How FP&A Professionals Can Evolve Beyond Reporting and Become Strategic Partners with Bryan Lapidus
In this engaging episode of FP&A Unlocked, host Paul Barnhurst welcomes back Bryan Lapidus, Director of FP&A Practice at the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP), to explore how finance professionals can better prepare for the evolving demands of the industry. They discuss how AFP supports the finance community, the role of technology in shaping FP&A, and why soft skills are critical in today’s collaborative environment.
Bryan Lapidus is the Director of FP&A Practice at AFP, where he serves as a subject matter expert on financial planning and analysis. With more than 20 years in FP&A and treasury at organizations like American Express and Fannie Mae, Bryan brings deep knowledge of corporate finance. At AFP, he develops thought leadership, leads advisory councils, and curates content that helps professionals thrive in a rapidly changing landscape.
Expect to Learn:
The two core competencies every great FP&A professional must master
Why “getting out from behind the screen” matters for business insight
How AFP curates learning and networking experiences for finance professionals
What to expect from AFP’s FP&A Forum and Annual Conference
How to avoid low-value work and focus on driving business impact
This episode highlights the evolving role of FP&A, emphasizing the need for both strong technical skills and human-centered business insight. Bryan Lapidus reminds us that tools like AI are valuable, but true impact comes from understanding the business and adding strategic value. Continuous learning and community are key to thriving in today’s finance landscape.
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Explore Campfire today: https://campfire.ai/?utm_source=fpaguy_podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=100225_fpaguy
Follow Bryan:
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/bryan-lapidus-fpac
Company - https://www.linkedin.com/company/association-for-financial-professionals/
Earn Your CPE Credit
For CPE credit please go to earmarkcpe.com, listen to the episode, download the app, and answer a few questions and earn your CPE certification. To earn education credits for FPAC Certificate, take the quiz on earmark and contact Paul Barnhurst for further details.
In Today’s Episode
[03:33] – What Is AFP?
[05:38] – What Makes Great FP&A?
[13:34] – Inside the AFP Conference
[18:13] – How AFP Chooses Conference Tracks
[23:12] – AFP FP&A Forum Highlights
[27:30] – How Soft Skills Shape Career Growth
[33:27] – Top Technical Skills
[37:27] – Eliminating Low-Value Work in FP&A
[43:23] – Wrap-Up & Final Thoughts
Full Show Transcript:
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:47):
Are you tired of being seen as just a spreadsheet person? Will others get a seat at the table? Well, then welcome to FP&A Unlocked. We're finance Meets strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, the FP&A guy. Each week we bring you conversations and practical advice from thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who are reshaping the role of FP&A in today's business world. Together we'll uncover the strategies and experiences that separate good FP&A professionals from great ones helping you elevate your career and drive strategic impacts. Speaking of strategic impact, our title sponsor of FP&A Unlocked is campfire, the ERP. That's helping modern finance teams close, fast and scale faster. Today's guest is someone who's earned that coveted seat at the table, and I'm thrilled and excited to welcome Bryan Brian Lapidus. Welcome back to the show.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (01:40):
Paul, as always, great to be with you and talking about my favourite topic.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:43):
Yeah, no, I'm excited to talk. What is this? The third or fourth podcast we've done together, I think.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (01:47):
I feel like I'm going to get the Saturday Night Live jacket when you've been on for a couple times for five times. I'm waiting for the bathrobe here.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:54):
Well, what I'll work on, I could give you the hat. I may be ordering some more hats. I'll get you the FP&A guy hat. How's that sound?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (01:59):
Sounds great.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (02:00):
And if I decide to go into bathrobes, maybe you'll get one. Or if I do beard care, I've considered beard care. I'll send you some beard products with the FP&A guy logo.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (02:07):
I'll take that and a vest, a cool vest would work too.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (02:09):
Let's see. How about this one? Let me just, I have it here handy. Does this qualify as cool? This was the one I almost wore before I had to leave early.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (02:19):
That is something,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (02:21):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (02:23):
We've got the boots to match, I believe, right?
