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Intuit's Shift to AI Failed on Day One · The Accounting Podcast

• Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding! Blake Oliver: [00:00:04] In my research, I discovered something fascinating, which is that there is already a way to become a CPA in this country without doing five years of education. David Leary: [00:00:15] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio. Blake Oliver: [00:00:20] Hello and welcome back to the Accounting Podcast, the number one podcast for accountants in the world. I'm Blake Oliver. David Leary: [00:00:26] And I'm David Leary. Blake Oliver: [00:00:28] David. What a wild, uh, weekend we were having. Here I am in Southern California. As our listeners know, for the month of July, I was at the beach, and I was sort of disconnected. I didn't have my phone on. You know, you can't really. You put it in the bag. You can't really check it. I get home and I hear that there's been an assassination attempt on President Trump at a campaign rally. And that's all that is. That's all that anyone's talking about right now. And and, you know, it's a little strange to come on here live and do our show, but we have to do it. It's a weekly show. Um, and I was thinking about, like, how do we talk about this? Um, so I have, I have some numbers that I think have not been reported in the press. You know, we're a show about accounting, So I feel like let's account for this sort of thing happening, which I discovered is actually very common in our history as a country, assassination attempts on presidents. So, uh, that's kind of my way of dealing with all this, you know, um, I and that's sort of the way I deal with any disaster. Like, you know, when Covid happened, it was like, let's put some numbers around this, let's quantify this. So that's what I want to do today at least, like the first five minutes. What about you? David Leary: [00:01:42] I'd love you to connect those dots because like, I obviously like everybody else, it's super surprising. It, uh, like I said, not expecting. I was actually super hot here in Arizona. I know you're missing all this heat. You can't really do much. You know, we kind of. We actually played a board game because we literally ran out of things to do because you can't go outside, right? Yeah. And so yeah, I wasn't looking at my phone either. Next thing you know, I felt like I was the last one in the world to find out. Blake Oliver: [00:02:07] Okay. So let's let's put some numbers around this assassination attempts on US presidents. And I did this research with perplexity AI, which is my new favorite, uh, research tool. Think of it like Claude or ChatGPT, but connected to the internet in a really good way. I know that ChatGPT is connected, uh, and can do searches. Claude is not. But perplexity beats both of these, um, llms these AI chatbots in terms of search and research because it is a research first tool. So when you type a question in, it will go out, it will surf the web, it'll find all these sources, it'll analyze them and then give you a result. So here's what perplexity gave me 27% of US presidents have faced assassination attempts. That includes President Trump. It's 12. 12 out of the 45 presidents that we have had in our history as a nation have been, uh, have faced an attempt at their life. 27%. Now, of those 12, four were assassinated and they were all assassinated while in office. So four divided by 45, that is 8.89%. David Leary: [00:03:23] That is almost one of ten. Blake Oliver: [00:03:25] Yeah. I mean, we're getting there, right? Like 9% like that's that is, uh, kind of astonishing. And those presidents, by the way, were you want to, you know, any of them? David? David Leary: [00:03:37] We have Lincoln. Blake Oliver: [00:03:38] You got Lincoln? Yep. David Leary: [00:03:40] Uh, for some reason, my brain wants to say McKinley, but I don't think that's right. It was. Yeah, but you're missing. Blake Oliver: [00:03:47] The other obvious one, which was, uh. Kennedy. David Leary: [00:03:50] Oh, yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:03:51] John F Kennedy. Yeah. And then the other one that people forget is James Garfield. So four presidents have been assassinated while in office. Eight of the 12 survived and did not die. That included Andrew Jackson in 1835, Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Franklin D Roosevelt in 1933, Harry S Truman in 1950. Gerald Ford, who survived two separate attempts in 1975, Ronald Reagan in 1981, and Donald Trump in 2024. So that is another, uh, like 18% of them. So I think we've forgotten. At least I've forgotten just how dangerous it is to lead this country. A quarter of you have, like, more than a 1 in 4 chance. If you are a US president of either being assassinated or having an attempt on your life. David Leary: [00:04:49] It's arguably one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, then. Blake Oliver: [00:04:52] Yeah, yeah. So I just wanted to put some numbers around that. Like, we don't have to go any more into this. It's all over cable news. Uh, you probably are listening to this podcast as a refuge from all of that, if you're listening later this week. So that's all I wanted to say on it. Um, and let's move on. David Leary: [00:05:13] Yeah. And there's no place for it. Right. Like. But but you're right. This is in the wrong way, a part of our history. And then I wonder what these math or this, these numbers would be worldwide on all leaders. Blake Oliver: [00:05:23] I'm curious about that. I mean. David Leary: [00:05:25] Other some countries. Yeah. Every two years. That's how. That's how they get a new leader. Yeah. Right. They assassinate the previous leader. But it's just. Blake Oliver: [00:05:32] And and I noticed that we move on. But I just want to say like this is a terrible thing. I think regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, we do not want this kind of violence in our political process. And we got to figure out how do we make this safer, how do we protect our leaders? Um, so let's talk about layoffs, David. David Leary: [00:05:54] Yeah. Jump right. Blake Oliver: [00:05:55] In. Uh, I guess I guess there's sort of a transition here, right? Um, you know, a bunch of people at Intuit got the ax. Uh, over a thousand, I think. Tell me what happened. Yeah. David Leary: [00:06:06] So I first saw the story. It was a fortune. I think. Had it exclusive. They called it exclusive at first. They broke it first. The title of the article was. Intuit is laying off 1800 employees as I leads a strategic shift. And then it started to spin. After that, AP had a a title out, says tax preparation company Intuit, to lay off 1800 as part of an AI eye focused reorganization plan. Then other news sites start reporting it as Intuit lays off 1800 and throws them under the bus on their way out, Bay area tech giant Intuit Guts staff CEO says 1050 workers didn't meet the bar. Intuit TurboTax is firing 1800 people in favor of an AI replacement, Intuit, to lay off 1800 employees labels 1050 as underperformers. Right. And the worst headline of all probably, is Intuit CEO letter to employees announcing the layoffs went viral. So the bigger news here is this the way the story has just spun into bad press? Ultimately, yes. Blake Oliver: [00:07:09] This did not go the way that the comms team had likely hoped, and I saw this in my text message. Threads with firm owners like it did not land well. And I think it was. Was it Haley Jones on LinkedIn? He said something very astute, which is like it doesn't make sense to be. Well, first of all, it's kind of like a jerk move to to say we're axing 10% and you're all like bad employees, right? Like, like that. That hurts their future employment. And it doesn't make sense when you're closing entire offices like they closed the Boise office. Was the entire Boise office underperforming? Like, that's not fair. Yeah. So there's something wrong here with how this all got communicated. Yeah. David Leary: [00:07:52] So before we jump into, you know, even our commentary on it and then maybe how to improve it, I want I want to see if we can improve the communications. But let's just get the details that are facts here. So Intuit is laying off 1800 employees. That's 10% of the workforce They intend to rehire approximately 1800 over the next year or two years, three years. And they view this whole move as an investment into in into Intuit's AI future. Um, the yes, 1050 were let go for a quote unquote not meeting expectations when it came to performance