How CFOs Can Slash IT Waste and Maximize ROI with an Efficiency Mindset with Ben DeBow
In this episode of Future Finance, hosts Paul Barnhurst and Glenn Hopper sit down with Ben DeBow who is a trailblazer in technology efficiency and sustainability. Ben is at the forefront of helping businesses optimize their tech investments while balancing environmental impacts. His book, End of Abundance in Tech (Forbes Books, 2023), challenges conventional IT practices and advocates for a more sustainable, efficient approach to technology.
Ben is a serial entrepreneur, author, and advocate for leveraging technology efficiently and sustainably. Through his companies, Fortified Data and Fortified, he helps organizations streamline data management and tech investments. Ben also hosts the Tech Evaluation podcast, where he discusses pressing tech challenges with industry leaders. With dual degrees in Information Systems and Accounting from the University of Cincinnati, Ben bridges the gap between finance and technology, offering unique insights into how organizations can thrive in the digital age.
In this episode, you will discover:
How technology spending has shifted from 2-3% of revenue to a major line item in company budgets.
The concept of “tech debt” and how it silently eats into company resources.
Why understanding the true cost of digital services is critical for CFOs.
The environmental impact of AI and cloud computing, and how efficiency can mitigate it.
Practical strategies for aligning IT and finance teams for better ROI on tech investments.
Ben’s knowledge highlights the importance of adopting an efficiency mindset, not just to control budgets, but to create sustainable, long-term value. By aligning IT strategies with business goals and fostering better communication between finance and tech teams, organizations can optimize their technology investments without compromising growth or sustainability.
Follow Ben:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bendebow/
Website - https://bendebow.com/
Company - https://fortified.com/
End of Abundance in Tech - https://a.co/d/iu0FqG0
Join hosts Glenn and Paul as they unravel the complexities of AI in finance:
Follow Glenn:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gbhopperiii
Follow Paul:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefpandaguy
Follow QFlow.AI:
Website - https://bit.ly/4fYK9vY
Future Finance is sponsored by QFlow.ai, the strategic finance platform solving the toughest part of planning and analysis: B2B revenue. Align sales, marketing, and finance, speed up decision-making, and lock in accountability with QFlow.ai.
Stay tuned for a deeper understanding of how AI is shaping the future of finance and what it means for businesses and individuals alike.
In Today’s Episode:
[01:53] Ben DeBow’s background
[04:44] The Rising Cost of Technology
[07:12] Inefficiencies in IT Systems
[11:43] Subscription Creep & SaaS Spending
[14:12] Aligning Tech with Business Value
[19:11] Environmental Impact of Technology
[28:08] Fortified Data & SaaS Solutions
[30:07] Future Trends in Tech Efficiency
[34:51] Fun Questions for Ben
[39:30] Conclusion and Final thoughts
Full Show Transcript
[00:02:01] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: Welcome to another episode of Future Finance. Today we're thrilled to have Ben DeBow join us. Ben is a serial entrepreneur, author, and advocate for technology, efficiency and the environment. As the founder and CEO of Fortified Data, a pioneering data analytics firm, and fortified an innovative SaaS company specializing in FinOps. Ben is at the forefront of driving change in the tech industry in his groundbreaking book End of Abundance in Tech, published by Forbes Books in 2023, Ben challenges the status quo and presents compelling strategies for organizations to optimize their technology investments through his thought provoking podcast series, Tech Evaluation. He engages in dynamic discussions with CIOs, CDOs, and CTOs, tackling the most pressing technology challenges faced by today's leaders. He is dedicated to mentoring technology leaders and organizations around creating an efficiency mindset with degrees in Information systems and accounting from the University of Cincinnati. Ben applies unique financial insights to technology. A sought after speaker, podcaster, and contributor to publications. Ben, welcome to the show.
[00:03:11] Guest: Ben DeBow: Welcome and thanks. And I see your Memphis shirt. You know, talking about UTC in Memphis, right?
[00:03:17] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: Yeah, I know, so I hate that you know, Memphis keeps getting anytime there's a conference realignment, everybody else goes somewhere cool. And then Memphis is just stuck. So I miss the Cincinnati, Memphis, basketball rivalry. Yeah. And then Paul's got his Utah Jazz hat on. So I've got to represent the.