Host: Paul Barnhurst (02:25):
I do, yes. I actually wore 'em in Vegas.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (02:30):
Nice.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (02:30):
Vegas fits. Nobody even looked at me like I was out of place.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (02:33):
All right. Well, a FP 2025 conference is going to be in Las Vegas in November. I'm just going to throw that out there for if your boots need to go walking, we'll be there.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (02:42):
Alright, not a bad idea. Alright, so for our audience that hasn't had the opportunity to list to a Pride episode, let me give a little bit of Brian's background and we'll jump into things. So Brian has more than 20 years of experience in the FP&A and treasury space working at organisations like American Express, Fannie Mae and private equity owned companies. At A FP, he is the staff subject matter expert on FP&A, which includes designing content to meet the needs of the profession and helping keep members current on developing topics. Brian has also managed the global FP&A advisory councils, which act as a voice to align a FP with the needs of the profession. Why don't we start before the normal first question I ask for those who are not familiar with a FP, because I use the acronym there, why don't you just give a quick overview of what a FP is for our audience?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (03:32):
Sure. The Association for Financial Professionals has been in the market for almost five decades, and our job is basically to help people in corporate finance and treasury be better at the job they have and be ready for the job that they want to have. And what this means is that we do certifications, certified treasury professional and certified corporate FP and a professional to collectively have been in the market for about 40 years. We've got, I think if you add them together, about 50,000 people have earned the designations across 90 plus countries. So certifications, continuing education that goes along with keeping a certification and being relevant in that commitment to competence. We also do events. I just mentioned our large conference. We'll have about 7,000 people coming up this year in November in really all aspects of corporate finance, but then we also have a second form, it's called the A FP FP and A form. It'll be March 23rd, 24th and 25th in Indianapolis. And that's the choice cuts just for corporate finance and FP&A. So just a really deep dive focus. And then we also have webinars, research guides, meetups, a full suite of tools and resources to help the membership and the community overall just be ready for the jobs that are changing every day.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (04:58):
Yeah, no, I know you guys have great content out there. You do a lot of work obviously in helping educate people, whether it's treasury or finance. So thank for that introduction and when you said you help people get to the role they want, I was thinking, I wonder if they could help me retire.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (05:15):
Let's think about it, right? It's FP&A getting you ready, being great, and obviously you're putting out great content. Let's see if we can find ways to make you more successful.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (05:23):
All right, there we go. Well, I'm sure having you on will help with that. So Brian, I want to ask you this question. I've asked you what is great FP&A, but how do you think about it when finance professionals come to you either for their organisation or as an individual and they ask, what should they be doing today to make sure they are prepared to provide great FP&A support to the business in the future? As we look ahead three to five years, what's your answer? What do you tell people?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (05:49):
I tell people that two things. I think you have to be good at finance and the processes by which you deliver your financial services and you have to be good as a partner to the business. And so what I mean by the first part, being good at finance and financial processes, you have to remember that you work for the CFO, that your job is to be the steward of capital for the company. Understanding how capital moves from its sources and its uses and you have to be good at your processes and your tools that allow you to do your financial analysis, right? You've got to be good at budgeting the technology that allows you to do it efficiently. The process by which you gather and you analyse and you bring. All of that is being good at finance. The second part is you have to be good as a business partner, which means you have to understand how does the business make money?
