It didn't just hit the AI community, it blew up and went mainstream, like New York Times, Wall Street Journal, like, hey, there's a ten percent chance we're all dying because of AI. Good morning, Veer. How are you? Good morning, Jim. How are you? I'm great. Good, good. Well, I'm glad that ⁓ today we have ⁓ another very esteemed guest, Ken Philbrick of Adam James International, ⁓ based here in Greenwood, Colorado. Ken, thanks for joining us today. Well, thanks for having me, gentlemen. It's great to be here. Yeah, so I I mean, I'm pretty excited. We're gonna have a wide ranging conversation. about all things AI, what you're seeing. ⁓ specifically what I'd like to do is just give you a second. You've been doing this with Adam James. You've been a partner founder since nineteen ninety seven. And I'd love for you to tell our viewers exactly what you what you do in your firm and like what part of the market that you go after and and ⁓ feel free to brag on yourself a little bit. Well thank you guys. It's great to be here. So what we do in basic terms is we recruit I'll say CEOs, CFOs, other C suite members for private equity backed companies. Most of our clients are all say middle market, lower middle market, all throughout the country. We probably, ⁓ since 2002, have worked with maybe a total of a hundred private equity firms, but we're pretty active on a regular basis, let's say with thirty to forty of them. We probably do set seven to ten CEO placements a year, twenty-five CFO placements. We'll work across other functional areas and then maybe do 50 to 60 VP jobs that are subordinate to the C to the CFO or the C suite positions. Yeah, and you built that from the ground up yourself after leaving Deloitte, right? That's right. I was sort of ⁓ I know we were joking about this before, but I'll say an average accountant. And I was fortunate kind of early in life to kind of figure out where my strengths and talents slide. And so my best friends at Deloitte started this, Warren Adolski, and I joined maybe six months after him in nineteen ninety-seven. And we've just had a lot of fun, I'll say, serving the community and ⁓ doing this work ⁓ for almost basically thirty years. And you are yeah, yeah, I would say you are the rare CPA who is very, very focused on relationships. And maintaining those relationships over the long term and really find like finding ways to deepen those relationships, not just because it's good for business. I've I mean, like I've personally had the opportunity, Veer, of working with Ken ⁓ in several different capacities at this point. And you just don't find that in a lot of places. That's just ⁓ that's a rare commodity. Well, thank you. I think ⁓ what I learned when I was young was just ⁓ be more interested than interesting. That came from a friend of mine named Mark Sanborn. And ⁓ my kind of defining purpose in life is to help people and to to care for them. And so throughout the work that we do, we make a huge impact, I think, in general, just whether it's a kind word, maybe it's an introduction to somebody, ⁓ helping them with general networking and, you know, if we're fortuitous enough to place place them. But the totality of that work, putting other people first or ourselves second ⁓ I think it's ⁓ both doing good and it is good business ⁓ to care for people in such a way. Yeah, yeah, completely agree. So diving right in to people super easy question. ⁓ are accounting and finance roles fundamentally changing? Are they going away? At times I'm a parrot of this information, so I'm constantly listening to what private equity firms are doing with accounting in particular. ⁓ there's a large private equity firm on the tech side that we work with. And let's say two and a half, three years ago, everything I heard from them was offshore and outsourcing, I'll say operational accounting, shared services functions, things like AR, AP, fixed assets, payroll. When I spoke to them more recently, what they were telling me was that they put some what some of these offshore ⁓ Entities on maybe let's say year to year or month-to-month arrangements with a little more optionality or flexibility. At the same time, what they're trying to do is anything that's some level of a repeatable process, seeking to utilize AI to you know to automate those functions, to then in turn have smaller teams led by people that are using AI to do things more efficiently. So it'll be interesting to see what comes from specifically the repeatable functions on things that are a little more complex like accounting policy. ⁓ what I hear there a little bit is, you know, obviously in the past, you know, if you're a public company or a prominent business and you needed a ⁓ an interpretation, you might go to the national office of the big four or s you know, some national firm. With what Claude can do to analyze, you know, accounting policy, it's Going to be interesting to see how much leverage is put on taking that information for, you know, ⁓ at least the constructs of how they want to account for something via US GAAP or IFRS, but then maybe ⁓ going and utilizing the big four ⁓ from an accounting policy or an advisory standpoint a little bit less because they have so much help already from the interpretation via AI. So those are some of the things I'm seeing. The last thing I'm seeing is. ⁓ I'm hearing from some of the public accounting firms what they presume will be the future state could look a little more like instead of a triangle, ⁓ a diamond, where you have smaller ⁓ partnership ⁓ groups, maybe a little bit larger senior manager teams and then smaller staff, because you don't need this army of people that are doing basic substantive testing. ⁓ on an audit. So I'll be interested to see what comes of that. But so much of this is changing as we go. So it'll be interesting to come back, let's say six months from now and see how much of this has developed from what I've mentioned this morning. Yeah. Well it seems interesting. Like what I f I feel like like we're hearing different ⁓ similar in other industries as well. And and and so that's aspirational when I'm talking with ⁓ private equity leaders and ⁓ you know ⁓ finance leaders. But like right now. Right. I mean, like are are they putting their money where their mouth is? I mean, are they following through on those aspirational goals by the searches that they're and the requests that they're bringing to you? It's a good question. I'm not I'm thinking about trends like typically if you're investor backed, there's such an emphasis on IRR and you know, getting a return for your investors. So that it's like they're exploring every avenue they can to drive EBITDA and do things as lean as quick as they, you know, possibly can. If they're closely held, they seem to be a little bit of a laggard. ⁓ you know, Jim taught us this and I'm noticing this also that larger companies are sometimes beholden to a level of compliance and ⁓ dealing with risk that they're probably a little slower to adopt this. Whereas I'm noticing lower middle market and sometimes middle market companies are moving a little more agile and moving a little more quickly towards these endeavors. Yeah. I think that's really important. So first of all, thank you for making me feel proud that I actually added some value and you know, talk Jim, you you are you are the absolute best. I mean, our I I every time I meet with a private equity client, I talk about you and what you've done with your individual business that you and your wife have