell, I did some auditing and it was a pretty typical experience. I had an interesting collection of clients, but they weren't marquee clients for the firm. My main client was the town of Danvers. There’s nothing wrong with it, but auditing a suburban municipality is not as exciting as it probably sounds to you right now, I'm sure. I audited a community bank and then they were a multinational. There were twelve city areas I audited, but they were just check books. It was a good training ground, but it wasn't going to excite me, which is why I was three years and I got my CPA and moved to Gensym, which was a high-tech company. That was a good one, great boss. I’ve worked with good people and learned a lot. 

In terms of my parents, my dad was a mason and my mom stayed home. She went to Chandler Secretarial School and she had that type of career until she became a mom. I feel like a lot of people, they were born in the 1930s. My dad took me on a lot of his jobs. What I learned from him is the commitment to the customer. In his main job, he would build buildings. If you look at a lot of the buildings in the Boston skyline, he worked on those at some point. On the weekends, he would do things like put in someone's steps or would build up a brick addition. I was taken by his commitment to the customer. He's like, “If these things fall apart ten years from now, I want you to call me and I'll fix them.” I know on one or two occasions that happened. Someone came and said, "Can you come out and fix them?” It wasn't my dad's fault. He said, "Yeah, he did it for cost. I’ll get out there and fix it for you.” I learned a lot from dad. He wasn't the shrewdest businessman in a classic sense, but he had a lot of loyal customers.

It's interesting to hear those types of stories when you go that far back and hear the lessons you take away. There's an element of that hard work mentality that’s caring about people. It’s funny hearing about what brought you into the accounting world, and then ultimately got you into the CFO role. Were you surprised when you realized that the CFO role is not just numbers and more communication?

My first CFO job was in 1997. It wasn't quite as strategic as it might be now. I tell people the 1999 version of me would not have been as well prepared for a pandemic as the current group of CFOs are. That's no knock on me. It was early in the evolution. It was still largely financial reporting. I was a little surprised. I probably got to know the company's attorney more than almost anybody else. I went on a couple of sales calls, but now for a lot of CFOs, it's a routine. I mentioned in my book that just about all of the CFOs are deeply involved with self-process and whatnot. I do tell people that accountants often are introverts. I know as many CFOs as anybody and I don't know five CFOs who I think are introverts. Maybe they pretend not to be, but they're very comfortable talking to people they know, people they don't know. It would be a tough job for me to learn to be successful in now.

I came from the biotech space and some of the CFOs there know the science as well as pretty much anyone, and at least be able to speak it in layman terms to investors and what have you. It's fascinating to know that they know the numbers, the science, and they're able to know the people inside pretty well. It's definitely evolved.

It's a well-rounded job because you’re talking to the guys in the white suits. Do they still wear them in the industry? I don't know, but the white lab coats. You can't come across like a dummy. They don't expect you to know as much about the science as they do, but you do need to be able to articulate the business value that they're driving and then take their scientific knowledge. If you're talking to investors or fellow executives, you've got to be able to distill that. You can't always rely on the CEO to do that because she or he might not be there.

We're moving around the dialogue a little bit. We moved from taking you back a little bit to see where you came from. I want to come back to when you first started the CFO Leadership Council, what were the major challenges that you face making this into something that would be a revenue driver for you? Where there big challenges?

I was inspired by the MIT Sloan CFO Summit, which predate the CFO Leadership Council by 2 or 3 years, and that was a one-year event. I love doing that and discovered against all odds that I was good at organizing events and enjoy doing it. I love AI, it’s MIT so you call a CFO and you can get phenomenal CFOs to come and speak at these events. I was meeting some of the best CFOs in the world. Our very first event, we had Fortune 9 at the time, American International Group, and the CFO of EMC, which was the biggest tech company in New England at the time, first year out of the gate. All the other speakers were good too. I'm just like, “This is fun.” I did that and learned a little bit. I then decided to let's take this content and make it a community and ongoing. I didn't do it to make money at all. It wasn't part of the plan. It was a network with my peers.

Hire people, not necessarily smarter than you, but better than you at the job you're hiring them to do.

In one of the early meetings, it's funny, I had to pay for the food, the coffee, the pastry and that sort of thing. We had morning meetings. I put a jar out and say, “Give a few bucks. If you're in transition and don't feel like you have to, you'll get it back when you landed.” In the third meeting, the jar was stolen. Someone just trumped the whole thing. I'm sure it wasn't one of the members. CFOs, you can criticize them but they're all honest. I’m sure it wasn't one of my members who did it, but I was like, "All they want to do is break even.” Oddly that started this metamorphosis where I decided to start charging dues for it. The company grew up as a victim of its own success, and I didn't have time to manage. I had a full-time job and it was going well, so I could only dedicate so many hours.

