Exploring Solutions to the Accounting Talent Shortage with Jen Cryder, CEO at PICPA

Want to learn what sets a live flow apart from thousands of other QuickBooks online apps? Do you want to learn how LiveFlow saves time for hundreds of accountants and bookkeepers? Want to learn how LiveFlow helps accountants and bookkeepers to use LiveFlow successfully in their firm? Stay tuned to hear more from our sponsor LiveFlow, later in the episode. I'll tell you a secret, and I can't believe I'm going to say this publicly, but when I was going through my college career, I interviewed with the big four. I didn't get an offer, and I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I'm starting out my career as a CPA, it's such a failure, because I'm going to a regional firm. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Coming to you weekly from the on-pay recording studio. Hello, and welcome to the show. I'm Blake Oliver, CPA, and we're joined today by Jen Crider, CEO of the PICPA, the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and as always, my co-host David Leary. Hello. Welcome, Jen, to the show. Thank you. Hi, Blake and David, so glad to be here. Really excited to be here with you, talking about pipeline issues, questions facing the future of the accounting profession. I know that you and the society there, the institute there, have been really on top of that and are working on ways that we can get more accountants into accounting firms and into colleges and into studying it in high school. So eager to hear your thoughts on that. You did a presentation with the August Town Hall professional issues update for the Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs, right? One of the slides really stuck out slide 32 in a super clean slide, almost nothing on the slide, and it just said the sentence, it is not possible to replace retiring CPAs one to one with new CPAs. I just thought that was like really a good way to capture the state of things, but that's where we're at. It is. It truly is because when we look at all the inputs into the pipeline, kind of the supply side or the supply chain of our profession, you have to think about it with lots of different layers. So you've got to look at demographics, you know, high school and college enrollments, size of population, all of those things, and when you put all those pieces together, we know we know a couple things. We know the pie is shrinking, right? So the generation that are coming into elementary school, middle school, high school, smaller, the pie is shrinking for sure. And then when we look at college enrollments, so I'm looking at it in Pennsylvania specifically, but even when you layer that against national data, college enrollments went down by double digits during the last five years. We're beginning to see that increase a little bit at this point, but so we've got a shrinking pie in terms of population size, and then less people are choosing to go to college, clearly that's the path into our profession. And so between those two things right off the bat, there's just there's just a far smaller pool from which we're drawing from. And then you start to think about what are those factors that influence the choice of accounting major and very specifically to pursue the CPA license, which is where my focus is. And it's this really complicated multi level puzzle, but it is not possible to replace CPAs at a rate of one to one is they're going to retire almost every day in my role. I talk to a firm leader or you know, somebody in practice who more or less is saying, how can you go find me more people? And I'm beginning to shift that conversation to say, I don't think we're going to be able to ultimately go find more people. Yeah, that's the slide right there. We're not going to go find more people. The pool is just smaller. And I do think that we have to adjust to that reality and think about it in that context, because then once you think about it in that context, you can really start to think about what are some effective solutions to this problem. We know that less people are choosing to major in accounting, graduating with accounting degrees. And then most critically, that ratio of how many accounting majors choose to pursue CPA license or that ratio has really fallen off in recent years. So when I think about pipeline, I think about it in each of those different layers, because each of those layers, you know, demographics, college, licensure, each of them has a different set of issues and solutions. So glad to talk more about that. Yeah, experience, learn, and earn program that was introduced. I think this week, the press release came out. I do think that those sorts of work and learn models are a really effective way to buy down the time and the cost of the 150. I know that's something that you guys talk about all the time. So we might as well jump right into that. I think that there are ways to buy down the time in the cost. And I think ELE is an early model of that. Yeah, so you're saying we can't replace accountants one to one. It's not possible. So then I guess the conclusion is that we shouldn't measure ourselves versus the historical numbers. We're always going to fail in that respect. Possibly. I think I think trying to measure ourselves against history just sort of sends us down the wrong path because when I think about pipeline, I really think about a long-term human capital strategy and you've got to look at the supply side and the demand side. I think what firms are going to require in terms of talent. I mean, it's already wildly different and