FinPod

Meeyeon (00:13)
Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of CFI's Careers in Finance series. Today I am joined by Smith Lordeus and I'm finally going to get to be able to say something that I've wanted to say my whole life. He joins us from the ATL. Are you still in Atlanta?

Smith Lordeus (00:13)
Go for it.

Yeah, I live in the greater Atlanta area. I'm a little bit outside the area, but here, if you live close to Atlanta, you just say Atlanta. Everybody doesn't know where those smaller cities are, but yes.

Meeyeon (00:35)
Okay.

So I'm so excited to be hosting you and having you as our guest today. What I'd like to open up this series with is always, can you tell us how you got started in your career? What's your origin story, so to speak? Did you study things in finance? Did you do a degree in business? What got you interested? What got you to your very first step in your career?

Smith Lordeus (01:10)
That's a great question. So I have a non-traditional path to finance. If you were to ask me when I was younger, my goal was I was trying to be the hotshot engineer. Effectively, Bill Gates was kind of the ideal. So I wanted to be the black Bill Gates, if you were to ask me. But yeah, so I started, I wanted to be an engineer. My father was an electrical engineer. My mom worked in the medical field as a nurse.

Meeyeon (01:29)
love it. Black Bill Gates.

Smith Lordeus (01:40)
So science was always been a part of my upbringing and so forth. when I went to school, I grew up in Miami, Florida. And when I went to school at the University of Florida, I majored in computer engineering and it was a bit of a Renaissance, man. I majored in some of the other engineering as well along the way. But...

Yeah, so starting just from a very technical skill, I fell into finance accidentally. just throughout my career have done a lot of different roles just along the way. And I had an opportunity just to join the finance org, leveraging my technical skills. I remember it vividly. I was a data analyst. I was in the role of a data analyst and I hit that, I hit a wall in my career. I was just trying to figure out, you know, I want to grow my career, but I don't know.

how to progress. I feel like I'm always just going to be in the data space and only seen in this space. And I really wanted this to expand my horizons. So I looked across my organization and I said, well, where in the organization can you A, leverage data, B, know, stand in front of your work and get more exposure, C, influence strategic decisions and add value to the organization. And lo and behold, fp&a was the

Perfect intersection, I would say, that led me there. So I started off as a senior financial analyst within a telecom company. And I did that for a few years and before getting my leadership opportunity within the space.

Meeyeon (03:19)
And it's interesting you say you started in data because data analysis has always been around, but it's never been as relevant and as at the forefront of like a growing career than it is today. Because today we have more data than ever before. I want to say like 10, 15 years ago when people said like, we make strategic decisions, it was difficult to say we make data-driven decisions because it-

Smith Lordeus (03:35)
yeah.

Meeyeon (03:47)
wasn't as readily collectible and we didn't analyze consumer behavior, for example, the way that we do today. But with data, it's so interesting because I remember when I used to work in debt capital markets, my colleague that sat beside me, one day maybe he'll listen to this, hey Josh, his thing was like, know, I'm just a data analyst, okay? We just work with a lot of data. We were in fixed income, so of course it's very analytically heavy, but.

Being a good data, like everyone's an analyst at heart, okay? Whether you're like 25 or 55, everyone's an analyst at heart. But data analysis was so key and being able to learn to not just work with data, but being able to get a really desperate, like kind of makes no sense piece of data set and get it to a high quality, like blessed data set, and then work with analyzing that and splicing it, dicing it in many different ways.

Smith Lordeus (04:20)
Right.

Meeyeon (04:46)
such a useful skill to have. How did you find that was relevant FP&A when I think, so I don't have a background in corporate FP&A. Tell us what you do. Like what was it kind of like day to day when you started the first role that you had in FP&A?

