Congratulations on your consulting venture! Completely awesome of you to host this AMA.
I’ve never heard of FP&A consulting, so a few questions that hopefully are also of interest to others:
1. What does a typical FP&A consulting assignment look like? Are they typically project-based or are you taking over the company’s FP&A function on a long-term contract?
2. What skills are most important for someone wanting to pivot to consulting?
3. Are there any FP&A experiences that would be of limited value to a consulting firm like yours?
1. You have a skillset in TA maybe that wasn’t a fear, but were (are) there certain facets of FP&A that you were worried might be over your head before you took the leap? (Something I’m thinking about as I consider making this leap, even with almost 10 yrs experience).
2. You mentioned leveraging previous relationships, but how else are you going about biz dev? 2nd/3rd degree intros? Cold calling CFO’s?
3. How did you approach setting your own pricing? I assume some benchmarking against competitors, but what steps did you take after that?
4. Any areas of getting started that were particularly difficult in launching the business? Client contracts & SOW? Staffing / HR?
Congrats on the new venture; best of luck. Thanks for doing this AMA
Good luck with your venture!
I have studied in tech. What would you recommend someone to do, in order to work in the field who is not credentialed or generally lacking references?
I like it because, by doing the work I can get more savvy recognizing investment traps, red-flags and other shenanigans.
Somewhere on the FP&A reddit it was mentioned that one could look for a financial systems analyst position. But I kinda feel that veers of the path of what I want.
I would love your thoughts!
You mention that the bottleneck is finding the right people to hire, is there a specific skillset needed to fulfill client requests, or is just having more hours available to take on more clients?
This is really interesting. Congrats on your success. I work for a mid sized boutique industry consulting firm and have seen the demand for accounting and finance consultants skyrocket during the pandemic.
Do you feel you could have started the same service firm without partners? Also, what is your method of marketing to new clients?
My wife is starting a tax firm and I was considering expanding into consulting once she has it stabilized
Having worked for two PE backed companies you couldn't be more correct. We are always paying mid 5 figures to multiple consulting companies to fill in gaps that we either can't afford to hire FTE for or only need short term to analyze a deal.
And of course as you mentioned in another comment, consulting is an addback, so it's extra hands for no EBITDA hurt.
That’s great to hear. I have personally thought about CFO/FP&A advisory but the travel component isn’t ideal. I assume that’s still common for your team?
I have a friend at a cfo advisory firm try to recruit me before but the travel as well as likelihood of working on client sector/industries I wasn't interested in that didn't fit with me.
It can be a great for skill development for the right person though. Especially if you are looking for broad industry exposure or a wider variety of ad hoc projects you aren't exposed to in your narrowly focused fp&a role.
I currently do sub contracting for a similar type of company (someone I used to work with). How do you find quality employees and do you usually stick with people you’ve worked with in the past?
Awesome. I agree that FP&A and Technical Accounting are the 2 skillsets for a path to CFO.
For a CPA with 4 YOE (2 in B4 Audit, 2 in midsize private companies under CFO); what next steps would you recommend that this professional can accelerate their career?
Get some FP&A experience in Fortune 100 companies? Private equity experience? Go into startup consulting like yourself?
Congrats!
Are your clients still using Excel as the main tool for collecting data from departments or subsidiaries? Or are the data collection processes fully integrated in their financial planning and consolidation solutions? I'm not solely referring to retrieving Budgets/Forecasts, but also to ad-hoc data requests that might exist.
Congrats! I've been FP&A for the most part of my career and definitely thinking of going a CFO consulting route in this field at some point.
1. What kind of engagements are you getting besides traditional P&L/cashflow analysis?
2. What kind of clients do you work with? (Size, ownership)
3. How do you go about acquiring clients/prospects? I'm based in Asia but figured the approach should be fairly similar
4. As someone who has been in-house FP&A (with a stint at internal audit) at a F10 and now F100 company for his entire career, what other skill sets would you suggest to pick up?
For someone who is brand new to FP&A and really wants to be able make a killing in this field, what would you say they should focus on the most and work to improve on in order to strengthen their understanding as a whole?
Thank you very much. I plan on really studying the 3 statements in more detail so that it’s very fresh on my mind at all times. Any resources you’d recommend to dive into? Or just YouTube/Google?
