How FP&A Pros Can Use Automation & Python to Save Time & Become Better Business Partners with Willian Gomes
In this episode of FP&A Unlocked, host Paul Barnhurst (The FP&A Guy) welcomes Willian Gomes, a finance and analytics professional with over 15 years of experience spanning telecommunications, aerospace, investment markets, and consumer goods. Willian shares how combining technical expertise with empathy and communication skills has enabled him to thrive as a financial partner across 60 countries in EMEA.
Willian Gomes is a seasoned FP&A and data analytics professional currently supporting EMEA supply chain operations at a global consumer goods company. Based in Brazil, he holds an MBA in Project Management and advanced certifications in machine learning from Stanford. Willian brings deep expertise in automation, process improvement, and financial storytelling, having saved tens of thousands of work hours through custom-built tools and insights-driven analysis.
Expect to Learn:
How to evaluate whether an automation project is worth pursuing
The challenges of implementing machine learning in corporate environments
How Python enables scalable automation over Excel
How cultural awareness enhances business partnering across global teams
Here are a few quotes from the episode:
"Finance isn’t just about numbers, it’s about helping people make better decisions." – Willian Gomes
"Empathy is a skill that’s not often associated with finance, but it’s essential for business partnering." – Willian Gomes
Willian Gomes shows how true FP&A impact comes from blending technical expertise with empathy, communication, and continuous learning. His journey across industries and continents highlights the value of automation, cultural awareness, and a people-first mindset. This episode is a testament to how finance leaders can drive change by being both data-driven and deeply human..
Campfire: AI-First ERP:
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Explore Campfire today: https://campfire.ai/?utm_source=fpaguy_podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=100225_fpaguy
Follow Willian:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wjgomesds/?originalSubdomain=br
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
[02:48] - Willian’s Background and Global Role
[04:03] - What Great FP&A Looks Like
[11:46] - Moving Back to FP&A from Data Analytics
[19:52] - Where FP&A Struggles with Analytics
[27:16] - Saving 7,000 Hours with Automation
[38:55] - Must-Have Tech and Soft Skills
[44:36] - Travel and Fun Facts
[47:49] - Final Advice for FP&A Pros
Full Show Transcript
[00:01:31] Host: Paul Barnhurst: 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 unlocked where finance meets strategy. I'm your host, Paul Barnhurst, the FP&A guy. Each week we bring you conversations and practical advice from thought leaders, industry experts, and practitioners who are reshaping the role of FP&A in today's business world. 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 is Campfire, the ERP that's helping modern finance teams close fast and scale faster. Today's guest is someone who's earned that coveted seat at the table. I'm excited to welcome Willian Gomes. Welcome to the show.
[00:02:28] Guest: Willian Gomes: Hi, Paul. Thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here.
[00:02:31] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you. And just, you know, our audience knows Willian joining us from Brazil, right?
[00:02:36] Guest: Willian Gomes: Yeah, I'm from Brazil.
[00:02:38] Host: Paul Barnhurst: We're excited. You don't get a ton of guests from South America, so I always enjoy that because you get different perspectives from everybody, you know, working all over the world. So a lot of fun. Willan is a professional with over 15 years of experience in finance, data analytics and business intelligence across Telecommunication, aerospace, investment markets and consumer goods. He has his MBA in Project Management from FGV Business School along with several specializations in data science, including machine learning from Stanford driven by a passion for process improvement, finance, automation, data science, and AI. He has a proven track record of implementing automation solutions and BI tools that have saved over 60,000 work hours across companies, professionals, and retail investors. As a financial partner on the supply chain FP&A team, he supports the EMEA cluster covering 60 countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, leading financial reviews with senior professionals and leadership to help drive the financial close and forecasting processes. I love the background. I love automation. Really excited to jump into that. I know we'll talk about some of that, but we're going to start with this question. You know what's coming. What does great look like to you? Describe it for us.
[00:04:07] Guest: Willian Gomes: Yeah. Honestly Paul, this is my favorite question. Just listening to your podcast and focusing on this topic has taught me a ton. I would encourage everyone to just pay attention to these questions and watch your previous episode, because there's a lot of insights that we can get from that. To me, a great start with soft skills. Sure, that technical abilities matter is how your partner works with people across the organization, that really drives impact. And I would like to tell you a recent personal story in my current role at Cvu. As I said, I'm responsible for helping the company to understand their story behind CNA's. That means I work with folks across 60 countries through Europe, Middle East and Africa. And to do this well, I need to build a genuine partnership, not just check in about business performance. One day I was getting ready for a close review with the analysts in charge of a particular cluster. We kicked off the call, as usual, with a little small talk before diving into the numbers. Joking I'm good, but when I step into is calling me, I panic. So of course we lost. But after meeting I was just thinking about it. What if it's not just a joke? Am I making his work harder instead of helping? So in the next few meetings, I'm starting to ask more about his workload, and I learned that he was juggling way more than just tennis. He barely had time to prepare for reviews to help other people in his team.
[00:05:51] Guest: Willian Gomes: I was reflecting on that and I began to send in my quick questions ahead of time. Right away he seems to be more relaxed, prepared, and our meetings became much more productive. So that's my view. What makes a great FP&A? It's about being a true finance partner, not just chasing explanations from budget variance, but really working alongside the teams. Understand the challenges, make things a little easier. So this is one point that I would like to mention. Another one that I would like to tell is storytelling. For me it's a skill. It's a soft skill that you should pay attention to, because very often FP&A is the last stop before important information reaches the high level of leadership. So that means we have to make our story simple but powerful because it's shared with the stakeholders, shareholders, employees, even the broad community. So I like to think of storytelling like a business TV series. You know, if you watch the first few episodes and they don't connect or make sense, you probably stop watching and switch to something else. So when you go to a company, it's risky to let someone change the channel, because in your world, those viewers are investors or shareholders. If they turn out they were not looking for entertainment, they might be looking at our competitors. So that's why shaping a clear, compelling story is vital. For me, a great play makes sure people want to watch the entire series. You know what I mean?
[00:07:38] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I like that analogy, and I love the example you gave where you were proactive, like, okay, is this person really joking? Usually there's some level of truth in humor, right? I've heard stories that say, you know, 70% of all truth is said in humor, and I don't remember where I heard it. I'm sure the number was probably made up, but it gets that point across that there's almost always some truth to that. And I love that you took action and found a way to improve the meeting because that's totally being proactive without him directly saying, hey, we need to make some changes or I'm struggling here. You look at it and said, how could I resolve his pain? To me, that's a great example of FP&A. So thank you for sharing that and talking about great FP&A in general. You're sure to post recently on LinkedIn. That's how you and I connected about the things you've learned from FP&A tomorrow. In particular, that question you mentioned earlier. It's your favorite question. So what are some of the key takeaways you've received from that question that have helped you in your work?
[00:08:40] Guest: Willian Gomes: Yeah, I'll try to summarize a lot of things from your past episode, but I need to be honest. I need to watch all of them again because there are so many sites that are impossible to capture just at once, but something that I really see that is being repeated by your interviewer is a great Fe needs to be good at communications, needs to be good at business. Partnering needs to have empathy. So I'm starting to pay attention to this because hard skills are important. But some of them you can learn in just a weekend. If you put a lot of effort, you can for example, uh, go from a non-knowledge in Power BI to someone who can make uh, a reasonable, you know, dashboard. Just a weekend of learning by listening to our episodes. I have tried to collect as many sites as possible to help me improve my soft skills, which I believe are very important in this area. One episode I like was the interview with Brant Dikes uh, which talked about storytelling for uh. So it showed me how it is to communicate financial ideas clearly, not just showing the numbers, but telling the story behind them. I try to focus on these because although hard skills are important, like like I said, you can study it in a weekend and get better. So for another thing, I learned, the podcast often says that a professional has strong communication, work well with others, tell good stories, show empathy. This confirmed my beliefs that why hard skills matter is the soft skills really make a big difference in FP&A and help drive better results from the business.
[00:10:40] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Agree. I mean, at the end of the day, to a certain degree, the hard skills are just expected, right? We all have to be able to work with data. We all have to do some level of Excel modeling. Understanding accounting. If you don't have the basic technical skills, then you should be spending some time developing them. But what really allows you to be strategic, to be a business partner is all those soft skills. I mean, it's become so clear to me, talking again and again to guest, you know, attitude and soft skills to me are the key. Yes, you have to be able to do the technical, but give me the soft skills and the attitude and I'll hire that person. Teach them technical. As long as they're willing to learn.
[00:11:18] Guest: Willian Gomes: Yeah, there's a maximum that you are hired by your hard skills and you are fired by your soft skills. You know, you can't teach a hard skills for someone, but soft skills, sometimes it's really hard for the company to manage it.
[00:11:32] Host: Paul Barnhurst: The one I've always heard, I hadn't heard that one, but the one I've always heard is your technical skills get you your first job. Your soft skills get you promoted. You know, kind of the same idea.
