AT&T has been a cornerstone of the telecommunications industry for decades. Pascal Desroches became CFO AT&T in the wake of its mega-merger with Time Warner. In this interview, Pascal takes a deep dive into the company’s strategic evolution. He shares how AT&T streamlined its focus, invested in key areas like fiber optics and 5G and navigated the complexities of the modern telecommunications landscape.
Beyond AT&T, Pascal shares his leadership philosophy on building teams, embracing diversity and promoting open communication. He also talks about his inspiring journey as an immigrant who rose to the top echelons of Corporate America and how a series of mentors at top companies helped him shape his management style.
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Redefining Telecommunications with Pascal Desroches
Welcome back to another episode of The Secrets of Rockstar CFOs. I’m Jack McCullough, and my day job is the President of the CFO Leadership Council. We truly have a rockstar CFO. Pascal Desroches is the CFO of AT&T. His full title is senior executive vice president and chief financial officer. He and his team oversee the financial strategy for AT&T’s $122 billion connectivity business. Pascal, welcome to The Secrets of Rockstar CFOs.
Jack, thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m looking forward to our discussion.
That’s great. I had never heard of AT&T until I started talking to your team. I guess you’re a startup in the Houston, Texas, area. For those listeners who don’t know me, that was my attempt at sarcasm. One of the great companies and great brands. Everybody’s familiar with the company, but it’s undergone such an amazing transformation in the last few years. Do you think you could give a 10,000-foot overview of the modern AT&T?
Sure thing. I think it was under the prior administration that AT&T had expanded beyond traditional telecommunication. We had a big wireless and big broadband business, but we had acquired a big television satellite company, DirecTV, and Time Warner Media Properties, which, ironically, is where I joined the company because I was a longtime executive at Time Warner. When I joined as the CFO, AT&T was trying to reshape the company.
John [Stankey’s] goal was very clear. We had a company with a lot of indebtedness, over $150 billion in debt. We had a $15 billion annual dividend obligation. We had three big businesses that all needed significant investment to reignite growth. We understood that something had to change. John made bold moves to reshape the company and go back to the historic telecommunication roots of AT&T. We separated our DirecTV business. We separated the Time Warner businesses. We had to make the very difficult decision of reducing our dividend. We undertook a significant plan to deleverage the company.
All those things together got us to where we are today. We are a company that has reduced its debt by over $40 billion, and at the same time, this is a company that is growing earnings, growing revenues, subscribers and cash. We’re doing all this while investing significantly in American telecommunication infrastructure.
During John Stankey’s tenure as CEO, we have invested over $100 billion back into American telecom infrastructure, including nearly $40 billion in spectrum acquisitions that we did in 2021. In a fairly short period of time, we’ve really totally repositioned AT&T back to its roots as one of the great telecommunication companies in the world.
It’s remarkable. When I think of the biggest transformations of the last decade, I’d struggle to come up with anything more than what you have executed in the last few years. Good for you. It’s funny because when I was a CFO, I was with startup companies. The biggest company I was a CFO for did about $100 million in revenue. The numbers that you’re tossing around seem almost like something out of science fiction to me, but it just shows how enormous the scope of AT&T is and what an impact it makes, not only in all of our daily lives but on the global economy.
It is indeed. We are such a critical part of global communication infrastructure. With that comes an enormous responsibility to ensure that we invest to have the absolute best connectivity in the world. We are incredibly proud of what we’ve done to reposition the company over the last several years.
Early Life
That’s fantastic. We’ll definitely talk about that later. Before we get into that, I want to talk about your personal background a little bit. I know that you immigrated from Haiti when you were a child. Can you tell us a little about that experience, where you settled and those things?
Sure thing. I don’t remember all the details vividly. I was only five when I immigrated here, but it is truly a great American story. My parents came here in their late 30s with four kids ranging in age from 2 to 10. I was five. I was number 3 of 4, the second youngest. We lived first in Brooklyn, then in Queens. We were a typical New York immigrant family. There are quite a few of them in New York.
