How This CFO Sold LoveFilm to Amazon

Host: Today we spoke to Jim Buckle, a CFO with over 25 years experience and um, recently took Gusto from 100 to 300 million revenue. Jim has had a highly successful career across Love Film, including an exit to Amazon as well as recently scaling gusto. We also spoke about Jim's non linear path to becoming cfo. Being a CFO in different types of organizations and different ownership structures and the challenges of leading a consumer business in 2026. And towards the end of the episode we spoke to Jim about being a successful CFO but working a four day work week. Jim, you've been a CFO and COO now for over sort of 25 years across Gusto Wiggle Love Film. If you were to go back to before you got your first CFO role, what were the things you'd say? You're about to get these completely wrong.

Jim Buckle: Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think I'm going to cheat slightly and go not from my very first role, but when I went to be CFO Love Film, which was probably the first business of any kind of scale that I went to, I went having been managing uh, director of Property Finder. So I'd been in a non finance role and in my mind I thought when I go and be cfo I need to kind of reprogram myself as the finance guy and go and be very financy. And as it happened the first year that I was there, there was kind of lots to do around sort of processes and systems and bringing together two different finance teams because we'd gone through a merger and so there's lots of kind of nuts and bolts to kind of think about. And so I thought this is kind of great because I can show all my kind of finance expertise and they won't be worried that I want to do a non finance role. Um, and after I've been there, I don't know how long it was six or 12 months. I had some 360 feedback and one of the other people on the leadership team made this comment of I feel like there's much more Jim's got to give us, but he's not kind of giving it to us. And um, it was like a light bulb went on in my head and I thought that's what being a CFO is about. It's not about sorting out the finance. You have to make sure those things happen. But it was a kind of real light bulb m moment for me that actually all the things that I had done in sort of running a small business and sort of Being involved in the kind of commercial strategy and thinking about all those kind of things was what I needed to do as a cfo. But I hadn't kind of really realized that was what was needed. And so I guess that was the main learning and I've hopefully followed that through ever since.

Host: And I think we discussed the other day the CFO role. We keep hearing about that. It's, it's changed or it's changing. And um, often you wonder if that's because there are people trying to sell you bits and pieces because of this. But, um, has it, has it changed much over the last 25 years?

Jim Buckle: Not in my experience. I think what's changed is the nature. I guess the structure of finance function is changing through technology, but the ultimate role of the CFO hasn't really changed. That's ultimately to help with the CEO, set the financial strategy of the business and deliver on that financial strategy. Um, clearly as a finance function, you've got to pay suppliers and you've got to do payroll and you've got to collect your debts in if that's the kind of business you're in. But that's for your team to do. It's not for the kind of CFO to be spending too much time worrying about. You've got to make sure you've got the right team, the right processes in place underneath you. I think there's probably a sort of change in the, in the structure of finance. So historically you have this kind of description of the kind of pyramid with like lots of people at the bottom doing transactional processing and very few people at the top doing kind of added value sort of business partnering and sort of strategic work. And I think particularly now with kind of AI, you'll maybe see like more of a kind of inverted pyramid structure where you'll have more people at kind of senior level. Not quite sure how that works from a career development point of view. And that's something we still need to grapple with. But you'll need maybe definitely fewer people at the bottom doing those kind of transactional processing things, even doing the kind of basic analysis, because AI will be able to do that for you, but you need more people who are able to really interpret that and then understand what that means for business and work with partners alongside that. Um, but fundamentally I don't think the role of CFO has, has changed at all from the first proper sort of standalone finance role I did, which was for a pre revenue startup back in 2001. Um, it was still about dealing with shareholders Setting out a kind of financial strategy, worrying about kind of business planning, um, worrying about, in that particular case, worrying about the business was going to survive beyond the following week. Um, all those things are still important and I don't think it's changed, it's just the tools you've got have changed.

Co-host: Yeah, um, have you found it easy to adapt to the different, you talked about stakeholders there, the different stakeholders you've had to adapt to over the years in the different ownership models. Has that been something that you've kind of had to evolve over time as well?

