Peter Margaritis: [00:00:00] Welcome to Episode 10. And my guest today is Rebekah Brown. And she is the Director of Development for the Maryland Association of CPAs and the Business Learning Institute.

Peter Margaritis: [00:00:10] In her role, Rebekah frequently presents to groups both locally and nationally on the future of the accounting profession. Rebekah is a certified Insight to Action facilitator, having guided firms, nonprofits, and accounting professionals in the United States and Canada in their strategic planning process. In 2017, Rebekah was named one of the 20 Under 40 Superstars Who are Helping to Advance the Accounting Profession by CPA Practice Advisor.

Peter Margaritis: [00:00:40] Rebekah earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration with a dual specialization in Accounting and Sports Management from the Fisher School of Business at The Ohio State University. She’s a CPA and did work has an auditor in public accounting.

Peter Margaritis: [00:00:56] Now, in her current role, she uses her talents and experiences to work for the profession rather than inside the profession. She has a lot of interesting insights into the future of the profession, and I know you’re going to really enjoy this conversation.

Peter Margaritis: [00:01:11] Speaking of the future of the profession, there was an article in Accounting Today titled Melancon: It’s Time to Reimagine Accounting that discusses the future of our profession. Barry Melancon is the President and CEO of the AICPA. This article is based on a presentation he made this year at the AICPA ENGAGE Conference.

Peter Margaritis: [00:01:32] He’s quoted in saying, “The opportunities for the profession are immense, but so are the changes we are facing. If we are willing to go beyond, to push on beyond the perceptions of what we do, we can create a profession that is aligned with where the world is headed.”.

Peter Margaritis: [00:01:50] Now, my favorite quote from this article is when Barry said, “We’ve changed significantly just in the past year, and we’re never going to see the pace of change that’s slower than what we’re seeing now. And, you know, we won’t be obsolete, particularly, if we embrace these changes.”

Peter Margaritis: [00:02:13] Let that sink in. “We’ve changed significantly just in the past year, and we’re never going to see the pace of change that’s slower than what we’re seeing now.” How does that affect you and your business? How does that affect you as an accounting financial professional as we move forward?

Peter Margaritis: [00:02:37] So, I highly recommend that you find this article and read it because Barry and the institute’s chair, Eric Hansen, provide us with their ideas on where we need to start, on how new takes on old roles, what things that we need to learn, and their big picture vision of the profession.

Peter Margaritis: [00:02:58] Now, after reading this article and listening to Barry’s podcast interview with Bill Sheridan on Future-Proof, a podcast for accounting and financial pros, I have decided to invest my CPE time and dollars into learning more about block chain and artificial intelligence.

Peter Margaritis: [00:03:16] Now, I’ve been somewhat reluctant. But, now, I want to have this better understanding of this technology. You can find the Future-Proof Podcast with Bill Sheridan on iTunes. I listen to it. He does a wonderful job. I highly recommend this podcast to all accounting and financial professionals.

Peter Margaritis: [00:03:37] Before we get to the interview, let me ask you two questions. Do you want to present financial information with confidence and clarity? Do you want to turn boring numbers into a compelling story that describes your business better? Well, let my new book, Taking the Numb Out of Numbers: Explaining and Presenting Financial Information with Confidence and Clarity, be the guide in your transformation.

Peter Margaritis: [00:04:04] See, when you take the numb out of numbers, that leaves you with ers, E-R-S, which stands for effective relatable stories. And isn’t that the goal in every financial presentation? Because when we tell stories, we engage our audience.

Peter Margaritis: [00:04:25] Hayden Williams, who is a CFO at the Washington Society of CPAs is quoted in saying, “This book is a must-read for any financial professional.” The book is now available on Amazon. So, stop what you’re doing and buy it today. So, without further ado, let’s get to the interview with Rebekah Brown.

Peter Margaritis: [00:04:46] Hey, welcome back, everybody. Today, I’m with my very special guest who I’ve known now for about 5-6 years. I’m here with Rebekah Brown. And Rebekah, thank you for taking time out of your, I know, very hectic schedule because you work at the Maryland Association of CPAs. And I know for a fact to get you to sit down for an hour is probably a challenge because you’ve got so much going on there that keeps you running in every which direction. But thank you for taking time to be with me this morning.

Rebekah Brown: [00:05:15] Yeah. I’m very happy to be here, Peter. Actually, you probably have only known me for five and a half years, but I’ve known you longer.

Peter Margaritis: [00:05:24] Uh-oh.

Rebekah Brown: [00:05:24] Uh-oh. So, because I went to Ohio State, I was the Ohio Society’s Student Ambassador at Ohio State. And I heard you present probably my junior year maybe of college. And so, when I came to MACPA, and I heard your name thrown out, I was like, “I remember that guy. I remember the Improv thing and everything.” Yeah.

Peter Margaritis: [00:05:48] Oh wow.

Rebekah Brown: [00:05:50] I know, right.

Peter Margaritis: [00:05:50] You’re just, now, telling me this, which is-

Rebekah Brown: [00:05:53] I know. I can’t believe I hadn’t told you that before. Yeah.

Peter Margaritis: [00:05:56] Holy cow. Wow. So, I presented at a student event?

Rebekah Brown: [00:06:01] It was a high school accounting workshop thing exposing the high school students to the accounting career. And so, I went and was on a panel of like what it’s like to be an accounting college student. And you were there. I think, either it was that or I also met you there and at the, like, orientation for Ohio Society Student Ambassadors. We did like a little training.

Peter Margaritis: [00:06:26] Yeah.

Rebekah Brown: [00:06:27] And I think you talked about like the Improv thing.

Peter Margaritis: [00:06:29] Probably did. When they put me in front of students like that, they’d always want me to do talk about the Improv stuff, and because that’s-

Rebekah Brown: [00:06:36] Yeah, it’s a fun set.

Peter Margaritis: [00:06:36] Yeah, it’s kind of fun versus, “Let me talk to you about what it’s like at a firm.” And you are a CPA.

Rebekah Brown: [00:06:43] I am a CPA.

Peter Margaritis: [00:06:43] Card-carrying CPA. So, give the audience a little bit about your background after you graduate from The Ohio State University.

Rebekah Brown: [00:06:53] So, I actually have a dual major or degree from The Ohio State University, in the Fisher College of Business. So, I majored in Accounting and Sports Management. So, that’s how I got to my 150.

Peter Margaritis: [00:07:05] Okay.

Rebekah Brown: [00:07:06] Yeah. So, that’s another fun fact.

Peter Margaritis: [00:07:09] That’s another fun fact, wow.

Rebekah Brown: [00:07:09] Yes. So, I actually went into accounting to do sports management. I have a passion for football, always loved football, knew I would never play football. And so, decided to go into the business side. Always been pretty business-minded.

Rebekah Brown: [00:07:25] I went to Iowa State because they were one of the only schools I found that would let me do sports management as part of their business school and not as part of their, like, sports or leisure studies program. And they don’t have that as an actual major. I had to create it. So, I had to research Sports Management majors all over the country, take the best of the best courses, and, like, create the specialization within Fisher, presented, and getting approved, and all of that.

Peter Margaritis: [00:07:53] Wow, that’s cool.

Rebekah Brown: [00:07:54] Yeah. So, when I started, that was my purpose in going to Ohio State and Fisher. And then, when I had to do my undergrad, you know, the gen ed kind of stuff for the business school, accounting, obviously, was part of that. And I kind of fell in love with the logic of accounting and thought it would be a great pairing with the sports management to kinda go get my CPA, and work in a firm, get that experience, and then move into the sports management field.

Rebekah Brown: [00:08:24] So, that was always my plan, but plans change. So, yeah, when I talk to students, I tell my career path has been like Lombard Street in San Francisco. Like I had made some changes that don’t make any sense to me, but it gets me safely to where I am today, so.

Peter Margaritis: [00:08:39] But you started off in accounting. That was the focus. And it sounds like the sports management was the add-on, as you said, to get to the 150. What made you-

Rebekah Brown: [00:08:48] It actually was flipped. It was flipped. I started with the sports management. And then, I went into accounting. And then, my perceptions and my ideas on what I wanted to do kind of flipped. And so, then, the sports management was the extra hours, and the accounting was the focus, so.

Peter Margaritis: [00:09:02] So, what was it about — Why did you become an accountant? What was it about that that when you saw that, you went “Oh, I could do this”?

Rebekah Brown: [00:09:10] Yeah. So, it’s so cliché, but accounting is the language of business. It just was so obvious to me in those courses. It was logical. Now, I know once you get into the working world, in actual application, it’s not always logical. But in school, it was very logical. Everything had a place. I am very analytically-minded. So, that fit pretty well. And to be honest, I grew up around accounting. So, it was familiar to me. And I knew and respected the profession so much that it made a lot of sense for me to kind of go in that direction.

Peter Margaritis: [00:09:47] So, when you graduated, who did you go to work for?

Rebekah Brown: [00:09:49] So, I graduated, and I went to work for a large top 100 regional firm in Maryland. Really amazing firm. I had interned with them between my junior and senior year at the end of my — I guess, the summer of my junior year, I got a full-time offer. So, I was able to go into my senior of school with a full-time job. So, that made that a very pleasant experience, and started working, you know, right when I got home.

Rebekah Brown: [00:10:14] Actually, you know what, I took like two months off, and my sister got married, and I started. I had to take one ethics course. So, Maryland requires a specific ethics course to sit for the exam. This was part of the — It was before the 12150. So, now, they can sit at 120. I couldn’t sit to 150. That’s how old I am. So, I had to take that ethics course over the summer. My sister got married. And then, I started at the beginning of August in public accounting and audit.

Peter Margaritis: [00:10:49] In audit. And how many years were you in public accounting?

Rebekah Brown: [00:10:54] I was in public accounting a little over three years.

Peter Margaritis: [00:11:00] Three years. And you said, “This might not be for me, or this might not — And I want to do something different.” And is that when you came over and joined MACPA?

Rebekah Brown: [00:11:12] So, yes. So, what I found was I went and got the CPA, I got promoted to senior. I probably had been a senior for about six months, or no. No, about maybe six or eight months, and got really stressed out. I had kind of taken on a special project to help train all the incoming staff and interns. I loved that, poured a lot of time and passion into that. And the client work kind of piled up because I was pouring so much love and passion into that, and then got kind of bogged down.

Rebekah Brown: [00:11:49] It was a summer. I did most of the employee benefit plan audits over the summer, got kind of drowning in that client work, and just wasn’t feeling great about what I did. I had a training session of all things, a CPE session for all the seniors, and what we did was this leadership style assessment. And my results came out that I was spirited and considerate. Those were my two defining words of my leadership style. And every single one of my colleagues came out as direct and systematic.

Rebekah Brown: [00:12:29] And so, it was kind of at that point that I realized I, like, fundamentally went about things differently than they do. And that wasn’t a bad thing, but it did kind of make sense now why I was so stressed out and struggling, and they weren’t. It wasn’t that I was given more work to do, or my hours, or anything like that. It was they strive in that kind of environment and did well because it fit their strengths, and what I was doing didn’t fit my strengths. It’s not that I couldn’t do it. It just wasn’t fulfilling to me; and therefore, became stressful. And when you’re under stress, you start making stupid mistakes. And that’s kind of what had started to happen.

Peter Margaritis: [00:13:11] Can I get an amen from the crowd please. Because, like you said, yeah, I was different as well, and realized what you just described just took me back to when I was in public and when I was doing accounting work. Yeah, I’m not that by far. I’m kind of like spirited, and yeah.

Rebekah Brown: [00:13:32] I actually asked the instructor that was teaching it or whatever. I actually said out loud, “Oh my gosh. Should I have been a kindergarten teacher?” Like those are my results, and it came out, and I was like, “My sister is a kindergarten teacher. Maybe I shouldn’t have taught. I’m at the wrong way.” But it was it was a life changing moment that day.

Peter Margaritis: [00:13:52] But I will say this, and I think it’s why I love the profession and accounting, it seems like there’s so many ways that you can make a living in this business without having to do the accounting work, that it just opens a lot of opportunities. Like with some, you know, fields and some professions, if you don’t do, there’s nothing there for you, and you go find something completely different.

Rebekah Brown: [00:14:16] Exactly.

Peter Margaritis: [00:14:16] There’s a lot that can be done for folks like ourselves who are not that stereotypical, but we can add value to the profession. And that’s what you’re doing now at Maryland Association of CPAs. You are the director, director. Director, director. Director, right?

Rebekah Brown: [00:14:34] Director of Development, yes.

Peter Margaritis: [00:14:35] Director of Development. And you were explaining to me before we started the conversation that it’s out there. It’s a little confusing, but you want people to ask you. So, what is the Director of Development? What do you develop?

Rebekah Brown: [00:14:53] Sure. So, I think of it in three areas, three Ps, like the alliteration in letters in this profession, right?

Peter Margaritis: [00:15:01] Right.

Rebekah Brown: [00:15:02] So, the first is people. So, I develop people. I am passionate on the individual basis about helping people find their strengths and find their place in the accounting profession. So, on an individual basis, with each of our members, I want to help develop them and develop their careers.

Rebekah Brown: [00:15:21] The second P is pipeline. So, we are, gosh, over a hundred-years-old organization that supports CPAs. And so, part of that is that we have to be always constantly thinking about and developing future CPAs. So, a lot of my work deals with the pipeline, both college students and high school students. I’ve also done some, you know, elementary school presentations about the accounting profession. So, always thinking about who is our next generation CPA, who’s our next generation member, and preparing them for the profession.

Rebekah Brown: [00:15:54] And then, the third one is the profession, in general. So, whether that’s inside of Maryland, and speaking to our member firms and organizations about how they can be more anticipatory, or really find those success skills in their organizations that we teach through our Business Learning Institute, or through our Business Learning Institute, being able to go outside the State of Maryland as well, developing the profession as a whole, speaking, facilitating, doing strategic planning for firms and organizations, actually, globally. And then, all that knowledge that I get from speaking with CPAs throughout the world, and bringing that back to Maryland, and sharing that with our members.

Rebekah Brown: [00:16:36] So, everything always comes back to Maryland. That’s our purpose. But, I think, the Business Learning Institute, and the speaking, and teaching that we do outside of the State of Maryland is super important too because we really believe that the rising tide raises all boats. So, we want the profession to grow to be successful, to be anticipatory, to be future-ready. And so, as we do that all over the world, we believe we are benefiting Maryland, and we believe that Maryland CPAs are even better positioned to be future-ready because of that.

Peter Margaritis: [00:17:11] I agree wholeheartedly. The work that you guys do outside of the State of Maryland, and then you bring it back in through Tom’s PIUs and the content that you’re pushing out, yeah. They probably heard anticipatory way before many other CPAs in this country heard the word anticipatory. And that’s a hard word to say, especially when you’re a graduate of the University of Kentucky. So, what is anticipatory? How do you frame that?

Rebekah Brown: [00:17:38] So, it’s interesting actually. I heard a definition through CPA.com’s study of the future of CPA and the skills needed that they did, basically asking, are our CPAs future-ready? And the results came out. Well, no, unfortunately. CPAs themselves, so CPAs included in the survey, only about 8% said that they felt that they were future-ready.

Rebekah Brown: [00:18:02] And they defined future-ready as the capacity to be aware, predictive, and adaptive. So, aware of future trends and environment, what’s going on. Predictive, being able to see those trends and kind of see where things are heading, predicts what might happen. And then adaptive, being ready to pivot when things change, and being able to take the skills that you have and apply them in different ways as you go for it.

Peter Margaritis: [00:18:34] I think, now, after you just described that, I said, “God, 8% sounds like it’s high,” because, I mean, adaptive, the profession had been that overly kind of adaptive. We’re a little bit more in that risk-averse side. And being adaptive takes on additional risks, which, you know, makes a lot of people uncomfortable. But we all know that we need to be adaptive. We need to take risks in order to grow.

Peter Margaritis: [00:19:02] And I know Daniel Burrus helped out a lot in this development of this anticipatory. And I had the pleasure of meeting him last week in Dallas at the National-

Rebekah Brown: [00:19:14] Wow.

Peter Margaritis: [00:19:14] … National Speakers Association Annual Convention. Actually, he and Mike Rayburn are co-chairs of our convention in 2019.

Rebekah Brown: [00:19:23] Wow. That’s so cool.

Peter Margaritis: [00:19:24] Yeah.

Rebekah Brown: [00:19:25] Yeah, we’ve learned a lot from Dan. His Anticipatory Organization; his book, Flash Foresight; and then the second book, Anticipatory Organization; and then the Anticipatory Organization for Accounting and Finance that we helped kind of co-create, his learning platform, the Anticipatory Organization and adapting it for accounting and finance professionals. We’ve learned so, so much through that experience and that process.

Peter Margaritis: [00:19:52] Yeah, I’ve got the book. It’s on my stack of things to read. But, you know, I almost think it’d be a letdown because I’ve heard so much from Maryland from Tom about it, and Bill, and you. And some will say, “Okay, I probably already read the book. I just haven’t read the book.” I’ve been around it for a number of years.

Peter Margaritis: [00:20:11] And I remember the first time when I had my big aha moment was I presenting at NABA, National Association of Black Accountants, and we were in DC at the time. And Tom couldn’t make it, and they asked me to do his PIU. And that’s when he was talking about the second machine age. And once I prepped for it, and got into it, and went, “Oh my god. This is really cool.”

Peter Margaritis: [00:20:35] And, you know, I know, at that point in time, people weren’t even thinking that this was ever gonna happen. And Tom was such a visionary. And then, it seemed like overnight, boom. And, now, we’re in this future-ready stage. And you did have to present or go talk to some pretty highfalutin, as we say in Kentucky, some highfalutin folks in the accounting profession recently. Would you like to share that with the audience?

Rebekah Brown: [00:21:01] Yeah, I do. I had the, gosh, amazing pleasure and honor to speak to and with two groups of IFACs. So, the International Federation of Accountants. The IESBA, the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants, and then the IAASB, the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board. So, they had a joint meeting of their consulting advisory group. So, not their full board but, you know, the people that, kind of, advise them on things. And I got to talk to them about, you know, the future-ready CPA, the future of the accounting and finance profession.

Rebekah Brown: [00:21:50] And a lot about what I did, actually, was walk through those three things: aware, predict, and adapt. I kind of broke my presentation down into, “Okay, let’s be aware.” First of all, what is anticipatory? What does that mean? What does the future look like?

Rebekah Brown: [00:22:08] Then, aware, what are the trends that we’re seeing? We talked about three types of hard trends: demographics, technology, and regulatory. So, those are trends that because they’re hard trends, they’re almost like certainties. We can really predict well where they will go.

Rebekah Brown: [00:22:26] So, then, we’d move into the predict phase of that, and being able to go, “Okay, here’s the hard trends. Now, when I look at hard trends, how I categorize them and things like that affect how I think about them and how I predict what might happen because of that.

Rebekah Brown: [00:22:41] And then, we go into the adapt, which is really about the skills needed. It is really about being able to, you know, pivot and move to things, and those future-ready skills, one of them being anticipatory, but also being things like communication, and leadership, and the importance of those softer but often very hard skills that really set you apart as a professional and are really going to be the game changers in success, I think, in the future. And, currently, I think that’s very true of what sets people apart as successful.

Peter Margaritis: [00:23:20] So, this audience, we talked about the kind of demographics of this, and mostly white male, some diversity with race, some diversity with gender. Average age, we figured probably somewhere in the mid 50s, somewhere around that.

Rebekah Brown: [00:23:37] So, the IFAC audience was a little different. So, IFAC, the both groups, so because it’s an international standards board, it has representatives from all different countries. So, the actual chair of the ethics standards board was from Greece. Fascinating.

Peter Margaritis: [00:23:57] Oh boy. Oh boy.

Rebekah Brown: [00:23:58] Fascinating guy.

Peter Margaritis: [00:24:01] Being Greek, that makes too fascinating.

Rebekah Brown: [00:24:04] Yes. Stavros was one of my favorites. And then, so they had representation from all … It looked like the United Nations.

Peter Margaritis: [00:24:14] Cool.

Rebekah Brown: [00:24:14] It was an amazing experience to talk to these individuals from all over the world that literally had, you know, flown into New York to work on the future of the accounting profession. So, the first thing I did when I got there is I had to thank them, like, “Thank you for taking-” This isn’t like a paid position, right. This is a volunteer thing that they’re working on our profession and setting standards, hopefully, that will make our profession future-ready and future-proof.

Rebekah Brown: [00:24:42] So, that experience both with the IAASB and the IESBA were very diverse and international. Still probably majority men, but it wasn’t drastic to me by any chance. Somebody I met at the time was, right now, he is the former chief auditor of the PCAOB. And he invited me to come and speak to PCAOB standing advisory committee or a group of standing advisory committee, the SAG. I didn’t think that was a great acronym, but that’s what they call themselves. So, PCAOB SAG. That group was much less diverse-

Peter Margaritis: [00:25:27] Okay.

Rebekah Brown: [00:25:28] … and not international. A couple, you know, but not very — More US-focused. Not a lot of diversity at all in that group.

Peter Margaritis: [00:25:51] So, with the response to this anticipatory, this predict, looking at trends, the skills, we need to develop the skills of communication and leadership, was that well-received or is that looked at kind of, “What are you talking about? We’re accountants”?

Rebekah Brown: [00:26:08] So, it’s interesting. I think both groups, it was fairly well received.

Peter Margaritis: [00:26:13] Okay.

Rebekah Brown: [00:26:14] So, the IFAC community, they were mostly standard setters and auditors in that group. The PCAOB group was kind of split into thirds with auditors, investors, and public company chief accounting officers.

Peter Margaritis: [00:26:34] Okay, yeah.

Rebekah Brown: [00:26:35] So, all three groups in the room, getting all three of those groups to agree on something probably is more difficult than a lot of things. They all seemed very receptive to it. I think, the chief accounting officers were really interesting in the conversation because, especially with the trends in regards to technology, they were like, “We’re doing all these things, and we’re worried because our auditors are falling behind.”

Rebekah Brown: [00:27:01] And these are, you know, huge, huge organizations that have big four auditors, and they were saying, you know, “We’re doing robotic process automation in our accounting department, and our auditors don’t know what to do with it. And so, they need to level up and get ready because we’re doing it regardless.”

Peter Margaritis: [00:27:20] Wow.