that's going to just that piece of change is going to accelerate. So I'm a CPA. I was in a public accounting firm for 15 years in the Philly area. And when I think about the stuff that I did at the beginning of my career, like, not if that exists anymore because technology has replaced all of it. And I had a fabulous experience as an intern in my firm, but I was still fitting numbers and photocopying stuff, things like that. Like it's all gone. So I think that we equally have to look at how's technology changing the work of people in firms? How are cultures changing and what impacts do we have to make there? The impact of global workforce, changing kind of compensation structure and metrics and incentives. You almost have to look at all of that together, because if you're only looking at the supply side, I feel like we run the risk of sort of missing the mark as we look toward the future. Like we've got to build for what the professional is looking forward. I agree, but I'm going to dig into one of these supply side issues because it's one of my favorite. And yeah, it's the 150 hour rule, the additional 30 semester hours of education required to sit for the CPA exam. The ACPA and NASBA have teamed up with Tulane to ease CPA licensing. That's the headline in accounting today. This story is about a partnership on a post grad program at the Tulane School of Professional Advancement that will combine online learning with on-the-job professional experience to college accounting graduates. I believe there's a similar initiative on the East Coast in like New Jersey as well, something they're working on. So the idea is that students, instead of going into a master's, would join a firm as staff and then complete online courses and receive credit for courses and work experience that would get them to the 150 hours, the equivalent of the fifth year of education so they could sit for those exams. So I look at these programs and I think to myself, why water it down further? Why take this 30 semester hours and how can it possibly be as rigorous when you're working simultaneously as if you're sitting in a classroom? Why not just substitute the extra 30 hours for a second year of work experience like we used to have, allowed people just to go straight to work and get work experience and get licensed that way. So have 150 hours plus a year of experience but also have 120 hours plus two years of experience and allow both pathways. And that's what Minnesota has proposed. The Society in Minnesota has proposed bringing back that as an alternative path. What are your thoughts on this, Jen? Yep. So first of all, I think you're describing this model really accurately. And like you said, a lot of different firms are coming up with programs, you know, variations on that feed. So the big four have started. They've got, you know, a deep bunch of resources. This program that was announced last week is intended to take that concept and scale it to firms of all sizes so that it really can meet the needs of the very small firms. You don't have the resources of PWC who's investing, you know, just a lot of money in their program with St. Peter. So that's the model there. And the thought is that, you know, these courses from Tulane are just as rigorous as if you were in the classroom. We all know that learning is not necessarily tied to being in person anymore. So I do think that on the rigor point, I do think that they have that covered and contemplated. And I think that it'll be really great for the profession for students in the marketplace to see lots of different variations on these work and learn models here in Pennsylvania. I'm talking with lots of different colleges and universities. You know, often there have been credit for internships, co-ops, work study, all of those things. So when we think about work and learn, it's about how do we take those pieces that have existed forever, put them together in new ways to buy down the time and the cost of the extra 30, because the research shows that it's really the time and the cost that are the hurdles there. So I think at least here in Pennsylvania, we'll see a lot of creative solutions. You know, for example, at the school is willing to grant six credits for internships. How can we get that to a higher number? Or how could you take like six internships credits, combine that with some work study that's happening while you're in a firm, you know, working full time at the firm, but still getting college credit for that? I think that that combination of working and learning is essentially an apprenticeship model. And our profession is that of apprenticeship, right? Like we all know that you do the theory in school, you really learn on the job. And so rethinking how to effectively blend the two, I think is a really good thing. Your question essentially though was, why don't we allow a lot of different path? Yeah, yeah. That's where you were going. I mean, this seems complicated. Simple would be let them just do the apprenticeship by working. And whenever I talk to my fellow CPAs and I say, all right, what would you prefer in a new hire? Would you like them to have an extra year of education? Or would you like them to come to you with an extra year of work experience? In the year of work experience, Trump's the education always. Nobody ever says, right? Now, I imagine maybe it's a little different in the big four where those classes that you take in that master's program before you go work at PWC are particularly relevant to the needs of large multi-national global corporations. But for most of us, most