The IPO readiness mistake CFOs make, with Joy Mbanugo

Joy Mbanugo: I think one of the most underrated skills of a CFO or anyone in finance is being a good storyteller. And the most effective and impactful CFOs and finance people are the ones that are able to tell a good story. A good story to the market, a good story to investors, a good story to the board. There are times where I've leaned more on the technical, right? Like, gotta be technical, you gotta be accurate, gotta be this. And that's all fine and you should. That's kind of table stakes.

Host: Hi Joy. Thanks so much for joining us on the $0.02 podcast today.

Joy Mbanugo: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Host: Before we get started with our conversation, do you want to just introduce yourself to our audience a little bit more and talk about your kind of journey in finance and to your current position?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Joy Mbanugo: Yeah. So my name is Joy Bunugo. I am currently the CFO at a publicly traded company here in the Bay Area, California. For those of you who don't know when we say Bay Area, um, called cxap and we're an employee experience company. Um, and so like my path to becoming a CFO was not linear. So just for people who want to become a CFO to give them a little bit of background, like the three very traditional routes to become a CFO are controller, investment banker, or fpa. I didn't come from. I did, but not really. My core foundation came from working at ey. I was an audit nerd. I worked in tax. And so I was there for about 12 years and like built a really big regulatory framework. And you couldn't tell me that I was not going to be a partner at ey. Like that was, um, my dream. But somehow I got the bug, I think from living in London while I worked for ey. I got the bug to do more and become more, like dig more in the finance side. And so that's where I moved to blackrock, uh, which was a great experience and great in hindsight I didn't even realize it, but great for me from becoming a CFO because it helped me understand institutional finance. And I think for especially public company CFOs or uh, pre IPO CFOs, you have to understand institutional finance because the big asset managers will eventually be your investors. And so that was super helpful. And then after blackrock, I moved to Google and I worked in Treasury, Tax, Tax, slash Treasury. It was like a joint role. Moved, um, on from that to controllership and then moved into cloud, FP&A, and a go to market team. Um, and so now at CX App, I'm like bringing all of that experience gathered Google, cloud and AI and all of the buzzwords. Institutional finance, audit compliance. You name it, I do it.

Host: That's great. You mentioned the, um, the difference between a public company and an institutional finance. I wonder if you could just dig into that a little bit more for us. Like, what are, what are the kind of stark realities, the kind of the differences that you encounter, especially when transitioning from one to the other.

Joy Mbanugo: Yeah, yeah. So I think maybe I could just kind of like highlight like differences jumping from like consulting to, you know, uh, Blackhawk and Google and then from that share size to like the private company. I went to my first CFO role and then to this company. So when you're a consultant, it's easy to provide advice in a vacuum. Right. Like you're not living it. So, you know, one of the things I would do at ey, I would write a very beautiful memo or it would become beautiful with a lot of help from a lot of people, we would deliver that memo, you know, when I was on the tax side. And it's same thing in like advisory. It's a report memo. Same thing. You hand the reporter memo to the client and you say, good luck, implement it. And so you walk away. Um, but when you move into, when I moved to blackrock, it was a very stark reality of having to actually do the work and then just seeing at both BlackRock and Google, how you operate, um, at scale, you have, I don't want to say ample resources, but you have resources so you can hire teams to run really good, heavy, media efficient projects. Fast forward to my current role. You, you don't have that same level. Like I don't have the same access to resources that I did at Google. Right. Like, or that I did at, um, blackrock. And blackrock was pretty, I don't say tight, but pretty strict about spending. But like, I'm at a much smaller company. We're a micro cap. And so the amount of resources and learning how to do. I hate that, I hate the phrase doing more with less, but it really is doing more with less and just learning how to operate with the same rigor that you would if you were at a big institution. But being able to do it at a smaller company.

Host: Yeah. Sounds like a real, um, real stress test in a way. Yes, I know.

