How to Evaluate a CFO Role in Private Equity Before You Say Yes - Chris Voudouris, 3x PE CFO

We are live in Atlanta and this is the diary of a CFO. I'm your host Wassia Kamon and I've called this city home for over two decades and it is one of the most important business hubs in the country. This is a limited series where I'm sitting down in person with CFOs and senior finance leaders right here in Atlanta to learn more about how they build their careers, what's working, what's been different about doing it here so we can get a better understanding of the humans behind the big titles.

Today I am super delighted to have with me Chris Voudouris. Chris is a three -time PE back CFO. What I want to get into today is how he got there because Chris didn't come through corporate finance like most CFOs. He came up on the deal side, starting at KPMG, then transaction and restructuring, then private equity with grand partners before stepping into his first CFO seat in 2013.

Three CFO seats, multiple private equity exits, a career built almost entirely inside the PE space. Super excited to have with me. today, Chris Voudoris. Chris, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Wassia. Of course. Always curious to hear your story about how you got into corporate finance and accounting. Yeah, sure.

Well, I went to Villanova University. When I was at Villanova, I had a professor and that professor, his name was Noah Barsky, and he was my accounting professor. And he said, You know, I know you've been talking a lot about going to MIS and double majoring in finance, but forget all that. Come and do accounting.

Come to the dark side is what he called it. And he said, if you do that, you can do anything you want. So I heeded his advice. I met some great people, KPMG folks.

And that's what brought me on that pathway of corporate finance and accounting. Okay. And so once, once you joined KPMG, were you in audit, tax consulting, which one? Yeah, so I was fortunate enough to have an externship followed the next summer by an internship.

OK, and that was all in the audit space and had some really good groups and I did audit for a couple of years. I liked it, but I didn't absolutely love it because I felt like I wanted to. be more into business insights. And that led me into the transaction services group, which is an M &A practice at KPMG in the advisory side.

And I joined that in 2006, 2007. And that's what put me there. Okay. And so from being in at KPMG, what drew you towards like private equity?

Because once you left Big Four, you went into private equity. Yeah. Yeah, so KPMG was great for me. In transaction services, I would assess and analyze strategic as well as financial buyers targets that they wanted to acquire.

And these businesses, you saw some really good ones. You saw some not so good ones. You saw some mom and pops. I remember some businesses where.

mom and pop exterminators. Another was GE Plastics was sold to Sabeck for $11 billion. So span the gambit of different sizes and different vendors who we were servicing. But as I kept doing that, I saw a lot of different businesses and I saw good ways of doing things and bad ways of doing things.

But I wanted to do things. I wanted to be a part of the journey of these businesses themselves. And that's what led me to explore what else is out there. And I found Graham Partners, a private equity firm in Philadelphia.

And that's what really led me to go out to private equity. Okay. And what brought you to Atlanta? A mix between opportunity and the regional interest.

So I had a one year old son at this time living in Philadelphia with my wife, Melissa. And there was a business called Universal Pure. that we owned and it was operating out of Lincoln, Nebraska. And we were opening a green field operation here in the suburbs of Atlanta, Albuquerque, and when that business was going, we really needed a CFO.

And I ultimately raised my hand. went through an interview process. And next thing you know, I was moving my family down to Atlanta. I knew nobody down here scared to death.

Right. And my wife and I were excited though. And now we're never going to leave. Oh, good.

Good. But curious to hear though. I'm glad you raised your hand, but That was your first year for all coming directly from like the deal side and most CFOs usually come from corporate accounting. They've done clothes or some type of FPNA.

They've done like the budget and forecasting. You came straight from there. How do you feel that that Do you feel like actually strengthen your PE background help there or? Yeah, it's a good question.

You know, I looked at it from the outside, right? From the service provider at KPMG. I looked at it from the ownership side, Graham Partners and being the private equity owner. So coming in, I was always thinking about value creation.

Where are we going to create value and exit readiness, right? Is this business prepared to be exited? Because that's the private equity model. you buy a business, you're going to improve upon it, and then eventually you're going to move on and sell and return the capital back to the investors with a gain.

And because I always took that view, I would say there's many different ways to cook an egg, right? There's many delicious ways to cook an egg, but ultimately somebody from corporate finance can cook an egg probably just as well as I can. I will tell you, when I cook that egg though, I'm always thinking about how and in what way are we going to be selling that egg later as well, in addition to making a delicious egg. I'd say that's kind of the unique difference and the angle that I came from, than somebody growing up from within.

