📩 (FPAFT) The Pause: Back on the Fast Track - 📊: October 7, 2024

⏳This is a 4 minute read📚

Hey Fast Tracker!

If it seems like you haven't seen a message from me in a while, you're not imagining it. I haven't sent out a newsletter or recorded a new podcast episode in a few months. I took a pause from both because my fiancé was diagnosed with breast cancer in April. That completely reshuffled my priorities.

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Good news, though. After a couple of surgeries, she is cancer-free. She still has at least one more surgery to go, and we are optimistic that once she recovers from surgery, we will be back to the active lifestyle we love...hiking, camping, traveling, and teaching. She loves teaching kids and, as you know, I love creating and delivering training for FP&A Fast Trackers, just like you.

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O.K., now that you're caught up with why I took a pause, let's talk FP&A.

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Although my priorities were reshuffled, I have been a very busy bee.

Some of the things I've been working on that might interest you include:

NEW COURSES

I developed two half-day (4 hours of content each) courses that will be available soon. They are:

1. The Art of Simplifying Finance for Business Partners: Frameworks for Clearer Communication
2. Mastering Data Visualization to Make Decision Making Easier and More Impactful

I'm kicking around a few different ways of teaching these, including live courses, on-demand recorded courses, and some combination that would allow you to watch videos to learn core concepts and frameworks, plus some live sessions where I can give you direct feedback and we can help you crowdsource solutions with a cohort of other FP&A professionals in the community.

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I think the community aspect can bring a ton of value, as I've always found that in my courses, some of the best ideas come from participants who share the problems they've run into in their daily work and solutions they've tried that worked and even some things that didn't work. Those can all be learning opportunities for everyone.

Both will eventually be turned into cohort-based courses taught through a combination of recorded content and online live hands-on sessions.

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I would love to get your input on the format you think you would like most.

Which format would you prefer for courses? LIVE: virtual courses via Zoom ON-DEMAND: recorded courses that let me go at my own pace COMBINATION: courses with recorded course modules and live sessions where I can get my questions answered

AFP CONFERENCE

The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) annual conference is happening later this month in Nashville and I'll be there delivering three different training sessions. I'm obvously biased, as I've been a speaker at every AFP conference for the last 11 years, but I think it's a great opportunity not just to learn, but also to meet other FP&A professionals.

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I think networking is one of the most underrated things in the FP&A community. Lots of us think because we have a great job working for a great company that we can just do our daily tasks at work and cruise along. Of course, you can do just that. But, if that's all you want to do, why are you subscribed to this newsletter for fast trackers? Just curious, but not really interested in upping your game? That's fine. You can still get valuable content as I send it out, but if you really want to level up, engage. Maximize every opportunity to learn and grow, and that includes growing your network.

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You may have heard the phrase your network is your net worth. You might think that is a bit overblown, but I can tell you that the FP&A jobs I got at Arby's and AutoNation were both because of my network. One was from a recommendation from one of my college roommates and the other was via a recommendation from a former coworker. Both are straight up from who I knew. I obviously had to have the basic qualifications to get the job, but that's true no matter who you know, or don't know.

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If you want to jump start your networking, head to Nashville for the AFP conferece. It is happening October 20th through October 23rd and you can register here. I don't have any discounts I can snag for you and there's nothing in it for me, but I can tell you it's worth the investment, but you'll only know that after you've been to the event and see for yourself.

Upcoming Podcasts

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I'm thinking of doing some interviews at the AFP conference, since so many FP&A experts will be there. If you would like to see some interviews from the conference, let me know who you would like to see me interview. AFP has a list of speakers who will be presenting at the conference in the conference brochure, so if you see someone who will be presenting that you think would make a good interviewee, let me know. I might not be able to get Malcolm Gladwell (the main keynote speaker) to do an interview with me, but there's no harm in trying, right.

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UNTIL NEXT TIME

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Thanks for being a part of the FP&A Fast Track community. Keep on the lookout for some great new content...coming soon.

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John Sanchez

Managing Director of FPA Group

FP&A Fast Track Podcast Host