From Excel to AI: Ex-Salesforce VP Sean Blitchok Reveals Why Your Finance Job Isn't Dead

In this conversation, Sean Blitchok, CFO of Zenoti, discusses the evolving role of finance in the tech industry, emphasizing the importance of technology and automation in financial processes. He reflects on his journey through various companies, highlighting the strategic influence of CFOs and the necessity of adapting to rapid changes in the business landscape. The discussion also touches on the balance between growth and financial controls, as well as the future potential of AI in finance. In this conversation, Sean discusses the rapid evolution of AI in finance, emphasizing its potential to automate processes and create value. He highlights the importance of quality control in automation, the artistic nature of accounting, and the need for finance professionals to embrace AI as a tool for strategic value. Sean also addresses the changing landscape of finance metrics, the critical role of investor relations, and the skills needed for future finance roles. He concludes with a focus on people-centric leadership in finance, stressing that success hinges on hiring and nurturing the right talent.

Takeaways

• Technology can alleviate many financial process issues.
• The role of CFO has evolved to be more strategic.
• CFOs must understand the entire business landscape.
• Automation is key to improving financial processes.
• Financial controls are essential for scaling companies.
• CFOs are increasingly seen as potential CEOs.
• The relationship between CFOs and boards is crucial.
• Emerging technologies are changing the finance landscape.
• Process optimization and technology should go hand in hand.
• AI's impact on finance is still developing. AI is evolving rapidly and will impact the finance sector significantly.
• Quality control is essential as companies automate processes with AI.
• Accounting is not just transactional; it involves interpretation and creativity.
• AI should be viewed as a value creator, enhancing strategic roles.
• Future finance professionals need to embrace AI and adapt to new technologies.
• Understanding business and economics is crucial for finance roles.
• Investor relations play a vital role in connecting finance with the broader business.
• Choosing the right AI tools is essential for effective implementation.
• People-centric leadership is key to success in finance.
• The finance landscape is constantly changing, requiring adaptability.

Sound Bites

• "The CFO plays a critical role."
• "I can't stand fingers on keyboards."
• "We can fix a lot of the manual work."
• "It's not just about cost arbitrage."
• "It's incredible how fast it's moving."
• "AI is a value creator, right?"
• "AI is going to be a piece of that."
• "Embrace AI, be part of a solution."
• "You have to have those core skills."
• "Don't underestimate the IR capability."

