Ep. 33: Jordan Savage - Becoming a CFO

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


Adam: (00:05)


Welcome back to episode 33 of Count Me In, IMA's podcast about
all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your
host, Adam Larson. And today we are going to hear from Jordan
Savage, a successful CFO who quickly climbed the traditional
corporate ladder to get where he is today. And his conversation
with Mitch, he explains the risks he took and the opportunities
he recognized to overcome some challenges and obtain the skills
needed to progress in our accounting industry. Let's keep
listening to hear Jordan talk about today CFO. 


 


Mitch: (00:41)


So it kind of looks like you followed a pretty linear career path
as far as the different roles and responsibilities you've had.
Can you talk to us a little bit about the different roles and
kind of how each time things have changed as far as your
responsibilities and the value that you offered to the
position? 


 


Jordan: (00:58)


Sure. So when I first started my career, I started kind of with
an entry level position as a project accountant. And what I
learned early on is you know, you just have to do the best you
can in the role that you're in. And once you prove yourself and
you do a good job, you have good internal and external
opportunities for growth. And in my case I've had a lot of good
internal growth and so I went from a project accountant to a
senior financial analyst with one company. And what you find as
far as responsibilities, how they change is you really have to
you understand the lower levels and so as you grow your personal
responsibilities will increase every time you move up the ladder.
And so you become responsible not only for your work but the work
of the entire team and that's the biggest change as you work your
way up up the ladder. 


 


Mitch: (01:57)


How about just the industry as a whole? I mean, I know you talked
about how your roles change, but what have you seen as far as
accounting and what do you feel has really affected those changes
the most? 


 


Jordan: (02:09)


I think the biggest change within the accounting industry is long
gone are the days where an accountant comes in, books a
transaction and just keeps up with the daily record keeping. now
the role of the accountant is much more value driven. You know,
there, there's not a lot of value with day to day record keeping
because most of our ERP systems are starting to catch up and
allow us to book transactions that are routine or simple, you
know, automatically. And so the role of the accountant has
changed significantly. I think you have to possess more skills
that relate to technology, you know, how to interpret and work
with data. I think the IMA has done a fantastic job of kind of
highlighting these changes with their you got to earn it
campaign. I think we've all seen the commercials where, you know,
there's the robot that's walking through the office and I think
that's starting to occur. It hasn't hit every industry yet, but
that, that change will certainly come. And so the value that we
have to provide as accountants is just different in today's day
and age. 


 


Mitch: (03:17)


In what position did you personally realize these changes? When
did you see the technology and the automation really start to
take some of your responsibilities away? 


 


Jordan: (03:28)


I think when I was a senior financial analyst, you know, when,
when we first started, our systems weren't very robust. And so we
had to do a lot of data manipulation before we could get to what
we really wanted to study or, or look at. And over time as our
systems became more robust and, and as they were able to handle
more routine transactions and so forth, we were able to get
better data out. And so we were able to spend more of our time
doing the analysis and so forth. And so I think, you know, any of
those entry level or you know, kind of second level above entry
level positions will start to feel that transition the
most. 


 


Mitch: (04:12)


Kind of going along this ladder that we're climbing here, you
start to realize these different transitions in the role. I'm
assuming that you've probably come across some new challenges
also. Right? So can you talk a little bit about some of the
challenges you have faced in some of these higher
positions? 


 


Jordan: (04:28)


Sure. Well, and I think I'd first say, you know, in my opinion,
the technical accounting skills, you know, those come with time
and experience. And so from a challenge perspective you know, I
kind of list it into three different areas. For me personally you
know, with my role as a CFO now the first would be sourcing
capital for our organization. The second would be managing the
operations. And then the third is people management. And so in
the, in the real estate and construction industry, good access to
capital is absolutely necessary to achieve growth. We work a lot
with our banking relationships to increase the amount of capital
that they're willing to deploy with our group. And it's a
constant challenge for us because we've got a tremendous amount
of good projects but limited and constrained resources. So for
us, that's a huge challenge. How do we increase the amount of
capital that our banking partners are willing to spend with us?
second, you know, for us it's, you know, our operations, which
is, you know, processes, procedures, allowing us to scale. We've
got three main operations at the challenger group. We do single
family homes kind of traditional home building. And then we do
commercial development, which would be mostly apartment
complexes. And then we've just started modular manufacturing
facility and of these companies, most of them are less than two
years old. We've, we've got a lot of startups that we're doing.
And what's interesting about, you know, our environment and our
challenges you know, some people work on one startup and it's
hectic and crazy. And in our case we're working at about or
working on about seven of them all at the same time in various
stages. So finding ways to streamline the processes and
procedures and to make sure that the lessons we learn in one
company are applied to our other startups I mean is very
important for us. And it really does present a lot of unique
challenges as we try to grow. And then the third, as you grow in
your career you know, people management becomes incredibly vital.
We talked a lot about servant leadership at the IMA and, and
that's important. And I think in most cases the most important
asset that a company has is not their intellectual property or
the way they do certain things or the product itself. It's
absolutely the people that they employ. So one of the missions of
the challenge of group is making life better. And that goes for
our customers, trade partners and employees. And I love that if
we're actually servant leaders, we can have a positive impact,
not only on our businesses that we operate, but also the lives of
the people that would come in contact with. And I think that's
one of the biggest challenges we face is how do we manage people,
you know, customers, trade partners coworkers, you know, the list
goes on and on. And I found that that people management to be the
most rewarding and difficult endeavors that I face. there's a
great book called the outward mindset that I'd recommend the
listeners to read. one of the things I took from that book was
that people aren't just simply objects to help us achieve what
we're trying to achieve. Each individual has needs, ob...