1207: Putting Guardrails Around Aggressive Growth | with Jamie Schroeder, CFO, Premium Guard Inc.

0:00Support for CFO Thought Leader comes from OneStream, Trusted Data, Faster Decisions, and Salesforce. Explore new research on the future of finance and AI at Salesforce.com slash CFO report.

0:16Jamie Schroeder: Hi, this is Mark Millman, CFO of Ascensus, and you are listening to the CFO Thought Leader podcast. This is episode 1207. We saw an opportunity to do this and we got super aggressive. We put together super aggressive pricing, promotions, products, and it made the finance team uncomfortable, to be honest with you. It was risky. What's going to happen at the other retailer? We get listings here. Do we lose listings over here? You know, we weren't used to, you know, operating in that disruptive type of marketplace. place. And so for me, it was a really growth moment to kind of embrace that, work with our leadership team.

1:00And as a finance team, be that source of data, scenario analysis, and helping put together a playbook to address the risk. So it's not, I don't want to avoid risk. There's risk in doing this. Let's quantify it. And then let's figure out what our playbook is to sort of react as some of these things potentially come up. Hi, it's Jack. On today's show, we speak with Jamie Schroeder, CFO of PGI.

1:33Finance leaders are trained to see risk. But what happens when the bigger risk is standing still? Transformation really arrives with a complete map. and growth opportunities seldom wait for every uncertainty to disappear. The modern CFO, therefore, has to do more than protect the downside. Finance must help the organization understand the exposure, create the right guardrails, and move with confidence. That sounds straightforward. Until the decision threatens existing relationships, margins, or established ways of working. Jamie Schroeder describes one such moment and what it taught him about the difference between avoiding risk and making risk manageable.

2:26Our talk with Jamie Schroeder begins after this. AI is changing the finance function, but how much business value is it actually delivering? According to new research from Salesforce, 90 % of finance leaders using AI report a positive return on investment. And as AI agents enter the picture, finance leaders are seeing opportunities to improve productivity, reduce costs, and strengthen forecasting. But there's another side to the story. CFOs are also confronting growing revenue complexity with more subscription, consumption-based, and hybrid business models to manage. And that raises an important question.

3:15How can finance leaders gain the visibility they need to make better decisions while putting AI to work? Salesforce explores these challenges and the opportunities ahead in its latest CFO research. Discover what finance leaders are saying about AI, revenue complexity, and the evolving CFO role. Visit salesforce.com slash CFO report. That's salesforce.com slash CFO report.

3:50Hello, CFO Jamie Schroeder is with us. Jamie began his finance career at Ford before spending 16 years at Scott's Miracle-Gro, moving through treasury, strategy, pricing, supply chain, and operating finance. More recently, he's led finance through private equity ownership, retail transformation, and the creation of a standalone company. Today at Premium Guard, he's helping shape the next chapter of a business, expanding its brands, manufacturing capabilities, and automotive aftermarket reach. Jamie, welcome. Thanks, Jack. Glad to be here. Nice to meet you. So take us back in time. Get in your time machine.

4:40Take us back in time. What are some of those experiences as you look back, you realize, wow, that's really where I grew in my understanding of the business. What comes to mind? Yeah, I think I'd start in the time machine going all the way back to when I started at Ford Motor Company. So I think one of the things that I've appreciated during my career is I've had the opportunity to work in environments where I've had a passion for the business. So I'm a car guy, love cars. And so the opportunity to go work for Ford Motor Company right out of school, out of undergrad, was just a dream come true at the time.

5:17And the great thing about that, not only having passion for the business, but Ford had a very rigorous development program for finance professionals. And so it involved rotations, a lot of breadth building, especially early in your career. And so that was very foundational for me in my career. So I started as an analyst in an assembly plant outside of Cleveland. The rotations even took me to work on the shop floor. So I was in the paint shop for a month. And so it was really all about learning the business and getting your hands on the business to be able to be a really influential and intelligent finance partner for operations.

