Strategic Finance Insights for FP&A Executives to Drive Growth in PE-Backed Companies with Nate Saperia
In this episode of FP&A Tomorrow, host Paul Barnhurst sits down with Nate Saperia, a seasoned finance professional and founder of his own consulting firm, to explore what great FP&A truly looks like, especially in private equity-backed companies. Nate draws from over 20 years of experience in consulting, corporate finance, and strategic roles, sharing practical insights on how to make KPIs measurable and actionable, the blurred lines between strategic finance and FP&A, and what working in fast-paced PE environments really entails. He also talks about the skills FP&A professionals need today, from mastering Power Query to building effective business partnerships that drive real impact.
Nate Saperia is a finance veteran with a background spanning economic consulting, corporate finance at companies like GE and Hess, and advising private equity-backed firms on financial planning and analysis. Recently, Nate launched his own consulting firm, focusing on helping businesses navigate strategic finance challenges and achieve smarter growth. Known for his clear and pragmatic approach, Nate is passionate about helping FP&A professionals elevate their role beyond reporting into true business partnering.
Expect to Learn:
Why truly great FP&A means understanding the business and enabling better decision-making.
How to break down high-level financial goals into clear, measurable, and actionable KPIs.
The nuanced difference between traditional FP&A and strategic finance roles.
What it’s like working in private equity-backed companies, including the heavy reporting demands and rapid pace.
The top technical and interpersonal skills FP&A professionals should prioritize now.
Here are a few quotes from the episode:
“If we had truly clean data, FP&A would be more exciting because we’d spend more time on analysis, less on manual work.” - Nate Saperia
“Business partnering is about empathy and understanding others’ perspectives, not assuming you have all the answers.” - Nate Saperia
“Power Query is the single most important technical skill for FP&A professionals today it solves most data cleansing headaches.” - Nate Saperia
Nate delivers a thoughtful and practical perspective on the evolving role of FP&A, especially within private equity-backed companies. He highlights the importance of building actionable KPIs, mastering essential technical skills like Power Query, and developing genuine business partnerships grounded in empathy and understanding. This episode is a must-listen for finance professionals aiming to elevate their strategic impact and navigate the fast-paced demands of PE environments.
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In Today’s Episode
[01:11] - Introduction to the Episode
[03:07] - What Makes Great FP&A?
[05:08] - Nate’s Career Journey
[07:25] - The Role of EBITDA in Private Equity
[11:12] - Defining and Using KPIs Effectively
[17:42] - Building a Metrics Matrix
[20:34] - Strategic Finance vs FP&A
[28:41] - Life in a Private Equity-Backed Company
[35:17] - Reporting Expectations in PE
[41:47] - Power Query and Business Partnering
[46:05] - Nate Personal Insights
[48:45] - Final Advice for FP&A Professionals
Full Show Transcript
[00:01:32] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Hello everyone. Welcome to FP&A tomorrow, where we delve into the world of financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and future prospects. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FP&A guide, and I will be guiding you through the evolving landscape of FP&A . Each week, we're joined by thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who share their insights and experiences, helping us navigate today's complexities and tomorrow's uncertainties. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your journey in FP&A , this show has something for everyone. This week, we're thrilled to be joined byNate Saperia. Welcome to the show, Nate.
[00:02:17] Guest: Nate Saperia: Thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited. I've been following you for a long time, so this is an exciting day for me.
[00:02:24] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Well, good. I'm excited to have you on as well. I was grateful you reached out and, you know, suggested that you had some ideas that you thought would make for a good show because I'm always looking for great guests, so I'm really excited. The first question I'm going to ask you is that it will give you an opportunity to tell a little bit about yourself. What does great FP&A look like? What is a great FP&A in your mind?
[00:02:44] Guest: Nate Saperia: For me, great FP&A is helping business leaders make better business decisions and also leading to better business outcomes for business. There's a lot going on behind the scenes. We talk a lot about Excel, about power BI, about data analysis, but all of that is for a purpose. It's to help a business.
[00:03:07] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I like that, I like how you said it's all for a purpose, right? To help the business in the long term. So do you have an example? Maybe you could share where you've seen great FP&A in action, where you're like, wow, we really made a difference. We helped the business here.
