A Developer Toolkit for FP&A Professionals and Various Musings with Microsoft MVP Jordan Goldmeier
In this episode of FP&A Unlocked, host Paul Barnhurst welcomes back Jordan Goldmeier, Excel expert, author, and longtime friend of the show, for a wide-ranging and honest conversation about careers, technology, and growth. Jordan reflects on his unconventional career path, from auditing and operations research to becoming a Microsoft MVP, author, and entrepreneur. The discussion covers Excel’s evolution, why many finance professionals underuse powerful tools, and Jordan’s latest projects aimed at modernizing how power users work with spreadsheets.
Jordan is an entrepreneur, event producer, author, and Microsoft Excel MVP based in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. He is widely known for his work helping professionals master Excel, data analysis, and modern spreadsheet practices. Jordan has authored several well-known books, including Advanced Excel Essentials, Dashboards for Excel, and Becoming a Data Head. In addition to his work in Excel education, he produces global events that bring together leaders across finance, technology, and entrepreneurship.
Expect to Learn:
How Jordan’s career twists shaped his approach to Excel, data, and problem-solving
Why most professionals only scratch the surface of Excel’s capabilities
Jordan’s perspective on why VBA is outdated and what could replace it
Why vertical learning beats beginner–intermediate–advanced training paths
Here are a few quotes from the episode:
“Excel isn’t dead, but the way we develop in it needs to change.” – Jordan Goldmeier
“You don’t become great by learning everything. You become great by going deep where it matters.” – Jordan Goldmeier
Jordan also shares the story behind his latest project: a developer-style environment designed to help Excel power users work faster, cleaner, and more confidently, without relying on outdated tools like VBA. He explains why Excel should be treated as part of a broader finance tech stack and how modern coding concepts could dramatically improve spreadsheet workflows.
Campfire: AI-First ERP:
Campfire is the AI-first ERP that powers next-gen finance and accounting teams. With integrated solutions for the general ledger, revenue automation,
close management, and more, all in one unified platform.
Explore Campfire today: https://campfire.ai/?utm_source=fpaguy_podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=100225_fpaguy
Follow Jordan
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordangoldmeier/
Earn Your CPE Credit
For CPE credit, please go to earmarkcpe.com, listen to the episode, download the app, answer a few questions, and earn your CPE certification. To earn education credits for the FP&A Certificate, take the quiz on Earmark and contact Paul Barnhurst for further details.
In Today’s Episode:
[00:00] –Trailer
[02:15] – Jordan’s Career Journey
[08:30] – Setbacks, Resets, and Growth
[15:00] – Writing Books on Excel
[25:59] – How Excel Is Really Used
[29:12] – Why VBA Is Outdated
[33:54] – Building Better Tools for Excel
[42:25] – Advice for FP&A Professionals
[47:16] – Creating Your Own Network
[52:12] – Rapid-Fire & Final Thoughts
Full Show Transcript
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:00:44):
Things. Welcome back to another episode of FP&AUnlocked. Are you tired of being seen as just a spreadsheet person? Will others get a seat at the table? Well then welcome to FP&A lot where finance meets strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, the fp and a guy. Each week we bring you conversations and practical advice from thought leaders, industry experts and practitioners. Together we'll uncover the strategies and experiences that separate good fp a professionals from great ones helping you elevate your career and drive strategic impact. Speaking of strategic impact, our title sponsor for FP&A Unlocked is campfire, the ERP. That's helping modern finance teams close, fast and scale faster. So today's guest I'm thrilled to have on the show. I had him on fp and a today, three and a half years ago now. He was the first guest I ever interviewed, Jordan Goldmine. Welcome.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:01:43):
Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here once again with you, Paul. Now three and a half years later and what, 300 some interviews later, is that right?
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:01:54):
Yes, it's 300 podcast interviews and another 50 shows I've probably been on. So done this a few times now. Hopefully I'll be a little crisper than last time. You really have. I think you were in New York last time as well, just different apartment.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:02:08):
Yes, I was in New York last time. I am living in Lisbon now, but I do travel a lot, and so my work outside of Excel has brought me here.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:02:16):
I thought all your work was inside Excel.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:02:18):
No, as it turns out, I'm a multifaceted individual and I don't just do Excel. I do events. Some of those events are for Excel people and AI people, but I also do events just in general to meet people, to meet new people and expand my network. And I had one here in New York City.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:02:35):
Yeah, no, I know you've lived there for several years. So why don't we start, tell our audience a little bit about your background, what you've done, what you're doing today, your career story. Give us a little bit of the Jordan overview.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:02:46):
Okay, so where did I start? I think we did this last time on your first interview, and I would say that I started as an auditor. I mean, my real story is that I started coding when I was 10. I checked out some books at the library. I always thought, how do you get a computer to do something? And I learned how to code just by reading those books at the time. I didn't have a way to code them up, so I just thought about it. Well, fast forward a few years, I enter into college and it's after the.com boom. And my dad says to me, you know, should really become an accountant because look what happened during the.com boom for programmers. So I went his route and I studied accounting, but I still loved programming and I think I got a minor in computer science anyway, and it's funny, I did really well in those classes.
(00:03:47):
In the accounting classes, I got c's. So I graduate and I think, okay, I'm going to become an auditor. So I was an auditor for the Air Force and I wasn't good at auditing, but they had all these old macros and nobody had updated them in years. And so because a coder, I went through and updated them, and then I realised that there was this formula language behind Excel, which I had maybe just a little bit of experience with. And to be honest with you, I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, but when I was in college, I had friends helping me out with the formulas. I didn't pay attention in class. I'm like, B lookup, what the hell is that? What is this stuff about? Absolute and relative references. Okay, well, when I was on the job, I picked it up very quickly because I still have a coding mine, and I was looking at my future in the accounting profession and I thought, God, this is so boring.
(00:04:43):
I couldn't do this. The Excel part was fun, but reading regulations on the weekends, I was working for the Air Force and I thought, God, this is just like, I mean, I remember they gave me a stack of things to read and I just zoned out for hours. I didn't know how people did it. So I realised that was not the job for me, but I had learned on the job how to code in Excel. And so I looked online and I saw all these people paying a lot of money for Excel developers. So I thought, okay, I'll go do that. And that's what I did. And I ended up in this research department also for the Air Force. If you work in Dayton, Ohio, you probably work for the Air Force. Yeah,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:05:23):
I was going to say, I know that's a big Air Force base, so that doesn't surprise me.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:05:27):
Yes. So they were doing a lot of this really complicated stuff in operations research, and this was maybe at the dawn of big data. So this was before we started really aggregating those huge amounts of data and trying to figure out what to do with it. So we didn't have data science as a discipline yet. So during this time I learned all these mathematical things that they tried to teach me in school, but I didn't get it because I'm more of a self learner. I taught myself the code, so I had to learn it on the job. It's not like with a test, you can run it a hundred times and then see where you failed. You really get one shot. So I did that for a while and that really, I started just getting into what Excel can do and pushing the boundaries on top of the fact that the people in these departments were running these financial projects, but they didn't have a finance background.
