What Technology Can (and Can’t) Fix for Finance Teams, with John Glasgow

TRANSCRIPT

Wassia Kamon: Welcome back to the Diary of a CFO podcast today. I'm so delighted to have with me, John Glasgow. He is a CEO and founder of Campfire, which is a modern accounting platform for mid sized tech companies. Prior to that, he was a top finance leader at build. com and Adobe. Welcome to the show, John.

John Glasgow: Thank you so much for having me.

Well, see, I'm really excited to be here and excited to hopefully, uh, add some value or share some, some fun facts and insights with some folks listening today.

Wassia Kamon: Of course, especially for you being a finance person now, the CEO and founder of Campfire. So why don't you tell us about your journey, the story behind how you find yourself where you are now?

John Glasgow: Yeah, it's a great question. I think about it a lot and everyone asks, um, and I was a finance exec at about 100 employee company. We were really struggling with our accounting software at the time. And, um, talk to the team and we had kind of concluded there wasn't really anything out there that felt like it was built for us.

We went on to get acquired, um, by bill. com for about 600 million. It was an accounting software company itself. It was invoicing. Okay. Invoicing software for businesses called Invoice2Go. We got acquired by bill. com for 600 million. And, um, that was a great experience. But once we got acquired, my largest partners, because I went on to lead partnerships there, Partners were the accounting software ledgers, um, on the small business and mid market side that this problem we had at 100 employees was actually widespread throughout other finance and accounting teams.

Oh, really went through Y Combinator, the startup accelerator to build the accounting software I wish we were on. And so that that's campfire. And we now have lots of customers coming to us from these solutions. I was frustrated with and when they, when I meet with someone and they tell me, here's all the pain points we're having.

And I tell them, I was you, you know, I coming from, I know your pain. And, and, um, and that's really helped us build the product in the right way because I was literally in their shoes. That's a founding story.

Wassia Kamon: But compared to a lot of us, for example, we have those pain points, but we don't necessarily go and create something new.

So was there something that clicked for you? Maybe a mentor or somebody, something you saw that made you do that job?

John Glasgow: It's a great question. I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Um, uh, 15 maybe more years ago now, my, I have an identical twin brother. And when I started a company, um, it was brief, um, but he actually went on to be a solo founder about seven years ago and went on to build a really big, successful business.

Um, and kind of watching him along his journey inspired me in many ways to go take the leap. You know, we joke, we have the founder DNA, we have the same DNA, but, um, that was one of the inspirations for me to go solve this problem. And, and. My, I had a really difficult, um, decision to make it was, um, the same month my firstborn daughter was born, accepted into the Y Combinator Startup Accelerator, and I had to decide to leave my big company job and I was reporting directly to the CFO at a large public company.

Embark on this journey with a much smaller salary and a much, and, um, you know, parental leave isn't as cushy when you're, when you're at this business. And so it was a big high conviction move for me, but it also gave me clarity that like, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right, because I have a lot on the line here.

And it's like being like really executing and focused. And so I've kind of divided my time now. There's family time, my wife and dog, and then there's like work time, and I've had to make some sacrifices and, you know, hobbies and some other fun stuff that I used to do. I tell my wife that, you know, campfire is my hobby.

I love, I love coming into work. I love my job. I was okay, kind of. Offloading some of the other hobbies I had when I worked at a big company. I knew hobby.

Wassia Kamon: Oh, that's awesome. So you have an identical twin, a supporting wife because she said, okay, go, even though we have a baby here now, probably two now. So a picture lately on LinkedIn.

John Glasgow: I have a one month old, uh, another daughter. Yes.

Wassia Kamon: Congratulations. And that, that's good to, to remember, right? Because we have life outside of our career and how it helps our professional careers. So does your identical brother pitch for you too? Or like, how did he help you? Cause it must help to be a founder and have somebody that just looked like you.

I'm just curious.

John Glasgow: Yeah. What, when I'm going through things on our journey, you know, he's been through it all because, you know, they're further along, like I said. So all my, my silent kind of co founders is my wife and silent is obviously not an official capacity, but when I bring problems home, when I bring the wins and the losses home to her, a part of the journey.

And you make a good point, like all of us, whether you're a founder or, you know, otherwise, you know, we all have support networks, we all have people around us, um, helping us, what I call like your personal board, that in your own life, you have your personal board, um, and, um, those are critical people, whether it's family, friends, or just like work mentors, these are critical people for your, just like any board, on any critical for the success.

