Careers in Finance | Tim Vipond: From Investment Banking to Founding CFI

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Welcome to the Careers in Finance series on FinPod by CFI, where we sit down with finance professionals to explore their career journeys. Join us for ideas, insights, and inspiration to help you advance your career in finance. Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Careers in Finance, the podcast where we discuss and we talk about all of the different paths, the many different paths that people could take into the world of finance. Today’s episode is a little bit different, as you may be able to tell, we are reporting live in person, and I’m joined by a familiar face to you all, co-founder and CEO of CFI, Tim Vipont. Tim began his career in capital markets, investment banking, and corporate development. But at one point, instead of staying on that well-worn path, he had to take a leap because, as we know at this point, CFI had come to fruition. In today’s discussion, we’re going to unpack Tim’s career, and he’s going to share with us all the lessons and skills that he’s learned and developed along the way to create CFI today. So, let’s get started. Okay, Tim, so take us way back to the early days. How did you develop your interest in finance? Did you have any early influences? Take us back to that very beginning moment. Sure. The earliest memory that I have was around the dinner table with my family. My father worked in finance. He was a portfolio manager managing fixed income portfolios.

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He would come home from work and talk about the markets. That got me intrigued and interested in finance. That’s the first memory that stands out. Then when I went to university, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but everyone at school was talking about going to work on Wall Street.

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That reinforced the interest I already had from my father growing up, joining the investment club. At that point, just one thing led to another, and all of a sudden, I was down the path. Did you do an economics degree or a science?

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In the States, with some schools, it’s a bit different. I went to Dartmouth College, and a lot of Wall Street firms recruit from the school, but the school only offers a Bachelor of Arts degree. I took economics courses, math courses, and semi-relevant topics, let’s say, but no actual finance degree. I had to supplement that stuff on the side through my own interests to learn that kind of stuff. I had a similar thing where I went to a business program because in Canada, EFT was a bit different, but I didn’t necessarily know what I wanted to do, but I was guided by my peers. Everyone was very excited about being an investment banking analyst. I was like, “Okay, everyone wants to do it. They must have done their research.” I’m like, “Let’s just go down that path.” For you, when you were not a freshman, but probably, what is the right term? Sophomore? Sophomore is second year. Yeah. Is that when you had your first internship?

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Yeah, I think it was sophomore fall. The school offered co-op internship opportunities. I could take the fall off, so I worked at Scotia Capital in Toronto on the training desk, and that was quite an experience. What was that like? It was pretty crazy because Scotia Tower, I think it’s like the second or third tallest building in Toronto. That’s the Maroon one, right? Yes, exactly. It’s this huge iconic building, and then the trading floor happened to be the very top floor of the building. I think it was floor 68. Yeah, they have a really scary elevator. Oh, yeah, it’s a crazy elevator ride up. Just the whole setting was another world for me to be at the top floor of this huge tower with all these big personalities. You walk into the trading floor, it’s wide open, it’s super loud. There’s just a ton of commotion. People are on the phone, they’re yelling at each other, and I’m just a sophomore in college timidly walking around trying to figure out what’s going on. It was a pretty crazy experience. What was that? It was a four-month internship, right? Yeah, three or four months. What would you say was your main learning outcome from that experience? It’s such a brief period of time, but it’s also your first real professional work experience.

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With hindsight, the biggest part of the internship is to fit in and be helpful, and essentially not be stupid. It didn’t really occur to me at the time. At the time, I was thinking more about little technical details of learning. I was on the money market desk, okay, learning about money market. What I realized later in life and having hired interns and had them work for me is you want someone who, from a personality perspective, is keen, is quick to learn, asks how they can be helpful, and works hard. I didn’t necessarily know all of those things intuitively at the time. I probably could have done a better job, quite frankly, of just trying to offer to be more helpful. They would do funny things like ask me to go get coffee for the whole desk. I thought that was a ridiculous waste of my time, but obviously I would do it. With hindsight, I should have been a little more like, “Sure, whatever you want me to do. I’m just glad to be up here on the top floor of this building. I’ll get you coffee if you want it.” Then after you were on the sales and trading team at Scotia, your next internship was still within capital markets on a trading floor, right? That was in equity research.

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Sort of. It was a wealth management firm in Vancouver, Philip’s Hager North.

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Okay.

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So, I was able to leverage. The key is getting your first internship, really, of any kind. Once you have that, you can leverage it up. I think it played a big role in helping me get the job at Philip’s Hager North. I worked for the chairman there at the time, and he had us doing some equity research-like activities, like researching companies, reading annual reports, putting together some ratios and some basic analysis. It wasn’t the equity research team, but it was that kind of work.

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With those two experiences together, I think that made up your… Did you have one more co-op experience? No, there were two. There were two. You’re going in, and now you’re finishing your final year at Dartmouth.

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Did you have any more… Did you feel a bit more prepared to make the decision about, “Okay, I want to go into finance. There’s a very specific industry I want to go into”? Or was it more of, “Okay, I’m generally interested. Let’s see where I can apply, where I could get the interviews, and then we’ll take it from there”? Finance was my first choice. Back up plans, I don’t know, could have been consulting or working at an operating company, but I wanted to work at a financial institution. So, investment banking or a hedge fund or private equity, something like that. I was just like what you were saying. I was following the herd, right? Everyone was going for those jobs, so I thought I should go for those. I was genuinely interested in the subject matter as well. You just start to build momentum down a path. At some point, you just say, “Okay, I guess I’m a finance professional. This is happening.” This is happening. This is happening, yeah. I remember when I was doing the interview prep process for the investment banking analyst interviews, the recruiting was really, really tough. I would say not everyone amongst my peers got the interviews, but then after we got the interviews, you realized you were with a very small group of people, some returning interns. So, there was a lot of competition.

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I think a lot of the competition just revolved around how easily you could access information and how far you were willing to go, how much time and effort you were willing to spend to get information. Yes. Back then, and I think when you were at Dartmouth too, it wasn’t like we didn’t have CFI, okay? We didn’t have all these websites that were already up on the internet where you could access interviews, coffee chats, and do so much due diligence on the role. For me, I actually had to buy a book. It was before Amazon, so I was at an online shop getting a book called, I think it was called Best Jobs on Bay Street. Okay. How did you go about that process? What type of research did you do? How many places did you apply? How did you find that interview process? Because so many of our CFI members, being an investment banking analyst is the ultimate dream, whether it is right out of undergrad or out of a graduate degree program or from somewhere in between. Right. Yeah, great question. You’re 100% right that the interview process is largely about how much research did you do, how well can you answer these questions. Like you also said at the time, CFI didn’t exist and even many of our competitors, I don’t think had much, by the way, of internet content available, but the Vault Guide did exist. Yes, the Vault. The Vault, right away, says to have like a monkey on the page. For me, this was like say 2003, 2004, and the Vault Guide was what I was able to get my hands on, which was really helpful in answering questions about like, how would you value a company? And then you’re supposed to say that comms, precedence, DCF. I wouldn’t have come to that on my own. This was very helpful for me. But actually, at the time, I don’t even think the banks or the hiring managers all knew that this information was available because I told them after they hired me, I was like, did you guys know that there’s like these Vault Guides and it just like tells you how to answer investment banking interview questions and some of them had no idea. Yeah, but now it must be so different now. I don’t know what it’s like going through that process now, but given how much information is available to candidates, I’m guessing the bar is even higher now. And I also think there’s case studies being handed out now to really test people’s knowledge through demonstration as opposed to just answering questions, which all I had to do was answer questions. And was it, so when I was doing the interviews, it was probably 2000, like 11 or 12. And I remember it was multi stage. It was the phone interview saying like, Oh, come to the campus career center, we’re going to have representatives, which were generally the director and an associate that are going to interview select pool candidates. And then all quick congratulations, let’s move on to the next one. We’ll see you in person. There’s an even smaller group. And they also again individually ask you questions that are a little bit more technical to see. Okay, like you’ve done the classic like, okay, how do you value a company? Walk me through a DCF? Which one do you think is the best method for XYZ? And maybe a couple a little bit more technical equity questions. And then the second round was even more detailed. And then the third one was you were presented a case and it was like pen and paper that you had to solve there. Was that also the process that you went through? Similar but without the case, I think there was a phone screen and then two rounds of in person interviews. And then so you have probably started, did you start in summer or fall? It was it was in the summer, they wanted me to start a bit early. So it’s like June or July that I started. And so take us through that experience. Because being an investment banking analyst is exciting.