Chapters

00:00
The Role of Technology in Finance

05:14
Evolving CFO Responsibilities

10:06
The CFO's Strategic Influence

18:36
Automation and Financial Processes

22:32
Balancing Growth and Financial Controls

25:10
The Future of AI in Finance

28:22
The Rapid Evolution of AI in Finance

30:54
Navigating Automation and Quality Control

32:56
The Artistic Side of Accounting

35:36
AI as a Value Creator

39:14
Preparing for the Future of Finance Roles

42:52
The Changing Landscape of Finance Metrics

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Transcript

0:00

can't stand fingers on keyboards, right? So it, it cause it's, it's, just creates a nice environment for errors. And the errors can be a look, have a, an inbox full of downstream problems with billing or upstream problems with how the quote is, being managed or whatever. The technology piece, I think can fix that. Right. And if you get the process right and the technology right in the beginning, it alleviates tons of problems down the road. Hello, and welcome to Asking Good Questions, the podcast where we explore the intricacies of the business world by, well, asking good questions. I'm your host, Edward Roske. And today we have a guest who has navigated the financial waters of some of the tech industry's biggest names. Sean Blitchock is the new chief financial officer of Zenody. Before that, he was CFO at Meridian Link, SBP of Finance and Strategy at Salesforce and BP of Finance at Blackline. Sean, welcome to the show. Thank you, Edward. We've actually known each other for a very long time going back into the Salesforce days, but it's good to reconnect and I appreciate you having me on. Absolutely. I, for our listeners, the reason I asked Sean to join is not only has a nice background in tech and understands what the future is looking like, I've always appreciated Sean's inability to hold back his opinions on things. So Sean, thank you for being direct with everybody. So the question on everyone's mind, at least the people watching this thing on video, is there like a secret CFO SaaS handshake that we should all know about? but it's secret so I can't share. If you meet me in person then maybe you're in the inner loop, but until then we'll have to defer. So Salesforce to BlackLine to MeridianLink to Zenoti, that's a journey of all different sizes in the SaaS world. But it's always been a financial role. What is the thread that connects finance across all those? Like what have you been able to say this is consistent no matter what that size or crazy growth rate of that company is? Yeah, that's a good question. Well, if I could just back up a little bit. I, before Salesforce, I spent a decade at HP. Before that, I was in many operational roles in the aerospace industry and management consulting, and it really found my home with SAS. And I think the SAS model is, I mean. I don't have to tell your listeners that the SaaS model is very appealing for many reasons, know, in economics being one of them. I think it's changing over the years and we can talk about that. the through line for me has really been whether you're at, you know, HP 135 billion is where I left. You know, I joined Salesforce at 3 billion and scaling up. and then decided to come down market intentionally because I like it down here, but is really just how do you drive kind of strategy, both financial strategy as well as the implementation and the rigor and operations that has to go along with the strategy overall for the company. So I have a very wide perspective when it comes to finance. You know, you have basic blocking and tackling when it comes to finance, people think of FP &A and they think of accounting and they think, but I focus more on how do you add value at the strategic relationship, right? You know, how do you really be the true partner to the leader? that you're supporting, whether that's the CEO or the CRO or whoever it is. And I hire people accordingly. And it's worked for, I won't age myself, but a long time. And I think it's really critical for, especially now. And we can talk about kind of the history that I've kind of seen, but. The velocity of change is, is unprecedented, right? And, and I think even in the SAS model, things are changing dramatically day by day. It used to be pretty, pretty straightforward and pretty easy. was a seat model. It was a subscription model. And, and I think with generative AI and some, some things that are happening right now, there's, there's a transition that's happening and, and there was a transition with. what the unit economics should look like, what a SaaS company should be focused on. so those are just a few things that I think are exciting and fun. And I'm a problem solver, first and foremost. And that's kind of where I've really found the most value to the companies that I've been with. Let's dive into the strategy side for a second. is a traditional perception of the role of finance, which is kind of backward looking, right? Like what happened? Governance compliance, you know, let's let you look at the last 12 months or the last five years. There's a little bit of budgetary forecast going out there. Talk about how it has helped in areas where it's been difficult to add the strategic side. Like actually let's affect the direction and let's look ahead to where where the company is going. I mean, if you think about, I don't know the exact time, but you know, for a long time, the role of the traditional CFO was more backwards looking. was focused on financial reporting. was focused on compliance, know, controllership, making sure, know, your audit functions were in place and really siloed off or siphoned off from kind of the strategy, which was left. to business leaders. I think, you know, I've seen that, and I lived through that. it's, you know, was for, you know, there's been numerous situations that I've been put in in my career where you kind of have to fight your way to the table and fight your way to have a voice in the direction of the company. I think in the last, I would say now look, now all that you see is we want a strategic CFO. Now what does that mean? mean, there's multiple definitions for what that can mean, but there's been an evolution, I would say, over the last at least decade where it's really evolved into really the number two seat in the company. mean, it really has to be I'm driven on a financial strategy. really have to understand where you're going to land and it's not backwards looking anymore. As a matter of fact, you know, probably the same, the same length of time ago, a decade, 15 year. mean, it was, yeah, budget to actuals is important. Variance analysis is important, but those are just table stakes things, right? What's really important is what's going to happen. going forward and that invites a whole host of what I consider to be very exciting and fun things, right? So it invites what's happening in the business, what's happening with our customer base, what's happening with our product, what's happening in the macro economic environment. And if you can thread a needle where you're adding Something that the business doesn't actually already have. I think that's really where you can really start to add value and earn your seat at the table. Now, you know, in the last kind of call it 10 years for me, that's just part of the repertoire. That's that, that has to be put, that's table stakes for me now. And it, and I think for a lot of CFOs out there that this is just part of the role, but I think it's changing even now, right? With again, emerging technologies with the velocity of change on a day-to-day basis. It's tough to keep up with. It's tough to keep up with from a business perspective. Everybody's got a day job. So having a strong, what I would call operating system that comes from finance to make these decisions, to evaluate priorities, to sequence things properly becomes incredibly important. There's definitely been an evolution over time where, you know, I think there's still probably CFOs out there that are stuck kind of a decade ago or still focused on the basic blocking and tackling. But the real value, I think, when you, especially when you get into companies that are high growth or they're running into a problem where they need transformation of some kind, whether it's business model or you know, the IT application stack or whatever it is, the CFO plays a critical, critical role. I remember once I was talking to you about strategy back at Salesforce and I asked you, are people open to it? And I think you said, well, know, Benioff just walked out of here like five minutes ago and he was talking to you about strategy. Has that carried through to your other roles? I mean, I know it's part of what you look for, but have you found that at that, that tight relationship at, at BlackLine and Meridian Link and now at Zenoti? Yeah. So I mean, I think for me and I, and, and I don't want to speak as if I'm the only person that focuses on this, but for me, it's that has to, interview the company as much as they interview me. And I think that's what I look for in companies. One of the reasons, you know, I love Salesforce and I always have, and I always will. I still. I still root for the company and I, but I, you know, I had a very big job at Salesforce when I left and still, even though we were driving strategy around go to market and, know, responsibility for all the customer facing organizations and working with the current chief operating officer of the company. you know, it was, it was fantastic. And I learned a lot, but at the end of the day, a company reaches a certain scale where you, I personally felt like it was still a little bit of a cog in a giant wheel. And so for me personally, the decision was, I would prefer to go down market interview where I know for a fact that there's a dependency or there will be a dependency. on that strategy piece on being kind of the right hand to the CEO, to the board, to making decisions intelligently. And so this is kind of a hiring criteria for me and it's kind of guided where I've kind of landed next for the last kind of five or six years. So, by the way, I've seen what you've seen about that CFO rising up from being, you know, the person almost works in the engine room to the person standing at the front of the ship, you know, next to the CEO. I was reading that over the last couple of years, the number one role that ascends to the CEO role if the CEO leaves is the CFO. There was something else I read though, which is, and this one is more recent change, it kind of surprised me. At over 50 % of Fortune 500 companies, The CIO now reports to the CFO because of that. Help me understand. it because the CFO is handling all the back office? Is it because they're expected to understand technology a lot more than they used to? So let me comment on the first one first. I think it's logical in that evolution where the CFO just has a, an understanding of the entirety of the business more than certain other, not to say they're more important or a more, you know, a more critical part of the wheel. but they understand the wheel a lot and a lot more depth than say a CRO or any other executive on the team. I think that's a part of why you're seeing more CFOs ascend to the CEO position. You also have a very, hopefully a very deep relationship with the board and the board. developed a level of trust in the command of the business and the command of the financials. And that can go, you know, currently, you know, for the last few years have been both public and a PE landscape. And it goes for both sides. You kind of, you have to develop that relationship to really be able to tell the board with conviction. where the company is going and be transparent and have intellectual honesty on what the company has and what the benefits and the momentum we have and where the pitfalls are and where we need