Building financial modeling skills while playing an E-Sport Game with Professor Eric Kelley
In this episode of Financial Modeler’s Corner, Paul Barnhurst sits down with Dr. Eric Kelley, finance professor, Microsoft Excel MVP, and financial modeling educator, to discuss how financial modeling education is evolving through Excel Esports and hands-on learning. Eric shares how he uses competitions, real-world cases, and structured modeling techniques to help students build stronger financial modeling skills, think in systems, and create models that support better decision-making.Dr.
Eric Kelley is a finance professor at the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business, where he teaches finance at the undergraduate, MBA, and PhD levels. He is a Microsoft Excel MVP and faculty fellow with the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge. Eric focuses on developing integrated financial modeling education, helping students build scalable models through innovative techniques and competitive Excel-based learning.
Expect to Learn:
Why communication skills are critical for financial modelers
How to build models as flexible systems instead of one-time solutions
How Excel Esports helps students develop real-world modeling skills
How competitions can improve financial modeling education
Here are a few quotes from the episode:
"At the end of the day, we've got to be able to communicate. We've got to be able to tell stories." - Eric Kelley
"You're not trying to find a loan payment. You're trying to build a system that is going to take in a flexible set of inputs and generate a loan payment as an output." - Eric Kelley
Eric Kelley shares how financial modeling education can move beyond traditional instruction by combining technical skills, communication, and competitive problem-solving. Through Excel Esports and structured case-based learning, he helps students understand that strong models are not just about getting the right answer, but about building systems that can adapt, scale, and support decisions.
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In Today’s Episode:
[00:00] – Trailer
[04:33] – The Importance of Communication Skills
[09:12] – Discovering Excel Esports
[11:35] – Competing Under Pressure
[13:01] – Coaching Future Financial Modelers
[16:36] – Bringing Financial Modeling Into the Classroom
[23:51] – Building Excel Esports Cases
[32:00] – Students’ Biggest Modeling Breakthroughs
[36:23] – Advice for Aspiring Modelers
[38:10] – Excel Rapid Fire Questions
[43:33] – Final Advice on Learning Financial Modeling Full Show Transcript:
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:00):
Financial Modeler’s Corner is the world's premier modeling podcast. It is brought to you by Financial Modeling Institute, the world's leading financial modeling accreditation organisation. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Financial Modelers Corner. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst. This podcast is where we talk all about the art and science of financial modeling with distinguished financial modelers from around the globe. The Financial Modelers Corner Podcast is brought to you by the Financial Modeling Institute. FMI offers the most respected accreditations in financial modeling and that's why I completed the Advanced Financial Modeler. This week, I'm thrilled to welcome on the show Dr. Eric Kelley. Eric, welcome to the show.
Guest: Eric Kelley (00:53):
Thanks, Paul. Good to be here.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:54):
Good to have you. And I think that's the first time I've called you doctor.
Guest: Eric Kelley (00:58):
Hey, that's all right. Most people don't.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:03):
I would imagine. So a little bit of his background, Dr. Eric Kelley is a professor of finance at the University of Tennessee's Haslam College of Business. Eric teaches finance students at the undergraduate MBA and PhD levels. He emphasises quantum problem-solving techniques and challenges students to create robust, scalable models. He is particularly passionate about developing integrated university curricula, spanning multiple courses that teach students to build financial models from the ground up using the most innovative techniques available, which we'll spend some time talking more about today, which I'm excited about. He is also a Microsoft Excel MVP and a faculty fellow with the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge. He worked alongside other MECC leadership to create the organization's first regional competition in 2024 and continues to promote Excel-based esports competitions by writing and testing cases and creating instructional content. Eric also coaches his students Excel eSports team from the University of Tennessee that won the 2024 MECC World Championship and play sixth in 2025.
(02:24):
Again, welcome. I'm really excited to get to chat with you today. I love that you're rep and your university. You got it covered.
Guest: Eric Kelley (02:30):
Go balls.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (02:32):
And I can see they're a Nike school.
Guest: Eric Kelley (02:34):
Yes. Well, actually it's June. I think on July 1st, we're Adidas.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (02:41):
Oh, were they switching? Yeah. The local university here just announced they were Under Armour and I haven't heard who the new one's going to be, but the agreement ends at the end of the year and so that came out. Yep. They all have somebody's logo. You got to make the money whatever way you can.
