CFO Bookshelf

What happens when a great storyteller learns that one of his closest friends is building an investment portfolio for his three daughters that he hopes will grow to a half billion dollars over the next thirty years? What happens is that we get a book pairing similar to The Education of a Value Investor (Spier) meets a mentor, The Dhandho Investor (Pabrai). In this case, the storyteller is Neeraj Kh...

In his new book,  Story Business , Gavin McMahon argues that the best-packaged ideas—not just the best ones—win in the marketplace. Drawing on his background as an engineer and his work in the defense, automotive, and other industries, Gavin frames storytelling as a fundamental business device baked with emotion.  He moves beyond simple marketing, providing a practical framework across six genres—...

Jonathan Stark needs no introduction in the value pricing world. Many years ago, Jonathan came to the realization that hourly billing was not a workable solution for him and his software development clients. He eventually ditched the billable hour in favor of value pricing. Flash forward to the present, and he's recorded more than 500 episodes on his podcast, Ditching Hourly, and he's im...

The subtitle of Ehsan Ehsani's new book F inding Value in Numbers is The Essential Investing Toolkit to Win on Wall Street . If I may, I'm adding my subtitle too, which is Learn a Handful of Key Financial Concepts for Your Small and Growing Enterprise . Accordingly, this book is not just for Buffett-like value investors but for CEOs, finance directors, operating managers, and board membe...

They called him 'Chainsaw Al.' In 1996, Al Dunlap took over a struggling Sunbeam and did what he did best: he cut. He let go 6,000 employees and closed 18 factories. The stock price? It nearly quadrupled in less than two years. To Wall Street, he was a superstar. But the 'turnaround' was a house of cards.  To meet impossible targets, Dunlap used 'cookie-jar' accountin...

Kyle Hegarty is a gifted, story-centric writer, as evidenced by his first book, The Accidental Business Nomad . Kyle's newest book describes the sales recession B2B sales teams are facing and offers remedies to overcome sales ineffectiveness rooted in an outdated playbook. The book is Sales Punks, and in this easy-to-follow narrative, Kyle explains the difference between the seller's jou...

He helped to navigate a violent and catastrophic economic crisis in Argentina. He helped shape the playbook for a Dominican Republic bank bailout, which nearly brought the country to its knees, and he was at the helm of this international bank during the financial crisis, which made money during that time period. Howard Green's book, Gimme A Crisis, is a roadmap for becoming a CEO, understand...

Over the past thirty years, Kevin Boehm has opened forty restaurants, been awarded the highest honor in his profession, and served everyone from Mick Jagger to President Obama.  Kevin's new book is a memoir entitled The Bottomless Cup. During this conversation, we hear how Kevin endured a chaotic relationship with his surrogate father and what it was like to learn of his biological father whe...

If you like the topics of organizational performance, personal and professional excellence, and thought-provoking mental models, then Superperformance by George Pesanky is worth reading. In this conversation, we'll learn about The Golden Hour, Root Cause Success, the Thomas-Kilman Conflict Model, the Prison of Expectations, and the Kano Model.

I am a customer of Bull Market Gifts, and when I spend time on their website, I'm hooked and have a difficult time leaving. Last year, I purchased some vintage annual reports, and I bought another before I interviewed the co-founder and owner of this niche retailer. Their product offering also includes old stock certificates and a deep assortment of New York Stock Exchange memorabilia.  Durin...

When I began studying the root causes of business failure early in my career, I believed that faulty cognitive limitations and weaknesses were the primary drivers of poor decisions, ultimately leading to business failure.  Taras Wayner is the producer and host of a new podcast called A Case Study in Corporate Fear, where he addresses one of the central emotions in the affective mindset: fear. Duri...

I'm calling Ken Iverson the Alan Mulally of CEOs in the 1980s and 1990s. "Plain Talk" by Ken Iverson is one of my favorite business books, despite its lack of self-congratulation and the absence of so-called transformational management concepts. Instead, this is a book about how people were treated, the concept of decentralization, bonus structures, and using instincts to make busin...