6:01And that was really where my career was born. And that kind of mindset and stuck with me throughout my career. I really love to work closely with operations, closely with leadership teams, understand the business and really be that strategic partner. And it was really born on the shop floor at my first job at Ford. Ten year investment there, by the way, I always like to share that with the audience. You're someone who's invested years into these experiences. when it came time to move on what is it that you're looking for what's the next chapter you want it yeah so great question so yeah i did spend 10 years at forward i actually spent some time up in uh dearborn as well so about six years up in there doing a variety of things corporate treasury again it's that theme of just building a very broad skill set so capital markets experience pricing experience, corporate finance experience up at the world headquarters.

7:00And so at that point in time, I had a fairly broad skill set and great, great training ground for myself. My next move was really, it was a little bit personal was driving and I wanted to get, my wife and I had started to have a family. We want to get closer to home. And so we're looking for opportunities in the Columbus, Ohio area. And a great opportunity came up at Scott's Miracle grow. So that was my next move. And really the opportunity at Scott's was, is, was different, you know, much smaller company, but a growing company, a great culture there. Uh, the culture was one of diversified, uh, development as well.

7:38So they were very much keen on rotating people and, and, and developing that generalist type of a finance professional. And the first job that the opportunity that came up to me was owning a P and L too. So it was owning a P and L of a division, at Scott's. And, you know, I looked at where I was at Ford, you know, great experience, had a great time, but owning a P &L at the Ford Motor Company was going to take me probably 10 more years at least to be able to have that kind of, you know, direct influence. So, so I felt like my skillset was at a point where I was ready to just go in and own a P &L and be a business partner to drive a division.

8:18And that was very appealing to me. And so it was a combination of a lot of different factors, but it ended up being the opportunity that really excited me to really kind of apply what I learned in a smaller but a more holistic leadership role at Scott's. And so that's kind of what facilitated the jump there. Along the way, can you give us a sense of the types of projects or initiatives that you think expanded your, your learning? Yes. Um, you know, and it's, it's a theme through my career and I really, I look back on it and I really appreciate it. It's been a theme of being uncomfortable and being put into situations where maybe I wasn't, uh, the thought leadership there, but as a finance professional, um, being able to gain the trust of operators and being put on the front lines of transformational initiatives where there was potentially a lot of ambiguity, where there was a lot of just thought leadership and collaboration required to kind of figure stuff out.

9:24And we had a very fast pace at Scott's Miracle-Gro, and I quickly had the opportunity to prove that I excelled in those types of scenarios. And so throughout my 16 years there, I really did a lot of things that maybe I didn't know what I was doing when I took the role, but was put in a position to figure it out, create some structure out of ambiguity, and collaborate with other leaders in the organization to create something brand new that didn't exist before. And so I started getting in a pattern of being able to do that. And that sort of became a little bit of my brand during my career at Scott's.

10:02And so as I sit here today, I embrace ambiguity, right? I think it's a challenge. I think I love to think creatively about problems. And I think it's been born throughout my career at both Ford and Scott's of just being put in situations that made me uncomfortable, but trusting myself, trusting my relationships with people to be able to figure it out and create some successes. And so I have several examples of that during my career at Scott's. There are many executives out there who would not have perhaps taken the last lap to discover that the door of the CFO office swinging open, they could have resided their entire careers in Ford or even in Scott's Miracle-Gro, which had to be a fairly sizable company.

10:51Are you thinking I want to be a CFO? That was definitely my goal, especially early on in my career. I think in the latter stages of my career at Scott's, because of the opportunities that I had to really drive transformation. I mean, during my time at Scott's, I was in business analytics. I was on the strategy team. I got to experience acquisitions, divestitures. And so towards the end of my time at Scott's, I really started to think that I had a skill set that could be transferable to the operational side of it as well. So while I was more CFO driven even earlier in my career, as I got those broader experiences, I started thinking, you know, it might be, it might be interesting to be an operator and run a business and maybe eventually a CEO, eventually.