standards. Um, they are growing and consolidating teams in Atlanta, Bangalore, New York, Tel Aviv and Toronto closing, like you said, the Boise office and the Edmonton offices. Right. And they did send an email to all the employees notifying them of these changes. And in this email, it tells them, oh, in the next hour you'll be invited to either a meeting or not. And if you get the meeting, invite your impacted. If you don't, you can assume you're safe or not impacted. So so that's the that's like the facts of what things that have happened. Um, I can give you my commentary, like based on 30 years of watching into it and being it into it. So I'm at the highest opinion that this should be a non-story, because Intuit every July at the end of their fiscal year, lays off people because all the new budgets for the new year take place. And this has happened as long as I can remember 1996 every single year. And I don't want to belittle saying it's a non-story because these are real, right? Like, like I've had friends, coworkers laid off year after year. David Leary: [00:09:27] Like I've been in this I've lived this movie a couple of times, right? Um, but even how the pivot II. Right. How they're doing that. I'm kind of okay even with that. Right. Because this is just a historical move as well. When Intuit moved from desktop to cloud, they laid off 600. Laid off 800. Laid off 900. Rehired 700. They moved. It moves like that to basically move the the capabilities and skills of the team from old desktop software to cloud based skills. Right. And I've even talked to plenty of apps that that successfully migrated from desktop. Right. You'll talk to those founders, they're like, oh, I had to get rid of my product managers and all my engineers to move to cloud, right? It's a transition that had to occur. And so it kind of makes sense. Right. They're probably getting rid of some engineers and staff that's not capable of bringing into it to the AI future. Understandable, right. But when I say it's like a nonevent story, these yearly layoffs, we would not be talking about these on our show, right? Even layoffs, FYI, listed this as like the number 53rd biggest tech layoff since the start of Covid 19. It's a little it's not a big story, but somehow this became news. And the news in my opinion, is how Intuit completely failed at communicating about this. And I would argue Intuit PR and communication teams are truly the underperformers here. Right. And for the company stressing the use of AI, I don't think they used any AI in these announcements. Blake Oliver: [00:10:56] No, I feel like I could have easily pointed out some of the flaws with this. David Leary: [00:11:00] You want to try it? Blake Oliver: [00:11:01] Yeah, let let's give it a shot. What are you gonna. What are you gonna use? Do we have ChatGPT? Do we have Claude or we have Claude? David Leary: [00:11:09] Am I sharing properly? Blake Oliver: [00:11:10] No. I think you need to share your screen again because we lost over. Now I see it. Okay? Okay, so we're looking at Claude, and I. David Leary: [00:11:18] See you've actually first we're looking at so Intuit actually. Okay, publish the email that's assigned sent to the employees okay. And this is what every news article has been based off of is this email. So arguably this is a press release from Intuit. Right. So they had full control over how this messaging went out the door. So I've taken this press release, I've pasted it into Claude, but I haven't done anything. So I think if I was on the communications team, I'd probably ask something along the lines of if I want to, uh, what risk or, uh, implications could occur. Right. So what risks or implications could occur by releasing this email from the Intuit CEO. Blake Oliver: [00:12:13] And while you type in that, I just want to say this is a great use case for AI is take a communication you've already drafted and have the AI find the holes in it, the potential objections to it, the issues with it. So you said what risks or implications could occur by releasing this email from the Intuit CEO to employees of Intuit? It'll be it'll be released as a blog post. And, uh, to the media. Let's try it. David Leary: [00:12:42] And what do risk or is it better to say negative implications? Blake Oliver: [00:12:45] Yeah, I don't overthink it okay. And I always tell this to people when you're prompting, like the AI is pretty good at figuring out what you mean. David Leary: [00:12:51] Okay, let me. Blake Oliver: [00:12:52] Write it how you would say it. David Leary: [00:12:53] And let's see what it says. And oh, and I already pasted that website in already just to save time on the show. Blake Oliver: [00:12:58] Okay, so we've got a big list of 11 potential risks. David Leary: [00:13:04] So obviously stock price, um, employee morale, making internal communications public. Right. Blake Oliver: [00:13:11] It might negatively impact morale. Remaining employees. Yeah. David Leary: [00:13:15] Um, detail information about the strategic plans are now public. The layoffs might be perceived negatively in the public, damaging into its reputation. Legal risk. I know some people bought this up. Uh, you know, when people are laid off, right. It's very hard to fire people at big fortune 500 companies. So when you lay them off and say it's performance based, is there legal risk of that? Right. Blake Oliver: [00:13:36] Because somebody might say, who was in these layoffs, hey, it wasn't performance based for me because I've had good performance reviews and they might sue into it. Yeah. Right. David Leary: [00:13:43] So media scrutiny, increased media attention, timing and sensitivity data concerns raised question about how internal communications are right. If this gets sent out, so should we ask Clyde to rewrite it? Maybe. Blake Oliver: [00:13:55] Well, I would say first, like ask it to criticize this press release. David Leary: [00:14:00] Okay. Blake Oliver: [00:14:01] You know, criticize this press release and tell me how I could improve it. And while you do that, I want to welcome our live stream viewers. Hello, Jerilyn. Heather. Sarah. Uh, Heather says were there attempts while they were in office? Trump is a former president. Oh, were the attempts while they were in office, I think. Um, I'm not sure actually, if all of them were while they were in office. Uh, no. So Roosevelt, it was as president elect. He wasn't in office yet. Um, Sarah says Intuit canned Simon Pass after 23 years. Expect huge changes in Qsp. That's QuickBooks solutions providers. All right. David Leary: [00:14:40] Got it. So we talked about some criticism suggestions suggestions for improving the pressure release. Uh. Blake Oliver: [00:14:45] Yeah. So go ahead. David Leary: [00:14:48] Uh, they said the email is extremely long and detailed for a public press release. Uh, it suggests to significantly condense the content, focusing on the key points and high level strategy. Remove the internal specific details out of the email, right? But I could understand, like you assume, an employee might forward it out to somebody, so why not release it? Blake Oliver: [00:15:06] Did it call out the issue that we found, which is that, um, you know, like, you shouldn't they should not have said that this was performance related or that there are issues with that. Like, does it call it out in this list here? Because when I, when I did the same thing, David that is it. My my I prompt called that out. David Leary: [00:15:26] Yeah. When I did a different prompt before we got on the the call earlier, I was asking specifically about possible air legal implications. Mhm. And when I did that I did get a little bit different results. Um, and most of it was uh the tone and sensitivity. Right. The overall tone could show more empathy, right? It really picked up on the empathy parts of this, and I don't know if. Blake Oliver: [00:15:48] Can you scroll down a bit more? We're not seeing the whole thing that you're showing. David Leary: [00:15:52] Uh, audience consideration. Blake Oliver: [00:15:54] You know, it's funny, like, I got to be honest, I'm not that impressed with this analysis. It didn't go into detail. And maybe that's the issue with your prompt, David, is that your prompt needs to be really specific, right? Which is I always say use the following format I am, you are, I need. And I learned that from Ashley Francis. So you say, you know, I am a communications specialist at Intuit. You are a communications expert. I need your help rewriting this press release. David Leary: [00:16:21] Start