created and what you've done to specifically help us. The future of ⁓ our firm is gonna be so much beholden on strong relationships with you and what you do to teach our team. And then I think the future of like a CFO position will be so embedded within AI that if you're not utilizing this to the full extent, you're gonna fall behind relative to your competitors. So I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I'm curious to hear what you have to say there. No, no, I think I think I'd love to, you know, tell everybody what I think about where the CFO is going and where all of that should what the horizon looks like over the next like three months, which seems like that is long term right now. That's the crazy thing to me. The crystal ball does not go much further out than you know than than three months at a time now. Look at what happened over the last week on X with the anthropic engineer that quit. And you know, it didn't just hit the AI community. It blew up and went mainstream like New York Times, Wall Street Journal like, hey, there's a 10% chance we're all dying because of AI. I'm not smart enough or deep enough into the weeds, you know, you kind of have to trust a little bit of what these folks that are on the inside are saying. Mm-hmm. However, as it relates to, you know, day-to-day practical business, which is what we usually talk about, it's absolutely ⁓ an accelerant right now, and it's gonna continue to be, but you can't really look out much further than three, six months. Because it changes that fast. We've had several. So full disclosure, Veer, ⁓ and everyone, Veer, you already know. I work with Adam James at, you know, to we we started with AI fluency. And now that we all have a language that we can speak, we're moving on to more outcome based. Like, well, okay, now we all know how to use do we know how to talk the game now. How do we put it into action? So that's kind of the stage we're at. ⁓ but can I I'm I'm curious, like what is it that that got you to say, hey, as a leader, as an executive and a founder, I need to push my company in this direction. And what were kind of some of the first steps that you took toward that? You know, I have a friend named Peter Lynch, and he he is was such a heavy user of this, and so he just encouraged me one day to To download the pro version of ChatGPT. So it's sort of started there. At the same time, I'm consuming, you know, news through, you know, Bloomberg Tech. And I was listening to the Joe Lonsdale podcast and some of his interviews with, you know, guys like Peter Thiel. ⁓ and I I think that there's two things that we're focused on here is fully understanding how, you know, where the momentum is around AI. So we wanted to be involved with. Companies that are dealing with I'll say energy chips, data centers, model, software, and application businesses. There's so much momentum there. So if you're truly going to be an expert in recruiting those for those kind of businesses, you need to lean in and not only learn what's going on in the industry, but use it yourself. My regret personally is like I'm probably, with your advice, Jim, I probably talked to ⁓ certain AI agents and ⁓ the the broader either Chat GPT or Cloud. maybe forty five minutes a day. I'm stuck on video calls, ten, eleven, you know, meetings a day. So I don't get a chance to use this as much as I can. But, you know, you helped David Sham on our team become sort of a a ⁓ you know an expert himself. And so as you have befriended us, you've been kind to kind of teach us and kind of let us walk and then start to run kind of almost analogy. ⁓ that has been so meaningful to us. And then to see what you're doing with Ivern that we can come back to here in a second, the AI agent that we have is helped us ⁓ tremendously to automate certain workflows. Yeah. Well, something you just said, I don't want to like like jump over it but get back into the the kind of the the pieces here, but you ⁓ and I don't know if you meant to say it this way, but I I I it's an interesting point that you just did is as you were explaining that, you said, you know, I yeah, I'm using these tools, I talk to it. you know, 45 minutes a day, and then you talked about your video calls. And so ⁓ what I heard was that you have adopted the ⁓ the AI into your I'm not saying that you've adopted it like, ⁓ you use it all the time. It's in your mental framework in the same like zone of operation. You said video calls and I'm using the AI like you're having a conversation with it, which is something that I think for a lot of people, like they're just like they're having a hard time. Like connecting the dots that like that until you have that that that kind of set in like that concrete sets and now you can start kind of working forward with you know getting better at it or using it ⁓ more or differently but just putting it in the same box, not it's not just, you know, some app on my phone that I use every once in a while. Like it's a like I think it's an interesting thing for you to to have made that connection. And that it's it seems like it has set in. Yeah. You know, I I'm probably some medium to medium high user. I'm I'm not the person who can ⁓ build, you know, the the constructs ⁓ like of certain A AI agents like Jim and David can do. But you know, for me it it started like maybe a little personally, like I'm just trying to figure out like I'm I'm terrible at like maintenance. So I'm like, how do I open the pool that I have in my backyard? I I could see what it could do there, right? And then I was thinking Well shoot. ⁓ why don't we use this AI agent to look at my emails and my availability and to schedule my meetings with ⁓ candidates or clients for me. ⁓ and so w you know, with Jim's help, we have automated so many different workflows. ⁓ but you you gotta kinda start somewhere ⁓ and you know, this whole process, it is moving quickly, but if you can just sort of lean in a little bit and just Just to start experiencing it. And Jim, one of the best pieces of advice you gave to me was just just talk to talk to it versus just typing kind of manually and and and refining your prompts over time. And I just seem to be getting better and better through the coaching that Jim's given us. Yeah, man. I I'm feeling like I'm not going to be able to fit in frame. I'd say that the end point it's just growing and it's growing and it's growing it's I know. Like I feel like there's a there's a funny editing thing there that they're ⁓ it'll be it'll be so good. But if the if there's too many compliments at Jim, we can just edit some. I know, we'll apply those out. No, no. We'll dub in some insults while we're this is gold. This is I love this. I I will say, you know, for me ⁓ I I think it's important if you're gonna be excellent in what you do, like I wake up every morning at the same time at four fifty. You know, I'm riding my bike an hour later, but in the meantime I'm listening to some thing that helps with my character first, and then I'll work then I'll move over to some tech podcast in the morning, work throughout the day, and then come back to the tech podcast at night. But I think if you really want to have a competitive advantage, you need to be doing things like this where you're learning and then you're experiencing it direct hand with a ⁓ somebody who could implement this like like Jim. And Veer, it's obviously nice to meet you for the first time. No, no, it's a great group. We've got individual clients, we've got some stuff that we work on