Tom and Adam explore the concept of financial storytelling with Soufyan Hamid, Founder and CEO of SouFBP. They discuss the importance of transforming financial data into engaging narratives to drive decision-making and the challenges finance professionals face in adopting this approach. Soufyan shares his methodology for crafting effective financial stories, emphasizing the need for clear messaging, engaging visuals, and audience-tailored presentations.
“Telling the story behind the figures is not about compliance; it's about triggering an action in the heads of business owners.” –Soufyan Hamid
The finer details of this episode:
Episode resources:
Timestamps:
Introduction to Financial Storytelling (00:00:00)
Discussion on the importance of storytelling in finance and challenges faced by finance professionals.
Practical Tips for Effective Financial Communication (00:01:46)
Introducing the guest, Soufyan Hamid, and his background in financial storytelling and finance.
Challenges Faced in Financial Storytelling (00:02:55)
Soufyan shares his personal experience and challenges faced in financial storytelling.
Reverse the Narrative Concept (00:07:29)
Explaining the concept of "reverse the narrative" in financial storytelling and its impact on communicating financial information effectively.
Adopting Financial Storytelling (00:12:35)
Challenges in adopting financial storytelling, including the struggle to leave out details and focus on the main message.
Practicing Effective Presentation and Public Speaking (00:15:19)
Tips for effective presentation and public speaking in financial storytelling, including the importance of practice and engaging the audience.
Adapting Financial Communication to Small Group Discussions (00:21:14)
Discussion on adapting financial communication to small group discussions and the importance of anticipating questions and reactions.
Visual Aids in Financial Communication (00:23:31)
Discussion on the use of visual aids like dashboards and graphs in financial communication and their role in supporting the narrative.
Adapting Visuals for Effective Storytelling (00:24:37)
The importance of visually adapting graphs and charts to focus on specific points and guide the audience's attention in financial storytelling.
Preparation and Structuring for Effective Financial Communication (00:27:12)
The significance of preparation, structuring the message, and using visuals to guide the audience's attention in financial presentations.
The Four Steps of Financial Storytelling (00:33:07)
The four essential steps in financial storytelling: preparing a message, structuring the story, creating presentation slides, and practicing delivery.
Time Management for Preparation (00:38:17)
Discussion on the time required for preparation, practice, and the overall impact of effective storytelling in financial communication.
Course Content and Expected Results (00:40:41)
Details about the financial storytelling course, its duration, interactive elements, and the expected outcomes for participants.
Intro (00:00:00) - Welcome to the modern CPA Success Show, the podcast dedicated to helping accounting firms stay ahead of the curve. Our mission is to provide you with the latest and greatest insights on cutting edge tools, innovative marketing strategies, Virtual CFO services, and alternative billing methods. Join us as we change the way people think about accounting.
Tom (00:00:22) - So, Adam, for today's program, we went to an expert around storytelling. I think a lot of people get excited about, but we hear about a lot and it's also hard to implement. What do you think is different about what people are going to listen to today?
Adam (00:00:33) - I mean, it seems very concise, right? It's not overcomplicated. It wasn't conceptual. I think he has some practical tips. I mean, he has like four main points that he does. And so, I thought it was pretty cool. Obviously super relevant to everything we do., you know where I was a little disappointed, though Tom, was he's from Brussels, right? You should have said that.
Adam (00:00:55) - So you could set me up so that I could say, how's your sprouts? But I was like, I'm serious. Like, I was trying to, like, hold my composure the whole time thinking, when can I land this one? And you just totally let me down. Aside from that, I think, listeners will really, enjoy his perspective. And again, I think this is really the piece that most people have the hardest time connecting with is like, what do I talk to the clients about? How do this is where you'll either live or die? On the advisory front, is this conversation and your ability to turn the numbers into a story?
Tom (00:01:27) - Yeah, I think you're right. And I think we spend a lot of our time sort of everywhere else, and this is a place to spend some serious time and, and hopefully people get something really good out of this. Great. Well, we hope people really enjoy this, right.
Adam (00:01:40) - All right.
Tom (00:01:41) - For this episode of the modern CPA Success Show, we decided to bring an international guest in.
Tom (00:01:46) - At the same time. I think it's a topic. It's going to be very much applicable to each of us locally., let's do a quick introductions. I'm Tom Wadelton, a Virtual CFO. I am joined by my normal co-host, Adam Hale. Adam. Welcome today.
Adam (00:02:00) - How's it going, Tom?
Tom (00:02:02) - Doing really well. And then SoufyanHamid. We are really excited to talk to you. And you are the founder of Finance Circle, and you are financial storytelling and your trainer of that. I would love to hear some of your background that brought you to this and then want to talk more about storytelling, finance, everything that you do.
Soufyan (00:02:20) - Well, at first. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you, with you two guys. And, I will indeed start by presenting myself. I'm Soufyan. I'm from Brussels, Belgium. And, I have a pretty classic background in finance. I started as an auditor at University. Then after four years, I moved to consulting at Deloitte, and after four years again, I joined a Telco company as a finance business partner.
Soufyan (00:02:55) - And this was a shock for me because if technically I, I had nothing to complain about, I was pretty good in what I did. I prepared dashboards that were flexible and easy to read. I prepared financial models that were, that were appreciated because they allowed quick and easy decision making. But there was something that was not working as I expected because I didn't have many connections within the company. I didn't have a lot of participations to the important projects. And most of all, I was super frustrated because I thought that with my technical skills, I deserve the promotion quite early. And after 2 or 3 years of fighting to get these promotions, I finally got the answer why I didn't get those. And this came from the VP finance self who during the presentations of the monthly results just told me in those exact words, Soufyan, you're a technician and you speak to me like I was the same kind of technician. But don't forget that the people who will be in front of me during the presentation are not finance experts.
Soufyan (00:04:23) - There are business experts and so they need to know how the business works. So you need to make a business story out of the financials. And when it said that, I understood that I was absolutely no good at it. And so, I took it as a challenge and started to train, started to get as much information as I could start to practice. And this is how I finally got so interested in financial storytelling that I developed my own methodology.
Adam (00:04:56) - Very cool. Yeah. No, definitely., let's consider this an interview., because I was, checking out your website, and, this looks really cool. And I think for just a, I mean, you know, we've talked about this, but we work with a lot of, you know, other CPA firms, small, medium, large firms, just like ourselves delivering virtual CFO services. Well, the key component with virtual CFO services, at least in our offering, is financial forecasting. And so and it's about collaboration and working with the client, meeting them where they are, you know, all those things that kind of what you're talking about.
Adam (00:05:32) - So for us, we always talk about that. Right. So, with our clients we're like, hey what's going on? You know, this needs to you know, we need to make sure that we're talking in a way that they can understand it and use the information. And we're not just reading financials off of the off the paper, which is a lot of times what happens. I mean, it's not even super technical. It's just like, hey, you did this and then you did that, and then look at that number and it's like, well, guys, they can read., that's not the problem. They don't know what to do with the information. Right? They don't know what you know. You've got to highlight what's important, and then you've got to tell them why it's important and then show them what it looks like to the future. And so whenever I was kind of reading your bio and going through all this stuff, I was super excited because I was like, hey, this is something that we need to have everybody on our team kind of digest and understand, because it's top of mind and something that we talk about all the time in order to really enhance our delivery.
Adam (00:06:29) - So, so just again, happy you're here. But now, you know, I'd like to just kind of dig in and, and hear a little bit more about, you know, some of these tips and tricks and things that, you know, people need to, to do because, you know, because if I was looking at this from, you know, from a consultation standpoint. So now we're I reached out to you to learn more about the program., again, for us, I would say my problem is, is that I've got really good financial people and they understand the results. Like they can look at it and they go, oh, this is a good month or a bad month. And they can tell me why, and I can ask them questions and they can create a story, you know, based on the questions I'm asking. But we need to do that before we go into the call because the clients like, great. What? So how does this course. And some of the things you've learned over the years since that engagement ended.
Adam (00:07:24) - You know, what's that evolution look like? What do we expect inside of here?
Soufyan (00:07:29) - Well, I, I have a concept that I call reverse the narrative. So. Okay. It's the contrary of what we are used to do in finance, in CFO, in accounting, generally we start from our financial reports and we start we try to explain it. We try to explain the variances with last year, with the budget, if there is any. And so we go through our sequence of the PNL, for example, and, you know, the structure of the PNL, you have the revenue, you have the cost of sales, and then you have the OpEx and the different sections of the OpEx. If you do that, not only will it only be related to you, but also you will have certainly duplicates, because a business event that has an impact on the revenue will most of the time have also an impact on the cost of sales. Another business events in the OpEx will have an impact also in the revenue.