[00:03:20] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. So the example I'm going to give actually is a weak example. I guess I can call it a weak example, but I was brought into a client, a large consumer retailer. And this is where I've seen the best FP&A the head of FP&A . They're likely the most technical person I'd ever met. No, but what she had was she knew the business inside and out. She'd spent time in the supply chain. She'd spent time in merchandizing. At one point, she was the head of their transformation management office and then head of So what that meant was she could talk to any business leader in the firm, understand where they were coming from and what her team needed to do in order to help those business leaders. The other part of what made her and her team great is the rest of her time. She didn't spend it in Excel. She spent it with her team. Being a good leader, mentoring and coaching. So this was great. She was basically a go between who could translate the needs of the business to her team, who are able to do the analysis to help the business. And that was great. Fanny had the opportunity to advise them on something very specific. It was business intelligence. That's what they needed. That's what their team didn't have. But I wasn't the one providing great for their. It was her and her team.
[00:04:48] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That's great. You had the opportunity to observe that and recognize that sometimes it's not us doing it. Sometimes it's observing it from others. You know, I've interviewed some people and I'm like, all right. I could tell they would have been a great boss to work for. They understand FP&A and like, I can learn a lot from them. So I love that you shared an example where you learn from someone where you came in as a client. Can you tell our audience a little bit about your background, kind of what you've done and where you're at today? Let's start there.
[00:05:15] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. So I've been in finance for about 20 years now and I've played a lot of different roles. I studied financial economics in college and then went into economic consulting. All I knew is I liked data. I really liked data economics, have a lot of data, but it was very academic. So I went back to business school and then went into corporate finance. I had a stint at GE, a stint at Hess, and I finally realized I wanted to go smaller. I wanted to go to a growth stage. So I became head of FP&A , a VC backed company. I didn't really know what I was before I came in as a capital markets role, had left and I left and they said, can you do this? And I started and so I spent a lot of time as head of FNA, but also half of my career has been in consulting the past seven years I worked at a firm called Accordion Partners, which advises private equity backed companies and their CFOs on all things finance related. For my first three years, I was on the strategic finance team there. And I think we'll probably get into talking about strategic finance and what the differences are. But I advise clients for the first three years, my company accordion was growing extremely rapidly. We were also private equity backed. So I raised my hand and said, look, we're advising our clients on this. Let's get this internal. So I moved to the role of head of FNA, and I did that for three years, helped build that reporting, budgeting, planning, and eventually took the firm through its second private equity transaction two years ago, two and a half years ago. Then finally last year, I moved back to advising clients. I worked in a lot of different industries, but decided I wanted to focus on professional services as an industry and started my own firm six months ago.
[00:07:22] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Got it. Well, thank you for sharing a little bit of your background. And you had a lot of private equity. We decided to go with the EBITDA hack because for some reason that seems to be all they talk about.
[00:07:32] Guest: Nate Saperia: Sometimes EBITDA is our love language.
[00:07:35] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You know, it's funny and I'll tell you this because I think you'll smile. I hated EBITDA when I started here because I started at American Express. American Express is a Warren Buffett company. He's the number one shareholder. You've heard what Warren has said about EBITDA, right? He absolutely despises it. So I kind of grew up like, why would you ever talk about EBITDA? Then my next company was private equity, and that's all we talked about. And then I started to realize, okay, there's a middle ground here. It has its benefits. I've never been a huge fan, but I get it. So it's always fun when I wear the shirt and get to have those EBITDA conversations, because I know you've probably had more than you care to count.
[00:08:11] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yep. Yeah. And I see the debates on LinkedIn about whether EBITDA is a good measure or not. I can understand both sides. The reality is I work in private equity, so it's not really a debate for me. That's just the measure. And you need to understand that, and you need to understand what's right and what's wrong with it. But it is what it is.
[00:08:33] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Well, and that's exactly it. At the end of the day, you need to understand the measures you're going to be measured on. Right. The performance metrics. And if you're going to work in private equity, you're going to work in VC certain industries. Ebitda is important regardless of what you think about it. So learn it, understand it, and support it. That's kind of the bottom line. Or find a new job if you don't want to.
[00:08:58] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. So you can like it or not like it, but your investor is still going to ask for it ten times a day.
[00:09:05] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So exactly. You still have to track it and understand it regardless of whether you like it or not. All right. So you started your own consulting firm six months ago. How's it? How's it been so far? What's it been like?
[00:09:17] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. So I'm sure other founders have told you this, but starting your own firm, it's not going to ever be what you expect it to be. I've learned a lot of new things. You've started your own firm. I bet it's been. It was very different from what you expected. I expected to transition out and be doing pretty much exactly what I was doing in consulting. Have people calling me doing cash flow forecasts. It's been very different. And a lot. The biggest thing I've learned is how to say no. I'm saying no way more than I expected. I expected to take most things just for the business, but nine times out of ten I'm saying no. And the reason for this is early on I was talking to a private equity firm. I had this splashy deck, went through my 20 years of experience, listed everything under the sun that I can do. They said, that's awesome, but what should you be doing and what should I call you for? What are the 1 or 2 things? And that was an aha moment for me. Said, wow, I really need to get super focused. So what I like to do is instead of saying no. Say no. But I know this person who can help you out because I don't like saying no, I don't. That's not very helpful to someone and I want to be helpful. So I say no, but this is who can help you out. So I'm trying to build a partnership network. If there are any experts that I can refer work to.
