In this episode of Careers in Finance, we sit down with Paul Barnhurst—also known as The FP&A Guy—to explore what it means to build a career in Financial Planning & Analysis. From his early days in procurement to leading FP&A functions across multiple companies, Paul shares how the role has evolved into one of the most strategic areas of corporate finance today.

If you’re exploring a future in FP&A—or wondering how to turn finance experience into something entrepreneurial—this is the episode to tune into.

Transcript

Meeyeon (00:13)
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of CFI’s podcast Careers in Finance. Today, I’m joined by Paul Barnhurst, The FP&A Guy, and I’m so excited to talk to you today, Paul. Welcome.

Paul (00:28)
Thank you, I’m thrilled to be here with you, Meeyeon and really excited to talk to your audience. Should be a lot of fun.

Meeyeon (00:34)
I’ve had only one other person so far to date in our podcast so far that has had a, she started her career in FP&A and has been doing it pretty much her entire career. So that’s been a solid 12 years now. And you’re the second one to have on here. And I know it’s such a, it’s becoming a more and more popular field to go into. And I think that the FP&A role has really evolved over the years,

initially being a function of just kind of being a support of forecasting and budgeting to something that is much more strategic for a business. And so as time goes on, think a lot of particularly business students are getting really interested in the field. I remember when I graduated, I think you would say like, who wants to be in investment banking? Everyone. Who wants to go into like sales and trading, private equity? Everyone. Who can name some other options?

Paul (01:25)
Yes.

Meeyeon (01:33)
But now people are really into FP&A. It’s clearly an analytical role. It’s a strategic role. It leads to a lot of different career paths. And so I would love to understand from you, where did you get started? Where did you your interest in finance? I always ask this to everyone, but is it something that you went to school for or did you get an interest in naturally as you went through university? Tell us the story of Paul.

Paul (01:59)
I would love to. I’ll give you that story. So, for me, I’ve always had an interest in numbers. I loved numbers as a kid. In fact, and it was around sports where I loved numbers. I would tear open the newspaper and read the sports section and read the box scores, like how many points people average, all those totally nerdy things. And then, you know, as a kid, I always thought I was going to be a lawyer, quickly realized laws about more than just arguing. So probably not what I wanted to be.

But I like to argue as a kid. What can I say? as a little kid, thought, water would be cool. I like arguing. And then as things went on, I got into high school, took a couple entrepreneurship classes, fell in love with that, and I did my undergrad in entrepreneurship.

At that point, I didn’t even know what FP&A was. And I ended up starting my career in procurement, surprisingly enough, for the government. I was a contract specialist. Did that for four years. Realized writing government contracts was not the right career for me. Went back to grad school and wasn’t planning on majoring in finance in my MBA. But I loved my finance class and ended up deciding to get a finance specialization. Again, still didn’t know what FP&A was. I looked at some investment banking roles, wanting to do something like that. But it was 2008,

that wasn’t happening nor did I want to work all night.

Meeyeon (03:10)
Yeah, not a great time for anyone to be looking for a career in investment banking.

Paul (03:16)
Exactly. And especially not if you’re willing, if you’re not willing to work all night. But I looked at a few little small things. I ended up going to work for American Express in a, it was called finance analyst, but it was more of a business role. I did a lot of SQL report writing. I managed a forecast that was used by the FP&A team and was looking to get promoted. An opportunity came up on the FP&A team, and I’m like, okay, I know the manager. I’m supporting them with certain things. I’ll apply for this role. And they selected me and that’s how it started in FP&A. It was really,

Oh, you mean you’re going to pay me more. I want to get promoted. ok, let’s figure out what FP&A is. And I spent 12 years in FP&A working at several different companies. And then I started my own business about two and a half years ago. And so that’s kind how I got into FP&A. More than anything, was just, oh, promotion.

Meeyeon (03:49)
I’ll take it.

And with FP&A, how has it been? How have you seen the industry kind of evolve over time, and the world that you would start in? Like an FP&A, guess I, it changes from company company. It’s kind of a less standardized titles than there are in banking, but what an FP&A analyst would have done 10 years ago. Do you think it’s very different from where they would start today? Do you think that the skill sets required are different?