Soufyan (00:08:36) - And so if you go through the structure of the PNL, you will certainly start to bore people because you will say twice or three times the same thing if you start from the business events. And for that you have to challenge your findings before the consultation and the meeting. But if you start from the business events, then in this case, you will cover the whole PNL with one sentence, and then you can discuss the impacts on revenue and Cogs separately. But at least you will only repeat once the business events that took place. And that explained some of the variations. And that's important, because this is what the people in front of us expect, expect. They want what they know. They want to know what they know and the impact it has on their financials. Not the other way around.
Adam (00:09:33) - Right. Instead of just constantly going down the PNL and going, well, but your Cogs are off because of the revenue thing that we talked about. And then now your common size factors for, you know, your percentage of rent or overhead or off, because of course, the event, you know, you keep going and like you said, repeating the same thing over and over and kind of coming back for it.
Adam (00:09:52) - So what I'm hearing you say, just to kind of say it back another way, is just make sure you have the headline the operational or business event headline for, you know, that's kind of the theme of the call, basically on the front end. And then you can kind of dig in and support your story from there.
Soufyan (00:10:11) - It's important when you when you have a call, when you have a presentation to have one big message. If you go there and have one big message, you should be able to say it in one sentence. Of course, we are a people of details, so we give also supporting evidence. We give supporting messages so you can divide them into sub messages. But the important is that you should be able if you had let's say 30s instead of 30 minutes, you had 30s to explain what happened during the month. In that case, you should have what we call an elevator pitch, and in this case it should be in one sentence, being able to say what happened, what the impact is on the business and what are the next steps.
Soufyan (00:11:04) - And with this three element, the what. So what? And now what the business owner should be able to. Act upon it. And I insist on that last word, because it's one of the most important and forgotten thing of finance storytelling is that telling the story behind the figures is not about compliance. Telling the story behind the PNL and the balance sheet is not about reporting. It's about triggering an action in the heads of business owners or people in the in in the company. If you are in a bigger company. If you manage to bring them what they need to take a decision, then they get into action. And that's the most important here because. If it's just a reporting, you might as well send a mail and it won't change much. But if you're there in front of them to present and to tell them what happened, you might as well bring some added value in it.
Tom (00:12:14) - So it's interesting listening to you that makes so much sense. And I have a hard time saying, why would everyone not agree with you when you work with, especially accountants doing financial reporting, where's the biggest problem that people seem to have is actually adopting what you're saying.
Tom (00:12:29) - What's the stumbling block that gets us to say, okay, here's why I'm having trouble doing that.
Soufyan (00:12:35) - Well, in my consultations and in my trainings, what I observe comes from the accounting background, because in accounting you have to be accurate. You have to be complete. You have to take care of every single detail. For the simple sake of the double entry concept, the debit has to equal the credit. So you cannot leave a single decimal. That's different because otherwise it doesn't balance. And this. This search for the perfection makes it difficult for finance professionals to. Think of leaving some details aside. That's the most important. The most difficult I've seen in finance professionals. And I was like that too. For me, it was hard to say that I only explained like 70% of the variance, because I thought that this was important, to bring all the ten little points that I discovered together with the one point that explained the 70%. But you realize that the people in front of you won't care about those little ones, except if you see really something.
Soufyan (00:13:49) - What we call an insight is that there will appreciate. But in the other case, they will be more concerned about the little actions that can change their whole business. And so here our biggest point, our biggest issue is to have the main message out of the sea of data we have.
Adam (00:14:15) - Yeah. That's tough. I mean, and I think that, you know, let's face it, we also like to show off all the hard work we did. Right. So, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, hours that go into getting those reports all pumped up. And we're pretty excited. And so, yeah, we always talk about it with the team. I mean, we've got 60 pages of reports. It's like nobody cares. Those are for you. You read all that and then you come up with the story from that reporting, and then you can kind of hop around and highlight some stuff. But I get it. That's it's really easy to get lost in the details one because again, you did do all the work and you feel obligated to kind of show everybody, you know, what you did.