[00:10:54] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. No, I'm the same way I haven't. I can't say nine out of ten. It took me a while to learn, but I'm getting better at saying no and trying to figure out where I should really focus. I'm just a slow learner. So fortunately you figured it out much quicker than me, which is good.
[00:11:08] Guest: Nate Saperia: Well, maybe that is too much. So.
[00:11:12] Host: Paul Barnhurst:Uh , you'll find out in time, right? I mean, the number is different for everybody, but one of the most important things you can learn in business is learning to say no. But I love that you pointed out no, but don't just. Hey, go away. I don't want to do your work. Here's who can do it. I can help refer you, or I can, because I build your network and build your credibility. People still trust you. They may come to you later versus the ignore them or or buzz off approach. I mean, just like being a business partner. In fact, we shouldn't just say no to our partners. It's no different. So I want to ask you a little bit about KPIs. We'll get into strategic finance here in a minute. But I noticed one thing that on your LinkedIn profile you mentioned you focused on is consulting is around KPIs and setting targets for KPIs, kind of how does that work with the customer? What's the typical process like when you're, you know, kind of helping them figure out their KPIs and targets?
[00:12:04] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. So private equity is an interesting situation. The way it works is a private equity firm acquires a company after going through a sale process. During that process, the private equity firm creates what they call a value creation plan. It's basically their roadmap to get from A to B, so they've usually defined their KPIs in advance, whether they're right or not. That's for us to figure out. But they know where they want to go and they have an idea of how they want to do it. So a big part of what I do is being an intermediary between a private equity firm and between an internal finance team. So where I start, I start at the top 30,000ft. Where do they want to be in four years when they sell the company? Because that's what they're looking to do. Sell in 3 to 5 years. If it's six, people aren't happy, but they're still selling the company. So where do they want to be? Okay. They want to be at X revenue with Y EBITDA margin. What does that mean for growth rates. Okay great. But these are all too high level numbers I can't do anything with those I can't advise okay. How do you get from A to B. So then we need to start breaking it down into non-dollar metrics. For example at a retailer you got sales. Sales is a dollar number.
[00:13:32] Guest: Nate Saperia: But what does that actually mean. Sales are made up of orders, and orders have an average order value. So those are two KPIs in the selling tree for a retailer. Just to give an example. One thing I don't like about the term KPI, and I'm going to keep using the term KPI because no one would understand what I'm talking about if I made up my own term. So KPIs are a key performance indicator. But is that really what we want? We want a KPI to be both measurable and actionable. Key performance indicator just indicates it's measurable. It's like saying you're on the highway and the speed limit is 65. And you're looking at your dashboard and your speedometer is saying you're going 80. You say, wait, I need to slow down. And you're just going to shrug. That says, I'm indicating what your performance is. I don't know what you should do about it. There may not be anything you can do about it. About. So just performance indication isn't enough. It needs to be both measurable and actionable. You need to be able to advise the other business leaders that okay, this KPI isn't where it should be. Not just it isn't where it should be, but these are the levers you can pull to get it where it should be. And that's all about what KPIs are for me.
[00:15:04] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I really like that you mentioned the actionable part. I think we start to see more and more people mentioning that. And so it's why in my mind, KPIs are usually operational in nature. Rarely are they financial. Because financial are lagging. And if it's a month after the fact, it's really hard to be actionable. Or by the time you're actionable, you've suffered a lot more pain, or you've missed out on a lot of benefit because you're responding after the fact versus having something that really helps you understand in the moment where you can take an action, right? Because if you see a trend upward and you're able to immediately adjust, maybe you pick up an extra 100,000 of EBITDA or whatever the benefit might be, or $1 million of revenue.
[00:15:49] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah for sure. That's exactly right.
[00:15:53] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. And so that's usually where we advise people. Where would you advise someone who's listening to this? Maybe they're in a PE or first kind of head of family and they're trying to figure out KPIs. Any advice you would offer them? Like if you have to select them, what are some things you think about? Or maybe a framework you use to help guide you when you're doing that?
