FinPod

Meeyeon (00:13)
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of CFI's Careers in Finance series. Today I am joined by Mimi Hu. Welcome Mimi. And I am so excited to be able to talk to Mimi because Mimi is actually a personal friend of mine. We went to school together so we have many many memories. But Mimi's had an amazing career in finance and so I'm just so excited to hear all about this because

Mimi Hu (00:24)
Hi.

Meeyeon (00:43)
While I know most of the ins and outs, I'm no longer in Toronto anymore, so I haven't touched base as regularly as we used to when we were in school and I was still living there. And so we're in such different places of our lives now. We both have families and we have lots of adjustments we're making in our lives as we balance our professional work and personal life. And so...

would love for everyone to be able to hear how you've managed your career and like where you are today. Because as I always say, this is the most accessible coffee chat in the world. When we went to school, I don't know if you'll remember this, but when you were looking for jobs, did you do a bunch of these coffee chats?

Mimi Hu (01:34)
yes. I remember, like remember when we were in school at U of T Scarborough and like there was so much emphasis on like networking and attending all those events and they felt so like forced but like I find that like a lot of job opportunities are actually

built from casual coffee chats. for example, we were in the co-op program and my first co-op placement, I didn't get that through applying and interviewing. It was through genuinely connecting with someone that we clicked at one of those networking events, we chatted. It was more like a fit thing and I applied and then I got the job. So I think that's pretty standard.

across all industries.

Meeyeon (02:30)
remember that with like the whole coffee chat process and it, I think that stands out to me the most was actually in my last co-op placement, I was at Ontario Teachers and while I had a really great group in the fixed income group, I really wanted to go be at an investment bank on the South Side, have like a bunch of young people join, blah, blah. And when I was set up with a bunch of people to have coffee chats with, with my then managers.

Mimi Hu (02:51)
Yeah.

Meeyeon (02:57)
It was just like, if I go to that coffee chat, that conversation and like everything I get out of it is like unique to me. No one else is getting that same type of conversation. But with this Careers in Finance series, I find it so...

It's just kind of a little bit mind boggling because we grew up in a different kind of era, different generation. Like nowadays, especially I think with the onset of coronavirus back in like 2019, 20, it became very normal. And like the idea of having a video conference call with someone going on Zoom was incredibly normalized. But it's like, if I asked someone to have like a Zoom coffee back then in like 2011, that would have been very...

Mimi Hu (03:33)
Good.

Yeah, totally. mean, since COVID, all, like, I'd say like half of my coffee chats are virtual. And I...

Meeyeon (03:49)
my gosh.

Mimi Hu (03:50)
Yeah, so like for example at our company we support like a CPA program. So these are like students that are getting their work experience, they're rotating through like a rotational program in the Westin group of companies and one of their things is they got to do coffee chats with people from across the organization. So all of those are virtual and I also find that it's so much easier to do a coffee chat virtually.

Meeyeon (04:18)
Yeah.

Mimi Hu (04:19)
rather than like having to like meet up, go to a place, and I think COVID just turned it normal to have a virtual coffee chat.

Meeyeon (04:32)
Yeah, the only coffee chats I've had virtually are actually for this podcast series. But I think also it's like less, I'm in Vancouver, it's a little different. I think if I was still in Toronto working in finance, I would do a lot more. Okay, so I'm gonna ask you a question. And this is the most broad level question. And you could kind of take this however you'd like to in terms of direction. But where did you get your interest?

Mimi Hu (04:53)
Okay.

Meeyeon (04:59)
in finance. Did you go from high school to university knowing that you wanted to go and do a business degree and then that you wanted to go into some area of finance or did you kind of do it a little bit more like me where I did like a bit of a process of elimination where I was like yeah I don't want to do a science degree it's not for me.

I'm not sure what I would do in arts and I don't think that would lead to a job. And then so I said, I want to do a business degree and make sure I have internships along the way because at the end of the day, I will have like responsibilities and know, responsibilities and I have to be able to pay for them and whatnot.

Mimi Hu (05:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, okay, so like I think in terms of getting into finance, like even when I was like in grade school, you know how they ask you like, what do you want to be when you grow up? And like, no one really knows what a career is when you're like 10 or 12, but like you still get asked that like really.

Meeyeon (06:01)
But all you know is doctor and lawyer,

right?