it again if you. Blake Oliver: [00:16:22] Can type all that right now. But I feel like we might want to move on. David Leary: [00:16:25] Yvonne. Okay. Got it. But I think that the point here is the. I could rewrite this if we asked it to. And make it more. We can actually ask it to rewrite it with more empathy. Blake Oliver: [00:16:35] This is the problem with live demos, is that we did this before the show with different prompts, and we got a better result. Yeah. David Leary: [00:16:42] It never works on a demo. Blake Oliver: [00:16:44] Um, but the idea is that and the I pointed out when I did it that, um, that the issue with saying that this was performance related. So yeah, I want to get to anything else you want to add on the Intuit layoffs? David Leary: [00:17:00] Uh, I don't think so. Blake Oliver: [00:17:01] That's it. Hey, welcome, Hunter to the live stream. Hunter asks, do you guys think that AI is substantial and sustainable model for business? You have brain drain from the profession, then the loss of potential successors and then the amount of electricity they use. Yeah, well, the the amount of electricity that AI uses is actually a, a a good thing. And for job security in the sense that to actually create AGI would be incredibly expensive, to the point where it would use more energy than the entire, uh, United States uses in a year. That's according to current estimates. Of course, it's going to get more efficient, but it's going to take a long time to get much more efficient. We're in the we're in the era with AI of like giant computers taking up entire rooms that kind of era in like the space race where it's just incredibly inefficient. It's going to take a long time to get more powerful, or we're going to have to discover fusion power, which is what Sam Altman is working on at OpenAI so that he can fund his AGI research. But I do think that AI is a sustainable model for business. We are using AI at the Accounting podcast to do our to help with our research. We're using it at earmark to assist with CPE course creation. And and it is a humongous productivity boost. So yeah I do. David Leary: [00:18:15] Well would the energy offset be this. So accounting firms, instead of making employees work 60 hours a week and have their computer on for an extra 20 hours a week if they use AI, maybe they could just have their computers on for 40 hours a week, and that extra 20 hours might offset the energy. Just a thought. Blake Oliver: [00:18:31] I have no idea how that makes sense at all, David, but I think we should go to our first sponsor break. David Leary: [00:18:35] If you like. Let me get my point across. Okay. If if, if if somebody in accounting firms working 60 hours instead of 40, that's 20 extra hours. Their computers are running. Blake Oliver: [00:18:47] Yeah. But the, the I prompt like to, to actually run an AI agent constantly. Yeah. Right now is like it's more money than like, the inefficiency. David Leary: [00:18:59] You would need. Blake Oliver: [00:19:00] More money than God to do that right now. Yes. It's the it's the, the the cost of running these processors. All right. We have our it's time for our first ad break, David. And first ad something we're going to try, something we tried before and we've committed to trying again, which is live ad reads on the accounting podcast to simplify our production. So who is our sponsor? Uh, lead sponsor of today's show, David. David Leary: [00:19:24] Today's show is on pay. So, did you know that Forbes and CNBC, they rank on pay number one for small business payroll? Blake Oliver: [00:19:31] I did not know that, but I believe it. David Leary: [00:19:33] And, you know, payroll has done the right for every client you serve. It'll be done correctly. It's easy to use on pay, has outstanding customer service levels. And one thing that's great about on pay is it's handles complicated payrolls. So multi-state payroll, local tax filings, they have integrated HR tools and no hidden fees. Like sometimes you use products, you get hidden fees, which is not fun. Blake Oliver: [00:19:56] And they do new client onboarding for free. We got to go through that ourselves when we onboarded onto Onpay for our companies, and it was super easy. We just handed off the information and we were ready to go. David Leary: [00:20:08] Yeah. And so that's one of the benefits you get as an accounting partner, right. With them. You're also going to get, uh, revenue sharing discounts, free payroll for your firm. Right. Uh, co-branded marketing activities, premium swag. Like this shirt like this. You could get one of these shirts. And then it's also really good for lots of different types of clients that some payroll products aren't. So you're looking at farms, startups, restaurants, bars, doctors, nonprofits, gyms, franchises, dentists. They all all, all your clients like that could be using Onpay. Blake Oliver: [00:20:39] Onpay helps you run your practice efficiently while providing exceptional payroll that your clients can count on. Head over to The Accounting Podcast promo slash Onpay. That's The Accounting Podcast dot promo Onpay. All right, moving on. I'm ready for listener mail. David. Uh, I think that went pretty well, by the way. Right? Wasn't that it was not bad for a live ad read. I think, you know, we'll get we'll get into the rhythm of it. David Leary: [00:21:04] For a couple of amateurs here. Blake Oliver: [00:21:05] Yeah. Exactly right. Uh, this is from Gage. Gage says. Hi, Blake. I just listened to your podcast while Intuit go red in the 2024 election. I, too am a musician and was almost done with my music education degree when I switched to accounting. I also think I have ADHD or Add, but I had never been tested. I just left public accounting after three years and my biggest issue with it was filling out my time. At the end of the day, that was my issue to gauge. I'm now in corporate and I love it. The company I work for has super messy accounting. No one knows what to do and I get to be creative, hone processes, fix things, make it my own. And the best part about this job is I'm not tracking my hours, I love it. I'm emailing to ask about how you became a CPA with the struggles you have. The reason I'm not a CPA is dumb, but it's because I struggled with watching lecture videos and I had a hard time understanding how to sign up for the test itself, and figuring out when I needed to start studying. I used Wiley. Do you have suggestions as far as study material and what did you do to pass the CPA exam? I know you're super smart, but I also know that passing the exam is not all about brainpower. Any advice would be helpful or maybe you could talk about it on a future episode. I would appreciate any feedback. Thank you Gage. And he says, PS what is your favorite instrument to play at? Mine is guitar and uke. Uh, well, I'll answer that question first because that's easy. Blake Oliver: [00:22:28] I'm a cellist and I am also a kind of mediocre pianist, and I've been practicing my piano recently. Um, I want to get good enough where I could, like, read from, you know, chord books, like popular songs, that sort of thing does vamp. But, um, to answer the question about, um, how to become a CPA when you have ADHD, as I do, uh, my system for learning anything has always or just accomplishing anything has always been extremely detailed planning and short bursts of activity. So with the CPA exam, it was all about taking these these giant exams, study, uh, methods and doing it in chunks, in setting out a time every day where I was uninterrupted, whether that was 1 or 2 hours a day. And then I wouldn't just study for that whole time. I would break it up into like 20 minute study periods with small breaks, like five minute breaks. The Pomodoro technique is what I use, and I use a timer. And that way, when my brain was trying to escape what I was doing, it would pull me back. I'd say, nope, you got to focus. It's only 20 minutes. You can do it. And it took me a while to even build up the ability to focus for that long. And now I can do it for much longer. But it was a real struggle. And I really believe in the Pomodoro technique. Use the timer for 20 minutes. Take a five minute break, five ten minute break after you study, and then do another 20 minutes and you try to do like three of those 4 or 5, six, maybe right in a day. David Leary: [00:24:07] Is there anything satisfying musician in your musician, anything from your musical career, background and preparing for musical performances or anything like that that helped you prepare that