1225: Nix the Clicks: Building a Finance Function That Manages by Exception | with Steve Fox, CFO, Every Man Jack

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. This is episode 1225.

0:22Steve Fox: For us to be successful in finance as an organization, one of the key things is we have to be able to show that we're leveraging our operating system. expenses. And in order to do that, we've got to be able to take processes and figure out how we can become more effective and efficient. So what we're doing at Everyman Jack is we're really transforming how our team is working. So we had a team when I started in 2021, we had a team of five people. We now have a team of five people five years later doing triple the volume of transactions. And the way we've been able to do that is really to lean into technology.

0:58Steve Fox: Our vision around this, Jack, is to create command centers, functional area command centers, which would essentially allow our employees to manage by exception. So pulling people away from the transacting and managing the exception. So using agents to do the transactions. We have an initiative called Nix the Clicks by 26, which was our goal was to get rid of all manual transacting by the end of 2026. Hi, it's Jack. On today's show, we speak with Steve Fox, CFO of EverymanJack.

1:34There's a curious thing happening inside finance organizations. We're asking technology to take over more of the work, but we're also asking people to exercise more judgment. And those two ambitions don't always fit neatly together. Consider a finance team that handles three times as many transactions as it did five years ago, without adding a single employee. That's an impressive productivity story. But what interests us is what happens next. If people are no longer spending their days processing transactions, what exactly are we asking them to do? Our guest today has some interesting ideas about that and how to get there.

2:21Steve Fox, CFO of EverymanJack, joins us next.

2:34AI 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. How can finance leaders gain the visibility they need to make better decisions while putting AI to work?

3:24Salesforce 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.

3:51Hello, CFO Steve Fox is with us. Steve's career has taken him from public accounting to running a retail business for Trek Bicycle. before moving into finance leadership in the computer products industry. After nearly 12 years as CFO of EO Products, he joined Everyman Jack in 2021, where he now helps guide the company's growth and operations. We're catching up with Steve today at Sweet World to explore his career journey and the business decisions shaping his leadership. Steve, welcome.

4:26Steve Fox: Thank you. Good to be here. So I was looking back to the early days. You went from accounting into running a retail business at Trek. And you might want to go back in time further for us. But I just want to mention up front, I'm like, how did that change your whole career direction? Well, pretty drastically, I guess, would be the answer. So, you know, it's interesting. The whole first half of my career was really working for big companies, which was great because I got to see a lot of like what works, what doesn't work for the resources available were wonderful. And then and then the whole back half has really been smaller, high growth companies.

5:02Steve Fox: But, you know, when I worked in public accounting, I I knew it wasn't for me. I didn't like the fact that it was like in God, we trust everybody else. We audit. I understand the purpose for it and why we did it, but I didn't feel like it was adding a lot of value to the company. And so I switched a little bit and started going more operationally, so operational audits. And I think that's what really set me up for this back half working for small, high growth companies is to be very process focused and how can we make improvement? How can we do better? And it's really a key to what businesses thrive with.

5:38We always like to ask about your early CFO years in certain respect. Looking back at those years where you were just into the role for the first 18 months, perhaps, was there a decision you wish you handled differently? like it.

5:55Steve Fox: There's a lot of decisions I wish I'd handled differently. And with age and experience comes wisdom, right? And I think for me, maybe it was not listening more. I felt like I really wanted to dive in and make a difference. And so as I've grown in my career, I've really learned to shut up a little bit. It's a harsh way of saying it, but really to listen more. Because I think people have really important things to say. And so if you listen to them, you can grow. Was it always going to be finance? I know you began in accounting, but were you always thinking operations role? I mean, you could have gone, maybe you want to be a partner in an accounting house.

6:39I don't know, but what did you set your sights on?

6:41Steve Fox: Yeah, I really was pre-dentistry in college. And I think accounting was my first true A. And so I always knew it was going to be something in accounting, and I liked it because I felt like it was the language of business. And opening up a lot of doors with being in public accounting for the first two years was a great move for me. It did give me opportunities, but I really knew pretty quickly that I wanted to be in the process improvement area. Well, after nearly 12 years at EO Products, what convinced you it was time to join Everyman Jack? What was it that hit you there? Well, it was a really interesting time, Jack.

7:23Steve Fox: So that was during COVID. And EO, we made hand sanitizer. We were one of the hand sanitizer providers. And so as you can imagine, our business really took a different direction in 2020. And so it was a very, very challenging couple of years. We worked really, really hard. and I just was coming to a point where I'd been there for 12 years and I had done a lot. I love the people, love the owners of the company but I was approached by Rich Viola who had started Everyman Jack and they had just been purchased by Carlisle Group. So private equity investment, they're bringing a new leadership team and for me in my career, it really was something that was going to send me in a completely different direction.