We grew up in a neighborhood that was pretty much middle class and trying to make our way to the American dream. I went to New York City public high schools, got my undergraduate degree in accounting from St. John’s University and started my career after graduation at what was then Peat Marwick Mitchell, which is now KPMG.
I knew there was something about you I liked. I started my career at Peat Marwick Mitchell too.
I spent a total of twelve years there. Most of it was in the audit practice in the New York operating office, but I also spent three years in their national office. During my time at KPMG, I had the opportunity to be awarded a fellowship with the Securities and Exchange Commission, where I was a professional accounting fellow with the Office of the Chief Accountant.
Ironically, that opportunity led to my current role here at AT&T. I’ll take you through that path shortly because the controller of Time Warner was also a former fellow. I interacted with him briefly, and he took a liking to me, and ultimately, that led to my joining Time Warner. When Time Warner was acquired by AT&T, ultimately, that’s how I got here.
In terms of other career highlights, during my time at KPMG, they sponsored me for an MBA at Columbia University. I got an MBA with a concentration in corporate finance and organizational behavior. Over the course of my time at KPMG, ironically, I didn’t work on telecommunication, I worked on healthcare and financial institutions.
That is quite a run that you had, to say the least. I’m curious, if I may ask, when were you at Peat Marwick Mitchell?
I was there from 1986. I left in 1998 and came back in the middle of 2000. I ultimately left the firm again in 2001. I left from 1998 through 2000 for the SEC fellowship.
Got it. That’s interesting. Apparently, we’re the same age. I was there from 1986 to 1990.
Which office?
I was in Boston. We probably met at one of those world-class training things in Phoenix, Arizona, or Scottsdale, Arizona, where they used to go. We probably met briefly at those. It’s funny, Boston people had a reputation, which we upheld. We didn’t do the advanced prep for those sorts of programs, we’d show up on the first day and be taking the plastic off the binder. I’m not sure what was wrong with us, but for some reason, we had a reputation. It was one of those reputations that, it turns out, was well deserved.
The New York office was not much better.
Interesting. I wanted to chat a little, just going back to your childhood. One of your colleagues shared with me that you learned to speak English from the local church. I’m curious what that was like. Again, I know you were pretty young at the time, not the only one coming to New York where English was the second language, but what that was like and how that maybe changed who you are.
This is why I am so incredibly proud of my parents. I always say no matter what I accomplish professionally, it will pale in comparison to what my parents did and the courage it took to immigrate to a country where they didn’t know the language. We all had to learn the language while going to school full-time. At five years old, I was going into kindergarten, and my younger brother was just born. In addition to our normal classes, we had to go and learn English as a second language through our local church, which provided that as an option.
It was principally for adults, but we also had access to it as children. School was incredibly difficult in those early years because you had to overcome the language barrier. I remember having the teachers pull me out and work through reading, making sure I understood how to read in English. Those are things that help you gain a degree of confidence in your ability to overcome challenges and obstacles. That still sticks out in my mind, even though it’s more than 50 years later.
It’s crazy. I grew up in the suburbs, and there weren’t a lot of people who were born outside the United States and came here who weren’t fluent in English, but we had our share. I always just thought it was remarkable that they could pass the classes. I can’t imagine if I went to Japan or India, where a lot of my classmates and friends were from, how I would be able to pass a test in Japanese while I learned the language. It’s just, to me, one of the most remarkable things. Your siblings, you had two of them a little bit older than you. It was probably a little bit harder on them, perhaps.
It was much harder for them. My younger brother and I had it a little bit easier because we didn’t have as much built-in history with French and Creole, which are also spoken in Haiti.
That’s fascinating. It’s incredible, you are truly like the American Dream type of success story. It’s remarkable.
Jack, I will tell you, I look back, and my younger brother is the president of Rice University. When I think about my parents and what they managed to accomplish in coming to the U.S. and making all the sacrifices that they did, it’s pretty remarkable. There is no other place in the world where a story like ours is even remotely possible.