you could relate for to the exam prep? Blake Oliver: [00:24:19] Um, yeah. I mean, it's basically the same. I used the same method to practice the cello for three, four, five, six hours a day as to study for the CPA exam, which was chunk it up and I would take all the, you know, like if I was working on three different things, 3 or 4 different pieces of music, maybe I'm working on an etude, maybe I'm working on scales, maybe I'm working on a concerto and a sonata, all those things at once. Um, you know, those are four things. And then I would say, okay, I'm gonna do 20 minutes on the concerto, 20 minutes on the scales, 20 minutes on the sonata, and I would pick a specific spot in the piece to focus on. So I'm not just running through the whole thing. It really works the same way with with CPA exam prep. You can't just tackle the whole exam or a whole section. You have to pick a particular part. So you got to just break it down into chunks, little pieces that you can digest. Um, and in terms of study material, I used one that is not particularly well known, but I really liked it for my needs, which was Glyme. Glyme is almost entirely self-study based. It's short videos, they have audio versions and they have it in book form. So whatever works for you, you can study from. And I actually prefer to read material because I can go at my own pace. Blake Oliver: [00:25:41] And so what I would do is read through a section and do the practice problems. And then if I had trouble still, I'd watch the video and I could watch the video like two x so that I wouldn't get, you know, bored by it. Um, and that worked for me. I really recommend Glyme for people who like to self-study, you know, at their own pace from written materials. Um, boring accountant says do you recommend a metronome speed for studying? I think that would drive me insane, but actually, the metronome is the number one way to improve at playing an instrument. If you want to learn any instrument, you need to be playing with that metronome at half tempo almost all the time. And the trick is you don't go full speed until you can play it at half speed. There's your there's your music lesson. Um, Liz in the live stream says, I had the same issues. And Roger, CPA really helped me because the videos were short and focused. Yes, I like really short and focused five ten minute kind of videos. That's great. Just communicate one concept, light em Up says. Regarding the CPA exam, I use Ninja CPA. It was great subscription based so helped motivate me to get done fast with the tests. Great for self-study also. That's great to hear. If anyone else has recommendations, feel free to put those into the chat and we'll share them on the screen. David Leary: [00:27:06] I have a timesheet related story and unfortunately it's another bad Intuit story. It just could. Incidental. Unrelated. Okay, Intuit failed to pay a half $1 million in overtime wages to employees. Blake Oliver: [00:27:20] I saw this, uh, I saw this Department of Labor release, and I was curious if you would talk about it on the show. David. David Leary: [00:27:27] Yeah. So the labor investigation found that Intuit deprived more than 2500 employees, um, about a half $1 million in overtime pay because they didn't, uh, keep accurate records and they failed to pay people for some work. They did. And so there's a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, right. And it affected employees across the US. Now, here's the violation, according to Business Insider. Okay. And this is why I brought it to the show. And I'm going to quote and unquote, all current and former employees who took the QuickBooks ProAdvisor certification between September 2021 and August 2023 were notified that they would be compensated for the time they spent completing the course and now have all been compensated, so Intuit worked with them to rectify things. It's on track. Blake Oliver: [00:28:10] But. David Leary: [00:28:11] They they basically were told to become QuickBooks Certified Pro Advisors, and they probably did the training at home or in the evening or who knows when. Right? Blake Oliver: [00:28:18] Okay, this makes sense now because I did the math on this 2500 employees, $555,000 in wages, and that's $222 per employee. Yeah. Now I'm thinking to myself, well, how could what what were they doing? David Leary: [00:28:35] Yeah, some got a little small. Got a little more. Blake Oliver: [00:28:38] Yeah, yeah. Okay. So this is a lesson for all of you business owners, firm owners and perhaps for your clients. If you require training of employees, you should probably pay them for it. Even. Even if it's something small, like a ProAdvisor training, which maybe takes a, I don't know, a few hours. Uh, they need to be compensated. If I would. David Leary: [00:29:03] Have known this. I never did the ProAdvisor training where I worked at Intuit. I helped write some of it, but I never actually did it. If I would have known I could have got overtime for doing it, maybe I would. It would have motivated me to finish my ProAdvisor training. Blake Oliver: [00:29:15] This is an email from Courtney, and I have abridged this email because it was really long, so I actually used AI to shorten it. I hope you don't mind. Courtney. Uh, Blake and David, thank you for doing the podcast. Before I got into accounting, the joke was you don't learn anything until you get into the real world. While school taught me some fundamentals, I had 12 years of accounting experience before my degree, and I swear that's what helped me get through it. Everything I've learned from my current bookkeeping business has been more from the real world than school. I decided to pursue the E instead of the CPA because with young children and an established business, it doesn't make sense to stop everything to work under a CPA. The entire education system needs reform to focus on industry specific classes and proper training for the workforce, like trade schools. Thanks for your time. Thank you, Courtney for sharing your experience. I think this is a big reason why we need to reform CPA licensure to loosen up the education requirements, to make them more flexible so that working moms and dads can pursue CPA licensure. Courtney would have done it and did not do it because of this issue with the inflexibility of it. Blake Oliver: [00:30:22] And so if we want to make accounting more welcoming, we need to fix that. Um, and so I would go farther than simply eliminating the fifth year of education. I'd get rid of these specific requirements for specific courses that are holding back accounting education. Here's another one. This is from Trevor. Trevor asks. Uh, I was wondering if you know of any updates on the 150 hour requirements for the CPA license. Do you anticipate this to change? Thanks, Trevor. Well, I do anticipate it to change. I don't know how fast it will go. We have Minnesota working on legislation. They've got legislation in for the 2025 session to allow for a four year pathway, two years of experience. South Carolina is also considering it. Those are the only two states that I know of that are actively working on it. But in my research, I discovered something fascinating, which is that there is already a way to become a CPA in this country without doing five years of education. And it's not that one in New York, David. David Leary: [00:31:29] The ten years is ten years of working. Blake Oliver: [00:31:30] Right? This is Ohio. So in Ohio you can become a CPA if you have a bachelor's degree and you take the GMAT, the test to go to grad school, you have to get at least a 670, 670 on the GMAT and have four years of experience that has been in place since 2000, and I find that fascinating because is that causing mobility problems for Ohio CPAs somehow? This seems to be substantially equivalent. So this makes me feel like this whole mobility argument is crap. Like if, if if Ohio CPAs can can bypass this requirement by taking a test, the GMAT, and getting four years of experience, why can't Minnesota do it too? Like why is this such a big deal? David Leary: [00:32:20] So so it really shows the value of the extra 30 hours, because you could get study guides to help you pass the GMAT. And then when you're done with that, you go by the study guides for your CPA exam and then go past that. And it proves you don't need the education at all. Right? Yeah. Oh, this is crazy. Blake Oliver: [00:32:37] All right, it isn't it? Uh, I've got some more listener mail that we can plow through. David Leary: [00:32:41] I want to add on to his