Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 51. Lawyer, Auditor, Fractional CFO: The Scrappy Path with Rob Bankey

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51. Lawyer, Auditor, Fractional CFO: The Scrappy Path with Rob Bankey · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:00
  What's happening, everybody? Welcome to Scrappy What Successful. It's a show where I sit down
• 0:04
  with your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated
• 0:08
  or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jock Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple
• 0:13
  Consulting Firm and Pineapple Analyst AI, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun fact
• 0:17
  of the day, we get a DC-focused fun fact for our guest. the streets are
• 0:22
  alphabetical, A, B, C, D, but there is no J Street in DC. It's because
• 0:26
  back in the day in old English, I and J were basically the same, they're
• 0:31
  indistinguishable. So Cities Planner said, screw it, let's just move on to the next one.
• 0:35
  It's a scrappy fun fact, but that's neither here nor there. Today I'm joined by
• 0:40
  my friend Rob Bankey. He's the founder of Banking Co., it's a fractional CFO firm
• 0:44
  and transaction or yeah, transaction advisory practice. They serve growth stage companies in the SaaS
• 0:49
  and the fintech and the AI sectors. Super cool, super hot topic these days, obviously.
• 0:53
  He's held all the finance positions and previous roles leading up to owning his own
• 0:58
  company. Rob, I'm pumped to have you on, man. We live in the same world
• 1:02
  of this finance and AI. We know that you're successful. But the question we have
• 1:07
  for you today, do you think you fall more on the sophisticated side or more
• 1:11
  on the scrappy side?
• 1:13
  Yeah, absolutely. Great. Jack, great to be here. great to be on the show. Appreciate
• 1:17
  it. I'd I'd say I'd I'd, you know, try and build bridge the balance, but
• 1:21
  lean a little on the scrappy side. I'm I'm I'm get stuff done, you know,
• 1:25
  especially when working with early stage companies. Sometimes, you know, there's not time to perfect
• 1:30
  everything and it just needs to go out the door and and get get get
• 1:34
  out to the customer. So
• 1:36
  Yep, yep, I'm in the same boat. Cut it, print it, ship it, let's do
• 1:39
  it, and let's fail fast.
• 1:41
  Yep, exactly. Exactly.
• 1:43
  take us back to the beginning. Where'd you grow up? Did you have any entrepreneurs
• 1:46
  in the family?
• 1:47
  well, I grew up all over the world. My dad was actually in the army,
• 1:52
  so not an entrepreneur, but always, always exposed to new ideas, new places. born in
• 1:58
  in Germany, spent half my high school in K like right outside of Kansas City,
• 2:03
  Kansas, and then the other half in Tokyo, Japan. So if you can imagine two
• 2:09
  Yeah.
• 2:10
  I I can't imagine two more opposite worlds than those. Like and you
• 2:11
  Yeah.
• 2:13
  know, you know, I think It's probably what led me into this career is just
• 2:17
  the the adaptability that that you learn when you're, you know, just like toss tossed
• 2:22
  off the tough off the deep end into the pool and gotta gotta sink or
• 2:26
  swim.
• 2:27
  Exactly, yeah. Did you have that like new kid at school mentality where like, all
• 2:30
  right, here I'm at this new place that's totally different, but let's go make some
• 2:33
  friends?
• 2:34
  Yeah, well yeah, I mean it I think when you grow up like that, it
• 2:37
  kinda becomes like just a part of life. Like you don't know what it's like
• 2:41
  to have friends for more than three years because like either they're moving or you're
• 2:45
  moving. So like, you know, you you you find people, you meet, you connect, you
• 2:49
  you know, take do as much with that relationship as you can and then you
• 2:53
  know, it's on to the next thing. I I actually thought One of the weirdest
• 2:57
  things was going to college because like there were a lot of people that didn't
• 3:01
  have that background. Like, you know, a lot of people try to force friendships in
• 3:05
  that early on, you know, whether it's the roommate or like, you know, people across
• 3:09
  the hall or people from the safe city. I'm like, it, you know, it almost
• 3:13
  felt unnatural in that situation. Whereas like, you know, when you're doing it all the
• 3:17
  time, it's just kinda like, okay, you gravitate towards the ones that have similar interests
• 3:21
  or, you know, do things that you like, or whatever.
• 3:24
  Were you on base for all these different like pre-college schools?
• 3:29
  I mean it was a mix of on base and off base. Like some of
• 3:33
  you know, I think in in the US I tended not to live on base,
• 3:37
  but then like, you know, with the international ones we were always on on the
• 3:42
  on the installation.
• 3:43
  Okay, so there's always a little bit of community nearby, whether you're on base
• 3:46
  Yeah, yeah.
• 3:47
  or not. So you had something there. with this sort of, you know, hey, let's
• 3:49
  just get stuff done, kinda mentality. Did you have the entrepreneur spirit as a kid?
• 3:53
  Like were you running a lemonade stand selling candy, anything like that?
• 3:57
  Yeah, definitely well, so I was I was thinking about this because you I listened
• 4:01
  to a few episodes and like I was thinking about like some of the first
• 4:05
  things I did and it was actually like in high school, so in high school,
• 4:09
  I had I had some interesting business experiences, but one was like was like the
• 4:14
  the annual school play, right? And like nobody at at that time like what what
• 4:18
  we did is we like we were in the like T V programming class or
• 4:22
  like the TV like production class that was like one of our electives, which was
• 4:27
  cool. So we used that and we were kind of like, okay, well let's film
• 4:31
  the school play and sell videos to the parents. And so we did that. Then
• 4:35
  one, learned about price point because they were a little overpriced given the quality that
• 4:40
  we were able to produce. And two, we had some of the the the parents
• 4:44
  made out didn't feel comfortable paying our Panther Paw production video company. So they made
• 4:48
  the checks out to the school. And the school was like, well You know what,
• 4:53
  you guys used our technology to do it. So we're just gonna keep these checks.
