In this episode of Careers in Finance, we sit down with Ben Murray, known as The SaaS CFO, who shares his unique career journey from customer service in a mutual fund company to becoming a fractional CFO and entrepreneur.

Ben discusses his early experiences in finance, the transition from traditional industries like airlines and healthcare tech to the SaaS model, and the importance of understanding metrics and operations in finance. He emphasizes the need for attention to detail, the role of RevOps, and the current trends in SaaS, including the focus on efficiency and profitability. Ben also offers valuable advice for aspiring finance professionals.

Transcript

Anna Talerico (00:15)
Welcome back to another episode of Careers in Finance. I’m excited about this one. I’m with Ben Murray. You might know him as the SaaS CFO. That’s how I came to first know him. He runs the SaaS Academy and he’s also a fractional CFO and a coach.

And Ben, when I started this podcast back in February, you were one of the first people I thought of because I just love your career journey and now what you’re doing and helping so many founders and entrepreneurs and CFOs.

So, you know, I’m gonna just jump right in, but first, welcome to the podcast.

Ben Murray (00:49)
Thanks, Anna, great to be here.

Anna Talerico (00:51)
Okay, let’s do it. And I should say, am big fan of your content, always have, but I feel like I’ve been following you since the beginning and now you just got this big platform sharing fantastic courses, content, et cetera. But let’s go back to the beginning. First question, I always start with your origin story. Did you always know that you wanted to get into finance?

Ben Murray (01:12)
Great, yeah, if we go right back to the beginning, I’m a CU Boulder alum undergraduate and I studied international business, which was pretty generic. Looking back, I think I would have refocused on just say a finance and accounting major potentially. But yeah, I really didn’t know, enjoyed the finance courses, enjoyed the numbers, but honestly didn’t really know where that path would go until I got into the workforce.

Anna Talerico (01:39)
Yeah, so you get your degree not in finance and accounting and you get into the workforce. What was your first role?

Ben Murray (01:46)
So, my very first job out of college, I was customer service at a mutual fund company. So was downtown Chicago, great location. They probably don’t do that anymore, but downtown Chicago in the loop and at a mutual fund company. We were taking all the questions from the brokers, of course, the customers, the clients of the mutual fund company, answering questions about their account, redeeming money, things like that. So that was my very first job out of college. No.

Anna Talerico (02:11)
Okay, so not technically finance, but also get tickling here. Okay. And so when did you tell us a little bit about then that from that role, what was your first official like I’m in a finance role?

Ben Murray (02:24)
Yeah, definitely.

I worked for a couple of years out of college and then actually became a mainframe programmer, believe it or not. This is the late nineties and Y2K and all that stuff. You know, enjoyed the technical stuff. And at that point, I was working in the, that kind of in-house administration at Accenture Consulting or Anderson Consulting back in the day and seeing all these programmers going to these job sites. I’m like, that looks fun. So I got my degree, then became a mainframe programmer, did that like, Hey, this is great, but I think I need to refocus on finance. And so I went

back to school, got my MBA in finance and accounting, and then after that, that was my first position. I started working for an airline in their corporate FP&A group.

Anna Talerico (03:05)
Okay, so you went back and got your MBA. What was it that made you say, do you think, like, it’s finance for me? Because you hadn’t at that point had a finance role, right? And certainly, in the programming, that’s kind of an unlikely past. So what was it that made you say like, it’s finance?

Ben Murray (03:23)
I think for me, I like numbers, like spreadsheets, I like that data side to it. So, and I just, and you know, I’m a very practical person. So I was probably thinking back in the day, of like, well, I can probably get a job from this degree and this major. So yeah, very practical, almost too practical probably back in the day. And, you know, just enjoyed, I think the numbers aspect of it and spreadsheets. And so I was like, Hey, I need to refocus my career here and get into the, into the finance profession.

Anna Talerico (03:51)
Yeah, well it is practical and many CFOs, not all, but many are very practical people. But even this idea that you can always get a, there’s always a career there, I think something that people don’t realize is like, there’s so many paths in, there’s so many roles, whether you’re corporate finance, or you’re working on Wall Street, Main Street, whatever, but also, runs the world. I know they say Excel runs the world, I think finance runs the world. So you get your degree and your MBA,

You get a role, what was that first role at the airline company?

