Podcasts classical CFO THOUGHT LEADER 716: Building Your Operational Model | Chad Gold, CFO, SalesLoft

716: Building Your Operational Model | Chad Gold, CFO, SalesLoft

Published: July 11, 2021, 10 p.m.

Back in 2008, Chad Gold was working for Home Depot as an FP&A professional when the economic downturn upended the home building market and summoned him to the retailer\u2019s forecasting front lines.

\u201cFinance had to be ahead of the business as far as thinking through all the different scenarios went because the housing markets were changing literally day to day,\u201d comments Gold, who observes that the crisis revealed to him how the finance team must always be out in front \u201clooking around corners.\u201d

After several years with the giant retailer and multiple promotions, Gold says, he began to grow frustrated as the flow of promotions slowed down despite his willingness to take on big projects in different functions.

Then, one day, an issue involving one of his projects \u201cblew up.\u201d

\u201cMy boss sat me down late at night and on a whiteboard drew some stair steps with a line that went from the bottom to the top of the 10 steps. You\u2019re so focused on wanting to step from the bottom to the top that you\u2019re missing out on all of these incremental learnings,\u201d Gold recalls him saying.

Gold says that he took the message to heart and uncovered new opportunities to satisfy his FP&A appetite inside Home Depot\u2019s growing merger-and-acquisition activities.

\u201cNo one was offering to go work in M&A, and I said that I\u2019d be happy to go do it,\u201d remarks Gold, who estimates that he applied his FP&A acumen over time to 20 different acquisitions, including some postmerger integration work in China.

Says Gold: \u201cI said, \u2018Well, I\u2019ve never been to China before, so why not?\u2019\u201d

Today, as CFO of SalesLoft, Gold says that his Home Depot experiences revealed to him how FP&A functions are built over time and ultimately yield different tools for the organization to leverage to allow Finance to become a more valuable partner.

He explains: \u201cThere are certain foundational things in FP&A that you simply have to have in order to partner\u2014the business partnership and collaboration are just the last part.\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney

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