Tom (00:14:53) - , and then the other thing is too, is just like the the public speaking aspect of it is sometimes a little bit difficult. I mean, it's hard for finance professionals a lot of times., and I know I think you talk about this a little bit too. You got some tips or tricks, for, for finance professionals in that, in that regard, you know, in terms of even body language and, you know, especially now we're on camera, you know, we're not in front of people all the time in person, those kind of things.
Soufyan (00:15:19) - Well, that's for sure. First, before jumping to the body language section and the public speaking section, you said something important because finance professionals prepare long reports with a lot of details. And for me, there's no problem in doing that as long as you make the difference between a report that's supposed to be a documentation and visuals that you use during a presentation and the communication that you make out of it, because those two, although sometimes we use slides, you we use PowerPoint for both.
Soufyan (00:15:57) - Well, those two are have a different function. The one is supposed to be a depository of the historical information. And that's good. That has a lot of information. And on the other side you have the communication part in which you want people to get the message. And the way to get the message is through presentations, public speaking and body language. And. There's only one word that will make the difference. It's practice. It's practice. You have to do it as much as possible. And so, my first advice for people who are not used to do that is to find audiences that will be open to have their presentations because, you know, it's all it's often hierarchical in a company. The CFO will present to the to the CEO. And then on the other side, you will have the finance manager who will present to a director. And so, staff people will feel lost and will feel they don't have their place in the storytelling world. But that's not that's not right. That's not true. There are many other layers in the company for which you can push to present the results, because there will be interested to and it will be a great exercise for you to practice your public speaking, practice your presentation skills, and also practice a different method of storytelling because you do not present the same way to staff than to executives.
Soufyan (00:17:37) - They will be completely different and you have to approach them completely differently. And if you have the chance to present to them, well, here are some tips you can use for a physical presentation. So, presentation in person and also in a digital presentation. The eyes you have to look at people normally if you are in front of your computer or even in a room, the reflex would be to look at your slides. And what's the reason behind it? It's because there is too much information on the slides. So you want to remember what there is. And so, you look at the slide and you don't have a connection directly with the people. The second one, in terms of public speaking, that works both for in-person and digital, is to use your hands. Maybe it's because I have Mediterranean roots. I use my hands a lot. But you do not have to be so exaggerated as myself. But sometimes, and it's even more important in the digital setup since you don't see the rest of the body.
Soufyan (00:18:51) - The hands is the only thing that's really moving. So, there you can list items, you can speak of time and steps, and with that you will keep the audience alive and make the presentation more engaging, that's for sure. And for the rest, you have to make it engaging. So, make sure that you remain open for questions during the presentation. I know that. We've been taught at school that the Q&A should come after the presentation, but we are in a business environment and this doesn't work. People want to ask questions on, what you've just said and don't want to remember their questions for 20 minutes. So be open to questions and let people participate. If it becomes a discussion, that means that you succeeded to make it an interesting presentation and you made it a story, and that's the most important.
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Tom (00:20:37) - To that point that you just made. I'm wondering, we often talk about what we would like to do when we're having a financial statement discussion with a client that it's more of a conversation than a presentation, that we think the best piece is when you're really having that interaction and maybe you're saying the same thing, but I'd be curious your reaction to that, because you're calling it a presentation, and it seems like we're talking something about public speaking. Often when we're with clients, it can be a handful of people, maybe an owner and a couple of people you're talking to. So it's a small group. But I wonder your reaction to that. If you go into it as more of a conversation than a presentation, does your advice differ or do you disagree with that?
Soufyan (00:21:13) - No.
Soufyan (00:21:14) - The...at least the discussion in a 1 to 1 discussion would be easier because it's less formal. You have less people to look at. So here in terms of public speaking stress, you are. Safer, let's say. But the rest would still apply in terms of communication. What you have to communicate, the structure you have to use to make sure that the people are interested in what you say, the quantity of information, the visuals you use. All those should remain the same. Because when I speak of presentations, not everyone. I would even say almost no one has a town hall of 100 or 200 people to present to most. Most of the time you have a room of maximum 15 to 20 people, and in that case, it's already a big step because you are in front of 20 people and it doesn't matter digitally or in person, but you are in front of 20 people, and so you have 20 different people to adapt to and to make sure that you anticipate their questions, their way of behaving, their reactions and so it's a tough work because you want your presentation.
