Gary Golden on Thriving Through Change: Lessons for Modern CFOs

In this episode of Asking Good Questions, we explore the evolution of the CFO role with Gary Golden, CFO of Media Culture. Gary reflects on his experiences at Blockbuster, Kinko’s, and private equity-backed firms, sharing actionable insights on navigating disruptions, leveraging AI, and leading with strategy.  Join us in sharing stories of transformation—from the untold history of Blockbuster’s missed Netflix opportunity to the challenges of adapting finance teams for the AI era. This is a must-listen for finance professionals looking to stay ahead in a data-driven world.

Takeaways

• It's not just about debits and credits; it's about interpreting data.
• The CFO's role has evolved to include strategic leadership.
• Understanding economics is crucial for financial decision-making.
• Cash flow management is essential, especially during economic changes.
• Companies must adapt to industry disruptions to survive.
• AI can streamline financial processes and presentations.
• Communication skills are vital for finance leaders.
• Outsourcing non-core functions can enhance efficiency.
• Finance leaders should be proactive in providing timely information.
• Continuous learning and adaptation are key to success in finance.

Chapters

00:00 Understanding the Role of the CFO
12:01 The Evolution of Finance Leadership
21:58 Navigating Economic Changes and Challenges
33:34 Adapting to Change: Lessons from Industry Giants
41:20 The Future of Finance: Embracing Technology and AI

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Transcript

Gary & Edward (00:00)

Welcome to Asking Good Questions. I am your host, Edward Roske. We'll be talking today about the evolution of finance leadership and the changing role of the CFO's office. I am thrilled and excited to be joined today with Gary Golden, CFO of Media Culture. Gary and I have known each other for over 25 years. We were slightly younger men back in the day. I first met you at Blockbuster.

For anyone on the podcast under 30 years old, could you explain what a Blockbuster is? 

Well, Blockbuster was your local neighborhood video rental store. Back at one point in time, movies made their most money by renting them out at a video rental store. It exceeded the revenues at movie theaters, and it was their number one revenue source, was going to a rental store, getting both videos. 

That's awesome. You were corporate controller?

I was. 

Blockbuster? 
I was. 

So before we get into the recent changes, tell us what it was like. mean, Blockbuster at the time was, you know, a global domination path. 
Yes, it was. A matter of fact, in one year before we went public, which was the year 1999, we built 500 stores. We had more than 5000 stores in the United States and it was a really interesting scenario. I actually, before I became the corporate controller, I did mergers and acquisitions for them. Now everybody laughs when you say mergers and acquisitions and sure enough, when I went in, they had done 52 acquisitions in the year before I joined them. Very formulaic process that they did and my boss, when I first went in, said, why don't you do a post-mortem or a review of all of the acquisitions? So I did the review of the acquisitions of the prior three years and quote unquote, they had overpaid for everything. Which makes sense. And so we decided to take a look at that and we cut the prices on anything that we were going to buy in the future. So while they did 52 in the year before I joined them, during the 18 months that I was in mergers and acquisitions, we did a total of five.

Many of the best deals we did was we didn't buy another company. So that was fun. Then the opportunity arose to become the corporate controller, which I enjoyed immensely. This was during the time that the transition went from VHS tape, which some people may not realize, but there used to be a VHS player, and then they went to DVDs.