[00:03:34] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: And I don't know if that's a good thing with how bad they are this year. They're in the tanking race, not the winning race this year.
[00:03:42] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: Well, my Titans in the NFL were in that situation too. We got the first draft pick. No we got yeah.
[00:03:48] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: I feel your pain on that one.
[00:03:50] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: Well we were talking before the show and it feels like between the three of us we probably could have a whole other sports podcast. But keeping with the theme of this show, maybe we should just dive into finance or the future or something.
[00:04:02] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: Do sports analytics. You know how that's true.
[00:04:04] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: That could be a whole other thing. Yeah. Ben, you coming on the show right now is interesting because I think even maybe 4 or 5 years ago, if we were talking to finance people and we started talking about leveraging data analytics and scaling systems, we would lose half of them because it's, you know, I'm the domain expert in finance. Why are we talking about systems and analytics and all that. But I think now with digital transformation, we're seeing this happen in the office of the CFO. We're seeing the CFO role change and the expectation that we are able to do deeper analytics and all that is more important. So I think this is very timely for you to be coming on right now. And as people are thinking, as AI becomes more and more. Not saying we're using it yet, but we're talking about it now. And I think you're and I can't remember if I saw this on your LinkedIn or if it was from a previous conversation, but you described your mission as enabling businesses to leverage data analytics while scaling their systems to meet changing technological demands. And this is you've got to be in high demand with that kind of mission right now. But could you elaborate on how this mission kind of drives your work and why it's critical in today's business landscape?
[00:05:21] Guest: Ben DeBow: If you think about what most businesses are back at, you know, 20 years ago, we used to describe most businesses as brick and mortar, right? They had a product or some type of goods or services. Right? If you look today, most organizations are technology organizations, whether they admit it or not, in most of those organizations want more technology, more innovation, faster and quicker. And that's sort of driving some of those needs around okay. Being able to understand what data do I have? Being able to understand how do I access and analyze this data, how do I process this system? And bringing it back to CFOs where it's impacting them? It's on the budget because technology budgets used to be about 2 to 3% of total revenue back in the day. And now that's inching up percentage points each year. And once something starts to become, you know, 5 to 10% of, you know, your budget, you're like, what is this? What am I getting in return for this spend? And then where can I potentially optimize this spend, especially if everybody's trying to ask for more innovation and you have this increased growth rate at the same time as you're trying to manage that spend. So that's sort of where and why I'm talking to organizations is how do you balance innovation, growth and support of 20 or 30 years of legacy technology while balancing your Your budgets.
[00:06:50] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: That's funny because you're speaking to finance people in 2 in 2 streams here. One is yes, analytics are important. But then what really makes our ears perk up is when you talk about the percent of the budget that's going to the technology spend. And I think maybe this, you know, maybe that's a good segue into your book, which is interesting because now you look at what's happening in the sort of the macro economic, the spend on technology and the billions and billions of dollars that we're using to train these AI models. But thinking about at the business level, this idea, you know, when, when SAS became a thing and it was like, oh, we just can get whatever software we need from the cloud, there was this idea of just it's infinite, whatever we can do. So I think that the title of your book is a really interesting mind shift, but the end of abundance in tech and that critiques kind of decades of inefficiency in IT systems. And I'm wondering, Like what you saw, or what are the most significant inefficiencies that you've observed and how can IT leaders and by extension, the finance teams start addressing these today.
[00:07:58] Guest: Ben DeBow: So yeah, there's a lot of things to consider. And, you know, the reason why I wrote the book is because when I started in the technology 25 years ago, I actually had to care how much or how many resources my code used or how much memory I consumed when I was processing this data. Today, I'm more focused on the functionality and something working and getting that to the market, then how much it uses and where this comes into play. More so these, you know, today is over the last 10 to 12 years. That's when the cloud Amazon first launched, you know, AWS: the cloud. And that changed the model of how I charge for resources. So before then it was all you can eat buffet. I bought a server and I could run whatever I want on it, you know? And when I designed those applications, I didn't really focus on resource footprints and cost and so forth. Now, as soon as you have to put your credit card down to pay for that meal, you start to become aware of what did you order? How much did you order? Right. Who bought the last round, per se? Right. And this is where end of abundance in tech is focused on. We have to change our mindset in the sense of most technology applications were never designed for a utility compute model. Meaning like electric, electricity or water. And now that we're building technology, we have to think about, hey, when I design this application, is it going to cost me X amount over this next years and then is it efficient. And that's sort of how we are changing the mindset of organizations is they have to think about the design. And every technology design decision they have has a cost implication, not only today, but on average, the next 12 years.