Mimi Hu (06:04)
Doctor

and lawyer and like whatever else like an Asian parent household would put in your head. So you know you see like these picture books and I'm like well I want to be someone that works at a desk and I didn't really know what that entailed but I'm like it feels like something that like would fit me personality wise and like lifestyle wise.

And maybe there's bit of influence from my parents too, know, like doctor, lawyer, accountant, whatever it may be. and then through high school, there was like a bit of flopping back and forth and like, you know, keeping your options open. But I think in grade 12, like the funny story here is like, obviously everyone tries to keep their options open and take like all the classes that they can to like be able to get into like a science, program or like a business program.

but

grade 12 chemistry really killed me and I'm like I can't go into medicine. That's it. I can't understand these chemical equations like I'm gonna do a business degree and I think deep down like I always knew I want to go into business so it was more like

the chemistry class confirmed that like just go into business. And then when we got to university and our university, Mion, as you remember, like was very like finance and accounting focused.

Meeyeon (07:32)
Yeah, everyone was going to Deloitte, okay? And I still remember him. Maybe he'll listen to this, Keith. Remember Keith Kwan? He was like our campus recruiter for Deloitte. And he was so nice and he was so funny and so friendly. But I just remember thinking like, like accounting. I'm not sure if that's for me, but that was like the big thing. Everyone goes into accounting. It's a great place to start.

Mimi Hu (07:54)
I

yeah, I mean, I think for me, like, yeah, I kind of like bought into that propaganda, like everyone goes into account. And that's fine. But like, I think everyone was going and focused in like the public accounting path.

Meeyeon (08:13)
I think it's called CPA now, right, officially, but when we were in school, it was always called the CA.

Mimi Hu (08:17)
Yeah,

so you're really dating us. It's fine, it's fine, it's funny. um, yeah, so I think for me,

Meeyeon (08:22)
I know. Sorry. Maybe we'll cut that out.

Mimi Hu (08:32)
Yes, I've always sort of like knew I wanted to go into finance or accounting, but I think the difference is that I always knew I'd like to management accounting more and like on the fp&a side. So that's where I've like taken and focused my career.

Meeyeon (08:49)
And so I forget, but where was your first full-time job? And then like, maybe you could take us through where you started your first full-time job to where you are today. Mimi is at Canada's largest department store. One of my favorite places to shop currently.

Mimi Hu (09:07)
Yeah, so I'll give you like a rundown of sort of like my career after university. after university I graduated, I actually joined a startup called Teambuy. Teambuy and that's when like the group buying and all those coupons were really hot. So I was like, my gosh, this is so cool. I'm joining like a startup.

Meeyeon (09:18)
yeah, my gosh, I completely forgot. Team bye, right?

my God, I completely forgot about that. Do they

still exist?

Mimi Hu (09:32)
No, unfortunately not, but yeah, think the hype has died down. I joined there as like an entry level, like analyst, accountant. It was fun. Like the workforce was really young, know, like tech people working overnight, drinks in the office.

Meeyeon (09:34)
I haven't heard about group pod in a while either.

Mimi Hu (09:56)
partying and stuff. But after that, was like, I think I would really want to like go to a bigger company to just learn more about how like a bigger company operates and its processes. So from there, I joined Loblaws in their apparel department, which they sell private label, like family apparel called Joe Fresh.

Meeyeon (10:22)
my gosh, I completely forgot about

that chapter, yeah.

Mimi Hu (10:26)
Yeah, so I had joined that team to manage their standalone stores, for those of you who don't know, Joe Fresh is their apparel brand that they sell in their grocery stores, but they also have a number of standalone stores in malls or on the street that they run. So that was...

Meeyeon (10:41)
Standalone, yeah.

Mimi Hu (10:47)
sort of like really exciting for me because I've always had an interest in retail and even in high school I've worked at the mall part-time job as like a sales associate so it was sort of like full circle when I was able to join Joe Fresh and like I understood how like the stores and the floor and the sales associates worked and it was really interesting to get a grasp of you know like head-off.

Meeyeon (11:09)
It's nice to have

that like tangibility, right? Like I remember at least in financial services when I was in DCM, it was very like bizarre to me. like, like, this is like a billion dollar bond, but like a bond, right? Like what?

Mimi Hu (11:21)
Yeah, what is it? Yeah,

so did that for two, three years. And then

Meeyeon (11:32)
Did you do your CMA

when you were at JoFresh?