(00:06:21):
So I came in with this accounting and finance background, and I was able to actually solve all these other problems. So I did that for a while. My old boss there, so I had a boss there. He went and started his own company. So I worked with him for a while, and then about 2014, I decided I wanted to start my own company. So I did that for about a year and realised, well, as all entrepreneurs do, I made a lot of mistakes and I had to get a job back at work. So I started doing more of the same, more analytics, more data science, more coding in other platforms. And then at about 2018, I got divorced, then I got laid off, and then I remember because I got laid off, they called me up to say, you're not really doing any work. And I'm like, well, I just got divorced.
(00:07:12):
I mean, that just started two weeks ago. I am trying to deal with all that. And they're like, well, you need to get in here and fix X, Y, and Z. And I remember this so clearly because I went in to go. They were like, you got to get here now. So I remember it would take me an hour and a half to actually get there. I was working in New York, and so I decided to call an Uber. And then as I was waiting for the Uber, I got this call from my grandmother, and it was the last call. She was telling me that she had cancer and it was going to take her, and that was it. And I told her I was getting divorced and she said a lot of very positive things, but then I had to go into work and fix this problem right after receiving that call.
(00:07:51):
And I remember I went in, I couldn't get it working, and then finally I was like, I'm just going home. But before that, I went to the bathroom and locked myself in a stall and just like the music started playing, this was at a WeWork in Brooklyn. It was like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, under pressure. Everyone has to listen to me to sing that off key. And I just broke down, man, that under pressure song. And I remember crying and thinking, what is my life? What happened? I went back home and thought I can't even work anymore. So I told them I wanted to leave earlier than we even planned. And I was out of there. I was out of my job in a week. And the next day I woke up after no job, no wife anymore. My grandmother had passed by this point, and I just thought, okay, I'm starting my business up again.
(00:08:44):
So that was 2018, and I started consulting. Really, I just did anything, my consulting training, you could pay me for Excel, and I did it. Okay. So I did that up until the pandemic, and then the pandemic happened and everything cancelled. People didn't have money. My live in-person trainings cancelled, and I was back to where I was before, broke as hell looking through my couch cushions for change, smoking cigarettes for dinner, so eating lump so I could suppress my appetite. And I had also hurt my back. So it's almost like I was reliving the pain again of the catastrophic cascading, bad luck that happened before. And at that moment I realised I need to change everything. So I pushed all my training online. I decided that I wanted to travel more, and that became the impetus to move to Lisbon. And then I just moved everything to become passive course sales and started working with clients who I only liked.
(00:09:45):
And that seemed like that was the ticket to traction. And so I built a company around training people how to do things in Excel that they want to do, but don't know how to do, how automate things. And I focus purely on the market instead of just what I wanted to build anymore. And that really, I think brings us to this day. So this is my, now I build training courses mainly for LinkedIn. I have other vendors who sell them. I've also written multiple books on Excel and data science. And so I travel a lot. I spent the last two years kind of taking a break doing other businesses, other things. And it brings me to this point talking to you, Paul, and I think you know what I'm working on now. So I think I spent 10 minutes on that, but that is the rundown.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:10:25):
I appreciate all the backstory and appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing some of those difficult times. I think sometimes people think, oh, hey, here's this Microsoft MVP, he's running his own business. Everything must be fabulous and he's rich. Not that you ever get that impression from people, right, Jordan?
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:10:44):
I mean, it's funny because out on the outside, when I was an outsider, I thought it was like that, but now on the inside I talked to you, I talked to others. There are real struggles that happen behind the scenes. And this is not just me. It's not just being an entrepreneur. If you're an everyday worker working, I know many of your audience working fp and a, which is a big vertical I support these days, it's very easy to come in and show people how to do something in Excel. And then you always have that person who asks this question, well, how do I get people to change their minds? Or Can you look at my code to tell me what's wrong? Because those are the real struggles that happen behind the scenes, and I don't ever have good answers for that except to say it's not as it appears.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:11:25):
I totally agree, especially the first one. How do you get people to change their mind? It's like, well, nobody in my company's taking initiative or automating things or how do I get them to desire to be to upscale? And the reality is you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make 'em drink. As the saying goes, there's only so much you can do. And so that can be frustrating. And then the second is, yeah, look at code. And sometimes it's an easy thing. Oh yeah, I can help you. The other times you're like, I don't even understand what you're trying to do.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:11:50):
Yeah, I know that happens so much. Now, we were talking about this earlier. When someone says, look at my DAX code. I'm like, I don't know, Dax. I mean, I know it enough to be dangerous, but I don't know and know it.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:12:01):
Yeah, I know the basics mean, but now it's been years. I haven't written any since I started my business. I was writing it some before, but very mostly basic stuff. I wrote a few, I'd call 'em intermediate type stuff for one job. I have Marco Russo's book over there and I went through it. But reading a book and actually doing it are two different things is our
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:12:24):
Yes, I can explain dax, I can teach it, I can teach calculate and some of these things. But in terms of these very complicated DAX functions, I think the learning curve is so steep and I just don't have enough exposure on projects that use it that I would have it top of mind every single day. And if I'm being realistic with you, as I said, I focused on my market niche. My market niche is Excel. So it's not like I can't teach Power bi. I've taught it for M BA programmes, but I'm just not an expert in it. So I can tell you how it thinks and what it does, but all these special functions that they have in it, it's just like, it just doesn't even excite. That's the worst part about it. It's just like, I'm like, ugh.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:13:08):
I heard it described to me once if SQL and X Excel had a baby, it'd be Dax.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:13:13):
Yes, but a baby they didn't love. It's so neat.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:13:17):
So it's a redheaded stepchild, not that either of us are. One of us has red hair or anything,
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:13:22):
And one of us does, right? No hair and red hair. Yeah. I think last time you interviewed me, I also had long flowing walks, but I started balding and while everyone's always very nice about you, can't tell, I'm just like, forget it, I don't care anymore. I'm in my buzzer.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:13:36):
Yeah, what can you do? Fortunately, the balding part, I'm pretty fortunate on all my grandparents had a good head of hair in their seventies and eighties and my dad still does. So I'm knocking on wood that I keep a good full head of hair, but you got to go with what you have. It's different for all of it.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:13:53):
You have a wicked beard. I think that that is fair to say.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:13:57):
I have fun with my beard. Somebody the other day laugh at us on LinkedIn, so that needed to do a pole who had a better beard? Me or James Harden, and I just laughed. Well, I'm giving it to James Harden. He has the handle of the beard, so he wins.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:14:10):
Well, I think within our community you are the beard king.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:14:14):
I do think LinkedIn finance, I definitely have to be in the top three. Well,
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:14:18):
You heard it here everyone. If you want to get ahead in fp and a, you need to figure out how to monetize your beard.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:14:25):
That's coming next. FP and a Beard products, the fp and a guy's beard ball. Just wait, I expect you to order some Jordans.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:14:31):
Yes, definitely.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:14:32):
Alright, before we get into the project you're working on today, we'll get there in a minute, which I think will be interesting. Your fp and a audience, you've written several books. Maybe talk a little bit about some of the books you've written, what audience they're for, why you like to write books. A little bit about your,
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:14:48):
I'll give you the behind the scenes too. In about 2010 when I was still working for the Air Force, there was this one guy and he had written what was considered the best book on Excel development for operations research. So the department I was working in, I saw him speak in Texas and to his credit, he did a lot with Solver and he pushed a lot of things forward. But he was an older guy and what he was building was very dated. And I was looking at the stuff Chandu was talking about, the stuff I was doing, and I thought, God, there's got to be a better way. I mean, this is just like I can't believe that there's 200 people in this audience and this is what we're teaching. And so that really bothered me as a young person in my twenties. And I thought, you know what?