Ben Murray (04:23)
Yeah, so it was back early 2000s, back as America West Airlines and Phoenix headquarters or Tempe, actually, and was in their corporate FP&A group. So which was comprised of an analysis side. So doing like flight profitability and labor analysis, know, completely ad hoc stuff, fleet analysis. And then they had the traditional planning side. So that budgeting forecasting side. So worked in both sides of corporate FP&A. So started out

you know, that first true finance FP&A job in that airline setting.

Anna Talerico (04:54)
So I’m curious, I know you might have to dust off some cobwebs for this one, but of what you learned in school getting your MBA, what were you not prepared for in your first role?

Ben Murray (05:06)
So I remember, you know, some of that just the core fundamental financial concepts, so applicable, capital budgeting, discount cash flow analysis, so applicable. So just understanding those fundamentals really well. felt like didn’t really, you don’t need to be say like so advanced in some of these concepts, but it’s just understanding those fundamentals so you can apply it on the job. And also I thought I still remember this coming out of my MBA program, I thought, man, I know Excel really well. Like I did this for two years now

and in the MBA program that you get on the job and you’re in Excel for eight hours a day five days a week and that’s where you really that’s where I was like boy I have so much more to learn in Excel.

Anna Talerico (05:48)
I love that you point that out because I think that’s something, no matter what role you’re going to end up in in the beginning, if you just continue to focus on your Excel skills before you land that role, it’s only going to serve you well because it feels like an untapped well that you can learn.

Ben Murray (06:04)
Yeah, definitely. don’t think you have to be, I never say learn macros or VBA or things like that, but just those basic formulas, because the more you can leverage in Excel, man, that just helps your work life, you know, that you’re not just bogged down in formulas and just all the different spreadsheets. you know, that’s where you really truly learn Excel on the job.

Anna Talerico (06:24)
Yeah. So going back to that first role in FP&A at the airline, what was the day-to-day like? What was the typical day in life and like who was the team that you were interacting with too?

Ben Murray (06:35)
Yeah, so that team, so in that, so again, we had, I…

It’s hard to remember now, but you know, like we had, you know, CFO, VP of FP&A, director of FP&A, and actually directors for the planning side. So the forecasting, budgeting, that traditional stuff. And we had director of financial analysis because in an airline, you’ve got to do all the fleet analysis, labor analysis. Maybe you’re going through contract negotiations with the unions. So tons of analysis and also CapEx analysis, of course, CapEx intensive. So you had those two distinct, plus you could say there’s a little offshoot of the analysis team called Flight Prof. And that’s where I started.

And that’s where we’re slicing and dicing every single route that the airline flies and really doing, think about a product P&L, but taking it to the nth degree down to the route level. So if I fly Chicago to Denver, what was the profitability of that? So you have to do all the allocations down to almost net income. So that was my first thing in flight profitability. And that was, we weren’t on that, you know, that monthly close calendar. You know, of course, we closed the books and that fed the flight prof stuff, but a day in the life

was running those flight prof reports, presenting those to the executives, all the other teams, and out of that just a lot of analysis that people needed.

Anna Talerico (07:46)
Yeah, getting thrown all the way right into the deep end of the deep nitty gritty. Okay, so you did that for a while. Then what was your next role after that?

Ben Murray (07:57)
So then I went to the planning side, did the traditional forecasting budgeting, budget season, all that great stuff. And then actually moved then to a regional airline in the Phoenix area and same thing. So applying those same concepts at the major airline level down to the regional and continue that FP&A journey. And kind of same thing as supporting that regional airline. And then my next role switched industries.

Anna Talerico (08:23)
Okay, so I want to get to the industries, but before I do, those first few roles in FP&A , what do you think are some characteristics other than Excel Mastery that make somebody successful in those roles or stand out, you know, and on the job? And so those first few years, you know, being in an FP&A team, what makes a great team member?

Ben Murray (08:46)
I think

it’s cliche, but it’s attention to detail. It’s, you know, it’s, some of those basics of reviewing your work, making sure you’re catching those obvious errors, because I remember going into my boss’s office and, you know, printing out more stuff back then, but print out the reports, the variance reports or whatever it might be. And the red pen comes out and they’re slashing things up and changing, change the format, change this and that. So I think it was just the, having your own quality control process. So you catch most of that stuff and then what they’re changing, you’re learning in the

process. So you’re absorbing that. And also just taking notes. If you’re in a meeting, taking responsibility on you as at the analyst level, not relying on your boss to say, come out of the meeting and say, hey, what should I do? Well, having an idea, taking those notes, so being proactive. So I think it gets back to some of the basics of just detail orientation and being a self-starter.