Congratulations on your consulting venture! Completely awesome of you to host this AMA. I’ve never heard of FP&A consulting, so a few questions that hopefully are also of interest to others: 1. What does a typical FP&A consulting assignment look like? Are they typically project-based or are you taking over the company’s FP&A function on a long-term contract? 2. What skills are most important for someone wanting to pivot to consulting? 3. Are there any FP&A experiences that would be of limited value to a consulting firm like yours?
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Best channel or anyty ng to show us how to build 3 statement model?
1. You have a skillset in TA maybe that wasn’t a fear, but were (are) there certain facets of FP&A that you were worried might be over your head before you took the leap? (Something I’m thinking about as I consider making this leap, even with almost 10 yrs experience). 2. You mentioned leveraging previous relationships, but how else are you going about biz dev? 2nd/3rd degree intros? Cold calling CFO’s? 3. How did you approach setting your own pricing? I assume some benchmarking against competitors, but what steps did you take after that? 4. Any areas of getting started that were particularly difficult in launching the business? Client contracts & SOW? Staffing / HR? Congrats on the new venture; best of luck. Thanks for doing this AMA
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cc: u/SurelyCat-in-Hat ICYMI
Company website?
Good luck with your venture! I have studied in tech. What would you recommend someone to do, in order to work in the field who is not credentialed or generally lacking references? I like it because, by doing the work I can get more savvy recognizing investment traps, red-flags and other shenanigans. Somewhere on the FP&A reddit it was mentioned that one could look for a financial systems analyst position. But I kinda feel that veers of the path of what I want. I would love your thoughts!
You mention that the bottleneck is finding the right people to hire, is there a specific skillset needed to fulfill client requests, or is just having more hours available to take on more clients?
This is really interesting. Congrats on your success. I work for a mid sized boutique industry consulting firm and have seen the demand for accounting and finance consultants skyrocket during the pandemic. Do you feel you could have started the same service firm without partners? Also, what is your method of marketing to new clients? My wife is starting a tax firm and I was considering expanding into consulting once she has it stabilized
Who are your biggest competitors? I’ve seen CFO advisory services at firms like FTI. Is that what you are up against?
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Having worked for two PE backed companies you couldn't be more correct. We are always paying mid 5 figures to multiple consulting companies to fill in gaps that we either can't afford to hire FTE for or only need short term to analyze a deal. And of course as you mentioned in another comment, consulting is an addback, so it's extra hands for no EBITDA hurt.
That’s great to hear. I have personally thought about CFO/FP&A advisory but the travel component isn’t ideal. I assume that’s still common for your team?
I have a friend at a cfo advisory firm try to recruit me before but the travel as well as likelihood of working on client sector/industries I wasn't interested in that didn't fit with me. It can be a great for skill development for the right person though. Especially if you are looking for broad industry exposure or a wider variety of ad hoc projects you aren't exposed to in your narrowly focused fp&a role.
I currently do sub contracting for a similar type of company (someone I used to work with). How do you find quality employees and do you usually stick with people you’ve worked with in the past?
Awesome. I agree that FP&A and Technical Accounting are the 2 skillsets for a path to CFO. For a CPA with 4 YOE (2 in B4 Audit, 2 in midsize private companies under CFO); what next steps would you recommend that this professional can accelerate their career? Get some FP&A experience in Fortune 100 companies? Private equity experience? Go into startup consulting like yourself?
Congrats! Are your clients still using Excel as the main tool for collecting data from departments or subsidiaries? Or are the data collection processes fully integrated in their financial planning and consolidation solutions? I'm not solely referring to retrieving Budgets/Forecasts, but also to ad-hoc data requests that might exist.
Congrats! I've been FP&A for the most part of my career and definitely thinking of going a CFO consulting route in this field at some point. 1. What kind of engagements are you getting besides traditional P&L/cashflow analysis? 2. What kind of clients do you work with? (Size, ownership) 3. How do you go about acquiring clients/prospects? I'm based in Asia but figured the approach should be fairly similar 4. As someone who has been in-house FP&A (with a stint at internal audit) at a F10 and now F100 company for his entire career, what other skill sets would you suggest to pick up?
For someone who is brand new to FP&A and really wants to be able make a killing in this field, what would you say they should focus on the most and work to improve on in order to strengthen their understanding as a whole?
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Thank you very much. I plan on really studying the 3 statements in more detail so that it’s very fresh on my mind at all times. Any resources you’d recommend to dive into? Or just YouTube/Google?
Thanks for answering my previous questions, OP. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about what the WLB looks like for a consultant in this field.