The CFO Agenda: Raw Sugar Living's Jonathan Weiss

Learn more about NetSuite for health and beauty companies: https://tinyurl.com/2uesmbsr

Tune in for the next installment of The CFO Agenda series featuring Jonathan Weiss, CFO of Raw Sugar Living, a health and beauty brand selling hair and body products with natural ingredients. Jonathan and cohost Megan O'Brien kick off the podcast episode by discussing Jonathan's background and what brought him to the CFO role at Raw Sugar [1:39]. They then delve into Raw Sugar's use of NetSuite and why having a strong tech stack is so important for the company [21:21]. Jonathan and Megan conclude the episode by discussing CFO priorities for 2025 [42:00].

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Follow Us Here: Jonathan Weiss: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-m-weiss/ Raw Sugar: https://rawsugarliving.com/

------------------------------------------------------------------ Episode Transcript:

The CFO Agenda: Raw Sugar Living's Jonathan Weiss

00;00;05;07 - 00;00;37;18

Unknown

Hello NetSuite listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in to the network podcast. I'm Megan O'Brien, a co-host of the podcast. Today we're continuing our CFO agenda series with Jonathan Weiss, CFO of Raw Sugar, a health and beauty brand selling premium hair and body products made of natural ingredients. You've probably seen their shampoos, conditioners and other products in their signature white bottles with bamboo tops around Target, Walmart, CVS, etc.

00;00;37;21 - 00;00;58;26

Unknown

We discuss Jonathan's path to the role of the CFO. Hint as not necessarily what you would expect. His perspective on the future of the finance function, the company's tech stack, and some of Raw Sugar's goals over the next year. So stay tuned. You're not going to want to miss this episode.

00;00;58;28 - 00;01;25;15

Unknown

You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast, where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. We'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company, and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale.

00;01;25;18 - 00;01;59;04

Unknown

Hi, how are you doing today? Afternoon. This is such a treat. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on. I mean, let's go ahead and just jump right into the questions. So could you talk a bit about your past roles and your path to where you are now? Sure. Well, it's been a long road, but it started with UCLA, undergrad and had this awesome liberal arts education and yet was also able to take about 8 to 10 accounting classes.

00;01;59;04 - 00;02;25;08

Unknown

And from that, I started out at KPMG in New York, working in the audit side, luckily got assigned into the manufacturing retail space, liked it, but didn't love it to be honest, and started kind of my journey to where I am now because, I jumped over to the consulting side and started kind of hoping different partners answer different problems for large corporations.

00;02;25;11 - 00;02;54;28

Unknown

Went off to business school back at UCLA because I wanted to be back in the LA market and then had a great, lucky opportunity when I was about 30, where two founders who had created a fashionable scrubs business long before that was the thing. And I came on kind of as a consultant and would eventually became their partner, and for seven years grew this into a business that really I loved and enjoyed.

00;02;55;01 - 00;03;21;03

Unknown

And for the last 20 years, I've pretty much been doing the same role of CFO CEOs. Sometimes it's been for founders, sometimes it's been for public companies like LVMH. And then for the last eight years it's been with different private equity firms, a liberal arts degree taking accounting classes. You don't hear that very often n