Podcasts about cfos

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Mark Mascarenhas. Purpose of the Interview The interview aims to educate listeners—especially entrepreneurs, small business owners, and aspiring millionaires—on financial planning, wealth management, and risk mitigation strategies. It emphasizes the importance of discipline, clarity, and professional guidance in achieving financial success and sustaining wealth across generations. Key Takeaways Financial Planning is Foundational A written financial plan is the first step before any investment portfolio is built. Success is defined individually—financial, health, or lifestyle goals. Diversification & Risk Management Digital assets like Bitcoin should only make up 2–3% of a portfolio for high-net-worth clients with high risk tolerance. Fear and greed drive markets; advisors help clients maintain discipline. Long-Term Care & Insurance Planning for long-term care is essential, typically starting in your 50s. Term life insurance early locks in health; whole life policies provide stability and living benefits. Tax Strategy Use tax-loss harvesting, asset location strategies, and estate planning to minimize tax burdens. Estate planning focuses on transferring wealth tax-efficiently to future generations. Millionaire Mindset Millionaires are clear, disciplined, optimistic, and collaborative. 74% of millionaires work with financial advisors vs. 34% of the general population. Power of Compounding Compounding interest is the cornerstone of wealth accumulation—requires patience and discipline. Avoid lifestyle creep and impulsive spending, especially for younger millionaires and influencers. Fiduciary Responsibility Advisors act in the client’s best interest; success is mutual. Trust and transparency are critical in client-advisor relationships. Notable Quotes On Risk & Bitcoin:“You could potentially double your money, but you could also potentially lose 70% of it.” On Financial Planning:“Every dollar needs a job description.” On Millionaire Mindset:“Successful people view us as CFOs—they’re the CEOs.” On Compounding:“If you could win 72% of the time, would you play that game? Yes. That’s the stock market.” On Retirement Success:“Living the same or better lifestyle in retirement than you do today while working.” On Fiduciary Role:“We make more money when the client makes more money.” #SHMS #BEST #STRAW Money Making Conversations Master Class with Rushion McDonald is America's premier entrepreneurship, business leadership, financial literacy, and wealth-building podcast featuring successful entrepreneurs, executives, founders, celebrities, and industry experts sharing actionable insights for professional and financial success. Business Podcast Entrepreneurship Small Business Business Growth Financial Literacy Wealth Building Black Entrepreneurs Minority Business Leadership Executive Leadership Business Funding Marketing Strategies Personal Development Startup Advice Sales Training CEO Interviews Founder Stories Professional Development Economic Empowerment Business Success Networking Brand Building Innovation How to start a business Small business funding Entrepreneur success stories Business leadership podcast Wealth building strategies Black entrepreneur podcast Minority business development Marketing for small businesses Business growth strategies Startup funding opportunities Executive leadership training Financial literacy education Success mindset podcastSupport the show: https://www.steveharveyfm.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Mark Mascarenhas. Purpose of the Interview The interview aims to educate listeners—especially entrepreneurs, small business owners, and aspiring millionaires—on financial planning, wealth management, and risk mitigation strategies. It emphasizes the importance of discipline, clarity, and professional guidance in achieving financial success and sustaining wealth across generations. Key Takeaways Financial Planning is Foundational A written financial plan is the first step before any investment portfolio is built. Success is defined individually—financial, health, or lifestyle goals. Diversification & Risk Management Digital assets like Bitcoin should only make up 2–3% of a portfolio for high-net-worth clients with high risk tolerance. Fear and greed drive markets; advisors help clients maintain discipline. Long-Term Care & Insurance Planning for long-term care is essential, typically starting in your 50s. Term life insurance early locks in health; whole life policies provide stability and living benefits. Tax Strategy Use tax-loss harvesting, asset location strategies, and estate planning to minimize tax burdens. Estate planning focuses on transferring wealth tax-efficiently to future generations. Millionaire Mindset Millionaires are clear, disciplined, optimistic, and collaborative. 74% of millionaires work with financial advisors vs. 34% of the general population. Power of Compounding Compounding interest is the cornerstone of wealth accumulation—requires patience and discipline. Avoid lifestyle creep and impulsive spending, especially for younger millionaires and influencers. Fiduciary Responsibility Advisors act in the client’s best interest; success is mutual. Trust and transparency are critical in client-advisor relationships. Notable Quotes On Risk & Bitcoin:“You could potentially double your money, but you could also potentially lose 70% of it.” On Financial Planning:“Every dollar needs a job description.” On Millionaire Mindset:“Successful people view us as CFOs—they’re the CEOs.” On Compounding:“If you could win 72% of the time, would you play that game? Yes. That’s the stock market.” On Retirement Success:“Living the same or better lifestyle in retirement than you do today while working.” On Fiduciary Role:“We make more money when the client makes more money.” #SHMS #BEST #STRAW Money Making Conversations Master Class with Rushion McDonald is America's premier entrepreneurship, business leadership, financial literacy, and wealth-building podcast featuring successful entrepreneurs, executives, founders, celebrities, and industry experts sharing actionable insights for professional and financial success. Business Podcast Entrepreneurship Small Business Business Growth Financial Literacy Wealth Building Black Entrepreneurs Minority Business Leadership Executive Leadership Business Funding Marketing Strategies Personal Development Startup Advice Sales Training CEO Interviews Founder Stories Professional Development Economic Empowerment Business Success Networking Brand Building Innovation How to start a business Small business funding Entrepreneur success stories Business leadership podcast Wealth building strategies Black entrepreneur podcast Minority business development Marketing for small businesses Business growth strategies Startup funding opportunities Executive leadership training Financial literacy education Success mindset podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Mark Mascarenhas. Purpose of the Interview The interview aims to educate listeners—especially entrepreneurs, small business owners, and aspiring millionaires—on financial planning, wealth management, and risk mitigation strategies. It emphasizes the importance of discipline, clarity, and professional guidance in achieving financial success and sustaining wealth across generations. Key Takeaways Financial Planning is Foundational A written financial plan is the first step before any investment portfolio is built. Success is defined individually—financial, health, or lifestyle goals. Diversification & Risk Management Digital assets like Bitcoin should only make up 2–3% of a portfolio for high-net-worth clients with high risk tolerance. Fear and greed drive markets; advisors help clients maintain discipline. Long-Term Care & Insurance Planning for long-term care is essential, typically starting in your 50s. Term life insurance early locks in health; whole life policies provide stability and living benefits. Tax Strategy Use tax-loss harvesting, asset location strategies, and estate planning to minimize tax burdens. Estate planning focuses on transferring wealth tax-efficiently to future generations. Millionaire Mindset Millionaires are clear, disciplined, optimistic, and collaborative. 74% of millionaires work with financial advisors vs. 34% of the general population. Power of Compounding Compounding interest is the cornerstone of wealth accumulation—requires patience and discipline. Avoid lifestyle creep and impulsive spending, especially for younger millionaires and influencers. Fiduciary Responsibility Advisors act in the client’s best interest; success is mutual. Trust and transparency are critical in client-advisor relationships. Notable Quotes On Risk & Bitcoin:“You could potentially double your money, but you could also potentially lose 70% of it.” On Financial Planning:“Every dollar needs a job description.” On Millionaire Mindset:“Successful people view us as CFOs—they’re the CEOs.” On Compounding:“If you could win 72% of the time, would you play that game? Yes. That’s the stock market.” On Retirement Success:“Living the same or better lifestyle in retirement than you do today while working.” On Fiduciary Role:“We make more money when the client makes more money.” #SHMS #BEST #STRAW Money Making Conversations Master Class with Rushion McDonald is America's premier entrepreneurship, business leadership, financial literacy, and wealth-building podcast featuring successful entrepreneurs, executives, founders, celebrities, and industry experts sharing actionable insights for professional and financial success. Business Podcast Entrepreneurship Small Business Business Growth Financial Literacy Wealth Building Black Entrepreneurs Minority Business Leadership Executive Leadership Business Funding Marketing Strategies Personal Development Startup Advice Sales Training CEO Interviews Founder Stories Professional Development Economic Empowerment Business Success Networking Brand Building Innovation How to start a business Small business funding Entrepreneur success stories Business leadership podcast Wealth building strategies Black entrepreneur podcast Minority business development Marketing for small businesses Business growth strategies Startup funding opportunities Executive leadership training Financial literacy education Success mindset podcastSteve Harvey Morning Show Online: http://www.steveharveyfm.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Send us Fan MailGot something genuinely new to sell — and buyers keep lumping it in with every other "revolutionary" pitch they've heard this month? This one's for you.Bill and Bryan work through a real scenario: a friend building software that could transform hospital billing, but can't get CFOs past their skepticism. The fix isn't a better pitch — it's a completely different approach to who you target and how you position the offer.You'll learn how to sort prospects by tolerance for change (not company size), why positioning your offer as limited and selective beats "revolutionizing everything," and why acknowledging buyer skepticism up front builds more trust than any pitch could.It's the 20th anniversary of the show, and Bill and Bryan want to hear from you — send a short voice memo to listener@advancedsellingpodcast.com for their September anniversary celebration.The Insider program is open for enrollment. To check out our small learning group, go to http://advancedsellingpodcast.com/insiderIf you haven't already, join 14,000+ other sales professionals in our LinkedIn group at advancedsellingpodcast.com/linkedinIs it time to make a BOLD move in your business? If so, download our brand new book, "12 Bold Moves - Insider Secrets to Reinventing Yourself and Your Business." http://12boldmoves.com

Send us Fan MailShownotes can be found at https://www.profitwithlaw.com/548.Early retirement and financial independence are the dream for almost anyone, but how do we plan for and achieve them? How much money is needed to retire and be financially independent? Is the income from your law firm enough? If not, how can you get cash flow outside your business?In this episode, Sarah Young of Young + Co joins Moshe Amsel to discuss the value of CFOs in making financial decisions and planning your firm's growth trajectory. She builds on her years of CFO experience and shares tactical ways to increase your cash flow, prepare for retirement, and achieve financial independence! If you want to know how to create cash flow outside your law firm, this episode is for you! Resources mentioned:Law Firm Growth WorkshopTake the Law Firm Growth Assessment and find out how you rate as a law firm owner! Check out our Profit with Law YouTube channel!Learn more about the Profit with Law Elite Coaching Program hereNot sure if now's the right time? Book a call with us to talk it through and see if it's a good fit.Profit with Law CommunityConnect with Sarah via LinkedIn or Instagram. Learn more about Sarah's work at Young + Co through their website. Profit + Prosper PodcastGet help with your virtual staffing needs through Get Staffed Up. Get $750 off your startup fee here. Join our Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/lawfirmgrowthsummit/To request a show topic, recommend a guest or ask a question for the show, please send an email to info@dreambuilderfinancial.com.Connect with Moshe on:Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/moshe.amselLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mosheamsel/