Smith Lordeus (05:05)
Yeah, so everything that you said is very accurate. think data is the new gold, if you ask me in this day and age. In my first role in fp&a , it was different because here I am, I worked as an operator, like, hey, I'm working in the business and now I'm transitioning to a world where you're working on the business. So for me, I had to lean into my strength.

data analytics and just being able to analyze data sets. I think what gave me an advantage was that I worked in the frontline role prior to my data analytics role. So I had more context in terms of the information. I think one of the challenges is you can see a mountain, a sea of data, but if you can't see the story that it's shaping up, you can't add value. So.

In that first role when I transitioned, I had to lean into that. It was a very technical role. I helped with bringing in data sets that my finance team didn't have a lot of visibility into and being able to explain, here's what happened when I was in this role in the field. this is what, when we see these increases and decreases in this volume metric, this is what that means for customers. This is what's driving it.

So I leverage a lot into my strengths at first. I really had to work with a lot of very, very smart people that were great at the financial modeling and I had to ramp up that skillset. And hey, how do you interpret a P &L? How do you understand, how do you connect the dots between all of your domain expertise into how does that drive top line revenue? How does it connect to cost? How does it drive free operating cashflow? So.

It was, I think in that role, I wrote a lot of SQL queries, a lot of Tableau, building dashboards.

Meeyeon (06:59)
Select

star from.

Smith Lordeus (07:01)
yes, yes, a whole bunch of it with data warehouses and millions and millions of lines of data. And, and just talking, having tons of conversations with different business units. It can be very easy to get siloed. And I think the group I was in was very good at just trying to break down those silos and bringing people together at the table and showing the power of the data. So we did business cases, I would validate assumptions. So a lot of my day in that first role was.

Truly just analyzing data, but I think the key was uncovering the business story. And I think that was a huge transition for me going from an analytics role to a finance.

Meeyeon (07:42)
did you mainly work out of, was it like Excel and were you putting together various types of analysis in Excel? Or I'm curious, what type of software did you use in FP&A?

Smith Lordeus (07:54)
I think Excel is pretty much like the all skills apply, right? That's the all purpose software within a lot of FP&A environments. think different organizations have like their ERP solutions, they have their finance suite. The organization I work for had no shortage of those tools, but yeah, Excel definitely, think it can be very easy. I think if you're not careful, Excel can be the thing where if you feel like you're very good at Excel,

Meeyeon (07:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Smith Lordeus (08:24)
you are very good at FP&A and that's not necessarily the case, right? It's a great skill, it's a tool, but obviously we're the drivers of the tool. So definitely Excel, definitely a lot of SQL query tools. you can use, I'm trying to think what's a popular one. SQL developer would be like a popular one. Or you can just use some online Oracle based platforms or Snowflake, AWS. So there's a lot of different.

Meeyeon (08:45)
Yeah.

Smith Lordeus (08:53)
tools you can just definitely leverage. In some environments, they use SAS or R if you're more in the higher level up in the rung of analytics, but those are some of the tools that I use. I think you try to find the tool.

Meeyeon (09:08)
Did you learn those?

Did you learn those while you were in school? Like how did you learn how to use all of those kind of database servers and as well, because you have a different background, you're an engineering background, how did you come about the knowledge of being like a data analyst? And then on top of that, how did you gain your knowledge in finance?

Smith Lordeus (09:29)
So you're going to laugh when I share this, but I'm largely self-taught. So I read a lot of books, definitely a lot of YouTube University, I would say. I also guess networking with people in this space. So there's a lot of smart people out there. So within my organization, I reached out and network and build relationships with those who are further ahead in data analytics and learn a lot of the tricks. I bought a lot of coffee and a lot of lunch.

Meeyeon (09:55)
Yeah, oh my gosh.

You're probably like, oh, a lot of coffee.

Smith Lordeus (09:59)
yeah, definitely. So spent a lot of money. They were line items in the budget for my personal budget. So I just spent a lot of time with people that had the skills and operated in space and learned from them. Read a lot of books, just really being self-taught and also just learning from, benefiting from other people's experiences along the way. So I think a large part of that, I think my experience in academia is that it tends to be highly theoretical and it's a...

