um, so I always like to share that. Um I took a very indirect path to get to where I am today, so I'm I'm a CFO. I like I really enjoy doing that. But I did not come through the accounting routes, the investment banking round or any other typical sort of finance approach. Um, I have actually had a much more general background. I've been, uh, in various roles, ranging from, you know, operations. I've run sales a couple of times. Uh, Andi, even, um uh, GM on CEO of some small companies. And I think that those have all better prepared me for being a finance executive, sitting across the table from my peers and having a better sense of what their issues are. Um, what what's really interesting? You know, you talk about, you know, what are the incidents there? Sort of experiences that sort of shaped how I got here. Um, ironically, I kept taking. I sort of had this feeling like I wanted to be doing something else. Like I would read CFO magazine, which is a very non accounting finance, you know, oriented magazine talking about, you know, things that businesses go through and just And I found it very interesting. And, um, yet the past that I kept getting lead down, wound up being different. And, um, as it as it turns out, you know, I was part of the dot com bubble burst, you know, in 99 2000 and had to start up that time. And, you know, I started to stray very much on that path. Away from thinking of what, you know, that this is really was gonna be an outcome for me. I wound up when our startup, you know, hit the skids as as many did. Um, uh, I wound up starting to explore the financial out again, and it just it was not the right time to do it. And especially with my background, I was getting a lot of council. I have to start over. And so you asked about incidences and experiences and and things just sort of work out. You know, I started taking those GM and operational roles. I wound up in a startup. It didn't work out with a finance person, and we had toe we hit some speed bumps where we had to sort of, you know, um reinvent ourselves and we did that. And in that process, I was asked to take on the financial, and that began kind of the first step of doing that. And I've had a couple of incidents exactly like that where I think, being open to sometimes you get thrown certain choices in your path that just allow for, um, those decisions. That's exactly what's happened in my case.

It's funny. I just got asked on the survey since Cove. It have hours increased. And the answer is absolutely, um, you know, I I mean, I'll tell you it at my level that the downside is, especially in today's age, where you've got, you know, Elektronik leashes. Um, it, you know, there's no real time bound. I mean, I could find myself on calls your meetings, you know, over the weekends or in the evenings. Um, you know, my typical week is probably, you know, easily, 50 hours easily, right. But but it can absolutely vary and suddenly become, you know, notably mawr. If I'm working on financing or, um, some other thing of that nature, Um, in terms of you know what my overall responsibilities are they vary with companies. So, um, a zay said it hired. I've had responsibilities for legal, for HR for Data Analytics. In addition to you know, both the finance side in the accounting side, um, facilities as well. Andi, I've been in other companies where it's just been, you know, accounting and finance. So it's so varies by organization. Um, and in terms of, you know, the big decisions that I'm faced with and especially now I mean, you know, this whole environment with Cove it is fascinating. Um, it is. It ranges the gamut of it's really all cash management. Onda how we're going, Thio manage Our resource is, uh, in in an environment, we just to give you context. We've seen about a 65% hit against what our expectations were for the first half of the year. So far, things were just stabilizing now. So it's been pretty. It's been a challenge.

um, I think I might divide the challenges into two groups right there. The challenges that I might say, um, you know, one has, you know, with your own organization, a CFO, and then they're the challenges that, you know, you have more broadly outside your organization, and then there's there's I mean, look, I have lots of other challenges. Um, you know, um uh, but But I want to talk about those, and I'll come back to the others, you know, on a broader level within the finance and accounting area and particularly in more growth oriented companies. You you have a tendency, and I think this is a little bit of question later on, but you have a tendency to attract people who normally gravitate to accounting and finance as a career. Um, sometimes, like, um, there's a certain mold that comes with that in terms of being, ah, bit more black and white on. But that is not at all how it works, especially in a higher growth company. I mean, you're wearing many different hats. Accounting, as you know, isn't perfectly clean on. Do you know there's lots of subjectivity and making this and so internally um it's helping people realize that, um, step back and look at the business and and understand what you're doing in the context with the business and by the internally I mean the the finance and accounting team. It's not just about getting the numbers, you know, right? Making sure, but is doing things exactly correctly. But it's is the business moving the way that we wanted to be doing, you know, to be moving. And how are you helping externally? Um, you know, the challenges there can often be for me is how do I get everybody on the same page? So I liken a lot of what I do. Thio. You know, it's sort of like if we're all going to go live in Germany, then then I want to be able to teach the language that everybody can speak the same language and we can we can get by and finance accounting Is that language that you know to me, the more people who haven't understanding of how what they do impacts the business. Ultimately that translates into the finances. Then they get the sense of how they're contributing. They understand the business and and how that works. Um, obviously that there are other challenges to deal with, right? I'm dealing with the market and what's happening with you know, the combination of of what we've seen, for example, in this pandemic, how that's affecting funding in our case, we were actually had just gone out to try to sell the company. So that created some real issues. Major challenges. Ah, lot of board, uh, interactivity and, uh, disruption. I spent a lot of my time dealing with board matters on bond. You know, the the CEO and I trying to navigate, you know where we want to take this company to. So the realm of challenges is certainly never ending.