How Finance Teams Should Be Using AI Right Now, with Chad Gold, CFO of Fullstory

We are live in Atlanta and this is a diary of a CFO podcast. I'm your host Wassia Kamon and I've called thIS city home for over two decades. More than two trillion in payments flow through Atlanta every year. Yet, most of the business conversation is still centered on places like New York and San Francisco. This is a limited series where I'm sitting down in person with CFOs and senior finance leaders right here in Atlanta. How they build their careers, what's working, what's different about doing it here so we can get a better understanding of the humans behind the big titles. I'm so happy today I have with me Chad Gold. Chad is a CFO of Full Story and was named the 2022 CFO of the Year by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. A veteran finance leader with over 20 years of experience, he previously served as CFO at Sales Loft, where he drove 10x growth in enterprise value to over $2 .3 billion. And he was the first CFO at G2. With a background on SAP Ariba, the Home Depot, and Ernst & Young, Chad combines big systems expertise with high growth startup agility. It currently leads Full Story's global strategy, focusing on AI and behavioral data, and how we can turn operational efficiency into measurable business outcome. So glad to have you here, Chad. Thank you for having me. Oh, yeah. I'm so glad we finally getting to do this in person. That's right. I told you, right? My very first podcast in person, which I think I like this better. Oh, sweet. I won't turn red. So first, wanted to hear what brought you to Atlanta. So I actually grew up in Florida, in Gainesville, Florida, and graduated from the University of Florida, go Gators, which is not a welcome thing in Atlanta, but hey. And then, you know, when you graduate from Florida, I majored in finance, and the reality was there's only a few cities you're gonna go to. You're gonna either stay in Florida and go to Tampa, Orlando, Miami, but honestly, the best place to go is Atlanta. And for me, it was getting a job at Ernst & Young that brought me up here over 20 years ago. And what excited me about the opportunity was with Ernst & Young, it was about working in a job in corporate finance. So it wasn't on the accounting side. And I knew that it was going to help me build a great foundation for my career. And then I met my wife up here. I've had both of my children here. And this is the longest I've lived any place. So it definitely is my home now. Oh, wow. I mean. I'm planning a trip to Florida. So I'm always curious to hear when you have to leave like the ocean and coming back to the humidity of Georgia. What was that transition like? Well, I grew up in Gainesville, Florida, which if you look on the map is north central Florida. Yeah. So the humidity is worse there than it is here. Yeah. I mean, I was an hour and a half from the ocean. I do miss it, but we go to the beach. I think Atlanta, the benefits of Atlanta far outweigh the fact that the beach isn't close by. Tell me more. Like, what's your favorite thing to do here? You know, the fall and the spring in Atlanta are my favorite, you know, hiking, being outside, just absolutely incredible. I mean, there's so many great places to go. The other thing I've seen over the last 20 plus years, the food scene, right, has gotten so good. And I think, you know, you were mentioning you live in Johns Creek, right? I live in Sandy Springs. Even in the local cities, I think the food scene has really picked up. And so it's a fun place. I know we're both talking about raising families. It's a great place to raise a family, too. Oh, yeah. What about um career wise like what do you think has helped you because it looked like you build most of your career Here like right after college. Yeah, I think it's a combination of You know, I I started at u ursonian like you said now call it ey Love the job. It was awesome because I built You know really that foundational how to build financial models You know how to dig into the numbers in the business, but I quickly found that after a couple years Wasn't actually learning about the operations of the business and it was luck that I got recruited to go to Home Depot And when I got recruited originally it was recruited for what they called their audit leadership program which was it was built just like GE's corporate audit staff, okay and even more lucky for me was that Carol Tomei was the CFO at Home Depot and She's now the CEO at UPS. And so I had a front -row seat to see what an operational CFO really looked like. And Home Depot gave me exposure to M &A, international business, financial planning and analysis. So I got to really round out my career over eight years. And then it's been a combination of, I think, you know, where I've worked, but also I have this belief in this this term I use called lines, not dots. You know, you meet people across your career and if you only talk to them when you need something. That's what the dot means. It's like, oh, it's very transactional in nature. And I have this belief that relationships that you build over time is what actually shapes your career. For me, there was a guy that I worked with at Ernst & Young out of college that eventually recruited me to Ariba 10 years later. Wow. And we had maintained a relationship that whole time. He had moved to California. He'd moved back to Atlanta. There are people now that I work with at Full Story that I worked with at Ariba and then also that I've recruited that I work with at sales loft and so those relationships that lines not dots principle has helped to shape I think the progression through Atlanta I love that I'm definitely gonna use that because So much of how you move at some point of your career is based on relationships and not just your skills That's right I totally agree and and if I if I look it really wasn't until I went to sales loft Where I started to recruit people that had worked with me at other places and now I've done it I did it at G2. I've now done it at Full Story. And it's just awesome because, you know, look, there's a reality which is you spend 80 % of your time at work if you don't work with people that you enjoy and that you love and care about. It's not as fun as it can be. No, it's actually draining. That's right. It makes such a difference, because the work will be the work, but the people you work with, it can drain you. 100%. I'm curious to hear, because you worked at the Home Depot, EY, what people will see as very stable large companies, and then you shifted to startups. What was that transition like? Were you scared in the process? No, you know, it was interesting. I think first of all, I was lucky that I did that early in my career. And so that built that foundation of strong process, solid foundation and understanding data and how numbers work and how to work with a business. And I think for me, what drove me down to startup, it was two things. One is my wife will say that. You know, being a CFO in a high growth startup company is probably the riskiest thing a finance person would do. And so it does