Beyond the P&L: What Construction CFOs Really Need to Watch | Josh Bohlke

Hi, thank you, Rishi.

just the the amount of detail involved in it. from a lending side everything is very theoretical. you know, and it it's it's really interesting moving into kind of the behind the scenes and just how many levers there are. you obviously as a as a lender you understand statements of cash flow and what all the levers actually are, but then even further than that. all the levers that are behind those you know those metrics. And so just understanding that it's not it's way simpler to say from a lender's perspective and way harder to do on the construction side.

Yep. yeah. it's it's it's really interesting and and you do view risk very differently. I mean simple things, you know. just from the safety component to all the ins and outs of the insurance policies and all the things that can go wrong there. y you just don't think about those in in the commercial lending space. You think of the big ones, but Yeah, as as you dive in and and you know, director's policies and and just all the risk factors that go into running a a business of this scale. And and frankly a an industry that that is is higher risk from a just a personal safety component as well and and all the factors there.

So it's it's definitely a lot different on this side of the desk, that's for sure.

yeah, we we don't do a lot of work with subcontractors. we do it often, but they're generally smaller projects. So it's typically you know we'll do excavation, things like that. but we don't have we don't have a lot of subcontractors doing big portions of our work on site. so w we don't track them a ton. Our vendors You know, depending on the size and how instrumental they are. So for example, we'll get large material suppliers on big jobs and we will we will quite often, you know, work with them directly. They tend to be larger national firms, so it's not as not as big of a deal.

We've had a couple of vendors go out of business in the middle of projects, some smaller subcontractors and and it you know We we were able to recover from that pretty quickly. so nothing detrimental, but yeah, this is a this is an industry where where bad things can happen and you need to be on your toes and and you need to be betting the folks that you're working with to the best of your ability.

You know, I think I alluded to it a little bit talking about the details, but I'm gonna say the WIP You know, when you look at a WIP on a reviewed financial statement, it it that makes sense. When you're calculating it, you're looking at it on a job by job basis and it's you know, not just those top twenty jobs, you have hundreds of jobs sometimes. and and the ins and outs of the over under billing and and how you get there and my gosh, you know This one was wrong last month because this invoice was sitting out there and didn't get approved and just all the little nuances of the WIP, that was probably the biggest wow moment where it was like this is not as easy as it looks from from the lender side of the desk.

It it absolutely is. It it really encompasses everything and it's it's not a science either. It's way more of an art than than I had

thought. You know, it seemed pretty black and white sitting from the the lender's chair, but when you're digging into it, there's there's a little art to it for sure.

Absolutely. Yep. And and you know, just even the projected cost. I mean, it all centers around your projected cost. And if your projected costs are wrong, all of it's wrong. And, you know, from from my chair, I'm counting on the field guys to make sure that they're actually, you know, looking at their their productivity tracking. they they know exactly where they're at on the job and and not doing free work, for example. and you're putting a lot of faith in them for a document that realistically your name goes on and you're delivering to the lenders and to the bonding companies and that kind of thing.

So it's it's interesting for sure.

I kinda look at leading and lagging indicators. So

for the leading indicators, it's your backlog. That's gonna tell ya, you know how how did you finish the year? What kind of what kind of work have you estimated and bid and what what's sitting there for next year? If you even if you end the year with a with a million dollar net profit, but you have five hundred thousand in backlog, I to me that wasn't a successful year 'cause you you you really focused on the the execution side but really dropped the ball on the business development side. so you you gotta have a solid backlog at the end of the year. And then obviously your GP. where did the GPs come out?

And i if if I know what our GP is, I can tell you pretty immediately whether or not we made money without even looking at the bottom line. So your GP has to be in a certain spot. I I think, you know, we may talk about this in some of the other questions here, but looking at your indirect costs and and how large those were relative to direct costs and relative to revenue and so there there's a few metrics in there but I'm I'm gonna say backlog and GP so you know how you you really ended the year and then how you're set up for next year as well.

I would say yes in some ways. in some ways it's pretty similar. I mean I would think that our our GPs tend to be pretty close to the same. They're looking at the same backlog and and work in progress. When it comes to estimating, I think that there's a lot of gotchas in the electrical world just because there's literally thousands of components that that we have. you know, different things from a material takeoff perspective when you're doing your estimate. I think, you know, and and possibly, you know, a a mechanical contractor is gonna say the same thing, you know, but typically we like to think of electrical as as there's just a lot more lot more inputs, a a lot more a a lot larger material schedule and and a lot to consider in the takeoff. that would maybe be the one differentiator. but I mean overall I think f from a financial perspective it's pretty similar.