[00:16:11] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. So I really like that I'm going to focus on revenue. And I really like selling trees. And you know the example I gave was for retailer okay. So you have sales. But what does that really mean. It's the number of orders and average order value. So as you said those aren't exactly financial metrics. One is a number, a number of units. The other is it has a dollar on it, but it's a dollar per order. And that's something a dollar per order. You can say, okay, how am I going to increase the number, the dollars per order. Can I bundle things together to increase dollars per order? Then on the order side, you can break it down further. That's based on how many people come into the store and your conversion rate. Okay. How do I get more people into the store? Do I need to run a marketing campaign? How do I convert more people into a sale once they come in? That's things like maybe it's where you place things in the store. Maybe you need different products. So those are all actionable. That's what makes them KPIs. You're not just measuring them to see where you are, you're measuring them so that you can do something about them.
[00:17:36] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. You're trying to get down to the root level where it's actionable. And that's why you mentioned the decision tree, right? In this case, you like to start with revenue and just start breaking it apart and break back. And if you go back far enough you'll start to see, okay, you know, whether it's website visits or leads coming from this source or whatever it might be, you start to see things that, oh, that has a huge impact on my final number. And there are levers we can pull. There's things we can do. That's right. That's really what you want to be looking for.
[00:18:08] Guest: Nate Saperia: Exactly. Also tactically, another thing I do is at my prior firm, we'd call it a metrics matrix. It's basically just write out every possible metric that this business could track and define. Defining is a huge part of the equation. You go, you get the business leaders in a room and ask them what an order is, and every single one of them will tell you something different about what an order is. How can you not agree on what an order is? A customer comes in, they place an order. But is it? Well, is it each item on that ticket? Is it a percentage that's being shipped later? So defining is another big part of that process. Then the last one is I really focus on dimensions. Different ways that the metrics can be looked at, whether it's by customer type by region. Time is a metric. Like what quarter of the year? Time is a dimension. Any way you can slice and dice the data and then you get your matrix. So you have this massive document and you go through and you say which ones have the most impact and which ones can have levers attached to them that I can pull to cause the impact. That's what I do.
[00:19:37] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I like that it's a really good approach. Like I said, you know, you build a big matrix, you define everything. Because like you said, everybody's going to have a slightly different definition. Anyone who's worked in FP&A for a long time has seen that. Then going through, and I love that last step with each one of them. Which ones are most important and then which ones can I actually pull a lever on? Which one can I be actionable? Then you should have a list that you can pull. Okay, now what are the, you know, main ones. Do I want to measure? There's a reason it's key performance. Not every performance metric.
[00:20:09] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. That's an important distinction between KPI and metric. You probably still want to measure the metrics. And they may be helpful in understanding where you are. They're not key.
[00:20:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah exactly. No great great advice there. So you've held several strategic finance roles. That's been the title. And I think a lot of times we're a little bit of confusion in, you know, what is a strategic finance role versus FP&A . So I'd love for your thoughts of how they might differ at traditional FP&A role from a strategic finance, how do you think about those two roles?
[00:20:42] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah, there's definitely a distinction, but I don't think the distinction is as large as what people think it is. So I'll break this into two parts. One is a true technical distinction. The other, I believe, is a perception distinction. So in my mind the technical distinction is that strategic finance usually has some corporate development or M&A or capital raising aspect to it, where that function is a leader in that process. FP&A is often involved in those types of activities. A transactional work, but more as a support function. So in my mind, that's the only technical difference. I'm curious whether you can think of other technical differences.
[00:21:36] Host: Paul Barnhurst: In most of the roles I've been in there. Really, they haven't carved out strategic finance, there's corp dev, there's FP&A , and someone from FP&A is helping with some. There might be a kind of a like one of the companies I worked at. There's the chief of staff group that did a lot of the stuff that you'd call strategic finance. But I agree in general with with what you've said there is the way to think of it is when you're more involved in that FP&A and more from a strategic standpoint, you're getting involved more in the, you know, the fundraising that tends to be a little bit more strategic finance than you traditionally see in FP&A . But that's partly why I ask, is the companies I've been in, we've never had a strategic finance role.
[00:22:18] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. So the rest of it I think is just perception. Perception is of FP&A as doers, not as advisors. They're the ones they build the book, they model it out. They put together the reporting package, they put it together and pass it along. They do an analysis and pass it along. That is in my mind the perception distinction between the two. Whereas once you have strategic in the title, that means you're an advisor. You're not just doing you're going in and going to the business leadership and saying, this is what I found, this is what you should do or this is what you should think about. But that's purely a perception difference because good FP&A is doing exactly that. So most of it, other than the transactional difference, I think it's mostly perception and and good FP&A is basically strategic finance. We even started my own firm. We stopped or started moving to calling it strategic financial planning, analysis and strategic finance for sure. The lines are extremely blurred and I'm not sure if there's really that much difference.
