Biotech Bytes: Conversations with Biotechnology / Pharmaceutical IT Leaders

AI In Finance: How AI Is Changing The CFO Role - Insights From CFO Julianne Averill

• Steve Swan • Episode 20

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In this episode, we explore how AI is transforming the role of CFOs with insights from Julianne Averill, CFO at Danforth Advisors. Discover how AI streamlines finance operations, enabling leaders to focus on strategic growth. Please visit our website to get more information: https://swangroup.net/ 

Julianne shares her experiences tackling unstructured data challenges and the importance of human oversight in AI tasks. Learn how these technologies are shaping the future of biotech and digital health finance.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

  • The role and value of executive coaching in leadership and decision-making.
  • Strategies for improving communication skills and understanding the audience
  • The importance of humility, learning, and adaptability in leadership development.

Links from this episode:

  • Get to know more about Julianne Averill: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julianneaverill 
  • Learn more about Danforth Advisors: http://www.danforthadvisors.com

This video is about AI In Finance: How AI Is Changing The CFO Role - Insights From CFO Julianne Averill. But It also covers the following topics:

  • AI In Business
  • Corporate Finance
  • Mergers And Acquisitions

AI In Finance: How AI Is Changing The CFO Role - Insights From CFO Julianne Averill

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Julianne Averill:
AI has the potential to ideally help my business and help my work from a perspective of it can possibly replace the lower level transaction work. Because with finance and with business in particular, our goal is to be strategic. Our goal is to really serve the business. Serve. How do we add value? And what I'm finding with AI, and it keeps going faster and faster, is it can really alleviate that type of work. And so if it can alleviate that type of work or can help replace the transactional processing, that brings me up, that brings my teams up to really focus on how do we add better value at the companies.

Steve Swan:
Welcome to Biotech Bytes, where we speak to biotechnology leaders about the current trends in our industry. I'm your host, Steve Swan, and today I have the pleasure being joined by Julianne Averill. Thank you for joining us.

Julianne Averill:
Thank you.

Steve Swan:
Julianne is a managing director at Danforth Advisors. And since some of our audience, Julianne, may not be familiar with Danforth, can you give us a, just a quick rundown on Danforth and what you folks do?

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Steve. So what Danforth does is we do pretty much everything but the science. And so really that's a little bit of like what my role is, which is an interim CFO. We help out with like, clinical ops, investment resources. Really, basically what we do is we help businesses scale and move to the next level. And so what I mean by that is it's professional services and it's really helping businesses think through everything from fundraising all the way to clinical operations and business development.

Steve Swan:
Good. And when you say businesses, you're strictly biotechs.

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, strictly biotechs. Even digital health. But it's all life sciences basically, all the time.

Steve Swan:
Okay, good, good, good, good. Just wanted to kind of get a little, you know, little brief on what your organization does. And then you in particular, you just mentioned that you come in as an interim CFO throughout the process when you're looking for some of this out.

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. So it's an interesting role. It's been really fun. So I was in houses a long time with biotechs, like helping them scale as a CFO. And now at Danforth, what I do is I come in and I serve as the company's CFo, usually at that stage of series b, or they're getting ready to go IPo, or they're getting ready to be a public company and, or are a public company. And so I serve as their sitting CFO and help them with everything from thinking through their fundraising strategy to helping them out with a business transformation to even just really day to day operations. So, like, for example, if they're going through an ERP implementation, we'll help them out with that.

Steve Swan:
Good. And so how did you get involved, just real quick about you yourself, how did you get involved with something like this? Tell me a little bit about your background that got you to this point.

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, so it was kind of an interesting dynamic, Steve. So when I was started out, I actually started out in public accounting, and then I went into basically in house. And so I went in house at companies that were doing health tech, they were doing biotech, and they were really scaling. And so every time I get to a company, it was pretty cool because what would happen is I get there, and they were going through a really high growth stage. And so, like, for example, one of the companies was cal index manifest Medx. And so after about six months or so, we decided we were going to go through a merger. And so it was really cool. So I got to see all the different operations, got to do not just finance, but like HR, it kind of, you name it, I got to do a little bit of everything.

