How AI Agents will Streamline and Eliminate Manual Work for FP&A Professionals with Albert Ramos

great FPNA, you're serving as a strategic business partner for senior leaders. - In the space that I work in, I find that the pricing strategy is kind of the look over the fence competitor analysis. There's a lot of passionate people out there that have opened up their own fitness studio, boutique studio. However, they just lack that financial literacy. But I haven't recommended people's. First, do your homework. What is that niche for you? Is there an opportunity to do both for now? So they have a steady stream of income and cash flow as much fun it is to have high utilization or with AI? There's nothing like having a good time with human colleague or human friend. - A brief message from this week's title sponsor. Being an operator isn't for the faint of heart. It's like building a parachute while free-falling. I found my solution in operator's guild. Home to over 1,000 elite, high-growth leaders, the special forces of business scaling. With 150 plus events across 25 global chapters. I've found my personal board of directors and instant answers to critical challenges. Ready to join the Navy Sills of Business Scaling? Visit operator's guild.com and tell them the FPNA guy sent you. - Hello everyone, welcome to FPNA tomorrow, where we delve into the world of financial planning and analysis, examining its current state and future prospect. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka the FPNA guy. And I'll be guiding you through the evolving landscape of FPNA each week. We are joined by thought leaders, industry experts and practitioners who share their insights and experiences, hoping us navigate today's complexities and tomorrow's uncertainties. This week I'm thrilled to be joined by Albert Ramos. Albert, welcome to the show. - Thanks Paul, such a huge fan and I'm so grateful that you allowed me to come on just to share my insights and have a good conversation. But thanks, thanks so much, I'm super excited. - Of course, I'm looking forward to the conversation. I'm glad you're able to come on and we were able to make it work. So our audience knows funny enough, commented on a LinkedIn post from Jack Swini about the show and Jack's like, "Yeah, I only have CFOZR or whatever." And I jokingly said, "Hey, I don't have any requirements like that, I'll take different guests. You can talk to me and Jack kind of laugh." - That's how this started, right? - That's right, I'm a huge fan of Jack's as well. I listen to both of your podcasts. The fact that we were engaging and chatting back on fourth on LinkedIn was a big mind blow for me. So I was super excited to spend some time with you and get to chat about what we were thinking about and it was too funny. But Jack does listen to this, I'm sure you will. Jack, I'm a fractional CFO. I meet your guidelines. - Yeah, I've got to know Jack a little bit. Great guy, great shows, and a faux thought leader. All right, so a little bit about Albert that will jump into some questions and have some fun here. But Jack, if you're listening, I'm not a CFO, so you can't have me on your show. All right, Albert Ramos is the founder of "Stratigo in Tell Consulting." If you like that game, there you go. An AI-powered fractional CFO and virtual chief AI officer firm powered by Wike Love AI. Stratigo specializes in wellness and fitness franchise SMBs as well as corporate and private equity owned companies. Albert helps organizations leverage AI-driven financial strategy. You're not getting a trend here, we might talk a little AI today. Cash flow management, KPI dashboards and bank investor relations to drive efficiency, execution, and sustainable growth. With 15 years of executive leadership spanning finance operations, sales, and technology, Albert has led teams over 300 members large, a combined location count of 70 locations in a portfolio of over 200 million plus an annual revenue. His expertise extends across publicly traded, private equity back, and employed owned organizations. Where he has led AI automation, FPNA financial modeling, M&A strategy, and large-scale business operations. How does the sound listening to it? Does it make you sound good? You're like, wow, have I done all that? It's a mouthful. I'm gonna go edit some things to shorten it up. (laughing) I'm like, what is that? What have I been up to? All right, well, it sounds impressive nonetheless. I appreciate it. It's a lot of fun. All right, we're gonna start here. Great FPNA. What does that look like to you? What is that? You know, I think it's evolved. It's a great question because I'm seeing a lot of chatter around the accounting side as well as the FPNA side. And where I think FPNA is going or is currently adding going and what would make great FPNA is predictive analytics, right? We obviously all know and spend a lot of time in modeling and forecasting the future. I think that's still really important. But where I think great FPNA really helps bring some value is the insights, like, okay, great. Now what? Now what do I do? And I think a lot of people in our space that are finding some success or climbing up the ladder, finding a way to be an advisor and a consultant. I'll bring that up quite often probably today 'cause I think that's where it's going. A lot of what I'm seeing with the tools speaking of AI, I'm finding that a lot of our FPNA leaders really need to step out away from the computer and the model and tell the C-suite executive, here's what you need to go do. Here's what's next, here's why it's important. - I agree. I think, you know, great FPNA, you're serving as a strategic business partner for senior leaders. Whether that be a business unit leader, the company is a whole, the head of IT, whatever it might be depending on who you're supporting. But that's really especially as you get more senior, that's what you're doing. You're helping the business as one person put it, and I love this, I've shared this many times, it comes from Stu West of Grammarly. Finance, I think it's FI's to FPNA, is about helping the business make better, faster decisions. Three words, better, faster decisions. And I'm like, okay, that boils it down really well. We're a strategic partner at the end of the day. Are we should be, if not, we're selling ourselves short. - Yeah, it's a good point. And I think to add to that, the choice of whether you choose to be, that timeline is starting to shrink. The tools that I'm seeing right now, and I'm talking not over the last six months, I mean, today, the last couple of days, there are tools that can reposition accounting team members in FPNA team members right now, and even potentially replace a lot of the things that we're used to doing and taking a lot of time doing. Right, we love doing it, we love our models, our budgets, our forecasting, et cetera. But I'm seeing tools right now from, not just AI and what we most mainstream knows of it, or your agentic workflows, but there's agents that are being created are created right now that can do a lot of the things that we're used to doing, which is exciting, 'cause again, that allows us to be more creative and be a thought leader, be an advisor consultant to those decision makers in our organization. - Yep, agree. So share with me an example of when you have seen great FPNA in action. So share an actual example, kind of describe what it means to you. Now I wanna see an actual case. - Yeah, for me, so when I go into organizations, one of the big things that I look at is not just cash flow, but all the different