(06:41):
How does the business provide value to the customer? How do you support the business? And in order to do that, it's important to get out from behind your screen, whether that means to walk the line to flip burgers if you are at Shake Shack, whether you are walking the floor of the warehouse if you have a distribution facility. I have gone on ride-alongs with my sales team in the past, right? I've done all those things while I was in finance. In order to understand what it's like and to understand the meaning behind those numbers, it's really easy to get trapped behind a screen and think almost like chess, you can move pieces around on a board or in different cells just by managing it. Real businesses have real people and they run with real processes and finance needs to understand that.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (07:29):
Thank you. I appreciate that answer. I think there's a lot of good information in there, particularly the whole separating it into two areas of understanding technology, be good at the job and the business partnering and really being able to speak the business' language and go beyond just the road answers. And I laugh when you said get out from behind the screen, I thought, well, if someone wants to learn my job, their FP&A, don't I put 'em behind the screen behind the mic.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (07:58):
Paul, you and I both have a shared background at different times. We both have worked for American Express.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (08:03):
Yes.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (08:04):
So one time when I was in New York City, American Express had hundreds of people literally go out to merchants in New York City and explain to them either thank them for accepting the American Express card or explain to them why they should. And having those face-to-face conversations about discount rates, about the value that a company brings versus the service. What's commodity, what's premium. I still remember small shops bodegas on the corner and having that back and forth and you go back to the office and whether the discussion went in your favour or against you, just having the conversation made you understand the universe in which the business operated so much differently.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (08:53):
No, a hundred percent agree. I still remember, we both know Ron Matero. We share that interest. He tells the story where they had to go sell pricing to a customer and it was a standard formula where, hey, if certain things happen, here's your new price. He goes, I still remember going in, sitting down and explaining the pricing to the company and them screaming at me about how it was unacceptable. He's like, it's a formula based pricing that's in your contract. He's like, that gave me an appreciation for what sales went through. He's like, I managed them different after that, but this getting screamed at part kind of made me laugh. He goes, I remember the guy just yelling in my face about his pricing. He's like, it's a formula. There's nothing I can do about it. Your
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (09:37):
Contract, it's in the contract.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (09:40):
So I think there's so much value in getting an appreciation for what others do because it gives you empathy and understanding that it's hard to get otherwise. You're not going to get that from the spreadsheet.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (09:51):
And to be a good finance person is to be a good business person to understand how value is created and how it's destroyed as well.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (10:00):
Yes, fortunately I've worked for a few companies where I've seen a little more destruction than I'd like.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (10:06):
Understood.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (10:07):
Oh yeah, I figured you could appreciate that. So what's your favourite part of working for the FP A community and the role you have in a FP? What's kept you there? You've been there, what, 10 years now?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (10:18):
Almost a decade in some ways. Maybe I'm doing penance for budgets done badly in the past, something like that. I often think about the experiences that I've had in my 20 years in corporate America and what I wish I had known or had done. I look at my job a little bit as a recycling programme. How do I take the best parts of what I hear, of what our membership is doing, of what the community is doing, and give that back to the other group to give that back to everybody else. And whether it's through any of the mechanisms, any of the channels I mentioned before, whether it's putting somebody on stage or writing a really insightful paper or a webinar, I'm trying to move the median forward at a different part on their sophistication or maturity. And we've got members who are world leading companies doing cutting edge things with big budgets, and we've got people who are one person finance shops doing everything. The way I view it is how can we a FP, move the whole community, move the median forward by recirculating and recycling the best ideas that are out there through all these channels?
Host: Paul Barnhurst (11:33):
No, I appreciate you sharing that, and I'm sure it wasn't penance that kept you there from a bad budget or forecast. I'm sure it was more than that. I know the community appreciates the work you do there, so I appreciate that. But I'm curious, speaking of the fp a, what do you miss most about the day-to-day work? I mean, outside of budget, of course
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (11:55):
I did not. Yeah, we'll leave that one aside, but what I really
Host: Paul Barnhurst (11:58):
Missed, you have the same answer I have. That's not your favourite part. It's okay.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (12:02):