[00:23:38] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Now, and that's helpful. And that's kind of how I felt about it. You know, I had someone else was going to come on the show and we never made it work. And they wanted to talk about the difference. And to them there was very much a big difference. And to others like, no, it's really blurred. You know, you see a lot of these software tools, say your strategic finance platform instead of your, you know, FP&A platform. And it's like, okay, it's still doing planning and analysis. And that's where you're like, okay, where's the. So that's why I was curious, your perspective because I have like I said, I've never had a role that has been titled strategic finance or seen it in the companies that have been in. It's kind of like in some areas you have FP&A that focuses on the reporting, the planning, and then you have what we call big business decision support or business support or business partnering. If over in Europe and they separate the roles and some people are like, oh yeah, they have to be separate. They should be different roles. And I'm like, well, it just depends on the company and the size and what works for you. I've been in both. Right. You have. There's different parts of FBA, so I agree with you. It's very blurred. It's kind of like revops smaller companies. There's a lot of times where FP&A is doing revenue operations. There are times that completely different role, and it can get really blurred. And depending on who you ask, should it sit in sales, should it sit in finance? You know there's not a right answers to any of these things.
[00:24:56] Guest: Nate Saperia: No, for sure. And you make a great point about bigger companies. I get some of these distinctions at bigger companies. If you have 10,000 employees, you can't have a manager of FP&A who's putting together the model and then running the reporting and then advising, you know, your chief people officer on what to do. You have to have business partners and you have to have separation. I've even seen it. A good friend of mine runs financial analysis at an airline. And I was talking to him and I said, you mean for financial planning analysis? He said, no financial analysis. We split the P and the A. I run financial analysis. My buddy over here runs financial planning. We work together a lot, but they're different functions. And, you know, the bigger you get, the more you do that, for better or worse.
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[00:27:14] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, exactly. Now I work for American Express, right? Big, huge company. And there was a lot of areas where we had to split it. You just have to try to figure out what somebody can manage and there's trade offs to that. There's some things that are good about it and there's some things that aren't. Just like with a small company, and when you're doing everything, you're doing FP&A and operations and janitorial, sometimes, I mean, there's benefits and there's some like really you're kind of chuckling because I'm thinking you can relate to what I just said there.
[00:27:42] Guest: Nate Saperia: And I was thinking about,Uh , VC backed startup. I worked at WeWork, a meatpacking district in New York City, and we needed a little more office space. So we moved to a, like, a really corporate building. And I remember the, you know, the CEO being like, Nate, just just bring these pieces of equipment in, in your backpack and you go a little more each day. And, you know, at a growing company, you FP&A you can you can define the role, but you got to do everything. I remember I, you know, my CFO at my last firm, when we were small, like 50 people, he was doing allocation of consultants to projects. Literally, our CFO was doing the talent management. We're very small and grew much larger. And now that company has a fantastic talent team. But early on you do a lot.
[00:28:41] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, you do what you have to to get it done. But I think I want to switch gears and talk a little bit about PE. And we talked a little bit about strategy. Some of those difference you've worked with and advised a number of private equity backed companies. I'm curious, what is it you like about the PE space? What have you enjoyed about being in that space?
[00:29:00] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. So the biggest thing I like about PE is the opportunity to go in and make a difference.Uh , I'm going to first compare it to a corporate like we're talking about where you have extremely large teams. Everyone has their specific functions and that's not inherently bad. There are great programs out there. You know, I was at GE right after business school. They have a fantastic financial leadership program where you can see best in class and learn it early on. I think they're great for early in your career to see what best in class is for me and for certain personality types, I'm drawn to situations where there's a lot of fixing that needs to be done fixing and building. And the reality is private equity backed finance teams, they're run very lean and that can be challenging. But it presents a lot of opportunity. So the other thing I'm going to say here is there are a lot of parallels with VC backed companies, but there are a couple important differences. I think the skill set that makes for a person and a VC backed company and PE backed company. I think they're very similar. You have to be scrappy. You don't have a ton of resources at your disposal, and you need to be looking for problems to fix and then going and fixing them. One of the major differences to me is that VC backed companies are looking for the next ChatGPT. They're looking for the next Uber, the sexy industries. People are drawn to them. And a PBC company, you're looking for your next roof repair company, your next 2 to 3 person roof repair company. And if you're looking at pretty much doing the same work, either for the next ChatGPT or the next three person roofing company that you're going to bring in, and the compensation is the same, which one is are most people going to choose?
[00:31:15] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That's a roofing company. No. I'm kidding.