Rebekah Brown: [00:27:20] So, that was an interesting conversation. So, our message is all about, you know, the profession, and making it better, and things like that. The investor community was less interested, I think, in our conversation because it was about — our conversation was about improving the profession, and the skills, and things like that. And they’re just like, “No, just give me my opinion.”

Rebekah Brown: [00:27:41] We talk a lot, especially in the profession now, about that consultative. That’s where a lot of things in the profession are going, and they don’t want to see that. They don’t want us to consult with them. They want to give us, you know, the unbiased opinion, which I understand. So, that was the interesting dynamic was the investor community going, “I don’t want you to be more consultative. I don’t want you to, you know, help your clients more. I just want the black and white opinion.”.

Peter Margaritis: [00:28:07] And actually they were interesting too because they were like that’s not — the financial statements is, now, a very small percentage of the things we look at when we’re making investment decisions. And it was a very interesting group at the PCAOB group.

Peter Margaritis: [00:28:23] Wow. And with the firms within PCAOB group, we had the chief financial officers and investors. That third group who sounds to me like they’re lagging behind, what was their thought, or their opinion, or their comments as it relates to futuristic?

Rebekah Brown: [00:28:40] Yeah, it was interesting. They were probably the least vocal group. I think, they are overwhelmed. I think they agree and see everything. I think they completely understand. I think they’re just trying to do what they’ve always done, I think, to a degree. They’re like, “This is what I know. I’m going to continue to do this.” But I think they know they need to be different.

Rebekah Brown: [00:29:05] And so, I think that was a little internal battle almost. The desire and the intent is there. And I think they understand it. I didn’t hear from a whole lot of them. So, that, I found interesting as well that, I think, when you’re hearing from the investor community, and from their clients, and their clients’ clients basically are in the room. And I don’t know.

Rebekah Brown: [00:29:29] Their pushback was always, you know, we’re making it harder to do the audit. And so, the audit is being commoditized. So, it’s like the more regulations that we put on the standards, the more that we have to increase our cost. And then, the chief accounting officers don’t want to pay for it, but the investors want it. And so, there’s kind of like almost the middleman thing going on maybe.

Rebekah Brown: [00:29:49] And so, they were a little more quiet, at least, in my group. So, maybe that could also be because when we broke the group into four separate groups, I took a group into a room to facilitate conversation, and it could just be my group was, you know, skewed the other way.

Peter Margaritis: [00:30:04] But, I think, we sit and look at firms nowadays, and the makeup, and how they’re put together, and how they run, a majority out of them, they run the same way they did in the ’90s, in the ’80s. The way it’s built, the way that, you know — But then you have firms. And my favorite firm is in Maryland, Deleon & Stang, they’re very anticipatory. I mean, the things that they’re doing in their firm this year is they get unlimited PTO.

Rebekah Brown: [00:30:34] Yeah.

Peter Margaritis: [00:30:35] Yeah. And you see, I’ve said that in audiences, and some of these partners go, “How do you? What?” And this look of, “We don’t trust them.” But that’s always been kind of the mindset. And, you know, to change that mindset, it’s really going to take the non-baby boomer generations, the ones that are coming up now is to get into those leadership roles and make those changes in a lot of cases because, like you said, they don’t want to change the way they’ve been doing things.

Peter Margaritis: [00:31:09] And, you know, talk about technology. Excel has been out there for how many years. I’ll ask the audience, “How many of you still have a 10-key on your desk at work?” and about 75% raise their hand. I go, “Folks, there’s a support group for you. Haven’t you heard about Excel?” And it’s like, “Come on, get into the 2018.”.

Peter Margaritis: [00:31:35] And I see the profession’s going to have some parts of it, there’s going to be a big shakeup. And that shakeup is going to happen sooner than later. So, we had the 2025 Project for ’18. This was released, I think, in 2011-2012. And most members don’t even know what it is. So, when I explain it to — And really that talks about that skill set that’s needed for the future.

Rebekah Brown: [00:32:07] It is so interesting because both the Horizons 2025, which you’re right, was done in a ’11-2012, it was kind of the redo of the 1997 Vision Project that went to 2011. That is grassroots CPA saying what the skills needed are. Like they’re coming up with the right answer, they’re just not doing it. I don’t understand why, but it’s true. They have the right answer. They see things. It’s not that they’re — But I think it’s it’s that ability to really pick their head up and to start thinking about the future differently.

Rebekah Brown: [00:32:46] I think our greatest stress or challenge in the profession and probably in a lot of professions is whatever the work is right in front of us. Like we spend so much time heads down looking right in front of us trying to do the next thing that we’re completely missing out on huge opportunities to really grow. And it’s that mindset, again, shift of, “Yes, I need to, you know, do my day-to-day job, but part of my day-to-day job needs to be looking out to the future.”

Rebekah Brown: [00:33:18] There’s a great blog post from Seth Godin talking about a job, and that your job being a historical artifact. It’s this like list of procedures and things that you have done that have grown over time. And you do this, this, and this every day, and lots of meetings, and things like that. But your real value isn’t your job, it’s those special skills that you have, the real things that you can do like no one else. And that, if your job is getting in the way of you doing that, then you need to consider changing your job. Like that’s basically what he said. If your job is getting in the way of you doing real valuable work, then you need to change your job.

Peter Margaritis: [00:34:01] Exactly. I agree wholeheartedly. And talking about this futuristic, there was an article, the CEO of this rather large regional firm of Sikich wrote an article about the future of CPA firms are going to be led by non-CPAs, which ties back into the whole consulting aspect of it, which ties back into-

Peter Margaritis: [00:34:22] I mean, I met a gentleman in Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. And he’s a managing partner of a firm. And he’s already transformed his firm out of audit and tax into more of a consulting because he sees that as the future. And if he wants young people like them to come and work for him, he’s got to change his firm in order to attract them. I go, “You get it. Can you help spread the word?”

Rebekah Brown: [00:34:48] Yeah, it’s interesting. So, I was thinking about that the other day that, you know, I totally believe the CPA of today is not going to be the managing partner of the firms. But I don’t think that you have to get rid of the CPA in order to do that. So, I think, in our mindset of what a CPA does and is, I don’t think that will be the person leading organizations or firms in the future, but I think that person can be a CPA if they have the right skill.

Rebekah Brown: [00:35:19] It’s not the acronym itself. It’s not the fact that you’re a certified public accountant that makes you not the leader of the future. It’s that you’re operating in the past. And so, if you’re an anticipatory CPA, if you a future-ready CPA, 100% you can be a leaning and managing partner of a firm in the future. It’s the idea of what we believe a CPA is right now that we don’t think can be the leader in the future. But I think we need to change what we think a CPA is, not take them out of the equation in the future. Does that make sense?

Peter Margaritis: [00:35:52] Yes, it does because we just went full circle because, basically, what you just described, there’s a place for you and I to lead firms because we are that anticipatory CPA. We’re not-

Rebekah Brown: [00:36:02] Exactly.

Peter Margaritis: [00:36:03] We’re not described as, you know, the stereotypical CPA because we bring other skill sets that current CPAs don’t have. So, maybe that’s our whole career path is now going to be taking a change. And we’re going to be recruited by the big guys who come in, and be the CEO, and help lead these firms into the future because we can see it.

Peter Margaritis: [00:36:23] Yeah. And I want to point, I want to get somewhere where all CPAs are that. Like that it’s not just ones that maybe have a special personality type or something like that where they’re able to get, but I wouldn’t change the stereotype of the CPA. Man, I can tell you, since I work with a lot of students, that stereotype is strong, and it is not true all the time.

Rebekah Brown: [00:36:48] Now, our Student Leadership Academy, I guess, a little over two months ago, almost two months ago, I had this dynamic student, going to be, you know, a force to be reckoned with as she enters the profession. And she said to me, “You know, I gave my commencement speech for my university because I was the valedictorian.” So, you know, super smart.

Rebekah Brown: [00:37:06] You know, she gives her commencement speech. She says she walks off the stage, and a gentleman standing there goes, “Wow, that was such full of passion. That’s so awesome for you, but you’re going to have to tone that down a little bit when you get into the accounting profession because that’s not going to-” And that just broke my heart. I said, “That is not true. In fact, we need more of that. We need that passion. We need that. And we need people to show it.”

Rebekah Brown: [00:37:31] I think there’s a lot of people that have it that have just been told at some point that they can’t show it, that we’re hiding these things about ourselves. I mean, that’s like John Garret’s podcast and kind of the premise for his thing is, you know, bring your full self to work. Talk about those kind of fun aspects of yourself that really set you apart. And I think, we’ve got a profession right now that, in a lot of different ways, doesn’t value those special kind of quirks, or diversity, or all of those things that really make people who they are.

Rebekah Brown: [00:38:06] And I think what really — If they can embrace that, I think those are the organizations that are going to kind of win out because it is diversity of thought. It’s that passion. It’s that zest. That’s what creates successful people and successful organizations, not, you know, making the person under you look just like you and work just like you because that just creates more of the same. And we don’t want more of the same right now because that’s not the environment we live in.

Peter Margaritis: [00:38:35] Right. And some have described that as leadership by checkers versus leadership by chess because with checkers, all pieces can move in all the directions. Chess, you can be strategically moving those pieces. So, it’s looking at the individual and going, “How can we make this person successful within this organization? Where’s their strengths? Where’s the weaknesses?” And let’s put them in the right role versus, “Oh, you passed the CPA exam, you get the lows behind that. Then, you should be able to do this right here.” And you’re going, “No, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not me. I can help out the firm in other ways.”

Peter Margaritis: [00:39:10] And I hope, someday, we get to that way to make the firms a very diverse organization in thought, and in leadership, and in appearance. It’s not as linear and black and white as tends to be these days.

Rebekah Brown: [00:39:25] Yeah, it’s not the environment that we’re all operating in. And so, we’re trying to operate in a complex, and ever changing, ever, you know, just transforming almost environment. And yet we’re trying to do things the way we’ve always done them and even structure-wise of a firm. I think all of those things are going to need to change. And not just change. This is how we have thought about it.

Rebekah Brown: [00:39:48] So, we think of change as just doing something differently. So, think about — And the CPA profession isn’t great with that either. So, think about how hard and long it took for firms to go paperless, or to go from the, you know, paper ledger to excel. There’s something about that, right. So, that’s changing. That’s doing things differently. Doing the same things, but just doing them in a different way; whereas, transformation, I think of as actually doing different things.

Rebekah Brown: [00:40:16] And so, what does that mean for the profession? I think we’re going to need to transform the profession. I think we’re going to be able and need to do different things with the same amount of ethics, with the same foundational business knowledge, but different things, and not just trying, you know.

Rebekah Brown: [00:40:33] And that’s what I see with technology in a lot of organizations, they’re like, “Oh, I’m just going to go get AI or block chain, and I’m going to plug it in to the system that I’m currently doing.” And it’s like, “That’s not what this is about.” You know, it’s not a new computer program that you log in, and then you do your whole process the same, except, you know, one step new is you do this AI thing. No, it’s completely looking at the entire workflow and the entire product and service that you’re giving, and completely transforming it based on a technology and based on, you know, what the client needs, not what you’ve always done.

Peter Margaritis: [00:41:13] I couldn’t have said that any better. And the word transform, I’m hearing more often than not, that we’re getting away from the word change and transform. Daniel Burrus is doing the chair of our convention next year. And the theme of the convention is — Just take a guess. What do you think? They’ve themed it Transformed.

Rebekah Brown: [00:41:31] Transformation. Wow, yeah.

Peter Margaritis: [00:41:31] Yeah, yeah. And, now, I’m reflecting back on just the little words that he did say. And he did say it’s not about change. It’s about doing things completely different than we’ve done it. And when people say, “This is the way we’ve always done it,” in my mind, that means we need to change. We need to transform.

Rebekah Brown: [00:41:53] Transform, yeah.

Peter Margaritis: [00:41:54] Yeah. We need to do it a completely different way. So, before we wrap up, I got a question for you. I mean, you’re very busy. You get a lot of things going on. So, what do you like to do in your free time? What’s your hobby?

Rebekah Brown: [00:42:09] What’s my hobby?

Peter Margaritis: [00:42:10] Or hobbies?

Rebekah Brown: [00:42:12] Hobbies. So, I have to say, if it’s an acceptable hobby, and I’m not sure that it is, but I’m owning it, it’s food. I love to eat. And it is probably — You know, I’ve heard that there’s two different types of people in this world. There’s people that eat to live, and there’s people that live to eat. I’m a live-to-eat. Like I just enjoy good food, and I enjoy watching people prepare good food. If there’s a chef table at a restaurant, that’s where I want to sit. I love learning about food, about wine, and cocktails, and pairings, and all of those things.

Rebekah Brown: [00:42:47] That has been something, I think, probably, I was a little bit born with. My mom’s side of the family is a deep southern family. So, you know, they know how to make good food. My great-grandfather actually owned a restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi in a hotel that’s actually by the wonderful, you know, pleasant Providence. I was able to stay at the — They had just completely renovated and redid the hotel, and I got to stay in the hotel-

Peter Margaritis: [00:43:13] Cool.

Rebekah Brown: [00:43:14] … where my great grandfather’s restaurant. It was such a cool experience. But, yeah, food, I just enjoy it so much. And it is about the people that you’re with too. It’s an experience. My dad called it dinertainment, you know. It’s you eat, but you’re entertained, and you enjoy company of other people. And that’s probably my one hobby is if I have to say one.

Rebekah Brown: [00:43:38] If being an aunt is a hobby, an acceptable hobby, that’s probably my number one. I got to put her above food. But I absolutely adore my niece. I have a wonderful dog. I’m currently attempting to build a home. So, that, plus my job, keeps me pretty busy. But I just love this profession. And so, the fact that I do work a lot, I do work really hard, but it’s in my strengths. I value it so much it. I love the people I work with and I work for. And so, it makes it not like a job. I am excited for the future of this profession. I’m passionate about it. And so, I love what I do.

Peter Margaritis: [00:44:19] That’s awesome. And I can’t speak highly enough about MACPA, BOI, your group. I’ve been with you guys for — I don’t even know how long. I’ve been doing work for you guys, I think, it’s about eight years. Maybe longer.

Rebekah Brown: [00:44:32] Wow, yeah.

Peter Margaritis: [00:44:32] And I get it. I love the passion that you all bring, and the direction, and the voice that’s out there to help change the profession. But I have to take one quick step back. You live in Baltimore, which is like foodie heaven.

Rebekah Brown: [00:44:48] We make some good food.

Peter Margaritis: [00:44:49] You make some good food. What is your favorite restaurant in Baltimore?

Rebekah Brown: [00:44:53] Favorite restaurant in Baltimore. So, I love to try new things. So, there’s a couple restaurants that I go back to over and over again. But I’m trying to think. That’s so hard because I do, I love to go different places. I really like that farm-to-table kind of fresh thing. So, there’s a place called Woodberry Kitchen that is amazing. Great farm-to-table concept, and fun cocktails, and things like that too.

Rebekah Brown: [00:45:23] But I have to say since I moved, so I moved almost, I guess, two years ago now out to the country. I’m about 25 minutes from the city. Eating at home has become more and more enjoyable too from that because I literally have, you know, this — Where I’m trying to build a land, I’m building a house, I’m living with my parents now, just these beautiful surroundings, and like lambs, and horses, and donkeys next door.

Rebekah Brown: [00:45:49] And so, I haven’t eaten at a whole lot of restaurants in Baltimore recently because I love being home all of a sudden. So, that’s interesting when you said was your favorite restaurant in Baltimore because I don’t go out. Like when I travel, that’s like all of our vacations since I was little revolved around food. Like when we’re eating breakfast, we’re talking about where we’re going to have lunch. And when we’re having lunch, we’re talking about where we’re going to have dinner. That’s just been my family’s thing. So, I guess travel and food go together more for me than home and food, which is interesting. I never really thought about that.

Peter Margaritis: [00:46:21] Okay. So, if travel and food, what’s your favorite restaurant outside of Maryland when you travel?

Rebekah Brown: [00:46:27] So, the best meal I’ve ever had was in Nashville, Tennessee at a place called The Catbird Seat.

Peter Margaritis: [00:46:35] Okay.

Rebekah Brown: [00:46:35] And it was the epitome of that dinertainment my dad jokes about because, I think, was it eight or 10-course meal, and it was the smallest restaurant I’ve ever been in. You just, basically, sat around a counter in their kitchen and watch them cook. And as they cooked, they told you what they were making you. And the waiter just had — The menu was a blank piece of paper at the beginning of the meal. And as the chef made things and gave them to you, he wrote them down. And so, at the end of the meal, you get to take home the menu that was all handwritten of everything you had. And it was just things I would never put together. I love trying new things. And it just was a phenomenal experience and really good food. So, yeah, that was probably the best meal I’ve ever had. And it was really about the experience.

Peter Margaritis: [00:47:29] Yeah. I’ve got to go national just to go to that restaurant. I mean, being Greek, I’ve grown up in restaurants, I cook, I get the food thing, and I’m pretty critical when I go out because I want the experience. You can give me great food, but if you give me horrible service, the food doesn’t taste that good.

Rebekah Brown: [00:47:46] Exactly, yup.

Peter Margaritis: [00:47:47] So, there’s got to be that balance there. But, yeah, I have to make a special trip to Nashville because I’m already hungry.

Rebekah Brown: [00:47:56] Yeah, it was an amazing experience.

Peter Margaritis: [00:47:59] Cool. Rebekah, thank you so very much for taking time out. I see people in the back going, “She’s got to get back to work. Cut the podcast.”

Rebekah Brown: [00:48:04] Oh gosh.

Peter Margaritis: [00:48:08] Good but thank you. I’ve enjoyed the conversation, a lot of great information. And I continue to wish you success. And hopefully soon, I’ll be up in Maryland, and I can see you face-to-face versus through a Zoom camera.

Rebekah Brown: [00:48:20] Yeah. Always love to see you, Peter. Thanks so much for having me. Just a wonderful time of discussion, you know, about the things that I’m passionate about. So, thank you.

Peter Margaritis: [00:48:28] And you can tell the passion’s there in your voice, which is the really cool thing. So, I look forward to it next time, and keep doing the good work you’re doing up there.

Rebekah Brown: [00:48:38] I’m trying. Thanks, Peter. It’s a lot of fun.

Peter Margaritis: [00:48:42] I want to thank Rebekah for taking time to share her thoughts and wisdom on —

Peter Margaritis: [00:48:48] I want to thank Rebekah Brown for taking her time to share her thoughts and wisdom on the future of the accounting profession.

Peter Margaritis: [00:48:56] In Episode 11, my guest is Kate Colbert who’s the author of the upcoming book Think Like a Marketer: How a Shift in Mindset Can Change Everything for Your Business. And in full transparency, Kate is also the publisher of my new book. Now, her book provides great advice for anyone in business, and she has tailored her conversation to meet the financial professional — She provides great advice for anyone in business. And our conversation is tailored to the accounting professional.

Peter Margaritis: [00:49:32] Thank you for listening, and begin the process of changing your mindset, and getting out of your comfort zone, and develop new skill sets to become more future-ready. Your call to action is to first become — Your call to action is to become more familiar with artificial intelligence and block chain, so you can begin to become more strategic in your organization and with your clients. Remember, a part of being future-ready is being an improviser. And being an improviser is someone who’s willing to take risks in order to grow. I thank you for listening.

Peter Margaritis: [00:00:00] Welcome to Episode 9. And my guest today is Byron Patrick, who is Network Alliance’s Managing Director, CPA Practice. He oversees Network Alliance’s strategic growth within the Accounting and CPA market.

Peter Margaritis: [00:00:12] Now, let me ask you a question. Are you overwhelmed with trying to stay current with the rapid change in technology? Do you have sleepless nights because you fear that someone will hack into your company? Do you need IT help? If so, then this episode is a must listen to because we discuss those questions and many more.

Peter Margaritis: [00:00:35] Now, Byron knows this stuff, and it was evident when the AICPA asked him to present five sessions – That’s right, five sessions – at this year’s AICPA Engage Conference. Those sessions were Managing a Business/Firm in the Cloud, Latest Internet of Things to Get Excited About, Latest Trends and Strategies, End User Security Awareness, and Prepare for Cyber Attacks Across the Globe. We will cover a lot of ground during this interview, but if there’s something specific that you would like to ask Byron, please e-mail him at BPatrick@NetworkAlliance.com.

Peter Margaritis: [00:01:15] Before we get to the interview, let me ask you a question. Does this describe you? When you’re giving a presentation to a client or prospect, your heart is racing, your internal critic is working overtime, and all you want to do is have this thing be over even before you start? While you’re delivering your message, does your client or prospect look confused, disengaged, or maybe even uninterested? Well, you are experiencing the presentation gap and my new book, Taking out Numb Out of Numbers: Explaining and Presenting Financial Information with Confidence and Clarity, will help bridge that gap. To learn more about the book, go to TakingTheNumbOutOfNumbersBook.com. And it’s also available for purchase on Amazon.com. So, without further ado, let’s get to the interview with Byron Patrick.

Peter Margaritis: [00:02:09] Hey, welcome back, everybody. Today, I’m with my good friend Byron Patrick out of Maryland, former chair of the Maryland Association of CPA’s Executive Board. Welcome back, my friend. Good to see you.

Byron Patrick: [00:02:22] Thanks so much, Peter. Good to see you. And really excited to be on again.

Peter Margaritis: [00:02:26] Yeah. I’m looking forward to this conversation because a while back, about mid-June, I had seen you had posted or read somewhere that you were speaking at AICPA ENGAGE Conference, and you did five sessions at ENGAGE, which, one, your topic must have been very hot and very pertinent to the membership and anything around IT these days. We know that it is. But to do five sessions is utterly a superhero type of performance.

Byron Patrick: [00:02:58] Well, thanks. It was, you know. It was a bit of a sprint that should have been a marathon, but it was great that the topics, like you said, were IT. So, incredibly popular. And just that, you know, I was excited for the opportunity that, you know, they wanted to hear from me that much. In the span of three days.

Peter Margaritis: [00:03:20] Well, that says a lot about you, and your business, and how well you do it. So, what was the overarching problem you were trying to solve for the members or teach them how to solve?

Byron Patrick: [00:03:31] I would say, you know, obviously, security is this huge topic, major concern on everybody, front of their face every day. So, a lot about IT security. And then, just other IT topics, in general, trends that are going on. It’s such a fire hose of information in today’s world. You don’t have time to consume it all. So, it was a great opportunity to provide relevant detail that was filtered down into things I felt people could, you know, take away and value.

