An Unconventional Path to CFO: Scott Drummond's Story

Speaker A: And definitely in the CFO role. I was lucky enough in my career. I worked in corporate finance a lot doing transaction advisory services at EY and that definitely doing management meetings, supporting, advising on deals and supporting the deal flow hones that ability to listen to those little finer points which have been discussed in management meetings, to pick up leads, to allow enough room for people to talk, to be actively listening, to note the details, but bring it up to the big picture of what is important. And it's all around strong communication and presentation, which is vital for a cfo because it's what this is is expected now.

Speaker B: Welcome back to Books The Boardroom Season 3 CFO Catalyst podcast. Today I'm joined by Scott Dromond, CFO at REIQ. Scott, great to have you on our podcast.

Speaker A: Good to be here. Thanks Zuma.

Speaker B: I have come full circle. This is the second time I interview CFO from REIQ on this podcast. So I'm really excited about that. And two different stories, obviously, even though it's the same, it's come from the same company and I'm really inspired by your story. I want to go really drill down and understand how you become a cfo. So you got a quite a journey like from performing art, especially Six Beard, the Minoc. Is it Minoc? Have you called this team Minak?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Joined the Deloitte, uh, at 29. So how have you experienced in the performing arts influenced your approach as a cfo?

Speaker A: So I, yeah, I did a arts degree and did performance, theater performance simultaneously in the background. I was doing a business degree at the same time at uq. Um, but in that my focus was on the arts and I was lucky enough I found my aptitude was for directing. So I did performance, I did some writing and I did directing, the whole sort of gamut of it. Uh, and in that the skills, there's tons of skills. I can give you a whole shopping list of different skills that are transferable around the soft skills. You're planning a production, finding what the objective is, what's your vision for the show, what are you trying to communicate to this to. To the audience, bringing out the best in everyone that's in your team, your production team. You want to. You've got a lot of intelligent people around the table and you want to bring, you want create a forum for them to bring their best creative self to the project. You got lots of personalities, lots of people. As it gets closer to the curtains going up, people getting terrified whether they're going to make, to make it there on time, whether they're going to know their lines or be convincing and everyone, they're really working together to give a great performance, whether it's a sad one or a happy one, an exciting one, whatever the case is. So there's definitely in the directing side there's a lot of skills that are transferable around being able to hold an elevator, a helicopter position, helicopter seat, but still being right down holding, metaphorically holding people's hand to help them cross the road if they need it, so to speak. As in literally making sure they understand they have ownership and they feel confident to get on with what they're doing. So it's a lot of those skills, uh, definitely transferable to the CFO role, I think importantly so for a sort of strategic CFO and Aldous phrase and working that in that seat, just being able to stand back and understand what the organization is trying to achieve, you've got to always have that because that's always helping you look forward and understand what you need for resourcing and what problems might coming up, what opportunities are there and what you can lean into to make them happen. And then also really trusting the team, really trusting your team to get on with it, uh, bringing bring in an environment where their best intelligence can come out and where they feel fully engaged. They'll always. The fun parts when you are surprised. I've been doing this for a lot of years and I have my. The risk has been set in my way and thinking I know best or something like that. And that obviously is really dysfunctional because you can't do everything, you can't know everything and just practically you can't do everything. And also it's very limiting for a team. So I do really enjoy those moments where I get surprises and, and I'm just completely rely on the team where they take ownership and autonomy to get on with that.

Speaker B: I love this thing. Like now CFO needs to perform live. So your CFO service is not anymore a back copy service. The CFOs are now involved in the business at the front and leading from the front. And you are live now so you don't have a cover anymore. So I think you're experiencing the performing art especially in the kind of more on an open stage situation. So make you more uh, vigilant or more confident to lead at the front and make sure that the audience, that's our stakeholders in the business context are all getting served.

Speaker A: Absolutely. The uh, leading from the front, whatever the interaction might be hosting that interaction, so to speak for yourself. And as in if you're doing a performance, say you're talking about Minack. We took a show there and it was a very audience interaction show at times. And so you've got 800 people but single individuals in front and you need to be listening and responsive and receptive to what they are giving you, their ideas, they're sharing. And you need to very, very quickly internalize, understand, reframe, communicate that back your understanding to, to create a fun show that everyone loves and then they're surprised by and all of that. And definitely in CFO role. I was lucky enough in my career. I worked in corporate finance a lot doing transaction advisory services at EY and that definitely doing management meetings, supporting, advising on deals and supporting the deal flow hones that ability to listen to those little finer points which have been discussed in management meetings, to pick up leads, to allow enough room for people to talk, to be actively listening to, to note the details, but bring it up to the big picture of what is important. And that's all around strong communication and presentation, which is vital for a cfo because that's what this is, is expected now.