Guest: Eric Kelley (02:58):
Those are big contracts. They stick around for several years and it was a big deal when we changed.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (03:05):
Yeah. And they're just getting bigger and bigger as the money keeps getting bigger in college. It's pretty crazy. But sometimes you don't, you wish you could throw football a little further?
Guest: Eric Kelley (03:15):
Most times, yes.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (03:16):
All right. So you're the first guest we're doing this with. First or second, we're doing a new career corner. So I have a couple questions about your career around financial modeling. First one we're going to ask you is how did you decide you wanted to be a college professor teaching finance?
Guest: Eric Kelley (03:32):
It was really kind of a perfect storm for me. A few things came together. I enjoyed the teaching and learning process and so that applies both the classroom stuff as well as research because our job is to generate new knowledge. I enjoyed math from really as long as I can remember. I was always fascinated with how financial markets work and just generally I like variety in my day-to-day duties. And so the academic career, the PhD and finance in particular, it all just came together in that.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (04:14):
Makes sense. You love teaching, you love the math, you enjoy markets, good combination to be a professor.
Guest: Eric Kelley (04:20):
It works.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (04:22):
So the next question I want to ask, and I'm curious to see what you say to this. What is one skill that you think most financial modelers need to have that most people would be surprised to hear you say that?
Guest: Eric Kelley (04:33):
I would say oral communication skills. I mean, I know modeling, it's a very technical thing, but at the end of the day, we've got to be able to communicate. We got to be able to tell stories. And so I think the oral communication piece is essential. And when I say oral communication here, I'm not talking about preparing something and sort of delivering this speech. Rather, I'm thinking about the ad hoc, thinking on your feet, answering questions in clear, coherent ways so that your audience can understand you. I think it's essential. If you can't tell the story behind your model and what your model is communicating, doesn't really matter how good your model is that people have already lost you.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (05:22):
100% agree. And I've been guilty of that before where I think I'm explaining something well and everybody's looking at me like, "What are you talking about? " And you're like, "All right, I clearly did not communicate that well, even though I thought I understood it. " Yep. Definitely more important than a lot of people think. They all think we're just Excel nerds and we are Excel nerds, but there's more to it than that.
Guest: Eric Kelley (05:42):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (05:44):
What do you tell college students who are interested in a career in financial modeling?
Guest: Eric Kelley (05:48):
Before we actually get into the nuts and bolts of trying to build a model, I mean, I try to start with let's just learn the thing that we want to model. Let's learn what is actually going on behind the scenes. And so in a lot of ways it sort of starts with things like just learning the financial statements, just how they fit together, the story they tell. And then once you have an idea of the types of things that you want to model, then I pivot and try to get folks to think about efficient systems and processes. I mean, it's not about doing anything once. It's about creating a system and a thing where you can do tasks at scale.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (06:37):
And I'm curious, obviously you see a lot of students' first model ever and they're very early attempts. So what's maybe one of the biggest mistakes you see or craziest thing you've seen as you're seeing those early models? Because I'm sure it's very new for some of these students. Might be their first time really ever using Excel.
Guest: Eric Kelley (07:01):
I think it's just trying to solve a problem, whether it's big or small just for the purpose of solving that individual problem. So how that translates into models, whether they're big or small is going to be lots of just hard coded values. Don't do that. When you're taking a test and you're asked to calculate a loan payment or something like that, yeah, you're solving an individual problem. But when we get into modeling, what the initial thing that I think people need to learn is they're not trying to find a loan payment. They're trying to build a system that is going to take in a flexible set of inputs and generate a loan payment as an output so that they can then go and change the inputs and then get the right answer and not have to resolve the problem. But yeah, so I mean, it's being very, very focused in solving individual problems instead of thinking about systems and process.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (08:02):
And that totally makes sense because that's usually how we work in school. You're just thinking, how do I solve this case? I want to get the answers in, whether it's accounting or whatever it is. And with the model, you're trying to teach them that no, you're building a system. So if you change the inputs, you make adjustments, it will work continuously with you. It's an evolving document. It's not something you just get the answer and move on.