Paul (04:33)
It’s definitely evolving. think for many years, good FP&A in organizations was always needing to be analytical and strategic and coordinate with the business. But those needs are becoming more more greater, the ability to analyze lots of data. think if you go back more like 20 years ago, and I say even beginning of my career, I like to refer to it as FP&R, financial planning and reporting. The analytics side was very weak, lots of planning, lots of reporting.

There’s still lots of planning today, but the analytics side is becoming more and more important. The commercial side. What CEOs, CFOs, and the business are looking for is a commercially focused strategic partner from FP&A. Somebody that can help them make better, faster decisions. And so the role you’re seeing more and more FP&A people become CFOs, and CFOs become CEOs. The data is clear that

that’s

becoming more of a trend where it used to be almost, you know, most CFOs came from accounting and a controller role, which is great. Nothing wrong with that. Very common. But you’re seeing much more of the FP&A because in many ways, when you’re supporting the business, you’re out in a business unit, you’re serving as a mini CFO in a lot of ways. If FP&A is being used right, you’re really helping ensure the business makes good decisions by analyzing the data, by being strategic, by

being a critical thinker. So I think that’s the biggest change we’re seeing is more and more companies are really seeing that need and continuing to ask FP&A to do more on the strategic commercial analytical front than maybe they did 15, 20 years ago.

Meeyeon (06:21)
And I think that’s largely because before, I think like 10, 15 years ago, companies very seldomly were able to truly say, we make our decisions based off data we collect. Because it hasn’t been until about, I think like 10 years ago, where everyone’s collecting our data all the time. It takes a while to establish that architecture of data and before you could actually make it into something useful. A phrase that I hear so often with FP&A,

that I think is still a little bit abstract, some of our listeners and people that are interested in the career path is what does it necessarily mean to be a strategic business partner in fp&a ? Like an example I’ll give is, so I learned through my conversation with a friend of mine that works in fp&a at a large department store, like a Neiman’s. So, one of the interesting parts is that for a department store, marketing is one of our largest expenses.

Have, whether it is, you know, direct in your face, ads that you’ll see on television, on a billboard, or like more on your tailored Instagram algorithm. And she said, we partner with marketing a lot to figure out how it’s hard to kind of quantify when someone says like, this led to like X number of sales. Like this led to all these conversions of non-buying customers that would browse online to ones that would make a purchase.

But also a very specific example she gave me about partnering with business units was, you know, at the end of the year, you see a bunch of seasonal merchandise get discounted. Well, they go through an analysis with the inventory people saying, okay, like, what did we buy this for? What are the individual contracts allowing us to discount the items for the brand? What does it cost us to send it back to the manufacturer? And how could we…

Is it better and more cost-efficient to discount it further if we’re allowed to? Or is it even another idea to actually transfer some of this merchandise to a regional leading selling store? So that was the most kind of specific and tangible example that I have of how FP&A partners with the business unit.

Would you be able to give our listeners another example of how FP&A is a strategic advisor to the business?

Paul (08:48)
I mean, I’ll give an example. I worked on a project for several months where we completely reorganized our sales team. They brought in a new head of inside sales. I worked closely with them and what should the organization look like? What are the right ratios? We provided feedback on the sales compensation plan saying, well, no, here’s a concern. An example would be that they didn’t want the salespeople to be punished for cancellations after a certain amount of time. And like, no, financially, that doesn’t make sense. Here’s why we have to do it.

And so having those discussions to make sure we incentivize salespeople correctly, but we protect the financials. There’s a lot of strategy involved in that as well, in a commission plan, thinking about incentives and how people behave. So that’s one example strategically. And I can think of several others. Others are,

such as, should we be rolling out a new product or changing pricing? We’ve had a number of conversations about that. We had one situation where it’s like, no, I think we’d probably make a lot of sense to lower our price a little bit and do a volume play. We could probably get a lot more business from people.

And so having that discussion, what does that mean strategically? How does that impact our brand? And so there’s a lot of things that will go with that. And it really comes down to knowing what’s the strategy of the business. So the business as a whole has its goals, its vision, its mission. And when you’re making decisions, being able to look and say, does this fit with where we’re trying to go? Does this help us accomplish what we need to do? I think that’s what it means. And early in your career, you’re going to be less and less strategic,

a lot more analytical. In an analyst role, unless you’re at a small company, you’re not going to be meeting with the CEO and really getting into strategy, but you can still know what the company strategy is and be thinking about it from the beginning and how it impacts your work. As you get higher and higher up, you’ll be in more meetings where there’ll be those strategic discussions.