together. It's it w this is like, I mean, the hope, I think, that like it is one of the best case scenarios for organizations where ⁓ from a leadership level, ⁓ there's this adoption that the the these you know connections get made of I need to understand it. I have Jim you know talk talks and about fluency. And then you adopt it. And yeah, right. The pool. And and ⁓ I was on a call yesterday with old friends back in North Carolina, and we were talking about smoke detectors and ⁓ and ⁓ w w when when do you replace them in your home? And ⁓ and and the conversation went about two minutes before I was like, Did any of you ask Chat GPT or Gemini? Like, you know, like w yeah, i like And and one of my friends, you know, the the conversation, you know, kind of unfolding the conversation went from, well, I would Google it, but then I have to go read all these things. And I'm like, No, we we're asking a general knowledge coaching question, how long, you know, if you've owned your home for, you know, ten years, you know, should you just replace all of them? Like th like the it will do some of that for you, right? It'll come back and cite you sources, but you don't you don't have to spend the time Searching for the answer, you have to spend the time validating the answer, right? It's a trust but vi ⁓ verify approach to the thought. ⁓ and I feel like maybe 20 years ago, that same conversation was happening where we would be sitting in a bar and arguing over a sports score before somebody would whip out their Blackberry and be like, ⁓ I can actually look this up right now. Yeah. ⁓ but but but it didn't occur to people that we didn't need to have the argument. Jim, you started with the question about like what is the future state of accounting and and maybe the CFO's organization look like? I was kinda thinking about you in this in this business that you and your wife have. I mean, ⁓ y w did you feel like I hit on the right points on some of the automating of repeatable tasks and maybe I'd ask you what what is what did I miss that maybe you're observing that 'cause you're so much further advanced than I am on this, like, where do you think the future state of this looks like? Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to answer that. I I think this is, you know, we've been playing around with like, you know, how do we go to market as a a tiny little firm, you know, a startup, that focuses on AI enabled finance and accounting or AI augmented, or, you know, you pick the the word. One of the things that that I've really noticed is that we're becoming developers. So a CFO, I mean, in most organizations, has always not most. I think most. You would actually be the better person to tell me this though, Ken. I think the CFO, the IT department, a lot of times rolls up to the CFO. I would say that that's I don't know, mid-market companies maybe more than 50% of the time at least. So that's why I say the majority. I think it's becoming more prevalent. ⁓ I'd love to hear what you're gonna say. W what I historically saw amongst private equity firms is the narrative almost every time for a strategic CFO is that they manage corporate development, capital markets, investor relations, corporate strategy. And then the emphasis again is ⁓ they have a compliment to them that's a terrific chief accounting officer on the accounting side and then obviously a VP of finance. But with AI now, what I'm seeing like we've got a large private equity backed client that ⁓ has the the the chief technology officer reporting to the CFO, but the the concept of technology and finance is becoming more intertwined and that these functions need to be in concert with one with one another to run the business as efficiently as possible. Yeah. And that so that's a great ad and actually helped me refine a little bit what I was going to say. I think that you're seeing the marriage of finance and technology and a lot of other marketing and technology as well. I mean, so I don't want to just, you know, I I want to have an enterprise view versus a functional view, but in finance, like we are responsible the finance professionals to go to the board and defend the numbers and own the numbers. The IT team puts the numbers in place historically and manages those. They do that a lot of times, not via the CIO, CTO, you expect to have a certain level of business acumen, but the people that are working further downstream, actually developing and engineering, they don't necessarily have The business acumen. So if you get it's like I always joke around, I'm gonna get skewered for this and say it anyway. But it's kind of like Ron Burgundy. Like, you know, like if you it's like if you put it on the teleprompter, he'll say it. That's kind of what that's kind of what IT is in the past, ⁓ without the business acumen. They're very good at code, but you have to get the requirements so, so perfect because whatever comes out of it, they're gonna say, yeah, we did everything. Everything that you said. And they're right. They're not wrong. No. Being right and being successful are two different things, right? And and I mean, I think like, I mean, I standing up for like I know people want to work hard. Nobody's trying to do a poor job. The ⁓ but they lack domain knowledge most of the time, right? The domain, even if they understand the company's business, they don't really understand the operational ⁓ choices that are being made or the pressures that are ⁓ happening, you know, post an acquisition and how they need, you know, what what what is actually being measured. ⁓ I've seen the fact that with a lot of these mid market private equity companies, they are not often investing in a tech first business, right? They're bu they're buying something services related or or or something that's often subscription and and so ⁓ IT is often secondary, right? It's an accelerant, it's a tool, but it's not the primary focus. And so the the thought has all I've as I've talked with folks, right? It's a it's a cost, so it rolls up to the CFO. But ⁓ now we're seeing the IT directors or the VP of IT or the CIO still rolling up to the CFO, I think, but for a different reason, right? For the reason that we're talking about here is that now it's maybe the the most obvious place to start taking advantage of these AI based solutions. And frankly, right, the the finance teams ⁓ the and the FPNA reporting teams often have the skills to engage with the IT team in a very meaningful way. But that yeah yeah and that that's a trend that started probably like fifteen or so, maybe twenty years ago where You know, machine learning comes out and so now finance professionals can need to like know Python. So now any account most accounting and finance professionals coming out of college have some at least rudimentary understanding of Python, but that's really all so but a rudimentary understanding of how it works is what you need now. Well, do do I understand how these things can possibly help me? And then am I willing to go deeper and really learn so I don't make mistakes? Yeah. And I and and rudimentary, I think, is maybe a little like like I'm not giving it as much credit too, because I feel like because w exactly what you said, right? The IT guys smart, they put data together, right? We saw probably ten years ago the trend where we started divorcing the FPA function and really throwing the reporting and the building of those queries and the presentation of the data. over to the finance side, right? And IT was just responsible for