Through the SRT Lens: Adapting to the Modern CFO Role with Joe Pizetoski

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In this episode, Joe Pizetoski reflects on his career and the transition from the Shore Resource Team to CFO. He discusses the value of diverse experiences, including his time as interim CFO, and how they prepared him for strategic leadership. Joe highlights the challenges of scaling operations and fostering strong company culture. He emphasizes continuous learning, proactive problem-solving, and developing strategies that drive both individual growth and organizational success.

Transcript

Introduction

Anderson Williams: Welcome to Bigger. Stronger. Faster. the podcast exploring how Shore Capital Partners brings billion-dollar resources to the microcap space. This episode is part of a series in which I interview members of the Shore Resource Team, better known as the SRT about the work they do to support success across the Shore Capital portfolio.

In addition to enabling portfolio company growth and success, each member of the SRT is growing themselves and their own careers on the chief financial officer path. In this episode, I talk with Joe Pizetoski, the CFO at FirmaPak and former SRT member. Joe talks about the range of new and different SRT experiences, including just figuring things out, that helped prepare him for the CFO role.

He speaks to the importance of following your interests within SRT and being proactive in looking for compelling projects and not just waiting to see what comes to you. Joe talks about his learning curve as a CFO. Specifically in human resources and people strategy, as he describes the ways the CFO role has and continues to evolve as a strategic partner to the CEO.

Welcome, Joe. To get us started, will you just introduce yourself and tell us who you are and what you do and where you do it?

Joe Pizetoski: Yeah, sure. So, Joe Pizetoski. I am the CFO of FirmaPak. I've been with FirmaPak for about a year and a half now. FirmaPak for about a year and officially, but half a year as part of the Shore Resource Team or as an extension of that.

So, for some of the 100-day plan. So, in Chicago, travel out to each of our three facilities across the country.

Anderson Williams: So, say a little bit about what FirmaPak does and just give us a sense of where the company is in terms of growth and scale, kind of in the shore capital journey.

Joe Pizetoski: So, we're about a year and a half in our investment.

So, starting with what FirmaPak does, we're a manufacturer of blow molded plastic bottles. If you open up your pantry and see a honey bear bottle, we do a lot in the honey industry. On your refrigerator, there might be orange juice bottles. We do a lot of that. Any real rigid plastic bottle, like an automotive and personal care with shampoo and conditioner bottles, things like that.

We do kind of cross industry plastic bottles, but from a shore investment horizon perspective, year and a half in typically think to five-to-six-year investment chunks, something like that. So, getting off the ground for sure. We made our first acquisition in January of this year. So, you know, we're starting to see some activity there and I think we're seeing some infrastructure building.

We're really excited for the next chapter.

Anderson Williams: And if my math is right, based on your timing, you were in early as part of SRT, right at the start of things, I guess.

Joe Pizetoski: Right at the start, yeah. I knew I was coming on and I think I was aligned to come on as CFO. And so, I think the natural solution was for me to come on and help lead the 100-day plan and naturally transition into the CFO at the culmination of that.

Anderson Williams: So even as you were going into the 100-day plan, you already sort of knew that the transition was going to be to CFO?

Joe Pizetoski: Yeah.

CFO Bootcamp

Anderson Williams: So, talk a little bit about your time with SRT and how you led up to one, that 100-day plan, but then knowing and then transitioning into the CFO role. What did your time at SRT do to prepare you for that?

Joe Pizetoski: I think you just get thrown a ton of different experiences, which is kind of a perfect preparation for the CFO because with CFO, you get all new different experiences that you have to be ready to respond to. I think, especially where we are in the lower middle market, there's a lot of just figuring things out, whether it's for the first time or leveraging your extension of Shore resources to help, you know, navigate in terms of finding a new software system or into things like that.

So, with my time on SRT, you get thrown a 100-day plan, which if you've started, you've never seen before, but you're building out sort of finance. an operational infrastructure from which your platform builds upon. And beyond that, you know, outside of the 100-day plan, you just do kind of ad hoc projects ranging from parachuting in and doing a margin by SKU pre sort of sell side engagement, or it's serving as an interim CFO for a quarter plus depending on what the need is.

So, I had some experience with that too.

Anderson Williams: What would you say of those things sort of best prepared you for the actual CFO seat? Where did you feel most prepared from those experiences? And then where is your learning curve been?