In this bonus episode, McKinsey CFO practice leaders Kevin Carmody, Matt Maloney, and Christian Grube share their insights from the 2026 CFO Forum in London. Their conversation explores how the CFO role is evolving from financial steward to strategic value creator; why leading finance organizations are moving beyond incremental budgeting; how AI can provide the catalyst to fundamentally rewire finance operating models rather than simply automate existing processes; and why talent and capability building will determine which organizations capture the greatest value. They also discuss how CFOs can reclaim the strategic narrative, strengthen capital allocation, and create the headspace to focus on the bold moves that drive long-term growth. Related insights Why accelerated resource allocation matters in the age of AI CFOs have been concerned about geopolitical impacts for months The CFO as growth leader: A conversation with Levi’s Harmit SinghSupport the show: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance/See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Don’t miss the marketplace revolution! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode of the Ultimate Partner Podcast, Vince Menzione sits down with AWS Marketplace leaders George Maroulakos and Arif Razvi to uncover the rapidly shifting ecosystem of technology procurement and partner transformation. They dive deep into the evolution of buyer experiences, the critical necessity of executive alignment, and how agentic AI is redefining software discovery and consumption. If you want to accelerate deal velocity and ensure your business isn’t left behind, this conversation outlines exactly why integrating the AWS Marketplace into your core co-sell motion is no longer optional. https://youtu.be/Avp0sIyxRU8 Key Takeaways Embracing the AWS Marketplace should be viewed as a natural extension of your co-sell motion, not an interrupt-driven exception. Successfully leveraging the marketplace requires top-down executive sponsorship to overcome internal friction across legal, finance, and revenue operations. Partners must prepare for global expansion by ensuring local entities and currencies are wired up to meet buyers where they are. Agentic AI and natural language queries are leveling the playing field for software discovery, moving beyond traditional SEO-driven presence. SaaS pricing models are shifting toward consumption and outcome-based structures, demanding highly detailed product metadata. The speed of deal closure is drastically increased when partners are prepared to transact seamlessly through the marketplace. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags AWS Marketplace, partner transformation, buyer experiences, hyperscalers, co-sell motion, revenue operations, strategic alignment, agentic AI solutions, outcome-based pricing, metadata optimization, software discovery, private offers, global expansion, deal velocity, cloud centers of excellence. Transcript Arif Razvi and George Maroulakos Audio Episode [00:00:00] George Maroulakos: From my perspective, think about marketplace as a why not as opposed to a why. [00:00:06] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:17] Arif Razvi: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host. [00:00:22] Arif Razvi: And each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology, [00:00:26] Vince Menzione: partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:39] Arif Razvi: It is the strategy because being in the room changes everything. [00:00:44] Arif Razvi: Let’s start. [00:00:48] Vince Menzione: I’m excited to, because we were talking about some of this earlier with Matt, but I thought this would be a great conversation. I’m gonna ask each of you to introduce yourselves, George and Arif, and your roles. ’cause you have two very unique roles. Uh. Contrasting roles, I would call it, within the AWS Marketplace Organization. [00:01:06] George Maroulakos: Yep. Happy to do so. So I think Vince just didn’t wanna say my last name, so that’s why I’m gonna introduce myself. Mayor. Very, very good. So Mayor Laki, George Meki, pleasure to meet. Hey, I can say that, uh, all of those that I haven’t met before, lots of familiar faces as well here. Uh, so it’s really great to see. [00:01:21] George Maroulakos: Uh, I’m part of the AWS Marketplace team and our center of excellence. That focuses on buyer experiences. So like why is a buyer guy here in this partner session? And I think, you know, I’m gonna help to try to bring some perspective around what our buyers see as the value for using marketplace and. [00:01:40] George Maroulakos: Working with all of these great partners that are here in the room and, uh, you know, the experiences that we see in helping to drive, you know, the blood to all organs. I’m using that a lot, Alison, to copyright it. It’s, it was really good. I love that, that analogy. But, um, for, but for both our partners as well as for our customers. [00:01:59] Vince Menzione: That’s awesome. [00:01:59] Arif Razvi: Hey everybody. I’m Arif Roski. I’m based here in New York City, although I’m a Celtics fan. Um, uh, go, go. I, I still supported the Knicks through the championship and I’m very happy for them. So excited to be here. Excited to be among, uh, other channel and alliance leaders. I’ve spent my entire 25 plus career in channels and alliances. [00:02:20] Arif Razvi: The last seven years, uh, on AWS marketplace where I lead, uh, a couple of functions. One is I support all of Matt Ian’s feature launches. So from a go-to market perspective, uh, I support his launches. I also focus on international expansion of marketplace. So, uh, Matt alluded to this earlier. I’ll mention some, I’ll talk about some stuff in a little bit. [00:02:39] Arif Razvi: And then, uh, we do some deep engagements with some of our most strategic partners to help them accelerate and unblock their marketplace business. By embedding a subject matter expert from my team into their organization to really help drive, uh, adoption of marketplace. [00:02:55] Vince Menzione: So important. Both of your roles. [00:02:56] Vince Menzione: By the way, this is standout roles. I, you know, I. I don’t want to get into trouble here. I talk about other hyperscalers, but I said this with Matt on stage earlier. You guys have been at the forefront of driving marketplace in such a strong way, having somebody who’s customer focused, right? And that lens is so important. [00:03:15] Vince Menzione: I don’t feel, I feel like that’s missed so many times. And then you also have. You know, quite a bit of an important role here in terms of what you’re doing in embedding resources. ’cause a lot of times people get lost in the process and it seems to be the, the common currents. So, um, really great both sides of the same equation here, right? [00:03:33] Vince Menzione: Buyer led, partner built, uh, let’s start George here. Um. Let’s talk about how buying has changed. Right. We go back to the early days of marketplace. It felt like it was a listing at first and it started to become important. Organizations like Work Span started to come to fruition and started to drive, at least in my part of the world. [00:03:53] Vince Menzione: And then we started talking a lot more about Marketplace. And of course the, the cus customer commits really started driving things in a different direction. You’ve got the customer, so talk about what your journey’s been like. [00:04:05] George Maroulakos: So I’ve been with Marketplace nine and a half years, which is pretty long time since the beginning of it, and watching the evolution of, of where things have come and where they started. [00:04:15] George Maroulakos: And I remember, uh, I was covering the, the northeast region when I very first started and working with, uh, you know, different enterprise accounts and financial services and, and, and healthcare and life sciences, and talking about this. This creation that occurred called, called AWS Marketplace, and even folks within AWS didn’t really know what that meant or how to talk about it or sell it. [00:04:38] George Maroulakos: So there was this creation of a infield based business development function to help supplement the account teams and the value and the importance of marketplace as a part of a customer’s AWS journey. And when I first started the, the, the highest, uh, or most frequently subscribed to products that existed were. [00:04:57] George Maroulakos: Uh, Amazon machine images a amis and it’s very specifically open source amis. So think of Bantu or Cintas as the predominant things that were being subscribed out of marketplace. So, um, by definition, not really revenue generating. You’re, these are not the a hundred million dollar transactions or the billion dollar club that we talk about today. [00:05:19] George Maroulakos: It was very much helping. The builders go again, go back 10 years, uh, who are just getting started with the cloud and how could they find partner solutions that they trusted or that they felt were secure and helping them to start to build out and migrate their workloads into, into AWS. Um, so I existed before the. [00:05:39] George Maroulakos: Very first private offer was transacted. Nice. Um, there’s actually a, a gentleman towards the back, uh, who helped with one of our very first private offers. I see you back there, Joe. Nice, nice. Um, so we, we worked on, uh, uh, uh, really big transaction with, uh, with, at the time AppDynamics, uh, and, and helping to get. [00:05:58] George Maroulakos: You know, a customer really up and running with their implementation that, so watching over the 10 years from, you know, the builder mentality of, of getting started with the cloud to really embracing all kinds of partner based, um, solutions that go along with AWS. It’s really been, uh, you know, a, a rocket ship you referenced earlier, moving to the top right quadrant, if we want to use the, the Gartner analogy, and I think we’re at another. [00:06:24] George Maroulakos: Inflection point because with what’s going on with Ag agentic solutions, the way that our customers are finding and discovering different partner solutions is better than ever I would think. And I think it gives much more of a equal opportunity in playing field for all partners of all shapes and sizes because you’re not driving your presence based on SEO or whether or not you have the best Google search results. [00:06:53] George Maroulakos: With AgTech and how you differentiate your solutions, you’re gonna be able to really get yourself in front of more customers more quickly. And as Matt talked about earlier, the, the, the really big penetration that we’ve seen thus far is real, is on the discovery piece, the, the research area, the pre-purchase activity, so validate what’s available. [00:07:13] George Maroulakos: So I think marketplace has really evolved over the 10 year, nine and a half years-ish that I’ve been there. And I think it’s gonna continue to change here in the coming months ahead. Yeah. [00:07:23] Vince Menzione: Any predictions? [00:07:25] George Maroulakos: Yeah, I, I think, you know, the, I, the, the importance of marketplaces is only going to continue to grow. [00:07:32] George Maroulakos: Uh, and I think we’re going to see, you know, even more innovation and expectation from our customers on being able to find the right solutions and being able to procure and deploy them as quickly as possible. [00:07:44] Vince Menzione: Nice. Arif, from your side. Partner transformation. So, you know, embedding resources with the partners. [00:07:51] Vince Menzione: Right. So you basically help kickstart a lot of the, the efforts, right? George? George is looking at it from the customer side, and then you’re kick-starting it on the partner side. [00:08:00] Arif Razvi: Yeah. Either kickstarting it, uh, on the initial stages with a strategic partner. Yeah. Or accelerating their adoption of something that’s already there. [00:08:07] Arif Razvi: Right. So what we’re seeing, what I’m seeing a lot of more recently is partners who say, I didn’t know you had capabilities for us to sell into Korea or Japan, or we just, we just launched India. Yep. Matt alluded to this easier, uh, earlier that we’re making it easier for partners to expand globally. And now partners are realizing, wait a minute, I can match my. [00:08:26] Arif Razvi: Uh, my business processes on marketplace, so revenue recognition, tax collection, locally, local invoices, and now they’re starting to set up multiple entities outside the US to meet those buyers, uh, where they are. [00:08:41] Vince Menzione: Nice. And you mentioned having these resources. How do you determine who gets resources and who? [00:08:47] Arif Razvi: Well, there’s, uh, staging and there’s, uh, there’s qualification mechanisms we use. We work with the PDMs for the partners. So any PDM, uh, any pd DM managed partner can be nominated for, uh, what, what we call a compensation. [00:08:59] Vince Menzione: So you’re overlaying that organization sense. [00:09:00] Arif Razvi: We’re overlaying the PDs. We’re not replacing, we’re only doing time bound sprints to unlock very specific activities. [00:09:05] Arif Razvi: Very [00:09:06] Vince Menzione: cool. So it’s not a poll. Yeah. Cool. You’re not, you’re not there forever. [00:09:08] Arif Razvi: No. [00:09:08] Vince Menzione: You’re there to get the job done. We [00:09:09] Arif Razvi: did that before. Uh, yeah, we’re, we’re doing short sprints now. [00:09:12] Vince Menzione: Yep. Let’s talk about how the buyers are using marketplace. You’ve done some really in, we talked about this earlier with Matt, but we’ve talked about some of the innovative things you’ve done. [00:09:21] Vince Menzione: You know, being, being able to embed into a website and in the storefronts. All these things seem to be unique to AWS. Talk to us about how the buyers are using the marketplace today. And [00:09:31] George Maroulakos: yeah, I think, you know, Matt talked about earlier the. Pre the, the preconception around why customers use marketplaces for the financial incentives, the, the financial benefits that go along with it, whether it’s direct incentives that are associated with the individual product that’s out there, or the Association of Marketplace to our private pricing agreements and the ability for. [00:09:55] George Maroulakos: Transactions that occur in marketplace to count towards those commits. Um, I’m gonna amplify a, a particular point that Matt made, uh, in his talk that, you know, we have many more customers who do not have PPAs with AWS than those that do. And the volume of transactions that take place in marketplace. [00:10:11] George Maroulakos: Dwarf, uh, in volume from those that, uh, are occur from our PPA customers. So yes, there are very large transactions that occur and there is Ben financial benefit that goes along with it. But there’s many other value points that our customers find from discovery. From ease of use, from consolidated billing, from post-purchase, um, you know, management and governance that goes along with it, and reconciliation that’s available, that’s, that exists. [00:10:36] George Maroulakos: Um, you mentioned storefronts. I’m really excited. That was one of the most exciting launches. That’s why I reminded him when he was talking about it, uh, around, you know, what that means. And it’s both a presence for, um, our partners and being able to create their own storefronts on behalf of, of customers or within their own property, but also for our buyers directly too. [00:10:54] George Maroulakos: Take that next generation of something that was previously, you know, our private marketplace and curate a catalog that is very specific and intentional for the things that they’re interested to innovate with and the partners that they’re interested in using. And so I think meeting our customers where they’re at. [00:11:10] George Maroulakos: And being, you know, marketplace anywhere and everywhere is I think really important for our customers. And then the other aspect, you know, in terms of how our customers use marketplace, there’s more than one persona at our customer that we need to be, be, be aligning with. Right. Interesting. We typically talk about procurement and the value points that procurement find in marketplace, but just as important as, as the technologists. [00:11:32] George Maroulakos: It’s the Cloud centers of Excellence. It’s the innovators who are looking for those business applications or those infrastructure solutions that exist and making sure that we have the right things from the right partners available to them. So we see value all over the place with our customers and how they inter interface with [00:11:47] Vince Menzione: more. [00:11:47] Vince Menzione: You brought up something really interesting, insightful, is the fact that all the different personas in the organization that are touching the marketplace, right? [00:11:54] George Maroulakos: And it’s at different points of the journey, right? Yeah. So while there may be early discovery and research and experimentation going on from, you know, the technologists or, or, or the, or the, the, the business application owners, um, as it progresses through the, the, the. [00:12:09] George Maroulakos: The opportunity lifecycle procurement and sourcing and legal, and the shared services then become a more important part of, of making sure that we get those opportunities closed and launched. [00:12:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah, and that was one of the things we were talking about earlier is the fact that how, how, uh, it, it, the work arduous it could be. [00:12:25] Vince Menzione: To go through that whole process at a customer side. Right? ’cause they have to. [00:12:29] George Maroulakos: It is, and and you know, I think when Cloud first got started, it was quite scary for procurement, right? It became another version of Shadow it. And we were seeing things that were getting purchased on P cards because they could quickly stand up infrastructure versus waiting for the IT team to do it. [00:12:44] George Maroulakos: And so now you introduce all of these other things that. Procurement kept near and dear to their heart, and here comes another wave of, is this truly positive disruption? Is it going to affect what’s, what I’m doing affect really my goals and objectives of supporting the company. And as you, you know, you continue to express the value of marketplace, they start to see, hey, this is actually very complimentary and helped me can get better control and governance in a way that I. [00:13:11] George Maroulakos: Perhaps didn’t have before with what was going on inside the cloud. [00:13:15] Vince Menzione: So this is a question for both of you actually, but I was thinking about these partners in the room and what did they get wrong? Like what are they doing? Like what are the things we always talk about, things that they’re doing right? [00:13:26] Vince Menzione: We’re having the happy talk about all the great success that’s been going on, but what is your advice to partners that maybe are not getting it right? Like what, what, what are the things you see that. The easy stumbling blocks that could be fixed. [00:13:38] Arif Razvi: Yeah. Well, probably the easiest is, uh, waiting to talk about marketplace at the last minute and not making it part of the full commercial journey [00:13:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:45] Arif Razvi: That the sellers will go through. Right. So, um, but that includes being able to have those internal conversations from the executive level, getting that executive sponsorship from marketplace upfront. That filters down through the rest of the organization. So you’ve gotta get rev ops teams, finance, legal, you know, the marketplace terms, the, the standard, uh, contract that goes into your listing has to be approved by legal. [00:14:08] Arif Razvi: Uh, and then you get down to the sales teams, making sure that you’re not penalizing sales teams for doing transactions on marketplace, which will create friction, then meeting buyers where they are, right? So local entities, local currency, um, having all that wired up. Uh, I met with a, a partner yesterday at Summit who is literally wiring up 10 new regions, 10 new entities in 10 new locations on marketplace in advance of what they know is a pipeline that’s going to be building into those regions. [00:14:37] Arif Razvi: So they’re getting ready and not waiting for the last minute for marketplace. [00:14:40] Vince Menzione: I love it. And the internal, go ahead. [00:14:43] George Maroulakos: Yeah, I, I echo definitely what Arif was saying and I think the, the other aspect of that is that our customers shouldn’t feel like it’s more painful. To use marketplace versus they would any other way. [00:14:54] George Maroulakos: And so whether that shows up in pricing, it shows up in awareness of what marketplace is and isn’t, or what it can or cannot do. Um, whether it’s introducing it naturally or it’s this, oh, by the way, on the end, like the, the more. Integrated marketplace is as a part of your co-sell motion, whether you’re doing it directly on your own or through a reseller or with AWS or all of the above. [00:15:17] George Maroulakos: Um, it’s, it should be a natural extension and a value point that you’re bringing to your respective customers, not some. Interrupt driven or, or exception based activity that goes along with selling your, your, your, your solution. [00:15:31] Vince Menzione: Why do you think customer, some customers or some partners are held back or what, what, what is, is it a mindset? [00:15:38] Vince Menzione: I mean, I talk about the principles, you know that, but like, is it mindset? What is it? Is it, [00:15:42] Arif Razvi: it’s, it’s internal. Friction. Yeah. A a a lot of what I see, especially in these, in, in embedded engagements is the amount of, you know, I have a lot of empathy for this room, right? Because you are the ones that have to go internally and navigate all of these stakeholders to be able to convince them that marketplace is the route to market. [00:16:01] Arif Razvi: It’s the preferred route to market, and it’s the way that a AWS wants to co-sell. With its partners. And that’s a hard thing to do if you don’t speak the same language that the tax legal, rev ops, finance, accounting, because everything changes. When you start doing transactions on marketplace, your revenue is booked differently, right? [00:16:20] Arif Razvi: It’s booked as a w from AWS and not from the, you know, from the, so things change and having that conversation is often challenging. Uh, we are working on some tools that will help make that conversation easier. Um, and we’ve already written blogs, and again, there are mechanisms that your partner managers have internally that they can request support and guidance. [00:16:43] Arif Razvi: Uh, and we’re happy to provide that. [00:16:45] Vince Menzione: What needs to change so that marketplace becomes a true go to market engine. [00:16:49] Arif Razvi: Top down, top down, top down where, where I’ve seen the most success. From a partner is where they’ve gotten strategic alignment at the executive level. That marketplace is the way we are going to, uh, sell globally. [00:17:02] Arif Razvi: Right? Then that starts to filter down, as I mentioned earlier, into the different teams and yes, it is a journey and you may start with the US or if you’re EMEA based. Partner, you may start with just amea, but eventually you will start to expand your, you’ll want to expand your business. Um, and marketplace is a great place to do that because we have all of those mechanisms globally to help you scale without adding incremental resources to handle the tax or the compliance or the invoicing and collection and all that stuff. [00:17:30] George Maroulakos: Yeah. I’ll add to that because I’m gonna steal a second thing you said, Allison, about centering around a customer. I, I loved a lot of Allison. Come on now. I’ll be your hype guy. I absolutely, but, but, but the but demand will drive supply. And I think to what you were talking about, Arif, when are customers, when. [00:17:46] George Maroulakos: Our customers come to you about wanting to use marketplace. Yeah. How are you ready to adapt to that? How are you ready to respond to it? And if it becomes a disjointed, not centered around a customer, bespoke based, independently based interaction with the customer, everybody loses. Versus if you’re ready to embrace what that means and how to make that as good of an experience, if not better, versus how they might have traditionally procured your solution and deployed it. [00:18:13] George Maroulakos: Um, now we have a much better together story. So I think understanding that customers more and more are going to use marketplaces, particularly AWS marketplace, and want to make use of partner solutions that embrace marketplace as a part of their way to procure and deploy. You have a much better chance of being successful with them. [00:18:33] Vince Menzione: You know, it made me think about this. Is there a seminal event? Like I think about, I think back to COVID changing buying behavior, right? I’m, we’ll use AWS, an example, three boxes show up in my house every day, right? That didn’t happen before. We used to go to the store. Is there a seminal event we’re waiting to happen? [00:18:50] Vince Menzione: I, I know that the millennial buyer, we talked about this earlier with Matt, is the new buying persona. Over 50% of buyers are millennial and they’re used to doing comfortable with phones and trust Is all there. Is there something else we’re missing or what do, what do you think’s gonna happen? [00:19:03] George Maroulakos: I really think it’s what in front of us right now. [00:19:05] George Maroulakos: Yeah. Vince, I think what. Agen solutions, what Agen SaaS offers, what the power of information and research that’s now directly available to customers versus maybe indirectly available through consultancies or deeper research. Um, the velocity of what our customers are going to be able to do and with partners that they may not have even heard of right before. [00:19:32] George Maroulakos: You know, they started their journey. I, I think this is a present day. Inflection point. Yeah. Um, going back, you know, over the past several years, the advent of supporting private offers I think was a pretty big milestone for marketplace. It allowed for our partners to be able to. Work through customized terms and conditions and commercials that were important for a particular opportunity in a customer. [00:19:54] George Maroulakos: But today, the here and now I think becomes the next inflection point for the success of marketplace. [00:19:59] Arif Razvi: That would [00:19:59] Vince Menzione: Go ahead. [00:20:00] Arif Razvi: I was just gonna add on top of that, but partners need to be ready for that. Right? And if they’re not ready to accelerate a deal and get it closed in days versus stalling it for weeks to negotiate. [00:20:11] Arif Razvi: Yes. Like they’re not gonna stand. Customers are not gonna stand for that. So partners need to be ready to move quickly. If you think about all the innovations that Matt is delivering for Marketplace and Partner Central. They’re about accelerating co-sell. They’re about accelerating deal velocity. They’re about, we know f from, from the Forrester studies and others that we presented, that we’ve made public that the deal value goes up when you’re dealing with marketplace and co-selling with AWS. [00:20:36] Arif Razvi: So how can we just accelerate that? Yeah. Partners need to be ready for that and move quickly. [00:20:40] Vince Menzione: And you use partners in sort of a, you know, plural sense, but I think about those organizations as so many multifaceted. We talked about finance, we talked about all of different functions in the organization. [00:20:51] Vince Menzione: What are you doing to help that? I mean, we talked about you’re doing a lot of readiness work, but I do feel like there’s a lot of evangelism still to be done internally with those organizations. How do you think about [00:21:02] Arif Razvi: that? Yeah, we, um, obviously events like this are fantastic mechanisms to at least get the conversation started and get your head thinking about what you need to think about. [00:21:10] Arif Razvi: But we have other activities. We have, uh, rev Ops squads, right? So revenue operations teams, and we bring them together, uh, around the world op, uh, ops squad, which is operational teams, so deal desks and others that help them, uh, understand the capabilities that marketplace can bring to accelerate deal velocity. [00:21:28] Arif Razvi: And then we have, like, obviously other events like the, the, uh, marketplace Seller Conference in September where we bring marketplace sellers together and give them, you know. Guidance. And so there are ways to get this information beyond just like getting somebody from my team, of which there are very few as you, you know, as we start to, to consolidate down. [00:21:47] Arif Razvi: But um, but they are available and there’s other mechanisms and we’re happy to share those out. [00:21:50] Vince Menzione: Nice, nice. Well coming here doing this and we’ll make a podcast episode out of this as well. Can you hear. I hear us all, uh, because I do think it’s important to get in front of, especially the Chief Finance Officer and operations and all those different departmental heads who aren’t really embedded into, like, they don’t come to these events. [00:22:07] Arif Razvi: Yeah. And they also don’t log into Partner Central. That’s right. So how do they get this information right? Yeah. So we have to one to one it with them. Yeah. But that doesn’t scale when you think about what’s gonna happen now with this next wave of GSIs and sis and, and others coming onto Marketplace who hadn’t been there. [00:22:22] Arif Razvi: Yes, they’re gonna need the same guidance. Yeah. So we have to start thinking about what we’re building is AI tooling to help with those conversations. [00:22:28] George Maroulakos: Well, and, and you know, if, when I think about it from, from our buyer’s perspective, even just yesterday we held a, a couple of round table discussions with some procurement leaders that were, we’re here for the summit and, you know, we do a lot of enablement and, and awareness. [00:22:42] George Maroulakos: With alliance leaders at our partners, and that’s certainly a, the tip of the spear of getting the conversation started, but it’s not enough. And one of the things that we hear from our customers is. Well, you may have a great partnership with particular partner A, but the individual experience that I had with that sales rep doesn’t match that. [00:23:02] George Maroulakos: And so yeah, the evangelism and the awareness, yes, and the understanding of marketplace has to go beyond just the alliance team. You guys are the amplifier to it. But the folks that not only are in the back office and all the, the, the operational teams, but on the front lines and field sales need to also understand and embrace, not understand all the features and capabilities of marketplace. [00:23:25] George Maroulakos: AWS needs to handle that, but understand how marketplace fits into the co-sell strategy in what’s going on for that particular customer is very, very important to make sure our customers get the right experience. [00:23:37] Vince Menzione: Well, I think Arif, you mentioned this earlier about compensation models. And that’s a, that’s a factor too. [00:23:42] Vince Menzione: ’cause people, people, um, they’re fearful of change. They’re fear, fearful of compensation changing. Especially, especially sellers. I, um, again, that’s a coaching area. [00:23:54] Arif Razvi: Yeah, it’s a coaching area. Um, it, it, it is, um. It’s probably one of the easier ones to solve. Um, and, and, and, you know, we have these conversations with partners about net, uh, cost neutral or uh, seller neutrality and things like that. [00:24:06] Arif Razvi: Once you show them the economics of how AWS can increase their deal value, those economics sort of, they go away. The problems go away, but they, you have to get in front of those. Uh, you know, senior leaders, the CROs and the CFOs, to have that conversation to then go, okay, I get what’s going on here. I get why I’m paying. [00:24:23] Arif Razvi: The listing fee is, is about funding all of these marketing activities that we do for our partners, right? [00:24:29] George Maroulakos: Well, and then you use the word neutrality. The other end of that neutrality problem or, or, or challenge is the pricing that goes along with the opportunities that are made available to customers. [00:24:38] George Maroulakos: And so to one of your earlier questions on points of friction or what, what stops it from taking off further? When, when partners and our customers have a disconnect on. What they’re expecting to pay when they use marketplace, or if there is a unnatural cost that goes along with procuring that solution through marketplace. [00:24:57] George Maroulakos: That also tends to bring a, a pretty bad experience, not only for that opportunity in front of them, but for respective opportunities that may, may be in play thereafter. So thinking about not, you know, having an a, an unnatural experience for our customers relative to pricing as well as compensation and, and everything else is, is also very important. [00:25:17] Vince Menzione: So we’ve got a few minutes left, and we haven’t really touched on ag agentic AI and agen AI solutions. A little bit different than the SaaS solutions per se. How, how are these solutions brought and sold differently than SaaS? [00:25:30] Arif Razvi: Uh, well, as Matt said, the SaaS apocalypse is not real. [00:25:34] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:25:34] Arif Razvi: Um, he doesn’t, I’m glad to hear that, nor nor do I. [00:25:37] Arif Razvi: Um, I, I think what, you know, where, where SaaS has been very user seat based, you’re moving now to a world that’s gonna be more consumption based or outcome-based pricing. And so that’s really changing the dynamic and I think partners need to think about what does an outcome-based, uh, pricing model look for My particular. [00:25:55] Arif Razvi: Um, product, uh, Zendesk is a good example of, Matt published a blog, uh, earlier this week, I think it was, where we, we referenced Zendesk pricing on closed tickets or, or resolutions to tickets, right? For, for outcome-based pricing. So I think we need to think about on the pricing side, how to reprice, how to think about pricing. [00:26:13] Arif Razvi: But on the discovery side, thinking about what your, what your listing looks like, it’s no longer about marketing copy. It’s about, it’s almost, I was talking yesterday about being an API contract. ’cause the agent needs to have all the details that a person doesn’t necessarily need to have in order to make a recommendation that your product is the best fit based on the technology that’s underlying that, where it’s gonna fit in the infrastructure. [00:26:37] Vince Menzione: So three and a half minutes left lightning round. Um, but seriously, what, what if I’m in the room or even any, any partner that’s listening today, what do I need to change in the next 30 days? [00:26:50] George Maroulakos: From my perspective, think about marketplace as a why not as opposed to a why. And if you change your mindset around marketplace can be better together in helping to accelerate and expand your opportunities with our mutual customers. [00:27:03] George Maroulakos: You’ll get a whole lot more value out of it. You’ll get away from the fud in the system or some of the traditional roadblocks that you either have been or could be encountering when you think about marketplace, uh, together with your, with your solution. So think about the why not think about the value that the, the, the total solution can bring to our mutual customers and integrate it much more naturally into your total sales motion. [00:27:26] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:27:27] Arif Razvi: I would say maybe three things. One, um, don’t just sell globally. Operate locally. Think about how your buyers wanna buy and then meet them there, right? As a partner, even if you’re doing CPPO transactions, um, you know, meet them in the location. Number two, top down, go get that executive alignment so the problems start to disappear, or at least are easier to manage when you’ve got that executive alignment. [00:27:51] Arif Razvi: And the third was, uh, don’t wait till the last minute to introduce marketplace. Work with your sales teams to make sure it’s part of the early conversation versus no procurement leader wants to know at the end of the day, oh wait, it’s coming. I gotta deal with this marketplace thing. They don’t wanna deal with it on the buyer side. [00:28:06] Vince Menzione: No, absolutely. Alright, we’ve got time for like one question in the back. Is that Eric? Yeah, that’s [00:28:12] Guest: me. [00:28:13] Vince Menzione: Hey. [00:28:14] Guest: Hi, Eric Rosenstein, um, with Cornerstone Strategy XAWS. So George, you talked about, uh, tools around that customers can use to research for self discovery. So what guidance, uh, first of all, like what capabilities are these tools gonna bring and what guidance would you give an industry specific ISV? [00:28:36] Guest: So someone that’s focused on law enforcement or private equity. That solution may be Angen solution, or it may be something more SaaS related. What guidance would you give an ISV to think about how to best leverage those tools? Is it metadata? Is it like. The outcome that your solution’s gonna drive, how would you tell ’em to best utilize those coming tools? [00:28:58] George Maroulakos: Yeah, excellent question and, and I think this is gonna, going to continue to emerge in the days, literally in weeks, weeks ahead. But recently, I, I’d say over the last six months, the advent of agent mode I think has been a game changer and the ability for our customers to use marketplace directly to research. [00:29:18] George Maroulakos: Efficiently what’s in our catalog. Prior to that, we had a category based. Old school based, search based category, click through way, which became very buried beyond the first page for any solution that was out there. Now with natural language query and the ability to propose, what am I specifically looking for, it gives partners that were on the first page or the last page in equal opportunity to be surfaced. [00:29:48] George Maroulakos: So then for a partner being able to do many of the things you just enumerated. Better metadata, better keywords, better description and differentiation for what your solution offers allows for the Ag agent search, whether it’s natively within AWS or outside of AWS through Claude Chat, GBT Crock Pick your, your, your agent of choice. [00:30:10] George Maroulakos: To be able to identify and know that your solution’s available. [00:30:13] Arif Razvi: And from a partner side to your question, I would say, uh, rich metadata, uh, both so that agent mode can find it. Yeah. Use cases, problems, it solves, you know, uh, technical specifications, pricing where you can, right. So that agents can really understand the solution, uh, that the buyer is, um, is looking for. [00:30:33] Vince Menzione: GEO is. [00:30:37] Guest: Perspective should be like as detailed as saying, so this agent is gonna act on these various data sources. [00:30:44] Arif Razvi: Yes. [00:30:45] Guest: Bringing it all together to drive that outcome that you want the agent [00:30:48] Arif Razvi: drive, if you can include what it needs to connect to in order to deliver that outcome as part of the listing. [00:30:53] Arif Razvi: Absolutely. ’cause the agent will want to know. For sure. [00:30:57] Guest: Thanks. [00:30:58] Vince Menzione: Alright, we are at time and this was a great session. [00:31:01] Arif Razvi: Thank you Vince. [00:31:01] Vince Menzione: Great to see you, George. George and I grew up, uh, five miles away from each other and went to the same college. I love it. Great to, great to spend some [00:31:09] Arif Razvi: time with you, George. [00:31:11] Vince Menzione: Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the ultimate partner.com. For show notes related content and the resources for this episode, and if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live Event in Reston, Virginia, October 26th through October 28th. [00:31:38] Vince Menzione: Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything.