Valuable Mentors
Your brother is the president of a prestigious university? That’s pretty cool. Good for him. Great. I want to get back a little to your career path. You’ve certainly worked with some of the best-known companies in the world, Time Warner, Turner Broadcasting, KPMG. What were some of the valuable lessons you learned along the way to prepare you for this role in a Fortune 20 company? Who were the key mentors you had? I’ve met very few people who didn’t have mentors. Often, the mentor doesn’t even know that he or she served in that role.
I’ve had so many of them over the years, but I’ll give you an example. Dick Parsons, longtime CEO of Time Warner, was a mentor. Jeff Bewkes, also a former CEO of Time Warner, was a mentor. Our CEO of Turner Broadcasting, a fellow by the name of John Martin, was a mentor. Obviously, John Stankey is a mentor. Here are some of the things that I will tell you.
Thinking about Dick Parsons, for example, one of the things that I admired about Dick was that he made it psychologically safe to problem-solve with him. He was an attentive listener. When he started to ask questions that were counter to your point of view, he would say, “Keep going. I want to hear the counterpoint. I want to make sure my understanding is complete.” He created a psychological safety that was, in my mind, critical to world-class problem-solving.
All too often, you have leaders who come in and they know the answer without really fully understanding the problem. Dick, and also Jeff Bewkes, were the types of leaders who really wanted to understand fully the opposing view before reaching their own judgment. Another trait that I really admire about Parsons, in particular, is that he said, “We have to be very comfortable living in ambiguity.”
Very few problems that we’re going to have to solve are going to be clear. The ability to have a deliberate debate and be comfortable coming out on the other side that our calculus may not be right, but if we went through the right process, is also something that I learned and try to emulate in my leadership.
It’s often commented that I never get overly excited, no matter what’s at stake. I’m usually pretty calm, cool and collected. It comes from those experiences where you say, “If you follow the right process, you have to feel the outcome, even if it doesn’t go your way, you’ve done your best to put the company in the best possible position.”
That’s the name of the game. It’s interesting what you said about some bosses, they just walk in knowing all the answers and don’t listen to their team. Talk about self-limiting behavior. If they get to a CEO role, they’re probably very talented, but they’re putting a ceiling on how successful they can be if they’re just relying on their own perspective and experience. They seem to be doing themselves and their companies a disservice by leading like that.
Indeed. I agree. By definition, the higher you go up, the more it’s critical that you listen because you are not going to be as intimate with the facts as the people who are directly involved in the day-to-day.
It’s amazing. I wrote a book on psychopathic leaders a couple of years ago, I interviewed a lot of CFOs for it. It was specifically about psychopathic CEOs, of which, unfortunately, there are more than you might think. One person shared with me [a story about] a PE-backed company that was doing very well. They replaced the founder, who became the CTO or VP of engineering, and brought in an outsider to be the CEO.
The very first day, as she told the story, he said, “I don’t really need a lot of input. I know exactly what I want to do. I know where we need to take this company. I’ll ask you questions, but I don’t necessarily want to hear your opinions.” Even if you’re thinking that, what a way to introduce yourself to the team. He’s like, “By the way, if you don’t like it, thanks for your service. You can turn in your resignation.” He just wanted to be surrounded by a lot of yes-men and yes-women. You were blessed to have leaders like that who shape your career path.
The other thing I will tell you about our current CEO, one of the traits that I really admire and try to emulate, is his courage. What he did to reposition AT&T took an incredible amount of courage. He’s a longtime AT&T executive, and upon being named CEO, he did a 180 on the previous strategy that he was critical to formulating. He understood that the situation had changed and that we needed to do something different. He did a 180, and he also took the really hard step of reducing the dividend, which took an incredible amount of courage because, for investors, that’s one of the main reasons they invest in AT&T.