Did you have like a culture shock though, like coming inside? Because I have a lot of friends who went from, you know, being an auditor to coming inside going, what the heck, because they were advising and now they're doing the work. So curious to hear what your transition was like. I wouldn't say it was a shock and that's because when I was in transaction services My job was to explore these businesses to get the data get the information cut and analyze it and then say, okay What stories is it telling and then ask those stories?

And if those trends made sense to the people that worked within those businesses So I spent a lot of time with those people asking them for insights and what's driving certain trends that I was seeing or circumstances and therefore I interacted with them often. I'd say that in addition to wanting to be part of that day to day, I wanted those relationships. I wanted to have those deeper relationships with the people that are part of creating the value in the business. Nice.

So now you've been a CFO at different P companies now. So I'm curious to hear what you do usually in your first 90 days, like when you join a new venture. Cause I'm curious to hear. your perspective on it, because everybody has their own playbook on what they do within the first 90 days.

Curious to hear yours going into a new PE. Yeah, sure. Sure. Well, I've done it a couple of times and each time I try and go in with the same approach, but also tweaking it a little bit.

The first thing is just being open and welcoming. And you need to really just hear people's stories and what's going on. They've been there and you want to learn from them what they think is going on in the business before you go and jump to conclusions about what you think needs to be done. So I would say that going in with an open mindset is extremely important.

And you also need to be vulnerable. You need vulnerable and confident all at the same time because Think about it. When you're making friends in the world, not just work, but just friendships, those people that open up to you and they expose themselves from a vulnerability perspective, it's healthy. It's good.

And you need to find common ground. And the only way to do that is share who you are. And then I spent a lot of time on learning who they are. And that can go at different levels.

I'm reminded of my last director of FP &A. When we started connecting and we were talking, we both had children. And his big thing was to go to Costco with his son. And I'm like, I love going to Costco.

And we talk about it. And he's like, yeah, we go around. And next thing you know, on one of those social media type platforms, maybe it was Etsy, something pops up. And it's buying this little tray that goes into the Costco cart that you can put your hot dog and soda on while you're wheeling around.

I bought that for him, right? So you need to have connection with your team. There's going to be tough times in business. And if you don't have that relationship, then it becomes tumultuous at times.

And if you don't have that, you need, you're going to struggle a little bit. Okay. Now, speaking of relationships, so how you connect and relate to people when you're on the buy side versus the sell side, right? Cause you've analyzed deals like both ways.

Yeah, that's correct. So what have you learned? Like what's different about maybe the culture or the people on one side versus the next? Yeah, I've done both buy side and sell side due diligence.

So I've looked at it from the third party perspective from the buy side. You know, you really want the business to open up about not just their greatest successes and where things are going, but also where the biggest risks are. Because sometimes those biggest risks create the biggest opportunities as well. Ultimately get aligned on.

I'm trying to create value here, and if we can create value together, we're both going to be successful. On the sell side, it's really important to have your ducks in a row, have your stories, your past, and then also where you're going. Why do you think you're going to get there? And if you're going to get there because you've accomplished it before or because you've seen performance that aligns with early indicators and those early indicators are starting to flag again, and you can prove that those early indicators were a leading indicator of what happened in the past positively.

Now they can look and buy something based off of the future value, not just the present value. Okay. So selling, you really want to create as much value as you can at that time. Okay.

So I hear a lot about being in PE is a lot of stress, is a lot of long hours. So curious to hear like your perspective on it. What should people really be talking about? Is it true?

Like, how did you survive? Sure, sure. So I think stress can actually be a motivational tool to some extent, and there's healthy levels of it and it creates drive. Distress, however, you don't want that.

You don't want situations where you cannot win no matter how hard you try, you're not being listened to or otherwise. So I think it's important that it's the right type of stress. And oftentimes, stress is a reflection of the people that you're working with. And if you're put in a situation where you guys can't win, then that stress isn't very healthy.

Otherwise, I think stress is very healthy. You need to challenge yourself. come back and then go back to more stressful opportunistic situations. So being in PE, you know, we also hear, I also hear, you know, the payout could be great, but you know, the road to get there, you're not too sure.

How do you navigate that? How would a finance leader think about like the debits and credits of being successful in that environment? Yeah. So you're right.