[00:31:17] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah, but that's exactly what private equity is. You have private equity investors getting super psyched up about rolling up these things. Like roofing companies, HVAC companies. They're not exciting to a lot of people. So people are.
[00:31:35] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Often not sexy. They're a roll up play.
[00:31:37] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah, but that leaves a lot of white space. So you get a lot of talent drawn more towards VC. And that leaves a lot of opportunity open in the PE backed world to to come in as a very talented professional and really leave your mark on a company. You just have to get used to the boring industry.
[00:31:59] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. Well that makes a lot of sense. There's definitely some differences. So I'm curious, how have you seen FP&A typically work? You mentioned runs really lean, but maybe a little bit more of what you've seen, at least in your experience working with PE back.
[00:32:15] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. So I'll keep this to companies in say the, the 50 million to 250 million. Sure. New range which we call sort of middle market or a little bit down to lower middle market. So of course you have a CFO and under that you either have one VP of finance or you have two people directly below a controller. And that's more common in what I've seen. But sometimes roles will be combined into a VP of finance. Sure. Under the controller you have a lot of accountants under the head of FP&A . You have a lot fewer people. You have, let's say, call it 2 to 3. It's tough to do a lot with 2 to 3 people. So this is where very resourceful, very scrappy talent can make a huge difference. If you get an associate, a manager who can both build power BI models and also explain what the models are saying. That person becomes invaluable. There aren't a ton of those people, but when you get that right talent, it can really change the course of the finance team.
[00:33:34] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I would agree with that. I know what you're talking about there. The people you get that can be really good technically, whether it's, you know, power BI, maybe some Python, they still do things on that reporting side, but also still have the ability to really translate it, speak to the business and drive change. And I think we're seeing more and more of that. But that is when you get people that have that good mix, you want to hold on to them.
[00:33:59] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. Do everything you can do to keep those people. And it's tough. There's a lot of turnover in private equity. You know I'll talk a bit more about private equity, the reality of the situation. And I'll do a VC See comparison as well in VC your investors they all have a small percentage interest in the company and no one of them really has complete say over what the company does. In private equity, you know, traditional private equity, leveraged buyout investors taking more than 50% of the firm. So they have a tremendous influence on what's going on day to day. And they're also extremely fast paced. The whole period that they're targeting is 3 to 5 years. So you should expect in a perfect environment to be working at a very fast pace and be making changes very quickly and regularly. So that can be exciting for a lot of people, and that can be overwhelming for a lot of people. And there's no right or wrong. It's really just. Is that the right fit for you?
[00:35:17] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And I love how you said, hey, is that the right fit for you? I've worked for two PE companies. I've worked at a large company like American Express, and they're very different. There are similarities, but there are definitely differences and you have to learn what is right for you. I learned a ton, you know, all of them, but in different ways. I can definitely relate to what you're talking about there. So reporting I think often can be quite different for PRS than non PE backed companies. So maybe talk a little bit about what you've seen for reporting and what someone should kind of expect if they come into a PE backed company. On the reporting side.
[00:35:58] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. You're going to need to expect a lot of reporting, a lot more than you would expect in other environments. It's going to be 60 next page. Monthly reports. Expect it to produce hopefully within a couple of weeks after the month end. A 60 page report. It's not. You're not handing over your income statement, your balance sheet and maybe your cash flow statement. Yeah, those are in there. But you have 57 other pages going through. Let's say we wish it were just the KPIs, but pretty much every metric that you can think of, their PE firms have become incredibly data intensive and data hungry, and that's what they're expecting out of their portfolio companies. So that's monthly. Quarterly. You're going to be doing a board report, which is going to be a sprint. It's going to draw on a lot of the same metrics. But there are also going to be specific topics that require a lot of one off analysis. You're probably going to have, let's call it a week a week and a half to do this on top of. You might be preparing the monthly report at the same time, or he might be in budget season. It's still expected. It's still part of your job. The last thing is sometimes you're even doing weekly reporting, you know, private equity. The reality is they put a lot of debt on businesses. If we're talking about a leveraged buyout versus.
[00:37:32] Host: Paul Barnhurst: A lot of elbows, there's going to be a lot of there's going to be big interest payments.
[00:37:35] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah for sure. And that puts a strain on cash. So you're probably going to be doing weekly cash flow forecasting. You need to update it every week. You need to review it with your CFO every week. You're probably not reporting it to the private equity firm every week unless you're in a cash strapped situation, in which case you might be reporting it to them every day. But you're going to be updating it every week, and you're going to be talking to your CFO about it every week. The thing I like about 13 week cash flows, and here I'm talking about direct cash flows, is unlike an indirect cash flow. This aligns exactly to how the business functions. If you can build 13 week cash flow for your business, you know that business inside and out. You know your customers, you know who's making payments, who's not. You know what you're spending money on. You see those big interest outflows. And that's a little painful, but it means you really know your business. It doesn't mean you're just doing high level. You know, how do I go from net income?
