Transcript
Please note that this has been transcribed by AI/Bots so there may be typos and the occasional strange things happening.
Richard Holmes
0:01
Welcome to the numbers people podcast in partnership with HPR Consulting a leading Sydney executive finance recruitment firm. I'm your host Richard Holmes.
Richard Holmes
0:14
In today's episode, I'm talking with Mats Weiss. Mats is CFO and CEO for my sale, a leading eCommerce retailer. Mats is a highly accomplished senior regional finance professional, with over 20 years of progressive leadership roles across world-class, global business environments. He's worked for the likes of 20th Century Fox, Philip Morris, Nike and PwC. mats is a driven and adaptable leader, with a record of leading, motivating and inspiring large and diverse groups of professionals. He is passionate about transforming finance functions into strategic value-adding centres of excellence.
Richard Holmes
0:53
Mats, how are you? how I could see I'm, I'm very good, Richard, thank you. Really good. Excellent. A pleasure to have you on the podcast. I've known Mats for a while now. And I think his career and what he's achieved is fantastic. And I think he's got a really interesting story here. wants to tell his moments. Thank you. Yeah. And first of all, thank you for having me on this podcast. I'm a little bit nervous. But I'll try to, to do as good as I can.
Mats Weiss
1:23
Yeah, my background is slightly different compared to I guess, what I would say is a traditional route to CFO,
Mats Weiss
1:33
I am a country boy back, growing up in the southern part of Sweden, and
Mats Weiss
1:42
decided to go straight to work after high school. And I started with PwC, and external accounting, which today would be probably quite hard without a university degree. But that's what I did for about five years, and then decided to move up to Stockholm and did a couple of roles in accounting with the Nikkei, among others, and moved to Philip Morris, also in an accounting role, and kind of got my commercial finance school and experienced through a career journey with them for the for about seven to eight years, where I was constantly challenged and constantly pushed into broader and broader roles, which I very much enjoyed.
Mats Weiss
2:42
And up until I started to question the product in itself, which is very social, socially non-acceptable, I would say, and decided to move to 20th Century Fox, in in a finance director role and took on a Nordic responsibility there, built a strong finance team and a business partnering team, I would say, got the offer to move to Australia back in 2010. And, or the offer, but I was identified as one that could take on a more senior role in Australia until they decided or detected, I should say that I did not have a university degree. And that set me back in that process. And I decided to, at that point, challenge myself and go and get that university degree, which I did. Evening evenings, nights, weekends, for a couple of years, and then I had it between us, I'm not sure I actually thought I would be given the chance to move to Australia again, but I was in 2014, I moved here with Fox into first a and Zed role, and then after a year into an Asia Pacific regional role. So kind of a different journey to the CFO role in the sense that I did not go down the traditional path with university education.
Richard Holmes
4:35
Right. And then now in your current role, not sure it's myself, and your job is an interesting time at the start of last year.
Mats Weiss
4:44
Yeah, two days in my role until everyone was starting to work from home. So I've been here a year. Started in March last year. Very exciting, very exciting time to join eCommerce And a pretty steep learning curve over the last 12 months, I would say, I found myself in a number of situations where I needed to ask for help. Absolutely. And, and, you know, just had to figure things out.
Richard Holmes
5:18
Yeah, that's great. And just listening to you then Mats it must’ve been quite a bit of a wake-up call when you were talking about moving to Australia, and suddenly the university degree came up. I mean, I can imagine at the time that was like, Well, what do we do here and stay where I am? Or push yourself?
Mats Weiss
5:38
Yeah, so that the university thing had been something that had kept coming up through my career. I mean, Philip Morris normally do not recruit anyone without a university degree and even more, so a finance guy, I would, I would think so, you know, with every step that I did there, internally, that kept coming up. So it's always been in the back of my head. But I've, I guess, I've always thought, I just have to prove everyone wrong, that I can actually, I can do this. And I used it as a driver instead of something that would put me down I guess, and but, you know, the Australia thing finally tipped me over the edge, and I decided to do it. And just to get that off the table, in terms of discussion, not necessarily that I think I was lacking any, any skills, you can always learn. So there's, there's I'm sure things that I picked up throughout those couple of years as well.
Richard Holmes
6:55
And in looking at your background, that you've progressed in every company you've worked for, and like when you look back, when, if you always push yourself, you mentioned you challenge yourself before is with the opportunity to work on have they been presented to you? Or have you always gone to contact them?
Mats Weiss
7:14
I have never had a plan. I have never had a plan. I generally go in I work as hard as I possibly can. I am eager to learn. I'm curious about the business, I'm curious about people, I want to learn what, what makes people tick and how to get the best out of your team. And, and that has worked really well for me. And, you know, I, as you said, I had a number of opportunities with Philip Morris, who I should say, even though the controversial product they present is a fantastic company to work for it it is best in class in many ways. And I learned a lot there. And you know, the same thing with Fox. Work hard, be creative and push the boundaries even outside your remit sometimes and the question What, what, how we do things. And that has worked well for me.