Jim Buckle: I think I've definitely learned what I like. Um, I guess I've worked in sort of large corporates where the stakeholders are some distant people, um, in a kind of, often in a foreign country. So, you know, when Love Film was built by Amazon, you know, suddenly your stakeholders are, you know, Jeff Bezos and people in kind of Seattle, um, or when I was at the BBC, it's kind of like the kind of senior hierarchy of BBC. So it's kind of like somewhat distant, uh, or you know, or Dell, a kind of similar thing. Um, and then you know, as you go into kind of smaller businesses, you know, you're kind of much. And I guess as you get more senior, you're in a much more kind of closer relationship with those stakeholders. Um, but I think the thing I've learned the most is probably a distinction between a typical kind of private equity structure and a kind of venture capital structure or more of a kind of diverse shareholder base. So my experience in private equity has been one dominant shareholder and essentially they see that they're to some extent they're either setting the strategy or they're expecting management to execute pretty rigorously and sort of strictly against the management plan that they've invested the business against in the business. So they don't then expect you to go off and do other stuff and they don't really expect you to kind of wander off into kind of different directions. They kind of like they bought the business, they put this amount of equity, this amount of debt into it. They've got a five year plan that you're going to do X, Y and Z and then they're going to sell it at the end of it. And that's kind of like the model and it's pretty boring. Um, whereas if you're joining a business that's either still run by the founder but still kind of run by the management team and it's accumulated sort of VC and then maybe growth investors along the way, it's still the leadership team that are driving the business forward and developing the strategy. And then your job is to take the shareholders with you m on that journey and make sure that ultimately you still got to deliver liquidity for those shareholders. And so they will have a point of view and they'll kind of want to know why you're doing what you're doing. But it's much more led by the management team and the CEO, uh, rather than being directed by the shareholders. And that for me makes a much more interesting, uh, situation. So that's the situation we have at gusto. That's the situation I had at Love Film when I was there. And um, those are probably the two roles that I've enjoyed the most. Not just for those reasons, but certainly part of that.

Host: And there's obviously been a bit of trial and error in your career in finding out what suits you and, and your style. What would you say to those maybe sort of aspiring CFOs and ones considering that next move when thinking about those different types of ownership structures? Because there's a lot of mystique around um, private equity we find, and sort of that seems to be quite a pull for some people. And it's a golden pot at the end of that potentially. Um, obviously there's been this sort of boom and bust in the VC space as those cycles go on. How would you sort of think about that if you were.

Jim Buckle: Yeah, I think the first thing is think about the size and shape of organization that you enjoy being in. I would think about that before ownership structure maybe. You know, I spent the first 10 plus years of my career in kind of large corporate. So I started at KPMG and I was at BBC and then at Dell and parts of that were interesting. But there was kind of me, I couldn't really articulate at the time. But looking back, you were just sort of so far away from the kind of decision making. And so if you want to be in the action and involved in the kind of decision making, setting the strategy of a business and doing those types of things, then don't work in a large corporate. If you want a relatively safe career and just kind of, and a nice structure that kind of, you go up the ladder over time, then a large corporate is for you. And I remember when I was at Feelunique, we used to hire a lot of people into our commercial team who'd worked at places like Debenhams or Boots or big retailers, uh, in the kind of beauty space. And they would always say in the interview process, I Want to work somewhere more dynamic and a bit more kind of fast moving. And then some of those would thrive on that and others would go and after like a few months you realize they didn't really want it that fast paced or that chaotic and they would kind of go well where's my kind of career development plan and that kind of thing. And as a small business you have to try and do that but you can't do it in the same way that a large corporate. So I think that's. And then you know, and then you can go from, you know, I've worked in, you know, a pre revenue startup with like 15 people and that has its kind of other challenges and particularly in your finance. You're essentially, you are the finance function. So you're doing everything from posting invoices to talking about investment with your investors and kind of, and kind of worrying about the business is kind of future. So it's like a very condensed role and that's fun but some people would find that incredibly scary. Um, and then you know, you got more mature businesses. Like Gusto is the most mature kind of early stage. We're 15 years old but 14, 15 years old but not really early stage anymore, but it's kind of a relatively mature business and you got probably good, um, the best of kind of being in a growth business, an early stage business, but also some of the elements of being in a corporate as well. And so I think people need to think about what sort of business they want to be in and then if you're lucky enough to then be able to sort of pick and choose around ownership structures. I think part of the. I read something recently where someone said don't go into private equity just because you think you're going to make a ton of money out of it. Because I don't know what the stats are but how many people actually walk away with like a multi million pound check at the end of it? Um, probably not that many. I've certainly over the course of my career had some kind of equity return a few times. But I've also had more experiences of things where you think you're going to make a load of money and you don't, um, so definitely don't go into things just because the money is great. Um, when I went to work at Dell, partly I went there because it was a great experience, different to the BBC but it was like an awful culturally place, place to work culturally. And I sort of consoled myself with the fact that the Dell stock price was going up by One or two dollars every day for the first year or so that I went there, and then it completely crashed, and I made no money whatsoever. But, um. And so there was a kind of real learning for me in terms of, you know, think about the organization and the culture and the people before the money, because the money may never happen. Um, so. And I think probably the final thing I would say is you've got to try stuff. You know, you can't. No career is perfect. You're not going to kind of start at 21 or whatever and kind of go to 65, and everything's going to be plain sailing. And you almost need to make some mistakes and find things you don't like, because if you don't find the things you don't like, you won't know what you will like.