Julianne Averill:
And so that was one company. And like, basically like three or four companies later, I had done that like four or five times over and over again. And so what happened was Danforth approached me when they were building out their west coast office, and they saw that I had a lot of experience with M and A. I had experience with building companies and really helping people think through how do they transform their business. And so they said, okay, since you really helped out these startups, these later stage companies, how about you come and do this from a consulting perspective and really come in and help a lot of different biotechs and health tech companies figure out how you do this more on a consulting and fractional basis. And so that's when I kind of made the transition at that point.

Steve Swan:
Very cool. Awesome. That's good stuff. That's fun. And, and so you get to see a lot of different angles. You get to see a lot of different things and help out a lot of different organizations, right?

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, I do. So it's really nice because it's, by doing this on a consulting or fractional basis, you really get to see the trends. So, like, for example, right now, really get to see, and it's really exciting because we get to see what's going on with technology. We get to see, like, the fundraising come back. And so I can really help advise my clients and companies on what is going on in the broader industry as opposed to just being at one company saying, okay, just like one perspective, basically.

Steve Swan:
So fundraising, you just mentioned their fundraising has come back a bit, right?

Julianne Averill:
It really feels like it has, Steve. I'm very optimistic on it because I feel like lately I have, like, I literally have five companies right now, everywhere from series a all the way into the m and a IPO. So it's basically you get really that perspective of getting to see everyone in each stage. But I am starting to see that signs of life in the market, which is nice.

Steve Swan:
Awesome. That's great. There were a couple of things in the past that you and I have talked about, and again, going back to your theme there with some trends that you see, one of the things that you had talked about in the past is the growth of the variable resource model. Tell me a little bit about that. And are you still seeing that growing?

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, so I still am. And so this variable resource model, and it's really interesting because Danforth in particular, we do drive for this, but I'm also seeing this across the industry. And what this really means is it is a combination of ensuring that you have full time resources, but you also have just in time resources in your business operations and even in your science and your clinical development operations. And so what that means tactically is, for example, let's say you have a platform company, so they have like a tech platform, and all of a sudden they're moving into clinical development operations. And they may need a chief medical officer, but they don't need that chief medical officer full time yet, because for whatever reason, it's not cost effective or it may not be the right time to bring that role on full time. And so what the variable resource model does is you bring that role on fractionally. So you bring on a high power resource. Like, for example, if you're an oncology company, you bring on a chief medical officer who's experienced in oncology, but you bring them on for maybe 20 hours a month, and then that role scales, and over time, you have that role on a part time or fractional basis until you get to that need, whether it's like phase one or phase two, where you need it for a full time role.

Julianne Averill:
And so that's really kind of what that variable resource model is, is where you scale up the needs of the individuals until you get to that point of, okay, do you bring the role in full time, or do you bring the role in basically more time?

Steve Swan:
That's great. I mean, I'm sure a lot of companies that see this and a lot of companies out there have that need, you know, otherwise they'd be strapped with, like you said, 40 hours of something they don't need.

Julianne Averill:
Right, exactly. It's been really interesting to see because I've seen all different iterations of companies where I've worked with organizations where, for example, our entire finance team was completely outsourced to. I had one organization that was, there was only two employees in the entire organization, and the company itself was public. So you can do all different dynamics as you try and figure out how do you bring interesting products and services to market.

Steve Swan:
That's great. That's pretty cool. Well, so, you know, you being on the finance side, right? You see, you see everything from a CFO perspective, right?

Julianne Averill:
Yeah.

Steve Swan:
One of the things, you know, that you had mentioned in the past and one of the things that I've done a lot of podcasts on the past is AI. Right?

Julianne Averill:
Yeah.

Steve Swan:
So, you know, sort of the AI aided, if you will, CFO. You talked about that. Tell me what you're seeing there and what trends you're seeing there, because I think a lot of the folks that would plug into what I do and what we're doing would love to hear something about that as well.