variables within it. And so when I've seen great FPNA, well, specific to modeling, it's always around pricing. In the space that I work in quite often in the wellness and fitness space, I find that the pricing strategy is kind of the look over the fence competitor analysis, and sometimes that works, but I think when you get mathematically precise and actually create a model, a scenario-based model showing when a price point is X or a price point is Y, here's what your volume or mix will be. That's where I see a lot of value in what we do, specifically in this space, but in other industries as well, is lifting up the hood, taking a look at the pricing strategy. What you'll find in most cases, we have a lot of passionate leaders and owners, franchise owners out there that are really excited about their product or impacting their community. But when it comes to the financial arm, and specifically in this topic, pricing, sometimes it's just whipped, pencil width, I guess you could say, and it's not really mathematically thought out. And so that's where I've seen a lot of great work that leads to, as I mentioned, cash flow growth and business growth overall into the bottom line. - Yeah, you know, funny enough, you mentioned pricing 'cause, how, probably almost five years ago now, I did a poll on LinkedIn saying, "Who should own pricing?" And I wonder the opposite was finance. And most people responded with, "Yes, finance should own it." But almost all the comments were against finance owning. It's kind of funny, I think it's an area that's often under utilized strategically in companies, and it's an area where FP&A can have a role, right? I mean, it's a multi-disciplinary thing, but I've seen so many areas where pricing is just a mess, and you're leaving money on the table. - Absolutely. - And so it's a great area for FP&A to help make sure the conversations are happening. Like there's a study done, and this is in SaaS, where they found the average SaaS company spent more time on their janitorial services in a year than they did on their pricing strategy. - Yeah, big opportunity. And, you know, the space that I work in, when we're looking at it, it's a subscription-based model, so it's applicable to other industries, but you're looking at acquisition or retention attrition, specifically to functions of pricing. It's important to be mathematically sound there, and scenario-based it out, right? Again, it can't be a look over the fence, and let's just match what my competitors doing. That's not the right approach. That's a approach that can potentially be a variable, but not the right approach if you're really trying to scale and create a sound business. business and pricing strategy. - Well, I mean, it's the holy girl, holy girl, of pricing, it's where we really all want to be and you need to think strategic as value-based pricing, right? You want to base your price on the value you're providing the customer and trying to maximize the price you get for the value you're giving, whether that's low cost, whatever that may be. That can go across the entire spectrum. And if you're just matching your competitors, there's no thought for value. You don't know what exercise they did. You hopefully consider yourself providing more value than your customer. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're strictly a volume play and that's why you're matching. But in general, there's no strategy to that. It's just, well, I hope they did a good job 'cause I'm gonna go with what they did. - That's a really good point. And I think the consumer, the member, the customer, right? They're, we're far more savvy nowadays, right? And if you take a look at an organization and you've had a bad experience, maybe with their competitor, the organization that you're planning on, having them earn your trust and business, you notice that the pricing is similar. It can lead to actually devaluing your organization, right? So if there's some sort of similarity that well, they must be the same in what they offer and I'd actually not, that type of money. But maybe it's something at a premium and you notice the services are far more valuable and much different than the bad situation that I've just encountered. Now we're feeling different, right? So yeah, I think there needs to be far more strategy and around pricing, specifically to this topic. And I think the F&A leaders and finance leaders should definitely have their arms around that. And so now I'm looking forward to all the hate mail, the DMs coming through. But yes, I agree, finance should own this. - Yeah, see, in my view is, I don't care if finance owns it or not. I've kind of softened on that. They need to be involved. Everybody needs to be involved. I think it depends on the organization, all that. The key is the conversations are happening and finance is there to make sure the numbers make sense and to provide input and sometimes that goes beyond just the numbers. I mean, if we know the business well, like you spend a long time in the industry, we can provide real insights if we're really that strategic partner. But the key is that it's happening. One of the most popular articles I did is I wrote an article for CFO University about pricing and kind of how finance should think about it and how there should be a pricing committee. And it's been a big two, three years in a row, one of their top 10 most read articles, which just shows people are realizing how important it is, especially in an inflationary environment. Because everybody's scared about raising costs. As long as you can show value, most customers aren't gonna leave, they understand. They may not like it. And nobody likes having their money squeezed and being worthless. At the same time, most people get that, okay, yeah, if I just had to pay 20% more for everything, odds are this place is gonna cost me more too. - You know, you made me, it's funny, 'cause switching gears a little bit, over the last year or so, most of us have rode the, we've rode the inflationary wave, right? So as we think about volume, right? And I'm thinking subscription based model, but volume, price and mix, price was a favorable one. We all saw it, right? We saw the 10, 15% lift, like shoot, we're doing great on top line revenue and flow through down that, we're on the top end of the marginal curve now, right? To squeeze out a little bit more is gonna be difficult this year and next. And so it's interesting, as we speak about pricing strategy, right, it's even more important because you don't have a lot of room to go, so you really need to know, I mean, every cent and every little point, every little dollar is so important. So having it be mathematically sound is important, but you know, so that's an interesting topic I've been chatting a lot about that is, you're not gonna have too much wiggle room on the price, so how do you go drive more volume and especially in the retail side, I'm hearing this a lot, so interesting. - Yeah, especially retail, I totally agree. It's a really hard area. If others, we can do add on services or add more value for that price increase. Because right, if you just increase prices, like you saw this a lot in the retail, or some of them, the increased price and shrunk the size. Okay, consumers don't really like that. We're not stupid. I could tell, you know, some may not notice, but I know it was six ounces last year, now it's 5.6 and it's a dollar more. So that leads to 40%, the inflation was 20%. Something tells me you're winning on this, right? - Knowing the audience and look, I know I come from the