Driving agency growth depends on a strong leadership team and that includes having a CFO who is deeply embedded within the business. Or at least that’s the way it should be. Despite this being a role that is central to agency success, conversations about what makes for a good CFO, including skillset and behaviour, gets relatively little airtime in our industry press. Ironically that changes when things go wrong, and then the CFO becomes a useful scapegoat, sometimes even finding themselves in the glare of negative publicity defending company performance and where the numbers “went wrong”.

In this episode of Waypointers, we shine a light on the value that a strong CFO can bring to any ambitious agency. Adrian Talbot, CFO at the global marketing business Miroma, is a highly experienced practitioner who believes in getting involved with every aspect of the business.

In this conversation with Waypoint partner, Matt Lacey, Adrian talks about how he’s adapted the CFO role in his image, making it a very “human centred” one. That has meant getting involved in parts of the business where a CFO might often find themselves “warned away” from or where they’d simply not think to look. In the same way that creatives might traditionally have been kept away from clients for fear of what they might say or do, CFOs may have to contend with similar attitudes.

But by building firm ties across the agencies he’s worked at over the years, with leadership teams, staff and clients, Adrian has carved out a much more holistic CFO role.

Numbers are nothing to be afraid of

A surprising number of business leaders fear numbers. They hope that by ignoring them they’ll go away, or at least that’s been Adrian’s experience. He’s made it his mission to overcome that fear and reluctance through a mix of formal training and coaching and making sure that the finance function is central to the day-to-day operation of the business, not a department that’s “confined to a far corner of the office”.

Building relationships for difficult times

Adrian explains how he works to build relationships with clients as soon as a pitch has been won.  In too many businesses, the finance department is kept at arm’s length from clients, only to be brought in when things get tricky and a tough negotiation in on the cards. By getting to know a client’s leadership team and finance function from day one, any tricky future conversations will be so much easier to navigate.

The finance lead you need at different growth stages

It might feel like a stretch from a cost perspective, but even when you’re in start-up phase, Adrian’s advice is to hire the finance person who can take you on the growth journey you’ve set out. Someone who has the skillset and experience to help you scale. It also needs to be someone the agency CEO specifically and the leadership team more broadly have great chemistry with, someone they genuinely feel they can partner with and involve deeply in every part of the business.

For more insight how you should be thinking about the finance role in your agency business, wherever you are in your growth journey, select the Waypointers link to hear Adrian’s thoughts on a topic that really doesn’t get the airtime it deserves.