give me a chance to dabble in that that kind of risk reward. But I think more importantly, the thing that I didn't love about the bigger companies was decision velocity. I found when I wanted to change something that it could be stifling. It could take me quarters or even years sometimes to change what I would argue were very simple things. And so when I moved into the sales lofts of the world, the G2s, the full stories, part of it was betting on myself. I said, I would rather see the impact of my work and take that risk that I'm going to do the right things. And when I don't, it's OK to acknowledge you make a mistake and change it. And I think in companies like that, you can see the impact. You can look back on a week and see what you've done. You can change more in a month than you did in a quarter or a year at a big company. And for me, I find that very energizing. I would rather be in a position to the phrase I use is make the news not report it. And I think that high growth companies really put you in a position to do that. Yes, that's true. I really I will say I to move between company sizes and definitely being in a small organization, you do feel the impact of your decision. But that also comes with a lot of pressure because you probably were walking to companies and you were there was no finance and accounting function and you had to build it from the ground up. So Tell us about what could be the right playbook when you're in those situations and what helps you stay grounded. Luckily for me, at SalesLoft G2 and Full Story, there at least had been a finance function. So there was something there. You know, what I always say to any CFO that's starting a new job, you come in and the first thing, there are literally 50 different things coming at you or people say, this is broken. You need to fix this. Finance doesn't do this right. This system doesn't work. My first thing that I've done every single place I've worked is you have to spend the first month, the first 30 days just listening, really gathering facts, both from your own team, like learning, why did we do things the way we did? And then also from the business, like where are the gaps? What's going on? And the reason I say that is because if you don't gather that in the first 30 days, you will make recommendations that are misinformed. And I think that you have an opportunity to lose the room really fast. So that's the first one. Then what I always say is after you spend those 30 days come out with something that you want to accomplish in your first 60 to 90 days and generally pick three or four really big topics and Share them with your CEO share them with your leadership team. And what I say is tell them look I'm gonna do these things first It's not that the other 45 things you've sent me aren't important. But if I don't get these things, right I won't get things moving forward and It becomes this idea for your own team where they start to see progress And there's this concept called the progress principle. You start racking up small wins and the momentum, the energy, the morale in your team starts to elevate really fast. And that puts you in a position to tackle bigger things later. And so I say, look, pick those three or four big things, commit to them, make sure you get them done, and then get into everything else. Where leaders make a mistake, I think, is they try to tackle everything at once. and it's like quicksand. You move things a little bit each way, but no one's feeling the progress. But then how do you manage change fatigue, right? Because like you said, you walk in, because I rarely walk into any job, not just as a CFO, and there was nothing to change, right? And you have those 45 things. So you pick three, there's like 42 left and probably 10 more that got added. So how do you lead change in those circumstances when people kind of get tired? Yeah, I think it comes down to I mean communication becomes huge I Have a coffee cup somebody gave me because I guess I quoted this all the time or someone would bring me something and I would always say What's the context? Why is this on my plate? What what's important? Why is why are we bringing this up? And I think that also is important when you're making changes Bringing people along the journey. Here's why we're doing it. Here's the context here's why it's important to the business. And I find that if you're willing to invest in communication, people will come along for the journey. And actually acknowledging and having empathy that, hey, I know this is difficult for you to change this thing. One of the big ones when you come in as a finance leader is you're probably putting in more control than there was before. And a lot of business folks are like, well, wait a minute, I used to be able to approve anything I wanted to or spend this or. And if you give them the context on why it's important and give them some autonomy and agency to do certain things, they'll tend to partner with you and come along for the ride. OK, OK. So you've led organizations that grew very fast, like very, very fast on a short period of time, because that's really how success is in those kind of startups. What do you think typically breaks first for finance? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think people's perception is it's the billing system or your data quality or your models that break first. And I think that's all true. But at its core, I mentioned before decision velocity. You know, one of the things as you're moving really fast and growing a business is the ability to give feedback to the business fast, to put data in front of them, to make decisions, to give them advice and kind of steward the business along. And I think where finance leaders can make a mistake is you have to invest in some level of data quality and infrastructure so that you can stay ahead of the business and be able to make decisions with them. What happens is if you don't do that, you start to drown in what I would argue is maybe lower value reporting, lower value analysis, and the business stops asking for help eventually. They're like, I got to figure this thing out on my own. And so you want to stay ahead of them so that they're always coming to you and saying, before I do this, I want to make sure Chad and his team are on board and that they're calling out any gaps, anything that maybe I hadn't thought of. And I think the other thing that becomes important in a high -growth company is, in addition to decision velocity, I have this thing I look for in people, which is, it's okay to tell the business no, but it should always be a no -but. And what I mean by that is, it's okay to say no, but you need to give them another route to achieve what they want to achieve, unless, I mean, some things are just dumb and they shouldn't do it. But most of the time, there's a good idea behind it. And you want to be their partner to helping them figure it out. And so saying, no, but you can't do that. But here's what you can do. The business feels more empowered. Or sometimes you say, yes, yes, I'm OK if you do that. And I need you to do these other things. So