question, though. Okay. Um, reading between the lines of some of the aicpa's, uh, verbiage these days, you almost can feel like they're admitting it. The change is coming. They probably want to be in control of the change, but you can almost read between the lines that it's still coming. So that makes me think, ah, are some accountants going to wait on the sideline because I like, I'm assuming if, let's say they changed it on the first of the year, but you started today. They're going to require you to finish your 30. Right. There's going to be some some timeline or grandfathering in. And is it where, hey, maybe it's better to wait till they change it and then go start the process, I don't know. Blake Oliver: [00:33:18] Well, that was the question from Emma who said, hi Blake and David, I'm a dedicated viewer of your podcast and recently watched your most recent video, episode 392. I'm 21 years old and just graduated with my Bachelor's in accounting from an accredited university in three years, am currently working for a big four firm in audit, and I'm supposed to start my master's program in this upcoming fall. I am planning on sitting for FA in January, as part of a larger effort to finish my CPA by the end of fall 2025, despite receiving merit scholarships that will lessen the financial burden of my education, the uncertainty surrounding the easing of state requirements has prompted me to consider delaying the start of my graduate program, especially considering I will have to temporarily forgo my salary and valuable industry experience. It's especially difficult for me to do so, as I am also responsible for my finances, albeit not qualifying for aid, and have to work part time babysitting being a dorm RA. Basically it would make me a going concern haha. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Wanted to note that both of you have helped solidify my interest in the industry. Watching your videos while getting ready for work is the highlight of my morning. Also, as someone who has had ADHD since eight years old, Blake's story about his unbeknownst diagnosis really resonated with me. Thanks for all you do and bringing meaning to my day to day life. Well thank you Emma. That brings a lot of meaning to what I do. And I have to really think about this. Blake Oliver: [00:34:47] Uh, okay. Given what we just said about how it's going to take a long time for these requirements to change, I don't think you should wait for the change to happen before getting that extra education in order to become a CPA, and And you definitely should finish your CPA. However, you should know that there are ways to obtain those credits without doing an expensive master's program or not working anymore. And one of those options is to take online classes at a school like Western Governors University. One of our listeners pointed out to us that you can use WGU to challenge courses and earn credit just by taking a test, and they have an all you can eat subscription tuition program. So you could theoretically get everything you need done in 1 or 2 semesters, maybe one. So that is something to look at because I don't think taking a break from work at this point and like leaving and then going back is like the best option. I would not recommend doing that. So I would try to figure out how to how to keep your salary, how to earn those credits using whatever tricky way you can figure out to do it. Just get the get them on the transcript. Nobody cares where you got them from. Nobody is ever going to ask you how you did it. Just get those credits on the transcript in the most efficient way, most cost effective way possible, and get rid of get around this burdensome requirement. And that's what most people do. Okay. David Leary: [00:36:25] So now that you just did a commercial for Western Governors University again on the show, we'll do a real commercial. Yes. Blake Oliver: [00:36:30] And if Western Governors University is interested in sponsoring the show, please reach out to David David at earmarked me and we'll get you a real ad. Um, but I think now it's time to thank our sponsor, Retrievr. So, David, tell us about. Right, Rev. David Leary: [00:36:44] So I do the bookkeeping for our media company, and I think the ads is a good example of this. People buy ads maybe months ahead of time. And I always think about revenue recognition. But we're not a public company so it doesn't really matter. Right. But I always think about it all the time. And there's companies like Right Rev that will help you do this because in theory it would be really complicated. Right? It's not really QuickBooks is set up for this. Accounting software is not set up for this. And what right web will do is right. Web has an API first approach that's going to integrate with all your existing systems. So whether you're dealing with subscriptions, billings, hybrid business models, they're going to distribute that revenue ratably at specific points in time, ensuring everything's accurate and in compliance. So we don't have to do it because we don't have to be compliant yet. Right? Maybe one day. Right? Yes. And the way they do it is they they have this flexible model and they can automate it for any event inside of any business model. They basically process a billion transactions within minutes. It generates 160 revenue metric points as transactions occur, giving you the real time visibility and a more efficient close process. Um, some Some teams are reporting to Right Rev that they've improved their closing the book process by five times. Blake Oliver: [00:37:53] That's amazing. You know, I had to run a revenue recognition spreadsheet for one of my startup clients once, and it was, in theory, very easy. In practice, one of the hardest things I had to do as an accountant, because things would change. Like somebody would cancel their contract. I'd have to make a little change in the rose and I would mess up, and then it wouldn't tie up. So the idea of having an automated tool to do this is just fantastic. David Leary: [00:38:22] And you could find it at The Accounting Podcast dot promo slash right rev. Blake Oliver: [00:38:25] With over one over $10 billion in customer revenue processed to date. That's amazing. The Accounting Podcast dot promo slash right rev right rev thank you. Right rev. And now David, I'm going to give you the choice of deciding if we keep going through our listener mailbag or if we move on to what do we have time left for. Uh, Iris news. What do you have? Do you have anything else? Do I have. David Leary: [00:38:53] Two small quick follow up stories? Okay. Um, one is, remember the South Carolina, the $1.8 billion extra they found lost. Blake Oliver: [00:39:01] Track of in an account. David Leary: [00:39:03] Where it came from, you know, recap. They put a new computer system in 2010. Somehow it was double counting revenue and the amount of 3.5 billion. And then somehow 1.8 billion is just sitting in a bank account. No man knows how it got there. Well, their new fiscal budget was just approved, and they have a provision to hire an external accounting firm to conduct a forensic audit. And the RFPs are ready to go. So if you think you could take this job on, you know, I would try to value Bill for this. Like if you can figure out where this 1.8 billion because it's not missing money, it's real money that exists. So they can afford to pay you from that 1.8 billion. Blake Oliver: [00:39:40] All right. I'm gonna open up the listener mailbag one more time. And this is from Wilder. Wilder said, Blake, just listening to your podcast on slow discipline of the truth social auditor. That's, uh, Benjamin Borgers for those who did not hear that episode. A Colorado CPA, Wilder continues, throughout my career, I joined other CPAs and complaining that subpar practitioners never seemed to be disciplined, at least not enough to stop poor practice. Now that I have had the inside view by being a board member of a state board of accountancy, I know that there will never be speedy and adequate discipline for CPAs who fail to comply with standards. The national standard for discipline established by legal practice and precedent is rehabilitation through education, not license revocation. The lawyers advise boards that anyone whose license is revoked will sue on the grounds that he or she can't be deprived of livelihood. I also have learned that the disciplinary process works very slowly. Long before I was appointed to the South Carolina Board, I filed a complaint about a CPA who had strung a South Carolina county along for