(00:15:41):
I need to start sharing with the world. I can sit here and complain. So I started the option explicit VBA blog for those of you familiar with Visual Basic for applications, the macro coding language behind Excel option, explicit is a command you can put in there that will force you to declare your variables. And it doesn't happen by default. You have to make it available. And I only bring that up because it bothered me that it doesn't happen by default because every other language is typed. You got to declare your variables and option explicit. It requires that to do it. And so I thought to myself, that is the better way. And they're not even teaching that. They're not even coding it. So that's why I named the vlog that looking back, just anyone who wants to start a business, if you name something esoteric and specific, you'll only attract a fraction of the people who could be part of it.
(00:16:38):
So I started blogging on there and I started really testing a lot of stuff in Excel that nobody else was testing and really thinking about it using my computer science background rather than accounting background and the idea of just recording macros and going from there. So starting from a code first sense. And that really connected me with Chandu. And then I started working with him, not directly, but just through blogs and stuff like that, participating more. And so ideas I got from him and from others, there was Excel Hero wrote back then Dick Luco was doing Daily Dose of Excel. And so I started blogging and I just wanted to be one of them. And then I had this corpus of writing that I put together and I was reading all these books on Excel. My favourite being professional Excel development first edition, not the second edition.
(00:17:28):
So that was my favourite book. And I thought to myself I could write a book. So then I pitched a book Idea to O'Reilly. They weren't really into it. And I waited a whole year again and I went and refined the concept and I thought, okay, I'm in dashboards. I'm going to look at my bookshelf. Who are most of my books? What's the publisher for Most books on my bookshelf? And it was a press. So I pitched it to them and they said, yes, it's like 20 something year old getting a book deal. I was like, this is incredible. I remember it happened on my birthday that they said yes. So I started writing this book, gas You spend
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:18:02):
The entire royalties you got from the book on your birthday.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:18:06):
I wish I was too reserved back then I would say. So I got this book deal and it was supposed to take nine months and it took three and a half years. They almost pulled it twice. I had every problem you could have writer's block being afraid, what's it called? Imposter syndrome. I had to be perfect, had to be this. So I had written a lot though. It was like a big book. And so they said, okay, well let's spin out a smaller book in the intermediate. So we spun out a smaller book called Advanced Excel Essentials from nine chapters from the big book. So that was my first book coming out. And that book did pretty well. It took a lot of the ideas that I had and put 'em together. Got a lot of great feedback from MVPs. I finally finished the bigger book dashboards for Excel.
(00:18:52):
Shandoo helped me get it across the finish line. And that book just is huge. It has some of the same chapters as the smaller ones. So some people didn't love that and it had a lot of charts in it, but it was printed in black and white. So that was all my ideas. That book does not review as well. It turns out people like smaller, thinner, focused ideas. So then I thought, I want to write another book, but I had told my wife, my then wife, if I write another book, if I have another idea of writing another book within this next year, you need to promise to punch me in the face. Okay. So she reminded me of that multiple times. Now, did she ever actually punch you in the face? I'm kidding. Not for that. All right,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:19:33):
We won't go there.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:19:35):
So then life went on and I thought I'll never write a book again and do, we're going to fast forward. Okay. My buddy and I, a guy who I'd worked with at the Air Force when I did the Excel stuff, he was a math whiz. He ended up getting a PhD in math and stats, and we've been friends ever since. We spent years just practising explaining tough concepts to each other and just unpacking it because we think that's a great skill to have. And it helped us both as instructors. And so he kept talking about a book for 10 years that we should write together. And I have a certain point a early on that 10th year, I said to him, it's time to shit or Get off the pot. You either are doing this or not. So he kind of put together a first draught and then this was the first draught of the chapter came to me like chapter one, which you need to send to chapter one in when you do a book proposal.
