330 Alexander Ladd

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Alexander Ladd, Mindstream Analytics CEO, is a prominent figure in technology innovation and change management. With over 15 years in financial software systems, his expertise is unmatched. Alexander's holistic approach, blending his history degree from Trinity College with technical acumen, provides unique insights into performance management.

His strategic guidance has benefited notable organizations, including the American Medical Association, Bayer Corporation and Verizon, making him an indispensable technological innovation and financial operations expert. 

And before we start this episode, a quick word from our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the 90 Day Deep Wealth Mastery Program. Here's Jane, a graduate who says, and I quote, the Deep Wealth Mastery Program prevented me from making what would have been one of the biggest mistakes of my career. I almost signed on the dotted line with an unsolicited offer that I now realized would have shortchanged my hard work and my future had I accepted that offer. Deep Wealth Mastery has tilted the playing field to my advantage.[00:01:00]

Or how about Lyn? Wow, he gets right to the point, and I quote, Deep Wealth Mastery is one of the best investments ever made because you'll get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anyone who doesn't go through this will lose millions. 

And as you're listening to these testimonials, are you wondering if you have the time? Are you even thinking that you've got this covered, you have the advisors or people in your network? Well, I got to tell you, these myths, they're often behind the 90 percent failure rate for liquidity events. Think about it. You have one chance to get it right for your financial freedom. You really want to make it count.

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So what do you think?

As I hear that, that's exactly what gets me out of bed every day. That's my mission. That's the team's mission here at Deep Wealth to literally change the social fabric of society. One business owner at a [00:02:00] time, one liquidity event at a time, and my Deep Wealth Nation, what I want you to know, the Deep Wealth Mastery Program, it isn't theory.

It's from the trenches. It's the only one based on a nine figure deal. And that deal, that was my deal. You know my story. I said no to a seven figure offer. I created the system that later on, myself and my business partners, we said yes to a different buyer, a different offer, a nine figure deal. That's what we now call the Deep Wealth Mastery Program or the scale for ultimate sales system.

It's from the trenches. It's built by business owners, for business owners, so if you're interested in growing your profits for preparing for a future liquidity event, and that may be two years away, it could be 22 years away, whatever the time may be, you want to do this now, and you want to optimize your post exit life, Deep Wealth Mastery is for you.

To get started, email success at deepwealth. com. Again, that's success. S U C C E S S at DeepWealth. com. You'll receive all the information about the [00:03:00] Deep Wealth Mastery Program or better yet, why not hop on a complimentary strategy call.

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Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. Well, you heard it in the official introduction. We have a rockstar with us [00:04:00] today, a business owner, a thought leader. I'm going to use the F word actually a couple of times. We're going to have some fun. We're also going to talk about some finances and the preparation around that.

And who knows where we're going to go. So I'm going to put a plug on it right there. Alex, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. And Alex, I'm really curious because there's always a story behind this story. So what's your story, Alex? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

Alexander Ladd: Well, thank you for the welcome. maybe I'll start with how I started the company that I run right now. And the story is actually not one of I've always been an entrepreneur. It's almost the exact opposite in this case. I was working for a company a very small company.

We're a consulting firm and I was working for a consulting firm at the time. And we had just been purchased by. Much larger firm. And about a year into this, we got purchased about two weeks before Lehman Brothers went under in 2008. So probably the, maybe the optimal time to sell, maybe not the optimal time to sell.

I guess it depends how you look at it, but the economy obviously had taken a different turn through 2009 and got to about same time, about a year later, [00:05:00] 2009. And I was talking to one of the partners who had sold the firm and told him that this really wasn't working out for me.

And I was going to be leaving and looking for a new job. And what he told me was, you've got a great reputation in the industry. You should try doing your own thing. It doesn't work out. People know you, they trust you, you'll get another job. So I always tell people, I'm really just looking for my next job still but that's really how it started.

And then, we've gone from there. it's been about 14 years. And there's been a lot of high points up and down and, it's been great though,

Jeffrey Feldberg: Alex, what a story. And a couple of things jump off the page for me. First, a good friend of mine, he always reminds me, he says, Jeffrey, timeliness is next to godliness. And so the company that you're at closing two weeks before the 08 debacle and everything that followed from there, I mean, no one could have known that you couldn't have planned for that.

But it also reminds me what my grandmother always used to tell me, Jeffrey, Never put off for tomorrow what you can do today because you just never know. And I'm sure if that deal were set to close two weeks after or four [00:06:00] weeks after, and you can say up or down, not a big deal, but it would have been a big deal.

I mean, that could have just put the whole thing off the rails with that. But the second thing I wanted to ask you about, and that's being a consultant where you're going from company to company, you have, depending on what you're doing, usually a wide breadth of different companies that you're looking at, different experiences.