I ended up hiring somebody, she was a mom of an infant. She was looking for a part-time job she could do at home. I had one, except I said, "One morning a month, you've got to come out and do some stuff.” It was a perfect combination, my network and understanding of CFO challenges and her organizational skills and energy, and desire to build something. It came pretty good. I didn't have a vision other than to meet other CFOs and have some fun. Now we're fifteen years into it. We have over 2,000 members. We're on every continent except the Antarctica. I'll tell you what a competitive jerk I am. I went on LinkedIn to see if there were CFOs on Antarctica. There were two listed. One is from Siberia though and the other one, I'm sure was a fake profile. It was like Roy Hinkley, which is the professor's name from Gilligan's Island or something. Someone's got an odd sense of humor here.

It's probably in case someone's looking for CFO in Antarctica, they're looking for this guy.

I was pretty sure there weren't any businesses there. There might have been a government structure like an exploration thing that has CFO running it or something like that. Being in Boston, we can get a little bit cold here, but if somebody calls now that they have job in Antarctica, I don’t think so. I did get one in Iceland about a year ago and people brushed in. Weather isn't everything.

You have a real front seat to the issues that CFOs are dealing with when you reconvene this group. What is on top of the minds of most CFOs these days?

The evolution accelerated in 2020. It was slowly and steadily evolving from backward looking financial reporting, compliance, expense management to strategic. That accelerated and for the first half of 2020, it was all about survival. We have this thing, it's called CFO Connect. It's a members-only tool where they can reach out. The early days, it was never so busy with the PPP loans and everything else. It’s just, "What can I do to survive?” Most of them in my world did keep their companies afloat, and then it was taking care of the team and everything else because with very little notice, all of a sudden, we're all working from home. There are the social issues. Fundamentally there's risk management and security. There are bad people in the world that want to steal your data, depending on what line of work you're in. All of a sudden, it's a lot easier to do. If you have a fifteen-person accounting department and your data is on fifteen people accessing it from home. Security is pretty vulnerable under that scenario, so that was it too.

Once things stabilized a little bit, they got to work. One person told me you can never over-communicate and it will always be talking. Talk to your customers. Talk to your employees, not only your own but company-wide. Talk to your investors. Talk to the world at large, if your company fits that profile that people are paying attention to it. One of the reasons is CFOs are known as being great communicators. They say what they mean, and they mean what they say. It’s the trust factor. All sorts of studies have said, and it’s easier for us to say that both of us having been financial leaders, but who's the most trusted executive in the company? CFO, VP of HR, usually 1 and 2. It varies from company to company. Generally speaking, if you put what someone does for a living, an image pops into your head. Used car salesman, you might think of a guy in a large waistcoat, smoking a cigar. CFO, maybe you think of a highly professional, a very sincere woman or man, who knows the numbers but always tells the truth and it's in their DNA.

Even when it's not comfortable to tell the truth, sometimes you have to give the unvarnished truth, which is one of the things I was telling somebody. Sometimes I have bad news to share about financial balances and things like that, which is hard.

When you always tell the truth, it's easier. There are people that I can get away with it. I remember in one case, we had to do a reverse stock split. It was in one of the companies I worked for. It was a 60 to 1 reverse stock split. I was asked to deliver the news to the founders, and it was the worst news, a family member passing away or something like that. It was about the worst news you could give because they've worked 4 or 5 years. They gave up their life to build this company. They thought that they were going to get rich off of it and probably not retire because they were mostly in their 40s and 50s at the time. They were going to be able to pay off their mortgage, take the kids up to school, that type of thing. All of a sudden, "No, you've been completely wiped out. Your whole life’s work is just about nothing.” Because I was credible partly because on a personal level, I'm credible but also by title, I had a lot of credibility. The president came in and said, “You're lying to me.” It goes with the territory. As long as you have that reputation for being a straight shooter, you can deliver the message clearly and credibly.

It's funny to think about this fact that, especially in the smaller company, there are a lot of hats the CFO has to wear. You spoke to it a little bit earlier where startups look to the CFO to be the head of facilities, the IT person, sometimes even the head of HR. You have to know, what are my limitations? What are the things I know? What are the things I don't know? Being honest with yourself about what you can handle and what you don't, when you can handle and when you can't handle is probably something that will be good to hear from you what your take on this is. Once you become a bigger company, there's the chief officer of the bathroom.

I haven't seen that one, although I did get a lot of mileage when this new job called chief compliance officer came out. They probably existed, but they came in around the time of Sarbanes-Oxley. I'm like, "That sounds like a dreadful way to make a living,” but it's internal controls and legal compliance, and basically just Dr. No. To your point though, a lot of CFOs, even the ones who came up like I came from, my generation was pretty traditional path, CPA, accounting manager, controller, CFO. There are a lot of us like that. The best CFOs will tell you to hire people not necessarily smarter than you, although that can be great, but better than you at the job you're hiring them to do.

