“Show Me The Money”
This is one of the most well-known lines from the movie Jerry Maguire, but there are other lessons in the movie which I share in this bite-sized episode that are useful advice on having more successful and meaningful careers in Finance.
Full transcript
Andrew: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. And welcome to this week’s Monday memo and I hope you had a great weekend.
[00:00:05] Actually this past weekend myself and my significant other, we were able to watch a movie we hadn’t seen in a while. And some of you might’ve seen before it was called Jerry Maguire actually happens to be one of my all time favorites, which is an odd thing, probably to say as a finance person, because for those of you have seen the movie about Jerry Maguire, He’s a sports management agents going through a a life altering crisis of conscience.
[00:00:31]and why would I be talking about this on a finance podcast? I suppose I’m not looking to give the plot away if that’s what you’re worried about, but there were just some sort of key lessons that I think we could all take from. Hey, Jerry McGuire’s hero’s journey that you’re in the show, actually helping our on our finance careers and our work, helping influence other stay relevant and driving impact within our organizations.
[00:00:56]Now, even if you haven’t seen the movie, you’ve probably come across the phrase, show me the money. And, being a finance business podcast seems like a pretty good way to run your business, but that’s not necessarily the point about it. Yes, it’s important to maximize shareholder value, deliver that for shareholders. And in theory, everything else should look after itself, but there’s been plenty of profitable companies that haven’t been sustained.
[00:01:25]And the crisis of conscience, Jerry, Maguire’s going through because of a scene or an event that happened earlier in the movie is that business. Shouldn’t be about people over profit. Even though funny enough, his client, his main client in the movie does tell him that it’s profit or nothing.
[00:01:41] That’s where show me the money comes from. And he actually gets started required to say that show me the money. It’s quite a funny scene because the way it plays out in the movie is that Jerry Maguire and his client are a bit of an odd couple and they ended up becoming very close. His client becomes a better sports person.
[00:02:00] Jerry becomes a better man out of the engagement.
[00:02:03]And ultimately in the end, Jerry is able to land this client, the big contract, and that’s in my mind, similar to what we should be doing and finance it’s. Yes. Great to have a successful financial results, but it’s more about the journey of. Getting to showing me the money it’s helping our business partners, our stakeholders, the different parts of the business.
[00:02:27] We support. Even the teams. We support those around us. Within our finance teams, it helping them be more successful, identifying opportunities with them to be
[00:02:38]more effective, more productive. Yeah, we can’t do the work for it. Yeah. Helping them walk through the door. We can just all help them open it and being there for them as well. When things are a bit tough and that’s actually where the second key phrase or moment in the movie with Jerry Maguire and so to do it another character, which is his wife.
[00:02:59]Jerry goes away and he secures a big deal, but he’s been having trouble at home because he’s not really been around much. And he felt a little hollow because he had this big win. I was all about driving the business and his work, but didn’t have anyone close to share it with him.
[00:03:15]I think that’s another important message as well as we’re looking so much and focusing on our careers, trying to remain relevant,
[00:03:23]put the hours in grow a presence, help the business drive value. They’re very much in my mind short term achievements. You may not, it may feel like we’re working towards something in a yearly planner, quarterly goals, quarters, or trying to manage monthly budgets, but essentially they were relatively short term.
[00:03:41] Some of the longer term things outside of maybe our careers that don’t necessarily give us the instant feedback we’re looking for, or our sense of achievement. Things like having well adjusted kids or fruitful relationships are very much connected at with your brothers or sisters or so on. They might be tended to left to one side, and it’s just very important not to forget about those because they, those relationships, those longer term things are very important to us and actually help complete us.
[00:04:12]And again, don’t want to give away too much, but very emotional part of the movie. And then I suppose for me a third and maybe find a key one I share is another funny moment where Jerry’s begging with one of his clients to help be help you, For us to be effective and have meaningful careers and be involved in meaningful conversations.
[00:04:33] We really need to know where best to help.
[00:04:35]And sometimes that takes a great degree of patience because in, in accounting and finance, When we step back, we can, we just had them very good visibility of the business, how things fit together, where things are going, being able to break things down and tell stories around the numbers and so on.
[00:04:53]But it might be frustrating sometimes when perhaps other people don’t necessarily see that. So one key way of helping people move forward and overcoming that is really understanding their expectations. And that’s what this helped me help you is all about, is understanding each other’s expectations so that you can both move forward and probably a more effective and more efficient manner less stress for all parties concerned.
[00:05:19]But in, in finance, I suppose it’s like when we sit down with other people in our teams and our organization, those we support it’s like a partnership it’s really understanding where they coming from so we can better help them. And also sharing with them, the importance of the clients and stakeholders, not the people providing you.
[00:05:37] With transparent answers. So you can put your best self forward and deliver the best value for them as well. And I think that’s a very important thing at the start of any good relationship. Look, to understand expectations. I talk about haves and wants all the time to you once, someone’s expectations, what it is that you want, wanted to wonder this, that they currently have and start close, and those have one gaps.
[00:06:00] Yeah, that’s a great way of building trust, demonstrating value, and hopefully to longer term meaningful relationships and fun at work. Now, look, I’ve already shared three sort of key moments from the movie. There’s probably other ones you might have, your favorites would love to hear about them. I think some other popular ones that you had me at hello or Quan, and I’m still trying to figure out what Quan is or if someone could help me, that’d be really good.
[00:06:24]Yeah. And I suppose that’s the essence of the strength and the numbers show and why we bring guest mentors on for interviews every week. It’s to help us understand the things we might not maybe know so well, or we’re a bit uncertain about in terms of how we go about things. It’s much easier. So months probably walked the path before us and been able to share with us there.
[00:06:46] Hard won lessons at what worked for them, what didn’t, what they might’ve done differently, the best bits of advice they’ve received in their careers. And also looking forward, what’s exciting them most about finance so that we can maybe start capitalizing on the right areas that might keep us motivated and interest in sustaining our careers and accounting and finance into the future. [00:07:10] So look, I really hope you enjoy this episode. If you did. We love it. When you share it with your friends and colleagues, we’re on all the major platforms. ITunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, YouTube, and Spotify. And as always, really appreciate you investing your time with us today. So until next time, take care of yourselves and let’s keep on building our strength in the numbers.