Soufyan (00:22:35) - And when I say presentation, it's a communication. Whatever the format, you want your communication to be successful. And so, anticipating questions is also part of it.
Adam (00:22:48) - Can you talk to you about and I think that's important Tom. You're right. The conversation a lot of times I like to kick off my meetings with that headline that you're talking about, but also, you know, I just turn it back on the client. How's that sound? You know what I mean? Or, like, how'd that happen? Or what's going on? And a lot of times, the first 20 or 30 minutes of the meeting, I'm just gaining valuable context that I can then use to, like, land my argument later so I can pop the variances that are important. So, I might already know what I want to call out but I'm trying to create that conversation that first 15 or 20 minutes. You know, sometimes there's not a whole lot going on, don't get me wrong. And then we have to hop right into it.
Adam (00:23:31) - But sometimes whenever I land, you know, I send a I drop a big bomb on him, like, oh, man, this month was terrible because of such and such. What happened? Well, then, you know, now you're going to you're going to be sitting there talking for like 30 minutes about something completely different for, for a little while. And then you can kind of support it. So that's cool. But you also talk about the visual aids because I think this is important to kind of come back and kind of help as a crutch. So we don't do anything with, PowerPoint slides. Right? So, we're not doing a deck every time we're talking to a client but we do have a dashboard where we're, you know, we've rolled up and kind of cleaned up the financials a little bit. It's not like it's right out of QuickBooks or, you know, some Excel spreadsheet., but whenever we're showing them that stuff, we do try to minimize or summarize some of the information, but some clients want to see the details.
Adam (00:24:18) - , you talk about the visual aid pieces being an ally, or it can be, you know, a nemesis, I guess if you're if you're showing the wrong stuff, what kind of, you know, what kind of suggestions do you have for, you know, cleaning that up and really helping the letting the visuals, you know, help the narrative a little bit? Well.
Soufyan (00:24:37) - Well, it's an interesting example you give Adam because. Visuals can be used. For explanatory. Purposes and exploratory purposes for exploration, like a dashboard you send to to a client. Well, he will want to analyze, ask questions about them. And so it's an exploratory. Concept of dashboards. And there's no problem with it because it's useful. And people will appreciate to have the details and ask questions they find interesting for explanatory. When you already have your message and you already know what points you want to focus on, well, it's important to visually adapt the graphs so that you will focus on the points you want to discuss.
Soufyan (00:25:31) - So for example, let's say that you have a bar chart of, I don't know, revenue or EBITDA per month. And one month was particularly bad. Well, instead of leaving all in the same color, you might want to gray out all the columns except the bad month. So, the attraction of the eye will be direct to the mound. You want to discuss about, and it's the same for any other graph. You want to ease the reading of the people so that they do not have to analyze the visualizations, because let's be honest. Most people don't know how to read a chart. You have basic charts that are known by most people, but even then. They will not directly see where you want to go with your, with your story. And in the other case, you will even deserve yourself because. People might want to observe points you did not want to speak about during your story. So, in that case, it's important to adapt the visuals to make sure that they only represent the message you want to bring.
Soufyan (00:26:55) - If there are two messages, fine. You put two bars in colors, but you absolutely want to make sure that the charts you use for storytelling are not the same as the ones for dashboards.
Adam (00:27:12) - Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I hear what you're saying. I mean, it definitely makes sense. Like, if you were doing, like, a presentation, go in and basically screenshot or cut away those things that you just want to focus on. And I think that's important for us a lot of times because we're dealing with high volume in terms of the number of clients we are. You know, there's a there's a huge time savings in, architecting the data so that it's visually presenting everything that we want to discuss. Now, again, I agree with you on the front that, you know, if I have 25 dashboards, those are for me, you know, so I use those dashboards, I analyze those dashboards, I figure out what the story is., but then what I try to do is, I try to have those 3 or 4 places on those dashboards that I want to take those people to.
