How to Succeed After Getting Promoted: Seeking Feedback, Acting with Intention, and Leading with Perspective

I was early on in my career in public accounting, I garnered a couple mentors via LinkedIn asking questions. You know, sometimes you don't get a response, but sometimes you do get a response, you have a conversation conversation and then they'll wanna transition it to a phone call or a Zoom meeting and you can ask them questions. And then before you know it, you've created a friend. Other times you meet mentors via your friend group asking, what do your parents do? Oh, my parents do this, my parents do that. Like, oh, can I sit down and talk with your parent? I'm actually interested in this. Another thing you can do is when you're departing from a company and there's someone that you really liked, ask or ask your leader or find people in positions within your company and ask, you know, would you be willing to be a mentor? Welcome to Beyond the Ledger, real conversations with people driving business forward. I'm Troy Ashby, CPA and host. Each episode, we impact stories, challenges, and insights from today's top accounting and finance leaders. This podcast is brought to you by my friends over at MarketScale. Welcome back to Beyond the Ledger. Today's guest is Derek Alonso, Controller at Valor Companies. Derek came through public accounting at RSM, and then he moved to Koch Industries, where he leaned into principle based management decisions and framework. Today, he focuses on creating sustainable finance solutions that deliver real value to stakeholders and teammates. Derek, welcome. Howdy. Howdy. You brought the cowboy hat. I love it. I did. I did. I love it. When I started this podcast, I knew I had to have you on this this show. And thankfully, you're able to come even sooner than I would have imagined. Yeah. And really looking forward to sharing what I think is a it's inspiring story, also just, you know, climbing the ranks in a non traditional, but traditional way. I cannot wait to hear what you share. It's been a journey. It's been an interesting journey. When I started my career, I thought public accounting was the only industry I was gonna be in and I was gonna try to make it to partner. And I think it's funny how sometimes life changes paths but you just tend to go with the flow a little bit. Yeah. Well, so let's, before we go as far as what you've done and making it to the controller seat in record time, tell us a little bit about like who Valor is. What do they do? Yeah so Valor is a steel fabrication company. We focus on the renewable energy sector. So think solar, wind, not really renewable but transmission lines. And so what we really do is we get steel pile and rebar and we fabricate it and send it to sites to be installed to help with renewable energy production. Okay. And you were mentioning that there's either current or future growth opportunity. I think you were mentioning big numbers, but is that through acquisition? Is that organic? I think it's really just in how my stakeholders operate. Our COO is really aggressive, understands the industry, makes good decisions. Our stakeholders have good connections into the industry and good challenges, and they make really good decisions when they're steering our boat. So I really think the growth comes with how they forecast, how they plan, how they lock in jobs, and just the connection that that group has with one another. Yeah, well I can tell you're really excited to be there. So I just wanted to give them a little bit because they've allowed you to come here. And yes, they've provided an opportunity for you, but sharing a little bit about them is great too. Yeah. I I want to kind of let you share a little bit just, you know, the the typical tell me about yourself or, you know, what's something that people can't see this that's so professionally buttoned up. I know you have several things that that people could listen to or learn from, but I'm just curious, something I can't say about you. You know, I think one of the things that I think about is a lot of the decisions that I made in my career or just if I felt pinned down, was it wasn't just me making the decision. There were a lot of mentors involved and a lot of questions asked and a lot of, you know, just sitting back and thinking if I'm gonna make a move or if I'm gonna make a change, like, right? Weighing the opportunity cost with different mentors, not just one specific mentor. And sometimes even having conversations with two or three mentors over coffee to really get different perspectives. And so if you were to look at my LinkedIn and you can see the movement, it's not just me finding an opportunity and making those decisions, there was a lot of background discussion going Are those is that something that you, like, sought after? Like, every when you're are these mentors that were at those companies, are they mentors and family? Talk about that mentorship piece. It was mostly just networking through friends or being in college and someone saying, my dad's a CFO, and just asking if I can meet their dad and have a conversation with them and building networks. There were some mentors in the companies I worked for, but most of the mentorship I have is generated outside of where I work. Currently at my current position, it's my first time having an in house mentor, which is very nice. Most of my mentors didn't work at the companies I worked at. Alright. Talk about how you foster that. What are you doing to identify? Yeah, think there's a couple