Joy Mbanugo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And m. One thing I want to bring up, you still have the same regular, like I still have as a public company cfo. Like, my regulatory requirements are not Any different just because I'm a micro cap. Like I still have to put out um, audited financials on a quarterly basis. I'm in the middle of our audit right now. Our 10k will come out um, you know, sometime this quarter. And so I'm still held to the same rigor just with less resources. And so it, there is a difference from going from like the sheer scale and size of a BlackRock in a Google to a, ah, smaller company.

Host: Would you think it's good though, like from a career perspective to be, to have to uh, operate within those different roles? Do you think it sort of um, does it give you different skills? Like maybe you could dig into what you've had to learn a little bit?

Joy Mbanugo: Yeah. So I think I would say yes. So you know, like I talk about audit and I own the audit at my current company. Um, like I was an auditor before, so I knew it went into an audit. But being the actual owner and understanding it and understanding, you know, really understanding the regulatory framework, really understanding internal controls, like on the practical side, not on the, you know, I don't want to say it's easy from an uh, auditor standpoint, but being able to look at, okay, the company and figure out how to get us to a place where we are reporting on time, where we have a solid financial foundation, where we again, I always, I'll, um, keep using this term rigor because it's really important where we have the rigor and we operate as if we are that size but we're not. And so just having to be a bit more hands on, it can be scary when you come from a big company. But I've learned so much and like, I can really say now there probably isn't any role in finance in any company that I can't do like on any given day. Like I'm an AP clerk and you know, I'm a cfo. Like I'm doing a podcast now and so, oh, it's glamorous. But like I'm going to get off the phone with you and I'm going to have like a thousand emails and one's going to be like, oh, check Bill, check this journal entry. And so being very hands on, like is good because I've also learned the business really, really well. Like it is easy to be, I think when you work at a larger company to be a bit more hands off again, even in a finance function, like offer advice a little bit in a vacuum. I can't do that in my current role. Like I can't do that at all.

Host: Yeah, no, it's a good argument, I guess, for. Because, I mean, this is what we're going to get to later in the conversation. But we're talking about strategic CFOs.

Joy Mbanugo: Yes.

Host: And things like that. It sounds almost like. And a big part of being strategic is being holistic. Right. And not being in silos. Sounds like you don't have an option. Sometimes

Joy Mbanugo: I don't. I don't. Which is good. I mean, m. It's been great. It's been a learning experience. But no, I do not have the benefit of sitting in an ivory tower, unfortunately. Cool.

Host: It's great. It's great to hear. Right. Okay. So you describe yourself, um, I think in your LinkedIn profile as a finance transformation architect. I find this to be a really interesting term. Um, can you describe what that means in practice to you? And also like, what are the first signals that like an institution needs? Like, um, broad change transformation, not just kind of incremental change.