[00:10:05] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: Yeah. That really is a mindset shift in thinking about just that approach to it because it's, you know, you end up with all these subscription services and the tool and, and thinking about utilization and whether you're paying for number of users or number of transactions or whatever. And then what are we getting? Why are we paying for this? And, as the costs are going up. It's, yeah, very we treat it like a, it's just a recurring payment, like a utility, but it's. What are we getting out of it? What's the ROI that we're getting on this monthly spend?
[00:10:39] Guest: Ben DeBow: I don't know if you have an iPhone or an Android, right? You might be paying $0.99 for storage. Okay. Because number one is you start to take some photos and then all of a sudden you fill it up with the music videos and the photos, and then you're like, oh, I'm going to back up my phone just in case I use it. That's $0.99. The next tier is 299, because you never really run out of space on your phone because what they're doing is they're shifting things up and so forth, because they want you to feel like there's abundance and resources slash consume more. And I'm only going to charge you an extra dollar or so. Oh do that times 36 months or whatever it is. So in those SaaS apps, a lot of times we lure you in by offering you essentials or something very cheap and easy and small. Once you land there, then you upgrade to Enterprise Edition, then you add users, then you add features, then you add additional modules. Now what are you paying for versus day one? Right?
[00:11:38] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: So true. I was just thinking, as you were saying, all that I was thinking of my tool I use for project management, a lot of my content and I'm like, it was free at first, then I'll get the monthly one. Oh, now I have an employee. Oh, there's this email add on. Oh, I want this next thing you know you're like, wait, went from zero to a few hundred dollars a year. What happened? It just kind of creeps up on you as you start seeing more and more things and think, oh, that's not that's not expensive. Then at some point you look at the whole thing and you're like, wait, I'm spending how much?
[00:12:08] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: Hey, Paul, I'd like to get your thoughts on this. You know, you spend so much time and energy looking at fintech software and advising clients on that. And what I mean, talking about just IT systems in general. But let's maybe think specifically on finance technology software. What are you seeing now spend in 2025 versus maybe what it was? Is there creep happening on the finance tech spend? Is there subscription fees for the existing software going up, people adding more software.
[00:12:43] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: It's a good question. I think you have to segment it by customer. Right. If you talk small customer, the reality is most of them are still saying Excel is good enough. Quickbooks, Xero. Maybe they're doing a little bit of analytics with looker or some others, but pretty, pretty low cost. Some of them are starting to spend a little bit more. The mid market is where I think you see more and more companies saying, look, we need to get to something a little better than what we have. You know, we need to we've outgrown QuickBooks. We're going to move to an ERP. We're going to put in an FP&A tool. And those costs and what they're doing are creeping up. Although there's so much especially in the space, there's so much competition that's helping keep price down. But so you can get some good deals. But definitely I think that's the area where you're seeing more spend, especially as you know, both of you know, if you want to use AI, you need good data, right. Ideally you want lots of data and clean Data. But, you know, many mid-market companies, especially when they come out of that small, still don't have very good data. You know this, Glenn, right? It's a fractional CFO. When's the last time you walked into a company and they handed you the data and it was all clean?
[00:13:51] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: Yeah. Never. Yeah.
[00:13:52] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. I was going to say we could do this down here. Crickets. So, I mean, that's kind of how I think of it. But what's interesting, I think the area where we'll see more spend is so many of these vendors are realizing fractional CFOs grown like crazy in the last few years. Fractional in general has an CFO and advisory services. So many of these tools are really now trying to figure out how do I create a model that really helps them manage all their customers. And that will be something that'll be low cost at first. And you get in, you start loving it. And next thing you know you're wait I'm paying how much per customer do I just go back to Excel? I think that will happen over time. But we're in the early days there. So you know, the question I want to ask you here, Ben. You know, you emphasize the importance. You often emphasize the importance of understanding the financial impact of technology, as we just talked a little bit about that. Right. We've talked a little bit about that cost and how it's creeped up, you know, how can it leaders align their strategy, make sure that tech strategy is aligned with the business value creation. Right. The finance people are always going to say, hey, we need to justify it. What's the ROI? What's the value? How do we get aligned?