• 4:57
  So it's
• 4:58
  Yeah.
• 4:59
  like there's all kinds of lessons in like one, like, you know, make sure you
• 5:02
  get the like contract and agreement up front, make sure like you're like talking to
• 5:06
  the right people, make sure that you have like your vendors locked down and like
• 5:10
  know who you're talking to and have those agreements and like also like you know,
• 5:14
  who has the money controls the power, like you know, check their names on the
• 5:17
  check, like there's not a whole lot you can do. So it's like it's a
• 5:21
  great experience and like you know building and learning from from those types of things
• 5:25
  all my life.
• 5:26
  That's awesome. I like I laugh at the school board coming down and be like,
• 5:29
  Well, it's our IP, so we own it.
• 5:32
  Yeah.
• 5:35
  that's great. did you collect anything as a kid? Maybe that you know do you
• 5:38
  just enjoyed or that you thought would make you rich one day?
• 5:42
  Hmm. I think. I mean, I definitely did like, you know, I think I did,
• 5:48
  you know, my my generation had like Marvel trading cards at one
• 5:53
  Sure.
• 5:54
  point. I don't think I did anything really more than that that I can think
• 6:02
  of. But I did
• 6:05
  Okay.
• 6:06
  it, like I did end up getting like one of like the special like hologram
• 6:08
  cards, like one of like one in like a thousand or something. And I was
• 6:12
  like, was worth like, I don't know, maybe like three hundred bucks or something.
• 6:16
  Yeah.
• 6:17
  So which was a lot for like a card. And then like I I told
• 6:19
  my parents about it and then what they put it in like they got like
• 6:22
  a case for it and then they put it in a safe deposit box. So
• 6:25
  I never saw it again. I
• 6:27
  Okay.
• 6:28
  w I actually have no idea what I whatever happened to it. I I'd be
• 6:30
  curious to see one, if it still has any kind of value, and two,
• 6:34
  Yeah.
• 6:35
  like if it exists somewhere, you know, in my parents' safe deposit box.
• 6:39
  That's funny. That's my I I love that because your parents at least had some
• 6:43
  force I'd be like, hey, like this is worth a couple bucks, let's protect it.
• 6:47
  My dad's generation had he had like a Joe DiMaggio rookie card and he put
• 6:52
  Wow.
• 6:53
  it as like the sound thing on the back of his bike tire so like
• 6:56
  it it would flick every so he was like the cooler the card, the better
• 6:59
  the sound.
• 7:00
  Ha ha ha ha.
• 7:03
  okay, how are the grades in high school?
• 7:07
  I would say, and it's always been kind of my mentality, is like get get
• 7:13
  the most for be as efficient as possible, I guess.
• 7:18
  Love it.
• 7:19
  And so like for the effort I put forth, I had amazing grades.
• 7:23
  Okay.
• 7:25
  Where they like, you know, and I I think there's also like a bit of
• 7:28
  transition. Like I think there's a bit of maturity, like very early on in in
• 7:32
  high school, I think I put less effort to it and then by the end
• 7:36
  it was like, you know, a s straight eights or whatever. I think I did
• 7:40
  up near the top of the class, but not the absolute top.
• 7:43
  Okay. Still the efficiency game, that's smart to have as a high
• 7:45
  Yeah.
• 7:46
  schooler. Like I eventually figured that out in college, but in high school I was
• 7:48
  like, I gotta work extra hard and do all this stuff. But the
• 7:51
  Mm.
• 7:52
  end of the day, like the efficiency route was the way smarter route to go.
• 7:55
  Yeah. No, I've been I've been long term efficiency. in high s or in college
• 8:00
  I actually got five years of credits and four years. So like
• 8:04
  Wow.
• 8:05
  total that got the check checked some boxes but only, you know, cut the tuition
• 8:10
  by a good amount. So I was I was happy.
• 8:14
  Okay, and where did you go to college?
• 8:16
  I went to Notre Dame.
• 8:17
  Very nice. Okay, good school. what was the major?
• 8:22
  I well I started off in engineering. was good at math, but ultimately ended up
• 8:27
  in accounting, but with a guess it was a second major in Japanese.
• 8:33
  Whoa. I guess from Tokyo days, I guess that makes sense.
• 8:35
  Yeah. Being like having having the the experience in Japan.
• 8:39
  Okay.
• 8:40
  I kinda wanted although I didn't st when I was in Japan I didn't study
• 8:43
  Japanese and then I left, came back here and studied Japanese all through throughout college
• 8:47
  and then got to use it like maybe like one summer and then my parents
• 8:51
  moved back to the US and
• 8:53
  Okay. Do you do any international accounting or anything like that?
• 8:58
  Well, so I did, so I was kind of interesting story, I guess. When
• 9:04
  Sure.
• 9:05
  I graduated, it was the collapse of Arthur Anderson. And I was actually hired by
• 9:08
  Arthur Anderson my senior year. So like senior year was thought I was set, like
• 9:12
  have the offer letter, have everything. January comes around, they like pay pay the the
• 9:17
  signing bonus, and they're like, don't worry, you know, we'll be around six months from
• 9:21
  now. Well, six months from now came and went and they were gone. And so
• 9:26
  then I like moved to New York City because I'm like, what else am I
• 9:30
  gonna do? And I had a friend that was like staying there over the summer.
• 9:35
  So I like you know, had a had an apartment there and ended up working
• 9:39
  in like a financial services firm, but I was still kind of trying to get
• 9:44
  back into the like the big four. Because you know it's just good good early
• 9:48
  career training and and stuff. And ended up they saw my resume and they're like
• 9:52
  hey this guy understands both accounting and Japanese. We have this practice for accounting in
• 9:57
  Jap Japanese specifically based in Chicago. So a lot of Japanese companies headquartered in Chicago.
