Why the Future of Finance Isn’t About the Ledger

Speaker A: There's this joke in the States, comes from the Pinterest Instagramification of the world about like putting a bird on it, just adding a little zhuzh. And like every booth I saw was like, put an AI on it, you know, flap AI, you know, oh, AI this, AI that. And one of the things that I think that people lack is a real understanding of how to communicate about how we're using that technology. Because you and I both know the technology isn't actually brand new.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the Need F ah

Speaker C: Word podcast where we talk finances in business. I'm your host, Colin Hewitt, founder and CEO at Float. We're so glad to be back for season three. And this season we've got some great guests that are going to bring a ton of value. We'll be diving further into how fractional CFOs add value, what financial clarity actually looks like, and what systems and apps are leading the way. New guests, sharper conversations. Let's get into it.

Speaker B: So it's great to be joined for this episode by Madelyn Reeves. Maddie, we've already been speaking for about 20 minutes. I always enjoy your perspective on the market, on where things are going. I think you've got a really unique voice and I think you're representing, you know, a really unique bunch of people as well. So, Maddie, why don't you tell us, what do you do? I know you wear lots of hats, so feel free to start off with the main ones. I. And um, we can get into some of the others as well.

Speaker A: It's funny, I think sometimes I still wonder what I want to be when I grow up. And the answer is like a little bit of everything. I have adhd, so I get a bit bored. But on a day to day basis, I identify as a founder, I identify as a creative consultant, as a business leader who works with a lot of other leaders and a lot of scaling organizations to help them, particularly with go to market strategy. Um, and go to market, for those of you who don't know, is what I call the bridge between marketing and business development. Really this essential understanding of how everything from your brand to the content you're creating to the way that you're bringing something to life in the market is going to really land and drive results. I did this work in many different forms and fashions over the years in industry. In another lifetime, I was a global business development leader for some large and leading tech companies, many of which, you know, and put in my bio, you know, on this episode. And the thing that was so interesting about My earlier career is I was always joining teams that were a net new product or a net new market for that company. And so I was oftentimes a one woman band where I was like cool. I am the head of brand marketing, the sales team. Oh, we've got to build a support arc, we've got to figure out how to tour around the country and get our name out there. And I just learned how to do things in a really like scrappy startup sort of way. And that built this like muscle of strategy inside of me that I love bringing to organizations. Whether it's small solo founder operations that are looking to grow and have a really big vision or it's really established companies that are in the millions and even now billions of dollars that look to me to work with their leadership teams on their go to market and executive strategies.

Speaker B: So how do you choose? Not many people do that. They typically tend to start small, go up market. You've actually tried to try and keep a balance where you still want to help much smaller companies, but you're still working. Is the larger work to supplement the work that you really want to do or is it just like you love the diversity of it?

Speaker A: I love the diversity of it. Uh, and I also love the ability to bring things that I'm seeing so far upstream down to smaller markets and vice versa. And I think that one of the things that actually makes me and my team so incredible at the work that we do is that we have our feet in a lot of different industries and a lot of different sizes and scales of companies because there are things that we'll learn. For example, I still coach some founders at the individual level and some of my coaching clients are for example accounting professionals. And I've done that work for many many years working directly with accounting firms because of my background in that industry. And I can give an example yesterday where I was on a call with the founder of a multiple seven figure accounting firm. I've worked with her since day one and so since she was starting the practice and she was giving me some really direct feedback around an issue they're seeing. This is so nerdy. But with job costing for multi part manufacturing companies where despite the fact that they've used every tool in the market from a automations perspective, some of that job costing she's like none of them do X. And it's really funny because she knows I disclose when I can who my clients are that I work with a couple of those companies and so I immediately get to do things like oh my gosh that's so fascinating. I know that this one company just went to market with new functionality around that. Can you give them feedback? I'll introduce you to the head of their accountants channel and let's build it. They're very apt to hear from you. And this is a use case they want to solve for. And so I see myself as a bridge builder. I think that I have all these really interesting opportunities to see sides of the coin that people are seeing because maybe they're stuck in their day to day of being a company of a certain size or being focused on one industry, but I have the ability to bring those pieces of the puzzle together. And I think it just makes me and my team much better strategists to kind of see all different sizes of companies and all different sides of the market.

Speaker B: I think being a business owner as well, you've obviously got some real lived experience there. How long have you been running is it Fear Foundry that your sort of main umbrella is so fearless?

Speaker A: Is. Is I call it my daughter company. I have two sons. And so I see the love and the effort I pour into this company as like equivalent to raising a kid. We feel like we're in our late teen years now, but the company is eight years old and there was definitely something about getting past that five year milestone that felt really significant. I know the stats as to how many companies fail and we faced a lot of challenges in some of those earlier seasons. And so there's a solidity that's been created in the last couple in both my belief in my abilities as a leader and a founder. And it was also a really interesting experience because prior to starting the company, I led a lot of companies, but I was leading companies with other people's bankrolls. Other people were sitting above me in those leadership layers. So it was a very different experience to strike out on my own and figure out could I make this thing work. And you know, especially because we're a professional services business and because of the way that I've scaled, you know, we're primarily bootstrap. That's just such a different dynamic than the industry that I was brought up as. You know, you know, there's lots of friends and folks we have in the industry who are handed a couple million dollars to get themselves off the ground. And that definitely wasn't my circumstance. And so I've definitely had to learn a lot along the way.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, being very much in the accounting world and the accounting apps world, how have you found that you've approached Finding an accountant, building a software stack. Do you have like fractional cfo? How have you pulled that all together, knowing what you know?

Speaker A: So this is interesting because I joke a lot of times the world's largest or sometimes I say the world's weirdest frolich of accountants and industry professionals. So you would think that it would have been really easy for me to find someone. And I try to tell the truth always. And the truth is that it was really, really hard to find somebody who was qualified to support ourselves as we scaled. And, and the reason was twofold. And it was really interesting because it was a continuation of a story that I was seeing when I was still in market. For those of you who don't know, for a number of years I was a global business development leader for a company that was focused on advisory and offering tools for accountants to really become advisors. But when I was taking that company to the market, particularly in North America, I saw such a big gap between the services that firms were offering and the things that scaling business really needed, which was guidance. And it was interesting to me to then be on that other side of the coin and be that small business seeking that key guidance to, and finding firms who sold me on something they called LIZ Advisory, but really were just like, here's your piano. And I was like, cool, I know how to read one. But that doesn't actually do anything for me. For you to tell me, cash is down this month. Great, what are we going to do about it? How are you going to help me with that? Or okay, great. I can see the variance between my expenses month over month. Like, are we going to have a conversation about it? And so what I found, it took me over five years to find a firm that was really delivering what I would call true accounting and advisory services. And even then the foundations that we had to build from a, uh, processes and bookkeeping perspective. And this is not to say that I didn't have the best of breed of tech. I'm a total tech. And to be honest, that almost encumbered me a lot in the early days because shiny object syndrome is real. And when you're like consulting with all these companies, they're like, we have this new tech thing. You're like, cool, let me try it out. But then you get to this moment where you're like, no, I don't need to try my third proposal tool in three years. No, I don't need like another CRM. I don't need build a zap for this. That and the other thing I Just need a proper process. And so again, I think on the other side of the five year mark, we started to get some solidity around, like these are the tools we're using and some of them are really great and some of them are quite imperfect. And I think that's the other thing that was challenging for me was knowing how much I know about, for example, general ledger software. I will go to bat and uh, full stop and say underneath the ERP layer, there is not right now in market a, uh, strong enough GL solution to do the level of project profitability that I need for my company. I still run a lot of things on spreadsheets, which surprises people given how much I know this space and how much I love tech. But there isn't a tool out there. I'm working with a couple teams hoping that we can be the guinea pig that helps build some AI based GL tools that lead to that level of granularity for us. But it doesn't exist yet. And so I've had to make do with, you know, the solution that we've chosen in for now. Another example of that too is some of the cash flow side. You know, it has been really challenging to get to a point where we find tools that are really aligned. Luckily your tool exists and luckily we have a CFO now who is implementing things like that for us. But I think there's also this challenge for us which is not only finding the right people to do it, but then also building enough trust that after those experiences with other firms where we handed them our files and they failed, they failed to keep our books into shape where they failed to really deliver the services that we were paying for. I won't lie, you get a little wounded over time and you're like, oh, do I really trust another firm to take it on? And so what we're seeing with our CFO that we work with now is that we started with just giving them the littlest bit. We gave them a cleanup project to start because our books were a mess from the previous firm that we had paid lots of money to. And then from there, once we saw that they did what they said they were going to do in terms of cleanup, then we expanded. And so what we've done over the last nine months with their team is expanded, expanded, expanded into a much more full suite of advisory services once we had the confidence that they knew what they were doing and could live up to the services that we had signed up for.

Speaker B: It makes a lot of sense. And I think I hear that A lot from people. Just thought I was going to find this in an advisory firm and then I had to move to a CFO to really build and use them strategically. So build a team that you need, um, on the app stack and all that. But it still feels like in 2025 it's still harder than it needs to be. Right. You've just been at scaling new heights,

Speaker A: I think bridging the gap as well. I've been on the road.

Speaker B: Okay. And we haven't done any US events in a while, I think since COVID So what are you seeing? Like, because I think the UK market and the Australia market, which we're more familiar with, somebody told me the other day that some kind of crazy stat that 47% of people in the US are still getting paid by check. I was like, it's about probably under 1% here. I would have thought. So who was there? What was your impression? What were your takeaways? Love to hear.

Speaker A: This is one of my favorite parts about my career is that I get to play globally. And so we're always supporting clients from across major global markets. And it was really my tutelage in some of the UK and APAC that really taught me how far ahead these markets are compared to North America. Which is ironic because I think Americans like to be exceptional and like to think that we're ahead on everything, especially when it comes to business. Right. But especially on the finance side. I remember, you know, a moment of this had to be like almost 10 years ago being in the UK and like, I didn't have a chip card. I was having to like sign credit card receipts and everybody was looking at me like I was some thief or something. Like all the vendors were like, what is this janky? Like no chip situation you have because it had been implemented so long ago. And so in the US market, there's a couple of things that I'm seeing that are really interesting and I have my fair share of opinions and worries that I'll probably weave in here. But the first thing that I'm seeing is a rush to market with under baked solutions. And I think the pressure there is twofold. One is there's a lot of potential and that does excite me right now in the market. There's a lot of potential around the new capabilities that people are finally starting to adopt or be able to access from a development perspective around AI and machine learning. And so I think inevitably when you have new technology come to M market, it very much reminds me of what we saw when cloud came online, there was this rush to like create new solutions using this technology. I love that moment of initial spark and ideation and innovation. Flip side of that is that in that rush to market there is a lot of under baked technology that is raising a lot of capital for something that doesn't really exist. And so that's where I get a little frustrated. I was ranting to you offline about it before we hit record, but I work, as I said, with such a broad swath of the market that I work with a lot of underrepresented founders. And so to see, you know, people raising millions of dollars for what is ostensibly an idea, not a product and also I would argue is probably going to be a feature. And this is my big frustration in market is inevitably it's a part of the developmental trajectory that in order to get to full fledged products we have to start with features. But there is this pattern, especially in this finance and accounting industry where people are going to market with what I believe is truly a feature or a utility and calling it a product. You know. And so this is where we, I would give the example of in the document space there were so many people who when OCR came to market were like, oh my gosh, you know, we're a product and receipt capture, uh, is a functionality. And as we've seen the technology progress now it's baked into every gl. Those tools were all bought up because it is a feature. It's not a full fledged product. It's not something that people want to stand alone or pay for separately. It should be done by the tool that's going to ingest or extract that data. And so I think we see a lot of that right now. There's a lot of people bringing like features to market, calling them products. There's a lot of fake things out there right now where I can't tell you the number of booths I went by. I was like, okay, can you give me a demo? And I got just like a runaround. And I'm very picky about the tech that I'll talk to or work with because I believe in a product led growth. I believe in letting the best product win. And so if you don't even have a product to show, what are you selling at underneath the hood there? And then the third thing that I see that I just think people need to be very cautionary about from a market and marketing perspective. There's this joke in the States. I think it comes from the Pinterest, uh, Instagramification of the world about, like, putting a bird on it, like, you know, just adding a little J. And like, every booth I saw was like, put an AI on it. You know, slap AI, you know, oh, AI this, AI that. And one of the things that I think that people lack is a real understanding of how to communicate about how we're using that technology. Because you and I both know the technology isn't actually brand new. It's been around for a while, and a lot of times it's been in these products for quite some time. But because it's so trendy right now, both to the investment climate as well as to business vernacular that's going on, everybody's talking about AI, but there is a level of dissonance there. There's a level of dissonance between the actual users of these products and the tech companies that are creating them. And this is where I think that 10 years ago, it was kind of like the Silicon Valley tech bro side of it that accountants couldn't keep up with. It's a little bit of that, but it's more of like just a real misstep. I saw some panels that were on a main stage where you have two CEOs of some of these. These, you know, new to market companies that are kind of just going back and forth with industry, speak to each other. And I'm like, who are you talking to? You really don't know your audience? Because, okay, year or two ago, the message was all about fear, uncertainty and doubt, and AI is going to take your job. But, like, where was the conversation about, let's talk about this technology, let's talk about how it works, let's talk about what it unlocks for you, let's talk about what it means for your firm. And so I think there's a level at which I'm always thinking about from a messaging perspective, how do we bring it back down to the user, and how do we really connect with the conversations that they're having or the questions they have, or how would they explain that to a client? And I just don't see that happening right now really effectively in the market. And this is my last rant is that I also think it is because a lot of these companies are really under resourced on the marketing side. I won't name names, but I saw this pattern appear a couple years ago. Um, and as you and I know, there were a lot of large tech companies that laid a lot of people off over the last couple years. And this impacted my business personally because I was the layoff before the layoff. As an outsourced spender and as a contract creative team, we work a lot of times as kind of like an outsourced CMO plus creative staff experience for some of our clients. So we were laid off first and then we watched them gut their marketing teams and their dev teams and their product support teams and their sales teams. And so there are companies that are operating a lot leaner these days, but many of them have continued to kind of under resource on the marketing side. And that doesn't make for good go to market. If you don't have people with skills, if you don't have people who know this industry, who don't have the experience on your team, you're not going to be able to tell those stories to customers. You could have all the sales reps in the world, but if you don't have the right message and the right ways of explaining and teaching people about your product, you're not going to lead to conversions. And so I'm also seeing that pattern in the market where people are getting very nervous about their ability to keep growing and not necessarily recognizing that they're leaving some of the essential narrative and the essential marketing work out of the equation that is required to keep that growth going.

Speaker B: I think you're right in that there's a lot of people who jumping on the AI slap it on bandwagon. And so interesting just how the fundamentals haven't changed where we have to ultimately find a way of making life easier for the customer. I also think like you said earlier about that new shiny thing is, oh, what am I missing out on if I don't have that thing that's doing it with AI and actually I think we're very cautious afloat of not doing that. You know, like we were trying to think about how we use AI effectively, but at the same time, if it's just an average of three months, we're just going to call it rather than AI, uh, predictions or something like that.