It went really from a rental structure because people would go into a blockbuster and we called it managed dissatisfaction because we'd have 12 copies of a movie and everybody would run and want to get the latest releases. Well, 12 copies do not satisfy the man that much. And all of a sudden there was this transition to DVD. Warner Brothers invented kind of the DVD and changed it to where they would get a royalty of like a dollar per DVD. So they were very much incentivized to make video rental become video only. So going from 12 copies, we realized we were not satisfying customer demand. So we worked with the studios to get more and more copies. Matter of fact, we might have a hundred copies after we changed it into a store. And it's really interesting to see how that all evolved because as we got more and more copies, we satisfied demand that much quicker. Really interesting in that when we first went into this transition, a movie when we would buy it at 12 copies, it would last six months in the store. We called our new release wall and movies would stay there for like six months and we amortized the cost of that over the six month period. Then we had in the center of the store, if you remember going to Blockbuster, we had what we called our library which we amortized over a 36 month period, because we felt that was the life. As we changed and it went to DVDs and we got more copies, we had to change the life and then our own gap accounting and change it to a 90 day. Then as time went on and the more and more of this happened, it ultimately became that a movie lasted all of three weeks. Now, if you think about movie theaters today, 50, 70 years ago, there were very few movie theaters. Then the evolution came about of multiplexes. And so now, you know, there are thousands and thousands of screens. And you think about a movie, when it now comes out, think about it, it's because there are so many movie theaters, demand is satisfied typically in about three weeks. A movie is pretty much dead in three weeks. Well, Blockbuster realized that too. That a movie was dead after about three weeks. We had some restrictive agreements because of the transition in which we could not sell a previously viewed tape until it went to six months. Well, as it evolved and the movie was dead after three weeks, you know, it became a problem for us and that inventory increased and increased and increased and increased.

And when we amortized the video, we went down to $4 per copy. And then all of a sudden we had millions of movies at $4 a copy. So at one point in time, we had to take a big write-off because there was no way that we could sell all the movies that we had. The wild part about that is we took a large write-off on September 10th, 2001. We announced it to Wall Street September 10th, 2001. And we really were kind of worried how the world would react to it. Well, we all know what happened on 9-11. Nobody cared. It just completely failed underneath because of the events of 9-11. So very interesting times at Blockbuster. 

Very interesting times how the accounting changed and how we had to make our accounting change as the life of a video decreased.

 It's interesting. It was almost like you were at the forefront of like fast casual, but in the movie industry, you know, I was talking to a finance leader over at JCPenney and they're like, yeah, there was a time when we would turn something over twice a year. We'd be happy four times a year. And to your point, you know, something being obsolete after three weeks, that's a 14x turn. Yes. That's crazy. Yeah. And the wild part about that is people we judged how are we looked at it, got the, what am I looking for? We tracked how many times a customer came to us. And the customers would come to a Blockbuster 13 and a half times a year. All the more reason why we tried to have a store in store one point in time with Radio Shack. That was a test. The reason why Radio Shack's customer came in one and a half times a year, and they wanted to take advantage of that customer coming in 13 and a half times.

It was just a test in some small markets. The financial results of that when we did the testing was it was not in favor of them whatsoever. And so they elected not to go forward. We were ready to renegotiate with them and make it more attractive to them. But they changed management and said, forget it, we don't want to go forward. And we understand why when we saw the results of the test.

It's been quite a change. You went from Blockbuster to Kinko's. Also for anyone under 30, just explain the transition of Kinko's as well. Well, Kinko's was headquartered in Ventura, California, and they decided to move to the Dallas, Texas. They had a change in a CEO. Very interesting from the standpoint that like Blockbuster five years earlier, who had been located in Fort Lauderdale.

They needed to break the corporate culture away from the original foundings. That's why they moved to Dallas. The same thing with Kinkos. Kinkos had a very charismatic leader in Ventura, California, a wonderful, wonderful gentleman who helped and had the vision to start it. But then they changed management and they decided we needed to break that culture from Ventura and move to Dallas.

It was a privately held company. The reason why I went to work for them, it was the gentleman who was now the CFO said, Gary, just like you help Blockbuster and get their records ready to go public, will you help us at Kinko's get ready to go public? And so we were in fact doing 10 Qs, 10 Ks drafting them. We did not submit them because we were not, but we just wanted to be ready to go when in fact we went public. The unique thing about that was, just before we were ready to do that, FedEx came in and bought Kinkos in a defensive move against UPS, who had purchased mailboxes, et cetera, and had now had all these additional distribution points FedEx likewise needed to have and was able to gain 2,000 additional distribution points by buying Kinkos and turning it into FedEx Office. Yeah, it's interesting when people decide they need to expand their distribution network. You're looking at Amazon, you know, buying Whole Foods. It was not necessarily a step into retail. It was a step into localized grocery distribution. So what was the biggest change from being a publicly traded Kinko's expanding to going over to that FedEx office world? I know you were early on in it, but just having, you know, from the external side, looking back, was that like? 