Finance is such a broad space. Most people, when you think finance, you're only thinking of Wall Street or investment banking. Not many people think of fp&a as a specific skill or a specific career field within the finance space. what I find very interesting is that it's, a lot of it tends to be either on the job training or use case, if you're working on a project learning, working on different projects or yeah, we're just being self-taught.

Meeyeon (10:58)
And then so like, tell us about how you went from, so you were at Cox Communications, right? And you were there for quite some time. And you eventually became a manager of FP&A. Tell us about that experience and just what the, what your, what kind of like springboarded you into that.

Smith Lordeus (11:05)
Yes.

Yeah, so it's funny because, you know, you do, being an individual contributor for, so for the bulk of my career, you think that, hey, you know what, this is the way to go. Build up the technical skills, you know, do great work, and that's how you get to leadership. And what I learned in my transition from individual contributor to now managing, when now you have a team, you're leading a team of people, is that what got you there will not keep you there.

Meeyeon (11:30)
Mm-hmm.

Smith Lordeus (11:51)
I had to flex new skills and learn different things. How to delegate, how to trust my team, how to tell the business story, how to influence. These are skills that I got some exposure to from an individual contributor as an analyst, but it's a whole different level once you get into the management realm and it continues to evolve. So storytelling, critical thinking, a lot of the things that were, I would say that were advertised as soft skills.

Meeyeon (12:20)
Yeah.

Smith Lordeus (12:20)
are now

the new hard skills once you get into that frame. And as you know, as you continue to climb up into higher roles, it becomes so much more strategic. So I think the key learning for me was building relationships. That was a springboard because I had a good track record of delivering good work. So that definitely certainly helped. But once I got there, it was just learning a completely different skill set. It was a whole new arena.

Meeyeon (12:48)
But what I find super useful is that I think that once you, and I think you said it the best, is you're an individual contributor earlier on in your career, you're building up a lot of technical skills, putting in a lot of hard work, long hours. And then once you kind of finesse and hone and have continuously practiced developing those technical skills, all of a sudden you go into a leadership management role. And the...

What gets you your results? What will get you promoted into your next role and continuing through that path of developing as a leader is not going to be necessarily like it'll be your work product, but you won't be. You're not doing the work product. And so it's a different story because you have to learn how to control the work product by kind of just influencing it. And so being able to manage a team of.

Smith Lordeus (13:29)
All right.

Meeyeon (13:46)
PNA like analysts is such a different skill, but how much did you find that benefited that you got to have frontline experience, data analysis experience, and then being a senior financial analyst, like being able to actually do the job of the people that you manage, I think is essential to success. You understand not only the work that they do, but you can really empathize with any struggles that they have. You can coach them from firsthand experience. How did you find,

How did you find developing as a leader in a manager of fp&a role? How much did you find that your actual own experience was helpful to that? Do you think you could have been as an effective leader if you came from like a completely different background?

Smith Lordeus (14:34)
Short answer, probably not. But what I would say is that, you know, I feel very fortunate. Very early in my fp&a career, I had some really great leaders that were really focused on development. a lot of my leadership today, I model after my experiences with those leaders and some of my peers. think the question I always, something I always remind myself is be the leader that I want to have.

Meeyeon (14:36)
You

Smith Lordeus (15:03)
you know, as a, if I'm, you know, for someone, if I'm leading someone who's a financial analyst, what kind of leader do they need in their career at this point in time to help them get to the next step? And a lot of, most of the time I see myself in my team. So when I would lead, you know, I remember, you know, hey, you know, the first time you had to deliver a presentation to a client or to a VP and you have to, you know, be firm and

having all of the anxiety and the nervousness, and even though you prepared and everything is there, how do you help someone navigate through those emotions and feelings? So for me, knowing that, having experienced that myself, I try to make sure that the environment is as such where, hey, how can I create a safe practice field for you just to practice, to get more reps, repetition, and to build on that? How do I?

empower my team and esteem their confidence. Because a lot of what I've noticed in terms of building credibility, it really stems from our level of own personal confidence. You if we don't feel confident in our work, how can we expect somebody else to have that same confidence in us? yeah, yeah. So, so for me, I think because of I've had some great leadership leaders that I model myself at, and I, of course I add my own flavor to it.