[00:11:43] Guest: Willian Gomes: I couldn't say better. Yeah, that's really true.
[00:11:46] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So you recently transitioned from a data roll into a full time FP&A role. What had you switch? I know you've kind of worked in both and you're very passionate about data, but what was the thinking of kind of wanting a full time FP&A role.
[00:12:01] Guest: Willian Gomes: Since the beginning of my career? I've always loved to automate things. I start with Excel. I think as everyone is learning some bva's BVA sorry, some Vbas and some formulas to make my work faster and easier. And about five years ago I became passionate about the stock market, so I became a retail trader. I tried to invest a little bit of my capital in the stock market, and I realized that it's hard to make a good decision without solid data analysis. So I just began to build some tools to find opportunities in the market. My work gained some attention in the community, and I saw there was a real demand for this kind of skills. So I just give some time to my financial career and I moved it to a data analyst. As a data consultant, working primarily with retail traders and some companies. But after almost three years in this area, my wife and I, we decided to have our first child. So, you know, Paul, being our own boss has pros and cons, but I realized that combining my experience in automation data with my passion for finance would allow me to add even more value in the financial field. So I decided to switch back to finance to get more security to my family. And now what? Can I use both of my automation data skills to do my job much, much better in the finance field?
[00:13:44] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It's amazing how those children change what's important, right? You know, things we think we'd never do. It's like we'll do whatever we need to for our kids. So I totally understand wanting that security. We've all been there. I know I have at times it's like, all right, I'll take I'll take the secure position here. So it makes a lot of sense. Sounds like it's been a great opportunity for you.
[00:14:06] Guest: Willian Gomes: Before we move it to the data analyst, uh, role I was working at in Boulder. That is the third leading manufacturer in the world. I had a solid career in finance, but I was so passionate about, uh, automations and everything. And once I. My wife and didn't have any kids, I was just thinking, why not try? You know, I'm not too young, but you know, I can make some mistakes. So I just tried to get involved into this, and it was a great experience for me. And now back in finance, I use all these skills that I learned. And I can say that my job now is, is doing much better than when I was a.
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[00:15:52] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It's funny, I've talked to others and you know, I've said this before. If I went back into FP&A today, I would be much better for having run my own business for the last three and a half years. And the things I've learned, you know, it definitely gives you a different perspective when you're the one where everything kind of stops with you. I think it gives you a greater appreciation for your business partners as well, because, you know, when you're a business of one, you're doing all of it. And we mentioned this in your bio, but I'd love to dig into this because I know you're a big automation guy and we're going to get a little bit more into automation, but you completed the Stanford online machine Learning course. How has that helped you in the, you know, the data analysis and kind of analytics work you're doing? Talk a little bit about that, because I'm a I'm a big fan of machine learning. And I think sometimes we we sleep on how valuable that is a little bit with everybody getting caught up in gen AI these days.
[00:16:42] Guest: Willian Gomes: I got involved into machine learning because it's something that you can build it, not from scratch nowadays. I love it. Programming Python and I don't know if you are aware of it, but Python has two. The last time I see was 200,000 libraries for you to build something, do some analysis. And nowadays, you can make a very efficient machine learning model using a library. We just need to have some knowledge on how to, you know, improve the data, find to some parameters that answer your question. I still see Paul. That is not there is not many companies that is ready to get involved into machine learning because some of the models we call a black box. So you can see the result. But people want to see step by step. What's going behind is not possible for him. For all of them. So it's a huge work to do nowadays to build a machine learning model. I want to do it one day at Cvu, especially to identify some posted in the BVA that can call my attention not because they are higher than the forecast, but because they are unusual. Now imagine if I log in Ethan SAP and try to analyze the six countries that I manage. I'll get a lot of data. It's impossible to do it even with Python. So I need to build something to help me to do it. But to be very honest, machine learning has used it in my personal life. I'm 40 as we talk it. I'm not so young, but I like to exercise. So I build a model that track my body to see the points. If the points of my body are aligned with the exercise that I'm doing. So it's helped me to avoid injuring my body. So the first project that I did after completing Stanford was this one. I tried to get involved into the cam view, but as I say to you, everyone ask me, okay, that's a good project, but I want to see what's behind your machine learning model. And I just can't open it because it's a black box.
[00:19:11] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, it's really difficult. Well that's cool, you've done it for your health. I was going to say I'm pretty low tech. When my knees or my feet start to hurt. I know it's time to buy new shoes because I tend to abuse them. I go buy the new shoes and I'm usually okay, but I could definitely use a little more high tech there. That, and my smartwatch that says, hey, your heart rate's high or it's low.