Joy Mbanugo: Yeah, yeah. So I think about transformation in a couple of ways. So. Right. Like everybody, when you hear transformation now probably immediately goes to AI and yes, that. We'll talk about that. But I think before you even get to AI, you have to look at people and processes. Right. Like transformation starts with people. I worked on a really large. I've worked on small transformations, large transformations, and I have seen them derail because people don't focus on the people first and the process and they want to go right to the end goal. Like, okay, let's get a br. A business requirements document. Let's write down our requirements, let's go into testing. We. But before you even get there, you need to like spend some time on architect and like architecting the process and the people. And sometimes it's like the actual people in the roles are the people you'll need. Um, and then like there are a couple of signals or three signals I want to talk about. Sorry, I really want to dig into some of this because I'm pretty passionate about it. Um, one signal is like finance teams from a transformation standpoint. I think going into the future, finance teams need to be forward looking versus, you know, looking at history and even FP&A teams. Like, I know everyone who's an FP&A will say, no, no, no, I'm forward looking. But if you're, if you're reporting like budget to actuals and what happened last month or last quarter. Right. That's historical. And if you're a controller, you know, and I'm an. I'm an accountant. And if you're like providing the financials from last month or last quarter, that is not transformational to a business. And that is very, you know, historic backwards looking. And so I think the way teams can be forward looking is like, okay, taking all of the context we have, here's where I think we are headed, here's where I think we should invest. Here's like, you know, a lot of people talk about 13 month cash, rolling forecasts. Here's where cash is headed if we do this. And just being proactive and putting your neck on the line and giving suggestions, um, I think that's really hard. Um, signal two is that sometimes leadership is making decisions without finance at the table. That makes me cringe. I've seen it happen before. Not so much in my current company because we're so small and like I literally sit, I'm um, not in my office now, but I literally sit like an elbow away from my CEO. So it's like really hard. Like I will hear his conversations that he'll have to go off the room. So it doesn't happen that much. But like sometimes like I'm watching you hear like, you know, he can hear my conversations, I can hear his. But one of the signals is like that, you know, transformation might be needed is that if you see leadership or teams, depending on the size of your business, making decisions without you, there's a signal that transformation needs to happen. And part of that probably comes from going back to signal one. You need to be providing forward looking advice and guidance and like again putting your neck on the line and saying this is what I think you need to do. And number three, if you are noticing that again going back to processes that your processes aren't can't scale, you know, you're going to be a, ah, you're going to be a hindrance to the business. So I'm very passionate about transformation but I think transformation, a lot of people want to start talk about transformation. They dive right into technology. I start first with people. Um, do you even have the right, you know, people always talk about tech stack. You have the right people stack, right? Like who cares about your tech stack if you don't have the people to operate it. So again, I think, you know, there are a couple of signals to look at that will say ding, ding, ding, like we are right for a transformation.

Host: Yeah, definitely. I love how you broke that down. It's um, and I think there's a, I think a lot of CFOs, uh, of finance leaders will definitely relate to the frustration that you're describing of kind of. And it's like, what is going on? I've got no idea what people are doing.

Joy Mbanugo: Everybody stop. Pencils down, everybody.

Host: Yeah, absolutely.

Joy Mbanugo: Yeah.

Host: Okay, so you've been involved in kind of strengthening, um, governance, um, improving reporting discipline. What is like that in your opinion is the common cause behind, you know, audit breakdowns or behind regulatory, well, regulatory or audit breakdowns. Like what, what are, what do you think are some of the main reasons, the main causes behind those things?

Joy Mbanugo: Yeah, I think a lot of people treat regulatory, uh, compliance as like a tick box or checkbox exercise and don't look at compliance or regulatory compliance. One, as an enabler and like, as a strategic enabler. And I'll get to that. And two, just a solid foundation for the company to grow. Um, one, I see like a lot of pre IPO companies that are like, oh, we're going public and you know, pre IPO or pre transaction companies, whether it's pre IPO or acquisition, and they've never been through an audit. Big, big, big, big mistake. Again, because someone may look at it as like a checkbox exercise. Again, going back to the people, not the technology. They may not have the right people in place. They may not have a controller or a controller who's lived through a public company audit or uh, some type of transaction. They may not have a CFO who's lived through any of that. Because the focus has always been growth. Growth is great, but growth isn't great if you can't go public or you can't do a transaction because you don't have audited, uh, financials. And then on an existing company side, I think companies forget or like maybe non finance people forget that you can use your public filings as strategy, right? Like you can use your public filings to tell a story. I was just looking at, um, ah, a friend of mine who's a CFO was looking at their uh, annual shareholder meeting, their proxy, and part of it told the story of the business. And I was like, oh, that's interesting because the proxy, and this is no, you know, dis on my company, but the proxy we put out last year was very, um, very. It was good, but it was very much regulatory. But there's a way for even your proxy to be strategic. Um, one, on the things that you actually vote on and two, and the proxy and annual shareholders, meaning I'm kind of mixing this all together. Um, two, you can use that time to use um, your proxy statement to tell more of the story of the company that you probably haven't done or to continue the story that you told in your 10k and in your 10q. So I think people look at regulatory, again, compliance is just like a checkbox exercise, and they need to look at it as like an enabler for growth.

Host: Yeah, I love that. I love it as an opportunity for storytelling especially. I honestly never, ever thought of it from that angle. But, um, we talk a lot about. On the podcast about how data tells a story.