Anna Talerico (09:38)
Yeah, self-starter, that’s, I would say, theme on careers and finance that we hear from everybody. it’s like, think sometimes people just need to hear that to remember, right, can be a self-starter, I can take that, proactive. And the attention to detail thing’s so interesting because…

after all of these conversations I’ve been having through the podcast, I think you either need to be a natural at that or you need to just really care. You need to think about that. Even if it’s not natural, you’ve got to really care about the attention to detail because otherwise I think it just damages your credibility if people are constantly finding errors.

Ben Murray (10:12)
Yeah, that eventually you’ll, it just won’t. think your FP&A career will be short if you just, you’re just not capturing those details or someone else sees those and you make those corrections. If you’re making that mistake over and over, which is probably not any profession, but you just have to be like you said, a natural. That’s just part of how you think or

Anna Talerico (10:17)
Yeah.

Ben Murray (10:32)
you’re making that extra effort. Just review your work. And I had one boss early on who said, hey, before you come to me with questions, this was in the programming world, make sure you’ve done your homework. Don’t just come to me with every single question unprepared.

Anna Talerico (10:46)
Yeah, right? Just, and that’s good advice for anybody in any role in any industry. Come also maybe thinking through the solutions before it’s just asking yourself, surfacing the problem. It’s the same thing, right? Okay, so you do this for a while. You’re in airline, a couple different airlines, then you switch industries. What did you switch into and what was that role?

Ben Murray (11:05)
Yeah. So we were kind of at that journey of like, kids are coming, all that stuff, family life. And so we moved actually back to Iowa and got my first position. still an FP&A and in a healthcare tech company. So was McKesson. So they’re more known as big for distribution and medical and drug distribution, but they also had a big tech division, a couple billion dollar tech division. they had business units kind of scattered throughout the country and they needed an FP&A analyst, FP&A analyst, basically you embed with that business unit and support the general manager.

Anna Talerico (11:35)
So what was that, how was it similar? I’m sure there was a lot of similarities, right? But then how is it different? Like going to, wasn’t a startup, but it was a different industry, different kind of structure. How is it different?

Ben Murray (11:47)
So lot of the same things, the same with FP&A stuff. So forecasting, variance analysis, general ad hoc support, but learning a new industry, learning the tech model that back then it was the on-premise software model, not SaaS as we know it today. So learning that model, which was very different because at an airline we’re very capital intensive. Of course, there’s a ton of labor, very operationally complex, but you go to now a software company and it was just, the P &L was much easier to understand. We have a lot of people, maybe contractors,

some, some training, but it was, I guess, I’d say more complex on the strategic side of now, with airline, you swipe your credit card, book the flight, we really didn’t look at, how do we generate more sales, at least in the FP&A group? But now in the software world, it’s like, yeah, we’ve got to sell software, we’ve got to look at pipelines and funnels. So the business model was much different.

Anna Talerico (12:41)
And did you kind of have some familiarity with things like, you know, funnel models and pipeline and those familiar concepts to you or was it you were kind of like, this is a little bit of a foreign language now?

Ben Murray (12:52)
Was coming out of the airline world. We’re not talking pipelines and maybe in the revenue management teams today they are, but yeah, coming into the software, no brand, brand new terminology, brand new business model to learn.

Anna Talerico (13:03)
Yeah. And do you just kind of just get thrown in and you’re just learning it as you go? Or did you, you know, how did you kind of make sure you felt confident?

Ben Murray (13:11)
In that role, yeah, you’re embedded with the executive team supporting the general manager. So you’re almost like a little mini CFO. could say head of finance supporting that group. So you’re just learning. You’re in the executive meetings. So you just kind of learn on the job.

Plus, I think, you know, just started researching then get into software and just started, you know, Googling the different metrics, the terms. And that’s where I also, think I learned a lot just from going to the internet because a lot of the stuff back in the two thousands, you know, we weren’t talking say,

Anna Talerico (13:37)
Yeah.