Adam (00:27:59) - So I'll be like, okay, so and, you know, to illustrate that, I want to show you this report, and then I want to show you this one. You know what I mean? I go boom, boom. So, I'm like, I'm not giving them. Don't get me wrong. Like on that page, there might be a little bit more data that they can see, but I'm like circling and kind of pointing to like what I'm trying to get them to., but point taken though. I mean, I think it is important and I think it, what you're saying too is, I think a side effect of that, that I think is really, good is preparation., because if you are taking it to the extent that you just said you're not just relying on, oh, the dashboards are there, and I'll kind of hop around because we have been told before, sometimes people get too bouncy, you know, you'll bounce around a little too much, and clients are like, I wasn't really following Adam.
Adam (00:28:47) - He like, he turned on ten different dashboards. He kept flipping things back and forth. He's going super-fast, as opposed to if I would have just taken three screenshots and just said, boom, boom, boom, you know, and just focused on a, on a still screen. So, point taken. I mean, if you have the preparation time and stuff like that, I agree that that makes a lot of sense.
Soufyan (00:29:06) - But if you know your script, for example, if you know that that data points, you want to analyze and that you know it by heart and that's you know how to navigate from one chart to the other. You basically do this job other than visually. The most important is not to leave it, leave things gross as they are from Excel or from any other BI tool and help the reader. And you can help them visually, but you can also help them by clicking on a certain amount. And so, you will see a month that will be highlighted.
Soufyan (00:29:43) - It happens in Excel. It happens in power BI for example. Well in that case you're doing part of the storytelling job. So, it's already a quick win.
Adam (00:29:54) - Yeah. I mean, again, I think just where my mind always goes is preparation. Because don't get me wrong, like there's times whenever I popped into a meeting and haven't looked at anything and I start trying to start, you know, doing the storytelling. And so, and then I start telling it's almost like a choose your own adventure book. I start telling a story, and then I'm like, oh, and then I hear facts, or I see something and I go, oh, just kidding, it's because of this. Or just kidding. It's because of that, you know, like you catch yourself midstream. So, so everything that you're saying to me as far as, like understanding the events and then finding the data that supports the events and then pulling that out to me just really focuses in on the need for if you're going to be a good storyteller, you better know how the story ends, right? Like so don't try to read the book together.
Adam (00:30:44) - You should have probably already read the book before you go and try to like, explain it to the to the client. So, yeah, I just, I really like the idea of the, the preparation component of what you're suggesting. So, is that something that you kind of focus on in the course, you know, what are the main focal points or the kind of cornerstones? Because again, for us, we can say these things to our team. You know, we're always talking to them. We're like, hey, it's really important to be a storyteller. We actually brought in, I don't know if you know, Peter Margaritas or not, but take the num out of numbers. He's like teaching you how to story, tell and kind of create story out of out of the numbers. Kind of similar to what you're talking about., but again, that was and it's great and it's more conceptual., but what I'm seeing from your course is it's more you're showing us more tactically, you know, again, which might appeal more to our accountant brain of like, okay, this is exactly how to kind of focus that on.
Adam (00:31:43) - So what are those cornerstones in the, you know, trying to, you know, try to teach our team how to do those kind of things.
Soufyan (00:31:51) - What? You said so many things that it's really. It's really great because I have to jump on each of them. Well, you directly. So, the main difference between my methodology and most storytelling. Courses we see because it's adapted by a finance guy. I work in finance and I know how it works, and so I didn't want to bring all these Hollywood stories concepts into my storytelling course because it did not make sense in our environment. And so to jump on the second thing you said, what I made sure was to divide my course into four steps. And all those steps are preparation. You have to prepare first a message. While most people start with preparing their slides, normally when you analyze your figures, you should be able to tell what you want to bring out of your data. So at month end, when you close the books, you analyze your data and you want to analyze certain data points, challenge them with business people, get additional and contextual information.
Soufyan (00:33:07) - And so you prepare a message, because only when you have a message you can prepare. And that's the second step a story. You prepare this story by using structures that are adapted to the audience. And so, this is what I said earlier about staff people, what we call experts who will need a specific type of storytelling structure. And you have executives who will need another type of storytelling. In most cases, executives will want the conclusion before any other detail. And so, what you said about saying the first, the message is working for executives, but sometimes for. Lower people in the in the hierarchy. They first need to be convinced before accepting a conclusion. So, you have to build your the build the trust before sharing your conclusion. And that was the step two. And only after that, when you know what to say and how you will say it, then you prepare your slides. And when I say slides, it's more slides that you show during your presentation, not the reports that you said.