Joy Mbanugo: Yes.

Host: You know, um, and I know that's how, uh, well, stats or figures or anything that you want to talk about like that. I mean, I think, um. And that's something as well, isn't it, Going back to what we were talking about as cfo as being strategic partners. Um, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a lot of the time it's about making the figures tell the story right. Or being able to interpret the story and convey what it is effectively to people in the room. Right?

Joy Mbanugo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think one of the most underrated skills of a CFO or anyone in finance is being a good storyteller. And I, you know, my background is accounting. I'm also a lawyer, so I've always. Not always, but there are times where I've leaned more on the technical. Right. Like, gotta be technical, gotta be right technical, technically, gotta be accurate, gotta be this. And that's all fine. And you should. That's kind of table stakes. But what I realized over time, the most effective and impactful CFOs and finance people are the ones that are able to tell a good story, a good story to the market, a good story to investors, a good story to the board. Like, you have to be able to tell a really good and compelling story.

Host: Yeah. And not just of where we've been, but where we might go.

Joy Mbanugo: Right.

Host: As well.

Joy Mbanugo: Again, that goes back to my being strategic. You can't just sit there. It goes back to signal one. You can't just sit there and talk about what we did. What we did. You need to talk about. This is what we did, and this is where we're going, and here's why.

Host: Yeah, definitely. Love it.

Joy Mbanugo: Love it.

Host: Definitely. Okay, so for finance leaders that may be listening to this, can you think of, you know, uh, some practical tips maybe for. To increase audit readiness without, like, massively. Well, causing massive headaches with head count or things like that?

Joy Mbanugo: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so this is where I'm going to. I'll get into my AI spill, because I feel like I Talk about it all the time. I mean, AI is in our. Our ticker. Um, but one. What.

Speaker C: I'll.

Joy Mbanugo: I'll talk about what I've done. So, two things. One, close the books faster. Um, and I know that sounds cliche, but if you are taking more than five days to close the books, that's too long. And even with closing the books in five days or three days, I think you can look into closing, like, continuous close. So what accounts can you reconcile on a daily, weekly basis so that by the time you get to close, it's really seamless? Um, there are some companies, some tech companies out there saying that they close in one day. I haven't seen that. We have a short close. It used to be long. We've shortened it significantly, like cut it by 50, 60%. And again, it's by doing some of the reconciliations. Um, the other bit on getting audit ready is just looking at all of the hairy bits that you may have as a company, right? Like, you know, really, really technical stuff that you'll have to write technical memos on. You could start to do that now. And guess what? ChatGPT, Gemini, claw, perplexity, they're all great at it. Now, I. I'm not saying just use it, write it, and then, like, shift it to an audit, but, like, start to get in that habit of doing that, um, so that you get to have your place and. Sorry, I said two things. Third thing, and very, very, very, very important thing, whether it's an. Whether you're getting ready for audit, IPO acquisition, anything like that, make sure your revenue is right. I know that sounds crazy, but, like, before you get to an audit, I think you should practice auditing yourself. And you don't need to hire anyone to do it. I think you need to sit down and look at your rev rec processes. And, um, you'd be surprised at how often this comes up for companies of all sizes.

Host: Yeah, Yeah, I can. I can imagine. Definitely.

Joy Mbanugo: Yeah.

Host: Great. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about how, um, you know, the sort of IPO readiness which is kind of the main thrust of this conversation, how that's kind of shifted since the pandemic or before the pandemic. So from your perspective, like, what. What has been the biggest shift?

