Adam Larson: 00:21

Welcome to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson. And today, I'm joined by Jameson Galey, a finance professional with an inspiring and unconventional journey From taking just two accounting classes in college to landing his first job in the industry by chance, Jamison quickly rose through the ranks to become CFO at 29. Along the way, he navigated industry pivots, the onset of COVID-nineteen, and even started his own online accounting firm. Now, he's on a mission to make accounting fun and accessible for everyone through his new platform Ledgeroo.

Adam Larson: 00:49

Whether you're an accounting pro or just interested in unique career stories, you'll find something to take away from today's episode. Let's dive right in! Well, Jameson, I'm glad to have you on the podcast today. And today we're just going to be talking a little bit about your story because you have a very unique story, and I'm really excited to share this with our audience. And so to start off, what really initially what initially drew you to the field of accounting?

Jameson Galey: 01:19

Cool. Well, thanks for having me on. I'm a fan of the podcast. And as you know, I'm a CMA as well, so big fan of the IMA in general. Kind of an interesting track.

Jameson Galey: 01:28

I actually studied entrepreneurship at USC. Was in the business school. I only took two accounting courses there. Tried sales, marketing, PR, a few different things out of college and wasn't really finding my niche. Then I was like, You know what?

Jameson Galey: 01:40

I actually really love those two accounting courses I took. I'm just on a whim, see if I can get a job in accounting, maybe go back to school, become a CPA. I was actually working for a television production company at the time. And I talked to some of the accounts there and was telling them about my plan. And literally the next day, the CFO walked over to my desk and was like, Hey, I need a head corporate accountant, my first entry level guy.

Jameson Galey: 02:03

Do you want the job? And I was like, Absolutely. So I just jumped into it. Was super lucky to have that happen and then just kind of absolutely fell in love with it. So my kind of, you know, the fact that I really like those two courses, like really actually paid off.

Adam Larson: 02:16

Wow. Yeah, it's funny. I took a couple of accounting courses during my master's program and I was like, No, this is not where I want to go. And so it's interesting how when you take those courses, everybody has a different feel for it, right?

Jameson Galey: 02:30

Pretty funny. There was a really good teacher at USC. His name was Merle Hopkins. I don't know if he's still there, but great accounting teacher, taught the huge accounting 101 of the whole business school. And he was actually missing like a pinky finger.

Jameson Galey: 02:41

And there used to be like a rumor going around that he had been like counting cards in Vegas or something. So who knows if that's true? But he was I give him credit for like kind of making it fun and really bringing me into it.

Adam Larson: 02:50

Yeah. So, you know, you so you mentioned that you're you're a CMA and so you became certified. So how was what was that like working full time and these different things and trying to be sort of become certified in the same time?

Jameson Galey: 03:02

Yeah, so I would say, you know, for the first six months, I didn't do anything except work and just kind of get my feet up and kind of get going. And then I was like, all right, actually, this was the right call. Like, I'm actually loving this. I want to kind of just rise in my career and pursue more and more. I started taking online courses through UCLA Extension.

Jameson Galey: 03:21

And essentially what I just did is I got in early, a couple hours early every morning for years. And I just studied accounting online through UCLA Extension, got enough credits to combine with my business degree. And then I sat for the CPA exams, became a CPA. Honestly, I loved the experience of studying so much that then I went on to do the CMA exams as well, just for the fun of it. I was absolutely just loving that experience of learning and working at the same time.

Adam Larson: 03:45

Yeah. Wow. I mean, I commend you because I know that's not easy to do, especially trying to go in a little early and try to study something and then do your work and then do other things outside. Can be very taxing on you, but obviously it was very rewarding.

Jameson Galey: 03:58

Absolutely. I honestly think back, but it's like a really fun time. It was just like this kind of, like, discovery period of, like, learning on my own. I'm a big student, love school, always have. So it was like that you know, the thrill of getting back in and just, cracking open a huge textbook is, a huge challenge to me.

Jameson Galey: 04:14

I just, like, ate it up.

Adam Larson: 04:15

So you mentioned that you worked for some, you know, big production companies who did TV shows during your career. What was it like working for those organizations, especially in the financial perspective?

Jameson Galey: 04:24

Yeah. Absolutely. It's It's a really cool industry, honestly, to be on the accounting finance side. It's interesting to see a lot of that. See, I worked for a company called Kinetic Content, which has actually ended up being like a huge success story.

Jameson Galey: 04:36

So when I joined, they were probably like $10,000,000,000 in revenue. Over a five year period, we grew to about 90,000,000. And a big part of that was they created, actually they didn't create it, but they brought the Marriott at First Sight franchise over. I think it was originally created by a different company, Denmark, I believe it was. But they brought that to The US and, like, made a huge deal out of it.