wellness and fitness space, but I enjoy a couple potato chips here and there, and I'm sure we're all, especially last year, I was counting those chips for the money I was spending, and the increase in price, I'm like, wait a second here, there's a matter of dozen chips missing in this bag. - I think we all work. So let's talk to get back a little bit to fitness here. We'll move on from pricing, but I think we can price spend the whole hour here on pricing. It is something that's underutilized in companies, finance should clearly be playing a role with marketing with sales with everybody. We're in a position to help strategically lead that, and I think there's a lot that can be done. I think we're both on the same page there, but you've spent most of your career in the fitness industry. Why? Why, what is it you like about fitness other than maybe being healthy? I mean, but why the fitness industry? - Yeah, I come from a pretty athletic family background. - You're one of those, are you like? - Wow, you know, I'll tell you, and I'll explain a little bit more. I played basketball, baseball, and football. I played a ton of sports. Now, pickleball for any pickleball fanatics out there. I challenge you. And yeah, I played college football at a small little private school called Oxygenal College out in Los Angeles, Eagle Rock, California. And I've always enjoyed athletics. And actually, I don't think we've chatted about this. I worked prior to getting in the fitness space. I worked for Extreme Makeover Home Edition. And so that was a blast to be in the entertainment space. Previous to that, my family and I were on Family Feud. And I did a couple things on MTV and all that. But I was driving by fitness studio. And I just remembered the feeling of that athletic experience and the rest is history over the next 15 years. I spent a lot of time on the finance and operations side in the fitness industry and helping people out. And so it's the lifestyle. It's that feeling of being around people that are looking to improve their lifestyle. I'm a big nerd when it comes to biomarkers as well. So it's fitness as far as movement. But then there's also the different part of the ecosystem, like nutrition, mindfulness, and in my nerding out case, blood, blood work, and longevity. And so I really enjoyed. And my family does, too. We've made it a lifestyle. And it doesn't mean just going to a gym. It means being outside, riding your bike, hiking. You can't do too much of that in Houston, because it's so moist and humid and hot. But we try as much as possible. I hear you. And it's definitely a lifestyle. And as far as the extreme makeover, home addition, you're welcome to come to my house and do one anytime. I'm not tired. It was a great experience. I bet. Well, make sense. You grew up in a very athletic family. You did a lot of sports. I could see wanting a very out fitness and full lifestyle. And so naturally it's an area you gravitate towards. You have an interest in. So combining that lifestyle and the work you do, you enjoy both of them. It's a great way to go. Yeah, absolutely. You know what I found and why I actually started Shratego was there's a lot of passionate people out there that have opened up their own fitness studio, boutique studio, or their executive leaders in the fitness wellness and longevity space. My style has always been to serve and help others. And I just found a void there. And I thought, wow, I could really use some natural mathematical capabilities that I have and obviously my passion for finance and help companies out there with Shratego and my consulting. And it's been a blast because I get to be in that environment of wellness and be next to some very passionate, well-known fitness gurus and leaders, but also help on an area that's their, you know, their blind spot, their Achilles heel. So I really enjoyed doing that. I've been all along. I do it with that. I said, I'm picturing you would see Gillian Michaels, Gene Simmons doing some kind of-- Yeah, a little. Yeah, watch out. We're doing something live next week. I'm just kidding. I can't wait. I want to see it all. Thank you. I'm in good life. Come watch Albert, work out. There you go. And get your finance questions answered at the same time. I watch the same time. At the same time, yeah, yeah. And an episode. So you talk a little bit about why you started your business. You started-- you went full time in December of 2023 for that. You were working for others. I know you're doing so hard time. What led to the decision to go full time? Like, how did you know it was the right time? And this was the thing for you. Yeah, so this fractional work actually goes back to 2015. It's so funny. It started post that-- and then not that he's irrelevant. He's still very relevant, but that Gary V. Wave being a virtual coach. And my wife hated it at the time. I had my GoPro. I was filming everything. I wish I still doing that. And so it really started there. But right around the end of 2023, I decided to take a risk and things just got quite busy. I want to make sure that I put my focus into my existing client base and those that I was serving and those that were going to need help, especially with this huge unknown or what has been causing angst, this artificial intelligence wave, and really get through the hype, right? Get through the noise and talk about what's practical, what's applicable, what can we execute on? And so I decided to go full all in and dive right in. So others who are considering that, right? The fractional CFO, advisor services, whatever you want to call it, there's all different terms. That area has grown a ton in the last few years. It was like we hear about it all the time now in the finance base. And so I'm sure we have some people listening that are thinking, hey, I would love to go out on my own at some point. Any advice you'd offer them? Yeah, I get a lot of those conversations and actually people DM me, I'm very open about, let's have a virtual copy chat, I send out my booking link. I love having conversations. There's no obligation or there's nothing being pitched or anything like that. I just enjoy having conversations like we have. Paul and so no, what I'd recommend is do your homework, right? And really find in the feedback I've always gotten is have a good niche, right? There's a great book by Peter Thiel called Zero to One and I've had some great mentors along the way that have reminded me as much as I want to broaden out and go to the masses, it's go an inch wide mile deep. And so what I'd recommend to people is first do your homework, what is that niche for you, right? And is there an opportunity to do both for now so that you have a steady stream of income and cash flow to support your business because there are a lot, there's a lot of noise out there that you should just go all in and you can and people have been very successful in doing that and there's been a lot of people that haven't. It's very stressful, there's a lot of hard work and when you're starting something from scratch, you know, many people that are listening know it's it's it's not the rainbows and butterflies sometimes that you see on LinkedIn, there's there's a lot of messiness behind the scenes and yeah, exactly, right? And so you know, just make sure that you do your homework and you really know what you're signing up for. And if there is a support system, a spouse, what that partner, whoever, I'd have that conversation too because it can create some tension and it definitely pulls on the relationship a bit because of the time allocation, right? So