The Finance Leader Podcast

098: Why Did You Choose a Career in Finance and Accounting?

November 15, 2022 Stephen McLain Season 12 Episode 3
The Finance Leader Podcast
098: Why Did You Choose a Career in Finance and Accounting?
Show Notes Transcript

Why did you choose to work in Finance and Accounting? Did you want to work with numbers? Did you think you would work mostly alone? Were you attracted to the leadership opportunities available? Was it something else or a combination of these? Whatever got you interested, I am urging you to ask yourself if you still maintain that passion you once had? Do you embrace and look forward to leading with the numbers every day? The Finance and accounting fields offer a great opportunity to career track to CEO of an organization.

Please connect with me on:

1. Instagram: stephen.mclain
2. Twitter: smclainiii
3. Facebook: stephenmclainconsultant
4. LinkedIn: stephenjmclainiii

Consider joining The Finance Leader Podcast Community Facebook Group, where we can talk leadership and the other topics I present here on the podcast. https://www.facebook.com/groups/financeleaderpodcast  This is a good time to jump in and start sharing ideas and thoughts about leadership so we can help each other.

For more resources, please visit stephenmclain.com. On the website, you can download the Leadership Growth Blueprint for Finance and Accounting Managers. You can use this guide to develop your leadership by focusing on communication, and growing and empowering your team.

You can now purchase a course to help you advance your career from financeleaderacademy.com. It's called Advance Your Finance and Accounting Career: Developing a Promotion Strategy that Sets You Apart.

Unknown:

Why did you choose to work in finance and accounting? Did you want to work with numbers? Did you think you would work mostly alone? Were you attracted to the leadership opportunities available? Was it something else or a combination of these? Whatever got you interested, I'm urging you to ask yourself, if you still maintain that passion you once had, do you embrace and look forward to leading with the numbers every day, the finance and accounting fields offer a great opportunity to career track the CEO of an organization, there are so many incredible opportunities to make a positive difference. And that's why I love it. Please enjoy the episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host, Stephen McLean. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. Please consider following me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. My usernames, and the links are in this episode's show notes. And also, please join the Facebook group I have for this podcast community. Thank you. This is episode number 98. And I'll be asking why did you choose a career in the finance and accounting fields? Benjamin Franklin said, Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement and success have no meaning. This episodes format will be a little different from what I usually do. But it's for a reason. I wanted to deep dive in asking, why did you choose a career in finance and accounting? What drove you to pick a career that was so numbers focused? Both finance and accounting are different in their approach, but both sides are trying to do the same thing. help drive the business to excellence, to grow the business and to make the overall organization successful? How many of you believe that you would have such a key role in making a business successful? Or did you think you would only have a side role and mostly work alone, the finance and accounting teams and accompany help drive strategy. And they bring reality to what is happening? Because they have the numbers. We drive insights and we ensure that our resource management techniques follow GAAP and are consistent. We drive the business, we help senior leaders develop and execute the strategy. And we also have the opportunity to get promoted into senior leadership. Do you still have the passion for this field? Are you still committed to excellence? Are you committed to growing the organization and to apply your leadership and helping every way possible? I want you to ask yourself what you want to accomplish? What is your long term goal? Do you want to rise in your career or stay the same? Do you want to make the decision to commit to achieving your long term goal? I chose finance and accounting because I do love to work with numbers. I love to solve problems, and I love to lead. You can do all three in this profession. I especially love to advise and to help senior leaders develop and execute strategy. And to do my part and growing the business. I have the daily opportunity to bring positive change in everything I do. Now how do we accomplish what I just shared as a finance and accounting leader? First, we need to learn and deeply know the key metrics that drive sales, and that drive margin so we know how and where to find insights in the data. You need to know everything about the metrics that drive the business, then we need to partner with senior leaders to know more about what they are trying to accomplish. And to help understand the performance of metrics and KPIs they are monitoring. We want to share insights with them about those KPIs and metrics, so they are able to make better decisions and adjustments to grow the business. We also want to build better and more realistic projections. We also need to ensure we have accurate financial reporting and accurate financial statements by applying our core principles, a solid financial system and good processes. Additionally, we need to look for efficiencies and opportunities in the middle of the profit and loss statement. So we can say resources, which then positively affects net profit. These may be special projects that can deliver big savings in the long run. We should be looking for ways to partner around the company to help other teams to find usable insights. as well. We have the opportunity to bridge the gap of communications between teams around the company. I have done this many times as teams are developing plans or maybe missing an important piece of information. But the team next to them has it and you are aware of that. You can bring those teams together because you work in the numbers and you see it bring the organization together through your leadership. Finally Ain't we always need to be reviewing and transforming our processes. So they are efficient, effective, and near real time, which can lead to better and quicker decisions. Use your leadership to overcome the status quo, on how we do tasks and how we do analysis, find and advocate for better ways, smarter ways, and more technological sound ways to finish projects and tasks. What do you want to accomplish in your career and in your life? What are your goals? Do you see yourself achieving your goals and you have a written plan? Goal setting is essential to our success. You must have a written plan, a resilient mindset and the necessary skills to achieve those goals. Why did you choose a career in finance and accounting? Are you ready to achieve the goals? I know you have to achieve the role of CFO and even CEO. The finance and accounting fields are fun and very exciting. We get to lead with the numbers to help grow the business and to bring positive change. And that's why I love it. Now for action today, I have a request, write out your long term career goal. We will work with this at the beginning of the year in 2023. What do you want to achieve in this profession? And do you want to become a sought after leader who can make a difference? If you have not already, I want to invite you to download a leadership guide for finance and accounting leaders, you can go to Finance leader academy.com and select Free leadership guide on the main menu. It's free, and it may give you a few ideas for your own leadership development. Today, I asked why you chose a career in finance and accounting, I believe we can make a positive difference in our organization, finance and accounting professionals are often seen and sought after as leaders. So we have the remarkable opportunity to solve problems. And to help senior leaders execute the strategy. People are often amazed by what we do, how we look through the data to come up with one or two figures that may transform an entire strategy, we get to do that, we get to steer the ship in a different direction. Based on one number I have done this, I know you have to. I have spent days building a financial model to arrive at one number for a project. And key decisions were made with that. That's amazing. I am amazed at what we get to do pulling the right data to build a model to get to one number and then we execute from that one number. So join me and planning out a meaningful long term goal for our finance and accounting careers. So we get to make a positive difference. Work with me, so we can figure this out together. Next week I will be talking about taking risk so we achieve our goals. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast I'm dedicated to helping you grow your leadership skills, to change your mindset, and to clarify your goals so you advance your career. You can find this episode wherever you listen to podcasts. If this episode helped you today, please share and leave a quick review so that others may find the podcast. Until next time, you can check out more resources at finance leader academy.com and sign up for my weekly updates so you don't miss an episode of the podcast. And now go lead your team. And I'll see you next time. Thank you