BONUS #1  - Recorded Lesson: Communicate to Impress

How to Speak and Write in a Way That Helps Rather Than Hinders You

($297 Value!) The way we communicate is one of the things that people use to judge our credibility, and indeed our ability to lead the business. So, communication skills are critically important.

It might seem like some people just have the ‘gift of the gab’. The truth is most of us struggle with communication. So, I’m going to put together some training, and some exercises you can do, that will enable you to nail down any aspects of your communication styles that may be holding you back.

BONUS #2 - Recorded Lesson: Building a Business-Focused Finance Team

($297 value!) As a Finance leader your job will involve giving direction, motivation and inspiration. Just think how your impact can multiply by building a team whose focus is to help the business, rather than just to complete Finance tasks.

So, let’s get together on a webinar and talk about ways you can help your Finance colleagues. This is one of the areas where business acumen and business-focus genuinely meets leadership, and you can show business leadership as a CFO should.

BONUS #3 - Online Course Bundle: Drive! and Driving Business Performance Further in Finance

($594 value!)

Managing performance better should lead to better performance (otherwise why bother trying to manage it?)!

Knowing how to manage performance is one of the key skills that gives you business acumen as a Finance professional.

So, the Drive! course is designed to cover the business performance management framework I developed several years ago, and how to use it in Finance to help your business to manage performance better... and therefore to perform better.

It’s an online course we sell normally for $497 on the website. And I’m also adding in a mini-course called Driving Business Performance Further in Finance, which covers Performance Measurement, Reporting and Analysis, Keeping Business Change on Track and Rethinking Finance Transformation.

AND – Saving THE BEST until last – From our friends at CFO.University – FREE access to courses and classes available on CFO.University

(up to $1,300 value!) A lot of aspiring CFOs talk about their fears about being caught out by practical things they don’t know. And whilst I believe that the things that make a difference are the behavioural skills and the business insight, I know that fear can really hamper you.

So, we’ve arranged with our friends at CFO.University that everyone who enrols in CFO Readiness Builder will get until the end of 2024 to get free access any of the classes and courses on the CFO.University website under their four pillars of Accounting, Finance, Treasury and Leadership. These give you practical know-how in all the areas a CFO is expected to be proficient in.

All the support you need

With 12 months of direct access email support and Lifetime access to our exclusive Facebook group – The Supercharged Finance Student Community (priceless!) - the aim is to make sure that help is always at hand, either from us or from your peers.

So, what do you think?

I know this is not like any other training brochure you’ve ever seen for Finance professional development.

That’s because I want you to feel inspired by the possibility of your success!.

Because I know that we accountants and Finance professionals can be a little reserved sometimes. We may have secret ambitions to progress and become leaders in the Finance function and in the businesses we work for. We want successful careers where we...

... rise as high as we can,

... make our families proud,

... become influential in our businesses.

But we don’t like to admit it, perhaps because we’re not sure we really can do it.

And I’m here to say that YOU CAN DO IT!

I got my first Finance Director job at the age of 29. And I wasn’t even aiming at it at the time! If I can do it, so can you!

And from my experience, there are things you can learn that will make you ready for the next promotion whilst enabling you to make a bigger difference where you work. And if you put that learning into practice, week after week, year after year, if you want to, you can be CFO-ready.

So, you have a decision:

You can either

do nothing, and continue to browse the CPD catalogues for courses that can give you point solutions or interesting knowledge. Your head will fill up more, and you may learn how to build new reports or do different analysis. But essentially nothing will change. You’ll still be wondering how to get ready for a CFO role when the opportunity comes along.

OR...

if you know deep down you want to get yourself CFO-ready and make a bigger impact in the business you work in, then...

join me in CFO Readiness Builder and start your transformation journey towards becoming the business influencer and leader you want to be.

Simply book a call with us to discuss this offer in more detail and see if it's for you, OR click one of the enrolment buttons on this page and join others who are eager to get themselves CFO ready, and I’ll be waiting to take you through the steps you need to take.

But if you’re still uncertain, still wondering whether to get involved or leave it, you may be thinking...

I just can’t see myself as a CFO or Finance Director

It’s very difficult to see things as any different to the way they are now. We can’t picture ourselves being any different or changing our habits. And that’s the crux of the matter. In order to progress we have to be different, act differently, work differently. And that’s why one of the things I’ll teach you first is building your ability to change.

Look at my own experience – at age 22 could I see myself being a Finance Director seven years later, with a team of 50 people, and getting to jet off around Europe helping to build a business? No! At age 22 I was an audit junior who was nervous talking to client staff in case I looked stupid! But I was determined to make whatever changes I needed to succeed (without compromising my values of course!)

OR, you might be thinking, “it’s just not the right time for me to be doing this.”

First, let me say that if you’re going to avoid procrastinating and putting off your CFO-readiness into the never-never, then you must be clear why you don’t think it’s the right time. What circumstances have to fall into place to make it the right time? What things would you have to get done? If CFO-readiness is important to you, make a plan to do those things and intentionally bring circumstances into line so that you you’re ready to work on your CFO-readiness!

And if you really think it’s not the right time, just leave us your name and email address in the ‘expression of interest’ form and we’ll let you know when we’re next enrolling. (By the way, we only enrol people in this program every 6 months, so you may wait a while.)

Or, you might think, “I don’t have an ambition to be a CFO, so this probably isn’t relevant.”

And yet here you are listening to me talk about what it takes to be a CFO! Why is that?

I’ll let you into a secret. I never thought about having an ambition to be a CFO until I actually got a job as a Finance Director! Your ambition doesn’t have to be that clear and specific...

And in reality, it’s not necessarily about wanting to get an actual CFO role one day. The thing is, if you want to progress in any significant way in your Finance career, the development you need will involve the same things. Business acumen and leadership. Because every role in a business Finance function is somewhere on the journey between accountant and CFO.

Being CFO-ready doesn’t mean you have to go on and be an actual CFO, unless it turns out that’s what you want.

* Article: “Here Are The Top Voices On LinkedIn In 2019: Finance, Accounting, And FP&A!” by Anders Liu-Lindberg (Jan 2020)