Joy Mbanugo: I think the biggest shift is the amount of ARR in just real revenue. You need to go public now. I think before the pandemic, um, you could have $100 million in revenue, sometimes less, but that was, you know, tricky. Um, well, you could have the standard $100 million in revenue, a billion dollar valuation and you would be able to go public. Right. And then during the pandemic and a little bit, uh, before we saw the onset of SP SPACs and you know, I work at a company went public Vs back. And so that all kind of worked for a while until it didn't. And now post pandemic, you know, the investment bankers are a bit more aggressive. Like I think I don't know what the average is, so don't quote me, but I think like the average IPO in the last year or so the ARR was like north of 200 to 400 million dollars. That's double. That's huge. And so what does that mean for companies that want to go public or that, or uh, that have, that are pre ipo, that have been in the trenches for a while, Some of them just may not go public. And so you have a lot of companies that are really solid that are in that $1 billion, $2 billion valuation, you know, maybe 50, 50 million to $200 million in revenue that may never go public. And I think if you're sitting at a company like that and you're a CFO and it doesn't look like you're going to grow, like, I think you should look at other strategic opportunities, you know, private, private equity, you know, you know, maybe acquisitions, maybe joint ventures, maybe an exit through a sale to a strategic. But I think, you know, there is a whole host of companies that had that. The required revenue that you need. And I call it air quotes because it was never required, but air, uh, quote required revenue that you needed to go public pre pandemic and that the goalpost is totally moved.

Host: Wow. Okay. It's complete, uh, a complete shift and a lot of pressure there, I suppose.

Joy Mbanugo: You know, a lot of, a lot of pressure. And it unfortunately right now it's skewing very much towards a lot of tech companies, a lot of the AI companies because their valuations are huge, their revenues are large. And so that, that 200, 200 to 400 million may even shift even further. You know, we'll see as 2020. We're early 2026, so we'll see what happens.

Host: Yeah, definitely.

Joy Mbanugo: Yeah.

Host: Uh, exciting yet, uh, scary future.

Joy Mbanugo: Yes, yes,

Host: try both.

Joy Mbanugo: Yeah.

Host: Okay. So speaking of the future, uh, and things that are potentially scary, uh, and also kind of exciting as well, uh, you know what I'm getting on to now, uh, AI. So let's, let's talk a little bit about AI And I'm really curious as someone you know, your, your experience in finance. I want to know like what were your first thoughts on it when your particular function like and um, what do you think its role is now? Like could chart the kind of evolution for me of like how your thought process behind it and how you use it.

Joy Mbanugo: So if I had to be honest when I, when it first came out, I think so this was probably when, when I first started using an LLM, a large language model, I think this would, would have been in 20, 23, 24. So uh, not that long ago. But I was using it for very basic things like help me write an email to a board member or you know, it was very, very, very basic. Fast forward to today and I can, before claudebot came out, so Claude code and all that, I was able to create, you know, a scenario, an FP and a scenario planner within one of the LLMs and created my own agent. And because of how I treat my, because of how I've like programmed some of my LLMs and because it's behind our firewall, I've gone from again, very basic, help me write a, help uh, me write an email to a board member to my CEO to help me create like 5 to 10 different scenarios where in the past I would have just done three and I, I have an AI agent that helps me do it and within minutes versus what would take days if not weeks. And so I think the evolution is exciting and scary. It's exciting because I think finance folks are going to be able to do more quicker again going back to that signal, providing insights, you're going to be able to provide insights. Like if a business comes and says, hey, if we change pricing, what does that look like? Before you'd have to open up your pricing spreadsheet, take it in or open up a tool. Now you can just run some simulations in an LLM with the agent or depending, you know, we have to talk about cloud code or if you use cloudbot and like let it work overnight and do it for you, which is like, whoa, um, that's exciting. The scary part though is, is twofold. One there is, and I'm a little bit old fashioned, there is some beauty in doing math the long way, you know what I mean? There's some beauty in knowing how to do advanced multiplication by hand. And if you just use AI for everything, you lose that skill of being able to critically think right. And I don't think critical thinking skills are going to go away, but we're getting to the point where some of us rely on it. So much that you have to remember, whoa, I have to look at the output and think critically. So that's one bit. And then secondly, I do get a little concern. It's kind of related to this for, um, entry level folks because I had to do audit by hand. I ticked and tied with a pencil. I'm not saying you need to do that, but if you, like, learn how to audit with AI and analytics, it's probably good and you'll get the insights. But I think there is still something. Again, uh, I will always think this way. There is something to be said for doing things the long way. And again, I call it by doing multiplication and division by hand. Like being able to do it by hand and like the memorization of having to do it. You understand the logic behind it, right? And so you understand the rationale was, now you just get the answer and you can give the answer, but what about the rationale behind the answer? And so I'm excited for it. But I also caution people to really, really dig down into like, do you understand, like, what the, what the tool gave you? You know, the output of what the tool gave you?