Meeyeon (10:46)
And would you say that, so from my background in investment banking, the work is very individual contributor and everyone is quite similar in background. And then we have like a managing director who’s like the ultimate individual contributor who manages a bunch of us, but really doesn’t. In that like, there’s not like a whole lot of like coaching and development and all of these things. It’s very much like you kind of do your own thing and then.

It all gets added together to create a team and then we have our team product. For FP&A, you think it’s, is it a similar situation where it’s like a very independent individual contributor type of role throughout the career or is there more of a transition to a leader?

Paul (11:28)
Say it’s a collaborative role from the beginning and what I mean by that especially.

So stepping back, let step back for a minute. When I think of FP&A, there’s usually kind of two types of roles. You could argue there’s more than that, but for simplicity, for the discussion, we’ll go with that. There’s the person who is in corporate and focuses on reporting. If you’re doing that, a lot of roll up of the data, you’re going to collaborate with the business, but you’re a little more individual. If you’re out in the business unit, where a lot of FP&A is and supporting a business, you’re going to be doing a lot of collaboration. Even if you’re doing the work on your own, you’re sharing it with the

business. You’re having those conversations. You’re going to the marketing person, trying to understand their needs, if that’s who you’re supporting or IT. So I would say it’s a very collaborative role. In fact, I just interviewed somebody and one of the questions I ask is what’s the number one skill, both technical and soft, that FP&A professionals need? And on the soft skills, he said collaboration

above communication, above business partnering, listed that as the number one skill. So there’s definitely a lot of collaboration that’s needed from the beginning, especially if you’re doing business partnering and doing FP&A in a way that you’re able to really provide value to the business.

Meeyeon (12:50)
And something that I’m really curious about is you then transitioned from having an extensive career in FP&A to becoming an entrepreneur, to becoming the host of a podcast, and all of these other things today. Tell me about how you transitioned from that very corporate role to what you’re doing today.

Paul (13:09)
Yeah.

It’s been a fun journey. Never in a million years did I think this would be my business. Obviously, I did entrepreneurship and undergrad, so I always wanted to start my own business. But really where it came is probably about eight years ago now, almost eight, nine years ago, somebody asked me to write an article in return for me giving them 30 minutes of time. I said, hey, I’ll give you a Starbucks gift card. He’s like, no, no, I want you to write an article for my website. I wrote an article, and he liked it. He’s like, I’ll give you $100 if you write another one. I wrote a couple more for him, and I shared them on LinkedIn and all this trying to find a job.

And just going, “Okay, I need a network and share some things to kind of grow, so I can find that right role.” That led to being part of an FP&A trends group where I was helping moderate discussions. I got invited to be on a couple different webinars and things started to grow. And then probably in 2021, during COVID, I’m looking for a new job again. And at this point, I don’t know, I had a couple of thousand followers

in people started to know a little bit who I was nothing big and I shared about a couple FP&A tools as I was interviewing with them trying to get a job and what happened from that I did it both times didn’t get the job but all of a all these tools started reaching out to me and asking if I’d demo their tool and I’m like I might as well we’ll see where this leads and so things continued to build and really November 21 there’s kind of a watershed moment where in about a month three things happened and I said hey I can turn this into a business first someone

I’d worked with reached out to me and said, Hey, I know this consulting company, this company that needs about 15 hours a week of support for FP&A. Well, I can do that. Okay fine and then somebody else reached out to me that I had been on a webinar with and said hey I started my own business about six months ago I just sold this Excel course but I can’t teach it. Can you teach it? Like sure I could teach that. We still work together today.

Today, almost daily, we do a lot of our courses together. that, that, and then in one week, three different FP&A and tools reached out to me, and two of them asked me to apply for a job. The third one wanted to do a big collaboration. So I remember I went to my wife and like, Hey, I think I can turn this into a business. She looked at me like I was crazy because we hadn’t discussed it at all. And we discussed it about six weeks later. I go, I’m not going to start something unless you’re comfortable. Let’s know, let’s talk through it. About six weeks later, one morning, she goes, I’m comfortable. I go, are you sure? It’s like, yes.

OK, good, because I’m going to put in my notice this morning. I did. I put in my notice that morning, and here I am.

