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- [00:00]
Podcast Announcer
The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to CMO Confidential.
- [00:25]
Sponsor Voice
The podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions and choices that go with being the head of marketing. Hosted by five time CMO Mike Linton.
- [00:36]
Mike Linton
Typeface helps the world's biggest brands move.
- [00:39]
Sponsor Voice
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- [01:38]
Mike Linton
Learn more at typeface AI/cmo welcome marketers, advertisers and those who love them to Chief Marketing Officer Confidential. CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions and the politics that go with being the head of marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite.
- [02:02]
Sponsor Voice
I'm Mike Linton, the former Chief Marketing.
- [02:05]
Mike Linton
Officer of Best Buy, eBay, Farmers Insurance and Ancestry.com, here today with my guest Scott Lindquist. Today's topic what your CFO wants to tell you but won't Now. Scott started his career at Price Waterhouse Coopers and went on to become the Chief Financial Officer of Farmers, a position he held for over 13 years. He is currently the CFO of CNA Financial, which is another insurance company based in the Midwest. Now, full disclosure. Scott and I worked together during my eight years at Farmers, where he was a fantastic business partner and where we actually jointly manage the marketing cfo. Welcome Scott.
- [02:49]
Scott Lindquist
Hey, thanks very much Mike. It's a it's an honor to be with you today and just want to say I had a lot of fun, ton of fun working with you at Farmers over the years and I'd say everything I know about marketing I think I learned from you. So thanks for inviting me to your pod. And just a little fun fact here to CFO Chief Financial Officer. I was also known as you recall, as Chief Fun Officer too. So.
- [03:14]
Mike Linton
That's right, you were one. I will say you were one of the more funny, approachable CFOs. So. And let's talk about that speaking. Speaking of CFOs, you know, you've met a lot of them obviously and give us a quick overview of your take on CFOs in the marketplace. I mean, I always think there's some CFOs that are focused solely on costs. There's CFOs that are true business partners like you are. There's the folks that say no all the time. And obviously some of those types are more receptive to marketing than others. Just tell us an overview of your take on what's really out there in the CFO marketplace.
- [03:54]
Scott Lindquist
Yeah, no, sure, that's a great question, Mike. And you know my experience over the years, I mean I've seen just a wide variety of CFO roles out there and you know my experience, it typically tracks very closely to where the organization is in their strategic life cycle. Whether you're a startup, you're an aggressive growth mode turnaround, you know, private equity owned, looking for a liquidity event or a steady state Fortune 100 type role. And in my experience, the CFO needs to really be joined at the hip with the CEO, with the chief executive officer, almost to the point where you can actually finish each other's sentences. You're always kind of on that same, same frame of mind and whatnot. And, and so yeah, I, I've certainly seen the, the Dr. No type CFOs. I've seen the hatchet man bad, that bad cop type CFO. I've seen financial engineering type investment banker CFOs and then of course the true business partner type type cfo. And you know, it's really a neat trick to just kind of pull off all, all those roles at the same time.
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Mike Linton
Hey, just a quick question. How often would you say percentage wise, out of 100, how many CFOs are really true business partners?
- [05:17]
Sponsor Voice
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- [05:19]
Scott Lindquist
Typeface.
- [05:26]
Sponsor Voice
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- [06:20]
Scott Lindquist
Now back to our discussion with CNA CFO Scott Lindquist. I'd say the majority of them, I think the majority of the successful CFOs are really at the end of the day true business partners that have really that deep and guided knowledge of the strategic underpinnings of a company, true understanding of the levers that, that, that, that grow a company and not, not just financially. I mean obviously that's a key point but, but strategically and able to kind of connect those dots as to how does a company make do business. The underpinnings for how does a company make money? And you know, I think I learned from you and certainly others, it's all about, you know, the end, the end consumer, you know, what are we delivering for a value proposition and then how do you make that actual linkage to, to the financial dynamics of a company. And there's going to be a short term view, there's a medium term view and there's going to be kind of very long, long term view. And I've just seen a wide mix of that in my career.
- [07:23]
Mike Linton
Thank you. I do think we'll talk a little bit about this later. I do think if you're interviewing for a CMO job, you should absolutely always meet the CFO in addition to the CEO to get a feel for what type of CFO you are going to be working with. And we can talk more about that later like questions you might want to ask in the interview of the cfo. But let's stay on insurance here for a minute. Insurance has been a hotbed of marketing over the last two decades, really spending billions and billions every year more than beer. I know commercial lines is a little different, but what's your take on that? Tell us about marketing in the insurance industry which 30 years ago you would have never expected what you have insurance now which is this massive influx of money and brand building. Give us your take.