Mimi Hu (11:36)
I did my CMA when I started the process when I was at Team Y and then I finished off at Joe Fresh and yeah, so during Joe Fresh I got my CMA which is like the CPA now. I think they've consolidated all the three bodies.

But yeah, after Joe Fresh, I went to Brampton, which is like the Loblaw head office to join like a project management team. For those of you who don't know, like when Loblaw's acquired Shoppers Drug Mart.

Meeyeon (12:13)
Mm-hmm.

Mimi Hu (12:14)
There was a huge team that dealt with all the synergies and the reporting. So I was on that team doing financial reporting. was a really interesting experience. It was a secondment for about a year where we looked at both the businesses and we identified all the synergies that essentially we would realize by merging the two businesses together. So like the...

Meeyeon (12:40)
you were there

prior to the actual merger happening?

Mimi Hu (12:43)
Not prior, it was like post, so I was doing all of the post merger acquisition work. So it was like one of the most tangible examples is like, for example, Shoppers Drug Mart, which is a drug store, like the biggest drug store chain.

Meeyeon (12:46)
Okay.

Like a Dwayne,

Dwayne Reed is equivalent, I guess, in the US for folks that might be in the US. Yeah.

Mimi Hu (13:02)
Yeah.

And it was, previously it was like strictly focused on like non-food and pharmaceuticals. But one of the things is like, what if we like put food in there? So there's a lot of like testing and learning and I was there to like track the results.

On top of that, there's obviously like margin efficiencies. So La Blanc, the biggest grocery retailer in Canada. Basically, we went and like consolidated all our buys and looked at pricing and...

took the lower one, so there's obviously margin benefits there. that's sort of like the examples of what I was tracking during my time on the Synergy Strategy and Reporting team. After that, I was like, oh, maybe I should expand my experience a bit. I sort of saw what I...

needed to see on the retail side. Like let me dip my toes into like the manufacturing side because the Weston companies at the time also owned Weston Foods which was their bread manufacturer. So I went there for a little bit over a year doing fp&a and focusing on Ace Bakery which is their higher end bread brand.

and sort of looking at their margins and helping them with projects and efficiencies and like growing their food service business. So a lot of like report development and like working with business partners.

And then I'm like, hmm, I don't know if manufacturing's my cup of tea. Like, only after like going to the manufacturing side, I was like, oh, I don't know if my interests lie here. So that's when I was like, okay, Holtz has an opening. I'm interested. So I've been at Holtz for seven years now. Sort of.

rotated throughout a lot of the different business areas on the fp&a team. So I started their supporting marketing and HR and that's also the time when we were switching ERPs. So we switched to SAP as our financial system. So that was really exciting times.

Meeyeon (15:37)
And for those of you who are global, Holt's

is Holt Renfri, it's a major department store in Canada. It's like the biggest one. So in the US an equivalent would be like a Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue. And then what's the one in the UK? Selfridges, I think that's what. What's the other one with like the green bag? It's like really cute. It was like a major one and I completely forgot the name.

Mimi Hu (15:46)
stock.

Yeah, yeah, suffrages.

There's like, Beyenkorf, which is very, I think it's only in like, Netherlands or something. like yeah, Holt Renfrew used to be owned by Selfridges. They actually sold off the, you didn't? Yeah, so previously, Holt Renfrew rolled into like, the parent company, which was Selfridges Group.

Meeyeon (16:15)
I didn't know that. I had no idea.

Mimi Hu (16:29)
which was in the UK and under Selfridges group was like Selfridges in London Brown Thomas Which was in Europe and then the Debye and Corp which is also in Europe and then Holt

Meeyeon (16:45)
was

founded in Canada by like a Canadian person. It's not.

Mimi Hu (16:49)
It is from Canada. It was bought by the Westins. The Westins also owned Selfridges Group at the time. But now we've sold that off. Not me personally, but I wish.

Meeyeon (17:03)
my God,

I wish too, I'd like, Mimi, could I go in your private chat?

Mimi Hu (17:10)
Absolutely. Yeah, so, yeah, I've been at Holtz for seven years. I've supported marketing, HR. I've done the corporate fp&a role, which does all the consolidations, looking at total P &L. I'm currently, under my portfolio right now, is what we call trade finance, which is looking at sales and margin and...

and customer, which is really exciting. So essentially...

Meeyeon (17:38)
Okay, so I have a couple oops,

sorry.

No, you go ahead. You finished up. We're gonna edit this out.

Mimi Hu (17:45)
I was gonna say like in my role I support like the buyers and the planners as well as the marketing people.