It's, it is not linear. As I think about any opportunity as a CFO, You kind of have to look at it with kind of three lenses. And those three lenses are, I'd say, the investment side of it, right? If you are taking a job as a CFO, you are making an investment in that business.

And that's the long -term incentive equity that you're talking about and that benefit. You need to make sure that you diligence the industry, the business that you're looking to go into, and the partners that you're looking to do it along with. And then you need to assess the business itself, right? this is my job, this is where I'm gonna be spending my time, you're gonna be spending more time with those people than you do at home.

And you need to assess that just like anybody else do so. And then I'd say the last thing that you're assessing are the people, the who. And for me, the most critical thing is that relationship with your CEO. I've had some CEOs that are just spectacular, really motivational, also very understanding, friends, and I would say that they're friends, but you're in the foxhole with them.

Right. And you need to build those relationships I talked about before. Yes. Those are the kind of the ways that I would assess it.

Okay. But yeah, there's definitely, I wouldn't call it a pot of gold, but there's something at the end of that rainbow that is beneficial and rewarding for your time and commitment. So what are some tips there? Like what should you be looking for?

Cause now, you know, in talking with most CFOs, we're talking about how your offer letter, like what are some of the things in the contract that you should be looking for security here? Like what are the the things that you usually want to have in your offer letter or your contract any any special clauses as you walk into a role in the piece. You know it's funny I haven't thought about it because it's just so normal for me right but you're typically going to find your base compensation your bonus target percentage but then you're going to have some type of equity incentive which is often referred to as sweat equity and that is equity that you earn over the period of the hold cycle of the private equity investor.

There's typically some tranches to that, meaning that the equity matures or vests over a couple of different thresholds. The first is time -based, typically. So as long as you are there for a period of time, or at least there when you do sell and create realized value for your investors, that box is checked. There's typically also some hurdles that need to be accomplished, whether they be MoEC, multiple of them invested capital, two or two and a half times, sometimes even three times required.

And then IRR. So what rate of return is the investor receiving? They're all different. And they can come up with many more creative ways of measuring that.

But that's the equity side. Typically, otherwise, you'll have separation agreement clauses. So you'll have an expectation that if you guys decide to part ways, there'll be some kind of runway for you. And the rest kind of all comes together as you go through it together.

OK. But I think my best advice is really understand the business that you're looking to join because you are making an investment. You're making an investment in that business and you're making an investment in the people that you are partnering with, your CEO and the private equity firm that owns them. And as you're trying to make that investment, what kind of questions should you be asking or documents to be able to do that?

Because I feel like sometimes, especially when I'm talking to first time CFOs, they're like, oh, I wish I had asked for this. Oh, I wish I asked for this report or this. I should have asked for three out of this statement. What are some of the things you like going and say, okay, I'm going to ask this list of questions as I go in.

That's a good question. I would start out with, hopefully there's a SIM, confidential information memorandum. When they went and bought the business, what was the summary of that business? It gives you the full picture.

Sometimes if it's a proprietary deal where they just found this business and bought it on their own, that might not exist. You'll typically have a quality of earnings report. Oftentimes there'll be an investment thesis. on how this business was targeted and found.

And I like to get that. Sometimes there's sales due diligence or contractual due diligence where the customer arrangements are reviewed. And especially if you have a high customer concentration business, you'll want to make sure that you get those contracts and just be able to look at those, see if there's some loopholes or just get the sales diligence report if there's not as much customer concentration. There's probably a multitude more.

You definitely want to make sure you're doing facility visits and tours so that you to understand what that business is like and how it's viewed from the perspective of the other executives that you're going to be partnering with. So I definitely want to do facility tours with the COO. I want that individual to say, here's what I like, here's what I don't like, and here's how that all works together. You want to walk around and spend time with the CEO, understand their relationship with private equity investors.

There's varying degrees of involvement by private equity shops. And where you're going to find out what that's going to be like is when times are tough, right? So you want to get some feedback on that. Commercial is huge, right?

So private equity is typically investing in businesses that are growing. The intention is growth and operational execution. Well, if you're looking for growth, that commercial officer is going to be a really important person to meet with. Understanding how they're going to the market, what they look like, what their sales cycle tends to look like.

Um, those are all different things that I do. Can you get a new opportunity? Okay. And then it's, it's so enlightening.