Meeyeon (15:34)
So something that immediately strikes me about you is that the way that you described that watershed moment, would you describe yourself as a person that is always open to the idea? A very open-minded person.

Paul (15:48)
I’d like to think so. Mean, I think in general I try to be open-minded.

Meeyeon (15:52)
Like it seems like kind of being open to any opportunity that comes up, it’s like, yeah, sure, like I’ll look at it. And then you can kind of see all of the effects that it can have. And then on top of that, you are an excellent communicator. I think you’re extremely clear in what you have to say and it’s very easy to follow what you have to say. And it seems like while it’s coming to you as you’re saying it, you seem like you would be an excellent presenter. And these seem like…

You are actually demonstrating the skills of someone that would typically be very successful at a very senior level in FP&A today. Very coincidental.

Paul (16:28)
Thank you. Appreciate that. I get to communicate

a lot now. Obviously, that’s probably the biggest part of my job. Obviously, talking to people having done training, podcast webinars, well over 300 different things where you’re talking to people.

Meeyeon (16:43)
Because I feel like

from my discussions about FP&A and I have had so far, there is a lot of presentations and it’s not different from really any other aspect of like front office finance jobs where you have to be able to take like disparate information, different data sets, be able to analyze it, distill it. And then the final moment is, can you actually explain in a cogent format what your insights are? And so…

That seems to be, as you’ve said, that plus like collaboration seems to be such important skills that people look for in FP&A today.

Paul (17:18)
For sure, you have to be able to present.

Anyone can learn to present. It’s about putting in the time. I’ve shared this example probably 100 times. I still remember I spent six months on an analysis I’d done for a new commission plan. I aligned it with the sales lead, the account exec, my boss, the CFO, general manager, and we’re going into the global CFO to get his approval. And we start presenting, get about 10 minutes in, five, 10 minutes in. like, this is a terrible idea. Why would we do this? And I’m just dumbfounded because everybody’s signed off.

I remember he calls in the general manager to the meeting. They talked for, don’t know, five, 10 minutes. And he ends up signing off on it. And I asked my boss what happened. And he goes, your analysis was brilliant. Your presentation lacked.

Like basically you forgot to think about his view, the audience, and put in the time to the presentation. You just thought he’d rubber stamp it. And that was the reminder to me that so many times we do great analysis, but it dies. It’s never initiated because we don’t think about the audience. Don’t think how we’re going to influence them and really spend the time on the presentation and the communication. And the only way we can get good at that is by practicing.

If you go back and listen to the first podcast I ever did, I was terrible. It was horrible when I interviewed the guest. Sometimes I still think I am, but I’m definitely a lot better than the first one. And that’s why I tell people, anything, odds are you’re going to stink the first time you do it, but you have to get out there and do it.

Meeyeon (18:50)
And would you say that of all the people that you’ve interacted with when you were in FP&A, is there a standard personality? For example, I think generally with lawyers, find, of course, a successful lawyer is going to be very adversarial, confrontational, a typical kind of industry group, , investment banker. They have a very strong type A personality. Is there a general personality type that you would say, from all your years in FP&A, that’s typically successful?

Paul (19:19)
I think there’s a few things that you tend to see. I’ll say there’s a couple things. One, being analytical. You’re analytical data-focused.

You really value that. So I think that’s one thing you see a lot of. In general, finance people tend to be risk-averse, especially corporate finance, maybe a little less so than investment banking. You don’t necessarily see type A personalities a lot. I mean, you definitely see them, but I don’t feel like that’s the dominant in FP&A. But I would say they tend to be very analytical, very curious to be successful in FP&A. I’d say those are probably two things you see a lot of.

And I’d say most FP&A professionals tend to be risk-averse by nature.

Meeyeon (20:05)
And something that I have been having, have admittedly not been a great adopter of ChatGPT. It’s like a next generation thing, but I’m trying to take advantage of this tool and learn how to use it because it’s basically becoming a skill. Just as I had Excel skills and Bloomberg skills when I was in banking, it seems like nowadays everyone’s interweaving something like ChatGPT in. And I had her finish this sentence for me, but I would love for…

an actual human with real-life experience to finish it for me. For me, think investor relations is like the mouthpiece of a corporation, of a company. What would you say the FP&A team is, a corporate FP&A team?

