Transcript

Anna Talerico (00:14)
Welcome back to another episode of Careers in Finance. I am thrilled today to be joined by Eric Mason, CFO at the City of Quincy. I recently had the pleasure of listening to Eric on a panel at a CFO Brew event, which was a fantastic event. And the second he opened his mouth, I knew I had to have him on the podcast. Number one, because he’s doing so many cool things in his role and his story of how he, you know, his…

to get to this role too is so unique and interesting. So Eric, thanks for joining us. Welcome.

Eric Mason (00:46)
You know, Anna, thank you for having me on. I’m very excited as an avid listener of your show. I think it’s kind of cool to be on here. And let’s see if Oprah Conference was great. They put together an excellent show. Not just because I’m not just saying that because I was a part of it.

Anna Talerico (00:57)
No, they did. I thought so too. Well, thank you. So I’m going to dive right in and I want to just first, as you know, on this podcast, I love to talk about people’s origin stories and how they got started in finance. Did you know, was this always the path that you saw for yourself? What did you study? Tell us a little bit about that.

Eric Mason (01:17)
Yeah, no, the answer is no. I never saw myself in finance. I was speaking at the World Finance Forum maybe about a year ago, and I called myself the Accidental CFO, and I still feel that way. So I went to school for economics. I was very lucky to have some great professors and able to do research and graduate with actually a publication as an undergrad. I went to, it’s actually, I spent my early career doing.

You know, market research, working in the public sector as an economic advisor, then an economist, then chief analyst. And you know, I love being an economist. That’s my favorite thing to do. And it’s definitely been my passion. But you know, life’s very interesting. You know, one of the coolest things about working in finance is that it’s such a large field that there’s room for everybody with different skill sets. I know brilliant finance people with bachelor’s of arts and fine arts, and I know some great analysts with BS’s in math.

So basically what happened with me is I had applied in February of 2020 to start my graduate education in applied economics. And then we all know what happened in March of 2020. And I’m sitting in my, March 15th, 2020, I’ll remember for the rest of my life, I’m in my kitchen at my house and I get a call from the mayor and, you know, how are you doing boss? And he goes, okay. He goes, I just got off the phone with Charlie Baker, the governor of Massachusetts at the time

and the state’s shutting down tomorrow. And at the time I was working, and I still am working in municipal finance. So I’m thinking, awesome, I get to work from home, this is gonna be great, I get to do all my math by myself sitting in a room. And he says, the current CFO was, I believe he was transitioning to retirement anyways, and so he said, Eric, do you, and I still bring this up to him all the time, he says, do you wanna take over the CFO position until this blow’s over?

Occasionally I will bring up a, hey boss, is this blown over yet? Can I go back? I’m an economist. And I showed up to my first day being a CFO with one person in my office in the middle of the pandemic with nobody knew what was going to happen. It was certainly baptism by fire to say the least. And you know, four years later, still here and we’ve been able to do a lot of really cool things and be able to really grow in the role.

I’ll tell you, one of the best things about being thrown in that role when you’re 26 is you’re allowed to ask stupid questions and some of the smartest answers come from the dumbest questions, I’ll tell you that. But yeah, that’s kind of how I got to, you know, you and I having this conversation today.

Anna Talerico (03:49)
I love it. I went an incredible story. And what you said is exactly why I do this podcast because there are so many paths into roles in finance. And I think people often don’t realize that. And so many people find that path was accidental. I would say, you know, half the guests I do on the, on the show were accidental. And I think that’s what’s so exciting about the field of finance and what I love about it. So, and you know, again, just even changing some of my misconceptions that I had many years ago.

So thank you and we definitely need to come to some of the cool things you’ve done since you’ve been there because you’re doing some really innovative things. But let’s start with your first role when you graduated. Your first kind of, I’ve got the, was it a finance role that you started with when you graduated?

Eric Mason (04:32)
Yeah, I mean, a little bit of a mix of both. So I started as an economic advisor working for the city. So actually, the first thing I ever got assigned was to analyze the finances of the Boston 2024 Olympic bid, which sounds crazy that we’re in 2024 right now. That just because that seems so far off when we were doing it. And simultaneously to that, I was also there was a small startup.

called DataBlock that I was working as the director of market research. I know we talked a little bit about this in the pre -show. During the day, I was working in government and working in a process that government technology -wise can be a little bit of behind. I don’t think I’m being outlandish saying that. Then at night, sitting on these calls with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met talking about ways to apply Blockchain to data security.