mediums or ways people should go about getting a mentor, securing different mentors. One of the things is looking on LinkedIn, searching chief financial officer, controller. When we're young, we're so scared to reach out or to talk to people at these levels. But most of the time they're very friendly people. They feel honored that somebody has reached out to them and they'll share a lot of life stories. They'll tell you what their journey was. They'll tell you what they wish they would have done, what they didn't do. Your mentor doesn't necessarily have to be in your company, in your state. Know, they could, we're in Texas, you can get a mentor in California and you also just never know what type of opportunities are gonna come. So when I was early on in my career in public accounting, I garnered a couple mentors via LinkedIn asking questions. Sometimes you don't get a response, but sometimes you do get a response, you have a conversation and then they'll wanna transition it to a phone call or a Zoom meeting and you can ask them questions and then before you know it, you've created a friend. Other times you meet mentors via your friend group asking, know, what do your parents do? Oh, my parents do this, my parents do that. And like, oh, could I sit down and talk with your parent? I'm actually interested in this. Another thing you can do is when you're departing from a company and there's someone that you really like, ask. Or ask your leader or find people in positions within your company and ask, you know, would you be willing to be a mentor? But would say if you're working within a company and you're gonna go get a mentor outside of your traditional structure, just make sure you have that transparent conversation with the person you report to so that way they're in the loop and they're aware. I think it's a professional courtesy. But for the most part, you can garner and generate mentors through various mediums, and it just takes you being willing to advocate for yourself and put yourself out there. It's funny. You're right. They're just people. And all they can do is say no. Exactly. It's it's interesting you say that. That people have been asking me to do this podcast for a couple of years. And one of the reasons I decided to do this is because I have thousands of conversations a year with people like yourself, both on the job seeker front and on the hiring front. But they're one on one conversations. And so I appreciate like you talking about mentorship because that was one of things I wanted to give back to the community is hearing these stories that you can't see on paper. You can't see it in the digital world and, you know, so maybe there's a little bit of mentorship here but I think you're right. Reaching out to somebody that you respect, what's the harm? What's the harm? And you never know what opportunities are gonna come from it. Yeah. Beautiful. Alright. So let's dive in. Let's start in public accounting. Talk to us about your experience there. You were at RSM, right? Yep, RSM. So talk to us about kind of what you learned. I know everybody kind of has their own experiences in public and you shared some with me and I'll let you share what you want. Yeah, I think one of the really good things about public accounting is it's a very fast environment. Know, I never experienced really any slow time but I think the biggest lesson people can get from public accounting is project management. Also learning how to fail, learning how to communicate. Even at the different levels in public accounting there's responsibility at such a young age. And so you get to learn how you operate in a business and how you want to establish your day, your routines, and you get the freedom that you might not necessarily get going into a private company because everything's structured, it's a work process. Public accounting offers a little bit more freedom. Yeah, that's right. Were you in a specific group in public? Oh you're an auditor right? I was in audit and I did kind of work across various industries. So started in insurance, not for profit, did some manufacturing, did some governmental work, so did some banking. So I never really stayed kind of in one pocket. Yeah. Which I could, if I could recommend any new public accountant, I would say try to pick a niche and stay in that pocket so you can really learn about that industry because there's differences in the different industries. So when I reflect back on my public accounting career I think I was working in too many different industries that nothing ever really felt like it stuck. Yeah real broad, right? Real wide, real narrow. And I was trying to figure out like if I do exit what industry do I want to be in? Sure. So when I was in public, I was also really broad, smaller office in Oklahoma City. But I didn't pick the industry specialty that I ended up being put in. It was a necessary or is a need. And so my choice was made for me. But you're right, I think if you can figure out where you think you want your career to go, if you think you're gonna leave public, there's so much at a young don't that knowledge in there. And I think it really comes down to like how vocal of an individual are you to the firm. Like if you go through an internship and you know you like a specific industry, if they're gonna give you an offer, advocate for yourself. Fair. When I come back I would like to work in this industry. Now one hundred percent going to work in that industry alone? Probably not. But if the firm knows what you want, they'll do what