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Episode 155
What Your CFO Really Thinks About Marketing
Only 2.6% of board directors have marketing experience. So how is marketing really being evaluated at the top? And what can marketers do about it?
This episode, Elena, Angela, and Rob are joined by Marketing Architects CFO Brent Longval to break down how finance actually evaluates marketing investments. They cover the root causes of tension between marketing and finance, what makes a marketing pitch credible to a CFO, and how to build a shared language across both functions. If you've ever struggled to justify a brand investment or earn trust with your finance team, this one's for you.
Topics Covered
• [01:45] Marketing's shrinking influence in the boardroom
• [03:30] The core tension between marketing and finance time horizons
• [07:00] The three numbers your CFO checks every month
• [15:00] What makes a marketing investment credible vs. suspicious
• [23:00] How marketers can speak the CFO's language
• [25:00] What marketers should stop (and start) saying to finance
Resources:
Whitler, Kimberly & Krause, Ryan & Lehmann, Donald. (2018). When and How Board Members with Marketing Experience Facilitate Firm Growth.
Today's Hosts
Elena Jasper
Chief Marketing Officer
Rob DeMars
Chief Product Architect
Angela Voss
Chief Executive Officer
Brent Longval
Chief Financial Officer
Transcript
Brent: If I was mentoring a CMO, go to your CFO, schedule a time and ask her what's important to her and her team, and what is finance focused on at that time. It might be a little different than what it was six months ago or a year ago. And a lot of times in the best organizations, the CEO and the CFO have a really tight relationship. Not only are you getting an understanding of what's important to that CFO, but also what's important to the CEO.
Elena: Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research-first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions.
I'm Elena Jasper on the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host Angela Boss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, a Chief Product Architect of Misfits and Machines.
Rob: Hello.
Angela: Hey.
Elena: And we are joined by Brent Longwall, our CFO at Marketing Architects.
Angela: Brent. Morning. Thank you. Glad to be here today.
Elena: We are back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions in data, research, and what drives business results. But quick — before we dive into our topic today, I wanted to mention that Marketing Architects is going to be at Shop Talk in Las Vegas at the end of March. We'll have a booth. I'll be speaking on marketing effectiveness in streaming TV, and if you're going, we'd love to know so we can meet you in person. But today we are talking about how finance really evaluates marketing. We've brought our own CFO on the show to help marketers understand how CFOs think so that they can communicate more effectively, justify their marketing investments, and earn greater trust with the broader business.
But I'll kick us off, as I always do, with some research. I chose a paper for this one. It's titled "When and How Board Members With Marketing Experience Facilitate Firm Growth." This is by Kimberly Whittler, Ryan Kraus, and Donald Lehman. For years, there's been this concern that marketing's influence at the top of organizations is shrinking. The data does support that. This study looked at over 64,000 board member biographies from S&P 1500 firms, and found that only 2.6% of board directors have marketing experience. Even more interesting, prior research cited in the paper found that fewer than half of 1% of Fortune 1000 board seats were held by active marketing leaders.
Boards are dominated by what the researchers call throughput functions — things like finance, accounting, operations, and legal. Roles that are internally focused and oriented around efficiency and cost control. Marketing, on the other hand, is an output function, so it's externally focused, demand generating, and growth oriented. But when marketing isn't represented at the highest levels, the authors argue that firms tend to prioritize efficiency over growth. But there's good news for marketers — when firms include marketing experience directors on their board, they see significantly higher revenue growth. This brings up the question: if marketing voices are so rare in the boardroom and finance perspectives dominate those strategic conversations, how is marketing really being evaluated? And how should marketers think differently if they want to influence at the board level? And that's what we're going to unpack today by going straight to the source and interviewing our own CFO. And we're also lucky to have our CEO on this podcast. So I think having both perspectives today is going to be valuable. So let's start with the main challenge of this episode. Why do we think there is a traditional tension between marketing and finance? And Brent, why don't you get us started.
Brent: Yeah, thanks Elena. I think really with this, it starts off with time horizons. We think from an accounting and finance standpoint more short term — you think about month-end closes, quarterly reports, and especially if you're a publicly held company, maybe sometimes as far out as year-long estimates. But those are very short time horizons. And then you look at a lot of the initiatives that marketing is driven to accomplish, which is brand building. Well, those take 12, 18, 24 months to see come to fruition. And so I think right off the bat you have a difference in time horizons. I think a second one would be really around the definition of risk.
From a financial perspective, we look at risk as the unknown return on an investment. What is that ROI going to be? And that feels like a risk move for us. Marketing's risk is under-investing in the building of a brand for long-term growth. And in fact, we actually saw this this morning — Angela and I were on a call earlier today where we started talking about a new product offering at Marketing Architects. We had a two-phase approach and we were talking about phase one before we moved to phase two. And I immediately went to, "Hey, before we get to phase two, we should prove out there's a gain in phase one."
And Angela quickly reminded us that even if we're at break-even on phase one, it's going to be worth going to phase two because it broadens our services and it makes us more attractive in the market space. So we even saw that earlier today in a conversation that we were in. And then I think the last tension is really around measurement. Historically it's been really hard to measure brand building for clients, and I think the combination of better tools and engagement with marketing effectiveness principles — we see a lot higher correlation now and attribution to where marketing investments can make a long-term impact on the growth of businesses.
Angela: Yeah, I totally agree. I think about it at its core — both functions are trying to create value, but they're doing it from different angles, and that's probably where the tension lies. We do need people focused on predictability. We do need people focused on managing risk. We do need people focused on safeguarding cash flow. But the realities of marketing, especially when those metrics aren't clearly connected to business outcomes — which sometimes they're not — marketing can start to look like a cost instead of an investment, and that's where that tension is.
Rob: The tension's pretty simple when you think about it, right? One function counts money, the other function spends money. So there's going to be some tension. And I'll go so far — and I'll throw myself in this bucket — agencies as marketers are actually really bad with money. The best agencies, historically, the ones that have risen meteorically and not plummeted quickly, were because they had a CFO that was helping to drive the agency.
So often you look at, oh, it's the creative founder or it's the strategy founder — that's all great, but you have to have someone in there doing what you guys were doing earlier today: looking at the product, what's the opportunity, how are we making sure controls are in place. And that's not to say that marketers are idiots — it's just they're driven by different values. And so having someone who can be the adult in the room and make sure that we can afford to eat next week is sometimes really undervalued.