Guest: Eric Kelley (08:25):
Yep, exactly. Exactly. And it's interesting how long it sometimes takes that to click because we are so trained not to think that way.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (08:40):
Yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way, but that totally makes sense. Yeah. It's not the way we study. It's not the way we typically learn. Now, whether we should or not is a whole different debate that I'm sure we could spend the rest of the time on, but
Guest: Eric Kelley (08:54):
We can talk a lot about the system.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (08:57):
And it's going to be interesting to watch how it changes with AI. I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts on that, but we'll get back to modeling for our audience. So I know you're a big fan of Excel Esports.
Guest: Eric Kelley (09:07):
Absolutely.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (09:07):
How did you first discover it? What was your reaction? Kind of tell a little bit of that journey.
Guest: Eric Kelley (09:12):
I learned about Excel Esports the same way a lot of folks have learned about Excel Esports and that is they know David Brown. So David is a finance professor at the University of Arizona. And interestingly, I met David, I was on faculty at Arizona at the time and I was in the process of leaving, moving to Tennessee and we were in the process of trying to hire him and that was gosh, 12 or so years ago. But I met David and I kept up with him over the years and then maybe five years ago we reconnected and spent a bit of time together and he was kind of telling me the story about how Excel esports work. And David, for folks who don't know, he is the founder of the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge, which is the big network and the big competition at the college level.
(10:05):
And David learned from Andrew Regally, I have trouble with Andrew's last name.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (10:13):
Morovich, I think. I have a hard fibre to do.
Guest: Eric Kelley (10:20):
So if David's kind of the father of college Excel esports, Andrew would be the grandfather of that, because Andrew started the financial modeling World Cup and the Microsoft Excel World Cup or World Championship. When David told me about how all of these things work, it was like, man, I'm in. This is awesome. It's learning, it's the opportunity to display creativity, it's working under pressure and competition. We love to compete. It's something you can win at, so why not? But yeah, I was immediately excited.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (11:02):
Love it. And for those who are interested, David Brown was one of the first interviews they ever did. Funny enough though, I think it's episode three was David Brown, but back to back, I interviewed two David Browns. So it's the University of Arizona one, not David Brown that runs a consulting firm out of Africa because they were literally, I think, episode three and four of the podcast. So it was kind of funny because I'm like, and this week I have David Brown then the next week and I have David Brown again. Tell our audience, what's it like competing? Let's start with that versus coaching, because I know you've competed in the event as well.
Guest: Eric Kelley (11:35):
Yeah. What's it like - I mean, I've done a little competition, more coaching than competition, but I mean, I think the way to think about it is you're going to walk in and you're going to encounter some type of problem like you've never seen before. Something completely new, maybe totally off the wall and you're going to have a few minutes to read, plan, digest, and then maybe 30 minutes to just go at it and make as much progress as you can. And I, at least am very used to just type all day long by getting there and just all tensed up and you're making mistakes and trying to move around and get things done and trying to remember all the tools in your tool belt. It's interesting what happens to you when you think you know everything and then you're under a huge time crunch and you forget how to copy and paste sales sometimes, but it's a interesting beast.
(12:32):
It's pretty cool though.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (12:34):
It is pretty cool and it is unique. I've competed a few times, not a lot. I think I've done maybe four or five times in total and it is definitely unique, especially the first time you do it.
Guest: Eric Kelley (12:46):
I don't know, it's addictive. I mean, it's just like I want to come back. I want to do more. It's just fun. A lot of fun. Love
Host: Paul Barnhurst (12:55):
It. So talk about what it's like coaching students, because obviously coaching versus doing it yourself is very different.
Guest: Eric Kelley (13:01):
Very different, very different. So certainly there's techniques and skills that they need to learn, but there's an interesting twist to the coaching part that comes from the fact that... So these students, the students that I work with and the students that are into this stuff, they're typically going to be high achievers, also highly competitive individuals themselves, but that brings this dynamic where you've got students who are very accustomed to all their academic career studying very hard, regularly earning A's, oftentimes attaining perfect scores or near perfect scores on their exams and then just kind of keep on going. They just expect, they expect excellence and they're bright. And so this is not unjustified, but in Excel eSports, it's so different because achieving perfection is rare even for the best players. And so I've got to just drill it into my kids early and often to know that, you know what, you're probably going to see a problem that is too big for you to solve today or for sure in 30 minutes.
(14:31):
And in some cases, 50% may be a really, really good score. And to a super high achiever, that's a hard thing to stomach. Yeah,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (14:45):
Somebody who's never got a be in their life to be sold, be happy with 50%.
Guest: Eric Kelley (14:51):
Yeah. But the thing that I try to use to hook them is this while that experience doesn't look like a test that they're accustomed to taking, it looks a lot like real life and that's a place where your life, your work life at least is one where a good goal on any given day is just to make as much progress as you can and just have a place to start the next day. And so I think the cases are much more like real work than they are tests and a good thing.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (15:26):
Totally agree. And I'm curious, how did you decide that making the learning, because I know you've, and we'll talk about this, you've turned several of the cases into eSports learning cases for learning financial modeling, right? You've turned that into a competitive game. So you started saying, "Hey, let's do some of these eSports." Then you said, "How can I teach financial modeling as a competitive gain kind of an eSports framework?" So how did you first come up with that idea? How did you develop that idea? Well, my background is in FP&A. I am also passionate about financial modeling. Like many financial modelers, I was self-taught. Then I discovered the Financial Modeling Institute, the organisation that offers the Advanced Financial Modeler programme. I am a proud holder of the AFM. Preparing for the AFM exam made me a better modeler. If you want to improve your modeling skills, I recommend the AFM programme.
(16:26):
Podcast listeners save 15% on the AFM programme. Just use code podcast.
Guest: Eric Kelley (16:36):
Well, first of all, I can't take credit for the whole financial modeling in eSports. So there are many greats that did that well before me, specifically Andrew and David and that lineage, but I did focus really clearly on the FMI stuff. So in some sense, it was new because it was a different set of material. But yeah, I mean, I already recognised, just watching my students compete in more generic cases that really didn't have anything to do with finance or more just general problem solving, just watching how engaged they were, especially with things that they could do in teams because they loved it. They just thrived on working together and then putting a live scoreboard up so that they could see their progress. I was saying, "Okay, there is certainly something here, but what I was lacking was, I hate to say it, but basically an enforcement mechanism to get them to a lot of students to do the cases because I mean, it's really sold as an extracurricular activity and these are busy kids.
(17:51):
I've got a lot of things to do. And so I set out to find ways to bring the competitions into the actual classroom so it was part of their actual course. And so then I've got a captive audience, and so it was great. And so in order to do that, I had to take the actual subject matter that was being taught in a given course at a given time and put it into the context of the models. But in many ways it wasn't that hard because if you think of a model very broadly as just some mechanism that has some inputs, does stuff with those inputs and then generates outputs that are useful for decision making, that's exactly what we're doing in many of our classes, especially those that have a quantitative bent and finance is just, it's perfect for that because that's what we do in finance for.
(18:53):
But from a very basic level, when we're learning time, value, money, we're solving problems. And so I just started taking these ideas and putting them into the case framework. And I started really small with intro to finance topics like calculating loan payments, calculating retirement savings amounts, things like that, moving into bond pricing, stock pricing, some risk and return, building portfolios. And then this past spring, I had the opportunity to do an honours class with a group of second semester sophomores, all finance majors. And so this was really their first semester when they're even taking finance. And so I just had the freedom to just try stuff with them just to see what we could do. And we blew through all the material that I had planned in the first two thirds of class. And so end of that, I had another month, well, what are we going to do?
(19:50):
Well, I liked the FMI curriculum. I like the foundations package. I know it. It's a very good thing for them to learn. So let's put them through that. And on Fridays for a few weeks in a row, let's just do a case based on that material. And so more complex than the original cases I was writing for them. But by that time they'd seen cases, they knew how they work inputs and outputs and all of that. And so now they've just got a new set of material. And so now they're building a revenue schedule and they're building a cost schedule and then they're making it all the way down to EBITDA and incorporating taxes and CapEx waterfall and getting all the way through an income statement. So it was pretty cool, just kind of one layer at a time and just see what they could handle and they delivered.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (20:41):
Sounds like kind of a little bit born on the FMI side of doing that out of necessity in the sense of, okay, I got a few more weeks of material I need to do. What am I going to do? I like this material. I like the framework of competitions because I know they can learn that way. So let's start layering in these lessons in the competitions.