no, but or yes, and I think helps as you are scaling a high growth business as well. And I like the idea you said about business partnering, right? Because they thinking about how can I bring finance in ahead of time and not after? an afterthought because I did a survey not too long ago and about 200 finance leaders, most of them were CFOs talking about how finance is brought in after the fact. and not like once we already made a decision, we all going it out, you know, you guys make it happen. What are some of the things that have helped you partner better with the business to the point where they say what you just said? What is your team on board with what we're about to do? I mean, I think it comes down to three things. And it's, you know, the first one is you got to build the processes so you could stay ahead of the business. Those are things like, I always say that in finance, you have to answer three questions in order. What happened? Why did it happen? So now what? And if you can't answer them, you go all the way back to the beginning and start with what happened and move through that. And that's a very foundational thing. You have that process so you can get to the, so now what? How do I guide the business? Finance, I have this... Saying which is you know finance is just the expression of everything that happens in the business and numbers And so if you build those processes you have visibility into the operations of the business You heard me talk about systems and data data quality becomes really important Often you hear the stories all the time about high -growth companies and a very simple metric might have ten different definitions Your chief revenue officer says my bookings this quarter was one number and then the CFO comes in and says no It's not it's this my team gave me this number. Well Now you're in this reconciliation back and forth, which isn't valuable at all. So agreeing on aligned definitions for metrics and getting a central way to report them becomes important. And then I think the last one is it's a talent management thing. You have to hire people that don't just want to be behind the scenes. I think you talked about the finance functions that I saw both at SalesLoft and really G2 and even Full Story to a degree. There were elements of those teams that had this hunger to be involved in the business, but in some ways had just been seen as a reporting arm. And, you know, what we really wanted to do over time was to transform that into again, making the news and really driving the business forward. And how do you bring your team along? Because that's a good point that you you sometimes inherit a team and that reputation is already there in people's mind that you I can't go to them for anything or They're only doing reporting. I don't see them already as a business partner. I should bring in early in my conversation. So when you inherit a team, how do you go about getting them to the level of efficiency you want them to be when it comes to business partnering? I think one of the first things you have to do is empower them. One of the biggest challenges is I think finance teams often don't feel like they can push back. They don't feel like they can ask for help. And so I think that's the first one as a leader coming in saying, hey, I'm here to help you. My job is to make you successful. It's amazing just even saying those words and really then, of course, proving that you're going to do that. It really changes the calculus of a lot of people. And I think a lot of folks say it's like, hey, let's let's go to some of these conversations together. Why don't you see how how I engage with the business? And, you know, more times than not, they're able to come along, and sometimes they're not, and they ultimately decide that maybe that phase of the company, because there's people that are good for certain phases, they may decide that's not the right phase for them. And then also, at least at SalesLoft, G2, and now Full Story, I've been lucky enough to bring in leaders who I've worked with before, who have the same mindset that I do, and so they help me to drive that across the team. And back to the relationships again and how you are able to bring people along. So I'm curious though, on the personal side, what's difficult about leading in those periods of change, right? Because you come in, there's not necessarily everything you wanted. Things are not how you would want them to be. And you have to be patient with yourself and you have to work and wear all these hats that now CFOs have to wear. So how do you... Keep up with that. I mean, I think it's a couple things. One is I tell people all the time when I'm mentoring other CFOs, you have to stay calm. There's this view that if the CFO is nervous or frazzled, that everybody's frazzled, right? It's just a part of the job. And so I think that's the first one is like being calm, being patient, as you say, but more importantly, that incremental progress that I told you about. I do think it's important for you to be patient, but to get to start. Stacking up small wins and you know This is more of I say this all the time that I've made enough mistakes across my career that I know how to do Maybe do things the right way now the first time and so they're just areas that you generally see that are easier to tackle when you come in and When your team your team sees that you can make a small change that might be a change like a definition of metrics where you just grab the business and align on something and you all get to the same place. And now you've eliminated all of the back and forth. Or it's an analysis where there's a big decision like what segment should we be in? Who is our ideal customer profile? And you raise your hand and say, my team's gonna lead this analysis and you have your team do it. And they start to see it and they start to get excited. And so part of your job is being a bit of a cheerleader and building up the morale of your team. And then I do think you made a comment, which is wearing all these hats. Look, the CFO role generally now isn't just owning finance. So at at Full Story, I own finance. I have our legal and corporate development team. I have our enterprise systems and data team. And I love that because I've got awesome leaders underneath me. And I actually see a lot of power in having all those functions work together because they're all working. on very similar things and they can multiply each other's work. But as a CFO, you have to be okay that, you know what, I'm not the domain expert in legal. I'm not the domain expert. I'm definitely not the domain expert in IT and systems. But if I get the right leaders and we partner together and I share a vision and then I support them along the way, it's pretty powerful. It is. And because at ACE, I have HR like... They want to give me other stuff, and I'm like, no English. Don't even try. So what's your go -to approach to hire those leaders that are not in your primary function? Because you have to... coach, for example, the person in IT, or go and hire somebody to help you with legal. And that was not, for