[00:38:53] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Cash flow can be really important in P. And I you know I never had to deal with cash flow as big enough P that I worked, you know, out supporting the business until I wouldn't say cash flow. But we definitely had to get involved during Covid, we had to approve every single payment. You know, kind of push it out as long as we could. Try to negotiate. That's when more than any time in my career was all over cash flow.
[00:39:19] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. So a very similar situation, coincidentally. I moved internally at my last firm to head up FP&A in March of 2020. Complete coincidence right? You know, we'd said that in December of the prior year, and I just happened to be making the transition about two days before all of that hit. But yeah, the very first thing I did was dust off our 13 week cashflow forecast and get that thing up and running very quickly. One of the most interesting things I did actually, during that process, and I posted about this on LinkedIn recently, is Build in Power BI are aging and R aging Report that. I think that's probably the most complex model I've had to build. I posted recently because there are actually now some resources out there showing you how to do it and with some, some code. So I want to give a shout out to the guys at SQL by SQL who put out great stuff. I don't know if you know them.
[00:40:27] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I'm familiar. I don't know the people, but I'm familiar with that site and I know they put out a lot of great stuff. I don't do very little in by now. I mean, I've used it in my career. I, MicroStrategy, Tableau, Domo, power BI, and so I've written a little Dax and stuff, and I know how complex and challenging it can get. The more complex that report is. So cash flow, aging, restatements, a lot of those things are harder to model than they are in Excel. It can be done, but it's not always easy.
[00:41:00] Guest: Nate Saperia: I actually wanted to touch on you on that for a little minute. A little bit. You talk about for resources and you provide a ton of free resources. That's something that I think is just so invaluable for our community.Uh , none of those things existed when I took my first Afghan role, and it was just figuring it out on my own. And my guess is you had a similar experience. It's so great that these communities are coming together, and they're more resources out there, because there just hasn't been much to help people understand, you know, the function and get up to speed on the function. So thank you for what you do on that front.
[00:41:47] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I appreciate that, I enjoy doing it, and I know I wish I had those resources when I started. I love the community. We've built the FP&A hub. You know, we've hit over a thousand. Hopefully we'll be closer to 1500 by the time this is released. And we're starting to see more and more traction. So really excited. When you get to help somebody answer a question they have somewhere they know they can go and talk to people, that there's going to be somebody who's experienced what they have. You know, we have some CFOs in the community directors, and then you have those people that are in accounting that are trying to figure out how to get into FP&A . So having that range makes it more likely. The question that's asked is that somebody can give advice, and that's why you want a community, because so many of us have been there where you're googling it and just trying to figure it out and have no idea how it should really be done. Yeah.
[00:42:33] Guest: Nate Saperia: Absolutely.
[00:42:35] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I'm with you. All right. So we're going to move into our standard FP&A section. This is where I have three questions. Kind of short answers. We ask a lot of guests these questions. So the first one is what's the number one technical skill that you think FP&A professionals should master.
[00:42:50] Guest: Nate Saperia: Power query right now it's Power Query. The biggest challenge for folks is clean and automated data. And Power Query very quickly solves 90% of that problem.
[00:43:04] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I love me some power Query so I can see where that is an answer that definitely it's beneficial for people to learn. All right. What's that softer human skill.
[00:43:14] Guest: Nate Saperia: The softer human skill.Uh , we talked some about business partnering. It's that and it may not be a defined role, but it's a huge part of FP&A . And here's how I've approached it. Personally, I want to get to know the people in my organization, and I want to get to know them as people, I think, and I want to understand where they're coming from. I know I've been guilty of this at times, and I think it's common in our profession to assume we're the smartest person in the room. But that may be true for data and analytics. But there's a reason these other functions exist, and there's a reason these people have been successful and are leaders in these roles. So if you can understand where they're coming from, that can only help you do your job better and help your company out better. So they probably know something that you don't.
[00:44:16] Host: Paul Barnhurst: There's no doubt they do. And as you said that the business partner I couldn't help think of, and this is an answer I get a lot, is empathy as the number one soft skill which kind of comes close into business partnering, actually understanding and relating and trying to put yourself in their shoes versus coming into a room and thinking, I know everything. I'm the smart guy here. They just need to listen to me. That never ends well.
[00:44:39] Guest: Nate Saperia: I've probably been guilty of it before.