Ben Murray (13:41)
payback for an on-premise software company. We’re talking about margins and margins by revenue stream, but not some of that common SaaS metric terminology that we see today. So really my learning was just operationally inside the company, but also self-educating through the internet.

Anna Talerico (13:57)
Yeah, again, being proactive and taking things into your own hands, I’m sure. So when did you take us from that first role, is healthcare and software, when did you get into SaaS? What was that first role?

Ben Murray (14:11)
So it wasn’t until, so worked for a couple more software companies, but technically on-premise or even that first role we were switching, know, but this is going back to, all right, on-prem, now we’re calling ASP or application service provider was still on-premise, but now a subscription model. And I still remember my boss saying, Ben,

we need to create a subscription model for the software. That was in the 2000s. So it was a couple of roles later until I worked for a company, kind of moved around and actually made our way back to Iowa. And so a company, a local company, software company that had been in business 30 plus years, and they were on-prem, but switching to the cloud and going to that cloud infrastructure. So that was my first, that was probably in the, I don’t know, was 2014, 15, something like that.

Anna Talerico (14:34)
Yeah.

Okay, so again, dusting off some cobwebs maybe, but I’m curious, I won’t ask you about switching to SaaS, because SaaS, we’re gonna talk about that, but this idea of some kind of business transformation was really what it was, right? Going from on-prem to subscription, whether it’s installed or not. What were some of the things going through that transition that were hardest

for the business and hardest from your sort of vantage point of trying to work with the business through that? I’m just curious, like what kinds of obstacles or friction was there?

Ben Murray (15:33)
Yeah, transitioning and there’s still a lot of on-prem companies out there, but really I remember

you know, as you go through that on-prem to like subscription transition, maybe it’s still on-premise hosted by them, hosted by you until it got to the cloud. But just really it’s like, okay, if we’re not going to charge say 200,000 upfront for a perpetual license and it’s going to be 50,000 a year now, well, that completely changes the dynamics, you know, and then you have to look at your cogs and like, well, what’s my ongoing cost to now deliver on this $50,000 of annual revenue? And that was really hard. I remember that the first time…

in the healthcare tech setting, boy, it’s like, well, what expenses do we need to support this revenue? How can I price this? So it’s just a complete unknown. And, of course, with software pricing, it’s a lot of trial and error. And you do, I mean, it’s gotta be trial and error until you figure out that profitable model.

Anna Talerico (16:23)
Yeah. So what point did you were you did you ever land at like a purely true SaaS the way we think of it now company like and then of course the next question is when did you become a SaaS CFO? So take us through a little bit of that, you know from the first time of working with the company as they were going through that transition to like now fully SaaS and you start to say there’s a there’s a there’s a lot of education that needs to happen here for the market.

Ben Murray (16:37)
Yeah.

Yeah, we went, you know, was in-house CFO at the software company that was going through that transition. So we still had on-prem, we had on-prem hosted, and then we, we did then eventually we tried to move everyone to the cloud. that true SaaS subscription model. And so that’s, we’re also doing, and that was a CFO in that process and that’s set for seven years in that transition. And again, kind of, I think starting that role in 20, I don’t know, 13, 14 and still SaaS metrics, not a big thing yet.

So again, like looking to the internet, seeing those blog posts, because that’s where you were learning those SAS metrics. And that’s where then I started incorporating those into my package, into my reporting. So I was in that transition to the cloud and to a true SAS company. And then had another SAS role after that. And then that’s when then after that went out on my own.

Anna Talerico (17:39)
Okay, so I know this is like such a cliche question, but I have to ask, what do you think, you know, somebody who’s in finance, even FP&A or sitting in a CFO seat, any sort of any role in that finance function internally

that’s not a SaaS company. What do you think the things are that they don’t realize about SaaS? Because I think some people will say like, it’s like the same, you know? And I think, and I know this is what you spend all of your time on right now, but just like high level, what do you think is the people don’t realize about SaaS and finance and metrics and things like that?

Ben Murray (18:13)
Yeah, I think with SAS, I think maybe you can.