accountants don't do that. They don't go there. And so they end up collecting these 30 hours through a variety of irrelevant courses because it's easy and cheap. And an example in my case is, I took community college courses. I took intro to philosophy to satisfy my 150. Made me a better person, but I don't know if it made me a better CPA. Yeah. You know, on the point of these work and learn models, the intention is to put really high quality content in there. And at least in that experience, learn and earn program, the schools that are going to put content in, you know, tooling is the first one in this pilot, but they intend to add other schools to it. They're committing as part of that pilot to bring the price point, the price point of the credit hour, down to I think $150 credit hour, which is the average cost of the community college credit. So a really significant buy down in cost, making it much more cost-effective for the student and the firm if they if they choose to support it. But let's get to your to your real question of like why don't we just change the law? So the first thing to understand is it would require a law change in every jurisdiction. So it is not me as a state society just deciding or making up my mind. It's not the ASEPA. It's not even NASPA or the state boards. Every single state would have to change their law. And so when we went to 150, it took 30 years to do that. I don't think we have 30 years to solve this problem. We've got to find other solutions that got us there much, much quicker. So essentially that is the answer. It would take far too long and it would open up way too much risk to change all those laws. So that's why I look at things like work and learn, because I'm really interested in finding very practical solutions, because I don't disagree with you. Like I'm a CPA. I lived this I know I got really great stuff from a great accounting education. And then I got really great stuff from my on the job, you know, learning. We don't have 30 years to figure out how to make that happen in the state law. So how do we like quickly, and within the laws that's written right now, get to better, more creative solutions that gets the right talent into the profession quickly. That's the really quick version. We could dig a lot into, you know, the concepts of mobility and substantial equivalency and all the stuff behind it. But essentially, it is a very time consuming and very risky process to open up every state statute. This episode of the accounting podcast is sponsored by LiveFlow. If you're really a busy body, your title would read CPB, a certified public busybody. You're a CFO, a controller, a CPA, and yet you've earned so much time on the busy work component reports stuck in the land of CPB. Well, LiveFlow's mission is to get you out of there. It's the fastest way to connect your QuickBooks Online to Google Sheets. It's designed to eliminate your extra busy work by automating and scaling your client reporting with live hourly updates. Once you cross the border, some strange and wonderful things start to happen. You stop exporting reports from QBO, you no longer customize your sheets over and over again. Your central nervous system forgets what it feels like to deal with stale data and you enter a state of Nirvana. For your one-way ticket out of CPB land and 20% off your first three months, head over to accountingpodcast.promo-liveflow. That is accountingpodcast.promo-forward-slash-L-I-V-E-F-L-O-W. Welcome back to CPA land. Well, so I do wonder about that because that is the number one objection to changing this that is brought up at NASBA and AICPA. They always mentioned mobility was so hard to get and we will struggle to maintain that where it will go away. Of course, if you're a large firm, mobility is very valuable. It would be incredibly difficult if you didn't have mobility to audit these companies that are all over. But we already have reciprocity with other countries where we say if you're a CPA in Australia and you come here to the United States, we'll have reciprocity and they only require three years of education there and we let them become CPAs here. So we have this perverse situation where if you're licensed abroad, you can be a CPA here with less education than we require for our own CPAs. And we've also got all these states with slightly different requirements and somehow we've managed to create reciprocity there too. Like they're not identical. They're substantially. Right. So that's the debt. I love this. Now my inner CPAs coming out because I want to define substantial. All right. What is substantially equivalent? I feel like NASBA has far more discretion in determining what is substantially equivalent. And actually, they have complete discretion when it comes to the states that have deferred on this decision to NASBA, right? They're just like in the law, there are states that say as long as NASBA calls it substantially equivalent, it's substantially equivalent. It's true. So it's really Ken Bishop at the at NASBA who can decide this. If he wants to, he could do it or the board could vote and do it. I just don't believe that it's as complicated as passing a law in every single state, at least for a lot of states. Look how fast the states acted for COVID. Like nurses used to have to be licensed in each state. And they just in two seconds just fixed it. Now, yeah. And now I don't think it's gone back, right? Like nurses can just bounce around anywhere. And if you're good enough to be a nurse in New Jersey, you're good enough to be a nurse in Arizona, right? So obviously, literally, just