Speaker B: So yeah, no, it's very interesting because now we thought previously the technical skills and all the qualifications that we achieve as a CFO would help you, but now the uh, it has been shipped. Yes, of course you need certain amount of qualifications, but I think what is most important, like what you alluded to, the communication, listening mostly the listening skills as a CFO and trying to, without talking a lot, try to understand everything and see whether you can work, uh, behind the scene and then get to the front when you really need to get to the front.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: I've never played baseball, but I sometimes feel like my role is like being the, the backstop to the pitcher or something like that. I sit at that. I can see the whole field. We're not necessarily running around after the ball, but we see the whole field and we just give those subtle cues to the picture just to help guide them to, to look amazing or whatever. And that, that's what it uh, that's if there's a metaphor, that's how I feel like my role sometimes. Yeah. And definitely don't drop the ball. Don't let anything get past you.

Speaker B: Exactly. No, that's wonderful. Especially when the business are in trouble or when the business are ah, growing. These are the two. The areas that CFO is very important, play a very important role whether you grow or whether you are declined. So that's pressure comes onto the CEO in both cases and ah. Yeah. Then you definitely can't drop the board.

Speaker A: No, no, not at all. Not at all. And is that assurance you're giving to the CEO and the coup and the other teams who are out there? Very definitely actively delivering on revenue growth and strategy and any activities like that. And it feels they are going out on a limb in part in this sort of the unknown at times. And yeah, I see my role there as being able to give them some probing. Doesn't sound as exciting, but that sort of foundation so they can go out there that it's all, it will all be supported to be able to get on with these initiatives and whatever the ambition is.

Speaker B: And you started your serious finance career, uh, at the age of 29. So when you joined Deloitte in London. So how did that come about?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think I had a. Not a non conventional way of getting there, I suppose as we chatted about a. Did a lot of performing arts and stuff, but. But I guess right before that, as a teenager, I grew up in Byron Bay. There was no finance services there. There are now, I think there's a lot of fintech there now. The whole home environment has opened it right up. So it's very different. But when I was there there was not a lot of financial services, let alone employment or whatever. And so this idea of being an accountant or a finance person was far out of my. My mindset. Didn't really know many people that went to university. The ambition level was pretty low and everyone just wanted to go surfing all day basically.

Speaker B: But.

Speaker A: But I think I was. I grew up watching. I think everyone's seen Wall street and Gordon Gekko whilst he's the bad guy. I was really inspired by the New York high life and I was like, um, oh man, that looks cool. That looks fun. Wouldn't that be fun? So anyway, I, I did the books in a real practical way. I did the bookkeeping for my mum's business. She ran a training organization. As a teenager I was entering the debits and credits, plodding along. Then I went on, uh, I need to learn a little bit more about this. So I read a really great big thick accountancy book on first, the principles of double entry bookkeeping. I taught myself that just because my brain is stubbornly tenacious, trying to know stuff like that. So I taught myself that and it just became a skill set that was getting me through university and sort of a side hustle, so to speak. I was doing bookkeeping and then I ended up at a role@carpet1. All the while I was A little bit, I suppose in my teens and twenties. Not a, Not a sob story but a uh, broken family. Dad had PTSD from the British army. And it was not a, it was not a. I lost a lot of love and support, just not the opportunity there to flourish as, as easily. So it was a little bit of hard graft to get out of that I suppose. And my mum all the way along was supporting me and then all through my 20s was just trying to find what is my trajectory, where do I want to get going. Then I think it was about. I think I was 26 maybe I was working at carpet one, uh, as a senior bookkeeper while studying full time. And my dad was. Also had injuries so I was looking after him. M. So it was a really, it was a long days, long hours, Long long hours. And uh, there was the. The main accountant there was. Had gone to. It was chartered accountant. Ca. Gone to London, did the whole London trip and, and uh, he was great. He's lovely. I learned a lot from him. Really good mentor, gave me really good opportunity. And then I was also working with our auditors and just looking at what they were doing and their manner of how they approached their work and brought themselves, their composure to the workplace every day. Uh, their personal quality I really appreciate and really like when I like that and the nature of the work I was going, I could do that. Ah, what's this about? As in better opportunity to open up. So I, in my naivety, I started researching it and uh, applied to the Big four. I didn't know them who they were necessarily six months earlier and six months later I had a role at Deloitte in London.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Yeah, so it was a bit, I think the expression was jammy. I was a little bit punching above my weight, it felt like at the time. But that said it was. The circumstances weren't obviously there, but they came there. But I always, just always had some ambition and some drive and always had good support around me and just lean into that. Recognize those opportunities where there's inspiration or there's opportunity to excel or to make your mark. And then just curious, just pull on a thread I found. And then uh. And as I said, I didn't know who the Big four were because I never really wasn't part of my growth journey to understand that. And I very quickly learned who the Big four were and all of that story there. And yeah, it was just. That's how I ended up in London.