If you're hiring a chief accounting officer, make sure she or he is better at accounting and financial reporting than you are. If you're hiring a director of information technology and that person reports to you, make sure that person understands better than you. If you're hiring someone to run your HR group, recognize your limitations, bring in somebody that fills your gaps. There are businesses that are complex, particularly the CEO and the CFO job, and I'd argue senior HR person too, extraordinarily cross-functional. They have to know many different things and unless you're a prodigy, it's not possible. Let's face it, if you're a prodigy, you might have picked up a scientific path or something like that. The smartest kids in high school are encouraged to explore science or something like that where they can make a bigger impact rather than business.

It makes the position itself be exciting yet also daunting in many ways because there's a lot of pressure that rides on that, and responsibility. At the same time, how exciting the ability to be able to be responsible for such a big part of the business, and see the inner workings of many parts of the business. That makes it cool.

One of the people that I interviewed for my book, she spoke to me about the importance of mentors and learning skills outside the world of finance and accounting. At the time she told me that story, she was a controller at Gillette. It was probably the second or third biggest company in Boston when she worked there. They had a lot of different divisions and she wanted to be a CFO, so she took on a mentor. The mentor she took on was the VP of Sales. I'm like, “That's interesting. Show me the thinking there.” She's like, "I can do finance and accounting better than my boss and better than most of the CFOs in the company. What's going to help me get the job and then excel once I get it is if I bring a customer-focused approach to it.” She could have gotten the CFO to mentor her. There's no reason she couldn't. She just found a VP of Sales that she clicked with. Apparently, he had an interesting career and liked it personally, and is able to share his philosophy on growing a business.

What's interesting is after Gillette was bought, they went together. They worked together in a startup or a smaller company. She is the CFO, he is the VP of Sales. She told me that once a month, he'd have weekly sales meetings and she’d have weekly finance and accounting meetings. Once a month, they'd switch, but the other person wouldn't be in the room. She would run the sales and marketing meeting and he would run the finance and accounting meeting. It was so good from a cultural perspective because it made each team respect the challenges that the other was facing and whatnot. Sometimes there's tension probably more between accounting and marketing than between accounting and sales.

CFOs are problem solvers. They think strategically and don't show even if they get rattled.

My first boss was the old-school CFO. This was in the 1980s. He seemed like he was 100 at the time to me, he's probably only 60. The marketing people used to call us bean counters. He called marketing arts and crafts. The difference is he did it right to their face. He made no effort to hide his disdain for the little value that he perceived marketing is doing. That doesn't fly. First of all, a smart CFO appreciates what marketing does and recognizes the value that this company might be complete garbage without good marketing. Let's not call them arts and crafts. The good marketing people also don't call accounting bean counters either. If they think of you as bean counters, then you're probably not doing your job very well.

It’s funny because it's this element of silos. I tend to see a lot of that, not always, but when you see silos in organizations, that's a sure sign that there are going to be issues on the horizon. When you have this one function and not talking to the other, you know that there's going to be something that's going to come to a head and cost some issues.

In grad school, I wrote a paper on that. It was an internship where I sat at a company and observed. It was seven groups that individually were talented and working hard and doing great, but they couldn't get their act together. The company was Lotus with you being local, you remember them. It’s not Microsoft that developed the first spreadsheet. Lotus 1-2-3 predates Microsoft Excel. I don't know why Microsoft ultimately was able to make a better spreadsheet than Lotus. I saw things culturally that I bet Bill Gates, who was not an easy guy to work for by reputation, wouldn't put up with that crap, “Get rolling in the same org guys.” That's probably not the reason that Microsoft dominated Lotus, but at one point they had a 100% market share in a growing industry. Microsoft came along with not even a better product, but they eventually passed them multiple levels.

When you think about these companies you mentioned, two very different companies, Gillette and Lotus. I used to work at Gillette, which is where I got my start, which is interesting. You've had at hand and got to know some of the financial people across the entire at least locally, but the impact is pretty wide.

I'm wondering if you have twenty-somethings in your audience. They might think, "This guy is old.” The glory days of Lotus was in the 1970s probably. It wasn't that long ago. It was only 45 years ago or so.

Lotus Notes was still hanging about only a few years ago.

There are probably still people who use it. Do you know TaB, the soft drink? Coca-Cola announced that they're finally discontinuing it. Apparently, if you looked hard enough, you could have found TaB. I remember it was awful. It was the first diet drink that was undrinkable. I don't care what calories it saves. It's not worth it.

At this point, when you look back at a career that has been pretty strong in terms of working in finance role in many different industries. What have you been taking away from your journey and what are the things that you want to share with people as you come to a close in this show?