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, exactly. And this is interesting because it's almost become an offshoot of a little bit of the variable model plus a little bit of the technology blend and plus finance. And so it's morphing into what I call an AICFO or AI enabled finance model. And so what had happened is in finance and actually in GNA or just business operations in general, is we're always looking to find ways to drive down costs, and whether that be through leaner business models or through technology. And what's been really interesting is with the rise of OpenAI chat, GPT, all these different things, it's given us the opportunity now to use AI technology to help improve our operations in the finance function and in and in GNA more in general. And what I mean by that is there's been two different areas where we've been able to do that. One was with operational efficiencies. And then what's really cool is also in some ways, there's been a little bit of they're now calling them digital workers.

Julianne Averill:
And so by the digital worker side, what I mean by that is, like, for example, you can use AI to actually help analyze, like, AP transactions or even financial analysis. So there's tools out there. And this is really cool, Steve. Like, for example, I had a I was using this yesterday. I was trying to build out a plan for how do I stage a finance transaction from end to end and build a deck? And I really just had limited time, and so I went into one of my AI tools and I said, okay, build me this deck that has these different fundraising paths, these different options, build these different work streams. Literally typed up the prompt, and it built me this 13 page deck that had all these different work streams. And it did it in five minutes. And so it's really cool from that.

Julianne Averill:
Yeah. Isn't it neat, like, just to be able to use this stuff now? So I'm really excited about, like, where AI is heading and all of that and what it can do for finance.

Steve Swan:
You've always been, every time we talk, you always lead into AI and bleed into AI. You've always talked about that. That's a hot button of yours, right?

Julianne Averill:
It is, Steve. Well, it's interesting because I thought, so I went on a tangent, I think, about four or five years ago where I thought I, you know, I really like finance, I really like technology, and I was going to go into computer science, so I went and got actually a degree in data science. And what I find is with AI, AI has the potential to ideally help my business and help my work from a perspective of it can possibly replace the lower level transaction work. Because with finance and with business in particular, our goal is to be strategic. And I know, like with your role too, our goal is to really serve the business, or how do we add value? And what I find with AI, and it keeps going faster and faster, is it can really alleviate that type of work. And so if it can alleviate that type of work or it can help replace the transactional processing, that frees me up, that frees my teams up to really focus on how do we have better value at the companies. And so that's why I'm really excited about everything that's happening in the AI, like, basically ecosystem.

Steve Swan:
Yeah, sure. The AI is going to focus on the lower level tasks.

Julianne Averill:
Yeah.

Steve Swan:
And you can focus on the higher level tasks. Right. The more, like you said, the more strategic things and such. Right?

Julianne Averill:
Yeah.

Steve Swan:
Now, now with the companies that, and I don't, I'm not going to get specific. I don't want to get specific. Right. But with the companies that are doing this kind of work. Right. Using AI for the, the AICO, however you want to phrase it, let me attack that another way. That, that same question. Lots of the CIO's that I talk to, most of them, if not all of them, really say, hey, listen, it's about the data, and we, we need our own data.

Steve Swan:
We got to focus. So do these CFO's at each biotech, do they have their own particular data sets, or can they use data that's out there that they can just, you know, access? I mean, how does that work on the finance side? You know, they've got to use their own data for internally, right?

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, exactly. And so that's been the challenge right now, because we've always struggled in finance to get data to a clean state. And so, and so part of it is you can use some public sources of data, because no matter what, with finance in particular, with the later stage companies, you have to use like ten qs, so you have to go to an SEC database anyway. So that stuff is a little bit easier to go get. And that's pretty much in some of these databases to begin with. Now, other sources, though, that requires more of that proprietary data set. So, like, for example, I work with a lot of companies that are using AI within their products. And so they actually are like healthcare tech companies where they built out their database and they're using AI to analyze their products use as a competitive advantage.

Julianne Averill:
And in that situation, that's more of that closed data set. And so with that particular instance, it's really figuring out how do we access the data? How do we build that? I guess like competitive mode. But then how do we take that and merge that with the public datasets and really ensure that we have the right controls and everything around it so then we can take it on the finance side, analyze it, turn it into usable metrics that can then be used at the company level to figure out how the business is doing.

Steve Swan:
Right. So once you get to that proper data set is when you can really cut the AI loose. You know, I had somebody call me a couple weeks ago, and he was talking, he's in a new role somewhere, and he's more in a sales capacity. But my directors in my group that are directors of data science, and a director is going to be, give or take 200,000 on the base, right? He said they're spending a bunch of their time triaging my data, getting it structured so they can use it. And that's probably not where you want to use a $200,000 person, right?