a full year, collecting $70,000 in fees for an audit he could not opine on because he was already under board order for substandard government work. Blake Oliver: [00:40:55] It took over two years for my case to come to the board, at which time he was simply told he couldn't perform a test engagements ever again. I inquired when I was on the board about whether board staff ever followed up to make sure the CPA was complying with the test ban. The answer was no. I was told board staff pursues discipline only if they receive a specific complaint accordingly. Two years ago. Sca, CPA had to find someone to file a complaint against EA when the story broke about their SEC discipline for cheating on the ethics exam required for licensure, the board hasn't yet heard the case, and in fact, the board is not permitted to even know the complaint has been filed, much less its status in the investigative department, because the board would then not be able to serve as jurors in the case, which will eventually come before it. Long story short, discipline of bad practitioners is a joke. Also, on another topic applicable to Naspa losing sight of who its customers are, I stood up at the Eastern Regional meeting last year and asked if the staff had ever actually pulled its constituent members regarding the one 2150 question. Blake Oliver: [00:41:59] I reminded them that they are a trade association, not a regulatory body. It apparently had not occurred to staff to pull the state boards on what they were thinking. Best regards. Wilder. Waldman. So thank you, Wilder, for writing in. It is crazy to me that discipline of practitioners is just so, uh, bad. And we can see this when we look at the Colorado, uh, disciplinary actions like CPA lookup. Uh, you can actually see that I'm going to continue to check this every week or two that Benjamin Borgers of BF Borgers, the firm in Colorado that did thousands of fake audits that the SEC called a sham, is still a licensed CPA in Colorado. Active license status. That is just embarrassing and I wonder how long this is going to go on. I'm putting this on the screen here for our YouTube listeners. Just look at this active CPA. And I don't see any complaints against him. He's got some CLS stipulations, whatever those are. But the last one was in March, which was, I think, before any of this even happened. So what's it going to take for a guy who faked thousands of audits of public companies to be disciplined and to lose his license? David Leary: [00:43:22] So essentially, a board is a little bit like a homeowners association or homeowners associations. They they always make decisions based on we don't want to get sued. Right. And so they're going to let all the government, they don't have real power. Right. So they're going to let all the government agencies do all the things they do. Then at the very end, they might come in and revoke that license. But then according to the email, was it Wanda? I'm sorry I missed the name Wilder. Wilder, Wilder informed us, which is even worse. So even if they do strip it, he could just keep practicing with the CPA letters and until somebody escalates it, they're not going to do anything about that either. But then even if he does practice with CPA and he doesn't after they did strip it, it's going to take them years for them to even do anything about that, right? So it's like we. Blake Oliver: [00:44:07] Have all these rules to make it really hard to become a CPA with these education requirements and these exams. But then once you actually are a CPA, there's very little enforcement of ethical standards or professional standards. So I think maybe we should take our focus off of initial licensure and perhaps enforce our standards as a profession on the people who are already CPAs. And I don't see why that has to be unpopular. I think that should be very popular because there's a lot of great CPAs out there who want to maintain the integrity of our profession. David Leary: [00:44:42] The argument of the 150 hour rule is to protect the brand, make the brand valuable, elevate the profession, go on, elevate the profession. But if you let this happen to the brand on the other end, that's the point. Blake Oliver: [00:44:52] Puts it in the trash. Okay, well, let's move on to a topic we have covered recently, the synapse bankruptcy. I wanted to give a little update to our listeners on this because basically, since we covered it, it has gone mainstream. The New York Times published a piece about the synapse bankruptcy. It was in, I believe, The Wall Street Journal as well, CNBC it's all over the place. And the reason is that lots and lots of customers have had their accounts frozen as a result. Synapse was the middleman between the chartered Bank, evolve Bank and trust and a bunch of fintech apps which include Yotta, Juno, yield, Street, copper, Mercury and Dave. Those are the top ones that have been mentioned in the press. But synapse had contracts with 20 banks in 100 fintech companies, so as many as 10 million end users could ultimately be affected by this bankruptcy. But the ones who are affected now are those who were banking through synapse at Evolve, and they may have had no idea. They probably had no idea that they were doing this. A lot of this was consumer accounts, because I've never heard of businesses using yadda yadda, Juno, yield, Street Copper or Dave. I think those are like B to C type of apps, and it's really affected a lot of people, 100,000 Americans with approximately 265 million in deposits have been affected, and 160 million of those deposits are frozen right now. The FDIC came out and said that they can't do anything about it, because they can only step in when there is a bank failure. And synapse was not a bank. So it's up to those customers impacted to work with evolve, or perhaps Sue evolve to unfreeze those accounts and evolve has refused to do that until synapse gives it access to some sort of dashboard, which was taken away from evolve. And synapse has been ordered to do this by the courts, but has so far not done it. And so evolve has not done anything and has frozen this customer money. David Leary: [00:46:58] So in and it's escalated. Do you have that in your story with the synapse stuff? Tell me. So, uh, basically there's the, uh, subcommittee of senators, right. The finance committee, they've actually, for Democratic U.S. senators now have written a letter to synapse in the major investors, and they specifically even go after the VCs saying that the venture capital firms funded synapse without investing or insisting on adequate controls to protect consumers. So they are escalating. This is now at the Congress level of attention. Right. Blake Oliver: [00:47:30] But, you know, I put the blame on evolve because evolve is the bank with the charter that is supposed to be taking custody of customer funds. And so for them to put this on a tech company, I think is unfair, because their entire job is to maintain the integrity of the banking system and these accounts, and they have utterly failed in that respect. And that's why I'm really glad that our bank relay moved away from evolve last year and shifted all their funds to a different bank called Thread in Nashville. And so if you bank at relay like we do, you are assured that your funds are not in this cluster right here. And we've seen, you know, I think like wise also does not use evolve. So the lesson here is to look into who these fintechs are using. I think the, the the one that is most concerning to me for our listeners is the Mercury, uh, customers because Mercury targets businesses. So I wonder how many Mercury customers were affected by this since they work with evolve. David Leary: [00:48:35] Yeah. Because well, they they haven't finished transitioning away. Right. They transitioned off synapse and kind of went directly to evolve and haven't finished getting off of that. So it's it's still messy, right? In general. Overall, the one thing I thought I saw and I'm not sure if now if it was a tweet or if I saw it in an article, but it was a really interesting quote. If you put your yourself in the perspective of startups, startups want to move fast, right? They don't want government regulation in a way. Right. And so the lack of good controls at evolve right was actually a feature. Not a problem. Right. Like that was a feature. If you're a fast moving startup and you just want to like ignore KYC on board clients fast, like that's the perfect partner. You want a partner that's lacks control until the what you. Blake Oliver: [00:49:21] Get