can move fast. They could do this in one session, but it supports not there by the bodies. Who's going to prompt the legislatures to make change? Well, here's where I think we should look, because I don't think you're wrong in asking the question, right? Who owns the definition of substantial equivalency and how can we redefine it? I actually agree with you that we need to ask that question. Because I think I think that there is, it's a little bit unclear, right? And so I think where there is a little bit of room, we should just like with work and learn and these other things pursue every avenue that's going to get us to a quick and productive solution. And I think that looking at the definition of substantial equivalency is absolutely on that list. We absolutely should look at it, because the profession needs it. We can't wait around. I don't think it is as simple as your saying, and I get that you're being a little bit, you know, you're probably making a little bit of a joke there. I don't think it's as simple as you're saying, you know, can just can decide and change it, because it's really every state board of accountancy that owns that, right? And you're right. Some of them in their regulations defer to NASPA, but it's only, I think, 15 or 20 states that do. So there's still a lot of state boards of accountancy that we have to get on board. So it is not as snap your fingers by one person sort of thing. There's definitely more time and complexity to that, but that being said, we should absolutely look at what's really substantially equivalent and really what serves our profession today, right? Because those definitions of substantial equivalency were written at a certain point in time. And, you know, I think an interesting question is how do we make sure that that's a living thing as our profession is changing? Because whatever we come up with today is the right answer. It might not be the right answer tomorrow. So it's definitely something we should look at. I mean, I talk to CPAs, you know, that's what I do. I talk to CPAs all across Pennsylvania. And most of the CPAs I'm talking to in Pennsylvania are not big four. They are regional firms. They are small firms. That's most of the time. That's who we're supporting. And this talent issue is real for them. They can't fill their engagement teams. They can serve their clients. And that's why this is that's that's where I'm seeing this as a big issue is it's not the big firms. The big four are still able to fill their classes, their training classes and get people in the door because everybody wants a big four firm on their resume. That's still a really valuable thing as a young CPA. But the small firms, they're the ones who are feeling this shortage. And we've got the typical small firm owner is 60 years old or older now. And they want to retire in 10 years. And the young blood is not coming into the firm that's going to take over. And so firm valuations are dropping. You know, the idea of being able to sell your firm becomes more of a problem. And also just delivering quality works here. Clients becomes an issue. You know, we saw we've seen coverage from the PCOB issue to press release saying that 40% of audits in 2022 were deficient according to their methodology. And these are part one a deficiencies. So the the bad kind of deficiency that means that the auditor shouldn't have issued the opinion 40%. And I wonder are these things connected? Is this talent shortage connected to this problem of deficient audits? Yeah. And in that op-ed, she even said, if you know, if you want to blame it on pipeline challenges, like, you know, go figure it out. But while also offering no commentary or solution, you know, on the pipeline problem. So I sort of sympathize with the firms that are getting the auditors who are getting hammered by PCOB. But PCOB is not offering any solutions. Yeah. I think so we've done a lot of listening to CPAs across Pennsylvania over the last year on this issue. And in hearing all of that, talking to people in all corners of the profession, small firm, big firm, educator students, you know, CFOs, controllers, all of it, the most common theme that we heard come out of it is, our profession has this role of trust in the capital markets, right? We help families make financial decisions. We help small businesses, you know, kind of navigate their success. We support, you know, Wall Street businesses from the top to the bottom. We have to maintain that trust. And in maintaining that trust, we have to walk this really fine line of balancing rigor and capacity, right? And so that's why this is a really complicated issue. We have to maintain the rigor of the credential because there's a public protection element of that. And, you know, our profession has earned that and has to continue to earn that every day. But at the same time, when there's not enough capacity to get the work done, we're seeing it in Pennsylvania, especially among highly regulated industries like nonprofits, for example. When I was in public practice, I worked with a lot of nonprofit clients in the field of the area because they got government money. They needed single audits and just like a lot of complicated regulatory stuff. I'm getting a lot of calls at this point, nonprofits that can't find auditors because of the capacity constraints and the pricing pressures, like they just, you know, the fees that they would have to pay are just completely out of their reach. And that means they can't go get those funds that they need that require an annual audit. Those grants, those big grants. And