to solve for issues. On the CIO piece, that's been becoming more common, I would say, in the last five years. And this has been... something that I've been responsible for as well. And I do think that it's, there's two, to me, there's two elements to it. One is just a, think CEOs and boards want the CFO to own the entirety of the GNA stack, right? So that's one is, look, GNA, you have to scale. You have to scale GNA and the... The internal IT environment is a big piece of that. you you, especially with, with companies that don't have amazing CIOs, you see a proliferation of SAS tools. see, you know, everybody wants their own vertical tool. want, you know, you have engineers who are paying with credit cards, you know, we have, I've seen. at a very small scale, the number of applications at like seven or 800, right? And that is just, that's leakage. And so I think there's a component of that that says you should really own this entire thing and how it fits within the GNA ecosystem. So that's one. Two is I think the CFO has to, in my opinion, have command of that internal IT ecosystem because everything revolves around the architecture and the architecture is typically built on a finance architecture, right? So whether you're talking about the ERP or the CRM or, you know, downstream billing tools, whatever it is, now analytics is the hot topic. But all of that is to to really be more efficient, to automate as much as possible, to drive value from the IT stack without science fair projects. That isn't the best way I can say it. And so I think that makes a lot of sense. Now, if you get a CIO who I've seen models where you know, a CTO can be responsible for CI, for the internal stack as well. And that works too. I mean, and so I think it's company to company specific, but it works well when you have kind of a model that's not working, number one, and needs to be adjusted, needs to be re kind of sequenced, whatever it is in terms of the IT stack. That works well. CFO usually has a pretty deep knowledge of what needs to get done, especially when it comes to of quote to cash process, P2P process, and the systems that are required in order to support those processes in the right way. And that really comes, it really comes back to scale, right? All companies are looking to scale and you can't scale if you have broken. broken systems, right, as you well know. So I think that those are two big pieces of why you're seeing that those tendencies. Yeah, it's interesting. I was just trying to picture, I can think of a lot of cases where a CFO has risen up to take the CEO role. And I can't think of one where the CIO has risen up to take the CFO type role, but I think you hit it exactly right. It's, it's a global view. It's trust. And then also just downward. It's figuring out how to, not only understand the technology that using, but how it can improve, how it can automate. speaking of, so at, at black line, you. Fundamentally, BlackLine helps companies improve financial processes, right? When it's automating through the power of technology. How has that perspective from BlackLine, how have you carried that forward to your roles since? Like when you've gotten into a new role, what have you said, okay, this is sacrosanct, I'm not going to change it at all, but this really needs to be improved technologically or automation. Like what are you doing to change it really? Yeah, well, the questions around BlackLine, would say even going back to Salesforce, BlackLine, mean, so, you know, whatever you're selling, I've developed a pretty strong opinion about the use of technology in building scale in a company, right? you know, it's, again, it continues to change, but You know, I'm a Six Sigma black belt. I've been like process has been my number one thing for many, many years. However, I will say there's now, I think in the last few years, I've kind of changed my tune a little bit, which says there's a combination of process. Yes, that has to be there for sure. But instead of it being sequential, well, where you optimize process and you jump to. kind of automation or you jump to technology, I think there's, there can now be a combination of them being hand in hand, which says we're going to optimize process and layer in technology at the same time. So, you know, block line was a great, is a great example of, um, you know, whether you're talking about accounts receivable, whether you're talking about accounting automation, I mean, those things are, they're manual. in many companies, there are things that take up a lot of time and have, this is a term that I use with the team all the time, I can't stand fingers on keyboards, right? So it just creates a nice environment for errors. the errors can be, look, I have an inbox full of downstream problems with billing or upstream problems with how the quote is being managed or whatever. The technology piece, I think, can fix that, right? And if you get the process right and the technology right in the beginning, as the company is starting to scale, it alleviates tons of problems down the road. And I think that's BlackLine's thesis as well is like, look, we can fix a lot of the manual. work that's being done by some of the finance functions and really the office of the CFO, should say. And provide a huge benefit to this. Now, this isn't just about also, I should mention. It's not just about cost arbitrage, right? I think, you know, for a long time, it was, okay, how can we outsource? How can we move costs to a lower... cost location and sometimes that's still the right answer. But I think more and more, the first option should be really about how do we automate this, right? And I think BlackLine is a perfect example of how to use that is, okay, instead of taking a bunch of manual process with 15 people in the US or 100 people in the US and outsourcing it to 200 people and. India or the Philippines or whatever, let's just take the process and automate it and