Meeyeon (16:12)
my gosh. I used to say that exact same thing to my team. Yeah.

Smith Lordeus (16:28)
as well, but yeah, I think because of those experiences, I think it would have been much more difficult, not impossible, but because I've had those mentors and because I've had those positive examples, it's allowed me just to be able to be a more effective leader and to connect with my people. Because otherwise it can be very easy just to kind of just look at, look through the lens of, hey, you know, just black and white, the work is done or it's not, or it's right or wrong.

It can be very easy to have the empathy as you mentioned. So I think those experiences are huge. I think when I look back at my career, I've had a lot of diverse experiences and I think they all work together to help me as a leader, just to be able to show in terms of how I show up.

Meeyeon (17:15)
And I think it's a really wonderful point that you mentioned.

Some people are focused on, everyone has their own style of management and just as much as everyone's a unique person, but some people show up to work as in leading a team is like, this is my team and this is my leadership style. But I love how you mentioned that sometimes people need different leaders. Like, so the way that you show up for one person is gonna be different from another. It's like you Smith, you have your own style of leadership, but when you're working with, let's say Jackie versus Michael.

you're going to be the leader that they need at that point in their career. And I think that's such an important thing to emphasize because if you want to be a successful leader, you cannot ever be a successful leader without the people that that kind of report to you supporting you. And it is so important, I think, for people to recognize and appreciate the importance of what you just said. Being showing up as a leader.

that they need, like being the leader that you wish you had when you needed them. Because everyone can be a good leader, but I think the difference between a good and great leader is that you recognize the people that you're leading, need a different person at different points in their career. And so I just think that's a really wonderful point.

Smith Lordeus (18:42)
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's critical. It's because I think we all are, I think everybody's at different points in their career journey. you know, I think that you never want to put a seal on anyone's growth because at any given point in time, someone you don't know, unless you know what's going on with a person, you don't know what's going on with them inside their minds or in their personal life. You know, like, for example, for myself, you know, there were times where I've had either

just specific challenges or an early, early career. you know, having a leader that was able just to recognize and just say, okay, well, Smith needs this, you know, for this period of time, Smith needs some, this is a period of time where Smith needs added support and encouragement. And then, you know, once you get through that point, okay, now this is a time where we need to challenge and, and so forth. So I think you're right on, I think that's very key that definitely being adaptable and

Just kind of just reading the room. Yeah, I think that's a very important thing. think even just from a leadership standpoint, I think knowing your people, being really invested, I think that, which is hard because there's a lot of competing priorities from a business standpoint. And if you have a large team, it's difficult to connect with everybody as closely as you'd like, but.

Meeyeon (19:43)
Yeah.

Smith Lordeus (20:04)
I think it's very critical to the extent that you can is to build a firm relationship. You know, just build a solid relationship where you can understand what drives a person, what motivates them, and what can be the, you know, what can push them to greatness.

Meeyeon (20:19)
And so FP&A is becoming a really, really popular career path for people to go into these days. I think I would say, you know, like five, 10, 15 years ago, if you went to economics program or business program, the whole thing was like, after I graduate, everyone's like, I want to go to investment banking. And that was like a big thing. But now I think, well, in room of like a hundred business students, if you said, like,

Who knows what investment banking is? Who knows what private equity is? Most people would like put, almost everyone would have their hand up for investment banking. It's like, I wanna go into that. And then PE, there'd be a little bit less, but then you would say, okay, so those are two very well-known paths. Can somebody list me three other paths that you might be able to take? And someone might be like, I don't know, accounting, go into audit. But then people just generally did not know. And back then, when you wanted to explore career paths,

Smith Lordeus (20:56)
Alright.

Great.