So from a consulting mindset, before you started your own company, what were you seeing out there with the companies? And I'll ask it in two ways. The companies that were really successful, what was a one or two things that they were doing? And the companies that, well, you know, maybe not so successful, weren't doing so well, again, what would be the one or two things that they were either weren't doing, or they were doing that they should have stopped doing?

Alexander Ladd: The one thing I always come back to, and, this gets thrown around these days all the time. The one thing that comes back to like success is culture. You walk into a group of people and. You work with them. If they want to work with you and they're opening, they have their mind open, they're open and accessible to each other, they're going to be more likely to be openly accessible to new people in general, [00:07:00] whether it be a consultant, whether it be a new worker or whatnot, and they work together.

Whereas, you walk into some companies and everybody's Running around kind of hiding from each other or not talking to each other and more not cohesive as a team, but really individual performers. It doesn't get as far, you know, and they, constantly stumble in their own, cause they're getting in their own way.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Culture. So, yeah, so powerful in our nine step roadmap, step number two, X Factors, things that make you incredibly successful or not, things are world class for you. Culture, a rich, thriving culture is absolutely everything. All the money that your competition has, they can copy, they can buy, they can really do what you're doing, but they cannot buy culture when you're doing it right and when you have the right kind of culture.

So, Alex, I don't want to assume, I don't want to put words in your mouth, that cuts both ways for you that they're really successful companies. They had a great culture and the ones that weren't doing so well, perhaps it wasn't the best culture.

Alexander Ladd: That usually is the case. I mean, every once in a while you get somebody with a terrible culture that their product or their service or what have you is [00:08:00] so light years ahead of everybody else that, they can overcome that. on a financial basis, but for the most part, the people that exceed really have a good culture.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting. And you saw it from there. And let me ask you, so when you started Mindstream and you knew about the culture, you saw it go both ways. Were there any things that you did really deliberately? Okay. I'm starting my company. I want the culture to be A, B, C, and D. So I'm going to do E, F, G, and H. What did that look like for you?

That

Alexander Ladd: because I'm sure I, and I honestly believe this, but I screwed it up a number of times before I kind of landed on the formula. And I wouldn't even say I have the formula, I'd say I've gotten blessed with. Bringing in some other people that helped me like create and maintain a great culture.

One of the challenges that we had when we started was, we started in 09 and when you think about 09, obviously the economy had impacts this and that. But the other thing that was interesting for us is when we started. You pick the people that you work with that you trust the most when you start.

And those people, the company that had sold had just [00:09:00] started to really become more national as opposed to regional. And so some of those people were all over and spread out far and wide. And that became one of our challenges because we started as a remote company. When you think about consultants at the time, we traveled to our clients at that time, right?

So having an office didn't seem like The most important aspect of what we needed. And, but, over time, the office creates culture, right? That's a, when everybody's together, that's an easy way to start to create culture, right? So when we started, we were remote and it became something that we had to overcome right from the get go.

And like I said, we made mistakes, tons of mistakes along the way, but I think we've gotten to the point now where we have much, a pretty stable and nice culture.

Jeffrey Feldberg: was wonderful to hear. And it sounds like you really had a good training ground of seeing what was working, what wasn't working, and it's actually a terrific segue. So into Mindstream. And I know in preparing to talk with you today, when I went to your website, I saw a statement, two words. Transform finance.

And then the question, are you [00:10:00] happy with the reports you get? So for the benefit of our listeners, and especially for myself, Alex, because I would not put myself at the top of the class for finance. In fact, I'd put myself probably below a kindergarten level when it comes to that. I'm very fortunate. I surround myself with really smart people, particularly in the finance area, much smarter than myself.

But what was the unique problem that you found that you said, you know what? No one's really dealing with this. It's causing a lot of pain. It's causing the marketplace to really be up at night feeling that pain. I'm going to solve it. What was going on?

Alexander Ladd: what I think we really do well as a company and as a group of people, when we're consulting with clients is listen to the customer and try and solve their pain points. And we're, we help them implement systems, exist, so we're not developers, well, we are to a degree, but, our primary mission is not developing something brand new.

Our primary mission is to help you leverage what's there and get the most out of what's there. Listening to the customer becomes. Paramount in that case, right? And figuring out what they're doing and what they could possibly do better. And at the end of the day, you can buy software from all kinds of different vendors and [00:11:00] things like that.

But ultimately way you set it up and to make it the easiest to use is going to drive the most efficiency. Because we've all seen things that are super complex. And yeah, if you learn how to do it or use it correctly, it, it saves, mass amounts of time for you. But the. The amount of knowledge or the ramp that you have to take to get to that level of knowledge for it to actually save you that much time can be prohibitive.

And what you really need is something easy to use and then take baby steps to get more efficient and more efficient, right? And get better and deeper into your analytics.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so when you look at it from that vantage point, I'm going to go to what some people call Pareto's law, more commonly known as the 80 20 rule. So for, I don't know, what would be the 20 percent of the issues that are creating 80 percent of the problems for people or clients that you're speaking to before they become customers, that you come in and you help them solve, what would that be for you?