just the data, right? Make it available, make it fast, make sure that it's always updated, make it fresh. But ⁓ the the the the teams could not keep up with the demands or the the nuance that was necessary for for the reporting side. Yeah it's the business acumen. Kidd go ahead sorry. No, Jim, I wanted to ask you ⁓ you guys are mean with new clients Why why do you think at times companies are reticent to lean in here on AI? have you seen some patterns or trends? I I'm I'm sure our viewers would like to hear your comments on that. ⁓ yeah, and I I'd like to know it the same thing for you. I mean, like I literally, I think you're you have my script because that was my next question for you too. It's like kind of what you're hearing. But no, I so I spoke at the ⁓ the Association of Financial Professionals. So that's something that I've been doing for a long time. I've been involved with that. ⁓ organization. They just lean more towards the Treasury side with that CTP or ⁓ designation. But I was an item writer for their FPNA, still hasn't taken off, but for their FPNA certification, ⁓ way, way back. This was like 20 years ago. What I'm hearing from them is the same kind of things. It's like it hallucinates. It doesn't give me the answer. I have mission critical things. Like a wire has to be down to the pending ⁓ I mean the penny. Funds flow, you can't mess account numbers up. The wires have to go to the right places on closing day. ⁓ so those are the things that they're scared about. These are the risks that they see. What I try to do is really lean into the well, LLMs are non deterministic. So they will give you, if you and Veer and me all ask it the same exact question or give it the same exact prompt, we're gonna get a little bit of a different answer. We've got to use those tools in finance, accounting, IT, marketing where it's critical, any place where it's critical that the answer always be right. We use these tools that can give us different answers all the time, but are also very good at building tools that give you the same answer every time. So we've got to make that shift. What what we see in our industry, ⁓ just ten second history, like a lot of times search firms were would be evaluated against how strong was is your network? I mean, a long, long time ago that was a big deal. And then when LinkedIn came out, that was a great equalizer. Then where search firms moved to next was assessments. So they hired all these PhDs to interpret kind of the assessment results. So yesterday was a good example. We had a a CEO candidate take the assessment. I threw the assessment you know, into Claude and then now I no longer need to pay the PhD to do the assessment or review. I've got Claude that does the review. I I don't necessarily see any hallucinations there, but I do review it before talking to the client about it. And then I'm taking the wisdom from AI and then r I'm the final review. If there was any hallucination or something that didn't make sense, it w it's my based on my experience to you know, fix that or critique that to make sure it's not, you know, hallucinating. But I have not seen that in ⁓ my work with either Claude or ChatGPT in that kind of example. Yeah. I think it was it was data. Sorry, go ahead, Veer. ⁓ no, I I I was just gonna say I mean th like I feel like when we have this conver I when I when I talk with professionals who want to kind of w when we have the AI conversation and they lean in and that's one of the the pillars that they want to kind of like like lean on and say, the hallucination component of it. And and you know, the the challenge, not not to say that it's not true, but I but to give it the correct amount of gravity and weight is I can hire a PhD interpreter of something and he or she can still make a mistake. I I think we're we're we're often kind of like thinking that the the tool has to be a hundred percent right. I'm willing to accept a certain amount of uncertainty dealing with a human being. And and and I'm not calling out the fact that, you know, ⁓ that researcher went to this place. And I work a lot in the medical field, ⁓ and ⁓ seventy percent of my background has been in healthcare, ⁓ payer, hospitals, provider side, and and ⁓ that that's that's another one where you cannot make a mistake. You cannot like do this wrong. But I think the the leaning in on the hallucination as a as an excuse to not use it versus exactly what you said, Ken, right? Is ⁓ it I you have the domain knowledge to know what you expect ⁓ an interpretation of an assessment to look like. You have enough, you know, ⁓ you know, deep insight to look at it and go, this does look correct. And and frankly, it is going to be as, you know, as correct as, you know, maybe, you know, it's gonna get you to ninety two percent of what that, you know, PhD researcher might be able to get you, which is probably the appropriate level of of correctness to for you to engage with a a client for a conversation or with a ⁓ so right tool, right job, right amount of of of gravity and risk. ⁓ it's an interesting like like conversation to like triangulate with people. I I I would be interested to get both of your thoughts on this comment. I know you guys are asking me questions, but this is these are just real life things that I'm seeing that I find really interesting. So Yesterday I met with a gentleman who's ⁓ he's both an executive, but he's been placed as a board liaison ⁓ to one of these acquired companies that his business just recently acquired. It's ⁓ a public company that just did an add-on acquisition. And the add-on acquisition that they did came with a a CEO who's extremely difficult to deal with. So he's being specifically told to only use Gemini at the company. But He feels he he's really leaning in AI and on his own he has Claude on his phone. So he talks to it about how difficult this CEO is to deal with and then utilizes the wisdom from that. But he's not allowed to use Claude at the company, but he's using this on the side. So i I I see some interesting things going on where there's corporate policies to use a certain AI tool, but people ⁓ Want the very best information and they want to make the best decisions. And so he's trying to be really careful not to put any specific names of the company that he works for in there or anything that's ⁓ financially proprietary about the business, but is seeking a level of wisdom to to better solve the situation, but using a tool that's outside of the ⁓ approved kind of AI tools that the company allows for a big big public company. I'm just curious to get your thoughts on that. Veer, I think this is a good IT ⁓ you you can start with the IT governance side of things and yeah, there's two pieces there. I mean, I think one, kind of depending on how regulated your industry is, ⁓ he's right. ⁓ you know, ⁓ if you're sharing information, I think when ⁓ the LLMs first dropped a few years ago and I helped companies write ⁓ acceptable use policies or ⁓ or add-ons to their existing ⁓ acceptable use policies, I I I started with the idea for folks, just so that folks had a point of reference, was like, well, it's just like email. It's just like Google. It's just like, you know, right? Like whatever you wouldn't share for with in an email, you you wouldn't share with these this other company, right? And and and I and it's it's a little bit reductive, but I mean it at least gives you a starting point that okay. So you th it sounds like that your ⁓ colleague is also doing something similar. ⁓ then It