Elena: That's a good point, Rob. Well, to get into the mind of this adult in the room — which is Brent — I thought it'd be helpful if we started with just what is on a CFO's mind each month, because like Rob said, it's different typically than what a marketer's thinking of. So when you look at the business each month, what are the first three numbers that you go to? And I'd be curious if you think this perspective would hold across other business models or other industries.
Brent: Really, first I'd break it down into leading indicators and lagging indicators. And I think on the leading indicator side, the PPP — it's Pitches, Pilots, Partnerships. That's the lifeline. So how many pitches are we doing on a monthly basis? How many pilots are now starting within that month? And how many of those pilots really converted over into partnerships — long-term partnerships, long-term commitments. So using Rob's funny math because it was an acronym, I'm going to count that as only one of the numbers that I look at.
The second one jumps into lagging indicators, and the first one there is revenue against plan. Obviously revenue fuels growth for everything in that expansion. But then the other number is net income against plan. What are we doing? Because that ensures positive cash flow and ensures long-term liquidity. And to your point earlier, Elena, different industries are going to have different focal points. If you look at a manufacturing company, they might look more at debt ratios. If you look at retail, that might be more around inventory turns. If you have a SaaS company, they're going to look at probably new customer acquisition and churn. So different industries are going to have different measures they look at. Really what it comes down to is I think everyone's going to have three key variables that it ties back to, and it's growth, profitability, and sustainability.
Elena: That makes sense. I was thinking about this episode and the value for marketers. One thing I thought is it would be helpful if marketers knew how to evaluate a healthy business before they even join a new role, because as a marketer, if you're getting into a business that's not profitable or struggling to grow, or in a challenging category, it's probably going to be harder to invest a lot in marketing and support long-term marketing goals. So how would you define a healthy business? What does it look like to you as a CFO?
Brent: Yeah, and this is something that anyone could ask as they're coming into a business or evaluating that. And I think it starts with consistent revenue growth. Revenue growth happens two ways. One, it's new clients — acquisition of new clients or new consumers. And then the second is organic growth — the expansion of your existing consumer or customer base. Those are going to ebb and flow at different times. For us, we're going to have some clients that spend more than we anticipated at the beginning of the year, and some are going to spend a little bit less. Holistically, I take more of a portfolio balance approach and say, are we having consistent revenue growth quarter after quarter? And that's the way that I think that fuels everything — it starts there.
The second thing to have a healthy business is really an engaged team. When you think about an employee base that's highly engaged, typically it's because they have a lot of autonomy. They're highly collaborative throughout the organization. And when your team is engaged, they've got the ability to be really strong advisors to our clients — they're almost stewards of the business. In their respective roles, they're looking at how technology can help expand the service offering or broaden the value that we provide to either our clients or even the partners that we have on the media side.
And then the last one is, as was mentioned earlier, balancing efficiency with investment. You obviously want to drive greater profitability, but sometimes you have to take that short-term hit from a profitability standpoint to ensure long-term viability and long-term sustainability. So balancing where efficiency comes into play along with long-term investment — having those two work collectively and collaboratively — is really important.
Elena: That perfectly sets me up for my next question, because I wanted to ask you about how you define growth for the business. Because sometimes you're looking at, alright, is this growth or is it profitable growth? I know a lot of companies aren't profitable for years and years, but they could still be growing. So how would you define growth for the business?
Brent: Growth always starts with revenue — top-line expansion — and that just has to come. I think that's the biggest way to get there. It's important that especially the finance teams put the right guardrails around what is growth and ensure that you are growing profitably, and give that to the sales team, give that to those account management and strategic growth teams, to have those bumpers in place. But it always starts with top-line expansion in revenue.
But it doesn't stop there. It goes further into expansion of services — on both the breadth and the depth of services that we provide. We've really embraced the principles out of Blue Ocean Strategy as a marketing positioning. We definitely want to have that Blue Ocean strategy with the all-inclusive TV, but we push that down to each one of our solution arms and say, if we were to offer our creative, our analytics, our strategy on a standalone basis, why would customers want to buy that? So I think we look at constantly evaluating and expanding the breadth and depth of the solutions that we provide.
And then the last one I think is employee growth. AI has been very disruptive to the industry, specifically to the marketing world, and it's going to start to disrupt many other industries as well. And so talent development is a growth strategy. All of our team members need to look at whether it's upskilling or expanding their own skill sets, the leverage of AI, their utilization — and how they are individually growing becomes a key part of having a long-term sustainable business.
Elena: Yeah, so definitely expanding beyond revenue, but that'd be the most important, or the first one you would look to. Angela, what about you from your CEO seat? How do you think about growth for MA? Does it differ at all from how Brent's thinking about it?
Angela: I'm happy that revenue was number one for Brent coming out of the CFO seat.
Elena: Yeah, that would've been a weird answer.
Angela: Yeah. I do think of course revenue matters. I think about growth as durable demand creation. Revenue's the scoreboard in terms of what's happening right now and the lagging indicator to hopefully something that we've been working on for years. But I think real growth shows up in stronger brand preference. It shows up in more efficient acquisition of clients. It shows up in greater operating leverage over time. To me, sustainable growth means we're expanding the customer base, we're strengthening our mental availability, we're making it easier for people to choose us again and again. It means that the marketing we're doing today is effectively lowering our risk for tomorrow.
I think when demand is strong, our pricing power improves, our pipeline becomes more predictable, and the business in effect should be more resilient. That's the kind of growth I think that we should all be focused on building. But I also think that if we're only focused on the metrics of today — and a lot of those are fairly short term, customer acquisition and things like that — we love the statement "the long and the short." There are marketing impacts long and short, and we should be thinking in both capacities. But especially right now in a time where our industry is being so disrupted with technology and AI, what is that lens on how we want to mindfully invest?
There might be an impact on profit this year that we might all put our hands in on and say, we want to make that bet — because yes, we could potentially have a better ROI on the year if we didn't, but we're making the five-year bet or the ten-year bet. And ultimately we're more focused on ensuring that we've got sustainability and we're here five to ten years from now. And Brent does a great job of that — he's very long-term minded and will go with the business on investing into areas that we think make sense.