Peter Margaritis: [00:04:07] Being a solo entrepreneur, I think that’s one of my biggest challenges is just the IT aspect of the business, and making sure that I’m backed up, making sure that I’m safe, my information is safe. And it is overwhelming even for just a one-armed paper hanger here.

Byron Patrick: [00:04:28] Absolutely. It’s incredibly overwhelming. I speak to new opportunities and clients all the time that are one, two, three-person shops. And you have the same challenges that a 50 or 100-person shop has with respect to technology, and keeping it up to date, and making sure all the pieces are there. So, you know, being able to assist on that, so you can really focus on what you do and not worry about back-up routines is, you know, where we can bring value to the table.

Peter Margaritis: [00:05:03] Yeah. I got a new desktop, and I forgot to hook up Time Machine on it, and I was working on my book. And, all of a sudden, we got power surge, and I lost my update, and I put a lot of work into that day. And it was completely fried. I couldn’t recover from it. I lost probably about 30 pages that day. So, I learned a lot about that. And yeah, I’m backed up.

Byron Patrick: [00:05:31] Yeah, yeah. Probably in triplicate at this point.

Peter Margaritis: [00:05:33] It’s actually a duplicate, but I could go triplicate on that because it’s just — You know, I said if I lose my information on the computer, I don’t know if I could ever replicate any of the stuff again.

Byron Patrick: [00:05:47] No. It’s an incredible amount of work to try to recall and put that all together. I mean, like, just take away the professional side, the personal side, I mean, I’ve got all my family photos. I’ve got them on my workstation. I’ve got them backed up to Amazon Prime. I’ve got them backed up to Google Photos. And then, I have an extra on a hard drive. I mean, you’ll never replicate, you know, memories like that.

Peter Margaritis: [00:06:13] Right, and I’ve-

Byron Patrick: [00:06:13] And so, we’ve got to do it.

Peter Margaritis: [00:06:13] I’ve got stuff out on iCloud, and I’ve got stuff on Dropbox. And they’re probably the exact same thing, but they’re just in two places now.

Byron Patrick: [00:06:22] Absolutely.

Peter Margaritis: [00:06:24] Yeah. So, what was one of the topics? What was the topic that had the biggest crowd and that you had most of the attention? You had probably what, a couple of hundred people in the room?

Byron Patrick: [00:06:34] Yeah, absolutely. I would say, definitely, the End User Security session was, you know, standing room only because that was focused on the human element of security. You hear so much about firewalls, and encryption algorithms, and all that noise that kind of makes everybody’s eyes glaze over. And my session was focused on what you can do to protect yourself, like not clicking the link, how to recognize threats against you. And 75% of the data breaches occur because of the human element. So, we were discussing, you know, how to try to close that gap.

Peter Margaritis: [00:07:18] And the crooks have gotten craftier these days because a lot of times, I’ll see something, and I’ll go, “I’m not really sure about this,” and I’ll send it to my marketing people. And they’ll go, “Yeah, this is bad because, Pete, when did you start speaking on strength and fitness?” I went, “Oh, I guess I don’t.” But I’m able to, at least, look and get an idea. But, you know, if somebody clicks something, I’ve heard horror stories. I bet you got ton of horrible stories on situations like that.

Byron Patrick: [00:07:52] Absolutely. And to your point, I mean, the crooks now, honestly, have the skill set to be incredibly employable on the marketing side. I mean, their ability to convince us to click, to reply to an e-mail, to allow access, they understand what motivates us as human beings, and they’re able to leverage that better than most marketing organizations. So, it’s real.

Peter Margaritis: [00:08:22] So, what should the end user be looking for in an e-mail that may look or sound real but is a threat or can hold your computer and data hostage?

Byron Patrick: [00:08:36] Right. So, the first thing is I tell everybody, gut check, even remotely. Like if you feel like you might need to forward that email somebody else to verify it, you probably already know the answer. So, delete and move on. The gut check is number one.

Byron Patrick: [00:08:55] The number two is just anything that is inspiring urgency, or fear, or panic. I can tell you, we do security tests where we send phishing emails to our clients and see who clicks. And, you know, we’re helping to teach them what to look for, and put the fear of God that they’re going to fail the test and get in trouble with the boss, which protects them. But, you know, the biggest successful phish we did was when the Equifax Breach happened.

Peter Margaritis: [00:09:28] Oh yeah.

Byron Patrick: [00:09:28] This had fake e-mails that said, “Click here to get your credit monitoring.” And everybody who had been doing really great passing those tests, they were clicking as quick as possible.

Peter Margaritis: [00:09:39] Right, wow.

Byron Patrick: [00:09:41] Yeah.

Peter Margaritis: [00:09:41] Wow, yeah. And, actually, correct me if I’m wrong, but I did hear that they said that Equifax came out and said if you go to this website, but that was a fraud.

Byron Patrick: [00:09:53] Yes. Somehow, somebody at Equifax got a hold of a link that was a fake website, and they forwarded it via social media to their customers.

Peter Margaritis: [00:10:07] Yeah. Guess who else filled that out and bit that hook because it’s coming from them. But even my software, my computer said don’t do it. I’m like, “This is weird.” I should’ve known at that point, but I didn’t listen. And yeah, luckily, everything’s okay, but-

Byron Patrick: [00:10:27] Right, yeah.

Peter Margaritis: [00:10:28] So, when you send these fake phishing, what happens when they click on it? Does your picture show up and go, “You shouldn’t have clicked”?

Byron Patrick: [00:10:38] So, it’s funny actually. There’s a number of different landing pages we can do. A lot of times, I actually just had the page fail to load because if it, you know, has my picture and says, “You shouldn’t have clicked,” they quickly e-mail all of their buddies and say, “Oh, don’t click the e-mail that just came out.” So, usually, it just goes to 404 bad website, and, you know, people just move on. But we can put a rickroll video up there. We can do, you know, “Hey, buddy. You clicked the link you shouldn’t have.” The other benefit is it enrolls them in a short 5 to 10-minute training that they, then, have to complete because they failed the test.

Peter Margaritis: [00:11:25] That’s cool. What other topics did you discuss at this user piece?

Byron Patrick: [00:11:30] So, we also talked about the Internet of Things. And just, you know, basically, we’re putting IP addresses on toasters, and staplers, and, you know, everything else, and everybody wants to bring them into the office. And, you know, the latest trends going on there and what you should be looking for, especially as you want to introduce the stuff into your office.

Peter Margaritis: [00:11:51] So, what should I be looking for?

Byron Patrick: [00:11:54] Well, one of the big challenges, again, it’s going to be security, is all of these vendors are putting IP addresses on all types of analog devices, things that were never smart, never intelligent, and they’re not doing it with a lot of forethought with respect to security. So, if you are going to introduce something in your home or in your office specifically, you want to make sure that you’re working with the veteran who has put some time and energy into putting security into that device. So, you know, you can’t turn a smart speaker into a remote microphone and listen in to all the board of director moments. You know, it could be a challenge.

Peter Margaritis: [00:12:39] Wow, I didn’t think about that. You could turn a smart speaker into a listening device.

Byron Patrick: [00:12:46] There you go.

Peter Margaritis: [00:12:46] And you know how to do that.

Byron Patrick: [00:12:49] I plea the Fifth.

Peter Margaritis: [00:12:51] Yeah. I’m thinking, do you ever send me any listening devices or?

Byron Patrick: [00:12:55] [laughs]

Peter Margaritis: [00:12:56] Yeah. Oops, there we go. So, with that end user, we have these tools called Alexa and Google Home. And, you know, she’s having trouble connecting to the internet. Did you hear her?

Byron Patrick: [00:13:12] Yeah, I heard that.

Peter Margaritis: [00:13:14] Yeah. So, how do this play into that security aspect?

Byron Patrick: [00:13:18] Well, they are at the very top of the list because these devices, they don’t only listen when you send them commands. They’re listening to every single thing that you are saying. So, privacy concerns are, you know, rampant with respect to these types of devices, especially in the workplace.

Byron Patrick: [00:13:39] So, there are a lot of conversations where the recommendation is don’t bring these into the workplace yet because it hasn’t been flushed out of what information is being captured, if that information is being cataloged anywhere, could somebody potentially get unauthorized access to that information. You know, there’s all these great opportunities to use these devices potentially in the workplace, but it could come at a cost. You have to weigh that out and, you know, evaluate the risk versus reward.

Peter Margaritis: [00:14:13] Yeah. An attendee shared a story with me about how she caught a crook, a robber, at their office. And she said that she had petty cash, and there’s an amount of petty cash because of some fundraising, and came in the next day, and realized some was missing, and knew that she couldn’t pull the whistle because she didn’t have any evidence. She thought she knew who it was. So, she went out and bought a nest camera.

Byron Patrick: [00:14:42] Okay, yeah.

Peter Margaritis: [00:14:42] Put it on her bookshelf, and then get the alert on her phone that somebody was — and she looked, and there was the person that she thought. So, she had him dead to rights. But I’m sort of thinking through that. So, basically, somebody could hack into that to watch her and watch the office if, yeah, you’re not in.

Byron Patrick: [00:15:07] Yeah, absolutely. There’s been stories of crooks gaining unauthorized access to things such as baby monitors, watching the home, and learning the behaviors and activities, and they can figure out when the home is empty and go right in. So, you know, obviously, that goes beyond the home.

Peter Margaritis: [00:15:29] Is there a way to encrypt it or put some security around these devices, so they can’t — Well, no. I guess, they’re going in through your WiFi system.

Byron Patrick: [00:15:39] Yeah. And it depends. A lot of these devices, they hook up to your WiFi, but, sometimes, if the crook can just hack into your WiFi, they can then get access to all of the devices that are hanging off your WiFi network. So, that’s where you need to make sure that devices you’re putting on the WiFi network are segregated, isolated, and they require additional authentication. So, just by virtue of being on the network, I could install the app and potentially gain access to it. You want to make sure it requires additional authentication, passwords, or something.

Peter Margaritis: [00:16:19] Okay. So, my system here, I’ve got a password required to get into, have access to it. You’re saying there’s probably a two-step verification process that I could install or it’s there and activate. So, if anybody get on the net, then they would-

Byron Patrick: [00:16:38] Yeah, absolutely. And you brought up another good point is that that multi-factor authentication or two-step authentication, a lot of devices, a lot of apps have that, and nobody configures it because, you know, God forbid, that extra 20 seconds to my day to log in is just way too inconvenient. And, you know, it’s-

Peter Margaritis: [00:17:01] I just thought of my son.

Byron Patrick: [00:17:04] Right, right. You know, if it’s there, man, you got to set that up.

Peter Margaritis: [00:17:11] Yeah. Well, I think I know what I’m going to do after this call is over is to set that up. As we move forward, we’re talking about artificial intelligence. And did you talk about AI in your sessions?

Byron Patrick: [00:17:25] It definitely came up as a topic. It wasn’t the focus, but yeah. You can’t avoid it today.

Peter Margaritis: [00:17:31] Because I finally figured out, all of a sudden, all of these websites had this, “Let’s chat,” and the person, yeah. And it’s a chat bot, right?

Byron Patrick: [00:17:40] That’s right. Nine times out of ten, you’re talking to a robot.

Peter Margaritis: [00:17:45] Robot. And someone told me that they didn’t — I don’t know if this is college or whatever, but, basically, the people thought they were actually talking to a person for over a long period of time when, in fact, they were not. They were talking to artificial intelligence.

Byron Patrick: [00:18:00] Well, and I’ll take one step further. After you finish listening to this podcast, go out and google the latest Google assistant that can make phone calls on your behalf, and make reservations at restaurants or for a hair appointment. And it’s an actual voice. And the person on the other side has no idea it’s a computer calling them.

Peter Margaritis: [00:18:26] Shut the front door.

Byron Patrick: [00:18:28] It is amazing.

Peter Margaritis: [00:18:30] Really. So, I’ve got Google Home, and I’ve got Alexa, and I can put stuff on my calendar. So, there’s a step even higher than that?

Byron Patrick: [00:18:40] Right. So, where that’s going is you’ll be able to say, “Hey, Alexa, give me, you know, a restaurant, a nice Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood.” “Okay.” “Can you make reservations for a Friday night for five?” And then, next step-

Peter Margaritis: [00:18:56] Wow.

Byron Patrick: [00:18:56] … is calling the restaurant and making that reservation.

Peter Margaritis: [00:19:00] So, the app calls the restaurant and makes the reservation?

Byron Patrick: [00:19:03] That’s right.

Peter Margaritis: [00:19:04] “I’m going to make a reservation for,” yeah. Can you keep it? I’ll let Bill Clinton’s voice to be on mine. I’m making reservations for Pete Margaritis’ family.

Byron Patrick: [00:19:16] That would be phenomenal.

Peter Margaritis: [00:19:18] So, how do you bring that — How does that work in the workplace with that type of technology?

Byron Patrick: [00:19:26] Well, think about the administrative assistant’s role, and the things that they do to coordinate meetings, to coordinate various travel, things like that. If you can have a bot sitting on your PC, on your desk, or whatever that you can just ask, “Hey, I’ve got a trip coming up to Las Vegas in June. Coordinate hotel, airfare, and such,” and it will just go do it based on your preferences, and even if asked to make phone calls, it will do it.

Peter Margaritis: [00:19:59] And they’ll actually make that reservation, airline reservation and hotel reservation for you, but you, obviously, got to be specific with the parameters.

Byron Patrick: [00:20:09] Absolutely, absolutely.

Peter Margaritis: [00:20:12] Can it work on Excel and create databases?

Byron Patrick: [00:20:15] I’m sure it’s coming. They’ve got bots that can do programming and scripting, so, you know.

Peter Margaritis: [00:20:23] And if I think about Grammarly, I use a lot. And that’s technically a bot itself because it’s grading your homework, grading what you’re writing, and providing suggestions and corrections.

Byron Patrick: [00:20:36] Absolutely. And, in fact, the latest version of Gmail will recommend replies. So, you hit reply, and it will actually pre-fill a suggested reply to that email.

Peter Margaritis: [00:20:50] Interesting. I know a lot of businesses are using G Suite. And I’m just learning about G Suite, and trying to figure out how that’s going to help me in the business. How does G Suite help a business in managing their contacts, and their email, and all things assorted to that business?

Byron Patrick: [00:21:12] Well, you know, G Suite is just kind of an alternative to the Microsoft platform. And the beauty is that Google innovated what was a very stale platform. Microsoft Office, Outlook e-mail was all very boring and very mundane. And Google, you know, kind of has taken it to the next level, introducing machine learning, and artificial intelligence, and all types of the add-ins for, you know, like Grammarly, and Boomerang, and these types of things.

Byron Patrick: [00:21:45] Microsoft has, now, been forced to step up their game. So, Microsoft Office 365, now, has a lot of those features and functionality that G Suite provides. And they’re working to go even beyond. They have entire Cortana Cloud, which is their artificial intelligence virtual assistant that they are now putting on top of Office 365 to give you all of those benefits, staying inside that Microsoft platform.

Peter Margaritis: [00:22:18] Oh my god, my head’s full because I run on a Mac, but I’ve got Windows also on the Mac, and I run 365, and trying to — I’ve just kept my 365 for Word and Excel, and that’s about the extent of it. But then, I get these e-mails from Microsoft, and I’m reading them, I’m going, “This is cool. I just don’t understand it.”.

Peter Margaritis: [00:22:43] And I got frustrated one day and made a comment to my son, who’s now 18, and his reply back to me was, “Dad, if you don’t understand, just google it. The answer is out there.” You know what, go away. You know, nobody likes a smart aleck. But he’s right.

Peter Margaritis: [00:22:59] And I think of my generation, the Baby Boomers, that’s not the first thing that pops into our head. It’s, you know, “Go find it. I need some help,” versus “I can get the help. I just got to google it, and ask a bot, and receive that information.” And that’s pretty cool.

Byron Patrick: [00:23:19] You know, and you nailed it. I will never forget when — I have daughters. They were probably, you know, five and seven. And we’re unpacking Christmas decorations, and one of the decorations is a snow globe, Coca-Cola snow globe that had polar bears. And, you know, one of my daughters turned to me and said, “What in the world does a polar bear have to do with Coca-Cola?” and you know. So, I was like “I don’t know. Let’s find out.” So, we get on the Google and do some research. And, you know, we find an article in the Library of Congress that, basically, talks about the entire origin of the polar bear marketing campaign from Coca Cola.

Peter Margaritis: [00:24:08] Yeah.

Byron Patrick: [00:24:09] Yeah. And so, like, I do all of this, and then I can sit back, and think about it. Actually, you know what, when I was their age, I never would have thought to ask that question because there’s no way in hell I ever would have gotten the answer to it.

Peter Margaritis: [00:24:25] Right.

Byron Patrick: [00:24:26] But they know they’ve got the world at their fingertips. So, why not.

Peter Margaritis: [00:24:33] That’s interesting, but yeah. I mean, that’s what they’ve grown up with. They didn’t grow up with the Encyclopedia Britannica that sits on a shelf in your house, or, you know, I can’t tell you the last time I looked in an encyclopedia. My friends never looked in an encyclopedia. And it really is at our fingertips.

Byron Patrick: [00:24:53] Yeah.

Peter Margaritis: [00:24:54] So, what are the other hot topics that you’re speaking about an ENGAGE?

Byron Patrick: [00:24:59] Well, managing your business in the cloud. It is huge. So, for many years, we’ve been stuck installing Quickbooks, and Microsoft Office, and all these apps to our local computers, dealing with like a Windows parallel along our Mac to try to work in there. And the future, which is happening as we speak, is the world of browser-based applications. And organizations are now adopting all of these browser-based applications. They’re adding multiple logins to all their staff. They’ve got data all over the place. And talking about how to gain control of that browser-based computing platform for your business, and how to do it efficiently, effectively, and securely.

Peter Margaritis: [00:25:52] Browser-based applications, and you’re saying something about parallels, and Microsoft, Mac on a browser-based application, which-

Byron Patrick: [00:26:04] Well, in the world of browser-based applications, you will eventually be able to throw away parallels, throw away running Windows on your Mac because everything will just run in your browser. You will have access to — I mean, even your office 365, you can access all of that within your browser. And I’ll tell you, you have the large majority of functionality that you have today with the locally installed Microsoft.

Peter Margaritis: [00:26:36] Wow, because I’d never — So, I can log into Microsoft under my password and pull it up on a browser?

Byron Patrick: [00:26:45] Absolutely.

Peter Margaritis: [00:26:46] Without having to go through parallels?

Byron Patrick: [00:26:48] That’s right.

Peter Margaritis: [00:26:49] And I guess I could have done that initially without even going through parallels. It’s just sign up with Microsoft. So, I don’t really have to have Windows on my-

Byron Patrick: [00:27:01] That is right. The decision of the operating system is becoming irrelevant.

Peter Margaritis: [00:27:06] Wow, wow. And I can just see the benefits to that for businesses.

Byron Patrick: [00:27:14] Absolutely.

Peter Margaritis: [00:27:15] Because they always say, you know, Microsoft is the analytical aspect of the computer, and the Mac has always been the creative side. Now, basically, instead of being predominately one side of that right or left brain, you can have both sides together. And, man, that’s going to unleash a lot of opportunity.

Byron Patrick: [00:27:31] Absolutely. You can put your peanut butter with your jelly.

Peter Margaritis: [00:27:36] And put a banana with it there.

Byron Patrick: [00:27:40] There you go.

Peter Margaritis: [00:27:40] Oh man. So, we’re rapidly moving, transforming our businesses. Technology is becoming a lot smarter, a lot more helpful. But I feel like that we’re still working twice as hard.

Byron Patrick: [00:27:55] All this code for efficiency is really just squeezing more out of you.

Peter Margaritis: [00:28:01] I have a feeling that that’s true because it just seems like we keep adding another layer, another layer, but it does make the work easier to accomplish. And I think it allows us to take on more work, and we try to multitask, but that’s a whole other issue. What were some of the questions that people asking you during your sessions?

Byron Patrick: [00:28:20] Well, I mean, one of the big topics is password management. You know, we’ve been talking about it forever.

Peter Margaritis: [00:28:28] Oh god.

Byron Patrick: [00:28:29] Right? So, a lot of conversation of, “You know, well, is this okay? What if I, you know, write it down in a hieroglyphics?” you know. So, there’s always a lot of questions about that. That’s big discussion. And then, a lot of discussion on the decision of what apps to begin using. There’s so much innovation going on. And this fear of better options in the sense of, you know, “I’ve signed up for this application. I’m now using it to, you know, process all of our expense reporting. And now, there’s a new one that does that, plus,” you know. It’s like, at some point, you have to pull the trigger and say, “I’m married to this cause.” So, there’s a lot of decisions. People are having a hard time with that decision.

Peter Margaritis: [00:29:27] And this, the platform I’m using right now, Zoom, has I think taken over what Skype had built at one point in time because the other person doesn’t have to have an account. And the video aspect of it is a lot cleaner and nicer than Skype’s was, and it’s very user-friendly.

Byron Patrick: [00:29:48] Yes.

Peter Margaritis: [00:29:49] Because we’re having this conversation, you’re in Maryland, I’m in Ohio, and I can even see this being brought — Because we use Adobe Connect. I could facilitate an eight-hour session for the Washington Society of CPAs in Bellevue, Washington. Of course, they had enough participants, but not enough to cover the expenses of bringing me out there. So, I held a class, and I could see them, they could interact with me. And that’s, I think, part of where learning is going to go as I’m still having the interactions. It’s better than webinars. It’s one sided. It creates that conversation. So, what’s your favorite app?

Byron Patrick: [00:30:29] My favorite app. I tell you. So, about a year ago, I would have said Evernote.

Peter Margaritis: [00:30:35] Evernote.

Byron Patrick: [00:30:35] I’m a huge, huge Evernote fan.

Peter Margaritis: [00:30:35] Yeah, me too.

Byron Patrick: [00:30:35] And you know what, Microsoft — So, I was a OneNote fan for years, and that just got boring, and very plain. So, then, I went to Evernote, fell in love with Evernote. And, now, I’m back to OneNote because I have a touchscreen and a stylus. I love to write on my screen. And in OneNote, I can write my notes in there and keep it all organized. And if I get really crazy, it’ll convert that to type text. So, yeah, I’m really crushing on Office 365 just because of everything they do in there.