Alexander Ladd: Really, we see in a lot of clients is, as they get bigger, and this is an easy one, I guess, in my industry to say, and I feel bad, but what [00:12:00] happens really is Excel. It's the most wonderful, most powerful tool that I think, that exists on a computer, really, right?

But it's also one of the most deadliest tools that exists on a computer because you do it one way in Excel, I do it a different way in Excel. And then we're starting to put our stuff together and all of a sudden it doesn't match up or something missing. And, you have to check it 10, 000 times to make sure that a formula is just not off here or there.

And the bigger the company gets, the less reliant it can be. It has to be less reliant on Excel or, kind of hodge podge things that as you grow. Great. As you're growing, growth's not always pretty, it's not always fun, and sometimes you have to, make do with what you have. But as you go back, and as you grow, those systems start to fall down, right?

we've all been there as things grow and see, something that's not an issue today gets amplified as you grow. And, you know, it might be a small issue today, but as you grow, it becomes a bigger and bigger issue. And the same thing happens in finance departments and things like that.

Because at the end of the day, When you're a CEO or a CFO or anybody that's like figuring out where to put your capital, the finance department, [00:13:00] usually gets the lowest, you know, the lowest priority, right? You're going to put it at the sales team, at marketing, at quicker or faster production.

You know, I get all that. I do the same thing. Okay. totally understand that. But at the same time, finance needs some love too, right?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. I hear you on that and you are really preaching to the choir. And so talk to us a little bit about this because Our community at Deep Wealth, they hear us say it all the time, and you and I offline, we're talking about this, that Jeffrey, preparation is really key, particularly on the financial side.

Whether you're growing a business, you want to increase your profits, or maybe your profits aren't where you want them to be. You want to make a change in that, or perhaps you're taking some risk off the table. You're going to have some. Liquidity Venture, you're raising capital or a full exit, everything else in between.

So what's going on from that side? What are you seeing, Alex? What would you be sharing with our community of what you guys are doing? How that's making a difference where there may be some blind spots for our community, you know, the typical, again, the 80 20 rule here on the finance side. Hey guys, you probably don't realize it, but here's what's heading your way.

You better be ready for it.

Alexander Ladd: [00:14:00] Yeah. know, I think along those lines, as you go down the road, we started with QuickBooks. I'm sure almost every company started with something similar to that, right? Very inexpensive, easy to stand up and get going. And then as you mature, you probably moved on to something else depending on where you are in your life cycle.

one of the things QuickBooks is it lets you set up the fundamentals. I can bill people, I can receive payments, et cetera. Great. Easy, but what are you doing analytically? Do you know what's driving the, those sales and those receipts? Do you know your KPIs? Do you have those organized?

Are you looking at them regularly? And most people, they know what their KPIs are, maybe, Some don't, I guess, but most people know kind of what their KPIs are, but they don't know, they're not looking at them regularly because getting that information is too difficult. Going back to Excel, well, I have to take a dump out of this, and I have to grab this, and then I have to spend four hours, mish mashing it together in Excel.

So, you know, that's too much. I have a pretty good idea of where they are. I'll just keep letting it ride and do this exercise next month. [00:15:00] Well, if you can automate that, you can see that all the time. And there's a whole host of financial metrics that you may not be judging yourself on, but somebody else will be.

Especially if you get towards any of the events that you just talked about, whether you're taking some money off the table, whether there's a liquidity event, whether it's, you know, number of things that might happen are, there's a lot of them and being prepared for that, having all your numbers in line, being able to illustrate that you have control of that goes a long way just in and of itself.

And of course, if you do have control of that and you can see all of that you're going to be able to make better decisions. Cause we all think we know our numbers and then we look at something and, oh, wait a minute. This is a little different than I thought. I mean, how many times does that happen?

It happens to me. do this for a living and it still happens to me regularly. So

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And you're talking about the KPIs, the key performance indicators. Alex, as you're talking about that, I had two flashbacks. So the first was when we had the unsolicited offer for the company that ended up being the seven figure offer. Ultimately, I said no [00:16:00] to, and it was interesting because as we say now at Deep Wealth from that experience, You're always guilty.

You're never innocent. And every single investor or buyer, really in the back of their mind, they may not be saying this, but they're saying, okay, show me all the reasons why I'm going to penalize your company. Show me all the reasons why I'm going to lower the value of the company. I'm going to walk away from this deal because it's risk on, not risk off.

And when I went in front of that buyer for the first time, I wasn't prepared. I didn't really know these numbers, all kinds of skeletons came out and it was just a catastrophe. Yes, the buyer was being a typical buyer, that wolf in sheep's clothing, as I like to say, but I was playing the typical entrepreneurial role.