I know you've been living in this world and I'm like, wow, I will never think about it. So definitely if I look at a P I would drop his contact information in happy to be involved. Thank you so much for sharing, especially on the things that you don't know. You don't know, right?

Cause you had the advantage of going in that you had been on the consulting side analyzing both sides. And then you went in the CFO seat and you were able to see, okay, this is how it looks once you're inside. How do you work with the CEO? I'm curious to hear maybe what was the hardest conversation you had with the CEO because now in my seat, I realize a lot of your success.

is hinge on that relationship with the CEO. That CFO CEO relationship is like everything. Yeah, that's really well said. I mentioned the foxhole before, right?

I mean, you're in with other executive leaders, but you're definitely in with the CEO. And establishing that relationship is extremely critical. And I've connected with CEOs before on the fact that when we let our hair down and unwind, we like to go to Las Vegas for a casino trip, right? And we enjoy that, or music or otherwise.

I've found ways to connect with those CEOs. But ultimately, as you're looking to partner with your CEO and you're bringing ideas and you're looking for opportunities within your business, you need to start with the why. It's very important to tell them why you're bringing it, tend to be what are the options at hand, and then which one you're recommending. And again, why.

The why is extremely important for any CEO because they need to make their own decision on a lot of things and if you can help them to that pathway. I would also say that you need to meet them where they are and that means a lot. I don't mean just physically which is part of it but every CEO just like every individual receives things differently and some like to be informed of things very frequently as they occur. Some like to be summarized and some like to have you handle everything and tell them only when they need to know certain things.

So you need to meet them where they are in their degree and they all have their pluses and minuses. Okay, so I'm curious to hear a fun story now. Any story you want to share about? CEO or your go -to move to establish that trust.

Yeah. Once you get there. Cause it's some, or maybe what questions you ask before you actually want to work for a CEO. I'm just curious to hear.

I did a recent post on LinkedIn about how, you know, there was a CEO, everything was kind of going okay. But then there was a fallout with the CEO and the CFO had to leave. Like he was like, you know, I need to find something else. So I'm always here to see.

How can we prevent those kind of situation? Like what have you learned? Really worked. Funny stories.

I mean, I remember maybe the one that lives with me the most because I was earlier in my career. I was chief cook and bottle washer on the finance function side. And I did the model for the budget for the year. And we had a good amount of growth built in.

We got it approved by the board. Everything was hunky dory. And yes, I just used the word hunky -dory. And I'm looking at something later as I'm putting it into an analysis.

And I was like, uh -oh. There was a savings in there that was just a model error that we had done. And about 15 % of the total EBITDA growth that we had just projected to the board was just an error in the model. And the finding for me or what I found there is that Needed to go to my CEO and immediately right and just be like, hey, this is what happened This is where the error occurred and what I found is that when you share those tough circumstances It's really you find out the true nature of your relationships and also the true nature of the individuals you're working with Ended up not being a big deal, right?

We work through it just fine, but you never know. So when you have a difficulty share it early And what do they say? Good news, share quickly. Bad news, share it even quicker.

I would say that was kind of a little bit of a learning lesson there. Okay. Cause yeah, too. Accounting error.

You're bringing back memories. You're bringing back memories. It does. It does.

But I'm curious to hear for you, what's the difference between like a CFO that, you know, you just run the accounting and finance operations, but really being a CFO. That is see you actually consult when it comes to strategy, right? Like you really the right hand person and like they want you in the room versus the CFO. That's like, you know, staying your I've been very fortunate that in each of my experiences, I've been in that room.

I've been in those conversations and I think it's a couple of things. One, you come into a very open minded and understand that everybody is a stakeholder at that table, trying to push a different ideation or motive or what they think is right. And you gotta hear them all because they're all good ideas. It's just a matter of which way you typically think it's best to go as a business.

So I would say that open -mindedness is most important. But then I've been teased before that I always turn everything into analogies, right? I think earlier I said analogy of an egg or something like that. I had a CEO once say, My gosh all these analogies.

I'm gonna create a book and then the next thing, you know Next four meetings. I said more analogies and he started writing down the book. He paused the meeting and started writing Different analogies and maybe that book will be out someday So hopefully I get some credits. Yes, but I think the point about analogies is the CFO role.

It's important to be a translator because The World Cup is on right now, right? And everybody's talking. I'm like, how are they talking? Well, they're all talking English, right?