Blockbuster was not really to go public at least it didn't seem like that when we did it. So we were not prepared for all the Q's and K's and really had to work hard to get this history to be able to disclose that when in fact Kinko said and knew early on they wanted to. So they were always doing the preparation. They were always grabbing the records to be ready to do it. And as I said, by doing the Q's and K's before they were even public, it was going to make the transition even easier.

Yeah, it's interesting looking at the foundation on which Kinko's was created versus kind of mailboxes, et cetera. You the mailbox, et cetera now, whatever, UPS stores. you kind of think of them as just the place you go to ship something versus FedEx office is built on that Kinko's foundation. You still actually go in and use computers and buy retail. It was an interesting business model. After Kinko's, you've been with companies, billions of insized, multinationals, all the way down to small to mid-sized businesses. You've covered just about everything. 

Tell me, from a CFO standpoint, CFO, corporate controller, titan of industry, 25 years, what kind of changes have you seen in that finance leadership role? Well, it depends on the size of the company. It also depends on the ownership structure. So a number of the companies that I've worked or have been private equity companies. And there has been the demand from the private equity owners to want to have more information. There's been the acquisitions, which I put my toe in with Blockbuster. But then as we were doing add-on acquisitions, you know, by private equity, that was very, very interesting to go in, see a set of books, see what the investment bankers had presented to you discounting that tremendously, knowing that a lot of it was pie in the sky and coming up with what you would think would be the attractiveness to your company and combining the companies, looking at the synergies. And that's really the play is obviously the synergies so many times. And some of it would be related to your operations because now going, you could send one buyer in or one seller in to see a buyer at a multinational big box, as opposed to them having, depending on your product line, have like six different people. So it's really interesting. I went music, I went electrical parts distribution. That's right, you were at Brook Mays. I was at Brook Mays when saw what happened there. And that was a very interesting time. Went to Rexel.

20 billion out of Paris, France. That was fun. Actually, for five years during the economic crisis, 2008 to 2013, I assisted, I was an employee of a company called MMC Group, who had a contract with the FDIC to assist in failing banks, unlike anything I'd ever done before. And that was fun to go into a bank. It was really crazy when on Friday nights at six o'clock, we'd have 200 people descend on a bank and go in because the people did not know it was about to fail. They were obviously nervous when this number of people walked in and we said, you've got a job. That was obviously everybody's biggest concern is do I still have a job? Yes, you still have a job. You're being acquired by another bank. The FDIC worked very hard to make sure that have another bank acquire it, even to the detriment of the FDIC and taking lower prices. So we would go in, we would look at their books over the weekend, and then we would do what was called splitting the assets. The FDIC would keep certain assets, the new bank was getting certain assets. Every contract was different, so you had to look at each contract. But going in, one, allaying the fears of the people, that to me was very primary and then going through and doing the accounting records and getting it ready for the new bank to buy it on a go forward basis. After doing that, I've done some consulting for a number of different companies, three month project here. One was laying 5G, the wiring that was out of St. Louis, ADB companies, that was a lot of fun. Another was a company that acquired an international company out of Germany and they weren't sure how to do the international accounting. And so that was fun. Lots of different things. How does that, the accounting for each is different. The accounting, the size of each of the companies was different. And you really just try to match the capabilities of the people with the software that you have and to help the people get the job done.

I obviously you brought up the Great Recession, the economic collapse, but people tend to forget there are always multiple booms and bust cycles. There are always these inflection points like you brought up, know, 9-11. was the, you know, Sarbanes-Oxley completely redoing everything. was the savings and loan collapse. know, Blockbuster went through changes. Radio Shack obviously went through changes. As you navigate those kind of inflection points.

What are the key issues you're dealing with as a CFO or control or finance leader? Well, cash is always king and you want to make sure that you've got that cash proper. The economic status has really changed as it relates to interest rates. As interest rates, when they were so low, obviously money was cheap. Being part with private equity, private equity loves to leverage a company up borrow all that money trying to use other people's money to make money. And we were considered highly leveraged in some of the companies that I worked in and one of which was  a home decor company. It was a company that was 216 million when I joined them, 775 million when I left. Growth was mainly by acquisition. Growth was mainly through debt financing and to see the interest rates as they came down and how much more willing we were to do. But then as interest rates go up, your game is different.