As I like to say at Deep Wealth, don't shoot the messenger. You know, As business owners, we can be really smart, but really dumb. And we're really dumb in the sense that we're not being prepared. We believe the skills that built the business are the same ones that sell it. It really isn't. So the next question I'm going to ask you, you could easily say, and you'd be right, well, Jeffrey really depends on the company, where they're at, the industry.

But here's the question, generally speaking, what would be some [00:17:00] KPIs that really move the dial that perhaps I may not even know about, or I'm not measuring, or are hard to calculate? Anything that you can shed on that, any light on that?

Alexander Ladd: yeah, one actually that came up to me lately that I really hadn't been tracking closely on our, dashboards and things like that was the rule of 40. Have you, yeah, I don't know if you guys talk about that regularly or not, but that was something that kind of, wait a minute I knew even a growth and revenue growth were important.

I get that. And, we track that regularly. Of course, I think we all probably track revenue. That's a kind of easy one that's right out of the box, right? But your growth percentage and then the rule of 40, and how they apply together. That kind of caught me off guard a little bit because I always track them separately and rule 40 starts to put them together.

So that's one that would apply to all industries. I would imagine, right? And then, I mean, otherwise there's a lot of other cash metrics and balance sheet metrics that you can get into that people are going to look at that you as an owner, that's not going to maybe affect your day to day cash position, but you should know.

Because the buyer's want to know them, and then they're going to, like you said, penalize [00:18:00] you or not for where you are.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so let me ask you this. So you're talking about the rule of 40 and for our listeners who aren't really aware of that, they haven't heard of it. mean, not always, but usually it, and it may have even started in the software industry with SaaS based companies saying that the combined revenue growth rate and your profit margin should be at least 40%, if not more on that.

But what's going on with that? And you're saying really all companies should be doing this. So where are we missing the boat on that one?

Alexander Ladd: Well, I just don't think people think to put it together, you know what I mean? It's actually not that hard a complicated formula. Like you said, it's revenue growth percentage plus EBITDA growth percentage, or whatever bottom line percentage growth you're going to be using. Most people these days, I think, are using EBITDA.

But if you're using something else that, you would add that growth together. And it's just a simple addition of those two growth rates. But that's, most people don't think to put that together.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Alex, from that side of things, I'm thinking of someone who's in the community and they're saying, okay, Alex, help me out here. I'm hearing what you're saying, but where do you fit in exactly? Because we have our accounting software that we're [00:19:00] using and yeah, I'm going to make this next part up, Alex.

My sales department, yeah, they're using Excel to track the ratios and the marketing, they're doing their own side of things. So Alex, how would you come into that picture and really begin to automate and streamline things? What does that look like?

Alexander Ladd: So what we typically do is we'll help a customer, if you're in that position, most people think about their general ledger, like you think about QuickBooks, you think about a NetSuite or a Xero or something like that, that's going to fit in that small business. Area, right? And then, I mean, as you grow older, you know, if you're, more mature, you're a bigger company.

Maybe you're on like an Oracle or an SAP or something like that's fine, or a Workday. That's fine. But most people think about that general ledger and that's, we're going to do the mechanics of your, accounting, You're invoicing your cash receipts, things like that, booking your expenses, et cetera.

But then when you get into the analytics piece, how are you doing that? Most people are going to be downloading information from that general ledger in Excel and then adding it up, and measuring growth rates, calculating growth rates, calculating any kind of key performance indicators in Excel.

And so that [00:20:00] takes time usually that's a lot of manual effort. And I've met tons of people who tell me no, no, I'm really good at Excel. So this doesn't take time. It's all automated. It's not, and really what's out there, there's so many packages out there that you can put on top of all of these systems that will help you automate that and give it real time to you whenever you need it.

As soon as you close your books, you should be able to see all of those components, all of those ratios. And that should just flow through. So really what we can help you do is pick out the right software to help you do that automation because everybody's in a different situation and what they need.

you're a different industry, there's might be something that's more specific to you because it, it hooks up to some kind of production system that maybe, is unique in your industry. you know, in our industry. Project management systems, timesheet systems, drive, our biggest key performance indicator, which is utilization, right?

So, all those things matter, and then we'll help you select something and help you put it in place so that every month, every quarter, you can see what's going on and gives you a nice, easy readable dashboard that just automatically pops [00:21:00] up. And that's really what we're trying to help you do.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And for our listeners, Alex, I want to take something and put that out to them. For our listeners, let's say you're spending 20 minutes a day, just going into Excel, you're rejigging the different statistics, you're getting your KPIs, 20 minutes, I think I'm being on the low side, but let's just go with 

Alexander Ladd: I think so too, but that's fine.

Jeffrey Feldberg: and so, if I'm doing my math correctly, let's assume it's 20 minutes a day and we're not going to do a full 52 weeks, we'll do maybe 50 weeks a year. So roughly that's right around 84 hours. 84 hours, you're really losing every year, 84 hours. So, and if I do 84 hours, if I divided that by 24, I mean, that's like working three and a half days straight.