What I really missed is the analytical problem solving, right? There's one company that I was working with that with, I just remember coming up with this. We thought we understood a certain part of our business and when I really looked at it, I found out that the contacts per customer was going down. We had been doing so much more outreach and so much more marketing and spending a lot more, and we thought that we were at the verge of overindulging or over engaging our customers, but what I found out is that our customer base had grown and we were looking at it wrong. That kind of aha moment and creation of insight, that getting into the details and I had to talk to different people to get the different parts of the puzzle. That sort of financial analysis and problem solving and quantitative approach unfortunately is not part of my remit at a FP. Sometimes I think I bother people a little bit. I'm like, I'll overanalyze something just because I'll get excited. I could build a little model about something. They're like, all right, that's interesting. But that's the part that I miss.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (13:11):
I could understand that. I mean kind of putting the pieces together, doing that analysis, we tend to be very analytical people. It's right in the title of FP&A, so I could see where that would definitely be something you miss. Alright, so tell me about the A FP conference last year. I believe it was not Boston in, was it late October?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (13:32):
Last year was the third week in October in Boston I think we were at or near record number of attendees and I mean this is the Lollapalooza, this is the all you can eat buffet for corporate finance and by corporate finance, I mean everything outside of tax and accounting we have.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (13:49):
Yeah, I was going to say treasury. Are you sure that's what you want to say?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (13:51):
Yeah, yeah. No, treasury is actually is a huge segment. It's really treasury capital markets risk. Obviously. We have an FP&A corner, we have development, we have 250 vendors every year on the exhibition floor. We have a puppy park, six different keynotes on mindshift and wellness and this year the Life is Good Founder was our closing keynote. It's a really an all encompassing event within that in order to help the FP&A community really find each other, we have a separate hub. It's almost like a conference within a conference. We have a separate hallway, we have our own meetups and then you can go and mingle and join and take everything from, if you're interested in the capital markets and payment side, we've got a tremendous element there that's open to you. But we do try to create that community within the larger community just for fp a and then we've really pulled out and expanded. So if that's the all you could eat buffet, then the choice cuts are the FP&A form and that's what we have coming up in March. And for that we're going to have a dozen interactive round tables and events in addition to 24 FP&A specific topics. I'm going to be leading two different sessions myself as well as just sitting in and absorbing what the community has to offer.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (15:14):
Okay, so 24 sessions, is that topic sessions? Is that what you said? They'll be at the event
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (15:19):
24 educational topic sessions and then we have the interactive and networking round tables. And what we did is we thought about the sessions in terms of three different tracks and this really matches our maturity model, our FP&A maturity model.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (15:34):
I've seen that.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (15:34):
So we've got one track that is finance and financial processes. The way that we deliver our finance acumen. We have another track that is technology and data, and that's everything from current tools you can use today, call it Power BI and Excel and EPM tools and your transformation journey, all the way up to what it takes to prepare for AI and automation and agents and preparing your whole roadmap. That's in your tech and data segment. And then the third segment is personal and team effectiveness. So whether it's data visualisation or how to structure and build out your organisation, all those people's skills and organisational competencies are in that track because one thing that we found is if you listen to all, not just the hype because the hype is real, but there's so much about just the technology, we no longer think of technology as kind of the end to itself. The technology is the means by which we do our finance work. And so while we've got a technology and data and a transformation session, you'll also find that that's just in many ways built in. It is a part of how we do our job. By keeping these three different tracks, we make sure that we cover the breadth of corporate finance topics for the community.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (17:03):
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Guest: Bryan Lapidus (18:11):
Well, we have our maturity model and every couple of years we revise it. So it's actually the third iteration of our maturity model now, and that is developed by the advisory council. So I have a group of 24 that helps to figure out what matters, what's relevant and where are we going. Everything that a FP does is by practitioners for practitioners. So we've got expert real hands-on people who are helping us to say, this is how we think about the market. We follow that point of view when it comes to our conferences. So our conferences, we have a call for proposals and then we look at everything that comes in and we make sure that we fill out those three groups, finance, technology and data and people. And so if there's a case where maybe we're overloaded on one, we'll say, look, we've got enough, we've got the choice areas here and we might go out and fill in with some expertise if we're missing, but that's ultimately practitioner based, practitioner submitted and reviewed experts coming in in order to fill out the whole curriculum.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (19:28):
Makes sense to me. I'm curious, this seems to be the case elsewhere. Are you seeing most people, and not just the conferences, but your content where you're going really focused on AI and technology, is that the big elephant in the room for you guys right now? From the base, it feels like everybody's trying to figure out, how do I make sure I stay up with generative AI and I'm not being left behind? Is that what you're seeing as well?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (19:54):
So I get so much of that as do you people like us who hang out on LinkedIn a lot. We get so much of that and what I hear from the advisory council is you can't go overboard on that. That's not a hundred percent of our job. Our job is not to be good prompt engineers.