Have to generate the cash, the monies to be able to pay that interest. Also as the supply chain scenarios, I know I had left the company at the time, but when one of the companies, the home decor company that I worked with, they were having problems getting product in from China and the cost of bringing product in went from $3,000 for a container to $20,000 for a container.

And that was, wow, the cost of $20,000 to a container, that was more expensive than the product that was in the container. So they made some bad choices. It's unfortunate that they did. And ultimately they went bankrupt, which I was so sorry to see. And because it was such a nice little company that I worked with from 13 to 19. So those changes, working with the private equity, working with private companies,

It's once again making sure that the owner is informed. If it's the others, you're always just trying to make sure that results are given to the people who are making the decisions on as quick basis as you can make it happen. It's, you know, accounting has been behind the fact about so many times. It's been 20, 30 days when you get the financials to the owners or decision makers, which is too long. You need to be able to make it go a lot quicker. Blockbuster was challenged with that. Blockbuster was almost 30 days before they closed their books. Well, that obviously wouldn't work being public. So we got that product down with some consultants helping us. We got it down to like a five day process. That's pretty nice for a $6 billion company. So that was interesting. But it's true even for small companies. They are used to having these long terms and you have to change the ways that you look at things accruals. You don't have to be correct to the penny. You're really trying to get information to the decision makers and hopefully you were in as a finance leader as part of that and leading guide people as to this worked. This promotion worked. This promotion didn't work. This decision worked or we should have never done that. Let's make sure we don't repeat that error again. Yeah. That's funny.

Luckily that happened right in the book. Yeah, no, that worked well. We will edit that part out. This will make it onto the blooper reel. Apparently we were staying too still. The lights went off in the room. We will wave our hands around more enthusiastically. You touched on the role of the finance leadership changing. If you rewind the clock 25 years ago, you and I both experienced this. was number crunching, was kind of backwards looking governance compliance, closing the books whenever you were 100 % sure they were correct. Now it's a more strategic leadership type role. 

How has that changed your involvement in the finance world?

Trying to once again, getting the information to the decision maker quicker and then sitting with them and discussing the results. No one cares if you're off by $12.37. That's my favorite expression, I don't care if we're wrong by $12.37. We can correct that later. Let's get the heart of the financials. Let's get the story in there so that we can make changes on a timely enough basis to affect the old much results of the company. Budgeting has always been important. I think it's even more important today to understand where you're going. It helps for your cash flow to make sure that you're doing the cash flow properly and making sure that you refine those models even more. One, so you're either paying off debt or two, investing the cash that you have. Looking back 25 years ago, it almost seemed like the CFO was at the back of the ship and the captain was at the front and you periodically call and go, are we turning left or right? And you'd like look backwards at the wake and go, oh, it's going this way or this way. And now it's standing up at the front. Being the kind of co-pilot of the ship. No, it really is. And making sure that the finance and accounting is part of the decision making team, as you say, because so many years ago, it was just, you were an after the fact kind of person. So looking at it today.

Both at Media Culture, you've been a consultant in the recent past, you've seen a lot of different companies. What are some of the challenges that are facing finance and finance leadership? I I know data is doubling every two years at this point. We can no longer use Excel as the duct tape of modern finance. What challenges are you running into? Well, the cost. As wages rise, we're looking at what the cost is.

Should we outsource? Should we not outsource? If you do outsource, where are you going to get the best bang for your buck? But it's not just cheap that you need to look at. It's when are you going to get the information that you need to move the company forward? And that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be in the Far East or anything like that. It can be Mexico. It can be Indian reservations in the US.

It can just, there are companies now who are doing those kinds of things for you. It's really trying to get down to do your core strengths and let somebody else take care of things when you can. The boring stuff, if you want to call it that. And you know, accounting to me is fun. It's the people side of math to me versus just pure math, which is statistical and all of that. I actually changed the direction of my life because I got to work for NASA.

