The Black Swan CFO: Planning for What You Can't Predict

Hello and welcome back to the CFO Playbook podcast with me, David McClelland. And here on the CFO Playbook, as always, we get under the skin of how world-class finance leaders leverage technology, set goals, make plans, manage teams, and much, much more. And in today's show, I'm speaking with a CFO who's gone from the high-octane world of supercar finance to the sun-drenched open roads of a beloved heritage automotive brand. Navigating some bumpy terrain along the way. There are very few independent automotive brands out there anymore. Well, I was pretty sure when I left PwC to go to McLaren that it was gonna be career suicide. Moog is a relatively new business, but the product is kind of timeless. So it started as a failed military project in the 1950s. I need to be able to step away, you know, it's not healthy, me, you know, doing the bank recs on my honeymoon because there's no one else to do it. If there's garbage going in, you're going to get garbage out. Nobody knows what AI is going to look like in 12 months' time, let alone 5, 10 years' time. Get yourself a rubber duck. It's been pretty transformational for me. Don't forget, CFO Playbook is here every month with exclusive finance leadership insights. So make sure you subscribe, browse through our back catalogue, and get in touch, as many of you do, because your suggestions really do help to shape our show. Right, let's meet today's guest. This episode of The CFO Playbook is brought to you by Soldo. Trusted by over 25,000 organizations across 31 countries, Soldo combines pre-programmed cards, an intuitive app, and a powerful management platform to replace manual processes with efficiency and control. To find out more or to book a demo, visit soldo.com. Andy Mullineaux, CFO of Moak International. Welcome to CFO Playbook. Good afternoon, David. Yeah, great to speak to you. Great to have you here. And well, where is here for you, Andy? And tell me what the week ahead looks like for you. What's on your desk at the moment at Moak? So I'm at home today, a stone's throw from Wimbledon Tennis, actually. You can hear the balls bouncing. This is peak Moak season for us. The sun started shining and everyone's buying their Moaks, so we're building them as quickly as we can. All right, so I want to start with a small confession. Moog wasn't a brand name that I initially recognized before researching our chat today. I did start looking around on the internet, and I know I've seen the vehicles before, but there wasn't such a strong association with me. I'm not that much of a petrolhead, so perhaps that's why. But perhaps to enlighten me and the rest of our listeners who maybe haven't come across Moog before, just share a bit about Moog and its background. Yeah, so Moog is a relatively new business, but the product is kind of timeless. So it started as a failed military project in the 1950s. So the idea was, once the original Mini had been designed, they thought, hang on a minute, maybe we could make a version of this that we could drop out of planes behind enemy lines, which would give a really handy little vehicle for soldiers and the like to get around behind enemy lines. And transport ammunition and weapons and things on this little, what they called a buckboard. So they came up with the idea of taking a Mini, stripping off the roof and the doors, and just making it as basic as possible to make it as light and simple as possible and as rugged, and to launch it, you know, with a parachute attached off the back of planes. So there's some great images out there if you Google it, and this was in the time of the jet set and the booming tourism in the Caribbean and Saint-Tropez, and suddenly all these you know, really exotic locations were opening up, and it turned out to be the perfect little runaround for those kinds of locations. So in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, they continued to build Mokes in their thousands with an internal combustion engine similar to the Mini, and sold them into these coastal locations where they were enjoyed by millions of people, but usually associated with really happy memories because they were when people were on holiday, and it was a jolly laugh to zip around in this little car and you know, you know, hear the local sounds and smell the local smells because you were so exposed to the local environment. So, you know, it was very popular in sort of the '60s and '70s, and then it kind of became a casualty of the end of British Leyland and Rover as it was part of that group. But we're fully electric and we're now made in Britain. Original Moat production was made in a few different places, but we're made in the Midlands, in Leamington Spa is where we build our cars. What a fantastic story. And I want to peel away a little bit more into that recent 5 or 6-year period where you've been so closely involved in the regeneration, I guess, of this beloved heritage brand. Let's chat about what the finance function looks like for you inside a business like Moat, your role there. Let's then go back and maybe retrace your road from PwC via another car brand, McLaren, because it's been quite a journey for you, and then perhaps reflect on what the 5 or so eventful years at Moog have taught you about being a CFO in a business like that. How does that sound for you as a chat today? Sounds great, looking forward to it. You've set the scene there with Moog and where it's at right now. Tell me about the finance function there to help us understand that a little better, because I'm guessing it's not a vast finance department like you might expect at some other vehicle manufacturer. So in practical terms, what does it look like and what does that mean for you as a CFO in terms of rolling up your sleeves and making Mooc work? Traditionally, you would look at other similar businesses and say, was their— how is their finance function structured, and do a bit of a copy and paste exercise. Where we are, our volumes are never going to justify having a big back office function, and a lot of process controls around us that are going to slow down decisions because our team is always going to be pretty lean. So I'd always thought, how small can I keep this team and how much can I delegate what people traditionally see as finance activities to the non-finance departments? So this is keeping everything as organized and as disciplined as