that's what's going to drive a legislative change because these legislatures, you know, they have their own super PACs and the way they're raising their money and that has to be accounted for properly, right? And maybe their spouse has done the board of two or three nonprofits. And then that's when they're going to be really alerted this problem when they're out of dinner table and a family member or somebody involved in a nonprofit is like, we can't get an accountant. And that's when that's when it's going to become real, right? I was just watching the thing with Congress and one of the Congress people played one of those ERC voicemails on her phone to the subcommittee about ERC. It's like when it hits home, then they take some action, right? Yeah. And it's very real. So we have to be really thoughtful as we're balancing that the rigor and the capacity issues. And I think trying to solve for one or the other in a vacuum is where we really could run into trouble. So again, for us, as we're talking to our members, it just goes back to what are those expedient practical solutions? I don't know that the profession was collaborating in a way that it needed to in the past. I can tell you I've seen that change a lot. I get to participate in a lot of different national discussions. Pennsylvania is a big state. And I have seen that level of collaboration change a lot. The other thing I've seen change a lot very recently is the focus on using data to inform the discussion. So maybe it's just my CPA brain. But when I first came into a lot of each discussions, I would ask questions around the data. And there weren't great answers. And as the CPA, I was just like, wait a minute, what? Like, I don't understand what's going on here. I remember really early as an auditor in my career, the partner I worked for said, you know, you cannot, it's something you don't understand, which by the way, obviously meant that I did not, I didn't understand what I was doing. That was just very nice way of telling you that I didn't get it. But it's the same thing here. Like, I just think until we have much better data, it's hard to solution. I have seen much better data coming out recently. This episode of the Accounting Podcast is sponsored by Forwardly. Are you tired of waiting for clients' payments to clear and being stuck with slow ACH transfers? Frustrated with paying high fees for credit cards? Stop being stuck with slow payments and say hello to the future of real-time payments with Forwardly. America's first instant business payment solution using Fed now. With Forwardly, Accountants in the USA can receive small business payments instantly in their bank accounts, manage cash flow, and simplify accounting with automatic reconciliation. Best of all, Forwardly allows you to receive faster payments 24-7 365. With competitive processing fees, generous partner rewards, and no commitment required, Forwardly empowers you to build a modern practice with happier clients. If you're ready to liberate clients in yourself from expensive credit card fees, the limitations of bank hours, holidays, or weekends, and are ready to embrace the future of real-time payments with Forwardly and Fed now, head over to accountingpodcast.promoslashforwardly. That is accountingpodcast.promoslash, F-O-R-W-A-R-D-L-Y. Well, and that's a really good point, Jen, because when I talk to younger accountants or you look at message boards like Reddit, you don't hear them talking about 150, to be honest. Like, as the problem that's making them dislike accounting and complain about it, it's the long hours in the low pay. That is ultimately a business model issue. It's the way these firms are set up. It's how the firms are structured under the partnership model. It takes a long time to become a partner. The rewards are, once you get to that level, and young people, I was one of them. I was at a large top 25 firm as a manager, and I had the opportunity to go work in tech, and they offered me more money and stock options. I compared that to what I was doing at the firm, which I loved the firm. It was a great firm, and I could see that someday I could make partner, but that path was very opaque. Did I want to sit around and wait for the five to 10 years it was going to take? I took the money up front, and I feel like a lot of students are making that choice too. Are you seeing that? For sure. Absolutely. It is the smart play. You can't blame them for that. Once again, understanding what's really going on. It's the only way to get to real practical, quick solutions. I think the secret of pipeline is that it is largely a business model in supply chain problems. We were talking about the education requirement and the college and university piece already. Definitely, there's a lot of work that needs to be done there, but the majority of accounting grads that are on a CPA track are beginning their careers in firms. I think that there's a lot in terms of that this model of firms, a lot of work that we need to do there, to make this a profession that people want to come into and want to stay in. One of the big things that you were just alluding to right there is that mix of compensation and incentivizing that journey. What are the metrics by which the firm is run? There's so much work to do there. I don't think that that partnership model that pyramid for many firms will be the model of choice going forward. We're already seeing that with private equity and some of those other elements coming into firms, a big reason that some of those firms have taken private equity money, at least from what I