Elena: Yeah, and that is a challenge for marketers, but it's important — making sure that your marketing is not just too focused on the short. But I know a lot of CMOs are challenged because sometimes their tenures can be so short; they get in the door and they're expected to produce results right away. But really they might want to pitch for investments that are going to take a couple of years to see through. So there's this huge part of a marketer's job that is marketing to their own company and to their CFO. So Brent, one thing I was curious about is what would make a marketing investment credible in your eyes versus what would make you a little skeptical of it?
Brent: First is tying the marketing initiatives to business outcomes. I think you do such a great job of this, Elena, within our own business — it's not about impressions, it's not about clicks, but it's true business performance and business impacts that are going to happen. And I think it's important to do that and start that off right from the beginning. Also, evidence of previous tests — things that have been done and worked in the past. The test, learn, scale methodology and approach. Those may be tests we've done historically, maybe it's tests within the industry, and there are other things you can point to that are benchmarks from other industries that have also done marketing tests. So I think having that, and then having a measurement plan — making sure that you're holding things accountable. Here are the initiatives that we have, here are the outcomes that we anticipate, and that drives back right into financial results. So if a marketer can come up and do that, I think that adds a lot of credibility.
I think where skepticism comes into play is if there are vague awareness claims, or there's no path to revenue, or there's no feedback loop to find out how something performed. So I think one area where a marketer might raise a red flag is if they came in and said, focus really on loyalty over acquisition. You talk about the law of double jeopardy — smaller companies stay small because they focus so deeply on the loyalty aspect of things. They want to drive deeper into their existing client base, but we know that to be able to grow, you have to expand that base, you've got to expand your consumer base. And so that's really where acquisition comes into play. So if there isn't some sort of balance — and more slanted towards acquisition — I would be really skeptical of that plan.
And then the last one is if someone comes in with a very hyper-targeted marketing plan. We know hyper-targeting is very expensive, the data most of the time isn't even reliable, and at that point you might not even reach the targeted customers that you want. And we know that a significant amount — upwards of maybe 90–95% — of your customers are out of market at any given point in time. So if you're hyper-targeting, you're not really expanding that base and making sure that you get into that mental availability for people who aren't in the market at that time but may eventually be interested in your product.
Elena: That's right. Everybody, my CFO's read How Brands Grow. So maybe you should send How Brands Grow to your CFO before you pitch a marketing investment — that's my own tip. We were recording an episode a couple of weeks ago and talking about where does brand happen, how do you define brand — is it an in-person experience, through an advertisement? And one thing we talked about was there's this growing expectation that marketing needs to get more involved in product, more involved in the business. And we were debating it — like, is that marketing's job? How much should they really put their time there versus communications? And that inspired this next question I have for all of us, which is: when we think about marketing investments compared to other investments within the business, is it even fair? Should a CFO be looking at marketing investments and evaluating them by the same standards as other investments in the business?
Brent: In principle, yes — it should be evaluated. I think we have to make determinations. There's typically a finite amount of capital available, and we have to determine where that capital is going to be deployed — whether that's into marketing, into the expansion of products and services, into technology, or into people. So there's a variety of areas where we have to make determinations as to where to deploy that capital to get the greatest return for the business.
We have to have the right time horizons — and Angela spoke about this earlier. We might have some investments that have a very short-term time horizon where we expect a return in six months or twelve months. But then you look at some of the brand building activities and those are going to have a longer-term horizon. So I think it's really important for the finance organization to make sure that you're allocating investments that have both a short-term return but also long-term sustainability and profitability growth for the business. So I think in terms of yes, it should be held to the same standards, but we should be looking at timeframes as to when we expect those returns.
Angela: Yeah, I would agree. I think the evidence, Brent, of what we talk about a lot is that marketing needs to lead that conversation in terms of how the investments will pay off, and needs to educate a broader group of people — including the CFO — on how this works. This isn't their field of study. And so what Brent talks about here is evidence of that. I think it's not that you can't measure it — you can measure it. It's how are you looking to measure it. That's where I think the conversation falls short very often between marketing and finance — we're not creating a common playbook, common vernacular, and just common understanding on how marketing does work and how the short and the long work together.
Rob: And how much fun you can actually have in creating that shared language. When you talk about allocating capital proportionally, that's such a financial term — that's also a media mix strategy, right? We're actually sharing similar philosophies just applied in different areas. The nature of compounded interest is actually branding — it's both the interest of money, but it's also the interest of the consumer. So there's a real opportunity to sit at the same table, create vernacular you both can align on and have some fun with. But of course, you have to measure what's happening with the marketing team.
Elena: Speaking of vernacular, Brent — if you were mentoring a marketer who wants to become a CMO, or is a CMO and wants to improve their understanding of finance and speak your language, what sort of metrics do you think they should be confident in?
Brent: My first inclination on this is, hey, understand the P&L — understand how your company makes money. And bridge some of those marketing terms into the financial reports — whether that's on the balance sheet, building goodwill on the brand equity side, or if it's on the P&L side of things. So start thinking about sales acquisition, branding, share of voice, share of market, excess share of voice, distinctive assets, and trying to tie all of that together. But that didn't feel really actionable to me. So what does feel actionable is: be curious.
My advice if I was mentoring a CMO — go to your CFO, schedule a time, and ask her what's important to her and her team, and what finance is focused on at that time. It might be a little different than what it was six months ago or a year ago. And a lot of times in the best organizations, the CEO and the CFO have a really tight relationship. So now not only are you getting an understanding of what's important to that CFO, but also what's important to the CEO.
And then take that — once you have that curiosity, once you hear what's important to them — go back and use your favorite LLM. Could be Claude, could be Gemini, could be ChatGPT. Line up all your marketing initiatives and say, here are all my marketing initiatives that I'm working on — how does this align to the CEO's and CFO's priorities and what's important to them? And have the LLM bridge that gap. Then you can take that and educate the CFO on a lot of these marketing terms. Like Elena, you've done for me with marketing effectiveness — we've been able to learn more about that, and I think that can bridge that language together. I would use LLMs to actually bridge the gap between what's important to the CFO and what you're doing on the marketing side, and how your marketing initiatives can tie back into the P&L — and then go and present that to her.
Elena: Well, speaking of bridging the gap — marketers, one of the tougher pitches it seems could be investments in brand, because it's more long-term. If I'm wanting to invest in a brand initiative, what type of argument or what type of data is going to work for you or build trust?