Soufyan (00:34:25) - Because for that you are free to put any other details you want because those have a different function. But those slides you use as a visual during your presentation have to respect certain rules to catch the attention, to be digestible and to show, and to provoke an emotion in people so that they listen to you. They are not too focused on the slide, but enough so that the catchy messages still remain in their heads. And only after that you have to practice. And that's the fourth step. Prepare yourself. And this is where I teach people how to how to improve their public speaking, how to use their body language, how to rehearse, how to give a digital presentation. All those concepts that work today are important because. You might want. You might have the best message and the best story possible. If it's delivered poorly, it will not have the same effect. That's for sure. Because imagine a movie with a great scenario, but with $1,000 budget will not work. So, you have to imagine your story like that.
Soufyan (00:35:45) - And so yeah, these four steps are the cornerstones of my training program because with that, you cover all the pain points I got from the CFOs I interviewed in these last years, because I had the opportunity to speak to many CFOs, more than 35. And there were five main recurring items that came in their complaints about the presentations they got from their teams. The first one was the absence of a main message. The second one was the absence of tailoring. The presentation to the audience. So, we use the same presentation for all audiences. The third one was that there was no use of narrative. So, we just go through the PNL as we know it, and then we jump to the balance sheet and we jump to the cash flow. And so, storytelling was not existing. The slides were, you know, the repetition of slides of finance, I guess. Sure. I don't have to paint a picture. And then the fifth one was that. Since we spend so much time on preparing the slides, people do not practice before the presentation and so they feel stressed.
Soufyan (00:37:01) - They do not convince the people in front of them. And this is an important point, because we might think that because financial information is the truth, we do not have to convince people.
Soufyan (00:37:16) - But.
Soufyan (00:37:17) - It's not the case. We have to convince them they have their reality. They do not always think that one of their actions has a financial impact. And so you have to go into their mind to make sure that they follow you along. And that goes only with a with a great communication and somehow a performance.
Adam (00:37:43) - How long does that prep time take? I mean, you know, so I'm trying to think of our own team, Tom. You know, like we always talk about, hey, like, the best thing we can do is think about our clients. But the reality is, we have limited time. I mean, and obviously, I understand that at first, it's going to take a little bit of time to, you know, get into a rhythm and understand that kind of stuff.
Adam (00:38:02) - But at Stable State, would you how long do you think it should take you to do those things that you just kind of mentioned? And maybe it depends on the size of the data and that kind of stuff, but just small or medium sized business?
Soufyan (00:38:15) - Not sure.
Soufyan (00:38:17) - I think that when you are really used to storytelling, to practicing, to structuring your thoughts, it can go quite fast. I think that by rehearsing once or twice.
Soufyan (00:38:29) - And.
Soufyan (00:38:30) - It will be as long as your presentation, so 20 to 30 minutes because don't forget your presentation or your communication will be more a discussion. So that means that there will be back and forth and in the slot of 60 minutes, you will have a talk time of 20 to 25 minutes. But then you will have questions, you will have answers, you will have the discussion. So basically, if you prepare your slides and your story and your analysis, which is part of the normal stuff, preparing yourself takes. Up to 40 minutes. Like one? One hour.
Soufyan (00:39:09) - So each month you can block one hour. It can be a significantly a game changer for you.
Adam (00:39:19) - I think so. I mean, even just that preparation going into a meeting, if you know that story, you know how it ends. You, you know what you're going to show them. I mean, Tom, I know we've had this conversation many times. Just the feeling is, I mean, not only does the client feel it, but you do too. It's just like you just feel like you just nailed that presentation. So. Yeah., there's a there's a big difference. So again, I think the, the structured presentation that you're talking about and the methodology for that, I mean, it has me sold, I mean for sure like, again, because we talk about all this time, all of it all the time. And I think people get the, the conceptual piece of storytelling. But I think whenever it comes to practical examples, it's really hard for people to kind of articulate, oh, that's what you meant, or okay, how would you handle it in this situation? So I'm looking forward to the course.