Julianne Averill:
No, exactly. And that's always been the fundamental challenge, even as long as I've been in finance, is getting unstructured data into a structured format, and even today, so this is why I keep focusing on trying to find the right AI tool for finance is like you can go run copilot, or you can go run chat GPT, and it will give you, like, a spreadsheet or give you a pivot table, but it's almost on par with, like, what a data analyst or financial analyst can do. And so I know everyone's working on it, and I'm looking for that day when we can get to that point of, okay, someone could take unstructured data, have it cleaned using those AI agents or digital workers or whatever they're calling them, depending on the week, and us be able to use that. So that's kind of the next evolution, basically.

Steve Swan:
Yeah, I mean, it is. You know, all, everybody in all my podcasts, they're all saying it's the data. Is the gasoline running that engine data? You got to have it in shape. I mean, I even asked Bob McGowan from Regeneron. I said, you know, what sort of advice would you give anybody out there, you know, in a small company that's poised for growth? You know, what do you wish you knew today that you didn't know six years ago? He said, get your data ready. You know, get your data ready. Right. It's all about that.

Julianne Averill:
It is. Well, even I was having a conversation with somebody who is on the marketing side, and they had a really interesting insight, and a lot of it is ensuring that you use, like, your personal data. So, like, for example, you can now train the models on your voice by using, like, your, your words, your writings, things like that. And so really, to your point about getting your data ready, it's ensuring you get your data ready, and it's also ensuring you have the right data to train the models for when you actually need. That day comes where they can actually do that right analysis.

Steve Swan:
Right. Well, you know, and again, from the IT side, without that data, I'm hearing from certain folks that upwards of 70% of these AI projects fail, and a lot of it has to do with the data. The technology gets in front of the readiness of the data. And so they have these folks that have built out these great models and this great technology. They just can't feed it any data. It's not ready. So that's a problem.

Julianne Averill:
Exactly. Part of it is it's ensuring that you're using it in the right way. Back to that example of, like, I was using the AI tool to help with my work and help with efficiency, is, for example, I can ask it to write a certain memo for me on a timeline or a memo on, like, a board letter. But whatever it generates, I know that I have to do that supervision. So it's like that whole human in the loop thing of, you still need that expert to look at and see, okay, what did it do wrong or what can it do that can be improved, basically?

Steve Swan:
Right? Yeah. And to your point, especially now, we still got to keep an eye on all this stuff. You know, it is doing the lower level tasks for us, you know, so we can focus on the higher level, but you got to make sure, you know, that it's doing it properly.

Julianne Averill:
Exactly. And I think that's where everyone who's worried about their job being replaced, I think that's the fallacy, is the job won't be replaced. Your job will just be transformed. And that's where those who know how to use AI will have that competitive advantage versus those down.

Steve Swan:
Right. It'll be enhanced. Right. You know, that's what I see a lot of people talking about how it's gonna make, I don't know.

Julianne Averill:
Yeah.

Steve Swan:
This, this ex person just that much better, you know? You know, as long as you're using it properly and it's gonna allow you to do different tasks and different things, like you said, transform it, you know, it's gonna be great. You know, I think it's. It's interesting. It's. It's a lot, you know, we got a long way to get all the way there, right? Everybody thinks we're there. Right? And a lot of these folks are getting beat up because the higher ups, their buddies are telling them on the golf course that, you know, I'm using AI when, you know, maybe they are a little bit, right, but not totally, you know? And when that gentleman called me about the data, you know, having his directors tune the data, I was telling him, you know, you can find, and not a master's student from data science, but an undergrad data science student right out of school, they'll data wrangle for you, and they'll, they'll get that in shape for you, and they can continue to move through your organization as years go by because there's a lot out there, and I. You don't have to spend that much on those folks.