Speaker A: Exactly. I mean, how many people have it reminds me of like there was this moment 10 years ago, it was chatbots. Like the thing that was going to save and scale your product was that you were going to put a chatbot in your app and if only you could implement some, some of this backnet and technology that would allow for kind of like a walking style experience to the product and a chatbot to meet somebody there and that chatbot could be hooked up to your support queue. That was what was going to scale your support efforts. And it was just going to make everything better, right? And I'm like, you want to know how many millions of dollars were wasted on dev teams or products that were putting chatbots in product? You want to know to how how sick users are. They're like, don't you dare pop up a chatbot at me. Nobody likes that user experience. And I think that's the thing that is missing. We have this phrase that we always talk about at Fearless Foundry, which is start with strategy. Like start with the underlying why for why you're doing something, why you're implementing, why you're building something. And I think that can get lost in this conversation. You know, this it. I see everybody rushing to say they're doing something with AI, but I think we need to slow the dialogue down. And I'm going to ask you a counter question here Fallon, because I'm curious for your side of the market, but I live in a market where this technology is not regulated and I think that we are starting to see some of the inverse and negative effects and not just in terms of like, oh, it's going to take people's jobs and things like that. But this technology is vast and has a lot of potential applications and some of them are detrimental. And so I think that a lot of companies skipped the mark on was jumping straight into building with a as opposed to setting parameters and policies around how they think about and leverage AI as part of their growth strategy. And I'm curious for you, being on the other side of the world, like how do you think about that as a founder and also what do you see as different in your market as opposed to North America? Because for example, like you guys live under GDPR where we don't here again,

Speaker B: it's a bit like the chip and card. It's like we've been living without for so long that it's almost hard to remember what I think in the UK there's a lot of innovation and again we'll maybe jump around. I'm seeing like there's a lot of the innovation. I'm seeing maybe six, five or six new entrants in the general ledger space. Is it puzzle campfire? I'm curious as to where they see the gap in the market, but maybe there is an opportunity. Obviously zero been trying to break into that for so long, still struggling with a massive budget behind them. So I think in the UK we've just had been very zero heavy for so long and stage you're kind of playing around in the background. It's been a very sort of simple world and I think AI is it's just changing so fast in terms of the new models that are coming out. And it does feel like we're starting to see the diminishing returns and the more those models can do now that we can get images with proper text or we can do basic maths problems, that kind of thing. We're not seeing it yet in bookkeeping. Like I haven't seen anybody crack that. I know there's a couple people working

Speaker A: on it and they have been for a really long time.

Speaker B: But again, you know, it feels like why, where is zero in the mix? We're intuit at the mix of that. You would think that is something that they're all over because again once you get that in place it holds you into an accounting system because you spent time training the model and you don't want to move.

Speaker A: And so this is where I get excited because I have no loyalties in this general ledger conversation and you can look at my LinkedIn and see who I've worked for but I will just say I've worked for and um, with all of the market leading general ledger solutions globally. I've either been a core partner or an employee of every single one of the companies. I'm very familiar with this technology. And, and also when you have a fundamental code base that is built on technology that is outdated, you have to build new product from the ground up. You can't just keep. I think about it, this is gonna be a funny metaphor but my. I have a kid who's getting close to driving age and what he really wants to do, and it's driving me crazy is he wants to buy an old car and he wants to mod up an old car and he wants to put a cool grill on it and he wants to put a fender on it and he wants to change the seats out and stuff like that. That and that is what I think the historic GLS are doing is they are modding up and oh, now you can unlock a subscription to this and we do have payments but you have to sign up for this bank account, you know and this that they're modding up an old car when you fundamentally need a new vehicle. And like this is where nobody else can go to 00:60 like a Tesla because it was a new piece of technology. And so that's where I think that things get very interesting with these new go to markets around being AI based tls. I actually think there's potential there. Now I've seen some demos and I've seen some People who have denied me demos because they don't have products to show yet. And so again, this is where things get a little snake oily. But I'll tell you the world that I want to live in as somebody who, you know, likes to get a little future y, I want to live in a world where the ledger doesn't exist because you and I both know that cash is what matters. The ledger is just a record of what happened. And to be honest, it's just required for audit and tax purposes. And, and there was a world a couple years back where everybody was talking about the blockchain and what if we could have, you know, the underlying record of every transaction and things like that. And I saw the possibility for a future where the ledger wasn't required because the bank already has all that data and we should be able to automatically code it to a category. I'm really interested in betting on the kind of horses that are looking at the ledger as a utility as opposed to a primary functionality, because I think that's the world where things get really interesting is being like, like, oh, it's not about QuickBooks versus zero. Like, I don't really care if you drive a Toyota or a Honda, they're both cars. Like, it's not actually that big of deal. And I think that those solutions have been leading in the market when in reality there's other things that are going to be more important and more powerful, like what does that data mean? How do I work with it, how do I conserve cash or grow my bank balance in a way that allows me to leverage, you know, into new levels of growth? Because ultimately that data is pretty redundant these days. And it's just like a necessary evil as opposed to something that actually is actionable. And I think that's why I like tools that are figuring out, like, how do we make that reconciliation, like the least important part of the process so that we can focus on ensuring the data is of quality and then we can dial into what do we do with that information.