started to get to the point of like we have our personal tools, right? I mean, we we know we we use our own cell phone. I I use, you know, at what point do we really start policing this? You know, do do I do I tell you that you can't take your company notebook home ⁓ with you that you wrote your notes in, which was a rule at NASA for a long time, right? You did not walk out of the building with your notebook. Right with your notes in it, like that and and so ⁓ I think we're in a space now where I think for me as a as a tech professional, as I'm as I'm talking to folks, ⁓ and boards and and and these leadership teams, ⁓ like there there needs to be an a kind of an acceptance of like you know, Pandora's box is open, people have access to the the world's information on their device, they're they're not going to necessarily stop. ⁓ Responsible use for people like me or you is we use ⁓ company or ⁓ like the pro level systems or we can there's a there's a toggle, right? That I'm not it won't it won't use it for training and and and stuff. And even then, I mean that's a little bit of a gray area today. But I I s in my career, 26 years ago, I was at GE Power and walking around the building with IT looking for ro Rogue IT finding people who had bought servers, full two unit high servers and bolted them underneath their desk in class A office space in Atlanta, Georgia. and they bought it on their P card and they had it like hidden away and they were doing, you know, analysis and ⁓ I mean, you know, it's it's kind of that Jurassic Park, right? Like life will find a way. So That's right. We Yeah. I'm curious what Jim has to say and I I can share with you guys what we're doing at our company, but what's your opinion, Jim? I So start with the premise, like let's just all agree that three months is a long period of time in today's world. Yeah. We didn't have Astra, which Veer and I have both been playing with on the chat on the open AI side. it's pretty incredible at what it does. so things are just moving quickly. So if you start with that premise, I think if we're moving that fast, technology is accelerating at a speed we've never seen, I go back to just finance, opportun accounting, opportunity cost. It's the risk for me is like, well, what is the risk of me using it. Well, I have an insurance claim because I lost some information. A competitor finds out what I'm, you know, doing in XYZ region. I and on and by the way, I've never seen a story on this. I've never seen a story in AI where somebody has searched a competitor and gotten their full set of financials. I haven't either. No. And PII, I can't ask AI right now I I mean maybe somebody has figured it out about Ken Philbrick. Where do you live? What's your bank account number? Blah, blah, blah. I've never been able to see that. Okay. But it is a risk, right? Because you're putting things out there in the ether. So it's a risk. But what is that risk to the balance sheet for all the finance folks? Well, the risk is, ⁓ well, maybe I take a hit here on sales, it dips a little bit. Or maybe I have a liability that increases, or I have a risk of an insurance claim, et cetera. Right. So all of these things. So we can kind of like put those in a box, measure the risk and and say, all right, well, that's what would happen if this particular set of data went out. There's a whole science and field around that. The other side though is the risk of not trying to keep up using the tools and learn if everybody else in the world is doing that. Your balance sheet, your your your balance sheet goes to zero. Like the the it is like you go bankrupt. You are out of business because you didn't keep up. So I look at it as strictly a risk management type of situation. It's like, yes, mitigate, eliminate all the typical RM type of things. You can't really eliminate your complacency. If you're complacent, you'll just be behind. That's my take. Yeah. We ⁓ we probably have a little bit of an idealistic situation here. I mean, every person we hire it's the the narrative is around ⁓ always do the right thing every single minute of the day and as you treat people, treat ⁓ fairly. And I know this stuff is like easy to talk about, but if you met our team, you kinda know what I'm referring to. And you know, when we talk to our team internally, we just say presume every conversation you have is has been recorded And every correspondence in writing could potentially get out there. So ⁓ would your family be proud of anything or displeased with anything that you wrote via correspondence and ⁓ kind of just be a good basic human being. So we I don't I don't stay up at night worrying about something getting out. ⁓ having said all of that, which was a little bit long we did, I I presume as we get larger and we see the capabilities of what Claude's doing. And has access to our files that ⁓ Jim will probably come back to you to say, you know, how do we accomplish both, right? Like how do we lean into this a hundred percent, but have some level of protection that this stuff doesn't, you know, s sensitive or confidential information doesn't be on to us, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And and it's only one part I mean, that like right that like that's one leg of it, right? Is is the breach and sharing leg, right? And and then there's ⁓ you're right, so there's, you know. ⁓ but then there's also just the misuse, right, of of of information, either internally, which again, you know, I always try to drive folks to the conversation of what have you got if you're worried about AI doing something bad, how have you already addressed that with people? Right? I mean, like I because I feel like ⁓ if you cause maybe you aren't using AI, but you already have people. So if this is an actual legitimate concern, ⁓ Which you're you know, I'm like let's dig into well, how are you already handling it? Right? How are you already handling that? And you're already handling it through a first layer of character and trying to get folks in who are trustworthy, who are going to exemplify that ⁓ personally and professionally, ⁓ w which which is the the the the standard to start with. And and ⁓ so then yes, do we do we have similar, you know, how do we have a similar gate for the technology? But but then also, right, do I give people cell phones? Yes. Do I give people iPads and ⁓ laptops and ⁓ they have email and they have Slack and Microsoft Teams and ⁓ they have all these things, right? And like you said, you you have to assume if you sent somebody an email, they could share it with somebody else. ⁓ and remind like I had a mentor who once told me that a whole ⁓ very similar, right? Don't tell a lie so you don't have to remember what you said. Yeah, I think that stays with me too. I don't I don't worry about that stuff. So I ⁓ go ahead, Jim. No, I I got it so Ken, what was one thing that you would have expected AI to fix at this point that it hasn't? Like what's one surprise where you're like, nah, why why why are we still doing this? Well, in general, we still have a lot of paper around here. So that's one thing I would, you know, I'm a little surprised with. ⁓ that's a good question. I I d it's almost like conversely, I'm so surprised by everything that it can do that I didn't expect. ⁓ I'd have to think about that, Jim. I I I will say when you were asking me that question, one thing I I think about is like how can I consistently get better with AI so I can be ahead of our competitors. ⁓ and so it does this mean like we no longer