Host: Yeah.

Co-host: Did you. It was really interesting what you were saying about bringing in commercial people from Debenhams, and I assume the same with you. In finance, you've hired people from different backgrounds. Have you found any good ways of identifying the people that will fit the business that you're. You're talking about? You know, whether that is a VC or a, you know, different model? Because I'm really interested in that from the hiring perspective, because clearly, people from Debenhams can work, but they need to be the right person, and there's some in Debenhams that couldn't be. So how do. How have you found ways to kind of take the right gambles and the right people in that respect, and have you got better at that over the years in some way?

Jim Buckle: Um, well, funny enough, I've done hardly any hiring in the last five or six years because, uh, I've been lucky to have, like, a very stable team at gusto. So I've not. I've only hired one person directly to work for me, which was an interim maternity cover. But all of my direct reports were in good stuff before. Some of them have been promoted, but they're all kind of, like, predate me, so I can't really say I'm getting better because I haven't done much recently. Um, but it's really hard, I think, is the honest answer. You can't really be sure that someone's going to sink or swim in a particular environment. So you really just have to, I guess, ask them what sorts of things they enjoy and what sort of things they don't like. For me, those are two of my kind of favorite questions, like, what do you enjoy doing at work? And what don't you enjoy doing at work. And you can pick up a lot from that. And if people sort of say, well, you know, I like a bit of structure or whatever it is, and, you know, they're probably not going to be right for like a really early stage business where things are a bit chaotic and things are changing the whole time. But I think you can, you can pick up a, a good sense of people's personality just through asking the right questions and interviews. But some people are really. The other thing about interviews, some people are really bad at doing interviews and some people are very good at doing interviews and that's a really difficult thing to unpick. And, um, I've always thought I'm not very good at doing interviews. And so I kind of like. Most of the jobs that I've done have been through personal recommendation rather than through a typical interview process because I don't feel I sell myself very well. Um, so, yeah, I think it's really hard. There's no honest answer. But I think the other thing is once you've hired somebody, if they turn on that to be right, then you have to quickly have like an honest conversation. And, uh, it's best for kind of both sides that you don't let that kind of linger on.

Host: Going back to, um, Love Film and selling, uh, to Amazon, I mean, it's a great story. I guess one of the things you're probably most proud of in your career today. What, reflecting on that again, as a sort of a more seasoned CFO now, what did you learn from that process that you kind of take forward to today?