He knew that, at the size of the dividend, we would not be able to invest sufficiently in the business. Upon his exit from the company, we would not have had a company that was vibrant and healthy. He did what was right for the long-term well-being of AT&T, even though he knew it was going to [bring] him a lot of personal criticism.
That’s an amazing story. The part that amazes me, Pascal, is that he was an insider. A lot of times, people recognize, “We need to redo this thing,” so they bring in an outside CEO. In many cases, that is the right decision because if you’re an AT&T lifer and say, “The entire business model needs to be reworked,” that’s difficult to do. Good for him for recognizing, “This is what I built, now I need to change it.” I’m not exactly doing a 180, but I’m close to it.
I’ve been really fortunate, Jack, to get to work with some of the greatest leaders in corporate America. Along the way, I’ve added tools to my toolkit in terms of the behavior I want to be able to model.
That’s fantastic. One of the big things for CFOs, particularly first-time CFOs, the majority of our listeners, we believe, are first-time CFOs, is how do you build a relationship with the CEO? From what you’ve shared, and just from what I’ve gathered from publicly available information, it seems like you and John have a true partnership, mutual respect. He is the CEO, so it’s a dynamic, but how did you build that relationship? Is that just something that came naturally?
When AT&T acquired Time Warner, I fully expected that I would leave Time Warner and go off and do something else. I didn’t expect to stay with AT&T. John, to his credit, said, “I’m new to the media business. I would love for you to stay and help me get my arms around this for a period.” Many of the Time Warner executives wanted no part in being a subsidiary of AT&T. Me, on the other hand, I said, “I’m going to be constructive here. This is a great company. I want to make sure that I position the company in the best possible way to succeed long term, with or without me.”
I think John truly admired how constructive I was in helping him understand the soft spots in the business and what needed to be done. At the same time, I was able to tell him, “Here are the tough decisions that still need to be made.” He admired that objectivity. Ultimately, that’s what got us to the point where we had a great relationship. Similarly, I pointed out to him that the Time Warner businesses needed significant investment to reposition them because the business model was largely rooted in the legacy cable television ecosystem and needed to be repositioned to go direct-to-consumer.
John, to his credit, significantly increased investment in content to allow the Time Warner businesses to go direct-to-consumer. Recognizing that he, at his core, is a builder of businesses and wanting to do what’s right for the business long term is something that very much made me want to work, or continue to work, with him.
That’s fantastic because it gives him credit for having the humility to say, “I don’t know enough about your industry, and I need your expertise to help me do that.” Talk about setting the partnership off on favorable terms from day one, just to be able to approach you like that.
As the CFO, you are the person who needs to be willing and consistently able to tell the CEO, the board and even employees what’s not going well. Having the confidence to do that and having a CEO who can accept that message is so critically important in order for these partnerships to work. As a CFO, you have to be comfortable not being Mr. Popular or Mrs. Popular. You have to be comfortable speaking truth to power. You have to advocate for the shareholders and make sure that the company is doing what’s right by them while also giving them the information they need to make investment decisions.
Building A Great Team
I want to shift gears a little bit. You’ve worked with some great teams throughout your career. I just want to get an understanding of your philosophy and approach to building world-class teams, not only within finance and accounting; for the CFO today, it’s an enterprise-wide job. You’re not just siloed in finance and accounting. Do you have a philosophy or some nuggets you can share with people when looking to create that type of company?
It has to start with humility, knowing that you don’t know everything. Even within the company, you may not have the right skill sets to take the company to where you aspire for it to be. Having the humility and the awareness to recognize that is a key part of building great teams. I always start with, if I have a position to fill, who is the best person on the planet to do this job that I think would be willing to do the job? I don’t limit myself to the people in front of me. I always start by saying, ideally, it would be great to have somebody who’s in front of me who can do the job, but what the company deserves is the best possible person to do that job. That’s one.