• 10:01
  Why don't you come to Chicago, be part of that practice? And you know, really
• 10:06
  got got to use the the cultural knowledge and the insight working on those companies
• 10:10
  and, you know, got to spend a good time in Chicago.
• 10:14
  Wow, that is the best case I've ever heard of using all of your majors.
• 10:19
  Right. I put you up.
• 10:22
  I talked to so many people and they're like, Yeah, I majored in whatever and
• 10:26
  I couldn't even tell you anything about it, but you went straight into it. Okay.
• 10:30
  So the first job, you're doing exactly what you set out to do. Did you
• 10:35
  like the accounting world in ac like after studying it?
• 10:38
  I mean, I think it's a great knowledge base and base builder. Like, being in
• 10:43
  audit is like so frustrating because like, you know, I by by my nature, I
• 10:48
  feel like I'm a doer. I want to like help and like correct things. In
• 10:53
  audit, you know, typically you're three to six months after something happened, you're telling them
• 10:58
  not real time, they don't have the opportunity to. correct it. They're like, okay, we
• 11:04
  made a mistake. Maybe we won't make it next time. But it's not really
• 11:09
  Yeah.
• 11:10
  helpful because it's six month it was six months ago and so much has changed
• 11:13
  since then. Like I don't even know if it would really exist again anyway.
• 11:17
  Right.
• 11:18
  so I found that part frustrating. I loved working with the clients and just like
• 11:22
  meeting different people and seeing different parts of like organizations. You know, there was some
• 11:27
  I worked at like some of the big ones like GM, you know, and did
• 11:33
  like factory counts and that kind of stuff. And then there were like I worked
• 11:38
  on Con Agra and had to do inventory counts of meat products, so raw, in
• 11:43
  process finished products. So I saw
• 11:46
  Yeah, yeah.
• 11:47
  pepperoni from stage one to stage, you know, final. literally,
• 11:50
  Wow. Literally how the sausage is made. Okay.
• 11:54
  yeah, literally all the songs we've made now. so and and that was you know
• 11:59
  just really interesting seeing kind of like what business is like, you know, on the
• 12:04
  inside. And
• 12:05
  Okay.
• 12:06
  I loved, you know, having different clients and and change like having that change kind
• 12:08
  of consistently and just like going from one to the next and the next. That
• 12:12
  was great.
• 12:13
  Yeah. It gives you some good to your point, some base level knowledge of hey,
• 12:18
  finance is finance, you know, numbers are numbers to some extent, but let me get
• 12:23
  some different industry experience. Does the advisory come into play at all then?
• 12:28
  as far as like when I like was I doing a lot of advisory when
• 12:32
  I was doing that stuff? a little bit. Like you know, we would find things
• 12:36
  like, you know, how they were structuring their inventory or how their like inventory processes
• 12:41
  were and whether they were capturing them in the right way and were there better
• 12:45
  ways to capture it so they can get better insights. So a little bit,
• 12:50
  Okay.
• 12:51
  you know, never as much, I think, as would be ideal, especially from my perspective.
• 12:56
  Okay, totally fair. And so now you live in a very tech world but finance
• 13:00
  side of tech world.
• 13:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:03
  where does that come from? Do you just see how the world is going, or
• 13:05
  did you get exposure to some cool clients in that? Like where does that come
• 13:08
  from?
• 13:09
  I mean, it it's a mixed path. So after I was at Deloitte, I left
• 13:13
  and went to law school because I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. And
• 13:17
  that's the reason I ended up in Washington, DC. Came to law school here, specifically
• 13:22
  because the school I went to, Catholic had a program that was like, if you
• 13:26
  want to work at the Securities and Exchange Commission, like this professor was like the
• 13:31
  guy. He wrote the book on broker dealer regulation. And you know. He had started
• 13:35
  this program and I'm like, that's really cool. And like I looked at, you know,
• 13:40
  at Deloitte, like, you know, the people came from all over the place, but the
• 13:44
  ones that were very successful were like kind of ones that came out of these
• 13:48
  like known programs to do like finance and accounting stuff. And so like I wanted
• 13:53
  to replicate that on the law side. So I did that. I went there. ended
• 13:57
  up being his like TA is not the word, but like I helped him write,
• 14:02
  like update his book. Like so
• 14:04
  Okay.
• 14:05
  like I I like I you know it was I went there with intent and
• 14:08
  I achieved that intent.
• 14:10
  Nice.
• 14:11
  ended up interning at the Securities and Exchange Commission and did not like it. I
• 14:14
  did not like doing that kind of legal work.
• 14:17
  Okay.
• 14:21
  and then I like did some other like work for a firm too, and I
• 14:24
  did not like that legal work either. So
• 14:26
  Okay.
• 14:27
  past the bar, I'm still technically a barred attorney, but What I missed was kind
• 14:31
  of like the forward facing, front facing client stuff. You know, I think lawyers sometimes,
• 14:36
  especially in those the the stuff that I was doing was litigation. So it's like
• 14:41
  after the fact kind of like investigations, document review, chasing down like, you know, bad
• 14:46
  stuff. It felt more like the audit world, whereas like again, stuff that already happened
• 14:50
  is not stuff you can influence. I really loved the the aspect of being able
• 14:55
  to influence the outcome.
• 14:57
  Okay.
• 14:59
  And so I left that. went to a consulting firm that worked on IPO readiness.