Maybe you think you can just manage the business with financial statements. Of course, that’s a key component to it, but there’s just so much going on underneath the hood of your financials in a SaaS company that really tell the economics. Like gross profit is one, maybe even as one, but there’s so many things because you’re investing so much in sales and marketing, for example, you need ROI on that. So it’s, it’s, it’s, there’s this journey, you know, now as a fractional CFO, take SaaS companies through to get them to those metrics.

But each industry is different. And really, with SAS, you have to speak that language of SAS to truly understand all the moving pieces going on underneath the statements.

Anna Talerico (18:57)
Yeah, for sure. So, at some point, I know when I think I first started reading your content, you were still working and you were running the SaaS CFO. Did you ever think about yourself as an entrepreneur before that? Were you thinking there’s gonna be an entrepreneurial journey for me professionally at some point?

Ben Murray (19:17)
Not at all really so I started my blog, so it started 2016. You know, I actually grabbed the domain the budget CFO dot com and did that I’m like, my gosh, that’s so boring. No one’s gonna find this and sassy fo dot com was taken. So I’m like, well, what about this sassy fo dot com because I was filing like the points guy a travel news site, all that stuff and that domain was open so, you know in 2016 started that but

and no, would never have thought I’d be doing what I do today in 2016.

Anna Talerico (19:48)
Yeah. So was it, were you just feeling like I want to write about the stuff I’m learning and share with everybody else and teach it because there’s not enough good content out? Or what was like, do you think your motivation?

Ben Murray (19:58)
Yeah, it was, you know, I remember it like back in the day with Twitter, you know, which was still maybe not, you know.

I think it was late 2000, maybe Twitter was founded, you know, Twitter account, all that stuff and people like sharing other content. like, I could share other people’s content, but that’s kind of boring. Why don’t I just share my stuff? And I remember back from my programming days, you know, with these, these experienced veteran programmers, they never start from scratch. And this was back in the day of the hard diskettes, you know, so they these hard diskettes that they carry from job site to job site. They never start coding from scratch, which makes sense. And just like FP&A, we love templates and models

Anna Talerico (20:24)
Yeah.

Ben Murray (20:33)
and rarely do we start from scratch. So I’m like, I could just start posting my templates, my forecast models, because people could use those, adopt those, modify them. And that was the whole goal of just sharing those freely, sharing what I’m learning in these posts.

Anna Talerico (20:47)
Yeah, your content is amazing, but your templates are so valuable. So at what point were you doing that? You’ve got your full-time, regular day job, too. At what point did you say, I’m all in on the SAS CFO and SAS Academy? Tell us a little bit about that transition.

Ben Murray (21:05)
Yeah, it was hard because my newsletter was growing through those downloads. So I started at zero, zero website visitors, zero subscribers, and now 75,000 today. But it was just growing and just the SaaS space was blowing up. And it’s like, wow.

And founders would reach out to me via my blog, hey, can you do a forecast model for me? Can you do this for me? And then an investment bank reached out, hey, can you train my analysts? So it just seemed like there was a ton of. It started the Academy in 2019

but just seems like there was a ton of opportunity. It’s one of those things like I’ll never fully realize the potential of what I’m doing there if I don’t go full-time.

Anna Talerico (21:43)
Yeah, yeah. And there you were, an entrepreneur, and you didn’t even necessarily kind of think that that’s the journey you were starting on.

Ben Murray (21:50)
Totally accidental. The whole SaaS CFO brand now was just totally, yeah, just like, I’ll grab that domain. And now it’s created the, now it is the brand today.

Anna Talerico (22:00)
Yeah, yeah, I love it. today, obviously, you’ve got the courses, you’re doing training, you’ve got incredible content in your newsletters, but a part of what you’re doing is consulting and advising, fractional work. From your seat, doing that across lots of different businesses, what do you think are some of the things that you see that are real soft spots that you need to help point out or shore up for companies or for finance leaders?

Ben Murray (22:29)
Yeah, on the fractional CFO side, I help companies with a couple million in revenue up to say 15 and 20. That’s the sweet spot coaching. Could be a couple million, 100 million in revenue, but they’re common themes, especially in the early stage. One is accounting, right? chart, you know, just chart of accounts, GL structure. And I say, you have to satisfy your chart of accounts because

you need that nice looking SAS P&L. We have a very specific format for a P&L within the SAS world. And that provides so much information there. And that also helps you then more easily calculate SAS metrics. So always reviewing their accounting foundation. Do they have their revenue streams? Are they clear and distinctive? COGS versus OPEX, a cost center structure? So that comes up over and over. And then from there, then it’s building. All right, let’s build the SAS P&L, build the forecast, build the metrics.