example, your expertise. I realize a lot of people don't feel comfortable necessarily with that or don't know how to go about it. Just like you have CFOs that come from an FPNA background and now they have to lead a controller who comes from a very technical accounting background. Like what are your go -to moves when you come to that? What are you looking for in that candidate? How do you coach and manage them once they're on board? You have to be intellectually honest that you don't know all that. Like I'm not an accountant by nature. So I have to have, I've got an awesome controller at Full Story. I've been lucky to have really strong controllers at all of my companies. Either I've hired them or they've been there. And I think that applies to all the functions. Even just acknowledging first, hey, I'm not the expert here, but here's what I want to, here's my vision and bringing them along the journey back to the context. It's pretty powerful. And I think that, you know, if you Hiring in those functions. It's not about getting into the really super technical details You and I know enough to be dangerous in all of the different areas just to know what's important But it's about finding people. I think all of those functions can have an element of this make the news not report it Yeah, so you want to find leaders that feel empowered that That don't just let things happen to them. They want to come in and they want to drive the business and they want a partner And they also view the business as their customer And I think if you get like -minded people, not necessarily that all have the same personality, you don't have to have that, but I think people that at least view their functions as ways to supercharge the business, you can move things forward. Yeah. And I like what you said here is that mindset, right? Because you can only train people on technical skills so much. Right. And now you are working at Full Story. You guys are at the forefront of AI. Curious to hear what do you think are some trends that finance and accounting professionals should think about, you know, as we approach our career? Because, you know, like you said, you're hiring your leaders not based on do you know how to code, right? Because that's low level. At your level, you're looking for do you have the vision? Do you have the drive? Yeah. What about finance and accounting professionals in general? And what AI is bringing to the scene? So I think the CFO role is evolving because of that. And if you really think about it, as the CFO, you're one of the primary drivers of AI in the company. And I think there's two ways you're doing that, right? One is you are responsible for creating the environment, the data infrastructure, the governance, making sure that you're putting the right tools in place so that people can start using AI. I think that's one of the things. And I think that's where a lot of things fail. The second one which becomes important is and where a lot of AI fails is talent You want to bring in people either that have a vision or have worked with some of these tools before and I think there's an element of In all of our functions whether that's finance or legal or HR or wherever where if you want to bring in people that Can really supercharge your your function your company you might have to find people that are really good with data and systems more of an engineering mindset. And maybe they don't know the function as well, and you have to teach it. And that's where I think a lot of people are making a mistake now. They're looking for the finance AI transformation person. I mean, that would be great. There just aren't that many of them yet. This is so new. And so I think the CFO's job is to... Try to bring in the talent both of who has you have to have some functional expertise, of course But marrying that up with the people that understand the tools and systems and together they can teach each other And that becomes I think part of the flywheel But I think you know a lot of people make the mistake now of just assuming well if I just buy an AI system it's gonna work and You know if you don't have the data if you don't have the the environment. It's really hard to get it off the ground Yeah, but I what you said about how the the CFO should be leading AI. For most people, they think the CTO, somebody in technology, somebody else is responsible for AI. What would you say needs to shift in that approach? How should CFOs, how should leadership team view how to bring AI as a group project into an organization? Well, I think your CTO comment, if you really think about it, that's for what you're bringing to market for your customers. Look, at the end of the day, that's the most important thing. Are you positioning your company to be critical infrastructure for AI in the future? And that's really what we're focused on at Full Story. And so our chief product and technology officer is laser focused on how we continue to unlock behavioral data for AI for our customers, full stop. Internal operations, when it comes to how you apply AI to drive efficiency, decision velocity in a company. That's squarely in the CFO office. Generally, more times than not, the CFO is owning IT, at least in smaller companies. So you already have the functions. But even in bigger companies, you're in this unique seat where you're seeing every function of the business. And so it's your job to say, well, team, how are we applying AI here? What are we doing? And don't just do what you're doing today with an AI tool next to you. How are you rethinking how you work? What do you need to rethink how you work? And I think the CFO is in a unique position to ask those questions And so I view that as part of the responsibility for sure and I think that's part of our mandate pretty much forever going forward Yeah, it's just that thing that you know, whatever doesn't really belong anywhere ends up on the CFO lap What is it the phrase is like if if no one owns it finance owns it, right? It's just that's the reality But I think with AI I think there are a lot of people that want to raise their hand, but they don't know where to start The CFO can and you can invite yourself to any party in the company Yes, and if you've now earned the right if you've done the work to say hey I want to be involved in the operations of the business And you've really shown that you can people will bring you in and I'll say hey, you know and and I think the other thing I would say One of the things I love and appreciate about the CFO network is we're really good at talking to each other. Mm -hmm. And so I talked to I've got a network of a bunch of CFOs that I can bounce ideas off of. And so when I'm having those business conversations in engineering, yeah, I don't know engineering, of course I don't code, but I have talked to 10 CFOs who are all thinking about how do I help enable engineering to leverage AI? And I think that's part of your role is to help find that network effect of, look, we all are learning at the same time, the more we can knowledge share, the faster we can move. Yes, and I like your idea of having that network of