Advanced Financial BasicsSuccess is boring. That's not a knock — it's the whole point. The best tennis players in the world don't win with highlight-reel shots; they win by making almost every easy shot and missing almost nothing. Wealth-building works the same way. This week, David Chudyk, CFP®, breaks down BASICS — a six-letter framework covering the unglamorous, "advanced" fundamentals that actually move the needle for people who are already building real wealth.What BASICS Actually Stands ForB — Budget. Not a lecture about canceling subscriptions. The real question isn't "can I afford this," it's "is this appropriate for my current situation." For some listeners — especially those with a solid nest egg — an appropriate spending plan means spending more, not less.A — Allocation. Where should your money actually live — checking, real estate, retirement accounts, an emergency fund, speculative positions? "Should I buy the hot new IPO?" is really an allocation question in disguise, and there's no universal right answer without knowing the full picture.S — Systems. We don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. This segment covers the financial habits — recurring money check-ins, subscription audits, auto-pay, systematic investing — that quietly determine whether goals actually happen.I — Insurance. Insurance isn't exciting, and David doesn't pretend otherwise — but its job is simple: it protects your money, nothing more, nothing less. Includes a breakdown of life insurance, liability coverage, and why finding a great local independent insurance agent is real advice, not a throwaway line.C — Caring. Tying back to David's core philosophy — how we handle our money should positively impact our lives and the lives of those around us — this segment covers generosity beyond the tax-deductible check, and a candid look at whether your spending actually reflects what you say you value.S — Support. Borrowing from Dr. Benjamin Hardy's Who Not How, David makes the case that the right question isn't "how do I figure this out myself," it's "who already knows how to do this." Financial advisors, CPAs, attorneys, fractional CFOs, and mastermind groups all make the list.Bonus Content: Allocation, Round TwoStick around after the outro for a bonus deep-dive on allocation: why the goal of investing isn't always the highest possible return, how David solves for the required rate of return needed to hit a goal, and why a 79-year-old getting a lucky 40% return doesn't mean their money was allocated correctly.Resources MentionedFree E-Book: The Rainmaker's Dilemma — for business owners stuck as the primary revenue driver in their own companyBook Referenced: Who Not How by Dr. Benjamin HardyRelated Episode: "The Richest Corpse in the Graveyard" (referenced in the Budget segment)Where Are You Strong? Where Are You Weak?Leave David a voicemail at weeklywealthpodcast.com and tell him which of the six basics you need to work on. Or skip straight to a conversation: Book your free Vision Call.

The speed and magnitude of AI implementation at the firm level will help determine its overall impact on growth, productivity, and employment. Survey evidence shows CFOs' approach to AI integration varies based on how they assess the risks and potential benefits of the innovative technology. In this episode, we talk with John Graham, Professor of Finance at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, about what's driving CFOs' decisions on AI spend, the impact on productivity and employment thus far, and parallels with the late-1990s desktop computer revolution. Simply Put: Expert perspectives on the trends influencing fixed income, banking, and the macro landscape, hosted by FHN Financial's Macro Strategist, Will Compernolle. Tune in to better understand what's moving the markets and what to keep an eye on in the weeks and months ahead. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode Dealsynchq.com founder Shalom Ben Or joins the show to unpack why $1.5 trillion in asset-based lending and roughly $250 billion in B2B trapped capital still moves through emails, PDFs, and meetings. He explains how CFOs are stuck reacting to cash flow problems instead of controlling them, and why traditional revenue-based financing breaks down for AI and outcome-based companies. Shalom walks through how Dealsynchq.com turns complex, non-standard revenue into a financeable asset using AI-driven judgment at the CFO level. The conversation covers market size, early adopters, and what is next for the company's growth. Key Takeaways: 8:19 — What is trapping 20 to 30 percent of B2B revenue in the sales to cash process? 14:05 — How did building a fintech company in Africa shape Shalom's view of broken financing? 22:04 – Who is adopting Dealsynchq.com first, and why? 25:04 — When does Shalom expect Dealsynchq.com to hit its next major milestone? Quote of the Show (21:00):"We want to make sure the CFO can control the cash flow at the onset, not react to problems." — Shalom Ben Or Join our Anti-PR newsletter where we’re keeping a watchful and clever eye on PR trends, PR fails, and interesting news in tech so you don't have to. You're welcome. Want PR that actually matters? Get 30 minutes of expert advice in a fast-paced, zero-nonsense session from Karla Jo Helms, a veteran Crisis PR and Anti-PR Strategist who knows how to tell your story in the best possible light and get the exposure you need to disrupt your industry. Click here to book your call: https://info.jotopr.com/free-anti-pr-eval Ways to connect with Shalom Ben Or:Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shalombenor/ Company Website: https://dealsynchq.com How to get more Disruption/Interruption: Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=disruption+%2F+interuuptionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Candice Frazer is the revenue efficiency strategist and founder of AlphaRev, a firm that helps established businesses systematically increase revenue across retention, expansion, referrals, win-backs, and lost deals. Frazer works with CEOs, CFOs, and operators in professional services and industrial organizations to help them capture more value from their existing customers, partners, and pipeline. With more than 20 years of experience across revenue strategy, operations, and growth systems, Candice is known for bringing clarity to messy growth problems. Rather than pushing top of funnel tactics exclusively, she and her team at AlphaRev help teams focus on revenue efficiency building practical systems that turn overlooked opportunities into consistent, operational cash flow. AlphaRev's work is especially valued by leaders who want growth that compounds without burning out their people. During the show we discuss: Why more leads don't always mean more revenue. How to find revenue that's already hiding inside your customer base. How to reduce customer churn. How to turn past customers into new revenue. How to recover lost deals. How to generate referrals without making the process feel transactional. How to build systems that don't depend on the founder. How to know when your business needs a CRM. How to simplify operations so they can scale. How operational efficiency can improve fundability and business valuation. Resources: https://getalpharev.com/

In this episode of Future Finance, hosts Paul Barnhurst and Glenn Hopper welcome Alex Curran, CEO of Aptitude Software, to discuss AI-native ERP, the changing role of CFOs, and how finance teams can prepare for AI adoption. Alex explains why strong data foundations, flexible architecture, and real-time finance systems are becoming essential.Alex Curran is the CEO of Aptitude Software, a company with decades of experience building finance solutions for complex organizations. After more than 12 years at Aptitude, Alex became CEO in late 2023 and now leads the company's focus on AI-native finance technology, including the Fynapse platform.In this episode, you will discover:Why CFOs are becoming strategic partners in business decisions.Why clean, detailed data is essential for effective AI adoption.What makes an ERP system truly AI-native.How CFOs can evaluate legacy and newer AI-native ERP platforms.Why flexible AI models and real-time finance are becoming more important.Alex explains that successful AI adoption requires more than adding AI features to existing finance systems. Organizations need the right data and architecture to support changing AI technologies while meeting complex finance requirements. Follow Glenn:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gbhopperiiiFollow Paul:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefpandaguyFollow Alex:Website: http://fynapse.app/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-curran-9aa593b/Future Finance is sponsored by QFlow.ai, the strategic finance platform solving the toughest part of planning and analysis: B2B revenue. Align sales, marketing, and finance, speed up decision-making, and lock in accountability with QFlow.ai. Stay tuned for a deeper understanding of how AI is shaping the future of finance and what it means for businesses and individuals alike.In Today's Episode:[00:56] – Meet Alex Curran[02:32] – Aptitude Software and Fynapse[05:16] – The Changing CFO Role[07:03] – Finance's Data Problem[10:53] – AI-Native Finance Systems[14:33] – Evaluating ERP Options[17:32] – The Future of AI-Native ERP[18:59] – Closing Thoughts

What if your business keeps growing, but your personal wealth does not?Phil Calandra built an insurance brokerage and an investment advisoryfirm with approximately $250 million under management before sellingboth companies in a single transaction to a $10 billion firm. The dealmade work optional. It also helped him see a problem that traps fartoo many founders.Most business owners have plenty of specialists: a bookkeeper, CPA,fractional CFO, financial advisor, and perhaps a business consultant.Each may be competent. But when no one coordinates the completefinancial system, the founder becomes the conductor, and the business,tax strategy, and personal wealth can begin working against oneanother.Phil calls this the coordination gap. It is how an owner can drivemore revenue, pay more taxes, assume more complexity, and still wonderwhy the wealth is not showing up outside the company.In this episode, Phil and Jerome Myers discuss the heart attack thatchanged Phil's relationship with risk, the unsolicited offer that ledto his two exits, the emotional high after the transaction, and why hechose to build again. They also examine the revenue trap, the dangerof assuming “I'll make it all when I sell,” and the three financialflywheels every founder must coordinate: business profitability, taxstrategy, and owner wealth.If your entire wealth plan depends on a future transaction, thisconversation will challenge you to start extracting the value of thebusiness before the exit.In This Episode:• Why an exit made Phil work optional but did not make him want to retire• How a heart attack at 51 influenced his decision to sell• Why more revenue does not necessarily mean more owner wealth• Where CPAs, CFOs, bookkeepers, and wealth managers can work at cross purposes• How the coordination gap turns the founder into the financial bottleneck• Why the business and the owner's wealth must be planned as one system• How to coordinate profitability, tax strategy, and personal wealthbefore a saleResources:Wealth Creation Scorecard: https://wealthcreationscorecard.comExit to Excellence: https://exittoexcellence.comAll the best,Jerome Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Jess Larsen Show on Innovation & Leadership, Jess sits down with Tom Shea, co-founder and CEO of OneStream, for a deep conversation on building a multibillion-dollar software company, going from private to public and back to private, and what it really takes to create lasting enterprise value. Tom shares the journey behind OneStream, from his early days building software for the office of the CFO to creating a unified platform for consolidation, planning, reporting, and financial data. He explains how his first company, UpStream, led to an acquisition by Oracle, and how that experience gave him the confidence to think bigger, build a platform, and create a company that could serve some of the largest and most demanding organizations in the world. Jess and Tom dive into the principles that shaped OneStream's growth, including the company's simple but powerful mission: every customer must be a reference. Tom explains why customer success, product-market fit, transparency, passion, authenticity, and long-term relationships became the foundation of the business, especially when selling mission-critical software to CFOs whose numbers ultimately go to Wall Street. They also discuss the realities of entrepreneurship, from surviving early implementations and coding through hard problems to leading with confidence when things get difficult. Tom shares why founders must know their strengths, surround themselves with the right partners, stay close to customers, and build a culture where the team is willing to do whatever it takes to deliver. This is a practical and thoughtful conversation about scaling a software company, building trust with enterprise customers, navigating public and private markets, and creating a business where customer success is not a slogan, but the operating system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The traditional annual budget process is broken. It is rigid, backward-looking, and not operationally fit to keep up with today's fast-moving markets. Top-performing companies are outpacing peers by budgeting differently. Matthew Maloney, Karen McLoughlin, and Michele Tam join us to discuss their recent article on how top-performing companies are transforming the budget from a control mechanism to a dynamic road map for driving growth. They share how leading CFOs are more closely linking the budget to strategic priorities, and how harnessing AI enables a data-driven, forward-looking approach. Related insights Your budget is killing your strategy—here are four ways to fix it The CFO as growth leader: A conversation with Levi’s Harmit Singh CFOs have been concerned about geopolitical impacts for monthsSupport the show: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance/See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Welcome to The SaaS CFO Podcast! In today's episode, host Ben Murray welcomes Lyndon Stickley, CEO of Iplicit, and Rob Steele, CFO at Iplicit, for a lively exploration of SaaS, accounting software, and the dynamics of scaling a tech company. Lyndon, a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple exits, and Rob, a finance software veteran, share their unique backgrounds and how they teamed up to breathe new life into Iplicit—a cloud-first finance solution born from a deep understanding of complex ERP challenges in the mid-market. Listeners will hear the inside story of Iplicit's evolution, from humble beginnings and sizable personal investment to rapid growth—leveraging over $25 million in Series A funding and a people-centric, remote culture. Lyndon and Rob pull back the curtain on their fundraising process, explaining how clear vision and disciplined focus created high investor demand. They also dive into go-to-market strategies targeting CFOs and FDs, the pivotal role of partners and resellers, and how channel sales are poised to fuel their next phase of expansion. This episode is packed with real-world insights on the modernization of accounting platforms, the nuanced role of AI in finance, and the metrics that drive SaaS success. If you're interested in the intersection of SaaS, finance, and innovation—or curious about how to build, fund, and scale a company in a competitive software landscape—this conversation will leave you inspired and informed. Show Notes: 00:00 The origins of Iplicit software 06:20 Realizing broader customer demand 08:47 Open API for flexibility 10:50 Opening up to growth funds 16:12 Building Investor Relationships 19:47 Challenges in direct sales and marketing 20:36 Shifting to partner sales channels 26:41 Trust and adoption of AI solutions 28:00 Discussing AI native queries 31:06 Growth slowing as company scales Links: SaaS Fundraising Stories: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/iplicit-raises-29-7-million-in-funding/ Rob Steele's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-steele-686a21169/ Lyndon Stickley's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyndon-stickley-bab38b78/ Iplicit's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/iplicit/ Iplicit's Website: https://www.iplicit.com/ To learn more about Ben check out the links below: Subscribe to Ben's daily metrics newsletter: https://saasmetricsschool.beehiiv.com/subscribe Subscribe to Ben's SaaS newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/df1db6bf8bca/the-saas-cfo-sign-up-landing-page SaaS Metrics courses here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ Join Ben's SaaS community here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/offers/ivNjwYDx/checkout Follow Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benrmurray

John Quinn, founder and CEO of Wellnecity, joins Stacey Richter for an outtake from their conversation last fall on rethinking how self-insured employers build their provider networks. Rather than treating the network as one big, undifferentiated system, Quinn argues employers should think like a manufacturing supply chain: break healthcare into defined "subassemblies," or pods of care — pediatric care, a cancer journey, a kidney stone episode — and direct-contract for those pods whenever the price beats the fee-for-service average. If the boundaries of the pod are clear and the price comes in lower, Quinn says, the plan and the member both win, quality being equal. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ✅ Why Stacey Richter says the provider-network debate could fill "a 20-hour show," and why networks still have real upsides — administrative infrastructure, claims coordination, guaranteed provider payment, and broad access — even as critics like Mark Cuban ask on LinkedIn, "Why do we need networks? It is just a way for insurers to play pricing games." ✅ A real example of network rigidity: a self-insured employer identified 40 physicians who cost the plan upwards of $15 million in a single plan year while patient harm was occurring, and their ASO couldn't figure out how to remove those doctors from network under the existing contract structure ✅ How John Quinn defines a "subassembly" or "pod of care" — a bounded, definable episode like pediatric care or a cancer journey — and why purchasing that pod for less than the fee-for-service average is a win for the plan and member, assuming quality stays neutral ✅ Quinn's kidney stone example: a physician who says he can now treat a kidney stone in a 48-hour to five-day episode for roughly $2,000 to $3,000, versus the typical six weeks of pain, overuse of pain medication, and a price north of $10,000 ✅ Why Quinn frames network optimization as a manufacturing supply-chain problem — the same way an automobile gets built from subassemblies sourced from specialized providers around the globe — because it's a mental model CFOs and senior leadership at self-insured employers already trust ✅ Quinn's bottom line: "We have the tech and we've got the tools to do this at this point. We just have to get ourselves out of" the fee-for-service hangover WHY THIS MATTERS Provider networks have real tradeoffs: broad access and guaranteed payment on one side, opaque pricing and rigid contracts on the other. John Quinn's pitch to self-insured employers isn't to blow up the network model, but to layer bounded, directly contracted "pods of care" on top of it wherever a clear price beats the fee-for-service average. Framing that as supply-chain sourcing, rather than a wholesale network overhaul, gives risk-averse finance and HR leaders a model they already understand — and, Quinn argues, the technology to act on it already exists. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE LinkedIn Post by Mark Cuban Article: Medical Economics, "An Idea Whose Time Has Gone: Healthcare Provider Networks," by Jim Jusko, JD EP457 with Cynthia Fisher: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps EP433 with Justin Leader: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps EP501 with Ivana Krajcinovic, PhD: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps EP503 with Ryan Wells; Leo Spector, MD, MBA; and Adam Stavisky: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps EP485 with Cristin Dickerson, MD: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps EP486 with Stan Schwartz, MD: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps EP493 with John Quinn: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps EP495 with Mick Connors, MD: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps EP505 with Ahilan Sivaganesan, MD: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Other Apps === LINKS ===

