Blog

Financial-Model-Must-Haves

5 Must haves for any financial model

I spent a large part of my corporate career standing in front of a whiteboard with a black (sometimes red) Texta in my hand. Before Excel was opened. Before formulas were written. Before tabs were colour coded. I would sketch

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AI-Finance_wakeup call

Finance’s AI Wake-Up Call

The biggest risk with AI if you work in Finance is not that it replaces your job. It’s that the business stops coming to finance – and your entire department is downsized or replaced. For decades, finance has been the

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First-90-Days

Your First 90 Days as an FBP

It’s one of the most common questions I get asked….”Andrew I am about to start a new FBP role have you got any tips for what I should focus on”. So lets do this, what you should focus on in

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Just-world-rough-world

Working hard Won’t Help Your Career

Most finance professionals I work with aren’t short on effort. They work long hours. They care deeply about doing things properly. They’re loyal to their organisations. They patiently wait their turn. Unfortunately many are quietly confused – and frustrated –

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fbp-networking

Why Your Networking Isn’t Working

Most finance professionals will tell you networking is important. They’ll also admit they don’t really do it. At least not in a deliberate, consistent way and not until they need it – it’s one of those important things we put

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Power-of-silence

The Power of Silence

Well 2026 is here now can you believe it?  A new year, new opportunities, and a familiar temptation to talk more, explain more, justify more. Finance professionals are brilliant at filling space. Silence makes us uncomfortable. It feels like we’re

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marketing-for-finance

Marketing 101 For Finance

Most finance professionals think marketing is manipulation, fluff, or something best left to people with bright slides and questionable metrics. Which is ironic – because most finance professionals have no training in marketing and are some of the worst marketers

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world_class_presenter

Become a World Class Presenter

Steve Jobs is one of the most iconic presenters of the last 50 years. Some may say World Class. However people viewed him, and opinions vary, one thing was for sure – when he turned up to Macworld to present

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master-data

Master Data – FBPs Ugly Cousin

In every finance team I’ve ever worked with, there’s one topic that consistently gets overlooked because it doesn’t feel exciting, strategic, or commercial. Yet it’s the thing that quietly determines whether your team spends its time adding value… or adding

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AI-hallucinations

Is Your AI Hallucinating?

In over 20 years working in finance, and 10 years training finance teams, I never once had a spreadsheet tell me a lie. Plenty of people did, but the spreadsheet itself? Never. Now it’s 2025, I’m hearing more and more

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Speak like a 6 year old

We have all heard the famous Einstein line, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it well enough” The problem we face in finance is that most of the six-year-olds I know aren’t across EBITDA, variance

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Ignore Your Emails

At some point in every Finance Business Partner’s career, the juggling act becomes impossible to ignore.  You’re managing your own finance workload, supporting the business leaders you partner with, and somehow expected to keep an eye on the bigger strategic

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Getting A Promotion

Let me start by saying I got lots of promotions early on in my career. And often. Then they dried up and were less frequent until I realised the following… Promotions don’t always go to the hardest worker, the most

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Entering Difficult Conversations

If there’s one thing I’ve had a lot of practice at over my career as both a senior finance professional and a general manager, it’s difficult conversations. Most of them went poorly in the early days of my career. Not

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Our Brains Don’t Help Us In Finance

Our Brains Don’t Help In Finance For those of you who follow me on Linkedin you will have seen I spent this week “across the ditch” in New Zealand. In a lovely city called Hamilton, about 100km south of Auckland.

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