Julianne Averill:
You don't have to spend that much on those folks. And the good thing is, once you analyze the data, it gets better over time. And that's the piece I'm looking to back to that AI CFO, the AI finance side, is, it's different because one of the things that we always get good at in finance and GNA is we always expect our teams to grow and evolve and move on. And with the AIH agents, the AI bots, they're kind of always growing and changing, too. And so one of the things we can think about is, like, if we have these digital agents and all that is, over time, they'll just get smarter. And so, like, if we think about if we're building like a GPT for the future, it's like, okay, eventually we'll have these finance teams that are co pilots or built with our AI that can help us, that we've trained. So, like, we've trained them on accounting literature, we've trained them on finance literature, and then we can really take them with us from company to company or industry to industry.

Steve Swan:
So my brain just went to, and we're not going to solve this here, but my brain just went to, I'm in company. You and I are in biotech, ABC, right? We get these things trained. They're awesome. Our data is great. We got this thing nailed.

Julianne Averill:
Yes.

Steve Swan:
We get, we get bought out by lmnop. Well, now what? I mean, we have our little thing going and we're great. We're probably left alone for 6912 months, but pretty soon we're gonna have to integrate. And is that other side ready again? We're not gonna solve that now. That's like stuff I'll lose sleep over, you know, I don't need to, but that's just everybody's going at different speed. Everybody's digesting this at a different rate or has a different capacity for it. So that's just. It is what it is, you know?

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, exactly.

Steve Swan:
We'll get there. I want to move on real quick because one of the other things that you've talked about in the past are, you know, sort of the rise and what's been going on with women owned organizations and women funded organizations and such. So tell me about the trend you see there. Are there more women leaders in these organizations? Are they CFO's, coos, presidents, CEO's, CBOs? Are they, are they more in the CFO's in your space? Are they more consulting, advising? Are they more on the tech side of the data science? Or are they just more everywhere? You know, what do you see in there?

Julianne Averill:
Yeah. So what I've seen is, I see it's more of, it's growing a little bit. Yes. So, like, I just saw a statistic yesterday where somebody said, like, specifically to CFO's, there's now something around, like, it's 28% of CFO's in the C suite and, like, Fortune 500 companies. In some ways, though, we're going backwards. So, like, for example, on boards, there's less women on boards, but we are making progress. And so where I've been focusing my time and efforts is really on a couple things. Helping get women on boards, helping get women founders funded, and then really helping advance women into the C suite.

Julianne Averill:
And what I mean by that is women who are at that director level ensuring that they're getting mentored and finding that opportunity to get their first ep role, get their first CFO role, their first CEO role, but really ensuring that they're set up for success. And so what I am seeing is I'm seeing signs of improvement in the industry and really hoping that we're continuing to do more with different organizations from that perspective.

Steve Swan:
So do you think, is it a mentoring kind of thing? Is it a industry kind of thing? Where do you see the stumbling block, the roadblock?

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, I think it's an industry thing. It's a little bit of a structural thing as well, too, because one of the items too is if you've all heard that statistic about less than like 3% of venture funding go to women back founders, for example. Yeah. And so it's one of those where it's, we need to remove those barriers to success and ensure that we're ensuring that people are set up and women and underrepresented founders really have that ability to get that initial funding, that initial opportunity to really move forward in ways to ultimately build out their organization, ultimately be successful across their organization, and to really build those companies that can really help be successful for the long term.

Steve Swan:
So, I mean, again, my wheels are turning. Right? So is it a marketing thing? Is it hooking women, women financiers up with women founders? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I have no idea what angle to hit that from. You know, there's a lot of different ways to look at that, right?

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, there are lots of different ways to look at it. So a couple different ways, it's been connecting from a relationship perspective. I think what I know I've been personally doing is I've been focusing on, like, for example, there's a fund I've been working with how women invest. And so what they actually are is they're a group of LP's who they actually focus on investing in women owned companies. And then there's also ways to do this with marketing. There's also just ensuring that we're giving people that opportunity to have their first executive roles basically too.

Steve Swan:
You know, it's funny. You just mentioned something about financing and women in finance. I remember reading something about the financial crisis. 08090.

Julianne Averill:
Yes. Yeah.

Steve Swan:
And they talked about in this article how if there's more women, I guess, in some of those seats now, there weren't then. And us guys, apparently part of our coping mechanism or whatever, we're big gamblers, so we just keep doubling down, hoping we're gonna get out of the hole, and it just keeps getting worse and worse. And this are, this, this article was arguing that if there were more women involved, we wouldn't have been doubling down. We wouldn't have been going deeper and deeper. I. So, you know, I don't know. I definitely see that, though. I mean, I have two girls.

Steve Swan:
One is in finance and one's in data science. So they're on either side of what, what you do and. Yeah, absolutely. Not, not, not the big gambling types. So that's just. It is what it is.

Julianne Averill:
So, yeah, no, it's interesting you mentioned that because I was in banking back in that 2008 2009 period, and then, Steve, I moved on to, interestingly enough, forensic accounting after that. And so I got to see, because the way forensic accounting works, it's always a look back. So those particular cases moved through the courts around that time. And so it was interesting to see, to your point, there was a lot around, okay, who's like the smartest person in the room later on with those particular cases? And there probably is something to that around. Okay. If we had different individuals and different diversity of thought, it might have had a different outcome from that perspective.

Steve Swan:
I do believe that that particular timeframe, those instances, are really what brought diversity and decision making to the forefront. Right. Because like you said, we were going to the smartest person in the room, and what should we do? Well, you got a pile of jellybeans in the middle of the table. If 100 people take a guess at it, we're going to come close to the number to average that out. But if you're just going to one person, like you said, it could be the right thing. Might not be, you know, but with the collective intelligence of, like I always told my kids, collective intelligence every day gets better by that much, every day. And we need to get that much better to stay ahead. Right.

Steve Swan:
So it's interesting that it's really brought that to the forefront in the recent past. So anyway, so question about, you know, Danforth, right. And you at Danforth. So I'm on the outside. I'm Steve Swan. I'm looking at this. I'm thinking, I'm jiving on the, on the AICFO and kind of thing. But why would I want to work with you and Danforth, right, versus one of the other, one of your other competitors? I just like asking folks these kinds of questions.

Steve Swan:
Usually if it's a CIO, I'll ask them. I'll say, hey, listen, why would I want to work in your group and you for your company? Same sort of thing to you. How would you answer that? Thoughts?

Julianne Averill:
That's a great question, Steve. And so the reason you'd want to work with, like, me and Dan forth versus, like, somebody else, what we do that's different and that's unique for life sciences is really, we come in and we help organizations really get to the next level. And so it's thinking through strategically what that means. And so for, like, an early stage company in life sciences, it's really building the foundation for success, for example. So that's like setting up your operations right from the ground up. So it would be like building out your operations around equity. It's building out your HR functions. It's building out finance.

Julianne Averill:
And then for, like, the later stage companies, like the ones who would be getting ready for IPO right now is really thinking through, okay, what does that take to transform from a private company to a public company? And so that's really where we have that. I'd say value differentiation is we have these deep bench of experts who, they've really been there. They've done that many times over, both in house and in the consulting realm. And so they really have that ability to say, okay, we've done this, we've seen this, and we can advise you on some things that work, some things that may not work and really show you, okay, here's kind of the path.

Steve Swan:
Well, yeah. And also, see, I mean, you, you've done forensic accounting, you've done banking, you've done data science. I mean, I don't know. I'm sure I'm missing a million different things. All the operations that you have, it's just, you know, and if the folks at Danforth are half as smart as you are, that I think it's got to be a pretty good place, you know, a lot of good folks there.

Julianne Averill:
So, yeah, it's nice because I feel like it's, at Danforth, we get a lot of different people from a lot of different walks of life. So even you get to, you get the benefit of not just like, if you work with, like, for example, if I'm the CFO, I'm not just the CFO, you get the benefit of calling everybody else and then. Yeah, to your point, I, I'm one of those people who, I'm always interested in learning, and so I feel like I've done a little bit of everything over my career because I've always loved, like, the life sciences and learning about stuff. So I'm one of those people who just always wanted to see all the different aspects.

Steve Swan:
Well, and that's also the thing with this industry, because there are so many thousands. Right, of small biotechs out there, and each one of them has their own little thing. So when I sit down with a company that's looking for a technology leader, each one of them needs a little different flavor on it because they have something different about it. I read something that some folks are trying to, are talking about trying to create collective, you know, sort of a collective services around technology, which I think is kind of tough, but they may try it. I don't know. We'll see what happens with that. So any, anything else you want to cover? I always have one final question I ask of guests, and I don't tell them what it is and everybody that doesn't know what it is, it's the same for everybody. But before I get to that, any, anything you want to add here that you think we should think about? Industry trends, things going on that we should be thinking about or look out for or anything else you want to add?

Julianne Averill:
I think, I want to turn a question around to you, Steve, because I know you and I talked about this a little bit, but what led you as a it expert and just a person expert in general, to get into podcasting?

Steve Swan:
Yeah, that is a good question. I have no idea. No, I'm kidding. So I speak to so many folks like yourself, and I speak to so many technology leaders. I just always, this is what I do for a living, right? I talk to folks and, you know, I've always found that I get to places in my conversations with people where I think sometimes it even surprises them that we go, meaning that we do get to certain places and we solve certain things and we, sometimes we don't solve them, but we get to certain, you know, an understanding of an issue that's out there that we didn't really understand before. And last September, when I was coming back from vacation with my wife, I turned to her and I said, I know so many of these leaders, and I have so many of these conversations. Every time I hang up the phone, it's gone, it's over. It's not recorded.

Steve Swan:
And a lot of the folks that I know and talk to would love to share their insights with other folks. So I came back and I started pinging some folks that I know. Bob, like I said, bob McGowan, CIO or general, a bunch of others, and I said, what are your thoughts on this? They're like, that's a great idea. We like it. And, you know, so now I'm starting to take it to the level where I'm creating little networking events with CIO's because they're very collaborative group, you know, leaders are, and they don't want, they don't want breakout rooms. They don't want to solve problems. They just want to shake hands, say hello, and solve problems offline. Let's take each other's contact information, let's meet, and let's do it from there.

Steve Swan:
So, so what really got me to it was just the fact that I felt like there was a lot of good information in those conversations and, you know, in the spirit of abundance, why not share it with folks? I mean, shoot, I'm already doing it and a little more complicated than I thought it was going to be with the production and the whole thing probably bit off more than I could chew there. I was able to hire folks and we were able to work through it, so. But thanks for asking. Yeah, it's been good. It's been fun. It's 25 years of doing this, and it's been a good break to chat with folks like this. So, yeah, appreciate it.

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, thank you for sharing that because it's nice to have the relationships and I feel like it, like, builds more of the life sciences overall. That's really, it's really relationship business.

Steve Swan:
It is. It is a relationship business. And there's, you know, again, a lot of folks have the same problems, but they each have their own unique problems above that, on the margin. Everybody has their own little problems on the margin, but in the middle for the most part, you know, it's a lot of the same stuff. So that's where my mindset went with the podcast where we could help, you know, no reason to reinvent the wheel, you know, every time we get to something. So that's kind of where I was, and, you know, it seems like folks are enjoying it. So, you know, I was originally going to do one a month, and then by the time I got to the end of January, I already had eight recorded. And I'm like, oh, this isn't going to be good because I'd be releasing the last one from January right now in August.

Steve Swan:
And it wouldn't. So I've been doing them every other week. I'll do 20. What's that, 26 a year or something like that? Yeah. Every other week. So.

Julianne Averill:
Wow.

Steve Swan:
It's good.

Julianne Averill:
Yeah.

Steve Swan:
Yeah, it's good. And I really, really was excited. And still I'm excited that. To have you on because, you know, the CFO's are, you know, they need help, too. Right. And it. Technology reports up and through and works real close with the CFO's. And I know that you come from both sides of that, so that's why I was real excited to have you on here.

Steve Swan:
So thank you.

Julianne Averill:
Exactly. No, of course. And I'm happy to be here because I feel. Yeah. CFO. And it's so integrated now and even more so because, like, today, CFO's really have to understand technology and really understand how to use it and when to use it. So it's very important.

Steve Swan:
Well, the call I get is, I'm a CFO. I don't want to do technology anymore. Can you help me find somebody to do that for me? Right. So I'll get those calls, too. Right. Because they get a little freaked out. So anyway, my final question is always this. Okay, live music.

