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When David Parsons tells us that he remains concerned about the whereabouts of his 20-something-year-old self, we realize that our talk with Zuto\u2019s CFO is going to be different from most of those that we undertake with today\u2019s finance leaders.

According to him, \u201cThirty-nine-year-old Dave is looking at mid-20s Dave and asking, \u2018What are you thinking?!\u2018\u201d

Some further probing on our part reveals that \u201cmid-20s Dave\u201d was roaming the English countryside on weekends as part of a wedding band, as well as a member of other assembles\u2014including a popular Michael Jackson tribute act.   

\u201cI just went down this rabbit hole where I was working weekends as a musician and doing studio work in the evenings,\u201d explains Parsons, who adds that his weekend music tours would often book-end 70-hour workweeks in corporate finance.

\u201cI don\u2019t mind working the hours, if I get to do what I love doing,\u201d continues Parsons, who began serving in a succession of FP&A roles once he was safely beyond his 20s.

\u201cI have not necessarily built my career by trying to fill niches and gaps on my c.v., which is, by the way, a good way of going about things\u2014but it\u2019s just not for me,\u201d remarks Parsons, who notes that he began to find his work increasingly satisfying as he moved into a number of commercial finance roles, which eventually led him to accept a position with UK-based automobile finance and loan company Zuto.

\u201cBasically, we begin by placing a customer with a lender and a preapproval, which means that we can tell them with a very high degree of accuracy whether the lender is going to accept them,\u201d reports Parsons, who points out that Zuto deploys a sizable team of car-buying experts who can offer customers one-on-one service for vehicle history checks, free vehicle valuation checks, and the like.

Parsons recalls that at the time that the CFO role opened up at Zuto roughly 5 years ago, he was overseeing FP&A. Nonetheless, although the company was evaluating other CFO candidates, he knew that in the end he was a good fit\u2014and not necessarily because of his familiarity with the business.

Says Parsons: \u201cIt really comes down to being a cultural fit, and for me, I found that this business is doing something that I believe in.\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney