[0:00]Too often, finance leaders are expected to stay in their lane, managing numbers, forecasts and budgets. But what happens when finance isn't just about the numbers? What if it's a driver of talent, operations and strategic decision making? Kate Gulliver has done just that. As a CFO and CAO of Wayfair, she's not only steering the company's financial strategy, but also overseeing key functions like legal, talent and corporate communication. In this conversation, she reveals how finance leaders can expand their impact and what it takes to thrive in a role that touches every corner of the business. Let's dive in.
[0:59]So Kate, welcome to the show. It's so exciting to have you here. Thank you. I love being here. Thank you both. Kate, could you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do at Wayfair? Sure. Um, so I have been at Wayfair for over 11 years. Um, Wayfair is an e-commerce company, we sell furniture. I'm currently the CFO, but I have had a wide range of roles at the company. I started, um, to run our IPO, so I actually started an investor relations. I did that for a few years. I ran a P&L for a little bit, at one point I was our Chief People officer. That's the role I've actually had the longest at the company. I did that role for six years. Um, and then I guess it was two or three years ago, I stepped into the CFO role. Um, and within that role, I lead finance, um, actually still our people function, legal, real estate, compliance, and sort of corporate comms. Very, very cool. And I wonder as the CFO roll now, can you tell us a little bit more about kind of what the experience was moving from function to function? Did you have any doubts moving from one functional area to another? Did you face any kind of like friction moving to and fro? Any kind of interesting insights of what it's like to change your role within a company so significantly? Yeah, I mean, I have personally loved it and it's why I'm still at the company. Um, because it is not only, so the company itself has gone through sort of a crazy period of growth since I've been there, which is very fun to sort of see that. But I've also gotten to have several different roles within the company, and doing each job, it feels like, you know, I'm starting something new every time, which there's a lot of friction. Sure. It's not to say that there's a lot of friction, um, but it has been for me highly enjoyable. I actually think more of the friction was externally. I think people thought every move was a little bit crazy. Um, particularly, so my background was originally in finance. I worked in private equity, I was an investor for many years. So first leaving that to go into the corporate world was just not something that people really thought made a lot of sense. And then when I told people that I was going to, you know, leave sort of the finance world to run the talent function, I think people thought that I had lost my mind. Um, and that probably our CEO had lost his mind because I knew nothing about talent. So it's interesting, I actually think the, the, I, you know, not that I felt, you know, it's easy and retrospect to go and say, oh, I had such conviction every time I changed jobs. No, it's creates a great story now, but not at the time. But I was excited each time and it was more externally where there was a little bit more noise. That makes tons of sense. So you kind of followed that passion. I love that. I really love that. The, um, it's so interesting what you said about it. We had tons of question around the role around people and how does that fit with the, with the financial role, but before we do this, something we wanted to come back on was the fact that you started an investor relationship, if I'm not mistaken. And how does that helps you looking at the global company and, you know, as you start, is this a special position that helps you later in the job of like having this outside view on, on the company? Unquestionably, um, so I came into the, to Wayfair about, um, nine months pre-our IPO. Um, actually my first day on the job was the first day of what's called the banker bake off where the banks all come in and pitch you to run the IPO. So everybody, all that, you know, you name the bank, they're in there and they're just telling you why they should, you know, run the process and they're gonna be the best bank to, to take you out. Um, and so I really, you know, for the first nine months I was there, my role was entirely around preparing the company for the public offering. And as part of that, you get to help craft what the company's public story is going to be. And in doing that, you sort of got, I got access to everybody within the company because I had to to understand, you know, what were the metrics that we were going to show. By the way, 11 years later, there's metrics that we decided to show then that now I'm like, oh man, why did I come up with that metric? It's an awful metric. What idiot put that in place 11 years ago? Unfortunately, it was me. Um, but part of the process is you write what's called the S1, which is your offering memorandum that you put out as as part of the process. And writing that was probably the best way for me to learn the business and I loved that. I mean, I had to learn every part of the company as a result and so I got to meet all of these leaders across the company, and it really helped me understand how Wayfair operated and helped me really grow to love the business because I, you know, was able to identify what we were doing that I felt was unique to the business. That's so cool. It also resonates a lot with something we've heard from multiple CFOs about coming into the CFO role and sort of the process around that. What we've often heard from multiple CFOs is, don't come in and execute at the operator level right away. It's so much more fruitful to kind of observe and understand the company, understand the stakeholders, speak with everyone and kind of get a lay of the land and build that trust before going in. So it's very interesting that in doing this task, you got to do exactly that. You got to speak with all of those stakeholders and build kind of that thesis of the company and your understanding of the company, which is incredible. Oh, absolutely. I mean, again, none of this was, it's not when I joined the company that I planned someday I was going to be this, none of this was planned. But in retrospect, looking back on it, it's an incredible foundation. And, you know, I spent eight years at the company, nine years before I became CFO. And so I knew the business, not even in the finance, right? So I knew the business very well operationally and commercially before stepping into the CFO job. And I think that that makes you a much better CFO over time if you can have the opportunity to, to do that. Yeah, that makes total sense. That makes total sense. So, how do we move from investor relations to people? This is fancy.