8:10Steve Fox: a new set of experiences and new opportunities. And I just really thought it was a great opportunity for myself. I just want to have you think about your development as a leader for us. We wonder how your approach to leading people may have changed. And I think you already gave us a hint. You focus more on listening now than ever, perhaps. But what, you know, as you move through different businesses and CFO roles, how has perhaps your leadership changed? well my leadership has really been influenced by some mentors that i've had and uh i think having a a mentor and having a good mentor is really key to any career and any development uh probably my best mentor was one i had at trek bob burns who really taught me about fairness uh and that it doesn't always have to be a win-lose situation it can be like we all feel good about what happened And I try and bring that oftentimes to the way I manage and the way I interact with people.

9:11That's interesting. You're not saying it's a win-win. You're saying it's just fair. Yeah. Is there a distinction there?

9:16Steve Fox: Equitable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we might have some additional career-related questions for you later. We're always interested in mentors and how they actually influenced you. But right now, let's find out. I love the name of this company. Everyman Jack. Tell us about Everyman Jack. What does it do today? What is this business about? So Everyman Jack is a 20-year-old company now. So it was started by Rich. He was a semi-pro triathlete who had worked. He was very early on at Method. And he saw an opportunity in the men's space to bring in a product that could compete against some of the legacy brands that would take natural products, be a little bit more performance-based, specifically made for men.

10:02Steve Fox: He chose the name Everyman Jack. It really is. It's an old English term, I think, from the 18th century that means sort of for the for every guy. So it's very appropriate and very fitting for our brand. Beautiful products. We operate out of Marin County, California at the base of Mount Tam. And, you know, really the brand Genesis was really an outdoor inspired brand with natural products, beautiful scents, very woodsy scents, sandalwoods and cedarwoods. And we've really become more of this performance-based brand for men. Now, since joining in 2021, how have perhaps the company's investment priorities changed?

10:45Steve Fox: Well, our investment priorities are very clear. So we have a parent investor, the Carlyle Group. They came in and the goal was really to take this brand, which hadn't really invested ever in substantial marketing. And nowadays, it's very competitive in the consumer product space. We've got sort of this TikTok generation. It used to be, I think, men would buy a product and if they liked it, they would continue buying it for 20 years, their entire life. That's changed. With the TikTok generation, we have a little bit of consumer purchasing ADD. It's what have I seen today? what do I like? So you really have to, you have to drive your brand awareness.

11:25Steve Fox: You have to pay attention to it. And so Carlisle, Carlisle's thesis with the investment was there's this great brand here, uh, that's, that's widely distributed, but isn't really that well-known. So if we can invest marketing dollars, then we can, we can, uh, drive brand awareness and, and the brand will thrive. So really that's, that in investment is where I came in, in, in 2021 as part of a new leadership team. And my role in that is really, how do we continue to drive margin growth and leverage our operating expense so that we can have more marketing dollars to be able to generate that brand awareness?

12:02You always wonder about the toughest allocation decisions you've had made, how they're made with your team, with a revenue officer. I don't know, but can you reflect a little bit on how tough allocation decisions?

12:17Steve Fox: I've always been of a firm belief that technology is a great place to invest resources. So for one thing, it can be a balance sheet investment and doesn't really impact your EBITDA directly right away. And so there's a benefit there. But technology can be the cornerstone for growth where you can build capacity as you scale without adding more expensive overhead. Tell us about what are those early indicators that allow you to understand how the business is performing? What is it that you're looking at? What are those operating signals? So we focus on EBITDA. EBITDA is really important to us. We have to be a healthy business first and foremost.

13:03Steve Fox: Margins are a key component to that. In CPG, margins are really key. You know, are we effective with our product and driving the contribution margin that we need as a business to be healthy? And then we look at our revenue per employee is a really key metric. And I think that's a measure of how successful we are with investing in technology and leveraging the business. we're wondering um if you could walk us through uh again we're we have this emphasis on decision making within organizations now and how the cfo's role as you know has continued to evolve over the recent years so we're wondering we've been asking lately can you walk us through a consequential decision involving whether it's inventory production or distribution uh as far as how we would would do that how it how it happens yeah how decisions are made oh yeah we um so we we start with our our strategy every year we sit down as a leadership team we look at the business how we perform what do we learn from the prior year uh and what's really important for the next year uh and we develop our strategy we then we then communicate that strategy to our team and we have a set of OKRs that we use.

