The Finance Leader Podcast
The Finance Leader Podcast
Bonus Ep 73: Rediscover the Excitement of a Career in Finance and Accounting
Do you remember why you chose a career in finance and accounting? Rekindle your passion as we revisit Episode 98 and deeply contemplate the reasons that drew us towards this exciting field. This episode is a rallying cry for all finance leaders, urging you to reconnect with the joy of number-crunching, the thrill of forging strategy, and the ambition of leadership. Remember, a true finance leader isn't just technically proficient, they use this mastery to uplift others and guide their organization towards success, using data as the compass.
Please connect with me on:
1. Instagram: stephen.mclain
2. Twitter: smclainiii
3. Facebook: stephenmclainconsultant
4. LinkedIn: stephenjmclainiii
For more resources, please visit Finance Leader Academy: financeleaderacademy.com.
- On the website, you can download the Become a Finance Leader Guide. You can use this guide to build your Finance Leadership skills so you can help senior leaders develop and execute the strategy.
- I also offer a course, Advance Your Finance and Accounting Career: Developing a Promotion Strategy that Sets You Apart.
Hi, this is Stephen McLain of the Finance Leader Podcast. This is Bonus Episode number 73. It's a great day to be a finance leader and I believe that can be every day. The finance and accounting fields are exciting and we get to be involved in some amazing processes. We get to shape and influence strategy, we get to tell stories with the data so that anyone can understand, and we have the opportunity to be leaders in the organization. A finance leader is a confident expert of finance and accounting principles who fuses technical expertise with leadership to make others around them better and to positively transform the organization by using accurate, relevant and real-time data to help other leaders make better decisions to execute the strategy. So this week I want to share an encore replay of Episode 98.
Stephen McLain:Why did I choose a career in finance and accounting? Why did you choose to work in finance and accounting? Did you want to work with numbers? Did you think you would work mostly alone? Were you attracted to the leadership opportunities? Was it something else or a combination of these? Whatever got you interested, I am urging you to ask yourself if you still maintain that passion you once had. Do you embrace and look forward to leading with the numbers every day. The finance and accounting fields offer a great opportunity to career track the CEO of any organization. I love this profession. I love being a finance leader. Next week, I will be introducing how to develop a finance and accounting system that can support the overall business strategy. I will be sharing more in the future about this and I can't wait Now. Please enjoy this encore episode, episode 98. Why did I choose a career in finance and accounting? Have a great rest of your week. In a few weeks, we will be discussing our 2024 goal setting. Thank you for choosing the Finance Leader Podcast Until next time. Thank you for listening. Take care. Why did you choose to work in finance and accounting? Did you want to work with numbers? Did you think you would work mostly alone? Were you attracted to the leadership opportunities available? Was it something else or a combination of these? Whatever got you interested? I am urging you to ask yourself if you still maintain that passion you once had. Do you embrace and look forward to leading with the numbers every day? The finance and accounting fields offer a great opportunity to career track the CEO of an organization. There are so many incredible opportunities to make a positive difference, and that's why I love it. Please enjoy the episode.
Stephen McLain:Welcome to the Finance Leader Podcast, where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host, stephen McClain. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. Please consider following me on Twitter, facebook, instagram and LinkedIn my usernames and the links are in this episode's show notes and also please join the Facebook group I have for this podcast community. Thank you, this is episode number 98, and I'll be asking why did you choose a career in the finance and accounting fields?
Stephen McLain:Benjamin Franklin said without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement and success have no meaning. This episode's format will be a little different from what I usually do, but it's for a reason. I want a deep dive in asking why did you choose a career in finance and accounting? What drove you to pick a career that was so numbers focused? Both finance and accounting are different in their approach, but both sides are trying to do the same thing Help drive the business to excellence, to grow the business and to make the overall organization successful. How many of you believe that you would have such a key role in making a business successful, or did you think you would only have a side role and mostly work alone. The finance and accounting teams in a company help drive strategy and they bring reality to what is happening. Because they have the numbers, we drive insights and we ensure that our resource management techniques follow gap and are consistent. We drive the business, we help senior leaders develop and execute the strategy and we also have the opportunity to get promoted into senior leadership.