[7:04]Oh, it is so odd. It is so odd. Um, and by the way, by far, unquestionably, the best career move I've, I've ever made in my life. Um, I loved it. I loved running the the talent function. Um, so when I joined the company, as I said, the company was much smaller scale, um, and we didn't have a fully developed sort of people function at the time, although we had some very talented people working on talent acquisition and talent management. Um, I'll never forget, I was, uh, with the CFO of the company and he was telling me how he had been talking to the CEO and they realized they needed somebody very strategic in, um, a Chief People Officer role, which had not yet even been created. And they were, you know, he was like, do you know anybody? You know, maybe you, maybe you have some friends. Right. And he goes, you know, sort of casually said, I even thought maybe you could do it, but I know you would, you know, you would never wanna do that. Oh. But he knew me very well, and so this idea like sucked in my head and I was like, oh, that's interesting. So I came back to him a few days later and I said, you know, remember how we were on the plane and you were talking about this job? I'm a little bored, you know, I, I think I could do more. I'd love to sort of understand what you meant by that. You know, I've never even considered something in that space. How would you, how could you possibly see me in this space? And Michael, who was our CFO at the time and is a dear friend and and mentor of mine to this day, um, is just incredible at. He's very comfortable with the idea that a lot of technical skills can be learned on the job. And that instead, what he looks for when he hires is, you know, an ability to communicate, an ability to lead and sort of strong quantitative and analytic capability. And the rest, you either hire the expertise or you develop it. So he was not fussed at all that I didn't know the legalities of talent and sort of the ins and outs. And what he focused on were, you know, skills that he thought I had that would be beneficial to the role and beneficial to him. Then he suggested that I talk to the CEO about it. Our CEO is our founder. Um, he still runs the business today, Niraj. Um, and I'll never forget what he said to me, which was, the most important thing I think about all day is do I have the right people in the right roles? And at that stage, his view was that our number one limiter on growth and at this point we were growing, you know, 50, 60% a year was not having the right people. And I sort of came away from that conversation and I thought, well, if this is what this CEO is primarily thinking about, why wouldn't I want to do the job that he feels, you know, is the most important to the company at this moment?
[9:40]And I also felt like I had something unique to bring to the role and that, you know, I might approach it more analytically than historically that role has been seen. Um, so it was a real leap of faith. Again, people definitely thought I was crazy. Um, but I, I thought I would go in and do it for two years and I did it for six years. I, I absolutely loved it. There is in my opinion, very few other ways where you can sort of learn the company as intimately as you do in that role when you're hiring so many people and you have to set up the systems and the processes and you really have to identify like, who are we as a business? What do we want our culture to, you know, how do we want that to be articulated? Because the culture's really defined already. That's already been created over years of work. It's really how are we communicating that and what do we like about that and what do we want to modify? Um, and it was really exciting to be sort of that hands on and that development. That is so cool. I'm curious as you came into that role, you, um, probably had a lot of new things to learn, switching functions.