Meeyeon (21:18)
we were doing like real coffee chats. Like for example, when I was looking at different careers back in, know, like the 2010s, well, maybe 2012 or a little later, when I go to meet someone to have a coffee chat, I'm physically going there and buying the coffee and having the caffeine. And the knowledge that I gain is unique to me. Again, I'm not gonna be able to repeat it in the exact same way, but the information that I get from that person is the information that I get. It's gonna be different from if someone else has a coffee chat with them the next week.

Smith Lordeus (21:32)
Right.

Meeyeon (21:44)
But with this podcast, what I found is that this is the most accessible coffee chat in the world. You have an internet connection. You can meet anyone. You can meet Smith. You can meet me. You can meet anyone at CFI. It just makes it so much easier. But FP&A has been coming up and people are really, really curious about it. And I was wondering if you could give our listeners an idea of what the day to day might look like for a senior financial analyst.

And we've already talked about it a bit, but like, as you go from the senior financial analyst to a manager, how does that career shift in terms of the work that you do day to day? We get that it's kind of like from individual contributor to more leader, but we'd love to know, I think people would love to know what is the actual day to day like if I were to join the, join any sort of company in fp&a today? What would make someone successful and what does that day to day look like?

Smith Lordeus (22:38)
Yeah, so I think that there's some, know, every organization is different. Every industry has their own nuances. So I think I'll probably touch up on some, some things that are overlap. I think for fp&a , gotta have a curious mindset. think the transition from analyst to manager, you're wearing more hats. think.

It's easy just to focus on just being, hey, I'm the one that creates the financial model, right? Or I may present this one deck a month, a month end, or it be I did this analysis or a business case. And I think those are very good, solid examples and great work. But I think once you get into your manager and beyond, you have to take a step back and think more, even much, so much more strategic, I think would be the.

way I would describe it. So if I had to distill everything down into four things, when you're an analyst, it can be very easy to be in the tactical, you're closer to the information, you're closer to the weeds, and you have some strategic influence, but once you get into the upper levels, you now have to be a stronger catalyst of the business. You have to figure out how do you drive conversations? You're always a steward of the business. Well, now that's, you know, that's upper level. You have to figure out.

ways in terms of looking at data, understanding, hey, what did we not catch in the past that we can improve on and what from a process standpoint, how can we be better stewards moving forward? You have to be strategist, right? You have to have your strategy cap on and thinking about how does this affect the next 12 to 18 months or three to five years? And then obviously I think that as an operator, working with clients, working with those who are operating in the business, having strong and tight relationships with them. So I think

As we kind of go up the leadership ladder, those four areas tend to, those are more pronounced, I would say. Whereas from an analyst, can, from people I've spoken with, it can be very easy just, I put my time in and then, hey, I go, you know, and I just head home. Whereas once you get into those upper roles, you're, it's, I don't know if you've ever felt the need to turn your mind off when you're constantly thinking about the business and you're thinking of, what if this works? So, you know, what if we tried this?

you know what, or here are some new opportunities I'm seeing, or I heard this in this conversation, how can I help this other client? Like it's a, it's really very holistic, I would say. So I think those are just some commonalities. I would say for anyone who is trying to make the pivot or the transition rather from analyst to manager and beyond or to leader is focusing those four characters, four areas. How can I be a stronger catalyst to the business? How can I be a better strategist to the business? How can I.

work with the people who are operating it? How good are those relationships? How can I help them achieve their objectives? ultimately, how are we good stories of the business?

Meeyeon (25:36)
And so I'm going ask you another question. This one's going to be more specific, but I would love to understand. So this is, again, like different for every company, as you said, every company is quite unique. there is generally the word corporate development in some companies will mean it's a sales team, like going out and getting new business, getting new clients to purchase the company's product. But there's also a separate kind of department.

that might be called corporate development, and they mainly focus on for the business. So for example, if you're at a large pulp and paper company, you might be going to look to purchase other huge pulp and paper companies like a Domtar or whoever, and corporate development focuses on analyzing those deals, understanding is this a good prospective company to buy? Is it additive to our business? Will this merger eventually be a creative in several years? And I think people are curious, especially if people are...

interested in doing the FMBA here is how does that type of role, like a team where that focuses on deals and doing kind of internal , differ from what someone would do for corporate fp&a and do those teams interact? Like have you ever interacted in fp&a with investor relations or anything?