(20:18):
Our job is finance. And so it's important, and I think people really like the fact that we bring it back to how do you be a good human? And part of that is how do you be a human that compliments the AI that's out there, right? You're not going to out computer a computer. So what is it that we can bring in order to be good at our daily job given how the world is changing, we're not ignoring that. We're just saying you've got to compliment that, be the cream and sugar to the coffee that's out there.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (20:50):
And I appreciate that. I mean obviously like you said, we both hang out on LinkedIn a lot. We spend time there and you see what's there. But I love the practitioner's reminding, look, that's a part. There still needs to be a holistic approach. Not to say we not going to put a little more focus there or there might be some extra articles or whatever. It's important. It's big and people need to be there. But I like how you said our job isn't to change everybody to be a prompt engineer expert. I know you're about to say something there.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (21:18):
Yeah, no, I'll give you a great example. So you mentioned before, I'm almost a decade in this role, and when I started everything was big data. We actually see different trends come through as we look at all these submissions and when I started it was big data is everywhere and how do you handle big data, right? Well, if we had gone a hundred percent into saying finance is about big data, well one thing is we would've missed out on the next thing and sure, AI today what we call AI is generative. It's machine learning, it's predictive. The actual definition of AI has changed over the years as things become go from mind boggling and futuristic to oh, well today we've got natural language generation and natural language processing, we've got predictive analytics, we've got agents that are out there, we don't know what's coming next. Remember that AI is in service of finance and the finance is still delivered through our processes and it's still delivered by people and you've got to keep all those pieces together. Otherwise, if we go overboard on one thing, we'll sound a little anachronistic like big data does today.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (22:32):
I appreciate that and I love that you kind of keep that perspective and bring it back to, hey, we got to be holistic. There's going to be trends. There's going to be times when there's hot topics that if you're not careful, you can make them be the entire conference, but there's others will do that and there's a place for that. You're going to say, look, that's a part of it. Obviously there's going to be a little more talk about it, but we're always going to bring it back to what's that core part of FP a?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (22:59):
Exactly.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (23:00):
It makes total sense to me. And so a FP forum, we've talked a little bit about it, if I remember, it's in March this year, three days,
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (23:07):
Three days
Host: Paul Barnhurst (23:07):
In March, Indianapolis.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (23:09):
Yes.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (23:09):
So what do you have in store? This is the second, I know you did it a few years back and then you took a hiatus with COVID and everything else. You brought it back last year. So tell people any kind of big surprises or what do you have in store outside of the tracks? What should people expect if they come to this event?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (23:24):
What a lot of people say at this event is, I found my tribe kind of feel. One of the things that always makes me laughing gives me a lot of joy is connecting different people. And I remember I put together one person who was the CFO of a hundred million dollars startup company or venture backed company and a divisional CFO at an oil major and watching them have so much in common to be able to have those kind of conversations, the ability to watch two people who've never met before geek out on Power Query because they understand the uses in the use cases.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (24:04):
Is that me by chance?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (24:08):
No, but it was other people that you and I both know the content is real. The content is great. I talked through the tracks, but it's the people. It's the way that we facilitate conversations in the hallway at every time slot. There is an interactive session at the networking happy hours. One of the things that we got really high marks on, almost record high marks from the conference that we had in last October was in networking. We understand people come for education, they come for networking, they come to meet and learn from the vendors. We got near record high marks for the ability to facilitate that connection among people, and that's really rewarding because they'll be able to keep that and call on those folks later when they go home and say, Hey, we have this great conversation. How did you do that? Here's what I'm doing. And keeping that going throughout the year. Then we've got meetups throughout the years where people can talk to each other. We've got collaborate an online platform where people can ask each other or ask the community questions. We have ways of not just making this an annual event, but a recurring part of your professional development all year.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (25:23):
And speaking to the networking part, I can speak from having been to part of the forum and a couple of the conferences. Unfortunately I had to go home last year, but the things I remember most, yes, I remember some of the sessions, but it's the conversations, it's the connections, it's the talking to people, especially getting to meet people in real life, so to speak, that you haven't, you've talked to 'em a tonne of times. Like at a FP forum, I know we did dinner and I got to meet SU on for the first time and I saw some others that I'd met before Carl and CIA and a group of us, and those conversations are what I remember most. Yes, I do remember some sessions. There's some things I've learned. There's still some I can think of that were really valuable, but above all that it's the human side of it.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (26:11):