It was a really crazy juxtaposition. It really was. It was like you’re going in to working on a place that’s was using Excel for their budget and then talking about, you know, best ways to, you know, handle warehousing services for large blockchain, large blockchain chain. So it was a yeah, it was definitely unique, but I would describe, I would say describe both those as fairly financial economics and finance assistive fields, but certainly on the doing market research. That’s heavy finance. I think that’s a lot of analysts

don’t realize just how heavy finance is involved in market research. Everything’s finance in that.

Anna Talerico (05:53)
Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned working in the public sector, which is, I think you’re my first public sector career in finance interview. Tell us a little bit about what’s different about that or what’s unique about working in the public sector.

Eric Mason (06:09)
Yeah, first off, just pure marketing plug right here. We need anybody who’s thinking of working in the public sector. We need you. We are, it’s amazing. I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal a couple months ago on this. There’s just a huge, you know, there’s a huge gap in public, public finance. And it’s, it’s a, I’ll tell you, good benefits, good paying career. It’s not what it was 30 years ago, 40 years ago. But you know, working in the public sector is kind of cool.

I used to think, you know, I’d speak at the World Finance Forum, I’d speak at these different conferences, CFO, or speak to industry leaders like yourself. I used to think I had such a different perspective that public finance and private finance are different. And the more I’ve done this, and as I’ve learned and grown, especially over the last like three, four years, we’re not different. So, well, my job, I don’t have a P&L, all right, but I do, in a sense. Like, our job’s the same, but if you’re in the private sector, it’s get the greatest return on every dollar.

I had that same responsibility. But here, what we’re trying to do is get the best return on every dollar, but for the constituency. Take every one of those tax dollars, Aaron, and get the most out of it. So we’ve been able to leverage federal funding and local funding to build new special needs school. We built three new schools since we started. I’ve started here. Our mayor’s, I think, is up to fourth or fifth. And it’s really about that maximization. I think…

That’s really what it comes down to. I still have a basic financial statement. I still have to know GASB. I have to know GAAP. But at the end of the day, you know, it’s working in the public sector, very similar to the private sector, about that maximization. But I will say one very different thing is just the transparency that’s needed. Most companies aren’t out there walking, you know, even shareholders through what every little member means. That’s an obligation, and it’s an obligation I love in my role.

I’ll get calls, probably get a call today from somebody and they’ll have their base financial statements up and they’ll be asking me questions and I love being that explainer. So I’d say it’s a lot more openness than compared to the private sector. It’s a lot more focused on making sure the constituency understands where their dollar’s going. But yeah, I mean, it’s very similar to the private sector but in some ways it’s uniquely different, in a good way.

Anna Talerico (08:21)
Yeah, well, one of the things that struck me at the panel when you were speaking is just the way you approach it and the way you speak about it was quite innovative, I thought, or even just doing some innovative things. So why don’t you share a little bit about, you do some fun things in your role and you’re working on some unique initiatives? I’d love to share a little bit about those.

Eric Mason (08:41)
Yeah, so the big one, I think it was the first time you and I met at CFO Peru. We had just received the funding from the first blockchain bond ever sold in the United States. And it was nine months. It was a nine-month process to go through regulatory actions. Worked with JPM on their Onyx platform, which was excellent. But Lock Lord and Hilltop, Oric, all the vendors that were Blockwise that were so instrumental in being able to do this.

It’s funny, there’s only been about 50 or so blockchain bond sales in the world. There’s only been two that were done prior in the public sector and that was both in the same place, which is Lugano, Switzerland. But it was such a unique opportunity and it was funny. So we sold $10 million in bonds and that was for road and sidewalk improvements, so kind of old school government stuff you do, improve roads, schools, all that stuff. And…

I was, it’s funny, I was speaking on this one time and somebody said, well, why were you the first? Why were we the first? Why was the public sector the first to do it? And this is where, as much as I have tried to grow into my CFO role, I really can never remove that economist hat. And I gave the boringest answer in the world. I said, aligned incentives. I go, there is huge incentives for the private sector to do this and they’ll get there. They’ll deal with the security of it, the underwriting reduction costs, all that.

