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And now, onto the show.
From Data Reels, this is FPNA Today.
Welcome to FPNA Today. I'm your host, Glenn Hopper.
I'm excited to introduce our guest this week, David Fortin.
David is a chartered professional accountant from Quebec, Canada.
He started his finance journey in auditing at PWC
before making a successful leap to FPNA back in 2019.
His first FPNA role was with Ubisoft,
the video game company behind Hit Franchises like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry,
Just Dance, and Rainbow Six.
From Ubisoft, David moved to a SaaS startup called POCA,
where he managed FPNA and also played a pivotal role
in securing the company's Series B funding and worked them through a successful M&A exit in 2023.
Now, he's changing his expertise into teaching Excel and Microsoft Co-Pilot
on his YouTube channel and LinkedIn, earning rave reviews for his engaging and practical approach.
Let's dive into David's inspiring journey and insights.
David, welcome to the show.
Hi, Glenn. Thank you for having me, man. It's really nice being here.
Yeah, excited to have you on.
So let's go ahead and dive in.
I love your background and I kind of wish I had done this.
If I could go back and tell my young cell something to do,
I would have loved to have started out with CPA and audit.
And I just have that experience because my experience with it has been just coming up straight
through the FPNA side and I really think that's a great way to round it out.
So you started your career at Big Forward at PWC before coming to FPNA.
And I guess since you started your career on one trajectory,
what motivated you to make that switch?
And to my earlier point, how did your auditing experience prepare you for your role in FPNA?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So I started an audit just like a lot of accountants in my space, in my circle at school and stuff.
So I really loved doing audit.
It was cool. It was challenging.
As you may know, it was a really long hours though.
We're working a lot, being with a president of company,
VPs of company really at the real, really young age.
But I always love video games and I was, you know, I'm in Quebec City,
which is small town kind of in Canada.
And there's not much work.
It was pre-covid, so you could not work like remote from everywhere.
So I was just looking at jobs.
You know, I was not looking for a leap into FPNA,
but I always thought that graphs and charts.
And I felt like I was more of a business guy.
Let's say instead of like general entries and typical accounting stuff.
So I was looking for jobs at Ubisoft because I really wanted to be in a company
that I love that I enjoy their products.
I feel like it's way easier when you love the company to actually love your job
and enjoy it and put like 200% efforts into it.
So that's why I tried or actually I wanted to transition from actually accounting,
typical accounting to FPNA.
And it was just a matter of like, it just happened like that.
I wasn't chasing an FPNA opportunity.
It's just that was the job that was open.
So I just applied there and I felt like my experience in the big forward,
they really train you to be ready for kind of anything.
As I just said, you talk to a president.
You're like 22 years old.
You don't understand anything about accounting.
And you're in there talking to president of companies asking about their financial statements,
their budgets and all of that, their BPR.
So I felt like it was a logical trajectory for me to follow.
So for me, I was just, I was 100% so I went MBA into FPNA and I was 100% really just
the only financial statement I knew was the income statement.
And that was where I did everything.
So when I got my first senior role, I mean, I knew what a balance sheet was and what a
statement of cash flows was, but I'd never cared about them.
So that was a bit of a switch.
And thinking, in FPNA, obviously we're very focused on the income statement,
but you have to have the free statement model and the understanding of the way,
what happens on the income statement, the way it flows through to the other financial statements.
Did you find that your background in accounting and audit gave you more of a full picture
understanding? Was that helpful to you in some ways?
Oh, yeah, 100%.
First thing is that I saw kind of a lot of clients in like three years space.
So I actually started in a video game company as a auditor.
So it gave me some ideas of what you can do and like,
how the companies were structured internally.
So, hey, I saw this graph at a specific place.
Let's replicate it at Ubisoft when I entered in my FPNA role.
So it gave me a lot of idea, a lot of financial reflexes.
You know, like I was helping the technician there with the reconciliation,
the bank reconciliation.
I was helping her a lot because I had seen so many in previous companies,
which I could not have done.
I think if I got on straight up, you know, like straight from school.
So yeah, I feel like it was really helpful on top of developing my reflexes of like
managing multiple projects at once.
You know, when you're in audit, you're working on three clients at once.
That's why you work 70 hours a week.
And this work flow keeps coming and coming at you.
So yeah, I feel like it was really helpful.
So first FPNA role at Ubisoft.
And then, so that's a big company, obviously.
And but then you moved to POCA and you're now in startup world.
So that's, that feels like a big shift.
So I'm wondering, you know, and maybe relative to big company,
but just in general, what were some of the,
when you moved into the SaaS startup world,
what were some of the unique challenges that you faced?
Was there a different approach that you had to take to budgeting and forecasting in a startup space versus a big going company?