• 15:03
  So getting companies ready to to IPO. One of their my clients at that firm
• 15:08
  like ended up being a tech startup and an early stage tech startup. They were
• 15:13
  you know the firm the it was mostly the IPA readiness agrope but they also
• 15:17
  had this like company that needed an audit. They had like a bank loan or
• 15:22
  something and they needed an audit and needed the finance done and they had they
• 15:27
  had like a bookkeeper and the bookkeeper like left on a trip to like Africa
• 15:31
  and then never came back. So they
• 15:34
  Okay.
• 15:35
  just had and and it was like six months or something before they like had
• 15:39
  had like they hadn't done their finances in six months and they had this like
• 15:43
  deadline for this like bank loan to get done in like, I don't know, three
• 15:47
  or four months. So they hired
• 15:49
  Holy
• 15:50
  the the firm I was working at and like I was like I like kind
• 15:53
  of ground that out, got it done, like got all their finances up to date,
• 15:57
  got them through an audit. and then they're like, well, did a pretty good job.
• 16:02
  What do you think about coming and working here and just like running finance of
• 16:06
  this company? Well, you know, like and it was like a time where, like, you
• 16:11
  know, 20 years ago, where, you know, there wasn't a lot of the tech companies
• 16:15
  weren't big yet. Like Google wasn't like maybe it just gone public, but like it
• 16:19
  was still kind of like cutting edge and like, Is a cool office. They had
• 16:24
  like razor scooters and ping pong tables and you the the keg in the corner.
• 16:28
  I'm like, that doesn't happen. That's not what I'm seeing at GM and Con Agra.
• 16:33
  That's not the style of business.
• 16:35
  Right.
• 16:36
  I'm like, this seems like a place that I want to work. Right. So like,
• 16:40
  Okay.
• 16:41
  I'm like, yeah, I'll I'll do that. Turns out that was a great decision because
• 16:44
  that company ultimately IPO'd. So like I took
• 16:47
  Nice.
• 16:48
  them from that like early stage first never been audited to filing financials on the
• 16:52
  New York Stock Exchange. working with Goldman Sachs on the the filing and just like
• 16:57
  you know scaling the company between those two things. And so that
• 17:02
  Wow.
• 17:03
  was that was really cool. And I'm like, that's when you do that, there's no
• 17:07
  way you can't get the the like tech bug, right? Like you you you have
• 17:12
  this amazing experience. You're like, I gotta do that again.
• 17:15
  Yeah. All right. So we go from potential lawyer to missing people in Africa to
• 17:21
  then tech IPO. Okay, this is awesome. I love it. all right, so then you
• 17:27
  run in finance. When do you start your own company?
• 17:32
  so I did that and then I decided like, hey, what I haven't done is
• 17:35
  kind of the really early stage. So
• 17:37
  Yeah.
• 17:38
  like in in public companies, I I love them. They provide such such value, but
• 17:42
  like especially kind of like after the the public part, you get into this like
• 17:47
  a lot of it is compliance work and it's like s Sarbanes Oxley type testing
• 17:52
  and like that just doesn't again, we've reverted to like stuff that you can't really
• 17:57
  influence and you're just like looking back. And like, yeah,
• 18:01
  Right.
• 18:02
  you can change the like documentation of the procedures, but it's not like that's not
• 18:06
  gonna change
• 18:07
  Not exciting, yeah.
• 18:08
  you know, a whole a whole lot. And so like wanted to start with a
• 18:12
  like really early stage business. So there was a company that was had had raised
• 18:17
  seed money, was kind of growing quickly and looking for looking to close out a
• 18:22
  series A. They're hey, you why don't you come on here as a contractor part-time,
• 18:26
  help us close that out, and then maybe after the series A, you come on
• 18:31
  full-time. And that's that's you know, found it interesting because it I hadn't, you know,
• 18:36
  by when I was hired by OPAW, which is the company went public, it was
• 18:40
  like I don't think they I think maybe they hadn't finalized their series B or
• 18:45
  they just gotten to series B, but they had been through a couple stages already.
• 18:50
  They were already, you know, found part part product market fit and were kind of
• 18:54
  looking at scale. And I hadn't done
• 18:57
  Okay.
• 18:58
  the early stage, so I went to the early stage company. I was there for
• 19:02
  about four years, grew that company, ran a dual process, does it do do series
• 19:08
  B, does it sell? Ultimately decided to sell to what would be a public company.
• 19:14
  Got some interesting stories there too. but then after that, like, you know, really got
• 19:19
  enjoyed kind of the the work with the early stage companies and helping people and
• 19:25
  founders figure stuff out. And that's kind of when I started doing it on my
• 19:31
  Okay. I mean talk about like immediate impact. A s a startup, an early stage,
• 19:34
  whatever, they're saying, Hey, we're we're running a million miles an hour in some direction.
• 19:38
  We just don't know what direction it is yet.
• 19:41
  Yeah.
• 19:42
  And you're coming and be able to give a little guidance. Okay.
• 19:44
  Yeah.
• 19:45
  how do you get your first clients?
• 19:49
  well it's interesting. So after after I sold that company, you know, I was kind
• 19:52
  of trying to figure out what I want to do. And then like a my
• 19:56
  old CFO kind of called me up and he said, Hey, I made an investment
• 20:00
  in this company. They need somebody. They haven't they don't really have anybody doing their
• 20:04
  financials. Would you be willing to help out? I'm like, Yeah, I can, you know,
• 20:08
  absolutely help this company out, you know, part time. And then like maybe like three
• 20:12
  months later, somebody else called up and said, Hey, I need some help. I don't
• 20:15
  need it full time, but I need it part time. I know you do this
• 20:19
  kind of stuff where you're willing to help me and like, yeah, definitely. And so
• 20:23
  then I just kinda like, you know, for the first couple of years just kinda,
• 20:27
  you know, continued like that, growing the business and it's been it's been awesome.