CFOs. That really helped me. I remember when I was VP of Finance and Accounting, I started working with an executive coach and she was asking me about my goal. I said, oh, I want to become a CFO one day. And she said, how many CFO friends do you have? And I was like, none. But it does make a difference in how we stretch your thinking and when you in those moments, how you able to bounce off ideas and get that feedback. So what prompted you to actually be more intentional about having CFO friends? I think some of it some of its luck, honestly. So if I go back to Ariba and I look at the team I worked on there, there's like eight of us who are all CFOs of software companies now. And so just the fact that we and we were all on the same finance team at one point. And so we've all stayed in touch over the years. I've also been lucky enough to, if I look at my team at SalesLoft, three of my four direct reports are now CFOs of other companies. And I don't think it has anything to do with me, but it just has to do with the environment that we created there that they then could grow into that next role. And so I think it's luck, but then it's also being intentional about staying in touch. We all get busy. I have, I try to do at least two or three of those a week where I have a conversation. It doesn't have to be a scheduled meeting, but it's a phone call when I'm in the car. It's a meetup for dinner or drinks or something where we can just talk about business problems. We could talk about life and that's important too. These are friends. But also you get a chance to really talk about what are you seeing about a certain like one of the big topics right now? I think that's everybody is trying to figure out is There is this ongoing move from subscription pricing to consumption. Yes. I mean, it's every other LinkedIn post is about this There are very few finance leaders that truly understand how to do it And so the more you can talk to CFOs who are dealing with that right now the more you can get ideas And the best ones, at least the ones I'm lucky, the ones that I get to talk to often are willing to say, hey, here's something I messed up. Here's something I would recommend not doing. That's just as powerful as here's what you should do. Yes. Oh, gosh. Yes. And then I would say, you have to be willing to also commit your own time. So you're going to get a lot of people that reach out to you and want to pick your brain. You have to be open to that as well. And it can't just be a one way street. Yeah, I like I like what you just said about you see it in your feeding on LinkedIn But it doesn't mean that it comes from people who are actually doing it, right? Because that's the thing with AI too I mean anybody can be an expert in something and that's why I value like this the kind of conversation we having so curious to hear from what you learned already about moving from that Subscription business with consumption because to me is like scary. Yeah, because it's like I with a subscription I can control My cost because I know that every month if I do xyz or or have this of this option My cost will be x when you move to consumption is different. So curious to hear what you you heard on that topic You know, it's interesting. First of all, no one's quite figured it out yet the companies that are on the cutting edge the Anthropics the open ai's and all these companies that are working around them that are true consumption businesses They're moving so fast that they too are trying to figure it out But there's an underlying motion that has to be created with that. And it's this idea that most of these companies start as PLG, so product -led growth. You can't send salespeople, it's very hard to send salespeople to go sell a consumption product off the bat. But having a setup where customers can start using it and it's very low friction, it may be for free or maybe for a very low cost, you have to have that motion where you can get the customers hooked. And you start to see the usage go up and up and up. and there needs to be a play that you run and there's no tried and true method but I think companies have proven this works where at some point as their consumption is going up you can introduce a salesperson that can say hey why don't you commit to a certain level and I can save you money on the cost and so you start to see that there is a reality which is even though they're consumption businesses underlying the business is still a substantial portion of committed revenue and committed revenue and subscription revenue are the same thing true and so But it's that fear that people say, well, it's all going to be variable and it's going to be all over the place. And like, there is some of that for sure. But it's understanding that life cycle from initial sale, low friction, maybe probably low value upfront, but then having the monitoring and the mechanisms on the back end to say, hey, these are good customers who are really using our product and are growing with us fast. These would be people who would be primed for a commitment. You know if you look at some of the biggest companies like that that was the model that snowflake Employed and it works. Yeah, I mean we all I'm hooked on like three or four tools Yeah, waiting to see what changes as it moves to a consumption model But then internally like when you think about the resources your team may be using when you bring on a AI empowered tool like how do you measure success? It's a great question and I don't I can't say I have the best answer for you right now. I think it depends on what it is. If you look at AI today, there's really a continuum. On one end, there are purpose -built solutions that are already built in the market. Like we just bought an AI clothes tool so we can agenify clothes. I have this mandate from my team. They've been amazing. They've moved our clothes process down by 50 % in a year. And I asked them to do another stock after the show And I've asked them to do another 50 % this year Wow, you know and you're starting to get down to just a handful of days And they're embracing it And so they went and found an AI closed tool that could help them to do that That's purpose -built and and you're not gonna get a competitive advantage by building that on your own Yes There are a lot of tools like that where you should be looking at what are what are good AI tools that make sense? To plug into the business And then there are the things that are more internal to your company, how you democratize data, how you implement your customers, how you research and go to market. A lot of those tools you have to build. And the beauty is with tools like Anthropic and OpenAI, everybody can be builders now. Back to you have to create the environment for that to be safe, I think is important. And so I think your job as a CFO is to challenge the team on when does it make sense to buy something? When is it good to build it? And there's not a great answer right now in each, but you can start to say, OK, well, for each thing that I'm investing in, what outcome do I want? If it's processing of transactions, zero touch, right? How