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You have to work really hard for the opportunity to work even harder. But it can it is an incredible learning experience. I find that it really develops skills in a way that no other job can. And it can really set people up for great success, great habits in the future. But it is incredibly stressful. It is very different from I think any other professional role, particularly coming out of school. How did you find that experience? How long were you there? And what are kind of the standout memories that you have? Because there’s going to be standout memories from this experience. Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of things we could talk about here. But you know, the first thing that comes to mind is, it was super hard. You know, working 60, 70, 80 hours a week is kind of crazy. And then the level of detail and perfection, essentially, that’s required in everything that you do, also makes it extremely challenging, right? So you really have to learn, you know, in school, you can get 90% on a test. And 90% is great. That’s an A or something and you move on. But like, in investment banking, or pretty much all finance jobs, for that matter, you have to get 100% only to send something to a client, right? So you’re always you’re always having to make everything perfect, and do it with really tight deadlines. So that’s a that’s a different way of operating than you operate as a student. So that was a big adjustment. The hierarchy was also a bit of a shock to me, like, that the way the firm’s layer, you know, analyst, associate, director and managing director and so on. And the way that hierarchy functions is like, you know, you only talk to the level above or below. Yeah. And then we kind of had a joke that like, if you know, if someone wanted to make an edit in a presentation, like, yeah, the MD would ask the director, the director of the VP, the VP associate, and then it would land on my desk at the bottom, you know, bottom of the aisle, and I would make the edit, and then it would go all the way back up to each of those people. So it was sort of a militaristic way of operating. So that also struck me.

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But it was, you know, fascinating work, like, valuing companies talking about strategic alternatives was like the main pitch we would give where you’d look at a company’s situation and figure out if they should make an acquisition, sell an asset, raise some money, do a recap, what it you know, anything that they could do to add value, essentially, to their shareholders.

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So that part of it was was really exciting and interesting. I guess that’s what gets you through really, I don’t think it’s the money that gets you through. I think it’s like, you know, the experience you’re building. Yeah. And did you select the industry group that you went into? Or were you in a more of a broader group as a diversified group in Vancouver being a smaller market? There was just a diversified group. And then, you know, in Toronto, or, you know, in the US, if you were in a major city like New York, you’d go to Yahtzee, an industry group. And one of the things that I picked up from an earlier podcast with Eric beyond. So Eric, if you’re listening, hi, was I never really thought about this, but the two, I think most popular streams to go into after going to university was either investment banking or management consulting. And what I never really thought about is when you go into management consulting, the skill that you perfect and kind of hone in that environment is very similar to school in that you are working in small teams on a project. There is a deliverable, there is a presentation. And so that transition