Because it's that common language. I would say finance and numbers and the debits and credits that you grew up loving is that common language for everyone, whether it's the sales team or the marketing team or the operations team or the safety team or whatever it may be. Everybody has to come together in that common language. And that common language is the numbers.

And as CFO, it's your job to be you know, chief interpreter for the organization. So I think the CEOs have appreciated that have been able to put it into a language that we can all comprehend and make decisions that are based on facts. Nice. Now thinking about the CFO, right?

I love how you said the analogy is really the storytelling and how you make it those complex things, you know, easier to digest. So people who don't have that accounting and finance background, but then finance I realized will pick up anything that doesn't belong. Somewhere like we we get the the gifts something is new It ends up being under the CFO like HR IT like I've seen so many things Being owned by CFO. What's your take on that?

Like how do you adjust? Yeah, I think it's because we touch everything You know because we're already involved in everything if something doesn't have a home Well finance is already touching it finance is already assessing that and trying to put it into a box or a situation or evaluation or a risk or an opportunity. So I think that's a little bit of the why. Does it happen often?

Yes, it does. I've got some partners, you know, we're all hearing about AI, right? And some CFOs are leading the AI initiatives in their business. Others are falling within the CTO seat.

I know that the most important thing is that you bring in the appropriate individuals to be a part of that team. and get their information and share it. So AI, bring in the HR department because believe it or not, there's a lot of individuals and organizations who are not adopting AI just because they're scared of it. They don't understand it and they're worried about themselves.

So HR is an important partner to have at the table in an AI discussion. So you wouldn't think of that, right? That's the kind of thing that a CFO needs to do is think about who could be impacted, how and why, because they have access to all the information across the organization. Curious to hear with all your see your PE space experience and all the stuff you did when you look back What is something you will say you wish you had known on day one?

I'm gonna go with a couple things. I'm gonna cheat I'm gonna say number one is relationship trumps the issue. It's it's very important to establish and maintain your relationships throughout everybody's just here to bring value to a business, succeed, right? People don't go into work and say, I want to suck at this today.

It just doesn't happen. Everybody wants to do well. So it's important to maintain those relationships and build upon them. Another thing, I would say early in my career, it was very cost conscious.

A lot of private equity is about growing. So you need to spend to grow. It's important that you spend the right way, right? But you need to spend.

It's a little bit like the Las Vegas analogy, reference I made earlier, you need to make little bets throughout and you and your CEO are going to make little bets and you want to help on, hey, this one looks pretty good and here's why, here's the why. And then last I would just say is trust your instincts. They tend to be pretty solid and trust yourself. Okay.

Now back on the little, the, you said the little bets, um, coming from like the education we have in accounting and we are, I feel like we naturally, like we naturally gravitate to a cost saving. And we don't like spending. Like you ask my husband, he will tell you, yes, I'm married to an accountant because I remember the price, the price of milk. Like I remember things, remember numbers.

How, how do you make that switch though, to be able to see, yes, where, what are the risk and opportunity, the risk, but also the opportunities, right? The, the cost saving, but also where the growth could be. Yeah. Yeah.

I think you're right. You know, risk avoidance is something that flows in the in the blood of any accountant it needs to be done in an individualistic approach so like to each individual opportunity identify what is the floor or what is the risk presented in this opportunity and then you can say okay well is that something i can bear is that something our organization can bear or handle and as long as the answer is yes and your upside potential is something that's really desirable or something you're looking for or aligned with your initiative then Let's dive in.

By the way, we need to get your husband with my wife together because my wife's constantly telling me that it's okay that four packages from Amazon arrived at the house today. That's my husband. Is it crazy how we attract the opposite? Yeah, the opposite definitely attracts in this world, for sure.

Yes, he gets more Amazon packages than I do. He does. I'm like, I'm your dream wife. You don't even know that.

Yeah, I totally agree. Although thankfully my wife's buying everything for the kids. I wouldn't know where to start half the time. So give her credit for that for sure.

Good, good point. Score the point. Now curious to hear, you know, what's keeping you in Atlanta now? Cause you've been, you still here.

You don't have to, right? Sure. We love it from a community perspective. You know, Atlanta's this wonderful city of opportunity and the infrastructure of Atlanta, where you start with the airport.

You also have the seaport. Everything kind of flows through here. It's the entire southeast and it's wonderful. My wife loves it.