Richard Holmes
8:37
He touched on curiosity, naturally curious person in with where you're working at the moment? What what's the biggest thing you curious about at the moment?
Mats Weiss
8:48
Or there are so many things, Richard it's, it's very humbled for the fact that this is a completely new industry. For me. It's very, very fast-paced. We make decisions on the minute and we have to make decisions on the minute we meet several times a day on how we are trading, we can look at the p&l real-time that is new to me. And you know, it was probably one of the fears I guess from the people that recruited me that I was stuck in old multinational global companies way of working through the layers and to a certain extent that's true, but I would think that the kind of character I am I adapt quite quickly. So that's been massive learning but more so the broader industry and eCommerce and how, how that differs from what I've seen before in terms of the customer. focus on the customer metrics, how much does it cost to acquire a customer. And, and, and also, this is the first step I formally take outside the finance role. So I also sit here in an operational role, which means that I had to put quite some time into supply chain and the operational side of this business as well, which has been a lot of new areas for me to dive into.
Richard Holmes
10:31
It's exciting no right
Mats Weiss
10:33
That's fantastic. No, it is it is. And, you know, I was, I had a break before I joined here, and I told my wife that I was looking to get challenged and pushed. And someone must have listened to that because I have certainly gotten pushed and challenged over the last 12 months. Yeah,
Richard Holmes
10:54
I enjoy it. It's, it's great to hear and what advice would you give to someone when they look at your career Mats? And that's what advice would you give to them somebody wants to pursue a career like yours?
Mats Weiss
11:08
I would probably go the traditional way, in terms of university, even if it has worked well, for me, I would do that upfront, as most people do. Just to get that off the table. I think what I have done well is I've always tried to stay. I am from Sweden. So I should use Sweden as a neutral country a little bit in the the middle, in terms of don't get caught up in the political games that always exists, tries to try to stay neutral, push your perspective, but also try to understand others perspective. And I've always been a hard worker, and I think, you know, having a teenage daughter as well, it's she would probably tell you that that's what I'm preaching, you know, that you will not get anywhere without working hard and working smart. And, and that's, I guess what I have done? And I've also been always been interested in people. And, you know, I'm genuinely curious about people. And as I mentioned before, what, what drives them. And that has worked well for me as well. And you know, puts more of a human side to a cold finance nerd.
Richard Holmes
12:47
Now, it's very true, Mats in terms of hard work, get your head down, do a good job in the job you actually employed to do.
Mats Weiss
12:55
Yeah, it's not always popular to come with that message, though. But, you know, I'm getting to the age now where I can say it's,
Richard Holmes
13:02
it's, it's what we do as parents, isn't it? Yeah. And in terms of the those around you that I've influenced you thrive, thrive, you created, is there any that standout? Or is that a constant.
Mats Weiss
13:15
I've been incredibly fortunate to have some brilliant people around me. Not only as a boss but even you know, people working for me. I had an absolutely fantastic team here at Fox in Australia, where I had a group of FBA, commercial finance, market insight and accounting. And, you know, the dynamic of those individuals just made all of us much better. And we pushed, we pushed not only ourselves, but we pushed the position of finance within first that the local structure and then eventually the regional structure. And I think I've been very fortunate to be surrounded with really good people. I don't think I can just pinpoint one specific like that.
Richard Holmes
14:16
I like the answer from the point of view. It's not just someone who's more senior than you. It's not all in your team. And I've heard that a couple of times now. And that's where people in more junior roles can influence you.
Mats Weiss
14:31
It's every day is absolutely and you know, that's important too. That's why it's so important. I should say that everyone feels safe to speak up. It really doesn't matter where you sit in the organization. We all want to push this business forward. We all have our reflections. We all have our ideas and you know, I love having that debate. With everyone, and, and that's how I tried to build my teams as well. Don't ever be afraid of speaking your mind, Never be afraid to challenge me because I'm often wrong. And I'm happy to be wrong. So
Richard Holmes
15:18
yeah, yeah, collaboration, it's, it's quite, it's used quite flippantly. Not many companies actually collaborate, like they are meant to do, I think not true. Some of the learnings from maybe the most junior person in your team, you can, you can learn a lot from and they can come up with a great idea, you know, already been thought of that absolutely
Mats Weiss
15:37
happens every single day.
Richard Holmes
15:40
And, and we kind of touched on it before going back to the constant learning you've had. In your role now, how do you continue to stay on top of your role? Is learning/self development constant for you?