they can to make sure that that's what's going to happen or that it's aligned to you. It's actually, I hadn't thought about that way because your offers when you're leaving school are gonna be about the same financially. So if if you do know you want to focus somewhere, that could be part of your decision tree. Yes. That's actually really interesting. Alright. So you had shared and hopefully I'm not letting the cat out the bag because I would love to kind of hear the perspective on this, but you had shared during your time in public that because you're a very confident guy, but you shared that it was like there were some confidence struggles in Because I know you, I know you're not an unconfident person. So I want to dig into that a little bit if you don't mind. Yeah, so you know, when I was an associate, experienced associate, I was doing good. I felt like I was kind of a rock star. I was getting good feedback. And then it came the time to senior my first engagement. And there could have been maybe some overconfidence bias there because I was the first one in my level to get the opportunity. And I failed miserably. There some good aspects of it, but I got exposed to sections that I had never seen and I struggled and I didn't know how to communicate. And you know I was over promising and under delivering and that was the first time where I had to take a step back and say you know I need to be a little bit more humble. I need to be open to learning. I need to ask questions. It was my first time experiencing that. Nobody expects me to have all of the answers, but if I'm providing inaccurate data to people and they're structuring their week around the information I'm giving and it doesn't work, it has a negative ripple effect. Yeah, so there were some tough conversations that were definitely had. But I think the firm ultimately understood. It was my very first And everybody has their own first in charge experience. But, you know, for me, it really set me, knocked me back a little bit. Yeah. And it took me some time just to mentally recover from what I experienced. Even today, you're calling it a failure, but it's a learning moment. It was, it was, but it was just really hard because, you know, I wanted to deliver and, you know, what I wanted to do versus what I was capable of doing, it was misaligned. Right? Yeah. And so there's only so many hours in a day, you know, we have to rest, you know, and I was burning the midnight oil trying to do it. Then, you know, I just got into a position where I was so tired and I wasn't producing anything and I didn't know what to do. Thankfully, had a good manager and they helped me and we had good conversations, but it bothered me that I didn't do the file top to bottom. I needed to have some assistance in completing it. I mean, looking back now, realize that you were first time senior rep. I do. It's nice. It leaves a mark. It does. But it's something you've learned from. You've learned to communicate up, you've learned, you know, set expectations appropriately. And that's an awesome because that's happens everywhere. I mean in any industry or anytime you get that next promotion there's going to be stumbling along those There's those learning curve struggles. Yeah. And I think that's a good lesson that public accounting really teaches you is beyond project management, how to hit learning curves. Because each level is harder and harder, and you have to be the person with the answer, or you have to be the person with the research capability to go find the answer, have the right conversations, and help others grow and learn from that. Yeah. It sets you up regardless. That part of your career that is now behind you sets you up for what's next. It does. And talk about your decision to leave and kind of where that took you next. I just kind of knew that I got to a point where I wasn't enjoying it. Know, I didn't find value in being in public accounting for myself anymore. At first it was fun and exciting but it kind of fizzled out for me I didn't know what to do next. And then I'd seen a recruiter on LinkedIn, Ann Hart, and I had just messaged her and asked her about Coke because I did some research. They were a very large private organization. Their culture is just all over everything that is out there about them and how much they care about their culture. So in public accounting I think there is culture, but there's culture to an extent. At the end of the day jobs need to get done, teams change, you know, firms do their best to prioritize culture, but I really wanted to go to a place that put culture first. And that led to me having a conversation with her and kind of getting to do various interviews for different roles. Then there happened to be an internal audit role that opened up and I interviewed and I met with my boss and I really enjoyed her perspective and how she talked to me and I really wanted the opportunity. As soon as I was done with the interview, knew that's what I wanted to pursue next. Was it the job, the culture, the boss? What was part of that? Because you knew you were leaving public. I knew I was leaving public. You knew Coke had a great culture. So it was the consistency in culture based questions that I was asked in the various interviews. Smart. Okay. And I picked up on kind of some of the theme that they were asking. Now I didn't understand PBM at the time. Yeah. Principal based management. But I could see there was some kind of theme that they were looking for and it was very consistent across the interviews. Okay. All