11:41So, so again, my, my, my North star started to shift it. It got a little broader. I think, you know, I, to your point, my next role was a CFO role, but it was towards those latter stages at Scott's where I thought I can probably do a little bit more than that. And I think, I think if you look at CFO roles today, the modern CFO, CFO, they are, you know, some of the more successful ones are the ones that are able to be those operational strategic partners. And you see people in CFO seats actually moving over to CEO seats more and more. And so I think my career has kind of gave me the foundation to be able to potentially think about that.

12:21But, you know, so far, so far has been the CFO track and it's been great. And the CFO roles I've had have been strategic partnership, sort of transformational type of roles. And so it really scratches my itch in terms of intellectual curiosity and, you know, solving problems. And so the CFO role has been what I've done, but I think who knows what the future holds. When you do step into a CFO role, you do it at a company where that was recently sold to private equity. There were certain risks there. That's an environment, perhaps, you weren't all that familiar with private equity ownership. Am I right about that?

13:01Did you sense that? Did you think about this as a natural next move? Or maybe there were some risks that you were concerned about? Yeah, absolutely. There were some risks. But the interesting thing about Scott's. It is a public company. It is very family influenced and the Hagedorn family owns a large percentage of it. And they've, you know, we liked to foster a culture of, it was really dynamic, fast paced, and very transformational in nature. That was a culture I was used to. And, you know, when I was looking in the private equity space, I was interested in getting into private equity because of my breadth of experiences, I thought, you know, this could be really interesting to get in and being a really value creation type of opportunity.

13:50But I was really trying to be choiceful about what that looked like. So I didn't want to just be a part of a flip sort of a situation. I really wanted to be in a situation where the equity sponsor was investing in transformation and growth, because that is where, you know, I think I have experience and that's where I think I can add value as a finance leader. And so that role at Herf Jones, you know, fit that bill at the time. So it was a transformational investing for growth and transformation opportunity. And so I was choiceful about what I took in the private equity world, but I did want to be in private equity.

14:30I wanted to get into those sort of growth type of modes there. You kind of zeroed in on transformational roles. And I'm curious, is that where your leadership, do you feel it had a large impact on your leadership, these transformational roles over time? Did they change the way you lead? That's a great question. And I think, yes, absolutely it does. So, you know, not everybody handles change or transformational the same. And so for me, going through, you know, those types of situations throughout my career, I've learned to embrace the maybe anxiety, the unknown, and really think about it from a positive, creative, you know, problem solving type of mentality.

15:20And so as a leader, when I've been in those situations, I think I bring a little bit of a calming presence to it. So, you know, sometimes people react, they get anxious if they don't know, you know, what the, what the, if the path is not specifically designed or designated for them. So as a leader, being comfortable with ambiguity, I think it is a different type of leadership. It's one that, you know, what I focus on is focusing on our North Star. So here's where we're going. So it's really reinforcing where we want to get to and how we get there might be a little bit, it won't be potentially a straight line.

16:02But if we keep focusing on where we want to end up, it's that type of leadership that it's like a visionary. I'm not calling myself a visionary, but it's the type of leadership where we say, let's all get around this idea of this is what our destination is. And let's work together, own the path, and I have your back. And so for me, it's not only articulating the vision, but having people know on my team, I have their back. And so if you have questions, if this is, does it make sense? Why am I doing what I'm doing? Come to me, open door. Let's tell, let's really talk about how this fits into the puzzle of how we're going to get to where we want to go.

16:40And so I think it is a different type of a leadership. It really is talking to people in languages they understand and helping them understand how they're going to navigate this to get to kind of the end goal at the end of the day. And I think it takes a different type of leadership skill to do that. So I'll mention here, we want to find out about Premium Guard. And you really were catching you just as you arrive, really, this summer. You've come to the door. So we'll be interested in hearing what it is, the opportunity that you saw. But for someone new to Premium Guard, what does the company provide and whom does it serve?