Smith Lordeus (26:56)
Yeah, so your organization that I work for, it's privately held. a lot of, so instead of the external stakeholders, you think of our internal, our stakeholders or the board or, you know, just kind of just that internal structure. So I haven't worked directly with specifically with like external investors. That's an area that I'm looking just to grow my own career and just getting that level of exposure.

But I do think that there are some, there's still, I think it's still several commonalities that can overlap and that are transferable in terms of just understanding how do you align, you know, just in M&A how do you align systems? How do you align objectives? How do you save costs? Where can you build synergies in the business and where can you save? So I think there are some general principles that do definitely transfer, but.

To your point though, think you don't know it unless you're in it. I think that's what FP&A is similar to and so forth. You have to be in it to really, to gain enough true appreciation for it.

Meeyeon (28:02)
And then I'm gonna have a couple of rapid fire kind of questions. So you have been a clear planner in your career. You know what you wanna go after, you go and seek it, you find it, you're a real self-starter. What are your next kind of goals for the next year, three, five years? What's Smith have planned if we were to follow up with you in like three years?

Smith Lordeus (28:06)
Okay.

You

Yeah, so it's funny that you asked that because I actually just had a meeting with one of my friends and we were just talking about our goals. And actually, when I started in fp&a back in 2017, I wrote on a sheet of paper, I just drew this timeline. And I wrote 2017, I wrote down Senior Finance Analyst. And I put three years later, I would get to a manager role and it happened. And I'm like, man, that...

it happened, right? And then I put like another three or four years and I put senior manager, director, and then I just kind of just listed roles. And honestly, you who's to say if those will actually happen, but it gave me a roadmap and gave me something to aim and shoot for. So to answer your question, I'm now in that phase where I'm like, okay, well, my next, you know, the next jump is supposed to be here. So for me, I think,

In the next three to five years, I would envision myself either being in a leadership role, but still within fp&a . I like fp&a . fp&a is where I, not to, I wouldn't cap my ceiling or say that I wouldn't go and venture off into anything else, but I truly have a passion for fp&a and would love to grow within the space. So I aspire to be a leader still within fp&a .

at the executive level or higher. So that could be director, could be VP, could be whatever. want to be wherever I can be an influence, leverage data to influence the business and strategic decisions. I want to make a dent in the universe for a business. And that's where I'd like to be at.

Meeyeon (30:08)
And I know that you are a big advocate for mentorship. Do you have any projects kind of, like things going on in the background where you kind of mentor someone or just allow someone to benefit from all of your experience? Because you have so much to share.

Smith Lordeus (30:27)
Yeah,

definitely. mean, being with, throughout my career, I've always been huge on just mentoring, whether it be through people who reach out on LinkedIn, people I've worked with internally. Over the past few years, I've been able just to go to college campuses. Like most recently, we volunteered at Morehouse College just to get recruit and try to get members into our early career development program that we had been working on.

I'm constantly just wanting to share. I like to be a giver of information and my experiences because I've been blessed to get that from others along my own career journey. So I'm always looking to pay it forward. But yeah, definitely. There is, I've even, you know, I even do what's called, I'm not sure how often this is talked about, but I also even do reverse mentoring where, yes, I'm mentoring someone, but I'm genuinely interested in the space that they're operating in.

and I want them to teach me something about their world. Because again, I like to look at a business from the frontline mentality. Like if I'm working in the business, but I'm in a role that's working on the business, how can I be the connector of both of those worlds? So, but yeah, but throughout my career, I've always just prioritized just meeting people, networking, and just sharing information, whether it be over a coffee chat, it could be over a video call. I remember most recently,

One of my peers and I, there was somebody that we befriended and he worked in the auction industry and he was very well known in the auction industry. then we, we just partnered together and just, just to kind of give him shared insights and our experiences. And he was an individual trying to break into the finance space. And within a year, you know, we just equipped them with, these are some courses you can take. Here's what's helped us. We shared like our work. Here's how we present financials. Here's how we.