right. So now you're an audit. Now are you traveling? What type of audit are you doing? Processes or Yeah, were doing supplier and vendor audits. And so we have contracts with suppliers that were working on the oil refinery. And so I was helping to establish an audit methodology to make sure that they're billing in accordance with the contract that we set between Okay, okay. Alright. And and how long before this next jump, or I should call it a leap, but like talk to me about how long you were there, what what did you learn that you can like I think I feel like every time you're at a job you take something that you learned there and you move it over. There were quite a few lessons I learned out the gate. And the first one, which was the most important one that I learned on my very first day walking in that door was challenge. Now, when we think of challenge, we think of opponent versus opponent. But in the Coke world, that's not really what challenge is about. Challenge is about asking different questions, understanding different perspectives to find the best solution that has a long term impact, positive impact. And challenge in the culture, it's not top down. It flows both ways. So it's a flat organization. Everyone is respected. Everyone has the ability to raise challenge. And I got challenged on my very first day by my team. Really? Coming out of public, public is very top down. Your partner says something, everybody's gonna do it. You're a senior, your manager says something, everybody's gonna do it. There's not really a flow of challenge. And so I got challenged by a person on my team and I was like, well, we're gonna do it this way because this is best. And then you know my boss and dad would talk with me and I was like, okay here we challenge, we listen. But you know I flipped, did a one hundred eighty and I understood what she said of, yeah, you know, people ask questions, people are gonna challenge things, but listen, absorb it, see if that changes the decisions that need to be made. And I think that was the biggest lesson that I learned while at Coke because if you can absorb challenging and you can allow others around you to challenge titles become irrelevant. Yeah. Now you're working as one to challenge a specific process to make it more efficient, to make sure it's the right process and to make sure that the end result benefits the company and your team and sometimes even the individual. Right, yeah. That's awesome. I want to see how relevant this is because seven years ago or so I had a mentor, she and I still talk today. And she has had a successful career in improv. She actually was the owner of Dallas Comedy House. Oh. And one of the things of improv is yes, and. And so when somebody is either challenging or expressing an opinion, you yes, and you acknowledge it. And then instead of saying but is and. And it sounds like that's kind of what they were teaching. I'm teaching it to my kids now but it sounds like that's what the listening piece. Don't just stiff arm and you'll get further. Absolutely. And the thing that grew on me was sitting in meetings and looking at challenge sessions, whether I was in a meeting with my team, whether I was in a meeting with higher level leaders, seeing the adoption of it by an entire organization and the things that the organization was able to go achieve. I mean, was speechless. Just, I was fascinated with it. I became obsessed with PBM and I watched my growth just expand and double and learning more about the different sides of PBM, but it all centered around human progression. Yeah. Can you So until you shared PBM with me, can you dive even deeper into that? I'm not familiar and maybe others aren't as familiar, but high level. High level PBM, it's principle based management. It was established by Charles Koch. And the goal of PBM is, it's really thinking of Maslow's hierarchy. The company just doesn't wanna succeed, the company wants the individual to succeed, and the goal of PBM is self actualization. And so it's about not just progressing the company, but progressing the people within the company and giving them tools and principles to operate by that yields success. Yeah. Allows you to learn from failures. It's a guide to a career essentially. Is that something you can go and find? Are they external about that There's a PBM website, there's different dimensions of PBM, different principles that fit within those dimensions. Interesting. And you can search principle based management, Charles Koch, and it'll take you to their external website. Very fascinating. I still, in my current role, visit the website. I understand the kind of the different tools and definitions that they have. Yeah. I just know when we were kind of briefly talking about what we may talk about today that that came up several times and I was like, should I know this? Like should I know this? Was that something I learned in in school or like what am I missing? So thanks for sharing that. So, alright, public accounting, audit, and had you thought about you love Coke. So had you thought about like where's my career going? As people navigate, it's it's not always a straight path. Right? It can be like chutes and ladders sometimes. But, like, talk to us about when you knew or if you knew maybe Coke isn't the right thing. Like, how how are you kind of going through these decisions to take this next step forward? Yeah, so while I was at Coke, know, I thought I was gonna be there forever. Yeah. Didn't think I was going to, you know, transition out of Coke. I thought maybe I would move around within the different companies. And I really enjoyed my experience there. But there was just an opportunity that came up and it was just one that was too good to pass up, right? Coke is a very large established organization. Now there's probably going to be different investments that are going to grow, but an opportunity came up where I could be a part of a growing business that was aggressively growing and there were different skill sets that I could go learn and use. Like one of the biggest things was system implementation. I had never really gone through a system implementation and I was gonna get the opportunity to lead that and be able to put my mark on a company. And I just had kind of this weird vision of like, okay, if I stay at Cope, everything's gonna go great. You know, I'm contribution motivated. I'm learning. I have good leaders. I can talk to management and ask different questions, figure different things out. But the opportunity that came up was more of like an opportunity where I could go put my mark on a company that grew and doubled in size, tripled in size, and I could be there along the way and work with some very interesting stakeholders that I could also study and learn more about and understand and grow lifelong relationships with. So it was hard for me to leave Coke. Like, miss my bosses, I miss my team. And it was a conversation that my fiance and I had multiple times and we used PBM to make a decision. Ironically. That was great. But it wasn't just like here's the opportunity, alright coke, I'm out. You know, it took a little while for us to make the decision. Alright, so you weren't looking, an opportunity came, and you listened. And I think sometimes that's when you make the best decisions, even if it's hard. But that has landed you in where you are today. And you are a controller, pretty young, and have all this opportunity. Has there been I mean, it's exciting. We'll talk about the exciting stuff soon, but like tons of learning. Sounds like you have some mentors there. Talk to us about those first few months. So the first few months, it's been a massive learning curve. Know, you go into an organization and you sit there on day one and you're telling yourself, I don't know anything. Right? If you could relate it back, it's kind of like that first day of public accounting or that first day at your job out of college where you walk into the building and you don't know what to expect or what's expected from you. It caused me to understand how I want to mature. And when I was younger, was more move as fast as I can. It was all about efficiency. It was all about efficiency. But after my first day as a controller, learned that I needed to slow down, right? Like adopt a motto, a wise person at my current job told me, Ready, set, slow. Because now I'm in a seat where I have to be intentional about the decisions that I make. High level stakeholders ask me questions and they need results that really benefit the organization. So it's not just get asked a question, regurgitate an answer. It's being open, honest, transparent, like here's what we can do, here's an alternative, but having thought and understanding about the downstream impact of what I'm telling to my stakeholders. Which is, that's the lesson in itself, right? What are they asking me for? What I giving what I what do need to give them? And then what if there's bad news? Right? And how do you deliver that bad news? Right. Because making this move, it's not just me and my reputation on the line, it's others that helped me make this move on the line. And so, my first thought going into work is like, I want to make everybody that helped me get here proud. And everybody that helped me get here spent time in getting me here, and that means a lot to me. And so I'm very intentional about I do need to learn this. I don't know the answer to this. I do need to do research, but then at the same time, I have to transition everything into an executive summary. I can find myself of nerding out, I want to give you the entire PowerPoint presentation. When I'm dealing with stakeholders that are moving, they have a lot to do. So it's a two minute interaction, a three minute interaction. It's not a thirty minute meeting or an hour meeting. It's very quick and it has to give them the information they need to make a decision. Yeah. Talk to me about the organization structure because it sounds to me that you're in a controller seat, but what you just described is very CFO like. Are you the top financial head or is there a CFO in there somewhere? I think one of our owners is the CFO and the owner right now. I think there's opportunity for me to grow into that role and then you know just dealing with some of the private equity side of it and some monthly presentations. That's a little bit longer presentation, it's still only about thirty minutes. I think the biggest learning curve is just like learning that side of like what are they looking for, what information is valuable, what's not valuable, how do I want to make the presentation and present to them. But you know what you don't know when you're younger and you get into these positions is even when you get into these positions, the stakeholders around you do understand that you're new into the position and give you the space to grow. And so it's more on how do you ask questions, how do you capitalize on this learning curve period that you have so you can create something sustainable that everybody enjoys. So another big