Most eCom marketers are optimizing for the wrong number, and a real CFO explains exactly how to fix that! Our good friend Abir Syed has a rare take on how to scale brands: he's run an eCommerce brand, built a performance marketing agency, and now runs a fractional CFO firm specializing in eCom. In this episode, he breaks down why MER is basically useless, what cohort profit actually tells you, and the three-pillar finance framework that gives marketers and CFOs a shared language for growth. Nate also gets uncomfortably personal about his own brand's cash flow situation. You'll walk away understanding how to set real scaling targets, why over-revving your marketing engine costs you money, how to predict LTV decay as you shift from organic to paid customers, and what questions to actually ask your finance team. 00:00 Why selling out early isn't the flex you think it is01:45 Introducing Abir Syed — the CFO who hates accounting03:30 Why 80% of your business story lives in the finances05:30 The #1 thing to get right before anything else: inventory costing07:00 Why MER is a useless metric (hot take, but hear him out)08:30 How dropping MER led to 130% growth in one year09:15 Cohort profit: Abir's favorite metric explained13:00 Over-revving the engine — the hidden way brands lose money scaling16:30 Incrementality testing vs. the scaling target table18:00 LTV decay: what happens when you go from organic to paid acquisition20:00 Paid customers get stolen by ads — a concept that breaks your brain23:00 The 3 things a CFO and CMO should never fight about24:30 Pillar 2: Investing in the marketing engine (creative, tools, talent)26:00 Pillar 3: Cash flow strategy and payback periods33:30 Expense leverage — making sure every dollar has a job37:00 Nate's regret: not taking big shots during a 2.5-year hot streak38:30 The $100K YouTube deal that looked like a disaster until Q439:30 The one thing to do this week if you're looking at your numbers

What does AI actually look like on a construction jobsite in 2026 — not the hype, the reality? In this episode of Voices of CFMA, host Sal Marino talks with Cindy Ly, founder of ToolBox Consulting, about her unconventional path from industrial construction cost control to yoga teaching in Europe to leading AI strategy for hundreds of construction companies. Cindy shares what she's seen across the industry in the last six months, where AI adoption is accelerating, where it's stalling, and why data standardization matters more than the tools themselves. In this episode:- Cindy's path from $500M industrial mega-projects to yoga teacher training in Europe and back to construction- Why she believes AI is a catalyst, not the solution, and data is the real work- The gap between field operations and financial control, and how AI is starting to close it- Common mistakes leadership teams make when rolling out AI tools- Her advice for CFOs and controllers navigating AI adoption right nowChapters: 00:00 Intro & welcome Cindy Ly 00:35 What Cindy does now 01:11 Growing up near Chicago, drawn to construction 02:06 From pharmacy major to construction management at Purdue 02:36 Industrial construction: blast furnaces and coke batteries 03:04 Burnout, and becoming a yoga teacher in Europe 05:26 The pivot into construction technology 06:36 Hiding her career changes from her parents 07:35 How yoga reshaped her approach to work 09:30 Reconnecting with the industry 10:10 The data problem before AI was a buzzword 12:49 What pulled her toward AI specifically 15:38 Her first AI project: Groundbreak 2025 and Procore 18:01 Why she started ToolBox Consulting 20:50 Hard lessons and the value of a slow burn 23:33 Where AI adoption is accelerating and stalling 25:27 Field operations vs. financial control 27:33 Hackathons and vibe coding, explained 30:27 Common mistakes in AI rollouts 32:07 Her #1 piece of advice for CFOs and controllers 32:59 Life outside work: DJing 34:06 Final advice: keep an open mindConnect with Cindy: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ly-cindyt/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ToolboxTechTalkAbout Voices of CFMA: Voices of CFMA brings you conversations with construction financial professionals and industry leaders on the trends, tools, and ideas shaping construction finance. Learn more at cfma.org. #ConstructionAI #ConstructionTechnology #CFMA #ConstructionFinance

How did ad agency economics become so challenging? Fee-cutting and low growth are part of the equation, but the roots of the issue go back decades. Ad industry analyst and author Michael Farmer joins WARC's David Tiltman to discuss his new book 'Madison Avenue Revisited' and offer his take on 30+ years of change to advertising business models, including the impact of dysfunctional client-agency relationships, increased creative workloads and AI. Guests: Michael Farmer, Chairman and CEO, Farmer&Co; Professor of Branding and Integrated Communications at The City College of New York David Tiltman, SVP - Content, WARC Chapters: [00:00] Introduction: Michael Farmer joins The WARC Podcast [06:49] From 'Madison Avenue Manslaughter' to 'Madison Avenue Revisited' [11:25] How ad agency workloads doubled while fees halved [18:29] Why big advertisers are underperforming GDP [23:44] Short-termism and the failure to brief for brand growth [27:51] The key factors undermining advertising economics [30:11] Artificial intelligence threatens advertising agencies [32:28] 'Infinite creative' doesn't equal brand growth [35:18] Using AI to fund strategy and reinvesting in senior talent [37:01] How hold-cos, commissions, and cheap CPMs undermined creative value [40:29] Why do CFOs block long-term marketing investment? [41:02] How AI can optimise the marketing mix for growth For 40 years, WARC has been providing the marketing industry with rigorous, unbiased evidence and expert effectiveness guidance. The WARC Podcast publishes a new episode every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe to The WARC Podcast here: https://www.warc.com/en/warc-podcastsSign up to daily WARC News for free: https://www.warc.com/en/latestBook a demo: https://www.warc.com/en/subscribe

As AI experts leave Google and new startups emerge, engineers are consumed with Superintelligence: building models that can reason, learn, and capture “all the world's knowledge.” While model evolution is important, I believe we're going in a different direction: toward vertical, domain and company specific AI that exponentially builds proprietary (not general) knowledge. In this podcast, I explain why the next wave of enterprise value will come from these specialized, domain-specific systems built on proprietary knowledge and experience. And this will take place within your company, as well as from experts like us. Drawing on our new research with Galileo and client work, I'm convinced that AI systems will become powerful advisors in HR, finance, supply chain, engineering, and other business functions… and you will have your own personal and company specific AI, forcing Frontier vendors to move to consumer. Frontier labs are not going away: they serve consumer and other needs, but they may not be the ultimate source of innovation. And big content companies like NY Times and News Corp may go there or elsewhere. It's fascinating to think that almost $2 Trillion has been invested in only four years and this market has so much room to grow. In the enterprise world, I believe AI is already able to make you “better at what you're already good at,” not necessarily be “the expert at everything.” It has lots of implications for your tech strategy and where you focus your investments. Additional Information Are Frontier Models Becoming A Commodity? CFOs and CIOs Starting to Treat Enterprise AI Like Traditional Technology, And That's Good Get Galileo: The AI Superagent for Everything HR and Management The New Global HR Excellence Certification: Become the AI Guru You Want To Be! Chapters (00:00:00) - The Future of Human Resource Management(00:10:14) - Steve Ballentine: The AI Vertical

Can you actually trust the numbers when AI writes your board report? In episode #383, Ben Murray breaks down how to vibe code finance dashboards that hold up to CFO standards. Every finance leader is being sold the same promise: that AI will do your analysis for you, but the hype skips the part that decides whether the output is usable. If you are putting AI-written numbers in front of your board or investors, the difference between a trusted report and an embarrassing one comes down to work most CFOs never do. Why the data foundation, not a magic prompt, decides whether your AI dashboards can be trusted How a deterministic metrics engine keeps AI away from your calculations while it writes the narrative on top The Cisco playbook for letting AI draft 80 to 90 percent of your board commentary before you finish it off How to turn an LLM-generated HTML dashboard into a live, refreshable report in about 5 minutes Which model, ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, actually produces the best-looking finance dashboards Tune in to get the exact process CFOs are using to put AI-written reports in front of their boards with the numbers they can defend. Resources Mentioned Webinar: How I Vibe Code Finance Dashboards, plus templates: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/pl/2148817040 SaaS Metrics Sprint, October cohort: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/saas-metrics-implementation-sprint-sept-2026 Tech CFO community: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfP4uwvwEoc92Qc_rS8eu-9EzV6shivPbBhaNcPqsy5sNVNNg/viewform?usp=dialog

In this episode, Andrea Marin, Chief Financial Officer, Logicalis, shares how the CFO role is evolving beyond finance, why data modernization is essential for AI success, and how building strong teams and cross-functional leadership drives long-term business growth.

In this episode, Andrea Marin, Chief Financial Officer, Logicalis, shares how the CFO role is evolving beyond finance, why data modernization is essential for AI success, and how building strong teams and cross-functional leadership drives long-term business growth.

Financial advisors can deepen client relationships by turning tax preparation into an integrated source of insight, strategy, and year-round value.In this episode of The Registered Investment Advisor Podcast, host Seth Greene interviews Richard Lavina, Co-Founder and CEO of Taxfyle, who shares how his experience as a CPA inspired him to co-found Taxfyle, a digital platform connecting individuals, businesses, and financial firms with licensed tax professionals. He explains how wealth managers and RIAs can integrate tax preparation into their existing services, access valuable client data, and provide more coordinated financial guidance without acquiring a traditional accounting practice. Richard also discusses the accounting talent shortage, the growth of fractional CPA work, the impact of AI, and the importance of preserving human connection as technology handles more administrative tasks. Key Takeaways: Taxfyle was inspired by the flexibility of the gig economy and the idea that CPAs should have greater control over when and how they work.The platform connects clients and financial firms with a network of licensed CPAs and IRS-enrolled agents.Wealth management firms can embed and white-label tax services without purchasing or operating a separate CPA practice.Tax information can help advisors better understand a client's financial position, investment needs, estate planning concerns, and overall financial wellness.Integrating tax services allows advisors to maintain greater visibility and control over the client relationship. Richard Lavina is Co-Founder and CEO of Taxfyle, an AI-powered tax preparation and planning platform that simplifies tax services for financial advisors, fintech companies, fractional CFOs, and their clients. With nearly a decade of experience leading Taxfyle's growth, Richard brings expertise in both technology and finance. Taxfyle is the United States' largest human-in-the-loop AI tax platform, with 7,200 CPAs and IRS Enrolled Agents in its network. Connect With Richard: Website: https://www.taxfyle.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/taxfyle/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Taxfyle/X: https://x.com/TaxfyleYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzodnNvli_8Wip0rT6v6_lA

For much of the time that I've been writing about the legal profession, the line between plaintiff- and defense-side litigation was clear, stable, and widely respected. Small, scrappy firms took plaintiffs' work on contingency; large, prestigious firms defended corporations for hourly rates. That division has been eroding—slowly at first, then with increasing speed. Today, defense-oriented Biglaw firms are actively seeking plaintiff-side engagements for their corporate clients, competing with the plaintiffs' bar for cases that they wouldn't have looked at even a decade ago.On Wednesday, May 6, I had the pleasure of moderating an excellent panel discussion dedicated to exploring these developments. It featured three great experts: Eva Cole, co-chair of the antitrust and competition practice at Winston Taylor; Evan Meyerson, managing director at Burford Capital; and Avi Weitzman, co-chair of the complex litigation and arbitration practice at Paul Hastings.I'm now pleased to share our conversation with you as a special episode of the Original Jurisdiction podcast. Thanks to the panelists for the time and insight, and thanks to Burford Capital for organizing this great event.Show Notes:* Defense-Focused Biglaw Moves Into Plaintiff-Side Work, by David Lat for Original Jurisdiction* Turning In-House Legal Departments Into Revenue Generators, by David Lat for Original Jurisdiction* Survey of in-house counsel on commercial opt-out claims, by Burford Capital* Litigation economics: CFOs and GCs weigh in on best practices in optimizing legal department value, by Burford CapitalSponsored by:Burford Capital helps companies and law firms unlock the value of their legal assets. With a portfolio of over $7 billion and listings on the NYSE and LSE, Burford provides capital to finance high-value commercial litigation and arbitration—without adding cost or risk or giving up control. Clients include Fortune 500 companies and Am Law 100 firms, who turn to Burford to pursue strong claims, manage legal costs and accelerate recoveries. Learn more at burfordcapital.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit davidlat.substack.com/subscribe

In this Simple CFO Case Files episode, Christina Gutierrez sits down with CFO and CFO trainer Tommy Robinson, who brings over 20 years of real estate finance experience as a former financial analyst, controller, and VP of finance. Tommy breaks down two real client turnarounds from inside the business.He walks through a client who came in with unreliable books, significant debt, and late tax filings, and how the team rebuilt her financials into clean, project-level reporting she can trust. He also shares a flipping and rental operator who discovered their flipping business had quietly lost money for two years while the rentals carried it. If you want to see what a fractional CFO actually does day to day, this one delivers.Timeline Summary[0:44] – Christina welcomes Tommy back and introduces the Case Files format built around real client scenarios[1:46] – Tommy's background across financial analyst, controller, VP of finance, and CFO roles[2:33] – Why Profit First is about changing how owners think, not just bank accounts[3:13] – What Tommy loves most about training new CFOs and learning from their varied backgrounds[5:02] – Why the team model protects clients when a CFO takes vacation or leave[6:26] – The standardized dashboard and shared notes that let any CFO step in seamlessly[7:14] – Getting personal: Tommy's family, four children, three grandchildren, and monthly dinners[7:36] – His volunteering and an upcoming mission trip to Peru to build houses[9:14] – The client who raved about Tommy to David Richter at a conference[11:29] – Why client success depends on the client doing the homework and buying in[12:37] – The starting point: unreliable books, debt, and taxes filed late with penalties[13:05] – Building debt schedules, implementing Profit First, and transitioning to Simple CFO bookkeeping[13:53] – Quarterly expense and vendor analysis to check every dollar for profitability[15:01] – The real transformation: decisions made with confidence instead of anxiety[17:52] – Why the best time to bring on a CFO was yesterday, and the second best is now[19:16] – How a trusted CFO catches a bookkeeper who isn't actually doing the work[22:36] – The big surprise: a flipping business that lost money for two years while rentals carried it[24:27] – Building deal-level KPIs to vet ARV, budget, timelines, and contractors before buying[24:52] – How project overruns in cost and time were quietly killing margins through carry costs[25:34] – The work-in-progress dashboard with flags that trigger proactive action[26:25] – Turning three years of flip losses into a year-to-date profit for 20265 Key TakeawaysYour Books Are Your Scorecard — Unreliable books mean inconsistent owner pay, missed tax deadlines, and blind decisions. Clean, timely reporting is the foundation everything else is built on.A CFO Is A Financial Partner, Not A Bookkeeper — Tommy frames the role as advisor to the owner's decision, giving data-backed guidance while the owner still makes the call.Trust But Verify Your Bookkeeper — A client flew blind for months because her bookkeeper claimed work was done that wasn't. A CFO reviewing the numbers is what surfaced the gap.Segment Reporting Reveals Hidden Losses — Running the P&L by class showed a profitable-looking business was actually losing money on flips for two years while rentals carried it.KPIs Catch Overruns Before They Kill Margins — Deal-level flags on work in progress, budget, and timeline let flippers act proactively on carry costs instead of discovering losses after the sale.Links & ResourcesSimple CFO — https://simplecfo.comProfit First for Real Estate Investing Free Workbooks — https://peiworkbook.comProfit First for Real Estate Investing by David Richter — https://profitfirstrei.comEnjoyed This Episode?If Tommy's story about a flipping business quietly losing money for two years made you wonder what your own segment reports would reveal, that's worth a closer look. Share this episode with a real estate investor who's never separated their flips from their rentals on paper, and follow the show and leave a rating and review so more investors can find these Case Files.

SPACs are back. The numbers make it hard to argue otherwise. In Episode 1 of their two-part series, Embark's Nicole Harger and Adam Olsen unpack what's driving the resurgence, what went wrong in 2021, and what CFOs and finance leaders actually need to know before they consider this path.In this episode:What a SPAC is and how the three-phase lifecycle actually works, from IPO to business combinationThe full equity instrument landscape: founder shares, warrants, PIPE financing, and earnout arrangements, and why the headline deal value is never the complete pictureWhy the 2020-2021 SPAC boom collapsed, and how the SEC's 2024 rules changed the calculusWhat's fueling the current resurgence and why PE-backed companies are at the center of itSPAC vs. traditional IPO: the real trade-offs on speed, valuation certainty, cost structure, and projectionsThe three most common mistakes companies make going into a de-SPAC, including the one that shows up in almost every SEC filing reviewWhy public company readiness isn't a post-closing project, and what that preparation actually requiresEpisode 2 goes deep on the accounting and reporting mechanics. If you're close to a de-SPAC transaction or think you might be, it's worth your time.

In this episode, Pete welcomes Eynat Guez, CEO of Papaya Global, for a forward-looking conversation on the future of work, payroll, and workforce infrastructure. Eynat shares why AI is not just another layer of automation, but a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebuild how organizations manage, pay, and support their global workforces. From the rise of autonomous payroll and workforce data orchestration to the growing role of CFOs, payments, stablecoins, and real-time settlement, the conversation explores why payroll is becoming one of the most strategic systems in the enterprise. The discussion also digs into the realities of global payroll complexity, why cross-border payments remain so difficult, how AI can help turn fragmented workforce data into actionable intelligence, and why the future may require a new kind of leader focused on workforce data, risk, cost, and financial control. Connect with Eynat & Papaya Global:    https://www.linkedin.com/in/eynatguez/ www.papayaglobal.com Pete's Payroll Influences case study on Bolt featuring Papaya Global: https://www.payrollinfluences.com/researches/bolt%3A-a-managed-global-payroll-services-case-study-featuring-papaya-global- *The annual Payroll Profession Confidence Index (PPCI) survey is open now through September 30, 2026. Payroll professionals and stakeholders interested in participating in the research can complete the survey at: https://www.payrollinfluences.com/ppci-2026.  Connect with the show: LinkedIn:  http://linkedin.com/company/hr-payroll-2-0 X: @HRPayroll2_0  X: @PeteTiliakos  X: @JulieFer_HR BlueSky: @hrpayroll2o.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HRPAYROLL2_0  WRKDefined Podcast Network: https://wrkdefined.com/podcast/hr-payroll-20  Thank you to our marquee sponsors for powering the HR & Payroll 2.0 podcast forward!  G-P ‘Globalization Partners': https://www.globalization-partners.com/ OneSource Virtual: https://hubs.ly/Q03YFNR90 Zoho: https://www.zoho.com/press.html Thank you to our ‘wizard behind the curtain' and show producer Ryan Kielma: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-kielma/

In this episode of CFO Stories, Hannah is joined by Sophia Levell FCCA, CFO of Access Fertility and one of the youngest CFOs in the UK. Sophia shares the fast-tracked path that got her there and what she's learned since.In this episode, we cover:Why she dropped out of college to start her ACCA journey earlyThe mentor-shaped transition from finance operator to strategic CFOHiring for complementary skills, not personality Building trust with the C-suite through constant, unfiltered communicationSophia's advice for anyone stepping into their first CFO roleLinks mentionedSophia's LinkedinLearn more about Access FertilityLearn more about ACCAExplore other CFO 4.0 Podcast episodes here.Subscribe to our Podcast!

AI transformation is a problem of governance, not technology. Anthony Habayeb, CEO of Monitaur, argues that organizations don't need to spin up a new AI governance framework, but they need better use of the controls CFOs and auditors already own.In this episode:-Why AI pilots stall and what it reveals about governance gaps-How to build an AI governance framework from structures you already have-Why the agent isn't the risk, but the use case is-Who owns accountability when an autonomous system takes action?-How CFOs and audit teams are becoming the forcing function for AI qualitySubscribe for episodes on the issues shaping finance, audit, risk, and sustainability at the C-suite level.