[00:15:05] Guest: Ben DeBow: Alignment is hard. I'm going to start off with one of the basic things that we are doing here today. We're communicating. But the challenge is, even for your audience and listening to some of the things I say is technically I speak a different language. So I actually have two degrees. I'm one of the, you know, minority in the sense of: I have a financial degree and a technology degree, and I could hop between the two realms. Most technologists are proud of their technology and only speak technology. That's a huge challenge within organizations. When they talk about what great things they can do, what things we have to fix, what things we have to address, like understanding and communicating that there's huge amounts of risk here by doing this, this and this. Many times they're speaking in their language, which I call that technology language on the business side, whether it's on the CFO side or marketing, finance, whatever the team is, they're not really understanding what the other side is saying. So one of the things I'm challenging everybody to do, even on my team, at both organizations, in a great example, is this when you guys have a success, meaning you did something great, many times they'll go and say, I saved this much compute or resources or whatever.
[00:16:25] Guest: Ben DeBow: The thing is, I saved this much time and they're very proud of that. And I'm saying, now tell me that story in business language. In business terminology. What's the one language all three of us speak for money? I can hold up a dollar bill right now, and we could all understand and understand the value of that dollar. So if I turn that same story that that engineer just told, and I replace certain elements of that with financials, now, I could start to have a conversation. So one of the key things that I'm talking to organizations about, it's less about the business communicating what they need to technology to build and create and innovate with. But it's more about how does technology translate what they heard back to them in what they could potentially do? What are the potential challenges? What are the potential risks? And ultimately, when you're done, what is the value of what I just created that's going to enable that business to do amazing things over the next X amount of time. So it's really about just communicating and then it's alignment of SLAs, goals, initiatives, etc. at the enterprise level. But I think the communication piece is the piece that's being missed the most today.
[00:17:38] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I can relate to that actually. I do have a master of science in Information Management and the MBA and can kind of bend that bridge. I've worked a little bit in SQL and database putting in a BI tool. And so often having that conversation between finance and IT. And you see the difference. Anyone in the business. Right. They give you that report requirement. That's the one I thought of cause I did report writing for a couple of years. This is what we want. And you start pulling it all and they look at it. And that's not what I want. Well, actually, you told me you start translating it. Well, here's what I think that means. Oh, no, that means something totally different. And so being able to really communicate on that same page, explain, like you said, in dollars. Right. The language of business is the numbers. It's your accounting at the end of the day. Not that you need to speak in accounting terms, but the dollar all ties back to accounting and your financial numbers.
[00:18:30] Guest: Ben DeBow: One of the things I'm seeing also is how, you know, think about, you know, these LMS, right? What do they do very well. They can provide, I call it text back to us so I could say, hey, I had this story, a technical story. How would I say this to the business? It's enabling engineers and so forth to better communicate. So I have dyslexia and dyslexia. It really helps us better communicate out because guess what? It's hard for us to do certain things in English. It is. Or translate our thoughts into words. So I'm using that to translate and help me better communicate. It's enabling so many people to better communicate whatever it is to as well.
[00:19:15] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: So on this show, obviously we're very pro tech and very and I know you are as well and I do. I want to get in a minute to fortify data, the business and how you apply these principles in business. But I do want to pause. And we were. I didn't really even have this question when we were putting together the questions for the show. But now thinking about this, I know you have an environmental angle on what you're doing. So it's not just efficiency for efficiency's sake and for finance's sake. It is the cost to the environment of, you know, we'll say whether it's SAS or running your own data center, all the technology costs that businesses are incurring. And that's grown as we've become more and more digital and more and more reliant on technology and more automation. So, you know, the sort of the environmental impact of that. But now it's accelerated when we're spending, you know, billions of dollars on building out infrastructure and we're, you know, we're bringing nuclear back to power, some of these, data centers to train these models. And I think so in Memphis, XAI, Elon Musk's company has put their big supercomputer here. And it's not just power consumption, it's the water used to cool it. And Memphis has this aquifer that's limited. You know, we're not drinking water out of the Mississippi River. We've got these this, you know, sand filtered aquifer water. But there's, you know, not a finite or not an infinite supply of that. So we don't even think about it as finance people. Everything is just about the dollars and cents and what percentage of budget it is. But someone needs to be thinking about all this from an environmental standpoint, and I'm wondering what your approach to that is, and if that's something you discuss with businesses when you go through and you do consulting with them.
[00:21:01] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: Ever feel like your go to market teams and finance speak different languages? This misalignment is a breeding ground for failure in pairing the predictive power of forecasts and delaying decisions that drive efficient growth. It's not for lack of trying, but getting all the data in one place doesn't mean you've gotten everyone on the same page. Meet qflow.ai the strategic finance platform purpose built to solve the toughest part of planning and analysis B2B revenue. Q4 quickly integrates key data from your go to market stack and accounting platform, then handles all the data prep and normalization. Under the hood, it automatically assembles your go to market stats, make segmented scenario planning a breeze, and closes the planning loop, create airtight alignment, improve decision latency, and ensure accountability across the teams.
[00:22:09] Guest: Ben DeBow: So it's at the cart. I signed my book Efficiency Mindset. If you think about what that really means, because I'm going to tell two stories here. Efficiency. If I'm efficient, that means I'm probably faster, Probably use less resources. Probably cost less. And at the end of the day, I'm probably more simple to support. And because usually it's less. Less lines of code, etc.. So that's complex. At the end of the day, I probably also help minimize my footprint on the environment. And when you think about efficiency, because of the title of book, different people reach out to me. Go. That's an intriguing thing to say, Ben. What do you actually mean by that? So one was the big hyperscalers. Somebody that ran a lot of the hardware or infrastructure that powers all the LM technology for them. And he said, hey, Ben, tell me more about your book. I told him, I said, well, tell me more about you. And he's like, well, if I had 100,000 more GPUs tomorrow, I couldn't satisfy all the questions today. I said, well, you're in a scarcity mindset. And I said, when you're in a scarcity mindset, what do we do? We solve problems differently. I said if you had gained 2% more efficiency because that Lem was more efficient in how it did it, because in an arms race, guess what? No one focuses on, I call it resources.
[00:23:39] Guest: Ben DeBow: It's the fastest to the end. Throw everything at it. But let's just change that equation. If I'm 2% more efficient on that algorithm to support a GPT or barter, one of those main ones, how many less GPUs would I need to buy? Which then translates to how much less power do I need to support that? Because the data centers today had the equivalent footprint of about 60,000 households of power in X amount of building. Tomorrow, those data centers are going to be the same size, but the density and the power consumption is going to equate to about 600,000 800,000 homes in the same building that's down on that next block. How are we going to support that? We cannot just keep on coding without an understanding of efficiency. Only by fixing you could have all the green data centers you want. But that's like me buying an energy efficient house. But moving inside that house. Non energy non energy efficient 1970 appliances and saying I'm energy efficient. That's why we need to focus on efficiency of not only the data centers but the questions or the code that we use to ask those questions.
[00:24:58] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: It's funny when you said code I've heard a lot now because right memory is so cheap, you can use a ton of size. That code is continuing to get longer and longer, and with that probably less efficiency in many ways because it's so much easier. Almost anyone can get some code. Go to ChatGPT and have it write it. Does that mean it's efficient? Not necessarily. Probably not. It's like the old macro. If you ever recorded an Excel macro, it was like 500 lines and then you'd go look for something the same online and you see someone who did it in like two lines. You're like, okay, which one's efficient? Pretty obvious.
[00:25:32] Guest: Ben DeBow: And then go run that a million times a day for the next year and then as a CFO. So earlier we were talking about SaaS apps. So think about one of the other most important things that CFOs care about is cost of goods sold. What's the cost to deliver that digital service out to the clients? I can tell you that most organizations do not truly know their cogs for those digital services. They're usually, I call it some type of percentage allocation based upon whether it's even division or percentage of whatever, but it's not true Cogs accurate to X amount. And what about if I could actually also increase your margin for that product. How do you also identify waste within technology? So one of the other things I've been speaking about is tech debt. What is the cost of tech debt in your org that you have today? The actual cost of it. And then if you were to address that, what's the increased value that your organization would have over the next five years? That's a hard question to answer, but it's an important one to answer long term.
[00:26:46] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: And if you can come in and explain that to CFO because it's hard, you know, that's not our domain expertise. If you could come in and explain that to CFOs, that's valuable because then it's almost like you're a translator between it and finance, and you're helping everybody understand. It goes back to what we were talking about before, but trying to for a finance person to try to calculate tech debt.
[00:27:06] Guest: Ben DeBow: We have to help them. One of my passions, and one of my goals is to enable CFOs to understand the value and cost of technology, along with what is my potential opportunity for cost takeout. The Pareto Principle, which is the 80/20 rule comes in, plays a huge component in technology because a fraction of the technology drives the majority of cost in waste within technology. The challenge for most organizations, CFOs and CTOs, we cannot see that cost allocation and what we could potentially optimize to get a huge gain. And these are some of the things it's like we're starting to solve some of those problems. That's why I have a SaaS company. We are providing some of this clarity around cost of technology down to the code level and data level, and that's enabling the CFOs to finally to say, if I modify just 1% of my code when I go to the cloud, I can reduce my cost another 44% over the next five years I'm in.
[00:28:12] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: Yeah. And I think, I mean, so this is maybe a lot of this stuff for some of our listeners can seem sort of abstract. And so making it concrete and, and making it into actionable, you know, decision points and everything is would be crucial to any of them. And maybe that's a good transition into the question that I was that I had scripted to ask next, which was I wanted to get into what you're doing at Fortified Data and how the company services like wisdom, and how they're sort of changing the way that companies approach their enterprise companies, I guess, would approach database management and workload analytics and all that. So if we could let's talk a little bit about fortified data and wisdom and what you're doing there.
[00:28:50] Guest: Ben DeBow: Yeah. So there's two components. Because I always say software alone does not solve all the problems. You usually need software and people to help solve problems. So on the fortify data side, we've been managing data platform for organization before. It was sexy, before data was sexy. Right. And so when you think about what that really means, you know, whether it's NASCAR teams to insurance companies, every organization has data, that data needs to be managed, protected. Eventually once it's managed and protected, etc. you need to analyze, you need to do something with it or else you're not getting any value out of that data. So we are helping organizations not only manage that data, but also analyze that data so that they could get the value. And you think about the big push today with AI. And hey, I need to, you know, as Paul had said, it's like most companies don't understand what data they have. It's not clean. Who owns it? Where's it at? We are helping organizations understand those four questions and prep them and get them ready for AI. The second thing is, most people are also wanting to better understand and reduce costs or reallocate freed up capital. So then they could innovate faster in technology, and we're helping them do that. So we're actually providing them the financial cost of technology at different levels, which is enabling CFOs product owners and CIOs CXOs to have a single discussion around the dollar amounts of technology as well. So it's really a hybrid play for us helping clients around technology.
[00:30:25] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: Got it. Thanks. That's helpful. So I'm curious, as you look ahead to go out into the future, what do you see as the trends that are going to shape the next wave of technology efficiency? And then how do companies prepare for what's coming?
[00:30:43] Guest: Ben DeBow: Think about just so I went to the AWS Reinvent conference that's held in November, last weekend into December. What was released two years ago at the end of November, GPT right. So on that floor, it's a great conference. The exhibitor floor is huge. When you walked around, you saw security, all these other technologies, right? This year everybody had AI in their slogan and so forth. Even between that conference and now, which has only been essentially two and a half months, think about how much the technology has changed. The tough part with answering that question, Paul, is this the technology is changing at increasing frequencies and it's exponential. But the key thing is this so many of the basics, the fundamentals still exist. I still get my calls dropped on cell phones. We still talk on mute. We still have all these other challenges. Right. So number one A is not taking over. But how do I invest in my data. First and foremost to understand it make sure it's available and clean and so forth. The data is one of the most important assets that most organizations have. If you have solid data, you will be able to feed that into analytical models, you know, AI models, and you will be able to leverage that to make those important decisions. But without the fundamentals meaning solid technology infrastructure. Solid data awareness around an enterprise data strategy. You're going to be hampered in the future around, you know, keeping up with the competitors. And AI is enabling so many new startups to come online and or else if you are a business investing in the right areas and innovating the right amount and so forth, you're going to outpace those traditional competitors. So that's what you really need to watch out for is what are your competitors doing this? And, you know, how do you truly tap into some of these new technologies and think of things differently, but have an efficiency mindset, because everything you do in technology has a cost, and it's not just today costs, it's a 10 or 20 year cost.