18 years old in Mathematical Physics branch and it was exactly what I thought I wanted to do with that. But I realized it was me and the computer and yes from this gray hair I used to it was right when computers were first getting going. So we were testing items we were actually testing the dispersion of a product when it hit the space lab to protect the astronauts. Now that sounds fun, sexy.

All this great, I mean, you know, it really sounds wild, but it was me with computer all day long, checking the dispersion of the destruction. And because it was so early, everything had to be calibrated. And I recognized early on while I was doing this that the computer was miscalibrated. So I spent this 90 days doing this work because it was a work study program. And at the end, I kept saying, it's wrong. I'm telling you it's wrong. And they were nice, nice.

Please don't misunderstand that. But they were saying, 18 year old, just touch and go back and do your job. But it was me in a computer all day long for eight hours a day and I said, uh-uh, I can't do this. I want to be around people. I want to help people. I want to enjoy the people that I work with. And so the scientists at NASA said, Gary, get out while you can. You can obviously do the work, but if this is not what you like, then go do something else. So that's when I went into the people side of math, which I call accounting. And I think that's even more so while we're getting the results. You need to be able to talk with people. You need to be able to explain what the results are to people. You cannot be the boring accountant. You've got to be the business leader to help them to interpret the numbers and what does this mean and where are we going to take this and where we go. And you make your suggestions as opposed to just giving the numbers and allowing somebody else to do it. You're coming up with your ideas.

Yes, it can be batted down by somebody, but you want to give them the ideas as to how you see the company moving forward. So I want to ask you which is harder, rocket science or finance? But it definitely sounds like the more fun side is the finance accounting side. It has been. You've talked about communication. That role in my mind has changed. 25 years ago, it's almost seemed like in finance, our jobs stop when we hand someone an income statement.

And now it's like that's really where the job begins. Yeah. Can you explain how that's changed the value of communication? Well, so many times people don't understand financials. So they see the numbers, they go, OK, yeah, but how's that compared to somebody else? But if you are able to get in there and explain to people how this works, as opposed to just presenting a dry number, you need to give them the variance explanations. I mean, that's to me is the accounting. When people think about accounting, so many times they think about debits and credits.

And I'm not, I don't care about the debits and credits per se, just in and of themselves. It's what do they represent? One of the issues at Blockbuster, when I first went there, we had a staff, well, there were 250 people on the accounting staff. And a number of the people were used to getting this debit from Sally Sue, putting in the books, and then passing on their results to John over here. So you'd ask him, what is your account balance?

I don't know. What do mean you don't know? Is the account balance proper? No one's ever asked me that. Can you tell me what it represents? And is it correct? No one has ever asked me that. That's a completely different side. See, that's not, accounting is not just debits and credits. Accounting is making sure that your financials are correct, they represent something, you understand what they represent, and that they're true and accurate.

That to me is part of the evolution, making sure people realize you just don't do debits and credits, but you get behind it. It makes the job more interesting. We actually at Blockbuster had people present their account balances. It helped them not only with their interpersonal skills, their presentation skills, and it made their job more meaningful than just doing debits and credits.

Yeah, I don't think any of us got our degrees in manipulating Excel spreadsheets. We wanted to have an impact and do something with our numbers. You've obviously gone through a ton of changes over the last many years. We'll just leave it at 40 plus. We'll stop counting there. I was going through the other day some of the companies that I've consulted with in Dallas, Fort Worth.

I started making a list and it was like Blockbuster, Circuit City, CompUSA, RadioShack. And was like, maybe I'm the problem. There have been other companies too that are still in business if you're curious, but I was starting to think it's like, what do companies like Blockbuster and RadioShack and CompUSA and Circuit City have in common? They were all the tops of their industry, their specific micro industry at a time. And the best I can figure out is they just weren't able to change with whatever was happening internally or externally.

You've been a survivor, you've succeeded. If you could advise companies from a finance leadership standpoint, how do you change so you don't end up like one of those? Transitioning is it. You're saying about your records, let me give you a little history on me. I worked in photo finishing. Six years in photo finishing. I actually worked for a company. Interesting to me, we were 300 million.