[00:19:32] Guest: Willian Gomes: Yeah, there's a lot to do that you can take advantage of.
[00:19:36] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, it's pretty amazing what's available nowadays. Yeah. When you say you're not so young, uh, you're making me feel old because I turn 50 next year, so.
[00:19:46] Guest: Willian Gomes: Yeah, but we just had some experience. Different experiences. You have a little more than me.
[00:19:50] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I just have a little bit of experience. Is what I like to say. You know, having that data analytics background, where do you think FP&A is. We've talked about machine learning, but where do you think FP&A particular kind of teams fall short when it comes to working with data and analytics? Where are some areas that you think they generally struggle? I think Black Box is something you mentioned, so sometimes trusting the data sounds like an issue, but what are some of those things?
[00:20:16] Guest: Willian Gomes: I think people want to have quick results very quickly because nowadays everyone talks about AI. You start to see some other posts on your Instagram about, uh, a tool that can just receive data and turn into very sites. A lot of insights for you is not the way it works. You know, I think people need to understand the real problem they want to solve. I see many people just jump in to just put some data in there and just try to receive the best result possible so they don't think about it. Is it a real problem to solve? Is it worth to work with data? Because it's very poetic to say that someone who works with data is someone that needs to come up with insights. But I think it's like 5% of my time that I come up with my projects to my manager, say, hey, see, I found this very interesting pattern in your data. Let's work on this. So it's not the way that works. It demands a lot of time, especially cleaning the data, understanding the real problem. I think people skip this process and move faster to the tools they want results and everything.
[00:21:45] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, so it's a little bit of a problem you're seeing of just people not being patient enough and taking the time to really clean the data, understand it and then analyze it. And you make a great point. We all talk about insights and hey, we need to bring insights. Many times we can conduct analysis and even of the insights we do find. Often the business is aware. It's not realistic to expect. Every single time you analyze data, you're going to have an insight that's going to change the way the business works. You know, if you're doing that, the business is probably working wrong. In fact, I would argue they are, if you're finding it every single time, because you should be using data all along. So I think you make a really good point on the data front, because it's easy to get caught up in insights because we always hear that term. I appreciate that. So how do you, you know, any advice to people? You've done a lot of automating, right. We talked about the importance of business partnering. We started off with that in soft skills. You know, what advice would you offer to people to have more of that automation mindset and start automating things? How should they think about it? Is there a framework you use or what? What can you share with us there?
[00:22:59] Guest: Willian Gomes: I have a framework that I usually use before I start to automate something first. First of everything, I look at the stage of the process. If something is new that might be changing soon, I prefer to wait before automating it because sometimes you can spend much more time building an automation than just doing the manual test. So it needs to be worth the effort, you know? So if you work to automate something that is in the very beginning of this stage. Maybe next week. Your manager just came to you and said, oh, look, the process changed. Now we are going to do it this way, not that way. So five, ten hours off your work is just, you know, throw it out. You need to start sometimes from scratch. The second what's the quality of your data? So there's the same data science that I mentioned. Trash in and trash out. So if the data isn't good, any automation will produce a bad result. So make sure that the data is already ready before moving forward. And finally, and finally what I like I think about how much time automating will actually save. It's like make an investment. I look for a good return on my effort.
[00:24:27] Guest: Willian Gomes: And in this case, the return is time saved. If automation saves a lot of time and make the process better, then I will move ahead. Uh, recently I tried to automate our BVA process at Cvu. I think I have spent five, almost ten hours trying to build an FP&A to complete the process because I need to connect to a system, and then I need to check some tables, and then I need to align something with the data governance. It takes a lot of time for me. So when this process finishes, it will be performing in a second. And not kidding. So something that now I spend 2 or 3 hours it will be in a second. This is a very mature process so it's worth spending time on this. So my advice to the people is look at this stage. The process is if it's a three-stage process, try to keep it manually until you get more matrix. Matrix stage. What's the quality of the data you are using and does it work? Your time to work with that automation because it's not that easy to automate the process. You know.
[00:25:45] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I like that you're talking about the maturity, quality and time savings, kind of looking at all three and being able to say, okay, this makes sense to automate. This doesn't, you know, not so much automation, but even analysis. I did when you talk about number two trash in trash out. I've done a ton of statistical analysis on some data we had, but it was all finance data. The accruals just made too big of a mess. It just never could find any patterns. And I was pretty new in my career, and was out of MBA school. So I went and asked the guy I knew that had a PhD in statistics and looked at the data. He's like, your data's garbage. You're not going to get any good numbers from this. Yeah, he was like, you could torture it all you want, but you're not going to get anything that's meaningful. It made me feel better. It's like, okay, it's not me. At least. It's just, you know, the data's garbage.
