Matt Hagel's guest appearances

Matt Hagel

CFO THOUGHT LEADER

SphereCast

Marc Elliot

Sachin Patel

Lawrence Levy

Rajesh Gupta

Dave Jones

Jeff Epstein

John Collins

Eric Johnson

Michael Tannenbaum

Kraft Heinz

Chris Baker

Bob Feller

Dave Kellogg

Jeff Nichols

Jim Stewart

OwlTail

This week, the SphereCast team speaks with Matt Hagel, Chief Financial Officer at Freshly. Freshly is a meal delivery service that delivers fresh-made meals straight to your door that are ready to heat-and-eat in three minutes or less. Freshly has been featured in The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, Glamour, TechCrunch, and other high-profile publications and has experienced an explosion of popularity over the past year due to the pandemic, given less people wanting to leave their homes.Over the course of his career, Matt has held a variety of leadership positions at some of the world’s most respected brands and fastest-growing startups — Deloitte, Sony Music Entertainment, AppNexus, and Bark &amp; Co., to name a few. And, as you would imagine, Hagel has become a wealth of knowledge on issues of effective leadership. On the podcast this week, Matt deep dives on issues of keeping a team inspired and efficient — both in and beyond the finance and accounting disciplines. Noteworthy Quotes:"As a leader, I've learned to effectively delegate. And in order to delegate, you have to build up the team. But more so than that, it's about the process. When you join a company, you must first establish a process... There's some pushback here sometimes because it feels like you're going slower. But while it feels like we're going slower, it will enable us to go a lot faster. If you have good process design, it should make you more effective.""Saying 'thank you' is free. Recognition comes in many forms... Gratitude means a lot. Recognition is a lot.""Good leaders are good listeners.""Sometimes mentorship is just about having an ear to speak to. It just helps talking some things out. We all deal with very similar problems, both personally and professionally. And it's not like we're recreating the wheel every time.""Teamwork is key. You can't solve all of this yourself.""You want to use tools to enhance the work you're doing... Excel will still always be a part of the formula. Now, we're just more of a gourmet meal, using other tools.""There's no typical day; I learned that a long time ago. But that's really something I enjoy. Each day poses a new challenge that keeps things interesting.""I think your past is a sum of all the parts, and you really learn to rely on your gut based on all of your prior experiences." Bullet List of Resources – Matt HagelLinkedIn FreshlyCompany WebsiteFacebookInstagramTwitter

This week, the SphereCast team speaks with Matt Hagel, Chief Financial Officer at <a href="https://www.freshly.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Freshly</a>. Freshly is a meal delivery service that delivers fresh-made meals straight to your door that are ready to heat-and-eat in three minutes or less. Freshly has been featured in The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, Glamour, TechCrunch, and other high-profile publications and has experienced an explosion of popularity over the past year due to the pandemic, given less people wanting to leave their homes.Over the course of his career, Matt has held a variety of leadership positions at some of the world’s most respected brands and fastest-growing startups — Deloitte, Sony Music Entertainment, AppNexus, and Bark &amp; Co., to name a few. And, as you would imagine, Hagel has become a wealth of knowledge on issues of effective leadership. On the podcast this week, Matt deep dives on issues of keeping a team inspired and efficient — both in and beyond the finance and accounting disciplines. Noteworthy Quotes:"As a leader, I've learned to effectively delegate. And in order to delegate, you have to build up the team. But more so than that, it's about the process. When you join a company, you must first establish a process... There's some pushback here sometimes because it feels like you're going slower. But while it feels like we're going slower, it will enable us to go a lot faster. If you have good process design, it should make you more effective." "Saying 'thank you' is free. Recognition comes in many forms... Gratitude means a lot. Recognition is a lot.""Good leaders are good listeners.""Sometimes mentorship is just about having an ear to speak to. It just helps talking some things out. We all deal with very similar problems, both personally and professionally. And it's not like we're recreating the wheel every time.""Teamwork is key. You can't solve all of this yourself.""You want to use tools to enhance the work you're doing... Excel will still always be a part of the formula. Now, we're just more of a gourmet meal, using other tools.""There's no typical day; I learned that a long time ago. But that's really something I enjoy. Each day poses a new challenge that keeps things interesting.""I think your past is a sum of all the parts, and you really learn to rely on your gut based on all of your prior experiences." Bullet List of Resources – Matt Hagel<ul><li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewhagel/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LinkedIn </a> </li></ul>Freshly<ul><li><a href="https://www.freshly.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Company Website</a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/freshly" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Facebook</a></li><li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/freshly/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/getfreshly" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Twitter</a></li></ul>