I think do it, take the risks, such a great opportunity to do it today because of the tools that we have available, right? AI and GPTs and eventually agents, you're able to do a lot more with a lot less people and on your own. So it's a great opportunity to do it and if you're thinking about it and it's pulling at your heart string, look into it, lean in there. No, thank you. I appreciate that great great advice there and you know, it's kind of funny. I get asked a lot about fractal CFO and that kind of stuff and I tell people I'm like it's less than 5% of my revenue and they're always kind of shocked like well then what do you do and then I have to you know kind of want to do it. I do plenty trust me because I do much of the because it just didn't for me, it didn't feel like I where I wanted to be long term but I think it's a great area. I do sometimes miss. I still try to do a little bit here and there to keep my hands, you know, doing the real work versus just talking to people because there's a difference when you get your hands dirty for sure. Absolutely. All right, so now we're going to talk about one of your passions. You like to talk about AI? I don't know like I don't know if you're a robot or what it is. It's not an avatar. There should be like a little a little disclaimer. This is not a Albert avatar. It's me. Yeah, funny enough, there's a guy Jeff Robinson. We interviewed him on future finance and he has had his voice clone. He spent hours and hours doing that. He spent hours and hours building an avatar. He does a podcast where he just loads the transcript and it does both sides of the conversation. It's his conversation just to test the technology. He has a live chat that's his voice trained on all his content on his website. So he talked that avatar and he's invested in two of the big companies in that area and is combining the avatar and the voice cloning and he's like pretty soon here it's going to be good enough. People won't really be able to tell the difference. It's kind of like the images. They should really know what to look like. Look for it can be really hard to tell if an image is fake or not. It's so interesting. I think the first wave, like anything that changes, but in this tech revolution is the it's the unknown, right? The anxiety that comes from just now, what the heck this thing is or how to use it. Now that many and not a lot, but many are using it. Right now it's like, okay, what do I trust? What's real? What's secure? And so there's a big, there's definitely a big void when it comes to trusting what you're seeing. I'm noticing that a lot of thought leaders are now going live to showcase the hey, it's really us, it's really me and let's keep it raw and authentic. I'd imagine there's going to be an opportunity for those out there that want to and I'm sure there's tools out there that again, offer disclaimer show that hey, this is AI generated versus it's not. This is human generated. It's so crazy to think about, but it's definitely a need for sure. Yeah, no, I definitely think there's kind of you know, AI is not going anywhere. There's plenty of places we can use it. There's also, you can never replace that human connection. And there's something to say to, hey, this is live. I'm really talking to somebody, right? And there can be value both ways and there is value. And they both have their place. And so it'll be interesting to watch of how we find that happy medium because sometimes it feels like there's way too much AI generated content and some of it is good and some of it is like sparing, right? But that's same with human there's people's content you read and you're just like even before AI came out. So it's how do we find that happy medium where we can embrace to change and maximize the utilization of the technology while still being having those authentic real relationships and being involved in things. I think we're all trying to figure out what that means for our industries and our jobs. And now a message from our title sponsor, being an operator is not for the faint of heart. It often feels like you're jumping out of an airplane and building the parachute on the way down. Stee-e-o, CFOs, COOs, FBNA leaders can relate. That is why I joined operators' guild. It's home to more than 1,000 of the most elite high-growth operators in the world. 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With the AI tool that I'm using now and I'm able to do things a lot faster than I used to do before more efficient and productive. And that goes for my team and those that I serve. But you're right, there's something about a face-to-face, whether it's virtual or in person, human-human interaction and just having a chat. As much joy as much fun it is to have high utilization or efficiencies with AI. And even talking to some of my GPTs and my bots and all of that throughout the day, there's nothing like having a good time with it's so weird to say a human colleague or a human friend. Yeah, right. AI can't replace that human interaction. It's always going to have a place. But let's talk AI. Maybe you've recently partnered with white-globe AI. Let's start there. Why? Why? You're with them. What's the kind of story there? As we've chatted about, I focus a lot of my time serving others in the fractional CFO space, more often than not in the wellness and fitness space or longevity. Along the way, I've picked up some skills on how to integrate and implement GPTs, right? AI and GPTs are agentic workflows. But I realized there's some great people out there that have far better technical experience than I and the big guns. And I met a gentleman by the name of Nick James, who we just related, speaking of the human connection, related on so many levels, including our faith. And that was really important to me and my family. And typically when I'm scrubbing through just relationships, I'm looking at some of these things that connect with our family values and Nick, checked all the boxes. He runs a great organization called the white-globe AI. And I say, it's the big guns. If you've met, if you had an opportunity to meet the team there at white-globe, you'd be amazed at what they've been doing over the last couple of years or so, specific to cybersecurity, chatbot, audio, text, tools like lucidis, and their AI executive podcasts, maybe we can touch a little bit. little bit on at the end here, but really the building side of it. And I know there's a lot of noise in the buzzword in 2025 as agents, but I've seen these things. I've seen them in action and Nick and the White Glifteam are supporting others throughout the country and making these things come to life and doing it securely. And then on the Stratigocide, they're obviously helping me integrate these things into the financial arm. And it's great to see these things come to life and upskilling and developing financial leaders and financial team members to do their jobs faster, more effectively, and more precisely is what I'm looking for. Love to get your thoughts. I've kind of made the argument, you know, we've been talking about AI and agents and they're coming. They're here people are using them. But I've said, you know, a lot of people, like, hey, 25's going to be the year of the agent. Something we've applied was week 24. I've kind of argued it's almost more 26 and I'm going to get your thoughts on this. My view is most companies, especially a scale, for really to use agents throughout workflows and outside of limited cases, you need good data. Most companies don't have the data they need, right? Anyone who's