- [08:17]
Scott Lindquist
No doubt about it. I mean I certainly saw that my last company being being a retail focused insurer. And no doubt about it's been a hotbed of marketing and advertising particularly with the, with the onset of the direct to consumer channel for, for auto insurers a little bit lesser extent for homeowners. But you mentioned beer. I mean I think I learned some years back, I mean it's been a top five category for media spend right up there with pharmaceuticals and autos. Also in addition to beer. So you know, I kind of use the obvious examples of Geico and Progressive and as you know Mike, I mean they, they have done massive, massive tens of billions of dollars of investment in their brands over the years and to the point where, where, where the Geico Caveman or, or the Lizard or, or flow from progressives are ubiquitous. Right. Everybody knows who they are and what it does is it just turned, turned those companies into category killers. Now to the extent they've taken massive market share from the traditional personalization, massive.
- [09:18]
Mike Linton
I mean we're talking like huge amounts of sharepoints in a billion dollar category. And also beneath all that is a pretty advent, I think advantaged financial model as well.
- [09:30]
Scott Lindquist
Yeah, no doubt about it. And you know, they've really just intermediated the agency. I mean listen, the big agency brands are still gigantic. But what these, what the direct to consumers have done through the use to the power brand building to the use and power of marketing is they've really squeezed out the second tier insurers and in fact they're right on the heels of the, of the, of the top market shares and you know, to the point where these, these cares were like nothing 30 years ago. I mean those cares were kind of no market share. So I mean that from my view was just a massive strategic investment in brand building and in leveraging that towards the direct to consumer channel and taking advantage of the technology now. I mean, you know, the Internet obviously and social media obviously, but we didn't have that 30 years ago. But, but they've, they've leveraged their brand to really just massively overwhelm those channels.
- [10:23]
Mike Linton
You know, it's an interesting thing and I'd love your opinion on this, which is you have an industry run essentially by actuaries and financial people with tons of surplus actually leading the charge over the last two decades on brand building and marketing. That is, is that a leap of faith by these companies or is that a learn as you go kind of thing? What's your take on how the industry got to where it is?
- [10:55]
Scott Lindquist
Well, you said actuaries and I know I'm tempted to do some actuary jokes here now, but I don't want to get off track here.
- [11:01]
Mike Linton
But I want to say one, you can knock one out, but no, all right.
- [11:04]
Scott Lindquist
No, no, no. So yeah, no, I mean it is a fair amount of, it's a significant amount of leap of faith. Right? Because you talk about the investment in brands and investment in marketing in the financial types, the actuarial types are always looking for that Immediate gratification. Right, right. You know, when's my return? Am I predictability?
- [11:23]
Mike Linton
I mean, one of the things about actuaries is their whole job is to predict stuff with as much certainty as possible. And you have this kind of way of you're going to build this brand and then you're going to win at least the consideration and get people to come in and get a shot at the business. But that is a pretty big leap of faith. Keep going, reject that.
- [11:45]
Scott Lindquist
So, no, it totally is. I mean, if you're talking, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars invested in a brand or marketing, you're like, wow, when do I get that return? And, and of course it comes to marketing math, and I learned that certainly from you and your team several years back, is like really truly understanding that marketing math and understanding the dynamics and the product management, the product pricing, understand how that helps retention, how does that drive new business? How does it drive bundling? And then, you know, it needs to all fit together to say, yeah, over the, over, over a five to seven year period, we're going to have returns that are exceed our cost of capital. And these days, cost of capital, you know, I'm just going to use, you know, 8 to 10%. It depends on the company. But, and it's all about all our.
- [12:30]
Mike Linton
Listeners know, just give us the top line of how cost of capital is calculated.