can see on the outside. I don't have any insight knowledge obviously, but one of the things they're able to do is incentivize people earlier in their career with things that are equivalent to stock options. It almost is a case of where we're so busy advising our clients that we forget to think about what we need to do to run our firms well. I think that's why we're seeing the professionalization of firm management in a lot of cases and not just at the largest firms, but I'm seeing that certainly in regional firms in Pennsylvania and smaller, where let's dedicate a CEO who is not also out there serving clients, but somebody that can be thoughtful about how do we build not only a profitable business, but one that is sustainable and that can attract and retain great talent and things like that, because firms have got to figure that out. Interesting. So instead of having all the executive functions, that the actual business functions your firm being staffed by a bunch of CPAs who aren't doing CPA work, which the, are you believe the country needs? You hire, I'm not, this is not sending me emails, a real CEO, like, and then run from there. He said it not me. That makes sense, love, you're right, because I know what it's like to wear multiple hats. They're not doing CPA work, and we need more CPAs to do the actual CPA work. And usually a CPA that's in a firm loves serving clients, you know, so they're going to want to, you know, naturally their bias is going to be to provide great client service. So yeah, I mean, clearly the largest firms started doing that a long time ago, but I'm seeing it move down into smaller and smaller firms, recognizing it is, I mean, you guys know this, this is the world that you live in every day. It is so hard to compete as a regional or a small firm right now out there, but not only the success and issues that you were talking about before Blake, but the cost and the investments that these firms have to make in talent and technology, it is really hard to compete and survive. So that is one way that firms are thinking about changing business model is kind of professionalizing that. It's no difference than saying, you know, if I run a construction company, I'm going to go higher than accountant or a CPA to do my accounting work because they know how to do it better. Well, we have some good news on the starting salaries front. I guess it's good news if you're a student, maybe not good news if you're the partner who has to cover these rising salaries. CFO dive.com said CPA firms facing talent shortage hike starting salaries 14%. An average of 14% and 18% of the firms so about, you know, one in five are going to boost salaries 21% to 40%. Now we don't know if they're actually going to do it because that's their plan, but that's like significant. If starting salaries went up for some firms 20% to 40%, that puts us in range of some of these other adjacent majors in the business schools and could also help make up for that extra cost of education. And that's what I've always hoped and suggested our leaders would do is, you know, do a spreadsheet and actually model out the extra cost versus the starting salaries and you'll see that, I mean, it's a significant amount of money that you have to spend to be an accountant that you don't have to spend to be a, I don't know. What are the other majors that people are going into, David, instead of accounting, like anything in finance. Tech, yeah, just jumping into tech, tech careers, private management, finance, marketing, marketing, yeah, they're jumping out of all those. I don't know how many accounting majors are going into marketing other than me, but. But ultimately, this goes back to students, right? Like, we got, you got to let the students know, hey, look, accountants are being paid more now, right? That needs to get out there. And Jan, if I'm interested in correctly on your presentation yesterday, you kind of have some additional challenge with students because in general Pennsylvania enrollments are lower than college enrollments across the country, which have been declining. So it's worse for that. And then the other part of your deck, you talk to, there's some point aside in that it talked about people's very first experience with accounting 101 or introduction to accounting and the reactions to it. So if you'd want to, I guess, or maybe the better way to ask this question is when the ACPA came out with their 12-part plan, right? And one of the things with student or younger people engagement, but they put it on the state societies, it's your responsibility, Jen, to talk to these students. So where are you doing in Pennsylvania considering the challenges you're having, you know, students into the pipeline? Yeah. And the reason that they put that on state society is because we're the boots on the ground. So like, everybody has their swim lane, and that's kind of our swim lane. We are on college campuses all the time, and we are expanding all of that work into high schools. So the research shows that that first experience in a financial accounting class is such a difference maker when somebody is building their perception of our profession. I know you guys talk about kind of the image issue all the time. So much of that is determined in that first accounting class. And so one of the things we're thinking about right now is how do we support, it's often high school teachers. You know, how do we support those high school teachers and making that first intro to accounting class? Not only kind of interesting and engaging, but something that tells the story of what