Peter Margaritis: [00:31:17] I do agree with that. Chris Jenkins, who’s the South Carolina CEO of the CPA Association, he was a big Mac guy. And when he was here in Ohio, he took his job at South Carolina. And somebody goes, “Well, what’s that?” He goes, “That’s a Surface Pro.” “What?” He goes, “Pete, 365 has blown away a lot of stuff that Apple was doing at the time.”

Peter Margaritis: [00:31:42] And what sold me was the fact of he showed us how when you’re developing a presentation, however you do it, but you can go into Word, and you could use the outline feature in Word, lay it out as an outline form, save it that way, go and open PowerPoint, and PowerPoint will bring your outline, and populate your slides, and you can start developing your slide deck at that point in time.

Byron Patrick: [00:32:12] Yup.

Peter Margaritis: [00:32:12] Which I went, “Holy cow, that was a winner winner chicken dinner.” I’ve told a lot of people about that. Obviously, you’ve got to smile. You’re going, “You know about that?” They go, “Really, you can do that?” I’m like, “Yeah. It does save time.” Yeah, it doesn’t save time if it’s already developed. Yeah. So, 365 is very powerful. I didn’t know about OneNote. So, I need to look into that because I love Evernote.

Peter Margaritis: [00:32:37] And I tell you what, I’m amazed how many people don’t have some type of note taking app on their devices because at these conferences, you know, we’re talking about stories, and developing stories, and they’re out there everywhere, and you can’t commit it to memory because you’ll forget about it, but all I got to do is take out your phone app, Evernote or whatever, just write a few words down, so you can come back and revisit. I go, “How many of you use Evernote?” And they’re looking like, “What’s that? I don’t know.” I’m like I can’t. If an app ever crashed on me, I would lose so much information because that’s my primary note taking.

Byron Patrick: [00:33:16] Yeah.

Peter Margaritis: [00:33:17] Now, sometimes, I don’t use it when a speaker is talking because I don’t want them to think that I’m texting, or playing Angry Birds, or something. But, at times, prior to, I’ve said, “You’re going to see me on my tablet here. I’m just taking notes. I’m not doing anything else. I promise you that,” because I know how sensitive that can be that, as a speaker, and when you see folks on their phone or on their tablet, it kind of throws off a little bit because, in your mind, for just a brief second, you go, “I wonder what the hell they’re really doing.”

Byron Patrick: [00:33:48] Right. And that’s one of the reasons why I moved to the stylus with my touchscreen. I have a Lenovo Yoga, which I can slip back like a tablet. And now, I can just hand write. And that way, there’s no question. I’m not doing Candy Crush. I’m actually taking notes.

Peter Margaritis: [00:34:06] But I’ve tried writing on my iPad, or some of these note taking. My handwriting is bad enough, but it gets a thousand percent worse when I do that. And the styluses, I don’t know if it’s because of my hand position and it’s on that. And I’ve never been able to master that. And I’d love to be able to.

Byron Patrick: [00:34:28] Yeah. Next time we see each other, I have to give you a little demo on my Yoga because I tell you, I had the same challenge, but I feel like it is so darn close to actually being pen and paper. It does a nice job.

Peter Margaritis: [00:34:44] Wow. Yeah, I do need an update or a class on that, some instruction from the master. So, what app would you suggest or what apps would you suggest CPAs have, the must-have apps for their business, whether in public, or an industry, or government, or education?

Byron Patrick: [00:35:06] Oh man. Well, it’s such a large span of apps that are out there. I mean, obviously, some form of online accounting, I think, you know, is definitely where you need to be. I mean, begrudgingly, Quickbooks online is really common around to be a solid product that, you know, a lot of people are using, and there’s just so many integrations in the marketplace that are out there that it just gets the job done really well.

Byron Patrick: [00:35:43] You know, after that, I mean — Gosh, you’re putting me on the spot here. I mean, Zoom is, in my humble opinion, wonderful, especially for a remote workforce. Our business, we have employees in West Virginia, in Western Virginia. I’m sitting here in Maryland. And to be able to jump on a Zoom and have a face-to-face conversation with staff is just a real game changer, for managing staff meeting with potential clients. I can’t say enough about that.

Byron Patrick: [00:36:20] And then, you know, one of my favorites is Camscanner. It’s this little app for your phone that allows you to take pictures of paper and convert it to PDF. And, in fact, actually, now that I say that, I’m going to take it back because Office 365 now has an app called Office Lines that is far superior for taking pictures of whiteboards, pieces of paper, and all the such, and turning it into a PDF, or JPEG, or whatever you need it for.

Peter Margaritis: [00:36:54] Wow, that’s cool. I’m going to have to be able to check that out. But you said something about Zoom, which takes me to another huge benefit of using Zoom. You can have a conference call on Zoom. You can see the individual, but whoever’s running it can mute everybody.

Byron Patrick: [00:37:13] Such an underutilized feature.

Peter Margaritis: [00:37:17] It is.

Byron Patrick: [00:37:17] Absolutely.

Peter Margaritis: [00:37:17] It is. And they can control the person’s microphone at anytime. And I told you, I’m the new president of NSA Ohio, and our conference calls are going to be — our board meetings are going to be conducted on Zoom. And I have the controls, and they’ll know. I’m going to say, “We’re going to do this in some kind of order,” because when you get a bunch of speakers together, and on a board, you can’t get a word in edgewise, and it tends to go on for too long of a time. With Zoom, you know, you can control that. You can control people stepping over each other. And that’s another reason why I love Zoom.

Peter Margaritis: [00:38:01] And like I told you, I take my iPad to our chapter meetings. We just started this last year. And we’re Zooming our chapter meetings out to our membership and others who want to participate, if there’s a reason they can’t make it to the meeting that day. You know, we’re not trying to get people to stay home. We want people to come. We still want that aspect, but it’s when you can’t, something’s come up, you need to be home, you can still participate and still get that information.

Byron Patrick: [00:38:34] Yeah. Yup, absolutely.

Peter Margaritis: [00:38:36] Yeah, I love it. And, you know, I guess, I didn’t realize I could use it on an app. See, baby boomer mentality. I just thought I had to use it on my laptop or my desktop. The first couple meetings, we were Zooming off of a laptop until someone said, “You know there’s an app for that.” And, technically, I could Zoom the meeting off my cell phone.

Byron Patrick: [00:39:01] Yup.

Peter Margaritis: [00:39:02] Yeah. Yeah. That’s — Yeah.

Byron Patrick: [00:39:03] Yeah. I do that on a regular basis. If I’m out and about and need to attend a meeting with staff, I just fire it up on the phone.

Peter Margaritis: [00:39:14] Cool. And I can only imagine what it’s going to look like five years from now.

Byron Patrick: [00:39:21] Yeah. Wait for the 3D hologram of Peter Margaritis that’s running next to me.

Peter Margaritis: [00:39:28] Oh man, that would be scary enough to get a hologram on the show at any time. I think, folks like yourself and your business are so critical to CPAs these days because of the complexity of what goes on from an IT internet world versus, you know — And we’ve got enough as it is just trying to figure out, you know, the regulations and compliance that we need. You and your company, and your company is Network Alliance, are critical to the success of the profession in a lot of ways.

Byron Patrick: [00:40:11] Hey, I really appreciate that. I mean, it is a ever-changing world. And, you know, we’re trying to pivot and stay up to date to make sure that we can keep bringing that value to, you know, the industry and keep everybody relevant.

Peter Margaritis: [00:40:31] Yeah, and I can imagine. As I think well, you know, CPAs, we’re always trying to stay current, and especially when the new tax law comes out, everybody would want to get up to date with it. But in your world, everything is getting updated almost on a daily basis to some degree. I don’t know how you keep up with everything that’s happening.

Byron Patrick: [00:40:50] I don’t feel like I do. You know, I wonder what I’m missing.

Peter Margaritis: [00:40:58] Yeah. And you’re probably not missing anything. It’s just the amount of volume that’s coming out, but I would rest assure that anything big and major, you’re all over it. Well, let me figure it out this way, anybody can do five sessions at ENGAGE, and one to be asked to do five, and then to do that, you’ve got a breadth and depth of knowledge associated with this subject. You’ve got the name and the profession. You’re recognized that the AICPA level. You’ll have it covered. You got it covered. You got it covered, my friend.

Byron Patrick: [00:41:32] I’m glad we disabled the video because I’m cherry red, blushing red now. I appreciate those kind words.

Peter Margaritis: [00:41:40] You’re more than welcome. You know, in the show notes, we’ll put your information, how people can contact. How can people contact you?

Byron Patrick: [00:41:49] There’s a number of ways. I mean, obviously, the Twitter, the LinkedIn are great ways to get a hold of me. In fact, I just recently connected with a firm in Alaska via Twitter, which is kind of fun. And, you know, obviously, good old email, BPatrick@NetworkAlliance.com. I would love to hear from you there. And if you so desire to pick up a phone, and you’re above the age of 35, you can, you know, call me at 703-715-4948.

Peter Margaritis: [00:42:26] I hope your phone blows up now that you gave everybody your phone number. That is great. Well, I greatly appreciate you taking time. I always enjoy our conversations. The problem that we have is we live too far apart. Hopefully, our paths cross sooner than later.

Byron Patrick: [00:42:49] Absolutely.

Peter Margaritis: [00:42:49] And I look forward to future conversations.

Byron Patrick: [00:42:54] Thanks, Peter. I definitely look forward to it. And speaking of looking forward to, I cannot wait to get my hands on that new book of yours.

Peter Margaritis: [00:43:02] Oh, thank you very much for the plug. Yes, by the time this goes out, the new book will be live on Amazon. And the name of it is Taking the Numb Out of Numbers. I appreciate your call out. Yes, you’ll be receiving a signed copy from me.

Byron Patrick: [00:43:18] Can’t wait to put it on my shelf.

Peter Margaritis: [00:43:21] Thanks, man.

Byron Patrick: [00:43:21] Thank you.

Peter Margaritis: [00:43:23] I want to thank Byron for filling our heads with a lot of IT information that, hopefully, we will be able to apply in our businesses. Thank you, Byron.

Peter Margaritis: [00:43:33] In Episode 10, my guest is Rebecca Brown, who’s the Development Director at the Maryland Association of CPAs. Thank you for listening, and begin the process of Changing your Mindset and getting out of your comfort zone, and develop new skill sets to become more future-ready. Your call to action is to ask yourself if you can do more to have a greater impact on your career and in your community. Remember, a part of being future-ready is being an improviser. So, yes, and – I’m out.

Peter Margaritis: [00:00:00] Welcome to episode eight. And my guest today is Owen Wyss, who’s the Financial Controller at Thompson Concrete Construction. Owen can be described by a quote he gave in a recent AICPA article titled Tired of Getting After-Hours Work E-mail? Owen stated, “Given the fact that my company does pay for me to have the ability to access my email on my smartphone, I believe they expect me to be available in an emergency or in order not to delay a project or task, especially since we operate globally.” Now, most CPAs don’t feel that way, and that is what makes Owen a great leader. Owen embraces the essence of leadership, and he currently sits on two association boards and chairing a committee on another one. Owen is able to manage his time effectively between his job, his volunteer work with the associations, and he does have a wife and a daughter, and his daughter is not even two years old. So, our conversation does touch on his role as a financial controller, his volunteer time, and his family time. I think you’ll find this conversation between Owen and I to be very interesting, and he is very inspiring.

Peter Margaritis: [00:01:23] A quick announcement before we get to the interview, my new book Taking the Numb Out of Numbers: Explaining and Presenting Financial Information with Confidence and Clarity is available for purchase on Amazon.com. If you’d like to learn more about the book, go to TakingTheNumbOutOfNumbersBook.com to learn more. So, without further ado, let’s get to the interview with Owen Wyss.

Peter Margaritis: [00:01:48] Hey, welcome back, everybody. Today, my guest is Owen Wyss. And Owen and I go back a number of years. And correct me if I’m wrong here, Owen, I think at one time when you were on the Ohio Society of CPAs Young CPA Board or on the committee, I think I was your mentor at one time. Is that correct?

Owen Wyss: [00:02:09] That is correct. Actually, I still tell my wife to this day that when we’re, you know, meeting up after work for a drink or an appetizer that I still consider you a mentor regardless of whether the official designation is now gone.

Peter Margaritis: [00:02:25] I appreciate that. And I will have to say when I remembered that, I went, “Holy cow. Look what he’s done in his career.”

Owen Wyss: [00:02:34] We definitely go back further than that though. All the way, I think, to the first year of my career when my employer at the time brought you in for one of your seminars.

Peter Margaritis: [00:02:49] Yes. You were with the Battelle & Battelle at the time, and that’s when I did my Humor at Work presentation. And that was the time when I said something like, you know, when you laugh, it has physical benefits it because it releases the endolphins. You know, the endolphins, those crazy fish that swim through your bloodstream to help you fight stress, anxiety, and depression? There were five folks who, on my evaluation, came back with “Mr. Margaritis, dolphins are mammals, not fish.”

Owen Wyss: [00:03:19] And in that group that day, that’s not all that surprising really.

Peter Margaritis: [00:03:25] I tell that story a lot, but I forgot about that, yeah. We met when you were at Battelle & Battelle, but I am amazed how your career has evolved since the first time we met many years ago. And if you can give the folks, the audience, a little bit about your background, where you started, and what you do today.

Owen Wyss: [00:03:46] Yeah, absolutely. My background after graduating from Wright State started out in public accounting, and really remained there for nine years at two different firms Battelle & Battelle in Dayton, and then Crowe here in Columbus where I’m at now, primarily focused on auditing, manufacturing, distribution, clients. It’s simply stated.

Owen Wyss: [00:04:06] From there, I moved on to a role for four years in a manufacturing plant here in Columbus, Diamond Innovations. Then, known as Sandvik Hyperion, went through several evolutions, but, ultimately, they press diamonds for use in tools. They didn’t actually make the tools, but press the diamond right here in Columbus, and then send it out to the toolmakers. And I’ve spent four years there working on — Mainly, it was a controller role mainly focused on the financial side or finance side, I guess, I should say, related to budgeting, forecasting, and assessing results against that, forwarding it to our executive management team.

Owen Wyss: [00:04:50] Well, not a whole lot of place to go there based on growth, and thought it was time to make another move. And I’ve moved over to Thompson Concrete now, a family-owned concrete excavation construction company located just south of town, serving nearly all of Central Ohio, and recently expanding a small operation into Louisville, Kentucky.

Owen Wyss: [00:05:10] Here, I call myself a hands-on CFO without the title. The title is financial controller, but I’d say that I do about anything and everything other than my job description originally thought I was going to do. Anywhere from finance and accounting, you know, 20 to 40 percent of the job, to responsibility for HR and benefits, IT, contractor, you name it. It has really become a jack of all trades, and couldn’t say more about the learning experience just over a little over three years now. An opportunity to learn more than I ever thought possible on three-year period with lots and lots more to go.

Peter Margaritis: [00:05:54] You just described every CFO that I’ve come across what they do. And I always hear HR and IT, usually, somewhere in that sentence of the responsibilities that they have. But I forgot that you were at Crowe, which jogged my memory. I had lunch with Andrea Meinardi a few weeks ago, and we were talking about you, all good, but I just wanted to let you know she said hello.

Owen Wyss: [00:06:19] Well, I hope she would say that because she recently took over our 401k audit. So, if she’s badmouthing, then we’ve got something to talk about.

Peter Margaritis: [00:06:28] No, it was all good, my friend. It was all good. The question I want to ask is, what made you or why did you become an accountant?

Owen Wyss: [00:06:37] Unfortunately, I can’t give a great answer. I will say that it was dumb luck. There is no accounting in my background. There is really no business in my background. I come from a family of farmers out in the country. My mom was an underwriter in insurance for 45 years. And the dumb luck really came down to, at some point, I can’t even remember, my junior or senior year in the high school curriculum, I saw an accounting class. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, but I thought it might be something good to know when I get out in the world. And that class had a great teacher, and it just stuck. It felt like something I was really good at.

Owen Wyss: [00:07:22] And so, when I went to college, it was definitely something I thought, “There’s a real opportunity here,” but my dad did have somewhat of an engineering background, so I was balancing between the two. And I will say, to my luck, I think I chose the right way. I ended up declaring a designation or a major in accounting while I was at Wright State.

Peter Margaritis: [00:07:43] Did you have Maggie Houston as a professor?

Owen Wyss: [00:07:47] Absolutely, first class, first year.

Peter Margaritis: [00:07:50] Oh wow.

Owen Wyss: [00:07:51] One of the greats. I hope she listens to this and gets a chance to hear that. But I will tell you, Wright State was definitely unappreciated for its accounting program, whether it’d be Maggie Houston or Dr. John Talbott, just some great professors I had while I was down there. Really drove me to want to excel in this profession.

Peter Margaritis: [00:08:12] Well, it started with that high school professor. Your teacher, who was a good teacher, raised your interest. And then, at your first accounting classes with Maggie, you’re hooked.

Owen Wyss: [00:08:22] Yeah, absolutely.

Peter Margaritis: [00:08:23] Yeah. She’s a great lady. I haven’t seen her in a few years, but I hope she is listening because, I mean, she’s dynamite in the classroom. She’s dynamite outside the classroom. She gets so much energy. She’s just a really wonderful person.

Owen Wyss: [00:08:36] Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more.

Peter Margaritis: [00:08:38] So, you kind of fell into this. You just kind of stepped into it. But, man, when you step into something, you build something with it. I mean, thinking about your career and how you’ve embraced the profession, how you’ve embraced your role, but I have to ask this question because knowing CPAs, we work a lot, we have a lot of responsibilities, we never retire, but we get sleepless nights. So, what keeps you up at night other than your 16-month-old child?

Owen Wyss: [00:09:11] I know. Actually, I will tell you, she’s been a great sleeper since 10 weeks. So, hopefully, there’s no one listening to me that is very jealous or hates me for having said that. But my wife figured out a trick somewhere in there, and she’s been a great sleeper since then.

Owen Wyss: [00:09:26] You know, I would say it’s nothing on an overall professional basis or even personally. It’s really where I’m at now. I found a very interesting industry when I entered construction. It really is. It’s a different world. And a lot of people when they’re interviewing an accountant for construction, nobody can figure out the debits and credits. There are still debits and credits. That’s just a given. Anyone can pick it up that’s got a good accounting background, but it’s a different world from the perspective that it’s a different way of doing business. There’s not a lot of planning. There is a lot of, “That’s always the way we’ve done it.”.

Owen Wyss: [00:10:15] And, you know, those are the things that keep me up at night. And It’s a very, to me, antiquated and fragmented industry. And, actually, I stole that from an article that I can’t give accurate credit to that I read a day or two ago that really needs to adapt. And so, I’d say what keeps me up at night is trying to help our leadership be on the cutting edge of adapting. And that’s a hard road to tow. It’s difficult, you know, especially in this environment where there are contracts galore, and we’re trying to make sure we’re picking the right ones. You know, change is tough to get behind when you’re operating as lean as we do, and there’s so much opportunity out there.

Peter Margaritis: [00:11:02] Wow. I wasn’t expecting that, but that’s interesting that you bring that up because construction, I have a very little background, and I used lend to it, but it is a different world. But you said the word leadership. You used it in a broad sense. So, you weren’t more or less talking about the leadership within your organization. You’re talking about the leadership within the construction financial arena?

Owen Wyss: [00:11:26] Both. You know, not only within our organization, you know, realizing that, you know, there’s some bad things, there’s possible bad things ahead that we need to avoid in our own company. But also, then, being part of several different organizations and going back to that fragmented way of doing business. Just the whole owner-contractor-subcontractor creates so many different self-interests in the way that construction is done or the way that things are built that I feel like we’ve got to find a way to to start to align the best interests of all if construction is going to be a successful industry into the future where we expect to keep cutting costs of building.

Peter Margaritis: [00:12:14] Wow, yeah. You said self-interest. And, yes, construction has always kind of been more in the self-interest side. And to get them to adapt to a much more bigger picture will be a huge undertaking. And it sounds like, to me, there — Well, let me ask it a different way. Has there been some movement in adapting to a newer way, or is it still pretty much this is the way we’ve always done it?

Owen Wyss: [00:12:42] I feel — I would say the majority of the industry is still this is the way we’ve always done it. But I am receiving some feedback from the field related to some of the GCs, some of the experienced general contractors that we are finding ourselves working with, are really making an effort. And the one that sticks out to me is Turner Construction who seems to really be pushing down lean manufacturing ideas into the way that they construct. And that, I appreciate.

Owen Wyss: [00:13:16] You know, it’s kind of — I’ve been talking to our guys, our leadership here locally, just about the Toyota way and Honda way a lot, and how they worked with their manufacturers and subcontractors that weren’t within their own plants, and really forced down their ways to realize better margins and more profitability. And I think that Turner’s been taking that on from a construction perspective and with the ideas of lean. And we’re trying to start adopting some of that ourselves.

Owen Wyss: [00:13:45] I think that’s just a small piece though, as I believe it is important though that the owners, GCs, and subcontractors, and even sub-subcontractors, and suppliers start to find a better way to align their interests. It’s not all going to come from lean manufacturing ideas.

Peter Margaritis: [00:14:05] Yeah, that’s a good point. There’s a thought process that I was just exposed to about a couple of months ago from a gentleman with the National Speakers Association, and he works at IBM. Have you heard of this called design thinking?

Owen Wyss: [00:14:21] No.

Peter Margaritis: [00:14:22] And I will butcher this, but the concept is, you know, as a manufacturer of something, I build this, you buy it. And then, you’re not part of that input. To me, you’re the consumer. Well, design thinking is going to the point where the organization is partnering with the customer and helping to design the product that meets their needs to eliminate a lot of errors, a lot of — You know, when you implement an SAP system, somebody goes, “Okay. This is not going run smoothly. There’s going to be some type of interruption. There’s always something like that with an ERP system,” which stands for entities reoccurring problem.

Peter Margaritis: [00:15:04] But with design thinking, it eliminates that because they’re partnering with their major customers and helping to design what they need versus, “We’ve got our engineers. We think we know what you need. We’re going to build it.” But a lot of times, it doesn’t work properly for a while.

Owen Wyss: [00:15:24] And interesting that you say that because maybe from that perspective, construction might actually be a little bit about out front, given the fact that the owners go in with an idea of what they need, and work with the GCs and design people to figure that out. I think it’s a little bit more of the actual process of getting it built that needs to come a long way; whereas, I think, manufacturing is out and front on that piece, and then needs to get more involved in the design piece.