Happy Mindful Monday! In this week's episode, our host Allie Brooke sits down with Hana Malhas. Hana is a professional singer-songwriter and a startup CFO. The combination sounds unusual until you hear her talk about why one made her better at the other. She has released multiple albums, performed across several countries, and founded BalaFeesh, a live music platform based in Jordan, showcasing independent Arab artists. She also holds an MBA from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and a track record of leading finance for startups in creative and media industries. Hana understands intellectual property the way most CFOs never will, not as a line item, but as someone who has lived inside the process of making it. She watched the music industry get turned upside down by streaming, and recognizes the same inflection point happening now in publishing. That's why she co-founded Sinai.ai, to bring AI into the world of books in a way that respects authors, protects rights-holders, and creates sustainable new revenue for the publishing industry. But at its core, she built it for the reader who used to get lost in books the way you get lost in a great song, and wants that feeling back. Because as reading evolves, she believes we shouldn't have to choose between what's new and what matters: the craft, the legacy, and the human intimacy of books.   Episode Topics How the creative process of songwriting mirrors the strategic process of financial modeling. The emotional and financial reality of intellectual property (IP) from an artist's perspective. Lessons learned from the music streaming revolution and how they apply to the current AI inflection point in publishing. Moving past the static page: What is an aiBook™ and why is it distinct from a chatbot or a summary app? How interactive reading enhances comprehension, retention, and human connection to text. Balancing cutting-edge technology with the "human intimacy" of a traditional book. Connect w| Hana Instagram Website The Growth METHOD. FREE Membership◦ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join Here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1:1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ GROWTH MINDSET COACHING PROGRAMS!◦ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Application Form ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ What are the coaching sessions like?⁠⁠• Tailored weekly discussion questions and activities to spark introspection and self-discovery.• Guided reflections to help you delve deeper into your thoughts and feelings.• Thoughtfully facilitated sessions to provide maximum support, accountability, and growth.• Please apply for a FREE discovery call with me!• Allie's Socials• Instagram:@thegrowthmindsetgal• TikTok: @growthmindsetgal• Email: thegrowthmindsetgal@gmail.comLinks from the episode• Growth Mindset Gang ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Broadcast Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• Growth Mindset Gang ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• Growth Mindset Gal ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• Better Help Link: Save 10%SubstackDonate to GLOWIGloci 10% off Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hana Malhas is a professional singer-songwriter and a startup CFO. The combination sounds unusual until you hear her talk about why one made her better at the other.She has released multiple albums, performed across several countries, and founded BalaFeesh, a live music platform based in Jordan, showcasing independent Arab artists. She also holds an MBA from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and a track record of leading finance for startups in creative and media industries.Hana understands intellectual property the way most CFOs never will, not as a line item, but as someone who has lived inside the process of making it. She watched the music industry get turned upside down by streaming, and recognizes the same inflection point happening now in publishing.That's why she co-founded Sinai.ai, to bring AI into the world of books in a way that respects authors, protects rights-holders, and creates sustainable new revenue for the publishing industry. But at its core, she built it for the reader who used to get lost in books the way you get lost in a great song, and wants that feeling back. Because as reading evolves, she believes we shouldn't have to choose between what's new and what matters: the craft, the legacy, and the human intimacy of books.Webpage: www.sinai.aiConnect and tag me at:https://www.instagram.com/realangelabradford/You can subscribe to my YouTube Channel herehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDU9L55higX03TQgq1IT_qQFeel free to leave a review on all major platforms to help get the word out and change more lives!

Joao Reginatto of M0, Monica Ramirez of Anchorage Digital, Olivia Vande Woude of Ava Labs, and Sheraz Shere of Solana Foundation join host Aaron Stanley at the Bitso Business Stablecoin Conference in Mexico City to discuss stablecoin readiness and the gap between corporate intent and implementation. The tech and the regulatory picture have mostly caught up, but companies are still stuck on accounting treatment, internal buy-in, and a shortage of talent that understands both crypto and traditional finance. The panel covers real examples like MoneyGram's board approval process and OpenTrade's work winning over CFOs, then closes with a lightning round of bold predictions on where stablecoins go next.You can connect with Joao Reginatto, Monica Ramirez, Olivia Vande Woude, and Sheraz Shere on LinkedIn Subscribe to Bits and Borders on ⁠Substack⁠-------------------------------------------------Bits and Borders is presented by SumsubSumsub recently released its fourth annual State of the Crypto Industry report. The new research reveals how digital asset companies are balancing fraud prevention, regulatory pressure, and user experience as they scale in 2026. This report draws on Sumsub's internal data from 2024–2025 and insights from 300 crypto companies surveyed outside Sumsub's customer base.Read the full report ⁠here⁠:

Noah Hopton, CEO and Founder of Finvisor, helps startups and growing businesses simplify operations by building integrated back-office teams that combine accounting, finance, payroll, HR, insurance, and technology. By combining experienced financial professionals with modern technology, Noah enables businesses to streamline operations, stay compliant, and focus on sustainable growth.  In this conversation, Noah introduces The Adjacent Extension Framework—Earn the Trust, Build the Relationship, Listen for Other Problems, Connect Other Specialists, and Empower the Team with Tech. He explains why proactive service creates lasting client relationships, how solving adjacent business challenges leads to sustainable growth, and why integrated back-office teams outperform disconnected vendors. Noah also shares how AI is reshaping finance operations by automating repetitive work, empowering finance professionals to focus on strategic decision-making, and helping businesses leverage technology to enhance—not replace—human expertise. — How to Outsource Your Back Office with Noah Hopton  Good day, listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Noah Hopton, the CEO and Founder of Finvisor, helping seed and Series A companies that have outgrown spreadsheets and part-time bookkeepers but aren’t ready for a full-time finance team yet. Their job is to give you the financial clarity to make good decisions at every stage of growth. Noah, welcome to the show.  Yeah. Pleasure to be here, Steve.  Well, great to have you here, and I’m very curious about your career and your business and what you built here. I’m particularly curious about your personal ‘Why’ and how you manifest it in your business.  Personal ‘Why.’ That’s great. Well, I’ll be honest, I didn’t go in thinking I was going to be an accountant or run an accounting firm. You know, I studied accounting in school. Eventually, I thought I was going to probably be more in a kind of front-of-house sales relationship because I enjoyed the people part—making relationships and meeting people.  But I was very fortunate that I found the consulting, fractional CFO world, where I got to discover a love of problem-solving, creating relationships, and creating value for clients. For me, it was kind of this love of helping clients understand their business, helping clients understand what to think about around the corner, where it's not just being in-house with one set of books that you're closing.Share on X  When you’re at Finvisor, my day-to-day, at least when I started, was probably working with 10 to 12 clients a month and helping them understand, “Okay, how did they perform last month? Can they hire a certain number of people? And what’s the plan going forward?”  Yeah, I mean, that’s super helpful. I started life in accounting as well with KPMG, and what attracted me was to essentially have that language of business so that I would be able to understand how a business works and have this confidence of not flying blind, right? That’s really, really cool. So how did you evolve from a CFO into a founder? What was the trigger point for you?  So I was very fortunate. I actually was at a prior firm at one point when I started my career, and they were a little bit like the cobbler with bad shoes, where eventually they decided they had to close shop, and clients were going to be given notice. I, myself, was given notice saying, “Hey, in a week, you’re not going to have a job, Noah.” And so I was really given this moment in life, saying, “Hey, if I enjoy what I’ve been doing, do I think I could do it better than the firm I’d been at?  And do I want to make this leap into being a founder and starting a business?” And so my co-founder and I both talked to each other and said, “Look, we love our clients. We love what we’ve been trying to build. I think we just need to do a little bit of a refresh and restructuring of how this operates.” And so we started our own company. I was very lucky that I started with about, I had about 30 clients and a team of four on day one, which I think is unusual.  Most people in the accounting space start off as a one-person shop, trying to grow from one to two, and having to double their clients or double their size to get there. We were fortunate to have five team members and 30 clients on day one. Originally, our vision was just, “Hey, let’s help with the fractional CFO and the bookkeeping,” but that really evolved over time as we added additional services and really understood where our clients were having problems in their back office.  What are the areas where maybe the insurance brokers they’d been working with weren’t very hands-on and kind of came in once a year? Our clients were asking us, as their CFO, “Hey, can you help us select our health insurance?” And we’re like, “Well, we’re kind of doing the broker’s job. Why don’t we build out our own team?” So that was one of the first verticals we moved into and added by building an insurance brokerage. From there, we kept building, where now not only do you have your CFO and accountant helping you, but you also have them with the ability to go out to market, help you compare quotes, and help get your insurance in place. So you’re essentially expanding the array of virtual services that you’re providing, or fractional services that you’re providing, to your clients?  Correct. Yeah. We really try to own the full back office end to end because I think a lot of people deal with, “Okay, great, I have a bookkeeper, I have a tax accountant, I have an R&D tax provider,” and they’re dealing with four or five different vendors that don’t really communicate. The client is the person playing telephone between the two, and we’re like, “Wait, stop. Why is this the solution?” We should just build a different business where it’s all under the Finvisor umbrella.  It’s all full-time team members who are actually working together on behalf of the client, even if fractionally. Some of our clients only need five hours of a payroll specialist, but they need someone to own that role, and they need that person to be able to talk to their sales tax team because it’s like, “Oh, we hired someone in a new state. Is sales tax applicable there?” And connect those dots because, when you have these disconnected providers, you have a lot of things that can drop because they’re not in people’s field of view.  Yeah, I mean, it’s a great service. If you can get a competent team that will take care of your back office, then you can focus on figuring out message-market fit and then essentially scaling revenue. You don’t have to worry about it, and you don’t have to babysit inexperienced people that maybe you can afford to hire, but who would not be able to own the job.  Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s kind of the, “Do you want to…” You know, I think at least when we started in 2014, there was more of a generalist bookkeeper. That’s kind of the typical solution people went with. Nothing against that, but it’s kind of nice to have dedicated specialists in the different back-office areas that you need. I mean, bookkeepers are great.  They’re usually not your best payroll and HR people. They’re not thinking about California final-paycheck laws, or whether you need to offer a 401(k) if you hire someone in California. Whereas, if you have someone whose entire job is payroll and HR, and you need Finvisor to help run your payroll, they’re going to be thinking about those edge cases and helping you along so that you can just build your business, get to the next milestone, and not worry about tripping yourself up because of compliance, taxes, or a lack of visibility in your reporting. Yeah, that’s great peace of mind. So this podcast is about frameworks, and I wonder, what is your framework? How do you help your clients, or how do you figure things out? What have you developed? We’re about 400 frameworks in, so I’m looking for something unique that helps you and is easy to explain—three to five steps maximum.  Yeah. I mean, one of the ones that comes to mind for us is what we’ve really called the Adjacent Extension Framework. So, first, do really good work and earn your client's trust in one area. Makes it easy for them to approach you.Share on X For us, it’s historically been accounting. People think, “Great, get my books put together.” But for us, it’s really about creating a relationship and earning the client’s trust.  Then, as step two, listen for the other problems they’re having. What are the adjacent problems they’re asking you to solve? And then for us, what we’ve really done is double down in those other areas by building specialists in those verticals. Once you’ve earned the client’s trust, if you’re doing their accounting and all of a sudden they’re struggling with invoicing or collections, you can say, “Hey, we can also help you with accounts receivable and collection efforts because we see your AR balance increasing on your financial statements.” At that point, they’re already thinking, “Great, I like working with this person.  Let’s give their team a try and help us solve another problem.” So, for us, it’s really been about finding those adjacent problems, building a team that specializes in them, and then connecting the client with the right expert. The last piece that’s really coming to market now is using technology to empower the team. Historically, a lot of our value came from having experts who could handle the edge cases or the gray areas between payroll, accounting, taxes, and sales tax. Now, with technology, you can also build the data infrastructure to highlight what’s happening for the client while helping guide the team as they manage those clients.  Love it. So what I’m hearing is, number one—or maybe even number zero—is do a great job, right?  The trust.  Okay. So that’s maybe another way of saying it: earn the trust. But is doing a good job enough to earn that trust, or is there more to it?  I mean, I think in any service business, you want to be proactive. A lot of bookkeepers, accountants, and even legal professionals are usually waiting for the client to ask a question before providing an answer. I think the goal should be to think ahead for the client and proactively provide guidance. That came naturally for us because we sit in the fractional CFO seat.Share on X  But even if you’re just doing bookkeeping, you can still catch these things for clients and help them out. Or if you’re selling P&C insurance and helping clients with their general liability coverage, you can think about what other types of coverage they may need. So I’d say the more proactive you can be, the better. The other thing is meeting clients where they already are.  For us, a lot of our clients are on Slack, so we connect with them on Slack. We chat with them as if we were full-time employees because we don’t want the experience to feel different. We don’t want you to feel like you’re emailing a generic support inbox and not knowing when someone is going to get back to you. If you only need fractional-level support, it shouldn’t feel like you’re getting fractional value or a fractional level of communication.  I love it. So you actually own the function inside the organization, so it feels like you’re part of the team, or your people are part of their team. So that builds the trust. So, do a great job, or earn the trust, number one. Number two, build the relationship. Number three, listen to other problems that they might have. Number four, connect them to other specialists. And number five, empower the team with technology.  Yeah. That’s a lot of it. I mean, as an advisor, we’ve grown… I mean, 60% of our growth comes from client referrals. So I think you know you’re doing something right if clients are recommending you to their friends and network. And so hopefully, if someone’s listening to this and you’re not getting referrals, you should be thinking about, “How do we either create more trust for our clients to be referring us, or how do we become more top of mind when clients are having these conversations?”  That’s great. So 60% of your growth comes from referrals. What’s the other 40%? How do you drive growth? What drives growth for you? What’s the other way to drive growth besides referrals?  Yeah. I mean, I think it’s also being connected with the ecosystem that you’re in. In our space, there are a lot of technology partners. Think about Xero, which is an accounting software, QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, payroll software like Rippling, Bill.com. They all have accounting partnerships, and the more you can build with them and grow your team alongside them, clients will reach out to them and say, “Hey, do you have someone who can help us set up Bill.com or help us set up Rippling?  We don’t have a payroll team to do our state tax registrations.” So we’ve seen a lot of good momentum as our software partners start sending us clients to help us grow. I think the other area is trying to figure out where you can have partnerships that will do introductions. We’ve been very fortunate in partnering with a number of VCs. Obviously, the VCs have worked with us because we’re on the board, or we had a mutual client. A lot of them will start to build partnership channels, and it’s a great opportunity.  They’ll say, “We just invested in this company, and you should go talk to Noah’s team to help with your accounting or your fractional CFO.” So it’s really about finding those tangential operators or entities that complement whatever you’re doing.  So are these primarily personal relationships that need to scale, or do you have a way to scale this across other people in your organization—this ability to develop partners? Or is it mainly you?  It depends on the role. A lot of our fractional CFOs on the team continue to build relationships. I would say probably 40% of our new clients come through a channel that’s not through me. There’ll be other people on our team who have built relationships with another VC or another software company. I think one of the key things we’ve always focused on is hiring people who are very, I would say “doers” might be the wrong word, but people who can self-manage and be project managers.  If you find the right people who can take a step back and look at the bigger picture, I mean, sometimes people come to Finvisor and they don’t realize that we ourselves are a business. Yes, you’re doing accounting like you were in-house and getting the books closed, but if you do good work and you realize clients are having problems, you have to think, “Hey, how can I help clients more and also help Finvisor create a win-win?” A lot of times, when we’re hiring, we’re trying to find people who have that type of drive to continue building and helping us internally, and not just do one part of the puzzle they’re responsible for. That might not be the most direct answer, but I would say a lot of it is hiring—making sure it's not just me leading the growth, but me building a team that can help lead the growth outside of just me.Share on X  Yeah. So how do you share the context so that your team members can connect the dots as well as you can? What’s your approach to that?  There’s a couple of ways we’ve done it. One way is we use a note-taker that then feeds into our CRM. For all client communication, whether they meet with us on Zoom or Google Meet, the transcripts are put into a centralized hub for us. It also connects to our CRM in terms of what we’re doing for the clients. At any point in time, someone can ask, “Hey, what’s going on with this client?” They can understand, “Great, this is what the payroll team talked to them about this week.  This is what the CFO team talked to them about last month. These are the problems they’ve been bringing up.” So we can capture that information without it having to be provided orally every single time, and without having to rely on a chat or an email to the team. There are some moments when it’s useful to give the team a larger update, but in general, it’s good to figure out a way to capture the essence of what you’re doing for your clients so that the team can then, in an AI chat-specific way, talk through, “Hey, great, what’s going on with this client? What are their needs? What has changed in the last six months? Who’s working on the client?”  I’ll have a VC that we’re talking to say, “Oh, we’re looking to invest in the CPG space and this type of vertical. Do you have any clients?” We’re at a point now where I don’t know every client. I usually have an idea about most clients, but there are definitely clients where I don’t know everything that’s happened in the last six months because I don’t talk to all 200 clients.  But I can go to our central hub to gain that information and understand, “Okay, great, which client is looking to fundraise and might want to be connected to this VC?” It’s a nice way to connect the dots. They’re looking to invest. The client is looking to raise. We also do brown-bag sessions. We’re a distributed team, so I think you have to be a little more intentional about how you educate the team. We’ll have weekly meetings where we walk through new technology, new changes in what we’re offering, new positioning, and continue educating the team in a more structured format.  The other thing we’ve done to help the team understand what’s going on is to make information as accessible as possible, similar to how we communicate with clients. So the team doesn’t have to log in to a pretty outdated CRM to pull information on a client. It’s either available directly in the Slack conversation or in a more modern tool like Notion, where you can easily search and find the information you want. So basically, you’re managing and harvesting your data and using that to feed people information about how they can develop partnerships. Is that what I’m hearing?  Yeah. And I think a lot of it is also figuring out which playbooks and processes are repeatable, documenting them better, and then educating the team around them. For example, with our fractional CFOs, we want to be in the board meeting. If we can be in the board meeting, A, we can help clients answer questions about their finances more easily, and B, it’s good to have visibility into what the board is saying about the business and where they want to go.  Then, obviously, the VCs are going to say, “Oh, great, this is Ian at Finvisor.” If he reaches out to me about a partnership, they’re going to have a better understanding of what we do because they’ve been in the room with us—or they’ve been in a virtual or in-person boardroom with us.  So you’re basically sharing the playbook so that they have a better understanding of what they can refer you for. Correct. Yeah.  So, switching gears here, Noah, what’s one thing that you’re trying to actively figure out in your business right now?  I mean, the question everyone is trying to figure out, at least in my space, is how they’re going to use AI in some fashion. That’s the kind of million-dollar question everyone keeps talking about—AI in accounting, AI in finance. Right now, we’re really structured in how we’re trying to use it and apply it. But the question I have is, what’s the next year going to look like? What’s five years going to look like as this technology gets more legs and more trust behind it? We’re pretty intentional about what we’re building and how we’re using some of the newer technology with AI. But I think there’s a lot that, at least for me, you have to continue to iterate. The world today feels different than it did three months ago. I’d say for most of Finvisor’s history—and this has been 12 years—it hasn’t felt like that, where a year later things might feel marginally different because we’re maybe 20% bigger or whatever might have happened.  Now, I think there’s a lot more excitement and unknown around technology and how it can either make people more efficient or help highlight and surface better issues that clients need to talk through. But I also feel like we’re in a moment where everyone’s trying to throw AI into every technology. So we're also trying to stay true to who we are, which is people first, relationships first—technology powering us, not being the solution.Share on X  So as you’re scaling AI to improve the information that your people have, your CFOs have, that presumably is going to lead to people doing less of the mechanical, repeatable tasks and more of the judgment tasks. So how do you scale judgment as you’re scaling the impact with AI?  On our side, I think it’s A, trying to organize and structure the data coming in. B, trying to create tooling that isn’t unique to one client but is built in a way that can be customized for each customer. A lot of the firms I talk to that are in the Finvisor space just take a blanket approach—turn Claude on for every fractional CFO, let them connect it to QuickBooks, and try to figure out their own playbooks.  That’s not how we’ve ever run the business. We don’t just hire accountants and let them run the accounting and see how the output turns out. We’re more focused on figuring out what is actually useful for review. Right now, I think AI has been most helpful around quality. It can definitely check that things are consistent and make sure edge cases are being caught.  I think we’re going to get to a future state where it’s not only making sure quality is at the 95th percentile of confidence, but also giving visibility into metrics like CAC, LTV, and churn—things that would normally take longer to pull together. Your fractional CFO might currently spend hours reviewing Stripe data or Shopify data to come to a conclusion. AI can cut out maybe 40% of that data-cleanup layer, where it’s like, “Okay, now they have the tools to dig in and understand what the underlying problem is,” instead of spending so much time cleaning up the data and getting everything organized.  So currently, at least my thesis is that it’s going to allow us to manage more clients because some of the day-to-day—I don’t want to call it busy work—but the work you have to do before you get to the exciting parts of the job will become more automated and less manual, like pulling data out of Stripe, Shopify, your CRM, or NetSuite.  So does that mean you’ll have a different type of people, maybe higher-level thinkers? Or do you think you can elevate your current team to that level?  Yeah. I think you’re… Sorry, I know I was originally answering this through the fractional CFO lens. Most of our fractional CFOs are already at the top of that organizational pyramid. For them, it’s really about helping them have cleaner data, better visibility into the actions they need to take, and better insight into what they should be reviewing and discussing with the client.  If I think more broadly about the back-office finance team, I do think a lot of the more generalist staff accountant and AP specialist roles won’t be spending as much time on the day-to-day blocking and tackling. If a client has 1,000 transactions a month flowing through their bank and credit cards, historically that accountant would sit in QuickBooks Online clicking “Okay, okay, okay,” reviewing every transaction and coding it. Eighty percent of those transactions will simply be coded automatically in real time as they come in. That leaves them to focus on the 20% that actually requires human judgment.  For me, the question is, can we continue to empower those people to be more impactful with that 20%? Are they the right people for that 20%? We’ve always tried to hire people who are proactive and broader thinkers, so I think we have the right team to step into that. If we’d built a traditional BPO model with an outsourced accounting team made up of people who were really just coding transactions at a basic level, I’d be more worried because getting those people to step up and handle edge cases is difficult.  But that’s not how we’ve historically built Finvisor. We’ve always tried to find people who are a little more… I’d rather hire an A-plus player than a B-player just because there’s some savings in the cost structure. I’d rather have the right people who can perform 80% of the time when they’re at bat than just hire someone because they’re cheaper.  Yeah.  Wrong baseball analogy there, but yeah.  Yeah, I understand. So you have A-plus people. Maybe the people who are doing more bookkeeping-type services—their jobs may become automated—but your A-players are going to have best-in-class information, and they can serve more clients that way.  Yeah. I still think that if you think about the typical accounting structure—if you’re working in-house and you have a bookkeeper and a controller—it’s still helpful. Depending on the size of the company, if you’re a small company, you probably won’t need that bookkeeper.  The controller can handle the edge cases and close the books. But at a certain scale, you’ll still want that junior resource supporting the controller so the controller can focus on the higher-level, more strategic work. I think people will simply be able to do more with less if they’re the right person. There will be people who, if they aren’t good at staying on their toes and figuring out edge cases, won’t be the right fit.  AI will probably replace some of those roles. But I think there’s a great opportunity for people who can think more strategically. They don’t have to be a CFO. They can just be a really smart bookkeeper who’s good at handling edge cases. They’ll simply be able to manage three times as many clients as they could when they had to code every single transaction.  Okay. If you had a magic wand and you could fix one thing in your business over the next 12 months, what would it be?  One area that we probably haven’t prioritized enough because of growth is SEO, AEO, and our overall sales build-out. Our paid advertising hasn’t been the strongest part of our business because it hasn’t been the top priority. If I had a magic wand, I’d have someone clean up our SEO and AEO visibility because I know clients love us and we do great work, but I don’t think we’re showing up the way I’d like from an SEO and AEO perspective. So that would be it. Yeah.  Yeah. Yeah. Love it. So, who are your ideal customers? Who do you want knocking on your door? Is it venture-backed companies primarily, or do you also work with private company founders? Who are your sweet-spot customers?  A lot of our clients are going to be in that 5-to-50-employee range, where they don’t need a full-time back office, a full-time accountant, a full-time CFO, or a full-time payroll specialist, but they need someone to own those roles. That way, we can put together the right Finvisor team to support them. We’ve intentionally made ourselves pretty modular, so while the largest group of our clients is in the tech VC world, we also have a lot of SMBs—law firms, beauty businesses, and other professional services businesses.  I would say that, if you looked at the Finvisor client base as a whole, you’d probably see a lot of startups. But we’re also starting to see more SMBs and more traditional businesses that don’t have VC funding but still need help with their accounting, bookkeeping, and modernizing their back office. So it’s a bit of both. Most of our clients are going to be in that 10-to-50- or 100-employee range, where they’re complex enough that they care about their financials and want to understand what they spent last month, where they’re going, and how they’re going to get there.  Earlier-stage companies are sometimes just a little too early. If you’re a one- or two-person company with just an idea, there’s a reason people think about their financials on more of a cash basis. They can think about the five clients they’re working with. Their bank balance ties pretty closely to their financials. There’s not a huge difference between the two when you’re a sole proprietor.  But as you start to evolve, that’s where Finvisor can provide more value. For all of our clients, we do accrual accounting, so we’re recognizing your revenue and your costs over the life of the service. As you start to grow and build, that’s really helpful. Obviously, if you’re at day one, it’s less impactful because you’re living more day to day, week to week, and month to month.  Steve Preda: Okay. So if we have those kinds of companies—which we do among our listeners—and they hear about this and want to fix their back office and outsource it to a reliable partner who can help them own those functions and give them good advice, what’s the best entry point? Where should they go, and how can they connect with you personally as well?  Yeah. hello@finvisor.com comes to me and the sales team. There’s probably a 95% chance you’ll talk to me if you reach out because I still love connecting with most new businesses that come through the door. The other area I wanted to call out that could be helpful for businesses is PEOs. PEOs are great, but I think at some point clients need to graduate from the PEO, and Finvisor is uniquely positioned to be both your insurance broker—helping you quote large-group plans—and your payroll and HR team to help you leave the PEO.  For a lot of our clients, once they pass that 100-employee mark, it’s like, “Great, we now qualify for a large-group plan,” which might have better rates than what they’re getting through the PEO. They just don’t have the team or bandwidth to get off the PEO. We’ll come alongside those larger companies and say, “Great, let’s quote a large-group plan for you. We’ll also put together a transition plan to register you in the 20 states where your employees are currently located.  We’ll make sure you get your workers’ compensation and employment practices liability insurance in place so there’s really no difference—apples to apples—from being in the PEO to running your own payroll.” We help with that transition because I’m always surprised to see companies with hundreds of employees still on a PEO, where the savings could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars if they left. They just don’t have the internal team because they’ve always been on a PEO. They’ve never had to do state registrations, so they don’t know how to do them. Because of that, they’re usually not looking for an alternative path to get off that structure. We can at least review it with them and help them out if it’s a good fit. And just to remind our listeners what a PEO is, in case they don’t know.  Oh, sorry. Yeah. A PEO is a Professional Employer Organization. If you’ve heard of companies like TriNet or Justworks, they’re PEOs. In the health insurance space, there are four primary ways you can get health insurance. Most companies start with small-group plans in the early days because they’re state-mandated. For example, in California, if you’re under 100 employees, the rates my company gets would be the same rates Steve’s company gets if we’re both under 100 employees and we’re asking Blue Shield for a quote from the same ZIP code. That’s small-group insurance.  Then there’s level-funded, where carriers quote specifically based on your employee group. There’s large-group, which is somewhat similar but designed for larger organizations. Then there’s the PEO. Let’s say you’re a 10-person company. You don’t have enough employees to qualify for large-group health insurance, which is usually discounted because the risk is spread across hundreds of employees. The PEO says, “We’ll employ your team. Instead of you directly employing 10 people and buying health insurance for only those 10 people, we’ll employ your team and give you rates based on the 10,000 employees we already have.” PEOs are really popular in places like California and New York, where health insurance is very expensive.  But once you get above about 100 employees, you can usually qualify for your own large-group rates, which are similar to what the PEO is getting. The difference is that the PEO is generally marking up those rates because they need to make a margin on the plan. You can often get those rates directly yourself.  Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Okay. So if you’re listening to this and you’re building a venture-backed startup, or you’re the founder of a professional services firm, a law firm, or another small business with 10 to 100 employees, and you don’t yet have the budget—or maybe you simply don’t need—a full-time CFO, insurance advisor, HR leader, and other functional specialists, then reach out to Noah and Finvisor.  Check out what they have to offer and see what services might be a good fit for your business. Thanks, Noah, for coming on the show and sharing your expertise. It’s fascinating to see how this field is evolving, how you’re tapping into technology, and how you’re focusing on the highest-quality CFOs to help your clients. If you enjoyed this conversation, stay tuned.  Follow us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure you don’t miss an episode. Every week, we bring you exciting entrepreneurs and their best management frameworks. Thanks for coming, Noah, and thanks for listening.  Thanks, Steve. Appreciate it. Important Links: Noah's LinkedIn Noah's  website Noah's email: hello@finvisor.com