Joe Pizetoski: I guess the most prepared came from my stint as interim CFO. For that one, it was just sort of coming in, trying to learn the system really quickly, overseeing, going into, you know, four acquisitions in the final quarter, as well as doing a budget for that next year and trying to learn the business and kind of cobble everything together.

Luckily, I had a really strong supporting cast in the CEO and troller at the time to help me as part of that. You know, what SRT does is just build that muscle, essentially from the start. It's not only exposure to the investment teams, world class board members, all that type of stuff where you kind of learn through osmosis, but it's just building the muscle of just figuring it out and doing your best to learn from what you've seen and trying to improve upon it.

So that's translated really well as a CFO because it's a whole new batch of challenges where, you know, I haven't led HR before. So being able to understand not only kind of covering the blocking and tackling of HR, but elevating to kind of viewing that as, you know, how we develop our people strategy.

Those are things that are new to me. I've seen as an employee perspective, but not necessarily have learned that or overseen that before. So, it's a continuous learning process. And I think it's, um, I love that part of it.

Life Before SRT

Anderson Williams: Let's go back to even before SRT. Did you have any experience with any of those things prior to SRT or in relevant industries, or was this all-new stepping into FirmaPak manufacturing and so forth?

Joe Pizetoski: So from a manufacturing perspective, when I was at SRT, you don't necessarily have to, at least with my exposure, my experience within SRT, it's, there's sort of the core SRT projects, but then it's informal enough where you can help out on projects that interest you and get experience that you're interested in. Like for me, I had a background, not necessarily in manufacturing, but coming out of school, I got my Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt certification.

I always thought that was fascinating. Just, you see the impact this type of system has on companies like Toyota and just, you know, a number of different case studies of how Lean impacts organizations, and I got the ability to study it and understand it in theory. And then working alongside Kevin Williams and Sean McDonald from the Center of Excellence Leading Operations, I got to tag along with some of their engagements doing kind of value stream mapping exercises to solve very challenging cross functional problems and unwrap it and try to identify a future state that makes sense for the organization.

Being alongside for that journey is really helpful and it translates really well into manufacturing to what I'm doing. So, it's a great framework and it just better prepared me.

Anderson Williams: I love that thinking and that you just had an interest and then coming into an opportunity like the Shore Resource Team where there's a portfolio and there are different verticals and sort of very different business models.

That interest was able to be sort of continued and tapped as you stepped into it. It wasn't necessarily that you had to have the previous experience, but you had the financial acumen, and you had the interest in the space that then presented the opportunity, which is a pretty beautiful thing.

Joe Pizetoski: Exactly, and that's kind of what I wanted when I was at my prior company, Deloitte, in more of a consulting advisory type role with heavy kind of finance and accounting expertise slash knowledge. My end goal was to be a CFO, or at least, you know, that was my vision at the time. And realizing that as the CFO role was evolving to less of a bookkeeper, more of a strategic partner to the CEO, you want more well-rounded experience.

And I viewed that as kind of part of that. Like, let's get out of the comfort zone a little bit and learn something new.

Anderson Williams: Say more about that. I think that's interesting, and I think a lot of people listening will find it interesting. Just from your perspective and your time, how has or how is the CFO role evolving as compared to what you might have thought of or even was industry expectation a few years back?

Joe Pizetoski: I think when talking to board members and asking them what a good CFO is, every piece of feedback I've received is trying to be that strategic partner to a CEO of, you know, helping use data to inform decision making from the CEO perspective or help give some operational rigor or financial rigor to major decisions like M&A, how to allocate capital, how to compensate our employees or how to incentivize our employees in the best way possible.

All of these things help, you know, drive the bottom line, but they're linked to operational initiatives. So being able to add that rigor is critical. So that's what I try to do.

Anderson Williams: And how have you as you've stepped into the role given that evolution and given one, the growth in understanding the business itself, but to the growth in that strategic partnership, how have you invested and what is your actual learning looked like so that, you know, I think one of the things that can happen as you come in and you know, you're really good at the financials and that's a safe zone and what you're describing is something that's there, but there's this other strategic relationship that you're cultivating. There's this HR side of things.

How have you just continued to develop yourself on the job over the last year, year and a half?