[00:44:42] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And yeah, at some level, I think we all have in some ways, whether it's, you know, really thinking we're the smartest or thinking we're right and not being open to listen to others. I've been guilty of that thinking, well, it's a good idea. So everybody will just get on board. I actually have to influence. It's not how the real world works. I learned that one early in my career and it was good.
[00:45:01] Guest: Nate Saperia: It's a good one early.
[00:45:03] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yes. Fortunately. All right. So this is kind of a fun question we ask sometimes if you could wave a magic wand. So you're the fairy godmother for a day, I guess. No, I'm just kidding. But if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about FP&A , what would you change and why?
[00:45:19] Guest: Nate Saperia: Clean data. And if we could just get clean data, or maybe our jobs wouldn't exist. You know, so much. So much time and brain damage is done on manually copying and pasting cleansing data, pulling reports out of NetSuite. And I think we're making a lot of progress on this. And this is why I flagged Power Query and a lot of other tools. You know, once all this gets integrated and people don't have to spend their time automating, manually copying and pasting, cleansing and data. The profession is going to get really, really exciting because that's going to leave a lot of time for analysis and insights.
[00:46:05] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Agreed. No, it's an exciting time when you think about that. So you're not the first one that's mentioned data. All right. Now we're going to move into the get to know you section. I have just a couple questions where we'll get to know a little bit more about you. So if you could live in any other time of the history of the world, where would you, when would you live and why?
[00:46:26] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah. So I have to think about this one a little bit. There's so many times in the history of the world, but I've always pictured myself living in the 1950s, and maybe I've just watched too many sitcoms or TV shows that, you know, romanticize the 1950s. But it just seemed like, the high point of, you know, raising a family during a time where you could walk down the street. And yeah, I think it's probably too many TV shows romanticizing the time. There was obviously quite a lot of volatility in the 60s and 70s, but throughout that time they also had a lot of fun, like Woodstock happened then. So growing up early in the 50s and then living through that time, even if it was volatile.
[00:47:25] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And I like it, that would be an interesting time, particularly the 50s. I know what you mean by the romanticization and then the volatility of the 60s and 70s. So yeah, I was born in the 70s, so I can't say I really experienced the late 70s. I can't say I experienced that. All right. If you could do anything else for a career. So if you could pick any other career in the world what would you do?
[00:47:50] Guest: Nate Saperia: I've, I've gone back and forth on this one. I've asked myself the question before. The easy answer is economist. I almost was an economist, but I backed out because the math got too advanced for me. So I'm not supposed to say that as an f b and a guy, but that it was some really serious math. And I said, wait, I.
[00:48:10] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I'm sure there was.
[00:48:11] Guest: Nate Saperia: Something more practical than this. I'm giving two answers. I hope that's okay.
[00:48:16] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That's all right.
[00:48:17] Guest: Nate Saperia: The second one is a psychologist, because I'd love to learn how other people think. And that's really what a psychologist does. Right? If I get into people's minds, that would just be amazing for me. It doesn't necessarily come naturally for me. So it would be super interesting to learn that skill set.
Got it. That would be pretty cool.
[00:48:45] Host: Paul Barnhurst: All right. Well, I think this is a good spot for us to go ahead and wrap up. We've been going for a while here, so we like to ask pretty much every guest guess. This question. If you could offer one piece of advice to our audience to be a better FP&A business partner, what's the advice you're going to give?
[00:49:02] Guest: Nate Saperia: The advice I would give is before you give advice, listen to what others are saying and try. And even if you disagree, try and understand the reasons they might be saying it and whether there may actually be some validity to it.
[00:49:22] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Got it. Thank you. And if someone wants to learn more about you or get in touch, I know you run your own business. You're active on LinkedIn, but what's the best ways for somebody to reach out and connect with you?
[00:49:33] Guest: Nate Saperia: Yeah, so I do spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. So if you send me a LinkedIn DM, I'll probably see it within a minute at least. That's definitely the best way to get in touch.
[00:49:45] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Perfect. So if anyone wants to learn more about what you do, also put some links in the show notes so people can find you on LinkedIn or see your website, whatever you want there. And thank you so much for joining me. It was great chatting with you today, Nate, and appreciate you coming on the show.
[00:50:00] Guest: Nate Saperia: Thanks for having me, Paul. It was really great, I enjoyed it.
[00:50:03] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Thanks for listening to FP&A tomorrow. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star rating and a review on your podcast platform of choice. This allows us to continue to bring you great guests from around the globe. As a reminder, you can earn CPE credit by going to earmarkcpe.com, downloading the app, taking a short quiz, and getting your CPE certificate to earn continuing education credits for the FPAC certification. Take the quiz on earmark and contact me the show host for further details.