principle from Coke is seek feedback, right? When you're asking for feedback, don't turn on this defensive mechanism because you want people to tell you the truth. You know, when I got to Coke, I never really fancied understanding what my strengths were. I wanted to understand what my opportunities were and it didn't matter the medium. It was more of it's somebody taking time out of their day to tell you what you can do better to get to the next level. Yeah. So accept it, seek it. And it's okay if you're not perfect, you know. That feedback that people will give you when they're giving you transparent and honest feedback, it's not meant to hurt your feelings. It's meant for you to know what you need to do. Yeah, it's funny. I think feedback has showed up in over seventy five percent of those that have been on this show. And whether it's giving it, but but seeking it in case you have somebody that isn't just outright to give it because you can grow. It does allow you to kind of button up those things that that you need to work on. We all need to work on something. I mean, your senior self back at RSM may not have thought you need to work on anything, like we all get blind spots. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And when I was in public accounting, I was defensive about feedback, know, and I didn't understand it, but nobody sat me down and explained why feedback was valuable until I got to Coke. So hitting this learning curve, I'm in more of a position, a controller position, where feedback is not really given to you. You have to go and seek the feedback. And I think from the organization perspective, they do want somebody in a role that's going to seek the feedback because as a controller, it's my responsibility to seek the feedback and change what I need to change. Even if it's something as simple as is this the way that you want it delivered? Right? Yes. Because you could sit there and think it's great all day but if it's not the way that they wanted it to be delivered, you may be stumbling and I even know it. And they may not share it. So I love seeking feedback. Yes. And if you're not seeking it, by the time they decide to share it, odds are they might not be in the best mood to share it with. That's fair. It might come off a little more harsh than if you're constantly seeking the feed. Yeah. That's good. That's good. We skipped past something. I I wanted to go back on still at Valor because one of the things like the reason I wanted you on the show, like really like skyrocket career to controller. Love love your story. But you were mentioning system implementation which is is a great skill set to have. Like, you may never leave Valor but if you do, having that system implementation experience is very valuable. And to run it is really cool. So I don't know where you are in it, but just curious how that process has been and what you've learned from it. Yeah, it's been an interesting process. I think it's going pretty smooth. There have been some hiccups. We are working with two, we're actually implementing two systems and so we're working with two separate consultants. Oh wow. So there's a couple meetings where we're just trying to seek alignment or one software company might see it one way, the other software company sees it the other way. But I think the beauty of it is being the customer you can interject and kind of level set that conversation and just say, I know you want it this way, but one of the words I really use is we're really just challenging the process because we need this end result to be sustainable for us. And so seeing two different companies come together and work through this with us has had its own challenges, but it's also been a really good learning journey because everybody is looking at something that they have never used. And so a lot of good questions come up, a lot of good challenges are made and it's more like the tortoise and the hair race, we're the tortoise, right? We're moving at a pace that's nice, slow, and steady, and the software companies are the same way. We do things wrong, it's okay, we're in a sandbox environment, we can fix it. Just learning to manage that project plus our daily tasks has been a learning curve on its own. We're doing this right at year end, we're closing the books, cleaning up the books, we're getting ready for the auditors, tax season's coming up, and the software company, they're not slowing down. They've scheduled their meetings. And so just finding the time, checking the pulse on the team, making sure everyone's okay, thanking everyone for their time and just understanding that it's not going get implemented overnight. These are things that take time. So yeah, you know, my current objective is just to do a heat check, know where we are and be able to report that back to the organization and say, hey, here's our anticipated go live date, but if we know it's going to change, getting ahead of it. Right? Back to that communication piece. And if we know it's going to change, let's explain why it's going to change. And just really from a controller perspective, understanding the cost was something new to me. You know, you're getting all these contracts, getting all these different costs, there's all these add ons that you can do. Okay, what add on do we really need? What add on do we really not need? When are these costs, when are we gonna have to pay for this? Because you know, systems aren't cheap. And so from a cash flow perspective, just understanding that we're able to pay when those