possible elsewhere in the business and having people do things which are really finance processes, but, but a disguise as an operational process. So by the time we get information and by the time we get data, it's in as good a condition as possible, and it's already been reviewed and is as actionable as possible that we have to do very little with it. So often automotive companies, you know, most of the large ones started, you know, generations ago, and they have a lot of the baggage of the company being there before a lot of the systems, and they've had to shoehorn these systems into an existing operation whilst the operation is still building thousands of cars a year. Whereas we have the luxury of coming in and kind of seeing what the result looks like. Okay, we're going to need an MRP system, we're going to need an ERP system, we're going to need to look at risk management. So what are the bits that we need it to do with as little development as possible? So taking what's off the shelf. But not a huge implementation of a, you know, a significant system that's been developed elsewhere and modify it to do what we need it to do with as little customization as possible. So that was the approach that we took for our organization. And we can do a lot of the things that the big guys do with a lot less effort, just because we've not had to build it around an existing infrastructure of people or processes or you know, even subsidiary corporate structures and tax structures, we were kind of starting from, you know, a blank sheet of paper, which gave us a lot more freedom to build things to be optimized for what's currently required and available. So it means things are pretty lean. It's a real luxury to be able to start from that blank sheet of paper, isn't it? In the period in which you've been doing this then over the last 5 or so years, there have been a lot of, a lot of changes, particularly as regards to the technology stacks, the tooling that's available to you. It strikes me as you describe there, making sure that the data that's coming into you, that the processes are such that actually the finance function is doing what the finance function excels at and letting other, other parts of the organization do their bit of the heavy lifting as well. Has the evolution of AI tooling, as it's become available particularly to finance professionals, has that been a help or has it actually been something of a hindrance given that the world is shifting so much while you're building something up there remote. Our approach to AI is, you know, I have quite a few friends in the software development industry, right? And I've learned a lot from them, which is if you break it down to sort of its bare components, you've got some inputs, you've got some processes, and then you have outputs which need to be appropriate for the stakeholders who are looking at them. And it's a similar thing with AI, right? It has some inputs, it processes them, on demand and gives you some output. And if you break down every system into those components, you know, whether it's our, just our general ledger system or whether it's the most complex AI model, ultimately, if you can think about the better the inputs, the better the outputs, and the less processing that's going to be required in the middle, it tends to make things simpler because nobody knows what AI is going to look like in, you know, 12 months' time, let alone 5, 10 years' time. That feels like a really pragmatic approach. And I think the way you break it down there, no matter what systems you're using, to your point, there will always be an input, some processing, some magic in the middle, and then an output. And, you know, we talk about garbage in, garbage out. If the garbage going in, you're going to get garbage out. So, so kind of shortening the gap there so that there is less inference, therefore more accuracy based on numbers. From all the conversations I have with CFOs and CXOs of all different disciplines, really, it's shifting from kind of the data and getting stuck into the tech of it to the business-focused, what do I want to know? What are the questions I should be asking as a business that this tool can support me in finding? Coming back to the conversation that I'd sort of planned for today, you'd come from another automotive brand, from McLaren beforehand. So I'm curious as to, I guess, synergies between where you'd come from and maybe any surprises? We very much consider ourselves custodian of this brand. There are very few independent automotive brands out there anymore. Most of them are part of these huge groups, and they have a real benefit of economies of scale and synergies in those groups. You know, they share components, they'll share back-office functions, they will share, you know, marketing, and often you know, there'll be a customer journey through those products. What happens at Mooc is although we are able to go and source parts from elsewhere, we will always be such low volume due to the nature of our product that often we can't get a seat at the table. So although we might be able to go to a manufacturer and say, you know, you're building tens, hundreds of thousands of units a year, do you mind if we use a bit of, you know, your indicator flasher relay, some component that's buried somewhere in the harness, they'll say, yeah, how many, how many thousand do you want? And we said, well, no, that we don't really operate in those volumes. So there's a, there's a bit there where you're kind of too big to be small. These cars aren't coach-built, you know, handcrafted, panel-beaten, car-by-car, but you're too small to be big in that you don't get a seat at some of those tables to get the components. So that really poses some new problems to our size of business and our industry to try and make a sustainable product that we can build at a margin that makes it worthwhile because we do have to focus on some of the bits that aren't so exciting and glamorous just to get the cars out the door. So yeah, that's a challenge they share. And how close are you in your role as CFO there for to that tension between not being big enough to have a seat at the table when, you know, you're talking volumes of thousands or tens of thousands and so on. Do you feel that very closely as CFO there? How close are you to that? I'm incredibly integrated into the business. So, you know, the business started essentially as me and my friend of