Here's how you do a variant analysis. Here's how you add value. Just the little things from how do you show up? How do you present? How do you build relationships? Don't be afraid, know, creating that safe space to practice. And now he's an analyst in the business within a year, which we're just very proud of. So I have tons of stories of people that I have in my mind just over the past.

even just over the past five years, there's so many people who I'm just so extremely proud of seeing their growth. it's a testament to their hard work. just feel like I'm the, think of me, I always like to think of myself as the career PVC pipe, right? I just wanna be able to facilitate the opportunity for people.

Meeyeon (33:06)
Hahaha!

And something that I want to touch on, because I really relate to it, is you said that you had a little piece of paper and you were writing out your goals. You said, like, OK, 2017, I want to do this. I want to do this. I want to this. And a great friend of mine, name is Leah. don't know. Maybe Leah will listen to this. But I remember she used to work at a company called Lululemon, which most people are familiar with. They're an athleisure company based in Vancouver.

Smith Lordeus (33:19)
Yes.

Meeyeon (33:39)
And as at Lululemon, something that they asked a lot of their employees to do at various levels, like from the most senior business unit leader to the analyst that joined yesterday from school, you have a picture of like you where you are currently, and then you kind of write out your goals. Like, what do you want to do this year? What do you want to do in three years? What do you want to do in five years? And usually it's a, it's a kind of an intensely personal thing for a lot of people.

Smith Lordeus (33:51)
Mm-hmm.

Meeyeon (34:08)
And people don't really want to share because you kind of just feel like, if I jinx it or like, what if people think it's silly? But she shared hers with me from several years ago that she did. She's like, my goal was to, you know, like have a family and then have extra and not just three children, she has a lot of children. So she's very busy. But she said she wanted to do she wanted to have grow her family to three children. She wanted to have an investment property. She wanted to be in like a different position in a completely different field.

Smith Lordeus (34:14)
Alright.

Meeyeon (34:38)
And I just found that to be such initially an intimidating idea. I don't know what it was. guess I had, was afraid, but I didn't. And I just sent it to her and I said, I'm just going to put it up. I'm putting it out there at this point. At that point I was single. I had moved back to Vancouver from Toronto. I didn't know what I necessarily wanted to do. And I put there, I want to have a corgi. I want to be married. I want to have some sort of

I want to be in the finance space, but in a different way. Like I want to be at like a venture backed startup. And it was insane because it all happened in like the past five years. I've gone from being single and just kind of like not knowing what I wanted to do to having a corgi who was like back here. and working at CFI, which is against like a kind of finance based, you know, venture backed startup. And I have a son.

Smith Lordeus (35:18)
So, wow.

Meeyeon (35:34)
Like it's so wild. And I just find that there is such a... A friend of mine said this to me. She's like, I believe that when you put something out in the universe and you really put it out there with intention, amazing things can happen for you. And so I loved hearing when you said that because I just really, really relate to that.

Smith Lordeus (35:56)
yeah, definitely. Yeah, think that's one that's great, your story just in last five years, how a lot's changed for you. That is amazing. Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that's great, because I think even for myself, you know, for me, know, a lot of that happened a lot sooner. Like I got married, was a senior in college, I got married and a year later we had our daughter. So I'm navigating career and you're having to...

Meeyeon (36:03)
Isn't that so much?

Smith Lordeus (36:22)
having to reevaluate my priorities and my values. Like very early career, that was a huge challenge. So writing out goals and so forth was extremely critical because I think, and as you're noticing, you've probably already done the exercise and you probably continue to reevaluate your priorities and your goals and so forth. And just really looking at in terms of knowing that, you know what?