• 20:31
  great. So just organic referral type connections.
• 20:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 20:35
  Okay. Did you have an ICP, an ideal client at the time, or you're just
• 20:38
  like, hey, somebody's knocking on my door, let's see if I can help.
• 20:42
  I mean, I d I don't know that I did, but both of them were
• 20:45
  like series A st style companies. So I think they've just gotten to the point
• 20:49
  where, you know, you can do it on your own for a while, but then
• 20:53
  you realize like I've got the money, I need to scale. I wanna focus on
• 20:56
  the scaling bit and not on like a like the back office stuff. And so
• 21:00
  like, you know, who d who do I know that can help out there? And
• 21:04
  it's kind of naturally
• 21:05
  Gotcha, okay.
• 21:07
  created my ICP, I guess.
• 21:09
  Okay. a very kind of a who not how principle somewhat. Okay. early days, did
• 21:14
  you have any like do you have any quote unquote easy clients or thought that
• 21:19
  you thought that they would be an easy client that turned out to be a
• 21:24
  total nightmare or lose
• 21:26
  No, never.
• 21:27
  you money?
• 21:27
  I like to be honest, like the the good and the bad of startups is
• 21:31
  that they're hard, right? Like
• 21:33
  Yeah.
• 21:34
  there there is like ever like even when you think, this one's, you know, like
• 21:38
  you know, repeat founder knows what he's doing, knows the industry, like has had success
• 21:43
  there before, like even like those you know, has big investor names behind them, like
• 21:47
  there's just so much they can go wrong. And like so much that like you
• 21:52
  can't predict. And like whatever your ideal is, the number one thing that you know
• 21:57
  is like that's it's not gonna be that. Whatever I build the model is, not
• 22:01
  the only thing that I am sure of is not going to be whatever I
• 22:06
  tell you on day one, and it's not gonna be tell what I tell you
• 22:11
  Yeah.
• 22:12
  on day 60. It may be direction. hopefully it's very much directionally there, but it's
• 22:15
  not, it's not, you know, there's no accuracy here because we don't know what we
• 22:19
  don't.
• 22:20
  Right, okay. it's it's a fun like again scrappy I suppose, just kinda rolling with
• 22:26
  the punches,
• 22:27
  Yeah.
• 22:28
  seeing where we go kind of thing. are you coming in to help steer the
• 22:31
  ship in those cases?
• 22:33
  Yeah, I mean, normally normally I'm, you know, pretty heavily involved with the management team.
• 22:37
  Like we're making resourcing decisions. Do we hire the sales guy? Do we hire the
• 22:42
  marketing person first? Like, you know, do we double down on R and D and
• 22:46
  hire more engineers and you know, wait a few months before we go to market?
• 22:51
  Just go to market now and build the wait list and hope that R and
• 22:55
  D catches up with the products ready by the time we're we're selling it. You
• 23:00
  know, like yeah, absolutely. Always you know, I think I think it's hard to do
• 23:05
  the finances of a company if you don't understand the company. And so you have
• 23:09
  to truly understand the company. And then you have this unique perspective of you're really
• 23:14
  beyond the CEO, the one that has a holistic view of what's going on, because
• 23:18
  other parts, like, you know, they live in their silos, kind of like they never
• 23:23
  really interact. Like sales, sales does sales, you know, RD builds the product, but like,
• 23:28
  you know, do th they intersect. And most of the time, especially at their early
• 23:32
  stage, that's only the CEO, especially like First-time CEOs, like they're not great at information
• 23:37
  sharing. And you know, so it's it's partly like, okay, they can share that information
• 23:41
  with me, and then I can provide a better dispersal of that information and just
• 23:46
  like bring everybody on board and let them know kind of how things are going
• 23:51
  and like bring better transparency to the organization overall so you get better.
• 23:55
  Very consigliary type role.
• 23:57
  Yeah.
• 23:59
  with your clients or even with your own business, have being in charge of finance,
• 24:02
  have you had to play the credit card timing game where you wait till tomorrow
• 24:05
  to charge something because that's next month's statement?
• 24:07
  yeah, these are startups all the time. What what can I what can I put
• 24:12
  I figured there'd be a layup.
• 24:14
  on there? Like I remember I remember that that first company that we ultimately went
• 24:17
  public on, like when I first started, you know, there's a there's also a VP
• 24:21
  of finance and he's like, I need you to FedEx this to the customer right
• 24:25
  now. Like just like I need you like we signed this deal, I need you
• 24:29
  to print this out, and I need you to like go to FedEx and FedEx
• 24:32
  because it's like, you know, one, it was 20-ish years ago. So like people were
• 24:36
  still using paper. But also it was like their c their main customer was utility
• 24:40
  companies. So they operated on these like antiquated things. But it was just like, this
• 24:44
  needs to get in the mail and it needs to get like pay the like
• 24:47
  fifty dollar fee to get it there tomorrow. So that we can collect it in
• 24:51
  like, you know, that we have payroll in like a month when we'd run out,
• 24:55
  you know.
• 24:56
  Right. I'm sure you got some other good hustle stories, like any any wild marketing
• 24:59
  stories from some of the companies that you worked with or any of those kind
• 25:02
  of like, all right, well let's just get this together and we're gonna ship it
• 25:06
  'cause we got an investor presentation tomorrow kind of thing. I'm sure you got plenty
• 25:09
  of them. I'm putting you on the spot, I know, but
• 25:12
  yeah, I yeah, none none that I'm like that are like coming off the top
• 25:16
  of my head, but I I do like there's just in in startups there's just
• 25:20
  like so many real unrealistic expectations. It's like, you know, one f one client recently
• 25:25
  is just like, Hey, I just I just signed the term sheet, but they don't
• 25:29
  have a mo I don't have a model. Can you build that in the next
• 25:34
  like twelve hours so that I can send it to them. I'm
• 25:38
  Ha ha ha.