Guest: Eric Kelley (21:01):
Absolutely. I mean, it worked very well hand in hand because they were... I know many of your viewers have been through the material and they're familiar with Ian's videos and some of his models that he's got in there. And so my students were watching all of that and at the end of the week it was just time to show what you learned. We're going to do a case on this.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (21:25):
That's great that you did that. I mean, I know we're both, I'm a huge fan of the FMI. I know as RU, and I think it's a great way for college students to learn because there's such good structure in it. In is he taught for 20 years, he worked in the industry, he now runs the Financial Modeling Institute. You're not going to find a more connected, smarter modeler out there. You can find others that are also just as smart and connected, but he's one of the foremost in the world. So it's just a really great way to have students to learn.
Guest: Eric Kelley (21:55):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (21:57):
What surprised you most throughout this journey as you started doing this? What's been kind of the biggest surprise?
Guest: Eric Kelley (22:03):
So it was really just the continued hunger that I've seen in these students. These are impressive kids that I've gotten to know and gotten to mentor and see grow, but I would push them and they respond and they're excited. They're excited to come to class and try to beat their friends across the room and they're wanting to meet outside of class and learn more. I've got a call this is for the time of our filming, this is what, June 19th, I've got a Zoo call tomorrow morning with eight students just to touch base and see how they're doing over the summer and talk about some esports cases that they can work on as they continue to tune up over the summer and get ready for the fall competition.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (23:06):
That's cool.
Guest: Eric Kelley (23:06):
Huge, huge, huge surprise, very pleasant surprise. So just thrilled that they're responding the way they are.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (23:12):
That's awesome. What I want to do here, and I'm going to encourage anyone who is listening, if you get a chance to watch this section on video, is I'm going to ask you to just take us through a case example, a little bit of how you built it, the levels, what the students are getting from it. So feel free here to bring it up on screen and I'll bring it up and you can walk us through one. All right. Eric, I know you're going to walk us through a case here so we have up on the screen. So for those of you who may be listening audio, we encourage you to turn this on. This is an Excel eSports case revenue minus cost equals EBITDA. I like the grid professor on the side there. Nice logo.
Guest: Eric Kelley (23:51):
Yeah, that's a brand that's myself and David Brown. So we're putting this together and making some resources under that brand. But yeah, just the backdrop here for those who are very familiar with FMI foundations, we're at about chapters three, four, and five in their 10 chapter course here in this case. And so what students have already learned is how to build a revenue schedule and then so that there was a previous case for that and this case is the next week where they also learned how to build a cost schedule. And so for the case, they're doing a revenue schedule and a cost schedule and then putting them together and starting to build an income statement. But just real quickly, the way these cases always work is there's going to be seven different levels and they're going to get progressively more difficult. So levels one all the way down through seven.
(24:55):
And then in each level there are going to be 20 different games. And so each row here is one of those games. And so you can think of each level as a model and then each game within the level is representing a unique set of inputs that are going through that model. And so the idea for the students is you want to build your model for the level so that the example works and then you want to quickly iterate through all of the different games to do basically a sensitivity analysis really quickly. And there's techniques that people follow with like data tables to iterate through really quickly, but there's always going to be some inputs out here and then the output of the solution's going to go here and then this case is linked to some assumptions. And so these assumptions, this is an abbreviated version of what the FMI folks would put on their assumption tab.
(26:05):
So it's just the ones that are needed.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (26:07):
It looks very familiar from having done the FMI of the best, worst, I'm like volume growth, sales price, cost inflation. I remember maybe - So
Guest: Eric Kelley (26:14):
We've got scenarios. So thinking you're going to have a scenario switcher in your model and you've got these variables, they're going to switch with the scenarios and then maybe some starting values for some things. But here in level one, very, very simple. They're asked to forecast unit sales volume and so I guess they've got the actual revenue and so they're going to divide that bot price spec here in their assumptions tab. And it's going to gradually get more difficult, five years of sales volume, five years of revenue and then we're moving into costs. And so here we've got some starting levels of actuals and actual cogs. And so you're going to identify your variable costs per unit. Here we're going to start switching scenarios. It gets more complex. And so since you're doing a five-year per unit variable cost, you'll have to, for each one of these, you'll have to pull in like an inflation rate from your assumptions tab and then you're gradually getting more and more complex onto level seven where here's your inputs.