[00:26:30] Guest: Willian Gomes: Yeah. The worst thing is people sometimes use this data in Excel to get the results, so they still use garbage data and they rely on the results. You know.
[00:26:42] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It's always frustrating to see decisions made and you find out, oh, the data was totally wrong. Yeah. You know, and I've done a few of those myself where I've ran something and the data was totally wrong.
[00:26:53] Guest: Willian Gomes: Never fun is not a good feeling to go to your boss and say, you know, that decision that you communicated yesterday was made by some wrong data?
[00:27:03] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. He had a situation where we paid some people and the data was wrong, so we paid the wrong people. That was not fun. You know, we all make mistakes. My view is always to just be transparent and upfront. And 99% of the time you'll be fine. I'm curious, you mentioned I think it was in the bio 60,000 hours you saved over time. What automation has saved you the most time over your career? Can you share maybe a story of something you've automated where you've seen a huge benefit?
[00:27:29] Guest: Willian Gomes: It was, I think, the project that I saved most of the time when I was working as a data consultant, especially for the stock market. A guy for a firm just came to me and said, look, I work with these traders. I need to see all the Brazilian markets. I need to see the US market, I need to see the dollar. So actually, I have six people to look at the patterns for me and communicate. The other traders have some opportunity. They are not seen. And he came to me and say, can you automate that? And I don't know if you are familiar with, uh, stock market, but usually we talk about some candlestick patterns. That is a graph with candlesticks when you have opening price, closing price maximum and minimum. Uh, to make things difficult, this guy was working with something that we call deep reading that basically you don't use graph. Most of the time you just observe the patterns with the players in the Brazilian market. We still see who is buying and who is selling. I think in the US you can do it. You just see someone is buying, someone is selling. But in Brazil you can see. So it was a big challenge for me. So I started to work with his team to understand how the strategy was, how they screen the market. And I built an automation for him that saved a lot of time because from six analysts looking for the market, he turned to just one to find the system. So if you take five analysts plus 4 to 5 hours a day, plus 24, 24 days a month in a year, you can save almost 7000 hours off of work. So that was a huge project that I did that saved a lot of time.
[00:29:35] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah, I mean, that's roughly three and a half employees. Full year time, 7000 hours. Thank you for sharing that. I don't think I've ever saved anywhere near that many hours. I really like that example, you know, so I'm curious, you know, for your automation, what do you find yourself using the most? Python coding. You know, doing stuff in Excel. What are the tools you tend to find help you most when you're automating things?
[00:30:02] Guest: Willian Gomes: Definitely Python because you can automate things in Excel. But for example, one day I try to build an entire system in Excel. Let's get huge, huge huge huge huge. And one day I just woke up, opened the system and there was an error of reference in one cell. And you know what's happening when you have this kind of error, it's going to affect a lot of cells in your model. So a Hispanic. What's happened to this? I spent a lot of hours trying to figure out what's going on. Who? Just delete some formulas in Python. If you are an organized person, you can extract it step by step from your code. And one part of the code do not affect the other. So you can give your maintenance much easy. So definitely Python for automation is a plus.
[00:30:57] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And so I'm curious if you think more professionals should learn Python. I mean how needed do you think it is. What's your take?
[00:31:08] Guest: Willian Gomes: I think if like.
[00:31:10] Guest: Willian Gomes: Learn a new language, you know, when I learn English, it's open for me, a new world, especially in terms of learning. Most of the good materials that I found on the internet came in English. So I can work just with Portuguese. I can keep studying, I can get better. But with English my vision just opened like this. Python for me is the same. You can do a great job for a person that I really like the way she's managed. She doesn't know anything about Python, but if you know Python you can automate things because I'm always thinking about the question you make in the beginning of your show. Paul, what a great fan! Looks like. You can have a huge list of hard skills and soft skills, but if you don't have time to do it, it's just a list. And when we were in a financial field, it's very easy to get stuck into data. Some tie out some data cleaning. So okay, you have a list of what a day looks like, but you don't have time to even practice. So a good way to save time is to automate things. So you use that time to do other things, maybe improve your communication skills and storytelling. Be engaged with your stakeholders. So it's not mandatory for you to do your work in fact with Python. But if you learn, you can save time not just for you, but for your coworkers, your stakeholders, your company. So I think something that is good for you to have in mind, especially because I don't want to say that it is a easy language, but it's more natural language. Some things that we see in Excel, we just replicated in Python, like if and else statement, you know, you can do some vlookups. So it's like a smooth transition. It's not like I'm going to learn C plus C plus. I don't know if nowadays someone is engaging to learn it because it's a very tough language. You know, my point.