bring in a great partner like BlackLine and allow that to solve the issue. So I want to talk more about the automation side, but before I get there, you've mentioned scaling a few different times. How do you balance the need, especially in a SaaS company, I in the heart of Silicon Valley, how do you balance that need for rapid scaling with maintaining strong financial controls? So both that forward rapid growth as well as the let's not break anything. Yeah, that's a great question. So my answer will be like in the context of the life cycle of the company, where the company is in its life cycle. I think there are companies, like Zenoti where I am now, where yes, we have to have the right financial controls, but it's a journey. Is everything perfect right now? No. It's not, but we will get there and we're going to make progress over time. The imperative in front of us is to maintain kind of the high growth model. And so, yeah, with a more mature company, it's a little different, right? Where scaling is important, but hopefully you've already implemented a lot of things that have built scale into the company and financial controls become the, especially in the public market, they become just a full stop. It has to get done. Right. And, you know, what I've encouraged the team to really do is in multiple stops along the way. And, you know, a friend and mentor, Mark Hawkins, who was the CFO of, of, of Salesforce for a long time, he would say this as well. Like it's, you know, socks and internal controls is not. one function's responsibility. It's the company's responsibility. so I think there is a lot to that. I've carried that forward. I use that and I claim it as my own. hope he's not listening. But I think that's important. But to answer your question, think, again, really, you have to identify where you are in the journey. And sometimes scale is a priority, but that doesn't mean that it's not important for the control environment. As the company matures, as it grows, I think that changes in the equation and the balance between the two actually changes. Yeah, I think it's important for the finance world and our listeners to realize good processes accelerate your scaling. they can support that. It's not the enemy, you know, it's kind of like stopping for moment to pave the road is probably a good idea, right? You can drive your car a whole lot closer to the ground. So we're going to, I'm going to now bring automate, we're going to talk about automation and I'm going to bring in Salesforce. So how's this for a segue backwards? So Benioff has actually been in the news lately pretty heavily talking about what he sees as the next wave of AI. Because if you, I'm going to way oversimplify the world of artificial intelligence. Right now we're kind of in the assistant co-intelligence phase, right? Let me ask some questions. Let me get some support. can do some activities, but really I'm kind of getting some advice and some insights and I'm sort of acting on it. What Benioff has been talking about with action force and others is that he sees the world as take each person, break them down into all the tasks they do. Each of those tasks can be an agent that can just go off and do that task. Does anyone need to really reconcile inner companies or can that be done? If we need to add an accountant, is there any way maybe the AI could figure out where in the chart of accounts that account should actually go? How far off do you see that world? Like, do you see us getting to the point where right now we can begin to have some of those tasks done by AI or are we talking? Two years off, five years off. Like what are you seeing actually implemented in your financial realm right now? Yeah, another great question. So let me start by saying Mark is a genius, number one, but he's also a visionary leader, right? And so he has, I would say, a unique ability to see the future and really articulate the future in a very crisp way. So I don't think he's wrong. and who would I be to question Mark Benioff. you know, it's, but what I see on the ground from a product perspective isn't there yet. And, you know, I've, I've advised a couple of companies who are trying to automate some financial, like true FP &A finance strategy work around budget to actuals and around And it's still a little janky to be honest. and I don't think that's the technology. I think that's really just people trying to get their arms around the technology and how to use it with their data sets or with what their internal IT stack coming back to the IT question. Like how do I leverage my. EDW or my data lake or whatever in a way that produces. quality output and that's a hard thing to solve. So from a product perspective, I don't see, I see a lot of companies who are promising these things or are working on these things, but I haven't seen something that is so compelling where I would say we have to do this right now. It's coming. I would say to your question around timing, You know, velocity is really hard to, to gauge for me right now because things are moving so fast. So to talk about two years off or five years off, that that's a long time in today's, in today's world. Yeah. What was it? ChatGPT celebrated their second birthday like a week before we recorded this. It's incredible how fast it's moving. And so I wouldn't be surprised if you see even within a year, some of these things starting to come to market. I think it's going to be, where is the priority? Where is the spend? Where's the money? Let's be honest. Where is the money in terms of the cost takeout, the automation? And then you're going to start to see the entirety of the value chain kind of affected, right? So I think Mark is focused on customer facing, know, like, and yes, his vision is everything, but you know, if you look at the chat bots and you look at like, okay, this is really a customer facing and this is kind of where the money is. To get to the finance and the