• 25:40
  just like, well, we could try.
• 25:43
  Yep, there we go. I love it. give us give us some startup advice. So
• 25:47
  if if somebody's out there listening, they've got a new startup, let's say it's in
• 25:52
  the AY AI world as everything is now. Is it focus on the the overall
• 25:57
  goal first? You lay that out. Do you focus on selling? Because now the building
• 26:02
  the thing is the hard part, but selling the thing is the hard part. Like
• 26:07
  Mm.
• 26:08
  where's where's some initial guidance for a startup who's brand brand?
• 26:10
  I think I think it is get into the customer's head. You have to you
• 26:16
  have to do that first. You have to understand their pain and you have to
• 26:22
  understand how they're thinking about things in general. And that will be the key to
• 26:28
  both selling your product and creating your product. In that if you focus on something
• 26:34
  that is like, That from their perspective is their problem, it's way easier to sell
• 26:40
  and it's way easier to build on. And then like make sure that in the
• 26:46
  early stages, you're getting their domain expertise too. Like, you know, early often in front
• 26:52
  of the customer, I would say, like the the more often you can do that.
• 26:58
  Now, don't do everything they say, because like, you know. the the whole point is
• 27:04
  like you you want to create something unique that solves it not only for them
• 27:10
  and not just for them. You're not building custom software, right? But you are building
• 27:17
  something that is a consistent pain across your customer base that really challenges them. And
• 27:23
  I think, this is something I need to solve and this is what I want
• 27:29
  to do.
• 27:30
  How do you get alignment from there? So you're like, all right, I'm in I'm
• 27:32
  in the brain of my customer. I've had some really good conversations. And
• 27:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:36
  now we need to do a whole lot of product updates and we need to
• 27:39
  sell it with this sort of language and stuff like that. You know, as as
• 27:42
  the visionary, I'm assuming you work mostly with the founder, right? You work mostly with
• 27:45
  the founder.
• 27:46
  What's that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:50
  So you're working with them and they've got this vision, they're inside, they know their
• 27:53
  customer inside and out. And then how do you get alignment across that? Like presumably
• 27:57
  small teams that just like, hey, here's what we're all doing, who wants to take
• 28:01
  what kind of thing, or is it a little bit less wild west than that?
• 28:05
  Yeah, I mean I think, you know, this is like I think you know, it's
• 28:09
  kind of management one on one is like set your North Star and make sure
• 28:13
  you communicate that. Like what is your what is the goal that you're trying to
• 28:18
  get to and get your team to align about that? Because if you do that,
• 28:22
  it makes every single subsequent decision easier. Because it's like, does it align with that
• 28:26
  thing that I want to accomplish? Yes or no? If no, it can wait. If
• 28:31
  yes, how like how important is it versus the other thing that the other things
• 28:35
  that are also yes? And that will get you there faster, probably not as fast
• 28:40
  as you want to be there, but faster. And it will get you there with
• 28:44
  you know kind of without the like cycles of like, hey, we should think about
• 28:48
  this, hey, we should think about this, hey, we should think about this. And that
• 28:53
  happens a lot in those like early stage startups. And I think you know, a
• 28:57
  lot of early first time founders also struggle with you gotta focus. You gotta make
• 29:02
  the decision, you gotta commit to the decision and then you get to make another
• 29:06
  decision, but like you have to follow through on the first one.
• 29:10
  Right. Yeah, you gotta keep them continually linked as well.
• 29:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:15
  That's kind of the hard part. What's like a I mean this is this is
• 29:19
  a broad question, but again, like let's go AI startup. What's a reasonable time frame
• 29:23
  that people should expect to like get their first actual paying customer? Is it is
• 29:27
  it the first week, the first month, the first six months?
• 29:30
  I think I think first six months. I think
• 29:32
  First six months.
• 29:33
  I think, you know, even with the ability to build very fast, like unless you
• 29:37
  have pre-existing customer relationships, which you you may and it's probably a better route to
• 29:41
  go. But if you do, like great, and get them in the first month. But
• 29:46
  if not, like, you know, I think even I think people underestimate the time frame,
• 29:50
  not even just to build, but then to like reach out and to get people
• 29:54
  on board and like schedule schedules and like You know, if you're doing it during
• 29:59
  a summer, somebody's on vacation. Like, you know, like it that stuff takes time. And
• 30:03
  I think, you know, a lot like the golden my my golden rule of startups
• 30:07
  is tell me what you think it's gonna take and then double it because that's
• 30:12
  what it that's closer to reality.
• 30:14
  It's like building a house. Double the time, double the money.
• 30:17
  Yeah, yeah.
• 30:19
  Okay. all right. So in your advisory capacity, one of the things that I often
• 30:23
  not struggle with, like talk about with other consultants is that like continuously proving value,
• 30:27
  right? So we come in, we're analysts, we help put the data picture together and
• 30:32
  all that good stuff and And we kind of say, hey, we're continuously proving value
• 30:36
  because your dashboards are up and running or we're providing insights
• 30:40
  Yeah.
• 30:41
  or whatever it is, right? From a finance perspective for these startups, what is your
• 30:46
  like kind of kinda like continuously proving value mechanism?
• 30:49
  Yeah, I mean it's it's it's tough because you know, I think when you come
• 30:53
  in the first time, especially an early stage startup, you're like setting up systems, like
• 30:57
  they're seeing things every day, like, this makes my life easier, this makes my life
• 31:01
  easier, this makes my life easier easier. And then once you get to a point
• 31:06
  where you're actually good finance, which is things are delivered on time, they're predictable, they're
• 31:10
  accurate, it almost feels like you're no longer delivering value. But that in itself is
• 31:14
  the value, like it's the
• 31:16
  Right.