Peter Margaritis: [00:15:56] Okay. So, it sounds like — So, it’s with the subs that seems to be the issue from the GC and the subs, getting that that’s done smoothly, and efficiently, and on time, and under budget?

Owen Wyss: [00:16:10] I think that — Wow, you’re asking me to dig into the details here.

Peter Margaritis: [00:16:16] No. Just for a second. I’m just curious.

Owen Wyss: [00:16:18] It is. It is a function, I think, of all three that you just mentioned. I mean, they’re pushing. Owners are pushing margins lower, you know, which obviously should drive the general contractors to push costs lower, which ultimately should drive the subcontractors to push costs lower. But I believe what you’re seeing is just shrinking margins because there’s not a great effort to look at how we can make construction more efficient. And like I said, I kind of keep going back to what I think. There are some GCs out there who see major opportunities with lean thought processes to do that and are trying to work with some of their closer general contractors to do or/and subcontractors to do the same.

Peter Margaritis: [00:17:06] Cool. That’s interesting. Like I said, I’ve got a limited — I have to be a little bit dangerous. I haven’t been able to get rid of that memory of lending back in the — Well, just way back in that time, but still have some of that floating around. So, I was really kind of curious about that.

Peter Margaritis: [00:17:24] We’ll change gears for a bit. The one thing that I’m so happy that you’re doing, and I’m really envious of you and how you’ve approached this, is you find it very important to give your time back to the profession and to the community. And I’d like for you to talk about that because you’re currently Vice Chair of Finance for the Ohio Society of CPAs. You’ve been on the board of JDRF, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. You’re currently also on the board of the Construction Financial Management Association. Am I forgetting anything?

Owen Wyss: [00:18:07] Not that — There were a few earlier in my career, you know, young CPA, young leadership boards that I participated in around the state and Columbus for that matter. But other than that, no, not at all. Not that I’m trying to fill any gaps either there, but, you know, it really started off as —

Owen Wyss: [00:18:31] And it’s interesting because I hate to say this, it was never meant to be giving back, but it really did start off at Battelle & Battelle in Dayton where they were very connected to a charitable organization. You know, for that matter, JDRF. They had a corporate bond with that organization. And, you know, therefore, it was easy to get involved because it was being driven from the top. And that was just a great chance to network, and get out, and do something. But it became more than that. You know, it really. You go, and you hear the stories, and it became much more of a connection outside of the networking and getting my own name out in the community. So, it really stuck.

Owen Wyss: [00:19:15] And when I moved to Columbus, actually, I passed up a chance to be more intimately involved with the board at the Dayton chapter, but I still wanted to continue that connection even though where I was moving to, I had no connection with that organization, it was important for me to maintain that. You know, it really is just finding something that you’re passionate about. And I stick with it to this day. I did the boards then. Now, I’m co-chairing their annual walk here in Columbus. And it’s just something I’ve become passionate about and has given me — Not only am I passionate about it and continue to do it, I’ve also met some amazing people around this city because of those connections.

Owen Wyss: [00:19:56] So, I encourage, first, for everybody to find something they’re passionate about; and second, to find an organization that aligns with them and realize that what will come of that are some great friendships, some great networking opportunities and business connections.

Owen Wyss: [00:20:13] And then, you know, the connections with the Ohio Society and with the CFMA, Construction Financial Management Association, those have both been driven from my professional relationships, and you find some really, really great and passionate people when you are working in organizations like that, people who want to drive change in industry. And it’s just a great opportunity to meet passionate people and other successful people in their profession, and get a feel for how they got to where they’re at now, which is where I’m aspiring to go in the next 20 or 30 years.

Owen Wyss: [00:20:58] So, I can’t encourage it more. It is a drain sometimes on personal life. And I shouldn’t call it a drain. It does take away from from being able to be at home or even sometimes at work. You know, there are during the day meetings, but it’s delivered tenfold back to me, not only for how I interact daily at work, but also how I interact at home.

Peter Margaritis: [00:21:23] So, just so the audience knows, let’s go back to JDRF for a little while. You’re very passionate about this organization, but you’re not a diabetic.

Owen Wyss: [00:21:33] That is correct, I’m not. But I’ll you what, you hang around some people at that organization who are diabetics, and who are passionate, and it’s hard not to feel the same way they do.

Peter Margaritis: [00:21:45] Yes. And, obviously, being a diabetic, I tip my hat to you because I applaud the work that you’re doing at JDRF and have done at JDRF. And I’ve met some folks at JDRF. I’ve met some of the doctors whose children have had diabetes, and they do a lot of work at JDRF. And that’s another organization. That’s kind of how — I didn’t realize, you had posted something on Facebook. It was around the Super Bowl or something, tickets to JDRF.

Peter Margaritis: [00:22:19] And you were the one who introduced me, who is the Executive Director, Cathy Paessun, at the time. And I went talk to Cathy and wanted to volunteer. And then, she moved to the Central Ohio Diabetes Association. And we’ve talked about this. Honey, my wife, if you’re listening to this, please turn it off because you’re going to get really upset with me. But like I told you, I would still like to do and help something out at JDRF as I do at the Central Ohio Diabetes Associations. I’m just going to put that out there. And it’s recorded, so it can’t be taken back. And I know you can make it happen, like I said. And hit me up here soon. We need to get together for another afterwork appetizer and talk about potential opportunities over there.

Owen Wyss: [00:23:05] Absolutely.

Peter Margaritis: [00:23:05] But you’ve been on the board for how many years now at the Ohio Society?

Owen Wyss: [00:23:11] I believe I just entered my fifth and final. And when I say final, I mean final, as in I do have to roll off for a period of time, but that’s going to be tough. I’ve made some great, great relationships there. And it’s going to be — It will actually be quite a system shock to not be able to catch up with some of those fellow board members, at least, quarterly for an all day meeting, and then at our annual retreat. So, it’s going to be a shock. But, you know, that’s also a teaching opportunity for myself. And then, I realized that I’ve got to make sure even if we were not assigned to be together that I continue to reach out and stay in contact with them, which sometimes, personally, will be tough for me.

Peter Margaritis: [00:23:58] And you had a very unique time on the board because I believe when you first started, didn’t Clarke Price has retired, and Scott had just come on as a new CEO?

Owen Wyss: [00:24:11] I believe I became a board member in Scott’s second year-

Peter Margaritis: [00:24:17] Okay.

Owen Wyss: [00:24:18] … as CEO. So, Clarke was transitioned out, but, you know, it’s been a five-year string of that. I can’t wait to talk more about that when the opportunity allows. And I shouldn’t say not that I can’t, but just it hasn’t been — You know, I don’t get a whole lot of interest from my friends who aren’t accountants to talk about this. But it’s been so interesting to watch an organization try and fight through the supposed dying membership model and pick a strategy that will help the organization survive for years. I will be able to use things I’ve learned in this five years throughout every piece of my life, primarily in business, but I’m sure in many things.

Peter Margaritis: [00:25:05] Yeah. You’ve been on the board for as long as you have. It’s a wonderful experience. I’m remembering when I first was on the board, I thought it was a cool thing because they really didn’t talk technical accounting. They were talking about the big picture things. And at the time, it was all about IFRS, and was it going to happen, and some things about peer review, and look at the profession, you know, five years ahead, and realizing, we’re five years there.

Peter Margaritis: [00:25:31] And, yeah, a lot of this did happen. Some of that didn’t. But it’s — Yeah, you’re going to miss being that connected. Trust me. When I rolled off the chairs, I was off of all communication, and I was going through withdrawals. I was shaking, you know. Just foaming at the mouth at times because you’re so connected. You’re in the know. Then, all of a sudden, you know nothing.

Owen Wyss: [00:25:56] Yeah. You know, I will say that that’s probably a little bit of it too is is trying to figure out. I’m so passionate about the mission now in navigating this dying membership model that it’s going to be hard to not be in the know. And not even the decision making part of it or helping the organization make decisions, but just being out of the loop. And I know it will be hard to figure out how to get back, stay in that loop even if it is on the edge.

Peter Margaritis: [00:26:26] Can you talk about anything about this dying membership model and the approach that the Ohio Society is doing, or is it still at board level and hasn’t trickled out to the general public?

Owen Wyss: [00:26:39] No, absolutely. I can absolutely talk about it. And it is still very much an evolving process. First, it would be my contention. And, you know, I’m sure that the society could summarize this much better than I will, but I’ll give my take on it here. You know, at first, the first evolution, I think, was to experiment outside the membership model with an organizational membership model. And we’ve learned a lot from that. And that is still something that we are pushing forward on, maybe not quite as we did on day one, but still today just with some tweaks to the plan.

Owen Wyss: [00:27:23] And then, you know, I think the other big change and evolution that we’re going through, and this is going to take years to perfect, if ever perfected, I guess I should say, is moving from a place where we deemed what learning that accountants in Ohio and beyond needed to a place where we’re working and consulting with organizations on their training needs and trying to bring solutions to them. And so, I think from that perspective, maybe both things I’m saying you can kind of hear us moving slightly away from our membership model and even more towards mainly an industry or business model.

Owen Wyss: [00:28:07] And, you know, we’re still so early. It’s hard to tell whether we’ve achieved success because, at this point in time, the organization still is very largely based on individual membership. So, we’re really trying to turn that slide around and hoping that we see that slide reverse course here shortly, maybe even the next four months.

Peter Margaritis: [00:28:29] And that membership model, yeah, too. That’s a big battleship to turn on a dime, to move away from that, even though that membership model is any more. It’s like how do you engage the younger generation to join, to be a part of?

Owen Wyss: [00:28:52] And you’re absolutely right. I mean, it is. You know, we’ve talked about my involvement from a board level, and I’ll even extend this into a membership level, you know. And I won’t get into naming generations. I will say I’m one year out of what is considered a millennial. So, you know, many people probably would still lump me in there, not that I think that they need designated names.

Owen Wyss: [00:29:18] But, you know, just even talking about the friends that I hang out with every day, who many of them are outside of this profession. And, really, it enlightens me as to why the Ohio Society is not the only organization having membership trouble. The younger generations, really, it’s not something that they –At least, from what I personally experienced, it’s not something that they feel is just something they have to do. If you can’t find a way to make that personal connection, they’ve got no problem paying.

Owen Wyss: [00:29:52] But, sometimes, I think it’s tough. You know, I look back at myself and realize that if it wasn’t for jumping into the Ohio Society as a volunteer because I wanted to expand my network, I don’t know that I would have spent enough time reading e-mails or watching Facebook videos to understand what the Ohio Society really is doing for me. And it’s because I made a decision to want to network that, today, I’m so passionate about what I know that organization is accomplishing on a daily basis.

Peter Margaritis: [00:30:26] Amen, brother. I mean, it’s kind of — I remember when I got involved because I was teaching at Franklin University, I felt like I needed to get involved. And I think the same thing. If it wasn’t for that, and I wasn’t — You know, I’m just trying to do it for the students, as well as build my network within the state. And, over the years, I think I did a very great job of doing that. I met some wonderful people.

Peter Margaritis: [00:30:49] But it gets frustrating from those who are active, and from those who don’t read e-mails, or don’t get involved. But then, you ask, “Well, why are they members?” And a lot of the feedback I get is like from an AICPA level, I’ve heard some AICPA members say that the reason they keep their membership is for the insurance, which I find really amusing to some degree, but it’s life insurance. And I hear some say that, “I just want to, you know, make sure I’m still in the know,” or “I take it for the cheaper CPE.” And I still look at this much more to that organization than just that, but I might have been — Just like as you said, I might have been one of those folks if I hadn’t throw my hat in the ring, and jumped two feet, and became a volunteer.

Owen Wyss: [00:31:49] I mean, absolutely true. I mean, sometimes we’re — And we’re wavering on how to sell, you know. Sell is such a bad word, but how to sell the organization because I can tell anybody that’s a CPA that needs CPE that the Ohio Society provides 12 hours per year, and just for paying your membership fees. And if you look at the cost of CPE, that pays for itself. I mean, you’ve officially paid for your membership if you take all 12 CPE hours.

Owen Wyss: [00:32:21] The organization is doing so much more. You know, we’ve got the advantage of being a sizable state and having a heavy membership for the Ohio Society. So, I think, you’d never know if you don’t take the time to sit and listen or read an article. But Ohio, from a business and tax perspective, especially the Ohio Society of CPAs, is not only playing in Ohio. I mean, they really are and do have a national presence. And it’s an organization I can speak to accomplishing so much that if anybody, an Ohio CPA and not a member is listening to this, I couldn’t encourage them more to do their research and get involved.

Peter Margaritis: [00:33:02] Yeah, it’s finding that value, “What value are you bringing to me as a member?” versus, back in the day, we were taken. You need to do this. It’s kind of like the told model versus now. But when you look at the members, you can’t — Well, I look at it this way. We’re looking at our members as like we’re playing checkers or we’re playing chess. Because if you think of the game of checkers, each piece can move in any direction it wants to, but in checkers, it’s a strategic move. So, it’s almost like an a la carte. I can’t give it one thing to the masses. I have to tailor it to meet those different audiences that I’m trying to appeal to.

Owen Wyss: [00:33:46] Absolutely. And it’s tough to — And, you know, we’re seeing it in social media every day today. It’s tough to strategize those communications to know that you’re getting the right communication to the right member or potential member. You know, here at Thompson, we’re talking about taking on some social media presence. We have the slightest right now that I manage also myself, but we’re really talking about bringing in somebody who is an expert at aiming social media.

Owen Wyss: [00:34:20] And that just shows you how poorly I can speak about this when I say aiming social media, but, you know, if we’re looking to hire, we do have demographics that fit what our typical employees ought to fit in best here. I have no idea how to direct that. But, you know, that person does, and it’s become an incredible expertise, And I continue to hear more about that other organizations should definitely be looking into.

Peter Margaritis: [00:34:48] Exactly. There was some committee meeting the other day. Somebody mentioned that they hired a social media expert intern. And within a 12-month period of time, their social media activity followers just exploded. It was up, I feel like, about 300% or something crazy like that. But if you think about that, and a lot of conversations being had out in social media, you’re just raising your visibility, your presence.

Peter Margaritis: [00:35:18] And having a social media strategist for, I think, all organizations, all businesses, to raise their profile, that’s more than likely an investment that would provide great ROI, But, a lot of times, we go, ” But what does it do? Am I not be getting sales? I might not. How do you measure?” But I think it’s much more than that, the aspect of just that visibility and being out in front of people. And when I need something done, social media, that’s first place I think of, and I’ll go to, and that’s my lifestyle.

Owen Wyss: [00:35:54] And I hate to admit, you know, I get asked the question on a survey here that I find myself taking, what’s your primary news source? And my primary news source is Facebook. And I know I just dated myself there, but my primary news source is Facebook. Now, don’t get me wrong. The news sources on Facebook are still your ABCs, and your CNNs, Fox News, and whatever else it is that I might have liked in the past, but I’m not even doing a search. If it’s important, it’ll show up in my newsfeed.

Peter Margaritis: [00:36:27] That’s interesting. I used to be a newspaper guy. But then, they took them all away. So, I get my news via some apps that will go out and gather information from a variety of sources to bring it in. And that’s the first thing I do every morning is kind of sift through. I just kind of go through it. But I still have the Wall Street Journal on my app on my iPad, and I still struggle at times to read through the Wall Street Journal or Harvard Business Review. I can do that, which is really that’s not like a CPA to say something like that.

Owen Wyss: [00:37:03] And I will be completely honest here, you know, I am of the generation, whatever generation that might be, that still likes its news, and/or does like its news, and does like what it reads to be 30 seconds or less. You know, if you want me to delve into a longer thought process on it, it’s got to be something that I’ve become incredibly interested in in the first 30 sec.

Peter Margaritis: [00:37:31] And in journalism, they call that don’t bury the lead because the lead gets you to dig in. And I forgot where I was reading this. Don’t bury the lead, the lead gets your interest, and the major content has to be of those first three to four paragraphs of that because the longer the article is, they probably won’t get to the end or even halfway through, but they’ll consume that first three or four paragraphs, and then move on to the next. But if the lead doesn’t attract in today’s age, we’re just going to move to the next. And that’s kind of like the top process towards that audience. How are we getting their attention? What’s that lead that we need to create and not bury?

Owen Wyss: [00:38:16] And I think you’re absolutely right. And, you know, a little bit of me even equates that to what I do at work every day. It’s a jack of all trades. And yes, I need to be a subject matter around some things, but, in a lot of cases, it’s better that I can speak at a high level about a lot of things. You know, and then if I need to dig into something, I will set that time aside or develop a team here that can help me do so.

Peter Margaritis: [00:38:46] Exactly. I find that Sundays are a nice quiet time where I can go through and dig deeper in some of the stuff. I put a lot of my articles that I want to read for that Sunday out on my Evernote account, so I can just pull them up, sit on a couch, have a cup of coffee, and read through about an hour, an hour or two every Sunday, and try to get, you know, a little bit deeper.

Peter Margaritis: [00:39:08] The one that I still haven’t done yet, and I’ve got a lot of articles on it is that new intestinal disorder called block chain. I am starting to begin to understand it, and I need to dig into it deeper, but that one kind of, yeah.

Owen Wyss: [00:39:27] I need to ask a favor then because I have tried, and I still have no idea what it is. I understand what I think it does. I don’t know what it is or how it does it. And I’ve made an effort. So, next time we get together, I’m going that you give me a little training and schooling.

Peter Margaritis: [00:39:50] I most certainly will, and that will be in 2020. You know, actually, I was speaking at the National Association of Black Accountants, and one of our colleagues was doing a session on block chain. So, I sat to his hour long session, and I walked out with, “I think I got it. I think I finally kind of understand what they’re talking about.” So, yes, I will brush up on it the next time that we get together.

Peter Margaritis: [00:40:16] Before we wrap up, so, let’s recap. You’re a husband, you’re a father, financial controller, volunteer at a variety of organizations. So, what do you do if you have any spare time just for you?

Owen Wyss: [00:40:34] This time of year, yard work. And the rain has been killing me this year. It makes it really tough to get to. And now, I’m going to jinx myself with that because we’ll have drought the rest of the summer, and my yard would be brown, which would even frustrate me more. You know, I have a passion for a lot of things. It’s so interesting. And my friends would probably tell you that my passions for a lot of things last for about a year and a half to two years at a time.

Owen Wyss: [00:41:05] Anything with an engine, I am a complete car guy. I have a few and love to tinker. I don’t know that I’m diving into them if I don’t know what I’m doing. I do have that hold up, but I do love to tinker with them. And then, just, you know, love to be outside. The summer is a great time of year, and just play some softball here and there. Kind of have slowed down in the past few years from the three to four nights a week of softball and volleyball with marriage and a kid. But when I do get a chance to get out, I still love to do so.

Peter Margaritis: [00:41:36] That’s cool. That’s great. And I was talking to someone recently, and in their interview, they asked, “What do you do in your spare time?” because, basically, if they don’t do anything, that means — And this is the way it was told me, and I agree that they don’t have an outlet. And anymore we need an outlet, a place that we can get rid of that stress, so it doesn’t continually build up, build up, build up.

Peter Margaritis: [00:41:59] And I applaud you on so many accounts. I’m so proud of what you’ve accomplished, but the cool thing is I’m going to be around to watch you do even more. And I’m looking for it. And I’m not going to jinx it, but I truly believe. But I will put it on the record that I believe that somewhere in your near future that you may actually be the chair of the Ohio Society of CPAs, and run that organization, and be the face of the organization for a year.

Owen Wyss: [00:42:29] Thank you for that. Now, I don’t have to publicly speak in front of a room of 400, I’d be much more open to that than what I might even when I first joined the board.

Peter Margaritis: [00:42:40] I can fix that for you. I can fix that publicly speaking piece to 400 people. And they may tell you to look at them naked, don’t ever do that. That’s the worst piece of advice, but I can help you in that realm.

Owen Wyss: [00:42:53] I know you can. And we’re probably going to need to start that training sooner than later if I plan to reach all of the heights I’d like to in my working career.

Peter Margaritis: [00:43:05] We have it on record. I’m going to hold you to it. Owen, I can’t thank you enough spending time. I look forward, and I’ll send you an e-mail on trying to figure out some time between now and the end of August to get together. And, man, just keep knocking it out of the park, my friend. Just keep knocking it out of the park.

Owen Wyss: [00:43:26] Peter, thank you very much for your time. This has been a thoroughly enjoyable. And I hope that it sounds good to everybody as it did in my head.

Peter Margaritis: [00:43:33] Yeah, mine too.

Peter Margaritis: [00:43:39] I want to thank Owen again for taking time out of his very busy schedule on being a guest on my podcast. As you can tell listening to our conversation that Owen is passionate about everything he does and is a great role model for both young and old. I am very proud of him, and I’m envious of his drive.

Peter Margaritis: [00:43:59] In episode 9, my guest is Byron Patrick, who is the Managing Director at CPA Practice at Network Alliance. He recently presented five sessions at the AICPA ENGAGE Conference on a variety of IT topics, and that is the focus of our conversation. Thank you for listening. And begin the process of changing your mindset and getting out of your comfort zone to develop new skill sets to become more future-ready. Your call to action is to ask yourself if you can do more to have a greater impact on your career and on your community. Remember, a part of being future ready is to be an improviser. Yes, and – I’m out.

Peter: [00:00:00] Cara, thank you so very much for spending some time with me today on my podcast. I’m so looking forward to our conversation.

Cara: [00:00:06] Thanks, Peter. Me too.

Peter: [00:00:07] It’s good to have a fellow Kentuckian finally on my podcast.

Cara: [00:00:13] Yeah.

Peter: [00:00:13] Even though you’re a UL fan, I’m a UK fan, I’m sure we’re gonna get along fancy today.

Cara: [00:00:18] Yes, I won’t hold that against you, Peter.

Peter: [00:00:23] Go blue. Cara, can you give my audience a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Cara: [00:00:32] Sure. So, my name is Cara Silletto, and I am a retention guru. I work with companies all around the country, all different industries to help them reduce employee turnover today. And we primarily do that by bridging the generational gaps and making managers more effective in their roles because, as we know, most people leave their companies, you know, not because of pay, but because of their managers, and that they don’t feel appreciated, or don’t have a great relationship with their supervisor. So, that’s what we focus on. And you can imagine, with that being a hot topic, we are pretty busy right now.