- [12:34]
Scott Lindquist
Yeah, so, so for, for most insurance companies, I'm just going to use an example. Capital is comprised of a mix of debt. In equity, generally speaking, 20 to 25% of debt, 75 to 80% equity. The debt is going to be how much it costs for you to borrow on the open markets. And cost of debt is higher now with higher interest rates. So you could issue bonds 5, 6% there and then the cost of equity, it's kind of a, this Black Scholes option, Bloomberg. So, you know, listeners could just Google it. Right. Cost of equity you can find in Bloomberg. But most companies, you know, 8 to 10% is a good threshold. So when I'm looking to say, all right, we're going to invest a billion dollars in building a brand, how am I going to get more than an 8 to 10% return? And we measure returns by looking at present value of future cash flows and present value of future cash flows, there's going to be a lot of assumptions in there. But you know what, that billion dollars is going out the door today. You're looking to recover that over a number of years. So that's where the marketing math gets Very important in understanding the levers around. Is this product really going to sell? Are we going to gain market share? Are we going to make profit? Obviously. Are we going to drive higher retention which drives profit profitability? Are we going to drive bundling? So adding additional products to households, are we going to drive households?
- [14:02]
Mike Linton
Yeah, that goes to, you know, how much you think a customer's worth and customer lifetime value, which is if I acquire you, am I acquiring you and you're going to be this at like $100 person or if I acquire you, are you going to be a $5,000 person? You know, and that really is a lot of assumptions. But beneath all this cost of capital and the spending is this leap of faith that you're going to spend a lot of money now on something that is kind of hard to put your arms around and it's going to pay out later. Right?
- [14:38]
Scott Lindquist
No, that's right. And like I say, a lot of judgment. You, you know, I, I, my career, we've been in big conference rooms where we've been kind of debating this and debating assumptions employed and you know, listen, I mean it's, it's like anything else. I mean it's always going to be, there's a certain amount of data driven element to it. There's going to be a lot of business judgment, a lot of business sense, a lot of kind of gut feel on that. So it's, it's actually very fascinating seeing that unfold. But listen, there's been several companies and a few of them I mentioned earlier have been very, you know, extraordinarily successful in making those big bets and tell.
- [15:14]
Mike Linton
Us, you, you, you moved from a B2C insurance company to what is much more of a, Almost a pure B2B company.
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Sponsor Voice
Tell us the difference.
- [15:27]
Scott Lindquist
Yeah, you know, tremendously different. Different. You know, and I joined my current company about 2 1/2 years ago or so and absolutely drinking through a fire hose. I mean I had exposure to a certain amount of commercial insurance through prior companies, but it was much more pronounced, much more significant current company. So it was really getting to know as soon as possible like a hundred day plan. Right. Getting to know everybody immediately. All the various functions, all the strategy of the company. How's it, how's the distribution work, how's that interplay with the customers, product pricing attributes, retention attributes, what, what drives the value proposition, what drives the brand, the importance of the brand and how does that.
- [16:09]
Mike Linton
You are talking so much like a marketing guy. You're not even talking about the CFO onboarding. You're talking about the marketing onboarding. This is very exciting to me.
- [16:18]
Scott Lindquist
Well, and I must say, you know, I've been doing the CFO thing for, for a while and I, I kind of say kind of half jokingly, you've seen one insurance company, you've seen them all from a finance perspective. They all have their different nuances. But I was immediately very focused on, on just, you know, how we make money, how's the company make money and how does finance be an enabling function to drive that strategic growth? I mean, listen, you know, we have a great team, you know, that closes the books, that files the tax returns, that files the regulatory reporting. And then, you know, it's all, you.
- [16:52]
Mike Linton
Know, all the FPA work, FP and.
- [16:55]
Scott Lindquist
A work, you know, that's, and you know, just excellent, outstanding type stuff. It's, it's table stakes, I think, like where, where can I add the most value to the organization? It's just kind of having that forward look and, and hoping to just drive overall, you know, value for the company. And so, so yeah, that, that, that was kind of a big change going from that retail to the B2B. But it's, it's been great.
- [17:19]
Mike Linton
And if so, if, if, if for our listeners out there, when a new CFO comes in to the org, what is the best way for marketing to onboard the CFO or to get the CFO to kind of understand what they're doing? Like give our listeners some tips as to what you who are, who is a believer in marketing would like and then maybe some of those other types give our, give our listeners tips on how, how should they approach the CFO and onboard them?
- [17:54]
Scott Lindquist
I think so. First thing is just build alliances with your peers. And that's one thing I did really immediately was just build alliances amongst everyone who throughout the organization, running major businesses, major parts of the organization and through that is just like I would always say, how can I help you as CFO accomplish your job? And it becomes kind of this, I'm.
- [18:19]
Mike Linton
Just saying, I'm gonna just say not all CFO say that. Some CFO say I need 10 more back from you. Yeah.