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can be very natural because it almost seems like you are in school. And if you like project based work, it is a fun place to be. You’re with smart, capable, very motivated people, and you’re getting paid. But with investment banking, it’s very different because all of a sudden I find that, especially with the analysts, if you’re not at a large company, like if you’re not at a large investment bank in a large city, it can be a very isolating experience. Did you go through the investment banking analyst training program right when you went in? Did you have a bunch of peers that were your age where you got to learn from each other because the skills that you need to succeed on day one as an investment banking analyst are so different from what you need to succeed in school? Yeah, a few things. First, a comment about the difference between consulting and investment banking. I agree with that. I’ve never worked in consulting, but I’m thinking that it would be like what you described in terms of this project work, more school alike, and so on. But a similarity that they both have is that in both cases, you’re not living with the decisions. You’re making recommendations to a company, and then that company is going to go execute it and live with those decisions. And then later in my career working in financial planning and analysis and corporate development, I actually found that a lot more interesting because we lived with our decisions. We’d make an acquisition, and then we’d integrate it, and we’d deal with all the challenges, and we would own that asset. And so personally, I really liked being at an operating company. So we’ll probably talk about that later. But then back to your question about training. Yes, I went through a training program at the bank. They flew us out to Toronto. There was a training company that delivered the classroom training. I think it was a week or two. And I found that training program difficult because I hadn’t done a Bachelor of Finance. So the learning curve for me was extra steep, so I had to really scramble to get through that. But it was a great and intensive couple weeks of training. And then there’s ongoing on-the-job training too, like being the junior analyst. You sort of have someone looking over your shoulder all the time, just helping out with stuff. And we all sat together, the analysts, so we could always just ask you in a little pit. So yeah, we could just call to each other and say, hey, help me with this. And then when it came to the– so something that’s changed over the years is that I want to say in the early 2000s, it would have been the typical. You go to a great school. You go to an investment bank or consulting firm. You spend kind of two, two and a half years there. You go do an MBA. You might come back. You might not. For you, what was that process like after you finished like a year or two at the investment bank? Did you consider doing an MBA or did you already decide, OK, I feel like I’ve learned– I’ve accomplished what I came here to do. And maybe I’m a little bit tired. And I want to do something different. So I guess my big question is, how did you know that it was time to wrap up your chapter in investment banking? Well, the quick answer is I was just too tired. I was just burnt out. I was just like, I can’t sustain this. And I got a lot of really good advice from people that I totally ignored, which everyone told me, OK, you’ve worked in investment banking. That’s an analytical role. And as long as you stay down the analytical path, you can keep moving down that track. But if you go into more of a sales role, like wealth management, which is what I did, they’re like, you can’t go back. Once you get off this path, you’re off it for good. People won’t hire you back into an analytical role. And I was like, oh, what do these people know? So I just ignored everybody. And then it turned out they were completely right, because after three years of being in wealth, I wanted to get into corporate development or something more analytical. And I couldn’t really. So that’s why I went back to do my MBA, because that’s a reset. If you do a reset, get an MBA or maybe get an FMBA, I don’t know. Maybe both. Yeah, maybe both. Some sort of reset. Then you can get in the recruitment pipeline again. And so that’s how I was able to manage that. I found– so I relate to that on a professional level, because when I was in DCM, in debt capital markets, I was like, oh, I want to try something different. And I was given the same advice. OK, if you go from an analytical role to something that is really anything less than that, it’s going to be very difficult to come back in. For example, if you’re in DCM, you’re probably going to not go up to industry group or M&A. You go the other way, but it’s very exceedingly rare and difficult to go the other way. And then so to go that other– to kind of go and do your own thing and listen and be able to say, no, I want to do this and quiet the opinions of others. Is that something that comes naturally to you? I guess so. Maybe I’m a defiant– I don’t know. I think maybe I was a bit of a rebellious defiant kid. I went to a private school that I sort of made my parents let me leave and go to a public school, because I didn’t want to go there. And I did all sorts of things like that. And actually, throughout my career, this happened many times. I left a large public company to go to a relatively small private startup. And again, that was like people were saying, well, once you leave a big public company, it’s going to be hard to go back that way. It’s a bit of a one-way street as well. But I said, oh, who cares? And I ignored them. So I guess I’ve done that a bunch of times. I do like to take advice from people, though, and consider it. But I think at the end of the day, it’s like what’s right for you.

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And it’s kind of like the thing where you say about the operating company, you make the decisions, and you ultimately have to live with it and then see it through. Yeah, exactly. And just have eyes wide open to the risks, though. That’s one thing I will say. It’s like, yes, I was going against some of the advice I was receiving, but with eyes wide open about, OK, but what are the risks of doing this? And then saying to myself, well, I can hopefully overcome those risks. And I guess with hindsight, a lot of times I was able to overcome those issues when they actually manifested. Yeah. And I would say you’re probably very much a glass half full person, right? Probably. Yeah. Because you can’t take those risks without doing so. Yeah, OK. And that’s for sure. So you did your MBA, and I guess you used it as not a reset, but sort of a reset tool, saying, OK, now that I’ve done this, I can kind of pick from the beginning again, whether I want to go back into investment banking, which is probably not a path that many people choose. But after you graduated with your MBA, there’s a couple of steps from there to CFI. Take us through those few chapters. Sure. So being in Vancouver, I focused on the largest industry, which is mining. And there are a lot of large public companies in mining. And I ran the mining club at UBC, which got me the ability to network with mining companies and executives. So I invited some into speakers. And then when they came in as speakers, I got to know them, stayed in touch with them. And that helps me get the internships. So I got internships during the MBA at Goldcorp and tech resources and then ended up going to work at Goldcorp in corporate development and strategy after doing the internship there. And how was that role like? So for CorpDev, I think that there is two very different ways that role can fold out, one being much more sales and the other being more kind of like an investor relations type. What was your CorpDev role like there? And how did you find that it was– how did you find that the skills that you’d built in investment banking and capital markets helped you succeed there?

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Well, in the mining industry, there are lots of acquisitions. So it was really focused on M&A. And so the investment banking work that I had was super helpful in modeling these transactions. I had to learn about the industry to be able to model mining specific assets, but I was able to figure that out. And during your time there, I find that mining is very much like a boom or kind of bust industry.