(00:20:31):
So he sent it to me and I remember just kind of editing it a little bit. My plane lands, this is like February 28th, 2020, and then the next day or somewhere around there the next week shutdowns, massive shutdowns are happening. All my contracts cancel. And I say to him, we were just in mild conversations with the publisher, I say to him, I am do or die. I need this book advance because I need money. So I basically tell that to Wiley, you guys need to close this week. And that's what they did. So that was a book purely on data science, on how to think about data science problems that the data
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:21:15):
Head book.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:21:16):
Yeah, it's the data head book. There's no code in it. There's a little math, but we keep it to a minimum. So it's just 10 years of us talking about these tough math concepts that usually require linear algebra. I think
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:21:29):
I have it on my shelf. Let's see.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:21:31):
Yeah, you should go grab it. Ah, great book. My favourite book. So yep, there it is again. Thin book. People really liked it. It's being used in universities. It's being passed around corporate offices. So it's definitely my best
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:21:46):
Book. You love your pages thin book. You did good on that one.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:21:49):
Yep. It's my best book. Most reviews on Amazon, great reviews. And it's my bestselling book by far. So then after that I decided I wanted to write another book. And there's only a few people who know data science in Excel, and there's a book that combines both of these called Datamart and we actually mention it in the data head book. And so I pitched Wiley on writing the second edition for that. I did that. We made it in colour, made many improvements to it. That book does all right. It kind of came out. Books don't really do what they used to do because you have publishers like PACT who can put out books a lot more quickly and can prefer online eBooks versus traditional publishers. And I think that just the emergence of online courses, they just don't go like they used to do. But that data head book, I can go to Union Square and find it in Barnes and Noble, which I do all the time. And then there's always a new one there and I tell 'em that I want to sign it, the author, and sometimes they're sceptical and make me show my id, which I love like, oh wow, I thought you were full of shit. I'm allowed to see it
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:22:54):
Next time I'm in Union Square, I'm going to go see if there's a sign one there. I don't think this one's signed. I mean I might have to bring it to Vegas, Jordan.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:23:01):
Oh, you should. I'll sign it for you.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:23:03):
Not only my first guest, but I can also now have a signed book from him.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:23:07):
Yes, true. So I would say two books are very niche. Okay, one real quick story. I know before we go into it, the dashboards for Excel book, keep that in mind. So first time you interviewed me, I don't know if I had laid out my plans yet to go to Lisbon, but certainly it was bonking around in my heads. The real estate market was hot when I was trying to move to Lisbon 2022. And there were four people like apartment after apartment saying no already booked. So we found an apartment with we being me and the broker and the owners wanted to interview me. I'm still in New York, they're in Lisbon. I hadn't even gotten to see it yet. And they said on the call, the wife of the couple said to me, I read your book. I was like, my book. I was like, you read my book on Excel? She's like, yeah, I work in an IT department. And because she read that book because it's like they knew me, I got the apartment,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:24:04):
I remember you telling the story. I think I read it on LinkedIn. It wasn't in the podcast, but I do remember hearing this
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:24:09):
Crazy world. Crazy. What a coincidence. So go write a book, get an apartment,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:24:15):
All I'm going to write a book. I don't need an apartment, I have a house, but hopefully I'll get something else. Maybe a new car.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:24:20):
Yeah, definitely.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:24:22):
Alright, sweet. I'll tell the publisher that Jordan said I'll be able to get a new car from this book. And now, a brief message from our sponsor, Campfire. Build a best-in-class AI-native ERP designed for modern finance and accounting teams. With Campfire, you can automate revenue, streamline your close, and centralize accounting, all in one unified platform. And now they've hosted Finance Forward, a first-of-its-kind AI summit in San Francisco. They brought together the sharpest minds in finance and operations, all focused on how to actually use AI to move the needle. You don't even have to travel to learn the tactical skills to put your team ahead. You can stream the whole thing on demand, totally free, anytime after the event. So if you're ready to get tactical about AI and finance, head to campfire.ai and register for the on-demand content for free. That's Campfire, where finance teams go to think forward.
(00:25:22):
All right, so that's great. So I want to talk about obviously FP and a professionals. We've talked to finance and the accounting side. You all know we use Excel a tonne. We dabble in data quite a bit. Sometimes the data science area, I wish there had been a data science programme when I did my grad school, I did a master of science and information management. Now it's a data analytics programme and I'm like, I would've really like that to go with my MBA, but that's how it works. So tell me what you're up to now. I know you've done a tonne of Excel, you do training, different things, but you've been working on a project, you and I had talked a little bit about this earlier today, but why don't you describe a little bit of what you're up to?
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:26:08):
Okay, so I'm actually working on two projects. I told you about one of them and I hinted at the other one. So we're going to talk about the first one, which is I have a good life now. So I live in Lisbon, I get to travel a lot, I work for my laptop, but I don't have the stresses I used to have. And many people would love that and some people are going to just kill me for saying this, but I like, and all my travelling and all the work I've been doing, I feel like I've been leaving my potential on the table or to put it differently on board. I don't have to take a vacation anymore. I live in Lisbon, so my life is a vacation. And so a lot of people would want what I have, but what I really have is a lot of free time and free brain space.
(00:26:52):
And so I've been thinking over the last two years the things I want to work on and I've tried a lot of different things. The other project that I'll tell you about after this is my running events, but I decided that I want to get into startups. So we'll see if in the end this thing I'm working on, if I choose to make it more of a lifestyle business like I have now or if I actually go grind again and eat Robin for dinner and look through change from my couch if I'm ready to go back to that life. But the idea behind this project is actually so similar to what I described in 2010. A lot of you are using Excel and by your own admission you'll say to me and say to Paul, I know what a powerful tool it is and I only know 10% of it.
(00:27:37):
And the thing is, are we going to learn advanced stuff like vlookup? That's my favourite. Alright. Now the problem is VLOOKUP was deprecated, not deprecated, but replaced. I mean it should be deprecated. In 2019 X lookup came out. So that was six years ago, seven. Can you believe that? No, I can't. For the amount of people I'm teaching it, it's shocking. So Power Query, when did Power Query come out? 2012 I think. Yeah, right. I was going to guess 2010, somewhere in there. I asked you. I was quizzing you, but I was actually hoping you would know. I don't, but it was like I was going to say 2010, somewhere around there. Yeah, it came
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:28:18):
Out first and then it was added into Excel a couple of years later.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:28:22):
And is it fair to say that you are still teaching people how to use Power Query?
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:28:27):
Most people I talked to don't even have never used it for Power Query. What?
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:28:31):
Yeah. And so I'm stuck in this space that I was in 2010 when the world has moved on from how we code and yet Excel is this 40-year-old thing, which is good. I mean I'm not complaining. I'm 40, we still got it, but I'm not as good of a coder as it were as the young people who are doing it now. And Excel is not the platform that it was 40 years ago when it was just top of its game. I mean I think I'm going to quote a book I never read, but I think that this is the quintessential innovators dilemma. So this thing, or maybe I'm wrong on that. You guys can write into Paul, you can handle that. Paul, I'll
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:29:09):
Take Jordan's complaints and send them to Lisbon. I need a free trip,
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:29:13):
Right? Okay. But the basic idea here is that I am building a tool much like VS Code and Cursor if any of you have used Cursor for Excel. So it's not just taking AI and putting it on the front end of Excel that lets you insert a chart, which I always think is funny, what they think is the hardest thing that we need AI to do, but rather create a power coder type tool that sits on the backend and lets you treat your Excel files as a finance tech stack, which means that you could go and Refactors is what we would say in coding rename things in those files very quickly. And we would do this not with VBA because VBA was basically deprecated in 1999 based off of Visual Basic 6.0, which nobody uses anymore unless they have to. I mean it's cobalt effectively, it's going to let you go through and make changes to those Excel files very quickly.