Eastman Kodak never made a penny in photo finishing. They made it in equipment, they made it in film, they didn't make it in photo finishing. They bought five companies up, never tried to put them together, but then they said to our company, we were 300 million, they said, let's put our companies together. We became 800 million overnight, and we used Kodak paper. And by doing so, it was very, very interesting. But we went from having 99 labs, five here in the Dallas Fort Worth area by itself, and then to mold those down, get those synergies. But we all know what happened to photo finishing. Then video, Blockbuster with a video, that scenario. So it was like, boy, here's. That's happened. I did work for a music retailer, which went bankrupt. It's coming out of it. But all of it was the transition. How do we transition? Blockbuster is the one that's notorious, everybody always talks about the transition because they didn't do Netflix. And there's stories written about the Netflix, there's the untold story too. The untold story was we did in fact have a contract agreement with Netflix. The price had been agreed upon, all of us heading, but as it became time for us to buy and actually put our money down for Netflix, our stock price had dropped. And because we were kind of in the same area, we had a leader who said, well, since our stock price dropped, your value has dropped. So we're not willing to pay the price that we said we want to drop the value like ours has dropped. And Netflix said, see you later. Bye bye. That is the big reason my blockbuster and Netflix didn't get together. Interesting. Yeah, I knew there was the offer. Reed Hastings came down and said, I want to become part of it. I never actually heard that part. I know. Netflix is an interesting company because they almost disrupt themselves. They started off as you wait two days to get something in the mail and you have to go down the queue to your point, manage dissatisfaction. Then they became a streaming company of other people's content, other streaming their own.

How do companies go about disrupting themselves? mean, Kodak I think fell into the same boat. They they were a company that made their money in film versus Fujifilm actually did adapt and said we're a chemicals company. Well, it's really it's just that transition looking for the next thing. Blockbuster did in fact drive through those agreements trying to do that such with Radio Shack. And then they were looking at it. I mean, they were late to the party. Netflix did the mail.

Blockbuster did the mail, but they were second to the item. We had all those movies that we just talked about that we were gonna throw away. We could have easily done that had we seen that vision early on. So it truly is looking for the right transitions. And many companies do try to transition, it just doesn't always go. And so you have some of the leading companies who have tried to transition and it didn't work. Whatever their transition theme was.

Where they tried to go, was not there. And one of the things I liked about what you said was figure out what that core competency is, outsource the rest of it. Yes. But be willing to understand your core competency might need to change. You know, can't just keep doing that same thing. that's exactly right. You got to adapt as America adapts. You know, just what the consumer taste is. Just on your note about outsourcing the things that you're not particularly good at, let somebody else do them. The way you form a finance and accounting team has changed. Talk about versus, you're assuming your entire accounting and finance team needs to be right there where you can physically look over the wall of a cubicle to today's world. What kind of team development, team putting together changes have you noticed? Well, I think depending on the size of the company, obviously the culture and you need to have that cultural fit. So that has become more important, especially because you're going to be depending on other people, some kind of outsource or some other company that's providing accounts payable, accounts receivable, a cash application into your receivables. You're no longer having that and you're having to coordinate with others. And so you need to make sure that your team is equipped to do that. And you've got to make sure that they have that competency as opposed to just debits and credits, applying this check and that item. Yeah, so you just really want to make sure that you're there towards accelerating your company forward. Awesome. Explain to me the role of finance leadership with technical leadership. Is it a partnership? Is it a combative relationship? Is one important to the other? Between the CFO and the CIO, what's the best way for them to work together or should they just go to their opposite corners? No, they shouldn't go to their opposite corners. Then you have silos and that's terrible when that kind of a thing's. mean, we all remember the old days where you used to say all the IT team says is no, no, doesn't matter what you ask, no is the first answer. And then you sit down and say, okay, what can we do together? What is it? How can we come up with a mutual agreement? It's so much better if you're not we're better or you know, we're flexing our muscle, we can do this. It's no, let's get about this together. Let's sit down. We have the company has a problem or there's this issue. How can you help us? How can you streamline this process? One, so that we can get the information to the leaders and the owners so they can make better decisions, so they can increase profitability. And that's really the goal always should be is to make sure that you're working together with teams when that is not working together, it's time to go share a meal together. I read somewhere that at Fortune 500 companies now, 52 % of them, the CIO now reports to the CFO. It doesn't happen so much at small companies, but I think they get to the point where almost the CFO is sort of running all internal and sharing services. But you definitely get some partnership if they're reporting up. Yes, that's true.