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When you were there, how volatile was it? And did you find that you took away– are there any standout memories from the time that you were there? It was just coming off the high when I joined there. There was like a big bull run for gold and for M&A activity and everything for a number of years. And then when I joined Goldcorp, things were kind of waning. So I think gold prices were down a fair bit off the highs, but there was still M&A activity going on. But it wasn’t as hot as it was like five years, let’s say, before I joined. So that caused me to look a little further afield, do some networking. And I actually started doing some financial modeling consulting off the side of my desk. Like, OK, on the weekend, I would talk to companies that needed some support and help them build a financial model. One of the companies that I consulted to was shoes.com. And after working with them for a while on the weekends and helping them with some modeling, they said, OK, we’re really scaling up. We’re going to do a big raise. We’re doing some acquisitions. We need someone like you in-house. Would you leave Goldcorp and come work for us? And this was a huge risk to leave a big public company and go to more of a private startup. But I could make a huge jump in terms of where I was in the latter or the pecking order and gain some really cool experience. And I figured that if I didn’t take this risk, I’d just be slowly climbing the ladder, chipping away. And I was like, no, oh, sorry. I really should have– I know. There’s a bird in here? Is there a pigeon in here? Keep that in. Keep that part in, by the way.

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Talking about shoes, going from a large public company to a smaller scale startup that was just raising funds. Yes. So again, I had to decide about the risk profile here of leaving a big company to go to a smaller one. And I just felt like, let’s do it. Let’s just take the risk. I noticed that people who– it seemed to me that the correlation between success and risk was pretty visible. All the people that I admired seemed to have taken some big risk at some point. So I thought, OK, let’s just take this risk and see what happens. If it goes public or becomes a massive company, I was going in as the VP of Finance. So maybe I could have become the CFO at some point. And I could see that story. I could visualize that in my mind about how that could go. But I also realized, hey, this might not go well. And actually, it didn’t, in fact.

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Which actually turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened, though, because that’s around the time that CFI was started. And shoes actually went bankrupt. And so it was around that time that it pushed me into CFI. And so before we get into CFI, up to this point in your career, did you have any points in your career where you look back and you said, I regret this. I wish I had made different decisions.

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At the time or close to that time, yes. But then now with the fullness of time, looking all the way back, I’m extremely happy about how everything worked out. So now I have no regrets. Even though I might have made a suboptimal decision at the time, but the way it played out over the long run, then I don’t have any regrets. I would just want to do everything the same way. Because when you make a mistake, if you will, you learn a lot. So it’s kind of like I wouldn’t want to erase the learnings. Up to this point in your career, what do you think has been– what was your, in your opinion, then, your biggest mistake? And what was your biggest learning outcome? UpToShoes.com.

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Well, when I left the wealth management industry to go get my MBA, I did worry that I might have left prematurely. I saw some people that stayed a few years later that had built really big books of business and looked like they were doing super well. So I had some doubt there of, OK, maybe I should have stayed. I guess the regrets, yeah, all I actually had to do was staying. Same with Goldcorp. It’s like, well, if I had stayed, OK, because shoes went under. So every time I made this change, then there was always the doubt of should I have stayed longer. Because I did also see– I also want to make the point that a lot of people that do really well are loyal, tenacious, consistent people that stayed a company for a decade or two and rise all the way up through the ranks. So then that was the other voice in my head, was like, well, Tim, maybe you should stop bouncing around. You need to stay somewhere for 10 years. Yeah, seeing the friend all of a sudden that you started as an associate with being the managing director. And you’re like, oh, maybe I should have done that. Yeah, maybe I should have done that. But if you’re not enjoying it, life is short, not to be cliche, but you got to enjoy it. And so now let’s talk about what has kind of brought us here today, which is CFI. How did the very beginning– how did the seed stage of CFI happen?