Speaker B: I think it's a really good point. Like, will the Gls become kind of ubiquitous? Doesn't matter which one you use. I mean, that's not good news for them, although I guess they'll still be getting paid. And this is where I think it's coming back to the difference between the UK and the US So in the UK we don't have bill, we don't need those things because, you know, I can make payments like on my phone through my bank. We can use M a myriad of um, ways but it's ultimately the banks make payments really easy just to make transfers and even though there are some new ones coming into the UK I keep asking our bookkeeper to have a look at them and they're like it's just easy for me to just do it in the bank. Like it's not that hard, it's not a big problem. And you know I'm sure if you're making hundreds of payments every month then it starts to become something that you can optimize on. But really that's the thing that's fascinating to me is that a companies like Bill and Ramp and Brex, we just haven't really needed that kind of solution. And then you're also we've got more innovative banking, you know like Monzo and Starling that have really kind of helped smaller businesses just get off the ground quickly. So I mean that's been fantastic for smaller businesses. But in the US I think it's interesting to see like will there be a bank like a Mercury or somebody who kind of nails it where they're just like tech first show me what to do so I can maximize the cash that I have in my business. I'm getting the loans that I need, the ruling credit that I need. So yeah, I think uh, we do live in. It is still a very different world.

Speaker A: It is.

Speaker B: I was going to say have you tried something like a ramp or a build? Do you use those products?

Speaker A: So this is funny because we're at a moment of influx here on, on this exact conversation inside of my business and I'll explain why because it's a very specific use case that brought it to light. If I'd continued to kind of operate my business on the day to day basis I would have been able to continue utilizing what I have over the past five years which is relay and relay like full disclosure like I'm very good friends with the CEO. I remember I ah had a meeting with him in 2019 when he was like this is what I think we're going to build and why. And it fundamentally had to do with his experiences at HU Doc where they were always getting blamed over the bank fees breaking and he was like we need to build a better bank. And I think also was quite innovative in the fact that he wanted to go to accountants first because he knew how they could drive user adoption and he knew what they needed from a banking solution that didn't really exist. The problem we have in our market is that the banks are so far behind and so I Think when we will see a, uh, critical tipping point in the space. Like when I'll really like stand up and be like, okay, it's happening is when like a big bank, like a Chase or Wells Fargo or somebody like that buys one of these companies, that's when I'll go. It's happening because right now they're quietly funding them behind the scenes. They're looking at them, they're watching what they're doing. But the difference for you and I is like your banks own this technology or have built it into what they're doing as opposed to right now. What we have is these are tech companies that are sitting on the back of banks. So a lot of people don't realize this, but it's like the rows and the relays and the mercurys of the world. Some of them have their own little bit of internal engine that is powering things like investments and things like that, but most of them have a partner bank. And so when you read the T's and C's, it's like, oh, it's them and this other bank and they're just really like this veneer and this technology that sits on top of that banking engine, which makes things not as transactionally swift or quality, to be honest. Like whenever you have a gap between the brand that is the tech and the bank that is doing the banking, there's always going to be a lag time that is not as good, but to me it's better than what I had before, which is like we work with our other bank as a credit union and our other bank is Chase. And both of them, their tech sucks. Like you wouldn't believe how bad it sucks. I added a new credit card to my Chase account a couple months ago and I still can't even see it when I log in. I've been on there and did support with 13, like three tips and they're the largest, like best bank in America and they're great from a financing perspective. But where I have started to look at alternate solutions is because of the payment processing side. And payments is inevitably still a challenge for us. And it requires a lot of thought processes as you scale. And to your point, just in that same scenario, if I was doing still doing less than a hundred payments a month, I would still just use Relay for that because they have some good functionality. There's less there in terms of like the international abilities. And we do work with a global team and global clients. I wish there was more there, but as you know, we're leading a First of its kind tour in North America called Advisory Amplified. And you would not believe the number of vendor payments I am processing. It's a little bit nerve wracking to have that much cash going out all at once and to a vendor in Texas for the venue and to the DJ in the city and to the this person and that's. And so I needed a better way to put one titration and parameters on who can approve and pay vendor payments. What is the timing that actually works for us based off of the cash coming in and also verifying that that transaction happens properly because there's so much opportunity for fraud when I've got $300,000 of potential expenses flying out in the next three months with that in mind. And also it was kind of forced a little bit because my, my COO is going on mat leave. She normally handles all of the oversight of some of those financial operations. And we didn't want to bring in somebody that has never worked inside of our finances before. So we started a conversation this, this past month with our CFO because I was like oh, I'll do it, I'll just handle it. And he was like, you're going to be traveling for like nine out of the next 12 weeks. You really think you're gonna like process all those vendor payments timely and well and not catch, you know, if something is a mess, let's put a system in place. Like let's put some controls in there. And so we're now evaluating Ramp versus Melio actually. And so we're looking at those two things side by side and going to make a decision. And hopefully again we're at in our company is really this like 3x mindset. We're really growing right now. And so our focus is figuring out like every tool and solution we put in place. It's not just about does it work right now. Does it work if our team is three times this size, if our revenue is three times this size, if our operations is three times this size. And so that's going into some of that evaluation process.

Speaker B: I think the spanned the cards side of things. And the thought is definitely something that is just kind of blown me away at how many companies there are there in that space. Spandesk and Pleo and just so many of them in Europe as well and Expensify as well. Still like seeming to be just kicking away like yeah, just doing their thing.

Speaker A: What's your case study in like how many ways can you try and run a company into the ground but still exist?

Speaker B: Oh wow. Um, tell us what you really think.

Speaker A: I'm sorry, I'm a truth teller. I, uh. People can Google it.