[00:33:28] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Is kind of. Transitioning from Excel to learning the basics of R and Python. It does the example in Excel and it has you do the example in R and Python and kind of walks you through. So you could start because I've heard it said Excel is the gateway to data analytics. And you know almost everybody starts with Excel and some never move beyond that. And they can still be good and do what they need to most all the time. And then others start bumping into the data limits. Whatever the problems are, you start investing more and more time elsewhere, whether it's Python, whether it's R like your point in mentioning lady that, right? She's great at her job. You can be great at FP&A without knowing Python, but having the ability to do it will save you time. Like if I started my career again, that's something I would have learned. It was kind of always on my list and I. I didn't do it. And now that I've started my business, I just don't do much of that type of work anymore. So I keep pushing it off. But it's always kind of been something I've wanted to learn, so I definitely saw the benefit of it from others that I've worked with that had it. I'm curious, how do you see AI, you know, particularly gen AI playing into kind of automation and changing the way we work, whether it's Excel or Python or kind of what's your take? I think everybody has an opinion here, so I'd love to know kind of how you see things with AI going.
[00:34:50] Guest: Willian Gomes: Yeah, I think nowadays we need to take care with AI because people rely so much on that. And it's like people will just skip the basics of the learning, for example, Python, because they think they just put some prompt in the AI, they are going to build the entire model for them. A lot of times I see the AI answer is wrong and I say it doesn't seem good. It's time- consuming, so very, very relevant nowadays. It's going to change our life forever. It's here to be. You know, it's a real new stage of the work. But I think people need to learn the basics behind what they want to use with AI. I'm using it a lot, for example, when I write emails in English, but for example, when I see some words, it doesn't sound good. You know, I think I mentioned to you that one day I received an email from someone I think was from when he tried to write in Portuguese. It was clear that he is using AI because they may start with, I hope this message finds you well. No one in Brazil uses it. Maybe my grandfather in the past wrote some letters, but no one uses it. So you need to be careful when you use AI. And I think the potential of AI nowadays is to combine it with programming, especially Python. But what I see in the companies they worry about their data is a fair point, you know. Because for example, if you are going to work with a framework, sorry, framework, not if you are going to work with an API from OpenAI in finance, you are going to put your finance data in there. So what's going on with your data? Can you guarantee it's secure? So usually I'm using AI every day. You know, in my job just to try to help me to fight some errors to optimize some codes. But I think we didn't get the full potential of AI because of this limitation of data security. And some of the.
[00:37:19] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I know it's a big concern. I know, uh, OpenAI just released. When they released ChatGPT five, they released a model that can be run on local servers to try to manage some of that security stuff better and give companies a little more, uh, comfort. I was just talking to a company the other day that, you know, they're building an Excel add in, and they were the only ones that did it as a calm add in. That's how they coded it. And they did that for security reasons. So you can't download it from the store. You have to, you know, run it as an executable. And I'm like, why am I doing this? Like, I feel like I'm in 1990. And I asked him and he explained it. He goes, it's because it's higher security. And, you know, they're talking to a lot of banks and things with the tool. And I'm like, okay, I get it now. Security is a huge one. I mean, I worked for the Navy. So, you know, the US government military and I worked for, uh, a bank, American Express. So I've definitely seen where you have to be super careful with your data.
[00:38:16] Guest: Willian Gomes: One question for you, do you think they are using AI in the Navy nowadays?
[00:38:20] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I'm sure they are. I don't know how tight it is. I have to go back. I'll have to go talk to one of my friends that works in the industry. I have a friend that I think he's still in that industry. He may have switched, but I'll have to check with him because, yeah, I'm sure they're using it in some ways, but I'm sure it's a lot more restricted. You know, they're not just letting them open up, open AI and put whatever they want.
[00:38:42] Guest: Willian Gomes: I'm going to attack this country. What do you think is the best approach or something like that?
[00:38:46] Host: Paul Barnhurst: So now we're going to come up to kind of that standard FP and a section. You know you know these questions. You've you've heard them before. I'm sure you've given it some thought. So first one. So someone starting in FP today, what's the number one technical skill they should master.
[00:39:03] Guest: Willian Gomes: Excel for sure.
[00:39:05] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It's amazing. 40 years later and it's still the King so to speak.