Brent: It starts with being very clear on what marketing initiatives are about sales acquisition and what marketing initiatives are related to brand. Because you're going to measure those differently and there are going to be different time horizons around those. And I think making sure it's very clear that in building brand, you're addressing customers that are both in market and out of market. And as I said earlier, a significant amount — maybe 90–95% — of your customers are going to be out of market at any given point in time. So the brand is building that mental availability so that when they do come into the marketplace, you're going to be at the forefront of their mind. So that's going to have a longer time horizon associated with it.
And then I think using historical evidence — there's a tremendous number of case studies out there where share of voice increases share of market over time. And we know that actually in a down market, that's the time for a lot of brands to lean into marketing. You have that excess share of voice and that's going to help you increase your market share, especially if your competitors continue to pull back from a marketing standpoint. Because naturally in any sort of a downturn, finance gets a little bit tight, they get a little concerned, they want to hoard cash — and we believe that's actually a great time to lean in.
Elena: Ange, what do you think? Would you agree with that? Is there anything else you'd expect to see if someone's making the case for a brand investment?
Angela: I think Brent had some great advice there. I think too, just starting with the evidence that brand investment is part of a disciplined system versus just a leap of faith. I know I am much more confident when I see consistent patterns across multiple data sources versus just looking at one isolated metric. Things like long-term sales lift, incrementality studies, market share trends, search and direct traffic growth, and hopefully improvement in your cost per acquisition over time. I think it also means ensuring that we're really clear about what's being tested, what's been learned, and how these things are helping to shape future decisions. If marketers can demonstrate that brand building is reducing risk and strengthening the business model — versus, to your point Brent, just generating awareness — I think it becomes much easier to support that sustained investment.
Elena: All right, just for fun — what is one thing that we think marketers should stop saying to finance, and one thing we think they should start saying? Brent, we'll have you start us off.
Brent: Stop saying brands can't be measured. Walk into a level of accountability because they can be measured. It's not easy, but brands can be measured. I'd prefer that people start saying, "Here's our hypothesis. Here's how we're going to measure incrementality and the impact to long-term business growth and profitability," and lay out that sustained plan. I think we really respect marketing teams that have a sense of rigor and accountability, and being able to do that would build a lot of confidence and bridge the gap between marketing and finance.
Angela: Yeah, I would take that a step further — because I had that same one — from "it's hard to measure" to a place of, produce a theory: we're going to test this and we think we're going to see X. What is X? If we do see it, this is what that means and here's what we'll do. If we don't see it, this is what that means and here's what we'll do. You're like, okay. There's still uncertainty, I get it, but you're helping to better shape the path forward through a learning system.
Rob: I've got one. I gotta be careful because I might drop my microphone when I say this one. But alright — instead of "How much budget do we have?" say "How much growth are you willing to invest in?"
Elena: Ooh. Nice. Very psychological tip.
Rob: That one's never worked for me before, but I just thought I would throw it out there.
Elena: Maybe it'll work for someone else. We'll see.
Brent: You've got the wrong CFO, Rob.
Angela: CFOs are actually probably more — most people will choose a path based on a fear of loss versus a fear of gain. And the CFO is probably the most concerned about that, I would think. So what do they stand to lose?
Brent: Mm-hmm.
Elena: Yeah. Maybe we can use the inverse of that question. All right. Well, this has been super helpful, Brent. I appreciate you coming on the show and breaking down the mind of a money guy for us. To wrap us up — a little more personal — what's something in your life that you under-invested in that now you can see deserved a bigger budget?
Brent: With age comes a bit of wisdom, and I think exploration and experimentation. Many of us in the finance area are very goal-oriented, efficiency-driven. You talked earlier, Elena, about finance being a throughput function, and that's just the way we look at everything — even our time. How much time am I investing in something? Am I going to get that return out of it? And we want to limit the number of risks or losses that we may have.
A year ago, we embraced this mantra on the accounting and finance team here at MA: embrace inefficiencies to amplify success. Being okay that we're going to be inefficient in the short term as we were testing — a lot of this was around AI, looking for tools in which we could embed technology or AI to make us smarter, stronger, and faster. And I think in doing that, you recognize, yeah, we are going to have some short-term inefficiencies, but a lot of times that's actually going to end up generating the greatest long-term results and returns. One thing I wish I would've done earlier in my career is just spend a little bit more time trying new things, being a little bit more experimental in nature. Continue to be curious and not be so efficiency-driven. Just go wander a little bit. Go play in the sandbox a little bit more.
Elena: Ange, what do you think?
Angela: I would say leadership coaching. I actually started leadership coaching pretty early on, but it's never too early. There's so much value in investing in yourself — and how much faster I could have grown maybe with the right outside perspective. Those are really solid hours to be investing in yourself.
Elena: I agree with that.
Rob: Gosh, for me — I have been woefully underinvested in my gadgets. My gadget budget.
Elena: How is that even possible?
Brent: Is that possible?
Rob: I mean, I just —
Brent: Your T&E — I just really need to up my game there. How about you, Elena?
Elena: Are you joking?
Rob: I —
Angela: That's how Rob makes a joke. Yep.
Elena: Wow. These are all — with the exception of Rob's — really deep answers.
Rob: I know.
Elena: And mine's not so deep. Mine is — we had kind of a crappy coffee machine forever and I would keep just getting new Keurigs and replacing them because they would always break. And finally my husband was like, let's just get a really nice coffee machine. And now — knock on wood — it hasn't broken in like a year and it makes better coffee. It's better for you because you're not using those K-cups all the time. But I think just taking a second to invest in something maybe a little nicer — actually I think we've saved money because we're not having to constantly order new ones.
Rob: My gadget budget wants to learn about this coffee machine.
Elena: Oh, we can talk about the coffee machine offline.
Angela: Coffee machines — in my experience, you either go with the $12 Mr. Coffee pot, which is going to serve you for like 25 years and you can buy good coffee to put in it, or you go that route. But anything in the middle is just not worth it.
Elena: It's not worth it. Yeah.
Brent: It's interesting — Rob's gadget budget or timing is actually the antithesis of efficiency for Marketing Architects, because what happens is he will start to communicate and talk and spend so much time commercializing all the wins of those gadgets that we'd lose company time on the efficiency side of that. Because he gets so excited.
Rob: It's not just the cost of money. It's the cost of time that I consume with my talk of gadgets. Yes.
Elena: All right, well thanks so much for joining us, Brent.
Brent: Absolutely. Thank you.
Elena: Thanks, Brent.