Speaker B: So was it that like a significant adjustment for you when you joined with Deloitte from working in the smaller businesses before. How was that adjustment phase light for you and what were your strategies to somehow gel with that fairly quickly?

Speaker A: Multiple adjustments. I was very lucky in the interview phase. I got through various rounds with different, different firms, but the Deloitte one is the one that I managed to get over the line with. The final partner round, it was an Aussie, excuse me, he was an Aussie from Brisbane, which was great. And it is so important, that sort of cultural alignment. I'd got through the psychometric testing and the more formal interviews and the hundred question interviews and all that sort of stuff. And then at the end you just got to sit down and have a chit chat and can you gel with the feel of the place? And, and yeah, so when he rocked up, we were just having a chit chat and being a skippy in London. I did all my final interviews in London and it was such a shift, a cultural shift. My dad was English so I did have a bit of an awareness, but it definitely still is a big cultural shift. And then the interview with him, I was just able to just relax and I think I even started, I don't know where it came from, but a Leighton Hewitt voice started coming on going, oh, come on, yeah, let's do this sort of thing. Uh, which, I mean he's not, it's not like he was going to be easily swayed by that by any means, a very smart person, et cetera. But it was. But it's the ability to find that they're looking for someone that can relax in the moment as well, in the high stakes moment that you can be relaxed and still communicate in your point of view. And that was important and I was able to do that. And luckily I found something to latch onto that gave me that ability to relax because I'd also seen other people interview who are brilliant people, but they just didn't quite click into themselves. They didn't click into the moment and they didn't get through interviews. So that was the first adjustment there. And then from there, I guess Deloitte, it's as I said, uh, I think I said at the beginning it was just such an array of, an arrangement of different people and different backgrounds. I was a bit older in my cohort, I think the average age I think was maybe 24, 25, but we all came from. I was very self conscious of myself at the start as well, thinking I'm an Aussie, I'm a bit older. These are people gone to Oxbridge, Cambridge and had PhDs and I was like, oh no, what am I doing here? Sort of thing. But it was all we were at the end of the day we all managed to get there and very quickly busy season gets that uh, gets rid of any of that pretense you might have or that nervousness because you just gotta get on and work and, and you go through with your cohort. It was. Yeah. So there's definitely shifts and changes but I think at the end of the day those first three years of the doing the training side, just so busy, there wasn't much time to think about it either sort of thing. It's a lot of work and really supported work as well. It's a very structured training program. Lots of busyness, lots of each year support to an expectation carrot and stick to take on more responsibility to be working on your team and supporting your team, to be having great interaction with finance directors and CFOs and clients, et cetera. And then there's always the summer training cycle that they would provide as well. So there's a lot of expectation but there was also a lot of support through all of that.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's quite interesting how you adjusted ah and became part of that Deloitte culture fairly quickly and then of course build your career from there. So I know I can explore a lot in that area because there's lots of lessons that we can tell the market because it's going to be beneficial for the young and upcoming finance professionals. But I want to ask a few critical the moments that the CFOs are facing these days and get your views on them, especially in this finance transformation. So I think you mentioned in your notes that it's no longer an optional thing especially for member based organization where you are heading at this point. So uh, what does the finance transformation looks like in your organization today?

Speaker A: Yeah, so we are, I'm reasonably new to REIQ here. We are a small organization but we have a lot of impact on the industry representing the real estate industry across Queensland. And so we have a lot of influence and a lot of expectation on us as well. And with that uh, we obviously we want to do well in our operations and how we actually deliver on that service for our members. And with that in mind, when I joined I very quickly realized that we are basically an IT company. You could look at us in one angle and go, we do all this industry stuff and this advocacy but we're an IT company uh, which is really fascinating. We have a forms platform which is very important for real estate industry. It's based SaaS application. We have all our CRMs, we have this digital tech stack which is just got layers of different apps that talk to each other to, to be able to deliver our services. And then behind that with our actual finance function we have uh, right through our sales function we, it is all highly digitized we where we're bringing everything into the journals through batches and payment gateways, et cetera, uh AP systems, everyone is loading their invoices, they're all automatically read uploaded into the accounting software, et cetera. And so that whole finop side of it is highly automated there which is obviously is important because we're small, we don't have a lot of buffer in our uh, P and L. We want to return as much as we can to our members. So it's really important in that finance transformation, that finop side that we're working in the lean environment. That said we don't, we keep, keep reflecting on whether this is the right state for us. And then I'm currently going through, looking at the moment the gap analysis, where are we, where might we be missing opportunities, where can we slim down processes, et cetera. And it's a balancing act of I find of over acquiring too many bolt ons, too many apps, over complicating it versus going a real simple way where we do everything on Excel because everyone knows Excel and that seems more manageable and controllable but obviously not necessarily as efficient. So there is this, this balancing act between there that we're finding why it's important as I was saying earlier, to deliver more value to our members, to make sure we're not wasting et cetera. But also one element that I'm trying to take the team through to the next side is really around that decision support and that analytics and really making the finop side of it as lean as possible. Inverting the pyramid where it's generally a fat pyramid at the bottom where we process transactions and then we do a bit of decision making up the top in analytics but try to reverse that so we can do the finop side quite quickly and really support robust decision making at the top with our analytics and whatever shape that takes. So that's the journey that we're on at the moment. That's what we're looking at and it's, it's very important to do.

Speaker B: You know, it's great that when you have that kind of a digitalization or the optimization of the transactional finance or that you are calling that changes the, the financial like from financial stewardship to a strategic business partnering. You will have more time to work with the CEO and the board and the rest of the people who are out there building the business. Because CFO is now have that ability to be business partnering and that's the role that they're expecting from you. So how do you make use of your, the time that you are uh, now available to work with the CEO to build a business, grow it or expand it or get to the next level?

Speaker A: Yeah, good question. That is definitely the expectation. And I think being the house statistician so to speak, that's as in I across uh, finance we get exposure to all the data points and there's a bit of an expectation that we can crunch the data in some way or at least make sense of the data. And so that side of it, in terms of how we support the CEO on delivering strategy and not just delivering strategy, coming up with ideas for strategy as well. I can support delivering and create a robust governance structure and roadmap and monitor the uh, the KPIs and what have you. But actually partnering with the CEO and identifying opportunities is uh, something that honestly is newer for me as a CFO and is something that I'm finding very exciting to do with that. It's been, it's just having a bigger view, bigger, broader view. So the budget came out today for Queensland government. Well they haven't seen the details yet, but we'll get to see all that. It's being on top of those details. Understanding what's happening in your market constantly market scanning and what does it mean for your organization? Market scanning, what does it mean? What are thematics coming up in industry? Digitization just mentioned globalization or de globalization. These big sort of geopolitics. But being able to bring that intelligence to go. What does all this noise out in industry actually mean for our organization and where might we find opportunities for uh, delivering on the value to our members? We serve our real estate industry members basically finding where do we fit into their value chain of making stuff happen. And we keep identifying opportunities in their value chain of acquiring business to completing a sale or property management. We find opportunities in there to support them in that process all the way along. So I think delivering value there for the CF for the CEO rather is helping make sense from a numbers perspective, a statistician type perspective on all the noise that's happening externally and what it might mean for our members is like

Speaker B: remit, I guess in your kind of business. I think the AI and what's happening in the technology is very important. Because you can do lots of research for your members as well as the macroeconomic variables, how things are um, working at the moment. It's very unprecedented time anyway like the wars happening everywhere and the micro variables are pretty volatile as well. So how do you make use of AI and uh, technology advancement in your career as a CEO to get more insights to the CEO and the leadership uh, team?