Two, maintain great networks. If you are good to people that you’ve worked with along the way, they will want to work for you again. They’re going to recommend to their friends to work with you. Some of the best hires I’ve had over the years have been people I either worked with before or said, “You want to work for him because he’s an honest broker. He will tell you exactly what he thinks. He will be an advocate for you. He will tell you the hard messages you need to hear to get better.” That’s another aspect of it, really trying to make sure you keep your network vibrant and always have an eye out for talent where you may have the need.
That makes a whole lot of sense. If people only take one thing from this podcast, if that’s it, then this would have been some valuable time.
One other thing, Jack, that I think is really important is, I alluded to in my last answer, is providing feedback. We all have opportunities to get better. Providing feedback on how somebody needs to improve to get better is the best possible gift you can provide them. It allows them to be aware of an issue they may not have been aware of. As importantly, if you’re good at it, you can also help them by giving them the tools they need to get better at it.
Whether it is participating in a class outside of work, building a specific skill set, suggesting a course for them or just working with them on it. I remember having one of my team members who was going to present to the board for the first time. I did three separate dry runs with them. I did it because it was really important for me that they were comfortable and successful in putting their best foot forward.
That’s a boss everybody would like to work for. I want to ask you a question, sort of related, but by reputation, and I think by fact, AT&T certainly is one of the companies leading the way on diversity, equity and inclusion. I know that’s important to you personally, but how have you empowered people from historically underrepresented groups? Perhaps that’s important to you since you’re from a historically underrepresented group.
I think that’s awareness. It always starts with awareness. I always thought, from the standpoint, we all think we are 100% unbiased, when in reality, we all 100% have some biases. It’s being aware of our biases and trying to put mechanisms in place to help overcome them. Things I’ve done in the past are things like having a diverse hiring slate. When you’re hiring for a key position, have other people involved of varied backgrounds so that way you know you are not missing a skill that, because of your biases, you’re not attuned to.
To always ask, “Why not them?” What are the gaps that they have that you think others don’t have? Let’s be clinical about it. Let’s write down, what are the key attributes to do the job well? Where are the gaps for each of the candidates? Trying to bring mechanisms to overcome the inherent biases that we all have. I look at my team, I am so incredibly proud of the diversity represented at my table. At the same time, I think in every single instance, I have an upgrade relative to the prior incumbent. It’s being able to be objective about it that also helps you improve the overall quality of the team.
AT&T’s Digital Future
That makes a lot of sense. AT&T, again, the last few years, has been a transformation like you very rarely see in corporate America, but looking ahead, what are some of the biggest challenges and opportunities that are facing AT&T going forward?
Let me start with, first, the challenges, because they will lead right into the opportunities I see. AT&T, in addition to being the largest fiber provider in the country, also has the largest legacy copper wireline. Landline phones, fax machines, phones in an elevator. We are carrying infrastructure associated with both. There are regulatory reasons that make it slower than ideal to have that infrastructure, but it’s being eliminated gradually each and every day.
We fully expect, over time, to be out of that infrastructure, and not having to invest in that infrastructure to support our legacy footprint is an enormous opportunity. Much of our wireless distribution happens through national retail outlets. In this world, we have an opportunity to do a lot more direct fulfillment through digital channels, not having physical infrastructure, not having to pay employees to man physical infrastructure, providing service the way the customer wants. A whole generation of consumers only want to do things digitally.
As a business imperative, we have to make much more of our distribution through digital channels. That will open up enormous opportunities for us. I think AI is another enormous opportunity for us. Think about it. We have customers who are calling in. Increasingly, we’re able to service the customer through voice recognition technology and AI, and it’s only getting better and driving more efficiencies. It’s improving customer service, and at the same time, it’s driving enormous efficiencies for us as a company.
That’s remarkable. It’s funny, I’m required as a podcaster, part of my license is that I do have to ask you about generative AI and technology generally, but how are you using it? You’re probably using it the way many companies are in the finance and accounting world and other groups, but how are you able to use it to create sustainable long-term competitive advantages for the company?