You know, Obviously we wouldn't be doing that, but 84 hours a year, what could you do in 84 hours a year? And the question is, or really the answer is a lot, 84 hours is a lot. that's just on the small side here.

Alexander Ladd: Because I think when you get to What I've found is that when someone says it takes me 20 [00:22:00] minutes a day or whatever the number they'll throw at you is, that's when everything's working perfectly and you haven't done something that changes. As the company grows, oh, I have five new employees.

Well, then I have to spend an hour that day getting it, right? Or something like that. It's never really as low as people think it is. Number one. And number two is the other aspect of that is that's great. But if I can give you all of the information that you're spending 20 minutes a day getting, what if you spent the other 19 digesting that and maybe digging a little deeper into the ones that are not really where you thought they were?

You just, that information alone might help you, add another 5 percent of revenue or something like that. And that's where your big payoff is because, oh, hey, this particular metric's out of whack a little bit. All right. learned that in a minute instead of 20 minutes of preparation and then some analysis time.

Now I know it right off the bat. As soon as I wake up in the morning, I can dig into that and I'll spend 20 minutes digging into that. Now I know the exact cause for that.

And how can I fix that, because that's really where you want to take this.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Alex, your point, there's a saying out there, if you want to change your life, change the [00:23:00] questions. So changing the question, it's not, okay, how do I manipulate, these KPIs or how am I going to get this to work today? What's that formula? Oh, what's that formula? Let me look up the formula.

Instead of asking that question, it's okay, what's going on here? Oh, isn't that interesting? This change, why did this go up? Why did this go down? Why is this flat? We're changing the question and in those 20 minutes or in those 19 minutes, it took you 30 seconds to pull it or whatever or read it. Wow, what a difference.

So now you're spending the 85 hours of really doing a deep dive. You're analyzing, you're getting those eureka moments. Ah, I never thought about it that way. Let's go do this instead of doing that. That can make all the difference or really put you on a different trajectory. To create that market disruption or stop that money losing activity that you're doing and now make it a profit making activity.

Thoughts 

Alexander Ladd: exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah you're improving, you're spending those eight, four hours improving the company versus really where you want to be.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so I know when I went to your website, I saw some really big names out there. They are known worldwide and I'm thinking [00:24:00] to myself as a business owner, okay, you know what, Alex, that's great. You have all those, I call them the royalty of business up there, those really big multinational bazillion dollar companies.

That's not where we're at. So how would you really fit in with someone who's more a small to mid sized business? What does that look like in terms of what you're doing and why they need you more than they think they do?

Alexander Ladd: Yeah, no, that's a great question. And just to, I mean, that's marketing, right? So we're obviously going to share the big names in the royalty because that's brand recognition, et cetera. But you know, Our customers range from zero dollars in revenue or pre revenue startups all the way up to some of those big companies.

So we really do fit in a lot of different ways. And obviously the tools we're going to use for different companies, the size of the project, etc. Obviously it varies significantly. But you know, one of the things we can do on the smaller side of the business is, we can help you know what those ratios are.

For starters, we can give you something that fits your size. one of our. Kind of most voluminous side. I won't say they're not the biggest in the revenue percentage, [00:25:00] but one of the biggest volume with number of customers on our side is we work a lot with companies that run NetSuite and those companies range in size, from, like I said, pre revenue all the way up to.

Eight billion a year in revenue. So there's a big, wide breadth of different size companies in that range. So there's a lot of different things and they all have different challenges and they're all looking at different things. And that's okay. There's something out there for everybody and we can improve it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so while it sounds like, and again, I don't want to put words into your mouth. You can say, Jeffrey, you're on base or off base. So it sounds like really what's going on. You've let the other software companies do what they do best, whether it be in the financials or for the entire company, whatever it's doing, but you're now doing what you do best because you fit over those and you're putting in very specific analyses and KPIs and statistics that save.

Countless hours of having to do this and it's all automated and you can just have it show up on your dashboard or in your email inbox and it's just a done for you kind of solution. How am I doing with that?[00:26:00]

Alexander Ladd: That's right. That's essentially what we offer. I mean, the goal really is to help everybody understand their business. And we want you to spend those at the, I forget what one minute out of those 84 hours, but let's say it's 83 hours roughly, or 83, 10 come out to, we want that time spent improving the business not doing clerical work because that's not value added.

That's

Jeffrey Feldberg: And speaking of value add, by the time this podcast comes out, the question I'm going to ask, it may be obsolete already. I'm talking about artificial intelligence, AI. So I'm curious from the back end, from the front end. What are you seeing with AI in terms of the financial world? How is this helping you, Alex?

Is there AI that you're looking at in terms of what you're doing and where are we going with that? So how's that for a really confusing, multifaceted question? A whole bunch of questions in one, but AI in general, what's going on with that? What do you want us to know?