Episode 155
What Your CFO Really Thinks About Marketing
Only 2.6% of board directors have marketing experience. So how is marketing really being evaluated at the top? And what can marketers do about it?
This episode, Elena, Angela, and Rob are joined by Marketing Architects CFO Brent Longval to break down how finance actually evaluates marketing investments. They cover the root causes of tension between marketing and finance, what makes a marketing pitch credible to a CFO, and how to build a shared language across both functions. If you've ever struggled to justify a brand investment or earn trust with your finance team, this one's for you.
Topics Covered
• [01:45] Marketing's shrinking influence in the boardroom
• [03:30] The core tension between marketing and finance time horizons
• [07:00] The three numbers your CFO checks every month
• [15:00] What makes a marketing investment credible vs. suspicious
• [23:00] How marketers can speak the CFO's language
• [25:00] What marketers should stop (and start) saying to finance
Resources:
Whitler, Kimberly & Krause, Ryan & Lehmann, Donald. (2018). When and How Board Members with Marketing Experience Facilitate Firm Growth.
Today's Hosts
Elena Jasper
Chief Marketing Officer
Rob DeMars
Chief Product Architect
Angela Voss
Chief Executive Officer
Brent Longval
Chief Financial Officer
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Transcript
Brent: If I was mentoring a CMO, go to your CFO, schedule a time and ask her what's important to her and her team, and what is finance focused on at that time. It might be a little different than what it was six months ago or a year ago. And a lot of times in the best organizations, the CEO and the CFO have a really tight relationship. Not only are you getting an understanding of what's important to that CFO, but also what's important to the CEO.
Elena: Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research-first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions.
I'm Elena Jasper on the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host Angela Boss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, a Chief Product Architect of Misfits and Machines.
Rob: Hello.
Angela: Hey.
Elena: And we are joined by Brent Longwall, our CFO at Marketing Architects.
Angela: Brent. Morning. Thank you. Glad to be here today.
Elena: We are back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions in data, research, and what drives business results. But quick — before we dive into our topic today, I wanted to mention that Marketing Architects is going to be at Shop Talk in Las Vegas at the end of March. We'll have a booth. I'll be speaking on marketing effectiveness in streaming TV, and if you're going, we'd love to know so we can meet you in person. But today we are talking about how finance really evaluates marketing. We've brought our own CFO on the show to help marketers understand how CFOs think so that they can communicate more effectively, justify their marketing investments, and earn greater trust with the broader business.
But I'll kick us off, as I always do, with some research. I chose a paper for this one. It's titled "When and How Board Members With Marketing Experience Facilitate Firm Growth." This is by Kimberly Whittler, Ryan Kraus, and Donald Lehman. For years, there's been this concern that marketing's influence at the top of organizations is shrinking. The data does support that. This study looked at over 64,000 board member biographies from S&P 1500 firms, and found that only 2.6% of board directors have marketing experience. Even more interesting, prior research cited in the paper found that fewer than half of 1% of Fortune 1000 board seats were held by active marketing leaders.
Boards are dominated by what the researchers call throughput functions — things like finance, accounting, operations, and legal. Roles that are internally focused and oriented around efficiency and cost control. Marketing, on the other hand, is an output function, so it's externally focused, demand generating, and growth oriented. But when marketing isn't represented at the highest levels, the authors argue that firms tend to prioritize efficiency over growth. But there's good news for marketers — when firms include marketing experience directors on their board, they see significantly higher revenue growth. This brings up the question: if marketing voices are so rare in the boardroom and finance perspectives dominate those strategic conversations, how is marketing really being evaluated? And how should marketers think differently if they want to influence at the board level? And that's what we're going to unpack today by going straight to the source and interviewing our own CFO. And we're also lucky to have our CEO on this podcast. So I think having both perspectives today is going to be valuable. So let's start with the main challenge of this episode. Why do we think there is a traditional tension between marketing and finance? And Brent, why don't you get us started.
Brent: Yeah, thanks Elena. I think really with this, it starts off with time horizons. We think from an accounting and finance standpoint more short term — you think about month-end closes, quarterly reports, and especially if you're a publicly held company, maybe sometimes as far out as year-long estimates. But those are very short time horizons. And then you look at a lot of the initiatives that marketing is driven to accomplish, which is brand building. Well, those take 12, 18, 24 months to see come to fruition. And so I think right off the bat you have a difference in time horizons. I think a second one would be really around the definition of risk.
From a financial perspective, we look at risk as the unknown return on an investment. What is that ROI going to be? And that feels like a risk move for us. Marketing's risk is under-investing in the building of a brand for long-term growth. And in fact, we actually saw this this morning — Angela and I were on a call earlier today where we started talking about a new product offering at Marketing Architects. We had a two-phase approach and we were talking about phase one before we moved to phase two. And I immediately went to, "Hey, before we get to phase two, we should prove out there's a gain in phase one."
And Angela quickly reminded us that even if we're at break-even on phase one, it's going to be worth going to phase two because it broadens our services and it makes us more attractive in the market space. So we even saw that earlier today in a conversation that we were in. And then I think the last tension is really around measurement. Historically it's been really hard to measure brand building for clients, and I think the combination of better tools and engagement with marketing effectiveness principles — we see a lot higher correlation now and attribution to where marketing investments can make a long-term impact on the growth of businesses.
Angela: Yeah, I totally agree. I think about it at its core — both functions are trying to create value, but they're doing it from different angles, and that's probably where the tension lies. We do need people focused on predictability. We do need people focused on managing risk. We do need people focused on safeguarding cash flow. But the realities of marketing, especially when those metrics aren't clearly connected to business outcomes — which sometimes they're not — marketing can start to look like a cost instead of an investment, and that's where that tension is.
Rob: The tension's pretty simple when you think about it, right? One function counts money, the other function spends money. So there's going to be some tension. And I'll go so far — and I'll throw myself in this bucket — agencies as marketers are actually really bad with money. The best agencies, historically, the ones that have risen meteorically and not plummeted quickly, were because they had a CFO that was helping to drive the agency.
So often you look at, oh, it's the creative founder or it's the strategy founder — that's all great, but you have to have someone in there doing what you guys were doing earlier today: looking at the product, what's the opportunity, how are we making sure controls are in place. And that's not to say that marketers are idiots — it's just they're driven by different values. And so having someone who can be the adult in the room and make sure that we can afford to eat next week is sometimes really undervalued.