Wassia Kamon: Nice. Nice. And then within your finance career, what are some of the things that you felt really help you make the switch to be founder now, to create your own company, addressing the pain point that you had as a finance and accounting professional?

John Glasgow: Yeah. Outside of like the product development pieces, you know, we, we talked through a lot of it, um, certainly around like.

You know, I manage our fundraising model, our manager operating plan. Uh, I've learned a lot about like forecasting. Yes. You want to try and get the forecast, right. But understanding like the key levers in a business, you know, has been really helpful for me of like, you know, if this input equals this output, thinking of like a financial modeling way of.

You know, operating leverage and gross margin, and maybe you don't need to solve for these things now, but even whether I'm raising capital or whether I'm just thinking about like the longterm path for the company. An end state can look like from like an op, like a financial operating perspective and like how I'm going to get to that end state, um, has certainly been an area that's been helpful, um, being really thoughtful and scrappy financially and how we run and operate just because, you know, like with our burn, um, and, and then also like dealing with investors and partners and even like, I ran a lot of, Pricing for one of Adobe's products.

When I was in finance, when we were building out, um, our pricing plan at campfire, you know, I had some great experience there on like pricing KPIs and key levers that I should be thinking about from a pricing and packaging perspective. So yeah, those were a couple that, that really stood out, um, beyond just.

Being able to like tell a story with numbers and being able to prospect of customer or an ambassador and a new employee. Um, one key part of finance is, you know, by other than anyone is like being able to tell a story with numbers and that's.

Wassia Kamon: Yes, and I think we sometimes get stuck on the being the numbers person, right?

So how do you evolve from that in your career?

John Glasgow: One of the hardest things for me, and this is a very tactical one, um, is I used to always insist on a PC. Um, even I went to a company, there was a hundred people and they sent me a Mac because everyone has a Mac there and I just sent it back. Cell junkie. I love Excel.

I have my keyboard shortcuts. I don't need a Mac. Um, but part of my evolution My next role actually two roles later was now as a founder I got a Mac not as good in Excel anymore and part of this was being okay that I need to shift from specialist to generalist like the the further up you go the less Technically proficient, you are a very specific task.

And so for me, a lot of it was letting go and letting go of my depth of Excel was something I had to, I had to do was just accepting that, you know, now I'm, you know, I'm, I'm type, I'm typing and using my mouse and Excel these days. But part of that was an evolution of me, uh, into a role that, um, being amazing at Excel is no longer required.

And, um, that's just like a microcosm of kind of. Things I've had to adjust,

Wassia Kamon: but how can someone like force themselves out of it? Even though they're still in the role that deeply involved Excel, like how can they either increase their visibility or improve their storytelling? Or how can they do it when a lot of their role is still, yeah, you're going to look at a lot of spreadsheets.

John Glasgow: Yeah. My big push for finance and accounting folks these days. It's like find tasks that are very repetitive in nature and automate them and that will like you're doing, you may be doing data entry, like you're manually creating an invoice. I was doing a lot of repetitive Excel tasks when I was in finance.

Is there a tool or even a macro or whatever version of it is for you? Automate some of this, and then that essentially gives you a promotion in your own way. There's another, maybe there's software that's doing the task instead of Excel. Opera's doing it. You're freeing yourself up to focus on more strategic work.

One area, especially with like, you know, everyone's talking about AI. We all need to reinvent ourselves in an AI world. And part of that is like, AI is going to take over some of these tasks that are very repetitive in nature. Stay relevant. It's evolving your, yourself and your skill set. Um, so I think it's mainly just pushing yourself.

The other thing I tell people is whenever I used to present, I used to prepare, you know, a lot of work for like financial models and forecasts. And I started to ask, can I be in the meeting when it's presented? And part of that, and you need to, whether it's the board meeting or for you, it could just be like your finance weekly meeting that maybe you're not invited to the CFO weekly meeting yet, whatever meeting that is that you're preparing work for that you're not allowed to attend, continue to push thoughtfully and gently like to be there and pitch yourself.

And what I would pitch myself was like, Hey, what if you get a question you can't answer that's super technical. I'll just be on mute and you can just call on me and I'll just help you out, you know, or I can take, I offer to take notes for people, the meeting for you. You don't need to focus and take notes.

Um, and that allowed me to not only be more visible, but also helped pull me kind of out of the day to day work. And then also get me into more of that, like, you know, and then by, you know, and then I was attending more regularly and then I would start to have like opinions in the meetings. And so part of this was me, yeah.

Pushing myself to evolve on how I think and operate, but the number one thing is just letting go.

Wassia Kamon: Hmm. That's a great hack though. Um, I, I wish I had, I had that earlier in my career. Like, like you said, if you pre, if you prepared one slide into a, in a multiple deck, be the one saying, Oh, can I present that one thing?

Yep. That's very neat. And going back to what you said about AI, right? Um, and how AI will automate a lot of things and how we all worried about AI. Your solution has AI. ChemFire has AI built in. So what are some of the pain points that you feel you automated through that solution first? And what are other things that that automation will allow finance and accounting teams to do?

John Glasgow: Yeah, it's a great question. Um, the first things we're starting with is, is the ones that I was mentioning around like repetitive works be like bank reconciliations or a transaction matching or, you know, it's like things that are very structured in nature and over and over again. I think spreadsheets will always have a part in finance and accounting.

But if it's repetitive task in a spreadsheet, it's I'd like to think we can get it and, and offload it to AI would be more for like an ad hoc budget or a one off, you know, blank workbook. You got to whip something up, narrowing the spreadsheet usage for non repetition. And so that's where AI is today. Um, some of the areas that we're really excited about is we have a product called Ember that sits on top of all of your financial data and it's just like chachapiti.

You can query your data, like show me customer contracts up for renewal this month, or can you look for missing prepaids or help build a Q1 budget Q4 historicals and assume some seasonality off of. Um, and we're, I've been pleasantly surprised at how good it has been, but most people rightfully so don't trust AI yet.

And well, because just like anyone else on your team, you got to like review its work needs to be auditable. You need to understand how it got to the conclusion. Um, and you need to be able to, like, export it to Excel, right? Because we're all finance people. And then tweak it. Yes,

Wassia Kamon: I need that button, export to Excel.

Here's my

John Glasgow: download button. And so we've been very thoughtful of like, it's not a black box. It's, it's auditable, it shows its work, it pulls the sources that it, and it, and it links to all its sources and it's, and it's downloadable. We've been asking people to think of AI as a member of your team. You give it feedback, like someone on your team, uh, it gets better as you learn how to work with it.

And you check its work, just like, you know, like I would never take someone's work from my team and present it to the board. Yeah, I'd reverse it. All the same principles would apply to AI. And that, and that's. Helping people rethink about AI, I think, in a more appropriate

Wassia Kamon: manner.

John Glasgow: Um, allowing them to push more tasks to the AI.

Wassia Kamon: That's nice. And I, and I like the practical use cases you already have. Um, and then the next step would be, yes. Sometimes we're like, yes, that's a great. Use case. How do I bring it to my company? How do I bring it to my team? Like, how do you convince people to move through change? How do you lead digital transformations?

Cause you've done it when you were in finance and you know how hard it is sometimes to push us through change. Any insights?

John Glasgow: I think they need to be in the right mindset. I don't know if I can always disabuse someone of their, their view of the world. Seeing, I saw a stat from McKinsey, uh, this week that of all of the functions within a company, finance and accounting ranks like ninth out of 11th in terms of AI adoption.

So we're, we're almost in last. We're not in last, but we're almost in last. There's valid reasons for it. Mainly around like tolerance for error is zero, right? You can't, you can't have incorrect numbers, right? That's table stakes. Um, and we talked about the audibility and everything else. Um, there's a reason they've been slow to adopt, but we are seeing more board mandates mandating AI on the company.

Accounting teams have felt they haven't had any tools. That have really been thoughtfully built for them to implement AI. We see here at Campfire engineering, AI is heavily used by every engineer at Campfire, our sales and marketing team heavily uses AI finance and accounting teams are a couple of years behind.

And for the reasons I stated, that makes a lot of sense as the tools solve for those problems. We're seeing not only the port mandate, but people say, I'm tired of manually creating a thousand invoices for a one week period of every month. Um, I just want someone to do it for me and I want to give myself a promotion and that's, that's where it's, we're also seeing sort of like bottoms up as opposed to tops down.