But in government, we have a unique opportunity here, which is we can democratize debt. So our goal, and it didn’t happen the first year because it’s the first step to climb Mount Everest here, is that, and this is like serving the shareholders, except we have a constituency. Our long-term goal is that we’re building a new elementary school. We want that guy to be able to drop off their kid at school and look down at their phones and see an interest-free debt payment from the bond that built that school.

I get $24 million in interest I pay every year in my debt portfolio. It’s not a bad thing, but it goes to these large funds. It goes to BlackRock. It goes to Fidelity. It goes to whoever holds public debt. Every other thing I do in the city, every other check I sign, has a local preference. So why not have bonding have a local preference? Why not let the local individuals paying this back have preference and be able to get that tax free income and blockchain lowers that barrier of entry so low that we think we’ll be able to get there fairly soon.

And I do very much like the idea of democratizing debt, let more people participate in it more. Let’s get more people involved in this.

Anna Talerico (11:14)
I love it. That’s amazing. So how does something like that get on your radar? Did somebody come to you? Are you thinking about just give it like that? How did that happen?

Eric Mason (11:24)
Yeah, so it’s definitely something, obviously going all the way back to data block that, you know, I’m always interested in there. I always say I’m very weird guy. Like I don’t like crypto, but I love blockchain.

Like, I love new technology and our current city council president at the time, the chairman of the finance committee and Kane, he called me up and you know, he is very, he knows his world pretty much better than anybody else I’ve ever talked to. Calls me up and it’s a, I think for some reason, I think we had the day off and I go over to his office.

Anna Talerico (11:33)
Yeah.

Eric Mason (11:53)
That’s classic, yeah. Like he’s a worker, he really is. Calls me up, I go meet with him, and he shows me this article from the guy in Switzerland. Now his company also hosts blockchain week, Boston blockchain week up here. So he has a lot of connections on this stuff, and he called me up and said, hey, look what this company did, look what this city did, because they also had the Siemens deal. Can we do this? And I’m not one of those people who says no. Like I say no, the only time I like to say no is when it’s a regulatory issue.

Otherwise, I hate saying no to any form of innovation. So I said, I don’t know. She said that to me, I was like, I don’t know, but we’re gonna give it a shot. When I brought it up to my bond counts and my underwriters, they were a great team because they were like, there’s not a no here. And then eventually JP Morgan came on and they went through the regulatory process. But it was a combined effort and then shaping what this was gonna look like. But I’d say the big turning point to this is that when we brought it to the mayor.

And we kind of explained that democratization of debt, and how it can better serve the public, and creates a safer bond. It’s much safer if it’s on a blockchain. That’s where we really got that, and the necessary political juice to really push this through. And basically what, long story short, what he focused on on it was that it created a better product for the public. It created a better situation, and even it started the step towards being able to democratize and open up the city’s debt

to the average person. And that’s one of my favorite things about government, especially local government, because local government is very different than state and federal, is that we all have different policy objectives. We all have different financial objectives. But we all serve one group. That’s constituency. And to see one person like the benefit of it because of the innovation, one person like the benefit of it because of cybersecurity, and the most important person on this, the mayor, like it because it’s clearly a tool to better serve the public. And we can all get together, even though we have all different perspectives, and push forward.

I mean, it was a stressful journey, but it was quite fun.

Anna Talerico (13:52)
Love it. It’s incredible. And I know it’ll inspire some listeners who are listening just to be thinking too about number one, being innovative and not being afraid, but also being coming from a place of yes, which many CFOs I talked to described their role that way. Where so many, I think on the outside think their job is to say no, but the true role is to find, you know, come from this place of yes and find the path forward, right? Yeah.

Eric Mason (14:15)
Yeah, I always say that a big part of my job is being a cheerleader, understanding departments, and trying to advocate for them.

Anna Talerico (14:19)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you got thrown in to this role and, what are, you know, fast progression. do you, are you, have you just kind of learned it on the job? How much from your education were you able to pull forward? Is it just being in it and getting your fingers on the keyboard, so to speak, or kind of how did you level yourself up as you were progressing?