office of the CFO, I think we're going to take probably a little bit more time. I could be wrong on that, but it's probably going to take a little bit more time for companies to really move in, out of maybe beta where they're at right now into like full production and really have a quality product. But again, think it's really, for me, it's at least, it's hard to gauge the speed at which that happens. It's coming for sure and I'm ready for it. It's exciting. But it's, I don't think it's there yet. I don't think it's. yet. This episode of asking good questions is brought to you by the great folks at Caprus AI. As someone who spent over 25 years helping improve the office of the CFO, I am genuinely excited about what Caprus is doing. They're bringing the power of AI to finance and accounting teams in a way that actually makes sense, helping unlock insights buried in data and make better business decisions even faster. If you're an FPNA or accounting and you want to see how AI can transform your workflow, check out Caprus AI. Trust me, your future self will thank you. Yeah, I'm seeing the same thing you're saying. There's a lot of software vendors that are talking about this new feature they will be adding. And they have a couple that are kind of in their infancy, but you know, if you came to me today and said, yeah, I really want to automate these five functions. Can I do it with AI? The answer is yes, but you're going to be custom developing it. and how long it takes. enterprise software companies, it's kind of weird to say this. What I was about to say was enterprise software companies have to move slowly because you don't want to break the massive install base. Yet I was literally just mentioning OpenAI, which arguably is an enterprise size software company. The deal is they can keep changing that model and they don't have a massive base that's going to yell at them if the next version gets a little more sassy. Wow, that wasn't meant to be a SAAs joke. They can tweak the interface and do whatever. They're not going to break your system of record to actually do it. Are there, are there concerns? So like, let's say, you you decided today, I'm going to automate like these five functions with AI. What are the things that, that would hold you back? Is it, well, we'll have to make sure humans are still involved in the way of human judgment, or is it nothing would hold me back? I want fingers off of those keyboards as fast as possible. Yeah, I think the roles again, I don't look at this as look, I'm going to be able to take 50 people out. You know, and there's a lot of concern written about this on a day to day basis, right? But for me personally, I think my goal has always been to move to everyone in my team to a more strategic value proposition for the company, right? And I think this is yet another tool. To do that, I don't so I don't. So, yes, I think as fast as we can get there, I'm willing to go there, but I also think their needs there, at least in the short term. Or short to medium term, there has to be quality checks. Right? I don't think. Deloitte or any of the big four in its infancy are going to be okay with you just saying, look, my entire control environment and all my processes are run through Anthropic or OpenAI or whoever it is. It's probably close, right? Maybe it's not hallucinating. I don't, you know, there's a lot of complexity that, you know, AI will learn, but, you know, everything changes so frequently too. And now I'm talking about things like 606 and, know, some of the accounting standards and some of the requirements. Everyone thinks that accounting is the most black and white transactional function in a company. And I actually think it's the most artistic, right? There's so much for interpretation and at least so I don't know how fast the models can get there to where you can interpret and translate in a way that makes sense because you know, especially when you're a scaling company or you're kind of down market and you're doing creative custom deals constantly, you're creating add-on products, you're constantly developing. things like you know, again, revenue recognition and things like how you're accounting for certain things on the balance sheet, it becomes a little bit trickier than just throwing a chatbot at it. I, again, I do think it's coming. I think that it becomes more quality control and how do you start to manage the bots? How do you make sure that the models that you're using, whatever those might be with whatever company you might use, in your benefit or are doing the things that you needed to do because every company is different. Every business model is different. And it goes beyond just accounting, I should say, too. I am a big believer that you have to run the company with a set of disclosed KPIs, right? And inside of the company, are running, hopefully through finance, you should be, running the KPIs that actually drive the company that way as well. So it goes beyond just accounting and making sure that the boxes are checked and making sure that everything is footing at the end of the day. It's really how does that model add value at the end of the day? How does it drive insight into your forecast? How does it drive insight into the future of the business? And once we get to that point, then I think now we're talking, now we're cooking, right? So, but I just don't think it's quite there yet. I like the way you put it. There are a lot of people that are, I almost want to say AI pessimists who just view this as something that takes away jobs. I like your point. It's a value creator, right? It gets us doing those things that add far more value. Like I don't think anybody at the end of their life went, God, I reconcile the daylights out of those accounts. But if you can look back and say, I made an impact on my company, right? We went a different direction. I got people to take a different physical action. Like there's something to be