Meeyeon (17:54)
Okay, so now I have a question about what exactly is corporate fp&a ? Because I don't quite understand. Like I get the idea of like corporate financial planning and analysis. So you plan out like the next like one, three, five years of the company and I get that there's, you know, there's financial analysis and planning for that future. But like what is the day to day like as like a more junior person and like what is it like?

where you are today. So I guess like for example, for me, if someone asked me like, what did you do in DCM? I would describe it as I supported the origination of bonds. I used to work in government finance, so we would originate government debt. So in Canada, would have been provincial debt, municipalities and whatnot, so that they can, for example, the province of Ontario could pay all their doctors every single month.

Mimi Hu (18:45)
Thank

Meeyeon (18:53)
And of course, the province needs funding to do that. And they do it through raising debt, because you're never going to see a province raise equity. And it would be like Ontario equity. And it would be the same thing for the US. It would be called, I think, like Muni Fin in the US, where there's a public finance team. So various states raise debt, cities, whatnot. And the banks would support the origination of that debt.

In corporates, was the same thing. So for example, people in Canada, let's say, tell us a major media and telco company, they need to acquire cable lines, whatever they need to buy, they do it through either equity or debt, oftentimes debt, and I would be on that team. So we would analyze where government treasuries are trading and advise the company on where we think that they could best come to market, get the best bang for their buck in terms of financing.

and just give them insights on what markets are doing currently. And it was a very transactional business in the sense that once you've originated one bond, you've kind of originated all bonds. But yeah, it's like very kind of routine process. You get to meet different people and understand different scenarios. But yeah, like as an analyst, I support our managing directors in providing detailed analysis of various corporate bonds or.

municipal bonds, I do internal analysis to make sure that managing directors have deals in their pipeline and kind of when they could expect to bring them into the business and report that to the head of DCM and present that on a monthly basis. That's kind of what I do in DCM. like, what did you do as a junior in fp&a and what is that like? Because I feel like for at least for me, it is like a very

I can't even begin to explain it. It's like very mystical for me. And I know that fp&a is becoming a very popular field to go into. Like I remember when we were graduating, the big thing was like, okay, like who wants to go into investment banking? It's like everyone. It's like, who wants to go into private equity? less hands. People like don't necessarily know what it was at that point. And then it's like, so can someone name some other jobs? And then there'd be like no one. But fp&a is like a big, big thing now. Like everyone wants to go into it.

Mimi Hu (20:43)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Meeyeon (21:08)
But like, what actually is it?

Mimi Hu (21:10)
yeah

okay so i think that is like i could go on for like 30 minutes about this question so i'll just start with like surface level of like fpna and like i think across every company and every fpna role like

These are sort of like the key things that like an fp&a team would do. So like fp&a is more like a forward looking team. So we're definitely looking at forecasting all the time, like on a monthly basis, budgeting for the next year. That takes like a quarter of the year, takes a lot of work, a lot of partnership with different teams across the business. And then we also work on like a five year plan. So a five year view out.

surface level, fp&a is, we're sort of like, I wouldn't say we're, we don't have a crystal ball, but we try our best to like lead the business and provide an outlook to the business of where we think we're going to be landing. I think fp&a varies from company to company and industry to industry, but at least from like a retail perspective and like a Holtz perspective, there's a lot of business partnering. So when I was talking about my experience,

with like supporting marketing, supporting HR, supporting like the corporate roll-up.

central team. That's really like business partnering with like non-financial people. mostly in my role now, I'll work with like the leads to get an understanding of what their spend is and sort of what that's bringing to the business, what KPI. So there's some like dashboard tracking and strategic planning. And I'd say

It's a lot of business partnership, but like with the intent to like add value to the business and we're not doing just reporting and like hounding people about like, you're over budget or under budget. It's really like explaining a story and being able to articulate the numbers and add value to the business and ultimately help decision-make. In terms of like what a junior role in fp&a would be.

Meeyeon (23:32)
Does fp&a

roll up into the CFO?

Mimi Hu (23:35)
Yeah, it does, it usually does.

In terms of what a junior person would do, so the analysts on my team, they'll do weekly reporting, monthly reporting, management of budgets on the spend side. I have a team that supports sales and margins, so they're looking at how we're tracking against our sales budgets, what's driving those sales, and really explaining the results. We look at margin to see if we're hitting our margin targets,

IMUs,

if we're hitting our IMU targets as well. IMUs is an initial markup. So in retail, it's a pretty standard business model, right? You buy the sweater at 50 bucks, you sell it at 100, so you make 50 bucks. So that's the basics of the business. You buy and you try to sell at a margin.