(00:30:09):
Do things like inserting M code directly into those Excel files as well. It's going to have a front end and environment that is basically stripped of all the formatting things you don't need and allow you to input formulas in ways that Excel won't let you do right now. So in any modern coding environment, there's something called linting, which is like you type in the code and then it squiggles if you put something in wrong. This does not happen in Excel. In Excel, if you have a malformed formula, it's just going to say, Hey, check your parentheses, or it's going to generate a very hard to understand value error or something like that. So you're constantly going through and thinking about what is the problem. So I'm trying to develop a Excel developer environment or as we call an integrated developmental environment that lets you actually do a lot of the things you do in Excel on one file at a time and multiple files at a time.
(00:31:03):
And also treating formulas, M code in the backend, things like code. And I just want to make this so clear because I think a lot of people don't really, they can't wrap their minds around what I'm about to say. I'm A VBA expert. All right, I planted my flag on it, but VBA is old and we need to stop using it. So I wish it was dead. It's a zombie and I have to deal with the fact that I'm good at it and I know it so well and I've just pushed it to its limits and everyone wants me to keep doing it and I hate using it anymore because it's not a real language. I mean it's just not what I think. If I had to pick an heir, what are they an heir apparent or a sole successor of the person who's doing a lot of things that I did before?
(00:31:50):
Patrick Ky, now he's doing a lot of great stuff, but he's even smart enough if he wanted to move on. And I'm not trying to say that he should no judgement , he's brilliant guy. But the thing is that it doesn't do it for me anymore because there's Python now and even the Python integration in Excel is like, I mean you're building these things that render on top of Excel, so it's not the way it could be useful. So there are finance teams out there because someone out there is going to be like, well, I don't really need that. Who listens to your audience? And I agree with you, okay, but there's one to 3% of the 750 million users of Excel are power users. They are shimming things together through VS. Code and Python and other services online through their coding experiences to put it all together. And I am going to give them a tool that's going to concentrate all that and make their life a lot easier and give them the things that they wish existed in Excel. And I know that there's a market about this because I just posted a picture of this to my LinkedIn and I got tonnes of feedback and people were like, whoa,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:32:52):
Yes.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:32:53):
So that is what I'm building.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:32:56):
I like that you use the IDE or kind of developer toolkit. Couple questions, we're going to have a little fun with this.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:33:02):
All right, let's go.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:33:03):
What should replace VBA in Excel? I know they've done JavaScripts, they've done Python. Yeah. Power Query. Should there be another language or what's your opinion you think? We all know Deprecating VBA is not an overnight project. Whenever Microsoft decides to do it, we know it's an older language, but we know it's still heavily used. You're in charge, ignore everybody who's using it. If you could replace it, you have something you would replace it in. Not your toolkit, but just inside Excel.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:33:29):
Microsoft has released office scripts and they do a lot of the stuff that VBA used to do ish. I mean VBA gave you a lot more exterior access to Windows, which is a bad thing today, but was a good thing back then. So Office Scripts is what I would say is the future, and I think that they're starting to put a lot of energy behind that. So I think that that is what could replace it today. But if you're asking me, yeah,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:33:58):
Your opinion, I agree off scripts kind of combined with Icon, with Power Automate, you're putting a number of things together to try to replace it in my opinion, but what would you do? You are Excel. Now Python, you just inherited Excel and it's your baby
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:34:14):
Python, VBA and Python have a lot in common. So I think people don't realise that because they think of Python as being an advanced language, but Python was really written as the VBA replacement for so many things, not just for this because Python does it all and it's just built in a way that combines some of the best features of other languages.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:34:36):
If you're in charge for a day, Python's going to replace VBA. You're seeing office scripts taking most of that. Obviously there's other things right now from Microsoft a lot
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:34:44):
By
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:34:45):
Scripts.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:34:45):
And the cool thing is you can write in Python and then have it compiled to office script code. So you could write in Python and then it compiles to office script code. If I'm in charge, that doesn't happen. Python just gets directly to Excel. The problem is that Excel is built on this old library. It's built with these things called comm, like component object bottle. So it doesn't integrate a lot of new stuff, but I also think that even Power Query, I can't say this a hundred percent for sure, but I think it was built on the old Windows Foundation layer. So it's not built anything new that you see that's really nice on Windows or Mac is usually built in chromium. It's built using the Google stack. Did you know Microsoft Edge is built on Chromium? It's built on a Google Chrome technology.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:35:30):
I think I had heard it was built on Chrome. I do remember hearing that and I was like, interesting. Chromium. Yes.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:35:35):
Yeah, I think that just the nature of Excel makes it hard to just jam something in, which is why we have these add-ins that appear as a different pane that uses a website and a website can be built on Chroy. If you just wanted to add chat GPT into Power Query, I think, but can't say for certain, but just looking at it, the structure of the windows that they use would not easily allow that, which is why it's not there and why they're not updating it a whole lot. So this is what my tool is meant to build.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:36:06):
And now, a brief message from our sponsor. Is your AI thinking like a generalist or like a finance leader? Here's the thing: most large language models weren't built for finance. They're trained on everything from Reddit threads to recipe blogs. So when you plug them into your accounting workflows, the results can be, let's just say, not balance sheet accurate. That's why Campfire, the company pioneering AI-native ERP, just made a huge move. They've raised $65 million in Series B funding, co-led by Excel and Ribbit, bringing their total to $100 million raised in just 12 weeks. And they're putting that momentum to work with LAM, the large accounting model. It's a proprietary AI trained specifically for finance and accounting, already hitting 95%+ accuracy on accounting tasks. That's redefining what ERP can do for modern finance teams. Unicorn companies like PostHog and Ripple are already using Campfire to automate their finance operations and seeing real results. You can see it for yourself, sign up for a live demo of LAM at campfire.ai. That's campfire.ai.So that leads me to the next question. Why a developer tool on top of Excel? Why not a new spreadsheet?
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:37:34):
That's a great question. So the way I look at Excel is like the way I look at a browser. So in a browser you can view things and you can also develop in a browser, but if you really wanted to do an app that lives in a browser, an app being like a software as a service type thing, so if you're Airbnb, you don't develop in the browser, you develop outside of it because that allows you to do a lot more. You're not restrained by the environment and you can inject other languages and other codes that could actually make it more functional on the front end.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:38:03):
I can get behind that. It's interesting, I watch and I see all these agent tools coming out for Excel long list. Some are going, Hey, we're going to build our own spreadsheet. Some just start with their own spreadsheet and then realise, oh, everybody's using Excel. I really should add this to Excel and so many different approaches. So I always like to get different opinions from people. Everybody looks at it a little different. We've all been hearing the demise of Excel since you started your career. I'm guessing every new app is an Excel killer. The recent with AI, Excel is dead. And I kind of laugh and I don't know if you've played much with the agents, but what I find is you actually need to know Excel better, not less, because the agents don't think like a human. They're often coding, they're often using more complex solutions than we typically use. It's been really fascinating to watch. And so you have to know really well to understand it, and I find it kind of ironic that everybody's saying it's going to die, but what we're seeing right now with the agents, not so much, obviously not your tool that you're coming with, but with these agents you almost have to know Excel better. It's a fascinating dichotomy.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:39:07):
Yes, I agree with you. You actually have to know Excel to know what you want to ask the agents. I think the biggest problem with the agents right now is that they are restrictive. So first of all, if you work in the enclosed Excel ecosystem, again, another reason why not to do it in Excel, there's only certain things you're allowed to do because from that add in Paine, Microsoft doesn't want you changing other things. So as far as I know, you can't change a menu in the ribbon. You have to do that via XML, but I could be wrong on that. I'm not an office script expert. But what most of these have done is they've gone out and they've tried to identify the main workflows and build around that. So you have a tool that can read in PDFs that pops in the side, but that's what it does.