said for that. And so on a scale of like 1 to 10, where 1 is maybe the AI figures out how to write Excel functions and 10 is, I don't know, Skynet. How worried should we be that AI is going to take over the finance function? Look, I think you can go back in history and you can point to probably three or four major technology changes that everyone had similar concerns, maybe not at this level. I think what we've typically found is that technology is fantastic and it's great. tool and we want to use it as much as possible, but you always have to have kind of human instinct. You always have to have human ability to intervene. You always have to be able to monitor and make sense of what's being produced by technology. I would say, you know, look, we were talking about the evolution of the CFO. think one of the things now is moved beyond kind of even strategy. It's holistic, holistically, how are we creating value at the end of the day? The AI is going to be a piece of that, right? So to answer your question directly, don't think, will it, will it displace some of the transactional work? For sure. I think that's on the short-term horizon. Will it displace some of the you know, less transactional, more kind of like I was mentioning, KPI, like how you drive the company, how you make decisions in the company. Yes, I believe it will. And that's kind of more medium term, long term. But in terms of the value of the human perspective, and is this right or is this, you know, there's there always has to be and you know this very well. There always has to be collaboration and consensus and dialogue. you know, just because a model says, even if it's anchored to a lot of history and a lot of intelligence and a lot there, there's more to it. mean, business is a people thing, right? It always, it revolves around people. You know, this is how I manage teams. This is how I approach just life in general. And I don't think that's ever going away. So I, you know, I would say, you know, I'll hedge my bets and I'll call it a five, you know, but I don't, I don't think that's displacing a finance function. I think it's actually creating more value at the end of the day. So let's talk briefly and then we'll hit rapid fire. We'll quick hit to close this out, but there are people listening that are worried because they view their job as being those collection of tasks, right? They can't even begin to think of like what might it mean to be a strategic thinker? What might it mean to communicate and like drive action? What skills would you as a CFO look for now? that might have been optional five years ago, just preparing for that future. Like what is your ideal candidate knowing you're not building for today, but you're building for a few years out? Yeah, it's a great question. Well, for finance in particular, that goes for the office of the CFO. So whether you're talking about, know, corp dev, you're talking about procurement, you're talking about, you have to have those core skills. But I think more and more, you know, if you're doing a transactional type of job, right, my first piece of advice would be embrace AI, like, you know, be part of a solution and stop. think fear is an emotion that we've all we all deal with, but it's it's useless at the end of the day, right? Things are going to move on whether you're fearful or not. So cross the bridge and see what happens. Right. I think that the more. You embrace it the more you're part of a solution that's adding value at the end of the day, the more that you're delivering on, not a blocker, that you're actually contributing to capitalizing on the technology that's available in the market today. Nobody's going to get rid of you, right? I mean, that's the best advice I can actually give. But yes, it definitely is. The talent is that I look for now is definitely different than it was 10 years ago, right? You know, I think, you know, programming skills are really important. think, you know, whereas, you know, your base, your like FPNA is a great example, right? Being able to build out like the FPNA model and do work in Excel and that's all important, but. I'm more interested in, you have the skill set to really understand what the numbers are saying? So do you understand business? Do you understand economics? Do you understand the difference between vertical SAS and horizontal SAS? These are the types of skills that you can backfill with people who can run spreadsheets or eventually technology, automation, AI. That's coming. But I think the more advanced technologies are going to require a skillset that a lot of companies don't have right now. They have a more traditional stack of people that are doing the work. it's a tough combination right now, right? To find somebody who knows Python or knows R, knows some of the now open, how do you program in AI? and has the business skills and the command of whatever business model you're running. So it's a little bit of a tough market for a combination of both, but that's certainly what I'm looking for. Awesome. Let's do a few quick hits. Yeah, sure. First thing that pops into your head, most overrated finance metric. Most overrated finance metric. I think it comes back to the life cycle of the company. I think in a short term, or a short term, in a smaller company, net income, I think we really have to be careful with net income and the bottom line when you're trying to scale up. I also think, I wouldn't say overrated. But you have to be really careful with some metrics like CAC and some of the LTV metrics because it really is dependent on your business model and who your customer base is. so we all want to drive towards it. have numbers in my head where I'm like, this is terrible because of my history, right? But when you start to dig in, it becomes actually this is pretty good for this market segment. And so I think you really have to be intelligent with how you lay out your goals versus industry benchmark. And