Let me start with AT&T overall, and then I’ll talk a little bit about what we’re doing in finance. AT&T overall, it’s probably in the area of customer service. Even though we’ve grown our customer base enormously over the last several years, the number of calls that are taken by humans has gone down dramatically as a result of using AI and generative AI. We are also able to more efficiently route technician dispatches through the use of AI and machine learning. Another big area is software development. We have a lot of legacy platforms that need to be converted to modern code.
Generative AI allows you to do that much more efficiently. From a finance standpoint, my team oversees customer credit and collections, so [we’re] using AI to detect anomalies [and] fraud patterns. We have driven much better credit decisions and much lower instances of fraud through the use of AI and machine learning.
Real estate is one of the areas that falls under my purview. In real estate, we have thousands of leases. We’re using AI to summarize key lease terms and identify potential concessions embedded in the lease without having to review them in detail. Enormous efficiencies. Jack, I will tell you, we are in the very early innings of this, and over time, not only will the efficiencies grow, but we will become much better at it. The level of sophistication and effectiveness will go up dramatically.
It’s a remarkable time to be alive.
It really is.
Five years from now, people are going to look at what we’re doing now and think it’s the most primitive thing they could ever imagine. Years ago, I worked for a company that did a form of AI, but I just never imagined it would [be] anything like this within my career, if not within my lifetime, and now we’re going to dwarf that. I want to ask, one of the big challenges for first-time CFOs, they’re challenged is making sure the financial strategy and the corporate strategy are aligned.
Back when I was a CFO, it was almost as if there were two different things in different silos. Not the greatest way to run the business, but that’s how it was back then. How do you make sure they are on the same page and that finance supports the strategic direction and the strategic direction is set with an understanding of the financial landscape?
To me it starts with, what are we trying to accomplish as a firm, and what is the financial infrastructure necessary to accomplish that? How much investment do we need to have? How much contingency do we need to build in? Because you never know what uncertainty will beset the firm. I think strategy and what you are trying to accomplish from a business standpoint should be a rational financial strategy.
In addition to making sure that there is clear alignment between the strategy and the financial profile you are architecting, it’s important that you are talking to each of the stakeholders in the same way—outside shareholders and analysts, your board, your employees. And that the plans are all aligned, because the only way you drive efficiency, consistency and alignment is to have that complete alignment between the strategic plan and the financial plan, and constant communication of both is critical.
That makes a lot of sense. It seems like it’s intuitive, but it’s an area a lot of people struggle with. It used to be financial planning was done on Excel spreadsheets, and it still is. Excel is an amazing tool, but you can’t run a business like AT&T on Microsoft Excel, I wouldn’t think.
The other thing, too: What’s important is for the CFO to have the courage of their conviction and find their voice in making sure that the key stakeholders understand that everything is about trade-offs and that if we’re investing heavily in this area, let’s all agree we’re going to have to find where we are funding that in another area. We can’t do all things for all constituencies. Having the courage to state that out loud and to get the organization to rally behind you to accomplish that is critically important.
Advice For Future CFOs
That makes sense. I want to ask a question about the very nature of financial leadership. Within the course of our career, it was like, I don’t want to say backward-looking, but it was focused a lot on financial reporting, cost controls, compliance and whatnot. [Now], it’s truly a strategic, visionary type of role. How do you see the CFO and financial leadership role generally changing going forward?
As a finance leader, as a CFO, you are the person who is talking to ownership the most, more so than the CEO. They are the providers of your capital; you have to make sure that they understand what you are trying to accomplish and that there is alignment, because there are things that you will do that don’t work out. You want to be able to say, “I’ve been telling you, this is what we’re trying. It didn’t quite work out as we thought. Here’s how we’re course-correcting.”
Being in the position to be able to really understand the strategy at an acute level and understand what are the key metrics that prove whether it is working or not, and sharing those broadly and often, is such a critical part of making sure you are gaining the confidence of your stakeholders. Because it all starts with the owners, whether it is your lenders, whether it’s your equity owners. They have to have confidence in what you are doing and your ability to accomplish it.