On Leading Well — Matt Hagel

It’s a story that Matt Hagel likes to share as he networks with fellow finance executives and accounting types. Back in 2017—only days after stepping into a finance leadership role at the online prepared meals company Freshly—Hagel was reviewing the company’s chart of accounts when he asked himself: “Why is Plant, Property, and Equipment (PPE) under Operating Expenses?” As he soon learned, this stalwart accounting acronym has long led a double life and is also used by various industries (notably healthcare and food prep) as a shorthand designation for Personal Protective Equipment. Three years later, the protective gear acronym is widely known from coast to coast—just like Freshly. In fact, since its PPE entry first drew Hagel’s consternation, Freshly has opened an East Coast kitchen and distribution center, an expansion that extended the firm’s geographic reach from 28 to 48 states and propelled its sales to nearly 10 times their early 2017 volumes. “I inherited a finance and accounting team of three, and now I have a team of 30,” comments Hagel, who located many of his new finance and accounting hires at the company’s three distribution centers, the newest of which opened in Arizona this past April. “From a cost accounting perspective, we have feet on the ground, so if any issues arise, our folks can quickly step onto the plant floor and determine the correct inventory number or provide whatever other information is needed,” says Hagel, who entered 2020 keen to sharpen his team’s focus on costs after years of marshaling resources and new plant capacity to accommodate growth. Then COVID arrived. There’s little doubt that the pandemic has been an accelerant on the trend of consumers turning to online for shopping experiences like Freshly that promise safety as well as convenience. (Such was the case for online car seller Vroom, which after record sales in March and April moved quickly to go public in June.) It’s enough to make you wonder whether Freshly management may be of a similar frame of mind. Reports Hagel: "Freshly is focused on building the best company possible, one that will be ready for the public markets or remain as a successful private company."  Perhaps momentarily escaping Hagel’s lines of sight is yet another option whereby Freshly is acquired by a giant inside the packaged goods space. Certainly, Hagel doesn’t have to look far when you consider that Nestlé is one of Freshly’s largest investors. To be sure, Nestlé’s move to acquire a minority interest in Freshly back in 2017 was somewhat out of character for the food giant that is generally known to swallow its quarry whole. At that time, Nestle was the lead investor in a $77 million round of funding. Just as the pandemic has accelerated the shift to online buying, so too has it appeared to draw Freshly and its big name investor ever more close. “This has been open-office at both ends. We have had a really good dialog that has helped us both to be successful,” comments Hagel. Back in March, Freshly engaged with Nestlé’s human resources team as it formulated its COVID response, which Hagel credits with having helped Freshly to avoid the mistakes made by other food industry players. For one thing, Freshly hired a number of health professionals to begin taking employee temperatures at every shift across its different locations. “The words ‘essential services’ weren’t even a term on March 9, and there was no way of knowing whether we would be shut down,” explains Hagel, who says that in the event of a state “lockdown,” Freshly has prepared printed laminated forms for each employee to use that would confirm their employment at Freshly. As the pandemic bore down on different U.S. geographies, Freshly issued a press release announcing that Freshly and Nestle would jointly be donating $500,000 to Meals on Wheels America. “What happened back in March was that there was a period of a few weeks when we had no new customers because there was so much demand by people who were already using our service,” explains Hagel, who adds that shelter-in-place ordinances quickly turned dinner clients into lunchtime customers. “People just needed more meals, and this transition to be more of a lunch solution is something that we never would have imagined happening this quickly,” Hagel observes.   Sign Up for Our Newsletter

It’s a story that Matt Hagel likes to share as he networks with fellow finance executives and accounting types. Back in 2017—only days after stepping into a finance leadership role at the online prepared meals company Freshly—Hagel was reviewing the company’s chart of accounts when he asked himself: “Why is Plant, Property, and Equipment (PPE) under Operating Expenses?” As he soon learned, this stalwart accounting acronym has long led a double life and is also used by various industries (notably healthcare and food prep) as a shorthand designation for Personal Protective Equipment. Three years later, the protective gear acronym is widely known from coast to coast—just like Freshly. In fact, since its PPE entry first drew Hagel’s consternation, Freshly has opened an East Coast kitchen and distribution center, an expansion that extended the firm’s geographic reach from 28 to 48 states and propelled its sales to nearly 10 times their early 2017 volumes. “I inherited a finance and accounting team of three, and now I have a team of 30,” comments Hagel, who located many of his new finance and accounting hires at the company’s three distribution centers, the newest of which opened in Arizona this past April. “From a cost accounting perspective, we have feet on the ground, so if any issues arise, our folks can quickly step onto the plant floor and determine the correct inventory number or provide whatever other information is needed,” says Hagel, who entered 2020 keen to sharpen his team’s focus on costs after years of marshaling resources and new plant capacity to accommodate growth. Then COVID arrived. There’s little doubt that the pandemic has been an accelerant on the trend of consumers turning to online for shopping experiences like Freshly that promise safety as well as convenience. (Such was the case for online car seller Vroom, which after record sales in March and April moved quickly to go public in June.) It’s enough to make you wonder whether Freshly management may be of a similar frame of mind. Reports Hagel: "Freshly is focused on building the best company possible, one that will be ready for the public markets or remain as a successful private company."  Perhaps momentarily escaping Hagel’s lines of sight is yet another option whereby Freshly is acquired by a giant inside the packaged goods space. Certainly, Hagel doesn’t have to look far when you consider that Nestlé is one of Freshly’s largest investors. To be sure, Nestlé’s move to acquire a minority interest in Freshly back in 2017 was somewhat out of character for the food giant that is generally known to swallow its quarry whole. At that time, Nestle was the lead investor in a $77 million round of funding. Just as the pandemic has accelerated the shift to online buying, so too has it appeared to draw Freshly and its big name investor ever more close. “This has been open-office at both ends. We have had a really good dialog that has helped us both to be successful,” comments Hagel. Back in March, Freshly engaged with Nestlé’s human resources team as it formulated its COVID response, which Hagel credits with having helped Freshly to avoid the mistakes made by other food industry players. For one thing, Freshly hired a number of health professionals to begin taking employee temperatures at every shift across its different locations. “The words ‘essential services’ weren’t even a term on March 9, and there was no way of knowing whether we would be shut down,” explains Hagel, who says that in the event of a state “lockdown,” Freshly has prepared printed laminated forms for each employee to use that would confirm their employment at Freshly. As the pandemic bore down on different U.S. geographies, Freshly issued a press release announcing that Freshly and Nestle would jointly be donating $500,000 to Meals on Wheels America. “What happened back in March was that there was a period of a few weeks when we had no new customers because there was so much demand by people who were already using our service,” explains Hagel, who adds that shelter-in-place ordinances quickly turned dinner clients into lunchtime customers. “People just needed more meals, and this transition to be more of a lunch solution is something that we never would have imagined happening this quickly,” Hagel observes.   <a href="https://app.monstercampaigns.com/c/kqhh57qyfo94v0vnovj5/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sign Up for Our Newsletter</a>

629: Freshly Ripens On The Vine |  Matt Hagel, CFO, Freshly