It was one of the last pieces of advice that CFO Beth Clymer left us with—an item that we snagged with one of our favorite questions: What advice do you have for new CFOs?
Her reply—“Don’t skimp on resources”—at first seemed trite, but a groundswell of words shortly followed.
“Too often, CFOs will say, ‘I don’t need that extra analyst’ or ‘I don’t need an extra accounting manager.’ But don’t skimp on resources. The impact that a strong finance organization can have throughout the business is massive, and those resources will almost always pay for themselves,” explains Clymer, who perhaps sounds more like a veteran CFO or a finance leader with multiple CFO tours of duty than an executive who entered the CFO office for the first time only in 2019.
However, prior to entering the C-suite at Jobcase, a jobs-oriented social media platform, Clymer had invested a decade with Bain Capital, where as an operating partner she had spent her days advising C-suite executives from the venture capital firm’s portfolio of consumer-oriented businesses.
“In my time at Bain Capital, I found that I was very often drawn to the parts of business transformation that had a lot to do with the office of the CFO,” recalls Clymer, who provides us with a lengthy list of typical challenges that frequently summoned her involvement at the firm, including finance team–building, KPI alignment, capital strategy, and business restructurings.
Still other items from her past also set her apart from finance’s more traditional corporate rank-and-file, including a nearly 4-year stint as a consultant with Parthenon Group, as well as a number of Ivy League degrees.
Perhaps not surprisingly, you get the feeling that it was Clymer’s experience at Bain Capital that today accents the delivery of her responses in a manner more akin to that of an objective outsider than of a CFO who has climbed the more traditional corporate ladder.
It’s a delivery that makes her final piece of advice sound all the more compelling.
Advises Clymer: “Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish. Really focus on surrounding yourself with the quantity and quality of team members who are going to allow your team to really help to drive the business.” –Jack Sweeney
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