Meeyeon (36:44)
Yeah, exactly.

Smith Lordeus (36:51)
A lot of great things are going to happen in your life. You're also going to have a lot of challenges, but what's going to be something that keeps your focus so you can still push forward towards your goals? think having that is key. So I love your story. It's very beautiful just seeing, just in the last five years, and you're still growing your career. So that's an amazing thing to share.

Meeyeon (37:14)
And then I have one final thing, because I just think that you, as you shared, when you had such competing priorities early on in your life, it requires you to mature faster, gain a lot of experience that some people will get later on in their life faster. But it makes you, I think, appreciate people a lot more, empathize with people, and really understand the challenges that people go through. I'd love for you to share with our audience any pieces of advice that you might give.

Smith 10 years ago. Anything that you think has been a really something meaningful to you that you would love to just put out there.

Smith Lordeus (37:46)
man.

Yeah, no, that's a great question. There's a lot of things I would tell myself 10 years ago. it's hard to just to pick one thing, if I had to, it doesn't have to be one, okay. Okay, so what I would probably tell myself 10 years ago is that one, just remind myself that, hey, everything's gonna be okay. I think it's just because I think,

Meeyeon (38:03)
Doesn't have to be one. Doesn't have to be one, yeah.

Smith Lordeus (38:21)
know, 10 years ago, I think I was going through a transition, I moved from Florida to Atlanta, had my son, and there was such a, we had a lot of challenges just during that time. So it's sometimes when you're going through a period of adversity, it's hard to see the other side of it. But I think a lot of times, you know, our goals are on the other side of our adversity. So I think I would tell myself that. Secondly, I would probably tell myself.

Even to that point, would tell myself, take more risk. think, you know, hey, you know, just continue just to challenge yourself, push yourself, get more, take more risks, take, you know, get more exposure out there. And then lastly, I would say is to be very strategic, be more strategic in the relationships that you build from a professional standpoint. I think that a lot of in today's job market, you know how they've said that, hey, you know, it's not,

It's who you know and so forth. And I think in this market, think that, you know, I think it really rings true. I think just building real solid relationships, just because you connect with somebody on LinkedIn or just because you know a name of somebody or that you had one conversation does not mean it's a relationship. I think, yeah, just really just understanding how do you cultivate those relationships? How do you add value?

Meeyeon (39:20)
Yeah.

Smith Lordeus (39:46)
to other people, which inevitably will add value to yourself. So I think those are three things I would probably would tell myself 10 years ago today.

Meeyeon (39:55)
my God, I love it. And the whole idea of it's gonna be okay. And the soundbite that I love is that our goals are often on the other side of our adversity. so no matter whoever is listening today, if you are, if you're in a stressful place in your life, whether it's through academics, career, family, whatever it is, I think that's so important. It's so simple, but to keep in mind our goals are on the other side of our adversity. Push forward and move forward. For me.

The goal that's on the other side of my adversity is my 16 month old son is all of a sudden, who's been a great sleeper, is like waking up screaming. And it's supposed to be a phase, it's supposed to be a sleep regression, but this has been going on for like five days. And I just have to keep reminding myself our goals are on the other side of our adversity. He's going through a developmental milestone. This won't be forever, although it feels like forever. And just to like...

Smith Lordeus (40:50)
Absolutely

Meeyeon (40:55)
Enjoy the moment. Everything is going to be okay. Regardless of whether you're talking about tackling personal goals, professional goals, the best mindset that you could ever have is our goals are often on the other side of our adversity. You got there, you'll figure it out.

And yeah, so that has been our podcast for today. I have enjoyed this time so much and I can't think of a better way to wrap that up. I think that's been one of the most meaningful podcasts for our listeners. So everyone, until next time, this has been Meeyeon this has been Smith, and I will see you guys again in another episode. Yay!

Smith Lordeus (41:36)
Take care.