(27:29):
So you've got a scenario that's going to link to your assumptions tab. You've got some actuals, revenue cogs and SG&A expenses and you're asked to forecast the next five years of EBITDA. And the answer is just some check value like a sum of five years of forecasts. These cases, I had one group, students are in groups of three and for a couple of these cases I had one group that finished the entire thing in 30 minutes. And so that was impressive because the spirit here is just like the FMI spirit in that they've got to build these things more or less from scratch. So yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (28:13):
Yeah, no, it's a great way for them to be thinking about it because I would imagine the more structured they build it early on if they think about the five years and build it like a model and build properly from step one, the easier it becomes as they get down to levels versus if you just do what is the natural of, "I just got to get the answer. I don't care what it looks like. " When you get to level seven, you're like, "Oh crap, I got to build everything now."
Guest: Eric Kelley (28:40):
Yep,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (28:40):
Exactly. Or level five. Exactly. You start realising more and more, because I was thinking that even as I was watching, I'm like, "Okay, the way to set this up is do all five years, build my revenue schedule and build the switches in place so as I get further down the line, it's just a matter of adding one more thing, switching something and I have the answer."
Guest: Eric Kelley (28:59):
Yep, exactly. And I can even show you what a model a final model might look like. So here I've got it got my solution, pardon my use of all sorts of tabs here.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (29:15):
You're all good. We know how Excel works. My audience wasn't and I have the wrong audience listening. So you mentioned you're going to bring up the solution. So we have the solution here for each level. I think we're looking at level seven solutions. So kind of walk us through what -
Guest: Eric Kelley (29:29):
Yeah, here's level seven where they're basically working their way down to EBITDA and you'll look over here to the side, this is where I built out the model and I pulled in one level of assumption, so the scenario revenue, COGS, SG&A, et cetera. And then I just really quickly built the revenue schedule up here at the top cost schedule below working all the way down to you EBITDA here. And the way I work my way through it is I just set up a data table over here where I've got a control cell that determines which of the games I'm on. So here I'm on example seven so I could switch to game number say 121 and everything over here in the model updates and have the bottom line EBITDA, which ends up being the answers. And so they iterate through the data table, copy and paste all their answers over into their green blanks and they're done.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (30:37):
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Guest: Eric Kelley (32:00):
I think a huge aha is when they set up their case in a way that they can quickly iterate through all of the inputs. And so typically it's done using a data table. So when they get their model right, they think it's right because it's solving the example and they're matching the numbers. And then they quickly just run through every different scenario of inputs and they pace their answers and they see that they're all correct. That's pretty cool. It's going from, hey, I think I built a model that got a right answer to my model's actually robust. I just changed all the inputs and it didn't break. That's a pretty cool accomplishment for
Host: Paul Barnhurst (32:45):
Them. And that gets back to your point of that's when they realise it's a system not hard coding because they just changed inputs and everything still worked and they can validate it work. Where in the real world, you don't get that luxury of instantly validating. You got to go look at it and say, do I think it's still working right? And set everything to zero and go, why do I have 100,000 of EBITDA? Obviously something's wrong or whatever. There are ways you could do it, but it's not a simple validation. So I'm curious. Okay, so I'm going to switch a little bit here on these topics, but change from building the cases back to the students. What's the most memorable team name? You've shared several of them on LinkedIn. I know I've seen some fun ones from time to time. The students totally fits for college have a lot of fun with coming up with your name.
(33:33):
So what's the
Guest: Eric Kelley (33:33):
Memorable name? So just for context, so what we do is we have a scoreboard that is up on the board and it is an online Excel sheet where all of their answers are feeding into it. And so we're tracking their scores in real time. And so the students get to pick their leaderboard name for their teams. Well, I think that the first competition I did in the entire semester, the winning team happened to pick the Dim Early Fan Club as their team name. And I thought that was pretty appropriate. And other fun ones. So gosh, look, this is Excel and so there's all sorts of fun things that you can do with Excel. So we would have things like Control Alt Defeat and then we would have Control Alt Elite. One week we had Tough Sheet. That was kind of fun. So gosh, back in April.
(34:31):
So April. We all know what happened in June, but back in April I did have a team name that was Nixon five. So a little prophetic there. But yeah, so they had a lot of fun with those.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (34:45):
Love it. Yeah, it's totally something students would have fun. What's the overall feedback been from the students?
Guest: Eric Kelley (34:51):
Been positive. I mean, it's been really positive on the fly. They'll hang around after the competitions and want me to look at their models and figure out what was broken and why they didn't make as much progress as they wanted to, which is great because we all know that one of the best ways to learn is to fail because you remember the things that you mess up. So on the spot, it's been good. After the fact, it's even better. I'll have students email me over the summer at their internships saying things like, "Man, sure, I'm glad we did all that stuff in the spring. My Excel skills, they're just paying off big time now." And so that's neat when you hear students say, "In my job, this thing that I'm trying to do, this thing that we did, it matters now and it's given me the leg up and putting me ahead.