Alexander Ladd: All right, so I think there's two distinctions that we have to start with because from what I do versus what you hear about, everybody hears about ChatGPT and large language models and things like that. they're having their place in our future without question. [00:27:00] And they will change the way we work in a lot of different ways that I am probably not remotely qualified to tell you all of them.

But they're going to have one impact when it comes to the financial world and finances. Where you're really going to see that is, yeah, there'll be some element of AI coming in, don't get me wrong, but those large language models aren't really built do what we do or do what the software we want to help you with does.

When you step into that world, what you really start talking about is machine learning. Which is still kind of in that AI bank, don't get me wrong, but it's slightly different because it's more numerical based versus like language based, right? When you think about like large language model, language right in the name, this, the machine learning that we're thinking about is much more you, we all took, well, maybe we didn't all, but a lot of us took statistics in college or high school or something like that.

And, that's in more in that bed, that machine learning. Recognizing patterns, et cetera, in your data, what's going to be repetitive, help you drive forecasts either by product or by department or by supplier or something like that. That's where you're going to [00:28:00] see the biggest impact and we're already seeing it.

And if you really want to read, if you're really interested in that, one of the best references you can be. And by when I say the best reference, this is it's a lot, but you can really get a lot out of it too, is Microsoft publishes their blog. Publish their financial journey of implementing machine learning on their financial planning and forecasting process.

And they have writers from throughout the organization, whether it be financial people or the CFO, like the group CFOs within Microsoft to the technologists. To the IT people who have to support it, it's a great resource if you really want to learn about what it's like to implement kind of machine learning for forecasting and probability analysis in finance.

That's a great reference, but that's what you're going to see in that story of they will talk about is, you look at little bite sized pieces and you're going to bring statistical models to bear. With pieces of your financial areas, so whether it be supplier analysis or maybe certain suppliers for a [00:29:00] certain type of equipment or et cetera, depends on the breadth depth of your data And, kind of, and your type of company, but that's how we'll see it come in. So we'll all be working with some kind of AI type model, whether it be kind of more statistical machine learning bent, or, if you're in marketing or some more language or linguistic heavy skill set AI large language models that you hear about on chat GPT and stuff like that.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And I'm going to put you on the spot. This is a tough question. It's anyone's guess. And it's somewhat time limited because it's changing so quickly. What's your prediction with AI as it pertains to the world of finance and KPIs and doing all these different dashboards, where do you see that going?

Alexander Ladd: I think that's a great question and I think that there's I guess let me start with a way I see it impacting our business. Number one is we do some, computer code development when we do some of this implementation. I think that, that leverage of that, we're already, our developers are already [00:30:00] leveraging, chat GPT and things like that to make them more efficient.

Because it can write the baseline code and then you adjust it. So that's already happening. In the future, it will, that will pick up and it'll become more and more, right? So you will, get a much more highly efficient workforce when they're augmented by AI. And probably that's more of a.

I don't want to use the hockey stick curve, but that's just going to keep going up and up at a pretty significant rate. then when you're talking about the financial aspect of it and what our customers see of that, they're all going to be using models. We're all going to have to learn how to, when you think about implementing kind of these statistical machine learning models.

You'll talk about training the model and stuff like that. if that's something you are not familiar with that term now, you will be in the future, right? We're all going to be using these models, whether they're kind of implied or whether you're using it, but they're all of the, everything you're using going forward in finance.

The other thing is, how do you think your credit card shut off your, or alert you if they think there's fraud, these are all similar models like that. they're going through your charges. It doesn't fit the [00:31:00] pattern. it flags the pattern.

Jeffrey Feldberg: What's really exciting about that. And again, you can say, Jeffrey, you're way off base. You're on base. As I think about AI, and I know I'm overgeneralizing big picture wise, what to me becomes exciting as a business owner. So someone like myself, who's in kindergarten or maybe pre kindergarten with my comfort with finance and all the stats and everything else that goes along with it.

I can foresee a day where it's AI who's learned the company, knows what's going on, it's fully integrated, perhaps with a package like yours behind the scenes that you can really, right now we're typing it in, but eventually I believe it's going to just be all audio, maybe even I'll go way down the path, holographic.

And I'm saying, okay, AI genie, given my business, what are some KPIs that I'm not looking at that I should be? What can I do to accelerate my growth or help me increase profits or decrease some areas that I'm overspending in? Talk to me about that, create some dashboards for me, and poof, it'll go out there and do it.

What do you think about that?

Alexander Ladd: I think that is 100 percent accurate. That is I think that, I believe that's what will happen. And if the basis for that is if you start looking at these statistical models, you'll start seeing [00:32:00] correlations in the data that you didn't think existed. It happens with every customer.

As they get into this and they want to get into that statistical analysis of what really drives it, you have to do the base analysis of where your correlations are. And what always falls out is some correlation they didn't know.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's 

Alexander Ladd: And so based on that, I think AI will find that is where I'm going because the computational power and the power to be able to do all that it'll do it for you and it'll start telling you what your KPIs are, not telling you know, not you telling it type thing.

Jeffrey Feldberg: What's interesting about that, behind the scenes, Alex, on a very limited basis, so at Deep Wealth, we have our 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery System, where people can learn the same strategies that I went from saying no to a seven figure offer to a nine figure offer. But better yet, they have the strategies that I really didn't do or that I failed in reverse engineered, and they have that.

But then from there, on a very limited basis, we become a success coach or a chief exit advisor. And one of the things that we work with these companies, whether they're raising capital or they're gonna have some kind of exit or liquidity event, something [00:33:00] in between. With that, we're looking for what are the levers in this company that accelerate growth, that have us show up for the liquidity event, a more valuable company.

And right now it's a bit of a grind. To really get behind, okay, big picture wise, we know what the levers are. They're usually, there's only two or three that accelerate profits, that accelerate the turn of which we're doing sales that accelerate our growth, but then going behind the scenes and putting the KPIs together and then tracking those.

We get it, but with the tools that are available right now, it's not the quickest or easiest thing to do. And so with what you're doing, with where AI is heading, I can imagine how we can actually save a lot of time and effort and just get there a whole lot quicker. Thoughts about that?

Alexander Ladd: I definitely would agree with you around that. I mean, there's also, when you think about all the efficiencies you can free up, I mean, we talk about the KPIs and things like that, but also simple tasks. You know, Like one of the things I talked about earlier, even like you set up your QuickBooks, you set up whatever your GL is, and just, sending out [00:34:00] invoices, receiving cash, doing your account reconciliations, AI can do all of that.

Those are tasks. It's going to maybe have a hundred of them. does 99 automatically and flags the last one for you to look at or something like that. Get to the point where are we even going to be measuring KPIs anymore?

Is it just going to tell us this one's out of whack today? Oh, I didn't even know we measured that. Why is it out of whack? And it's probably going to tell us why too.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's exciting where it's heading. So let me ask you this as you're talking about that and we'll leave AI to AI and wherever it's going to go and what that looks like, but present day, so right now, a lot of companies will have these very high ticket items, otherwise known as a chief financial officer or a controller or an accountant that are.

Really crunching the numbers, doing all these things. Alex, when I'm working with you and team and I put your system in place, what does that mean for my financial people in terms of their time? How does that change their day and what they're able to do and getting their time back?

Alexander Ladd: It goes back to those 84 hours we talked about. I mean, that's not just for the person [00:35:00] that is doing that one task. that should cascade through everything, right? So it's not just one person that's getting that, like that particular group of hours back, but you should be able to do something like that for every person in your finance team.

Because that's the capabilities that are out there right now. And if you're not, you want to look at, you know, listen, they cost money, but like you got to do that return on investment. You should do that analysis because it's worth doing. You can save just we run a pretty lean finance team here at Mindstream and, you can go back and look at it, but we invest in technology heavily.

, there's tons of platforms and they're getting better every day and new ones are coming out every day. At the least, what you want to do is talk to people like myself or somebody else that knows what's out there so you can see what you need and where you can get those.

Cause there's just so many things, I mean, like that AI model that I talked about with account reconciliations, that pretty much exists already for the most part. I mean, yeah, it'll get better, it'll get more advanced, but maybe it's not to 99 out of a hundred right now, but it's definitely at 90.

So if you can already free up [00:36:00] 90, that's going to save you time right there. So, I mean, there's efficiencies around the board. And I also, one of my pet peeves with software is I don't care how pretty it is. I care how easy it is to use. And I care how much more efficient does it make you?

And I feel some software companies have lost that goal, right? Well, it's got to look pretty. Well, great. Now I've got to click 72 times to get to where, what used to take me six. So that doesn't, that's not an efficiency gain, right? But you know, they're out there, those efficiency gains, and I would be looking for them constantly the software is expensive, but it's less expensive than adding more people.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. More people, more expenses, more logistics, more challenges. The list just goes on and on. And

Alexander Ladd: Exactly. with what you're doing, Alex, you can just really streamline things and get things out there a whole lot quicker. But let me ask you this, before we go into wrap up mode, I'm wondering, is there a question I didn't ask or a topic we haven't covered, or even a message that you like to get out to the community?

The message I would like to get out to the community, and you're never too small to start with this stuff because there's, different levels of all of these software [00:37:00] packages and there's something that will fit you where you are today.

And you shouldn't be afraid to go look because it might be a little money, but it'll save you a lot of time.

Jeffrey Feldberg: That's a great message because how often, and I've been there myself, Oh, I'm not big enough for that yet. Or that's really for the huge companies when in fact I'm shortchanging myself and it really isn't. It's designed for that. So that's a terrific message to get out there and get that out there. And similarly, before we go into wrap up mode, if there's one action That a listener could do today.