[00:39:09] Guest: Willian Gomes: Every year you say something that this tool will kill Excel. Now it's not going to be, it's not going to be. Because sometimes my boss comes to me and say, well, I have a meeting with the senior leadership in 15 minutes. I need to summarize. What's the, you know, the most, uh, impact of the coins for these and these and these and these countries. I can't just stop to build some codes in Python. I need to make a pivot table, analyze it. And Excel is very, very good at this. So you need to learn Excel.
[00:39:44] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It's fabulous for quick and dirty. It's fabulous for prototyping. Even if Excel was to go somewhere the spreadsheet is the form factor. I just don't see it ever fully going away. It's too valuable. As long as humans are doing analysis, the spreadsheets are going to have a place in our in the work we do.
[00:40:01] Guest: Willian Gomes: For sure, that's for sure.
[00:40:03] Host: Paul Barnhurst: What about that soft skill? What's the one they should focus on?
[00:40:07] Guest: Willian Gomes: Communication and storytelling. As I say, my work is impossible to do if I don't communicate with people. If I don't try to be a good business partner with. And actually I have a big challenge because I'm Brazilian. We have a personal style to work. But now I work with people from Europe, South Africa, Middle East. I talk to people in Prague, I talk to people in Spain. I talk to people in Italy. And everyone has a different behavior. I have a book I just read here that I would like to. Can I show it?
[00:40:47] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah.
[00:40:48] Guest: Willian Gomes: Yeah. For anyone that want is the Culture Map by Erin Mayer. It's a very interesting book because when I first start on eight, I had a meeting with someone from Portugal, and I thought she was very rude at me, and I. I speak with my manager and say she's always that way. And she said to me, don't worry about that. It's just the way people Traits that kind of subject the country. So don't take it personal. She's a very, very good person, but it's normal to hear that kind of behavior from someone in Portugal. So this book, just try to summarize it. So how people from Japan usually behave, you know, they don't want to put everything on the box because everyone is unique. But of course, of course in Brazil we have a pattern. If you send me a kind of a mail, I maybe see it's a bit rude, but if you send it to someone in UK, for example, they say okay, it's pretty normal. So communication, it's a very good skills for you to learn.
[00:42:03] Host: Paul Barnhurst: And cultural norms is a fabulous. I still remember the employee. It's like, why are you thinking I'm just doing my job. They're from the UK. Like guys always thanking me for everything. Like basically, please knock it off already. It was kind of funny. A lot of cultural differences depending on where you go. And so that's a great great book recommendation. I appreciate it. All right. It wouldn't be an FBA podcast without at least a few questions or conversations around Excel. So if Excel was to remove one feature tomorrow from the tool could be a formula feature, whatever you want it to be. Which one is causing you the most panic?
[00:42:39] Guest: Willian Gomes: I think pivot table for sure, because it summarized very quickly a lot of data.
[00:42:45] Host: Paul Barnhurst: I think a lot of people have said pivot table. I think it's a little less now that we have the pivot by function if you have 365, but still yeah, I, I can't even tell you how many times I've spent hours in a pivot table at work. I definitely would have a very hard time if they got rid of that. So I can relate to that one. All right. So we're going to move into the get to know you section. I have a couple questions to get to know you a little better. What do you like to do in your free time. What's kind of your hobby or passion when you're not at work?
[00:43:14] Guest: Willian Gomes: I like to.
[00:43:15] Guest: Willian Gomes: Exercise myself and I like to spend a lot of time with my daughter. I try just to leave my phone away and try to go out with her, try to play with her, and also like to have a barbecue. That is a very traditional in Brazil, you know, just enjoy sometimes with some friends and talking about some, you know, something about life.
[00:43:41] Host: Paul Barnhurst: You. I was going to say barbecue. That sounds good. I might have to make a trip down there.
[00:43:45] Guest: Willian Gomes: You definitely. I used to live in Australia. I lived one year in Sydney, and one day a friend of mine just invited me for a barbecue. When I just reached the place, I saw it's just a sausage. It's not a barbecue. And he said, it's the way we make barbecue here. So in Brazil we use a lot of meetings, meats.
[00:44:06] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It's funny, different places. What qualifies as a barbecue? What they barbecue. Like in the US, you got southern barbecue You and Texas and go. Different places are known and different sources depending on where you go. And I'm sure it's the same in Brazil.
[00:44:22] Guest: Willian Gomes: Yeah, it's the same.