Yeah, oh man, there's so much to say.
There's so much to say here.
So yeah, when you're in a bigger company, you actually have a team.
You have a BI team that can help you.
You have a lot of data to play with, which is actually cool,
but sometimes can be overwhelming as well.
So you play with all these video games that came out like in 2001,
and you have all of this data.
So yes, it's a great play field.
I can't say that like that, but like it, it's a great place to be.
But when you get in a smaller company, there are some other challenges.
Everything is to be built, you know, you get in there.
Their whole company is running on Excel, which was not the case at Ubisoft, of course.
But then you get in there.
It was an 80 employees company.
When I first got there, just give a little background on POCA.
It's a SaaS company, software service.
We sold licenses.
It was a nap for manufacturing world, connected workers,
4.0 manufacturing world, just to give you a little bit background on the company.
So it was really techy people, but I was kind of alone.
Yes, we had a finance team.
There was a budget in place, but in the startup world,
you know, the girl that hired me.
First, she left.
Like she called me and she's like, Dave,
and I work with her at PWC before.
So she hired me, and I don't know if it's because of me,
but she left just two weeks.
So she trained me for two weeks, and then she left.
And she left me there with like this whole Excel,
but she was also the person doing the HR, the legal,
the FPNA, like five hours a week when she had the time.
So that's another world, that's a different world.
And you don't have that BIT.
So you have to figure it out by yourself with the data you have,
which you don't have much in a very small company.
So you have to, you're very used to play with Tableau.
Like I was so hyped, you know, I had Tableau.
I was doing cool stuff, but I get there and I'm back to Excel.
And we were just buying the looker.
So we bought looker when we were at looker licenses.
We didn't actually buy looker, but, you know,
yeah, we were very, very rich.
So, so yeah, so basically I was trying to play on looker.
But then again, there's no like data, IRRK behind everything.
So you don't have any access to data and you don't have anything.
So that that was one challenge.
So I really had to shift my mind of like, okay,
I'm opening Tableau every day to just do pivot tables into Tableau.
To, okay, I'm back to Excel, back to square one basically.
So this really shifted my mind of like, I can do anything.
I can be so much more creative and do some cool charts.
And, you know, like learn as we go as to, okay,
we're making a budget.
We're sending it to VCs.
And it might get denied and we, they want us to do 20X instead of 10X this year.
You know, so that was, that was a kind of challenges.
I was, I was facing and at the same time, it was really, really cool.
Really challenging, but really, really cool.
Because I was not on my own.
I had a team of course, but I had so much more,
I don't know, I'll say that in English, but I could do so much more on my own.
Like, nobody was telling me what to do.
Like, the gate, they just trusted me.
They're like, Dave, you can do this and that.
And we trust you.
Like, we trust your expertise.
And it's your job to go on Google and ask people like,
then to get some help on FBNA like harder stuff.
Because I was told, you know, like, I'm 30 years old right now.
So I was 26 when I was there.
So not a lot of experience.
Like, yes, PwC, yes, Ubisoft, long hours and all of that.
But, and that's one thing I was really afraid.
I remember back then, it's like, how am I going to do it?
Like, how I'll do it?
Like, I don't know.
I just do basic charts and excel.
So it was a really, really, really different world.
And I hope I answered your question here.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's funny, as you're talking,
it's one of the things I love about hosting this podcast is,
you know, we're such a niche group of nerds that,
we could be having this conversation like on barstools and telling war stories.
Because very similar to you.
So my first CFO role was a retail business that had three locations,
was maybe doing around three to four million a year in revenue.
And I left and I was, it was pretty much just me out of the gates.
And I left a team.
I was working in Telcom and I had a team of like 31 people working for me.
And I had, we had, you know, this is, I'm dating myself.
But this is like an year.
This is in 2007.
But we were, had crystal reports back then, which was huge.
And we were, you know, at SQL guys and everything.
And we were doing some really cool stuff.
And then I came to this very small company that was looking to,
they had raised a seed round and they were looking to leverage and take on some debt.
But what I thought was really beneficial was,
I saw the way that a finance department could run at a large company.
And then I knew the way we were able to present financials.
And then I saw this small company where they didn't have
a monthly close when I got there.
They were, you know, basically their tax accountants were doing their books.
That's how, you know, small they were.
And I guess maybe they'd do a quarterly close or something.
But to take them and we were able to raise significant funds after that.
And I think that the big, one of the reasons we were able to do that is,
we strove to make our financial reports look as clean and as detailed as at the big company.
So it was kind of cool to take that and apply it at a small company.
But of course, to do that, you have to find efficiencies.
So you talked about you guys were bringing in looker and trying to find ways
that you could aggregate your data and get these bigger reports.
Did you find that early on, you know, your start-up,
so you don't have the staff you want,
but the, and you're sort of self-directing,
but you kind of know where you want to get with it.
Did you find yourself leaning into technology more
or what were you doing to try to streamline processes to improve the FPNA when you got there?
Yeah, so that was a, that's a super great question.
First of all, we were a kind of big finance team,
like six people out of like 150 when I left.
So kind of a big finance team.
And we were really close together.
Like we all worked at PWA, we basically emptied the big
four accounting firm here, which you will see.
So we're really similar minded people and really that really helped me for the FPNA journey.
Because if your actuals are like you can call straight up to the finance team and say,
what's this in the actuals helps with your forecast?
And it helps explaining to the CFO what's going on.
But to jump on what you were saying,
actually when I got there, the Excel were all Excel,
100% and we were just onboarding a looker.
But one thing I actually did is trying to,
because we were actually accounting the number of licenses we were selling
into all into Excel and also the usage from or end users or customers.
And one project that I got in is like,
can we analyze which tool that we need next?
Like is it an FPNA tool that we need next?
Is it a CPQ tool?
So I started going to vendors and we started having a look.
So what's the next step for us?
And you know, like having this success,
this team success at heart and not being selfish,
we ended up going with not an FPNA tool.
We're not there yet because our data was kind of small still.
So we went for the CPQ route.
So we had an ERP and then we unborted the CPQ
because the deal desk process was kind of hard.
And then we hired someone from deal desk and stuff.
So yeah, we're trying to leverage technology,
but I was going all in on Excel as well.
And you know, like when I found out that XLookup existed,
it literally I changed all of my workbook and it changed.
It literally changed my life and with the summits and stuff.
So we're doing pretty cool stuff, all with Excel.
And we had a data guy which was like,
I would say more advanced Excel,
more into like Google's script and all of that.
So we could we could have help from him as well.
Because we're really, or the company values,
like really like unified, solid team.
So that was pretty cool.
But of course technology is like you need to embrace it.
But I think it's not always the answer.
Like sometimes you're just not there yet.
I think we needed like to have a shorter close,
like closing sequence at the end of the month.
So yeah, so that was the next step when I left.
But of course we unborted a few tools.
We tried some stuff.
You know, I remember we were unborted inside squared,
which is a tool that plugs in onto your CRM and to Salesforce
to give you some data inside and all of that.
And they sell you all of this AI stuff.
But we were in there as a company.
We didn't have enough data.
So when you don't have a big sample,
the projection, the predictions are not any good.
So we ended out churning all of that.
So we're testing stuff.
But at the end of the day, we're trying to improve our process
every day and oh god, yeah.
We did a lot of cool stuff as well.
So yeah.
And that's the other thing about startups.
I know, so when you got there, I think you were just a few months
into your role at POCA.
And then you get informed that the company was going
for its Series B, VC-rays.
And I think about seed round, even A round.
You can get away with, you know, not exactly back of the napkin
financials, but it can be, you know, it's that startup
pre-revenue, pre-cash flow kind of thing.
And everything is sort of based on, you know,
it nested assumptions on top of each other.
But by the time you get to Series B,
they're pretty serious about how they're looking at your financials.
And you have to really stand up, you know,
be able to back up your projection.
So tell me a little bit about you walking into the company,
being there just a couple of months.
This is happening.
What your role was, what you learned from it
and kind of how you got through it.
Yeah, that's, yeah, oh man, that was a journey.
So I got there at September 8, 2020.
So just eight months into the pandemic.
Fresh from Ubisoft.
As I told you, my boss, that hired me.
She, she left.
So I got there.
She trained me for two weeks.
And then we started.
So I had to learn the company.
And it's a budgeting session or, yeah.
So it's, it's budgeting time in October.
So we do the whole budget.
So I'm trying to learn all these new SaaS ratio.
So main them like the CAC ratio, the DBNER,
the Net Retention Rate, the Gross Turn, all of that.
I was learning.
So I was listening to Saster Podcast a lot back then
during like my commute coming back home.
So I go into the budget.
I'm meeting everyone, the VP of sales,
to do my budget and all of that.
And then the CFO, my boss, LP that I love still to this date,
is really cool.
And he's like, Dave, we're going to this funding round
in January of 2021.
So I was four months in.
I had to do, to redo the whole budget.
And then we started raising.
So it was COVID.
I think it was less crazy than before.
I mean, they didn't have to fly.
It was all distance and all of that.
But I was really implicated into building or financials.
As we literally build the plane as we were flying it.
Like literally.
Like we're developing our ratios calculating.
Does it make sense to make it a trailing 12 average?
Or does it not make sense to do that?
Reading a lot of blogs, Kell blogs, Saster, all of this.
And we were just on Zoom, nonstop.
My boss and I, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Monday through Wednesday and then Thursday and Friday
we kept it kind of quiet a little bit.
And during the weekend, sometimes we had to work.
But it was a teamwork, of course, I wasn't alone.
But I had to build all these decks.
And I was literally jumping on the calls
with the VCs, maybe like the second call.
So the CEO and the CTO were going on the first call.
I was coming in on the second call.
And they wanted to ache and you share your stream
with Excel and go through your financials.
Which was cool is, one thing that was cool
is that we had great financials.
So we're pretty healthy.
Of course, we had a big cash burn.
But we're into the phase like that.
It was growth at all costs pretty much.
Instead of like profitability, like it's more,
probably that right now.
So that was an easy way in.
I would say it wasn't easy, but it was easier
with these great financials.
So my role was really to make sure to answer any question
they might have.
Like, why does your network engine rate
goes up in the first quarter of 2019?
Which client was that?
What's their AR?
What's their revenue?
So I had to be really well structured to answer any question.
Of course, you don't always come back.
But you're at the process of selling.
It's a sales pitch.
So you have to be solid on your scale.
That's what we say in French.
You have to be solid.
You have to own your stuff, especially
when you're new at a company.
So it was a lot of presentation meeting people
that sometimes didn't really care of you.
Like the SF people.
And there were just two feet on the table
and asking you a question about your company.
They got sent there.
They didn't have a real interest in you.
So that was a journey.
That was pretty cool.
And I have learned so much.
Like, I've learned so much of just having
to be part of this series B and having a serious role.
Because of course, I was the data guy.
So if I was in there one day, it was my FBNA data.
Of course, it could have done it without me.
But I was the one that built every graph, every color
I was putting in there, every bar chart, everything was me.
So that was cool.
That was a great role.
Yeah.
And those meetings can feel like you're
doing a PhD dissertation or something
where you're having to.
And it's great when you have a track record.
And you show whatever your year over year growth is
or whatever.
But and you have the data to back it up.
But it was always whether you're
talking to potential investors, debt providers,
the more upper management, very nerve-wracking
when you have to keep in your head all this data
and understand what your assumptions were and all that.
And yeah, one trick I learned early on was don't give them
everything you know in the first shot
because there's always going to be someone.
It's usually just one guy who's just not even listening
to you.
He's just staring at a printed out copy of your budget.
And he's like fixated on one thing.
And then he wants to go like three levels deep.
So if you give them the high level and just be prepared
for that guys you go through.
Oh yeah.
And I think to jump on that, I think the preparation
was actually whenever we were doing board decks every quarter.
And we had so many notes like below the slides just in case.
And most of the time it was as well, like a BPR for us,
a business performance review like,
OK, what happened during the last quarter
and really going deep down?
And the CFO was so great.
Like every time that was something wrong in my data
he could tell like, Dave, what's that?
And I could not answer.
And I will go back to the drawing board.
Like it's crazy how experience is like it shows
in high skilled people like that.
So I learned so much to be actually prepared
and more prepared than the last prepared.
Because if they don't ask the question fair enough,
if they asked and you have the question,
you have the answer, then you're looking rock solid.
And that's great.
And thinking about having, it's great
when you have a CFO who's that dialed in
and is picking up on the very small things
and being able to ask those questions.
So that's always an added plus.
A lot of times it can feel like you're just out there
on your own doing this.
So and I know we talked a little bit
before the show about sort of the perils of dealing
with misbudgets, unexpected changes,
kind of the stuff that goes along with being in the startup world.
For you, does anything stand out as something you dealt with
or how you handled a particularly challenging situation?
And if you have any strategies that you've used
that you'd advise any of our other FPNA listeners
for getting through these tough challenges
that I know we've all faced.
Oh yeah, and everything can change.
And I think it's true for any companies.
But yeah, I had some Friday PM.
It was 2 PM about to leave.
And the VP of sales calls me like,
I'm not too sure about my forecast that we're
going to present to the board on Monday.
Let's change everything.
And I was like, are you serious?
And then we change everything because he wasn't too sure.
Like VP of sales and stuff.
So I go in and it's all about how you structure your stuff.
I used to have a lot of scenarios and all my stuff
were kind of automated and stuff.
So it was not too bad to change some slides.
But that's one thing that happened.
You send your budget to the board
and then get denied completely.
And I saw, I actually saw the whole team.
I think the CTO was crying, legit.
It was December.
And it was like, Jesus, I can't believe
because all the VCs were like, oh, it's not enough.
We want you to go from 100 to 400 employees this year.
And they're like, Jesus, how are we going to do that?
And we presented aggressive ramp up, maybe 300.
And it's not enough.
And we have to redo the whole budget all over again.
But I never get discouraged by that.
I mean, sometimes I do.
And I have another story about that.
But I never get discouraged because it's
when you do an undo, it's because you're working.
And it's not because I try to never take it personal.
It's just a fast moving environment.
And they told me when I joined.
It's not going to be as quiet as Ubisoft.
It's a roller coaster.
And we're using Slack.
And my CFO add actually a roller coaster next to Isne.
So it was known.
But sometimes even though you know, sometimes it's just hard.
Like I could feel the pressure on my shoulders.
Even though I wasn't the CEO or the CEO, it's
used.
It's carrying the weight of all these numbers.
And it needs to be changed.
And we need to change everything.
And when you change last minute, how many errors it can be.
And I remember one day, we're
revisiting the whole revenue strategy.
So are we targeting new region?
Like are we going Europe?
Are we going Asia and stuff like that?
Because it was kind of a big company.
And me and my previous CFO, we call that the June 3rd day.
Because it was June 3rd or something.
And when I googled this day, it was like an emperor
or a king that died this day.
And it was the sales and the marketing that
could not align. And we're just texting each other on Slack.
It's, oh my god, this is June 3rd again.
And so yeah, that's a startup life.
So I keep, I have really great souvenir,
really great memories of that.
But it can be really hard sometimes.
And if people listen to us and they
can relate to what I'm saying right now,
it's just try to not care that much.
I know it's hard.
I was biting all of my nails.
I was stressed out because it's changing.
And you're like, oh my god, did I make a mistake?
Am I good at my projections and stuff?
So yeah, try to not care too much.
And I think it's something I started early in my career.
Same thing at PWC when I wasn't audit.
Try to not care too much.
You did a mistake in your auditing,
procedures or whatever.
It's fine.
You'll make it true.
It's not your company.
You got discovered.
You're good.
So yeah.
I mean, talk about trial by fire.
You go, you're still relatively new to FPNA
when all this happens.
But you go through the fundraising.
And then I know another part of your career is in,
I think you said it was in 2023.
You're one of the first employees that
finds out about this potential merger.
And before we give away the ending there,
but due diligence is its own beast.
I mean, it's potentially more difficult
than the fundraising because you're getting the acquire
or the person that you're emerging with,
the due diligence that they're doing is
they're picking up every rock and looking under it.
So you've got to be really tight and everything you do.
And I know that goes to the accounting side as well,
depending on who's acquiring whom.
But tell me a little bit about M&A activity
and what your role was in that.
Yeah.
So I remember it was somewhere around March of 2023
or something like that.
And the CEO comes in and is like Dave Felix,
which was the director of finance in my office.
And we're actually five, only that new was going on.
And he's like, hey, blah, blah, blah.
There's an M&A on the table.
And I don't want you to tell anyone.
And I was like, oh, cool.
Cool.
Am I working to lose my job in a few months?
Which is, it's kind of scary when you think about that.
It's a bit inception.
You're working very hard to maybe you've got fire.
You just don't know, maybe it's not going to work.
Maybe it's going to be a lot of work for nothing.
So yeah, we started the journey.
And then you question everything that you may.
Like, is this accurate?
Are my numbers right?
Am I following the right ways of accounting stuff?
So my role was really more into the beginning, I was saying,
because I was really into FPNA straight.
I wasn't doing nothing about taxes,
nothing about accounting itself.
Yes, I have financial statements knowledge,
but it was not like my specialization.
So when it came to the due diligence,
we really had the team on our side with all the taxes,
because we were selling to different states as well.
So that's a little bit more complicated.
So they were taking care of that.
But anything I could help, like the projection of the sales,
what happened when the client turned five years ago,
I was to go to guys.
So I wasn't making all of the charts for the financial.
So more of the KPI, cash burn and everything.
So that was my role, kind of.
But it was also in serving many, many, many questions.
So when there was more people in the race,
until it got to the actual due diligence
where there was only one person.
So it was my role to like, oh, it's 6 PM, I'm about to leave.
Oh, no, you don't leave right now.
We have 20 questions that just came in,
and you have to answer.
And as it kept going, it was easier and easier, I think,
because we answered some question,
and we could reuse the formulas, but the answers and stuff.
So my role was really to be there,
because I had a really great knowledge of the company as well.
Being in FPNA, you talk to every department.
That's another strength we have.
So what happened there?
And we kind of have a small sample of clients.
It was kind of easy to remember what happened.
And so I was the guy to tell the stories and like,
oh, I think this happened in that, and we called data check.
And oh, yeah, that's true.
It makes sense.
And then we could answer.