Wassia Kamon: Okay. Okay. And now in terms of actually bringing it, um, to a function, cause You felt the pain we have in typical finance and accounting, right? It feels like the business is having all these great discussions. They're making all these great plans and we're the last one to know about it. And we have to catch up, right?

So even with AI, right? Like, how can we use AI? To help us bridge that gap, right? Because I feel sometimes like it's almost like sales and product, right? Sales is like, yeah, we can do it. And product is like, wait, where, what did you just sell? I feel like accounting has the same thing with the business overall.

John Glasgow: It's hard. When I was, yeah. In finance, they would, you know, like the sales team would sell a deal that we had no way of analyzing from like, uh, we, you know. Not only the Rev Rec policy for it, but also how do we even handle the, the, like, how do we even track usage from, from how do we even know what to bill somebody?

Yeah. Finance and accounting the last to find out about a new go to market, a new geo. It's super frustrating. Um, part of this was, this isn't going to solve it. It, I, I, I can't solve it for you. The one thing helpful was I, I had one slide that I made and I said, here's my charter. And I went around to each business unit and I presented to them, here's my charter.

Here's what I do. Here's what you can use me for. And here's maybe what you should not use me. Um, and that helped educate them on when they went to do a new pricing or a new market, you know, maybe I pitched them well and I would usually a little sales pitch like, Hey, if you include me, you know, I can help you like build this correctly or can like, um, make sure it gets done.

So then if you sell it once, it's not, no, the second time, cause like, they'll be like, oh, we sold this deal and you're like, okay, we can't do it again. But if you involve me early. You know, maybe we can scale it and we can actually have a, something that does work longterm part of it. Again, I can't solve for it, but part of this is just like the evangelizing of your role and is my, all the only advice I can give other than there's a lot of bad actors out there that are going to do, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Wassia Kamon: Yes. But that's a, that's a great one though. It's, it's part of, you know, being a good business partner, you saying, this is what you, this is when you need to involve the team. This is when I should be involved. And I think it definitely makes things better when you are involving everyone from the start rather than at the end, because then I feel like we get all the pushback of these accounting and finance people again, here they are saying no.

Yeah.

John Glasgow: Yeah. I know it's, it's hard because everyone thinks of you like a CF no, and it's not about no, but it's like, let's be thoughtful about it, you know, and I would always remind, you know, folks when they ask for something and I was ready to say no. Um, I'd always think like I would tell them we have the same desired outcome here.

I want you to be successful. Let's find a way for you to be successful, even if it means like a different budget than what you were expecting, a different head count than you were expecting. Um, but we have common shared desired outcomes is how I would start the meeting.

Wassia Kamon: Yes. And that's a great way to start, especially when you think about finance and accounting being more of business partners.

And I think we don't realize soon enough in our careers that we need to be business partners, that we are in this together. Um, what are some of the things you would tell the young generation of finance leaders? How can they be better prepared in this evolving role of finance?

John Glasgow: You know, it's moving so fast.

It's hard to tell. Someone was even telling me the other day, like, You know, because as you know, I have two young children, people are saying, like, are they even going to go to college? You know, and things are moving so fast that it's so hard to tell. But my advice for folks is where you can be helpful is like the kind of your managers and everyone's going to look to you to bring modern solutions, to bring modern ideas, modern ways of doing things.

Um, like I used to be on a personal level, I used to be up on all the social networks. Like I've still, I've never been on Tik TOK now and I don't know, there's probably another Tik TOK. I'm not

Wassia Kamon: on Tik TOK either. So that's two of us

John Glasgow: newer versions of Tik TOKs now, but like, I look to the younger generations that I know my nieces and nephews, it's college that like, what's the hot tool?

What's new? What's, what's relevant. Um, you know, that's what you can bring ideas and fresh ways of doing things and you can be the. When the board mandate arrives to like, you know, AI needs to be implemented within finance. You can be the one that says, Hey, I just went and demoed 10 AI tools. Here's two I like, and you can help deliver, you know, on uniquely in ways that maybe other folks within the organization can't.

So that's, that's your secret weapon.

Wassia Kamon: Being that change agent. Yes. And leading change too. And I feel like we don't talk about it much, but how the project that you lead in your career is that usually the one that will accelerate your career, right? Like you doing the same thing every day doesn't really help, but it feels like it's the project, the other stuff you do, um, that tends to.