Peter: [00:01:11] I imagine you are because, I think, during setting up this podcast and communicating with who you, you’re like overseas for a week or so?

Cara: [00:01:19] Yeah. So, I did an international engagement down in Curacao, which is an island near Aruba, and it’s just north of Venezuela. That was pretty exciting. The gentleman who booked me down there, he actually saw us speak, me and my training partner in St. Louis, but he was from Curacao. And so, he asked to bring us down there, and I worked with six different companies and government agencies to help them bridge the generational gap. So, it’s not just a US thing, that’s for sure. It’s happening all around the world.

Peter: [00:01:50] Yes, it’s very much international. Was that like in February when it was like cold up here, and just absolutely stunningly beautiful down in the Caribbean?

Cara: [00:01:59] Yes, it was snowing when we left Louisville. And that was fantastic because we had to quickly shove our jackets in our bags when we got down there. And it was a beautiful week.

Peter: [00:02:10] I can imagine. And you’re an author as well. You’ve written two books. Can you tell us what those books are?

Cara: [00:02:17] Sure. So, we have a small mini book called The Millennial Mindset. And that is some stories about my childhood. I happened to be one of the oldest millennials. And so, we talk about things like technology, and respect for authority, entitlement, which is everybody’s favorite thing to say about millennials. And what that little booklet talks about is the backstory of why am I, as a millennial, why am I so entitled, and why do I have no loyalty to anyone or anything.

Cara: [00:02:49] And I tell some childhood stories about, you know, real things that happened to me. My parents got divorced when I was young. My mom, who happened to be a corporate accountant, she got laid off three times before I hit college. And so, when you’re a child going through those things, you don’t even know what loyalty looks like. And coming in as a worker, then, into a work world where my employer expected me to trust them and to stay long term, after I saw my mom work late at night, and then get laid off. I mean, there’s no guarantees. So, that little booklet tells a lot of those stories of how I grew up differently than the previous generations, which is a pretty good aha moment for a lot of managers and older colleagues even that really do not understand how millennials see the world so differently.

Cara: [00:03:44] And then, I’m so excited to announce that we just launched a new book this spring called Staying Power: Why Your Employees Leave and How to Keep Them Longer. And that book also has quite a bit of information about the millennial mindset and the evolution of our employees over the last 20 to 30 years in the workplace. And it, of course, focuses on specific strategies of how to reduce employee turnover today.

Peter: [00:04:15] Outstanding. And we’re going to talk a lot about the book, but I want to back up to you a little book for a second because, on your website, you’ve got about an 18-minute video of you giving this talk. And for those of you who are listening, we’ll put a link in the show notes. Go watch this. One, she’s funny. She’s got some great stories. But she really frames that mindset. Oh, by the way, like she said, she is a millennial, which is a great thing. I’ve almost quit using the term millennial. It’s just the younger generation.

Cara: [00:04:49] Right.

Peter: [00:04:50] Because there’s that stigma that has been attached to it. And I think that stigma is incorrect.

Cara: [00:04:56] Yeah. Unfortunately, it is really negative. Most of the time, when people in the workplace use the word millennial, it has a negative connotation. “She’s so millennial,” or “Are we going to hire more millennials?”

Peter: [00:05:09] Right.

Cara: [00:05:09] You know, that type of thing. And, of course, some people have a very positive thought of millennials, and that’s fantastic. But we refer to them more as today’s new workforce because what we find also is, first of all, there’s no one definition of millennials. People decide based on the research they do. So, different researchers, Pew, and Deloitte, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they all just picked their own start and end time.

Cara: [00:05:39] So, first, it’s a little bit difficult to put a definitive definition on the dates and the birth years of millennials. And what we argue as well is it’s not about your birth year, it’s about your mindset. It’s about the way that you were raised because, sometimes, I meet people who are younger than I am, and they were raised in a much more traditional family, very hierarchical. Maybe they have a military background, or they grew up in a small conservative town. They don’t think like I do. They’re going to be more traditional, for sure.

Peter: [00:06:14] Do you refer to them in the video as the old soul millennials or something like that?

Cara: [00:06:20] Yes. Yeah, we call them the old souls.

Peter: [00:06:23] Old.

Cara: [00:06:23] And, you know, it’s funny because employers come to me all the time, and they say, “How do we recruit more old souls because we want people that just do the job, and do what we say, and they don’t wear leggings to work,” and, you know, things like that because the old souls tend to act and think much more like a baby boomer or even a Gen-Xer.

Cara: [00:06:47] And so, it’s interesting to me to bridge the gap and explain, “You know, stop saying millennial as far as a birth year-

Peter: [00:06:56] Right.

Cara: [00:06:56] … a group of people, you know, that are a certain age. It’s really about people who have a different mindset.” And I meet Gen-Xers and boomers all the time who have a more millennial mindset, which is much more entrepreneurial. Yeah, it’s much more entrepreneurial. You’re probably an early adopter for new things, you love change, just different things like that that are not stereotypical boomer, which we-

Peter: [00:07:23] Right.

Cara: [00:07:24] … we tend to think, especially the younger people in the work tend to think that boomers are set in their ways, and they’re old school, and, you know, that type of thing. So, there’s negative and positive stereotypes and things on both sides, for sure.

Peter: [00:07:38] You know, I worked at a university for a number of years, and I saw how a lot of this changed because we were getting calls from students’ parents asking why Little Johnny failed the test. And we go, “Well, ask Little Johnny why failed the test. Don’t call us.” I was also hearing stories from some of my partner friends in accounting firms that if a candidate didn’t get an offer, the parents were calling up to try and to find out why.

Cara: [00:08:06] It happens so often now. And, you know, here’s what’s funny. We can easily judge those millennials and say, “You need to grow up, and, you know, you need to be more adult,” or “Stop being so entitled,” or whatever it is that we want to say about them.” But the reality is the millennials don’t know any different.

Peter: [00:08:29] Right.

Cara: [00:08:30] They only know a world where we get what we want when we want it. You know, we have drive-throughs, we have credit cards, we have Netflix, and Amazon Prime two-day shipping, and things like that. And so, when we look at something like that about the parents, don’t blame the millennial. Blame parents.

Peter: [00:08:50] Right. I used to do some generational stuff, and I would say the exact same thing as, “How many baby boomers are there? It’s your fault. You raised them.”

Cara: [00:08:58] Yes.

Peter: [00:08:58] And then, they start laughing, “Well, no, no, no. It’s not my kid. Not my kid.” I go, “Yeah, right. Yeah.”.

Cara: [00:09:04] Yeah.

Peter: [00:09:04] And I’m guilty. My son’s 17 years old, and he’s at the tail end of the millennial, and the things that I saw, my wife, he was on a dive team. And when he got a 12th place ribbon, I almost lost my freaking mind. My wife said, “Get out of here.” I have both of those ribbons just to keep around. But, like you said, he’s used to … Now, he’s 17 years old, going to be 18 in a month. By the time this year he should be 18, hopefully, he’ll have his license by then.

Cara: [00:09:41] Are you serious?

Peter: [00:09:43] I’m serious.

Cara: [00:09:43] He still doesn’t have his license?

Peter: [00:09:44] No, no. He’s got his neighborhood friends that drive him to school. If he wants some food, well, you got UberEats, you’ve got DoorDash. I mean, come on. I’m sitting there thinking, “Well, you know, there might not be something bad about that. At least, I know he’s safe.”

Cara: [00:10:01] Yeah, that’s true.

Peter: [00:10:02] Yes.

Cara: [00:10:02] But you’re right. I mean, a lot of the millennials are staying at home longer and/or coming back to live in their parents’ basement. A lot of that has to do with student debt as well that-

Peter: [00:10:14] Right.

Cara: [00:10:14] … previous generations, they had some student debt. But we’re talking $5000, maybe $10,000 of student debt. And, now, you’ve got so many people coming out with $30,000, $40,000, $80,000-

Peter: [00:10:28] Yeah.

Cara: [00:10:28] … in student debt, just from a bachelor’s degree. Of course, they’re going to go back and live in their parents’ basement-

Peter: [00:10:33] Exactly.

Cara: [00:10:34] … because they’re not part of an entry level position. So, yeah, that’s a whole different ballgame.

Peter: [00:10:39] Yeah, it really is. But, you know, I’ve worked with them for so long. Like I said, I’m a baby boomer with Gen X and Gen Y tendencies. I look at them … Hold on, my dog. Then, hopefully. you can take this, my dog barking out of this podcast. I can hear her. Sometimes, somebody is at the door, she’ll just start barking, and barking, and barking. She, eventually, will stop.

Peter: [00:11:01] But I look at the millennials as an opportunity. I mean, they are my help desk. And I’m pretty good with technology, but if I’ve got an issue, he’s 17 years old, “Steven, can you fix this? Can you figure this out for me?”

Cara: [00:11:19] Yeah.

Peter: [00:11:19] He’s got that kind of thought process. He can figure things out. And he’s used … I mean, obviously, they’re used to using their thumbs, they’re used to technology. And if they come in to the workforce, if they’re hired by an accounting firm or a corporation, and they don’t have screens to look at, and they’re not up with technology, they’re not going to stay.

Cara: [00:11:42] Right.

Peter: [00:11:42] They’re going to go find that.

Cara: [00:11:43] Oh absolutely. Survey after survey that we have done or looked at, it says that they don’t leave because of pay, they leave because of things like old antiquated software that is terribly slow to use, and it slows them down as an employee, and they won’t put up with that. If you’ve got software that just churns and churn, or is just difficult and clunky to use, that can absolutely cause turnover. As much as you think, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. They just need to be patient and deal with it,” that’s just not the case. They will leave because of that. They will leave because of scheduling issues.

Cara: [00:12:21] One of the biggest things that I’ve seen, particularly with CPA firms, is the mandatory Saturdays. Yeah, people will not do mandatory Saturdays anymore. And so, I’m seeing firm, after firm, after firm who had mandatory Saturdays during tax season. They’ve had that for decades. That was an expectation.

Cara: [00:12:41] And now, what the transition is it’s not that they’re expecting any less out of their people, but they’re giving them flexibility to bill those hours any time during the week. If they want to pull later days, or come in on Sunday or Saturday night, work from home, wherever they can hit those billable hours, they can still do it, but they’re not requiring people to come in from 9:00 to noon every Saturday morning anymore because you don’t have to do that. We have access from afar now.

Peter: [00:13:12] Right. In an earlier episode, I interviewed two partners, a firm in Maryland, DeLeon & Stang. And I got to know this firm, and they’re really unique. And they just instituted an unlimited PTO.

Cara: [00:13:29] There we go.

Peter: [00:13:30] As well as Saturdays are not mandatory. And it’s just kind of empowers. They’re still going to take care of the clients, but we’ve … They even changed their mission statement to put it used to be we put our clients, and then staff. Now, it’s we put our people first, and I know they’ll take care of the clients, kind of like the Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines quote.

Cara: [00:13:55] Absolutely.

Peter: [00:13:56] And they’ve been getting high productivity out of their people. And as the partner has said, “We’re building this firm for the millennials because that’s who will keep this firm moving into the next generation. So, we’re changing.” Now, they built a new office in Frederick, open, not tethered to the place. It’s not-

Cara: [00:14:18] Collaborative, probably.

Peter: [00:14:19] Yeah, exactly.

Cara: [00:14:20] Yeah.

Peter: [00:14:22] Yeah.

Cara: [00:14:22] Yeah, that’s a huge change today. And, honestly, any of the firms who are set in their ways, and they have old policies, you know, just long-term policies that they haven’t revisited, those are the ones who contact me and say, “We can’t recruit anybody. And when we do recruit somebody, they’re only staying one or two years, or they don’t want to be on the partner track anymore. What’s the problem?” And the old model just doesn’t work any longer. A lot of the young people, they want opportunities for advancement that are not just the partner track. You know, the partner track is like an all or none.

Peter: [00:15:00] Right.

Cara: [00:15:00] Plus a lot of millennials, I mentioned earlier, we have no loyalty as far as loyalty for loyalty’s sake.

Peter: [00:15:08] Right.

Cara: [00:15:08] Now, we can become loyal to a leader or to an organization, but we’re not going to walk in the door and say, “This is where I want to be for my whole career.”

Peter: [00:15:18] Right.

Cara: [00:15:18] And even if I like working there, I may not want to be partner track because that ties me to that organization and those other partners potentially for life for my whole career. And a lot of millennials just want options. They want flexibility and choices.

Peter: [00:15:36] Exactly. And as you’re describing that, you know, two things came into my head. I really was a millennial early on in my career because my average length of tenure at an employer was about four years. Then, I move to something else, move to something else. So, I was considered a job-hopper back in the day. But, now, I was considered somebody who had a broad brush and wide variety of cultures and things to bring to an organization.

Peter: [00:16:02] But the other piece that, as you’re describing that, is I hear this, “Well, they’re just going to leave, so why should I invest into them?”

Cara: [00:16:13] Oh.

Peter: [00:16:13] “Why should I show them to the training? Why should I invest into them? Well, if you don’t invest in them, if we all have that same mentality, when they leave, when you recruit, you’re not getting anything better.

Cara: [00:16:24] Absolutely. That’s what I was going to focus on is for the greater good of the industry and the profession, you know, that we all need to step up our game on training, and there’s that age-old old quote of one executive says, “Well, what if we invest in training them and they leave?” And the other one says, “But what if we don’t train them and they stay?”

Peter: [00:16:50] Yeah.

Cara: [00:16:50] So, that’s much worse. And I’ll be honest with you too, training now is not an option. It is not a perk anymore. It is absolutely required, and expected, and demanded from today’s new workforce. So, they want you to invest in their career. They want you to invest in their professional development, both technical skills and soft skills like leadership, communication, organizational skills, things like that. So, it’s really not an option.

Cara: [00:17:23] And what I saw happen was 10 or 15 years ago, at least, companies cut training and development. And that is so sad because it has now come back to haunt us where we promoted all these people into supervisor positions, and just up the chain, and even made them partner; and yet, they don’t have people skills to work with their team. They don’t have people skills to work with their colleagues, and then they upset everybody, or maybe even have a toxic attitude or toxic behavior within the workplace that is just ruining the whole place for everybody.

Cara: [00:18:01] So, very important that we reinstate more training. And there’s so much out there now. There’s online training. There’s conferences, and external seminars, and programs you can send people to. And then, a lot of clients, obviously, they bring in folks like us, right, Peter?

Peter: [00:18:18] Right.

Cara: [00:18:18] And we’re called in-house and do that training. So, I’m seeing a huge uptick in the amount of training that firms and corporations are doing because they realize they’re kind of behind the eight ball in many cases.

Peter: [00:18:33] Yeah, exactly. I’m prepping for a presentation I’m doing for the Indiana Society on the latest in leadership from Harvard Business Review. So, I’ve been going through a variety of leadership articles, and there was one that said, you’re, sometimes … It said, “Your highly productive people,” and I’m butchering the title, “a lot of times don’t make the best leader.” And to your point, they’re saying those early years, we’re getting them technically sound, but when we put them in a role that they’re now a manager and have to manage people, the mentality of the boomer is, “It’s just soft skill. You can pick those skills up rather quickly,” when it’s, “No, you can’t. It takes time. Start early. Don’t wait till later.”

Cara: [00:19:14] Yes, and some people that comes naturally for.

Peter: [00:19:20] Right.

Cara: [00:19:20] Other people, they are coachable, and they can develop those skills. And some people are not coachable. So, they might be … I mean, we all know one of those people or a few of those people, and they may be the best at their craft. They may be the best technical person. But what I talk to companies about a lot is creating different career paths for those people because if you just say, “Well, you’re my best accountant, so I’m going to make you this accounting team manager,” or something like that, or a department manager, even in engineering or nursing.

Cara: [00:19:57] I mean, it’s the same thing with any kind of clinical or technical skill, you don’t necessarily want to take your best technical person, and make them the manager because six months in, who’s happy? Nobody. The person, you know, the person who’s been promoted, they were happy at first, “I got a promotion. I get more money.” But then, six months in, they say, “All these people keep bothering me.”

Peter: [00:20:20] Yeah.

Cara: [00:20:21] “I just want to be head down, and do my job, and do what I love. And I got to manage all these people, and mentor them, and deal with them.” And then the people under them are saying, “Oh, man. I feel like I’m bothering my boss, and he can’t really help me. He can’t mentor me, or he doesn’t have time.” I mean, that just doesn’t help anybody. So, instead, I love when organizations create multiple paths for advancement. And so, you hear a title like senior advisor or something like that, which tells me that person is so good at what they do, but they probably shouldn’t be managing people, and that’s fine because they can still be promoted, and they can be a mentor or an advisor for somebody else, or for a team, but they don’t have the direct responsibility of leading and managing others.

Peter: [00:21:13] Exactly. And when I think of what you’re describing because I know of one firm, in particular, that had … I guess, somebody I worked for, highly technical, but they didn’t want to put them in front of clients.

Cara: [00:21:28] That too.

Peter: [00:21:29] Smart as a whip, technically sound, and, as you say, this person, it was not he wasn’t coachable. It just wasn’t in his DNA, but they saw the value in the person. and they kept moving him up the ranks until … They weren’t going to make him a partner because, really, a partner is a salesperson. They’re trying to get business.

Cara: [00:21:48] Yeah.

Peter: [00:21:48] But they made him … They may have called it a director of something else, and he resides in that role, and is happy, and a value to the firm. But they knew his strengths and his weaknesses, and they kept him versus, “Well, you’re not partner material. We’re going to let you go.” That’s a highly productive individual that’s hard to replace from a technical standpoint.

Cara: [00:22:12] Right. So, that’s that’s the argument. If you have a rigid hierarchy and a rigid structure that you are not willing to be flexible and creative to create the kind of position for that type of person, super valuable to the organization, but just because he doesn’t fit into your mold and into your structure, you would let somebody like that go. No way. We just put a buffer in between that person and the clients. You know, we make some kind of account executive, or client relations person, or, you know, somebody else who is a similar role but just better on the front side of things the front of the house. And, yeah, you use that person to their ability, put them in the right seat. Absolutely.

Peter: [00:22:55] So, a highly productive individual comes in, doesn’t get these skills, they put them in this role, they get frustrated, and they leave, what does that cost the company? What is the cost to replace that individual?

Cara: [00:23:09] So much. I mean, even entry level folks, you’re looking at $15,000 to $20,000 of replacement costs. The higher their skill set, the more specialized they are, we can calculate 50 grand, even up to 100 grand sometimes that it would cost to replace, and retrain, and get somebody else up to speed on the company systems, and processes, and people, you know, the relationships that crumble when that person walks out the door, all of those things. I mean, it’s unbelievable costs that are happening.

Cara: [00:23:42] So, really, the firms, I mean, nobody can afford to let that happen. They can’t afford to lose somebody great like that right now. And the other piece of that is they can’t afford if they put that person in the wrong spot, if they promote that person to be people’s managers, I guarantee they have more turnover than necessary under that person. That other people who are coming in, entry level folks, or anybody who joins that team, they get frustrated, and then they’re likely to go jump ship when all these other people are calling. I mean, you know, today, we are in an employee’s market.

Peter: [00:24:23] Right.

Cara: [00:24:24] It’s absolutely the employees’ choice, the candidates’ choice of where they’re going to work. And so, any employer or any leader that says, “Well, they’re lucky to have this job,” it’s just not true anymore. It is not true. We, as the employers, are lucky to have the talent we have, and we have to try harder to meet their needs, not just bend over backwards for them, and “Oh, we got to put in beanbag chairs and ping pong tables.” No, that’s not it.

Cara: [00:24:57] What they want is they want flexibility, they want to be heard. They would like more transparency across the organization. I know a lot of staff get really frustrated when they feel like the partners are the only ones who know what’s going on.

Peter: [00:25:12] Right.

Cara: [00:25:12] That, “Nobody tells us anything. We’re not privy to any information about the company or decisions being made.” And I’ll tell you, your staff, all the way down to the new hire, they want to know what’s going on. They want to be involved in those discussions and those decisions.

Peter: [00:25:29] Exactly. I do have to make one statement here. I know we keep using the term firms, and kind of pointing towards the accounting firms, but this also comes into play in the corporate world, the corporate finance department, the exact same things that we’re describing, they’re seeing the same thing-

Cara: [00:25:45] Yeah.

Peter: [00:25:45] … in those environments as well. So, I just wanna make sure that we, you know, kind of address that. You know, firms, they operate completely different from a hiring perspective versus, you know, a business in industry, but, no, both have the same types of issues and trying to address them is necessary.

Cara: [00:26:04] Yeah, absolutely. Everything we’ve talked about is applicable and transferable over into those corporate finance departments. Yes.

Peter: [00:26:12] So, what are you seeing out there on the horizon in your crystal ball?

Cara: [00:26:16] That’s a great question. You know, what I do see changing is long-term employment is a thing of the past. And so, while previous generations, they had pensions, and they had those employer-employee relationships that were very long-term-focused, I just don’t see those happening near as much as they have over the past 30 to 50 years.

Peter: [00:26:47] Yeah.

Cara: [00:26:48] And so, what I encourage employers to do is to realize that the deep-rooted trees that we call them, which is somebody who’s been in your organization a long time, they have deep roots, and they’re probably not going anywhere until they retire, but as those trees retire out of the organization, be prepared for that role or that position to transition over, and become more of a revolving door position. Not that revolving door. It doesn’t have to mean, you know, six-month or one-year people. It’s not that kind of revolving door.

Peter: [00:27:23] Right.

Cara: [00:27:23] But maybe you’re only going to have people for three to five years or even two to three years, in some positions. That we need to plan for that. And the thing is, it’s not that we can’t operate with that model. So many people push back and say, “No, I cannot do what I do if people are only going to stay three to five years.” Then, the model has to shift-

Peter: [00:27:47] Right.

Cara: [00:27:48] … because we can survive. We, absolutely, can survive with a different staffing model and meeting our clients’ needs, but we have to face the reality that it’s going to be very difficult to keep people even to the 10-year mark anymore because it’s an employee’s market. We have people poaching your folks on LinkedIn, and, you know. So, it’s not even about somebody saying, “Oh, I’m so unhappy. I’m going to go find a new job.” No, it’s the recruiters who are calling and the other companies that will call and try to lure those people away as well.