It's a team sport. The way we look at it, it's a team sport. We're all trying to get better at what we do because what we do is challenging. It's technically challenging. It's personally challenging. There's so many different aspects you have to be good at in order to be great at this job and the ability to learn, have other people tell you what works for them, where things blew up on them, that's really, really valuable.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (26:38):
A hundred percent agree. I think people don't recognise how much value there is and being able to go to somebody and say, how do you deal with this or how do you deal with that? I have a friend, he's very early in his career, very bright, moving up rapidly and known him for several years and when he gets the assignment of how do I build out my staff or certain things he's asked to do in a couple of different roles, he always picks up with the phone and calls me and we have conversations about that and I really appreciate that. Often we're on the same page. He's like, oh, I hadn't thought about that. Or I'm like, are you thinking about this? And maybe you do it this way because he hasn't been through that. He's still trying to figure it out. So having resources like that is really invaluable. It's like having mentors and things.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (27:19):
I had a mentor once who explained, this is when I was at a big corporate. He said, you get to a certain level in the hierarchy by being good and pushing your way up to the front by saying, look what I could do. And then you get to the next level a little bit by being pulled, but a little bit by all those things that you can't learn in an online virtual classroom. The interaction, the personal skills, the finesse, the experience, being able to talk to other people is an experience multiplier. I only know what I know, but if I talk to 10 other people, I can learn what they've learned from their stories and so it always stayed with me. You get to about that manager director level by me technically good, but if you want to be vp, S-V-P-C-F-O, you've got to build up that other side of your repertoire.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (28:17):
As our dean of our MBA programme would say to us, you get your first job out of MBA programme based on your technical skills, you move up based on your soft skills and they're definitely, you can only get so far on the technical. We've all seen it where you promote someone to run an organisation based on technical and they don't have the soft, it doesn't go over well. Typically they struggle. So I'm a hundred percent with you. And the other thing I'd say is getting all those connections. I've always said if I had to go back into FP&A tomorrow, I think I would be a lot better from four years of talking to hundreds of people, not thousands of people, about FP&A and learning different perspectives and tips and tricks. So being able to get that kind of experience at a conference is invaluable. In my opinion.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (29:05):
It's an accelerator and you just can't do that from virtual, from webinars and I know because we put on two to three webinars a month, right? I know what's great about webinars and I know what's limiting about webinars and that combination of the technical and then how do you apply it? Tell me the real story about it. That's really the secret sauce. Yeah,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (29:27):
You don't get the dinner from the webinar. You don't get to go out with 10 people after and sit down dinner and say, how did you really deal with this?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (29:33):
Yeah, true.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (29:35):
How many people do you plan on attending? You had what, 500 and something last year? Is that right at the forum?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (29:41):
Yeah, 500 and then we hit the wall. We actually had to close down registration because we hit capacity this year. We do have a little larger capacity, so about six 50 to 700 is what we're looking at.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (29:53):
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Guest: Bryan Lapidus (31:35):
Your career is an investment. It's not just enough to have your head down and be good at your day job and be good at what's in front of you. Your growth is going to come from people you haven't met. It's going to be about jobs that have not yet been invented, right? Your future job hasn't been invented. What's in front of you, what's at your fingertips and on your screen. Being part of a community brings that whole community's experiences to you. And whether that's in any of those channels that I've mentioned online, virtual, in-person chat rooms, all of that. A FP is a not-for-profit by practitioner for practitioner focused on your success, and we do our best to bring all of that to you and make it digestible for you. We curate it for you so you don't have to go out and wonder if the quality is good. That's my A FP commercial.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (32:43):
All right. Well thank you. This commercial was brought to you by No, I'm kidding.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (32:47):
And I endorse this message.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (32:49):