Anna Talerico (23:15)
Yeah. And then do you see anything, trend-wise, going on that our own

people’s minds as it relates to in SaaS, is there anything? I mean, obviously we’ve had some volatility and things are different right now, anything, one that comes to mind that’s really obviously is efficiency, the focus on efficiency, right? I think there’s just these fundamentals of SaaS businesses, over the last couple years, I think everybody has woken up to this idea that number one, the businesses can be efficient and they need to be run efficiently. But are there any other trends or themes that you see like that out there?

Ben Murray (23:49)
Yeah, I, the big,

I mean, a couple is that you have to have a path to profitability or sustainability, help bootstrap founders, VC-funded founders. And it’s like, you’ve got to do that scenario planning, the forecasting to have that path because yeah, the market is different today for capital. That’s like, you don’t want to get stuck there. You don’t want to get caught where you’re running out of cash and then you’re a little bit more desperate. So, always have that in place, always. And now around the pricing models, usage-based, and just are we going, because usage-based

became very popular. And then now I’ve had some people like, hey, we’re tired of the volatility of usage-based. We’re going back to subscription. And now AI, right? All these AI companies and now AI-based revenue. Now, is that going to be usage kind of, or is that just like usage-based revenue? Is it something different as outcome-based revenue, like kind of Salesforce announced? And that could be a different revenue category and a different way we look at that. And all the changing in the pricing models and SAS, that affects now all the SAS metrics, how we calculate go-to-market efficiency,

how we calculate retention schedules. So that’s kind of now muddying the picture. And then the question today, well, what truly is ARR? What truly is annual recurring revenue? And what can we take credit for?

Anna Talerico (25:03)
Yeah.

Yes, that’s a funny one because sometimes I look at companies and I’m like, that’s not recurring. We’re calling it AR. Yeah, I know. There’s a lot of nuance there for sure. But those are really good ones to point out. It just all does because there is a lot of volatility right now just with usage-based pricing and the trends and the sort of rubber band back to your point and AI and are we monetizing AI that we’re investing in or not? think these are, is a time of a lot of change for sure. Not always easy things to sort through and land.

Ben Murray (25:09)
Yeah.

Anna Talerico (25:34)
Yeah, when you are interacting with, and even as your role, actually, I was gonna say, when you’re interacting with companies and you’re doing your fractional work and your coaching, but even when you were CFO, what do you think are some characteristics of the best finance professionals? What are your common themes when you say, you’ve gotta have this to be really good?

Ben Murray (25:56)
I think I learned this from the airline industry, which is very operational, right? You, you have to, I think to be successful in finance, FP&A and ACFO, you have to understand the operations of the business. You just have to, you have to be out there understanding it. And same thing for software. It really would probably any, any industry you have to be out there. And especially as a SaaS CFO, it relationship building is so important. That was the same thing in the airlines getting to understand their business, kind of being in their business, but not too much, you know, where they take a little offense, but sometimes

you have to. So I think operationally, you have to be there. And now CFOs, right, you really have to influence. The tech stack is becoming more complex internally, how we operate a SaaS company. So you have to be at that table. And now you have to be that data steward too, because we’re trying to now connect all these data points together. And really, you have to sit there. It’s not just your IT leader. It’s not just your CRO, but the CFO has to be there as well. So I think data is huge. You’ve got to be involved. So I think it’s the operational piece and also just now influence

and also presenting the right data. Don’t overwhelm. What’s important for my executive leadership team to know? What’s important for the board to know? And of course, here’s all the appendices. So I think it’s being able to distill and present the right data at the right time as well.

Anna Talerico (27:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, the storytelling, right? It’s so in the narrative. Yeah, I think that’s so important.

I think I see more and more data living under finance under the CFO as a function. And I think that’s really important because it’s a single source of truth that the whole company operates from versus, you know, all the functions having different sources that they’re pulling from. But what about that kind of brings me to rev ops, which I’m sure you see a lot of this role, which is relatively new, but now seemingly everywhere. How do you think about the rev ops role? What should rev ops really be focused on? And, you know, does it does it really belong under fine?