[00:32:53] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: I was gonna say, I love just planting the seed here for people because if, you know, I don't know where where, you know, companies right now are with AI, it's all they're hearing is we're going to have to spend more on technology and we're going to have to. And so they're probably looking at that, you know, as a percent of their budgets grow. And then a lot of what you're saying today, I just don't know how many people are actually thinking about this. So it's important to be. And then, you know, with your expertise in there and to be able to find solutions for them, I think this is a great space to be in.
[00:33:22] Guest: Ben DeBow: Yeah. The simple one is I'm telling organizations two things, because AI is big and scary, and most orgs do not have the talent, the time, or are not ready for the data to be able to feed them. So even if the board said, hey, this is an amazing idea, I want you guys to do it. Go build me an AI widget next quarter. You're like, I don't know if I can write, I can build you a.
[00:33:44] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: But the data won't. Yeah.
[00:33:48] Guest: Ben DeBow: Yeah, yeah. You ask, "What's the weather tomorrow?” And you're like, yeah, we're having barbecue for dinner. You know, it's you know, the key thing is this two two things I'm telling organizations enterprise data strategy. Get your data in order okay. Number two is so many great organizations are in, startups are starting up. They're creating and solving niche problems. Leverage those services, AI services to solve some of your immediate problems where you could subscribe tomorrow. Yeah, maybe it's $0 today and it's $10 tomorrow, like Paul said. But test out and see what AI does well and see what AI does not do well. Today you start maturing. Solve 2 or 3 problems by using somebody else, investing in that while you start to educate yourself, get your house in order, and then you could start to align your stars and be better positioned to take advantage and invest in AI. Maybe in six months from now.
[00:34:48] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: I love to get your house in order. I mean, Glenn and I think preach that in one way or another, quite a bit. Like we want to use AI. It doesn't start with just throwing AI out there. Figuring out is your house in order, is your data there? What's the strategy. All those pre-work thing that we often want to skip because we just want the benefit. Well, you don't get the benefit without thinking and working on these things. There's a process here, and there's usually not a shortcut and how life works. All right. So we have some fun questions to ask you to get to know you a little bit. And I'm going to take the Glen approach today. Usually I let you pick a number or I let the random number generator pick. But I really liked one of the questions. So I'm going to go ahead and pick the one I ask. I use chat before you go.
[00:35:32] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: So this is interesting. And I think I'm going to break our rules too. This is the first time we've done this. If we don't, it's not the same question. But so what we normally do, Ben, is we take. So first we were just doing it generically, but now we take like your LinkedIn profile, if we have a pre-call anything we know about you, any kind of bio from your own website, and we load it into ChatGPT and we say, or we've tried, we do ChatGPT Claude, we've done Gemini, we used to do Bake offs, but now we used to just ask Asked generically, but now we're getting tailored questions, and apparently ChatGPT paid more attention than I did to your bio. So it's I see a lot of these questions here that I'm, I'm pretty interested in asking, but I'm, I'm not going to steal your thunder, Paul, because I, I'm wondering if you and I are both thinking we want to ask the same question, but.
[00:36:18] Guest: Ben DeBow: I'm betting what I, I'm betting what the question is. I could almost anticipate it, Paul. So I'm definitely anxious.
[00:36:24] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: I'm going to. I don't think you could. I think both of you will be surprised if you could give a Ted talk on any topic other than tech, what would it be?
[00:36:37] Guest: Ben DeBow: The power of nature.
[00:36:39] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: Elaborate it. Yes.