many of my transactions are not being touched? You can measure that. If it's reporting, you almost have to set a baseline. Hey, team, let's try to figure out how much time we're spending on X task. And then once we can try to measure it as best we can, it's not a science project, but just trying to come up with something. You then can say, OK, well, now that we have a baseline of measurement, what do we think can happen when we put an AI? And you start to measure against that baseline. I think the real problem is a lot of times people don't set the baseline first, so they don't know. And I do think it's your job as a CFO to challenge. your team, the business, to say, hey, I'm okay. I want to invest in AI tools and I want to free up money to do that. But if you're not careful, you now have just another cost without people signing up for incremental benefits. Yes. And so your job is to constantly push on, okay, well, what's the return on that? And it's probably also, they're probably not going to use it, right? Because if they're detached from it, it's like, eh. True, for sure. And then the other challenge is that, you know, some people today are saying, well, I'm going to measure what's called token usage. So with the big LLMs like Anthropic, you can see how much people are spending using the tool. Well, just because somebody spent $1 ,000 in tokens this much this month, is that a good thing? I mean, they're using it. That's great. So it's greater than zero, thumbs up. But what do they use that $1 ,000 for? And so I think, again, you've just got to be having ongoing conversations and measurements say, OK, well, we know who's using the tools. What are they using it for? And then what are we getting as a business? And it doesn't have to be perfect because right now the world is changing so fast. If you try to measure too much, you slow down the business too. And so there's a tension that you've got to manage. Yeah. And I'm curious to hear before you give me more tips on that about your team and how they were able to use AI to cut down clothes by 50%. Like what are some of the things they did or systems or tools they used? And so I would even argue the first 50%. was them just rethinking processes. And using AI, and I'll give you some examples of what I would call like early wins on AI, that was number one. The tool that I mentioned to you, we just bought. And so that's the next 50%. But things that they've done that I just find very powerful, and it's more about freeing up time to move faster. So one example is we built this tool called, we call it the SEC agent. And so you think about when you own revenue accounting in a software company, Everybody's bringing deals to you and saying, you know, is there a revenue impact of this? Is this okay? Is it not? Well, the accounting pronouncements are hundreds of pages long, right? And it's painful. It is painful. So what our team did, and again, this is back to getting the opportunity to own functions that can work together, our enterprise system and data team built them an agent called SEC agent, where we uploaded all of the accounting guidance, all of this detail and train this agent. So now we can just upload a contract and say, hey, what are the implications of this? And you're talking about hours of work from each contract now just being removed immediately. That's one example. The other one, which is one that's brand new is as a CFO, one of the things I've always asked for in the 10 plus years I've been standalone CFO is I want daily cash reporting. And people would say, gosh, that feels like overkill, but I always say, if you can't get anything right, get cash right. Yes, please pay me, pay people, pay vendors. You see inflows, outflows. And when I first came on board at Full Story, the team was like, oh, that's going to take us some time. And they built it. And it was great. And it took somebody maybe an hour a day to build or something. My controller, who is very AI forward, went and built an agent on his own. Back to everybody can be builders. that we can just download the data from the bank, send it through Claude, and we have enterprise Claude, so safe data, again, back to creating an environment where you're okay to share it. Claude automatically updates a report and sends a Slack message to a group of us with the daily cash update. You've now taken an hour to two hours of work a day and turned it into like five minutes. And that's just an example of ways you can leverage AI in your day to day to free up your time to do other things. And part of it is you must have to free up your time to then think about what you're going to do next because the technology is moving so fast. Yes. Thank you so much for sharing this great example and how you said is rethinking work, right? Because I feel like sometimes Our teams, ourselves, could be so much in the weed, we don't have time to rethink. So we go, go, go, go, go. But there is never that time to truly pause and even say, yes, that's the way it's always been done. Now what? Like, how do you get people to pause? Because I know we do, like, leadership retreat, all that stuff. But how do we make sure that we are able to have teams that take time to just think? There's no perfect answer. I think some of it is is you have to invest in a base level of training And so the beauty is with a lot of these tools. There's online training they can take You also have to create an environment where knowledge sharing is embraced So, you know, we've got a slack channel across all my teams where I said to them Hey every time you have an AI win, you need to put it in the slack channel Because that just unlocks people's thinking and I think it's not that people don't Want to do it. I believe everybody has well intentions, but it's more about like they just don't know where to start and a lot of times They'll hear an example of something that somebody did like wait a minute I have this other thing that looks just like that. I can use AI for that And then I think the the the main thing you start with is it's like what are the things that you do? The the more rote manual tasks that you just know are ripe for automation And automation used to sound like stitching systems together and things like that, but that was before AI. Now it's like, hey, how do I build an agent to take a process that I do all the time and just have it do it over and over again? And do it in a way where I can audit the results because you can't just, we're in finance, right? Accuracy is paramount. How do you create an environment with AI where it can do the automation, but you have the audit trail on the back end to be able to make sure it's doing things right? That audit trail, because I feel like if you're trying to go too fast in AI and don't have that governance in place, AI can make something very bad look very good. Yeah, I think what people don't realize, and if you use a lot of these tools, AI can give you a very wrong answer with 100 % confidence. Here is the answer to your question. And I think the trust but verify still is very important. If it doesn't sound right, it probably isn't. And