I I probably in the indirect costs I've seen, you know, overhead be inflated, indirect costs be non existent, or you know, they they try to put not enough in the job or too much in the jobs, and so I think the biggest thing though is When you're looking at your percentage of completion, one thing that we've been able to do, we've we've tracked productivity pretty tightly and we we've got some systems in place for that. So when I'm looking at jobs, I'm looking at percentage of completion based on man hours, quantity installed, and cost, you know, percentage of complete based on cost.

And when you align those three things, you really get some decent answers there. for example, if you are ninety percent of the way complete on cost and forty percent of the way complete on labor hours and quantity, somebody overspent somewhere or you know, assuming there's not a huge material purchase that's in there, yeah, big you know, switch gear or something like that that's that's causing that, but i if it's just overspending the cost, so I think looking at it from three or four different angles, if if you don't have those that that multi dimensional look, I think it's it's really easy to lose track of where you are.

And that's that's probably the biggest piece is is making assumptions, the field, the PM, not knowing exactly where they are on the job. that that's where you that last ten percent of the job you see a ton of fade really quick. so

That's probably the biggest area.

you know, I can very high level. we're we're basically rolling up another sister company into into into ours and it's it's been for various reasons it's it's had to be on a very shortened time frame and so it's it's been interesting. You know, thankfully we just went through a reconversion of spectrum about two years ago and And you know, stayed pretty fresh and current on that, in in various ways and and so it's obviously never as smooth as you want it to be, but given our time frame I think it's it's gone very well and spent a lot of time over there and you know, 'cause you're not just meshing financials, you're messing meshing cultures and people and there's all all kinds of elements that go into that and it it takes some you know, pretty serious leadership to walk through that.

So it it's overall I would say it's been very positive.

Yeah, it I think the biggest thing that I would caution folks on is whatever ERP you're using. if there's built-in tax tables, I would highly recommend visiting with your CPA. Making sure your CPA is is reviewing those and then test your software. Make sure that the software is doing what it's supposed to. it is very easy to lose trust with your employees if there's a hitch in there or something's wrong. Go the extra step, put in some effort to test that, analyze it, make sure all of your taxes, this is on payroll specifically, make sure that that things are coming out appropriately and and if there are issues, you know, as we did, you know, face and and make the correction and and that's the the best thing you can do. but yeah, I I would highly recommend whatever ERP you're using to double check the tax tables.

Don't don't take anybody's word for it. make sure that those are set up correctly. So

You do. And I think the other it's also depends on your state. It's really helpful to understand your state

tax laws. We're right on a border between Washington and Oregon and we have a lot of jobs in both. And

we have folks that live in Oregon that work in Washington and folks that live in W Washington and work in Oregon. Understanding the reciprocity, there's a lot that goes into it and especially when you get states with you know, several layers of of payroll taxes and and, you know, various funds and and things that are added to the paychecks, or deducted from the paychecks, it it can get incredibly complicated. And, you know, you you get into the nuances of, well, they were there for an hour. Does that count? Do we have to is it a half a day? Is it a full day? you know, and and there's there's a lot to think about there and and you know we We wanna do it right.

We we don't wanna get, you know, a year down the road and have a entity audit us and say, you owe seventy five thousand dollars 'cause you did this wrong and and so we spend a lot of time with our CPA making sure that those are correct.

Yeah, well we just redid it two years ago and so we we learned a lot through that. There's probably a few things we would do differently. It it's pretty clean. One of the things that we focused on is, you know, we took our chart of accounts from about five or six pages down to two. you know, and it's There's so many modules within the system to analyze the business from different angles if it's being maintained appropriately. The a lot of business owners fall into the trap of trying to analyze their entire business from the PL, and so they have a GL for everything.

And you don't want to do that. Make it clean. we have, you know, direct costs and every direct cost GL starts with job, every indirect cost starts with ind you know and and chunk up your your PL to to and to look at your your GP before indirect cost after indirect costs breaking it up like that is extremely advantageous for us for analyzing and comparing our metrics to industry benchmarks NECA NECA averages And and so that that's been really helpful for us. if we had it to do over again, you know, just minor things probably. when it comes to naming conventions, you know, c vendor codes, employee codes, there's probably some ways that we could have simplified it a little bit. and now we've experienced some growth since we did the implementation. we moved into using cost centers and department codes and there was a lot of that stuff

that wasn't set up appropriately when we first started because it was it was new to us, but now that we've now that we've had the use case for it, it's it's like, okay, that makes sense. I know why that's there and and so I I can imagine you know being a smaller company and and not really having a clear grasp on what those are for and and running into a lot of Just messiness with that. So

Jeez. Yeah, that's crazy.

