Kevin Appleby on the challenges facing new CFOs

<p>Kevin Appleby helps run GrowCFO, a community and development resource for finance professionals. A PwC alum-turned instructor, Kevin realized that what CFOs really needed was a support system. He joined me on The Modern CFO podcast to talk about the challenges facing CFOs today, the importance of seeking out mentors, and how to embrace imposter syndrome by conducting thoughtful self-assessment. </p><ul> <li><a href="https://www.growcfo.net/">Check out GrowCFO</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/growcfo/">Follow GrowCFO on LinkedIn </a></li> <li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-appleby-295417a/">Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn </a></li> <li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-seski-819b2581/">Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn </a></li> </ul><p>‍</p><p><strong>Key Takeaways</strong></p><p><strong>Kevin’s journey: from CPA to the classroom</strong></p><p>Kevin’s experience runs the gamut from CPA work to the chemical industry to working as a consultant for PwC. Ultimately he ended up in the classroom. When COVID hit, GrowCFO was the perfect segue. </p><em>“I became a management consultant and ended up working for PwC, mainly doing finance transformation projects, my client would typically be the finance director, the VP finance, or the CFO and often working with his team trying to find information for the project. And I found over time there are lots of stuff that I knew the answer to, but the client's own finance team didn't. I ended up spending time in the classroom teaching a lot of that stuff.” </em><p>‍</p><p><strong>Creating a dedicated CFO network</strong></p><p>Almost every industry has numerous networking and educational resources. Kevin saw that the CFO world was an exception. </p><em>“There's nothing really out there for CFOs, senior finance people to communicate with each other and to help each other solve problems. There's plenty of space here to go to the big advisory firms, but nothing really here to allow CFOs to cooperate with each other and share learni