Mats Weiss
15:55
Yes, yes, it is. It's, it's probably more on top of my everyday now than it has ever been. Obviously, stepping into a new industry, stepping into a new company, stepping into a new group of people, you, you learn a lot on not only about the technical side, and how to do things specifically in a new business, but also how to navigate around personalities, how to how, what are the group dynamics, dynamics and, and how to get things done. And but, but now, I would say how progressing, we are potentially looking at moving, moving my cell group from a listing on in London to ASX, which is also a completely new and blank paper for me. But luckily, there's a lot of people with that experience that you can, that you can ask and learn from. So that's, that's early in that process. But it, I find that incredibly exciting. And yeah, so to answer your question, I learned a lot from that every day.
Richard Holmes
17:21
Yeah, I can imagine as well. I mean, that's the good thing about changing industries as well. It's a constant, isn't it? It's kind of Yeah, you want to prove yourself?
17:29
Yeah, exactly. And other
Richard Holmes
17:31
companies, it doesn't really matter, does it? You're the new kid in the block, you got to prove yourself.
Mats Weiss
17:35
Exactly. And it's, it's dangerous to become a bit comfortable, in your role. So you, you need to push yourself over the edge from now on, then whether that is internally into a new role. Or whether it's, you know, like, like, moving into a new company or a new industry, you grow as a human. And it's, it's not without times where it's completely overwhelming. But you know, when you stand back and reflect it is, it's a massive reward. To be able to do that.
Richard Holmes
18:13
Yeah, it's with you've touched on it a few times. Now much, you're obviously a people person, people are having the right people, the right team around you is the key to success. What does culture mean to you?
Mats Weiss
18:26
I think I think it is what I've touched upon culture for me is that everyone speaks their mind doesn't necessarily mean that they get their opinion that we implement that specifically. But I want people to challenge I want people, to feel secure in doing so. And that's what I appreciate not only with my team, but in a broader perspective, you're not that narrow. So I could have a, I could have a say on what we have, from a campaign point of view, and I can have a perspective on that. And that debate, I think is incredibly important and vital for a business. And, and that's also the culture that I try to foster. And those are the, you know, I one of the worst things that I have come across is when you step into a role, specifically a new role and you start to learn about people working around you and you get answers like, No, no, no, we don't, don't even bother looking at that because that's the way we've always done things that's when I know something is wrong. So that's I will never ever let go when I hear that because you know, we need to win we need to constantly challenge ourselves and, and and improve and do better. I
Richard Holmes
19:57
completely agree with all the points there. And I really love the Have you talked to him as well about feeling secure? Yeah, people really think of that from a cultural point of view. But wherever you work, you want to go to work and feel safe and secure. And that you come. Yeah. So knowing what you know, now, that's what would you say to your younger self?
Mats Weiss
20:18
Probably a lot of things that the couple of things that come to mind, Richard is, early on in my career, I, I could easily say that I was quite afraid of confrontation, something that I have learned throughout the years, and you know, just address the elephant in the room immediately, get all the emotions out of it, and just talk through. That's, that's what I do. Now. It works very well. And,
20:55
you know,
Mats Weiss
20:56
second thing is, people, love to help each other. And that's probably something that I didn't realize, early on in my career, that I asked a lot of people for help now. And I wish I probably would have done that earlier. And being more vulnerable in the sense of admitting that I didn't know. And, and allowing people to step in, inside and help me. Yeah, it's,
Richard Holmes
21:27
it's a common theme throughout the conversations we're having on this podcast. Yeah, it's I, it how do we get in our early careers to be more vulnerable to feel more confident in asking for help? That it's just that perception of all I don't want to be seen as asking a silly question. Because I know early on me, which is not the case, is it but
Mats Weiss
21:51
and I actually found that when I was working for Fox, and I remember one of my first budget meetings in Los Angeles, and I was put on the spot in that big boardroom. And, and I openly said, I don't know, people, were the first place feeling a little bit uncomfortable, and kind of wondering, okay, so are they going to shoot down this guy completely now. But that's actually admitting that you don't know, in a setting like that could? how crazy it might sound be turned into an advantage of actually showing that you? I'm not even pretending I know everything, I will be the first one to find out. And I will get back to you in as soon as this meeting is done. And I find that that is often accepted. And, you know, you can turn it into an advantage rather. Not too many times, though, in one minute.
Richard Holmes
23:04
It's good. To mention that you can say I don't know. Exactly. gonna have some answers. But no, it's a to point before about vulnerability. Yeah, I think to do that, it just shows you you don't have all the answers in the lock. No one does have all the answers do they? We're in 202 now, what does the future of finance look like to you? Like you've seen big companies, the ever-changing eCommerce company you're in now? What does future finance look like?