[10:41]Yes. Um, what sorts of things did you do in that role to get up to speed? And what would you suggest maybe to other CFOs who are tackling a new function as CFOs, we often get tapped to kind of pinch hit and take over an entire department. Somebody left, you need to step in. Exactly. So this happens quite often. What would you to suggest for those folks? And also any specific suggestion for someone who's taking over talent specifically? Yeah, so I would say a few things. So first, I, I did get lucky and that there were some great people doing day-to-day talent work. Um, and, you know, that was very fortunate, would have been a much harder situation, um, if I didn't have people that had, you know, deep talent expertise. And so what I really tried to do in the first, you know, few beginning part of that job was sort of, you know, ride alongside them. Understand what it was that they were doing. I would attend meetings with them to sort of see how they navigated situations, um, sort of start to learn, um, some of the complex legal pieces that you have to have in talent, but also sort of how, you know, how did they see the world. And then the other big thing was it gave me an opportunity once again, like in that IR job to go back out and, you know, interview every VP and C-level executive at the company and ask them, what is working well for you in talent and what is not working well for you. And when you take on a job and you're new in the role, people are so willing to share, you know, because they, they think it's an opportunity. I can help influence what this role is going forward. This is great. Why wouldn't I wanna spend the time with Kate to tell her what I think is working and what's not. And so it was incredible for me to hear, you know, from, you know, our Chief Commercial Officer or our CTO, what they felt was productive and what they felt was actually really inefficient. And so that sort of gave me the starting list of, okay, here's what we want to go after. Um, and in that early stage, you can ask whatever questions you want. You know, nobody assumes that you have any knowledge, um, and being able to do that, I think is the most critical part of ramping up. And so it's both, you know, you do have to rely on some folks that have the more detailed expertise. And really taking the time to ask all the questions in the beginning, which is an obvious answer, but, you know, unfortunately, the true answer. Um, I would also say the other thing about talent and I, I think about any, you know, role that the CFO might take on, like if they have to step into real estate or a P&L because someone's left. Um, the, the basic, you know, analytics still apply, right? It's not, it's not that, you know, you can't take some logic and rigor to the job in the same way that you do into looking at the financial statements. It's just some of the, the numbers and the inflows are different, but we look at attrition data, we look at employee satisfaction, we look at compensation. We look at the ROI that we're getting on certain, you know, large populations of workers or other types of assets. And those were all the same questions, right? It's just applying, you know, a slightly different set of data to it. And so I think it's really important not to assume that the skills that you have in the CFO role aren't applicable in these roles. They, they absolutely are applicable. Did you get some help from the outside? That's something that we often have from from all the guests, you know, on the, on the podcast about, you know, getting some mentor or some advisors or, I, so in the talent role, I was extremely fortunate in that, um, a friend of our, of my husband's and mine, who actually works with my husband, had made a similar transition. She was a marketer and then had become a Chief People officer. Um, and she invited me, she had created a network of Chief People officers in Boston, who met, you know, every other month and she invited me into this group. And it was such a gift, um, because I learned how other people in the field thought. And what resources they used, you know, for example, I didn't know any of the tech in that field when I came into the role. And it's actually a space that has had an amazing amount of tech development over the last, you know, 10 to 15 years. And so in that group, you know, you would ask, hey, what are you guys using for people analytics or what are you using for XYZ? And it, it would just be a way to start to develop and build my own network, which would have been hard to do without that. So I think that, that is a very important piece of ramping up in any new role. Yeah, we talk, we talk a lot about like this network effect and also the importance for finance