things come due, which we haven't struggled with, but just getting ahead of that, right? Because like, you're overseeing the payable cycle, you're overseeing the receivable cycle and you know, things just come up. Yeah. So it's just been there's more to it than just meeting, going through the stuff and implementing the system. There's a lot of different variables that I've learned or have come up out of the shadows. You got to pivot, you got to adjust. And it's been challenging, but I think it'll be rewarding. And exactly all the stuff that you just said is why having the system implementation in your experience, if you were to ever, if anybody is to look is because of all the things you just said. Understanding the financial impact, the feedback impact, the additional hours impact. And because if you haven't been through it yet, do you really know what you're getting yourself into if you're stepping into a seat that is about ready to go into it or is in the middle of it? And I would say another layer is like the consultants come out and they have all these conversations with you. And then when you're going through the system implementation, there's things that come up in your processes that they might not be aware of. There, while it's not changing the fee, like they're gonna have to build in an extra API or they have to sit back and think about something. As they're teaching you how to learn the system, you have to advocate for the company and say, okay, this is the part of the process that we're going through. This is how we do it today. But I think the biggest piece is they need to understand how you do it today. Yeah. So we've seen some changes come out of that in the configuration sessions that we've had. Yeah. Absolutely. In the time we've known each other, I've seen a ton of growth out of you and you've taken on this role eyes wide open with so much excitement. I'm curious if there's something like that you're using all these tools. You've already mentioned like all these things you've pulled from different places. But is there a like, I don't know, a leadership rep, something that you wished you would have had sooner that you now have or that you could have implemented? Is there something that you wish you had sooner? I think it's wisdom. You know, just if we went back and looked at my public accounting days, that mentality of slowing down and operating with intention instead of flying by the seat of my pants. And it's honestly something that I'm learning right now. Even when I first got into the controller seat, was, I found myself flying by the seat of my pants taking on everything and just kind of delivering, being in a checklist mentality of just delivering things to my stakeholder as they came up or as they got completed. But now I'm really trying to slow down, apply learnings from life and be intentional about what I'm doing, how I'm setting up my day, what does my weekly structure look like. And even in this role there's still been some things I failed at and felt like I could have done better. If I could do it differently I would have done it differently. Just being intentional about remembering those lessons. I now create an Excel workbook and if I have a failure, if there's something I would have done differently, I write it out so that way every Monday morning I can go review it and I hope that that you know, compounds into better decision making going forward. Yeah. You know, you've mentioned the word failure two or three times today. And I had somebody on the show, Johnny Aiken, and I loved what he said because they didn't look at failure mistakes. They called it tuition payments. Yes. And you're saying the same thing because it's these learning moments and if you really take these as building blocks, it just keeps making you better. Yep. Yeah. That's awesome. And you get dividends from it, right? You do start to see residuals. There's been a couple times in the controller position that I made a different decision than I would have made in the past and it was okay, don't know the outcome, but based on my gut, this is very similar to this situation. It didn't turn out how I wanted it to turn out. So like, let me sit back, let me do a decision making framework, let me evaluate my alternatives and choose the best course of action. Yeah. So Well before I let you go, we've covered some really good stuff here. What is something that you would like to share as somebody going through their own journey that you just think is something that they should do or have done or look for as they if they're shooting to be controller CFO regardless where they are in their career? I think whoever you report to you should establish a relationship with them where you can actively talk about your goals. You know, in different leadership positions that I've had, it can be hard for people to be transparent about what they really want because they feel like it's going to mess up their current situation. And so the more open and honest you are with an organization, the better advice you'll get from your leaders. Because your leaders are there to develop you. And the more they know how you want to be developed, the better their plan of action for you can be. That's beautiful. We'll just leave it at that. K. Derek, I really appreciate you coming on the show today. That's an honor. I'm excited to be here. Oh, great. I'm Troy Ashby. And remember, people are more than their titles, and companies are more than their balance sheets. Follow beyond the ledger so you never miss an episode.