Meeyeon (24:15)
What are IMUs?

okay, okay.

Mm-hmm.

Mimi Hu (24:39)
so yeah, I'd say a lot of analysis work and also, a lot of thinking outside the box because a lot of like the ad hoc analysis that comes is potentially like evaluating business opportunities. So like, I'll give you an example, like,

Should we like, let's say we have a whole bunch of old stock, like, should we mark it down and try to sell it? Or should we return it to the vendor and we might have to incur some cost to transport it back? Like what is more worthwhile? That's just like one example. Yeah.

Meeyeon (25:22)
interesting. Okay, so

I guess for me to understand FP&A more, I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions. So FP&A generally reports into the CFO, and I believe like corporate treasury would also go into a CFO and like investor relations, everyone would go into a CFO there. Now with an FP&A team,

All the work that you do, I guess, like reports up into one senior person, whether it's like a VP, director, whatever you might want to call them, and then they report to the CFO. And then every year, there's each business unit. for example, I guess like marketing, get like a budget to work with. And then throughout the year, the FP&A team takes like actuals.

Mimi Hu (25:49)
Bye bye.

Meeyeon (26:13)
and what the plan is and do analysis on a forward-looking basis there. So it's like the CFO ultimately gives the business units like a, not an input, but like a number to work with budget-wise for the year. And then what actually gets realized throughout the year, does fp&a take those as inputs and then do forward-looking forecasting and other various projects like the one that you're mentioning here about old stock.

Mimi Hu (26:41)
yeah, you could say that. like on the budgeting piece, it's more, it's not so much like the CFO gives a number to marketing. There is a lot of collaboration back and forth as to like, what, what should the right number be? so we'll use like zero base budgeting where we like build it up. Yeah.

Meeyeon (27:02)
my god, it's a ZBB. I hate hearing that word.

Mimi Hu (27:05)
So we'll like build it up from scratch back and forth on like what the numbers are going to deliver. Everyone online's on a number that for the year they have an amount to spend and this is from a marketing perspective they have an amount to spend. We'll track throughout the year if they're spending.

on target and also like the spend, what are you delivering for us on our P &L or KPI-wise? And then, yeah, we'll also work with the marketing teams to forecast out what the next quarter looks like or what the remainder of the year looks like because we wanna make sure that we're managing to those numbers. And sometimes there's always questions about like, can we get more money because we can deliver more.

or not. And we sort of like, it's sort of like fluid, but yeah, like there's a budget at the beginning of the year. We track to it, analysis is done and...

It's a lot of business partnership and for fp&a role, I think the reason why it's becoming so popular now is that they're realizing like fp&a is not just like a budget management role, right? Like we have the capability to really partner and understand the business and add value from a financial perspective, which

to like a non-financial team that's really valuable because it adds a different point of view on how they make decisions.

Meeyeon (28:39)
So another question that I think would be interesting is I remember back in the day when you were at Loblaws George Weston, there was someone there that reached out to me about a role in their internal team. And ultimately I didn't end up taking the role, but corporate development as a team, I think that is kind of like a catchall raise. At a lot of companies, corporate development is just effectively sales.

Mimi Hu (28:53)
Yeah.

Meeyeon (29:07)
For example, let's say you own some sort of software. Corporate development at that team means going and finding new corporate clients. But at a large corporation like Alablaws, their idea of corporate development was going and acquiring different companies, whether it's your supplier for bread or something like raw materials that would get sourced into some of your products. That was corporate development for them. I'm curious, how does fp&a partner with

Mimi Hu (29:14)
Yeah.

Meeyeon (29:37)
like an internal team that you have. Does Holtz have like an internal team? I don't think they do very many like large acquisition, like I can't even name like an acquisition ever.

Mimi Hu (29:42)
Not really.

No, we don't really have a corporate team. think if we were to do any it would be because Holtz is owned by Whittington, which is like the parent company of like the private arm of LaBla. So.

at the parent company there's a team that would help with . In terms of how I would see fp&a partnering with is like, we're sort of like on the ground day to day. We have an outlook to the business. We have projections on what we expect the trajectory of the business to go. So I think would be interested in that. When I was at Joe's,

Meeyeon (30:34)
Would you support, like, so when you

were at George Weston and they did the shoppers transaction, would there be an fp&a team that like supports and partners with the, probably generally the former investment banking people that would say like, like we'd love to acquire shoppers. Like these are the business reasons why, this is why we think it'd be additive to the business. We think it'd be accretive in X number of years. Would the law of laws then fp&a team be partnering with?

their corporate development team and doing that analysis.

Mimi Hu (31:08)
I wasn't part of the pre-merger work, but I can easily see how yeah, they would. The thing with those corporate teams is they're sort of like out of the business. They don't really necessarily understand the inner workings of the business. So if there's anyone that they would want to partner with internally, it would definitely be the fp&a team.

Meeyeon (31:33)
Okay, yeah,

I understand that a lot better now.

Mimi Hu (31:36)
Yeah, so... Yeah. That's sort of what I think.

Meeyeon (31:42)
Tell us, what

do you do today in your latest role?

Mimi Hu (31:47)
What do I do? I mean... A lot of stuff?

Meeyeon (31:51)
Cause wait, you're a director

of is it trade finance and marketing?

Mimi Hu (31:54)
Trade finance

and marketing. Yeah So yeah Yeah, it's still with that within the FP&A team So I've been in this role for

Meeyeon (31:59)
And is that still within the FP&A space or?

Mimi Hu (32:10)
like almost a year and it's essentially being the business support to the buyers and the planners as well as the marketing team. So on the buying and the planning side it's managing like their sales budgets, their margins, looking at if they're hitting those, what a forecast would look like.

That's a really huge part of my job, especially because it's just so fast-paced in retail and we're really impacted by, you know, discretionary spend. General economy decisions on tariffs, very relevant last week. So...

Meeyeon (32:48)
Yeah, in general economy.

Tell me what that discussion was like.

Mimi Hu (33:03)
Yeah, so obviously.

Meeyeon (33:03)
Because obviously

we, not we, mean like Holtz imports a lot from the US. And so that'd be really interesting to learn because it's very topical in real life.

Mimi Hu (33:15)
Yeah, so obviously the tariffs impact our imports. So we import a lot of our goods from different countries, one of them being the US. So previously, US and Canada, like we're trade partners, right? So some of this stuff is like duty free or like a very low duty. Yeah. But if those, if we actually

Meeyeon (33:35)
We had NAFTA.

Mimi Hu (33:43)
go through with those 25 % duties on imports, then essentially we have to pay more duty on them and that's going to eat into our margins. So we would have to work with our vendor partners, so like the brands themselves to see like what best course of action was. mean, yeah, like it's, it's like a lose-lose situation for all, I think.

Meeyeon (33:59)
Yeah, like who's gonna eat the tariff ultimately,

Mimi Hu (34:09)
But yeah, I mean, we're watching it closely. The decision got like overturned in like a day. for like a month.

Meeyeon (34:14)
TBD for like a month, right? And like a month

in the world of FP&A, like what is a month? It's like not really anything. Like, yeah, exactly, right?

Mimi Hu (34:21)
That's going to be like next week. We'll like look at it.

But it's definitely on our radar. It's like going to be a big thing. And like these are sort of the things that like fp&a would be pulled into to provide point of view and sort of like impacts on our financials. Like how is that going to impact our financials? What can we do to offset that? Is there other opportunities we can look into?

to offset the potential negative impacts.

I think marketing and finance, they don't necessarily understand each other because we're very like, show me the numbers. But marketing is like, well, if you don't spend money on this, you will lose awareness.

Meeyeon (35:07)
Yeah, like I need to get

impressions out there.

Mimi Hu (35:09)
Yeah, impressions, awareness, all those like marketing KPIs that they track. So I think.

One, from a high level view of my role specifically is sort of like how do I bridge marketing and finance together where it's really a balance, right? On one side, there is a portion of marketing that we can measure and it's called performance marketing where you can click on an ad, you go through our site and you make a sale. We directly attribute that spend to a sale and you can measure

like an ROI on it or what we call ROAS, like return on ad spend. There is a larger part of marketing that is spent on like creative and like shooting models, shooting product, putting up.

ads here and there, targeting ads to awareness that is harder to sort of quantify its benefits on the finance side. So I think in terms of where we are at from a Holtz perspective is how can we marry marketing and finance better.

Meeyeon (36:23)
And

like one of the things that is probably like when you say it's harder to measure is like, for example, all of those, I don't know if TikTok is still a thing, but that in like Instagram, right? It is, I I understand it is a big marketing tool. And I think up to maybe like a year ago, it was terribly difficult to track. You'd say like, this person has, you know, like two and a half million followers. That's a huge audience.

Mimi Hu (36:34)
I think it is.

Yeah.

Meeyeon (36:52)
and their account is fashion oriented. They live in North America, whether it's Canada or the US, and they have X number of views per post on fashion related things. We should definitely work with this person and pay them. And you would pay them, but you don't really know what benefit you were getting. But I guess at this point now, it's kind of been like there's websites like Like To Know It is, I believe what it's called.

LTK and then other ones where you have these affiliate links that drive the traffic directly to the retailer or manufacturers website. So you can track, I guess as in FP&A marketing that you're paying these influencers and I hate that word, but that's what they call them. You can pay them and then they earn a commission off links that the consumer goes and purchases from, it also allows you to track like.

Mimi Hu (37:24)
Yeah.

Meeyeon (37:49)
through their affiliate link, what they're actually driving. So you can basically put a KPI on these individual influencer, i.e. contractors performance now, right?

Mimi Hu (37:52)
Yeah.

Yeah, 100 % and that's what I mean by like we can attribute performance to like those marketing dollars that we spend and there's like standard KPIs that we'll look at on that side of the business, not business, but that side of like the marketing world. But there is also this other side, which if you talk to a marketer, they'll say, this is like top funnel or middle funnel spend where it's more like you want people to know

Meeyeon (38:14)
Very interesting.

Mimi Hu (38:31)
like, Holtz is a retailer and a brand and to have it like stay top of mind. So like for example if you're looking for luxury makeup, like you know Sephora's there to sell it, but like is Holtz also top of mind? And if the answer is no, then like typically marketers would want to like invest more in like top funnel. So that's sort of...

Meeyeon (38:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mimi Hu (39:00)
I think my role in marketing right now, sort of like trying to marry the two, and I don't think that's different in any organization. hear, when I talk to like fp&a peers that support marketing, it's sort of, there's always like opportunity to marry up the two, like put a more tangible spin to the big dollars that they spend.

Meeyeon (39:26)
And with fp&a , what do you think are the key skills that you've, um, that have made you successful in the role? So for example, for me, I would say, um, whether it was in portfolio management or investment banking, it's been heavy data analysis and Excel presentation skills and not just presentation of data, but how you present yourself. I think has been a huge part of developing that career path. Um,

But like those hard technical skills are mainly like Excel oriented, PowerPoint oriented, Bloomberg oriented. And those, you're kind of, if you're continuously practicing and developing and perfecting skills in those pieces of software, like that's a great way to continuously build your career in finance, at least from the capital market side. What would you say it is for fp&a ? And is there like a standard software everyone uses in the industry?

Mimi Hu (40:20)
Excel? Excel and then yeah, so I think I can split that question up into like two areas. So obviously there's, I wouldn't say you need like super technical skills to be an FP&A. So like most like on the technical side, we use Excel on a daily.

Meeyeon (40:22)
Excel is true.

Mimi Hu (40:42)
basis being able I'd say like advanced excel is really helpful being able to do modeling and complex formulas things like that. We also use micro what accounting piece.

Meeyeon (40:56)
But what about the accounting piece?

Like, do you have to have a CPA?

Mimi Hu (41:02)
preferred, yeah. So from like a designation standpoint, like on the technical side, like ideally CPA, we really like to get those critical thinking skills. And I think with the CPA and the rigorous program that people have to go through, like it is a really valuable asset to have.

Meeyeon (41:23)
Are you familiar with the US

gap in Ifrist? Is that required in FDA?

Mimi Hu (41:27)
not at least for at-holds for a Canadian company, no. Nothing on that standpoint. If there's any sort of like data tools that you've had previous experience to like MicroStrategy or Power BI, that's helpful depending on what the company uses.

Meeyeon (41:46)
Power BI, interesting.

Mimi Hu (41:54)
And then, yeah, so like not super heavy on the technical side. I mean, we do a lot of PowerPoint presentations as well. A lot of like storytelling. If you're good at putting together really pretty slides, that's like a bonus. Yeah. But more importantly, I think it's on like the soft skill side.

Meeyeon (42:07)
Everyone loves it.