Steve Swan:
I love live music. So my wife and I, we go see a lot of concerts this tomorrow, I'm going to go see the band bush from the nineties, and Jerry Cantrell, who was the lead guitar player for Alison Chains, and we'll go see them. Tedesky, trucks. I mean, pearl Jam. We see all these bands. What has been your favorite band that you've seen live?

Julianne Averill:
Oh, that's a great question. Oh, there's been. Oh, God.

Steve Swan:
I get answers you wouldn't believe. I get answers from. From here to here. So there's nothing that's. That's off limits. You know, some person even told me that they're. They wanted. Their child is a classic violinist.

Julianne Averill:
Yeah.

Steve Swan:
So that was. That was theirs. But I've gotten a bunch of Bruce Springsteen's, you know, Paul McCartney, rush somebody gave me, you know, so it's been a whole bunch.

Julianne Averill:
Exactly.

Steve Swan:
So I don't even know if you like live music. Right. So I have no idea that I don't know about you.

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, well, exactly. And I don't think you and I talked about this, but I was a music major and play five different instruments, so.

Steve Swan:
What haven't you done?

Julianne Averill:
I've done. You know what? I don't know. We'll figure that out. I don't think I've done, I've not done skydiving. I almost did that and didn't end up not doing that. So we're good there.

Steve Swan:
There's no way I'm ever doing skydiving. So.

Julianne Averill:
Yeah, yeah, we'll see. So favorite concert? Can I pick two or am I only allowed to pick one?

Steve Swan:
Not pick two? Yeah, you could pick five if you really wanted to. Okay, cool.

Julianne Averill:
So there's two. So first one is trans siberian orchestra. I've now seen that like three times. And I love it because it's the, it's the Christmas music, but it's Christmas music with rock, so it's the whole thing and it's a light show and it's just, it's, I love the holidays. So that one. And then recently I got to see the trilogy concertinal. So that was pitbull. It was Ricky Martin.

Julianne Averill:
And then I'm trying to remember who the third one was, but it was all just happy music. Hispanic music upbeat music which is the music I run to. And so it was a really long concert. It was raining in San Francisco, but it was just really amazing. So Brixius was the third one.

Steve Swan:
And what was the third one?

Julianne Averill:
Enrique Iglesia.

Steve Swan:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I never thought I would find myself in, you know, one of those concerts, but New Year's Eve in Atlantic City, we went to see pit bull.

Julianne Averill:
Oh, yeah, right.

Steve Swan:
It was crazy. I couldn't believe it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julianne Averill:
In person, he's amazing and he gives, what's amazing to me, too, is how much he gives back to the community and how much he has kids and just everything from that perspective too.

Steve Swan:
He does, yeah. I go and, you know, yeah, I guess I study the artist sometimes before, because I didn't know anything about him, right. So I read up before and after and yeah, I was really amazed at that, you know, what he does, do, you know, because you see this guy and you're like, okay, what's his real story? You know, because, yeah, I want to learn, you know? Yeah. It means more when they're up there. You know, the one thing I was kind of bummed at was that he's on stage, it's New Year's Eve, he's got one job to count to zero. He messed it up. He messed it up.

Julianne Averill:
Really?

Steve Swan:
Yeah. He got to zero 4 seconds before and the screen was still saying four. And he's like, whoa, whoa, three, two, you know. Yeah, you can't get everything perfect, you know, I'm like, really? And the whole crowd, nobody knew what I mean, it was I don't know how many thousands of people in this thing. But you know, they're all like what do we do? We cheer with him? Do we wait for the screen? What do we do? You know?

Julianne Averill:
Wait a second.

Steve Swan:
So everybody, everybody was all freaked out. It was good though. It was fun. But to your point, very upbeat, very light, you know, wasn't crazy sappy bringing you down or whatever. It was good. It was good stuff. And then they opened it up. I think they had a dj started if I can't, if I remember correctly, something like that.

Steve Swan:
So anyway, awesome. Well anyway, well, thank you very much.

Julianne Averill:
Thank you.

Steve Swan:
That was awesome. I appreciate it. Always good to get a different angle on this stuff. Okay. Yeah.

Julianne Averill:
Thank you for inviting me. This has been fun, funny.