17:21And where's the opportunity today? Yeah. Great question. And I am super excited to be part of this team. Great organization, great people, great leader in Anand Bashara. I am about four weeks in, so I've had due diligence before I took the role. But then, yeah, four weeks in here, still super excited about the company and my potential to add value to it. So Premium Guard, it's a global automotive aftermarket supplier. We specialize in air filtration, so cabin filters for your cars, oil filters, and then other engine and performance parts. And so it was founded over 30 years ago, about 30 years ago now.

18:06And we're at a really interesting transformational pivot for the company. This is why I'm really excited about joining. We recently, the company has recently acquired some key intellectual property and related assets from First Brands Group. So that was the mega company that recently went bankrupt. And we took some of those assets. We bought some of those assets. It includes Fram, Autolite, and Trico Brands. And those are just really great opportunities for us to strengthen our product offering and develop further capabilities in windshield wiper blades and spark plugs and even in diesel engine filtration.

18:47So that just provided, it was just a, you know, something that happened that the balance sheet was in a good enough spot. And this is prior to me getting here, right? To be able to take advantage of it, dig in there and purchase those assets. We also hired several individuals from the first brands group, you know, really smart experts in the field. So it started with the people, honestly. Then came the brands and the intellectual property. And then the third kind of phase of that was buying manufacturing capabilities. And so we are in the process of opening our first domestic manufacturing facility in Albion, Illinois.

19:26We're really excited about that because it diversifies our supply chain, but it also represents an opportunity to, you know, restore about 200 manufacturing and operational jobs in a community that was really affected by this company's closure and this facility's closure. So there's a lot of good things about this, but we're in the very beginning stages of now that we've completed those transactions, as I'm stepping in, it's okay, now we have to make these assets work for us. We need to get the ROI that we expect out of it. And we do expect this to be a platform for us to just be a better supplier to our customers.

20:03So what do we do? Our number one job is to make our customers successful. So these are aftermarket retailers like Napa, like the Auto Zones of the World, Advance. I don't want to miss anybody, but I'm new. So I missed anybody. It's nothing personal. But it's those customers, it is our goal to make them successful. And by having a broad category of products and even better intellectual property, better expertise, and coming to market quickly as new cars come out, having the products in the aftermarket to be able to service those and make our customers successful, that's kind of our number one goal.

20:48And so that's what we do. And so everything that we're doing here is to just emphasize that and make us better at delivering that. The acquisition, the first brand additions, what can premium guard now become? I mean, where is it headed? Why is this a strategic acquisition? Is it a broader suite of offerings? It is a broader suite of offerings, but it hits on a couple of strategic elements. And so by having domestic manufacturing, it just further makes our supply chain resilient. And that's super critical. So we have supply chain resilience as a key part of that. The other piece of it is it helps us get into maybe some other different markets as well, like OEM products.

21:35And so diversify, you know, we still have a very, you know, the aftermarket is still our bread and butter. We're not taking our eyes off the prize on that. That is absolutely critical. But I think there's some opportunities for us to get into some different channels there and strategically just have different platform for growth, both here domestically and internationally, quite honestly, because some of the brands that we purchased, Fram in particular, global brands. And so it just opens up a lot of different opportunities for us to kind of get back in some of those global markets as well. So, you know, starting off right now and just making sure we're getting the facility in Albion up and running.

22:14But I think as we grow into it, there's just a lot of different opportunities for us to grow the business. Can you maybe explain how branded products and private label programs maybe contribute differently to premium guards economics? Yeah, we're going to find that out. And so, you know, this company has been built on private label programs. so our founder Anand Beshara it was revolutionary at the time to be able to really fill a niche that nobody else saw was a need for the automotive aftermarket at the time when he founded this by putting together kind of turnkey private label programs so again that is who we are right now with the purchase of these brands it's going to be interesting to see you asked about profitability absolutely need to make sure that we approach this from a from a highly profitable perspective that's sort of you know one of my remits as i come in here is to help guide that and work with the team to make sure we're doing that but i think it just provides the branded products again provide us a breadth of potential markets and channels for us to operate in and so i think there's absolutely i mean we had similar at scott's miracle girl we had private label programs and we had our branded program.