leaders to go out and seek those groups because sometimes it's just, you feel it like you are owning the truth by just digging further in the numbers or digging further into your own process. But sometimes the answer is just right outside when you ask someone else. And the, the CFO job can be a little lonely, right? I mean, often you're, um, you know, you're responsible in a way that many others are not. You have to own the problem. Um, you often know and see things before maybe others in the organization do, particularly your peers sometimes. And so I think it can feel a bit like you're on your own island to your point. I think that's a great point. Um, and being able to pick up the phone and not share the particular, obviously, but at least sort of, you know, talk through high level with somebody. Hey, have you ever experienced X or how are you structuring Y? Um, I think is very important. Yeah, also, I love your point about when approaching a role in new function, thinking about expanding that network to now include professionals who can help you with that new function. Oh, absolutely. Right. As like another step of what you will do adding to your personal Board of Directors. So you then moved to the CFO position, was that the first time as a CFO? Oh, yes. Yeah, no, no. I, uh, so I worked for many years running the people function for Michael, my boss who was the CFO at the time, actually reported into him in that role. As I said, our founder is the CEO, so he is a very, you know, he only has three direct reports, um, one of whom is the CFO position, but that CFO position historically held a lot underneath it. Um, Michael decided that he was going to retire a few years ago and so I moved into his position upon his retirement. Okay. So that's, that's the first time that you're moving into the CFO position and so you're coming from this talent, uh, experience. One thing that I like a lot with CFOs that sometimes they see, you know, they picture that seeing talent as just a number on the in the spreadsheet or anything, but it's actually way more than this. How can you, what is your experiences growing into this role after running the talent function and how did that help you in this, in this CFO this new CFO position? Yeah, it's a great question. Um, I think I think for any executive at the company, if you have done a stint in talent, you probably approach how you lead and guide your own team differently, certainly. But how you show up for the company as a whole differently. Um, because in the CFO role, like the CPO role or the Chief Commercial Officer role or the CTO role or the President role, or Niraj, our CEO, you're often asked to represent the company as a whole or to speak in front of the whole company, right? And answer questions and sort of help guide folks. It's not just my own team, it's, you know, all of Wayfair. And because I had that talent background, I think I have a pretty good understanding of, you know, how folks in Boston may feel about a decision. But I've also spent a bunch of time in our warehouses. So how might, you know, someone in one of our field operations feel about a decision, or somebody in our London office versus our Boston office, or, you know, the tech team that sits in Mountain View. And having that sort of breadth of this company is not just, you know, the finance folks that sit in Boston or the commercial folks that sit in Boston. It's, you know, more than 10,000 people in a wide range of roles across the, you know, across the globe. I think is a very important approach to addressing the organization and ensuring that, you know, the organization sort of is thought of as sort of a many, you know, a multi-dimensional thing. And I, I think it can be easy when you're in finance, and I'm sure it's true with any other role, to, you know, have your world just be the world that's proximate to you. That's a, that's a great tip. So yeah. I think this, uh, it often comes back to this, um, kind of tip that those finance leaders have gave us, given us around just making sure that you get outside of your own finance box and go and talk to others. Of course, if you've been into other position, this is even easier, so that makes a lot of sense. And the value of communication across organization, across different departments, we hear so many folks talk about how important it is to also get that kind of narrative out of just the finance function. So really speaks to that as well. Very cool.
[19:23]Yeah, people are watching you, right? And they're paying attention to what you're saying and what you're doing and, and how you show up at work. Um, and I think, you know, there are times where I'd probably wish I showed up less less authentically than I sometimes do.
[21:31]So I think you said earlier today that, uh, on, on in the conversation that you sometimes know things before others know about it. Uh, I think Wayfair announced, uh, a big change yesterday, uh, was that was that was released. Way, Wayfair verified. Wayfair verified. Can you tell us just in a few words so that people can understand what it is and so, uh, I just wanna follow questions. Yeah, no, we're excited about this. Um, so at our, we're a retailer, but at our core, you know, we are tech enabled. Um, and you know, what we're always trying to do is help on the storefront, help folks discover products. We sell millions of products. Um, I'm sure, I don't know where you bought these from. I'm sure we sell something very similar to this, if not this. In fact, we probably have several that are similar to this. And so the question for the consumer becomes, how do I know if this is a really nice high quality chair or if I'm just getting a cheap chair? And by the way, maybe I just want the cheap chair, but how do I understand value? And Wayfair verified is a way for on the storefront, so the web experience for you to understand value. These are products that are tested by our merchants. Um, they're actually, we, we often film, you know, we would film somebody sitting in this chair describing it, showing how tall the chair is relative to the average human height, that kind of thing. Um, and then these are products that we know will ship easily to you. They do not arrive damage, all of these things that we've checked on Wayfair verified. So then you're on the storefront, you're searching, you know, you're looking for sort of a barrel chair and you can look for the Wayfair verified product. And so it just helps distinguish across all of, you know, the wide range of products in the marketplace. It really helps the consumer know, hey, that's a product that Wayfair trusts and it has the Wayfair stamp behind it. Yeah. So that's a big release for Wayfair. How did you get involved in this overall project? Like was that way before or last minute? Uh, keep the CFO away from this. We don't want that. Um, you know, one of the things I love about Wayfair actually is, um, although, you know, we're a large business, the, um, the overall operating team is actually pretty small. And so I think Niraj, our CEO does actually a great job at, you know, all of these things are sort of talked through at the leadership team level. And in something like this, there's obviously an investment component to it. Um, you know, you are, you are taking labor time to film. Um, right now we don't use, we use AI all over the place, but in this particular case, we've chosen not to use AI in the filming because we actually think it's really important to see, you know, if you're opening and closing a drawer of a dresser, AI doesn't do that that well, right? We want a human to touch the product and talk about the product. We need that authenticity. So there's a cost to that. Um, and so part of, you know, the way that my team gets involved in something like this is we actually have a commercial finance team. Um, that supports the commercial operation and, you know, as an ideal like this is developed, they'll actually sit and partner with that team hand in hand and say, Hey, this is what we think it's gonna cost. If you think that those products are gonna get X amount increase conversion, here's the likely, you know, ROI on that investment over time, but you have to make an assumption around this kind of conversion, this kind of customer lifetime value or improved satisfaction. And so they'll, they'll actually work on that from the very beginning. That's very cool. In thinking through supporting as a CFO, a new rollout like this, a new program, kind of what, could you break maybe into the stages of as part of the leadership team, what you're thinking about as maybe the idea starts to get bounced around? You start to go into implementation. You start to actually have the program and now are tracking metrics, the kinds of different ways you're thinking about those different moments. Yeah, so in this case, um, you know, I think the original idea, I actually don't know who generated it or where it originally came from, but I think it was designed to solve, it was, it was well understood to us that, you know, it can be challenging as a consumer to navigate so much depth of product. And we have a highly credible brand, and so how do we use that to our advantage? Um, we recently went into physical retail, and so we've actually just been touching a lot more product than we typically touch. And now that we see product, you know, so much of it coming in, it's helpful to say, hey, while we're already seeing this, what else can we do with it? So, so the idea comes from a customer problem that you're trying to solve and, you know, trying to identify what is unique about Wayfair that can solve this problem in a different way than maybe other folks can solve it. Um, and so that's really where it gets started. And then, you know, I think your next piece was sort of, you know, how, how do you think about operationalizing it and where you go from there? We tend to like to just get things going. So in this particular case, yes, you know, a finance team helped the team understand sort of what the cost would be and sort of how to think about it. But at the same time, um, the, the guy who actually runs the program, a guy named Mike McCorry, um, he just wanted to start filming some videos to see what would happen. So he actually built himself a studio bay in an office-based area of the office that we were not using on a weekend. And, and, you know, sort of built this bay to film the project to start showing, hey, this is what, you know, this is what it could be. Right? This is what it is. And your CEO is just incredibly, I think Niraj probably helped push him to go do that. He's very supportive. Niraj is an entrepreneur at heart, right? He and Steve Cone had founded the company. And so they, you know, they're super excited about somebody who's gonna go and take that kind of risk and, you know, really just get doing something. So we try not to actually over-rotate on, hey, let's build a perfect business plan. Instead, we wanted to do those things in parallel. So it's like, let's get going on this. Let's see if we can get some traction. If we get traction and then we wanna have a lot of bays and do a lot more filming, then we can understand, hey, we actually have to dedicate X amount of hours towards this, which is gonna be Y amount of headcount cost. Here's what that's gonna look like. It's gonna take a spot on the P, you know, on the, on the page, you know, it'll take a spot up here. Do we want to move a verified product into that spot, or do we want a sponsored product and what is the return on that? But our, the first step is really, let's just get it started. Um, and that's one of the things that I love about working at Wayfair. You know, it's a large company, we're publicly listed, and there's still that attitude of, you know, let me go in on a weekend and, you know, build a bay to film in. Yeah, that makes sense. It's such a startup mentality. It's, um, it strikes me that it's just such a valuable asset for a large company to have to still have that entrepreneurial spirit to just kind of go in and try something and test it out and see if this is even worth having metrics around before actually executing. You don't always hear those stories, but it makes sense that that would be a very successful thing to, it's hard. I think it's really hard, and there are many places in the business where we probably need to hold onto that more than we do. Okay. Because it can be very hard when you get so large to still be comfortable taking that risk on trying something.