have to have bullhorn our database software anymore? How often are we talking to AI? What level of decision making is it making for us versus we're doing it ourselves? How much more efficient can it make us? How many more team members do I need to hire or do I can it be more efficient with the folks that I do have? I'm sure there's some specific gaps that things that it's not able to do quite yet. I will say ⁓ on the lower end side, ⁓ I wouldn't like our firms mostly doing like let's say high-end director or VP is at the lowest levels, all the way up to CEO kind of placements. There's a lot of nuance ⁓ that I'm not sure AI is going to pick up on anytime soon. But I am noticing so much level of automation regarding lower level recruiting where AI is actually doing the interview and all the filtering and stuff like that. So I think there's going to be some serious competitive threats to lower, you know, staffing firms. So ⁓ I didn't directly answer your question, Jim, but throughout the balance of this time I'll think about that question and see what else I can come up with for you. No, I I like the I'd I'd like to just dig in a little bit on like some of that nuance that you're talking about. Like so when you say, you know, at these higher level, more executive positions, what does that nuance look like that you don't think AI can handle? So we have a CEO search for a a business on the the West Coast and it's ⁓ previously was a closely held company and There's a large employee base that's been led by a founder that doesn't hold anybody accountable. They need a CEO that can drive a level of ⁓ performance management out of their staff that they never had before. So we need a CEO who's a driver, but we also need someone who knows how to value the relationship and ⁓ work well with people. If people need to be changed out, it needs to be done respectfully. ⁓ if you get too much of ⁓ Bulldog in there. ⁓ you could have a mass exodus of employees in a part of the country that's difficult to recruit for. So ⁓ we ran the assessment on three candidates, asked for their permission to throw the assessment results into AI. And AI kind of calls out one person that AI thinks is a terrific fit for the role. But as you do more behavioral interviewing with the candidate, they say things like, ⁓ I expect other people to do the work and I sort of supervise it. Whereas this company needs somebody with a range of ability that both do the work and also help at help at a junior level as needed. So there's just some some nuance there. ⁓ I I also think like if someone can if someone comes across a little edgy on certain questions, sometimes AI's not picking that up quite as well yet. ⁓ and then we can pick that up. And then lastly, I would say there's a level of referencing that's done and ⁓ checking on people in in the community and ⁓ things are said with a level of discretion that's not necessarily shared within kind of the whole AI framework. That's really like I think the the the human aspect of ⁓ and and frankly the value right that people the trust ⁓ in when when they come to you with their searches, ⁓ they are hoping for that, right? This this level of of nuanced understanding and and do you think the systems that you did use did it did it accelerate even slightly the before you got to the point where, okay, now I've had a conversation and, you know, ⁓ I've picked up on verbally and, you know, cues that I'm like, mm, this might not be the right person. But ⁓ it it it does. I mean yeah when we would propose on a CEO or CFO search, ⁓ after the whole database issue was taken away from Link as Because LinkedIn became prevalent. I no longer was asked, like if I did some re remote search in Montana, ⁓ they no longer asked me, what's your network in Montana? Because I can I can solicit those folks through LinkedIn or other things like Zoom info. Then it moved to assessments. And then they would ask me, How many assessment coaches do you have on staff? And can they help us interpret, you know, ⁓ or evaluate these candidates? We don't need the assessment coach. ⁓ I can utilize Claude or ChatGPT ⁓ if enough of the right inputs are put in there regarding, you know, put everything in the in the beginning in terms of what the client is looking for, not only technical requirements but how they define success and the behavioral competencies and the required background. You put all the right inputs in there, it does that work for you. ⁓ but with all of that said, ⁓ You know, ⁓ the client will say, you know, I I want these five references done and I want ⁓ from these specific individuals. When I get on the phone with those references, there's a level of trust that's being built there. And it allows me, if I build a relationship the right way, for them to give me the real information I'm seeking on strengths, weaknesses, you know, opportunities stuff like that. If I'm just an AI agent and I s I I reach out to the person, I may not get that same level of feedback that I'm specifically looking for. And there's so much nuance, I think, with ⁓ how someone presents and behavioral competencies too, that ⁓ I'm sure AI will continue to make strides and improvements there, but I think at the highest levels, that stuff is extremely important that can't technically be solved through AI and pattern recognition as much. I I I would agree. I mean, I I might take a shot from other like technology. I mean, I've spent my career doing the technology. I have a lot of hope and aspiration of how good it can become, but I Like this is kind of where I've kind of drawn a line in the sand too, where like everything up until that point could be potentially optimized, could be accelerated. You know, I I talk about ⁓ from a consulting standpoint, you know, how many shots on goal can you get in this month? And ⁓ you know, now ⁓ you know, I even personally as I'm doing work, I can take more shots on goal. But that last piece of building relationship, going out. to coffee, having, you know, the drinks and have and and building ⁓ and sharing, right? Being available for other folks to call and to have the, you know, I I I hope, I mean, as I talk with folks here in town, right? They have my number, right? They have a bat phone that they can pick up and and and just call for, you know, any reason. And that relationship gives us the ability to discern when it comes time to like talk about, you know, you know, a referral or or, you know, a candidate. I d yeah, I don't think the line's gonna go away. Veer, like one example would be like if a client said, I want an IT executive like you, Veer, who's smart, nice, ⁓ has a good personality, and then has certain character traits. A lot of this times I can go learn this by going to have lunch with you or something like that. And so you are truly that unicorn here on this upper left side of the the the the screen here that we're looking for. But it's wild, isn't it, Ken? It it is. He he's ⁓ I didn't realize who I was meeting with today. I'm I'm a little intimidated. So thanks for no no well, we we try to we feel the same way about you. ⁓ and you know it's you know iron sharpens iron, whatever cliche you want to use. I mean, like tonight we try to surround ourselves with smart people. ⁓ so y you know, I'm I'm really struck by the people aspect of this whole thing, Ken. Every conversation we have with a leader who's using AI It seems like we spend at least 30 to 40, maybe 50% of the conversation talking about the people aspect. And we've done that again here