Mimi Hu (42:17)
FP&A is a lot of business partnerships, so you have to be really good at developing relationships with all your business partners, working collaboratively with them. Yeah, teamwork, community, and...

What's really helpful on the soft suicide is if you're able to take the numbers and tell a story. Because it's all about the storytelling and how you analyze that data and make it relevant for your audience and your audience is your business partner. So you can't really just put numbers in front of a non-financial person. You have to tell a story for them to understand.

So yeah, I'd say like FP&A is like half storytelling of the numbers.

Meeyeon (43:12)
Okay, so Mimi, today as a director of trade finance and marketing, talking about forecasting, where would you like to see yourself in the next year, three, five years? What is Mimi who's fp&a for her career?

Mimi Hu (43:32)
I love that actually, I love how you asked what my outlook or FP&A is for my... That is a very interesting question. I don't have a crystal ball, but I do have like certain aspects that I would love to continue growing as part of my career. So...

Meeyeon (43:39)
You're a feater.

Mimi Hu (43:57)
I really like retail, so that's why I've been sort of like focused my whole career on retail. I feel like it's just so tangible, it's relevant. So probably love to stay in retail. I also do like the fp&a side of things. I like the business partnering and being able to tell a story. It's funny because in interviews, people like when I'm interviewing people and then they ask me like,

like why do you like staying in fp&a ? My answer is sort of like, okay, in finance or in accounting, there's like two ends of the spectrum. Like you can go into like tax and that's super like black and white. You follow rules, you produce statements and like that's your job. But then you can go on the flip side. Well, you can make a lot of money there, so.

Meeyeon (44:50)
Sounds boring.

I know it's true, right?

There's a trade-off.

Mimi Hu (44:59)
Yeah, risk and reward, right? So, but on the other side, I'd say is fp&a where you're, it's almost like the creative side of accounting where there's things that are more gray up to your discretion and...

And like there's no right answer. just depends on what is the right answer for the company at the time. And I really like the storytelling aspect of it and all the business partnerships. So I do envision myself staying in fp&a . Yeah.

Meeyeon (45:34)
And you

manage a team currently, right?

Mimi Hu (45:36)
Yes, I do.

Meeyeon (45:39)
And then so would you, I guess in fp&a as you grow your career, you go into an increasing kind of leadership role.

Mimi Hu (45:46)
Yeah, so like in our organization, I report to like a DVP, so a divisional vice president, and then he reports to the CFO.

Meeyeon (45:57)
my gosh, maybe you're gonna be a DBP next. You know what that reminds me of? Dawn Valley Parkway. I remember that from living in Toronto. If you become the DBP, does your employee discount increase?

Mimi Hu (46:02)
Hahaha

Yeah.

the limit increases. But it's not like I get more discount. I think the limit increases.

Meeyeon (46:19)
my gosh, I'm so excited.

Okay, so I would love to wrap up this pod pass by giving people that are interested in careers in fp&a because there's so many of them out there, one kind of like little kind of competitive advantage. What is the most frequent question that you ask in interviews for fp&a that you think people you find that people find most challenging to be asked?

Mimi Hu (46:51)
Yeah, so I usually ask, like...

Meeyeon (47:00)
that people find challenging, you find that you're not getting the answers that you would love.

Mimi Hu (47:00)
that like, that like they trip up.

I don't know if this is like a question that like I don't that they don't answer well I usually ask them questions about like if you were to like looking at Holt Renfrew because a lot of the time when people come for interviews at Holt Renfrew they

In Canada, we're a well-known brand. You can easily research what we do and what we stand for and the products that we sell. I love asking what you think are Holt Renfrew's top opportunities in the market. sometimes I get really bad answers and sometimes I get good answers. just drawing from what is the top skill.

that someone in fp&a should have. Storytelling as well as like you have to be really curious in order to like dig through the data because like there's data at every company and you can do your work and do a good job of it and that's great. But I think in fp&a in order to add value you have to be really curious.

Meeyeon (47:54)
storytelling.

Mimi Hu (48:17)
because there's opportunities everywhere in the data. So it's like having that curiosity in order to like take that one step further to like uncover opportunities that people are not seeing like surface level.

Meeyeon (48:35)
So those of you that have listened to this podcast, I hope that you have gotten a insider perspective on fp&a because I really truly could not think of a better person to give you all the deep insights of fp&a as Mimi Hu. So for now, that has been our episode today of our Careers in Finance series and I will see you all next time.

Mimi Hu (48:51)
Thank you.