Jim Buckle: Yeah, I mean, I think the interesting thing is with Amazon that we did two transactions with them. So we originally bought Amazon Love Film, for people who were kind of too young to remember, was a subscription DVD rental business and then became digital streaming business and which ultimately became Amazon Prime Video. Um, and Amazon had their own DVD rental subscription business in the UK and Germany. And so they were quite a strong competitor for us in the uk, much stronger competitor than Blockbuster. Um, they came to us one day in about 2008 and said originally, actually they came and offered, they offered us, I think, 300 million for the business, or maybe $300 million, which was like 200 million pounds, which was more than we ended up selling to them later on. Um, so the first learning was when someone comes along and offers you an amazing offer, don't turn it down. Um, but we thought that was kind of like not the right time to be selling the business, but we kind of got to know their M and A team. And, uh, a little bit later, maybe six months later, they came to us and said, we can see you're delivering a better product than we are in the UK and our business, we've got to the point with our business where it's not really scalable because we're sort of doing it on the side. Um, why don't you buy our business and we'll have 30% of the equity? And, um, we went through quite a long negotiation. We said, well, it isn't really worth 30% of the equity. So we ended up giving them low 20s and they put some cash in and they did various other things to kind of get to the percentage that they were comfortable with getting. Um, and on one level that was like a really transformational deal because we were able to add quite a lot of extra subscribers both in the UK and in Germany, without really any extra management overhead that went with it. So it was kind of pure contribution and really transformed us kind of profit wise. What we probably didn't think through was what the effect of having a 22 or whatever the percentage was, uh, shareholder, strategic investor on the, on the cap table, um, who was then our biggest shareholder and was potentially then a kind of real issue if it came down to, you know, a future liquidity because they were kind of sitting there like a sort of elephant on the doorstep. On the doorstep. Um, ultimately you could say that was good because in the end they did buy the company. But whether we could have sold to others for kind of higher price, um, it was, it was a difficult situation. We looked at, for example, we looked at doing an ipo. Um, luckily we didn't do it and luckily Amazon didn't support it. But we had a lot of conversations about doing an ipo and Amazon basically said, um, we don't really want you to do an ipo. We don't kind of support that. And then we spent lots of time trying to figure out whether they legally were able to block it. And they probably weren't. But in effect, if you're a 20 plus percent shareholder and you say you're not going to support an ipo, it's pretty hard to do an IPO in that situation. So I think for me the learning is think about the unintended consequences of doing a transaction that on paper looks fantastic and we probably still would have done it. But, um, definitely there was some challenges around doing that. And I think then when we came to sell to Amazon, for me, there's kind of two learnings. One is a kind of almost A learning for Amazon, really, which was we spent a long time negotiating on price because they sort of had a guy in their kind of M and a team who was like a sort of terrier. And he was like, you know, really wanted to get, like, a really lean price, uh, for buying the business. And he started off at, like, some really low price that we were never going to accept. And our investors started off at kind of a high price that probably Amazon were never going to accept. And we were probably 100 million apart in valuation. Um, and we spent many months sort of nudging closer and closer to the point where we were sort of within a few million of each other. And the final price was something, something and £750,000 kind of thing, because we sort of got to, like within 3 million or something and split the difference. And so it just became silly. And that transaction was completed, uh, about a year and a half before Netflix came into the UK market. Um, and one of the things that Amazon want, you know, we wanted Amazon to do and they wanted to do after buying the business, was to then invest much more heavily into digital content than we'd been able to afford as a standalone business. Um, and if we'd completed that transaction six months earlier, the price of content would have been a lot cheaper. But by the time we were going out with kind of Amazon's checkbook to talk to the newbie studios and saying, we want distribution rights on X, Y and Z, Netflix were also sniffing around, having those same conversations. And therefore the price of content had kind of gone up. And I kind of feel like if Amazon had just kind of given us a decent offer straight away, they would have saved money on the content that they later had to invest in the business, or as a combined business, we would have saved money. So at a kind of critical point in the kind of evolution of streaming, we were sort of dancing around a few million quid on the valuation of Love Film, when actually the real game was kind of over here in terms of getting streaming up and running and getting the content rights. And we probably could have cleaned up a lot more content and made it a lot harder for Netflix to come into the uk. If we'd closed our transaction, um, earlier, um, and then I think probably the other learning, which wasn't a learning because we did do it, but we had a very diverse shareholder base and we had, apart from Amazon, we had four other kind of VC investors who all had about 10 to 15%, uh, ownership. And then we had a kind of longer tail of kind of Various founders and angels and things like that. Um, and those four VCs had very different perspectives in terms of what they thought the price should be, how we should approach in negotiation and all that kind of stuff. Um, and probably the best decision they made collectively as a kind of group was to appoint one of their investor directors to basically work with me and the rest of the team on the transaction. So, as cfo, you don't want to be negotiating with a third party who's going to buy your company, but also with like four or five or six investors at the same time. And so the fact that they gave me one person to deal with who was a kind of very sensible person, just made that whole process a lot easier.

Host: Brilliant. And in terms of the actually preparing for a sale kind of exit readiness, are there things from that process that you kind of take forward today when you're kind of preparing for whatever the future for Gusto looks like, for example, that you kind of go, yeah, this is. This is how you prepare. This is best practice.

Jim Buckle: Yeah, it's an interesting question. So I just had a. I mean, at some point in the future, Gusto will kind of go through liquidity event. Not in the immediate term, um, um, but it's something we kind of think about, and we've recently had a discussion with the board about exactly that topic of, like, what are the things that we need to make sure that in X years time we've kind of got. Right. Um, and so we put together, uh, a paper for our board just recently on kind of different kind of topics around that. And I sat down with my team, like this week to kind of go in each of those topics. The things that we've said are, uh, actions, are they things that we're already working on just because it's part of maturing a business and making sure you kind of got the right governance and processes in place, or are they things we haven't currently been thinking about and we need to go and get some new work sort of initiated? And our conclusion was that with the exception of something very tiny, it was all things that we were doing anyway. Um, and so I think if you're on a journey to mature organization in terms of governance, risk management, et cetera, then you should be doing all those things anyway. I think we went through an exercise four or five years ago where we were thinking about doing an IPO at Gusto, and we did actually commission kpmg. I think it was to do a kind of IPO readiness kind of assessment. And so that was A useful document to kind of go back to and go, you know, what did they tell us before? And have we, where have we got to? Um, again, we kind of done most of those things. There are things, if you're planning for an ipo, you'd only do, you know, because you're going to do an ipo, so you wouldn't bother doing those in other kind of situations. But on the whole, I don't think there's a kind of particular stuff, but I think it's an interesting area just because there may be kind of specific things in the business. So when I was a property finder, uh, 20 years ago, um, I took over as managing director of the business in the midst of attempting to sell the business. And in my first three to six months, uh, running the company, we went through two failed sale processes. Um, so we kind of got someone who said they wanted to buy us for a certain price, went through dd, and they kind of said, no, thanks. And then we went to the next person down the list, went through DD again, and they said, no, thanks. And that for me was like a really good learning process because you kind of knew what were the things that they didn't want, what were the reasons they didn't want to buy. So that then gave me, like, a really clear plan as, like, if I go and fix these things, the business will be much more attractive to a buyer. Um, and so literally my kind of strategy immediately after that was go do these three things. I remember going to our investors and saying, let's not carry on trying to sell the company. We're just kind of getting lower, lower in price, and we're running out of people who are interested right now. But here are the things that I think we should do that would make a difference. Um, if you back me to do those, then I think that we'll be able to sell it in the future. And so that's what we did. And we sold it for five times more, um, like two years later. So that was a kind of worthwhile exercise. So I guess the one learning is try and sell your company when you're not ready, and then you'll quickly find out the things that you need to sort out. But they weren't really governance things. They were kind of structural things about the business that needed fixing.

Co-host: Yeah, I was just reflecting on some of the things you said there. But timing is fascinating in business in general, isn't it? When you think about the stages of your career and the companies you work for so much of, Um, I guess the journey you're on at gusto but love film. Previously it was so much about being at the right place at the right time to make that transaction. And uh, do you feel like you've kind of thought about the businesses that you've joined strategically in that respect or do you feel there's a huge element of luck to going, well, I've joined this business, I've joined it at the right time and then the right opportunities come along. How do you sort of balance luck versus your kind of thinking about your career strategically as well?

Jim Buckle: Yeah, I think I was going to say I think it's luck, but as you were asking, I think it's more to do with kind of appetite and kind of risk appetite that if you join an organization at an interesting time, then there's more chance of interesting things happening. If you want to join a really stable business where nothing's really much going to change, then the chances are interesting things won't happen. I think I've been lucky in some respects. So for example, I spent four or five years at the BBC. That wasn't a fast moving business. It was certainly going to transform itself. But I happened to join there at the time when digital media was in its infancy. I think I joined a year after World Wide Web was invented. And so I joined at a time when the BBC was really thinking hard about what's the kind of future of media, how will digital media kind of affect broadcast, et cetera, et cetera. And so particularly when I was working in BBC education, we had lots of really interesting conversations around how will educational content be delivered in the future. And it's really fascinating to look back now, nearly 20, 25, 30 years later and see how the things the BBC does today were sort of, the seeds of that were kind of sown when I was there in 1997, 1998, that kind of time frame, um, or when I was at Dell. We had a target when I first joined Dell that 10% of all orders should be fulfilled on ordered online. Which seems like a crazy target, but that was like a really ambitious target. Want to get 10% orders, uh, done through the Internet. Um, and so yeah, I feel like I've been lucky in some respects, but also I went from Dell to join a startup which to some extent was a kind of massive risk. It was a risk I was able to take at that point in my kind of personal life. But we had zero revenue. The business went bust after six months. That was unlucky, but actually in a way it was a great decision because if I hadn't done that and taken that risk, I would never have done all the things I've done since because it was just a chance to kind of step out of the corporate world. But also I just learned so much in six months about what it is to be helping to run a business that's at that kind of early stage and all the kind of things that go with that, uh, and just the importance of taking decisions. And in a corporate there's always someone else you can kind of bounce ideas off. But if you are the finance function in a, in a startup there's nobody else to ask about stuff. So you really have to be self reliant. And that, that's like a drug really. It's, it's exciting and scary at the same time and that's kind of what makes working in early stage businesses a kind of fun thing to do.

Host: Um, so I think I'm right and say Gusto kind of tripled, um, in a couple of years whilst you were there. Um, obviously Covid played a part of that. Uh, and then it stopped growing. And so which bit was, which is harder for you as a leader? You're going on this kind of, um, yeah, hypergrowth phase and then it stopped and then you kind of have to reassess and realign as a cfo. Which bit's harder?

Jim Buckle: Yeah, I think different types of hardness, to be honest. So yeah, when I, the year before I joined Gusto, we were doing under 100 million of revenue, uh, which was 2019, 2021, we did over 300 million. So yeah, tripled in two years. And so the whole, I guess the whole emphasis then was you got to be thinking 6 12, 18 months ahead because the business is going to be twice the size. And so is your team fit for purpose? Is the business fit for purpose operationally? In my first, I spent about six months in my first year being responsible for what we call operations development, which is basically do we have enough factories and if not we need to kind of go and get some. Um, and so thinking about what's the capacity requirement going to be in like 612 months? Well, not in two years time because it takes like one to two years to find a site, get a lease, get the building fitted out, put all the automation into it. So our Warrington factory, which is our kind of most advanced operation, went live at the start of 2022 and I think we've located the property in July 2020. And so there was kind of 18 months journey to kind of get that and so you. The biggest challenge with our business is like knowing what the business is or having a view on what the business is going to be and like 6 or 12 months time and if it's growing, that's a challenge because, um, and in my first two or three years ago the biggest single issue was lack of capacity. Um, but when you stock grading that also becomes an issue because then you've like, you commission factories you're no longer going to need. And so both of those are difficult decisions because taking in the case of Warrington, which was a 60 or 70 million pound investment for demand that you hope to have in 18 months time is difficult. Um, but then also we took decisions in 2022 to stop projects that we'd already invested tens of millions of pounds in M because the demand was no longer there. And that's equally a very difficult decision. Um, and so all the things you learn in your accountancy training about sunk costs kind of like come home to rooster. Um, so I think it's different types of things. Definitely the period where immediately post Covid we had the, we had the kind of Ukrainian war, kind of cost of living crisis and everything else. You know, I think we did really well to maintain our revenue, uh, coming out of COVID and not see a drop in revenue. Um, but because we were set up for growth, we had to take a lot of cost out of the business and you know, that's never a nice thing to do. So I, we reduced the size of the finance team by 25, 30%. Um, and so, you know, having to sit down and tell colleagues that, you know, their job isn't there anymore is never a nice thing to do, but you have to do that. And um, that's, you know, and, or telling people the factory project they're working on is like no longer happening. Those are all tough decisions. So I think both sides were hard. Um, but you know, great learning as well.

Co-host: You get excited about the sort of factory operations side. As someone who's a bit of a geek, I kind of feel like it should be highly automated now. It's going to be super high tech in there. Do you kind of get really close to that yourself as a, uh, as a cfo? Is that something that you enjoy as well or less?

Jim Buckle: So I have no idea how it all works, but, but it is fascinating. I mean I find it fascinating to go around, it's fascinating to go around and go, this was an idea on a piece of paper in 2020 and now it's like hundreds of people and boxes flying around and stuff like that. It's a really, I mean our operation is really interesting because at the end of the day, most of the stuff that goes in boxes is put in boxes by humans picking something off a shelf and putting it in the box. Um, we are looking at a bit more automation around that. Um, someone said in the session we had yesterday that our start of line process is like the most complex you could get in any business because we construct the kind of outer box, but into that we put what we call the cool box, which is the kind of bit, the kind of the chilled stuff goes in and then there's an insert inside that cool box. And so there's like multiple bits of cardboard that all have to be kind of constructed. And that is all automated. That's pretty much all automated. We've kind of got robots that kind of do that and then stick it on the conveyor. Um, so the clever stuff in our operation is not how does someone take a spring onion and put it in a box, it's what's the route that the box takes through the operation. So, um, we will have like several hundred different SKUs that kind of go together to make 200 different recipes on any given week. And the kind of what we call the order routing algorithm, which is the box starts here and goes through various pick stations. And how do the SKUs, how are the SKUs laid out in the factory? All those things are kind of data science products that have taken loads of costs out of the business because it's all about just the efficiency, the route. And once the box is set off, potentially adjusting that route because what lies ahead has kind of changed from what it was when it first set off. So all that kind of stuff is fascinating but way beyond my capabilities to understand. Um, but yeah, it's a real interesting combination of engineering and technology. So we have like teams that are combinations of engineers and data scientists and we have like a simulation model of both our factories. So we can now say if we make this change, we can predict exactly what will happen. And those are amazing tools to be able to not. We don't have to test anything in real life. You can test it on the computer first and see what happens.

Co-host: Yes, really interesting, isn't it?

Jim Buckle: Yeah.

Host: And on, on the note of kind of forecasting and budgeting, particularly within a consumer driven business in 2026, where, I mean we were talking about it earlier, since 2000, I mean, perma, um, crisis was a phrase that one of your peer group used not too long ago. Um, I mean how, how can you be accurate really? You know, Iran war kicks off, uh, out of nowhere and we know that's impacting energy and fuel and all those things which will ultimately come back to the consumer. Um, your forecasts are useless in a couple of weeks time, aren't they?

Jim Buckle: Yeah, I mean, I guess in our business there are different types of forecasting. So the kind of type of forecasting that my team do, which is, and we're just going through our kind of long term planning process, so we're trying to forecast out to 2030 and then you know, there's budgeting and you know, short term we do, we do a reforecast every month, uh, kind of rolling forecast for the year. That type of stuff is very difficult and ultimately you have to plan, you have to adapt that to the kind of the world you're in. So when we were going through Covid, we were probably overestimating expected demand because we wanted to make sure we weren't kind of falling short in terms of capacity and everything that kind of went with it. Um, probably if anything now we're sort of being quite cautious in revenue projections. And so we need to make sure that we're still a profitable and sustainable business even if we don't grow for the next five years. And so we'll look at kind of different scenarios, but we need to kind of go, if nothing happens in the next five years and we just carry on the way we are, how do we grow our profits through that time period and how do we kind of make sure we're kind of successful business that throws off cash and you can potentially invest in other things in the future? So that is definitely a kind of challenging thing. And we went through a period and I think when it was like 2023, maybe 2024, where we stopped doing kind of long term plans, we just had like different scenarios because it, I mean, and I think for me a big learning of the last few years is kind of a point in time. A singular forecast is a waste of time because the one thing you'd be sure of is it would be wrong. So really understanding the kind of the, the range of possible outcomes is much more important. So if we grow, what's going to happen? If we don't grow, what's going to happen and what decisions we need to take around that for me is much more important. Um, what's really interesting in our business is the real short term forecasting. So, um, what's going to happen next week or the week after and how do we Use that to minimize food waste and kind of optimize our margins. So that for us is a real part of our DNA and kind of heavily data science led. We had a presentation by someone on the team yesterday explaining how they were using some new mathematical model to decide which boxes get produced in which factory. Um, because that then drives where we have our raw materials directed to and then drives how much kind of food waste we might end up having. Because if we. No, because customers can change their box not quite up to the last minute but up until pretty near to when it's actually picked. Um, but all the time we've got to kind of making forecasts of like what will be the composition of that 150,000, 200,000 boxes, what are the ingredients in them, which factory will they get picked in and therefore how many potatoes do we need in Spalding versus in Warrington? And uh, at the same time trying to keep our food waste down to like tiny, tiny percentages. So that's a really fascinating area. Again completely beyond my kind of comprehension. And then we also use that to drive labor planning. So how many people do we need uh, in sporting versus how many people we need in Warrington? So we have like a core staff but then some of that's agency staff to kind of deal with the kind of peaks and troughs through the week. Um, so forecasting is a really, really key part of our kind of day to day operation and that you have to be that you can be reasonably precise on. You know, we, we know have reasonable accuracy kind of what next week's orders are going to look like. Um, but what next year's orders looks like. You know, your guess is as good as mine to some extent.

Host: Um, I've got a, I'm running a breakfast next week for um, high potential people that are on the path to being a cfo. And um, I'm sure many of them will we discussed before. I mean it seems like the route to that role now is, you know, it's not non linear. It probably used to be a little bit more a tried and tested path but um, yours was including kind of general management step outside of finance roles. What is your take on the route to CFO these days and thoughts for uh, aspiring CFOs?

Jim Buckle: Yeah, well I think you're absolutely right. I don't think there's any kind of clear route. I also think people get a bit too hung up on what's the next job going to be and want to sort of map out the kind of perfect path to success and I feel like that's wrong in two counts really. One is people feel they need to move quickly and that they need to move in the kind of linear direction. Both those things to me to seem somewhat kind of fallacies. Um, one of the kind of reflections I have now that I'm kind of like nearly 60 is I've been working for nearly. I'll be coming up next year, I think for my 40th anniversary of or in 20, I think it's in 2028 will be like my 40th anniversary joining KPMG or something like that. Um, and so you're working like for a hell of a long time. So you don't need to get to be CFO in the first 10 years because you've got like another 30 years after that to kind of worry about. Um, so people are always over worried about, oh, if I'm not promoted in the next 12 months, my career's over, which is just rubbish. Um, and yeah, I think in terms of direction, uh, I always use this analogy of trying to get from London to Edinburgh. Um, the most direct way is to go to King's Cross and get on the train and you can be there in three hours or whatever, but you won't really see a great deal along the way and um, you won't kind of accumulate very much kind of experience on that journey. So you know, you might be better off getting off on Newark and having a bit of a wander around and kind of learning that. Or when you get to uh, I don't know, Leeds, you kind of get a train over to Manchester and kind of see what's happening over there. And then you might actually go via Glasgow instead of going, you know, via York or whatever. So it's about taking opportunities as they come and you can't predict what those opportunities will be and accumulating that learning, um, as you go. And definitely if you can spend time outside of finance, that's been massively valuable to me. Um, and ah, there was a point in my career because I never really wanted to be an accountant. I saw being in finance as a root of being in general management. And when I was a property finder and our investors called me one day and said, would you like to, would you like to run the company? I was like, woohoo. I've like, you know, I've finances now behind me and I can like now go and do something more interesting. Um, and that was quite a naive view, but I definitely learned a lot from running the business. And then when I was A love film. Again, I moved from finance and kind of general management roles and then a Phil, unique. I was CEO there for the whole time. So I've never, I did run, I was responsible finance but was never cfo. Um, but if you've run other functions and I've had responsibility for every other business function, at some point you've got a much better understanding of what your colleagues around the leadership team are dealing with. And so you're not just the finance guy who's sitting there going cut costs or grow revenue. You actually understand that there are things underneath that, that you have to do and you have some empathy and you can support them in that journey rather than just being someone that's like telling them with no, no knowledge.

Host: And my final question today, Jim, your, um, CFO of a 300 million revenue business. Um, and I'm very jealous. You, you only work four days a week. Uh, we're here on a Friday, um, which is, yeah, um, accommodated us doing this today actually. How does that work? Because it, yeah, notoriously this is a very full on job.

Jim Buckle: Yeah, I mean I've been doing this since uh, I think two and a half years, something like that. Um, it sort of came about, I can't really remember how it came about, but kind of through a discussion with Timo who's a CEO around I guess motivation and things like that. But I guess where I got to was I've been working for a long time. I've never had more than like three weeks holiday since I left university, which is a bad, also a bad career decision. Um, and I was just finding that I was sort of mentally thinking, oh, how quickly can I retire? Um, but actually retirement is also like a long time and you know, if you've in the right business doing the right job, work can be fun. But I was kind of finding that five days a week was making it less fun. Um, and so switching from 5 to 2 to 4 to 3 for me is like being a massive kind of unlock just in terms of my motivation for work and how I feel about work and sort of work life balance. It's not like I'm doing anything kind of amazingly different at the weekend, but it just gives you like that bit more time so that if you spend a day doing something a bit like a chore, then you've still got two other days to do, you know, nice stuff and you don't have to sort of feel you kind of cramming everything in. Um, I am very lucky. As I said earlier, I've got four direct reports. Two of them have been a gusto for 10 years. Uh, the others I think have been at eight and one kind of nearly seven. So I've got a really experienced team, we've got quite a settled team right now and um, I can sort of trust them. They don't need me to be there five days a week. They probably don't need me to be there at all to be honest. But, but I also think that that should be the job of anyone in a leadership role. Your job is to make yourself dispensable, not indispensable. You should be able to, you should be progressively delegating and developing the team underneath you to do your job and they shouldn't be dependent on you uh, for their kind of day to day existence. Um, but having said that, it's not like I don't look at my work from 5:30 on Thursday to 8:00 clock on Monday morning. I quite often sit down on the Sunday evening for a couple of hours to see kind of what's happened or I keep an eye on my phone during the day on a Friday. So if something does need to be done I would do it. Um, so probably overall I end up working the same amount of hours but I structure it differently and I haven't got that obligation to be sat on my desk, you know, 8:30, 9:00 clock on a Friday morning. So that's quite liberating.

Host: Yeah, yeah, it sounds uh, yeah, aspirational and uh, yeah, I'm a bit jealous of that.

Jim Buckle: Yeah. But what I do know is that it might be I have a change in my team, someone leaves, someone else comes in or I promote somebody more junior and I need to kind of step in and just give a bit more time to it. So I'm, I'm sort of don't see as a indefinite situation but enjoy it while I can.

Host: Yeah, Jim, thanks a lot. Really, really enjoyed that uh, conversation and um, yeah, we'll keep in touch.

Jim Buckle: Right, thank you.

Host: Cheers.