today. Now, that said, I mean, so that's how important people are. So I think that tips all of our hands a little bit. I'm speaking for you two, but w we definitely still need people with experience dealing with other people and reviewing what AI ⁓ puts out. I mean, like that's Critical. But but if you had a CFO role that came across your desk or a CEO role that came across your desk and you found out that the CFO or CEO had a pretty negative view on AI or wasn't up to speed on AI, didn't like it, what does that do to the candidate's opportunity? It's a tricky question, as anyone who's listened to this knows that I'm fully leaning in on that. There there could be some unique example where the client is ⁓ you know, using nineteen nineties technology and and they want to stay there and for that reason it gives them a competitive advantage. I can't think of what type of company that would be. But to the extent that that is indeed true, ⁓ i it it still could make someone who doesn't use AI a really good and strong competitive candidate. But in the absence of that and in a normal situation, ⁓ part of what Companies are looking for for executives are folks that are intellectually curious, and that leads directly to AI. It's like, ⁓ you may not be an expert in these things, and I'm not. Like, I wish I had more time, like David does, to spend with you, Jim, so I could continue to learn. ⁓ so much of the things I know are a little bit self-taught, and then you come in every other week, and it's really helpful. But if someone's not intellectually curious and they're not willing to lean into this, I do think they're going to be at a disadvantage. So my counsel to the client would be, hey, this person's pretty stuck in their ways. If this truly makes the person exceptional and a good candidate, then it's your decision. But I will call that out because to me usually that's a net negative. Just make sure I heard right there, because ⁓ I I I think that's very diplomatic of you kind of you put it into the category of like, you know, because you could be not curious in other aspects. You could be not curious about people and about culture and and right and that could come out in the nuance that, you know, ⁓ and and so ⁓ I guess my question coming from the technology side of it is do you find yourself or ⁓ maybe do you think you will be finding yourself singling out this specific, like beyond just curiosity, ⁓ is this a facet that is gonna become a thing where like, you know, I'm gonna give you a score on your On your financial acumen, I'm going give you score on company size, but I'm going to get like AI fluency or curiosity or adoption like as a line item. So if a search is done right, you start with ⁓ what are the technical requirements? How do you define success? What is the required background and the behavioral competency? You start there. Once you've collected all that information, sometimes you're meet like 11 people and then you submit it for a ⁓ An alignment with everybody to make sure everyone's on the same page. The next document's typically like a scorecard. And so ⁓ on that scorecard, ⁓ if you remember what I just said a second ago, one of the categories was behavioral competency. So we're looking we're usually looking for something like intellectual curiosity. It'll come through on the scorecard. I've noticed I just got a scorecard yesterday for a new ⁓ roll up of ⁓ a large distribution business and AI is in there already. I didn't even have to like I I I got I got it from them and they want that in there. I think that's going to come up more and more. The last thing that's extremely important is if you're a CEO or CFO, for example, and you get to the final, final interview, they're going to ask you to present your 90-day plan. And for those of you who are listening, I would definitely go read the Michael Watkins book. ⁓ that book is extremely helpful. But you have got to come forth with a plan, ⁓ a document that goes with that. And it you know, if you don't layer in how you're planning to use AI to be more efficient and to run your business more efficiently, you're likely gonna lose as you present that 90 day plan against the next person who comes in who has that in there. That's interesting. I I think that's yeah, that the the 90 day plan, 100 day plan has always been like a, you know, a thing. ⁓ but it sounds like, hey, if you're not talking about AI and some of these things right now in that plan, you you might I I think that kind of answers the question a little bit. It's like th that is a line item. It is a lineup. I yeah. I I I I think but it is interesting to to put it into that like like I I I feel like that is a really good characterization of the the the the intellectual curiosity because this is a this is a a I think a view of and and like Jim has talked about, like it's opportunity, right? What what is possible, what could we do? What can we imagine? And and and because we're professionals and responsible, you know, as responsible adults, once we've done that, we filter based on, well, what are the risks and what can what what makes sense, what doesn't make sense based on our our security posture, our compliance posture, whatever it is. And it's just really interesting because I think ⁓ I've I talk to a lot of people here in Nashville who kind of approach it from the other end, right? They they kind of start with the limiting factor. Of well, we can't you can't do this. I can't do this. This is good. I heard this on the news and I read this, and you know, how much does it cost? And and ⁓ the but the curiosity, right? That that piece just seems to be missing. Or ⁓ or or you know, I mean I was talking with some friends the other day and I was like, ⁓ do you you think like working for a great big XYZ Fortune 100 company has just kind of beat that curiosity out of folks? Like they've they've they've been told no. so many times that that that that muscle is underdeveloped and and they and and and they've leaned the other way that it's better to not be curious that that that's that they're they're they're they're holding it as a strength. Well I mean like in Fortune 500 companies risk aversion is like, you know, a highly it's a virtue. Right? We've got to hit quarter. ⁓ that's that I mean like quarterly earnings are bigger than any pipe dream that you might have. I think the the question for me, like so you answer kind of from the IT side. From the finance side, ⁓ I look at it as you can do just about everything right now. And if you have a 30 person shop and all 30 are intellectually curious because you've done some great hiring to find these AI folks, they're gonna want to build everything from the ground up. For me as a CFO, is that smart? Like where is the most value? We have a finite period of time, we've got to pick what differentiates us in the market. Let me work with H ⁓ marketing and operations to try to like figure that out. But then what are the one or two things that really move the needle if we focus on them? So I mean AI's collectively given us ADHD. I mean we can do anything and we feel like we can do anything quickly and that's not always the case. So I think you really got to pick. This is so important, but you know our business from having consulted with us. What have we done that you think is positive from an AI standpoint? I know we've implemented Ivern, maybe you could explain that for a second. But what do you think I you know, as a leader of this business, I really need to do next? Because I am