(35:49):
And I'm the person that people are asking for help on things." So that's nice.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (35:55):
No, that's really cool. I like that. All right. So I am curious, one more thing on these cases and things is what would you recommend to someone else who may be considering doing it? What advice would you give them if you have a professor listening or someone thinking they could use it in whatever scenario it might be, what advice would you give them? Because obviously you've put a lot of time into this, you've gone through a lot of that, so would love some of your thoughts there.
Guest: Eric Kelley (36:23):
First and foremost, I would say just get your hands dirty and try a case. And try a case, it's a tough ask in a lot of ways because you can end up in some pro case and you have no idea what even level one is. And so you can sign up for the Microsoft Excel Collegiate Challenge, mecc.college and get some of the archive cases there. In the most recent year or so, MECC has been producing junior varsity cases. They're all labelled JV, and they're designed to have very low barrier of entry and using basic skills. But the real value of doing those is you just learn the process. If you can learn the process of the way the cases work when the level of difficulty is pretty low, then you can move in and start doing more difficult cases. Another nice thing that' provided will be walkthrough videos.
(37:20):
So I've been very pleasantly surprised with how generous the Excel eSports community is with their time in that people will just record videos walking through a case and describing how they did it. And so many of the cases that folks can find and try on their own can find some experienced player that's put out a walkthrough video that teaches you how to work the case. So just jumping in and doing some and then watching other people do, and it just kind of snowballs from there.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (37:59):
Yeah, I hear you on that. So I want to move on to our standard section as we move toward the wrap up. So the first one is favourite Excel shortcut.
Guest: Eric Kelley (38:10):
Control Z.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (38:11):
And tell our audience in case anyone doesn't know, what does Control Z do?
Guest: Eric Kelley (38:15):
Oops.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (38:16):
Yeah, exactly. It
Guest: Eric Kelley (38:17):
Undoes. It
Host: Paul Barnhurst (38:18):
Undoes. Do you know how many times it will undo something before you can't do it anymore?
Guest: Eric Kelley (38:22):
Do I know how many
Host: Paul Barnhurst (38:23):
Times? Yeah, there's a limit. Do you know? I tried. I don't know the
Guest: Eric Kelley (38:25):
Limit.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (38:26):
There is a limit. A hundred.
Guest: Eric Kelley (38:27):
What's the limit? Okay.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (38:30):
Sadly enough, I tried once because I screwed something up quite a while ago and I wonder if I can get back there. No luck. So 100 your limit. What's the most unique or fun thing you've done with the spreadsheet in your personal life? Any kind of fun models you built or things you built?
Guest: Eric Kelley (38:47):
In our first MECC regional competition, I worked with David Brown in case development and we had a case that had a cornhole board on it. So there's a picture of a cornhole board on the case and students had to track where the beanbags landed and score a cornhole game.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (39:05):
Fun. So how did the students like that one? I bet they really enjoyed that case.
Guest: Eric Kelley (39:09):
They did. Now some of them to this day chastise me because they didn't know the rules to cornhole and though that put them at a disadvantage, but you all learn somehow.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (39:21):
You can never learn. If you're doing Excel eSports cases, there's going to be one where you're just looking at and go, I have no clue. I know that much. All right, so now we're going to go to our rapid fire section. So how this one works is I'm going to ask you some quick questions around modeling and you have to pick a side. You can't say it depends. Then at the end you can elaborate on one or two because I know there's nuance to almost every one of these pretty much. So circular references in models, yes or no? Yes. VBA, yes or no?
Guest: Eric Kelley (39:52):
No.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (39:53):
Lambdas in financial models, yes or no?
Guest: Eric Kelley (39:57):
Yes.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (39:58):
External workbook links?
Guest: Eric Kelley (40:00):
No.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (40:01):
You said that with authority. Most people do. Should modelers primarily use keyboard shortcuts?
Guest: Eric Kelley (40:07):
Yes.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (40:09):
Should models always be print ready?
Guest: Eric Kelley (40:12):
Yes.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (40:13):
Is there ever a situation where merge cells are acceptable?