So I was the go-to guy for a lot of stuff
from bringing out the contracts on Google Drive
from like the past employee of the first day,
the company just started to answering the high level
financial question to preparing the decks,
preparing some random decks as well, like only 3, 4, 5 slides
with 15 hidden slides as well, just in case that I was saying,
you have to over prepare, because once again, it's a pitch sale.
And now that's the real pitch sale.
You know, like, that's a real game.
So again, it can be really stressful.
And you're in those meeting with the CEO, the CEO,
and every important people, acquiring CEO and stuff.
And like, I remember at one time, I did a joke,
and everybody laughed with the CEO, didn't laugh my CEO.
And I was like, he told me after,
it's like, that was close to be like a really bad Joe.
I was like, oh, no, no, that was fine.
That was fine.
I was really close to the guy.
And everybody laughed.
But it's going almost on the edge.
It was a little bit stressful.
So yeah, it was a great, great journey overall.
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You know, with your background, so you were,
I mean, in the startup world, everything is so fast-paced.
You're exposed to so many things all at once.
And so you're in the battlefield, you're in the foxhole.
Then you have the exit from POCO
and you've made a career transition at this point.
So tell me a little bit about what you're doing right now.
Yeah, yeah, so thank you for the question.
So that's the journey.
As you can see, I can stop smiling.
But on February of 2023, I started actually making Excel videos
because I saw on the internet miss Excel,
catnorton that is doing some TikTok about Excel.
And I'm a huge gamer guy.
And I always been into the videos, filming myself on Twitch.
I was like, hey, maybe I could give it a shot
because I don't see myself like keeping gaming on stuff.
I don't feel like I add value to this society.
And so I started my YouTube channel.
I called it the piggy bank accountant,
which was brainstorming with the CEO of POCO once again.
We're like chilling and he's like,
what about the piggy bank accountant?
And I was like, dude, sounds cool.
And I started doing videos
and then the M&A happens.
We sell a company in June.
And I was honest discussion with my boss.
I was like, I'm not sure if I want to get into this journey.
He's like, it's a ride.
Like we're going to change everything.
There's going to be a new process, new boss,
like new everything.
You want to keep going.
And I straight up said, maybe it's the end of it.
I didn't go sneaky.
That's the kind of relationship I had with them.
As you can tell, I really love these guys.
And they taught me so much.
And I'm really grateful for that.
So it started from there.
So I was like, OK, guys, there's my two month notice.
Let's transfer everything over.
And then you guys can go on that new journey.
And I'll do my things.
So obviously I got a small package from the transaction.
I had some stock options in everything.
Anyways, so give me a leeway to try my stuff and see if it works.
So I kept going on my YouTube channel, a warm video a week,
a lot of long form videos started the LinkedIn game.
And I found myself loving doing Excel teaching more than I thought.
And now I'm transitioning over to Microsoft Copa a little bit more
because I really believe in do AI.
And here we are almost a year and two months.
Since I first started my YouTube channel, 2000 followers,
it's going well.
I'm having some video that are popping off, especially with Copa
a lot.
And I'm trying to make Excel fun again and Copa a lot.
And so yeah, that's what I do.
I love to make videos.
And I try to make them a little bit less boring than what
we usually see in finance and accounting.
So I tried to bring my energy and my color to all of that.
So yeah, full time YouTuber until a since 18 of August, 2023.
So yeah.
And I'm teaching Excel at its cool here in Copa as well.
So yeah.
That's great.
So as a solopreneur leaving some pretty tense FPNA
with a lot of requirements and things that were asked of you,
I know the answer for me because I do a lot of side projects
and everything.
And I think about for companies, the kind of metrics
and stuff they get.
And I think about my own, whether it's personal finances
or business finances, I have zero metrics on any of that.
Now I'm wondering for as a solopreneur,
like you know, you're watching your number of views
and have the monetization and all that.
But did you take anything from your corporate and startup
FPNA and do you apply that?
Do you have metrics that you track and monitor
and aspire to in your business?
Not yet, but YouTube Studio is actually next level
on the metrics.
And as I'm starting to get some data,
I really think it helps me like,
I'm actually exporting stuff to Excel,
making my own dashboards about YouTube some metrics
that they all have like, how many subs,
like how many days it takes me to get 100 followers
and stuff like that.
And I'm actually thinking in a few years,
I might pivot onto this, you know,
like helping people get clearer views
in their YouTube analysis,
because you have everything.
When did people like the video?
When did people drop from this video?
What's the age of your audience?
Where do they live?
Which city are they in?
It's infinite.
It's crazy and you can compare your videos with all the graphs.
Like it's been launched since 48 hours.
You can compare all of them, you can group them.
So it's really infinite.
So that's really where I see my accounting and FPNA.
It's in my YouTube studio right now,
because right now it's kind of,
it's kind of not quiet,
but it's still early in my journey.
So I don't have like employees,
I don't have like velocity tracking
or whatever or cash burn.
I mean, of course,
it helped me a lot for my budgeting
and my financials overall and number of leads
and all of that.
And I think where it actually helped me the most
is all these interactions I got
with the VP of marketing,
helping her with her budget,
learning what a lead is,
what is the conversion rate?
What all of this was,
all of the sales,
you know, like I had no clue.
If I kept into a typical accounting,
corporate accounting,
I would say with the debit and the credits,
I would still probably have no clue,
no clues of what's a lead in all of this.
But now I understand a little bit better.
What's the email marketing?
What's a lead magnet?
What's, you know,
all of that was part of my day to day before.
So I really think that's where I really, really get some,
some insights like,
no, I know what's a churn rate and all of that.
So I really feel that's where it helped me,
like being into more into the marketing
because we're analyzing the results of the campaigns
and all of that, you know?
So yeah, that's really where it's helping.
Yeah, and it's, again, going back to startup world,
it's, I always say that if you successfully survive
the startup world,
you're basically getting an MBA,
but it's not, you're not getting presented to stuff
in a friendly classroom and case studies and all that.
You're out in the real world doing it,
but you are way more than if you are in a big company
where you're kind of stuck in your lane
and you don't see all that,
at least you get exposed to everything in the startup world.
Oh yeah, even when we did some household improvements
to the office, I was building those furniture.
So that's the all kind of skills you're getting
in the startup.
You know, you're doing the Excel courses
and you mentioned co-pilot and everybody's kind of got
their opinions on where co-pilot is right now
and I'm not looking to slam anybody or anything,
anything on the show, but I, you know,
I think from us talking before the show,
I think you and I share similar passions
and we have a similar vision and understanding
of how AI is going to change FPNA.
And I'm curious co-pilot or chat GPT or Gemini,
you know, pick your, pick your large language model
of choice,
you say, I guess two questions.
How do you see that changing finance and accounting
and how we work?
And when you're talking to people right now
in your videos and in your courses,
how are you explaining AI to them
and what the functionality of it?
Yeah, so that's a super great question.
So how I see, how I see I impacting
finance world and everything.
I mean, I was early, a doctor of chat GPT
back with the actual MNA, we were just talking,
it was my first time going through an MNA.
So what's your first reflex?
Like I didn't even have the reflex to go to chat GPT,
but like what's the top 10 questions
that I'm getting asked in an MNA?
So you put this into a GPT
and it actually gave me some ideas
and how to prepare well for this MNA.
So that was in March of 2023,
chat GPT came out somewhere in 2022
and I found it like amazing.
And even in my boss, I remember you told me,
oh, that's great.
You talked about that?
I was like, yeah, I talked about that.
So yeah, that's one thing.
As it's evolving and you mentioned Kopala a little bit,
I really feel like it's your assistant,
like your Kopala to see deeper in the data.
Of course, it won't replace.
I don't think it's going to replace any CPA.
Maybe more of the data entry level.
We see Microsoft coming up with Kopala for finance,
helping you with the bank statement reconciliation.
We're not at a point which is really, really amazing
or flabbergassing right now.
But I think if you will have asked me this question
last Sunday, just one day before the announced GPT 40,
my answer will have been completely different.
But I tried lately to just put a chart into GPT 40
and just straight up a little problem.
Can you analyze that for me?
And it was crazy. It gave me the year over year analysis.
It gave me the trend.
It gave me the recent decline.
It gave me seasonality.
So every fourth quarter, like the last quarter of a year,
it was, there was a boom.
And I was legit flabbergasted.
So I really see it helping teams,
like, you know, just a quick draft.
Just like it's working right now for the emails.
Like you're going to draft an email.
You just put your bullet points in there.
Of course, it's not perfect.
It's giving you all these words on log, on wheel,
all those weird words when you're just talking about Excel.
You're like slow down a little bit.
And so yeah, that's how I see it.
In finding it's going to be there
and you're going to have to embrace it.
And we see tools that are, I'm pretty sure,
Tableau or Power BI will eventually have its Copa,
I think it's announced.
But like Tableau is going to put some AI in there.
AI, have you talked about that?
And it's going to learn from your prompts and stuff.
It's going to be some L of a change.
I'm pretty sure it's going to be pretty nice.
And how do I explain it right now to people?
I think there's a big, big, big work of awareness
to do right now.
Because just I was giving a class at the school here
in Quebec yesterday.
And it was a government people.
And I was like, do you know Copa?
And she's like, no.
And I'm like, do you know Chad GPT?
Because it's been there for a longer time.
And she's like, no.
And I'm like, oh, OK.
You don't even know Chad GPT.
So we have a lot of progress to do.
And when it's going to be in everyone's end,
I think it's going to be too dangerous,
but very, very powerful at the same time.
So that's where we need to do an education of how to use it
and not take straight up copy paste and paste it even with the,
I hope you like my answer.
At the bottom, when you prompt it,
so I still see a lot of this stuff.
So when I explain AI to people, I'm still
doing some kind of awareness.
And like, here's what's possible to do.
Here's a V1.
And I'm comparing to internet.
And I'm a little bit yarn for that.
But like, I was playing Diablo warm back then.
And my mom would just pick up the phone.
And it will break my internet and see
so much progress we did.
And I'm talking to people in the United States and Australia.
And there's like no delay.
So that's how I see AI right now.
Like it's still in preview mode.
But like what we saw GPT 40 on Monday,
it just blew my mind and was like, that's really
going to change corporate world in a good way, I hope.
I think we'll have to embrace it.
But right now I'm doing more of awareness
and into the FPNA world.
I really see like where it can analyze your charts,
help you brainstorm, help you prepare for a meeting.
Hey, I have a meeting with the CFO of this company.
Could you give me a two, three liners of what's this company?
Because I don't have time to go on Google
and go through all of his website and all the podcasts
he went to.
And I want to get prepared for this meeting.
So I really think it can be, it's really powerful.
And it's going to be even more powerful in the near future.
Yeah, I think, you know, so as we record this,
for road was just released a couple days ago,
I've actually taken some time and gone in a little deep on that.
And I do, I was telling you earlier,
I did a scenario analysis where I uploaded
three years of full financial statements.
And then, you know, had it like you did with a chart,
had it identify seasonality trends,
all that, do a full breakdown.
And basically, like I would to a junior analyst,
I just handed it to financial statements,
said spit this out.
But then one thing that I've noticed
and I've been to limited success.
Like you said, we're still in the early stages of this.
But I've had chat GPT through that data analysis tool,
do forecasts for me.
So regression forecast, it's fine with.
But if you try to get into some more complicated forecast,
like a REMA or this we're using,
sorry, with the seasonal variations in there,
I'm seeing 4.0 has more reasoning capability
because it actually, unlike the kind of the one shot stuff
we were getting before,
it has a whole process where it goes through the steps
it's going to do, shows you the code
and then goes through and does it.
So that says, I think that there probably is not enough
understanding yet of how significant the change
between chat GPT for turbo or whatever to 4.0 is.
And it's a, we're getting closer and closer
to where this is actually usable
in a production environment.
I think that's cool.
Well, we're going towards the end of the show
and I do always like to ask,
kind of get a little bit more on the personal side
with our guests to remind everybody that we're all human.
We're not just, we're not like the AIs.
We have live live stuff out of our FPNA.
We're like, what's something that not many people know about you?
Maybe something that they couldn't find just by looking you up online
or?
Yeah, that's really geeky.
I mean, I didn't mention it at the beginning of the show
when I was playing video games on Twitch before.
So filming yourself while gaming.
And as you can see here, I have all the four who have boxes.
And I'm always shy to say that.
I don't know if it's, but it made me who I am, right?
But I have probably more than 20,000 hours played to this game.
And I started, I was 12 years old,
I have older, older siblings.
So I might older brother and they got me into this.
I was 12 years old.
And there was a command that the game slash played
where actually gave you the number of minutes
on hours you were online.
And I had so many characters.
And back in 2008, I had only one character, 150 days.
And that's almost 20 years ago.
So I can't imagine I'm probably at 20,000 hours.
That's really nerd, but that made me who I am.
It made me learning English because my main language is French.
It made me a lot of friends, online friends
that are still friends to this date.
I met people.
So it really changed who I am.
It taught me the economy because there was
like some auction house in the game.
It really made who I am.
And now I'm making videos.
And if I didn't get into gaming,
I will not be making videos or not be as good as I am right now.
But yeah, that's really nerdy.
When I say that to girls,
they just run.
They're like, oh, so yeah, that's who I am.
Love it, love it.
OK, in our go to question, what is your favorite Excel function?
Oh, I think it's an X lookup.
Since I found that and it replaced every V lookup that I had,
it's just so powerful.
And I keep learning about it every day.
Like we see new videos popping, like using X lookup.
And when I got a client asked me to help with Excel,
that's always what I put kind of everywhere,
hoping they have 365.
Because if they don't, I'm like, oh, no, we
have to do with V lookup or whatever pivot table.
So yeah.
That's great.
So all right.
Well, Dave, this was really great.
And joined talking to you.
And I love the work that you're doing on putting out
those courses and great here and about your background.
So thank you very much for being on the show
and sharing your insights and experience.
Thank you for having me, Glenn.
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