so you have to, you know, we always say it's like human in the loop. Even if you're having AI do something, there are ways to create audit trails, whether it's you're having AI analyze something and you say, okay, walk me step by step through your process. Create me. Now with it integrating into spreadsheets, you can say to AI, create multiple spreadsheets that walk me through the formulas of what you've calculated. Or if AI is coding things for you. which it can do. You can say to it, hey, I need you to walk me through step by step what this code is telling me and recognize I don't understand Python or SQL or whatever it is. It will do that for you. You have to ask. And I think that's where you have to be willing to take that next step to say, OK, I'm not sure I understand where you got that answer from. walk me through your thought process. It'll converse with you that way. And I think that's where a lot of the work is going in right now, is that there are a lot of leaders that are sharing tips and tricks on how to create that audit trail. But you can't just ask it a question and just assume it's right. The other thing I find really important, and I think this is again back to the CFO mandate, is data quality. If you just unleash AI on source systems, like you connect AI to your CRM Salesforce instance or to slack or to something. AI won't necessarily give you back a great answer. It can be garbled. You have to create a data layer. A lot of people will refer to this as a semantic layer, but a layer that sits in between your source systems and AI, where you define business definitions. You and your chief revenue officer hopefully likely have the same definition for bookings or ARR, annual recurring revenue. Well, let's embed that definition in a layer that sits between AI and your source system. And you do that so that when everybody is using AI to ask a question, they're getting back the same answer. I think that's the thing people don't realize is that AI, the term is probabilistic, but it's not great at math. And so you have to create that safety mechanism where you can ask it questions all day long and you know it's going to go to the right source to get the right data. And I think that's where a lot of companies are learning the hard way now. It's like I have to invest in those layers of data first in order to then unlock AI for my company. Yes. And where do you think, because you mentioned that a lot, people don't know where to start. So if I was a CFO today and I want to start bringing AI in my function to make it more efficient, to reduce my month -end closed process, to improve my board reporting, where should I start? I think you start with, you have to start with the easiest tasks, honestly. What are the things that your team is spending a lot of time on today that are manual in nature, that are repetitive? Start with those things. And you're not doing it, I think there's this view that you're doing it to eliminate headcount or cut down finance jobs. One day that might be the result, that's not the goal. The goal is to free up people's time to then work on more value added things. So you have to start there. You have to ask people like, let's all go assess what we're working on today and raise our hands and say, here's where I think AI could help me. And you start. That's one place. And then I think the other place is partner, whether you own IT or you partner with your IT and data team, how are we creating that data infrastructure so that we can put information closer to the business? And, you know, back to my comment about benchmarking with other CFOs. I had a call with another CFO where I shared with him one tool we were using, which he got excited about, and he shared with me that they had created chatbots for every function of their business. You know, there was a legal chatbot, an HR chatbot, a go -to -market chatbot. And you and I immediately would say, oh my gosh, how do we know those are right? Yeah, HR, chat bots, giving people salary. Right. And of course, you have to have governance and controls around that. But that's back to working with the business and creating a day later that sits in between so that it's secure. It's got the right control over who can see what. But it's also got the same definitions across all. And you know your job most companies tend to at least be thoughtful about who can access what you can embed that into your layers of data But you have to take a step back and invest in that first before you just go create the chatbot Because then what happens is you create the chatbot Either it gives back bad information, scary, or even worse, maybe it gives back good information, but it gives it to the wrong person. Yes. And I think the mistake that a lot of CFOs make today is they start with probably the more complicated tasks. Like you see on LinkedIn, we talked about LinkedIn before. Every other post is, oh, let me tell you how I used AI to automate all my board reporting. That's great. And that should be a great goal to have. First of all, you're probably not doing that much board reporting. And second of all, that could be more complicated. And if you haven't nailed the data piece on the front end, trying to do all your board reporting is going to be pretty tough. And so I think investing in the, you know, back to what are the easiest tasks I can tackle first, and then how am I investing in that data infrastructure to make AI successful? I think if you do those two things, you can build upon that from there. Okay. I love what you're sharing now, and I'm curious to hear since you're a CFO at an AI company, like how has it changed your view of the world? Right? Because you see it so much, like AI became popular for, you know, most people when Chad GPT, you know, came out. You've seen AI prior to that. So how did it change your view of the world or how you operate now as a leader? Well, I'll tell you first how it's changed and it's exciting for Full Story. So if you look at us as a company, one of the pieces of our proprietary technology is what we call Full Capture. If you think about any web -based interaction, whether that's on your phone and a website, like an e -commerce site and a software application, we always prided ourselves on capturing the deepest digital record of that interaction. And it's done in a way which is easier than if you had to instrument and measure certain things. Well, in the human world, where human beings have to interpret all that data, they see a lot of value in it. But maybe they can't unlock all the things that we can already capture. But what we're already seeing at Full Story is because we capture so much data, AI can do so much more with that. And still, it's going to give a human being a recommendation to make things better. And we want that. AI can actually unlock a lot of the data that we've already been capturing. So we're well positioned, I think, on the outside, which I get excited about. You know, internally, how it's changed my view is, I would even say for me, a year ago, I was probably using AI as like a chatbot, just to ask questions. And I still