Jameson Galey: 04:56

Think I don't know if it's still going or not, but it was on, like, season 17 at some point a couple years ago. But and then they also did Little Women LA. They went on to do Love Is Blinds. They had some really big hits. Chris Cole and the guy's CEO is really, really smart dude.

Jameson Galey: 05:10

So being on the finance side, it's really cool. It's actually it's a cost plus model. So it's like you learn pretty early on. The goal is to kinda get the biggest budgets you can get and kinda keep getting in there and increasing number of hours and things like that. But it's actually really interesting.

Jameson Galey: 05:25

It's this shell game where the studios that are hiring you to produce the show, they're only gonna pay you a 10% production fee because it's cost plus. There's all kinds of tricks these production companies do to increase their margins. Within the budget, there'll be a weekly camera rental. But then the production company will set up a different LLC, buy some cameras, and then it will actually be renting to itself. You've got production accounts on staff that you're renting out to your different productions.

Jameson Galey: 05:53

It becomes this kind of game of how can you get to a critical mass of content, and then you can actually build up that force and start kind of renting things back to yourself and increase your margins that way. So it's kind of a fun, interesting game.

Adam Larson: 06:06

Wow, that does sound interesting. Were there elements within like the CPA or CMA exam or things that you had to learn in studying for those that kind of helped you prepare you for what you had to encounter while trying to do those financials?

Jameson Galey: 06:18

Absolutely. Television accounting, the revenue recognition method is POC, percentage of completion. So you can actually be kind of complex when you're accounting for these multimillion dollar television projects that sometimes last over a year, things like that. So there was a lot of deferred revenue, accounts receivable, POC. There was a whole system that I helped build out to forecast and track all that.

Jameson Galey: 06:43

Everything I was learning in CMA and CPA exams was constantly applicable to what I was doing on a daily basis. What I liked about the CMA exams particularly is like CPA, there's a lot of audit and tax focus, which never frankly interested me. It's like I crammed for those exams and just kind of forgot the stuff immediately after. It's like I've always been into the actual working within companies, business strategy, risk management, decision making, all the kind of stuff that CMA really focuses on. It's really meant for people like me that wanted to be a financial executive.

Jameson Galey: 07:15

Super helpful across the board.

Adam Larson: 07:17

Definitely. And then from there, you transition on to becoming a CFO at quite a young age. How was it? How was it like that adapting to being a CFO at a young age, especially the pressures of that position and all the weight that comes with that?

Jameson Galey: 07:30

Sure. Yeah, I got really lucky. I became a CFO at 29. I'm sure there are people out there that have also done it. But for me personally, would have never happened if it wasn't for this very lucky happenstance, which is that the company, Connecticut Content, I was working for for five years.

Jameson Galey: 07:47

They were owned by a German parent company that owned about 20 different production companies around the world. And I got to be super close with them just doing month end finance calls for five years straight. You you can just imagine just month after month, developed a really good relationship with them. And they had another company in Downtown LA that they actually just moved me to be the CFO. It was called Kardig seven Pictures.

Jameson Galey: 08:07

So it was a super lucky, fortunate opportunity. I was very grateful for it, took the leap. And it's actually pretty funny. It was December 2019 actually that I made the jump. Within like a ninety day, I actually got married around that time too.

Jameson Galey: 08:24

So within like a ninety day period, I got married, I became a CFO and then COVID hit. So it was like, yeah, that ninety days was like, there's a lot of change in my life. It was, you just kind of, you know, I have a habit of just kind of throwing myself in situations and kind of just making sure I swim. I think it's like anything. I think I encourage people to take the leap and figure it out because you will.

Jameson Galey: 08:46

And there are definite times when I had to pretend like I kind of was a little bit more solid than I felt on the inside being a CFO. And all of sudden, it's like, there's no one else you can really point to or look to for answers or things like that. So that was definitely a new experience, especially being in a creative world because typically, each company is probably different. The CEO and the partners are probably going to be creative people. So there's really not going to be anybody that you can talk to about finance or whatever.

Jameson Galey: 09:13

You're probably going to be kind of on that.

Adam Larson: 09:16

Yeah. Did you have a big team that you were working with as a CFO or was it very was it a more small organization? You're dealing with big budgets, though.

Jameson Galey: 09:23

Yeah, we did about 20,000,000 in revenues a year, 2025. The company had been around for about eight years. I had three people working underneath me when I joined. And then, you know, you can scale up like production accountants maybe for a short period of time or something, depending on the level of production and the volume you have at that time.

Adam Larson: 09:40

So what was it like navigating COVID to COVID during the worst part of COVID, especially a lot of production companies couldn't shoot anything for a long time there?

Jameson Galey: 09:49

Yeah, we were actually really lucky because a big part of production is you go out and you shoot the stuff, and then you have it in the can, and then you have to spend time editing it. And we got really lucky because we had actually just gone out and shot a bunch of stuff. So we were actually able to remote edit from home and then still be releasing things and delivering the items we needed to get the revenue in from our customers. So we got lucky that way. And it's funny when you look back, it's like everybody I think was accounting was one of those things that you just assumed could not be done remotely.

Jameson Galey: 10:22

It's like, how are going sign checks? How are we going to do this? And within weeks, it was like, Oh, this is super easy. Yeah, there was a total production shutdown across the industry. We got lucky.

Jameson Galey: 10:33

I think we borrowed some money from our parent company. We did some layoffs. We got through it.

Adam Larson: 10:38

So what was your next career decision after the CFO of that production company?

Jameson Galey: 10:43

Yeah, it was interesting. So I was there for about two and a half years, survived COVID. We kind of steadied out. And then actually the original owners of the company decided they wanted to break away from the German parent company, start over and do their own thing. And they didn't really have a place for a CFO in their new scaled down role.

Jameson Galey: 11:02

So the whole thing just dismantled in an amicable way. And so I basically found myself looking for a new job after being a CFO for about two and a half years. And it was interesting. So I started reaching out to recruiters and they were all incredibly pessimistic. It was like, became a CFO way too early, your resume is all off.

Jameson Galey: 11:21

No one's gonna ever make you a CFO again, not again, but right now it's just not gonna happen for you. You've only ever done accounting and finance in the television industry. So it's like, basically they're telling me like, you're gonna sit there and wait for like a number two position of a TV production coming to open up, and who knows when that'll happen? It was very pessimistic. My wife and I had really enjoyed being remote during COVID.

Jameson Galey: 11:44

And it was kind of like, I would love to continue the remote lifestyle. I'm big fan of this. So I made the decision to open up my own online accounting firm. And I was like, I'm just going to find my own clients. I'm going to just do my own thing.

Jameson Galey: 11:56

And I believe that I have a lot of value to add to any organization. I'm not going to sit around and wait to be pigeonholed into the right role or whatever. I'm going to go do it myself. I made that decision. And then within a couple of weeks, was on Craigslist of all places, hustling, trying to find my first clients and bumped into this guy.

Jameson Galey: 12:14

He was a serial entrepreneur. He read my He actually put a post on Craigslist and said, Need a CPA one day a week. That's all it said. And I replied to it. And it was for one startup he was running, but then we started talking, he saw my resume and he was like, Actually, I would love you to come on board and be a full time CFO of this other startup I'm running.

Jameson Galey: 12:34

So, I felt pretty good about that. I was like, you know what, I'll shelve the online accounting firm. This is an incredible opportunity. I'm gonna go with it. So, the recruiters called me later and they were like, hey, you need a secondary role in a TV production company?

Jameson Galey: 12:48

Was No, I'm actually the CFO of a tech startup. Thank you. I figured it out all on my own. But yeah, I got really lucky. I think it just goes to show I was willing to hustle on Craigslist for $35 an hour or whatever it took to get that firm off the ground and it really paid off.

Jameson Galey: 13:03

I'm actually still involved with that company. I've been the CFO there for about three years now.

Adam Larson: 13:09

Wow. So it was like transitioning from one industry to another because sometimes it's different, sometimes it's not. I mean, the accounting stays the same, but what was it like transitioning?

Jameson Galey: 13:17

Yeah, I would actually counter that. The accounting definitely does not stay the same in certain cases. So, yeah, it's interesting. I call it a tech company because it kind of was and is tech focused, but it actually was like a manufacturing company when I first joined. So that was a big change.

Jameson Galey: 13:32

We had this kind of proprietary solar technology that absorbs solar energy and then is able to make signs light up at night automatically. So you see those signs these days with the solar panels affixed to the outside or near them or whatever, but these were actually built into the sign itself so you could see them. And so, were manufacturing those in house. So, it was a big change from purely the service model and entertainment to direct labor and manufacturing overhead, tracking and calculating all that. Was a lot.

Jameson Galey: 14:09

But I bought a couple of textbooks on inventory management and cost accounting and just dug in, and I loved it. That was the biggest change for me. It was an opportunity to build out a whole new system because most startups didn't really have a lot of good infrastructure in place. It was actually really cool too. When I worked previously, I was part of that group of 20 production companies.