- [18:28]
Scott Lindquist
But yeah, and you know, it's all about building relationships. Right? I learned that a long time ago and, and it's all about, you know, learning, I mean, embracing lifelong learning. And that's what I've done. I know when you and I, when you first, I first met you many years ago or so, you and I met each other and built that kind of week to week kind of rapport and Relationship and mutual respect. And obviously, we became friends very quick. Quickly. And so I think, you know, you learned from me asking a ton of questions of me. I learned from you by asking a ton of questions of you.
- [19:04]
Mike Linton
And we had a great marketing cfo, too.
- [19:07]
Scott Lindquist
Well, I think that was.
- [19:08]
Mike Linton
I had that idea for you, and you supported it immediately, and that was really a big help.
- [19:14]
Scott Lindquist
I think that was key, you know, because. And I'm a huge proponent of any large function, whether it's. It's. It's marketing or if you're running a distribution or. Or, you know, running a business unit, it's having your own cfo, if you will, kind of reporting to you. And that was. I mean, given the budget that we had, the amount of dollars, it made total sense at our last company. And it was great because the marketing cfo, he took ownership of the marketing math, particularly around the performance marketing, took ownership around connecting the dots as far as investing brand dollars, marketing dollars into. How does that build brand consideration? How does that build retention? How does that build bundling? And then. And then kind of laying out and making the case to the finance community say, like, hey, here's our. Here's our return. And we'd stress it up or down and really kind of understand that. Get the finance folks just really comfortable with the numbers. And I must say, great track for anybody in the finance area to. To go be a marketing cfo, because I know you and I are thinking of the same person. I don't know if he's listening.
- [20:20]
Mike Linton
Shout out to Scott Griffiths while we're waiting.
- [20:23]
Scott Lindquist
Yeah, thanks for the work. He's gonna go viral now. But. But no, he learned a ton on marketing. And, you know, he learned so much from you and your team and about the business that I'm not sure he'll ever turn back. I mean, I think he's kind of be kind of a lifelong marketer.
- [20:40]
Mike Linton
We love that about him, though. He was. He was also really good at saying no when it. When it was appropriate. So, you know, you. You are obviously a marketing believer and in the power of marketing. But, you know, they don't. I don't think they train that at PricewaterhouseCoopers or in your accounting degree. How did this happen to you? How did you become a believer?
- [21:07]
Scott Lindquist
You know, the last company we worked with, it was really the first company I worked for who had this gigantic national brand. But. But it wasn't big enough, though. It was. It was something that we needed to take to the next level. And. And that. And that. And the Dollar amounts of investment required were, were eye watering, eye popping at first blush. So that's what one of the things I spent a lot of time with you and Scott Griffiths really just diving into that as far as, you know, what are we getting for our marketing investment and how's that going to drive future value? And so that was just a tremendous learning exercise for me and in particular the performance marketing aspect of that. And I think you told me or somebody told me you see a lot of these commercials, the, the call to action commercials on tv and I always kind of shook my head. It's like, do people really dialing these 1, 800 numbers, are they really clicking? And I think you said they said hey, you would not see them on TV if they did not work. And, and so I saw all the data behind that. You guys showed me all the data about how, how all that stuff drove clicks, how it drove phone calls. And it's really just kind of fascinating for me seeing, seeing that investment manifest itself in actually the numbers turning into growth. And so I was a true believer pretty quickly. Then the other thing too, and I think this, before I met you, we did a brand valuation study which I had never heard of this, but we hired investment banking type valuation firm that specialized in doing valuation metrics around brands and, and you know, the brand. We came up, you know, a certain amount of judgment, some marketing math in there, but we're talking the value of these brands, I mean, are just multiple billion dollar brands just through the depth and breadth of reach and the power to drive, the power to drive earnings. And that was a huge weight for me.
- [23:08]
Mike Linton
You know, it's super fascinating and this is accounting thing that actually really bugs me is if I buy a company, the value of the brand shows up as goodwill when I buy that company. But if I build that brand myself, it is nowhere on the balance sheet. And that's me crazy. Yeah, anyway.
- [23:28]
Scott Lindquist
Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's always this kind of squishy intangible asset until you buy it.
- [23:34]
Mike Linton
When you buy it, it has a value, but it doesn't have any value until you buy it, which makes no sense. But so, so this brings me to the. If I'm working with a CFO who considers marketing cost center versus a growth lever, what tips, other than having a good relationship, would you give the marketer on that one? Because that, that is where, you know, I hear from our listeners one of the tougher things, you know, they see me as a cost center only they're unwilling to take long Term risks. What advice? Do you have someone with a CFO like that?