worked in FPNA, how much of your time do you spend cleaning up data? As I like to joke, how do you describe a FPNA professional's job? It's 80% cleaning data and 20% cleaning about the data you clean, right? And so I'm just kind of curious, your take. I feel like this year is really the year you'll see a lot more focus on data. Really, those agents really making the bigger deal in 26 for most most companies. Yeah, I know. I think it comes down to less of size or even budget at this point. I think you have your classic first movers and then 2025. I don't know what happened to December, but people said, okay, we got to go. We need to jump in here. And then you just have some that are still trailing and still scratching their head on whether they should be using this or not. What I think you'll see in 2025, it's not just a buzzword, they are here and I've seen it. You'll have more micro agents, right? Doing specific jobs and working with other micro agents, I think what you'll eventually see in 2026 and it'll become more mainstream is some of these enterprises like a Microsoft, which is already releasing their version. But you'll start to see something that can work across the enterprise fairly easily. But what you'll see this year are these little micro agents that you can plug in to, you know, AR, AP, I've seen this already happening. One recent one, I'm so glad this is happening. For those that are listening, I'm sure you're like, I spent hours building that, building that cash flow forecast. It can now be done within minutes with some of these agents that are pulling things from your ERP, etc. So they are here, but at a micro level, we'll experience the larger enterprise-wide agents. I think you're right next year. There's a tool and I'm sure everyone uses a kind of tool or we have a huge menu of tools that we can choose. There's lots of options when it comes to tools. Goodness and they just keep coming out. I'm telling you every single day, there's a new one coming out. But one that I would highly recommend that people start learning, it's N8N and hopefully you can start that. It's a great school right now again for someone like me who's not, didn't have the technical background specific to IT and building. It's fairly easy. I'll say fairly easy. It's not easy. It's fairly easy. But once you get in the hang of it and you really start to see what you can do with these things and as you start placing your digital species out there agents, you're going to be mind blown. It's amazing. So N8N, I highly recommend. Well, you know, one, and since we're talking here, kind of a little off topic on topic, I guess. But you know, there's a guy who he trained his, on all his data right for his website and put his own agent out there. And I've been considering with over, you know, 100 podcasts that I have is, did I train it all that and puts up on my website where they can ask questions and get answers and just got to sit down and do it because right, there's plenty of tools to do that. There's so many different use cases for AI. We talk about the agents. We talk about finance, but co-pilot. Hey, how do I write this formula? How do I do this analysis? To me, if you're not at least experimenting with it and finding ways to use it today, you're just setting yourself up for trouble. For sure. You have to learn it, right? I mean, the whole idea that these agents and now even currently GBT's will replace is very real. And I know I get in a lot of trouble sometimes on this topic because I'm not one to say, well, no, we'll upskill and everything's going to be fine and rainbows and butterflies. I'm actually on the other end, not to the extreme, but on the other end, because I'm seeing these things. And as I lived up to the hood of organizations, you know, sometimes a conversation with a C suite of the CEO or owner is, well, do we need that position anymore? And when you look at these tools and see what it can do, the answer is no. So I think it's really important for everyone listening to this and to your other episodes that I've got an opportunity to watch is step in, lean in, start learning, start getting that development. And if it's not through your organization, because maybe they're a little bit close-minded to this tech revolution, then go and spend time on Paul's episodes and others and doing courses and really learning these things, because you want to think about how are you going to be reposition? Kind of circles back to what we originally saying on great, great FPNA, but I'll throw in accounting and all finance leaders is you need to start thinking as a business owner, as an advisor, as a business partner. The way we've done things and past fashion finance, which is historically very conservative and likes to stay in its lane and do the same thing the way it's always been done. It's not the case anymore. It's been shocked. And so, and it's at that a small level right now, as this thing becomes far more mainstream, things are going to significantly change faster. So you have to be prepared and lean in. You mentioned something right now and people are going to, I'm driving my colleagues and friends and even clients crazy. I keep saying data repository, data repository, everything that we do now because of AI, because of transcribers, because I can talk to my AI, DBT, them bots, is the data point. Everything that you do, I even use it in my personal life during my workouts. But the data repository that you can curie, right, and then you could ask questions to, Paul, you have a ton of data and I would love to be in your brain, but to feel that amount of time of yours is impossible. Your way too busy. However, if I can go to something and picture brain through a GPT or or chatbot, how value I mean, I would, we can talk pricing by the way, pricing strategy, but that would be amazing. Yeah, now I know you're saying and I'm on, I'm not on this scale of hey, that jobs are going away. I'm more a little on the other side tasks are going away. And if your job is mostly process oriented, it's at risk. Because if it's truly task driven, process driven, we're going to figure out ways to continue to automate it. I think most jobs are more than that, but there are definitely some. So I think more than jobs going away is what you're seeing is every organization and expecting an efficiency for having AI, which means hey, we're not going to hire that next role. And somebody goes, we're not going to hire them. Yes, well, some people get laid off. No question. We'd all be lying if I told you nobody's going to get laid off. May I? People already have. And our jobs at risk, of course, the market's going to change. Things are going to change, right? When the internet came, jobs went away and new jobs came when, you know, other things, every revolution that we've had, the computer, it changes things. But, you know, so far we haven't seen any of it. I've been a net negative and have shrunk the jobs needed. It's going to increase productivity. No question. So it'll be interesting to watch out. It plays out. I'm a little, little more optimistic on the job impact, but we'll all see, right? We all have kind of our different takes. And it's crazy to watch regardless of how you think about it. Yeah, well, we'll see. I think the best hedge, right? And I loved listening to Motivational Speaker back in the day by the name of Jim Rohn. And you remember his voice and he would go "Value." He's like, "How are you creating value in your profession and skill set in the marketplace?" And so that's my suggestion, right? Wherever this thing