a friend, and it's grown in 2021, and now we've grown to around 40, 50 heads in total. Across the whole business. But that meant on day one, we kind of shook hands and said if he looked after demand, I would look after the supply side of the business and build out those functions of engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, quality, all those things we need to build cars. So I've really struggled to let go of, and on the side, I'll do a bit of finance just to keep the lights on, you know. And we had to raise a few quid to start with as well. So I I've been busy along the way, but I have struggled to let go of those things, partially because I know that in a lot of organizations, finance is considered a function that sits in a pillar of its own. Whereas because I've started a lot of these other functions, I've built them all with the finance in mind of knowing how they're going to be integrated into those functions. So I still am very involved in those functions and The people we brought on now to run those functions will tell you I'm probably too involved in those, but it's because I care. And a lot of those things, when you've built something, it's hard to let it go. But also I can see that in the medium term, unless we keep a close relationship between the finance and risk management, it's so critical to the rest of the business that you really need to keep your ear pretty close to the, you know, pretty close to the ground to pick up on where new risks are materializing or opportunities that others can't see because they're stuck in the weeds. So yeah, and to the extent that, you know, last weekend I was in the warehouse identifying parts where, you know, these were for cars that we built a couple of years ago, and none of the guys that were building cars then are still around, so they didn't know what the difference between a left-hand indicator and a right-hand indicator was. Well, who does know? It's, it's, it's, um, muggins here. So I was in the warehouse splitting, you know, lefts and rights, lefts and rights. But I love the product and I love the business, so you do what you got to do. Yeah, I guess it's a balance, isn't it? Because that passion, that love, that heritage in the company is priceless. And to have someone in a CFO position like you who has all of that experience, all of that knowledge, and all of that passion to spend your weekend searching through indicator stocks or whatever is great. On the other hand, as you allude to there, you kind of hope that that isn't scalable. That, you know, Moat will be operating at such a volume. And I don't know what your business plan is. I don't know what your numbers are at the moment in terms of volume, but you know that you can't do that. There are not many other CFOs would be willing to do that as well. So surely there has to be some kind of transition plan, succession plan, so that there are others who will be in place who can take on board some of that non-core CFO work. Yeah, exactly. And that's something I've really learned over the last few years is to hire people you can really trust. And people that can do the job much better than you can. You know, it's an old cliché of you don't hire smart people to tell them what to do, you hire smart people so they can tell you what to do, right? So that's been our recruitment approach, has been hire people who are better at these things than we can be. Even with all the additional passion and experience we have, they still need to be better than us to outweigh that. So that's what we've been trying to do. And there's certainly a scaling and a sustainability piece to this, which is I need to be able to step away. You know, it's not healthy me, you know, doing the bank recs on my honeymoon because there's no one else to do it. But, you know, when needs must, that's what you do. But it's not sustainable for a business that's going to scale. Let's take a step back, Andy, and look at the road that's brought you to Moak because it's been a bit of a journey and we've touched on a few points there. As I understand it though, going right back to the beginning, you were funding your way through your degree in Southampton by delivering groceries for Waitrose in Waterloo, an area I know fairly well, I have to say. So I love that there's a line there from delivery vans with Waitrose to supercars with McLaren, and now back to where you are at Moak. But bringing back to your degree and the beginning of your career, rather than what you were driving, what was it that was driving you at that point? What did you think you wanted from your career all the way back then? I loved that job at Waitrose, and I often refer back to it when I'm discussing sort of development with my team. The Waitrose customer typically tends to be a more affluent individual. And often they were in that area, they were a more elderly individual. And they were so relieved to see you because often, you know, they'd get visits from the postman and the health worker and maybe the Waitrose delivery guy each week. And that was their— that was the extent of their social interaction. So I ended up chatting to quite a lot of customers while I was at Waitrose. And I really enjoyed it. And you put the shopping away for them and do more than you needed to do just just because you, you know, you'd see these guys would be so elated when you visited. But what I realised when I spoke to the guys with the, with the biggest houses and the nicest cars, is that a lot of them would say they, they kind of retired in their 20s, because they found something they love to do. And they felt like they didn't go to work. And that was a really strange— the first time I heard it, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's just what you, you know, that's just what you're gonna write in your your autobiography or whatever. But actually, I heard it a few times. People will say, you know, I'd say, what on earth do you do? Because I was just being a bit nosy, to be honest. What on earth do you do to have this beautiful house? And they go, well, do what you love and the money kind of comes. And I thought, well, that's an idea. And I'd always loved cars and I'd always loved motorbikes and nosing around all, you know, classic cars and things. And I thought, well, hang on, if I love the product, I'm going to love the business, and if I love the business and I feel like I'm building it, then I'll love what I