How To Turn Your Company Data Into Enterprise Value With Automation - Episode 94 Recap Of Glenn Hopper, Author of Deep Finance

Welcome to OOH Insider, the first podcast made just for media and marketing executives to help simplify the conversation about how offline attention drives online conversion. My name is Tim Rowe and for the past three years, I’ve been interviewing industry experts for their unique insight into understanding this connection and the unique nuance required to create alchemy in the real world - blending marketing art and science to create memorable brand experiences that drive measurable impact.

Today’s recap is of episode 94 with Glenn Hopper, the author of Deep Finance, and an MBA from Harvard who started his finance career in marketing as the lead on a low-budget product in well-funded startup who had to fight for and rationalize every dollar he got, which has led him down a career path as a CFO. Glenn and I were strangers before preparing for and recording the episode and we’ve become good friends since and they way I describe Glenn is “if your CFO could execute like your COO, you’d have Glenn” so hopefully that gives you a better sense of Glenn - he’s a numbers guy who believes in operational excellence which is how he has become such a prominent thought-leader on backoffice automation in the context of finance and data. 

Which, let’s pause there. Here it is again, this recurring career theme of ‘I had no idea then that I’d be doing what I’m doing today, but it all makes sense now’ a great reminder that you are on an amazing journey, so enjoy the ride.

Glenn’s book is available now on Audible, so I’ll link to the amazon and audible listings in the show notes in case this interests you. I’m listening to the audiobook now and it’s filling in a lot of the gaps for me from the conversation with Glenn.

Unique Themes

Automate and eliminate human error. 

Add value to your business by getting time back to work on the business.

Most common mistakes:

• shared spreadsheet managing inventory and what’s sold, what’s available
• We try to make the wrong tools work when we don’t have the right tools, leads to inefficiency and mistakes
• There is something off the shelf, just gotta find what’s out there (g2crowd)

Where to start:

• make things easy = add value to the company, like internal IP
• Automation = more data, better data, ability to report on and optimize your business
• Go Six levels deep - identify the end-to-end process and solve those pain points first
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_yEG2TTL6o Against The Rules with Michael Lewis, Six Levels Down

Importance of having a scorecard in everything you do. You should want to be accountable because you want to be valuable.

Great breakdown on the difference between PE and VC and which you’re likely best setup for or which could be right for you depending on your circumstance so I really encourage you to go back and listen to the full episode.

Some of the key highlights though were:

Private equity - getting under the hood

• Conservative in investment risk
• Partial ownership in a founder-led business
• 4-6 years and out, you have to be ready to go. Got it together vs one who doesn’t, who is setup to win most in the next 4-6 years?
• Roi - can the pe firm add value? Maybe a billboard plant with good assets could be more valuable IF we did this
• Can be quite popular in pen and paper industries because there are typically a few folks who have made that investment in back-office automation and could be the lead company in an industry-wide consolidation because with a few key acquisitions, you can start to rol up smaller, less efficient operators into a portfolio, capitalize on economies of scale and really create a monopoly, which should be the goal of entrepreneur - to dominate their category.

VC - don’t get under the hood until series a

• Getting in early, assuming more risk, typically investing in an idea and a founding team
• How many businesses ever get past that stage?
• Because they get favorable terms, it can be a lot like roulette - chips on a lot of numbers betting that one will hit
• Hard to access

Emerging Themes

On Career Development

Thought marketing was what he was going to do. Was managing low-budget products, and started hammering on the numbers to rationalize budget. MBA who started in marketing, defaulted to being a marketing numbers guy. Necessity is a great catalyst to accomplishing things. Segue to finance when a huge, $1.5M accounting error was missed because of antiquated systems which accounted for about 7.5% of the entire company revenue at the time.

On Using Billboards

‘Grass roots’ theme emerging from outsiders

Family car wash billboards - directional and funny. Be memorable. Laugh or cry.

Extension of the business - an ambassador to the community.