They probably would not tell you no as often. That's right. Now we are going to get this done. And the timelines and the deadlines are always very interesting when we're able to work together and make that happen. speaking of technology, we're going to turn now to the future of finance. So trends that we've seen, how is the world evolving? What is... And we might not be around long enough to see where AI just controls everything, but right now, what are some evolutions you're seeing? One of the ones you mentioned was that kind of pendulum change from precision over to timeliness. Yes. Do you see more of that coming in the future? I think there needs to be more of it. I think we're still kind of in the background going, oh, it's got to be super, super accurate. No, once again, doesn't matter. I don't care about $12.27. Depending on the size of the company, that might be, I don't care about $123,700.

You know, if you're in your billion dollar companies, it's not going to change. If you correct that number, it's not going to change the decision as to where we go forward. But it sure is better if you can get it up front. As far as how it's changing for people, I do, I am interested in how AI is going to really change things. I already think with the presentations, we spent so much time in the past power, doing PowerPoints, making things pretty.

I cannot tell you the number of hours I've spent making it pretty. We had the numbers, we had it ready to go, but it had to be pretty. Let's make it pretty, especially when you're owned by private equity, because you were trying to make, that was one of the big deals is let's make it pretty. I really, I sound like a broken record here, but it was crazy the number of hours that we'd spent in doing that, as opposed to doing value added information for others. So if the AI can help do with those kinds of presentations, it can allow people to spend time more where it will be helpful to them. Yeah, it's interesting. AI, I've gotten to the point where if I ask myself, can AI do it? The answer is yes. It doesn't necessarily mean I know how to make it do it. And I can talk to somebody smarter than me that tells me here's how to actually put it in place. But things like make the numbers ready for presentation or make It can definitely do it right now, but I don't see a lot of companies actually implementing that. They still have humans doing it, even though, I mean, I've done it on one of my company's financials. I've said, go in and find the five numbers I should pay attention to. It's like, okay, now tell me a story related to those so I can relate to somebody else. Now put it together in a beautiful looking report or make me a couple of nice slides. But I haven't seen that transition yet in a lot of companies. You do see it in smaller companies like tech startups, but not like the multi-billion dollar companies.

They're still doing with people power. Why do you think that is? Change is tough on people. Very, very tough on people. It can be scary. People put up their guards. Don't tread on my territory. They're just worried about change as opposed. They just haven't gotten the religion yet of change can be very good. Change to them is bad and they've got to relax, understand and allow it. And some of that is to the people to have to make sure that they understand it's going to help the consultants. I think a lot make people realize, yes, this can be done. Yes, this can be helpful to you. Don't fear the change. Yeah. People talk a lot about job potential, job loss related AI. I've never seen a technology that didn't result in more jobs. Yes. And your point about consulting, you know, the next three to five years, I think everybody will want to use AI and other technologies to redo their processes, but they're not going to know what to start. That's kind of fun. In terms of getting started, like if you said, we want to rethink our processes for 2024. So not inheriting the ones that are there, but we just arrived, we're going to create them new from scratch. How do you find a balance between the human side of it, which is to your point, why you got into it, right? You don't want to just talk to a computer all day. How do you balance the human side with using technology where you can help? I think that's one of the things, the challenges that we have laying ahead of us to do and to figure out how that will work. I just think back to some of the basics, the communication skills of the people.

You've just got to make sure that people are informed as to what's going on because of their own fear, their fear factor. And when you make them part of the team and part of the transition and let them have ownership of it, then they're much more likely to help you and to work with you in making those things. And don't be afraid to say, can you help me with this? Or, I don't understand, there's many times that...