Mats Weiss
23:35
I think we have to continue to add value in all parts of the business, I think data is going to continue to be top of mind and you know, in smaller organizations like the one I'm in now, we will have to be the one that stands on the front line of trying to read data and add the insights that we can grow from from from the numbers and from the patterns to the business in making smarter decisions. And you know, that that's what I'm trying to push, push my team and don't only look at your narrow area, try to try to be curious on the numbers beyond and try to, to question and try to push the boundaries. And I think finance will have to continue to do that. And yeah, yeah, it's all about the value add every day, every hour.
Richard Holmes
24:39
Yeah, and that's a constant evolution, isn't it?
Mats Weiss
24:42
Yeah, it is.
Richard Holmes
24:44
I've been sharing with the few people in the whole term of finance business partnering is very much a recent job title here in Australia and in how far we've advanced in just a short amount of time. What's it going to be like? But it's Yeah,
Mats Weiss
24:59
far far away all the days where we were the accounting hat on only pens in the pocket, could be introverted and closing our doors and sitting there feeling good about ourselves on our Excel spreadsheets.
Richard Holmes
25:16
It's, it's all changing, but it's actually read something on LinkedIn about the importance of Excel. And people will keep on slagging off Excel. And it's such a good tale. I keep fighting that cause but
Mats Weiss
25:28
yeah, well, that’s another side story. When when I applied for the role at Philip Morris. I later found the notes from the HR director. Because I was the only one submitting my resume in Excel. And the notes were, seems like a finance guy because he has submitted his resume in Excel.
Richard Holmes
25:54
Wow. Did you really? Yeah.
Mats Weiss
25:59
Nothing that I'm particularly proud of today. But yeah, that's what I did. And I got the role. So
Richard Holmes
26:05
it's a differentiator, differentiator. Looking back months, what's been the favourite, your favourite thing of your career? Like, what do you enjoy the most?
Mats Weiss
26:18
constantly being challenged, constantly being thrown, new opportunities being pushed sometimes into Soanes where I am completely uncomfortable, you know, could be all from a role where I didn't have the core competence, the early stages, or it could be to speak in front of a large audience, which, you know, was a challenge to me initially, especially if it's was in a foreign language. So I think you know, that that's been absolutely amazing. And, you know, obviously, having the great opportunity of moving from from Europe to Australia has been a fantastic adventure. Not only for me, but for for my wife and my kids. And it's been truly amazing.
Richard Holmes
27:16
That's a that's great. And knowing you for a while, no matter where you come across as a calm, collected, chilled out kind of character. When you do feel under pressure, you've touched only a couple of times in your career, it sounds like you're thrive in that environment. But what do you do when you feel a bit overwhelmed?
Mats Weiss
27:35
Yeah, I love to exercise. And that's where that's how I get that pressure off. It could be could be a running session could be a late Sunday evening, at the golf course, all by myself, I find that a almost like meditation to me. And a really good way of collecting my thoughts and getting my priorities straight again. And, you know, just having time for myself, I guess. And rubber brings things into a new perspective in many ways. And you find openings on how to address potential problems that you have issues. So that’s what works for me.
Richard Holmes
28:23
Yeah, it's, it's a point I think a lot of the guests we've had so far, just stepping away. Yeah. From from whatever the stress is, seems to be the solution, which is Yeah, quite fascinating in itself, isn't it? It is, it is. Absolutely. But you're absolutely right. stepping away, doing something else for a little while and getting your thoughts on something else. And
Mats Weiss
28:47
then often I find when you focus on again, you have a different perspective.
Richard Holmes
28:55
To finish off, Matt, tell me something not many people know about you.
Mats Weiss
29:01
Well, I actually have a background as a professional golfer, nothing that I advertise too much. And but I tried for a number of years to make a living out of my golf. And, and here I am in Sydney, crunching Excel being a CFO. So that's that's how good I was. No joke. I, I was quite okay for a while. I was touring in Europe for about four years, and I had some success but not good enough. And I'm glad I realized that in time.
Richard Holmes
29:48
And tell the audience who you're friends with.
Mats Weiss
29:52
Yeah, well, so I played with, Henrik Stenson played even though it's quite a number of years older than me. I played with Jasper Parnovic probably a few people now, and also one of my friends is Joe Achim Hagman, who was Sweden's first representative in the Ryder Cup. 1993 At the belfry?
Richard Holmes
30:21
You go, Hey, got some good stories? Yes. And I've actually had the pleasure of playing golf with mats on a golf course he'd never played on before and he shot 2 over. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.
Mats Weiss
30:34
I'm still I'm still okay. Even though you know, without without the constant practice and consistency in the game. It's it's difficult to perform to what I think I could do in my head.
Richard Holmes
30:47
Yeah. You still still got it? But hey, look, Mats. So I really appreciate your time. I think you've been what you've talked about. It's been really insightful and offered lots of great advice, and hopefully we'll be on the podcast again soon.
Mats Weiss
31:02
Thank you, Richard. Thanks for having me on
Richard Holmes
31:04
the show. Thank you. Excellent, cheers Mats.