(00:39:54):
You have another tool that can summarise your data because they assume that you're an idiot and you have to highlight it and say, oh number, I mean copilots the same way it looks at your data. It's like, oh, 67 may be an anomaly, everything else is 30. But if you have a chart, you already know that. You don't need a tool to tell you that. And it doesn't even mean anything to call something an anomaly. Alright, rant aside. The fact of the matter is yes, okay, you can have it create a chart for you and you can have it do formulas, which you're saying is a really good point that you should know Excel if you're pumping in those formulas, but to me it's still in the enclosed Excel ecosystem. So Microsoft by default has limited the things that they want to allow you to do with it.
(00:40:36):
This I think is just the problem with the entire set because if you want it to tell you anything about your data, you got to highlight the data and then it pulls that in to its model and adds some other stuff to the payload, sends it off to the LLM and the LLM runs some generic thing. It's learned over 10 years and read it and Google articles to figure out how to craft a sentence and it can figure out, okay, well 67 is the greatest one, but the thing that I'm doing differently that is meant for them to think about is that I'm going to run it, that my AI is actually going to be run on the backend, the XML that describes the files. So in a certain sense, if it's scaffold the files based off of how your workplace keeps them. So if you have a company and you have a hundred financial models could actually go and learn the underlying scaffolding, not reading the cell and saying, oh, I should probably pick up bold and I should probably pick up a border here. But rather looking at the XML that describes it in that sense, it writes it like a book.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:41:38):
Thank you for sharing that. So kind of question I'll have for you. We talked a little bit about your tool, obviously fp and a and the finance audience having done accounting. If you could before you move on to your second idea, I know you had a second idea, I want to get there. If you could offer one piece of advice to the average FP and a professional, you've trained enough to know what I mean by kind of average, right? You've talked about the one to 3% as it relates to Excel. What advice would you give them? The average
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:42:05):
Fp and a professional?
(00:42:07):
I would just say that you should not take the status quo of not knowing how to use these tools. I mean, it's just enough people coming up and saying, oh, I mean I know they're making small talk and that some of this is bs, but people say, oh, I only use 10%, but I know if I knew a lot more, I could use it a lot more. Well, I mean, I don't live my life by that. I mean if there's something I need to learn, I go out and learn it and that's how I've always been. So I think that if there's something you're struggling with and it's not just I want to learn it to learn it, but rather I know it could solve my problem, like power query like formulas, and you should go out and do that. You should not take it for yourself to accept that you're not going to learn it or that it's too hard or you have to wait for Paul to come in and do a bootcamp for two days because that's not going to be like the bootcamps are great, but it's not going to be enough because then you have to go out and figure out how to use it.
(00:43:05):
So you can learn a lot there and retain about 20 to 30% of it. I'm not saying about you, this I just think is in general of live teaching or you can identify the things you need to learn and then you can make sure that you're learning those things and if Paul comes in, you can make sure to ask him about it. I think that the big problem here is that we keep teaching Excel horizontally. So there's beginner, intermediate, advanced people at home who are listening to this. Can't see that I'm drawing this out with my hands, but really the way,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:43:35):
We'll watch the video if you want to see Jordan play with his hands,
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:43:39):
Yes, but the bigger way that we become experts in things is vertically. So if you imagine everyone at home, you have first layer of a rectangles beginner. Second layer is intermediate, third layer is advanced. If you then put a vertical slice, a vertical rectangle in that and it slices out a piece of beginner, intermediate, advanced, that is what you really need to learn. I know that was a long answer for fp and a people, but if you want to become good at something, that's how to do it. So you don't want to go breadth, I don't know if this depth is the right word, but you want to go vertical because I think this is a big problem. Everyone's just like if he took a beginner excel course today, Paul, they would teach you how to put a header and a footer on your Excel file as if in the last 20 years kids didn't learn how to do that. And if you took an intermediate one, they might show you formulas as if we aren't all coders in our own way using things like Slack and Discord. So it's just like a lot of the younger people already have already infused how to use these things in their daily work. They've already used Google Sheets for organisation, and so you need to figure out for yourself what you need to learn and then go and learn it and not rely on other people to tell you how to do it.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:45:00):
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of dated training that isn't necessarily applicable. Like you said, you might use 20, 30% of it. And so there's definitely something to be said for learning yourself. Not to say training isn't good, but it only goes so far. Just like book learning only goes so far. You got to use multiple methods. It's not a rarely. Does somebody learn all with one method?
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:45:22):
Yes. And it's just like books, podcasts, YouTube, definitely. I'm not
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:45:28):
Actually, podcast is the only way you need to learn as far as I'm
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:45:31):
Concerned. Yes, exactly.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:45:32):
You only three, you only need three.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:45:34):
You only need three
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:45:35):
Thing. I have podcast. I'm kidding. Keep going.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:45:38):
No, I mean it's just like I have friends who are like, oh, did you read this book? Did you read that book? I'm like, yeah, I finished it already. I don't know. There's like, well, or just in these entrepreneurial circles, the new people, what are your favourite books to read? It's like read 'em all. What are you talking about? It's not one book, it's all of the books. You have favourites, but anyone wants to learn something, looks at everything. And for the people out there, yes, I could give you my favourite YouTubers and of course Paul is my favourite podcaster of all time. The one and only very best. But listen to all of them and figure out what works for you. I mean, someone could give you the advice, but the lived experience defines what's better. So when it comes to fp and a, okay, you could learn Anaplan, you could learn data rails, you could learn Excel, or you could literally dip your toe in every single one of them and then figure out the ones you like and then become experts and sharpen on the ones you really enjoy.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:46:34):
Thank you. Appreciate that answer. All right. We're going to do something fun here at the end, but before we get to that, what's the other project you're working on? You mentioned two.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:46:43):
Yes. Okay. So Astute Observers, if you follow me on Instagram and you follow me somewhat on LinkedIn, I actually have an events company that I run. So I create events for people. The original events were just very small ones in Lisbon, just meeting other founders. And I do this not to make money, although some of them do make money and some of 'em lose a little bit of money. Most of them are designed to break even. So I do this just to meet other entrepreneurs or whatever thing that I'm interested in. So I start with founders dinners in tech and finance in Lisbon. And when I felt like I got good momentum at that, I had 10 people show up at one. It was great dinner, great reviews. I decided I want to do something harder. Then I did a comedy show for tech people in Lisbon.