Cara: [00:28:24] So, you really have to listen to what your staff wants and needs. We have to try to meet those needs as best we can and kind of compromise, meet in the middle on a lot of things, update our policies, and understand that this relationship has to be mutually beneficial. They’re only going to stay as long as they feel that it’s a good place for them to work. And you’re only going to keep them so long as they’re providing what you need as an employer. So, it has to be mutually beneficial. And that’s probably going to be somewhere between the three and ten-year range for most of your folks moving forward.

Peter: [00:29:03] Right. And I think the more that you put these policies in, the more that you, like the non-mandatory Saturday, or the unlimited PTO, or whatever. And listen to your folks. And I did a creativity session for a company. And one of the things was, how do we increase the morale in the office? And the CFO is part of this training, and we were doing it on post-it notes. And he handed me the post-it a note, and it said, “Say thank you more often.” And I said,”I’ll let you address this.”

Peter: [00:29:41] And he turned to his team. He said, “You know, we’re so quick to criticize and so slow to just to say thank you. I’m going to change that. I’m not going to overdo it. But when you go above and beyond, I’m going to make sure that I say thank you, and I’m going to try to hold my tongue a little bit on the criticism.”

Cara: [00:30:01] Yeah. I’m going to take that one step further, Peter, because you said that, you know, when people do go above and beyond, we should thank them. And I got to tell you a little story because-

Peter: [00:30:13] Cool.

Cara: [00:30:13] … we were talking earlier about participation ribbons and trophies, and, you know, that’s one of the stereotypes about millennials. They go home with 9th place and 12th place trophies and things, which by the way not our fault, that was our parents’ and coaches’ fault for doing that. But what we see today is that our new workforce, and this includes people of all different ages, they get very frustrated when they do their job, and they do a really good job, and they are dependable workers, and they do it day in and day out, and they still feel like they don’t get the appreciation they deserve for doing a great job.

Cara: [00:30:53] And so, a lot of leaders are still thinking, you know, like we did 10, 20, 30 years ago, and they say, “Well, I’ll say thank you when when somebody goes above and beyond. You know, if they stay late, or they resolve a problem, you know, that maybe wasn’t even on their plate, but they helped and stepped up. So, then, I’ll say thank you.” But today, I want to challenge your listeners, I want to challenge each and every one of you to turn up your appreciation dial and start to thank people for doing a great job, even if it is their job.

Cara: [00:31:30] Now, I know some of you are just cringing right now because you’re like, “That’s why they get a pay check,” you know, “I shouldn’t have to thank them for showing up and for doing their job.” But we know today that we have people who come to work, and they don’t do their job, or they don’t do a great job, or they’re not as dependable as some of the other staff on our team. And so, you will gain so much more loyalty, more tenure, you know, people will want to work for you longer if you show the appreciation that is deep down inside of you. Because I know that if you dig down, you really are thankful for the people who show up, who show up on time, who do their job, who do great work, and who take great care of your clients or any of the projects that they’re over. So, that’s kind of a mind shift and a mindset change that I would challenge each of your followers to really think about.

Peter: [00:32:31] Yeah, exactly. It’s that, sometimes, I’m speaking to an audience of CPAs and accountants, I ask them what business they’re in. And then hear, “We’re in the consulting business,” or “We’re in the compliance business.” I go, “It’s a byproduct. It’s a byproduct. What is your main business that you’re in?” And I’ll get them frustrated. Then, I look at them, and I say, “You know what business you’re in, you’re in the people business, first and foremost. Without people, you have no staff. Without people, you have no clients and customers.” So, once we realize that we’re really into human being and people business, that’s the most important asset that we need.

Peter: [00:33:10] And, actually, Bob Petkovski, when I interviewed him, he took it another step. He goes, “Really, we’re in the hospitality business. No matter what industry we’re in, we’re in the hospitality because we want to provide good service to both our internal and external clients and customers.”

Cara: [00:33:27] That’s exactly it.

Peter: [00:33:29] Yeah.

Cara: [00:33:29] Yeah. The employees should be considered your internal customers.

Peter: [00:33:34] Right.

Cara: [00:33:34] We talked a lot about that. And so, if you think about all the market research we do for our external customers that we figure out, what do they want, how are their needs changing, we will follow the trends, and get data, and talk to clients about what do you what differently, what new services do you want us to provide, and we evolve for those external customers. And yet, in many cases, we’re still managing people, and hiring them, and have staff structures that we’ve had for 10, 20, 30 years. So, we have to go to where the customers are, whether you’re evolving your services, and the way you do things to meet the needs of your external customers, but also evolving for your internal customers.

Cara: [00:34:19] One other quick story that comes to mind for me is I was actually working with a law firm that one of the partners said, “I come in every day at 7:00, and I’ve got this new attorney on staff who he’s supposed to be here at 8:00, but he rolls in at 8:15, 8:30, and one morning at 7:00. I had a question for him, and I had to wait an hour and a half to get my question answered.” And I thought, “Why did you have to wait an hour and a half?” He said, “Because he came in late that day.” And I said, “Why didn’t you text him, or e-mail him, or call him, or anything else besides wait for him to be in the office? If you had tried any other communication channel, you could have had an answer at 7:05 or 7:10.” I mean, I would have responded via text call or e-mail from bed if he was still sleeping, you know, and waking up.

Peter: [00:35:18] Right, right, right.

Cara: [00:35:19] Or while he’s getting ready, or while he’s even driving to work, he could have taken the call, or in the Starbucks line, or you know, that kind of thing. And so, one of the things, I think, we really need to understand too is that visibility in your desk chair is no longer the equivalent of productivity today. And so, that’s one of those generational gaps that I see over and over again is that the older colleagues, or managers, or partners, they think that if somebody is late, they’re not a hard worker, or, you know, the first one in the last one to leave, that’s my hardest worker. That was the case 20 years ago when we didn’t have smartphones, when we didn’t have a VPN connection that you can get to from home. You know, it’s a totally different world today.

Cara: [00:36:09] So, we need to start reducing judgment. That’s really what we’ve got to do to bridge the gaps is start asking more questions, listening, keep your eyes and ears open, and just quit judging people because they don’t work or dress the way that you do.

Peter: [00:36:26] I’m laughing. I’m absolutely. And the reason I’m laughing is as you’re describing that about the expectation of being in the office and working, I can still hear my dad tell me when I got my first corporate job. I was working in a bank. He said, “Son, you should get to work before your boss, and make sure your boss sees that you’re already there. And son, you’d be the last one out, or when your boss leaves, you wait 10 minutes, and then you leave after them.”

Cara: [00:36:53] Yup.

Peter: [00:36:54] “And, by the way, when you go to the bathroom, you take a file with you because it looks like you’re busy, and you’re going someplace, and you’re working, so they can see you doing that.” And that was … I can still hear him say that. And, you know, the cheeks in the seat process of mentality has gone away.

Cara: [00:37:12] Yeah.

Peter: [00:37:12] Or it started to go away. And the other thing, going back to that internal customer, when I used to work at Victoria Secret Catalog, not as a model, but thank you all for thinking about that, one of the first things that they taught us was we treat our internal customer in the same way we treat our external customer because if we don’t … And that goes to anybody within your organization because if we don’t, then they’re going to hear their angst, they’re going to hear their anger through the phone, or they’re going to hear their anger when they’re out to dinner, and they overhear somebody badmouthing the organization. So, we treat everybody with respect and in the highest regard. And we have those crucial conversations when needed but we treat them exactly the same way as our external customers.

Cara: [00:38:02] Right.

Peter: [00:38:03] And I’ve gone to a few other companies that have that same mentality. And it is so critical that we have it. So, couple years ago, I was having lunch with a partner, known him for a while. And I asked him,”So, how are things going?” He goes, “Pete, you know what, we can’t beat him up like they used to. Like we used to get beaten up back in the day. We can’t beat him up like that anymore.” I said, “Well, yeah. Well, actually, they shouldn’t have been beating us up back.”

Cara: [00:38:29] Correct.

Peter: [00:38:30] Correct, but that whole mantra, we got to be nice to them and everything. Well, you know, that’s called a human.

Cara: [00:38:38] It is. It is.

Peter: [00:38:39] Yeah.

Cara: [00:38:39] It’s really not a generational thing. Everybody wants to be treated with that respect. Now, a quick explanation of why people were willing to get beat up in the past, why they put up with that, the baby boomers were so much larger than the generation X who came behind them. And so, what could the Gen-Xers do? They couldn’t fight their bosses. They couldn’t say, “No, we don’t want to wear pantyhose,” you know, or, “No, we don’t want to follow that policy or wear a suit,” you know or whatever. They didn’t want that stuff. They pushed back on the same things the millennials are pushing back on now. They wanted work-life balance. They didn’t want to work on Saturday mornings. But the Gen-Xers were such a small cohort, they didn’t have the strength in numbers to push back and to change anything.

Peter: [00:39:29] Right.

Cara: [00:39:29] So, they put up with it. Plus, their parents taught them to put up with it. They said, “You stick it out. You make a commitment. You stay late. You stick it out. You deal with a bad boss, who cares. They write your paycheck,” you know.

Peter: [00:39:43] Right, right.

Cara: [00:39:43] Where the millennials were taught … First of all, we’re a huge cohort. We’re already bigger than the Gen-Xers and bigger than the boomers. In two years, we will outnumber the boomers and Xers combined. So, heads up on that. But we’re huge, and that’s why we’re moving things along.

Cara: [00:40:01] But, also, we live in a different world today. So, with technology, and we were taught to push back on authority. We were taught to question authority. And if we see something. say something. And we should have our voices count. And that’s totally different than the way the previous generations were raised. “Because my mom told me, if you’re not happy, get out. If you don’t like your boss, get out because life is too short.” And we translated it into, you might have heard the phrase YOLO, which means you only live once solo. YOLO.

Peter: [00:40:39] YOLO.

Cara: [00:40:40] Yeah, which, by the way, it’s not cool anymore. It’s like so 2012, but that’s what a lot of the millennials think is like, “Oh, I don’t like my boss. I’m out. I’m going to quit. I’m going to go work somewhere else. Everybody’s hiring,” or “I don’t like my schedule,” or “I don’t like the attire policy you have,” or, you know, anything like that. They can absolutely walk out the door today. So, the power has shifted, and it’s time for your mindset to shift as well.

Peter: [00:41:08] It is. But I know that some of the angst out there, as I hear, “How do you manage these different generations?” And there’s a firm that they acquired another firm, and from what I understand, the original firm had a lot of younger generation, and this firm that they bought were very much for the older generation. And there was no middle.

Cara: [00:41:30] Yup.

Peter: [00:41:30] And having a hard time managing the organization because the older generation, they’re stuck. They don’t want to move. The younger generation wants to move. They want to do, and trying to get everybody motivated, and moving in the same direction. It’s become a big challenge for them.

Cara: [00:41:47] Yeah. It’s imperative that both sides see the other side of the coin.

Peter: [00:41:52] Right.

Cara: [00:41:52] So, we talk specifically. And I evolved my presentation in this direction over the past several years about generational differences is there is a spectrum and there’s a reason that people have a more traditional mindset because they were raised in a day with only three TV channels. So, you didn’t have options. You didn’t have choices. And then, today, we have Netflix, and Hulu, and Amazon streaming, and, you know, all these other things where we have choices, and we have drive-through windows, and credit cards to go get what we want.

Cara: [00:42:26] So, it’s no wonder that people at those two different ends, even age-wise, they were raised completely differently. And once you share the other side of that story, and you tell the managers, “Well, think about the way the millennials were raised and the times in which they were raised with scandal, after scandal, after scandal hitting the media. I mean, Watergate happened before I was born. So-

Peter: [00:42:50] Oh my God. I’m feeling old now.

Cara: [00:42:53] I know, right.

Peter: [00:42:53] What a gut punch.

Cara: [00:42:55] Yeah, sorry, sorry. But, you know, since that time we just hear over and over about people not being who they said they were, or doing things wrong, and illegally, and stuff. So, of course, we were raised differently. We don’t trust anybody, and we don’t trust the company to have our best interest at heart, you know. So, once you share those stories of how our society changed, and how the millennials were truly raised differently, it helps the older managers understand and build more empathy for the staff, not in a fluffy way. I’m not trying to say, you know, “Oh, let’s all just be friends,” and you know all of that.

Cara: [00:43:34] But as a leader, just understanding where people are coming from, and then the same, sharing that message of the spectrum with the millennials. They have no idea how business had been done for the past 30 or 40 years. And when you say, “Well, you know, my dad told me to be the first one in and the last one to leave,” I’m just going to like shrug my shoulders. That doesn’t make any sense to me because I have a 3-year-old, and I go back to work after he goes to bed at night. I’m a hard worker. I work a lot of hours, but I’m not sitting at a desk from 9:00 to 5:00.

Cara: [00:44:09] So, you know, just sharing those messages, and really explaining the spectrum, and the fact that there’s no right or wrong. There’s no right or wrong whether you have a more traditional mindset or a more millennial mindset. But what we do have to do is get along. I mean, we do have to work together. And the managers and partners, I mean, they have to figure out what’s going on in the millennials’ heads if they’re going to keep a solid staff and get that staffing stability they need to provide all of the services for their clients.

Peter: [00:44:43] Exactly. Hold on one second, Cara. Were you born when I was in office? It’s President Clinton here. Were were you born during my administration?

Cara: [00:44:56] I think, I was actually born with Reagan.

Peter: [00:44:59] Okay.

Cara: [00:45:01] Yeah.

Peter: [00:45:01] I feel better now.

Cara: [00:45:01] One earlier. I barely remember Reagan. Clinton is really the first president I remember.

Peter: [00:45:08] Okay.

Cara: [00:45:08] I remember him being President. So, that was pretty much it. But yeah, I was born in 1981.

Peter: [00:45:14] Okay. Okay. So, there’s a second gut punch. So, as we wrap up, there’s one last topic I want to hit on.

Cara: [00:45:24] Okay.

Peter: [00:45:25] And because it’s going to affect a lot of professions, especially, it’s going to affect the accounting profession, is technology, artificial intelligence, and Watson, and I don’t have to crunch numbers. I have to understand them, but I don’t have to … I’ve said this that Excel will be extinct in about five years. They will never need another 10-key again, and they still. That’s blasphemy when I say a 10-key. Some people go, “What’s a 10-key?” You know that adding machine with the tape on the desk? But as technology continues to evolve, the professionals can be changed more of a consulting role versus a compliance role, and talk about a different set of skills that we’ve already talked about become even more important than ever before.

Cara: [00:46:20] Yeah, absolutely. In fact, my CPA and I just had this conversation last week. She just made partner at her firm, and she said that a lot of the work we do will not be necessary in 10 years, the actual number crunching, like you said, and she knows that.

Cara: [00:46:37] So, first of all, their firm is staying on top of the technology. They are early adopters on getting where they need to be to be the cutting-edge group to meet their clients’ needs. But, also, they are starting to partner with and acquire more of those consultative services type companies. They’re starting to offer year-round services, and even things about HR compliance, and any type of solving business problems, the financial services beyond just the tax side of it-

Peter: [00:47:12] Right.

Cara: [00:47:13] … but a lot more services. So, we absolutely cannot rest on our laurels and think that the model we have today, the staffing model is not going to be the same, the technology we’re using is not going to be the same. And so, we have to think about what does our staff need to be in 5 to 10 years, and what is that for our clients, you know, how are we going to serve the clients in that time, and what are the skill sets and the structure that we need to have to do that.

Cara: [00:47:43] So, I encourage you to keep your eye moving forward even if you’re, you know, say, five years from retirement. There is going to be a lot of change in the next five years. And if you just say, ” Well, I’m on my way out. I’m just going to coast, and the next leadership team can deal with that,” you’re really setting that group up for a very difficult time. Please do not coast. Please do not hold anybody back from the changes and the advancement that we have to make, whether it’s the technology advancement, new systems, and processes, or it’s the staffing changes, and it’s new leadership models, and a new staffing structure. Please don’t hold anybody back from making those changes that we’re going to need to be competitive and to be sustainable over the next 5, 10, 15 years.

Peter: [00:48:31] And sustainable is a big word that we have to evolve in order … If we don’t, we’re going to die. And, you know, we’ve been talking about this technology for a number of years, but, now, we’re really seeing it. We’re seeing the impact of it, of artificial intelligence, of block chain. I don’t understand block chain. I will. I thought it was an intestinal disorder, but I know it’s not. But what I do see is that what we do moving forward is going to be so different. And if we’re waiting for the universities to provide us with the students, no. I think, companies are seeing this. Now, they’re going to be responsible for teaching that student all of this other stuff that universities are not doing. And the university, that’s a whole other conversation. They need to change on what they’re doing, but that’s like moving a battleship on a dime.

Cara: [00:49:29] Yup.

Peter: [00:49:30] It’s become more the employers’ responsibility to talk about business writing, and talking about these interpersonal skills, and doing all this other stuff. And it just kind of always evolve.

Cara: [00:49:41] You’re exactly right. That responsibility is going to fall onto the companies. And that’s why you have to start implementing more training now on the technical side, as the technology changes. And, of course, compliance, and regulations, and things are always changing. We have to do that, but we have got to improve our soft skills, and even just the creative thinking, and innovation that we bring in, those types of things. But definitely the people skills, we’ve got to bring back more of that training.

Peter: [00:50:11] Yes, we do. And before we leave, prior to us recording this, Cara has a special gift for our listeners. So, would you like to share that with them?

Cara: [00:50:22] Yeah, absolutely. So, we are going to offer a free autographed copy of Staying Power: Why Your Employees Leave and How to Keep Them Longer, which is my new book. We’re going to offer a free copy. So, what we want you to do is go on to Peter’s social media for the Change our Mindset Podcast. Go on to any of his social media platforms and tag yourself, tag your friends, leave a comment. And after a week, we will, then, pick one lucky winner from his social media to receive that signed copy of my book.

Cara: [00:50:58] So, we hope that you enjoy that. And, certainly, tell your friends if any of you are dealing with or struggling with employee retention, or managing and understanding millennials, then, definitely, you want to get a copy of the book or reach out to Peter and I.

Peter: [00:51:13] Great. And thank you for doing that. I greatly appreciate that. When I put this out of my social media, I’ll also write about it, and it’s to remind you of this giveaway. And I can’t thank you enough for taking time. It’s absolute pleasure meeting you. You’re the nicest U of L person I’ve ever met.

Cara: [00:51:36] Haha Good.

Peter: [00:51:37] And I’m looking forward to probably seeing you at Influence in Dallas. And I know you’re coming to our chapter. I’m looking forward to that as well.

Cara: [00:51:46] Absolutely. Thanks. It’s been a pleasure, Peter.

Peter: [00:51:49] Thank you.

Peter: [00:00:00] Welcome to Episode 6 and my guest today is Jennie Scheel, CFO of Five Nines technology group located in Omaha, Nebraska. I met Jennie last year when she attended my seminar titled Financial Storytelling. After the seminar, she sent me an email with a nice compliment about the class and was inquiring if I knew of any great summaries that I could share with her that take accounting data and turn it into a powerful story. At that time, I’d not run across any but I did suggest I’d be willing to help her in developing her story for the organization, in exchange for using this exercise as a case study for my book “Taking the Number Out of Numbers: Explaining and Presenting Financial Information with Confidence and Clarity.” Well this is the basis for our conversation. And without further ado, let’s get to the interview with Jennie Scheel.

Peter: [00:00:49] It is so great to have you on my podcast. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for quite some time. Thank you so very much for carving out some time in your very busy hectic schedule.

Jennie: [00:01:02] You’re welcome thank you for asking me to join you.

Peter: [00:01:05] We met last year at Nebraska Society CPA event, and in full transparency, in my upcoming book Taking the Number out of Numbers, Jeannie allowed me to do a case study on her organization and the role that she plays as CFO within this organization, and we’ll have that kind of little bit of that discussion right now. But before we get into that, if you could give the audience a little bit of background of yourself in your role at Five Nines.

Jennie: [00:01:35] So I am the CFO of Five Nines technology group. We are an outsource I.T. company. So we are the I.T. department for many small and mid-sized companies, and we mainly focus on business in Nebraska. And I have the privilege of overseeing the accounting here and also I am currently in charge of marketing and a few other areas, which is a really great well-rounded experience.

Peter: [00:02:00] So you wear many hats within your organization.

Jennie: [00:02:03] Yes, many hats. Every day is a new adventure.

Peter: [00:02:07] And I hear that all the time when I when I interact with CFOs it’s like are you just in charge of finance or accounting? Well that’s just what are that I wear. I’ve got H.R. or I’ve got I.T. reporting up to me as well. So you stay very very busy.

Jennie: [00:02:22] Very busy. Yes.

Peter: [00:02:24] So at your organization. It’s a technology company. You don’t do like the big shiny objects I think you described it at one point in time, where you would go into a part of a construction process of like building an arena and going to build that I.T. infrastructure. You’re more on the other side the server side working with small organizations, providing them their IT support.

Jennie: [00:02:45] Correct. Yes we used to do both. And now we found that our best skill set is being the I.T. departments, so doing their day to day I.T. work, all of their projects and everything related to, we are there I.T. departments.

Peter: [00:02:58] And I imagine that’s a lot easier on your workforce per se because of — I’m assuming when you do these like large projects and you said that you tried to focus primarily in Nebraska, there might not be that many and I would assume like planning and cashflow and aspects like that were a real challenge for you versus the way things run today.

Jennie: [00:03:19] Right. It’s better for training of the staff so that they always have similar type of environments and understanding what our hiring process should be. We’re way better able to understand what the workflow will be coming in from the new clients that we win versus the off the wall project. Also our our partnership is the big thing that we focus on to ensure that we partner with companies, so if we’re working with a bigger company just to come in and do a project, that’s not a true partnership. So we come in, they beat us up, and then we leave, and that’s night and weekend work, you know which isn’t in line with our mission which is to give everyone a nice work life balance.

Peter: [00:03:55] Yes. And having that project by project type of work is a little bit kind of what I do because there’s times that you know there’s something about accountants in the months of January, February, March, and April that they really don’t want to learn because they’ve got stuff going on, and planning that cashflow and trying to manage that can be somewhat of a challenge, as well as affects the morale of the office.

Jennie: [00:04:22] Right exactly. We have three parts to our mission: one of them is to love what we do and the best at it, and it was hard to be the best at that particular style of work and to truly love it.

Peter: [00:04:34] And you’ve been with the organization for how long?

Jennie: [00:04:36] Five years.