I encourage the CFOs to continue to be great because we're counting on them. It was a different skillset, accounting. You’re reporting what happened after it happened. That's an invaluable skill to have. There's no question about it until now, but it's remarkable to me how CFOs are problem solvers. They think strategically and they probably do get rattled, but they don't show it. The confidence and the ability to solve a problem, and then solve another problem, and solve another problem until you get a solution. How they can work strategically with the CEO and how they can work cross-functionally across the entire company, to me, I didn't have that skill. I could have developed it, but I haven't been a CFO since 2004. At that time, I didn't have that. It was just the beginning of it.

It's very gratifying to see that. I encourage the young people who are out there who aspire to be CFOs, get a mentor or if you can afford to get a coach. I know that's easy for me to say, but I had a coach and spoke to my dad, found a wisdom in his own way. I was talking about getting a coach and I wasn't sure if I needed it and benefit from it. He said, “Tom Brady has a quarterback's coach. Are you better as a CFO than Brady is as a quarterback?” “I don't think so, probably not, since he's the greatest quarterback of all times.” "You could probably use a little coaching, don't you think?” Coaching isn't free and whatnot, but if it's something that you can afford, it will pay for itself because you'll climb a ladder a lot more quickly. It’s easy for me to say. Get a mentor who's generally concerned about your career and learn from your peers as well.

I want to add something to that because that's such great advice. It's not just about the career, but also about their wellbeing too. I think of it as an element of making sure that they are taking care of themselves along that journey. As I've said earlier, we're talking about this pressure around the job.

One of the secrets of rock star CFOs was work-life balance. They may be defined a little differently than some other people would because they saw work ethic as second to none. A lot of them told me the importance. Don't skip your vacation with your family. Get involved in community service. There are a million studies out there that show the correlation between regular exercise and job performance. You can't work 80 hours a week and think that's going to be good. It's fine in the short run, but a few months into it, you're going to burn out. A well-balanced life, make sure you live it.

I recommend your book. It's a quick read but it's packed full of such great insights. I definitely want to recommend that to people who are interested.

I gave my sister a copy of the book and then I get a text the next day. It's a picture of Ayn Rand, which is 6 inches thick, next to my book which is not. It's short and to the point. People like the relatively short books. I'm not a great writer but because of the MIT CFO Summit and the Leaders Council, I spoke to some phenomenal CFOs who were very generous with their insights. I'm the middleman in that equation. It’s a lot of fun to read and a lot of people have enjoyed it.

Speaking of books, what is one book that has had an impact on you and why?

I'm going to go with The Catcher in the Rye. I was a lot like Holden. I was about the main character's age. He was in high school, smart but maybe not as smart as I perceived myself to be. A good kid who got in a little bit of trouble partly through his own fault, partly not through his own fault. I didn't have the adventures that he had. When I was reading it and he was sharing his insights, I was like, "I would probably hang out with this kid if he were in my class.” It was the first time that I read a book and I'm like, "This could be me.” There are a lot of great books. Great Expectations was my favorite book until then, but I wasn't all about that. When I read Holden, Salinger must have known somebody like me to base this character on because it clicked for me. I don't read it anymore but I used to read it every couple of years. It's been a long time since I did.

It's such a great take, but first of all, this is the first for me to hear that book mentioned in this space. It's an amazing book and I love the way you brought that to life because Holden is an interesting character for sure.

Salinger wouldn't let the book be made into a movie. Forgive me, Salinger. Do you know if he's alive? At some point, he wouldn't allow anyone to make a movie out of the book, but it would be a fantastic movie. You've got a good young actor. That would be a meaty role for an up and coming actor and the next generation, Sean Penn, or whomever. I'd love to see it come to life. I don't go to movies very much, but that's one that I'd see.

Nobody's going to movies these days.

That’s true. The last movie I saw was Avengers Endgame, which I did enjoy. I do like those comic books. Who doesn't? They're great entertainment for $9 or whatever.

Jack, this was so much fun. We covered so much ground and very insightful. I loved what you shared in terms of your story. I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. Before we wrap, I wanted to make sure I also give people a way to find out where they can find out more about you. Where are you hanging out these days?

The company website is CFOLC.com. If you want to email me, my email is simply Jack@CFOLC.com. If you're interested in the book, Secrets of Rockstar CFOs, I am happy to send you a PDF copy of it. If you want an autographed one, we have to charge a few bucks. I got to get it from the printer, but I'm happy to give you a PDF. That's a good book. I do recommend it for any controller.

Thank you again, Jack. This was so much fun. I also want to thank the readers for going on the journey with us. I hope you're leaving with some great insights from Jack’s story.

Thanks.

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Important Links:

• CFO Leadership Council
• Secrets of Rockstar CFOs
• Forbes.com
• The Catcher in the Rye
• Great Expectations
• CFOLC.com
• Jack@CFOLC.com