23:43So I have experience and I understand that those two can coexist and you can perform very well in both of those scenarios. We just need to figure out how to do it here at PGI as we go forward. And I'm confident we're going to do that. Yeah, and you just mentioned Miracle-Gro, but from your past experience, again, not being here, I don't want to put you on the spot with this, but what occurs to us is as you integrate these new brands and facilities, how will you decide where additional investment can create the greatest value, the greatest return? Those are the types of discussions you are going to be participating in in the coming months, one would imagine.

24:28Yeah, absolutely. I mean, directly to your question, I mean, it's Anon, the CEO and the founder, is definitely in that conversation, as well as our senior operations team. And so, you know, those decisions, a lot of those decisions on the, all those decisions on the acquisition happened before I was here. Now that I'm here and we're trying to make sure we're allocating capital efficiently, that's one of my number one jobs. It's not only just investment in the plant, that is a piece of it, but it's also investment in inventory. It's investment in, you know, our working capital payment terms with different customers.

25:06And so, honestly, you know, four weeks in, one of the first things that I'm asking about is, are there ways for us to kind of capture those buckets? How are we dedicating capital to different accounts, different channels, different product lines? And how do we think about the return on investment of that capital? Those are sort of lenses that as we grow, we need to be very judicious with our capital. And we need to understand, especially as we're growing quickly, that we're really funding the right horses. We're riding the right horses and we're putting capital where it creates the most value for the organization.

25:43And so we need to start creating some of those looks internally to be able to facilitate those conversations. And so that's one of the first things that I'm, you know, I'm trying to implement here is that, you know, get the data in a way that we can start having those looks and understanding how we're allocating capital and what it's returning for us. Just given the nature of this business, customer orders, sell through of inventory movement. I'm wondering what you'll look at, what early indicators there are that tell you demand is strengthening. There are metrics out there, and I'm learning these myself, Jack.

26:25So I'm in the process of learning this. But I know there's vehicles and operation metrics. So we know how many vehicles are on the road. There's metrics out there, their age. and I know those are things that the team looks at not only to kind of understand what products we need to bring to the table but also like indicators of demand at the end of the day but also this is where I'll maybe I'll do a little bit of a pivot we are employing so we have we're very much investing in data and analytics and data science and AI right so I think there's a really an opportunity for us to get better at understanding what metrics are out there, what sort of demand signals are out there that we can use to better forecast our production, our carry of inventory, and being just in a much better position to help our customers grow.

27:25And the idea would be to, you know, we're investing in that as we speak. The idea would be to share that with our customers as well and be very close partners with them because we have a view that they don't have, right? We have a broader market view. And so we can bring something to the table in those conversations that I think would be valuable to all of our customers. And that's what we're investing in today is to be able to do that a little bit better. When you say investing in AI, What are we talking about? Are these outfitting employees with language models? Is this having your R &D folks study something more closely?

28:04I don't know. Yeah, it's a great question. So it starts with getting the data in the right way to be digested by models, by dashboards, by AI. and so we are really we're pretty far through that um or the data is in a pretty good position right now and it starts with that and then it's there's there's a few different ways that you can kind of think about this it's do we have external data do we have customer data in that data so and consumer data how many times are you there how often do you change your oil right how old is your vehicle? Are there correlations between age of vehicle and how often you're in there?

28:47There's demographics in places where our customers operate. How are different demographics purchasing out of the aftermarket automotive retail space? The more we can understand that and put that data together and understand correlations and understand what signals there are, the better we can be in a position to, you know, react to that, share that with our customers and make sure that their shelves are stocked with exactly the right stuff and exactly the right times so that we can really not only increase sales, but do it very efficiently with inventory as well. So that's like the big operational piece of it.