lands, and it's probably going to land right in the middle, as it typically does, is how are you preparing for some of this change? And are you leaning in and creating more value for yourself in the marketplace? FPNA guy here. And I want to tell you about the planning and BI showcase. Gone are the days of juggling multiple platforms. Now with business intelligence tools, you can integrate planning directly into your BI system. The same system your entire company already uses. Join me on March 20th for the planning and BI showcase, where industry leaders will demonstrate how top BI tools are reshaping strategic planning. See firsthand how modern FPNA solutions can drive real value across your enterprise. The event features live demos from leading BI solutions. Whether you're a CFO or an FPNA professional, you'll discover the tools that can help you deliver more value across your enterprise. Don't miss out, register today at www.ww.com. excel events dot com slash e slash planning dot in dot bi dot showcase and take the first step for smarter data driven decision making. Yeah, I mean at the end of the day, it's like when we talk about pricing, everybody wants a value based pricing, the more value you can give for the salary you're getting exactly. But more likely, somebody is to keep the less value you give regardless of AI, regardless, and AI, the point any technology, anything that allows you to be more efficient allows you to give more value. AI is a productivity and efficiency tool. So why wouldn't you use it? Excel is an efficiency tool, right? If I went into any job and I start, I pulled out green paper and did my model, I'm probably not going to be there long because they're not getting value. It's taking me five times as long. You like, you want me to read your green spreadsheet paper. I miss those. I miss those. I miss those. There's just something about the touch. There is something about paper. I miss sometimes. I don't remember the last time now I pick up a newspaper, but I write my love letters to my wife and those those spreadsheet papers. Just kidding. Okay, now you'll laugh at this and we'll go back to another question here. But on financial modelers corner, so one of my other shows, I interviewed a guy by name, Tim McCondt. He was a founder, co-founder of corporate finance industry. And a question I ask is what's like the most unique case in your personal life that you've used a spreadsheet for? And he built a marriage tractor. Like this dashboard, how it was questions, how their relationship was doing and values and things. And I'm like, and how did that work? Well, let's just say, my spouse didn't appreciate it as much as I did. Hey, something worked. They're still married. So they were worth the effort. They were engaged. I think he said what he got to. It was pretty funny. That's risky. So there you go. I mean, you can do anything in a spreadsheet. So I want to talk about when you and I chatted, you had mentioned, you, hey, my heart wants to talk about AI. And you've talked about, you believe it can really help people manage, anxiety and stress, right? We live in a world that just continues to go faster and faster and can be overwhelming at times. So why do you believe AI can help us in those areas? I mean, maybe what have you seen? How has it helped you there? Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up. We chatted a good amount about this. And actually, I actually prefer when speaking about AI, I actually lean in here to this topic of mental health a little bit more than actually speaking about business and productivity and hacks and all of that. So back around 2015, 2016, you know, I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought I was having a heart attack at a young age. I'll just put it that way. And, you know, over the next couple weeks or so after having this experience day after day, I realized that I was having panic attacks. And didn't really feel like there was a lot of stress going on in my day to day building a consulting business and having a corporate job. But I guess there was, and my body was firing an alarm off that I just, I guess I wasn't paying attention to. So later found out, it was definitely battling anxiety as I found many do. And I've been very vocal about this in my corporate and consulting job. There's something relatable, I think I can share with others that are emotionally available to chat about. And I later found after some of these experiences with panic attacks and all of that, I had a tumor in my pituitary gland. And I share that because sometimes, I, well, I always recommend if you're having any types of issues with anxiety or panic or any type of body or mental issues, seek help, right? And so I got to, I got to do in a scan, actually, as I mentioned earlier, I've nerded out on blood and I love scans too. Maybe I'm a hypocondrient, I don't know. So I ended up finding it and, you know, the rest is history there. But it's my little story to share. Number one, just normalize it in corporate America or just in our professions, especially in the finance space as you're grinding out and it can be stressful, especially with deadlines coming up in an executive leadership team or board or private equity firm that means it yesterday. So I share that, but also too, in relationship with AI, what I'm really excited about what it's doing today and what it will do in the future, offload a lot of that storage, right? That memory that we're always downloading financial data points, numbers, and it can be a lot. I mean, sometimes my mind is just, or has just spun and spun because you have a lot of what I quote, unquote, bullets flying at you, numbers flying at you. And so what AI is going to be able to do is just offload some of those things that you just don't need a store. You don't need to memorize. It can take care of it for you so you can have some free space to be far more creative. Or, um, and shoot, this gets me in trouble sometimes to do is just have more leisure with your family and friends and not go so hard with leisure. Are we in America? Yeah, more leisure or just more free time to do things that you're passionate about instead of having the store all these things. And so I truly believe, and I know we didn't touch on this, but I tell people I really do believe the technology and the input that are going at our kiddos as well as us is just completely outpaced the evolution of our brain of what we use today. And so, in a lot of ways our brains are just going haywire. Just so many data inputs. So I think AI is going to allow us to offload. And I'm really excited to continue talking about how AI actually helps mental health. And for those that are, you know, for those that struggle with that reach out to me, I'd love to, you know, sometimes it can be isolating, especially when you have others around you that don't understand what you're going through. And I don't blame them. It's, you know, they are not experiencing some of those struggles. Why would they understand they could try? But I remember reading a book called "Rewire the Anxious Brain Change My Life" because I really got to understand the science behind the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. And what you do to reset your body when you're experiencing some of these anxious bodily sensations or panic attacks. But as, and now using tools to, again, offload some of the pressures and some of the things that you just don't need to accumulate over time. I get it. So, you know, I appreciate you sharing. I, I'm very open about mental health. I've