Elena: That's a good point, Rob. Well, to get into the mind of this adult in the room — which is Brent — I thought it'd be helpful if we started with just what is on a CFO's mind each month, because like Rob said, it's different typically than what a marketer's thinking of. So when you look at the business each month, what are the first three numbers that you go to? And I'd be curious if you think this perspective would hold across other business models or other industries.
Brent: Really, first I'd break it down into leading indicators and lagging indicators. And I think on the leading indicator side, the PPP — it's Pitches, Pilots, Partnerships. That's the lifeline. So how many pitches are we doing on a monthly basis? How many pilots are now starting within that month? And how many of those pilots really converted over into partnerships — long-term partnerships, long-term commitments. So using Rob's funny math because it was an acronym, I'm going to count that as only one of the numbers that I look at.
The second one jumps into lagging indicators, and the first one there is revenue against plan. Obviously revenue fuels growth for everything in that expansion. But then the other number is net income against plan. What are we doing? Because that ensures positive cash flow and ensures long-term liquidity. And to your point earlier, Elena, different industries are going to have different focal points. If you look at a manufacturing company, they might look more at debt ratios. If you look at retail, that might be more around inventory turns. If you have a SaaS company, they're going to look at probably new customer acquisition and churn. So different industries are going to have different measures they look at. Really what it comes down to is I think everyone's going to have three key variables that it ties back to, and it's growth, profitability, and sustainability.
Elena: That makes sense. I was thinking about this episode and the value for marketers. One thing I thought is it would be helpful if marketers knew how to evaluate a healthy business before they even join a new role, because as a marketer, if you're getting into a business that's not profitable or struggling to grow, or in a challenging category, it's probably going to be harder to invest a lot in marketing and support long-term marketing goals. So how would you define a healthy business? What does it look like to you as a CFO?
Brent: Yeah, and this is something that anyone could ask as they're coming into a business or evaluating that. And I think it starts with consistent revenue growth. Revenue growth happens two ways. One, it's new clients — acquisition of new clients or new consumers. And then the second is organic growth — the expansion of your existing consumer or customer base. Those are going to ebb and flow at different times. For us, we're going to have some clients that spend more than we anticipated at the beginning of the year, and some are going to spend a little bit less. Holistically, I take more of a portfolio balance approach and say, are we having consistent revenue growth quarter after quarter? And that's the way that I think that fuels everything — it starts there.
The second thing to have a healthy business is really an engaged team. When you think about an employee base that's highly engaged, typically it's because they have a lot of autonomy. They're highly collaborative throughout the organization. And when your team is engaged, they've got the ability to be really strong advisors to our clients — they're almost stewards of the business. In their respective roles, they're looking at how technology can help expand the service offering or broaden the value that we provide to either our clients or even the partners that we have on the media side.
And then the last one is, as was mentioned earlier, balancing efficiency with investment. You obviously want to drive greater profitability, but sometimes you have to take that short-term hit from a profitability standpoint to ensure long-term viability and long-term sustainability. So balancing where efficiency comes into play along with long-term investment — having those two work collectively and collaboratively — is really important.
Elena: That perfectly sets me up for my next question, because I wanted to ask you about how you define growth for the business. Because sometimes you're looking at, alright, is this growth or is it profitable growth? I know a lot of companies aren't profitable for years and years, but they could still be growing. So how would you define growth for the business?
Brent: Growth always starts with revenue — top-line expansion — and that just has to come. I think that's the biggest way to get there. It's important that especially the finance teams put the right guardrails around what is growth and ensure that you are growing profitably, and give that to the sales team, give that to those account management and strategic growth teams, to have those bumpers in place. But it always starts with top-line expansion in revenue.
But it doesn't stop there. It goes further into expansion of services — on both the breadth and the depth of services that we provide. We've really embraced the principles out of Blue Ocean Strategy as a marketing positioning. We definitely want to have that Blue Ocean strategy with the all-inclusive TV, but we push that down to each one of our solution arms and say, if we were to offer our creative, our analytics, our strategy on a standalone basis, why would customers want to buy that? So I think we look at constantly evaluating and expanding the breadth and depth of the solutions that we provide.
And then the last one I think is employee growth. AI has been very disruptive to the industry, specifically to the marketing world, and it's going to start to disrupt many other industries as well. And so talent development is a growth strategy. All of our team members need to look at whether it's upskilling or expanding their own skill sets, the leverage of AI, their utilization — and how they are individually growing becomes a key part of having a long-term sustainable business.
Elena: Yeah, so definitely expanding beyond revenue, but that'd be the most important, or the first one you would look to. Angela, what about you from your CEO seat? How do you think about growth for MA? Does it differ at all from how Brent's thinking about it?
Angela: I'm happy that revenue was number one for Brent coming out of the CFO seat.
Elena: Yeah, that would've been a weird answer.
Angela: Yeah. I do think of course revenue matters. I think about growth as durable demand creation. Revenue's the scoreboard in terms of what's happening right now and the lagging indicator to hopefully something that we've been working on for years. But I think real growth shows up in stronger brand preference. It shows up in more efficient acquisition of clients. It shows up in greater operating leverage over time. To me, sustainable growth means we're expanding the customer base, we're strengthening our mental availability, we're making it easier for people to choose us again and again. It means that the marketing we're doing today is effectively lowering our risk for tomorrow.
I think when demand is strong, our pricing power improves, our pipeline becomes more predictable, and the business in effect should be more resilient. That's the kind of growth I think that we should all be focused on building. But I also think that if we're only focused on the metrics of today — and a lot of those are fairly short term, customer acquisition and things like that — we love the statement "the long and the short." There are marketing impacts long and short, and we should be thinking in both capacities. But especially right now in a time where our industry is being so disrupted with technology and AI, what is that lens on how we want to mindfully invest?
There might be an impact on profit this year that we might all put our hands in on and say, we want to make that bet — because yes, we could potentially have a better ROI on the year if we didn't, but we're making the five-year bet or the ten-year bet. And ultimately we're more focused on ensuring that we've got sustainability and we're here five to ten years from now. And Brent does a great job of that — he's very long-term minded and will go with the business on investing into areas that we think make sense.