Yeah, and and again, if it's not maintained appropriately, that stuff can hide and it's it's really hard to find and especially for the owner. They shouldn't be in the minutia of the financials. And so, you know, it it's it's one area that a lot of smaller companies try to skip

on and it's maybe one of the last places that you want to skip.

well, coming from the banking world and I'm sure my my bonding surety colleagues would say the same thing, not enough small business owners focus on their balance sheet.

your working capital, are you are you growing equity? Are you taking all the the equity out in distributions? the the company has to be a living, breathing organism on its own. And it it needs to grow just like anything else. And the way it grows is is through retained earnings and and through its balance sheet. If you're not paying attention to that, you're missing a big chunk of the health of your business. Profitability is great,

yep. you know, cash flow is how the bills get paid, but To me, the balance sheet is your report.

So you really don't know how you're doing if if if if you're not looking at the balance sheet.

It is.

Yeah, exactly. And you know, you you get into these really nerdy topics like working capital and current ratios and and leverage ratios and all of that. And it it's nerdy, but the funny thing is, is that everybody who is you know, bonding your jobs, everybody who's providing you with lines of credit or loans to help you grow. They're looking at those numbers. And so if they're looking at and you're not, it probably you're either really lucky or that's why you're possibly struggling to to get bonded, to get loans. so it it's the business owner really needs to understand that balance sheet and what it's for and and what it's telling you.

Just from my days as a lender, it's really easy for me to look at a a balance sheet, for example, because that's that tends to be where the most mistakes happen. you'll notice

that there'll be a lot of negative balances on your liabilities. It's it's really easy to do because of double entry accounting. your debits and credits and they're not hitting the right things. And it's I I'm gonna not gonna pick on QuickBooks here, but it's really easy to do in QuickBooks as well, because it kind of lets you do anything. And so if if you're not looking at that correctly, you'll immediately see negative balances, you're not reconciling your GLs. we reconcile every GL every month, balance sheet on the balance sheet and and so that's an immediate tell that the data's not clean. you know if you see wide swings in certain ledgers, general ledgers from month to month.

You know, one month this general ledger looks like a monthly expense, but you'll see 40,000 one month and and zero the next and eighty thousand the next month. Somebody's not being consistent with how they're reporting certain transactions or it it's really easy to spot but That's that's kind of surface level, Rishi. And then it you know, it it goes from there. not saying that we need to audit every aspect of our business all the time, but I see a lot of mistakes being made in payroll and a lot of mistakes being made in liabilities. Those tend to be those tend to be the biggest.

That's a great example. Yeah, or you know, and we see that a lot, and the worst part about that is if a PM knows that that job is active and he can put his time to it and not on his job, you're getting horrible data. You may be losing money on a job. They're throwing it in this job that nobody's looking at because it should be closed. so and and the same goes for POs too. We have a lot of you know, we find that quite frequently in our audits. We find POs that have been open for, you know, three, four months and and which that can happen sometimes and those can be completely valid, but they'll be open with, you know, a dollar or two left on And so you gotta clean those

up.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's it can it can get daunting and it can become a monster if you're not watching it. You know, I've seen AR aging reports, you know, not not marking things as paid and stuff sitting on there and and maybe it was a credit, maybe it needed to wash out somewhere. and and so I've seen AR aging reports that are forty five pages long and

I mean, unless you're just not paying your bills it shouldn't be that long. So

It it really is. And you know, especially with these big ERPs, because stuff can hide and you can not see

it. yeah, it's it it's a big i big beast that requires constant maintenance for sure.

I could probably make an argument for any point in time.

you know, if it's if it's been let's just take an example of where we were. I'm just gonna lay it out like that. We'd been using Spectrum for ten years and we we got some initial training from from from Trimble and I I'm guessing that was fairly decent training. We we were using the system mostly how it's supposed to work. but it was it was a behemoth. And, you know, like a lot of firms, there had been some turnover in the accounting department and you had a lot of hands in it. At that point in time, we even had our project team in it. So we had PEs, multiple PEs coming in and out working on touching SOVs and budgets and and I I would say if you're to the point where you can't trust the data in your system, it's time to do a reconversion.

And we invested heavily into that reconversion. but I can tell you now, we're able to identify problems in weeks versus months. And it makes a huge

difference. I mean it it's I would say that we've probably recouped our money. three or four times over just in the the fade that hasn't happened because we're able to identify issues sooner.

Yeah, and I I'm gonna say that I I was not part of the decision making process for that. They were they had just kicked off the reconversion when I came on. so I was not part of that decision making process. I can tell you that Spectrum is a it it it has its place. It is it seems to work for us pretty well. I will one of the positives of viewpoint spectrum is the back end is incredibly intuitive. we've effectively automated our financial reporting. and so that has been very helpful for us. I'm gonna say that I've used a lot of different ERP systems. I've used ERP systems that are still on the DOS green screen and in other industries not in not in construction but in other industries and I I think they all have their pluses and minuses.

And at the

end of the day, you know, using what you're used to. there's there can be significant cost savings just tweaking, you know, the the little things that need to be tweaked and and but I you're absolutely right. Technology is evolving very rapidly. integrations are critical. All of our software we want everything to tie together as much as possible and some are easier than others and so there there's nuances there that somebody has to factor in when when they're looking at their ERP. But yeah, I I mean to some extent they none of are perfect, right?

but just finding what you're comfortable with I think is a big part of it.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah. there there's some there's definitely some benefit to having, like you say, three decades of you know, tweaking and reprogramming. but there's also within that 30 years a lot of bolt-ons and you know, different functionality that's been added and sometimes it works well and sometimes it doesn't. But yeah, I I I don't know that I'm I haven't used a lot of the other ones out there, so I don't know if I'm the best one to opine on on which one is best. I can I can tell you that w the way more important factor is whatever you're using. Make sure you're using it correctly and make sure the numbers

are telling you what what it needs to tell ya.

well we are waiting right now simply due to time constraints from some of the other activities we have going on. but I've I've talked to several folks out there. we have automated payroll for the most part. that is what we've done there is we also use Procore for our time tracking and project management. And then we've used a third party developer to come in and tie those two together. And that's worked very effectively. And because they've been able to to custom program some of the functionality, it's it's really helped us with our cost centers and department codes and all of that. we we've been able to to programmatically tell certain, you know, time and hours and costs where to go. so that's been super helpful. we're hoping to do the same thing with AP. we're looking ideally what we would have is some type of system that does both credit card transactions and you know regular invoices that we get in. and there's no way for us to get around this.

It just there it's so time consuming. What I'd what I'd really like ultimately is for my my AP person to be more of a vendor manager. And I think there's so much data entry right now that we we lose some of that touch and that interaction with the vendor and really, you know, focusing on where do we get the discounts? How quick do we have to pay? What are the terms? You know, is this pay when paid? for, you know, is is our job pay when paid? So do we need to see if we can negotiate passing that down to the vendor? All of those types of issues, I think we're maybe losing that a little bit right now because it we're just we're stuck doing data entry. so

having having a system that does both of those, the does the invoice, you know, character recognition and then also the the the credit card transactions. We've looked at systems that are ape that are card agnostic, so you can bring your existing credit card. We've also looked at some that offer you know point systems and and their own card and and those have their merits as well. we're we're still fairly early in the process because we put it on hold. but but yeah, I I there's there's some some good stuff out there and I I know Rishi you've you've got a a good software as well.

And so I think you know what it's gonna come down to is just which one works the best with with our system and where are we going to avoid the hiccups? Because we've seen software that, you know, says it integrates with Spectrum and it just doesn't the way it's supposed to. And so we're we're pretty cautious with that, but I know that a lot of folks have come a long way with that and it's it's not it's not insurmountable for sure.

Sure.

We're we're going through it right now. In fact I think we might have just signed it yesterday or the day before. it's become such a big part of of our workflow and our system right now. it's hard to imagine, you know, migrating to something else at this point. We you know, and this is a real thing when you talk about conversions and integrations and all that stuff. software fatigue is real. That is that is a implementing we've we've implemented a lot over the last couple of years. We did the Spectrum and then Procore and we we've done some other ones. back to your original question I will say that we are playing around with building some of our own software with AI. one of the things that we've noticed is there's you have to be very careful with that.

There are some security issues, maintenance issues. If if the person that built that leaves, how do we how do we maintain this? So there's a lot of those types of factors to consider when you're building your own. I think what we are building is really more kind of individual workflow type processes, not not entire systems that you know our whole company is the workflow revolves around. You know, it's it's individual

little tasks. but yeah. So I I I think I I think we're gonna keep it to that for a while.

huh.

Yeah, I I agree with that. Well, I mean there was a point I think you and I may have had this conversation at some point in time, but you know, is it is it even a viable business model when everybody can just create software customized for their needs? and you know, I was talking with somebody else and they said, So are you building your own email platform too? And I thought, Okay, that that's a good point. There are going to be some things that are just so Everybody needs, you know, they're ubiquitous enough that it doesn't make a lot of sense trying to develop your own.

So I I think there's

definitely some some systems like that. I think what we're gonna find is that there are going to be a lot of security issues. you know, we had a somebody who is vibe coding at home and tried to build something, you know, just kind of a sandbox testing some things, and found that. his registration emails kept getting kicked back and it was because the way it was coded into the system is that was routing through a Colombian domain to send the registration and and

almost every according to RIT people most networks and infrastructures these days block a lot of those types of domains and and so it was just something simple like that and he had no idea in the coding that that was what was happening. so I think we're gonna see a lot of security risks like that popping up with this. and it's I I do think the pendulum's gonna swing back a little bit the other way where it's not we don't need software, we'll just build build our own and I I we're gonna run into problems because you don't have software architects building those software.

It's just it's pure vibe coding. And like I say, it can work for, you know, maybe some some basic workflow functionality, but not for entire systems that your company's built around.

Ooh, that's a good question. I think, you know, when it comes to really repetitive tasks like payroll, like, you know, where you can build these algorithms around and say every time you see this it needs to go here. That's pretty easy. I I think where it's we have seen it not as robust or at least maybe has still some pretty significant weaknesses is in the estimating. there's so many variables when it comes to estimating. It's it's you can't just build an algorithm around that. It a lot of it is it's judgment based from the estimator, from the pre construction guys.

I I I think they're gonna struggle with automating the estimating piece. I there's you know, th there's just There's so much human interaction that has to happen with some of those tasks. It it's just I don't think you're gonna fully ever get there without some human intervention.

we had I I'm gonna say I don't know fully because we we added a couple things and subtracted a couple of things at the same time. Our bill was higher, but I haven't dug in yet, fully to know exactly what the cost of what was dropped and what was added. so it's not fair on this podcast. I don't wanna call out.

our bill was higher, but it that totally might be our fault as well. So

Yeah. Sure, for sure.

Well, I I think security, as I said before, is gonna be a big deal. You know, when you start talking about dumping data, I mean the ideal scenario is all of that that we talked about pulling SQL queries and everything out of out of spectrum, it'd be really nice to just hook up an L L to the back end and say go. and then you could have anybody, you know you could still put some limits on that, but when the owner wants to look at something or see a report, it'd be really handy to have him just be able to type in a prompt and and have it give him the information. so I think that we're moving in that direction.

I think that there's so much security concern around that that it's gonna take a little while. So it's not that the technology's not there, it's that the technology around security is not quite there yet. as far as ensuring that we've we've captured all of the the potential risks and vulnerabilities there. but it it's look, I mean it's having an impact already. when I started after we implemented I started doing a bunch of work with Power BI and to some extent it's a little outdated. the things that you can do with with like I say with AI is it it it's kind of making it a little bit of a thing of the past.

I mean it's it's always gonna need to be there, I think. but AI let me rephrase that. It's gonna be there as long as we have the other security risks. But once they kind of get over those security risks or you can somehow isolate your LLM to just your information, I I think a a lot of the typical work that I do, it's gonna change from building spreadsheets, building reports, building dashboards. There won't be any more of that. It's all going to be about what does it all mean? And how do you interpret it? What are you watching? and then how are you building a strategy around what that data's telling you, which is what we do now.

We just spend so much more time physically creating those things. and I I there won't be a need for that at some point.

Yep, for sure.

man. Yeah, I think A lot of it is around Automating the input of that, the AP, and we've you know, we've talked about that. the approval bottleneck, I don't know. That's a tough one for me. I that obviously that's one that's hard to to overcome. every month at the end of the month, our controller is you know sending out emails, nagging folks to get their approvals in. you know on the one hand. It's almost hard to automate that. I would love to just have the AP approvals be somewhat automated. but there's just there's so much human decision that goes into that.

Hey, this is this is on pause. We didn't receive this, or we received the wrong thing, don't pay this invoice. and we're we we don't really have a choice. We have to count on the project team to be able to do that. If there was a way that that somehow we could bake in you know an audit of some kind. maybe is this a duplicate? Is this is is there something going on with this job? Is there a way a way to flag something more from an automated perspective? But it I mean that that's really difficult to do because there's just there's again, the when it comes to all the variables, there's only so much you can automate that kind of stuff.

Yes. Yep.

What would really be cool is a reconciliation to statements. So having something where, you know, your system could go out and look at your your customer portal with one of your vendors and pulling statements down and running that a check against what's in the system. Are you missing things? Are there duplicates? You know, having a system that would that would make that piece automated. I think that would be fairly easy to do. You're not going to get it around the approval piece of that, but at least you can get around the hey we never received this invoice and it's two months down the road and now it's like, hey, this is outstanding and and you you get those you get those bad surprises and we we don't run into that too much.

We do a pretty good job of auditing regularly monthly with our our largest vendors. But some kind of an automated check would be super helpful.

I yeah, I think they all matter. right now the way we have it built out is we have our AP person also does payroll. there's really

not a science to that. It's more of just that was kind of the strength. our project accountant also does accounts receivable and that one does make a lot of sense intuitively. through the project accounting function, she's learning the customers, understanding knows what's coming up, kind of understands the job, what's been negotiated on the contract. so she has a lot of insight into that when it gets time to build that and and then she'll have some direct interaction with the customer. and so there's a lot of a lot to that. I would say from a controller perspective, we are we're for our size, we're a little small for a CFO and a controller.

I don't think one is more important than the other. having somebody with a pretty serious and significant accounting background, obviously, that's how we keep our data clean. That's how we maintain it. We audit, audit, audit, audit. and so there's there's very few bugs in our system. And that saves us a lot of money when we go to do our financials and taxes every year. I mean, to some extent you're gonna pay that one way or the other. and then on the

on the the CFO side, you know, in in my mind, a CFO should you you know, ensure that the data's clean because if you're not if you don't have clean data you're making bad decisions. and so but the the controller is very historical looking. And the CFO should be very forward looking. Job doesn't stop at at just closing the month. It's taking that information, okay, offering strategies to ownership, to the CEO about what to do, how to react, how do we fix this? and and being strategic in that regard, growth, is it is it organic? Are we gonna look at mer mergers?

Are we going to, you know, look at different different types of industries, different focuses there. So there's a lot that goes into all of that. and they're both incredibly necessary. Obviously if we were if we were planning to stay at the size we're at, we're we're pretty heavy in that regard. but we're we're continuing to see some pretty consistent growth and I I I do anticipate more into the future.

I think what I would tell myself is is you know, kind of buckle up.

it's it's gonna be a wild ride. And, you know, I I thought for a while there. I mean I instinctively I knew there's always things to work on. you're never going to arrive. I've always I've always said that, but there was a little piece of me that thought, okay, doing this full time now, we can get this pretty dialed in and and we can coast a little bit. And That's not even remotely close to happening. so we do have the things built out, they're telling us a lot, but there's just there's always more to do. And so it's kind of like just enjoy the ride, you know? learn as much as you can, retain it, take notes, you're gonna use all that stuff again in the future. and and so yeah, I I just think You know, recently I've I've had a chance because we've gotten things pretty squared away on the financial side, it's also about building your network in this role.

And the last year or so I've I've really tried to to do that and work on building the network and and that can go just as far as as anything that you're doing sitting behind the desk. So I I would have probably focused on that more earlier.

Well, and on in our role, because it is strategic, you know, we have to have those honest conversations with ownership. And they're not always fun conversations. hey, here's what I'm seeing from my perspective. I think I think we've hired too many people. I think we need to slow that down. We need to, you know, do X, Y, and Z. it there's no way for them not to take it as you you questioning their judgment. I mean it just it's human nature. And so the way you approach that needs to be incredibly diff delicate. I'm not saying this person didn't didn't do that. you know, you can still have those conflicts regardless, but it it does take a lot of tact.

And I think a lot of CFOs, especially the more accounting focused ones, tend to be very black and white and very just kind of raw with their with their feedback and and certainly I've seen that. you know, with with other folks that have that kind of viewpoint. And so it it's our job as leadership to to work with folks and and train them that way. But then, you know, we we just have to be we have to be tactful, but we do have to be open and honest. if things go wrong everybody's gonna look at us because we're the one handling

the finances. So if you see a If you see something, you have to say something. but there is a right way and a wrong way to do that.

Yep.

Rishi, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. All right, take care.