Tom (00:40:08) - Just to kind of hear a little bit more about, you know, diving in and seeing some of those examples and hopefully that'll help land the plane a little bit with the, you know, with the team so they can kind of see, you know, hey, this is this is how to kind of handle those kind of things. And so excited about that Soufyan, can you talk a little bit about the course if someone wants to take it, approximately how long does it usually take him to go through seeing results? Kind of. What should people expect if hopefully this is intrigued them and said, you know, yeah, this applies to me and I could get better at this.
Soufyan (00:40:41) - Well, the course is about two hours and a half of videos that are divided into small videos, because I don't want people to lose focus. You know, when you are online, it's always big difficult to keep the focus so small videos that in total give more or less two hours and a half.
Soufyan (00:41:01) - And since I said earlier, practice is the key. Well, you have approximately more or less the same time practice. So, in total you have for hours, four hours and a half.
Soufyan (00:41:15) - Of.
Soufyan (00:41:16) - Training in which you have videos to watch and in which there are interactions, but you also have exercises with a use case that I use from PNL that I invented. So, it's a telco company, but I could change it., and in this.
Tom (00:41:32) - It was your former company. That's okay.
Soufyan (00:41:36) - I adapted I it works. I didn't want o share confidential information, so I invented everything.
Soufyan (00:41:44) - But now in this case, it's, it's two hours and a half video, two hours training, and. I like it to be a bit fun. So, it's not only an Excel file you have to download and work on it. I prepared also games inside the course, so you have a game with the drag and drop. You also have a game in which you get to see your business partners to challenge your findings.
Soufyan (00:42:15) - You get to see other people to observe the audience. So, it's kind of interactive. I try to be quite innovative on how it works because online courses are not always the most.
Soufyan (00:42:29) - Interesting, but in this case, I try to make it as fun as possible so that you could not only learn and improve your skills, but also have a good time.
Soufyan (00:42:42) - It does sound fun.
Tom (00:42:43) - Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. No, it does, and I think that, again, this just seems pretty universal. I mean, if if you're delivering a, you know, this kind of a service and I mean, it doesn't even have to be because what you were talking about to whenever you're talking about variances and personnel, the one piece that we didn't really get into a whole lot was on the financial planning side. So the other aspect of ours is we tell people, you know, hey, you know, you talked about 20 minutes of presentation time where we're usually telling people, hey, five, ten minutes to get through the performance stuff, you know, the analysis of what happened and then spend equal amount of time telling about what that does to the future.
Adam (00:43:20) - Right. So we're doing both the both FP and pieces. Right. So we're doing the financial planning and the analysis. We just kind of start with the analysis and then go into the planning., that's kind of our conversation is so we're trying to make that and, and I think everything else you were saying kind of lands well with kind of the timing, 60 minutes, you know, you want to be half discussion, half presentation., that that sounds pretty accurate to what we, we pitch for and we try for.
Soufyan (00:43:47) - Yeah.
Soufyan (00:43:48) - The planning part is the part in which the storytelling takes all sense because you, you basically sell something that still didn't take place. It didn't happen yet. So you speak about the future and this is where you have to have business events, business assumptions to make sure that people go along. Because most of the time this is where you will you will also have a lot of challenge when you present a budget, for example, or forecast. You have people who might take them quite heavily, because sometimes when you speak of a specific project, that doesn't go well.
Soufyan (00:44:31) - Well, the responsible of said product will not be happy about it. And so you have to transform it into a story so that he's not an enemy, but more an ally. And that will go through the collaboration before.
Adam (00:44:47) - Yeah, well, I mean.
Adam (00:44:49) - Good advice.
Soufyan (00:44:50) - Yeah, that's an excellent point.
Tom (00:44:52) - Well, Sufjan, this has been excellent., like I said at the beginning, I think most people would agree. Yeah, this is needed anytime you're kind of hearing, hey, do it in a story form people like, yet it's hard. And I think you point out some of the reasons for people in finance profession, why it's really hard and love that you had the steps and then the course that can help people to do that. So really appreciate you sharing that with us today.
Soufyan (00:45:13) - Thank you.
Tom (00:45:15) - Great. Thank you. Hope everyone has a fantastic day.
Soufyan (00:45:17) - Yeah.
Adam (00:45:18) - Take care. Thanks. Bye.
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