Host: Yeah, there's learning. Isn't there in friction as well in making mistakes? And you know, I mean, I, I got you. You know what, you just, you gave me flashbacks to being 11 years old and trying to figure out long multiplication and long division and, and just the horror of it and then sitting with my, sitting with my parents at the table and like finally getting it, you

Joy Mbanugo: know, and you could have just done it with a calculator, but I remember they would be like, you're not going to have a calculator on the test. So it's like, oh my God, I better do it. And you don't use like, division, like, you know, unless you're engineered. Some, some finance people just do it off the top of their head. But, like, it's good to know how to do it.

Host: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. I think we, uh. This is, this is the scary thing. And it's not just, um, numerical either. It is also the verbal. I mean, I've always been someone who's more like verbally inclined, like, you know, language and things like that. But I found myself declining a little bit at times. I really do think so because I just. Because it is so. AI is so good at it. Especially with like, kind of, you know, more corporate kind of speak. A lot of the time you just kind of, you know, you'll sit there and you have to write something and you think, God, the Words just aren't coming to me, like, you know, because, because it, because I believe it's not just like, when you're growing up, it's also as, uh, you have to keep practicing it. It's like a muscle, you know, you have to keep doing these things again and again and again and again. Um, so I totally agree with you.

Joy Mbanugo: Reading books and like, learn, like, not necessarily learning new words, but staying, staying sharp mentally is important.

Host: Absolutely is. And I think that's the big, the biggest danger. Um, definitely, yeah. And that's one of those things, isn't it? Like, you can't close Pandora's box. It's not going to stop at this point. But we have to learn to live with it. And I think part of learning to live with it is asking these questions. Uh, let's talk in particular about IPO timing then, and sort of internal readiness. Like what kind of internal capabilities, whether that be financial, operational, in terms of governance, should be in place before a company seriously, like, considers go taking the plunge and going public, in your opinion?

Joy Mbanugo: Yeah, uh, you almost answered the question with the way you asked the question. So. So I would say 18 to 24 months and maybe a little bit longer. 18 months to me is just too short. That just doesn't seem long enough. You should have your systems in place and you should have governance in place. And what do I mean by that? I mean that you should have lived through one audit. Um, because if you live through one audit as a private company, that will get you ready mentally, and I say physically, but mentally and from a system standpoint, to go ready. So like, let's take out the 18 months. That's just too short to me. At least 24 months. Like, you need to have a roadmap to go in public. And purely from a finance and accounting standpoint, strategy, investment bankers aside, that's a different part. But like, from a real, like, you know, tangible readiness standpoint, hire an auditor, maybe hire, you know, an advisory company. If you don't have, if you don't think your books are, um, in good shape, get your books gap ready, go through an audit, live with that audit and live with the results and iterate based on that. And that is super helpful because that'll flesh out where you have any weaknesses that you need to beef up before you go public. Um, then there's like the institutional side, right, which you'll do with your investment bankers and like crafting the story. And you've been doing that all along, right, with capital raises, series A through whatever. But now the story is different. Going back to my conversation about institutional investors. Like the story before was to VC companies. The story now is to institutional and retail investors which have a very different, um, investment thesis and what the VCs have. And so you need to be able to think about what that value prop is going to be for an institutional investor. If you're trying to get them to take your, you know, invest in your company and put them, have the institutional investor take your company and put it into one of their funds. The story is very different. I mean the due diligence is the same, but the story and the value prop is really for institutional investors. Long term value creation, long term returns. Same for VCs, but with a bigger pop. And so like, you know, let's say you want to go into the S&P 500 or Russell 1000, you need to start to craft that narrative. I would say, you know, 18 to 24 months before you go public. So government value creation. And again, I think we talked about, you know, revenue. I cannot hone on this enough. Like your AR is going to be super important and you have like, whatever, whatever. We are all saying in the finance community now that the requisite ARR is to go public. Like make sure you have that and make sure it's real.