Grab our High-Converting Proposal Template and learn what to include (and what to leave out) to turn more of your proposals into higher-paying clients: https://webdesigneracademy.com/template Have you ever thought, I just need more clients, I just need to book more projects, and then I'll be okay? But here's the thing - you have real costs associated with running your web design business, and it's not just your time - and if your pricing doesn't cover ALL of your costs, booking more clients doesn't fix your problems - it just means you lose more money faster. That's the conversation fractional CFO and host of the Pivot to Profit podcast Pam Jordan and I had on the podcast just a couple days ago. We also talk about money trauma - where it comes from, how it's influencing your pricing decisions, and what it takes to break through your subconscious pricing ceiling. Pam is the founder of Pivot Business Group and host of the Pivot to Profit podcast, and she has spent 10 years helping entrepreneurs actually understand their finances after watching a multi-million dollar company go through bankruptcy early in her career.  In this episode, she breaks down why "money in the bank" isn't the same as a profitable business, what your P&L and balance sheet are actually telling you, and why doing more work at your current prices could be making things worse, not better.  Shannon also pulls back the curtain on the Package Matrix™ Method and how it helps web designers charge two to three times more than they ever thought possible... even when their own nervous system is working against them. What You'll Learn: - Why bank balance accounting is one of the most dangerous habits a service provider can have - The 3-part pricing formula (target profit + direct costs + overhead) that shows what you actually need to charge - Why it's a pricing problem, not a volume problem, when your business can't get ahead - The money trauma patterns that create an income ceiling - and how to start breaking through them - How the Package Matrix "benevolent bait and switch" gets web designers to close projects at 2-3x their old prices Key Timestamps: [03:01] The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make with their numbers [07:13] What profitable pricing actually looks like for service providers [10:34] The 3-part pricing formula [21:39] It's not a volume problem. It's a pricing problem. [22:34] Money trauma: where it starts and how to work through it [27:01] The Package Matrix and the benevolent bait and switch Resources Mentioned: Pivot Business Group: https://pivotbusinessgroup.com Pam Jordan's website: https://pamjordan.com Pivot to Profit Podcast: https://pamjordan.com/podcast Related Episodes: Episode 189: How To Price Custom Web Design Projects - https://webdesigneracademy.com/how-to-price-custom-web-design-projects-with-shannon-mattern/ Episode 168: Confident Pricing and Overcoming Mind Trash with Jen Davis - https://webdesigneracademy.com/confident-pricing-overcoming-mind-trash-with-jen-davis-of-better-the-brand-designer-podcast/ Episode 102: Six-Figure Pricing and Money Mindset with Austin L. Church - https://webdesigneracademy.com/six-figure-pricing-and-money-mindset-with-austin-l-church/ About Pam Jordan Pam Jordan is the founder of Pivot Business Group, host of the Pivot to Profit podcast, and a fractional CFO who helps entrepreneurs understand their numbers, increase their profitability, reduce their taxes, and grow their wealth. After watching a multi-million dollar company go through bankruptcy court early in her career, Pam spent the last decade building a team of bookkeepers, CFOs, and tax strategists who support entrepreneurs at every stage - from cleaning up messy books to implementing tax strategy to forward-looking CFO advisory.  Pivot Business Group: https://pivotbusinessgroup.com Pam Jordan's website: https://pamjordan.com Pivot to Profit Podcast: https://www.pamjordan.com/podcast About Shannon Mattern Shannon Mattern is a pricing strategist, creator of the Package Matrix™ and the founder of the Web Designer Academy, where she helps experienced women web designers package, price, and sell their services so they can build profitable, sustainable businesses without burnout. Website: webdesigneracademy.com For Service Providers: https://shannonmattern.com IG: @profitablewebdesigner YouTube: @profitablewebdesigner LinkedIn: shannonmattern

Productivity has been a problem for the past 15 years. In developed countries, weak demand, a lack of competition and a paucity of new ideas have all been blamed. Could AI finally reverse that trend? Soumaya speaks to Stanford economics professor Nick Bloom about why CFOs and CEOs expect AI to supercharge their businesses; how concentrated (or otherwise) the gains might be; and why working from home could be good for labour output… and fertility rates.Subscribe to Soumaya's show on Apple, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen.Further ReadingIs AI productivity growth in the room with us right now?How much value is AI really creating?Hosted by Soumaya Keynes. Produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval. Original music by Breen Turner. Sound design by Sean McGarrity. Andrew Georgiades is the broadcast engineer. Edwin Lane is the senior producer. Flo Phillips is the FT's head of audio.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most companies think they're transforming with AI. They're not, and the gap between what they believe and what's actually happening on the ground is costing them far more than they realize. In this episode, Craig Smith sits down with Chris Blackburn, founder and CEO of Liatrio, a consultancy that has spent a decade embedding directly inside large enterprises to help them actually change how they work, not just what tools they use. The conversation opens with a striking data point: the average enterprise Blackburn works with operates at just 5 to 6% efficiency, meaning employees spend only three to three-and-a-half hours per week on work that genuinely creates value, compared to Toyota's benchmark of 70%. The core argument is that AI is being applied to the wrong part of the problem: individual productivity gains don't flow through to the bottom line if the organizational system around the individual - the approvals, handoffs, bureaucracy, and middle management layers - stays exactly the same. Blackburn introduces a concept he calls "strangling the enterprise": rather than trying to transform a 5,500-person organization all at once, build a small, low-bureaucracy unit inside it that operates with radical autonomy, proves the model works, and expands outward.  The episode closes with a frank conversation about what real transformation actually costs: roughly half of total compensation spend across the organization, sustained for two years, a number Blackburn describes as "absolutely insane" and one he believes most CFOs aren't yet prepared to confront. Key Topics Covered: ●     Why the average enterprise operates at 5-6% efficiency, and what Toyota's 70% benchmark reveals about the scale of the opportunity AI could unlock ●     The critical distinction between individual productivity gains and system-level improvement, and why saving an hour doesn't automatically improve the bottom line ●     "Strangle the enterprise": how to build a small, autonomous AI-native unit inside a large organization rather than trying to transform the whole thing at once ●     Why most CEOs are dangerously disconnected from the actual work being done, and what McKinsey says about how much time they should be spending on transformation ●     What AI transformation actually costs: roughly half of total compensation spend, sustained over two years, and why most CFOs aren't ready for that number ●     Why AI isn't just changing jobs but changing life - from shorter work weeks to longer health spans - and what the farming analogy reveals about how slowly societies absorb new productivity As enterprises pour money into AI tools while reporting little bottom-line impact, this conversation offers the most operationally honest account available of why that gap exists, and what organizations that actually want to close it need to be willing to do differently. Subscribe to Eye on A.I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI. Craig Smith on X: https://x.com/craigss EYE On A.I. on X: https://x.com/EyeOn_AI   Connect with Chris Blackburn LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisblackburn 

What happens when a company has money—but its CFO cannot reach it?Over one extraordinary weekend, finance leaders found themselves confronting a threat few had anticipated: cash locked inside a failing bank, payroll approaching, and no certainty about what Monday would bring.This episode brings together the experiences of Ben Gammell, Larry Roseman, Dan Murphy, Stacy Tumarkin, and Sarah Spoja. Their stories capture the crisis from different vantage points—from companies scrambling to protect their own liquidity to finance teams helping customers regain access to theirs.The discussion is less about the collapse of a particular bank than about how CFOs respond when ordinary financial controls suddenly prove insufficient. It explores the decisions made under pressure, the communication required to steady employees and leadership teams, and the treasury practices reconsidered afterward.The larger lesson is one CFOs understand well: resilience isn't built during a crisis. It is built long before the crisis begins.

Grab our High-Converting Proposal Template and learn what to include (and what to leave out) to turn more of your proposals into higher-paying clients: https://webdesigneracademy.com/template Have you ever thought, I just need more clients, I just need to book more projects, and then I'll be okay? But here's the thing - you have real costs associated with running your web design business, and it's not just your time - and if your pricing doesn't cover ALL of your costs, booking more clients doesn't fix your problems - it just means you lose more money faster. That's the conversation fractional CFO and host of the Pivot to Profit podcast Pam Jordan and I had on the podcast just a couple days ago. We also talk about money trauma - where it comes from, how it's influencing your pricing decisions, and what it takes to break through your subconscious pricing ceiling. Pam is the founder of Pivot Business Group and host of the Pivot to Profit podcast, and she has spent 10 years helping entrepreneurs actually understand their finances after watching a multi-million dollar company go through bankruptcy early in her career.  In this episode, she breaks down why "money in the bank" isn't the same as a profitable business, what your P&L and balance sheet are actually telling you, and why doing more work at your current prices could be making things worse, not better.  Shannon also pulls back the curtain on the Package Matrix™ Method and how it helps web designers charge two to three times more than they ever thought possible... even when their own nervous system is working against them. What You'll Learn: - Why bank balance accounting is one of the most dangerous habits a service provider can have - The 3-part pricing formula (target profit + direct costs + overhead) that shows what you actually need to charge - Why it's a pricing problem, not a volume problem, when your business can't get ahead - The money trauma patterns that create an income ceiling - and how to start breaking through them - How the Package Matrix "benevolent bait and switch" gets web designers to close projects at 2-3x their old prices Key Timestamps: [03:01] The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make with their numbers [07:13] What profitable pricing actually looks like for service providers [10:34] The 3-part pricing formula [21:39] It's not a volume problem. It's a pricing problem. [22:34] Money trauma: where it starts and how to work through it [27:01] The Package Matrix and the benevolent bait and switch Resources Mentioned: Pivot Business Group: https://pivotbusinessgroup.com Pam Jordan's website: https://pamjordan.com Pivot to Profit Podcast: https://pamjordan.com/podcast Related Episodes: Episode 189: How To Price Custom Web Design Projects - https://webdesigneracademy.com/how-to-price-custom-web-design-projects-with-shannon-mattern/ Episode 168: Confident Pricing and Overcoming Mind Trash with Jen Davis - https://webdesigneracademy.com/confident-pricing-overcoming-mind-trash-with-jen-davis-of-better-the-brand-designer-podcast/ Episode 102: Six-Figure Pricing and Money Mindset with Austin L. Church - https://webdesigneracademy.com/six-figure-pricing-and-money-mindset-with-austin-l-church/ About Pam Jordan Pam Jordan is the founder of Pivot Business Group, host of the Pivot to Profit podcast, and a fractional CFO who helps entrepreneurs understand their numbers, increase their profitability, reduce their taxes, and grow their wealth. After watching a multi-million dollar company go through bankruptcy court early in her career, Pam spent the last decade building a team of bookkeepers, CFOs, and tax strategists who support entrepreneurs at every stage - from cleaning up messy books to implementing tax strategy to forward-looking CFO advisory.  Pivot Business Group: https://pivotbusinessgroup.com Pam Jordan's website: https://pamjordan.com Pivot to Profit Podcast: https://www.pamjordan.com/podcast About Shannon Mattern Shannon Mattern is a pricing strategist, creator of the Package Matrix™ and the founder of the Web Designer Academy, where she helps experienced women web designers package, price, and sell their services so they can build profitable, sustainable businesses without burnout. Website: webdesigneracademy.com For Service Providers: https://shannonmattern.com IG: @profitablewebdesigner YouTube: @profitablewebdesigner LinkedIn: shannonmattern

