Work3 Stories: Mostly Metrics 📉

👋 Hello and welcome to this week’s edition!

Swaying a little from hot topics I’ve dealt with lately (blockchain, web3), I hosted a super interesting conversation with CJ from MostlyMetrics - a very popular and extremely well written Substack publication about financial models and business metrics.

CJ has spent his late teens / early twenties as a mason, and then built his career elevator working in finance, helping to scale fast growing software companies (with experience in private equity and management consulting too).

He’s 100% not your regular ‘finance’ guy - with the rare talent of simplicity and the ability to connect lots of different things together. A true storyteller.

I asked him some questions about his career hacks, the future of work, growing his newsletter, and a lot more.

Enjoy!

Just to start - would love to know a little bit more about your background, and how you handled career changes and choices so far?

I’ve always looked for ways to learn more in a faster period of time. I started my career in consulting, mainly because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but knew I’d get to see a bunch of cool business models. I then went over to private equity for a couple of years where I learned how to value companies and raise money. That paved the path for me to go from the funding to the funded side of the table where I put my excel and powerpoint skills to use helping scale fast growing software companies. I love working with founders to build operating plans and then help them bring budgets to reality.

Given you’re a numbers person - when and how did the idea to start writing come along?

I’ve always loved writing. I was the editor of my high school newspaper, wrote for my college newspaper, and did a double major in finance along with history because I loved writing about historical events. 

People always say I’m a numbers person because I’m in finance, but I actually have always thought of myself as a storyteller.

I started writing Mostly Metrics for three reasons:

1. I was working at a hyper growth startup that was moving so fast I was worried I’d forget what I was learning. I wanted to “document” the playbook

2. It gave me an excuse to reach out to people smarter than myself. It’s easier to say, “Hey, I have a newsletter with 11,000 subscribers and they all love the field you work in, can we talk about it” compared to the generic “Hey can I get coffee with you and pick your brain.”

3. Writing has always helped me crystallize my own thinking. So it’s a nice way for me to cement what I learn as a CFO.

What’s the most important learning and biggest satisfaction you’ve had in growing Mostly Metrics?

The most important learning is to do things that don’t scale. When you do, success comes really slowly at first. And then it comes all at once.

I think doing hard stuff is a competitive moat. And you uncover “earned secrets” along the way.

As you probably experienced with your newsletter, it’s super hard to get your first 1,000 subscribers. It feels like running in quicksand. But once you get past a certain critical threshold, maybe 3,000, it gets increasingly easier as the flywheels start to spin on their own.

The biggest satisfaction is people reaching out to say it helped them solve something at work they had tried to google a thousand times, and then found me. Or that it helped them look smart to their boss. That’s really cool.

What do you think is the biggest pain point of the audience that is reading Mostly Metrics?

They want complex finance stuff explained clearly, in plain english. Finance and business strategy is often dressed up to be really complicated. But we secretly all wish someone would just cut the crap and explain concepts to us like we were having a beer or coffee together. That’s what I try to do with Mostly metrics.

Do you think there is an abundance / overload of information these days?

100%. And I think a lot of the overload is news related. There are too many newsletters and podcasts and tv shows that just recite current events. I don’t think there’s enough evergreen content that people can continually return to and learn from. And when I say learn, I mean help them solve a specific problem they are dealing with or make more money from implementing into their work. 

What’s your personal point of view on the future of work; what do you see being the biggest trends?

I think people will increasingly see their networks as the businesses they work for, not the C corps themselves. What I mean by that is you play long term games with a fairly consistent group of people. For five years you may work together to build one company, and then move on to build something new together for the next four years. I think gone are the days of working for the same company for four decades and getting a pension and a gold watch. I believe people will increasingly become more loyal to the people they work with rather than the underlying establishment. Especially after the recent wave of tech layoffs. 

Have you been exposed to blockchain/crypto/web3 and if so what’s your take on the current state of things? Both from a personal point of view but also from a professional one, given that De-Fi is a huge topic too.

I think 99% of it is a scam. But the 1% has the chance to fundamentally change the way we do business.

Looking at new generations, what do you see or foresee being the biggest challenges career-wise?

Staying in one place long enough to accumulate valuable and transferable skills. It’s become pretty obvious over the past ten years that you can jump from job to job every two years to get a bigger pay raise than you would just staying at one firm for a long time. Now, I don’t think you should ever stay at the same company forever. You do have to see what “good” looks like at multiples places over the course of your career. However, learning how one org functions, and watching it transition from one chapter to another is a valuable experience.

We are moving into a world of work where everyone needs to be much more widely skilled than before. What would you advise to do to level-up financial literacy for non-finance people?

Understand how your business makes money. We call this a monetization model. It sounds simple, but it underlies everything the company does. It should impact how you align resources. There are five core monetization models:

• Subscription (Recurring)

• Consumption (Usage Based)

• Hybrid (Mix and Match)

• Transaction Based (Take Rate)

• Advertising (Views)

Other than technical/hard skills, what are the key soft skills you have developed over the years, and which ones do you think are needed in the years to come?

Active listening. Showing you are interested in what someone is saying with your facial features and comments. People want to be heard, not just talked at. I think early in my career I’d try to blind people with science. I’d bombard them with a million facts and figures. But if you don’t give them a chance to participate in the conversation, they might not really care.

What are your 3 favorite books on Finance and 3 on non-finance topics / some that you’ve recently been reading?

My favorite business books are:

1. How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis

2. The Innovation Stack by Jim McKelvey

3. The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick

My favorite non business books are:

1. Once a Runner by John L. Parker Jr. (about running)

2. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont (about writing)

3. Green Lights by Matthew McConaughey (about career building)

Are there any particular companies or startups that you’re particularly fond of?

Aside from the ones I’ve worked at personally, which I think are amazing, I think Secfi is doing some really innovative stuff, helping employees manage their stock options. And I think Ramp is revolutionizing the way we manage business expenses, an area of back office finance that hasn’t gotten enough attention. Finally, I love data companies. ZoomInfo is incredible from both a pricing and packaging standpoint, and it shows in their financial results. 

I hope you enjoyed this chat as much as I did - please make sure to leave a comment with any questions for me or CJ (and make sure you check out MostlyMetrics if you haven’t already!).