do, right? It's a great thought partner. But what it's changed for me is now I'm like, I realized, and it really was when the anthropic announcements happened early this year, and you saw things like co -work, the ability to automate tasks. It's really unlocked my view of to say, well, why can't AI do that? And not just for my own team, for the company, back to like, we are the ones who are driving that. We should be asking every team in the company, not how are you using AI to make your thought process better or you're writing better. You hope at this point they're already doing that, but it's what are you doing to transform your business processes with AI? And I was not having that conversation a year ago and I have it every day now. Wow. And that makes such a difference, right? Because I see a lot of words saying AI CFO, AI native CFOs. But I think it's just a shift in how we think about business processes or how we do our everyday life. Do you feel like at some point it will dramatically change what we define as entry -level jobs in finance? I do. I think what I don't believe, one of the misnumbers is there's this view that all entry -level jobs are going to go away. And that's just simply not possible. I agree. Every CFO needs to be thinking about how are we creating a training ground to make sure that we're growing talent in our works. But I do think the shape changes. If you think about the typical finance org structure, it was a triangle, right? A CFO sitting at the top with middle managers and then a lot of analysts and accountants. I think the new world, it's going to be more of a diamond where you're going to have the CFO at the top and you're going to have a layer of middle managers. who are not just managing individual contributors, but they're also managing agents. And you'll still have some of the entry -level folks on the flip side. So I think what's gonna change is the people that you're looking for now that come in as entry -level need to have used AI in some way. If you hire an accountant, I still think that's important to have functional expertise, but hey, tell me how you're using AI in your job today. Because you wanna bring those people in who are gonna be willing to look at all your processes and say, hey, there's a better way to do this. And I like the idea of a diamond shape, right? Because I can definitely see how, to me with AI, I don't think entry level, like you said, are gonna go away. I think they're gonna be redefined. Right, because it's not going to be make copies because entry level when I came through after college was ordering lunches and making copies and stapling. But I think it's just going to change. But I'm also curious to hear, like, what do you think our universities probably need to start doing different now to prepare those new entry level folks? Well, I don't believe they're doing enough right now. I think about my own. oldest daughter who's in high school right now. And I still worry that the schools are treating AI like the boogeyman a little bit, like it's a way to get around doing the work. I think the universities, the high schools need to be training students on how to responsibly use AI, how to engage with it, how to exponentially improve how they think. How to get more things done. What are the practical applications in your daily life that you can use AI for? Because there's a lot of it if you really think about it. We are doing our students, high school, college, a disservice if we're not teaching them that. And my hope is it's not just taking an AI class. That's great. And you need that. But I think it's about every single discipline needs to be thinking about. Here are the applications of AI in medicine. Here are the applications of AI in finance. Here are the applications of AI in engineering. All of those things need to be taught so that when students graduate, they come out with a set of skills where it's not so scary to them anymore. I haven't done a lot of research on this, but at least from what I can see what's in front of me, I don't think we're doing enough of that yet. Yeah, I agree. I know 20 something years ago when I graduated from college, I didn't feel ready for the workforce, but then I don't feel like the university system has improved much. especially when we look at AI today. So it's always fascinating to me to understand more about what are we doing for that next generation of finance and accounting professionals. That's right. Yeah. I mean, everybody said on the job learning. And look, there's always going to be some of that. Yeah. And I think that now you go back to when you and I were in university, there was a class on Microsoft Office. Yes. And that was important. You couldn't even start your job if you didn't know how to use Microsoft Office. AI needs to be viewed the same way. You can't start your job until you know how to use AI responsibly to engage in your base level of work. It should be one of the first systems you're setting up when you start your new job. So cool. So I'm curious to hear my last question for you. When you look down on your career, what advice would you give your 20 year old self? So I think I learned a lesson the hard way. It was during my time at Home Depot that I've carried with me to this day. So I was really fortunate. Right out of school, EY got some promotions, went to Home Depot. I was in the right position and saw some promotions pretty early in my career. And then I hit a level and I stayed at that level for a while. I don't remember, four or five years, whatever it was. And I started to define my success by my titles almost. And I remember it started to then get into how I was operating as a finance leader. And I remember I was working on this really important project and I had made a mistake. This was still at Home Depot. And I remember that late that night, my boss sat me down and he drew something on the board that I still use today. He drew a set of stairs. And then he drew a line from the bottom step to the top step. And he said, you know, you are so focused on defining your success and your growth by the bottom step to the top, titles and growth. You're missing all of these incremental things you're learning at each step along the way. He's like, if you would reframe your success around all the incremental knowledge and experiences you're getting, the big steps will happen. And yeah, I mean that was, I think I was almost 10 years into my career when I learned that lesson. I wish I knew that coming out. So that is advice I give people now all day long. Focus on the incremental learning and growth that you can get. Raise your hand for those challenging opportunities. The bigger growth, the titles and all those things, like they'll happen. It can't happen at the expense of investing in those steps along the way. Wow. Very true. Well, thank you so, so much, Chad, for being on the show. I learned so much. Definitely want to chat more about your closed process because mine needs AI agents and more in prayer. Well, look, I love what you're doing for the CFO community in Atlanta and just honored to be here. Thank you. Thank you.