Content Marketing Innovator Brand.com Helps Clients Tell Their Story: Q&A with CFO Tim Ryder

What do you do in your organization?

I’m responsible for accounting, finance, financial reporting, capital formation and structuring, HR administration, and facilities management.

How is business for your company these days?

Business is great! We launched the SaaS (software as a service) model for our News Media Platform last summer and we’re seeing a lot of traction. We’ve expanded our publisher network to include some well-known and highly credible publishers as well as some demographic-specific niche publishers. This spectrum of publishers allows our brands to reach their target audience in a very efficient, cost-effective way. We’ve also added some well-known brands to our customer base, many of whom came to us through agencies.

What do you consider your chief business strength?

I think I have the ability to get deep into the details of a business while retaining a high-level enterprise perspective. A CFO needs to be able to do this to understand the impact of events on a business, and to provide forward-looking data to stakeholders.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

We have a great team at Brand.com and I love working with everyone here. Dave Armon, our CEO, gives me a lot of autonomy and I feel like my contribution to the company has a positive impact and is well appreciated.

What are the most important skills that someone in your position needs to have?

A good CFO needs to possess the analytical skills to see the enterprise for all of its individual components, but also have the relationship skills to work well directly with everyone from customers, investors, and the board to the management team, staff, and vendors. Nobody can make a successful organization by themselves; it takes leadership. To be a credible leader, one needs to understand the details and have the relationship foundations to responsibly direct the activities of others.

What is the smartest move you have made in your career so far?

Getting my MBA at Darden (University of Virginia). I was 48 when I went back to school and although I thought I knew a lot about business, I learned an incredible amount. Darden uses the case study method, so you’re not reading from a textbook, but rather discussing situations that real business leaders have faced. In many ways, it’s as if you had lived through those situations. The faculty is consistently rated the No. 1 MBA program for teaching, and from Darden I learned to incorporate teaching into my leadership style. I would recommend graduate education to any business leader.

What’s your management style with your employees?

I rely on the Situational Leadership model to guide my leadership style for a specific individual or situation. Assessing the person or group’s willingness and ability to perform a task is a good way to determine how to lead most effectively.

I enjoy using an open, highly communicative leadership style in most cases. I think it helps me to assess other people’s strengths, and it is key to creating an environment in which everyone feels connected to the success of the organization. It allows me to motivate my staff with something other than financial compensation.

Who are some other businesspeople or leaders you admire, and why?

I admire people who have been willing to take risks and identify business models that nobody else could. Fred Smith of FedEx would be an example, as would Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines. Roy Vaeglos of Merck would be another. I teach a class at Georgetown University which uses a case I wrote about Dr. Vaeglos’ decision to develop Ivermectin for human consumption to fight River Blindness, a disease suffered by the world’s poorest populations. It was a big financial gamble but it turned out to be very successful. His decision greatly improved the lives of millions of people.

What new initiatives are you working on?

We are moving our operations to a more data-driven way of making decisions. To do this, we are finding ways to collect disparate data from throughout the company and using tools to tie it all together. This also creates a cultural change within the company as people start to use data to support decisions.

In addition, we have moved as much infrastructure as possible to cloud-based or third-party-hosted solutions. This has helped us reduce operating expenses and streamlined our need for hardware and resources to manage the infrastructure.

Do you have a favorite inspirational quote?

One of my favorite things to do in my spare time is read great speeches. I’m not sure which is my favorite, but the one I quote or think about most often is when John F. Kennedy spoke at Rice University and announced that the United States would, within the decade, send astronauts to the moon and return them safely to Earth. It’s become known as the “Why Does Rice Play Texas” speech, and in it, Kennedy states, “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

So often in business and in other situations, we ask the people we lead to do very difficult things. If you ask someone to do the really hard work because they will get more money, you’ll lose them every time. But if they see that their work is a valuable, appreciated part of a bigger picture, that what they do has meaning, you create a team that produces more than money can buy.

What advice would you give to someone hoping to get into your field?

Learn to ask really good questions, and don’t accept simple or incomplete answers. Always look for ways to improve yourself, your staff, and your organization.

If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing instead?

Probably teaching, which is what I plan to do after I retire someday.

Connect with Tim on LinkedIn and follow the company on Twitter @Brand.

See full list of Entrepreneur and Business Executive Profiles >