Speaker A: Yeah. So AI obviously can't escape it. It's out there. And I think that's the big thing is that it is out there now. So firstly going to that sort of metaphor of the backstop in a baseball match, I want to make sure that we're using from a risk side that we're using AI in a, a well managed, we're managing the risk around it in the first place because it's genie out of the bottle scenario, isn't it? With the power of it, but also the misuse that could come with it and horror stories you can hear around. So cfo, uh, we're working through our framework for AI currently and where we've got our policy in place and our education program and just making sure our staff are using it appropriately. We want everyone to be able to use it. No doubt. It's got productivity uplift opportunities. I know I use it for researching as a research assistant and it's great. And, and so that's the first layer in terms of the data analytics side and the overlay that we might have, we're currently working through at the moment. And our approach in the first is to get the, the data governance right. We have a lot of data, a lot of important data points that uh, we need to protect and uh, make sure they're being interpreted appropriately and we're betting that firmly down at the moment. I was in a luncheries uh, and heard a story where they just quickly rolled out AI and some kids, some of this was at a school and the students were very quickly going what's my teacher's salary? And the data wasn't locked down. They got all the teachers salaries, they shared it around and that obviously is a, uh, that's a headache and as a cfo you don't want that at all. So we're definitely, we're working on that. So there's all sort of the risk averse side of it I suppose in terms of the value add side of it. Yeah, we, we do have a lot of Data. We have SaaS software or SaaS offering there and we're doing the analytics at the moment around the churn and lifetime Value and all of that sort of element of it, which definitely helps us to understand the quality of our membership base, which is vital. But also what we're really looking at the moment through this and leveraging is or how do we our membership of our member value propositions, et cetera. And it's always a never ending question for us as a membership organization. How are we serving our members? How are we giving them value back? How are we giving that value back? So we definitely use AI in understanding our business and analyzing our business. We're also and we're looking at various products to support at the moment there's a CPD regime change in the Queensland real estate industry that went live 6th of June and we have various apps that can support our industry participants through that process that we're working on to, to make that easier for them. So that's definitely a lot in AI there that we are looking at. The really selfish side of it. I find that just the quite simply working towards a lean finance team, the productivity uplift that can be tapped into if you've got to benchmark, for instance you want to benchmark your budget or your, what is an appropriate headcount for a revenue area, tap into AI researchers, provide sources to white papers, blah blah blah. And it very quickly obviously scans all the publicly available information on the Internet, et cetera. And I find that very quick. I've used it in meetings where we'll be discussing the matter and what's our strategy for ideas for this? Can we get some ideas? And bang. You can use it as this. You just basically tapping into the hive mind on steroids. Obviously you've got to sense, check it and do take what the output is as gospel, et cetera. But it is very quick in terms of getting through that um, writer's block so to speak, getting over that hump, getting this as my wife, she uses it in marketing all the time, getting that swill draft down, just getting over that. Then you enhance, refined, challenge the output inputs, et cetera. So I use AI quite a lot in that sense in a risk managed way to make sure we're not sharing sensitive information, blah blah, blah.

Speaker B: Yeah, end of the day the tools out there, they can do things but it's as good as the user. So user has uh, the power end of the day to use them and then get the right outcome and then implement it as well. Because it now is we are living in an information overwhelming situation. Right. So we got lots of information but it's about us choosing the right one to take and then implemented within our framework, the governance framework, uh, business expectations and of course the as you always referring to your members like adding value to the members.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, absolutely wonderful.

Speaker B: So we I got a one final question to you because your story is very inspiring. Never thought of becoming a very impactful CFO you are today and if you could give yourself for, I mean 25 year old an advice who was juggling between jobs and caregiving, studying the whole lot. So what could be the advice you give from everything you know now to yourself when you were 25 years old?

Speaker A: I think one of the things I the advice I would give is go all in. I did have a bit of a as as was said and it's not like that now. Lovely lifestyle and kids and family but it was a bit of a fractured lifest style which ends up resulting in a little bit of serving two gods. I wanted to do performance. I had a head for numbers, but I never really had any ambition for a career and all of that stuff. But I knew I wanted to do something then. I also had, I had ability for technology. I was looking at that. It was all just very fragmented and nothing's going to happen out of fragmentation like that. So there was a point where I just went hang on, I've got this opportunity. It's a great opportunity. Go all in, grab hold of it and just ride it for as far as it can go. I'm glad I've ended up here. It's fantastic. I may not have but just the. But just getting in. I've been able to have fantastic opportunities and work with some great people on some really interesting projects. And that's just because I've just, I've gone all in basically and taken. Ridden that wave and taken those opportunities.

Speaker B: Love that advice and thank you very much for telling your story on Books of the Boardroom podcast.

Speaker C: Thanks for joining us on this episode of the CFO Catalyst Podcast Season three. If you enjoyed our, uh, discussion on CFO leadership, please subscribe on your preferred platform. When you share with fellow CFOs and business leaders, you're helping us build this community of strategic financial thinkers together. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Connect with us on social media and join the conversation as we explore how the CFO role continues to evolve in today's dynamic business landscape. Until next time, keep innovating in your financial leadership and stay tuned for more forward thinking discussions in our CFO Catalyst series. Join us next time. Proudly sponsored by Brisker Global with production and distribution by disrupt X1, Sam.