Peter: [00:04:38] What did you do before that?

Jennie: [00:04:40] I was in charge of accounting department at a larger company in Lincoln, and then I worked at an accounting department for a global company, and I started my career in public accounting.

Peter: [00:04:51] So who did you work for in public?

Jennie: [00:04:54] BKD.

Peter: [00:04:54] Oh BKD. Okay okay cool.

Jennie: [00:04:57] Yeah.

Peter: [00:04:58] And so I always like to ask this question for those who started their career in public accounting and have now moved to business and industry: Would you ever go back to public accounting?

Jennie: [00:05:09] I don’t think so. Haha.

Peter: [00:05:11] I get that a lot. Every now and then someone will say, no, I’d go back. I kind of miss the diversity. But–

Jennie: [00:05:20] There are lots of great things about working in public accounting. The diversity is one of them, where it’s great where you can go in and help many different types and style and size of businesses succeed, versus just focusing on one. But also the demands and the travel of that career are also very challenging.

Peter: [00:05:37] Yes it is very much so. And you have a family and two small children and I know you like to vacation and all that stuff, and that’s a challenge when you’re working in public accounting versus an organization like yours.

Jennie: [00:05:50] Very true.

Peter: [00:05:50] Your workforce. When I think of I.T., I don’t think– you’re the only accountant CPA in the building. Correct?

Jennie: [00:05:58] I’m the only CPA in the building correct. I have an accounting team so I have more accountants, but they’re not CPAs.

Peter: [00:06:05] So your primary workforce– I think you told me at one point that they are engineers. Is that correct?

Jennie: [00:06:11] Correct. Yes.

Peter: [00:06:12] Do you speak engineering?

Jennie: [00:06:15] Reboot your computer is the extent of my engineering skill. So I can tell them that I successfully rebooted my computer and the problem still occurs. So I have to escalate it.

Peter: [00:06:29] So you know to reboot and escalate, reboot and escalate.

Jennie: [00:06:32] Right. Yeah that’s exactly my skillset.

Peter: [00:06:35] And the and the rest of the organization doesn’t speak accounting?

Jennie: [00:06:39] They do not.

Peter: [00:06:40] And I would assume that that is a challenge in your day to day life working there — it is how do I communicate the complexities and the financial information of this organization to those who do not speak the same language?

Jennie: [00:06:59] Correct. That is a significant struggle.

Peter: [00:07:02] And in the past, what type of audience response have you gotten when you’ve had to present this information or share this information to the other departments and department heads, and even to the owners?

Jennie: [00:07:14] Well I don’t love– I used to definitely not love being in front of the room presenting. So my strategy was to get up there, put all my beautiful spreadsheets up there with lots of numbers, talk as fast as I could, smile, then sit down and hope there was no question. I would occasionally even in meetings sit down and say just look at the numbers. Those are the important thing. It was you know it’s hard to communicate because if you stood in the front of the room, you could see there were the disconnect between what I was trying to communicate and what they would like to hear and try to be able to understand. But we talk in completely different languages so I was unsure how to solve that problem.

Peter: [00:07:56] Yeah that is a tough problem. I had a gentleman in one of my courses in the Philadelphia area, he worked for an engineering company and he said It dawned on him one day that he has to learn the foreign language of engineering and be able to translate that into accounting and be able to translate both of those into plain English to talk to the CEO to explain what is going on within the organization.

Jennie: [00:08:21] Yeah it is very tricky to work on all of those languages.

Peter: [00:08:25] And it’s funny that you know we tend to– because we all speak you know within our organizations, we all speak English. And when we’re speaking engineering, accounting – they are very much foreign languages to those who have no idea what we’re talking about.

Jennie: [00:08:40] Right.

Peter: [00:08:40] And the other thing that goes there is when you’re trying to explain something, maybe even to your staff, you’ve got the ten plus years, you’ve got a lot of experience, and that staff doesn’t have that same depth of knowledge. But you’re cursed – because you’re cursed with that knowledge and it’s because you’ve got that knowledge– You don’t remember– you can’t unlearn what you’ve learned, even though how much you try to unlearn you can’t unlearn. I’ve tried to get some of this accounting stuff, technical stuff, out of my head, but it won’t go away – it just stays in there and hangs out. But we forgot what it was like when we first started to learn this language, and the ability the ability to recognize that and be able to put things in context that those who might have part of our knowledge but be able to explain it to them so they understand and bring that conversation out of the technical side and into something with a little bit more context and analogies. However I can see that that light goes on.

Jennie: [00:09:45] Exactly.

Peter: [00:09:45] So when we met, you were an attendee in my financial storytelling class and you probably gave me one of the best testimonials or thank yous in an e-mail that I think I received the next day. Do you remember what you said?

Jennie: [00:10:06] Yes. I mean I remember generically that I thanked you for the training because to be honest lots of the CPEs that I attend…. you know you’re in the CPE and you learn things here and there, but you’re also working because there are many things maybe that they cover that you’re already an expert in. Or you know things don’t necessarily pertain exactly to the industry you’re in or your job at the time or things are of higher importance to the office, so I am you know glued into the training a little bit and really into into the work. Because it’s hard when you’re gone. No one is back in the office doing your job. So to ensure that you don’t get too far behind, you’re multitasking. And during this training was the first time that I think a few people on my team wondered are you actually paying attention? Because you’re not replying to my emails. You know this was– presenting to the staff and significant area for improvement that I had for myself. So when I saw this as an option, I was excited and hoping that the presenter would be excellent and be able to help me on something that I had set for a goal for myself to become better at.

Peter: [00:11:17] And I had that email and I have shared with other folks. I appreciate that. That was a great. That made my day my week my year. But then we get into the dialogue because you asked me if there’s any templates or anything like that out there that I could send to you or whatever. At the time there really wasn’t that many templates and I still believe that the really are because each situation is so different. And that’s why that’s why I posed to you: How about if I help you accomplish what you’re trying to do, with your staff and whatever, and in lieu of payment, I will include this story in my book, to which we agreed upon.

Jennie: [00:12:01] Mhm. That was a great trade.

Peter: [00:12:03] It really was a great trade because it was a lot of fun – because I remember as we started talking, you sent me a variety of spreadsheets and files.

Jennie: [00:12:12] Weren’t they beautiful?

Peter: [00:12:14] They were – actually they were beautiful. But when I opened them, it was like an avalanche just falling on my computer, and all of these numbers and graphs and things. But it did it did make me start thinking – OK so we’ve got this voluminous amount information, and I begin digging in and looking for maybe some… Why does this increase versus that? One, to try to understand the business. And then we started talking and you said my biggest challenges is, as you’ve already described, is I get up in front of them, I just plow through it. My spreadsheet is up there. There’s a lot of numbers. And I sit down and I don’t think anybody– I don’t think I’m connecting with anybody in that audience because they don’t speak this language.

Jennie: [00:13:06] Correct.

Peter: [00:13:06] So working together, the first time that we went through a bunch of different processes and conversations and getting to the understanding because there’s always stories behind the numbers, as well as the more that you can evoke emotion into that story about the numbers about whether, that helps people stay awake. That impacts them. Just just the numbers and the data… As John Medina, who wrote the book Brain Rules states, you know data’s boring. Numbers are boring. There’s nothing exciting about it versus telling that story behind those numbers. And whether you did this or your marketing people did this, when you sent me the slides that you used for the first time that you did this presentation, they were they were wonderfully done. They did a great job. And I believe I included a couple of them in the book. But the one thing that you did, which which I talk about in the book and in the class, is when– you know most people within an organization, especially managers, they kind of get the income statement but they have no idea about the balance sheet.

Jennie: [00:14:27] Right.

Peter: [00:14:28] But we tend to go over the balance sheet so I always say you know if we can avoid that but focus on the income statement and have them understand how we become profitable, and where our costs go and stuff. And you used a similar example that I had: taking a dollar bill and breaking it down.

Jennie: [00:14:49] That was a huge success. People still talk about it and are excited even for the next meeting to see my dollar break down. The best compliment I got was from one of the training employees, so she trained all of our staff, and she said usually when you used to get up in the meeting you would smile and act like you were happy about the numbers. So I thought they must be great. I had no idea what you were saying. But then you were smiling so I thought great. What you’re saying must be good. But she said this time, when you put the dollar up there, I actually understood what you were talking about – I could understand the business, that break down like you taught us in the class of a dollar or something, everyone can wrap their brain around and understand. So we have a Slack channel that people can give other employees high fives and one of the employees you know gave me a hi five right away saying that it was an excellent financial presentation, and many other people commented on it so that they were actually able to understand and know what I was talking about instead of my spreadsheet. That has huge numbers. You know lots of commas. All these big numbers slapped on a spreadsheet that no one can understand what I’m saying, let alone it’s not a good visual to see a spreadsheet up on a screen.

Peter: [00:16:09] No that just evokes sleep when he see a spreadsheet on the screen. That’s like an anesthesiologist.

Jennie: [00:16:17] Right. Right. Yeah it sure is.

Peter: [00:16:19] I haven’t asked you, but you– I mean you can read body language and I just wonder what was going through your mind when you put that dollar bill up and you could see the audience going what, this is different– and as you’re talking, they’re getting it. You had to be giddy inside.

Jennie: [00:16:37] Yes I was– For the first time in five years, I was excited to be doing a financial presentation. Because usually I get up there and pray for it to end as quickly as possible, but this time I was really you know I was really excited to have such an engaged audience.

Peter: [00:16:57] In the class, we talked about less is more. We, as CPAs, love to give all this information. But really if we can just give the most important things and don’t put so many words on there on the slide and have some picture with it. You also are doing stuff with I think you had like a word bubble that you did. And you also had a real cute video and it was about explaining budgeting, I believe.

Jennie: [00:17:21] Oh right. It’s that adorable girl. Mila, I think her name is. Her mom had her do all sorts of fun videos and there’s one that she does that says Watch the budget. And it’s very funny so it took a couple clips from there because it’s cute to see in the eyes of a child, as most people can relate to what is a budget? And I go there and talk about all of those numbers.

Peter: [00:17:44] And actually I’ll put the link to that video into the show knows if anybody wants to see that because I thought that was brilliant. It is cute. It’s very funny. But it gets the point across. And the thing with the word bubble– what what was that? What were trying to convey there?

Jennie: [00:18:00] I think that that was when we were talking about the change between the years and so we tried to emphasize the negative feelings that people were feeling when we had the big project. So all this stress, night and weekend hours, just the demanding clients coming to beat us up, and then how we were able to change it positive and focus on our target clients and how we could– we’re training the staff so that they know what to expect and can be successful for us. To have great hiring, to have overall good financial success because you’re able to forecast.

Peter: [00:18:35] And obviously this– that aspect has had a huge piece in the overall morale within the organization. Even though when you guys began to transition into more of the Shared Services type of work, there were some folks who’d who liked the big shiny projects and they believe in the organization. Correct?

Jennie: [00:18:53] Right. I think that happens when any company makes a change. Whatever you’re passionate about, if you’re passionate about, the clients that we serve and want to do the managed services, then this is a great thing. And we have a lots of longtime employees here and new people excited to join the company. And then some people, their skillset, it’s better for them to work on bigger companies or different type projects that excite them and they were able to find opportunities to fulfill that as well.

Peter: [00:19:19] That’s great, and everybody in the end ended up happy and and the company is moving forward. And are you having to take your pink bat out and say no?

Jennie: [00:19:32] Haha. Uh huh. I mean there will always be great shiny products that come our way that it’s sometimes hard to say no to things that are outside of what we’re trying to focus on and do and drive. But I’ve used the bat less than I used to, I think.

Peter: [00:19:45] I thought about you the other day. I was looking through something out of Louisville Slugger and they said for Mother’s Day, give her a pink bat. Oh I know somebody who has one of those.

Jennie: [00:19:58] I do and it says on it: mess with cash, get the bash. So. Yeah it is. It is a great thing.

Peter: [00:20:08] [laughs] Oh that’s funny. We also talked about doing this as how do you better connect with the audience. Because that’s the key. You may have the best story out there, but if you can’t make that connection with them, it’s still going to fall on deaf ears and–

Jennie: [00:20:26] Right.

Peter: [00:20:27] Prior to us having a conversation, when you would come and present and the others would come and present this financial information or the state of the business to the rest of the organization, can you talk about what people are wearing dress wise in the audience and what you guys were wearing?

Jennie: [00:20:44] Sure. So our employees obviously are all over the place. Installing hardware software different things where they could be you know crawling up or on the ground or different things, so they are a lot of times wearing jeans or khaki clothes that you know make sense for a lot of the work they do. Jeans and a polo is a typical attire for an engineer. And then when we would come in to present for a meeting, you would think OK we should dress up so we look nice, we look respectable, and so I would usually wear a nice dress or suit and the president would also be in a nice suit. So we thought we could dress up for the meeting and also see behind the podium. And one of the things that hit me during that presentation was that you should – And I think you mentioned you had experience in this as well – dress to be in line with what your staff is wearing. So now I’m always wearing you know Five Nine gear with jeans and so is the president, to ensure that we’re better able to connect with them. We try to get out and move around. You know sitting behind the podium, especially for my nerves presenting, was always my safe place. But like you said, get out, walk around, have it feel like you’re not hiding anything and that you’re truly connecting with the audience – and I think that that’s been really well received.

Peter: [00:22:06] Yeah it’s true. I’ve come to realize it’s very important and we always want to be professionally dressed. But sometimes we need to dress like everybody else so there’s not this oh there they are up on this pedestal and just we’re just the worker bee, us and them. And in my instance, I was presenting to a group and I walked in. There was somebody before me and he was in a suit from the from the international headquarters. And I looked around and everybody else were like jeans, shirts, polos. Nobody was really dressed up. And I had on almost like a suit, but didn’t have a tie. And I told myself walk out, go put on what you flew up here with, which was jeans and shoes and– but I didn’t do it. And I could immediately tell when I went up to do my presentation, they were looking at me like oh my god we’ve got another suit coming up.

Jennie: [00:23:00] Hahah. Yup.

Peter: [00:23:01] And body language just told me that I wasn’t connecting, nobody said anything to me afterwards, and I had to present the next day and I changed my attire and even wore a sport coat up on stage but I took it off and rolled up my sleeves. I had about 10, 15 people come up to me afterwards you know talking to me about the presentation. And three weeks later I got a call from that international group and they booked me for speaking engagements.

Jennie: [00:23:29] Mhm. Amazing.

Peter: [00:23:31] So what we wear does have an effect on making that connection with that audience. And I try to remember that but I think because I present so much to the accounting profession that I’m usually in a sport coat you know I call them dress jeans and not blue jeans but dress jeans and shoes and stuff that when I present to groups that are outside of the profession, I really do ask a lot of questions to the meeting planner to figure out what’s my appropriate attire to come in with.

Jennie: [00:24:04] Right. Mhm.

Peter: [00:24:05] So you have seen success and then you had another another quarterly meeting and you use some different slides and you had a you had like two beakers pouring into some containers that you were talking about revenue and costs and how it was broken down, and it seems to be it’s working.

Jennie: [00:24:26] It is working. Yes. The pictures are doing an excellent job of telling the story, instead of my spreadsheet. So obviously I love all of my spreadsheet and all of the data, but those are not what will relate and people will not be able to understand. So what I have learned through training and by actually utilizing it is that the pictures really resonate with people. So people were having a really hard time understanding when I would say the revenue and the cost and then you know the net income — easy, but not when you don’t look at it. And even understand… So we have new employees always starting and so I have to remember don’t they COGS because they have no idea you’re trying to say Cost Of Goods Sold. You know that’s not an engineering term. So I have to remember and try to say OK so here’s our bucket of revenue, here is a bucket which you know is hopefully not nearly as full of expenses so that when you mix them together, that’s the number that makes up our net income and so they can kind of see how those flow together and in proportion to each other. So I tried to show the difference between the two so that they can really understand the numbers not just the thousands and hundreds and millions of dollars, but that they can actually see pictures and see how that works out. And that seemed to go really well. So I’m actually planning for meeting on May 22nd. We were talking about okay how are we going to break down this particular item to show them where we’re at on our quarterly goals and what what could we use. So we were joking today about using pizza or donuts or something that are always well appreciated by the by the engineers.

Peter: [00:26:10] Yeah that’s great. And I know this probably hasn’t asked to you. But somebody in one of my classes, when I was doing the dollar bill, somebody said that’s not correct. What do you mean? Well you know we’ve got those non-cash items that are in the expenses that really don’t affect the dollar bill. How do you address that? I don’t. That’s called advanced accounting for them.

Jennie: [00:26:38] Right

Peter: [00:26:38] I don’t I don’t want to confuse them anymore and get into the whole accrual basis of accounting or anything like that. And and yeah we might not be given the exact detail, but as long as I have an idea, a picture, without confusing them. That’s all they need to know. And you know maybe over time when they become a little bit more sophisticated in the knowledge that they’re gaining through that you might talk about that other stuff, but that’s probably way down the road and it may never come up. But you know that other aspect of being a CPA and accoutnant is is that precision and accuracy. You have to kind of let that go when you’re doing this to a group that don’t have that same background that we do. You’ve got to got to make it as simple and as easily understandable as possible.

Jennie: [00:27:30] Right. The second that I say the word accrual, I think that they automatically go straight back to their phones or lose you know any idea to what I was what I was trying to say.

Peter: [00:27:43] I’ve done some teaching accounting to non accountants, and what I try to do when I do that is not mention the word accrual. I stay away from debits and credits. I just try to keep it at a very 10,000 foot aspect and have them just kind of understand the flow of information, the flow of what we do, without getting so much into the detail because it’s hard.

Jennie: [00:28:09] It is hard.

Peter: [00:28:10] If accounting was easy, everybody’d doing it. And it’s a complex language. And the more that we can translate that and put it in context as you’re doing with the dollar bill example or how we’re mixing this or pizza or whatever that visual aspect of it, that’s going a long way for them just having an understanding – and that’s really all you want is for the whole organization to understand how you operate, how you drive revenue, and what things that we do that takes away from that revenue, and even to the extent of benefits that we provide the organization.

Jennie: [00:28:53] Mhm. Yes. That was a great eye opener to show them as a you know when you break down the dollar bill, the large percentage of salaries and then show the other big percentage is benefits, and how that even compares to our tools, because we obviously to be successful company have a lot of technical tools to provide to our clients and so it was really cool and a great eye opener for them to see you know six cents out of every dollar is spent on tools, and that’s the same amount that we spend on all of these excellent benefits that we provide to you. And I think that the really great way to break it down.

Peter: [00:29:25] Yes I remember you sharing that with me about the benefits and you had it benchmarked, and basically you guys are way above that benchmarking norm and what you give in benefits to your associates. And I think after you said tha,t I asked you can I apply for a job?

Jennie: [00:29:43] You did. Yes. Haha

Peter: [00:29:45] In this day and age, how much health insurance and all this other stuff that you guys cover. I hope they understand that we’ve got a great benefit here that we didn’t recognize for a while.

Jennie: [00:30:01] Right. Just when I go up there and would inform them we spend you know hundreds of thousands of dollars on insurance. OK. You know that’s hard to wrap your brain around, versus to show it as a break down compared to a dollar and say you know of this dollar this amount of money goes to your benefit and all of these tools that we need for our clients, and that was really a much better way for me to present it and for them to understand and really appreciate all the great things that Five Nines offers.

Peter: [00:30:30] From what I’ve what I’ve been able to ascertain from you as well as research, you’ve got a very cool company and it’s been very successful and it looks like that will maintain that success for quite a long time and grow as well.

Jennie: [00:30:44] Yes I think we have great growth potential and it is a very fun company with a great culture.

Peter: [00:30:50] Fun. You said– an accountant said fun, CPA said fun?

Jennie: [00:30:54] Oh man. Once every blue moon. Haha.

Peter: [00:30:57] Exactly. So as you as you’re moving forward, are you thinking about — hat you kind of alluded to this a little bit — What are we going to do next? Because we can’t keep showing that same dollar bill. We’ve got to break it up and show it in different ways. Have you begun to think about maybe some other ways of presenting this information, whether it be visually, whether it be through creating a video or some other type of vehicle?

Jennie: [00:31:28] Yeah, I’m always trying to analyze what pieces of information they’re looking for and then how we would break it down so that they can understand it. So I’m always just kind of listening to them trying to interpret their questions as to what the true meaning of this question. What details do I need to present to them so that they can understand the company or their role or that financial why, and be successful with the decisions that they make? But it’s always hard to do left brain / right brain and put the numbers into something that I can communicate clearly. So the dollar bill has definitely set me up for success to figure out new ways to break down information so that people can interpret it and understand it and make decisions that are enginnering decisions, but they’re better able to have the dollars and cents to do that.

Peter: [00:32:18] Well that’s absolutely great and I wish you guys the best of luck. I wish you tons of of of of luck, and not so much luck of this opportunity to to help the company grow through the way of communicating the financial information to them as well as to the owners and stuff. Because you know you’ve got a lot of different audiences that you have to report to, as well as I can’t thank you enough for allowing me to take your company and yourself and take this information and have it be part of my book. I’m very grateful for that and I look forward to seeing you hopefully in September. But I did tell you that once the book comes out, I will be sending you guys copies, and if it happens be around the time that I’m out there, I’ll hand deliver them to your office.

Jennie: [00:33:09] That would be wonderful. I’ve talked to very highly of you and so I know that the owners who have also complimented my financial presentations will be very excited to meet the person who actually gave me the confidence and the background to be able to present to the staff.

Peter: [00:33:25] That’s great and I can’t wait till our paths cross again very soon.

Jennie: [00:33:30] Sounds great thank you so much.

Peter: [00:33:31] Thank you. I want to thank Jennie again for sharing her story on how she transformed her financial presentation into an event that was a huge success to the entire organization. You see, when you take the numb out of numbers, it leaves you with ERS: effective, relatable stories, which is the confidence and the clarity. In episode 7, my guest is Cara Silletto, who’s the author of “The Millennial Mindset: What’s Next in HR” and her most recent book, “Staying Power: Why Your Employees Leave and How to Keep Them Longer.” This episode will be available on July 23rd. Thank you for listening. And begin the process of changing your mindset and getting out of your comfort zone and develop new skill sets to become more future ready. Your call to action is to look at your financial presentation and ask yourself: Is it time for a change? If so, give me a call or send me an email. I would love to help you. Remember, part of being future ready is becoming an improviser so go improvise your way to success. Thank you.