If I can say add the spices to your career. So can you maybe speak of any exciting project you led? How did it go? And how did you really help you in your career?

John Glasgow: It's a great question. And before I answer that one, one piece of advice that's related to this question in the last is people always tell me, Hey, I'm starting to look for any role.

I found the higher up you go in your career, the more the role is going to be filled by someone is going to get you the job, um, that you already worked with. And so you're interviewing for your next role every day and your current role is what I tell them is I spent at Adobe. I was a strategic finance.

I spent a ton of time on this really large project. And then having a great outcome. Um, and my manager went on to be the CEO of Invoice2Go. How transformative I was for his team at Adobe that he brought me to come be an executive at Invoice2Go. So I think building your resume through the real interactions you have.

I tell everyone your current role is going to get you your next role. And it's going to be someone that gets promoted internally or externally that's going to take you with them. And that is how I found a few roles. I think the one that was the most transformative was probably when we were in, when I did invoice to go doing corporate development and finance and partnerships, um, when we, I was tasked with either like going to raise like a hundred million dollars series D and we got some great term sheets there.

Um, this is my first time raising like large amounts of capital. So I was certainly like learning a lot as I went. Um, and then also like. Exploring a sale of the company. And we ended up getting some great offers on both sides for the sale and the fundraise. And so kind of my capstone project was presenting to the board on both options, like blue pill, raise a hundred million and double down or sell the entire company to a great buyer and outcome.

And we ended up choosing the sale route. And so then the delivery and execution of the project was between signing and closing, and then even like some posts post closing integration work was probably the. Capstone project of my career up until, you know, I went and started campfire and, um, became a CEO.

So that, that, that one certainly stands out to me.

Wassia Kamon: Oh yeah. And it's definitely in line with what you had to do to start your own career, right? Your own company, I should say, uh, red pill or blue pill, do I go for it? And all the, the, the fundraising involved and the presentation involved. I still think maybe your, your identical brother is helping maybe now I want to meet him.

But it looks like it. It's amazing though. Don't you think how the things we do in our career, whether intentionally or not help us in the long term?

John Glasgow: Yes. Yeah. On a personal level. I mean, people. People don't realize like being a CEO, it's really the biggest sales job at the company. I'm selling new hires, I'm selling customers, um, I'm selling investors, I'm convincing people this is a place to be.

I'm the face. And so, you know, in finance, you know, when I was out fundraising, I was selling why you should invest a hundred million dollars in us when we bring our choir and I was out using slides and numbers to tell the story that was, this is how I sold. But at the end of the day, being a CFO is, is still a sales role.

You're, you're convincing people on your team. You're convincing, um, just about everybody to deploy capital, um, and, and come join you. And so. Whatever it is, you know, the further up you go, the more convincing people to do things, um, becomes part of it. And that certainly was foundational in this launch point and to start a campfire as well.

Wassia Kamon: Good for you. And it's a great reminder. I should have probably taken sales courses now. Like I, like you said, at this level, a lot of what you do is sales. I have, uh, I have a good friend. She, she was an audit partner and she was like, now that I'm a partner, I'm in sales and everybody that I see. speak to at that executive level, we all feel like we sales people.

John Glasgow: Yeah, yeah, it is. It is so true. Um, and even as a, as an accountant, you know, it, it, it, it's through, it's through every role in some way. Um, getting people to align to your view on things. There's, you know, there's all a million books on that active of the role, the higher you go and the more relevant that becomes.

Wassia Kamon: Yes. And what are some of you, maybe book recommendation or courses, newsletter, do you recommend for somebody trying to be those sales skills? Because I do believe that at some point in your career, you end up really being in sales.

John Glasgow: Yeah, you know, honestly, the number one thing, um, and I, I can certainly make some book recommendations outside of sales too, I found is all the sales people, like you can just watch like an actual person's, there's a lot of books out there, but one that I found most helpful was actually, um, is if you know someone in sales, almost all of their calls are recorded these days cause they're on sales software that records their call, ask new call recordings.

You're a real kind of sale in seat of someone that's actually out selling today, but it doesn't actually sell like sound like a sales pitch. It's deeply understanding problems, solutions to deeply understand a problem. Um, and, and that is like good sales doesn't feel like sales fundraising. I'm getting them super excited about taking on incumbents, you know, um, And so it's like solving problems and bringing solutions.

But, um, one thing like udemy. com, Coursera, uh, um, part time professor. So a lot of those universities have online classes now that are free or low cost. Going on and signing up for some classes. I think, you know, a sales class, um, there's the book, um, Never Split Lunch, I think is what it's called. Um, uh, Never Split the Bill, excuse me.

Never Split

Wassia Kamon: the Bill, okay.

John Glasgow: Never Split the Bill, there's some good business books. I like, my favorite books to, I don't really read anymore, um, given the whole family and, uh, work thing I mentioned earlier. When I was reading, um, I used to really like biographies of, um, business people, the founder of Nike, Phil Knight, Shoe Dog, um, there's Ride of a Lifetime, um, which is the, the Disney CEO story, Bob Iger.

And so those just like really on now, what I mainly learned through is, um, podcasts. So I'm When the car, I dropped my daughter off on the way to work and I listened to a podcast. Um, once I dropped her off between her being dropped, cause her and I chat and then I dropped her off and then I listened to.

Podcasts. So there's a lot of good business ones or some sales ones out there on the sales side. It's called Um, 30 minutes to president's club. It's a little more tactical for actual sales, but, and then I listened to a lot of tech and AI and finance podcasts just to stay sharp.

Wassia Kamon: Yes. I love it. Just to stay sharp, just that alone.

I feel like it's something that we should all have to do, like all plan to do, because like you said earlier, everything. is moving so fast. Like how do you stay sharp when you have two kids and a growing business and all these other things for me too. It's mostly through podcasts the same. I don't read as much as I used to.

So I have to find other ways. I, I, I, I subscribed to masterclass. Okay. So I get to, because I, I was introduced to it, you know, flying in Delta. I was like, Oh, what is masterclass? And I started watching their shows, but you realize that you have to learn on the go.

John Glasgow: Yeah. That's a great way. Yeah. And you know, whether you're on an airplane or you're driving or on public transit, um, catching a little bit.

It's also important like to, to just like decompress to way into work all this new podcast on the way home. I really try sometimes I'll catch up with people on a call, but I really try and just listen to music on the way home. Try and clear my head. One of the hardest things I, you know, have opening up a little bit here is like turning off work when I get home.

It's like you bring work home with you. You know, kids are excited to see you. You really want to focus on the family. But shutting off the big, you know, meeting you had, or the big winter loss thing, and so trying to use music or something, um, during my commute home has been something I'm really trying to do to allow me to transition to home life so I can really be present.

With my family.

Wassia Kamon: That's a good one because I feel like it's harder when you are working remote, so I feel like when I was driving to the office, it gave me time to decompress a bit by the time I was home. I was putting music like in my ears a little too loud sometimes, but it got me like, okay, okay, I'm going home and then going to work as well.

But then I feel like being remote, it's, it's kind of tough because your, your, your bedroom is down here and your office is here. So how do you feel about this remote hybrid situation? How we can actually help you stop bringing work to home.

John Glasgow: Yeah. So I used to be remote, uh, at Campfire. We're, we're five days a week in office, you know, you can see behind me there, there's office buildings.

I'm downtown. Um, you know, I think coming out of Y Combinator, they gave us some very strong advice that kind of the early formative stages of a company, having the team in person. This allows like the highest level of cohesion and velocity and operating as one. And so that's the approach we've taken so far.

Um, I certainly see a lot of amazing businesses get built in remote fashion from day zero, and I'm not saying you can't. What I really looked for in Campfire was like what I call tailwinds and headwinds, which is like, and I, you know, the, it's like, how can I create as many tailwinds for our success as possible?

I think to people much smarter than me, you know, my, my accommodator, they have thousands of startups in the portfolio, just heeding their advice on that to, to build in person, uh, my, my wife's remote. Um, I miss working on the couch with my dog on my lap. You know, I, it's, it's a big investment to be here. Do you think as companies scale and Campfire, we will be more remote as we scale?

Just because you, you know, you need people around the world and you need offices in other places for global coverage. Um, so it's coming. And as we have the institutional Um, as we have the infrastructure to support, um, people in hybrid and remote places, we're certainly going to like go that way, but right now there's no real training.