(00:47:29):
I got 50 people to show up to that. And then I wanted to build something for my Excel influencer friends to come in and mastermind with me. And so what I did is I got funding and I brought them all in for a five day mastermind event in Lisbon. And it was great. I met a whole bunch of people. There were some people who I never even met before. I'd just seen him online. Jess Ramos, big Data Energy. Delia, who is Tech Unicorn on Instagram, as well as Emma Chipper Excel dictionary. Your average finance bro, I don't want to say his real name. He likes to go by his
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:48:07):
Yeah, I know who you're talking about. Your average finance pro.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:48:10):
Yeah, your average finance pro. Because he goes by his character. And then we also had Katrina from M-S-X-L-E sports who I'm going to actually go see in Las Vegas here soon. And actually, those people who I mentioned, I introduced him to Katrina. I knew she had a relationship with some of them, but now they're actually coming in too. So it was this trip. I helped a lot of other people out. I got to meet people who I always wanted to meet great time in Lisbon, and I worked with sponsors on this one for the first time. So then the next event I had was an art show because I'd never done art shows before. So I had 50, 60 people turn out to an art show. I got local artists in Lisbon to come and show their work. I even introduced people and sold a piece of art. And the best part about this is that a half hour before it was over, I announced a surprise, which was, it was my 40th birthday.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:48:58):
I figured you were going to
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:48:59):
Sold so in Excel that you'd built some Hell no. I don't want to be known as the Excel guy for everything. So then I came here to New York and I ran an event at a high end restaurant, and we invited people in fashion and beauty as well as tech and finance. So this is my first time. We had a bunch of models there, never vetting work with models before. And we also had a lot of people who were just in that industry. And so I got to meet a lot of them. And I met someone who worked for nasdaq. She helps do the closing bell for nasdaq, and she invited me to go watch the closing bell ceremony behind the scenes, which I did a couple of days ago. So this is why I do networking. I think maybe this is something else to tell everyone. The power of networking is significant, but the major thing you need to know about networking is you can't rely on other people's networking events. You got to create your own container. So you could start small, just invite the people you like out to do something that you all enjoy. But networking is really the key to success in life.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:49:54):
There's huge value in networking. I only have one problem. You said I have to invite the people I like. I'm just kidding. Yes. It means I have to like somebody. No.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:50:02):
Yeah, right, you do. But that's important because so many people go to networking events and they're like, oh, I don't like being here. And I stand in the back. I don't talk to anyone. Yeah, you don't like any of them. No offence but maybe you're just not friends with them and you're not interested in the things they have to say and you don't want to have the same, it's really talk. So instead of people like, well, what networking events do you go to? And it's true that I go to others, but I go there to judge them to see what they're doing wrong so I can make my own. So the answer of course is to make your own networking event, to create your own container defined by the rules that you want, and bring in the people you like in that value of doing that. Go so much farther. Alright,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:50:42):
So Jordan's advice today, kill VBA. Don't use others to do your networking events. Alright, so we're going to do two things today. We'll take five, 10 minutes here, have a little bit of fun. The first is I'm going to ask you a couple of quick questions on different subjects, some Excel, maybe a little personal, just looking for a quick answer. First one is, because I know you have one favourite Excel joke,
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:51:05):
What comes after an Excel joke?
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:51:07):
I dunno what? A sequel. A sequel. Alright, I like that one. Favourite Excel function? I like filter. I mean I use filter so much.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:51:17):
Filter
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:51:18):
Is a great one. Favourite Excel feature?
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:51:20):
Merchant centre.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:51:21):
I knew you were going to say that. I want to say you're consistent. Well done.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:51:25):
I'll never back off of that one. In fact, in my tool we're going to have a big ass merchant centre button and to make everything run, you have to click it and it's just going to turn your whole spreadsheet into one giant merchant centre cell with ai. Favourite
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:51:38):
Chart, favourite graph that you like.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:51:41):
I mean you can't go wrong with a regular line chart. I like line charts because time series data. I mean I love time series data.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:51:49):
If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what are you eating?
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:51:54):
You know the answer.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:51:55):
I knew that was coming. Hot dogs.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:51:57):
Exactly. If you're at home
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:51:59):
Again, you got to watch the video to see his hot dog.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:52:01):
Yeah, if you're at home, I have a hot dog tattoo.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:52:04):
If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what book you're reading? Profit First. Profit first. Nice. Favourite movie
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:52:13):
The Game. The one with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:52:18):
Favourite advice you've ever received or best advice, whatever you want to call it.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:52:23):
Just don't think you can't do stuff. I mean, I remember I talked to an accountant way back before when I was just getting my business going in 2019 and I was still had that imposter syndrome and he was like, he had his own business too and he was just like, you got to take all that stuff and just forget it. It doesn't matter. So all those things that say you can't do something, don't try. I mean I do some networking coaching for some guys and I remember I told one guy, I was like, you need to surround yourself with positivity. You just need to just overload on it. I know some people out there are like, well, I don't want to become one of those annoyingly positive people. Okay, well some of those people have problems and you shouldn't listen to them. But I think in general, yeah, I mean some of 'em are just covering up a major insecurity.