in intellectually curious on this subject and I really want to lean into running this company the best way that I can. I think you caught some of so Veer yesterday we had a another session. It was an abbreviated session, so I was trying to squeeze a lot of what I wanted to get in ⁓ in a short period of time. ⁓ but the first portion of the session, and and I don't know that there's too many proprietary things, so maybe we could share this in in the links below. But ⁓ as long as we scrub it. But the thing that I think you did right personally, because I've done two I mean There's not many people that can say this, but I've done two AI implementations at companies. I've accelerated AI in two different companies now. I don't know how many folks have actually done that in real life. What we did right in this time, and it's you know, we did it a little bit last time, but this time much better was we started with the fluency. So we started by teaching everybody the words to use. And just making them smarter. The second thing that we did right was we had executive buy-in and we had a conversation with ⁓ Justin Ray, who is a leader of a founder of a software as a service company. He does this too. ⁓ but he didn't use somebody like me. He's just already there and just that he's that type of guy. He gave his people time on the clock to learn because people are not like It's not that they're not intellectually curious. It's just that they've got 40 searches that they're working on. And 40 searches takes a lot of time. And there's no time for them to sit, learn something new, and then build something and try it and mess it up and try it and mess it up until they get the result they want. And then ultimately they get efficiency. So setting that time aside as a leadership team, I think is critical. Those are two I mean you start at the foundation. That's how you build a house. Nobody wants to. It's the least sexy part, but you guys did that. And then you gave them time on the clock to actually work with it. You know, another clever thing you did, you mentioned Ivern, so I want to make sure that I touch on this. Ivern is the name of the agent Veer that they I think you're a little familiar with this, that Adam James installed ⁓ across the entire system that could read a lot of their documentation and data. And it was easily accessible through email. So people could just email in Outlook and get an answer back. That might be going away, but it was a really w smart way of doing it to start. Yeah. I mean you you you had mentioned it at one point to me and I think, you know, for me it like it has it has locked in. It's very clever. I and and and not in a in a reductive way. It is very clever because you've you allowed people access to something by making it familiar. Without we Yeah. We've kinda humanized it too, Veer. We we call Ivern yeah him. We make a joke that Ivern has a girlfriend now named Avern, but Avern hasn't been fully set up yet. But people email Ivern almost like it's a person at the company, hey Ivern, can you send me this ⁓ work product or can you help me schedule this interview? Can you ⁓ can you give me the contact information for Jim Boswell? I don't have that. And it sends it right back. It's really cool all the applications and workflows that it does for us. I think you know, I think you by doing that, you've you've you've conquered, you know, I mean I think, you know, ⁓ I did the management consulting game for a long time and and you a a big piece of it was selling change management as as services in and ⁓ and then I know that one gets like ⁓ Did you say change management? I know, I know, I know Like you hate that. I I hate it. I am so I hate it so much. But because I'm shocked. That that that that's you know, we're we're we're you know, yeah, well c ⁓ lots of reasons. But you you you conquered that hill by this kind of humanization of it and embedding it into like a just a a a very normal workflow. The chat workflow is becoming more normal for more people, but it it that that was yeah, a a really like interesting way to ⁓ to to kind of do that in a in a world that that is your workflow. Like you you're working with people, you're building dockets of material and you have to kind of cross reference and and it's a ⁓ yeah, I I I I really enjoyed hearing that 'cause it was a y you did change management without having to sell in change management, which which makes me really happy. Yeah. And so Veer hates the word change management. I don't know why, but he hates it. ⁓ it I mean I don't use it during an interview. But he does hate the word, so it's just funny. That's why you laugh, kid. But y you know, I think one thing, I mean, as we are kind of like trying to like wrap up. But I I I think having Ken here on the call ⁓ had this really kind of interesting kind of question, you know, because we talked about like maybe the role is changing for the CFO and maybe the fluency is something that we're going to look for. And fluency is kind of tucked up underneath ⁓ intellectual curiosity and and their ability to adapt ⁓ as as the world adapts. But ⁓ and then Ken, you kind of talked about how, you know, the maybe we're moving towards this practice that's more of a diamond, ⁓ where, you know, the kind of the we're we're gonna see a thinner layer at the bottom, we're gonna see a larger middle and and maybe still have, you know, a few leaders at the top in in organizational design. ⁓ so if that happens, right, where it's stops being a triangle and becomes a ⁓ diamond, the feeder channel ⁓ starts to in some ways maybe dry up. How does so Jim and I were talking about this yesterday. I'm curious kind of what your take is. How does somebody become a Jim Boswell twenty years from now if his career path has fundamentally changed? Yeah, I I talked to a a guy ⁓ who's leading an investment banking firm talking about this diamond model and I said, Well, how are you gonna hire like experienced staff? And the the answer was, Well we'll recruit ⁓ from other firms and I'm like, I I don't know how sustainable that is. I mean, ⁓ so I I don't know. It's gonna be really interesting to see what comes from this younger generation. I mean, if if a younger person's listening to this, the best thing they could do is just lean into this AI stuff a hundred percent ⁓ and utilize it in every aspect of your job. Because if you're not, ⁓ someone else will and it's gonna be difficult to compete at the at the lower levels. So amazing conversation. I appreciate ⁓ I mean we we sometimes get a little too technical and you know leaders don't always I mean that doesn't always resonate. This was the perfect ⁓ kind of blend of, you know, how a real life executive founder looks at at the business. I also think it's great that you asked questions that just says so much about you, Kenton. Really it says so much about you. you're usually on the other end of this panel. Yeah, I'm not I'm not ⁓ is good at being on the one who's being asked the question. So I appreciate everyone listening today. And thank thank you very much, Jim. I I thank you for what you've done for our company and and to help me and and Veer it's so nice to meet you. I can see what Jim works with you. Well this has been a a pleasure for me. I hope ⁓ as I come up to see Jim ⁓ in the future there in in Colorado over the ⁓ coming weeks and months ⁓ well maybe we can we can stop in and see you as well. So as always I am Jim Boswell. And I've Veer Hossain And I'm just gonna say it we're the functional executives.