Yeah, exactly. This message has been endorsed by the following people, Brian Lapidus. Paul Barnhurst. I can make up some other names like Chat T or Generative AI does. I can just make up a bunch of names. No. Alright, so let's move into the next section. I have a standard fp a section where I ask a couple of questions and I think I haven't done these the last couple of times we've talked, it's been at conferences. Before that I didn't have the set of questions. I think this is the first time you'll get these, I believe. If I was to ask you, what's the number one technical skill that FP a professionals should master today? What would you say?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (33:22):
The technical skill. I mean, you have to be good at finance. That's just the entry point. I don't have a single technical skill. It's the ability to learn technical skills and the sooner you start, everybody's using GPT to some part, prompting is good, all of that. That's a technical skill. Knowing Excel still matters. Knowing Power BI still matters when you're in a different role. We have a member, she's on my advisory council and I've watched her as she's moved to different areas. So she was in reporting and when she was in reporting, then querying and visualisation was really important. She moved over and she's in a very large company we've all heard of, and when she moved over to another role, she actually became the interim head of planning. Then it was a whole different set of modelling skills that you had to learn. Your ability to learn technical skills needs to be constant in every role that you're going with.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (34:19):
I like that answer. I think it's the first time I've had it quite put that way. So I appreciate that there is a lot of value in being able to quickly learn new technical skills and sometimes they're quicker than others, but that willingness and that ability to adopt and pick them up
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (34:36):
And the ability to learn your next technical skill is directly based on your last one, right? I'm not just going to start suddenly do it doing something really super advanced, but if I've done certain things that lead up to it, it makes that next one easier to add on.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (34:52):
Well, it's like if you know Excel well and you've put a lot of time naturally kind of learning some Power BI or if you've done some Power Query and then go to SQL or SQL to Power Query, there's a lot of overlap in these technical skills and ways they can benefit you when you learn them. Kind of like you said, you got to build as you get better and better at technical skills in general, learning additional skills should become easier If it's not, you've got to wonder how you're learning.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (35:19):
It's a lot easier to learn how to use your second EPM tool if you've already used one before because, and you understand the structure and what it's asking and
Host: Paul Barnhurst (35:28):
Yeah, great example. There's so many of 'em. What about soft skill? What's that? Number one human skill we need?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (35:32):
I feel like my answer has changed on this over time, but I think that it's, whether you call it systems thinking or whether you call it integrative intelligence, that ability to see how, not just how work gets done, but how things interact with each other. We talked before about how a cell, a number in a cell has meaning behind it and it's the business aspect and how to run the business. If you want to be a business partner, you have to understand the business, but you have to understand the numbers behind it. But you also have to understand how work gets done, how a project gets decomposed into different elements work on by different players, and then aggregated at the end. That parts and whole combination is really what can make you effective. And if I push here, it's going to have an outcome there. That's the systems thinking, that's understanding how it all integrates. Got
Host: Paul Barnhurst (36:30):
It. No, I appreciate that. Thank you for that one. All right, this is a fun one. I like to see what people say. If Excel removed one feature tomorrow, which one would cause you the most panic if it went away?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (36:41):
I mean for me it would be any of the lookups, right? I kind of bundle x lookup, a V match, all of that. If I didn't have the ability to cross-reference data that comes from different sources and is not perfectly aligned, I would lose time, my sanity and my hair.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (37:01):
So basically if you lost up the ability to do lookups, whether you're using X lookup or index match or whatever, it's like that.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (37:08):
Exactly.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (37:09):
I think all of us would struggle with that one. I'd be like, can I still have Power Query so I can at least look it up there? That would be my next question. So if you could change one thing about FP&A just in general about the profession can be as detailed as you want, you can go where you want with it, what would you change and why?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (37:27):
I talk to a lot of people who are stuck in process for the sake of process. If I could change one thing, it would be helping FP&A stop doing low value work. And here's what that looks like. In some cases it's vanity metrics, legacy metrics that were requested by some VP who's no longer there, or a report that nobody reads. You have these long detailed instead of information that just nobody wants to get rid of because well, if you get rid of it, then you're at risk. What if somebody asks for it? What if you don't have it? What if a bad decision is made because this 60 page appendix is missing Page 43, right? The ability to turn down the noise and focus on what matters is a multiplier for your success. And so often we do things because it's not just compliance, it's just somebody once upon a time asked for it or it made sense. There's a life cycle to reporting. There's a life cycle to metrics. Metrics are born, they have use and then they wane.