Eric Mason (14:42)
Yeah, I mean, one, never being scared to ask a dumb question to an expert. That’s definitely what I’d always recommend. No, I mean, I had built the previous four or five years worth of budgets. I had been heavily involved in the tax rate, which are your two biggest things. I knew those basics when the opportunity arose in being able to leverage that baseline knowledge, like having that foundational understanding can be quite beneficial. So I was able to leverage that. But

Anna Talerico (14:46)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Mason (15:11)
I fell back on my, I’m gonna be be with you, I fell back on my fundamentals. When you have 26, you don’t have that many fundamentals, to be honest. Which is research, I’m a researcher, that’s my thing. I would say one of my biggest positive traits I have, and I think a lot of people get into economics and people get into analytical finance, is that we like to research, we can fall into the weeds. And that’s what I did. I actually, that was where my own CARES Act came out, and that was 1,200 pages, pages, and sat down and read it, I have a

Anna Talerico (15:15)
Yeah.

Eric Mason (15:40)
picture on my LinkedIn of my cat sitting on a giant stack of paper as I’m reading through it. Because I basically said this, I said nobody’s an expert on CARES Act. The last pandemic was 100 years ago. Nobody’s an expert on this. So nobody’s going to be an expert. So I’m going to read everything I can. I read ARPA-H, I read the Biden infrastructure bill. I fell back on what got me into economics, which is being a data dog. I’m going to absorb as much information because we’re in an information game. That’s all CFOs are. We’re information. It’s an information game.

And I said, there’s much information that I can pull over to my side. That’s gonna help me. And I’d always been, I’ve always had a very good working relationship with our auditor, Mark, formerly Powers and Sullivan. And I called up Jim Powers, who was the principal of the Powers and Powers and Sullivan. And he had worked with me for years before. He taught me how to do the tax rate recap, which is like how we generate most of our revenue. He had taught me how to build the budgets. And I was never scared to ask him a dumb question. I’m sure Jim would have a litany of hilarious examples of stuff I asked him.

But once I kind of, that’s the best thing when you’re young and you fall into the role is that you have, you can throw away your pride. Like you can throw away, and that’s what I did. I kind of just, you have to humble yourself. There’s people smarter who know better. I was replacing a CFO who was one of the youngest treasurers in state history, who was, had an MBA, had all, was an amazing CFO. And so to go from like an MBA from one of the, from Babson and to go from being a state treasurer to, you know, some kid who went to school in West Virginia who

Anna Talerico (16:43)
Yeah, yeah.

Eric Mason (17:06)
can build you a hell of a model and know how to program R. But he took two accounting courses in his life. But that’s what I did. I relied on experts and I managed and like my big thing was managing and trying to mature those relationships. And it worked. I wouldn’t recommend the course to anybody. Don’t try to take over during a pandemic. A little bit learn on the job, being cautious and I certainly feel much more inclined. That’s why we do we were able to do more innovative things. I feel much more inclined now.

Anna Talerico (17:09)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Mason (17:35)
But it’s also understanding that any CFO, I don’t care what age you are, I don’t care where you are in your career, just because you’ve gotten that nice chief title doesn’t mean you’re done learning. I think that’s where people rot on the vine is a term I hear a lot, and that’s my biggest fear. I always want to be rejuvenized, and the best way to be rejuvenized is to be humble and know there’s people smarter than you. There’s a lot of people smarter than me, I can guarantee that.

Anna Talerico (17:56)
Yeah. Yeah. And some of them, I mean, I think the most successful people are lifelong learners and curious, right? Yeah. So what advice would you give to somebody that wanted to follow, you know, in a similar kind of career path?

Eric Mason (18:11)
Yeah, it’s all built in a tool chest. You don’t know what tool you’re gonna need. You don’t know if you’re gonna need a ratchet or a hammer or a screwdriver, but it’s about having the tool available when you need it. I didn’t know what tools I would need when I became a CFO because I never would have projected a pandemic would happen. I kind of had, in my career, based on where I was, the idea of becoming a CFO was something that I thought of, but I thought it was much further in the future. And I thought there’d be a transition phase, but…

building up that tool chest. Never be scared to learn a new skill, because you never know when you’re gonna need it. I’m an R programmer, so I enjoy that syntax, but I also learn SQL because I know ERPs are mostly SQL based. Doesn’t mean I have to be an expert in SQL, but because I can sit in this chair and talk to analysts in their language, that makes me more effective. It makes them more effective as analysts. So building that tool chest, learning a skill just to help with your job is great, but…

adding on new skills, even that you may not need now, it’s just an investment in your future, it’s the best return. And I’ll give you one of the, so when I took over this, when I first started working in my graduate college, I asked one of my cousins who’s been, it’s a very, very successful career. And I just said, hey, give me some advice. What would you tell somebody? He said, he goes, work as if your boss has to rehire you every single day. Which I thought was an excellent point. I think that’s a little bit why I’m here. And the second one’s kind of cool. He goes, you can be the smartest person in the room.