14:21Steve Fox: So we're very directive and the team, everybody knows what's expected. So when we look at making decisions, we put it against that framework. And communication is so key in these things. So we always look at from the perspective of do people have the right information to make the decisions that they need to make. Where has better connected business information perhaps made the biggest difference? as far as how every man Jack operates. Better connected business information. Yeah, well, that's the exciting thing. And I think it's probably in my very long career, this is the most exciting time I think that I've ever had.

15:04Steve Fox: And it's with the technology that we now have available, being able to take the data. And so I've seen periods where we've gone from, data was really hard to get to, you know dating back to like you would have to get your reams of of paper you know the green white bar paper and that that was how you review your data to moving into having data lakes and and that was the big thing of pulling our data together nowadays with with technology and ai we are able to leave our data really where it is and but then connect our data together and and what it's allowing us to do is really create a 360 degree view of a lot of our our our systems our business needs.

15:45Steve Fox: We can now pull in consumption data and marry that against our shipping data and our promotions. And it's really, I mean, it gives us information that we never had. Where do you think the greatest opportunity to improve finances operations might be when it comes to AI and automation? Where do you think the greatest opportunity to improve finance? Yeah, there's so many opportunities right now. And it's, I mean, really the limits right now are your curiosity and your creativity in some ways. And that is really amazing. For us to be successful in finance as an organization, one of the key things is we have to be able to show that we're leveraging our operating expenses.

16:29Steve Fox: And in order to do that, we've got to be able to take processes and figure out how we can become more effective and efficient. So what we're doing at Everyman Jack is we're really transforming how our team is working. So we had a team when I started in 2021. We had a team of five people. We now have a team of five people five years later doing triple the volume of transactions. And the way we've been able to do that is really to lean into technology. our our vision around this jack is to create command centers functional area command centers which would essentially allow our employees to manage by exception so pulling people away from the transacting and and managing the exception so using agents to do the transactions we have a an initiative called nix the clicks by 26 which was our goal was to get rid of all manual transacting by the end of 2026.

17:22Steve Fox: And we're on pace for that. I don't think we'll get rid of all of them in 26, but we're making good strides. So now we have agents running all of our transactions, and the functional member will come in, log into their command center, and look and see, are all my agents firing properly? Anything that needs attention? Here's a list of exception transactions that were kicked out for whatever reason. They didn't pass through the judgment. there was a variance from last time we did this transaction that I need to review and there's very actionable steps that they can then go in and review the transactions and make changes and then there's business self metrics so if I'm on the order to cache desk and I sit down in my command center order to cache command center and I have a full view of my process and how things are going and I can manage it all from that command center when was it that this command center concept.

18:16When did it occur to you that we need to make this more tangible for everybody to participate in?

18:22Steve Fox: I mean, yeah, I love that question. It was sort of two epiphanies that I had. One was coming from a Carlyle Technology Conference very early on, probably about a year and a half, two years ago, talking about the potential of AI. It was really more theory at that point in time. But I really, I left that conference thinking, this is going to be really big. And this is something that we really need to lean into. And then about a year later, we made the investment in NetSuite because our existing ERP system was not really allowing us to do anything we needed to do. We were having to fit our processes around the system, and we wanted a system that would allow us to run our processes and support our processes.

19:05Steve Fox: So we brought in NetSuite, and we went live September of 2025 and came to the Suite World Conference a month later. And at that conference on the stage, Evan was talking about the MCP connector. And literally our IT manager who was here with us, he, on the cab to the airport, set up the MCP connector. And ever since then, we've been running. But those are the two key moments. Wow. As the business does grow, can you give us some insight into what's proven harder to manage? Is it inventory and visibility, forecasting, or another operational challenge? I would say it's sprawl, really. You know, there's the potential.

19:47Steve Fox: We call it going down the rabbit hole, where you now have essentially 70 employees. And overnight, we created 70 software engineers, basically, who can take and really create a lot of things that they could never do before. That opens the door to a lot of possibility, but it also opens the door to a lot of distractions. So one of the first things we did, we formed an AI oversight committee and we said, we met with the team, the entire team, and we said, look, we don't do anything that's not in service of the strategy, right? So we have a strategy, we have our directive. If you're working on something from an AI perspective and you can't answer the question, this is how I'm furthering the strategy or this is how I'm servicing the strategy, then you need to rethink why you're doing it.