29:29You know, there is this opportunity for us to also use it to improve the way we look at data. So there's dashboarding and things like that that can be supplemented with AI tools. We're looking at dashboard platforms right now that have a native AI in it. And so you see a graph of sales and margin. I'm just make something up. You can work with the AI agent to say, hey, I want to understand this. I want to look at it a little bit different way. Can you create a graph that focuses on this part of the gross margin. And the AI will then use that and create your own graph. And it can be a very dynamic, almost communication between the AI and the dashboard you're looking at to slice and dice data.

30:14So that's another element of how this can actually come into everyday lives of the people in the building. And I think the third leg of it for me is really just process automation. I mean, there's just an immense opportunity for us to automate manual processes, especially kind of back office finance types of functions. I've done that in previous roles. I think there's a great opportunity for us to look at that here at PGI. And so that's another place where I think AI data and analytics plays a transformational role for the company. I titled this question, Friction Trade-Offs. But I'm wondering what is proving harder, perhaps, when it comes to integrating the acquired operations.

30:59What do people sometimes forget as the, you know, the real challenge of creating a successful merger? Yeah, I think that, you know, company culture is a huge part of it. That's even from my prior experience, right? So I'm not calling it out here necessarily in isolation. You know, culture of the company and the employee and the workforce is a huge part of the integration success. Again, it can make or break it. For what we have here in our situation here at PGI, these facilities actually went dark. And so they were dark facilities. So we're starting them up from scratch. Now we are taking advantage of the opportunity to hire people that have worked there before and know how to run this.

31:51From what I've seen, They're very much a cultural match with PGI. Great people want to be successful, excited about being here. And so the integration from a cultural perspective, it looks like it's going to be great. And then we just all have to work together to get these facilities up and running again. So it's less of integration in that sense. It's more of we're standing up something that we've never done before. That's the, if you want to call it a risk here. We've never at PGI run our own manufacturing facilities. So we, we source, you know, globally and import a lot of our products. This is really the first time that we're going to be standing up and manufacturing ourselves.

32:33We have the right people. the team did a great job of you know like i said previously hiring the right people first to make sure we have the know-how to be able to do this super successfully and now it's just really standing up something and integrating it in a way it's it's integrating into our business in a way that you know we've never done this before and so that's going to be the challenge and the learning curve we have curve we have to get up pretty quickly on so we are up to what we like to refer to as our finance strategic moment question. And again, this might have happened any time during the course of your career.

33:12And we're just really looking for a good story about finance and the role it plays. Anything come to mind when we ask for a finance strategic moment?

33:23Yeah, there's a lot. I've been fortunate enough to have a few to think through. I think one of them that resonates with me, especially as I'm in this role here at PGI, it's the situation where this is where I tell people, this is where I really learned how to be a growth CFO. And so finance and accounting professionals, we tend to have a relatively conservative mindset. We're focused on governance, controls, risk management, making sure the numbers are right. And sometimes when disruption happens, that kind of finance-y culture can retreat into a protect and preserve sort of posture and defense and mitigate.

34:08How do I mitigate risk? So the strategic moment that comes to mind that really impacted my thoughts on how to be a growth CFO, it was at Scott's. So I was the CFO of the North American business at Scott's Marilka Grove. So I'm going to keep some of these players nameless. But, you know, a couple of our biggest customers had different ways that they were going about marketing their lawn and garden products. One was a big supporter of Scott's and led with our brands. The other was a little bit more on customer choice. And so creating a lot of different choices for the customer. and we were a little bit stagnant and growth at both of them.

34:54So there was like a little bit of an impasse. Market wasn't growing that much. And so our finance team was in a much, it's a profit preservation, profit optimization. And so, you know, kind of a conservative posture. And so really, you know, putting new programs in place, you know, adjusting pricing, those were things that were really on the table. We were, we wanted to not upset the apple cart and just really focus on profit optimization. The transformational thing and the disruption that happened was in the partner that really was focused more on customer choice and sort of de-emphasized our brands, they wholeheartedly replaced their entire leadership team.