Joe Pizetoski: For me, back at Deloitte, I had a lot of manufacturing experience, but certainly not at the level that, or exposure that I have today. It was more on the sort of the finance side. For me, I guess I took sort of that servant leadership mentality and especially coming into a new company, just going on the ground to the facilities, walking around, talking to people, seeing what their day to day looks like, just learning what the pros and cons of the culture are, where they view opportunities to improve, just educating me on how the industry works, how our manufacturing process works from sort of customer engagement all the way to when we deliver a product. Just walking through that full life cycle helps me get up to speed on, and certainly the industry side.

And I've tried to, of course. add an outsider's perspective and hope it helps and do what I can to improve the business with all the knowledge that people share. So, I'm very lucky at FirmaPak to be surrounded by a great group, great team members to help elevate me. But ideally, you know, it's a two-way relationship where I help, you know, elevate the rest of the organization as well.

The Right People

Anderson Williams: Sure. You know, it's interesting. We were talking briefly before we got started about culture and that as a strength of FirmaPak. And I know that in your industry, there are a lot of family-owned businesses and family run businesses that are potential partners for you. From where you sit and knowing Shore and knowing that through the Shore Resource Team experience, how do you think about building and scaling that culture that these first couple of companies that are the foundation of FirmaPak have invested so heavily in?

Just any thoughts on that, that something that's so valuable at this part of the journey that it remains part of the idea of FirmaPak moving forward and scaling.

Joe Pizetoski: Yeah, I think first you have to partner with the right people. I think the relationship that you're able to develop with a potential seller, and especially because as at Shore and us at FirmaPak, we value the ability to bring on a new company and a new leader.

And rather than have that leader leave the company, keep them around and keep them happy, keep them growing and leading our organization in a way that's beneficial to our entire platform. So, partnering with the right person is critical and the right company with the right culture. That's a critical first building block.

But then I think it's just really a matter of building the trust and just being transparent and doing your best to, I guess, exhibit moral behavior. Really, it's kind of really that you just be transparent.

Anderson Williams: And modeling that right. And reflecting it and what you're seeing and modeling it back. I think that's such an important conversation because it's not the obvious conversation when you're talking about growing a private equity-backed platform.

It's not what most people are thinking of. And I know it's a point of pride and a point of strategy for FirmaPak.

Joe Pizetoski: Well, yeah, it's not only building the trust, which I think is a critical building block, but also partnering with the right people who have end goals in mind, you know, we all want to kind of empower each other to, you know, achieve an awesome exit and create value for everybody, all of our investors, including the people at the company and having that sort of goal in the back of everybody's mind. And everybody's aligned to working hard to go achieve that. If you find that right mindset and a potential seller, or you're able to build that up, that's the goal.

Trial by Fire

Anderson Williams: As you think about your time as the CFO, I'm curious when you look at, you know, whether it's about growth or partnering with the CEO or working with a board or thinking through HR things, what are a couple of things that despite having been an interim that you can only really learn and know by being in the seat and it being your seat?

Joe Pizetoski: I think the biggest part, and this goes back to my decision to join the SRT because I wanted to get to this level as a CFO. It's really, you're going to have to live with your decisions, which is certainly higher risk than a consultant coming in and saying, hey, do this, this, and this. See you later.

Hopefully that goes well for you. The challenge with that mentality is maybe you would think a little bit harder about what you're recommending or come at it with more rigor before you recommend it to your potential client. But then you also don't get to see sort of like the other side of it. If you're that consultant where they put that process into place, and it doesn't go necessarily well.

And then you can't tweak and improve on the next round where you have to make a similar decision. Now as CFO, as more decisions come across my plate, I ultimately need to kind of recommend a decision at that point. If it doesn't necessarily go well, I could reflect on that, see what didn't go well and inform that and continue to improve myself.

So, for the next time I could ultimately make a better decision, make a better recommendation for the benefit of myself and the benefit of the company. So, it's a learning curve.

Anderson Williams: Yeah, it is a learning curve, but it's also sort of a risk reward cycle, right? Like you're going to own whatever risk, but you're also going to own the opportunity to learn from that risk and what didn't go well and what did go well.

Cause you're not to make it sound trite, but you're playing more of a long game once you're in that seat.

Joe Pizetoski: Yes.

Anderson Williams: So part of what the Shore Resource Team is doing as we think about the Shore portfolio is making sure that as we grow companies and as Shore grows and we have more companies that we have cultivated and developed people like you to step into these roles, right?