20:32Steve Fox: So that was kind of the first key thing that we did. And then I think it's really, as we're developing, we're realizing that there is this capability for a lot of things to be created and then not used or duplication. So we're using the AI oversight committee to really monitor that and to create a corral where we're pulling all of the items that we're using, the dashboards and the different data segments and pulling them into one central location. Crazy. Okay, so we are up to what we like to refer to as our finance strategic moment. Again, this might have happened anytime during your career. Might have happened last week, for all we know.

21:12But Steve, what comes to mind when we ask for a finance strategic moment?

21:16Steve Fox: So this might be a little bit unusual, but for me, I had a mentor who once said, if you don't invest in yourself, how can you expect others to? And it's something that's really stuck with me about the investment in people. And so it's investment in professional development, but also just an investment in time and mentorship and energy. And I think as we move more into this world of AI automation, AI technology, the one thing I've seen in my career is that technology succeeds when people are open to it and when people adopt it. Change management is the key. And I think having a team that is ready and embraces it is really the key to the adoption of AI and any technology.

22:01Steve Fox: So it's about the investment in the people is really the key. To me, it has to start there.

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23:39This chapter, of course, the Everyman Jack chapter, let's call. It's the AI chapter. It's also the Carlisle relationship chapter. How am I doing? Would you disagree with that? You've brought up Carlisle a number of times. This has been a learning experience in some ways for you, that relationship or no? Am I overstating?

24:00Steve Fox: No, I think it's for me personally as a CFO, the difference of moving from a family-owned organization like EO to an investment-owned, professional investment owned organization is there's a different set of standards and disciplines that really are required around the business. And so being able to get information and present information accurately and timely is really key in that environment. And how the PE private equity CFOs sort of had unique knowledge and experiences versus these other CFOs. I mean, do you see it as part of your evolution? I guess that's the point. You know, it's so interesting, Jack.

24:44Steve Fox: I, uh, I had imposter syndrome when I started. Uh, I'll be, I'll be vulnerable and share that. How many years in a CFO role? Uh, 15 years in a CFO role. And you were experiencing imposter syndrome? Well, I had never, I had never worked for private equity and I think I had, I thought the same that, you know, you had to have some special, you know, skillset, uh, or come from a special pedigree. Um, and you know, so I was, I was worried, uh, for sure. Um, but what I found is that, you know, I'm just like everybody else. And, uh, you know, I, I, I listen, I, uh, I work hard. Um, I, I understand the principles and I think they don't change like what, what, what, what having a, uh, PE backed sponsor is really no different than having any other owner, private owner or family owned or anything, you know, that the principles are all the same.

25:39Yeah.

25:39Steve Fox: Right. Excellent. We always like to ask our guests to reflect a little on the personal side for us. Been there a while now. So what is it something that your colleagues might not know about? It might be a tough question. What don't they know about Steve Fox? Looking back in time, there might have been, I don't know, an interest that you had, a feet that you, you know, so something you do in off time. Well, I, I, I always wanted to be a rock star. I don't think they probably do that. Do you have a guitar or a musician? I'm learning how to play now. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. What about a book or a resource for us?

26:18And again, I always say it doesn't have to be a business book. It might just be an interest you have, something you like to learn more about. I get it. Yeah. Let me think about that. Resource could be streaming. resource could be. Yeah.

26:33Steve Fox: You know, interestingly to me, the key thing has always been networking. Yeah. I mean, I think it opens the door to so many things. I'm an avid reader, but I tend not to read a ton of business books. Did you get networking? The emphasis you put on it reveals, and I think you've mentioned that you really focused on it. At some point you realized this deserves my attention and what did that translate into just going to events or reaching out to sort of associations yeah i hated networking i was afraid i was terrified of it like going into a room where i didn't know people you know i would avoid that like the plague and and i just literally told myself you like this like you enjoy it and i tried to put a little bit of energy around it and eventually uh you know what i i realized is it's it's about it's about not being afraid to ask you know and to whether whatever it is to reach out and say hey you know i i'm trying this and i saw you do it i would love to get your input or your feedback um and you know 98 of the time people are so open and willing to uh share their themselves yeah nice nice insight there first thank you we're up to our final question and this is where We're going to ask you to look forward finally.

27:50And what we'd like to know are your priorities for the next 12 months, those CFO priorities. What would they be?

27:59Steve Fox: My priorities really are focused around managing the technology. You know, as I mentioned, getting that OPEX leverage is really key. It's such an exciting time. You know, I wake up every morning and I think, what are we going to do today? and our capacity to do things has shifted so that it's not such a long game anymore. It's like, let's do this. And so, Jack, I think my priority for the next year is really to have fun with this, quite honestly. Steve Fox, thank you for joining us on CFO Fault Beat. Thank you.

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