• 31:17
  trains running on time. Like because the trains run, you have access to everything that
• 31:21
  you like have. Like you don't know or you can't remember what it's like when
• 31:26
  that didn't happen, you know? And so
• 31:29
  Right.
• 31:30
  like I think I think there is like a propensity to be like, they're you
• 31:34
  know, I'm not getting continuous value. The good thing about working with early stage companies
• 31:39
  is like they're changing so much. The the value kind of is changing too. Like
• 31:43
  it's always like, we need to remodel this, we need to rethink this, like. You
• 31:48
  know, if we do this one thing, like how does that impact our business? So
• 31:52
  you're constantly like iterating on top of what's already presented. you know, which isn't, you
• 31:57
  know, for I I can't say that I've ever worked for like a stable company,
• 32:01
  right?
• 32:02
  Yeah.
• 32:03
  They're either they're either taking off or they're like, you know, are we gonna make
• 32:07
  it to the to the next to the next point? But there's never been like,
• 32:11
  yeah, just kind of like, you know, do the thing and collect the checks. It
• 32:15
  doesn't doesn't really exist in this world.
• 32:18
  Right.
• 32:21
  but like, you know, just always on, you know, deeper and deeper and deeper understanding
• 32:26
  the business, providing more and more and more value and more and more. What's what's
• 32:31
  the next level of insight? What's the next level of insight? Like where are we
• 32:36
  like, where are our blind spots and how do we keep, you know, incrementally decreasing
• 32:41
  those blind spots?
• 32:42
  Okay. Okay. I like it. That's I really like the hey, the trains are now
• 32:46
  running on time. That's that's the value, right? I think that's a really tangible thing.
• 32:51
  and it's yeah, the deeper you go. Okay, all right, this makes sense. So advisory
• 32:55
  in the world of AI. what I often say is like the expertise has to
• 33:00
  be there. The strategic advisory is the thing that provides the value. It's not the
• 33:04
  building
• 33:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:06
  of the thing anymore. It sounds like very much what you're doing. You're coming in
• 33:09
  and like initially you have to build the systems and set up the infrastructure and
• 33:13
  all that stuff, but then it's that true holistic advisory, it sounds like.
• 33:17
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 33:20
  Okay, perfect. Perfect. All right, let me hit you with some lightning round scrappy verse
• 33:23
  sophisticated questions. All
• 33:24
  Right. Sounds good.
• 33:26
  right, take me inside the office. how many monitors do you have set up on
• 33:31
  your desk?
• 33:32
  just one, but it is very, very big.
• 33:34
  Okay. Are you doing like multi split screen on it?
• 33:38
  yeah, normally at least at least two, sometimes three.
• 33:43
  Okay. Okay. any any ridiculous lighting setup going on, like a lamp on a bar
• 33:48
  stool in the corner or something like that.
• 33:51
  No, I I have this like I have this like one lamp that my wife
• 33:55
  and I bought like from like design within reach. So like it was kind of
• 33:59
  like high end, like when we first kind of moved to DC and I was
• 34:03
  still a law student, so I couldn't make any money. And it was like the
• 34:07
  whole like point of it was like, it's this super efficient light that will last
• 34:11
  forever. So I so that I still have my desk. I don't actually ever use
• 34:15
  it because the light it
• 34:17
  Yeah.
• 34:18
  like shines is not very good. Because it is like, you know, a super efficient
• 34:21
  light that'll last forever and like barely lights up what I'm doing, but it's there.
• 34:24
  I can
• 34:25
  Yeah. Here we go, let's check it out. Very fancy looking, yes. what is the
• 34:31
  most unique thing in your office? Looks like we got a pretty good bookshelf back
• 34:38
  there. Any any good stories from the office?
• 34:42
  Most unique thing. interesting.
• 34:50
  There's always there's always something that like is just kinda there, but there's a story
• 34:53
  behind it or something. If we can't find anything.
• 34:55
  Yeah, I mean I like I mean, I don't know if you can see up
• 34:58
  at the top here, these are the the deal cards from some of the sales.
• 35:01
  So like this one's
• 35:02
  nice.
• 35:03
  this one's like Teneco, which was a automotive company I worked at at Devoit. They
• 35:07
  did a big debt offering. And then this was OPAR, the public company, and then
• 35:11
  this is
• 35:12
  Nice.
• 35:13
  Contactually, which was the the startup that I worked at. So like when when the
• 35:17
  deals close, the the bankers give you these little trinkets, you know, as part of
• 35:21
  their like fifty mil five hundred million dollar fee. They're like, here's, you know, here's
• 35:25
  a ten dollar piece of plastic that you can put on your shelf. But it's,
• 35:29
  you know,
• 35:30
  Right. It's kind of like a investment banker tombstone esque.
• 35:35
  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 35:37
  All right, very nice. does your phone currently have any cracks or screen issues?
• 35:43
  No, it's been pretty good. I had my my youngest son dropped dropped it when
• 35:48
  I first like within a week of me getting it and like shattered
• 35:53
  Yeah.
• 35:54
  the screen and then I had it replaced and it's been good since then. But
• 35:57
  like it's definitely on its second screen.
• 35:59
  Okay, okay. and then in your default browser, do you use the bookmarks bar and
• 36:05
  if so, do you use like folders on there or specific links?
• 36:11
  I so I use the bookmarks bar and I have like groups by client. So
• 36:16
  like it'll and and they're color coded, so tab groups by client. So like if
• 36:21
  I'm working on a particular client, I like click the bookmarks bar, go to purple,
• 36:26
  and that's this client. I go to like green and that's like my internal business.