So, I'm curious, as you look back or you look at folks who are new in the Shore Resource Team, or maybe somebody who thinks, well, maybe that would be an option for me. Any words of wisdom or advice from the CFO seat about how to approach that kind of an experience to maximize it and optimize it for getting this kind of opportunity?

Joe Pizetoski: I would just say be actively open. To learning and stay interested and focus on continuous improvement of yourself and the companies that you work on and just probably work hard. It requires hard work to improve yourself and to improve the companies that you work with. So that's critical. But also, certainly with my background and others, you don't know everything.

You don't know everything to be successful as a CFO. So, coming in, you just have to kind of keep your ears around Shore Capital. You get a ton of very valuable insights just by being here. being around conversations of, you know, hearing about what went poorly at certain companies, what went really well, some risks some companies took and more conservative companies, how they approached different decisions or different points in their investment horizon.

So, taking all of that, you don't necessarily check off the box, but through osmosis, you get to understand more context around how to grow a company. So, I think. Just aggressively learning and hard work and just keeping your ears open to other companies. It's like, rather than going through an MBA and doing a few different case studies, you're there for 50 plus case studies every day and you hear updates about it weekly.

It's a pretty cool chance and exposure that you get to have.

Anderson Williams: Yeah. Just to give a little bit of sort of color for anyone who's not in this space, myself included, as you think about your SRT time, what was your favorite project you worked on?

Joe Pizetoski: I think it's the one where I learned the most. It was the Interim CFO.

I think it was three or four months for one of our portfolio companies. And I think every experience in my career, I'm sure many people say this, but every very, very tough stretch of time in my career, where at the time I was going through it, it was very challenging. It required maybe more hours than I'm used to.

Things I've never done before. Those are always the most challenging. Ultimately the best for my career from a learning perspective. And so this one, certainly going through four acquisitions, working with a brand new team, getting ramped up very quickly, doing all of these things that were brand new for my own career, it's just such a fast path towards growth and ultimately a great experience that I had.

Anderson Williams: Well, I was going to ask you, what was the hardest? Is that also the hardest or is there one that was harder that you would capture as the hardest?

Joe Pizetoski: No, I think that was probably the hardest too. Again, we had great supporting cast in that project, so it made it as easy as it could be, but just in terms of personally, it was challenging certainly to get up to speed there.

There are others that maybe were a little bit harder, not necessarily for the work that you were doing, but people management, change management, as an SRT member, you have to deal with a lot of change or recommending change. So part of that, and part of the transition that you don't necessarily get from a consulting side, you could recommend a solution and it just doesn't get implemented, or you could recommend a solution and whatever the situation is, when you are in the SRT role and you, are a significant partner to management and you make a recommendation, you have to be able to accommodate the change management and just influencing people and companies to a way that you haven't before.

And so, depending on who you're working with, it could be harder, it could be easier. So that's always a decent challenge.

Reflecting on the Experience

Anderson Williams: What do you wish you knew in your first days or weeks on the SRT that you know now about how all of this was going to unfold?

Joe Pizetoski: I don't know. I think it's more of like, if you work hard and do your best and just really care about what you're doing, everything's going to work out.

I tend to overstress myself. And so sometimes if something wasn't working out in an ideal way, I would put a lot of pressure on myself because of, you know, hey, I want to develop this strong personal brand and I want these projects to be successful for not only personally, but also for sure. Capital and the companies that I'm working with, I have an obligation to work with these companies and do my best as an extension of shore to help them.

Put them on the right path to the extent I can. So, there's a lot of pressure there. So, I think a lot of good comes with the dedication to what you do and hard work and just ultimately like, hey, it's going to be okay. Just work hard. Not everything's going to go your way and think bigger picture about things.

Anderson Williams: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure and check out our other Bigger. Stronger. Faster. episodes, as well as our Microcap Moments and Everyday Heroes series at www.shorecp.university/podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts. This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners, with story and narration by Anderson Williams, recording and editing by Austin Johnson, editing by Reel Audiobooks, sound design, mixing and mastering by Mark Galup of Reel Audiobooks.

Special thanks to Joe Pizetoski.

This podcast is the property of Shore Capital Partners LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, nor a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the Terms of Use Page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.