Stephen McLain:Do you still have the passion for this field? Are you still committed to excellence? Are you committed to growing the organization and to apply your leadership in helping every way possible? I want you to ask yourself what you want to accomplish. What is your long-term goal? Do you want to rise in your career or stay the same? Do you want to make the decision to commit to achieving your long-term goal? I chose finance and accounting because I do love to work with numbers, I love to solve problems and I love to lead. You can do all three in this profession. I especially love to advise and to help senior leaders develop and execute strategy and to do my part in growing the business. I have the daily opportunity to bring positive change in everything I do.
Stephen McLain:Now, how do we accomplish what I just shared as a finance and accounting leader? First, we need to learn and deeply know the key metrics that drive sales and that drive margin, so we know how and where to find insights in the data. You need to know everything about the metrics that drive the business. Then we need to partner with senior leaders to know more about what they are trying to accomplish and to help understand the performance of metrics and KPIs they are monitoring. We want to share insights with them about those KPIs and metrics so they are able to make better decisions and adjustments to grow the business. We also want to build better and more realistic projections. We also need to ensure we have accurate financial reporting and accurate financial statements by applying our core principles a solid financial system and good processes. Additionally, we need to look for efficiencies and opportunities in the middle of the profit and loss statement so we can save resources, which then positively affects net profit. These may be special projects that can deliver big savings in the long run. We should be looking for ways to partner around the company to help other teams to find usable insights as well. We have the opportunity to bridge the gap of communications between teams around the company. I have done this many times, as teams are developing plans or may be missing an important piece of information, but the team next to them has it and you are aware of that. You can bring those teams together because you work in the numbers and you see it. Bring the organization together through your leadership. Finally, we always need to be reviewing and transforming our processes so they are efficient, effective and near real time, which can lead to better and quicker decisions. Use your leadership to overcome the status quo on how we do tasks and how we do analysis, find and advocate for better ways, smarter ways and more technological, sound ways to finish projects and tasks.
Stephen McLain:What do you want to accomplish in your career and in your life? What are your goals? Do you see yourself achieving your goals and do you have a written plan? Goal setting is essential to our success. You must have a written plan, a resilient mindset and the necessary skills to achieve those goals. Why did you choose a career in finance and accounting? Are you ready to achieve the goals? I know you have To achieve the role of CFO and even CEO.
Stephen McLain:The finance and accounting fields are fun and very exciting. We get to lead with the numbers, to help grow the business and to bring positive change, and that's why I love it. Now for action. Today I have a request Write out your long-term career goal. We will work with this at the beginning of the year, in 2023. What do you want to achieve in this profession and do you want to become a sought after leader who can make a difference? If you have not already, I want to invite you to download a leadership guide for finance and accounting leaders. You can go to financeleaderacademycom and select free leadership guide on the main menu. It's free and it may give you a few ideas for your own leadership development. Today, I asked why you chose a career in finance and accounting. I believe we can make a positive difference in our organization.
Stephen McLain:Finance and accounting professionals are often seen and sought after as leaders, so we have the remarkable opportunity to solve problems and to help senior leaders execute the strategy. People are often amazed by what we do, how we look through the data to come up with one or two figures that may transform an entire strategy. We get to do that. We get to steer the ship in a different direction based on one number. I have done this. I know you have too. I have spent days building a financial model to arrive at one number for a project, and key decisions were made with that. That's amazing. I am amazed at what we get to do pulling the right data to build a model to get to one number and then we execute from that one number. So join me in planning out a meaningful long-term goal for our finance and accounting careers, so we get to make a positive difference. Work with me so we can figure this out together. Next week I will be talking about taking risk so we achieve our goals.
Stephen McLain:I hope you enjoyed the Finance Leader podcast. I'm dedicated to helping you grow your leadership skills, to change your mindset and to clarify your goals so you advance your career. You can find this episode wherever you listen to podcasts. If this episode helped you today, please share and leave a quick review so that others may find the podcast Until next time. You can check out more resources at financeleaderacademycom and sign up for my weekly updates so you don't miss an episode of the podcast. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you, treat $5 million in digital assetautoorg is a joint joint of Commissionersieland.
