How to win at FP&A with Psychology, Strategy and Tradeoffs

Taylor Otstot is VP of Finance at Dashlane, and former Senior Director of Finance at GoDaddy. He joined GoDaddy a year before their IPO and was there for eight years as the domain registrar and web hosting company scaled from $1.5 billion to $4 billion revenue. “By the time I left I was supporting about a billion and a half of that revenue and I was running a team of about 14", Taylor says. "So not only was I part of a business that was going through a lot of growth, but personally had to go through a lot of growth.”

In this episode Taylor reveals the psychological skills and strategy he uses to win in his career.

Insights from this episode:

• Printing Excel files (aka the worst budget he has ever experienced)
• Why every conversation in finance is really a conversation about tradeoffs.
• Letting go of what “made you great” when managing an FP&A Team
• Psychology learnings that have transformed my finance career and how you can apply them to your career
• Eight Lessons Learned the Hard Way, Reflection from Eight Years at GoDaddy.
• How a hard experience showed him that in finance “ titles unlock doors, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be invited in”
• Why I am a big fan of decision frameworks and breaking out of your “normal default positions”
• Burritos vs tacos and finance decision-making (with lessons for business reviews and business partnerships)
• Why the “safe choice” isn’t normally the right choice in finance 
• Secrets to building a high performing team 
• The big Sales comp revelation

Notes
https://taylorotstot.com/

Follow Taylor on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorotstot/

Creativity Inc, Ed Catmull

Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

Reflections from 8 Years at GoDaddy