I just threw out a couple of metrics, but I think it goes for the entire stack of SAS metrics. think it goes, you just have to be cautious on overstating kind of your goals. And yes, you can make progress over time for sure, and that should be your goal ultimately. But I do think I hear people kind of say, well, this is terrible for a SaaS company. Guess what? There's like a hundred different types of SaaS companies in a thousand different markets, and they're all different. By the way, thank you for saying that income. While it's important to be making money, it is the most lagging indicator in an entire organization. is the final thing that ever occurs. So thank you for bringing it up. Let's talk about most underappreciated yet critically important team member role in the office of the CFO. don't know about underrated, but I think that for me, I've had really, really, really talented IR folks. if you're doing just IR, then I think it is what it is. But I've had IR folks, I won't name names, but she knows who she is. listening. are literally who are literally connecting the dots between what finance is saying, what accounting is saying and what the business is saying and is is literally my right hand in how to tell that story, to tell that connected story, not just externally to investors and to the board or whatever, but internally to to the company. And so I think, you know, a lot of people rely on FP and A or they rely on you know, whatever finance and strategy or there's a lot of different names for kind of the same role these days. But I think that don't underestimate the IR capability, right? They touch and they get busy with a lot of different things, but they also have a very unique perspective that really is almost CFO like where they're seeing the entirety of the company in order to do. the remit of their job. And so to me, that one is the one that know, people are kind of treated as like a blocking and tackling type of role and it's critically important. I don't want to undersell it, but I think it can be a lot more than just, you know, the scope of a traditional IR. Other than Zenody, of course, what's your favorite AI solution of choice right now? You said other than Zenody? Yeah, yeah. By the way, Zenody, we're in a market that is really a fascinating market with Salon Med Spa. But I know nothing about it. I mean, I've been cutting my own hair for 25 years. So this is something where I have to figure out what the hell is going on with the market. think. ChatGPT, Anthropic, Claude, like if you wanna go chat with someone. I personally. think Anthropic is really my, it's got a, for how fast they've grown and for what the capability that I see, I think Anthropic is where I would put my money. I just think that I've tested them all and I've seen what they're capable of. I think they're Claude product and, and, know, I just think they're out in front. I just think they're out in front. And I just, I also will say there's a lot going on that appears to me to be a distraction with companies like open AI. I think there's, you know, the, the, the overall goal and remit is, has changed over the last couple of years, a year, guess. It feels like five years. the role of governance around AI, they're involved in a lot of things that I think might be a distraction, where I think Anthropics just got their head down doing their thing. And so that's my tool of choice. I am I'm very open to be proven otherwise wrong, but I think that would be my immediate answer. I did spend a little bit of time today researching Zenoti looking at the application. And I just think the concept of bringing AI to like spa and wellness management is really amazing. It proves AI can solve any problem if you figure out what problem you want to solve. And they definitely seem to know exactly how to harness that. So I don't know that you needed my affirmation, but well done on joining their organization. for other aspiring CFOs out there in the world. Best advice in five words or less. There's a lot of sub bullets to this, but I'll just reiterate, it's all about people. It really is. I've been around many, many different cultures, many different environments, many different geos. And at the end of the day, I think you got to get the skill set right for sure. Being a CFO, you've got to do the things that we've talked about here. But at the end of the day, you hire the right people, you take care of your people in the right way. It pays massive dividends down the road. So I'll leave it there. There's again, a novella. on that underneath that on what I mean, but I think that's the key message. I want to come back and talk to you again in about a year and we'll see how much of this we got right about the future. I will definitely let you elaborate on your answer. It reminds me of one of the greatest comedy movies of all time, Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School. At one point the professor says, I only have one question for you in 17 parts. Sean, it has been enlightening. It has been fun to hear your insights about the evolving world of finance. Before we wrap up, do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share with our listeners? No, I mean, I think you've hit on a lot of really good topics. I think the world's changing on a day-to-day basis, so we could do this probably next week and I might have an addendum to some of my answers. I don't know, but it's a pleasure talking to you again for sure. You've been kind of at the... at the cusp of the technology space for a long time. And I really appreciate you having me on. Well, thank you again, Sean. You will may very well end up being my most frequent guest on this as we talk yearly, quarterly, weekly. But thank you for joining us on asking good questions. And thanks to our sponsor, Caprus AI, for supporting this episode. And to our listeners, we appreciate you tuning in. Until next time, keep asking those good questions.