CPAs can do and what they can be and why it's a really interesting career path, right? Because you guys see this and I saw it in my own career. Being a CPA, it took me places I never could have imagined around the world. I got to, you know, talk with CEOs and CFOs and do work that was so much more interesting than I ever, ever imagined. How do we build all of that into that intro to accounting class? Very often that's happening in high school. I think that's another way to buy down the time on the cost of the 150 because students are coming into college. They're beginning college with many more credits from high school than they used to. Certainly, you know, when I was graduating high school and going to college, I took a couple AP credits with me, but all of these dual enrollment programs and things like that. So not only are we focused on how do we get those classes into high schools, but how do we make them interesting and engaging? So here in Pennsylvania, we're actually piloting this in the fall. We're going to pilot with a small group of high school students. We have a financial accounting class that we're going to bring in to them. They're going to take it throughout the year. They will get college credit for it and it goes on a transcript. So it, you know, begins to count toward that 150 right off the bat. Those are the sorts of things that state societies are really good at is kind of conducting those dots locally. This fall, we're also going to get, you know, hopefully many hundreds of CPAs into high school classrooms across the state to talk to hopefully thousands of high school students about why this is a really awesome career. And that goes exactly to a comment we just got in our live stream from Billy, who said, I think one of the main issues with the pipeline is CPA having bad publicity. We need thought leaders that present the positives of becoming a CPA. Yes. If you go on Reddit, if you go on Reddit and you look at the accounting subreddit, I would not, if we put that into an AI and said, you know, analyze the sentiment of these threads, it would probably be on the very negative side, right? Because it's a lot of people who are unhappy. And what what happens when people aren't happy is they tend to be more vocal. But we know there's a lot of happy accountants. We're friends with a lot of them. Yeah. Very content. They're all friends making really good money living a great lifestyle with great job security and lots of different opportunities to do almost anything they want. And I mean, that's what brought me into the profession as a career changeer was looking at accounting and seeing just how much I could do. I could do almost anything. And it's really worked out that way. Like, if I wanted to tomorrow, I could stop being a podcaster and I could go work as a controller at a startup somewhere. And, you know, now my, now my life has changed and I could do that. You can't do that in every profession. And maybe that's something that could be communicated better because I, you know, my daughter's now started her senior year and there's a lot of these questions like, what do you do? And the more and more I'm stepping back and we're at the NEA conference and just look at the EAs. And like, a lot of professions in college, you cap your earnings potential with that degree. But if you get an accounting degree, you have no limit to what you can make or what you can do. It's never capped. It's unlimited potential. Yeah, because you can be an entrepreneur as an owner of an accounting firm or you can even just start a business because once you know the language of business, yeah. Totally. And, you know, what like the research shows that those are the talking points that really resonate with high school students. So when I'm talking to CPAs in Pennsylvania, I give them that homework assignment. I say, please change your talking points when you talk about our profession because the research shows that if high school students hear about the way that CPAs impact the communities around them and that this profession can give you the building blocks to be an entrepreneur and that this is a fulfilling career that has a lot of stability. Suddenly, their, their interest level is very, very different. This episode of the accounting podcast is sponsored by the South Carolina Association of CPAs, SCA CPA. As a listener of this podcast, Blake and I consider you part of the accounting podcast community. Sure, it might get you a shirt, stickers, a free beer now on that. But wouldn't it be great if you could have a steadfast advocate, boost your career, get leadership growth opportunities, learn from a community of peers, build in-person relationships or just enjoy lifelong friendships. That's the power you get from engaging with the State CPA Association like the South Carolina Association of CPAs. Your State CPA Association is more than just a CPE provider. State CPA associations keep their fingers on the pulse of ever changing business, regulatory and legislative landscape to keep you in the loop and to protect the CPA profession, which in the end protects your livelihood. Whether you're just starting your career or climbing the corporate ladder, joining your State CPA Association can be life changing. And best of all, there's a CPA association in your State. If you're ready to find out why CPA association membership is for you, head over to accountingpodcast.promo-slash-sc-a-c-p-a. That is accountingpodcast.promo-forge-slash-sc-a-c-p-a. And there's evidence going to data, Jen, which we both love, that we don't even have so much