Speaker B: The interesting thing for me is I'm not sure that I want to do my budgeting in my spam management system because it's just, you're never going to cover everything. So that's the thing for me where I'm like, it's interesting to be able to set limits on cards and that kind of thing, but I do think that the intersection of that is a really interesting space. And so something worth thinking quite a lot about. Do we want to get into that world of building our own? Like, I mean, there's a lot of services now that will let you do it just like embedded finance and say, offer your clients cards. And it's amazing what you can do that the banks are not obviously doing themselves. It feels that we could do it will we just use a partner. But I think there's a lot going on. Coming back to the other gls, like, what are you hearing? Are you hearing anybody who actually decided to use them? Or is it just the cool kids? Is it the early adopters or are they starting to see some real traction?

Speaker A: I think that it's an early adopter stage. But the part that I get interested and excited about is, is there are a couple companies in this space that are starting to work with accounting professionals on the build side. And that part I get excited about because inevitably, much more than the small business user, the person who is reconciling thousands and thousands and thousands of transactions every month is going to be the most equipped person to tell you, like, this is the part that is stupid and redundant and unnecessary. For example, I've had some good conversations with In Kik and Digit and Count over the last couple weeks. Those all kind of came out of scaling new heights. I've only seen one demo so far. I saw a demo of Digit. Oh, no, I did a demo Kik as well. These are gls. I was excited. I'm, um, even flirting with the idea of running a parallel situation on digits as a little bit of a test experiment to see what it looks like to run my files alongside each other. So keeping it in one GL and then running it primarily on the other. It's known by many people too that I've worked with the FreshBooks team for a really long time over the last five years on really building out their product and programming for accounting professionals. So I really love a third way. I love a dark car solution. I love somebody who comes in and puts market pressure and says, there could be a better way, or at a minimum, there's not a binary Choice. It's not QuickBooks or Xero, there's all these other solutions out there. Because what I think it will create is a level of market pressure that is really going to drive development. And so I think that's going to be the challenge for those more established players, like the FreshBooks of the world. It's going to be about, can you build it fast enough, can you build it well enough, enough, can you really meet the market with what it's asking for? And I do think their team has made some really good strides in the last couple years in that regard. And then for these newer players, it's going to be like, can you live up to that pipeline? And so what is interesting and what I appreciated about the conversations I've had with those companies is I do see a level of candidness about what they can and can't do right now, which I think is very essential in these early stages to have the hubris to say, no, we're not building for that use case or no, we won't be able to do that. But there's a lot of like, oh, will be able to do it in six months. And I just think I'll give an example that I'm seeing in another space. There's a new solution that's gone to market in the sales tax space. And many, many lifetimes ago, I worked in the sales tax ecosystem for the largest player that became a publicly traded company, and they're the largest global player in that space, and they're still trying to figure out how to be profitable. They're still trying to figure out how to, you know, put together all the companies that they brought together. It is such a big challenge to solve for. It's interesting to see on LinkedIn people splash and say, O, we've raised 150 million and we're going to be the ones to solve this problem. And I'm like, cool. Rory Rollins, the original technical founder of Avalara, started working on that problem in 95, I believe. And that's not to say they haven't solved a lot of it, but global sales tax is insanely hard and complicated. And so just in that same way, where there's a lot of people coming to market going, you know, we're going to build the first of its kind, aigl well, one that lacks a knowledge and experience of this industry. Because if you think that the other products haven't been incorporating AI into their products since some level of their narration, like Xero is coming to market with new things like jax, but they were building off of machine learning models, and that was one of their fundamental differentiators for years. Like, they weren't advertising it because it wasn't considered cool or sexy to talk about. But, like, that is a part of the way their code base works. And so I think there are some players who lack a little bit of hubris and a little bit of I want to be like, do your homework. You need to know this industry. Because if you're going to come to market and say you're the first or the only, one, that's not historically accurate and two, that's actually lacking an awareness and a respect for the market that you're entering into, because you're entering into a market where accountants have actually been in this, what is the better, more automated GL conversation for over a decade now. And so you really run the risk of looking like you. You don't know them or understand them or respect their knowledge on this issue when you come to market and say, you know, we're the only or we're the best or we're going to do it better than anybody else. And they've already tried all those other products.

Speaker B: Mari, the final piece for me is just like, you know, you talked about your cfo. How do you see that market developing in the US do you think that's still pretty early days, or do you feel like more companies are starting to jump on that as well? Because you're obviously pretty aware, but there's a lot of businesses out there that I wouldn't have tried their firm and not done anything, just given up. What are you seeing in that? Do you see much in that space at all? Or how do you.