Host: That's great. Okay, well, we'll come into the to a close now, Joy. Um, I think maybe we could just talk a little bit about what your kind of, um, what like if you're, if you had like, you know, sort of perfect, like a perfect world, uh, rosy sky, you know, blue sky, rosy thinking kind of thing. Um, what would the place of a CFO look like in a company? What do you think is like the kind of dream position?

Joy Mbanugo: Dream position would be, um, with a good support system. So again, I'm always going to talk about people because I'm a, I'm a people person. So I believe you need to put people first. So for me a uh, dream scenario is having like an amazing controller, an amazing head of fpa, you know, and if I get to like icing on the cake is like, you know, a great treasure, but that could also be a controller, depending on the size, a great IR person, you know, but you can outsource that as well. But like table stakes would be a great head of finance, VP of finance and a great controller. And then like a great relationship with the rest of the C suite. It's not going to be perfect but like a great relationship with the CEO. Uh, I think a lot of people probably discount how important a CFO CEO relationship is. Like, it is super important. Um, you have to have a working relationship with their CEO. Um, and then I think also just having, you know, like a robust C suite, like my dream scenario would be like, because I don't have this right now and I haven't had it. I didn't have it necessarily in my previous role because these are smaller companies, but if I were at a bigger company, it would probably go something like this. Cfo, cf, CEO, coo. Maybe the COO was also like a CRO, but like there was some shared responsibility between the CRO and cfo. Coo, um, cmo. Did I say that? Because, you know, shout out to chief Marketing officers, a chief people officer, you know, a solid gc. So like, I would say like the, the C suite has to be like the Avengers. Like, I would want the. Of the C suite. That would be. And then like my team, like my, my 1 and 2 would be, you know, like Batman and Robin. So that would be an idea. So for me, it's all people. Because the technology tools are out there. People is the hardest thing everybody's got. Not everybody. I know all the tech people are going to be mad at me. Like, our, ah, ERP is special. Yes. Uh, people are coming up with really good ERPs. But like, finding the right people, you know, in finance and finding the right people at the C suite level is like magic. Yeah.

Host: And it's going to get more important than ever. Right. As. As more and more people are adopting AI, it's just going to become the standard. The thing that's going to differentiate people ultimately is their people, isn't it? Let's see. Yeah, it's the. I mean, it seems pretty logical to me, really. Um, yeah, absolutely. Okay, one final fun question before I let you go. Uh, what is. What is the one kind of thing that you hear people say about finance leadership that really irks you? You'd really like to sense room 101.

Joy Mbanugo: Like, yeah, we are like, when we are, like, there's a joke around some of my CFO friends that were like, cf, no. And like, we always say no. And that's how we do is no, don't do that. No, no, no. And I don't think that's true. Right. Like, I would like to believe that I am, as much as I say no, I try to give as many yeses. And I'm not just, uh, uh, a like, guardian of the business and like a governance general, but I'm also like a value creator. And like I'm a chief growth officer. So I think the misconception is that we say no all the time. I think people have to remember that we are guardians, we are stewards. But then there's also a part of us that are all about value creation and hyper growth.

Host: Yeah, definitely. I think that's a great note to end um, on. Thanks so much for your time today, Joey. It's been a pleasure.

Joy Mbanugo: Thank you. Yeah, no worries. Thank you so much.

Speaker C: And that wraps up another episode of the two Cents podcast. Thank you to our listeners for taking the time to tune in. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear from more finance leaders like today's guest, please subscribe to the show and leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. It would mean so much to me and my guests if you can show them some love and appreciation for sharing so many great insights with us on the show. Again, thanks for listening. See you in the next one.