Anna Talerico (19:30)
Mm, love that.

Eric Mason (19:36)
But grind is the number one thing. Because a lot of people stop not because they don’t have the intelligence to do it, it’s because they lose the drive. He goes, grinding is the best way for success. So I think it worked out. I feel pretty good. It worked out.

Anna Talerico (19:44)
Yeah.

Well, really good advice, because I think that it’s so easy to get into a role, know the role, like just living it and you get a little complacent. So thinking I need to get rehired every day keeps that fire in you, right? Yeah.

Eric Mason (20:02)
Yeah, I remember, like, I was never, I was an econ grad. Like, I did a lot of data and stuff like that. But I remember getting my first basic financial statements and I read through them. I remember getting my first, you know, offertory statement for a debt. It was like 350 pages and just read through it. And it sounds so goofy. How much did I really understand at 20, you know, 21, 22 years old, once in a basic financial statement? I’ll tell you, very, very little. But what it…

told me stuff I didn’t know. So when I talked to my auditor, I was like, what does this page mean? Run me through exactly what it means. And it’s like, wow, I just have that for the rest of my life. And that’s so valuable. It’s an insanely valuable thing to have.

Anna Talerico (20:39)
Mm-hmm, yeah. It is, you’re absorbing it sometimes too and you don’t even realize it. Well, I’m gonna give you one that we didn’t talk about. I have to because I can tell you just love public service and what you’re doing. Give us a little pitch on Quincy, what’s it like? Tell us.

Eric Mason (20:44)
Yeah, exactly.

So I’m born and raised in Quincy. It’s funny, I joke, I had two jobs in my life, both on Hancock Street, which is the main street in Quincy. I pumped gas at my parents’ gas station mechanic shop, and this job at City Hall. It’s very funny, I relive this every day, because my wife is from West Virginia, and she always jokes with me, she’s like, you think Quincy’s the greatest city that ever exists? I was like, because it is. No, I mean, it’s draped in history.

Anna Talerico (21:00)
Nice, amazing.

Eric Mason (21:23)
We have the only place you can go and see where a founding father lived. We’ve got John Adams and John Quincy Adams, the presidential estates here. Right over my shoulder, this cemetery, this is where John Hancock’s dad’s buried, John Hancock’s from Quincy also. One of the oldest English-speaking cemeteries in the United States. Across a promenade in front of City Hall, you can go see where Abigail Adams, Abigail and John Adams and Maria and John Quincy Adams are buried. You can touch real history.

But it’s so much more than that. I mean, it’s a beautiful coastline. We have the blue hills. If you like recreation, you can do recreation. If you have history, like somebody like me, it’s amazing. I mean, I remember, probably how I’ll criminate myself as a child, playing baseball in the front of a house that one of the Adamses lived in, and the baseball going through the window. And I go, how many places are you? You live in that much history.

But yeah, so it’s a great history. It’s a great food scene now. We have a very large Asian American population that immigrated over here and brought all their amazing food. So if you like that, some of the sushi restaurants probably on the East Coast. We have an Albanian steakhouse. That’s unbelievable. So if you like history, you like food like me, try not to love Quincy. And then, you know, if you love recreation, we take a lot of pride in our parks. It’s definitely a unique and beautiful place. It’s not just the history. That’s just a big add-on.

Anna Talerico (22:45)
I love it. Thank you. And thanks for being a guest. I was so excited to bring your story to the podcast and really appreciate it. And I can guarantee you anytime I see your name pop up at a speaking engagement, I will be in the audience. I love it.

Thank you. Thanks, Eric. Thank you.

Eric Mason (22:58)
And thank you very much. Thank you for having me on.