[28:32]And so, you know, I think we got here by moving faster than anybody else and taking the risk. And if we lose that, then it becomes much harder to innovate and stay on top. Yeah. And I think it speaks a lot to what you said earlier about culture. And I think that's what makes it so interesting about your previous position as well of, I think aligning like a global culture within the company of what 15,000 employees. I mean, it's, it's incredible to, to think like of how much you it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a privilege to be able to keep this this overall culture as the company growth. I think for my, in our company is just like only a few tens of people. It's already hard to keep the the same principles and same culture. And so I guess it's, it's something that is super important in your position today. And it's to be clear, it's very hard and we've definitely had times lost it, right? I think it, it ebbs and flows and I think one of the jobs in, you know, leading the people function, but also just being a senior leader at the company who's been there for 11 years is, on my myself to try to identify when are we losing that and how do we get back to that? And when am I creating process that I don't need to create because we're a larger company, and I think I need to do it, but we don't really need to do it. And so where can we sort of scale that back? I remember that the, the idea of the, the culture and also the the supporting function of finance in the business and helping them launching new ideas. I think it's a, it's a great, great, great tip and uh, insight for, you know, young finance leaders in the space that may end up becoming the CFO of listed entities. So thank you so much, Kate, that was a great conversation. I think, kind of to start wrapping up our conversation, we'd love to pivot to a topic, um, around balancing work and life. So we know that you're a mom and you're also a very publicly facing leader. Curious, you know, what kinds of challenges have you encountered in taking on both of those roles and any tips or advice from other folks who are in the same position trying to find that balance? I'm pausing because there is not a balance. Um, I, so I have three children. Um, they are 10, eight and five. Um, and my husband also works very full-time. Um, so we've chosen that, right? I think the biggest thing, um, I try to remember is that we're very fortunate to be making these choices. You know, we we've, we're in a privileged position to have both both be in jobs that we love. Um, and to also be able to have three healthy kids. Um, and there are tradeoffs that we've made obviously to, to make that work. Um, probably the biggest of which is that I think it's hard, it's often hard to sort of all five of us be together because I'll be traveling or my husband will be traveling. We sort of trade off and go in and out. And so, you know, maybe one of the unfortunate tradeoffs is how do you find time, you know, we really value, um, we try in the weekends to all five just be together. Um, because we really value the time when it's the five of us versus, you know, one adult somewhere, or one kid at a soccer practice, or another kid at swimming and, you know, really not getting that time. Um, but I don't, I say it's not balanced because there are times where work is dominant and, you know, and I enjoy leaning into it. I've always loved working. I, you know, there was, there was never a time where I thought I wasn't going to work. Um, and so I, you know, I, there are times where I really lean into work, and then there are times where the kids are dominant, where something is going on with one of my children. They maybe need some extra help or it's just a stage of their life that is more complicated. Um, and so I share that because I think, I think what has helped has been, um, not thinking that on a day-to-day basis it's going to be balanced. And instead acknowledging that there are gonna be periods where it's gonna feel completely out of control. There are gonna feel periods where maybe it feels a little bit better, um, and there are gonna be times where it feels like I'm swinging from one side to the next, and, and that's okay because it usually does pivot back. That makes it, it's, it's so funny. I feel like when dealing with these issues, so often in addition to whatever grief we might feel from certain challenges, we give ourselves additional grief from facing the challenge itself from the fact that we can't be. So I love kind of that permission to it's okay if you're not doing it all great all at the same time. You kind of pivot back and forth. It is hard to acknowledge that in the moment, they're definitely moments, but, um, but I think, you know, being able to say, yes, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna be really great at this thing today, and I'm probably not gonna be great at the other thing and, and that's okay. Yeah. How do you find, um, you know, we all kind of have lives and we all have work. What do you think about, maybe even also from your background now in talent, that you do for or that you expect from colleagues in helping each other kind of retain that balance and maintain, you know, thriving lives in, in both aspects. Yeah, that's a great question. Um, I really feel fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of colleagues who have, you know, rich lives outside of work in addition to work, but they they often, they're incredibly dedicated to what they do. Um, but they're also very comfortable talking about, oh, this weekend I, you know, did X and my kids, or where they're going to school.