[00:28:55:01 – 00:33:37:09]
The very seed stage was that I had developed a course I was delivering on my own to UBC students on the weekends. This was a bit of a side hustle that I had designed, OK? So I was teaching a financial modeling course. I wanted to work on public speaking and earn some side money. Then I got called to the career office. I was doing this on my own, bear in mind. OK, I was running rogue, doing this on my own. The school didn’t approve this. And I got a call from the career center, and they were like, a gentleman by the name of Scott Powell, who runs the training for UBC, wants to talk to you. And I was like, uh-oh. This is going to be a problem. This is going to be a problem. Yeah, because I’m not really allowed to do this. I’m just teaching people totally unauthorized, if you will. And actually, it was the opposite. He was like, hey, this is great. You’re teaching courses. Why don’t you come teach with us? And it’s like, OK, OK, sure. I’ll try that. So I wasn’t– I was a bit hesitant because I wanted to do my own thing. But I was like, OK, I’ll teach with you guys for a bit. So I taught courses with them for a while, and I’m still at shoes. And then Scott was like, well, maybe you should come just be with us full time. You could be a partner. And I was like, no, I just want to be an entrepreneur on my own. And then eventually, he was like, well, OK, I have an idea. We– This could be entrepreneurial. I have an idea. Yeah, we could make this entrepreneurial. We could come together, start a new company. And that’s how CFI was born. So there were assets from that company, MDA training that also gave the confidence. So even though this was a startup, we launched with courses that were like a decade in the making with top global banks. So this wasn’t just stuff we were making up on our own. So it was an interesting way to have a startup be born. And when you were starting– well, when you had kind of co-founded CFI, prior to that, so when you were teaching on your own at UBC, did you already have a vision of, I want to take what I’m doing in this classroom, kind of unauthorized and on my own, and eventually put it online? Did you have that vision from early on? Not at the very beginning, because I just wanted to work on public speaking and make some extra money. So it’s sort of like– but the strategy revealed itself over time, which, by the way, I’m a big believer in serendipity and things coming together and revealing themselves over time and not trying to force something too early. So we were just going with it. And then, of course, it became obvious that it needs to be online and all the things we did. But even certification with hindsight might seem obvious, but it just actually organically revealed itself as we built the platform. And being an entrepreneur is one of the– especially at the early stage, I think the most stressful thing that you can endure and persevere through, apart from investment banking. But you had that early on, so you’ve been conditioned to withstand that stress. How were the initial first few months, first few years of starting CFI? Because now it’s 2025, so CFI’s kind of been around for like 9, 10 years. How was that initial co-founding, let’s do this, what stage of your career? It was crazy, because I still had a jobissues.com for a while and was doing this on the evenings and weekends. And then it became clear that it was getting enough traction that I just jumped into it. And we didn’t raise any money, so it was also all done bootstrapped. So on the one hand, that’s a bit lower risk, because I had another source of income and could do this on the side. But on the other hand, it’s a lot harder if you don’t have any capital at your disposal. So I’m surprised that up to this point, I haven’t asked this question yet, but up to this point in your career, did you have any key figures in your life that served as great mentors from certain chapters of your life? For me personally, my greatest mentors are still my friends today. But for example, Anna, maybe Anna’s watching this one day, she hired me onto the fixed income team at Ontario Teachers when I was like 18 or 19. But her, Kevin, and my other boss Andrew Hainsworth at BMO have been incredible mentors to me. Did you have any key figures in your life that were mentors that you maybe still keep in touch with today? Maybe still keep in touch with today? Yeah, great question. There were two

[00:33:38:11 – 00:35:55:06]
bosses or managers that I had that were super helpful and impactful for me. And I still think back on those times all the time. So the first one was the branch manager at Scotia McLeod when I was in wealth management. And he was the best salesperson I’ve ever seen. His energy was crazy, the way he would walk around the office and bring positive energy was incredible. Whenever you asked him how you’re doing, his answer was top of the world. And this infectious energy really rubbed off on me. And I thought, okay, I can see how this helps the whole business perform. His energy is infectious. So that was a big takeaway there. And then when I worked at Gold Corp, the guy that I worked for, the VP of Strategy, was the first time I’ve ever had a boss that also became my friend, like my genuine friend. And that also rubbed off on me. And so actually with CFI and other parts of life and business, I’ve always tried to say, okay, I think you can have a genuine friendship with your co-workers, your colleagues, even people that report to you. And that actually makes everything better. That makes people more motivated. It’s more fun for me. It’s more fun for them. And so that was a big takeaway there. And then issues.com actually, the founder of that business taught me a lot too. He’s an incredible entrepreneur and has had a couple other big, big successful outcomes in his career. And he just taught me a lot about consumer marketing. So that’s actually where I first got switched on to SEO. Because issues.com, the SEO side of the business performed super well. And it was like the paid advertising side of the business that dragged it down. So that got the seed planted in my head about, hey, if I build a business to direct to consumers, I need to focus on SEO. And so I guess like serendipitous is the right word, that the lessons that you learned there are kind of what helped launch CFI. Yeah, a bunch of almost unrelated things all came together, right? Like working in investment banking and having that experience, having designed a course and delivering the course,