So right when this episode wraps up, before they make their next phone call, they have their email, their next meeting, whatever that's going to be going on with that, before they go on with the next activity for the day, what would be one action, a low hanging fruit? Low effort, high reward. Any thoughts on that, of what they could do?

Alexander Ladd: Okay. This is a little leading. I'll admit to that. Okay. but I would say one action you can do is have you checked all your financial metrics today? Like, where's your cash? what's your bank balance? What's your AR, what's your AP? Have you actually checked that?

That's the one action I would, because I've been [00:38:00] there myself, we all do it, right? I'm sure we've all gone a few days, a week, whatever the case may be, without checking it. So if you're checking those things every day, what else should I be checking every day? So just think of that, think of what you would want to know every day, and know what you should know every day.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah terrific strategy, and you never know what comes up. Oh, that's odd. Why is this like this? the better or not for the better, but at least we're on top of that.

Alexander Ladd: Yeah, Yeah.

Jeffrey Feldberg: that. Well, we're going to go into wrap up mode. It's a tradition here on the Deep Wealth Podcast, where every guest, I have the privilege of asking this question.

Alex, this is a really fun one. I'm going to set this up for you. So, when you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time. So Alex, the fun part is tomorrow morning, you look outside your window, not only is the DeLorean car curbside, the door is open, it's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do, and you're now going to go back to any point in your life.

Alex, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be, what are you telling your younger self in terms of life wisdom or lessons learned? [00:39:00] Or, hey, Alex, do this, but don't do that. What would that sound like?

Alexander Ladd: I don't know that I could actually get myself to do this, but what I would attempt to do,

 I moved to the United States when I was about five years old. And up until that point, I was bilingual. And when I moved to the United States my parents were working overseas, and which is why I was born overseas.

And when I moved back to the United States, I was bilingual up until that point. when we moved to the United States, I stopped speaking my second language. And I would go back and convince myself to keep that up because I think that is one of my biggest regrets.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Huh. Well, there's a whole story behind the story in that one. So what was going on? Where were you born? What was that language? And what's going on with that?

Alexander Ladd: I was born in Brazil. My father worked for Gillette, then Bausch Lomb at the time in Brazil. And so I was born there and I lived there. Until I was five. And then he accepted a job back in the United States and we moved. So for my parents, it was moving back to the United States, but of course I was born in Brazil, so I was really moving to the United States.

So I don't [00:40:00] know, maybe I'm moving back. I don't know how you want to count that but up until that time, I had spoke Portuguese as well as I spoke English. when I got here, I was so homesick. I stopped. I refuse to speak to anyone in Portuguese and, the thing about a language is if you don't use it, you lose it.

So that's the part that I regret.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, so true. Use it or lose it, not just for languages, but for so many other things. Exactly. Exactly. 

languages and, sadly for myself, well. Alex, I speak three languages. I speak English, English, and English. You can pick any one of those three.

Okay. And we're good. But outside of that, I so often wish, I wish I could speak that mother tongue of wherever they're from, because you see their face light up. And in my family, my grandparents, my uncle, they would speak seven, eight languages, and I would see firsthand when they saw someone else who was.

From whatever country and they spoke that country. Oh my goodness. The barriers were broken down. There were smiles. There was laughter. It's just amazing.

Alexander Ladd: It is amazing. It really is. then it's one of my biggest [00:41:00] regrets because I wish I could speak more. I feel like once you learn the first one, the second and third come a little easier, right? Because your brain is a little more wired that way.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. So use it or lose it. And maybe the other takeaway is, Hey, if you're only like Jeff, you're only speaking one language, pick up another language, make that a passion project for you on the side and then start conversing with people. I absolutely love that. Well, a couple of things, Alex. It's official.

Congratulations. This is a wrap of the Deep Wealth episode. And as we wrap things up, one of the question for you, if someone has a question or they want to learn more, they want to get a demo, or they want to really say, Hey, transform my company. Let's get this going. Let's get the Mindstream system into our systems.

Where's the best place to find you online?

Alexander Ladd: Well, I'm on LinkedIn. That's probably my best. But otherwise, our website's MindStreamAnalytics. It's all one word dot com. And just get on there and tell them you want to talk to me and they'll find me. But yeah, and my email is alad at MindStreamAnalytics. com and people are welcome to reach out with questions.

I try to answer every email I get. So

Jeffrey Feldberg: And [00:42:00] folks, there you have it. Alex gave us his personal email address for the business, so reach out to him, take him up on his offer. And the great news is, as always, this is in our show notes. It'll be a point and click, and you don't have to remember any of this. It's just all there for you. Well, Alex, once again, congratulations.

This is a wrap. And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Alexander Ladd: thank you. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. Did you find this episode helpful? Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

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