See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → This is the second and final part of Michael Palmer's conversation with Andrew Seguin, founder of Seguin Financial. If you want a candid look at how a bookkeeping firm doubles revenue without a big advertising budget, this episode delivers. Andrew walks through the real levers he pulls: a four-day workweek that keeps his team loyal, a disciplined approach to scope creep, and a referral engine built entirely on great service. Chapters [00:00] Introduction and Episode Recap [01:18] Four-Day Workweek Announcement [03:30] Andrew's Fridays: A Work in Progress [05:30] Scope Creep: How to Catch and Address It [09:30] Time Tracking as a Profitability Tool [12:00] How the Firm Doubled Revenue [15:00] Partnerships and Referral Strategy [18:00] Service as the Real Differentiator [21:30] Going Virtual Across Ontario [24:30] Final Advice: Start With Something The Four-Day Workweek in Practice Andrew made the switch to a Monday–Thursday, 36-hour week — with no pay cut for his team. "Working one hour extra per day doesn't feel as a big burden, but you get a whole day off every week, all year long," he explains. The response from clients has been overwhelmingly positive, and the retention impact has been real. For Andrew himself, it has gradually freed up his Fridays too — without the guilt of stepping away while his team is still at their desks. Catching Scope Creep Before It Costs You Andrew's approach to scope creep starts with the team: coach them to flag anything that feels different from the usual work, then back it up with time tracking so the numbers tell the story. Rather than hitting a client with a hard "that's out of scope," his firm offers two paths — "we can show you how to do it yourself, or we can have a conversation about a monthly increase to accommodate this." That framing keeps the conversation collaborative, not combative, and gets results either way. Partnerships and Referrals as a Growth Engine Seguin Financial grew from around a million dollars to double that in roughly 2.5 years — without meaningful advertising spend. The fuel? Strategic partnerships with fractional CFOs, outreach to franchise head offices, and a deliberate focus on asking the firm's best clients for referrals. "Our easiest client to take on is a referral," Andrew says, "because they've done probably so much work behind the scenes that at that point it's almost inevitable that they're going to become a client." Referrals arrive pre-sold — and they rarely price-shop. Service Is What Clients Can Actually See Andrew draws a clear line between quality of work and quality of service — and argues that for most clients, only one of those is visible. "Business owners are probably not going to always look at our reports. They might not really care a lot about the quality of the work. But the service they can see." Being responsive — not available at 8 PM, but back within 24 hours with an action plan — has moved Seguin Financial into a different tier in the eyes of their clients and made referrals far more frequent. Start With Something, Then Let the Data Lead Andrew's parting advice is straightforward: start tracking, even if it's just two spreadsheets. "Without time tracking, you're blind. You're honestly blind to which clients are doing very well for you and doing pretty poorly for you." He reviews his firm's analytics every month, makes a video for the team, calls out wins, and flags what to watch. That monthly discipline is what keeps the firm's profitability from quietly eroding — and what surfaces the clients worth doubling down on. Links Mentioned The Successful Bookkeeper PureBookkeeping Seguin Financial — find Andrew on LinkedIn About the Guest Andrew Seguin is the founder of Seguin Financial, a virtual bookkeeping firm based in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada. With over eight years in the business, Andrew has grown his firm to serve clients across Ontario, with a focus on e-commerce and owner-operated businesses. He is known in the bookkeeping community for his data-driven approach to profitability and his commitment to building a firm culture that keeps great people around for the long haul. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.

Welcome to The Ecommerce Braintrust podcast, brought to you by Julie Spear, Head of Retail Marketplace Services, and Jordan Ripley, Director of Retail Account Management.   Today, we are getting into something every brand needs to hear - because what you think you know about your media performance might be complete fiction.    We're talking about the 2026 measurement crisis. The moment when the gap between what your dashboards say and what your account shows has become impossible to ignore.    And to help us make sense of it all, we have two incredible guests from the Acadia team with us: Sally Kazin, Head of Analytics, and Ross Walker, Director of Retail Media.   Let's dive in!  Quote: The gap between the dashboard numbers and the ground truth has become impossible to ignore.   Sally Kazin   KEY TAKEAWAYS In this episode, Julie, Jordan, Sally, and Ross discuss: The growing "measurement crisis" in ecommerce, where platform-reported revenue often exceeds actual sales due to duplicated attribution claims across channels Transition from reliable observation-based tracking to a world of estimation and modeling, driven by privacy changes and a fragmented platform landscape The challenges posed by siloed data, platform biases, and engine inflation in retail media and traditional paid channels Widespread overreliance on ROAS as a North Star metric and the pitfalls of "ROAS jail" for both brands and CFOs The limitations and decline of Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA), and why Acadia now deploys a three-pillar measurement framework The importance of glass box (transparent) models over black box or "off the shelf" solutions, balancing science and business art in measurement Pairing MMM with real-world incrementality tests for a self-correcting measurement loop How to communicate with CFOs and senior leadership about marketing impact, translating platform metrics into true business outcomes and incremental revenue The evolution of MMM: from slow, backward-looking models to AI-enabled, forward-looking, and more frequent scenario planning Practical questions for brands to gut-check their measurement strategy, such as verifying if summed platform-attributed revenue exceeds actual sales Common flags of broken retail media measurement, and the need to match ad spend and goals to brand objectives rather than vanity KPIs  

What happens when an AI experiment becomes a production service that your employees, customers, and daily operations depend upon? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Brian Klingbeil, Chief Strategy Officer at Ensono, about AI infrastructure resilience, operational dependency, FinOps, legacy modernization, and the growing pressure to prove that enterprise AI investments are producing meaningful returns. Brian has been speaking with major enterprises through Ensono's Executive Advisory Council. Three years ago, many participants were experimenting with proofs of concept. Today, they are being asked to present AI projects that are already in production, approaching production, or demonstrating a clear return through productivity, lower risk, service quality, or financial results. That progression creates a new problem. When an AI model begins supporting product delivery, customer service, logistics, software development, or internal operations, it becomes part of the company's operating infrastructure. Leaders must then ask familiar IT questions about availability, monitoring, security, incident response, disaster recovery, ownership, and cost. Brian believes FinOps often provides the first warning. Token consumption can be difficult for CFOs and business leaders to interpret, particularly when hundreds of agents are operating across different models. Ensono's internal platform has produced around 1,000 agents, prompting questions about which are effective, which are expensive, and who should carry the cost. We discuss why chargeback and showback could change employee behavior. When AI spending is absorbed by a central corporate budget, teams may have little reason to question whether an expensive model is suitable for a routine task. When the cost reaches their departmental budget, the decision can look very different. Architecture also matters. Brian recommends systems that are loosely coupled and tightly integrated. Companies should be able to replace a model, provider, FinOps tool, or service as the market changes, while still connecting each component closely enough to deliver useful business outcomes. That creates a genuine tradeoff. Providers such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic can offer specialist capabilities that businesses may want to use. Avoiding every provider specific feature can limit what the technology delivers, while becoming too dependent on one provider can make future change expensive and disruptive. The conversation then turns toward legacy technology. Brian argues that many systems described as outdated still process airline reservations, banking transactions, insurance claims, government services, and other high volume workloads. Turning them off without suitable replacements would create far bigger problems than the word "legacy" suggests. AI can change the modernization decision. Ensono worked with Markerstudy Group to analyze six million lines of RPG code running on an IBM i platform. The resulting plan identified applications that should move elsewhere while preserving workloads that still benefited from the platform's reliability and transaction processing capabilities. Brian treats migration as one possible part of modernization. AI tools can document old code, support modern development environments, and allow younger developers to work with established platforms without immediately beginning a lengthy and expensive replacement program. We also discuss Ensono's use of AI operations. Brian says the company reduced mean time to repair by 50% while processing approximately 50,000 tickets each month. The example shows how AI value can be measured through service quality and operational performance rather than relying entirely on direct revenue. The result is a balanced conversation about moving quickly while building enough control to keep AI dependable. Organizations need space for experimentation, but production services also require ownership, budgets, recovery planning, and people who know what to do when something fails. If one AI model or provider disappeared tomorrow, how much of your business would stop working? Listen to the episode and share your thoughts with me.

On this special episode of Run the Numbers, CJ Gustafson revisits standout moments from past conversations with Alex Immerman, Curt Sigfstead, Daniel Kang, Adam Ante, and David Laptor. Together, their advice reveals how great CFOs earn trust, challenge founders, speak up when the data says something is wrong, and become true strategic partners without relying on the power of the purse strings.—SPONSORS:Anrok is the sales tax platform that watches your exposure everywhere, automates compliance, and flags risk before it turns into a surprise back-tax letter from a state you've never set foot in. Companies like Anthropic, Notion, and Vanta already trust Anrok to stay ahead of rules that move faster than any spreadsheet can. Talk to a sales tax expert for a personalized exposure estimate at https://www.anrok.com/rtnRightRev is an automated revenue recognition platform that lets your product team ship new pricing without asking finance for permission, and your sales team close deals without creating downstream chaos. Check out their free tool at calculator.rightrev.com It scores your rev rec process, shows what's exposing you to risk, and tells you exactly where to focus before it bites you in the rear end. Check it out at https://calculator.rightrev.comPulley is an equity management platform that lets you issue options, model dilution, and complete 409As without your cap table turning into a spreadsheet disaster. Founders raising, hiring, and scaling use Pulley to keep equity clean and stay focused on building. Learn more or request a demo at https://pulley.com/mostlymetricsRillet is an AI-native ERP built for modern finance teams that want to replace NetSuite and close faster. With revenue recognition, close management, multi-entity support, and native Stripe and Salesforce integrations, Rillet helps scaling companies run their finance stack in one place. Hundreds of teams, including Windsurf and Mercor, use Rillet to make the zero-day close real. Book a demo at https://www.rillet.com/cjMaximor is an autonomous finance platform that runs order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, the close, cash management, and reporting on self-learning agents instead of a dozen disconnected tools. One PE-backed customer cut their close in half, took audit findings from seven to zero, and cut back-office costs by 70% in six months. You pay for outcomes, not seats. See it at https://www.maximor.ai/Brex is an intelligent finance platform with AI-powered agents that capture expenses automatically, enforce policy before the spend happens, and close your books in minutes instead of weeks. 35,000+ companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Anthropic, and DoorDash already run on Brex. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at https://www.brex.com/metrics—LINKS: Mostly Talent: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/cLTxtAsNCJ: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com—TIMESTAMPS:0:00 Preview and Intro3:27 Alex Immerman's favorite CFO interview question4:54 What a weak answer looks like5:26 When the hard calls actually matter6:37 Walt and Roy Disney7:36 Liked even when making unpopular calls8:43 Sponsors — Anrok | RightRev | Pulley11:35 Curt from Clio: ego in the bottom drawer13:52 CFO as supporting cast15:10 Backbone vs. ego: when to use each16:23 Daniel Kang: don't use the purse strings as power17:36 Earn the seat, don't demand it18:52 Money is one arrow, not the whole quiver20:39 Sponsors — Rillet | Maximor | Brex23:54 Adam Ante: finance people pigeonhole themselves26:46 The CFO can sit in any meeting27:30 First 90 days: listen before suggesting28:46 David Laptor: listen, observe, think, speak30:50 Build a culture where speaking up is welcomed31:51 Curt from Clio: don't come in as a know-it-all33:08 Earn trust through curiosity33:46 Beware of all-green dashboards35:28 What would CJ say to Ballmer?37:14 Parting thoughts from Ben38:00 Credits

In high school, Gary Vecchiarelli received day-old copies of Investor's Business Daily from a business teacher. Stock prices still appeared in fractions, and the teacher told him that he would know he had made it when he rang the bell on Wall Street.Vecchiarelli tells us that the remark stayed with him for decades. He later rang the Nasdaq bell—an experience made more meaningful because his family knew the story. Long before that moment, however, he had begun ordering boxes of annual reports and reading financial statements he did not yet fully understand. He was drawn to CFOs who carried financial responsibility while dealing with Wall Street.That early interest eventually became a career defined by complex businesses and difficult financing choices. At CleanSpark, Vecchiarelli recalls confronting one such decision during a Bitcoin bear market. Debt was prohibitively expensive, and an at-the-market equity program was effectively the company's only source of growth capital.According to Vecchiarelli, CleanSpark faced an opportunity that required issuing shares at approximately $2.50. The decision was painful, but the capital funded land and power that the company now expects to convert into billions of dollars of shareholder value.The experience gave Vecchiarelli a lasting appreciation for “optionality.” He tells us that CleanSpark can now consider high-yield debt, convertible securities, equity, and borrowing against its Bitcoin holdings. That range matters because, as he puts it, markets can be “real fickle.”For Vecchiarelli, strategic finance is not simply raising and spending money. It means connecting execution, valuation, and capital so that today's difficult decision creates more choices tomorrow.

HR leaders spend all day surrounded by people. So why does it often feel like the loneliest job in the building? In this episode, Tom Emery, former Chief People Officer at a top City of London wealth manager, 20-year corporate HR veteran (ex-HSBC), and founder of HEX Talent & Development, joins Al and Leanne to pull back the curtain on the reality of HR leadership. Tom shares his powerful "Vet Analogy" for HR: just like veterinarians enter the profession out of love for animals only to see them at their illest, weakest, or most aggressive, HR leaders enter the role because they love people, only to be brought in when people are backed into a corner. Together, they dive deep into how HR leaders can step out of the isolated "police officer" role and step into the room as true strategic drivers, how senior leaders can build psychological safety by simply asking for help, and why learning to disagree well is the missing ingredient in high-performing C-suites.

What does it take for a CFO to restore credibility?Every finance leader eventually encounters a defining moment when confidence has been shaken—whether by slowing growth, a financial crisis, or years of eroding investor trust. In those moments, success depends on more than financial expertise. It requires disciplined execution, transparent leadership, and the ability to deliver on commitments when every decision is under scrutiny.In this special compilation episode of CFO Thought Leader, we revisit three conversations that reveal how credibility is earned—and, when necessary, rebuilt.Aidan Viggiano, CFO of Twilio, reflects on stepping into the role during a period of sweeping change. With growth slowing and difficult decisions ahead, she shares why rebuilding confidence began with one simple principle: do what you said you would do.Eric Brown, now CFO and COO of Cohesity, takes us back to the near-existential crisis at MicroStrategy, where he and the leadership team were forced to stabilize the business, make painful decisions, and lead through extraordinary uncertainty. His story underscores the critical partnership between a CEO and CFO when an organization's future is on the line.Finally, Paul Lundstrom, now CFO of Copeland, looks back on his tenure at Flex and earlier leadership at Aerojet Rocketdyne, explaining how stronger financial controls, operational discipline, and consistent execution can gradually restore investor confidence and reshape how the market values a company.Together, these conversations form The Credibility Playbook—a practical look at how exceptional CFOs navigate some of the most challenging moments in corporate leadership and emerge with something every organization depends on: trust.