do. So that really did, that really did drive me. I did, however, realize that I had to make a living and, and, you know, going the Big Four route seemed like a pretty well-trodden path, right, to making a living. And because I wasn't quite sure how I was going to get into a business that I loved, you know, I didn't know for sure it was going to be automotive, but I thought, you know, being in, in professional services. Is kind of like window shopping in a way. You know, I got to march in as a, you know, 21-year-old into all these massive businesses, go up to people and go, what do you do? What do you do? And quite often I'd ask, do you enjoy doing it? And you would, you would build a picture of actually who was, who was doing things where they were watching the clock in their computer screen, you know, waiting for that next hour to tick by. Whereas the other people who were going, oh, is it Friday already? And I wanted to be that guy. I have tough days at Moat all the time, but you see that product and you can't help but feel pride and think, okay, that's what it's worth. You know, that's what I'm building. PwC, and like you say, window shopping, love that visual there. The window that you picked was McLaren. 2019, I think, when you joined. What was it like when you arrived there? What I loved about PwC and the window shopping was the diversity, right? You know, one week you'd be at a property company, and the next you would be, you know, in financial services, or in the particular area I was in was pretty diverse. It was, it was mid-tier. So you got to look at a lot of different businesses and different industries, and I, and I intentionally didn't specialize. So I was pretty sure when I left PwC to go to McLaren that it was going to be career suicide because I was really pigeonholing myself into what was a medium, you know, quite a niche scale car manufacturer in, you know, in Woking, it wasn't going to broaden my horizons really. What really attracted me to going to McLaren was this company has world-class engineers in it, so I will be surrounded by world-class people and I will really need to up my game to play with the big guys, as it were. So I thought that would stress test me outside of the finance function. Now, I knew that at PwC I was surrounded by, you know, really hotshot people. They knew their stuff about finance and accounting and the latest IFRS standards and all of that was truly fascinating in some ways. But actually, I kind of needed to get outside my comfort zone and start dealing with people who would really, really challenge me. The journey that McLaren went through during that period of the, you know, at the beginning of the decade is well documented. So, you know, go and take a look online at that because we haven't got time to go over all of that story. But suffice to say, You were right in the thick of it there. Let's, as, as you allude to there in terms of it being a career accelerator, and it seems that you've had quite a lot of your career with your foot quite far down on the accelerator, the fact that you achieved CFO, uh, relatively soon after you achieved, after you got your graduation certificate, really, what would you say are the lessons that you took with you from your time at McLaren? That were just the right platform for when you joined Moak back in 2021 or so? For me, it was all about being in the right place at the right time, right? And you can never guarantee that you'll be in the right place at the right time, but you can pick up the phone. And that's all that it really happened for me is the phone rang and I picked it up and there was a big risk there. You know, I had a pretty, you know, stable job at McLaren. I was respected for what I did and I enjoyed it. And somebody picked up the phone and said, do you want to put all of that at risk and come and do something new and exciting? And for me, at that, particularly at that point, I thought, well, what have I got to lose? You know, I can always come, come back to mainstream and, and, and I think it will add some power to my elbow having said I tried something and I failed, you know, and being accepting. There's a lot of stigma around failure. I think particularly in finance functions. Where often the cost of failure is pretty embarrassing and we take a lot of, we are expected to be the prudent, risk-averse grownups in a lot of organizations in finance. So to then be able to take a risk and be able to, you know, stomach the consequences of that, it was worth the shot. So I think, you know, being in the right place at the right time, you'd be sure there's an element of luck to it. But there's also about putting yourself in those scenarios. Where you're pretty uncomfortable and people can see that you're not unhappy being uncomfortable. I guess it's an interesting one in terms of that attitude to risk. And you've mentioned in a few different ways what your attitude to risk is, your personal attitude to risk, whether that's driving Waitrose delivery vans and being curious and forward in asking questions to making what you decided could have, well, what could have been a career-limiting move when you moved from PwC to McLaren, and then this move to Moat as well. The question therefore is, how do you separate, or do you separate this personal attitude to risk? You know, you have to speculate to accumulate, you need to take risks in order to grow personally with your approach as a CFO to risk. There's a huge misconception around risk in society as a whole, and that is often people are surprised when even, even the tiniest amount of downside risk crystallises. You know, you say there's a 5% chance that thing's going to go wrong and then it goes wrong. There's a big, you know, reaction to that. You know, there is, it is statistically likely at some point that thing is going to go wrong because there is a risk of it going wrong. And I think a lot of that is due to what I would say is information asymmetry, right? A lot of people are a bit too proud to ask what happens if this thing goes wrong and what are the contributing factors to this thing going wrong? Because people can be a bit snobby about assuming that everybody already knows everything in the room.. And that's what a career in professional services is really good at is, you know, they always say there's no such thing as a stupid question. And, you know, in your training and everyone sort of giggles, but I probably