Paul (20:51)
Good question. You know, I think the corporate FP&A team is the business partner or kind of that internal consultant with a finance lens for the business. And what I mean by that is, like I said before, it’s all about helping the business make better, faster decisions.

That’s what FP&A does. And you can only do that if you’re able to analyze the data and you’re able to communicate and understand the business, understand what the data needs. I’d say two things are a superpower in FP&A. One, understanding the business inside and out. If you don’t, it’s really hard to be great. And then being able to understand how things strategically, commercially, how it impacts things with your analysis.

and bringing that perspective. They want people that can caution and guide them. And that’s a lot more than one sentence, but there’s my take.

Meeyeon (21:53)
But you know what’s so funny is that it’s the exact description of what came back. So I said, if investor relations is the mouthpiece of the company, so to speak, FP&A is the brain. I was like, oh, that’s interesting. And like what you’ve described is exactly kind of what it is if we’re talking about the human body.

Paul (22:10)
I can always think of that, just a good brain. I’m just kidding. I’ll start calling myself the brain guy. See what… Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. think I’ll…

Meeyeon (22:15)
It’s the brain guy, the brain FP&A guy. The FP&A guy has a better ring than the brain guy, because the brain guy is like, you could be a neurosurgeon.

Paul (22:24)
Yeah, yeah.

Very, very true. People would probably be like, “Does he have any humility?” And the answer would be no.

Meeyeon (22:35)
So today, I would love for you to be able to, because you’ve had a very diverse career, but also from meeting you, I think it’s very clear that you were meant to be an entrepreneur. You have that spirit in you. And if you could give our audience, or if you could give yourself, like 10 years ago today, a piece of advice, something anecdotal, what would it be?

Paul (22:59)
Yeah, if I could go back and give myself, especially around career advice, is network. And what I mean by network is don’t go out and just try to get names and get a big list of people.

But share yourself, share who you are, share the work you’re doing and let others share with you and learn. Networking is really about exchanging information and learning from others. And what I mean by that is most people don’t know this, but I’ve never got a job in my career from my network. It tells you how bad of a networker I am. Most people get a job from knowing somebody. Every job I’ve had, I applied for without knowing the hiring manager.

Meeyeon (23:42)
I’ve only ever gotten jobs from people that I know, ever, including my very first internship.

Paul (23:49)
And that’s probably why it took me a year out of undergrad to find a job. It took me six months out of grad school to get a job. I was not good at the networking side. Since I’ve started building my own brand and network, can’t tell. I’ve got multiple job offers. I got one to be a CFO from somebody in my eye. I’m not ready to be a CFO. are lots of different things. There’s a company I had applied for a job for a few years before I started my business.

I had now started my business. Got to know the CEO. I mentioned, you know, I might look to go back into corporate. Got an email within an hour. Before, I couldn’t even get an interview with the company.

And that was from building a brand and network. I didn’t change as a person. It was still kind of that same level of knowledge and intelligence. But I put myself out there and really started to get to know people and shared my thoughts. So I encourage anyone to really realize the value of your network. And the biggest thing I’ll say with that is the best thing you can do is to give,

to look to serve those in your network, and it will come back to you three-, four-, five-, sixfold.

Meeyeon (25:03)
And of your life experience that you’ve had. And this is more of a personal thing. What is the most like kind of general advice you’d give someone in their personal?

Paul (25:08)
Sure.

Yeah, I mean, it’s a great, there’s so many different things. It’s a hard one, but I think the biggest thing is to make sure you’re true to yourself and you take time for yourself. It was easy to let work take over your life. Take that time to exercise if that’s what you need. Or if you’re a spiritual person, you’ll read what that is, meditate, pray, but take that time to recharge yourself

and make sure you don’t just kind of wear yourself down. I like to think we’re here to enjoy life. So that’s the first thing I would say. And the second, find ways to serve others. That’s really where happiness comes from. As I’ve heard, there’s a quote I love, “Service is the rent we pay for the life we live.”

Meeyeon (26:03)
I love that. And honestly, I can’t think of anything better to say from that. So, on that note, I think that I can’t think of a better way to close out this podcast.

Paul (26:16)
All well, there you have it. It’s a wrap. I’ve been successful.

Meeyeon (26:20)
Thank you so much for taking the time to be on our podcast. I’m so excited for this to release. And until next time, everyone, that’s been CFI’s Careers in Finance for now. See you later.