(38:44):
Do the audit, figure out where the value is, where you're adding value, double down on where you're adding value and let go of the things. And sometimes you have to say, look, I'm not going to give you the report that you asked for because here's the time it takes to generate it. Here's the time I have to spend to make sure to validate it. And then we have a discussion about it. If we have a discussion about it and the discussion doesn't lead to useful outcomes, right? That's three different ways that time and effort is lost on things that are just process for the sake of process.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (39:16):
What this reminds me of is I interviewed Brett Hamson and he talked a lot about his FP&A operating flywheel and the importance of having a vision and mission and always asking yourself, is what I'm doing actually accomplishing the vision or mission versus just letting processes happen? Because I think when you have that to go back to and you have to get that culture where, hey, I look at everything and why am I doing this? Is it really supporting what my core job is? Is it providing decision support? If not, I probably should stop doing it. And so I think that's an incredibly good answer. I know there are plenty times in my career I did some stuff that was more for process than probably that I really should have kept doing it, so I appreciate that answer. Alright, you ready for the get to know You section? I'm waiting. I'm really excited for this first question. Alright.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (40:06):
I'm feeling a little vulnerable.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (40:08):
I think you know what's coming. All right, so I'm going to throw a little bit of a curve ball. So first, if the a FP annual conference had a theme song, what would that theme song be? And then what would the A FP forms theme song be for the FP and a professionals? One for the general conference and one more specific to FP&A. I'm going to sound like, and you can do an eighties reference. I may pick it up, others may not, but it's okay.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (40:36):
Alright. As long as you're going to, let me throw back here. I'm going to say at conference, it's a little eye of the tiger. That whole rising up back from the street, that sense of there is so much that's out there that we can do. There's so many, it's just really exciting and energising to be around that many people focused on finance, talking about all the things that when you're at home, people define really boring. Everyone's going to geek out there. So I would say for conference, I'm going to go with IA the Tiger
Host: Paul Barnhurst (41:11):
And I did get to go Philly for my first conference and I ran the steps as one of us was playing IA the Tiger on our cell phone. So I love that answer. All right, so now let's go to the A FP form of fp a form
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (41:26):
For the form in March. I would say the theme song would be, maybe this is even seventies, is We Are Family.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (41:33):
Wow, that's a throwback,
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (41:35):
Right? We're all in this together. And the ability to just walk up to anybody at any time and just say, Hey, how's your budgeting process? That's all it takes. That's all it takes to strike up a conversation with somebody or what new technology are you putting in place? I guarantee you at the forum, you walk up to any person, ask either of those questions and you've got a friend right there.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (42:00):
Alright, I love it. So we got our theme songs today. We can add those in to your message earlier, your advertisement brought to you by now. So as we wrap up here, one more get to know you question and then we'll wrap up. If you could have any job in the world for one week, what job would you take and why?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (42:22):
The food critic for the Washington Post just retired and he'd been in the job for two decades, so I know there's an opening and so if the Washington Post is listening to this, right? I'm just outside, I'm in the suburbs and you need somebody to go and sample the best restaurant, maybe put on a disguise in order to not be recognised, I'll go with that. But I would take that job starting now.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (42:53):
If you're no longer on LinkedIn, I'm going to message you. If I don't see you for a while, I'm like, so are you a food critic now?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (42:59):
Yeah, well come, I'll have a beard, I'll have long shaggy hair. Maybe I'll take your beard as inspiration.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (43:06):
There we go. I'd like to see that. This has been great fun as always, Bryan It's always great to catch up with you. Really excited for the conference in March and would encourage people if you're able to make it out. It's a great event. Having been able to spend some time at forum last year, having been to a few conferences, I've always enjoyed my time and appreciate all that a FP does. And all you do in particular, I know you spend a tonne of time putting together content, you share a lot of things on LinkedIn and the community benefits from that. So thanks for all you do. And last question, if people want to learn more about you or get in touch, how should they do that?
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (43:40):
I'm really easy to find. I'm on LinkedIn. I post if you go on a FP, my email is on our SMEs page. I'm easy to find. Just look for it.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (43:52):
Alrighty, sounds good. Well, thanks again for joining me, Bryan I've enjoyed the conversation.
Guest: Bryan Lapidus (43:56):
Always a pleasure chatting with you, Paul. Cheers. Thanks.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (43:58):
Thanks, everyone. That's it for today's episode of FP&A Unlocked. If you enjoy FP&A unlocked, please take a moment to leave a five-star rating and review. It's the best way to support the FP&A guy and help more FP&A professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmarkcpe.com. Downloading the app and completing the quiz. If you need continuing education credits for the FPAC certification, complete the quiz and reach out to me directly. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Barnhurst, the FP&A guy, and I'll see you next time