until this is what happens, right? Yes, exactly. Amazing. Um. All right. In the time we have left, David, I want to go back to 150, and I want our listeners know I'm saving it for the end. I've heard feedback from folks. They want me to talk about this stuff at the end, not the beginning. So that's why I saved it here. So if you don't want to hear about 150, if you don't want to hear about what I think about Barry Melanson's retirement, you can go ahead and switch off now. But actually, maybe we should do the last ad first, right? David? Yes, the. David Leary: [00:49:46] Last ad. Blake Oliver: [00:49:47] Here. Ad three. All right. Who are we thanking now? David Leary: [00:49:51] I'm pasting the link in right now. Blake Oliver: [00:49:53] Makers hub. As an accountant, you know that accurate cost tracking is the key to your construction and manufacturing clients success. But tracking costs precisely can bog down your team with never ending manual data entry. So, David, tell me about how Maker's Lab solves that problem. David Leary: [00:50:09] So, so obviously construction manufacturing clients, if you've ever had them have these invoices and bills, right, that are just 200 lines long, 50 pages, and you have to take all that and put it out to jobs and classes and all that. Well, Makers Hub has unparalleled scanning ability, and they'll scan all that and capture over 100 data fields from those incoming bills, including the skew level, Po numbers, payment terms, discounts, vendor details, and then they'll allocate all that data and sync it over to QuickBooks, applying the proper jobs, projects and classes. So super complicated bill scanning they can do. And then once it's all scanned and done, it really is your full entire AP process. They'll collect the w-9s. They have bill and payment approvals. You can do payments, but they're really that those complicated bills you have to scan. That's the the golden uh feature Golden ticket. Yes. Blake Oliver: [00:51:03] That ticket, the golden goose. That is amazing. Because, um. Yeah, with construction, you just have those detailed line item bills. And that's always been the problem with trying to use some other AP tool, is you had to do all this data entry. So that's great. And where should our listeners head to learn more. David Leary: [00:51:18] The Accounting Podcast dot promo maker sub or just look in the show notes or in the chat that. Blake Oliver: [00:51:23] Is accounting podcast dot promo forward slash marker s h u b. All right David Barry Melanson is retiring and the press are gearing up to sing his praises as he rides off into the sunset. After decades leading the AICPA, the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, which he took international under his leadership, and Barry has been a long time supporter of the 150 hour rule, and he was featured in a podcast interview with Amanda Aiken of Bloomberg on their podcast Talking Tax, and she asked him about this. I would like to play that clip for our listeners. Talking Tax Clip: [00:52:15] Let's talk about the talent crisis. You know, the profession has shed more than 300,000 accountants and auditors since the start of the pandemic. Accounting graduates in 2022 slid to the lowest levels since the Great Recession. There's a lot of work in process right now to address that shrinking pipeline, and much of that targets education requirements, particularly that students must earn 150 college credit hours to qualify for the CPA license. That's an extra year above the traditional four year degree. And I wonder, was it a misstep to make 150 hours the law of the land? Talking Tax Clip: [00:53:00] Well, first off, let's get all of our data points correct. There. There was clearly an impact in enrollments in accounting coming out of Covid. That is a true statement. People sort of conveniently forget that there was actual supply over demand pre-COVID, more supply than demand over pre-COVID. But even if we get to after Covid, your hypothesis is accurate. There was a decline. There was a decline in all university enrollments. There were decline in community college enrollments, and part of the system has to work that back up. We are seeing an uptick in accounting and enrollments today not enough to solve the whole problem, to be fair. But there are there is an uptick in accounting enrollments happening. There was an uptick in 2023 and people taking the CPA exam. So I think it's it's important to look at all those facts, not just the facts that were put forward. Now what was the purpose of the additional education requirement? So if we go back all the way into the 1980s, which is when that educational requirement came to be, the profession then was facing some different challenges. The world had gotten way more complicated. The number of standards, either accounting standards or auditing standards, tax law had exploded and there was a belief in the profession's, you know, leadership then that said that the profession needed to step it up, and it also needed to have a broader set of skills. Talking Tax Clip: [00:54:26] As you said earlier, it's not just about the numbers, right? It's about that business acumen that I referenced. So the hundred and 50 hours was designed to create a broader professional and a better educated professional, and also to elevate the accountancy profession, the CPA, to a higher level as well. And it actually did that very well. That doesn't mean that what was done in 1980 is the exact perfect answer. If you were dealing with it today. Of course not. The world has changed significantly, but I don't think it was a mistake at all. It elevated the profession. It elevated the success of the profession. It elevated the prestige of the profession. That was a very important part of what was being addressed in the 1980s. I don't think that decisions in 1980 can be second guessed as to right or wrong, though, particularly when you look at the success of the profession over those 40 or so years. I think it proved to be something that set the profession on a different trajectory and one that has been very successful. Blake Oliver: [00:55:28] So there is Barry Melanson, defending the 150 hour rule that was implemented in the 1980s and saying that it has elevated the profession. What is that? What do you think he means by that, David? What do you think Barry Melanson means when he says that the 150 hour rule elevated the profession? David Leary: [00:55:49] I'm not sure, because he just went on for a long time. And I'm not sure either. Blake Oliver: [00:55:57] And I'm not sure who he's talking about. In whose mind does an extra fifth year of education elevate the profession? Maybe in his mind, but I don't I don't I don't think you could even find a single non CPA who is even aware of the fifth year requirement other than due to the coverage of this recently. So how could it elevate the profession if nobody knows about it? David Leary: [00:56:28] Nobody knew about it until the last, you know, four years, right? Frankly, we started covering it and then it seems like all major media covers it now. Blake Oliver: [00:56:35] And it just seems to me that there's this like denial here by Barry and other AICPA executives and state boards of accountancy chairs and leaders in state societies about the fact that it doesn't improve CPA quality. There was a study done at MIT Sloan that found that there is no measurable difference in CPA quality, thanks to the fifth year requirement. They did this study looking at data points over decades and found no change. Uh, so they also found the only impact was that it decreased the number of CPAs that non-minority CPAs decreased by 14% and that, uh, really distressingly, if you're a certain minority groups, it went down like 26%, which makes total sense given that the cost and time increased dramatically. People feel like you have to go get a master's degree now, so I don't think Barry Melanson has reckoned in any way with his legacy, having led the profession to do this. It maybe it was a good idea when there was a huge oversupply of accountants, but I wouldn't even have done it this way. Like you don't increase the time and cost to reduce the supply, you just increase the difficulty of the exam, right? Just make it so that fewer people pass the exam every year. David Leary: [00:57:58] I mean, arguably it's all like, what is he being judged on? Right? And he probably his real job is not about growing the profession. His job, his job was to grow the icpa. And he's probably done that. He grew it. It grew. He added extra