took that a little bit too literally and would just ask about everything. It was, I don't mind if I look daft, you know, most of these people I'm not going to, you know, meet again or cross paths with again. And actually, if, you know, if 1 in 3 or 1 in 5 of these questions actually answers a question that most of the other people in the room were thinking, they were all just a bit too proud to ask it, then I've won. And I think what will happen is, and what did happen quite often, is people will come, thank God you asked, asked that question. Now that was, that's often enabled when you are the most junior person in the room. And I think what happens is as people progress through their careers, they think they're, they should know everything. The next situation I, I like to be in is one I know less about than the situation I was in yesterday, because therefore I'm growing, I'm developing. But that also means I'm completely at liberty to ask lots more questions. There's an asymmetry to risk because people are too scared to ask questions. But in doing so, they're almost taking a risk in itself because they're risking looking daft. But as long as you can, you put your personal pride to one side and you ask those questions, you're probably going to come out on top. Either through learning something or other people around you saying, thank God you asked because I was too shy to. And you can kind of make up for other people's, um, self-consciousness if they're worried about, you know, looking a bit silly. Um, you know, and you can ask that, and you will often build quite a strong relationship with other people by doing so because you've saved their embarrassment. In terms of governance, I'm, I'm prudent. I'm as prudent as I need to be. You know, there are responsibilities that we have in in this position. There are, you know, information that we're privy to, and, you know, people expect the bills are going to get paid and the wage is going to be covered and you're going to be compliant on tax and all the compliance things that you need to do. You know, don't think that I don't take those seriously, but there are risks that I'm prepared to take, and there are, you know, and I've appraised each of those risks. I've, you know, going back to the basics, you look at the likelihood, you look at the extent, You combine the two and you go, okay, what is my approach? Am I prepared to accept this risk or is there some kind of mitigation I need to put in? Or do I properly understand both the likelihood and the extent enough and have I asked enough questions in order to get somewhere on that map? Because that risk, that, you know, risk matrix is just a, you know, it's a spectrum on both axes and you just need to be able to put that pin in there. And I think quite often people just conservatively put the pin in the safe zone, there's at least an opportunity cost to that. So as long as you're sure that's where the pin needs to be, then absolutely put it there. Often a prudent route is taken unnecessarily, or similarly, if you're going to take a more risk-aggressive route, do it fully informed as to what the downside could be and be emotionally and psychologically prepared for the chances that downside will materialise. It shouldn't be a surprise. And I think that's what I often see elsewhere is, is people are reacting proactive when a risk crystallises. And I think a lot of that comes back down to the point that you made to begin with there about asking questions, you know, not making assumptions, not being afraid to ask those questions. And in, well, in personal development, the same as we talk about, frankly, as a parent as well, be curious. And of course, being curious is one thing, but then having the courage the boldness to actually ask the questions that you are curious about, to pluck up the courage to go and ask that person that question. Let's talk quickly about Moog then. You mentioned the difficult time that McLaren had been through in your time there and how you were able to play a part in asking the right questions and getting that on the spreadsheet and getting the numbers there and working that through. What challenges has your time at Moak brought, and how as a CFO this time have you been able to run with those? What was quite tricky at Moak was coming in and seeing how a lot of these things were done at McLaren. I was like, well, I know how that works. There's, you know, you go onto the after-sales system and log an issue. What after-sales system? Oh, okay, right. Well, put that on the list. Build after-sales system. Okay. Oh, we need to build the list. Okay, let's start there first. So it was, you know, it was about then prioritizing all that stuff because you had all this stuff to do to be a car company. You have all these people around you who tell you how, how they would do it because they think they know best, and, and it's quite difficult to discern what's actually advice versus opinion. And there aren't many people that have built a car company in the last few years because there's, there's a large graveyard of of, you know, automotive startups that have tried to adopt or implement new technology, um, and, and it hasn't worked out. Now, where we're different is a lot of those guys have tried to create a product, tried to create some technology, but at the same time create a brand and create some demand for their product. So our little cheat code is people already want the product and they don't know what it is yet, and they haven't driven one. You can't be shy in a Moke, right? So often I'll take one of the marketing pals around, you know, around my, my home in London, and you'll be stopped at traffic lights and someone will come over and just start talking to you. I drove one of those in the '60s, and, oh, my dad had a mate, he had one of these. And you're like, the light's gone green, you know, uh, but, and I kind of need to go, but yeah, thanks. So we need to build something that lives up to those expectations. So for us, it was like, how on earth do we live up to what people think this is going to be when actually so many other people who have had a lot more money and probably a lot more time have got it wrong. So there was quite a lot of expectations there that everybody thought they knew what— how to do it, um, but, but also quite a lot of doubt, which is even, you know, some of these big guys that have had hundreds of millions invested in them