Guest: Eric Kelley (40:18):
No.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (40:19):
That's the strongest answer. Should financial modelers learn Python in Excel?
Guest: Eric Kelley (40:24):
No.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (40:25):
What about Power Query?
Guest: Eric Kelley (40:27):
Yes.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (40:28):
How about Power BI?
Guest: Eric Kelley (40:30):
No.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (40:30):
Okay.
Guest: Eric Kelley (40:31):
Ish.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (40:32):
Should every financial modeler be able to build a fully integrated three-statement model?
Guest: Eric Kelley (40:39):
Yes.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (40:42):
I can tell you're struggling with view. It's fun to watch. Will Excel ever die?
Guest: Eric Kelley (40:46):
No.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (40:47):
Have you used AI to help you build a model in Excel?
Guest: Eric Kelley (40:50):
Yes.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (40:51):
Okay. What financial statement is most important for modelers if you had to pick one? Income statement, balance sheet, or cashflow?
Guest: Eric Kelley (40:59):
Cashflows.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (41:00):
Alrighty. What's your favourite LLM? Cloud, Copilot, ChatGPT, or other? Cloud. Claude. That's a pretty common answer at the moment. If you could pick only one for all your models for the rest of your life, which would you choose? Sensitivity analysis or scenario analysis?
Guest: Eric Kelley (41:19):
Scenario.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (41:20):
You struggled with that, but I've only had one person say sensitivity. So it's interesting on that one. Do you believe financial models are the number one corporate decision-making tool?
Guest: Eric Kelley (41:30):
Yes.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (41:31):
Okay. And then what's your favourite lookup function?
Guest: Eric Kelley (41:35):
X-lookup.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (41:36):
X-lookup. All right. I know you hesitated on a few. Is there one or two of those you want to elaborate on?
Guest: Eric Kelley (41:41):
The things financial modelers need to know. Even maybe six months ago I would've said yes to Python, but I don't know. AI can write some great Python functions for us. I'm not big on turning everything over to AI. Most people are not big on that, but writing some Python is, I don't know, I'm kind of okay with turning some of that over. And then the Power BI, I know that a lot of the world uses Power BI, but I feel like the modeler just needs to be conversant with Power BI as opposed to really being an expert in it and knowing what inputs and outputs need to be to
Host: Paul Barnhurst (42:35):
Work with it. And I tend to agree with you on both those. Power Query, I say yes, because you're just going to deal with messy data, especially coming from FP&A. That saved my life. I can't even count how many times.
Guest: Eric Kelley (42:47):
Well, and also just the idea of knowing you're going to have bunches of files that are coming in that have the same structure and the ability to just drop them in a folder and have something done to them, that's a fantastic use of PowerQuery.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (43:05):
100%. I love watching people's eyes open up and get big when they realise, you mean that thing I've been spending six hours a month on I can do in 20 seconds? Yeah, you just need to spend about two hours to set it up. It's not that hard. And they get really excited. So that's one of my favourite things to teach. All right, so as we wrap up here at the end of our time, any final advice, parting words you'd like to give the audience anything you want to share before we wrap up?
Guest: Eric Kelley (43:33):
I think like many other things, getting good at modeling, it takes practise. It's like learning to hit a baseball or learning to shoot a free throw and you've got to do it. You've got to practise. There's really not a whole lot of shortcuts to learning. And fortunately, we're in a world now where there's all sorts of resources to help you learn.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (43:57):
100% agree. It's never been easier the resources out there to decide you want to learn something. It's just a matter of you deciding you want to do it is really what it comes down to nowadays. So I really appreciate you carving out some time, Eric. We'll put your link in and your profile information in the show notes that you gave us so people can reach you if they want. And I'm excited for this episode to come out. Keep doing what you're doing with the eSports and teaching the students. I think it's a great way for them to learn. So thanks for what you're doing there for all those students.
Guest: Eric Kelley (44:27):
Well, and thanks for the conversation today, Paul. It's been a lot of fun.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (44:30):
Yep. Enjoyed it. Thank you. Financial Modeler's Corner was brought to you by the Financial Modeling Institute. This year, I completed the Advanced Financial Modeler certification, and it made me a better financial modeler. What are you waiting for? Visit FMI at https://fminstitute.com/podcast/ and use Code Podcast to save 15% when you enroll in one of the accreditations today.