programs to create revenue. He spun out a commercial division, the CPA comm. Yes, he was hugely successful at making the ACPa. Yes, a cash machine, and his salary probably went up astronomically too. It doubled. Arguably, the profession is in no better shape today than it was in 1979 1980. I don't know, I was a kid then, but. Blake Oliver: [00:58:33] David, you bring up a really good point, which is that when the AICPA publishes anything about how successful Barry Melanson has been, it's always about how he grew the AICPA. But I would argue, as you did, that growing the AICPA and making the AICPA AICPA bigger is not necessarily helping your average CPA, because we've seen average CPA salaries stagnate amid inflation to the point where your average CPA can't afford an average house in America. Average CPA salaries are like around 100 K, and it costs far more than that to buy a house in many states. And that to me is the big problem here. You've got accountants coming out of school burdened with debt, not making a lot of money because firms are not paying higher salaries. Right. Salaries have actually gone down in a lot of places adjusted for inflation. And the ACPa is enabling this by promoting offshoring and promoting automation with technology like they are actively working against the interests of average CPAs. And there's actually even, um, a historical example where, uh, there was a move to expand overtime wage protections, and this would have affected staff accountants decades ago. And the AICPA opposed it because it would increase costs for accounting firms. So like the ACPa has a history of of suppressing salaries of starting staff. And that's all under his leadership. You know, if if somebody needs to take responsibility for the metrics that have gone down and he doesn't even at the beginning of that statement, he doesn't even acknowledge that. He says, oh, they're ticking back up, right. I don't think he has recognized just how precipitous, uh, the decline in CPAs is, where like 75% are going to retire in ten years. David Leary: [01:00:29] And to call out that, like, oh, it just was like during Covid, there was a dip. I'm like, it's been trending that way for a long time. Right. For a decade plus it was trending. The the accounting grads has been declining not just since Covid. So yeah, I just it's I listen to that whole article and like at some level I thought he uh, spoke well like I thought he was collected. I thought he, he spoke well, but you're right. Is this a lot of like non point? Blake Oliver: [01:00:57] He's really good at saying a lot without saying anything at all. David Leary: [01:01:00] Anything. Yeah. Blake Oliver: [01:01:01] Right. Like this doesn't add information. I would be very frustrated if I was Amanda Aiken. I kind of wish she'd been harder on him, but I think the problem is that, you know, going back to Trump, go full circle here. I'm starting to see what Trump means when he says that the media are biased and are protecting the people in power, like the accounting media are going to publish all these articles about how great Barry Melanson was and his leadership. And we saw that on Accounting Today already. They already published an article, and they're going to do a whole series on this. And I just feel like there's there's not independent journalism happening that, that like they're just repeating talking points from the AICPA. And I'm glad that you and I have this venue, this vehicle to talk about other points of view and the truth of the matter, which is like almost completely the opposite of what we're hearing in the mainstream media. David Leary: [01:02:02] So how would you judge this legacy? Would you accounting salaries? Probably right. Cost of the education if you go whatever 1980 his whole career. Right. What was it on first year and then last year. Blake Oliver: [01:02:15] His legacy has been he has successfully grown the Arc-pa and made the AICPA bigger. You know, but I would argue that is not what like that that has actually been counter to the interests of your average accountant. And that's why nobody wants to be an accountant anymore. Not nobody. But you know what I mean, right? That's why it's so hard to get people to come into this profession. David Leary: [01:02:38] So, so his legacy ultimately, in summary, is the 300,000 people that left. Yeah. Blake Oliver: [01:02:42] And and. David Leary: [01:02:43] You could see. Blake Oliver: [01:02:44] Legacy if you listen to the interview. That's what he rankles at when Amanda brings that up. All right. Thank you everyone for listening today. Don't forget you can earn free continuing professional education for listening to this episode. Go to Earmarked app. Earmarked app. Create your free account and earn Naspa approved CPE. Get your CPE certificate and can we go ahead? David. David Leary: [01:03:10] Can we flip the switch on community? Can we just invite everybody to the community and it'll make us it'll force you and I to participate in it tomorrow morning. Blake Oliver: [01:03:16] Okay. We're gonna do it because we've been putting this off for too long. Everyone listen up. We have launched an earmark community. This is a place where you can do more than just email us. You can actually talk with us. It's a forum basically, and we're doing it on circle. Some of you may be familiar with that. I know it's a popular platform for accountants and their communities. Go to earmarked community and sign up, create a free account. And uh, instead of sending us an email, create a post in the earmarked community. We've got a space for the accounting podcast. We've got a space for the earmark app. If you have feedback on the app, we want to hear it. Um, let's do it. Let's get it. Let's get it going. Come on. Who's going to be the first person to join? Should we do some sort of promo? David, for the first few people that if I had. David Leary: [01:04:05] To bet money by the time if you go there right now, somebody's already created an account. People move fast in this day and age. Blake. Blake Oliver: [01:04:12] Okay, so, uh, boring accountant says like, discord, like Reddit. Uh, you know, I don't I don't know, we're gonna find out what this ends up being like. Uh, maybe it'll be its own kind of thing. Um, but, yeah, it's like that. David Leary: [01:04:24] Actually, a great discussion would be Barry's legacy. What do you think. Blake Oliver: [01:04:29] About Barry's legacy? Uh, we're gonna work on getting other shows on earmark onto this platform. So we got to go out and ask the show hosts, like, do you want to have a space? And then they can have a place to talk to you. So if you've got a favorite show on earmark and you want to talk with the host to let us know, um, yeah, it's going to be kind of a free for all. Right. Now, how about this? Let's do a promo, David, for the first ten people that post in the community, uh, we will send you a t shirt so you'll get it. You'll get an earmark t shirt or a The Accounting Podcast t shirt. What about. David Leary: [01:05:01] The sweet. Blake Oliver: [01:05:01] Hat? We've also got hats, too. Is that the same cost? We don't want to, like, kill ourselves on the merch, David, but, uh, okay, you can get an earmark hat or you can get a t shirt. Well, we'll let you pick first. David Leary: [01:05:12] Ten people commit to wearing it, though. I just don't want you to have that shirt. And then it goes into a drawer and you take. Blake Oliver: [01:05:16] A picture of yourself. Wear it. Yeah. These earmark shirts are pretty nice. David. I'm wearing one right now. I've got the gray one. Uh, I have the hat, but I didn't bring it on vacation because, you know, it's, like, hard to pack a lot of hats. So, um, we got black on and white text. We got gray and white. You know, it's very functional. It kind of goes with everything. It looks stylish. David Leary: [01:05:38] Did you notice our numbers today? We have 181 people viewing the live stream. Our all time high. Blake Oliver: [01:05:43] Apparently, Sunday is the day to do a live stream. Yeah. Um, and I don't know if that includes everybody from all the platforms. That's just on my Twitter and some YouTube people, so, like, it doesn't count LinkedIn. It doesn't count any of that other stuff. So it's great to have you all tuning in live. I know we have thousands of listeners who tune in, uh, after the fact. And if you want to continue the discussion with us, you didn't get to chat live, go to Earmarked Community and do so. All right. That's all I got this week, David. See you here next week. Bye, everyone.