35:36And they actually hired X people from their biggest competitor, who was a big proponent of Scott's. And so we saw that as an opportunity to that, uh, you know, this retailer was going to change the way they were going to do things. We saw that as an opportunity for us to step up and really partner with them to bring our brands, uh, to their market in a much more, much bigger way. And because we invested so much in our brand, we had a lot of confidence that in doing so we could actually grow the category. Um, and everybody and all boats could rise through this. Um, that, that retailer never took us up on it previously.

36:18Now that there was new leadership, we saw an opportunity to do this and we got super aggressive. We put together super aggressive pricing, promotions, products, and it made the finance team uncomfortable, to be honest with you. It was risky. What's going to happen at the other retailer? We get listings here. Do we lose listings over here? We weren't used to operating in that disruptive type of marketplace. And so for me, it was a really growth moment for, to, to kind of embrace that work with our leadership team. And as a finance team, be that, be that source of data, scenario analysis, and helping put together a playbook to address the risk.

36:58So it's not, I don't want to avoid risk. It's there's risk in doing this. Let's quantify it. And then let's figure out what our playbook is to sort of react as some of these things potentially come up. You know, we lose a listing in our highest biggest retail, what are we going to do? Those types of things. And so it created a different mindset. It got us out of our comfort zone. And we really had to be, you know, trust the numbers and trust each other. So transparency of all this is super important for me in that role as a CFO, making sure all of our operating partners knew what we were getting into, knew what the playbook was and what the guard we were going to operate in.

37:35So long story short, we, you know, we went in, made the aggressive offer. They took it, created a huge market share war in that spring between the retailers. We had our playbook, we used our playbook. And I describe it as there's this market share war, and they were using our products to basically fight that war. And at the end of the day, everybody's sales went up, uh, profit went up for the category and everybody won. And, and it was only, and it was, so it was a, it was super exciting times. We saw growth in a category that we hadn't seen in 10 years, uh, as a result of this. And so for me that, you know, I look back on that, that's where I learned that, you know, the best finance leaders know the business enough that they can be flexible to be able to take advantage of disruption in the market and provide not only, you know, the balance sheet, dry powder, do we have enough balance sheet to go after an opportunity, but also controls and make sure that we have, you know, the guardrails in place to be aggressive, but not get out over our skis too much.

38:44And we end up, you know, taking on more risks than we can handle. And so having that flexibility, that mindset really was a little bit transformational for me and kind of how I lead and how I think about, you know, supporting those types of growth. And that's one I'm going to employ here at PGI. We're on a growth trajectory here. How can finance really be a partner in helping to drive that growth? And I'm glad that I've had that transformational experience prior because I'm bringing that mindset here to be a partner with Anon and the team to do the same thing here at PGI.

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40:14The result? Faster decisions, less busy work, stronger governance, and more value from AI. Explore the Forward Finance blueprint at onestream.com forward finance and see how to turn AI ambition into real business value. Visit us at onestream.com slash forward finance. That's onestream.com slash forward finance. This is when we ask you to look back again for us. We're wondering about the first time you stepped into a CFO role, which I guess was at, I don't think we mentioned Big Lots, was the private equity owned company you became CFO of there. You step into that role, You had observed CFOs up close, a lot of senior finance people for years, decades.

41:11But something about the role surprised you, something you didn't expect, something you didn't know you were getting into. What comes to mind? You could go back and tell yourself this one thing. What would it have been? I mean, honestly, it's all about people and relationships at that level, to be honest with you. So it's, it's, you need to have the financial acumen as table stakes, but the best as a CFO, your biggest relationship is with your CEO and the rest of the leadership team. And it's really people skills that, you know, as long as you have all those boxes checked on the financial acumen at that level, you typically do.