There's no real, you know, we don't have a huge onboarding. Um, you kind of show up to work and you listen to a lot of conversations in the room and tap on someone's shoulder. When you have a quick question, um, we have no meeting and no internal meetings at campfire. Other than one 15 minute meeting a week.

It's just, what are you going to, what are you going to ship this week? That's the one question. And then you just start shipping and that's who you spend all week on. And so we've. removed some of the cohesion that you get, um, that that's required of, um, being in a remote world. Again, you can be super successful remote, but we've decided to go for every tail when we can.

Wassia Kamon: And I feel like it, it makes sense from when I look at. You know, my own career, probably your career was the same where going when you started out your career, you were meeting people. And it's amazing when I look back how much I learned from those coffee chat, like break room and you hear something and you're able to connect.

And I feel like early in your career, it does help, like you said, in the early stage to be in connection with people. And then as you grow, you know what you're doing.

John Glasgow: Yes,

Wassia Kamon: probably understand better how things are and you can do it remotely.

John Glasgow: I think that's a good point. I was fortunate early in my career.

I was at places that, um, we were all going in. And so there was a lot of like, I think additional training. It's more around the edge. Like if you have a really important question, obviously you're going to ask in a remote world. You hear someone solve a problem in a way you hadn't thought of. Um, or you you will ask the question that maybe you maybe you wouldn't ask if you had to hop on a zoom to ask it.

So there's a lower barrier for everything. But I completely agree, whether you're at a larger company or whether you're more experienced in your career, I think remote can make a lot of sense.

Wassia Kamon: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I think eventually we'll probably get to hybrid because I think there is benefits in having some type of human connection still.

Um, but we'll see. We'll see where the world takes us and where AI is taking us. It will all be roaming around or floating around in cars.

John Glasgow: Now, I mean, now they're talking about robotic AI and you know, it's, you know, we've got the self driving here in San Francisco, there's self driving cars with nobody in them driving all over

Wassia Kamon: them.

I freaked out because I used to work for a company headquartered in San Francisco and I was like, what is this?

John Glasgow: Yeah, yeah. No, no driver at all. Um, and I think that's kind of a, uh, a preview into where I see some of the finance and accounting going on the, um, these simpler tasks, you know, there's going to be no driver at all.

Finishing an OER CPA. One interesting thing we think about is separation of duties from a task from an accounting perspective is like from an, for an audit, obviously you have, you want separation of duties on a working, but can, can the AI be actually one of the individuals either reviewing or performing the work from an audit standpoint is actually stamping that Ember completed the task and as the actual separation of duties with human and AI, Okay.

Or reviewing, you know, my work on things I've done. Does, you know, will the audit world get started to get comfortable? Where does the liability sit? Um, these are all interesting things that are coming as. AI starts to take over more of the tasks, but you still need everything to be audited, right? So,

Wassia Kamon: yes, and it will be like the example you gave of, um, separation of duties, especially for smaller companies.

Sometimes everything is done by one person. But as you mentioned earlier, if AI is a team member, you just enlarge your capacity.

John Glasgow: No, it's exactly it. Like I said earlier, everyone gets a promotion. That's kind of our, our pitch. We're really not focused on like, you know, replacing everybody. I truly believe that like, as long as you evolve yourself, um, and how you think and operate, there's, you know, for a very long time, if not never.

There's a lot of accounting and finance that will never get moved, replaced by AI. Like we talked about earlier, continue to modernize and evolve, um, yourself and your skills, and that's the best way to, to stay relevant in this rapidly evolving world.

Wassia Kamon: Wow. Thank you so much, John, for being on the show. I really enjoyed that conversation.

Thank you. Thank you.

John Glasgow: Thank you so much for having me. This was awesome. I was honestly honored to be on, follow your content and here and. Hopefully folks found some value. If anyone wants to ping me, they can drop me an email, john at meetcampfire. com. I'm on LinkedIn. And yeah, thanks again for having me.

Wassia Kamon: Awesome. Thank you. And that's it for today's episode of The Diary of A CFO. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoy the show, don't forget to like, review, subscribe, and share with others. Our website is the diary of a cfo.com. That's what you can find all the episodes, access all the guest profiles, see their bios and their social media links.

It is also the place where you can apply to be a guest on the podcast and have information about how you can. As always, if there is any topic you would like me to cover in the future, just email me at askatthediaryofacfo. com. Again, the email is askatthediaryofacfo. com. See you soon.