Jameson Galey: 14:31

They had a very high level TM1 software that did all the planning and tracking and everything. Nothing like this into startups. So it was the first time that I actually had to build out a full FP and A system in Excel by myself with the actuals, forecast, budgeting. And I just feel like I learned so much during that process. My sales skills dramatically improved.

Jameson Galey: 14:51

And that's why I would encourage people to work for small businesses and start ups. Because when there's not that infrastructure and you have kind of build it yourself, it can be a great opportunity.

Adam Larson: 14:59

Well, it was hands on experience and something that maybe if you're working for a very large organization, you'd a part of the team choosing it and being a part of it. To build it from the ground up with the foundation that you've learned and from, you know, from the certifications you have to all the experience you have to be able to build that your own foundation is an invaluable experience, really.

Jameson Galey: 15:18

Absolutely.

Adam Larson: 15:20

So I wanted to circle to your other startup you have, which is called Ledger Root. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jameson Galey: 15:27

Absolutely. Again, we spoke earlier about it. I told you how much I love learning and love accounting. These are kind of my two great passions. Basically, I was using Duolingo a few years ago.

Jameson Galey: 15:39

I was actually learning German because I was working for the German parent company and I love Duolingo, love learning. I was like, there should really be a fun way to learn accounting kind of in this way. Should be gamified, it should be fun, broken down into bite sized lessons. And so it took me a few years, but I actually started working on the project over the last year. And we actually have an MVP now, we're on the market and people are using it every day.

Jameson Galey: 16:04

We've got people that have already come on and done hundreds and hundreds of problems. They're learning. We just launched in the last thirty days. Super excited to see the early traction we're seeing. And honestly, I'm so thrilled to have it be out in the world and really enjoying it and learning.

Jameson Galey: 16:17

And I think the future is really bright for the business.

Adam Larson: 16:20

Definitely. So, you know, who is your who is your main audience for this? Are you trying to get young accountants to come in and learn in a better way? Are you trying to get people from all around the organization to understand what accounting is doing?

Jameson Galey: 16:31

Yeah, it's a great question. So, you know, obviously I have some early investors and that's a that's a common question that I've had to tackle along the way. The answer right now is, I think it's actually broader. I've got a mix of people already using the site. I've got people who are pursuing accounting degrees, people who have just graduated with finance degrees who want to bolster their accounting skills a little bit.

Jameson Galey: 16:51

I've got a COO of a company. I've got a head of business analytics of a company. So I think it's actually pretty broad. That is kind of my dream is like, how can I make it as ubiquitous and global as possible? It's really not to kind of hone in on any one small demographic of accounting students.

Jameson Galey: 17:06

It's like, I genuinely believe these skills should be transferable and universal. My dream is that people from all walks of life will be using this product and it will help them grow in their careers, start businesses, improve their communities. I really want it to be as universal as possible.

Adam Larson: 17:22

Do you think there's different stigmas that can surround accounting that would prohibit people from saying, I don't want to do a game about accounting?

Jameson Galey: 17:30

Absolutely. You know, accounting kind of has this bad reputation as being sort of boring and tedious and all these things. Like, it's actually so cool and it's so empowering and there's so much structure and symmetry to it. It's like, that's the big hurdle is like, can I get people to just start trying it because it looks a little bit fun and it's a little bit more lighthearted? And they'd be like, wow, this is so cool.

Jameson Galey: 17:48

I can actually apply this in so many different ways. Because my belief is that if you work in business, no matter what role you're in, you should have a firm understanding of how to read financial statements. Absolutely. And it's like, this is kind of what we're here to help people learn.

Adam Larson: 18:02

That's awesome. So what are your goals for Ledgeroo going forward and for your career as well? Because you've jumped to a lot of different things and it's pretty exciting to hear.

Jameson Galey: 18:12

Thank you. Appreciate that. I want this to be the next twenty years of my life, honestly. So, you know, we're already seeing the user growth. It's really exciting.

Jameson Galey: 18:19

I'm super passionate about it. Like nothing would make me happier than to run this business for the next twenty years. Just continue to find ways to add more and more content, more and more gamification, reach a broader audience. It's my dream goal in life to wake up and just kind of build this thing every day.

Adam Larson: 18:33

Well, Jamison, I really want to thank you for coming on the podcast. It's great to that you could we're willing to share your story with our audience, and we appreciate it.

Jameson Galey: 18:41

Thanks, Adam. Been a been a pleasure.

Announcer: 18:45

This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast, providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.