41:52it's how do you fit into the culture how do you work with the leaders the ceos those relationships are are super important and that's how you get things done and as you know early in your career you know you don't really think about that at least i didn't um it was really more about how do i get to be an expert in xyz financial acumen i want to do an acquisition i want to do these these great things. I want to go raise capital. That's all great, but your ultimate success in that role is not only based on that, it's taking it up a notch and being just a really good partner and a good culture fit with the team that you're working with.

42:30And so that is something that I sort of knew, but you never know until you actually step into the role and live it on a day-to-day basis. Nice. Thank you for that. We always like to ask our guests to reflect a little on the personal side. You've only been there four weeks. So there are probably lots of things your colleagues, your newest colleagues don't know about you. Something from your past, anything you can share, something, something most people might not know about you. Anything? Yeah, I think, um, one, so some working here in Columbus, Ohio. So this one tends to resonate here, especially.

43:05So many people may not know that I was a squad leader in the Ohio State university marching band. Um, and so, um, so spent my time there, um, you know, we're referred to as the best damn band in the land. Um, it was a, an amazing experience and actually a really, you know, I, I think I benefited from it in my business life as well. Um, taught me the strive for excellence collaboration as a musical ensemble, everyone plays its own part, but the sum of the parts is greater, right? And you're creating something that nobody can do on their own. It's adapting to situations in real time. So it was a, you know, it was a real, it was a really great experience on a lot of levels.

43:48And it's, you know, one of those kind of fun facts that not everybody knows about me. Nice. Thank you for that. That's a great one. I wonder if you have a book selection for us, or maybe it's just a resource, something streaming. I don't know. Anything you can recommend to us?

44:09Yeah, I think when I, you know, there's so many good books out there. You know, the one that it's resonating with me right now in the seat that I'm here at PGI, just, you know, newly in the one that resonates with me is, you know, I'm sure you've heard this book before, you know, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. You know, it's built on lessons from their time as Navy SEALs. And it's really about leaders owning everything in their world, wins, misses, no blaming on the circumstances. And really, I think one of the things that's really relevant, you know, in a transformational situation, like the one I'm in here at PGI, is the idea of decentralized command.

44:52And so you can't be the only person that understands the mission, right? Everybody has to understand where we're going. Things are moving so quickly. We're doing things we've never done before. What is the mission? Making sure that everybody has a shared consciousness so that we can be nimble. And I preach this to my finance team, be nimble to support the operations with the end in mind. And so that's just one book that kind of comes to mind as being particularly relevant to where I'm at right now. Okay. Well, we're up to our final question, which is where we ask you to look forward finally. And we are wondering what your priorities are for the coming 12 months as CFO, PGI.

45:38Yeah. So I've got a full plate for sure, you know, with the team. So now that, you know, this is like we talked about, it's a pivotal moment of transformation for the company. We have the assets that we recently acquired. The real work is getting those brands up and running for our customers. And so it's really getting the Albion plan up, not taking our eye off the ball on anything else, and providing the leadership and transparency to know how we're doing as we're scaling this. Because this is an investment. It's an operational investment too. So how is that coming to, are we, are we making the progress we need?

46:17What is the, what do the financials look like? The investment we're making is within our tolerance ranges. And it's really about us, you know, being partners with the team to track that maniacally, to make sure that we are doing it the right way. So that's, that's a huge part of my agenda for the next 12 months. And I think right there with it is to, to really shepherd our data and AI agenda. It's just as front and center. You know, we have a real opportunity to create value. I'm super excited about the resources we have here already and the opportunity to really change a lot of aspects of how we do business, create value for our customers.

46:55That's kind of one and 1A for me in terms of my agenda here for the next 12 months. Jamie Schroeder, thank you for joining us on CFO Thought Leader. Thanks, Jack.

47:33experience. It takes just a few minutes and you'll receive early access to the findings. Visit cfothoughtleader.com slash benchmarking.