I’m just curious what your thoughts are there.

Ben Murray (27:47)
Yeah, now rev ops. of course, well, what does rev ops really mean? What’s that role in that company? But yeah, that’s now a huge thing, definitely within SaaS and software. So I think you see a couple things. Some people are like, it should be under the CFO. Some people would say it’s still under kind of the CRO or VPS sales and marketing. So, you know, I can see both cases because rev ops a lot of data. And I think for CFOs, we have to understand that top funnel.

And that’s where I, as a CFO, spend a lot of my time is in that go-to-market motion sales and marketing. So I need to understand what’s important to my VP of sales, my VP of marketing, my CRO and top of funnel. What are those conversion points? What’s the lead funnel? What’s the opportunity funnel? And I’m not telling them what to do there, but I needed to know, I need to understand. And sometimes in FP&A we’re tasked with, Ben, validate that pipeline. You’ll crunch that data, pull it out of Salesforce, HubSpot, whatever, and just make sure you know that

we have good data and we’re not missing anything because we’re committing to numbers in the forecast committing to the board. So I think, yeah, you spend a lot of time in the rev ops area.

Anna Talerico (28:51)
Yeah, and I think it was something you mentioned reminds me too, a lot of times when I’m first talking to a company, SaaS company,

I need to see the funnel model or build it or have them build it because I think some people don’t realize that in SaaS. No matter what, if it’s different types of businesses, different types of models within SaaS, but you’ve got to have a funnel model and you’ve got to track it and make sure that your assumptions are correct, historicals and go forward and where in the funnel are we not hitting and where are we exceeding things like that. To me, so much about understanding a business comes back to that funnel model.

Ben Murray (29:28)
Yeah, I need to understand what’s the go-to-market motion? Is it inbound, outbound, PLG, SLG, community-led, know, whatever, you know, so many XLG motions that I need to understand what’s going on there because we’re putting resources, we’re putting dollars, people, contractors into that, and that’s a big spend for SaaS companies. So really need to understand that well. And you think, it’s one of those things like, that should be easy, just like SaaS metrics, but

the data is messy. We’re not tracking the right data. Our systems aren’t set up correctly. So just a crucial role.

Anna Talerico (29:58)
Yeah, and I think especially now, more and more you see the companies that they have some PLG, they have some SLG, they’ve got so many different motions. How do you kind of bring those into a cohesive funnel story when they’re all quite different and have different, know, sort of like mini funnels within the big funnel too, and these things all impact each other. Yeah, this is fun stuff for sure.

So, Ben, thank you for doing this. I, know, one of the things I love about careers and finance is showing there’s so many different paths in and so many different ways that our career journeys evolve. you you didn’t start off with a finance degree. You had, you went and had, you know, career experience before you decided to go get your MBA and now just unexpected, you know, from software, well, airline to software to SaaS and now entrepreneur with this incredible brand that is just doing such great educational work.

What advice would you give to somebody starting out who says that’s an interesting path for me? Like what do you know, what do you think that they need to know?

Ben Murray (31:01)
I think getting back to the practical side is like what you know, first it’s like what’s interesting to you. And sometimes, like, I was very practical. Well, hey, the jobs are over here. Let me go do that. But I have a passion for numbers, for data, for spreadsheets, for forecasting. I love that stuff. And that just that helps you. So I think…

just that passion is gonna help you. I think explore those. Coming out of undergrad, it’s like, you feel like, I’m so old, I’m out of undergrad. But you it’s like, you’re just starting your journey where it’s like, go explore, go find things. And like I did, I used grad school to refocus my career. But I do think at some point you do have to find an industry. Otherwise, it’s just gonna be hard. Like say you’re 10, 15 years into your career, just like me say, if I was in airline software, I wanna get into manufacturing, that’s probably gonna be pretty tough.

So I think at some point you do have to think, I really like this industry. Maybe the role will change. But that’s, I think, where you’ll get that career growth.

Anna Talerico (31:59)
Nice, great advice, great advice. And great conversation, Ben. And I know everybody can find you at The SAAS CFO, the best domain ever, super easy to find you. And thank you so much for sharing your career journey and being on the podcast.

Ben Murray (32:15)
Yeah, thanks, Anna. It’s great being here.