haven't managed to do it. What makes you guys think you could do it with a business plan that only justifies getting to a certain volume because the product is always going to be a niche product? Um, so that was some of the challenges that, that we had starting the business. Um, but you know, proof is in the pudding, right? The more things you achieve and you demonstrate to people— if you set out the milestones and say, this is what we're going to deliver in this time frame, we're not going to deliver everything at once, there are going to be no miracles here— but you start to hit those milestones and you start to build, you know, some credibility there as well. People then start to trust you more further down the line. And you do, you do you know, you put a lot of trust in other people, whether it's suppliers or whether it's your team members or your colleagues or your investors. But having that, those milestones of going, okay, we need to achieve this by this date and then we'll start the next project, because if we try and do everything now, it's not going to happen. Despite the fact that our comfort zone is an organization where everything, everything needed a little bit of improvement, but it was already— the bare bones were already there and we were starting from, from scratch. So I think that's probably the, the sort of the main difference. You've got a new CEO, I think, and the US market is a real target, a real strategic area for you now. So as you look out on the open road ahead of you, what do you see as next? What's the next sort of milestone for you there? What do you hope to achieve by the end of this year or maybe this time next year, 12, 18 months or so? Yeah, so 2026 is a really pivotal year for us. As you say, we've just brought on a new CEO, Lorne. Um, his experience is largely at Brompton Bicycles, which is a huge British manufacturing and brand success story. And those poor guys had to build a brand and a compelling product at the same time, so it should be easy for him here. Um, but no, you know, he was, he was part of that journey which turned that from quite a niche product that was used in particular circumstances to being a global recognized brand. Um, and, and, you know, all the things that came with that in terms of building a retail network. And they now have some very clever channels where you can you know, you can lease the bikes, all of those kind of things. So thinking a bit outside the box, as it were, but with it, with a new product. He's also familiar with the, the idea that there are imitation products out there. There are a different price point, and, and we are well aware that with, with Moak, there are other things out there that look like a Moak from a distance and will be a cheaper price point because they're made in a different market and they hit a very different threshold in terms of that homologation, you know, in terms of the safety and the testing and things. Um, so he's very used to justifying the value proposition of saying, okay, yeah, our product is more expensive than those guys, but this is what you're getting. And actually, relative to, you know, um, relative to the overall price and the experience, this is, this is why it's worth pushing yourself to, to the real McCoy. So, you know, he brings a wealth of experience. 2025 was supposed to be the year of conquering the USA with Moat. Mr. Trump had a little bit of a thing to say about that when he introduced his automotive-specific tariffs. So we were, you know, we were lining ourselves up for that market, you know, we were turning away other markets to say, you know, we're really going to focus on conquering the US, you know, we were in discussions with dealer groups on the East Coast and the West Coast. It was all incredibly exciting. And then overnight, everything changed. And it was just as, you know, we were boosting up, you know, we insourced manufacturing in 2025 for Before then, we had been outsourcing manufacturing, built up all the capacity. We had those milestones I was speaking about to say, right, you need to be able to build this many cars because the US are going to be, you know, absolutely, you know, desperate for this product. And then we have the tariff changes. So that put a bit of a spanner in the works. So we've then had a bit of a reposition and said, okay, maybe we need to diversify across more markets just so that if any of these other changes do come in, we can ride out some of that volatility. The tariff situation has calmed down a little bit for the US now, although there's a little bit of ambiguity now about how that tariff's going to work because you get a dis— you know, the tariff is reduced to 10% for the first 100,000 vehicles out of the UK into the US. We're not quite sure how they know when car 100,001 turns up, or indeed what happens when that car turns up, or whether it's when the cars leave the UK or arrive in the US. This year, you know, we are back focused on the US. It's very much, it's kind of the world's shopping mall, the US, and often when people see products being enjoyed in the US, that can have demand implications elsewhere in the world. But it's also a bit of a seasonal hedge for us, you know, if we, you know, where the sun shines over there, and particularly in sort of California and Florida, you get sort of year-round sunshine. Mostly, whereas in Europe, you know, they kind of go to sleep come Q4, but we've still got a factory producing so many Mokes a month and we need to find homes for them. Now, we don't really want to be building cars for stock and sitting on them, so we would rather, you know, tweak our demand profile so that we can point it at certain markets in, you know, Q1 and Q4 and other markets in Q2 and Q3. And as you described as CFO, you've described your role there. Tell me, if you can remember when it became clear that the tariffs on automotive imports into the United States would become a thing. As CFO, having hatched this plan for conquering America in 2025, how did you feel? What was going through your mind at that point? Well, it was a fascinating time because it was quite difficult to know how to price a moat. Book. Because, you know, you go back to your business studies GCSE and you look at the, you know, the 4 C's of pricing, right? And you go back to, you know, what are competitor products or substitute products, okay, right? And you go, what's your, what's your, um, cost to make, to