Elena: Yeah, and that is a challenge for marketers, but it's important — making sure that your marketing is not just too focused on the short. But I know a lot of CMOs are challenged because sometimes their tenures can be so short; they get in the door and they're expected to produce results right away. But really they might want to pitch for investments that are going to take a couple of years to see through. So there's this huge part of a marketer's job that is marketing to their own company and to their CFO. So Brent, one thing I was curious about is what would make a marketing investment credible in your eyes versus what would make you a little skeptical of it?
Brent: First is tying the marketing initiatives to business outcomes. I think you do such a great job of this, Elena, within our own business — it's not about impressions, it's not about clicks, but it's true business performance and business impacts that are going to happen. And I think it's important to do that and start that off right from the beginning. Also, evidence of previous tests — things that have been done and worked in the past. The test, learn, scale methodology and approach. Those may be tests we've done historically, maybe it's tests within the industry, and there are other things you can point to that are benchmarks from other industries that have also done marketing tests. So I think having that, and then having a measurement plan — making sure that you're holding things accountable. Here are the initiatives that we have, here are the outcomes that we anticipate, and that drives back right into financial results. So if a marketer can come up and do that, I think that adds a lot of credibility.
I think where skepticism comes into play is if there are vague awareness claims, or there's no path to revenue, or there's no feedback loop to find out how something performed. So I think one area where a marketer might raise a red flag is if they came in and said, focus really on loyalty over acquisition. You talk about the law of double jeopardy — smaller companies stay small because they focus so deeply on the loyalty aspect of things. They want to drive deeper into their existing client base, but we know that to be able to grow, you have to expand that base, you've got to expand your consumer base. And so that's really where acquisition comes into play. So if there isn't some sort of balance — and more slanted towards acquisition — I would be really skeptical of that plan.
And then the last one is if someone comes in with a very hyper-targeted marketing plan. We know hyper-targeting is very expensive, the data most of the time isn't even reliable, and at that point you might not even reach the targeted customers that you want. And we know that a significant amount — upwards of maybe 90–95% — of your customers are out of market at any given point in time. So if you're hyper-targeting, you're not really expanding that base and making sure that you get into that mental availability for people who aren't in the market at that time but may eventually be interested in your product.
Elena: That's right. Everybody, my CFO's read How Brands Grow. So maybe you should send How Brands Grow to your CFO before you pitch a marketing investment — that's my own tip. We were recording an episode a couple of weeks ago and talking about where does brand happen, how do you define brand — is it an in-person experience, through an advertisement? And one thing we talked about was there's this growing expectation that marketing needs to get more involved in product, more involved in the business. And we were debating it — like, is that marketing's job? How much should they really put their time there versus communications? And that inspired this next question I have for all of us, which is: when we think about marketing investments compared to other investments within the business, is it even fair? Should a CFO be looking at marketing investments and evaluating them by the same standards as other investments in the business?
Brent: In principle, yes — it should be evaluated. I think we have to make determinations. There's typically a finite amount of capital available, and we have to determine where that capital is going to be deployed — whether that's into marketing, into the expansion of products and services, into technology, or into people. So there's a variety of areas where we have to make determinations as to where to deploy that capital to get the greatest return for the business.
We have to have the right time horizons — and Angela spoke about this earlier. We might have some investments that have a very short-term time horizon where we expect a return in six months or twelve months. But then you look at some of the brand building activities and those are going to have a longer-term horizon. So I think it's really important for the finance organization to make sure that you're allocating investments that have both a short-term return but also long-term sustainability and profitability growth for the business. So I think in terms of yes, it should be held to the same standards, but we should be looking at timeframes as to when we expect those returns.
Angela: Yeah, I would agree. I think the evidence, Brent, of what we talk about a lot is that marketing needs to lead that conversation in terms of how the investments will pay off, and needs to educate a broader group of people — including the CFO — on how this works. This isn't their field of study. And so what Brent talks about here is evidence of that. I think it's not that you can't measure it — you can measure it. It's how are you looking to measure it. That's where I think the conversation falls short very often between marketing and finance — we're not creating a common playbook, common vernacular, and just common understanding on how marketing does work and how the short and the long work together.
Rob: And how much fun you can actually have in creating that shared language. When you talk about allocating capital proportionally, that's such a financial term — that's also a media mix strategy, right? We're actually sharing similar philosophies just applied in different areas. The nature of compounded interest is actually branding — it's both the interest of money, but it's also the interest of the consumer. So there's a real opportunity to sit at the same table, create vernacular you both can align on and have some fun with. But of course, you have to measure what's happening with the marketing team.
Elena: Speaking of vernacular, Brent — if you were mentoring a marketer who wants to become a CMO, or is a CMO and wants to improve their understanding of finance and speak your language, what sort of metrics do you think they should be confident in?
Brent: My first inclination on this is, hey, understand the P&L — understand how your company makes money. And bridge some of those marketing terms into the financial reports — whether that's on the balance sheet, building goodwill on the brand equity side, or if it's on the P&L side of things. So start thinking about sales acquisition, branding, share of voice, share of market, excess share of voice, distinctive assets, and trying to tie all of that together. But that didn't feel really actionable to me. So what does feel actionable is: be curious.
My advice if I was mentoring a CMO — go to your CFO, schedule a time, and ask her what's important to her and her team, and what finance is focused on at that time. It might be a little different than what it was six months ago or a year ago. And a lot of times in the best organizations, the CEO and the CFO have a really tight relationship. So now not only are you getting an understanding of what's important to that CFO, but also what's important to the CEO.
And then take that — once you have that curiosity, once you hear what's important to them — go back and use your favorite LLM. Could be Claude, could be Gemini, could be ChatGPT. Line up all your marketing initiatives and say, here are all my marketing initiatives that I'm working on — how does this align to the CEO's and CFO's priorities and what's important to them? And have the LLM bridge that gap. Then you can take that and educate the CFO on a lot of these marketing terms. Like Elena, you've done for me with marketing effectiveness — we've been able to learn more about that, and I think that can bridge that language together. I would use LLMs to actually bridge the gap between what's important to the CFO and what you're doing on the marketing side, and how your marketing initiatives can tie back into the P&L — and then go and present that to her.
Elena: Well, speaking of bridging the gap — marketers, one of the tougher pitches it seems could be investments in brand, because it's more long-term. If I'm wanting to invest in a brand initiative, what type of argument or what type of data is going to work for you or build trust?