• 36:31
  I go to like blue and that's like this client. So like opens like four
• 36:36
  tabs with like that company's email address, maybe so like common, like you know, like
• 36:41
  their mo their their cash forecast model and like maybe like their like expense system
• 36:46
  or something.
• 36:47
  Okay. It's pretty classy, pretty sophisticated. you mentioned the cash forecast model, a world I
• 36:51
  live in all too much. How often are you in Excel? It's every day. It's
• 36:55
  still every day, okay.
• 36:57
  every day. Every day. Yeah, still every day.
• 37:02
  Does each company get a unique cash flow forecast, or do you have it somewhat
• 37:06
  templated?
• 37:07
  I I have I have a templatized, so like we're doing the same thing generally.
• 37:11
  So like but like there are some like we'll build we'll build out, you know,
• 37:16
  certain tabs based on that comp like one company has like, you know, is using
• 37:20
  debt and they want to like how to you know, what things are they allocating
• 37:25
  essentially to the debt pool versus like the cash pool. So like the view specific
• 37:30
  things in there. But there's a general format that we'll follow across.
• 37:34
  Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay. take me inside the inbox. How many emails unread is too
• 37:41
  many?
• 37:42
  There's never there's no there's no limit.
• 37:45
  The limit does not exist. It sounds like you've got a specific client email for
• 37:50
  each client, right? Okay.
• 37:52
  Yeah, yeah.
• 37:53
  Yeah, that's a lot to manage.
• 37:56
  It it it is, I mean it's good, like, you know, it it does make
• 38:00
  me feel embedded with the teams and like, you know, makes me more accessible than
• 38:04
  a lot of other people that only have like their own, you know, company email.
• 38:08
  but it is like, you know, again, like when you when you have like ten
• 38:13
  clients, like ten ten inbox is a lot to manage. And I think
• 38:17
  Definitely.
• 38:18
  I think my phone I at one point it capped out at like ten or
• 38:21
  twelve accounts. So that I like.
• 38:23
  man.
• 38:25
  Yeah, to like cut cut some ones that weren't as active to bring
• 38:29
  Right.
• 38:30
  on the new ones that were more active.
• 38:31
  Okay. have you ever had to do a thing where like, all right, well we've
• 38:35
  never done this, but we're very confident. So a hundred percent yes, client, we can
• 38:40
  totally do this full confident.
• 38:42
  yeah, last week I think.
• 38:46
  There we go. I love it. Are you traveling for work at all?
• 38:52
  Fortunately not very often is actually, you know, I started working from home pre pre
• 38:57
  COVID and I can say probably, you know, I can count on like I think,
• 39:03
  you know, ten fingers the number of times that I've actually traveled to client locations,
• 39:09
  which I kind of like because I don't, you know, have like I feel like
• 39:14
  traveling is just such eats so much time. But it also makes me sad. Like
• 39:20
  one of the things I love about, you know, consulting and was like, you know,
• 39:26
  going to the plant and like seeing the sausage being made, literally.
• 39:31
  Yeah, okay. That that makes sense. So I the efficiency in me is like, why
• 39:35
  would I ever travel? It just doesn't really make sense. And then I'm like, but
• 39:39
  it's kind of fun when I'm there.
• 39:41
  Yeah, exactly.
• 39:44
  do you use contracts for adjustments? Like a you know, a scope creep, hey, we're
• 39:47
  gonna take on a new thing. Are you always contracting it? Okay.
• 39:51
  no. Definitely not. It's like it's an email conversation. If if it's you know, if
• 39:55
  it's not a verbal conversation, it's an email conversation. So
• 39:59
  Okay. Okay. how many phone numbers do you have?
• 40:04
  Just one. Well, I
• 40:05
  Wow, okay.
• 40:06
  I take that back. I have two. I have like of the of the the
• 40:09
  the one that you know works and there's like I have like a sustainable line
• 40:13
  that I put on like government documents, like if they ever need to call those
• 40:17
  like the outward facing.
• 40:18
  Okay. Okay. last one here. Do you recommend books or do you recommend podcasts?
• 40:25
  What books? What was the
• 40:27
  Do you recommend books or do you recommend podcasts? Neither is okay too.
• 40:37
  no, I b like I would say both. Like I think
• 40:40
  Okay.
• 40:41
  the the mediums are you know they're different but and they're engaging in their own
• 40:47
  way.
• 40:48
  Fair, fair, fair, fair. Okay. what do you got going on for the next twelve
• 40:53
  months? What's getting you excited?
• 40:55
  you know, a couple of new clients coming on. That's that's always exciting. do have
• 41:00
  a family vacation coming up and taking a road trip up to Canada and Montreal
• 41:05
  and Quebec City. So like it's been a while since I've been up there and
• 41:11
  and looking forward to to revisiting those places thirty years on, twenty years on.
• 41:16
  It's a long road trip.
• 41:18
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 41:20
  Okay, awesome, man. I love it. I gotta say that you like equal parts sophisticated
• 41:24
  and scrappy. I I gotta agree with your initial assessment though. Scrappy to get the
• 41:29
  stuff done, but it comes in a sophisticated package.
• 41:32
  Yeah.
• 41:35
  I'm a big fan. Thank you so much for coming on, Rob. what do you
• 41:38
  want to promote? Anything you want the folks out there to know?
• 41:42
  Yeah, I mean not nothing nothing in particular, you know, if if you're a series
• 41:46
  A to B company and you need financial help or we just want, you know,
• 41:51
  somebody that's that's been there to to talk to, you know, feel free to reach
• 41:55
  out.
• 41:56
  There we go. Rob Bankey, everybody, give him a shout. It'll be a fun conversation,
• 41:59
  I guarantee it. Thanks so much, Rob.
• 42:01
  Thanks for having me, Jack.
• 42:03
  Stay data driven, everybody.