[00:36:41] Guest: Ben DeBow: Yeah. You guys are lucky that I'm not out in the woods somehow with a mic and a camera hooked on a tree right now, right? Or else I would totally be doing that, right? I grew up outside. When I got in trouble when I was small, I got grounded. That was my punishment. Today we ground a kid. It's interesting. It's almost like we need to send them outside without their cell phone. And that's the punishment, right? And you think about that. Nature is pretty powerful. You walk in the woods, you drop some stress. You're getting exercise. And then if you've had the most stressful day in the world, stand there. Look up. Unless a tree branch falls you. And that does happen sometimes. You figure out the world is not coming down on you, and you realize that, you know, nature is pretty powerful because you think about the problems we're solving. Nature solves them so much more quickly and stronger. And it's like, how do we leverage and benefit from nature more versus less? And even though I have technology companies, I love nature more.
[00:37:48] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: I like it. Thank you.
[00:37:50] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: Which leads to the environmental concern with everything that we do. And yet tech is a part of life. But if we want life to continue, we gotta pay. Pay some attention to the other side.
[00:37:59] Guest: Ben DeBow: Yeah. You're bringing up water earlier. Yeah. You think about some of those basic resources, and it is challenging because technology does run hot and you need a lot of water to be able to do that. But what are we going to drink. What are you going to, you know, aggregate your plants with.
[00:38:14] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: That's great. So okay, so my question so first off we already talked about Cincinnati and Memphis. And then I did notice in your bio that you mentioned barbecue, which I've recently moved to a townhouse which means my smoker my grills, everything that I had set up I had to leave behind. I have no, no place to put them anymore. So. But I do live. Yeah, I do live in Memphis, though, and I can throw a rock from my balcony and hit two different barbecue places, but it's not the same as cooking it. So I was going to ask about barbecue and we could, you know, debate, you know, North Carolina versus Memphis versus Kansas City or, you know, whatever. However, I really want to know more about mountain climbing. So. And is that where you thought, did you think mountain climbing is what I was going to ask about?
[00:38:59] Guest: Ben DeBow: I thought barbecue was going to be there. By the way, I've been in Memphis in May like five times in that competition. It's a blast. Four days of barbecue. Yeah. But so yeah. No, I think how do you challenge. Most of us can do a lot more than we ever think we can. And one of the things I do is, you know, I'm outside, but I want to go see things and I go climb different mountains. Not to the extent of like an average, but definitely go climb mountains. And it's awesome to see the sun come up in the morning and the curvature of the earth and those colors. Right. Or, you know, the challenge to get up there with weights and, you know, it's just, that's what I, you know, end up, you know, really diving and leading into because of the challenge and, you know, getting out there in the rain or the great weather. So it's just more of a fun outlet that gets me energetic.
[00:39:54] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: That's great. Do you have a favorite summit that you've done?
[00:39:57] Guest: Ben DeBow: I love well, you know anything from the Inca Trail in Machu Picchu? Hiking it through the sun? I call it the sun gates when it was raining to the mountains in Switzerland. So I was on a mountain top when I was 23. I came back actually just last year and hiked that one. There's so many different vistas. I think I like Europe because guess what? When you get to the top, most of the time they have these like some type of huts with the draft beer and home cooked food. And when you climb a mountain, if you could get that at the top, that's amazing. Yeah.
[00:40:32] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: I'm going hiking in Europe now. You convinced me.
[00:40:34] Guest: Ben DeBow: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So versus eating a freeze dried MRE or something like that, right?
[00:40:41] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: Fresh drinks, fresh food. That's a great place to end. We've covered barbecue, basketball, technology, anything else? Nature. I think we've covered a good gamut of the sport.
[00:40:53] Guest: Ben DeBow: Sporting, right? Yeah. I think I've had a great time talking to you guys. And, you know, it's how do we help, you know, both audiences, the business and technology work together and understand they're both valuable. And there's a huge amount of opportunity by partnering long term.
[00:41:10] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: Agreed. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Ben. It was a lot of fun. We had a good time. And you know, go jazz, not Memphis. Glenn.
[00:41:19] Host 2: Glenn Hopper: Yeah. Good luck. Jazz.
[00:41:20] Host 1: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the future finance show. And thanks to our sponsor, qflow.ai. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating and review on your podcast platform of choice, and may your robot overlords be with you.