make sure you're not selling it at less than that? What's the customer prepared to pay? And then what's your corporate strategy? And you look at those 4 and you look for a cross within those different vectors for what is the perfect price. Well, we were never quite sure on what the customer number was, right? Because it's quite a unique product, so there's not a lot of comparison out there. And, you know, there are classic Mokes which sell for an extraordinary amount of money, and then there's some pretty ropey classic Mokes which don't sell for much money at all. So that's not a good, you know, barometer of where that price point is. But we're also very aware that our products, you know, we're not under any illusion that this is is, you know, a mass market product that everybody's going to have in their garage. This tends to be for the, you know, for affluent people as a luxury product. So when the tariffs came in, it kind of forced us to do a bit of an A/B test, right? Because before the tariffs was A and post-tariffs was B. Because, you know, our margins aren't such that we could soak up the whole tariff ourselves and keep the pricing as it was. So it was actually fascinating because we communicated with some of our customers directly and said, look, you know, we've We've got a challenge here. We, you know, it's not sustainable for us to soak up all of this tariff change in our margin. So, you know, will you be prepared to move on price? And the vast majority of them said, of course, we voted for it, we've got to pay for it. And that was really interesting feedback. You've got such goodwill with the brand as well. You know, customers who really want that moke, that they want you to do well, that they're willing almost to invest in you at the same time. And, you know, there was a little bit of, you know, we'd only just introduced into the US, so a lot of them wanted to be the first to have one down the country club. And, you know, so there was a little bit of early adopter, but it also told us that they were really real advocates of the brand, as you say. They really wanted to support us. That has been really compelling for us that people are prepared to, you know, to spend that money to have a Moq in their garage. The other business model for us is rental fleets, and there are some rental fleets that will buy cars to rent out, typically in sort of tourist locations or in partnerships with hotels and things. And for those guys, obviously they've got a business plan as well to meet around the acquisition cost of the vehicle. So for those guys as well, it was a bigger conversation because there's bigger contracts at play to say, okay, you know, it's a multiple of that price when you're applying it to a fleet of vehicles, particularly when they had an order in the system with us. So there's kind of two different conversations to have. There was the retail end of the business, and then there was the rental side of the business, which is looking at fleets, and, you know, you had to manage the two. So yeah, it was a— emotionally, I didn't really let it get to me because I thought, well, you know, we can weather this storm. And there will be probably be companies out there that can't. And, you know, your heart goes out to them to an extent because you go, this is an unforeseeable, you know, on my risk matrix that I've talked about, you know, this wasn't something that was on the matrix very high up the matrix of something I was worried about. But it's not existential for us. When I talk about information asymmetry, it certainly changed my assessment now of likelihood of tariff risk on that risk matrix. But, and the likelihood when you can see, you know, the impact that it had, particularly timing-wise. When you kind of want to batch up production into different markets. So that had quite a big impact for a period. Andy, as we begin to wrap up our conversation, reflecting on the things that you've navigated at McLaren and at Moog as well as at PwC before that, are there any principles or instincts that you found yourself returning to when things get complicated as they have done? Are there any principles that you return to as a CFO to kind of keep you heading on the true path, even when the road might have lots of twists and turns, you still know where north is? Yes, I mentioned earlier my friends in software development, and they taught me a phrase that I use almost daily, which is rubber duck programming. Have you heard of this? Oh no, I haven't. Tell me more. So have you ever been in an instance where you've had quite a complicated problem And you, you try and figure it out and you can't work it out and you ask for some help and you, you bring someone over and you say, but this is the problem I'm facing. And whilst you're explaining it to them, miraculously it all starts to make sense. And what software developers do, which I think is brilliant, is they actually buy a little rubber duck, a little yellow rubber duck, and place it on their desk. If they're having a problem they can't solve, they explain it to the duck because actually often by explaining a problem to somebody else, and articulating it, you're breaking it down and you're, you know, you're defragging it in your brain to try and explain it to somebody else. You know, these are the inputs, these are the challenges, these are the dependencies, and though, look, there's, there's the path forward. And I encourage all of my teams to do this. And whether it's just a, you know, a coding problem when they're doing the software, or whether it's actually a really, you know, even an ethical problem. Actually explaining it to an inanimate object, often hearing yourself explaining it can make the answer seem really obvious. And I think often, you know, as a CFO, there is such a— you can't be an expert in everything, right? And there's such a broad expanse of things that we need to opine on. And there's such, you know, and there's such a broad expanse of topics that we want to give direction on or expected to give direction on. You can't be an expert in all of them. But you, if, if you can explain your rationale to, to somebody and explain it to, to the, the, the rubber duck, actually that probably gets you most of the way there. And sometimes even once you've done that, it still doesn't make any sense and the rubber duck doesn't know anything and he has a squeak and it's no use and you need to ask somebody else for some, some help. Um, but I find that a really useful tool also regarding sort of, you know, mental health and your own ability to process things. You know, I think, you know, often people when they've been to therapy say that, you know, for some reason I seem to be doing most of the talking and the therapist isn't actually giving me any advice. And actually, the rubber duck can be a therapist in a way as well, right? Because you're getting things off your chest. And you know, sometimes when reacting to something, actually just getting it out of your system, and therefore getting that emotion out and getting that, you know, particularly with a business like this that I'm so passionate about, I love the product. I love the— I love my team. I love the brand. And so if somebody, you know, if a supplier lets us down or if a customer lets me— that really, that really hurts. But you have to be level-headed. And so I'll take it out on the rubber duck, as it were. And actually, then suddenly you can have a breather. So it can help solve complicated problems, but also keep, keep you in check as well. So he's got a pretty big role here at Moat, this, um, this, this rubber duck. So I think that's what I would advise is is, you know, don't let it, let it out occasionally and actually will help you solve some problems. I know that by another name. To brick wall something is, you know, to stand in front of a brick wall and just talk to the brick wall. You're not going to get anything back apart from a bit of reflection of your own words. But actually, that feedback loop and those same words going into your brain does exactly as you say there, help to make them make a bit more sense sometimes. I like your rubber duck a bit more. Because I can put a rubber duck on my desk. I can even have a little bit of a, little bit of a relationship with it. And that kind of mental health aspect there as well, I really like. Andy, it's been absolutely fascinating to chat with you and really heartening that a brand that people have so much passion for is being looked after. You know, you are the custodian of that brand as a CFO, as you say. Is being looked after by somebody who also has so much passion for it as well. So thank you for sharing that passion with, with us all today. There are some quickfire CFO Playbook podcast questions that we put to all of our guests though, before we let them go. So, um, this is gonna be a very quick lap, Andy, are you ready? I'm, I'm ready. Okay. If you could automate one part of your role tomorrow, what would that part be? I pray for the day of EDI. You know, EDI, electronic data interface, has been coming for a long while now. And I know some places have implemented it quite well, but in the small to medium-sized business space, you know, just the amount of time you spend reconciling or trying to get a remittance or understanding, you know, there's a lot of communication loss. But if they can be given a platform to access it, I think that'll make everybody's life so much easier and will certainly make us a lot more ready for the AI revolution as well. Because data will be so much more organized. There'll be a lot less transposition and translation error and keying errors and all those things that really blight all of us guys in this space will just disappear overnight. Our hot lap continues with this: what emerging tool, habit, or idea do you think every CFO should be paying attention to right now? My hot habit is get on the factory floor. You know, you can hide behind the numbers, you can see the report so you can read the risk register. Put on your hi-vis and your steel toe caps and get on the factory floor and speak to the guys who are building your cars or providing your service or speaking to your customers or speaking to your suppliers. You'll get far more insight from those guys who are turning the spanners and speaking to people than you will from a report. So I make sure to block time in my diary. I get out there, I get in the warehouse, I visit suppliers and customers when I can, because that's what real insight looks like. And which finance leader, past or present, would you most like to see sitting in the CFO Playbook podcast? I was going to say hot seat, maybe passenger seat would be a better one. Mine is a personal experience, which was a partner I used to work with at PwC called Susie. And these partners are supposed to be big, scary dinosaurs. That, you know, suffered no fools. And she was a very senior partner who on the first day of the engagement, invited us all into our home and cooked us dinner. And if somebody who is in a leadership position can invite you into their home, and, and cook for you and wash up your dishes, that builds a, you know, I hold her in such high regard, and everybody would have done anything for Susie, because, you know, you have this relationship with that person. And often we're seen as the bad guys because we're the guys that say no all the time. But it's amazing how much of a rapport you can build with somebody just by cooking a lasagna and, and fee— and, and feeling part of their, um, and building that connection. So I think she could probably— she taught me a whole load in, in the period that, that I worked with her. Um, I'm sure a lot of your, um, your other listeners could learn from Susan too. And finally, Andy, here on CFO Playbook podcast, we are building an actual playbook, right? A collection of top one-line advice from finance leaders like yourself that we plan to turn into a resource for our community. So you may already have shared it, and that's absolutely fine, but what top piece of advice for a fellow CFO would you like to enter into our CFO playbook? It's got to be the rubber duck. Get yourself a rubber duck. It's going to change your world, or at least advise your teams to get a rubber duck. It's been pretty transformational for me, um, and I, yeah, it's a very useful tool. Andy, it's been an absolute delight chatting with you today. Thank you so much for chatting us through your journey at PwC, at McLaren, and now at Moog. And I wish you every success for the journey ahead. Thank you for joining us on The CFO Playbook. Thank you, David. It's been a pleasure. And thank you all for joining us today. Don't forget to join us every month here on The CFO Playbook for more insights from finance leaders just like Andy. But for now, from me, David McClelland, and all of the team here, bye-bye.