So that's it. That's a thing. Yeah. So we're here forever.

And the community. that we've we've been able to become a part of. We're very grateful for that. We live in Smyrna, which is just outside of the city.

And I would say there's a number of counties just outside of the city that are a great support system as well, whether it be our church or our schools or our friends or our little league or our dance studio, whatever it may be. We love it. And everything we want is here. So that's that's really important.

I would say that when you look at Atlanta and the southeast talked about that infrastructure but there's also really good education around here oh yeah a lot of universities and i didn't know about that when i lived up in the northeast it's like oh there's the ivy league and that's that's like it and and now that i've been down here and you you know about the I don't want to name the schools because there's so many of them. But when you name the Georgia Texan, the Georges and the Emery's and the Kenesaw State, the Georgia State, the Georgia Southern, and then you think about those that are just outside of that and the entire SEC and Auburn's just down the road.

And there are so many good educational communities that support. And what they do is they feed great talent into Atlanta. And that's the other key. I would say those three prongs are infrastructure, education, and then the talent.

Great talent. Okay. And then what have you seen in the PE space? How do you think he had evolved in Atlanta?

Or is it pretty much the same? Do you see more activity going? Because I remember when I started, I didn't see as many things around PE than recently. And I'm like, oh, what happened in the past decade?

I think PE has had a focus on the Southeast more recently. I was just speaking with a firm the other day that their entire first fund was focused on businesses in the Southeast and they're doing very well for themselves. So there's just a lot of opportunity here. A lot of PE originated and was based up in the Northeast.

And, you know, I want to say it was something like 70 % of our consumption in the U .S. at some point in time was all up in the Northeast. That's changed.

And as that's changed, the opportunities, the businesses. Southeast is a very great, very good place to be. By the way, I go back to that infrastructure at the airport with Atlanta. You know, if you're a private equity business and you've got partners in Chicago and New York City, you want to get to your business and you want to see it and you want to help it and you help grow it.

You can get on a flight and get there pretty quickly. There's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot to be said for that. OK, OK.

So my last question for today. Curiously here, what is your favorite thing to do outside of work? Thank you for that question. It's got to be tied to sports.

Okay, and more recently for me I've been very involved in golf. I love golf. I have a buddy group Hey, guys. And we go on a trip every year.

And that's a lot of fun. And then when I'm going to relax or when I'm going to see somebody from work outside of that environment, it's a great way to separate and just get back to nature, get to a little bit of competitive environment. But that competition is against yourself oftentimes. So I love it.

And that's what I do. More recently, I've also tied that into giving back to the community. We just kicked off our high school. we kicked off a middle school feeder team.

So I'll be coaching the young men and ladies in their aspirations to be young golfers and eventually make the high school golf team. So I really enjoy the sport. Oh, gosh. Yeah.

You you are into things that are kind of stressful. So going back to how you said earlier, you you believe that stress is not bad. I can see with your hobbies like me when I'm not working. I am Netflix saying I am eating.

I'm doing things. I do like to eat a lot. I cook too. Oh, you do?

I'm the cook too in my house. I enjoy it. I just need to find the time. Yeah, that too.

But I'm curious to hear, though, like, when did you realize that stress was not a bad thing? Because we hear it all so often. And I'm always like, we're asking, what do you do? I'm like, man, he does a lot of stressful stuff.

Yeah. I think it goes back to my roots of sports. And I would say, like, when you were When you were taught as a child, it was no pain, no gain. It was a very common, you know, and it's like, if you don't put yourself in challenging situations, you are not going to grow.

You're not going to develop an athlete that I found out more about after his passing. Actually, I was just amazed by was Kobe Bryant and the amount of effort, hard work and challenge that he put into himself is unbelievable. It's it's it's such an aspiration. So, you know, Sports brings all back to me.

And I think that a challenge within a business is fun. I think it creates opportunity and it also creates camaraderie just like sports. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I learned a lot about, you know, being in PE and that's why I love this podcast, by the way, because I get to learn from people like you who have done it for so long.

Thank you so much for joining me. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for everything you do for the CFOs of today and tomorrow. Thank you.

Thank you. And that's it for today's episode of the Diary of a CFO live from Atlanta series. There's something about doing this in person that you can feel from the side of the mic. If you felt that energy too, I hope you subscribe and send this to someone who needs it.

See you in the next one.