Can you name a work of fiction that centered around a stock picker? Alternatively, can you provide three fictional titles related to personal finance? If both answers are no, this episode provides a brief synopsis of four works of fiction revolving around personal finance and investing. One of the titles is new. Three have been written in the past twenty years, and one is a classic you might want...

Many in the magazine industry will tell you on the mountaintops that print is not dead. Try telling that to the writers who used to produce those beautiful glossy annual reports that are now published in the form of PDF documents. Robert Roth is making his first-ever appearance on a podcast to discuss how an annual report writer secures gigs, the time commitment required, and other fascinating ins...

Every financial executive should either have the book Valuation or have it on their physical or digital copy in their antilibrary. CFO Bookshelf is thrilled and honored to have the lead author of all eight editions of this foundational book on valuation, which is used in many financial curricula around the nation on college campuses. In this conversation, we hit on ROIC, growth, economic profit, l...

In CFO Bookshelf's 250th episode, we feature a book that embodies the heart and soul of what this show stands for. The book is Lead by Greatness by our guest, David Lapin. During this conversation, David addresses eight vital leadership traits, defining a spiritual fingerprint and why it matters, the reason the Siberian prisoner perished and what it means for both leaders and staff, and the r...

Why has Taylor Swift trademarked her and her cats' names? And how does she protect the approximately three hundred trademarks she owns? As Kary Oberbrunner tells us, we're just like Taylor in that we're all IP companies. In this engaging conversation about IP, we learn about Instant IPᴵᴾ, the role blockchain plays in IP, the reason good fences make good neighbors, and why you should...

We have read many stories about the magical growth of Starbucks. However, did you know that one of its first presidents had a background in furniture sales and did not hold a college degree? Our guest is the author of It's Not About the Coffee , and Howard Behar saw store units grow from a small handful to more than 15,000 during his two stints as one of its presidents. In this conversation,...

As my consulting practice started taking off about twenty years ago, I started reading everything I could by Fred Nickols, who blogged regularly for the software vendor, SmartDraw. Fred's articles were short, to the point, and always included a simple visual framework that was easy to comprehend. I ultimately read every post on that blog. Fred is a long-time consultant who calls himself a sol...

We live in a small business world where the Chief Fractional Officer is becoming indispensable. Before even considering hiring the Fractional Sales Manager, the Fractional Marketing Officer, or even the Fractional CFO, I'd start one hundred percent of the time with the Fractional Chief People Officer. Susannah Robinson has worked in big-company HR for more than twenty years. Now, as the head...

I'm betting that over half the CFO Bookshelf listenership participate in an NCAA tournament basketball pool at the office. Accordingly, I thought I'd share a story from a basketball legend I don't think I've ever heard retold from a leadership expert during a speaking event. I end this special episode on my three favorite basketball movies. What are yours?

Before I start reading a book on Warren Buffett, and there are many, I want to know if this book has been written before—the ones where the narratives essentially state the same thing about Buffett's investing style. In the case of Brett Gardner's new book on Buffett, he checks all the boxes of a fascinating investment book. It's informative, inspiring, and even entertaining. More i...

When I first experienced the Cynefin Framework in an HBR article many years ago, I never tried to adapt it to my work until I interviewed Bryce Hoffman, author of American Icon and Red Teaming, a few years ago.  While Bryce made the Cynefin Framework seem more understandable and accessible, Kevin Eikenberry has gone further to show leaders how to act when surrounded by varying problems they are tr...

CFO Bookshelf had never heard of Ivar Kreuger until the former Managing Director of CFO.com suggested we discuss the book, The Match King . Andy Burt joins Mark Gandy to explain why Ivar Kreuger is a financial mastermind worthy of studying and what led to his downfall. At one time, Kreuger was worth billions in today's dollars, but his empire, built on a house of debt, could not withstand the...

I recently came across a book that's been out for over 10 years by an exceptional and tenacious researcher and an engaging writer, Lodewijk Petram. His book, The World's First Stock Exchange , might be the first to explore how early investors first bought and traded shares of the VOC of this next stock exchange. The founding of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1602 marked the beginn...