[00:35:56:16 – 00:39:53:00]
getting connected to UBC, shoes.com for SEO, all these things just kind of coming together in a weird way. And with CFI, without giving away too many trade secrets, maybe you could take us through how you kind of scaled the company from what I know to be working in, we worked in a WeWork initially, it was a shared space to what it is today. A lot’s happened in almost 10 years. Are there any outstanding memories that you remember, things that were really monumental and pivotal in your career? And maybe just like at some points where you thought like, okay, like I don’t think this is going to work. Yeah, oh, there was so much fear and doubt along the way. You never know if this thing is going to crumble at any minute. I think that’s probably normal though for entrepreneurs or executives to just worry about any existential threat for the business. So that was always there. I would say I’ve always been extremely product focused. And so my version of scaling is around the product. Like, what is the next program that we’re going to launch? How are we going to get that program out to a lot of people through content and content marketing? So I think of like content as our product. And I’ve been very focused on that. Admittedly, I’m, quite frankly, not talented at like scaling a sales team, or building out operational infrastructure, right, which are different types of scaling that you also need. But that’s where other people on the team have been super helpful. And, you know, I haven’t always been the CEO of CFI. And so we’ve had a period of time with Anna that she built out a great team operationally. And now I’m able to leverage that, you know, to produce more content. So I would say my strengths are on the content and product side of things. And I still have a lot to learn on like the operations team and sales, sales force side of the business. And you brought it up. So this is a perfect time to talk about this is FMVA. How did that idea come out? Because I think until the FMV came about, FMVA came about, it was very much just either going to be a CA, well, it was called CA back then. Now it’s okay, I’m aging myself. CPA now. But it was either you do a CPA, you do a CFA, maybe you do both. Or if you’re in a completely different world, you do a law degree. How did you think of the idea of an FMVA? Yeah, good question. It also just product focused. Yeah, it bubbled up as we expanded the catalog or the library of courses to get to a certain size, maybe it was like 20 courses, or 30 courses, something like that. It seemed that, hey, this fits together in a coherent curriculum. And this curriculum should all be bundled and packaged as one unit, that someone should go through more like a certification program than just a collection of courses. Because historically for us and for a lot of our competitors, they were they were all just collections of courses, there was no you could go in any order you want, take any ones, didn’t matter. So I thought, okay, let’s structure this. Some of these could be prerequisites, some of them should be core requirements, and then some of them could be electives. And all of a sudden, this feels like a certification program. So that’s one part. And then the other part is, as I was looking out at the marketplace, as a financial analyst, thinking about how I could build my own career, to your point, you know, CFA, well, highly respected, and, you know, a program that that I admire, takes, you know, three or four years to complete, could cost thousands of dollars, and is mostly focused on memorization, as opposed to application. So I thought, hey, okay, most people default to the CFA, but it’s not there’s probably a lot of people that it’s not serving. And wouldn’t it be better to have a program as an alternative, that’s like the opposite of all those things. So it’s affordable, it’s online, it’s quick to complete, and it’s super practical.

[00:39:54:04 – 00:41:48:11]
And to me, it was just a principal decision. Like there was no other market research or analysis or anything that was done. It was just that from first principles, this makes sense that this should be bundled as a as a certification, and that people will want this kind of certification for for those reasons. And when you put together the courses before even the, you know, the grouping together an FMBA came about, were the courses that you offered, did you find yourself being inspired by when you were that investment banking analyst coming out of university where you didn’t necessarily have from a general arts degree, that economics background, that Excel background, did you find that you were kind of looking back at young Tim and saying, oh, like, I want to make courses that would have helped younger Tim succeed today? Yeah, for sure. That’s a great way of putting it. Like I wanted to use my own pain if I could have gone back in time and say like, here, this, this will help you get through this, right? So for sure. You know, it wasn’t like the outright intention, but it was going on in the background for sure. So looking back at the journey that you’ve had with CFI so far, what would you say have been your key motivations that led you to this point today and have they changed over time? The number one thing that keeps me going and motivated is the results that I see from our students. Like when they post on LinkedIn that they’ve earned their certification and everyone is piling in and congratulating them, you know, that gives me a huge high, a huge buzz. When I see the topics that we’re covering now and that just like the breadth of training that we provide, that gives me a huge high because I would love to have access to those as a finance professional, right? So it’s really seeing the impact and the learners