Brent: It starts with being very clear on what marketing initiatives are about sales acquisition and what marketing initiatives are related to brand. Because you're going to measure those differently and there are going to be different time horizons around those. And I think making sure it's very clear that in building brand, you're addressing customers that are both in market and out of market. And as I said earlier, a significant amount — maybe 90–95% — of your customers are going to be out of market at any given point in time. So the brand is building that mental availability so that when they do come into the marketplace, you're going to be at the forefront of their mind. So that's going to have a longer time horizon associated with it.
And then I think using historical evidence — there's a tremendous number of case studies out there where share of voice increases share of market over time. And we know that actually in a down market, that's the time for a lot of brands to lean into marketing. You have that excess share of voice and that's going to help you increase your market share, especially if your competitors continue to pull back from a marketing standpoint. Because naturally in any sort of a downturn, finance gets a little bit tight, they get a little concerned, they want to hoard cash — and we believe that's actually a great time to lean in.
Elena: Ange, what do you think? Would you agree with that? Is there anything else you'd expect to see if someone's making the case for a brand investment?
Angela: I think Brent had some great advice there. I think too, just starting with the evidence that brand investment is part of a disciplined system versus just a leap of faith. I know I am much more confident when I see consistent patterns across multiple data sources versus just looking at one isolated metric. Things like long-term sales lift, incrementality studies, market share trends, search and direct traffic growth, and hopefully improvement in your cost per acquisition over time. I think it also means ensuring that we're really clear about what's being tested, what's been learned, and how these things are helping to shape future decisions. If marketers can demonstrate that brand building is reducing risk and strengthening the business model — versus, to your point Brent, just generating awareness — I think it becomes much easier to support that sustained investment.
Elena: All right, just for fun — what is one thing that we think marketers should stop saying to finance, and one thing we think they should start saying? Brent, we'll have you start us off.
Brent: Stop saying brands can't be measured. Walk into a level of accountability because they can be measured. It's not easy, but brands can be measured. I'd prefer that people start saying, "Here's our hypothesis. Here's how we're going to measure incrementality and the impact to long-term business growth and profitability," and lay out that sustained plan. I think we really respect marketing teams that have a sense of rigor and accountability, and being able to do that would build a lot of confidence and bridge the gap between marketing and finance.
Angela: Yeah, I would take that a step further — because I had that same one — from "it's hard to measure" to a place of, produce a theory: we're going to test this and we think we're going to see X. What is X? If we do see it, this is what that means and here's what we'll do. If we don't see it, this is what that means and here's what we'll do. You're like, okay. There's still uncertainty, I get it, but you're helping to better shape the path forward through a learning system.
Rob: I've got one. I gotta be careful because I might drop my microphone when I say this one. But alright — instead of "How much budget do we have?" say "How much growth are you willing to invest in?"
Elena: Ooh. Nice. Very psychological tip.
Rob: That one's never worked for me before, but I just thought I would throw it out there.
Elena: Maybe it'll work for someone else. We'll see.
Brent: You've got the wrong CFO, Rob.
Angela: CFOs are actually probably more — most people will choose a path based on a fear of loss versus a fear of gain. And the CFO is probably the most concerned about that, I would think. So what do they stand to lose?
Brent: Mm-hmm.
Elena: Yeah. Maybe we can use the inverse of that question. All right. Well, this has been super helpful, Brent. I appreciate you coming on the show and breaking down the mind of a money guy for us. To wrap us up — a little more personal — what's something in your life that you under-invested in that now you can see deserved a bigger budget?
Brent: With age comes a bit of wisdom, and I think exploration and experimentation. Many of us in the finance area are very goal-oriented, efficiency-driven. You talked earlier, Elena, about finance being a throughput function, and that's just the way we look at everything — even our time. How much time am I investing in something? Am I going to get that return out of it? And we want to limit the number of risks or losses that we may have.
A year ago, we embraced this mantra on the accounting and finance team here at MA: embrace inefficiencies to amplify success. Being okay that we're going to be inefficient in the short term as we were testing — a lot of this was around AI, looking for tools in which we could embed technology or AI to make us smarter, stronger, and faster. And I think in doing that, you recognize, yeah, we are going to have some short-term inefficiencies, but a lot of times that's actually going to end up generating the greatest long-term results and returns. One thing I wish I would've done earlier in my career is just spend a little bit more time trying new things, being a little bit more experimental in nature. Continue to be curious and not be so efficiency-driven. Just go wander a little bit. Go play in the sandbox a little bit more.
Elena: Ange, what do you think?
Angela: I would say leadership coaching. I actually started leadership coaching pretty early on, but it's never too early. There's so much value in investing in yourself — and how much faster I could have grown maybe with the right outside perspective. Those are really solid hours to be investing in yourself.
Elena: I agree with that.
Rob: Gosh, for me — I have been woefully underinvested in my gadgets. My gadget budget.
Elena: How is that even possible?
Brent: Is that possible?
Rob: I mean, I just —
Brent: Your T&E — I just really need to up my game there. How about you, Elena?
Elena: Are you joking?
Rob: I —
Angela: That's how Rob makes a joke. Yep.
Elena: Wow. These are all — with the exception of Rob's — really deep answers.
Rob: I know.
Elena: And mine's not so deep. Mine is — we had kind of a crappy coffee machine forever and I would keep just getting new Keurigs and replacing them because they would always break. And finally my husband was like, let's just get a really nice coffee machine. And now — knock on wood — it hasn't broken in like a year and it makes better coffee. It's better for you because you're not using those K-cups all the time. But I think just taking a second to invest in something maybe a little nicer — actually I think we've saved money because we're not having to constantly order new ones.
Rob: My gadget budget wants to learn about this coffee machine.
Elena: Oh, we can talk about the coffee machine offline.
Angela: Coffee machines — in my experience, you either go with the $12 Mr. Coffee pot, which is going to serve you for like 25 years and you can buy good coffee to put in it, or you go that route. But anything in the middle is just not worth it.
Elena: It's not worth it. Yeah.
Brent: It's interesting — Rob's gadget budget or timing is actually the antithesis of efficiency for Marketing Architects, because what happens is he will start to communicate and talk and spend so much time commercializing all the wins of those gadgets that we'd lose company time on the efficiency side of that. Because he gets so excited.
Rob: It's not just the cost of money. It's the cost of time that I consume with my talk of gadgets. Yes.
Elena: All right, well thanks so much for joining us, Brent.
Brent: Absolutely. Thank you.
Elena: Thanks, Brent.