I think people come across to brash as opposed to just asking real quietly, can you help me with this? I have an issue or I need your help on this. And that can be the boss. The boss needs to go to his people and say, help me understand this. Help me go. Teach me. Teach me I don't understand this. the teach me takes a lot of the staining or the roughness out of I can't remember who said it. I'm just going to pretend it was Warren Buffett because it probably was Warren Buffett. But he said it's hard to convince someone to believe in something that will cost them their salary if they believe in it. I think, like, I look back at my first role as a financial analyst and it was trying to read an income statement. Admittedly, there was a lot of Excel, but it trying to read an income statement and then make some comments about it. you know, AI can do that now in under five seconds.

So that role of a financial analyst is going to change, but it's not going to be eliminated. But it's going to have to evolve to almost making sure action gets driven, which computers can't do. Like once they tell you the information, they don't know that if anything is actually done with it, where Hugh as a CFO would. Interpret it. Yeah. Now, once again, I'm back to our conversation about the whole accounting thing. It's not the debits and credits. It's interpreting the data. It is understanding the economics. That's what I tell people a lot of times.is it's economics. Why did this change? What is the reason why this number increased? What is the reason why this number decreased? What is the layering? let's understand that. That's really the role of the CFO and helping others to get what's being reflected in those financials. 

Part of the reason I wanted to interview Gary for the podcast was you have been of any finance leader I know involved in more industries, more size of companies, you have survived and thrived and you have so many stories to be able to tell. If you had to bring it all down, somebody is getting ready to embark on the path of finance leadership. They one day, they would aspire to be half as successful as you are. What advice would you give to an aspiring finance leader today? 

It might be different than 20 years ago, but you're planning for that future? Well, I think it really is to understand the economics, the variances, to be able to work with that. Be sure you have knowledge. Be sure that you're well read. Be sure that you are studied up on what is going on, especially in the technologies. But just to understand multiple industries. Don't just be defined by your one.

You can add value. mean, many times what we're looking for is not the person who's worked for the same company for 12 to 15 years. We're looking for someone who can bring other experiences. I say it to people when we hire them, listen, I'm hoping your career is like this. And I'm hoping that I get you in a two to five year span on your way up. Am I crazy enough to think you're gonna be with us for 30 years? No, that's not reality today. So I want you to advance my company, advance what's happening.

For the next two to five years, we want to give value to you and us grow, and then you have your next experience and you continue to grow. Yeah, constant growth, constant evolution. It's a key takeaway from today. If anybody is stagnant, they end up like a blockbuster or radio shack. And not just in Dallas, Fort Worth, not just in finance, kind of in life. You have to be changing, you have to be advancing.

You obviously have interests beyond the finance world. I saw your name show up recently as I think you were a judge of like top &A or something in Dallas, Fort Worth. If people are interested in finding out more about Gary Golden's awesome life adventure or other things that you're doing, could they follow you on LinkedIn? LinkedIn, LinkedIn, Gary N. Golden. N as in Neil. Gary N. Golden is who I am and you'll see a long history.

I started out in public accounting many, many years ago, worked for a conglomerate, 80s conglomerate, 27 different companies and all kinds of industries. Again, not concentrated in a few, just all kinds. Matter of fact, ultimately the company said, Wall Street does not understand 27 diverse companies. Let's get it down. So they made the changes. One of those was the photo finishing company, which was part of that. you know, I just...

Then I went to work for a small privately held company and not only did the finance and accounting but did the operations and then went to the big black, big giant blockbuster. You know, and encountered a company with $6 billion worth of goodwill on its books, which ultimately, as we all know, had to be written off. Same was true with Kinkos. I mean, you think about FedEx bought Kinkos, they had about $2 billion worth of goodwill. 

What'd they have to do with it? 

Write it off. That's one of the big things is take a very, very hard look at what you're acquiring and don't overestimate what the value of it is to your company. Don't overpay. Don't overpay. 25 plus years of history. Thank you so much. I want to say thank you to Gary for taking some time out of your life. It great getting to come out here, interview you in person, see your awesome offices.

Good luck at Media Culture and I'm sure there's many ventures beyond that. I want to thank you to today's sponsor, Caprus.ai. I'm your host, Edward Roske, and we'll be back again with your next podcast to talk about the future of finance. Thank you for tuning in to Asking Good Questions.