[00:44:23] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It's fascinating how different we can cook something or use the same term, but everywhere you go it's different or a little different. Love that about culture. All right. If you could travel anywhere in the world tomorrow, what would be your travel destination? Where would you go?
[00:44:42] Guest: Willian Gomes: I'm suspicious to say, because.
[00:44:44] Guest: Willian Gomes: I love Australia. I would like to come back there one day. It's far away from Brazil. It's like 17 hours of flight was the longest flight of my life. But it's a place that is very similar to Brazil in terms of weather. We have a mix of cultures where everyone is very friendly. We have a lot of good places to visit. Yeah. Definitely Australia. I love that country.
[00:45:12] Host: Paul Barnhurst: That would be fun. Never been, I had one time they were talking about sending me for one day of meetings, and it's basically 17 hours there and back. And my wife was like 6 or 7 months pregnant with our first. And I'm like, yeah, it ain't happening. I'm not traveling over there, especially for one day and, you know, 30 hours of travel. And they ended up, uh, managing it some other way. But it was pretty. It was like, I'd love to go. Yeah, it was a different time. I would have visited for a while, but it was just kind of a one day meeting. You're gonna send me all the way to Australia.
[00:45:48] Guest: Willian Gomes: Is a very good place. All of my friends just asked me the same question. Those spiders are real because they say that huge spiders, you know, that just come up. You know, I have never seen that when I was living in Australia.
[00:46:03] Host: Paul Barnhurst: It worries my wife. She's absolutely terrified of spiders.
[00:46:06] Guest: Willian Gomes: So yeah, they talk about sharks. They. I saw a thing that was very interesting when I was driving, a kangaroo just crossed the street. I thought that was impossible because I saw some, you know, advice. Be careful with the kangaroos. I said, it's not going to happen. And then I use a kangaroo just crossed, you know, the road and I try to break the car.
[00:46:32] Host: Paul Barnhurst: When you get out in nature, you never know what you're going to see. It's pretty amazing. All right. So this is a fun one. I like to ask if you could have dinner with one person in the world, dead or alive, who would you take to dinner? Who are you going to pick and why?
[00:46:45] Guest: Willian Gomes: That's a good one. Thinking about, maybe the Dalai Lama, because it's someone that has a very calm mind, you know, a very good philosophy of life. And I think nowadays everyone is very crazy to work as many hours as they can. Then they realize that they spend all of their lives just working, just worrying about the problems. And I think if you can clear your mind and be peaceful with yourself, you can, you know, handle problems much better. By the way, I'm trying to get into meditation. I promised myself several times before, but I didn't. You know, it's like I try to concentrate. And then that funny music just came to my mind and I said, oh my God, again, I need to try it again. But one day I will definitely try to meditate. A lot of times during the week.
[00:47:49] Host: Paul Barnhurst: If you could offer one piece of advice to our audience to be a better business partner, what advice would you give them?
[00:47:56] Guest: Willian Gomes: Try to put yourself in someone's shoes. It's very poetic to say, I know it's very hard to do because life is crazy. You are handled with your own problems, but you need to put yourself into someone's shoes to understand why they didn't answer you that way. Why do they answer you? Because if you just try to chasing people because of the job they don't do, you're gonna be in a real trouble. So try to put yourself in someone's shoes is a good exercise.
[00:48:32] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Yeah. When you say that, I think of just kind of empathy, trying to understand where the other person's coming from. It's A1I get a lot. I am a big fan of that. Thank you for sharing that. So if someone wants to learn more about you or potentially get in touch, what's the best way for them to do that?
[00:48:46] Guest: Willian Gomes: Yeah, I'm not a big fan of social media, but um, try to be active in LinkedIn. So just try to hit me up on LinkedIn and try to post some projects there, buy projects and automation projects. So if you have any questions regarding to any projects that I post, I'll be more than happy to to guide you through if you want.
[00:49:05] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Well, thank you so much for doing that. We appreciate that. And I imagine you'll get Somebody will take you up on that one of these days. So thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for sharing your post on LinkedIn about what you've learned from FPA. You know, that makes my job much more rewarding when I hear those stories. And so it's been a real pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much.
[00:49:24] Guest: Willian Gomes: Thank you so much, Paul. It's an honor to be here.
[00:49:27] Host: Paul Barnhurst: Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five-star rating and a review on your podcast platform of choice. This allows us to continue to bring you great guests from around the globe. As a reminder, you can earn CPE credit by going to earmarkcpe.com, downloading the app, taking a short quiz, and getting your CPE certificate to earn continuing education credits for the FPAC certification. Take the quiz on earmark and contact me the show host for further details.