talked about it a lot. I've lost family members. I share it on LinkedIn. I talk, it's very important. What I think's interesting there is kind of that connection of saying, look, use AI as a way to offload some of the information. Hopefully, reduce the anxiety, reduce the stress, reduce the trying to remember everything. We're really using it to reduce stress, basically, and anxiety. And I never really thought of AI that way. But I think it's a good point and it's something we can all do. So at the end of the day, we have one body. We got to take care of it. And you know, mental health is real. Something everybody deals with. And with any way, we can find to help us be able to relax, reduce anxiety, stress, whatever it may be is always a good thing. So, I appreciate you being open and you're sharing that. That's something I'm like said, I'm always passionate to talk about. Thank you. No, thank you. Thanks for giving me the space to be able to to share this. And I'm hoping there's those that are listening to what you've chatted about on this topic. And then what I just shared if anyone needs any help, reach out, right? You're not alone. Don't isolate. Yeah, that's the biggest thing is we just need to end the stigma. It's right. We are we we're all messed up. None of us are really. I love it. That's right. Things you never thought you'd hear on an FBNA podcast. You're all broken. We're all broken. We're all alone. We're getting the averages and all that stuff you learn about. That's right. We're here to tell well, I'll leave it at that. Yeah. So, you know, kind of coming back to AI and bringing this back around a little bit. I think most people are starting to experiment with AI. But what would advice would you give them if they're really trying to get to that next level and they're struggling to see the benefits and really figuring out how do I layer this into my processes and upload more to AI? Any advice you'd offer? Yeah, that's a good question. I get that one a lot. So I'll share three things. Number one, I highly recommend before you start anything is document everything that you do. Someone will call it like reverse engineer or chunk it up, right? Take a look at your workflows currently or maybe if you're in a position to do that for your organization, do that, right? But manually do it manually do it manually time it and document the resources that go into doing all of those. The next step or next piece of advice that I would give others is try one thing, right? If that means signing up for, and I don't even know if you need to sign up anymore, but for open AI, chat, GPT or many of us use co-pilot, right? Because we can live with them with documents that we use, like Excel. Sure, but just try it out, right? Experiment with it. Disclaimer, don't give it any sensitive confidential information. I always have to throw that out there. But play with it. Then from there, once you get really good at the prompting or how to find what you're looking for, create, or generate and get some amazing output from it, then start taking a look back at that workflow that you did and find ways where strategically you can now use AI. And next up is learning how to build GPTs, right? Which all of GPT is taking what chat GPT is or co-pilot or some others and narrowing the focus. If I want an expert at FPNA, well, I'm building a GPT for just that. Not finance in general, as we all know, there's different layers of the ecosystem there, but I just want an assistant that is FPNA or an assistant that's Albert 2.0. I have one of those two, right? So I call him K for some, maybe he keeps wanting me to call him Caleb and I'm like, Caleb, it's K, I need it to be quicker. So I've created a GPT for that. So I would map out your workflows, and this could be your personal like too, by the way, which you now have the ability, there's a great tool out there, and there's so many great tools speaking of tools again. But Plod AI, it's 24 hours that it's powered up and you can literally transcribe and record everything that's going on in your life and you're obviously chatting through it, but it's like a real life diary for those that don't want to write anymore, you can speak to, there's power in voice and what you're doing every day. But then you go back to that data repository of your life and you can start to see some inefficiencies or where you can be more effective or spend better time. So I'd do the same thing in your personal professional life, then lean in, one little thing, one step at a time and then get to learning how to build GPTs. That's not an agent, it's still more of a human intervention. If I tell you this or prompt you, then you give me, it's very different, or as an agent is more of an autonomous, it has a little bit of human intervention, but eventually goes off on its own on how you built it. So I would start in those little phases, but the real big thing is understanding, a lot of people don't stop to reflect and map out, what do I do all day? What am I doing all week? What am I doing all month? And then circling back where you can strategically use and place these tools. - You tell me I should document my processes. Thanks a lot. - The good news is you already are. (laughing) - Maybe not as much as you think, but I definitely-- - We're good there. - All right, no, great advice, I'm totally teasing you. We're gonna move into our FPNA section. This is where I ask a couple questions, kind of quick, relatively short answers, but we ask every guest similar questions. Number one, technical skill FPNA professionals need to master. What is it? - If you're not already there and I know a lot are already, so this might just be a refresher, but for sure predictive analytics. - Before thinking, you have to be all over that. And that doesn't mean modeling, but it also means data visualization. Get all over that, learn the ins and outs, what's behind the scenes that's creating your dashboards or your rows. You should be all over that. - Predictive analytics, I like it. I think that's the first time we've had that particular answer. I've had analytics, usually we get Excel modeling. So I like it. That's a new one for us. What about that softer human skill? - Yeah, and I know you chat about this a lot, and you're great at this, is the storytelling, right? Because we talk about being that consultant, that advisor, and that true finance business partner, you have we, not you, we have to work on our communication skills. So that means getting into a boardroom or in front of private equity or your leadership team, being able to communicate what the heck does this all mean and what I should do next is key. So there's great videos out there. I used to do that. I used to just watch public speakers and listen to their tone, their cadence, their tempo, and how they use pauses, things like that. So there's a lot of material, including your podcast pilot. I would watch paul's episode and just watch the communication style and how to storytelling. - Thank you, I appreciate that. And I think, great one to listen to is politicians in general. Politicians usually are very good speakers, regardless of where you are politically. I can tell you right left, whatever middle, whoever you like. Just go out and listen to a few politicians. You usually have very good command of their hands. - That's right. - Posing, like one of the best ever at the pause for emphasis is Barack Obama. - Excellent, come here. - Faster of making a point and just being able to pause and hold it. And you'll learn the more you speak, don't be afraid of silence. It's