[34:02]Um, I, when I first went into interview at Wayfair, I met Michael, the, the, um, CFO at the time. And I'll never forget, we were in the middle, it was evening because I was in another job and I didn't want them to know. I was interviewing anymore, so I met him at like 7:00 p.m. at night at the office. And, um, he's, you know, we started this interview and within five minutes his phone rang and he picked it up. And he said hello briefly to the person on the phone. He put it on pause and he said to me, I'm sorry, this is my son and he's trying to go to sleep, and I need to talk to him for a few minutes and then I'll come back in. And so he left, he went and talked to his son, and then he came back in. And at that point, I didn't even have any children, but I knew that that was the kind of person I wanted to go work for. Somebody who was incredibly dedicated to his career, unbelievably talented at what he did. He's been a public company CFO multiple times, but his kids still calls him at 7:00 p.m. at night when he's out of town to talk to him. And I loved that. Um, and I think I try to roll model that a little bit. I'm not sure I do it as well as he did, but at least to show, you know, I talk about my kids a lot and they, you know, on Friday a colleague was in the office and his actually, his son came in with him for a few hours. Um, and, you know, it sort of hung out and was coloring in the area. And just so that people can feel that actually they can bring their whole selves to work. And I think that's the bottom line is that the workplace is a, we spend a lot of our hours in the office. And the workplace is a much more enjoyable place if people can bring their authentic selves in and if they can, you know, bring who they are outside of work into work, some. And for me, that has made the experience at Wayfair much more enjoyable than it otherwise would. And I feel very fortunate to, you know, be working for folks who embrace that and encourage that, and I try to do that a bit with the folks on my team. That's such an incredible answer. It's so important to be able to bring your full self to work. It reminds me of one CFO we chatted with recently who was speaking about kind of the benefits of morale in the workplace. And it was, um, Elana Astricht, she's the CFO of Planned Parenthood, and she spoke about that from her experience leading troops in the military, talking about, you know, an army runs on its stomach, and how important it is to get letters from home that, you know, so often we think of these softer things as sort of like, oh, it's the fluffy stuff on the side, but it is essential to having a team that runs well to consider sort of their ability to bring their authentic self to work and have that morale. And again, back to the culture of the company and I think what is interesting as well is that often times we CFOs are just the number crunchers on the side and stuff. And what you're saying here, which I know, but and we know, but it's also important to remember is that we are as CFOs, as finance leaders, participating in building this culture of the company and and keeping it tight around, you know, whatever principles you have in your own organization. So I think it's something that is also super important. And to be clear, it's very hard and we definitely had times lost it, right? I think it, it ebbs and flows and I think one of the jobs in, you know, leading the people function, but also just being a senior leader at the company who's been there for 11 years is, on my myself to try to identify when are we losing that and how do we get back to that? And when am I creating process that I don't need to create because we're a larger company, and I think I need to do it, but we don't really need to do it. And so where can we sort of scale that back? I remember that the, the idea of the, the culture and also the the supporting function of finance in the business and helping them launching new ideas. I think it's a, it's a great, great, great tip and uh, insight for, you know, young finance leaders in the space that may end up becoming the CFO of a listed entity. So thank you so much, Kate, for being with us today.
[37:59]Oh, thank you for having me. It was wonderful. Thank you so much. We would love to record more episodes like this. I think you agree.