(00:53:13):
It's just very youngian. It is just the things they can't accept are being projected out to mask an underlying sense of lack. But I think actually most of the successful people I've met are just not, they don't complain. I mean they rant, but they don't get obsessed. They surround themselves with positive people who push them forward and they are themselves very positive. They don't dump on bad ideas just to do it. They may have feedback about why it won't work, but they don't take their negativity and put it on you. I mean, just as a prime example, I was helping an entrepreneur. I was like, you can't be taking Venmo in Cash app. You're a real business. Oh, I don't want to give people my bank details. They might steal it, not give people out there, but actually give it to Stripe. That idea, I can't wrap my mind around, I don't know her background and why she feels that way, but this is the type of stuff that holds you back so that negativity, I can't go to the gym because of X, Y, and Z. Alternatively, I have to go to the gym. I have to look like everyone else. This type of stuff. You just got to take it out back and give it the lasi treatment. It will not serve you in life.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:54:28):
You and Christie Nome, oh wait, did I say that out loud? Alright, so we're going to try a second section. I do this in one of my other shows, but I've never tried this on fp and a unlocked. So you're my first. As we were chatting here, I asked ai, so I'm even going to give the prompt. I said, use the web to research. Actually accidentally wrote reach, but it figured out research. Somehow I auto corrected it. Jordan Gold Maier to come up with 25 personal and unique questions for a podcast. I did some research. I can see a bunch of different things. The six steps, the questions it said based on my research. Here are 25 personal and unique questions for a podcast with Jordan Goldmine. So you got two options. I can use the random number generator to pick a number or you could pick a number between one and 25. We're going to ask you that question. We're going to run through a couple of these.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:55:20):
Okay. 16.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:55:22):
And I don't even know, I've only glanced at a couple of these. I don't even know what 16 is. Alright, here we go. It's under the section. First we'll give the section Excel data science and Microsoft. MVP is the section. Okay. You co-hosted Excel tv, which brought personality and entertainment to spreadsheets. How do you make something as boring in quotes as Excel genuinely engaging and what does that teach us about communication and technical fields?
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:55:49):
That's a great question because that was what we were trying to solve to do that. So the way you do it is, first of all, you don't make it about Excel tutorials. We had a tip section, but I made sure it was last. And then the other thing is you bring on people who have interesting personalities. So we always had a theme for a show and we brought someone on who was part of that theme, and we went in with the idea that everyone is interesting and has something interesting to share. So just as you talked about my history, we didn't talk about how to do X, Y, and Z in Excel as the main point. We talked about what is your background, what did you learn? I think we always had a theme, most embarrassing things that happened in Excel or we always had something where people could bring up their own personal stories. So get to the human.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:56:36):
Yeah, no, a hundred percent with you. And I know we've definitely tried to do that some in this interview and you've shared some of the human side of you. All right, pick another number or I'll use the random number generator. Six. Six. So this is under the section EMT and service, what I called it. This
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:56:55):
Thing knows everything about me.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:56:57):
Yeah, it's pretty impressive opt. You see all of 'em. But you served as a volunteer EMT in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic while running a business and teaching. What drove you to put yourself in harm's way during one of the most intense public health crises in modern history?
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:57:15):
I mean, I became an EMT because I was in Brooklyn and yeah, I'll just be direct on this podcast. I don't care. I was in Brooklyn. I was in an apartment where I was the only white guy and I felt like I was part of this community and I wanted to give back in a way that wasn't just like lip service. So I decided to become an EMT, but I still wanted to have my own business. So I was just a volunteer and I was volunteering for a while and then the pandemic happened and it was all hands on deck and that was my job. That's what I signed up for. Even though it was fun, as I was a volunteer, you don't do a whole lot. You deal with a lot of drunk people and you take the booboos and stuff that FDNY doesn't want, but then suddenly everyone needed to be there and I just reminded myself this is why I signed up. So that's why I did it and why I did the other things at the same time is I needed the money I needed to
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:58:14):
Survive. I figured on the other one, we all need money. We got to live. Let's do one more pick one more number.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:58:21):
Let's go with 22.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:58:23):
22. So this is under the section defence, corporate and high stakes work. So they titled it. Alright. When you were working on site in Kabul, did you work in Kabul?
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:58:36):
Yeah, I was there. I was in Kabul for a minute. Yeah,
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:58:39):
With International Security Forces, what was the experience like and how did it shape your understanding of the real world consequences of data analysis, real
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:58:49):
World consequences of
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:58:50):
Yeah, I was reading that. I'm like, I don't know. I thought you were going to say
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:58:53):
Of war or something like
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:58:54):
That. I know. So I'm like the way they worded that, I'm just reading the questions. I didn't make them.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:58:59):
Yeah, I mean, this is one of the funny things. I built this Excel model that was used by NATO training mission and then I went over into theatre to present it. What was it like on the ground? I would say however you feel about America's, I don't know what the word is, I don't want to say more in Afghanistan, but
Host: Paul Barnhurst (00:59:15):
What involvement, political involvement,
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (00:59:18):
Whatever you want to call it, however you feel about that. I would say that the people there who I worked with in the International Security Forces really cared. They were not bad people. They really wanted to make an improvement in the lives of the people there. They really believed in the idea of data, helping them drive this. I went over there not knowing any idea what to think. It was a cool experience. They gave me a flak jacket. I stayed on base at the airport and I just met a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds. It's an international forest and saw what it was like over in Afghanistan at that time and I would say that it was then and still is now very important for these organisations to use data to solve these problems. It's not the only thing, but it really helps support smart decision making.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:00:06):
I think we'll end there. I could keep going. There's lots of questions. I've learned a few things about your reading through some of these, but thank you so much for joining me, Jordan. It's always a pleasure to chat. I hope our audience enjoys this fun on conventional episode where we just made up the questions as we go. You came with the answers and we had a good time.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (01:00:26):
Yeah.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:00:27):
Wait, so this isn't what it's usually like? It's not, I usually have a little more scripted and a little more fp and a talk. This is a little heavier Excel than normal, but that's why I brought you.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (01:00:36):
I see, I see. Well, you didn't ask me my favourite finance joke. Fine. What's your favourite finance joke? Jordan? Why should you not give an fp and a person a gift? Why? Why? Because they always ask for the present value.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:00:55):
I knew that was coming. Alright, I'll tell you my favourite one since we're on jokes. What's the difference between an accountant and an fp and a professional?
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (01:01:02):
Accountants can deduct jokes made at their expense.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:01:05):
It's a good one, but no. When accountants get creative, they go to jail. When fp and a professional get creative, they get promoted.
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (01:01:13):
That's true.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:01:15):
Yeah, pretty much. Alright, anything else we need to cover? Any other fun things you want to tell our audience?
Guest: Jordan Goldmeier (01:01:21):
I just would say to my fp and a friends and loved ones, just go out and keep doing analytics and financing.
Host: Paul Barnhurst (01:01:29):
All right. Keep budgeting, keep financing. To our beloved listeners, have a wonderful day and thanks again, Jordan. Thanks, everyone. That's it for today's episode of FP&A Unlocked. If you enjoy FP&A unlocked, please take a moment to leave a five-star rating and review. It's the best way to support the FP&A guy and help more FP&A professionals discover the show. Remember, you can earn CPE credit for this episode by visiting earmarkcpe.com. Downloading the app and completing the quiz. If you need continuing education credits for the FPAC certification, complete the quiz and reach out to me directly. Thanks for listening. I'm Paul Barnhurst, the FP&A guy, and I'll see you next time.