Speaker A: I do, but I think we're a ways out. Which is that, like, hurts my heart a little bit because you know how long I've been in the fray in that conversation, especially around accounting and advisory. But I saw a session actually at 0con in Nashville last year. It was done by Joe Woodard, and it was quite good. And it was talking about the difference between controllership and CFO services. And I really appreciated it because I think it was one of the most dialed in breakdowns of the real difference between what it means to be an operational leader when it comes to a company's finances versus to be a cfo, which is a true strategist position. And I think that the bridge between where most accounting practices are and what it means to be a CFO is really long and um, really broad. And I see two things that make this hard and one thing that gives me hope. So the two things that make it hard is one, so many firms are just still so bogged down with the day to day, you know, minutiae of audit, tax and accounting. And so even though that we were all promised that there would be a world where the transactions would reconcile themselves, I still pay somebody at a very tech forward firm to reconcile my transactions. And so even if those firms want to be doing that work, it's that whole garbage in, garbage out conversation where if they don't have the quality of books to have those tools tacked on, to have those kinds of conversations, it doesn't really matter. And so, so there's inevitably this challenge that these firms face where it's just, they're just still trying to get the work done. The second challenge that I see there is even for the firms that have figured out all of the ways to get the work done better, faster, smarter, cheaper, what have you. Firms have tried everything, outsourcing, throwing some tech at it, fine tuning their processes, workflows, you name it. But then oftentimes inside of the firms, you might only have like one or two leaders who are really equal equipped to have that conversation. What it means to be a CFO is to be a strategist and a people person. It means to be able to do this. And we're entering into a market where more than ever before, young people who are coming into accounting lack a lot of those soft skills. They lack a lot of that ability to be human and have these kind of interactions and have these conversations. And so I think we've gone too far on the technical training and not far enough on the human to human interaction. And so my hope is that perhaps AI will enter into the fray and actually take some of this work off people's plate and actually do some of these jobs that nobody wants to do and actually reconcile the transactions without us having to, you know, enter in, you know, rule into the system. And if that happens, then that leaves this opportunity, this space, not for us to go out and to be more productive, but to be better as people in the interaction. Because what makes for a great cfo? I work with Martin Kamansky at Revel cpi and the reason I will recommend Martin Till the Cows Come Home is because he will sit with me in the SEC of it. He will sit with me and have the hard conversation. He will sit with me and show me this is what's happening with your cash flow? And he will say things to me like, no, you don't need to hire another sales rep to solve it. You're the best at sales inside of your organization. You need to go do that job. But that means he's a coach to me. That means he's a mentor to me. That means he's an advisor to me. But even in Martin's firm, there's only one Martin. Until we are creating a world where we're building more people who have that mindset, that have that strategy, that have that experience, that have that know how to lead those kinds of conversations, decisions. I think that that bridge and the spare in between what it means to be an accountant and what it means to be a CFO will continue to be quite long.

Speaker B: Like as a go to putting your go to market hat on, which you talked about earlier. Like, if you were advising somebody who was thinking about becoming a fractional CFO like you just discussed, this is my passion, this is what I want to do. I want to help businesses. I want to sit with them, I want to give them advice. What would your advice be about starting up in that, uh, how would you find customers? Would you try and find partners? Would you, you do you have controllers? Would you have cpa? Like, I'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts on this.

Speaker A: So this is more of a personal preference, but there's some walking through the woods that you need to do first. As a founder that I didn't do until I was probably more about three to five years into my business and things were really hard. But I think before you set a strategy, you really need to decide the leader that you want to become inside of the business. Because there's so many different ways to build a CFO practice. And, and I think about folks I know who just want to run a boutique firm. And I think perhaps if I was to build another business in the professional services category, I might not build one with a team to the scale that I have these days, because I could actually make a lot more money just operating as myself and outsourcing a lot of that work to another team. And so you have to ask yourself, like, do I want to be a leader of a company or do I want to be a leader of my clients? Because if you want to be a leader of your clients, you're focused on a low volume, high value business model, which actually requires a lot less in terms of things like partnerships or marketing, and really perhaps just requires you building an expertise. Perhaps it's Around a niche, perhaps it's around a season of scaling. It's something that you want to be known for. And it's really easy for a virtual CFO to get, you know, five or six clients at 5,000 plus a month and have a really good, highly profitable book of business. And some people, that's all they want. They just want to take home more than they would have if they were working at somebody else's firm and have a high quality lifestyle. So that's one way you could go if that's the leader you want to be. Some leaders want to build something. Some people feel called to create a team. Some people feel like, you know, their goal is to reach and impact as many people as possible. And if that's your calling, that's great. You do need to remember that you're going to spend a lot more time working on your company and with your team than you will worth clients. Which means that you have to then make more of you. You have to be a mentor to other people who can then deliver that quality of service. And so that start with you. You set a standard. And this is what I've worked really hard to do inside my business is to set a standard of excellence, to set a foundation of how we do things and to build processes that are going to ensure that when other people deliver the services that I've created that they will live up to the way that I would deliver them. But then your focus is really on forging those team and mentoring those people to be as good as you were than it is to actually work with a bunch of clients on a day to day. I'm fortunate enough that I still do a bit of both, but I have to be selective. I only work and coach with a handful of CL clients in every season. I only work with a subset of executive teams because I don't have capacity to serve every single client as well as work with my team on their service delivery.

Speaker B: I think that's great advice. Tell us about the tour because that's going to be like you were talking about a big thing. What's happening, where people find uh, information about it, where is it?