a good thing. Studies have shown, like some people like, "Why you speak really, really fast." People hardly notice if you'll just pause, even though you speak fast. And so that's my advice there. I think that's a great one. Last one, I'm giving you a magic wand for one day, you can change one thing about F-PNA. What are you changing? - I might get some DMs about this, but any type of model. - I'll give you that one. (laughing) - I mean, that's the nice ones. The nice ones. And I'm like, "Wait, that was a mean, that was cool." All the administrative hours and hours, and I know we all love this stuff. We can go line by line and we can build, build, build, and create models, right? But I really do think, well, one, I've seen it, but two, I do think we need to get away from that and be more of those strategic business partners. I know we've mentioned that a couple times, but if I could wave a wand, agents, and AI would completely take all that over, and we'd spend far more time on human, human interaction on insights and what you should go do next to drive better cash flow, to drive top line revenue and grow bottom line in margins. So I think that's where it's going. It may not be overnight, but I highly recommend people prepare for that and start developing their skillset to be more of that business partner. - All right, so Albert's magic wand is gonna say, "We can't be the spreadsheet jockey nerd." - That's right. - I'm sorry. - Thanks for watching, Albert. (laughing) - I totally understand what you're saying. It makes a lot of sense. All right, here's the Get To Know You section. What's your favorite hobby or passion? If you have a free night, you can go do something, you wanted to do, what are you doing? You know, my wife and I are pretty much home bodies. I mean, we watch every single show. I could throw some great ones out there, but we also like going to the movie. That's one of our favorite things to do, but I was making her sad the other day because we got one of those meta quests and my wife's name's Danielle and I'm a Danielle. I think our movie experience going to the theaters is gonna change here quickly, where you can be immersed in the experience and even be in the movie with what's going on in the VR space, which by the way, is flying very low under the radar with all this AI stuff. You don't hear too much about VR, like we were a couple years ago or so, but I think there's gonna be some organizations like Meta, they're gonna make a killing there. Just think about what we're doing today in the podcast and I'm working on testing some things out, but imagine that while we're so far away, we can be in the same living room and those in your audience can actually purchase seats or just first come first serve, actually be in the experience in the virtual living room with us and the podcast studio with us. What's coming? - Really interesting. Maybe I need to start buying some VR headsets for my guests and we'll send them out. We'll both be VR first. (laughing) Who knows? - I was trying something new. That could be interesting. - That would be a lot of fun. - All right. What's the book you could recommend to our audience that they should read a book you like? - Yeah, so it's not a finance book, although I have plenty of those. - Really? - And you want. - Yeah, so I'll give you one that just brings a lot of nostalgia and I've read it over and over and over again 'cause it just pulled up the emotional strings, it's creativity ink, but I believe by Ed Cappemore or at least about or co-author, but it's about Pixar and the creative process. And so for those that grew up during some of those movies, yeah, it's great. - Yeah, I remember when they came out with the first toy story. - Right. - Look at the animation for that and then look at the one. - What it came out, I know. - It's nuts. - So that's a great one, appreciate it. All right, as a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? - I would have these vivid dreams of flying helicopters. So yeah, that wasn't a fan favorite to the parents. I didn't end up working out and I don't have those dreams anymore, but maybe in another life I'll be on some choppers for sure. - Yeah, well let me know how that other life goes. - I will. - College football. So we know you're a little bit of an athlete, but what's your favorite football team? - Oh man, so I don't know if I should say this and I'm sure they're gonna throw me out of the house when I say this over in Texas, but I'm a big USC Trojan fan. Fight on, both my sisters went there and another went to UCLA, but I'm a big USC Trojan fan. - Oh, where's the hangout button? - Yeah, exactly. - Exactly. - All right, so you're a Trojan, so you had a rough year. - We've had a rough couple years ever since Vince Young ran that football into the end zone at the very end. - Ever since P. Carroll left, let's see it. - That's right, yeah. He strategically left. - You mean the fact he was gonna get a show cause and a bunch of penalties were coming down the pipe was a good time to go to the NFL? - Isn't it crazy that, and all things come full circle, Reggie gets his hyde and trope you back and it's just so interesting. The world is ever changing. You just never know, especially nowadays, never know what to expect. - You definitely don't know what to expect. We don't spend too much time there so I don't bore our international audience. We do have a few of them. But last question, 'cause this Sunday, so this will air after, so people will be able to decide if your prediction was right or not. Who's winning the Super Bowl? What's the score? - Oh wow. - Yeah, I have to go with Mahomes is what I call them. They're just on a run and-- - I would bet against them either, right? - Yeah, he's just number one. You can't dislike the guys. Just, you know, you learn more about his family and when you see him on interviews and then just how he plays the game, hit him in Kelsey. It's really fun to watch. So they're on a run. a championship team they know what it takes though, but I still think it'll be a close one 2114 Kansas City. Each 2114. I'm a big Andy Reed fan. I'm a BYU guy. He played at you. He started his coaching under a little bit of words. So I'm with the I'm going chiefs as well. 2721 is my guess. So there you go. You guys can DM us on that. We'll go ahead and wrap up here. I think this is a great place to finish out, but thank you so much for joining the Albert. If people want to learn more about you, you know, your services, get in touch with you. What's the best way for them to do that? Yeah, just come on LinkedIn. I'm on one platform. I love LinkedIn. Feel free to comment on post to get my attention or just DM me or connect with me there. It's Albert Ramos Jr. And it's the Stratigo Intel Consulting and we'll put that in the show notes so people can reach out to you. Thanks for carbon out some time today. My pleasure. Thank you so much. This was actually believe it or not a dream come true. Thank you. Well, what do you say I make dreams come true? There you go. Vian on the show. Thank you. Thanks for listening to FPNA tomorrow. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star rating and a review on your podcast platform of choice. This allows us to continue to bring you great guests from around the globe. As a reminder, you can earn CPE credit by going to earmark CPE.com downloading the app, taking a short quiz and getting your CPE certificate to earn continuing education credits for the F PAC certification. Take the quiz on earmark and contact me the show host for further details. [Music]