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Through the SRT Lens: How Hannah Credille Pivoted from Accounting to Operations
In this episode, Hannah Credille shares her journey from an early career in technical accounting to becoming a strategic leader on the Shore Resource Team. She discusses the impact of transitioning to an operationally focused role, her experiences supporting portfolio companies, and her first year, including serving as an interim CFO. Hannah emphasizes the importance of communication, scalability, and developing processes that empower teams and drive success.
Transcript
Introduction
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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.
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In this episode, I talk with Hannah Credille, a Director on the Shore Resource Team. Hannah talks about her seven years of experience in consulting prior to Shore, and how she's been able to leverage and expand her skill set as a financial leader More specifically, she talks about the opportunity to expedite her early career experience and how she's even found herself in an interim CFO role in her first year with the SRT.
Hannah talks about the collective learning and support the Shore Resource Team, and really all of Shore, brings to each other, as well as the portfolio, to increase the odds of success for any project, any company, and her own career.
Welcome, Hannah, and thanks for joining me.
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Hannah Credille: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
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Anderson Williams: To get us started, will you just introduce yourself and say what you do and where you do it?
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Hannah Credille: My name is Hannah Credille. I'm a Director on our Shore Resource Team here in Chicago.
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Anderson Williams: And what did you do before you joined the Shore Resource Team?
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Hannah Credille: Prior to joining Shore, I was at PwC for just shy of about seven years in the deals practice within a vertical called Capital Markets, Accounting Advisory Services, or CMAAS for short, since that's a pretty long name, but essentially I was a transaction based consultant that helped clients navigate complex accounting and financial reporting matters that related to deals or other transformational events. So, think initial public offerings, carve outs, new accounting standards under US GAAP that we needed to implement for our clients.
So, becoming that go to person for technical accounting and deals and change as these clients navigated those.
Taking a Leap
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Anderson Williams: Seven years is a pretty long stretch. What was it that you were looking for when you decided to make a change? Or how were you trying to grow? What was the appeal to coming over to Shore and the Shore Resource Team?
Hannah Credille: I think I was really lucky at PwC to have some really powerful mentors. And I mean powerful in the sense that they invested in me personally and professionally and pushing my intellectual curiosity and wanting to make sure that I was receiving the opportunities that I wanted to see there. I think ultimately at the end of the day, as I progressed in my career there, I decided, you know, maybe I don't want to be a technical accountant forever and had to back up and say, what's going to be my next move? What am I interested in?
And I think Shore presented itself as a really, really interesting in SRT because then you got to pivot from being a technical accountant to an operational accountant and to becoming a strategic thought partner to not only executive members, but also founders of businesses. And I felt like that was a really good fit just generally for the content or the types of projects that I would be covering.
I also wanted to preserve the aspects or certain elements of PwC whereby I was working with brilliantly talented people and very personable people as well. And I wanted to make sure that that was something that I felt was going to be carried over into my next role. And I felt like talking to Riley and Jeff and other people on the team, even prior to coming into interviewing, I kind of felt at peace with that decision prior to even sitting down and kind of going through the full interview process, which I thought, you know, maybe I would go somewhere and not know that that was going to be on the other side of it, but kind of going into the interview and thinking, okay, these people are really sharp.
They have backgrounds that are similar but also different to mine and have a lot to bring to the table and it's all kind of young hungry professionals and that same path and part of their career with the goal of exiting to become a private equity backed C suite member and whatever capacity that may be, whether it's CFO, COO and just being able to have those opportunities earlier in your career, I think that was really the big draw for me at Shore.
Anderson Williams: Yeah, I would love to just get into your head a little bit as you made that decision because I have to believe, you know, it wasn't that you were at PwC just a couple of years. I mean, seven years you had a career and probably a pretty clear career path working up through those channels. So, this was a little bit of a risky move, I would imagine.
Hannah Credille: Yeah, definitely was. I wasn't sure what to expect and also, I wasn't actively looking when Shore came into the picture. I'd worked with Riley previously in the same group at PwC, so I knew that she left for Shore, but I really didn't know much more beyond that.
And I feel like once I started talking to her, I started to feel like it wasn't as much of a risk, but more so an opportunity to come here and to really take advantage of what's being put in front of us, both from an engagement standpoint, but also the resources and the ability to grow into a professional that would be ready to sit in the C suite.
I think that was something that made it feel, okay, maybe this isn't such a risk. This is more so a really awesome opportunity that's too good to pass up at this point.
Anderson Williams: It almost is like a bit of an accelerator for finding the C suite as you go through the SRT.
Hannah Credille: Yeah, absolutely.
Anderson Williams: So, talk a little bit about your first year.
What are the kinds of projects you've worked on and how has that transition been and either met expectations or different than your expectations, exceeded expectations? Just talk a little bit about what that first year after being at PwC for that time and coming into Shore, what's that been like and what's the kind of stuff you've been working on?
Hannah Credille: Yeah. To start, I would say different but exceeded expectations. But, you know, I think in a good way of being different than what I expected, but I think it's been a lot of positive ways that that has been different than when I first started and what I thought was going to be the role. But I've worked on a lot of different portfolio companies.
I would say most notably, I've worked with some FP&A support. I've done our, you know, bread and butter SRT 100-day plan with Action down in Phoenix, Arizona for a few months worked with several team members and CXO even got to collaborate with that group, which I thought was really awesome and a value add for SRT product offerings, but also just the ability to cast your network wide at Shore.
I've worked on add on integrations for one of our portfolio companies, very first transaction. So, it was a VP of Finance who said, hey, I don't, I haven't gone through a transaction yet. How can you set me up for success for the next one that we go to? Because I know this won't be the last one and helping them get that integrated from a finance accounting perspective, and then all the way through to an interim CFO position in my first year here, which if you had told me that a year and a half ago, I'd be in a CFO position, I probably would have said you're lying. And I think that that actually was probably my most valuable professional experience to date.
Anderson Williams: And what did you learn in that interim role and just talk us through what it's like to step into a company that already has a team, already has things in place, but you're coming in for this interim position. Just walk through that experience a little bit.
Hannah Credille: I think everyone says in the consulting world, every day is different.
And sometimes when you go to corporate or to a portfolio company, people will say, oh, well, it'll be. a repeat cycle, but I can assure you that is not the case in the CFO role. You've got plenty of people reporting to you and everyone's coming into your office, not with all the good news. They're coming in with questions, with follow ups, or, hey, I think maybe we need to investigate this a little bit more.
Hey, we're looking at potentially buying this company. Would you mind reviewing some of the financials that we've gotten from them? Or, hey, we're off budget. We need to investigate, and let's really dig into why we're missing on revenue. Is it because we're pricing wrong or is it because we're not moving inventory at the right pace, or is it a combination of both?
So, it's a lot of trying to take one thing at a time. I think in the CFO world, it's really one issue at a time and tick through your list, but make sure that you understand the prioritization. I think that was a really big thing because there are only 24 hours in a day. There are a lot of things that need to get done.
So, understanding, you know, what do we need to do today, tomorrow, this week, this month. And I think it was truly adopting this mentality of what's important now, or I call it like the win mentality, of just figuring out we've got a lot of fish to fry, which one do we do first?
Preparing for the Role
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Anderson Williams: And how did you keep up? How did you do that having not been in the role? How did you figure it out? Because that is a whole other approach and a whole other sort of body of work than being able to do transactional kinds of project-based work once you're in that role. What did you have to adjust? How did you rethink things? Just any approach that you took to that.
Hannah Credille: Great question.
I think I'm lucky in that everyone on SRT has had breadth and depth of experience across our portfolio. So, for example, working with third party debt, I had somewhat limited experience at Shore just based on the engagements I'd done prior to this interim CFO role. And there were several others who had been interim CFOs or were currently interim CFOs.
And I was able to ask them questions. them, hey, how should I go about framing this? How should I go about thinking about this particular technical topic? If I'm looking for incremental add backs, do you think that this would be aligned with the credit agreement? How do you think about this strategically?
So, I think going to your network at Shore within SRT was really valuable. And I also think the other side of handling it when you're on the day to day on the ground, you don't necessarily have everyone on SRT at the desk next to you. You're in the office with all of the team on site, and you have to really lean on the N-1's and N-2's to give you historical context and give you the why behind a process that's currently in place and candidly asking them what are the pain points or what keeps you up at night.
I think that was something that helped is the first week that I was on site, I met with the CEO, the Chief of Staff, the Controller, all the way down to our accounts payable folks and just said, what's keeping you up at night? And I just, made a list and that was sort of where I felt there was overlap was where I felt like I could prioritize that because that seems to be an issue or a process or communication breakdown at this point for this person and at another point for these people and so it just kind of cascades throughout the company but as a CFO you get the ability to be able to be a strategic thought partner to executive leadership but also to your team and creating and enhancing processes.
Anderson Williams: It sounds like what you're describing, you've kind of got the SRT on one side, you've got Shore on another side, you've got the portfolio company on another side, and you've got those various folks as stakeholders, but also as supports in this process, right, as other people to learn from, other people to get advice from.
How do you think differently? If you do, about approaching or how is it different from the traditional consulting world to be working within a portfolio where you have this sort of mutual alignment in the investment and so forth? It seems to me there's a whole other level of accountability that just has to be there.
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Hannah Credille: Yeah, it's exactly right. I think that was probably the biggest thing I had to get used to here or really not get used to more so, I guess I should say. It was the biggest thing I had to adjust and learn to adapt to here, because in my prior role, we were really working for our clients, and it was one party, whereas at Shore, you have a management team, you have the deal team, and what the management team thinks is achievable in that particular day might be different than what the deal team wants to see in the next 24 hours.
I personally think is really strong differentiator for SRT because as we're going through our reps and our engagements and getting reps in this space, you learn what does the deal team really care about and what do they prioritize or what do they press on based on what management is providing and able to achieve in a certain time frame.
But on the other hand, you also get to say the deal team wants X, Y, Z in a certain time frame, but this team member is working on this initiative that maybe the deal team isn't even aware of. But it's still a value add and from a CFO perspective, that should be prioritized. So, you get to be a little bit of a liaison between the two.
And I think what that helps with is aligning everyone with the priorities and understanding what's on everyone's plate and back to the what's important now, if we want to get five things done today, what are those five? And I think it's important because you can help management scale and give them the resources that could potentially give them the horsepower to go from getting the three things done a day to the five things done a day.
And that alone has such a cascading impact on their ability to not only produce, but analyze and be able to share insights beyond just being a doer, but going into becoming a strategic thinker and going to the deal team with insights rather than just sharing something and saying, hey, here's a deliverable.
It's, hey, here's this. We were able to cut it down into a few hours in terms of how long it will take us to get there or to complete it. But here are the five bullet points of why this matters and what we're thinking about next. I think that's really the role that SRT can play and managing expectations from different stakeholders, but also making sure that you're moving everyone in the right direction and in the same direction.
Professional Development​
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Anderson Williams: As you think about coming back just to you and your own sort of professional growth and development. What have you developed? What muscles, what tools have you developed in this first year with SRT that you think just to kind of summarize some of what you've already said, but are preparing you for that C suite position on the other side of this?
Hannah Credille: Yeah, so I think two things come to mind immediately. I think the first is communication. There's a difference in communicating with an executive management team who maybe isn't as familiar with EBITDA or revenue under US GAAP, all of the accounting jargon that comes with it. And so, making sure that you're taking something that maybe I understand at a really technical level and bringing it up to the 20,000-foot view and kind of giving them the why we care about this first, before we dig into the actual, how do we build this?
And so, I think the framing for management team versus maybe the deal team is a little bit different. The deal team is looking for some of those more technical answers and expects the technical expertise that we can bring to the table. So, we can get a little more in the weeds with some of those. Items, but also making sure we keep it at an executive level of communication so we're not going into areas that don't necessarily matter to them as much.
So, I think it's becoming that strategic thinker and figuring out how to communicate that. The second piece is process is everything. If you don't have a process, you don't have a direction. If you don't have a direction, you don't have a goal. And I think that is something that Shore really harps on in a very positive way and that we as SRT want to provide consistent service offerings and consistent service quality across the board, regardless of the type of engagement that we're on or the type of industry that we're in at that very particular point in time.
So, I think just trying to create a process, even where there isn't one. So, our job is not to put a Band-Aid on it. Our job is to make it usable and make it scalable. So, I think on top of it, we have scalability in mind, but we also need it to be usable by our management team. So being able to coach them and empower them to take on those processes and really own them, I think is something that's really powerful.
The SRT does is we transition all the fabulous things that we've worked on throughout our engagements. to our management teams to then own and run with. And I think that that's something that's really impactful from our role that I don't necessarily think you would get elsewhere.
Anderson Williams: I think that's really an important point because of the model and because you're sort of an internal consulting group and you have the multiple stakeholders that there's never a situation where you just go in, help them with something, leave it behind, and then they turn around and say, well, what the hell are we supposed to do with this?
What do we do with this now? Hannah left. What do we do with it now that Hannah's gone? SRT is always thinking about how the company owns it when you finish a product.
Hannah Credille: Absolutely. You know, every engagement has an end date and a transition period, but the relationships here are very sticky. So, you know, I reference actions, a 100-day plan.
I worked on that back at the end of 2023. I'm still getting calls from the VP of Finance because they view us as a strategic thought partner and say, hey, we're thinking of using this provider for our opening balance sheet or my controllers. Would you mind just having a call and introducing him to Shore?
I want him to understand what you guys do or, hey, this technical accounting question just came up, would you mind just sort of giving me your perspective or, hey, do you have a best practice for this? We haven't seen this yet. And oftentimes the answer can be, I'm not sure, let me get back to you. But just the fact that they reach out to us even well after the engagement.
is done is a testament to our impact and the fact that we go from being boots on the ground to just strategic thought partners, even when we're not formally engaged together.
Anderson Williams: As you think back to when you started with SRT, what do you know now that you wish you had known in those first weeks or maybe even in that by the time you had that first engagement?
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Hannah Credille: My prior experience gave me a lot of opportunities to develop my technical skills that I think were very transferable to the role that I have now. I think it was a little different in starting here where in my prior role you had layers of review, and the decision was always made by multiple people.
Whereas here it's you're telling a founder what direction they should be taking this company. You're telling the deal team, no, I really think this is the initiative that we should prioritize, or this is what I think we should do this week. And I wish I could tell myself that being decisive is not scary it's empowering.
And I think the good news is there are 20 other people on our team who are previously in my same position, probably getting asked in the first or second meeting, what do you think? And having to really sit back and digest what's coming your way and formulate a perspective that at least shows that you've thoughtfully assessed the situation or circumstances and providing a perspective.
I just think being decisive and being able to form that early on and leaning on your resources makes it less scary and it becomes less of a, oh no, are they going to call on me type mentality and more of a, I hope they ask me, I have something to say.
The Shore Difference​
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Anderson Williams: Anything else I should have asked you about your experience with SRT, with the portfolio, with Shore, that I haven't asked you?
Hannah Credille: I would go with two things. One would be something that I think is a big differentiator for Shore in particular, in that I didn't even realize this was something that I valued so much until I got here because I just didn't know. Beyond having a lot of these, awesome events throughout the year and these conferences where you're constantly learning.
I find our Monday Morning Meetings to be incredibly valuable to professional growth, and I'll tell you why. It can be a long meeting to sit through, but oftentimes in a lot of companies, not just at other PE firms, decisions are made in a room with closed doors. And Shore allows you everyone in the company to get under the hood and hear partners and vice principals and principals thoughts on where they want to take the strategy, the things that they want to focus on, the things that are maybe keeping them up at night.
I got to see under the hood on day one. That was my very first meeting at shore. And I just thought it was incredibly valuable to watch our partners, A, think strategically, B, disagree respectfully, and learning how to negotiate in those settings and see just from an SRT perspective, figuring out what does the deal team care about from a finance accounting perspective and where can SRT get plugged in?
If I'm going to be a CFO, what do I want to pursue and chase? And what are the things that make people stand out in a good or bad way? Just figuring out, getting your training wheels and figuring out what's the recipe for success here. And I think that folks in other PE firms or just other companies in general, they're going don't get that access to our leadership and the thoughts that drive the why it's always sometimes I think companies have the decision is made and by the time it would get to someone like me it's just here's how we're gonna do this we don't really get the well how do we get there who made that decision like you get to see it in real time.
I thought that was a really big differentiator just on the day-to-day experience at Shore that I wasn't even expecting. And I was honestly shocked at that level of access that we have to the leaders at our firm.
Anderson Williams: Awesome. This was great.
Future Candidates​
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Hannah Credille: Can I just say one last thing? Because it actually is for SRT, I think this would be good for candidates to think about.
Okay. I think outside of engagement, involvement, or outside of just our engagements, we also on SRT have a lot of opportunities to lead internal initiatives. And I think that that's something that is undersold in the SRT recruiting. The one that I've been really involved with has been for our audit and tax vendors and kind of working with Riley and, and our audit tax vendors to manage the relationship.
So, we developed a scorecard where we met with them consistently every month during the audit period to figure out, hey, fee wise what are we tracking towards who's running into issues? So, we could alert the deal teams earlier rather than later. And it created this feedback loop that wasn't previously there.
So that way issues were flagged earlier and taken care of and ensuring a smoother audit process than before. And we actually collaborated with them to develop a big nerdy playbook on successfully navigating your audit because oftentimes the C suite or the executives at our portfolio companies have never even really had to do an audit before.
So just figuring out the resources that we can equip our management teams with, but also make sure that we're looping in the deal team, just back to making sure you're managing stakeholders, but also maintaining the relationship with your vendors to ensure a smooth experience across the portfolio, but enhancing the communication along the way.
And I think that that's. It's important because there are tons of people who lead initiatives within Shore, but SRT allows us to really shine and be able to show our chops when we get to own those things.
Anderson Williams: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to 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 Hannah Credille.
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.