- [24:09]
Scott Lindquist
No, I, I would, I would, I would take them into the data. You know what, CFOs love data. Obviously they love numbers, they love data, they love financials. I know I for one years ago had zero appreciation for the amount of math that goes into marketing. And I learned that from you and your team many years ago. I know this sounds like a gigantic suck up to Mike Linton show here.
- [24:34]
Mike Linton
We're kind of enjoying it on the show actually.
- [24:38]
Scott Lindquist
But I mean, I think you and your team took me through the data and through the numbers and it was kind of fascinating kind of looking at that. And I learned that through the brand valuation study also. I think that would be the best thing I would recommend is just taking, taking the CFO through the data through the power of the marketing math underneath that. And you know, my daughter, my younger daughter, she just graduated college, Villanova, a year ago or so and no doubt she'll be listening. So. Hey Kelsey, just a little shout out to you. So she majored in marketing and marketing and data analytics and college. Those are, those are actually merged together.
- [25:14]
Mike Linton
Now, which is super important for marketing.
- [25:17]
Scott Lindquist
Yeah, not a surprise, right? And I was like, oh, of course it is, of course it is. It's all data. I mean, marketing, the foundation of marketing. There's a foundation of creativity, but there's a foundation of data. So that would be my top recommendation for marketers coming into the company is kind of get to the CFO and just show them the data.
- [25:34]
Mike Linton
So we talked about the hall of fame best practices for marketers. Build a relationship, show the data, you know, actually have a two way street discussion. Tell us some of the worst practices you've run into in marketing. Like, watch out for this. If you're doing it, you're probably not making the CFO happy.
- [26:00]
Scott Lindquist
Yeah, that's, that, that's, that's a good question. I mean, I think, you know, the one thing that jumps to mind is, and not maybe directly related to the cfo, but I've seen, I've seen stumbles and marketing presentations to board, in board meetings, to board of directors. Give us a couple examples of horror.
- [26:18]
Mike Linton
Stories of marketing presentations.
- [26:20]
Scott Lindquist
Horror stories. Well, first of all, just over reliance on jargon, you know, and, and, and, and you know, use of acronyms and marketing. You know, if you say, hey, D2C. Well, I know D2C direct to consumer, but you know, that's kind of an example of kind of over reliance on jargon. You know, if you're allotted 20 minutes for board presentation. Don't show up with 100 page deck, you know, don't show up with gigantic, you know, data loaded deck pages there that, you know, it's more, we used to say, my, a couple of companies ago this year would say, like horses and duckies. Give me more horses and duckies. Yeah, right. Isn't that funny? Yeah. Use of graphs. Right. Use of bar charts or histograms and use of key messages. So I have never heard horses and.
- [27:06]
Mike Linton
Duckies before, but yeah, there you go.
- [27:08]
Scott Lindquist
There you go. Yeah, I think that was a GE thing when I was at ge, but, you know, very much focused on key messages because if you think about it, you're, you're going to board meeting. The board members have, you know, they may be in a series of meetings that day, maybe their third hour of the meeting. You see board members starting to doze off. And so you kind of have to read the room too. Right, right. So, you know, oh, and do not go over time.
- [27:35]
Mike Linton
Do not get to the point. Don't save the conclusion for the last 30 seconds.
- [27:42]
Scott Lindquist
Oh, here's a funny one. Here's a funny one. I'm sure you've seen. Don't present a slide and say, oh, I'm not going to drain this slide, and then proceed to drain the slide. So that's, how's that for recommendation?
- [27:54]
Mike Linton
So that's very pithy. Very pithy, Scott. All right. So, you know, we, we ended up having a really good relationship, obviously between the two departments and the marketing CFO was critical to that. Talk to our audience about how you manage the marketing cfo and then your take on how the, you know, the marketing CFO is running all the agent, it's helping run the agency contracts, the sponsorship deals, all, you know, in addition to doing all the math and the interface for the company and, and the finance department. Tell us, give us some best practices for managing the marketing CFO from your.
- [28:37]
Scott Lindquist
Yeah, so, so, I mean, here's kind of my number one best practices as a corporate cfo. I did not feel the need to have all the business or functional CFOs direct report to me and that I needed to control them. I was like, no, no, no, you're, you're, you're working for, you're working for the function head. You're working for the cmo. That, that's, that's your job. I'm happy to help wherever I can. You'll be dotted line. We'll have, we'll, we'll keep lines of communication. So I think that's very important. I think it's very important for chief marketers to really kind of have, have their own CMO as far as putting them in charge of sponsorships and, and, and agency contracts in the bank.