Speaker A: I'm both like so excited and so nervous and so I like to remember that in the amygdala like nerves and excitement come from the same place. But it is a big risk. It's doing something new. And I tend to be a little bit out ahead. But there was a moment about a year ago where I was watching the industry, I was back out at conferences in a way that I hadn't been in a while, and it felt like nothing had changed. And nothing had changed for my friends who are the tech companies in the industry. And in fact, things had gotten worse. Like, there was less and less quality conversations happening with them with firms, even though they were solving for things that firms really need. And most importantly, on the accountant side, accountants that I was meeting in the hallways were saying things like, yeah, this is a lot of drinking from the idea fire hose, but I don't feel like I'm going back with something tangible to take into my firm and really make a difference. And so the ethos of Advisory Amplified is really about, uh, giving back to firms. I watch in 2020 and 2021 and 2022 as so many firms. And you can see I'm, um, like, getting emotional about it. Like, they just moved hell in high water for their clients. And I worked so closely with so many of them and just could not believe the way that they showed up and served people in a. Such, such a very tender and tenuous time. And then they just had to, like, get back to it. They just had to, like, get back to filing returns. They just had to get back to the way things were. And I really want this tour to be an opportunity to give back to the industry and have a moment for them to pause and really sit and reflect and be like, what's the firm I want to run now and how do I get there? And so what I've done is I curated a really, really amazing lineup of teachers, people who know how to do these things, whether that's productizing your service lines, building a strong brand, implementing really strong workflows, having difficult client conversations, being a true advisor. These are the people who are stepping on our stage to teach you how. And each session has a workbook component that goes with it. So it's going to get. We're going to be a little bit of a teacher in the sense of you're going to get homework to take home. But my hope is that when we come back next year, people will have implemented these things in their firms, and then in addition to that, they'll have made new friends along the way. My biggest passion in this industry is community. And there so many people all over this country who don't ever even get to go to some of the accounting events because they're not accessible, they're too expensive, they can't take the time out of their firms. And so we're doing our best to come where we know the people are in hopes to Bring this to them in a really easy to digest way, but also to put them in the room with a hundred other practitioners who are working on the same thing because you're that much likely, or as an entrepreneur, as an individual, to achieve the outcomes that you're setting out towards if you have support systems along the way. So if I put you in a room with your peers who are all working on, on their own practice improvement plans, then you all can build stronger together and have a better time doing it too. Don't you want to, like, have somebody who you can sit and have coffee with and talk about the company you're creating? Like, I can't stick around in Austin forever, but I know people who you can be friends with and continue to build alongside of. I think entrepreneurship tends to be a very lonely path and a lot of firm leaders don't recognize that they're founders. And I know about those things because of my own experiences in business. And so if I can bring more people together and help them work, grow, that's always, you know, an outcome that I'm getting excited about.

Speaker B: Brilliant.

Speaker A: Love it.

Speaker B: So advisory amplified. It's going to be in six cities.

Speaker A: So we've got Seattle, Louisiana, Chicago, Austin, Atlanta, Boston. We have publicly said, so I've got a big mantle on my back. 10 cities next year I won't. We'll announce what those other four cities are towards the end of the year. Tickets are $99. They're very accessible. It's got five hours of continuing education credit associated with the event. Big names include folks like Kenji Kuramoto, Jeann Whitehouse, Liz Mason, Valerie Heckman. There's. I mean, our lineup is incredible and I feel really fortunate. Many of these people are not just partners, but are friends of mine in the industry who have been willing to go to bat for this new concept that hasn't been done before, but I'm really excited to get in person with people and to do this work together.

Speaker B: I remember Valerie Hackman. What a legend. Brilliant. Tell, um, us a little bit about. Personally, I know you're recording this from Hawaii. Like, what's going on for you? What are you hoping for? What are you getting involved in outside of work?

Speaker A: So personally, I am working on a book and I have been for the last five years. This is my Covid project. I started working on a memoir in 2020, and I, like, wrote 150,000 words that year and then have spent the last four years editing it into a second draft that I'm very proud of. And so, um, people who follow me on social, you know, do know a little bit more of my personal story, but I went through some really challenging experiences in my personal life, you know, without going into too many dramatic details at the buzzer. I went through a lot of, and a lot of struggle personally over the last, uh, ten years. And so I wrote about that one, I think, for myself, but two, to really help other people. You know, I realized that those struggles, one, we remove shame when we start telling those stories, but opens up space for people to feel like they can talk about the hard things that have happened to them as well. And so, yeah, I'm in the process of now, like, starting to meet book agents, which feels kind of wild to say. And I'm really hopeful. I'm like, anybody out there who knows a great publisher, send them my way, because I really do want to bring that to the light life in hopes that it helps other people who have been through similar stuff.

Speaker B: Brilliant. Well, I love, I think, you know, you've been very courageous in how you've shown up the work that you're doing with women. And there's so many great things that I really hope that the book gets a good, uh, deal, and I look forward to hopefully reading it one day. Thanks so much for coming on, Mari. I will hopefully put some links to the events and to you in the notes, but thanks so much for coming on.

Speaker A: It's, uh, so good to be with you, Colin. Thank you.

Speaker C: Thanks for tuning in to another episode

Speaker B: of the new F Word.

Speaker C: I hope you enjoyed it. Remember, expert financial advice shouldn't be limited to those with just big budgets. You can access the same level of advice for a fraction of the costs thanks to this fractional revolution. I believe that every growing business needs to know how much a game changer this can be. So if you loved the episode, please consider subscribing to the show. It'll help us keep doing what we're passionate about. And feel free to share this episode with others who might find it useful. Finally, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn.

Speaker B: See you in the next one.