DRWarner Bros.' Zaslav Offers $68 Million to Buy Summer Campnew January 2026 employment agreement$96M: Make-Whole RSU award to CEO Daivd Zaslav of 1,963,465 shares; after January 2 Follow-On Option award of 3,052,734 options because share price is downUnder a new employment agreement executed on June 12, 2025, Zaslav received a special award of 20,898,776 stock options with an exercise price of $10.16 (~$400M). Additionally, on January 2, 2026, he was granted 3,052,734 follow-on stock options with an exercise price of $28.51 (~$40M). To address the higher exercise price of these options compared to the initial grant, Zaslav received 1,963,465 restricted stock units on January 5, 2026 (~$56M).The Compensation Committee: 23 meetings in 2025*Paul A. Gould, 80, 18 years tenureGould and Zaslav worked closely together at Discovery, Inc. for nearly 15 years.David Zaslav took the helm as President and CEO of Discovery, Inc. in January 2007.Paul Gould joined the Discovery, Inc. Board of Directors shortly after, serving as an independent director from 2007 until the company merged with WarnerMedia.Both men belong to the tight-knit professional circle surrounding cable pioneer and billionaire John Malone.Paul Gould has a long history as a trusted director across Malone's web of companies, serving for years on the boards of Liberty Global and Liberty Latin America.David Zaslav has publicly and frequently cited John Malone as his primary professional mentor.Their shared ties to Malone are so closely linked that in 2012, Zaslav partnered with other high-level executives to donate $1 million to the Cable Center specifically to build and name the John Malone Theater.Paul Gould has served as a Managing Director and Executive Vice President at Allen & Company, a premium boutique investment bank deeply embedded in the media and entertainment ecosystem. Through this avenue, Gould and Zaslav connect in two ways:Financial Advisory: Allen & Company has a long history of providing valuation opinions, advisory services, and market analysis for major transactions initiated by Zaslav during his career.The Sun Valley Conference: Allen & Company famously hosts the annual "Summer Camp for Billionaires" in Sun Valley, Idaho. As a prominent media mogul, Zaslav is a regular, high-profile attendee at this event, which is organized by Gould's firm.Kenneth W. LoweKen Lowe is the former Chair/CEO of Scripps Networks Interactive (the former parent company of massive lifestyle brands like HGTV, Food Network, and ID).The Link: In 2018—four years before the Warner Bros. deal even closed—Zaslav orchestrated Discovery's $14.6 billion acquisition of Scripps Networks. As a direct result of that blockbuster cable industry consolidation, Lowe joined Discovery Inc.'s board of directors. He and Zaslav had already been working together closely at the board level for years before the legacy company expanded into WBD.The board of AT&TRichard W. FisherOutside of WBD, Zaslav's connection to Fisher is rooted in Fisher's previous role as a member of the Board of Directors for AT&T. When Zaslav was hammering out the complex transaction to spin WarnerMedia away from AT&T, Fisher was one of the crucial board leaders on the other side of the table who evaluated and signed off on the deal. As part of the closing agreement, Fisher was designated by AT&T to transition directly over to the new WBD board.Debra L. LeeDebra Lee was the longtime Chair/CEO of BET Networks (Black Entertainment Television) from 2006 to 2018.Zaslav and Lee have long-standing commitments to The Paley Center for Media, sharing space as members of its highly prestigious Board of Trustees. Additionally, Lee served on the board of AT&T, meaning she was part of the corporate governance team that initially approved Zaslav's pitch to merge Discovery with WarnerMedia.Geoffrey Y. YangJust like Richard Fisher and Debra Lee, Yang's primary pre-WBD connection to Zaslav comes down to AT&T. Yang sat on AT&T's board during the high-stakes dealmaking window. Because of his background in digital media and venture capital, he was designated by AT&T leadership to transition to the WBD board to help Zaslav steer the newly formed company's streaming and direct-to-consumer technology strategies.The board that ignores Say on Pay votesAt our 2025 Annual Meeting held on June 2, 2025, we held an advisory vote on executive compensation, or "Say on Pay" vote, and a majority of the votes cast by stockholders were cast against our executive compensation program.Our executive compensation program is designed to pay for performance and effectively balance executive and stockholder interests. The Committee considered the outcome of the "Say on Pay" vote from the 2025 Annual Meeting, and while it continues to believe that our executive compensation structure, which includes long-term agreements with each of our NEOs and delivers a significant majority of NEO compensation in performance-based vehicles, is effective in meeting our compensation objectives, it took note of the negative 2025 "Say on Pay" vote when making compensation decisions after the 2025 Annual Meeting.The Dodd-Frank Act: "The shareholder vote … shall not be binding on the issuer or the board of directors of an issuer, and may not be construed as overruling a decision by such issuer or board of directors”Special meeting vote 4/23/26: Say on Pay 83% no6/9 AGM: ShareholdersPaul A. Gould 52% noRichard W. Fisher 31% noDebra L. Lee 32% noKenneth W. Lowe 31% noGeoffrey Y. Yang 31% noZaslav 3% noSay on Pay 84% noStill on boardPaul A. GouldRichard W. FisherDebra L. LeeKenneth W. LoweGeoffrey Y. YangZaslavThe SEC: "The Say-on-Pay … votes are advisory rather than binding ... Unlike a binding vote, advisory votes do not require the company or its board of directors to take a specific action. The company's board of directors may consider advisory votes and may follow up with other communications or dialogue with shareholders as part of its deliberative process in making policy decisions."The workers for being poor1,378 to 1 CEO pay ratio.Andrew M. Cuomo Joins the OKX Board of DirectorsThe worldMen GreedThe U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) In February 2025, OKX pled guilty in a U.S. federal court to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and violating anti-money laundering (AML) laws.The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed that despite OKX having an "official policy" banning U.S. users, the exchange actively pursued U.S. customers and generated hundreds of millions in fees from them.Internal logs showed OKX employees explicitly telling U.S. clients how to bypass the exchange's own blocks—even telling a customer to "just put a random country" during identity verification.The exchange was used to facilitate over $5 billion in suspicious transactions and criminal proceeds, resulting in a staggering $504 million penalty.TrumpTrump has normalized crypto. Is it the path to the next financial collapse?Jon Ossoff Rips RFK Jr.'s ‘Foolish' Cutback To Cyclosporiasis Monitoring: Sen. Jon Ossoff says a cyclosporiasis outbreak spreading nationwide could be harder to track because the Trump administration changed CDC surveillance last year. In a letter to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ossoff argues that the CDC's FoodNet program (a public health network that monitors infections from multiple pathogens across CDC, USDA, FDA, and 10 states) stopped requiring monitoring cyclospora, and that the administration later made data collection optional at FoodNet sites for most pathogens (except Salmonella and E. coli).Elon Musk"ESG is the devil"A "scam" weaponized by "phony social justice warriors"Vivek RamaswamyThe author of Woke, Inc.founded an entire asset management firm (Strive) designed explicitly to offer "anti-woke" investment options that ignore ESG metrics in favor of pure profit.Ron DeSantisSpearheaded a massive legislative pushback against ESG in Florida, signing bills that banned state and local governments from using ESG factors when investing public funds or issuing bondsArgues ESG is a way to bypass voters and enforce a political agenda through corporate power.Peter ThielCalled ESG a "hate factory" used to control capital and punish companies that don't fall in line with mainstream corporate ideologyTariq Fancy (Former Head of Sustainable Investing at BlackRock)“Whistleblower”Called ESG a "dangerous placebo" that does nothing to actually fix the planet but allows Wall Street to charge higher fees while greenwashing their portfoliosMike PenceArgues that major Wall Street firms use ESG to enforce a radical left-wing agenda on everyday Americans, forcing companies to adopt policies that hurt the domestic energy sector.Glenn Hegar (Texas Comptroller)Created a blacklist of financial companies (including BlackRock) banned from doing business with the state of TexasCalled ESG an "opaque and perverse system" that violates fiduciary dutyAndy Puzder (Former CEO of CKE Restaurants/Hardee's and Carl's Jr.)Argued that forcing companies to focus on social goals instead of profits violates shareholder capitalism and ultimately hurts the economySenator Tom CottonAttacked ESG from a legal and regulatory standpoint. He led a group of Republican senators in warning top U.S. law firms that advising companies to cooperate on ESG goals could open them up to massive federal antitrust violationsSanjai Bhagat (Finance Professor, University of Colorado)Argues that ESG funds don't actually deliver higher returns and that companies in ESG portfolios often have worse compliance records for labor and environmental rules than standard companiesMenI pay my employees $1,000 a month per child for day care. It's one of my ice cream company's best investments.A womanAll womenDEIMolly Moon Neitzelfounder and CEO of Molly Moon's Homemade Ice CreamHer business planwhich included living wages and free health insurance for everyone who worked at least 18 hours a weekMMC-suite promotions now come with three or more jobs - from the article: “When Target named Michael Fiddelke CEO in February 2026, the leadership changes he announced went beyond a standard promotion. Target eliminated its chief commercial officer role and consolidated merchandising authority into a single position, naming Cara Sylvester, previously chief guest experience officer, as the sole chief merchandising officer overseeing product development, assortment design, and partner collaborations.” - WHO DO YOU BLAME??AIIsn't “taking more jobs on” what the promise of AI has been? The article claims “Executives who excel in a specific function are increasingly entrusted with broader operating mandates spanning commercial, technology, operations, finance, or customer strategy” - but really, aren't we just admitting that marketing and sales can be done by a dopey robot?Executive ChairsAs the TOP boys realize they can offload their work by becoming Executive Chair (same salary, fewer hours, no responsibilities!), maybe the CEO class is realizing THEY can stop doing as much if they just give more jobs to underlings? It seems telling the prime example in the article is Target where Brian Cornell still lingers on the board like a boilPay committeesPay committees are handing out massive golden hellos, particularly to CFOs but all c-suite, and they can justify them by “rolling” pointless jobs into a single person, right? BoardsBoards aren't actually paying attention to executives anyway - the data suggests by and large boards in the US are either deferential to the executives (do whatever you want!) or entirely self dealing (highly connected horse trading jobs on other boards!). The result is an indifferent board to actual executive shakeups either way - and CEOs are using indifference to shake up the c-suitesGeneral Mills is recalling nearly 736,000 Pillsbury bread rolls over possible glass - WHO DO YOU BLAME??Public Responsibility Chair Jorge UribeEx “productivity” officer at P&G until he retired in 2015. MBA and bachelor's in “management engineering”, which confused our knowledge typing which pinged off “engineering” to give him Public Safety knowledge, but there's no ACTUAL EVIDENCE he did anything but sales/marketing10 year tenure - longer than the CEO, but not as long as…Longest tenured director and man on Public Responsibility committee Steve OdlandOdland is the CEO of the Conference Board, who does public policy and governance stuff - he was CEO of Office Depot and AutoZone, and came from food (Quaker Oats, Sara Lee)Been on the board 22 years!! Solid job if you can get itBut both Steve and Jorge are tagged as “deferential” in the data (this is an important gig for them), so maybe…CEO Jeff HarmeningWith General Mills since 1994, came from marketing, but was COO - maybe Jeff's job as a director at Toro Company made him too busy to notice the glass? Or, maybe it wasn't their fault at all…RFK Jr: It's not just Taco Bell lettuce and possible glass in Pillsbury rolls: Food and drink recall events reached a 6-year year-over-year high

https://youtu.be/L1wE2Koy7eQ Tomas Milar, Founder and CEO of Eqvista, is passionate about helping businesses value what’s hard to value by making private company valuations more accurate, transparent, and actionable. Through a product-first mindset and relentless innovation, Tomas has built Eqvista into a leading equity management and private market valuation platform serving more than 25,000 companies, helping founders, investors, and employees make better decisions with real-time company valuations. We explore Tomas Milar’s PrivateCo Valuation Framework: Industry Data, Private Data, Public Comparables, Client Data, and Audit Defensibility. Tomas explains why accurate private company valuations require combining multiple data sources instead of relying on static reports, how proprietary datasets and public market benchmarks improve pricing precision, and why audit-defensible valuations build confidence for fundraising, compliance, and M&A transactions. He also shares how a product-first approach has fueled Eqvista’s growth while advancing real-time valuations and expanding shareholder liquidity through controlled tender offers. — Value What’s Hard to Value with Tom Milar  Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Tomas Milar, the founder and CEO of Eqvista, a leading equity management and private market valuation platform serving more than 25,000 companies. Tom, welcome to the show.  Steve, thank you so much for having me. Thank you.  Well, you’ve got a very interesting background and business. We talked before the show that both of us are from Europe, studied in different countries, and come from a financial background. So it’s very interesting. Out of the 350-plus guests I’ve had, I’ve never had someone with such a similar background.  Interesting. Thank you. Yes. I took every opportunity to study anywhere. One semester I studied at three different universities at the same time. So yes, I was taking exams left and right at different universities. It would be April in Finland, May in Turkey, and later June back in the Czech Republic.  That’s great.  In one week, I would really make that whole circle. Crazy times.  I heard about professors teaching at multiple universities, but students attending multiple universities… Maybe two at the same time in the same country.  But I had three.  Three in different countries? That’s completely crazy. I guess if you wanted to fast-track your career, get to Silicon Valley young, start a company, and already reach a modicum of success, you had to do that, right?  You know what? Or you drop out of school and do zero schools. That’s also an option. Now let’s be serious for a bit. For me, it wasn’t really about the education. For me, it was whether I could make it. So it was more of a challenge than an academic achievement. Yeah, it was a fun time back then. I would have a Tuesday exam in Turkey, then fly north. I would have to change clothes in Prague because in Finland I was only about 50 miles from the Polar Circle. It would still be winter there, so I’d pack winter clothes and then take an exam in Oulu, which is almost at the Polar Circle. Yeah. So from Istanbul to the Polar Circle. It was a fun time back then.  I saw it on your LinkedIn page—North Ostrobothnia—and I couldn’t imagine where that place was. So I actually Googled it, and the pictures were all ski slopes. I figured it had to be a cold place.  It was very cold. Yes. A lot of saunas.  Yeah, that’s lovely. Let’s get into the topics. One question I always ask my guests is: What is your personal why, and how are you manifesting it in your business?  You know, I learned the hard way that you never ask “why.” At least for me, after living in China. Things just happen. They just happen. Some people don’t really know certain things are possible until they make them possible. So from impossibility to possibility. It’s always interesting to see things happen without a rational reason. I don’t think it’s really about a why. I think it’s really about being naïve when you do things, just doing them, and figuring things out along the way.  Yeah. Well, I agree with you about naïveté. I believe it’s a great entrepreneurial trait because it allows you not to kill good ideas..  Yes, yes. …before they have a chance to develop. And Steve, the more you know about certain things, the less likely you are to start a business in that particular industry, right? Doctors never start hospitals. Bankers never start banks or neobanks because they understand how difficult it is. So that naïveté—to be foolish and hungry—it really works. Yeah. Actually, that’s what works for me. Again, I never thought about business ideas in terms of why I should be doing them. Let me ask you this instead.  What energizes you about running Eqvista?  I think it comes in different phases. Right now, we’re going to launch a controlled tender offer. For those who don’t know what that is, when you issue stock to employees or investors, you can get it back. We don’t really like the term “buy it back,” but that’s essentially what happens. Once you issue options or stock, you can actually buy it back and redistribute those same shares to different investors or shareholders. That’s our new product. We have a very big challenge in front of us, and it’s how to price stock.  We perform valuations on over $8 billion of client assets every month. We’re one of the largest equity valuation platforms on the market. That’s actually what energizes me. Not really the number, but how hard it is to become number one and what drives innovation. Because if you want to be number one at anything, you need to innovate. What we've actually fixed is the report. When you issue stock, you need to have a stock price.Share on X  That stock price reflects the market, how the company is doing, and the different funding rounds. Usually, you find that stock price in a report. It’s a PDF—40 to 60 pages. By the time you receive the report, the valuation is already outdated. One month. Two months. Three, four, five, even six months. In 2026, startups move so fast that in six months some companies grow exponentially. Yeah.  I saw your LinkedIn post about SpaceX. There was an April 2026 valuation of $1.6 trillion. Then you posted again four days ago, showing it was over $2.6 trillion. That’s more than a 40% increase in just two months for one of the most valuable companies in the world. Yeah. How does that happen?  Particularly for SpaceX, there are multiple factors. There’s definitely hype, no doubt about it, because 95 times revenue—that’s ridiculous, right? For a publicly traded company, we usually see six or seven times revenue. That’s probably the best multiple. But 95 times revenue—that’s unheard of. How does that happen? There are multiple reasons, right? One of them is innovation. Another is that SpaceX is the only company actually launching spacecraft into orbit.  And yeah, obviously, there’s the Elon Musk factor. If you look at the space economy, whatever we’re doing on Earth, we’ll be doing the same things in space, right? So looking at SpaceX as a bridge between the dream of space and practically mirroring what we do here on Earth, I think that’s a great analogy.  For us, it's a really nice demonstration of how any company going public should have a real-time valuation.Share on X It doesn’t have to be publicly available. You can choose. Again, think about how Merrill Lynch—I think it was Merrill Lynch and Bank of America—helped with the roadshow and all the due diligence and documents. I can’t even understand how they modeled the valuation one time. They probably had to do that every three days.  But if they had a real-time valuation, they could clearly understand what was happening in the market. So, going back to your original question about what excites me, this is exciting because we built the largest valuation model on the market. Currently, without SpaceX—because SpaceX would take up half of the benchmark—we constantly value over $4 trillion in assets.  Okay. So let’s talk about this because, in my time at my investment banking firm, we had a valuation practice, and we offered six different types of valuations. But really, we just wanted to have an enchilada process where we would have EVA valuations, multiples, private and public comparables, DCF, and all that stuff. But I’m really wondering because, when you’re valuing small private companies, you’ve got all these liquidity discounts, marketability discounts, ownership discounts, all these discounts.  So it kind of boggles my mind how you guys can value all these startups, which may not even have revenue and may be very early-stage. Because this podcast is about frameworks, I’d like you to share with us—with me and the listeners—a framework that simplifies this whole valuation. What are the major elements? If you had to constrain yourself to five major elements of your valuation, what would they be?  Yeah, I can definitely help with that. Obviously, the first one is the industry, right? The industry. We have our models and datasets that we’ve acquired over the years. We have valued $400 billion in client assets manually. Okay. Manually. Even before AI, we were using AI, right? So we really tested the models. We really worked on what works and what doesn’t. That’s one element. It’s the dataset.  Obviously, public comparables. We have incredible models for choosing and picking the right companies, right? There are 4,000 publicly traded companies on the market. That’s a very important dataset. Then we have data taken directly from clients. That’s also very important. The data actually reflects the reality of the company. Obviously, you can estimate, but all these estimates…  There are platforms out there that give you a range. There’s actually a company now that tried to copy us, but they came up with such an unfortunate solution. They have a range. And Steve, who knows the range? Let’s say you have a $100 million company valuation. They came up with a valuation range of $30 million to $100 million. Two hundred?  Okay, great.  Thirty to one hundred. Thirty to one hundred. Okay. I’m like, “That’s not even a range.” It’s ridiculous. So, again, you can try to copy it, but it’s not going to work. You have to have analysts. We have an in-house team of close to 20 valuation analysts with double master’s degrees, CBAs, CFA Level III, and NACVA certifications.  So we can also issue certified reports. We can support all the defensibility. So, in case any company is undergoing M&A, we can help with additional questions from the Big Four, McKinsey, or PricewaterhouseCoopers when they challenge the valuation. We can defend the stock price. It doesn’t really happen when we issue the stock, but it happens down the road.  Yeah. That’s fantastic. So let me ask you this. What drives growth at Eqvista?  What drives growth at Eqvista? The product. It’s really as simple as that. The product and our company economics. We don't really waste time and energy on things that don't work. We focus heavily on what really works and only on what works.Share on X We haven’t raised much money, right? We bootstrapped the company. We raised half a million dollars. I always gave up on fundraising because I’m a product founder.  I don’t really do many roadshows or meetings. I actually hate meetings. I stay with my team. I’m product-centric, super focused on the product, and I think that’s one of the reasons we’re successful. I’ve always been fortunate to build amazing products and hire very talented people who can understand what we’ve built and sell it. So it’s the product. I’ve always believed in pull marketing rather than push marketing.  Obviously, outbound outreach is also extremely important. But pull marketing is where you start, especially in the early stage when you want to grow to, let’s say, half a million, one million, or two million dollars in revenue. Because direct sales are extremely hard.  So what’s one thing that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business?  It’s the price. It’s the stock price. How to effectively value companies. That’s what excites me, and that’s what we try to figure out on a practically daily basis. We have a team of specialists focusing on stock pricing and stock price discovery. Adoption is going to be extremely important. How successful we’ll be in distributing the stock price to different segments of the market.  I’m trying to understand this. You already have 25,000-plus companies whose valuations you manage. You’re able to defend these valuations in court or in M&A situations. So what do you mean exactly by trying to figure out how to effectively value companies? I mean, it sounds like you’ve figured it out. So to what degree have you not figured it out?  We have it, right? But for us, it’s about efficiency. Efficiency and how precisely we can price the stock. That’s probably the big question, even for the public market. Some companies are underpriced. How is it possible that a company with a strong balance sheet has a lower value than the cash in its accounts? These are the types of things.  It’s definitely a different approach to value a company with a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue versus a company with $300 million in revenue and a $22 billion post-money valuation. These are crazy formulas and approaches. We’re still working on the precision because, at that scale, companies are extremely sensitive to any type of deviation. Even one percent can mean hundreds of millions of dollars.  So that’s very important. Actually, it’s also very important for startups to realize that, at the lower level, they might be undervalued by a few hundred thousand dollars or a few million dollars. That’s also something founders, CEOs, and CFOs should really be considering. That’s why real-time valuation is extremely important for all of us. We’re just trying to teach the market about real-time valuation.  Yeah. I can imagine. Even listed companies that have public data can move dramatically based on market sentiment. Something happens in Iran, and the stock can drop ten percent in a day. What could happen in a private company when you don’t have real-time data available?  Yes.  It’s going to be a really thorny issue.  It is.  So if you had a magic wand, Tom, and you could fix one thing in your company in the next twelve months, what would that be?  Adoption. Real-time valuation adoption. How we teach the market about real-time valuation. That would be the thing I would love to fix.Share on X We actually have a few ideas about how to do it. We’re becoming our own client. We’re becoming our own client, so we’re actually launching a controlled tender offer—a secondary marketplace, practically. Down the road, we could apply for an ATS, an Alternative Trading System. But that’s eight, nine, or ten months from now. At least that’s our vision, and that’s where we’d like to be headed.  So you’re going to do something like a relisting or a reverse IPO?  Not really a reverse IPO. No. Just to help shareholders liquidate their stock. It’ll practically be a platform where employees or investors can liquidate their stock. That’s something we’d like to focus on. We issue stock, manage it, reprice it, and we’d also like to help provide liquidity.  Wow. These are very exciting challenges.  Yes.  A lot of people have tried to overcome this, so if you do, you’ll definitely be pioneers in this area. Perhaps AI can help with that.  Perfect. Yeah. I have a list of people I know, how to use them, and when. So you’re always welcome.  All right. If people would like to learn more or contact you, where can they find you? Or where can they find Eqvista? How can they connect with you and learn more?  Yeah. I can definitely help with multiple subjects: company formation, bootstrapping a company, any product-related questions, and, obviously, equity management, stock pricing, valuation discovery, efficiency, and, most importantly, anything about Eqvista. You can find us at eqvista.com. E-Q-V-I-S-T-A dot com. The same goes for email. It’s tom@eqvista.com.  Okay, awesome. You can check Tom out on LinkedIn as well. That’s Tomas Milar. I think you’re listed with your longer first name. He posts regularly—very exciting articles, especially the recent one I saw on SpaceX and how the valuation shot up like a rocket. Definitely check it out.  If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure you subscribe, follow us on YouTube, give us a review on Apple Podcasts, and stay tuned because once or twice a week we bring you exciting entrepreneurs like Tom, who share their frameworks with you. So thanks for coming, Tom, and sharing your insights. And thanks for listening. Important Links: Tom's LinkedIn Tom's  website Tom's Email: tom@eqvista.com

Most reps trap themselves in the red sea of crappy discovery by stopping at basic operational problems that CFOs refuse to fund. In this episode, Armand and Nick break down their exact playbook, including: