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From Data Rails, this is FP&A Today.
Welcome to FP&A Today.
I'm your host, Glenn Hopper.
A bit of an announcement and a change coming to your favorite FP&A podcast.
Two years ago, Paul Barnhurst handed me the keys to this show, and it's been a great ride.
I can't believe all the fun and interesting and very smart guests I've had on the show over the last couple of years.
And it's something I'm really glad I did.
So much has changed over the last couple of years around tech, AI, and my own career path.
I never really set out to be, I don't know what to call it, the voice of an industry or a sector, but I'm so glad that I've hosted this podcast.
I've had some incredible opportunities around speaking and writing,
On really what is my favorite topic over the last couple of years.
And I'm very thankful for that.
I guess confession here, I don't know, but all along I've felt the pull to keep my focus on building and doing.
And I've had a consulting practice for several years.
Now I've hit a point where I finally hit that tipping point where I'm actually doing more building than talking.
So it seemed like the right time for a transition for me.
And it's time for me to hand the mic to the next generation and our next great host.
For the past two years, every week, Data Rails has given me a live mic, a platform,
And a green light to go talk to the smartest people in this profession and to take the show really in my own direction.
And that's I mentioned that because that's a lot less common than it sounds.
And I don't take that lightly.
And I have to mention the guests, two years of CFOs, controllers, quants, ERP veterans, Excel legends.
People who built forecasting engines from the back of a napkin, and people running finance for billion-dollar operations.
I've learned more from the people who sat across from me in this seat than I did in, I don't know, 20 years doing the job myself.
So today is mostly a thank you to Data Rails for the platform, to Jonathan Marciano, who kept me in line and the show on the rails for my entire tenure here, to every guest who trusted me with their story, and to everyone listening who kept showing up week after week.
I get to do...
One more of these shows today and then hand it to someone who's about to do it better than I did.
Welcome Sarah Schlott, the next host of FP&A Today.
I feel like there should be applause and drum rolls and all that.
Yeah, yeah, great.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it.
So it's been about a year, I think, since you were a guest on FP&A today.
And the same thing happened to me.
I was a guest.
And then when Paul was moving on, they brought me in.
And you and I were talking before the show, and we were talking about the questions.
And I was ready to just dive straight into the, you know, tell me about XYZ.
And then I thought, well, wait a minute.
This is bringing you to the show as the host.
So let's pause for a second.
For those who missed that episode or who are not familiar with you, I know you have already a huge following out there in the FP&A world.
But tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, what you're doing, what you've been doing leading up to FP&A today.
Yeah.
So actually, first, let me just plug that show and say, let's go find it.
And we can all listen to it again, right?
I don't know what episode it is, but it's something like along the lines, I'm tired of pretending.
And I think that's a good segue into what I've been doing.
That's just kind of the approach that I take to my work.
And to my skillset is that I just have this extreme curiosity and I'm always trying to challenge myself and keep growing, right?
So when we talk about what has happened in the last year, almost too much to mention.
I mean, things are changing so fast that it seems like every week as an FP&A professional,
Even of 18 years, I'm pulled into a different swim lane or a different area of the organization I didn't know that I would be in, right?
Including sales and commission structure.
Since the last time that we met, I put out a few podcasts of my own.
I have dug in deeper to my consulting firm.
It's an FP&A... Really, it's an FP&A as a service.
So we plug into your financial and CFO suite and we...
We help you with really any ad hoc or continuous improvements that you need.
And we plug right in there to your finance team.
In addition to that, I have some other projects that I'm kind of leaning into, but I'll keep those a secret for now.
Very cool.
Well, big project.
And you think, oh, it's just a podcast.
You know, this is I can I'll do it in my spare time.
But it becomes in a way, you know, because there's kind of the boilerplate questions we know we're going to cover generally before the show.
But there's pre meetings and there's you know, you have to come up with the questions and good luck getting AI to help with the questions.
Oh, I've already tried.
I have already tried.
But you're stepping into this now and starting with the next episode, you're the new host of FP&A Today.
How are you feeling about that?
What are you thinking?
I'm extremely nervous, if I can just be candid for a minute, because I don't know how else to be.
I'm thrilled and ecstatic.
When I first got the call, I think I was more excited that it was a female person
Versus that it was specifically me, right?
Because I think there's been a lot of movement for women in finance and FP&A and business in general.
And while that is certainly not going to be the only direction that I want to take it, I'm ready to highlight that and get some additional voices into the mix.
Yeah, I love it.
It's been changing for a long time as the world has, but still there's certain professions where it seems like the loudest voices are kind of the old boys club or whatever.
And there's so much diversity and change going on that it's nice to broaden that world and stop listening to people like me.
Well, you can still listen to me, just not on this podcast.
No, but I know exactly what you mean.
Yeah.
So it's not like a, hey, we need to kill the boys club.
It's a, hey, invite us along because we've got some perspective too, right?
So it's just like you said, it's a broadening.
It's not a change order.
So I know you've got a lot going on and building a consulting practice takes a lot of time and effort.
I know you had been on some podcasts, but was there a tipping point, something that made you say yes, or was it immediately like, oh no, I'm doing this?
Yeah, honestly, it was a yes before I even wrote Jonathan back, right?
I had no idea if there were other people kind of at the table interviewing for the spot.
And I was just like, nope, it's mine.
And I think one of the things that helped me just comfortably slide into that decision was that I'm a creative by heart.
I mean, it's a long story of how I even got into FP&A.
But when we look at the corporate structure and going to a nine to five job, FP&A for me fit that creative bill, right?
You have to think outside the box.
You have to think quick.
You have to be innovative.
And then just the whole design aspect of FP&A and models, right?
It gave me satisfaction.
And you do that for so long, it starts, as you mentioned, starts becoming a little redundant, right?
Or a little like, okay, I've got this down.
So hosting a podcast was leveling up that here, here's the next creative thing that you can anchor yourself to.
So it
It was an easy answer for me.
And now that we're sitting here filming this, the nerves are all over the place.
So, well, as long as it's as long as you just keep drinking from that water bottle and not from like the hidden bottle of gin over here or whatever.
I feel you.
It would be tequila, but.
All right, so as you said that, this is my last episode.
What do I care?
I'm gonna take it off the rails.
So you said that, you know, this is interesting to me.
You were talking about being a creative at heart.
And one thing I didn't talk about here is
So, you know, I've written a few books and I've got a couple more coming out.
Those are all business books.
But I also wrote and produced an independent film back in 2006.
No, you didn't.
It wasn't a good independent film, but it was on Netflix for a while.
It went away.
The DVDs used to float around.
Yeah.
It was called The Hanged Man.
I think the Rotten Tomatoes score was deplorable.
Like on IMDb, it was... Oh, who cares?
We don't listen to that.
What is the title?
It's called The Hanged Man, and it was distributed by Osiris Pictures.
I've got copies, and I've got digital copies, but I don't think you can find it anywhere.
Hey, look, if I don't get a copy in my email, you're going to get an email from me.
I will set it on auto tonight, every single week until I've got it.
And I'll do this for you.
Yeah, perfect.
Because I think you're headed to what is your creative outlet?
Yes.
It has always been writing myself as well.
I've probably started 100 different books.
Some business, mostly memoir-ish type books, mostly like family, generational type stuff.
But none of them are finished.
My main, I would say, stream of creativity right now is I've gotten into drawing.
But before that, I had started my career in...
Performing arts.
So I was a singer-songwriter.
Jenny Mitchell, Joan Baez type stuff.
I mean, I'm not in that same category by any means, but it's your acoustic, right, stuff.
I have a few songs on SoundCloud.
That was from maybe 12 years ago.
But yeah, that was where I wanted to end up and land.
So here I am again with a mic in my face and I'll gladly take it.
Yeah.
But the difference, and we talk about this a lot on the show, between finance and accounting, I think a lot of finance people in the FP&A world are creative.
And if you think about the nature of the work we do where you're trying to build your crystal ball forecast and map a future that we can't see yet, we're just using numbers.
To support that.
I mean, the logic supports the dreamer side of us, right?
And maybe that's why we all flock to it is because there is that like Venn diagram of, well, if I've got to make a living, this sure beats anything else.
And of course, storytelling is creative and it is a big part of FP&A, so...
And certainly of this podcast.
You started FP&A Daily.
Did you do a couple of episodes of a podcast on your own before this?
I did.
I did a couple.
Sadly, we had to kind of forfeit that channel because various reasons.
But yeah, I had started a few for sure.
So doing I mean, and there's anyone in the world right now can start a podcast.
That's why there's so many of them out there.
But was there an appeal to coming to an established podcast?
Versus starting a new one on your own?
Or was it something with the Data Rails sponsor of this?
Or what made doing FP&A today more appealing than just starting from scratch with a new podcast?
Yeah.
So, I mean, I would say the first thing, Data Rails was certainly kind of like, it's the flagship SaaS product out there for FP&A.
So that certainly caught my interest and my eye.
I had been a fan of the show for a little while.
So that was kind of star status at that point for me.
But I think the thing that really sold it, and again, it was a quick yes, but I'm going to go back to one thing that you said in your intro, which was you kind of had the green light to co-produce the show, right?
Do it in your own voice, take it in person.
To any direction that you wanted to within certain guardrails, right?
Having that along with just the foundation that has already been set by you and Paul just made it that much more attractive to kind of jump in knowing that I was on steady ground.
And from here, we can kind of explore what's next.
Yeah.
And it's, you know, I came up in my career in FP&A and I'm not a CPA.
And I always, as CFO, I always reverted to my, I mean, FP&A was first.
I always, I was blessed with really good controllers that I didn't have to worry about accounting treatment and the work that they did.
And so immediately when I got the financial statements, I mean, I...
I'd be guilty of what, well, it depends on where the company is, but I was always like, ah, who cares about the balance sheet?
Let me look at the income statement.
Let me dive into the P&L and start doing my back of the napkin.
Did you grow up in SAS?
Because that is common for SAS, for sure.
Yeah.
But I also, because of the nature of the companies where I worked and also my own proclivities, I guess, but I really, in the companies where I was CFO, I was in a unique experience
Where I was CFO, but might as well have been, I'd call it chief data officer or whatever, where I had full reporting across not just the financial metrics and I had so much data to play with.
And I started in
So I got hooked on all this data that we had with them.
So I tried to apply that to all the companies.
And one thing about the show is I think my own data and general BI and analytics and AI, certainly in machine learning and all that.
You know, that was a direction that I took it in just because that's where my natural interest lied.
And if you think about it, it just depends on the company.
But that difference between, you know, FP&A can be a customer of the data team in a lot of companies or they can be the data team and just depends on the structure.
But I think it's more common that there's a...
Data group and FP&A gets data from them outside of the GL.
But anyway, so I think it's actually, I think some of our reviewers may find it refreshing to get back to an FP&A purist that's not going to get lost in all these weird data worlds.
And I don't know.
I mean, again, I think I will go to my grave thinking those two are
Tightly connected.
Glenn, they have to be tightly connected, right?
I came up through the FP&A funnel as an operator first, right?
Really through your billing and revenue channel.
And for me, there was always, from the beginning, so many silos in the company and so many arguments over what is the number before we could even speak strategy, right?
Because we were all pulling numbers from different places.
So in my mind, if finance doesn't have...
Is not a major player in the data warehouse, then you're going to be fighting more than you're strategizing.
And that's me not coming from a telecom or data-driven company.
So I'm right there with you.
Would you say you have a default mode of, I guess the question I'm trying to ask is, there's the way Paul ran FP&A today, there's the way that I ran it.
Do you have kind of a vision?
Are there certain things that you're like, oh, we're definitely keeping that, or some things that you're already thinking, hmm, this would be an interesting change?
Yes, there's a good foundation that I'm snapping into.
So you guys have really made my job very easy.
So thank you.
And I'm extremely curious and I challenge my own assumptions a lot.
So one thing that, you know, I will probably default to just because it's in my nature is
Is leaning into the foundation and then trying to be extremely curious with not only the guest, but what mindset is driving their resolution or driving the solution set that they're offering
Or kind of drove them into the seat.
And then quickly behind that,
Maybe we can talk about some fundamentals of FP&A and finance.
And as the world is changing, especially with AI, what maybe sacred cows or foundations or fundamentals need a refresh or maybe even need to be challenged?
Let's just talk about that.
Things are different now.
So I do hope to kind of peel back a few of those onions, you know, within reason.
Again, it's not a change order.
It's just something I'm naturally curious about is what works and what can have a refresh.
Love it.
All right, I'm going to put you on the spot.
And no one asked me this, and it's not a requirement of hosting, but this is seeing how quickly you can summarize your ideas.
Could you crystallize that into like a single vision statement for the show?
That's right.
I'll put you on the spot.
It's the first episode.
Right.
So now all of my I'm a creative goes out the window if I can't do this.
So you're looking for like the 15 second elevator pitch and I'm just trying to buy myself time.
You want me to play Jeopardy music?
No, no, Glenn.
I don't think I can crystallize that down.
I haven't workshopped enough.
That's the perfectionist in me, right?
Let's just get curious and look at those golden calves.
What's out there?
Well, probably better to answer that way than to let AI generate something for you on the fly and just say, because it would.
It would just take this live transcript, dump it in, and it would spit out.
I mean, yeah, it would probably come up with something a little too kitschy.
And I can't always do that.
And it would have em dashes.
It would use the word quietly.
It's not a sacred cow.
It's the golden calf.
You're already using ai for your fpna chad gpt claude co-pilot and they're incredible
But here's the thing ai is only as good as the data you feed it
Right now you're getting confident sounding guesses that you'd never dream of presenting to your board
Now imagine typing a prompt
And getting a board-ready dashboard backed by your real numbers, or a P&L that you'd stake your reputation on.
Finance OS consolidates your ERP, CRM, HRIS, and spreadsheets into a governed data layer.
Every AI output now accurate, governed, repeatable, and auditable.
Find out why nearly 2,000 FP&A teams run on FinanceOS with hundreds joining every week.
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All right.
And now is the time when I'm picking up my proverbial torch and passing it to you.
So we will turn over hosting duties and let you fire off.
Please don't ask me any difficult questions like a single vision statement or anything.
Because I will not be able to answer it.
I think I have one for you and I'm saving it for the last.
So go out with a bang, Glenn.
All right, bye.
All right.
All right.
So here's an easy one because it's all about you.
And it's kind of all about what you've been doing and building up to the past two years.
And as I recall, the first time that we sat down and I did a little bit of investigative research of my own, you're somewhat of an AI royalty.
I'm just going to say it right from your LinkedIn courses to your published books.
New one coming out in September.
Can I say the name?
Yes, yes.
AI Ready CFO.
So that's probably going to be a good one to grab.
And then you also have AI Mastery Deep Finance.
Yes.
All of those are available on Amazon.
Shameless plug.
Also, your intriguing interviews and the guests that you've had here on the show, right?
Your consulting and your robo CFO company.
I have to ask.
With AI changing so rapidly, could you tell us how does one keep up with all the changes?
Aside from your books, how do we keep up with the changes?
I'm probably moving away from AI training on individual tools because the pace of change on
Claude just rolled out something, it was last week, but every week there's something, whether it's between Fable and Opus 5 and ChatGPT 5.6 and Sol and everything going on, like if you try to prepare a course or training on it, it's absolutely, like my LinkedIn learning courses right now
I think you guys need to call me and get me back in the studio to do a refresh because otherwise, I mean, it just changes so fast.
I think.
That sounds like a pitch, Glenn.
Yeah.
Well, Carpinteria is actually a really nice place.
So I'd love to get back to the LinkedIn Learning Studios and do that.
But kind of a long answer to this.
I have met so many people who have been introduced to me as AI experts.
And there's to my mind what an AI expert is.
And then there's people who've just really learned how to prompt and how to use the tools and all that.
And they are,
Some kind of expert, their AI user expert or whatever.
But I've talked to so many people who are, you know, a mile wide and an inch deep on what they know about AI.
They can tell you all the latest, this rolled out, this rolled out.
This is how ChatGPT did versus Anthropic versus Kimmy, whatever, on the benchmarks and all that.
That is so much noise.
And if you're, whether you're trying to train on it, implement it,
Use it it's just it's a lot of noise that pulls you away from what are we what's our end goal here
It's not to just use every new feature when it rolls out it's how am i going to get more efficient
How am i going to get better insights how you know how am i going to use ai to
Improve my team to improve my company operations so as far as keeping up with the latest i've really leaned into everything i build i have to be able to switch models because if
In the race right now.
I think everyone in the business world would agree that Anthropic has kind of taken over this year in what they can do in the business world.
And who knows in AI who is going to be there next?
So right now, it's really, for me, it's about, I know the core fundamentals, and this is going back to what nobody wants to talk about is the data foundations and
Semantic layers and how we talk to data and how we put harnesses around agents to make them deterministic when they should be, use generative AI when it's appropriate.
I've given up on keeping up with
Whatever's happening with the latest models now to to an extent i'm part of a lot of my implementations
It has to start with training so i need to
When i go in it's like this is the difference between a skill and a project and where you use it and everything
But it's um and they all kind of do that though
Right that's that's transferable knowledge
Yeah, but as far as keeping up, I do try to.
I will go home after a long day of work and fire up YouTube on the TV and watch videos from the AI YouTubers and get my updates there for what's going on when I can.
But at some point, you just have to say, okay, cool, that's another feature.
You know, we don't get super excited every time NetSuite rolls out a new feature or whatever SaaS tool we're using rolls out a new feature.
And I think chasing features in generative AI, don't get me wrong, they're cool and there's a temptation to do that.
But it's also just noise and distracts from how we're using it and what we're really going after with it.
Okay, so end goal in mind, is there maybe a collection of certain YouTubers that you watch or publications that you read?
It's so funny because, yes, there's the AI Daily Brief guy, Nate, I think is his name, the AI Daily Brief.
And then there's Matt.
Funny, I haven't recognized their faces and they just come up in my feed and I click on them.
You know what?
We should put them in the show notes because I don't want to leave anybody off.
There's three or four that are not related to finance.
And then there's all the...
Geeky ai engineering summit videos that i that i watch and stuff like that that
I don't know how deep down the rabbit hole they want to go but there's
A couple of um youtube and podcasters out there that just give um straight like to do daily videos and podcasts on the latest in the news and i don't i don't
Listen to or watch all of them.
But usually once or twice a week, I'll check in just to hear the latest.
Yeah, see what's going on.
All right.
So with that being said, and with the fact that you have this consultancy and it's AI, right?
AI transformation for companies.
That's what you consult on.
What is different about being the operator of a newly implemented book and process for an AI tool versus being the consultant who comes in and helps a company establish that architecture design?
Yeah.
Back to data.
Yep.
Well, exactly.
Well, here's the funny thing.
When I first started my consulting firm five years ago, it was mostly fractional CFO work and some data work, but mostly it was all for finance and it was...
Some fractional cfo work
And then we moved in just started leaning more and more into data because it was a way to differentiate among the eight million fractional cfos that are out there
And when i would come in on a consulting project the operator that i was talking to would always they would tell me what they wanted and then in the scoping call they'd start trying to um
Engineer it themselves and then they would tell me why you couldn't do that.
It just got maddening.
I think this is that crossover between BI and data and FP&A.
We all know enough,
But when I'm trying to sell to someone and they're trying to tell me how to build it and then why I couldn't build it, I had to stop and say, you know what?
Just pretend you have a magic wand and you can just wave it and it will exist.
This is we're doing this in an agile way.
You just write the story.
I'll go all the time.
You know, we'll build the epic and I'll assign the story points and I'll do the engineering.
Just don't even worry about speaking in engineering terms.
And but I think so I was in finance before I went into consulting 15 years.
Well, a little over 15 years as a CFO and then all my career up to that.
So around 20 years.
Little over 20 years in finance before I even did consulting.
And I know from when consultants came in, it could be a rocky relationship with consultants because as the operator, you're the one who has to live with whatever decision was made.
McKinsey or on down the line, somebody comes in and they come up with an idea and whether it's a deck or an implementation-
And as a CFO, you want a tangible artifact.
Yes.
And so then the consultant does whatever they do.
And then you're as the operator, you're stuck with whatever they handed you.
And also a lot of people in finance and accounting, a lot of us are very risk averse.
Change management is really hard.
You got a bunch of people who didn't want the change.
And here they are having to deal with it.
And, you know, from that seat, it feels like nothing's ever built right.
You get 90% of what was promised and you're trying to solve for the other 10%.
Which if it were easy, the consultant would have done it.
So you're sometimes left with something that doesn't quite hit the mark.
The consultant's gone.
And so it can be hard to work with them.
But then now I'm on the other side of it.
And I say, well, I've been here before, probably multiple times, like ERP implementation.
Well,
Good luck with that.
Self-serve data mart, bless your heart.
I guess as a consultant, you have to
Deliver the solution and then you know then you're gone so you have to well whatever retainer
I don't want to get into all that but for me it feels like starting out and spending most of my career as that operator makes me a better consultant because I'm in their shoes and I'm like okay look this is what we're going to do and it doesn't doesn't always make it easy but it is
You can conceptualize what they're trying to convey to you, even if they can't find the right words or workflow nirvana, right?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So, yeah, it's interesting being on this side.
And truthfully, for years, I thought, well, I'm sure I'm going to get back to the CFO seat.
And honestly, right now, I'm having so much fun in sort of
Engineering mode and building solutions and build and move and build and move that I honestly don't see it anymore.
I don't know.
We'll say life is wrong, I guess.
No, I can see that.
I can see that.
Maybe your retirement years, you're a professor somewhere.
That's, that's already part of the plan.
That's already Yeah, that's it.
I clocked you.
We got this.
We got this.
Okay, so follow up to your impressive resume and your future to be resume.
It sounds like even over just, you know, the past few years, this resume just continues growing and growing and growing.
So what's the immediate next for you?
The immediate next, so the AI Ready CFO comes out September 29th.
Hey, you know, in September, I think you need to go ahead and look at my calendlakes in September.
I think we need to have you back and you can read some excerpts from your book.
So that book comes out.
I'm actually, I don't know how much I can say about this one.
I'm probably a couple days away from signing a new book deal that is not the fiction book that I wanted to write next.
Because this one is also super interesting to me.
But I don't know what I can give away here.
It's going to be a more technical book on building AI agents.
And it's going to be a how-to.
I mean, if you need a pre-read...
All right, all right.
You can just read lines of Python code.
I mean, I would need AI to write the Python, but earlier on in my career, I was tasked with bridging that gap between...
The BI team and the billing and revenue team.
And so I learned the language.
I can't speak it, write it, right?
But I know what you're saying.
But that's such a cool place to be.
You feel like you're like the nerd whisperer between two different groups of nerds.
I love that.
I think that's my new tagline.
Yeah.
So I guess, I mean, the books are great and I've got a lot of speaking stuff coming up, but really what I'm most excited about right now is again, going back to the consulting and I'm so happy.
I've got a few retainer clients right now and some where I'm coming in and we're starting
With management alignment on acceptable use policy, then we're doing some training, then we're doing an assessment and identification of projects.
And I just rolled out for India, so a company in the wellness industry, pretty good size,
Growing rapidly.
We did a ERP upgrade for them and now they have this dashboard and I've built, I'm so excited about this, the coolest agent that lets them talk to their data.
And it's not just their GL data.
It also goes into their CRM.
It's got guardrails around it and it's just,
Like it's truly talk to your data.
And I know a lot of SaaS platforms have stuff like that.
But the fact that I had one that was custom made for this company with their own guardrails and it's just super cool.
I love that.
So is that like a playbook that you're going to sell or is that like a bolt on SaaS product?
Well, I'm not competing with Data Rails directly here.
Right now, the interesting thing is every one of my clients is like a snowflake and everything is bespoke.
And that's maybe my fault as much as it is the clients themselves, because I love the idea of going back into my workshop and what's he
Building in there and just building out some cool specific to them.
But I think there's invisible robot.
What are you putting together?
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I'm not trying to start a SaaS company, but people are a lot more open to projects like this, I think, than they were even three or four years ago.
And
And it's a lot easier, honestly, to get access to data.
And then before generative AI, building a chatbot would have been like one of those annoying chats.
And I did this with Lex back in 2020.
So Lex was the...
It's what alexa uses
It was an amazon language and it was so bad and i was
I tried so hard to have it tied in and to just have a
Through the the alexa app you could um talk to it and it would just
I never could get it to work right
But with generative ai these these bots are so cool and i know all this has kind and certainly data rails is doing it too but yeah
That's where my focus is these days.
Awesome.
So you're going to train AI to finally take the finance seat.
I'm not saying that.
There's a lot of human in the loop.
I mean, I need another like 10 years of work.
So we need to slow it down a little bit.
But wrapping up here, coming closer to the end here, I have two more questions for you.
One is directly for you.
And the other one is for our listeners so that you can leave some lasting insight to
You go.
All right.
So the one for you is this should be quick and easy, maybe painless.
Glenn, for old time's sake, what's your favorite XO formula?
All right.
This is going to be terrible.
Look.
And maybe this is like unveiling the secret behind the curtain.
So I got... My first CFO role was in 2007.
And I came up through FB&A and I loved Excel and was...
You know, it was with a big team when I was in telecom, especially was with a big team of people.
And we're all trying to outdo each other with our models.
And then you get into the CFO seat and yeah, you're doing some modeling, but you're no longer, if you're still an Excel warrior in the CFO seat, you're probably not doing something right.
So maybe you're with a startup.
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
Um, but so Paul asked me this on the show and I'm set it then I'm going to say it again, because this was before pivot tables V lookup.
I just, I'm, I'm an OG and I still there's index.
And now, honestly, now everything is just, everything's in a,
Postgres table and the first thing I do is rip everything down into that and I'm using SQL.
I'll take VLOOKUP.
Okay, so VLOOKUP versus XLOOKUP, right?
Because I've gotten into a few arguments over this.
There's times where VLOOKUP is stronger, but for the next generation, it seems to be hands down XLOOKUP.
What is VLOOKUP?
So what's your take?
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, we're index match now, right?
Yeah, I'm not.
VLOOKUP's easier for me.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's funny.
Like, the whole thing with Excel is even data scientists I work with, like, yeah, we want to talk about all the cool crap we do and... Just get to your end result.
Yeah, and it's like...
But everyone starts and everyone goes, like, you're not using Matplotlib.
Everybody goes back to Excel for visualization and all that.
I guess, really, I need to look at some, because what I'm doing now is I have dashboards that'll spit out presentations in Excel and everything as part of it, but they're coming through
As mostly values only.
So all that slicing and dicing is happening in the query itself.
All right.
So here's the question for our listeners and your last chance here on the show.
What is one thing that our listeners can start doing tomorrow or one question that they can bring to their team tomorrow?
That will level up their FP&A output immediately.
I have an answer for you, but I just recently renewed my cyber policy and my E&O policy around all this training that I'm doing because with great power comes great responsibility.
But I will say right now, whether it's vibe coding or letting AI do it, if you do it right, this is the right question.
I'm not going to take responsibility for if you mess this up.
Call me, DM me if you want to talk about how to do this right.
But I would say, take one report, one data transformation, one thing that you're doing that takes...
Manual hours every day, every week, every month, every quarter, whatever it is, and test whether an AI tool, whether this is an agent harness with guardrails and all that, that AI can do that for you, or you've encoded a little app that does it, that connects through an MCP or API or whatever.
But take that thing that is...
Not the value add that we and our position and experience are bringing to a company but instead is something that is just it's just busy work
And find a way to automate that because our value um i'm gonna i'm gonna
I use this quote all the time
I don't know when last time he's on the show but maybe this is a good one because i've referenced it so much
I'm gonna close out with this, and I'll tell you why after I say it.
So the quote is from Clifford Stoll, and the quote is, data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not understanding.
And the reason that I bring that up now is as you look at AI getting better and better and automation getting better and better, the humans are getting squeezed all the way to the end of that quote of taking that wisdom and turning it into understanding.
So if you're still taking raw data and turning it into information, yeah, we need to do that.
It's the...
The straight GL with no analysis is the data.
The information is, okay, let's compile this into a financial statement.
And then, you know, just working it up to chain into the reporting that we do.
But AI is eating away at each step there.
And if we're still doing it the old fashioned way, we're getting left behind.
So, and don't think... And you're never getting to that last link.
Yes and we're
That's not our value unless you are a college intern or what
Even then though it's like what value am i providing to the company
And being able to do cool stuff in excel and be able to create great reports
There's a cap on the value of that
The real value is coming in
What we learn from our experience, what we learn from the systems and what we learn from seeing the numbers over and over.
So automate as much as you can so that you're not so that you're spending your time on the golf course or watching YouTube videos, but so that the real value.
So that's how you're going to stand out is who cares how you got the information from one system to another.
That's only a step in the process.
So, man, I just got on a soapbox there.
But that's that's a foundational belief for me.
It is.
It is.
And I can see that you probably take that into your consulting practice, right?
Is that each link within that chain, the value goes up, right?
And the time spent on it goes down.
So that's like a nirvana state for people who...
Can think critically and bring value to the company beyond, like you said, those foundational items.
So I love it.
Well, I think we're right here at the hour, Glenn.
Wiping away my tears.
Thank you so much for having me today, for handing over the baton.
I'm humbled by it and I'm excited to carry on.
Thanks for the amazing two years that you've had on the show and all the knowledge that you've brought to us.
To the community here, anyone listening to the show, I'm thrilled to be a part of FP&A today.
And I'm always open for feedback, topic ideas, and even your own personal war stories.
So if you're watching on YouTube, please drop those in the comments and subscribe.
And for everyone else...
You can email me directly at podcast at theschlotco.com.
That's podcast at T-H-E-S-C-H-L-O-T-T-C-O.com.
And I think that's a wrap.
Thanks for joining FP&A today.
I'm your host, Sarah Schlott.
Until next week, trust your gut, eliminate the spreadsheet noise and good luck.