You have to rally the organization and hold everyone accountable for delivering for that external stakeholder. That is probably the biggest adjustment that I know I had to make in becoming a public company CFO. Others will have to step up to because you are the bridge between the outside world and the inside world. It’s critical that you speak to both in the same way and that you understand you are representing the owners.
That makes sense. A lot of people in the media have shared with me that they like to get the story from the CFO more than any other executive in the company. It’s not slamming other people by any means, but it’s more like you really want the unvarnished truth. There was a TV media guy who used to call it the no-spin zone. I forget the fellow’s name. I’m told I look like him, though. Anyway, it was the no-spin zone. You’re going to get that from the CFO. It’s so critical that they be transparent and always act with high integrity because that’s what the world expects from you in a way that they don’t necessarily expect from anyone else.
To me, I work for the owners. I really do. While John’s my boss, I work for the owners. I am here to represent them, to make sure they are getting the information they need to make their decisions.
Warren Buffett himself says that. He said, “I’d sometimes make decisions. I think of grandparents who put their life savings in a company that I might be involved in. I want to make sure that they have all the information they need to make a good decision for themselves.” One question I want to ask you, and I wrote it down to make sure that I didn’t leave anything out.
In addition to being a CFO of a highly visible, publicly traded company, you’re on the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Board of Directors. You’re on the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas’s Board of Directors. You’re on the Board of Trustees of Prep for Prep. You’re also a member of the University of Texas Southwestern President’s Advisory Board. Work-life balance. I can tell if I’m looking at you that you’re not skipping workouts. You’re obviously in great shape, but how do you do all of this and still find time to be a husband and father to your two adult children as well?
It takes a village. It really does. I think it starts with having a life partner who understands your goals and is supportive of your goals. My wife and I have been married for 35 years. I have two young adult children, that makes it a little bit easier. You have to make time for yourself. You have to make time to make sure you are doing the things that are necessary to keep you replenished because in order for you to be at your very best and to give all that is required of you, you need to be fully replenished.
My relationship with my wife, my workout habits, my eating habits and sleeping habits are all part of the ingredients for making sure that I am ready to fulfill all the commitments that I have. That is the foundation. Without that, I can’t be my best possible self. If I’m not healthy, if I don’t have energy, if my wife needs something and I’m not there for her, all things that are critical for me to do in order to be in a position to do my job.
It’s so important. I tell people, if you won’t do it for yourself, do it for your family. If you won’t do it for your family, if your career is the main thing, do it for your career, because in the long run, you’re not going to really flourish without exercising and a healthy diet. You don’t have to be running Ironman triathlons or doing that CrossFit stuff that’s so challenging. Half an hour, 45 minutes, a few days a week, it makes a difference. I’m a big eater, so I would weigh 300 pounds if I didn’t have time to do that. A healthy eater, but a big eater.
Likewise.
Cool. I always like to conclude with advice that you may be willing to share with the next generation of CFOs. I’m thinking those who were in maybe their first job as a CFO, or even those who are like three months to two years out from getting their first CFO job, things they ought to be thinking about.
Make sure you are aware of your strengths and the areas where you need bolstering and surround yourself with people who complement you, who can challenge you, who can make sure that you are considering everything that is necessary in order to make the best possible decisions. I think sometimes that’s not as intuitive as it should be, but you really do need a great team who will push you, who will say, “I don’t agree, and here’s why.” The willingness and the courage to listen to them is probably the best piece of advice I can give to aspiring CFOs.
That makes a lot of sense. Pascal, this has been a lot of fun. I know the listeners are going to really benefit from this. This is going to be the one that people are going to listen to multiple times. Before we go, I just want to give you the final word, if there’s any last thing you’d like to share.
I would just say to anybody who is an aspiring CFO, you just got to go for it. Oftentimes, we are afraid, what if we don’t get the job? I would say, so what? Keep trying. In the end, if you are dogged about it and you do the work, you will get the opportunity.
Thanks again for your support of the Secrets of Rockstar CFOs, rock on.