[00:41:49:16 – 00:41:55:07]
outcomes that really excites me. You know, with students from basically all 200 countries

[00:41:56:14 – 00:44:24:03]
with subtitles translated into so many different languages, you know, that’s incredible to see. And the price point, it means that people in certain situations that wouldn’t be able to afford any of the other options are able to get incredible training at this super affordable price. And that makes me really excited. So now we’re going to get to know Tim from a different perspective, some information, some insights that you might not know before. We’re going to get to know Tim, the person, not the CEO. So Tim, what is the very first job that you’ve ever had? Not necessarily professional, but first job ever. The first job that I was ever paid to do was to paint houses. So that was like summer job outdoors painting, painting the outside of houses with like a big roller on a ladder. Yeah. And if movie or TV series comes on, what is the one show that you will always stop to watch? If it’s on the TV and you walk by, you’re definitely going to watch a few minutes. I mean, the show that I’ve probably watched the most episodes of ever has to be Seinfeld. I’ve never actually seen Seinfeld. I know. I’ve seen a lot of friends, but not Seinfeld. Oh, oh, we just got that on film. What’s your favorite CFI course? No pressure. My favorite CFI course. I would say that my favorite CFI course is a brand new course, but it’s so topical. It’s tool selection for AI professionals that we made together with Paul Barnhurst. And it’s incredibly relevant for FPA professionals right now. And I’m excited to see this new type of collaboration course. And what is something that, this is always a tough question, something that people don’t know about you that you think would surprise them. I don’t know if it’s, I don’t want to say anything that’s too surprising. What is your favorite band or musician? Oh, my favorite musician. I don’t have like a band that I’m loyal to. I just play, I just play whatever Spotify tells me to listen to. I still listen to a lot of EDM, I have to say.

[00:44:25:14 – 00:46:24:20]
To get pumped up when I’m going to the gym. Yeah. Favorite workout. Oh, I like doing yoga and weights. Very nice. That’s a very good combination. But for more of a leisure activity, I love skiing and snowboarding. Don’t you love squash? I used to play squash competitively. I don’t play it anymore. But I used to play super competitively in high school and in university. How come you don’t play anymore? It’s just really hard on the body. It’s like, it really wears you down. Like your hips, your knees, like all the things, but my kids are starting to play squash. And so yeah, yeah. So they’re only six and four years old, but they’re already playing. So if they get a little more into it, then that might get me back. Bring them back out. It’ll be so fun. What is a book or maybe a podcast that has made a lasting impact on you that you would recommend for everyone to pick up or listen to? There’s an amazing podcast. It’s called Lenny’s podcast. I’ve only known about it for about a year or so now, but every episode that he puts up is amazing. He basically interviews founders and executives at top tech companies, mostly focused on tech. And he has these incredible conversations with them. So I highly recommend that he, you know, he focused on marketing, product development, company scaling, all this kind of stuff with amazing entrepreneurs and founders. So I highly recommend that one. So the CFI, our 10 year anniversary is coming up soon. How will you, this will be exciting for me as an employee. How will you mark that milestone? Yeah, good question. Well, we’re working on some things. One thing is having a, for the employees, having a 10 year anniversary party. So getting everybody at the company together, having a big celebration to mark the 10 year milestone. And then for the students, there’s a couple of things. One, I have a prop actually. I want to show something. So this is the original FMVA certificate. Yeah, this is the OG. This is like what, what we might now call the heritage edition.

[00:46:26:06 – 00:47:46:11]
This is what we had in our CFI office. I want to bring back the heritage edition to mark the 10 year milestone. That’s one. And then another thing is at some point, we’re going to have to host and I want to host some sort of global meetup or summit. We can recognize everyone who’s ever earned any of our certifications and get together. But that is still a very rough idea at this point. Yeah, that’ll be logistically challenging, but very possible. I make no promises. If this stays in, I have no promises about that, but it’s something I’d love to do. And where do you hope that, where do you see CFI five years from today? My hope in five and 10 years is CFI is the undisputed number one, biggest and best training platform for finance professionals around the world. Whether they want certification or they want skills, we are there for them on all topics and we’re the number one platform.

Thank you so much, Tim, for joining us today. It’s been an absolute pleasure to hear about your vision, your journey, and learn from all that you’ve built at CFI. And until next time, everyone, we’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. FinPod is brought to you by Corporate Finance Institute, the number one rated online provider of finance and banking training certifications and productivity tools.