- [29:14]
Mike Linton
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [29:15]
Scott Lindquist
I mean obviously there's a ton of math on that. You know, it's a great development opportunity for the finance organization too. I mean you're, you're a leader like, like I believe, I think I was, is, you know, let your people have, have enough rope to kind of do do their thing and, and not enough rope to tang themselves on. Right. So. And I know the individual we're talking about, he just did a masterful job on that. So yeah, that's my best recommendation is just, you know, own your own cfo. The corporate CFO shoes relatively hands off. Give them enough rope to, to kind of, you know, do their thing and always be, and always be. Be there if they need help. That was kind of my mantra.
- [29:54]
Mike Linton
Yeah. The other thing I would add to that, we had an operating principle of surface bad news as fast as you can.
- [30:02]
Scott Lindquist
Well, boy, isn't that the truth? Yeah. Because I can think of some examples where, where yeah, we got some bad news kind of late and it's like, geez, I would have liked to have known that a little bit earlier. We could have done a little bit more to mitigate that. So boy, I mean that's, I wouldn't say that's a CMO advice. That's an advice to anybody.
- [30:19]
Mike Linton
It is an advice to anybody. But one of the things about marketing is it's, it's if it's bad news, it's going bad. Yeah, it might correct itself, but it's probably like a cavity. It's only going to get worse and hurt. You know, it's going to destroy more of it. Like get it filled right away. That was kind of how we ran it. So, so we're closing in. We're almost out. We're towards the end of the show. I should actually just say that right away. So last question. It's a two parter. You have, you could take one or both, but you must take at least one funniest story or piece of practical advice we haven't discussed yet for our listeners. You can take one or both. But since you did claim as chief fun Officer, you know, I'm sure our listeners are counting on something funny.
- [31:06]
Scott Lindquist
Well, you know that, that chief fund officer that may have came out of a Agent Achievement Club event. You and I were at many Years ago in the theme of the party was a pirate party. So I think to this day you and I still exchange pirate jokes. We celebrate talk like a pirate Day, I think once a year. So I guess maybe that's my funny story.
- [31:23]
Sponsor Voice
So I'll just for one little thing.
- [31:25]
Mike Linton
I'll play it for you. Scott, what's the pirate's favorite country?
- [31:31]
Scott Lindquist
Argentina.
- [31:32]
Mike Linton
There we go. All right, so there's the funniest story.
- [31:36]
Scott Lindquist
Never gets old, right?
- [31:37]
Mike Linton
Never gets old. Let's go to the piece of practical advice.
- [31:42]
Scott Lindquist
No, I mean I think from a practical advice, and I touched on this earlier and this has served me very well in my career is just never be afraid to ask questions, even stupid questions. And I'm always happy to preface a question saying, hey, this may be a stupid question, but I'm going to ask it anyways. And even though in my mind it really wasn't a stupid question, but putting that aside, and I think that's incredibly particularly important with the CFO and really understanding what makes the CFO's mind tick. And, and you know what, you know, it's going to be a really great opportunity to build a relationship and to teach the CFO kind of the craft of marketing. And I know I was very, I welcomed that very, very much. And you know, I just learned the whole art of asking questions and never being afraid to be, you know, curious. You know, never be afraid to curious and intellectual curious. I Learned that at PwC many years ago as a staff auditor. And the other thing too is I just always have embraced lifelong learning. I must say, even after 35 years of working, I think rarely is there a day that passes where I don't, where I don't learn something, if not a lot more things.
- [32:46]
Mike Linton
I'll also say, I think that's a really good point. It's a two way street. Like I learned a lot about the financial structure, a bunch of accounting rules that turned out very helpful to me. And also at, when I was at a public company, you learned a lot about investor relations and what analysts actually thought and that was super helpful for marketing. So it's a two way street. I think a great piece of advice to end the show. So, Scott, we really want to thank you for being on the show and thanks to everyone for listening to CMO Confidential. If you are enjoying the show, please like share and subscribe. Look for all of our shows on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and the I Hear Everything network, which include marketing the battle between believers and non believers. Parts 1, 2 and 3 is the CMO position the hardest job in business A report from the media front lines what your agency really wants to tell you but won't Part one and two and the marketing CFO why it might be right for your company hey all you marketers, stay safe out there. This is Mike Linton signing off for CMO Confidential.
- [34:05]
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