of a pipeline problem at the beginning as we do once they're in the workforce. So Illinois CPA Society did a big study on retention and found that no surprise, we lose a huge percentage of accountants in their first few years in the profession. And why does that happen? Well, they get burned out on busy season hours. And that goes back to the whole business model, especially if the big four. I mean, I don't think I'm going to surprise anyone to say that you've got to work long hours and people get burned out doing that. And so, you know, how do we get these students into jobs where, you know, there's life outside of the job. And it's not just grinding and grinding and grinding. And the problem is that it's not that they leave and they go to smaller firms. A lot of times they leave and they go out of the profession entirely. It's like that, that first job is so important. And I worry that like the, you know, the people leading the big four don't have the same concerns that we do. I don't hear them talking about reducing hours or stress or making the job better. It just seems to be all dollar signs. I don't, I don't have insight into the leaders of the big four. So I can't confirm or deny that point. I do get the opportunity to talk with leaders of regional firms and smaller firms across Pennsylvania. And I think that the sentiment is really changing. There's, there's a variety, I would say. Let's be fair. There's a variety. I think that there's a lot of firms that are still very compliance focused. I'm going to deliver a tax return. I'm going to deliver an audit. The services that are pretty commoditized. And I think that in a lot of markets in Pennsylvania, there's a lot of room for that. There's still need and demand. But I'm seeing a lot of, even the smaller firms shift to more professional services, which is the kind of stuff you guys talk about all the time, right? You know, the advisory services and things like that. Regardless of which category of firm falls into, a lot of leaders are, I'm getting the question much more frequently. How do I build my firm so that there's not work with compression? We're not burning people out. All of those things that you were just mentioning. I think it's great that I'm getting the questions, right? It's a great place to start. They don't have answers. And I see that as the role of organizations like PICPA to help build those answers. And it's one of the reasons why, you know, I honestly thought I would say in public accounting forever, but it's one of the reasons why I'm so energized about my role because I see PICPA is being a force multiplier on issues like that. So, okay, we would have built a new business model for accounting firms in Pennsylvania that are, you know, smaller mid-size. There's a lot we can talk about there, right? We were talking about compensation and metrics and all of those things. We can talk about culture. We can talk about technology. We can talk about, you know, offshoring and outsourcing and kind of managing its centralized team. But an organization like mine can kind of take all of that and put it together in terms of best practices and amplify that out. So that's a big focus of ours this fall. I would love to figure out a way to get these professors in these top accounting programs to promote working at a regional firm rather than the only path is to go do what I did, which is go work big for because it's not the only path. But when you talk to students, they seem to think it's the only path because that's what their professor pushed on them. And I understand, right? It makes sense. Like that's what that was their career. I'm sure that the PWCs donating a bunch of money or whatever firm is, you know, connected with that school a lot. But, you know, they're bringing them in and they're burning them out and there's nothing left for the profession. That's kind of kind of feels like. I had a similar experience. Yeah, the school that I went to, you know, similar, they were super focused on big four. And I think it's well intention that professors want their students to have, you know, the best start to their career and they think that a different level of opportunity comes with that kind of start. I'll tell you a secret. And I can't believe I'm going to say this publicly, but when I was going through my college career, I interviewed with the big four. I didn't get an offer. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I'm starting out my career as a CPA. It's such a failure because I'm going to a regional firm. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I started my career with this regional firm that was, I don't know, about 100 people. This firm was so connected and there were such a strong culture. Like literally, they would cook us dinner every night during this season. Like they hired someone to come in and cook us dinner and we would all sit in the lunchroom and eat dinner together. Like it was amazing. But that's, I'm so glad you shared that, Jen, because that is exactly the experience that's still happening, where there's this mental block. We seem to think as students, if you're a high performer, oh, and you don't get that big four offer, you're a failure. And we even, I've just read a post, like there's posts like that online every every week. Somebody didn't get the big four offer they were hoping for. And now they like, do I leave accounting? Am I, am I done? And that's just totally wrong. Like there's so many amazing firms that are virtual now that you can go join that are, you know, doing incredible work. And very, I mean, if you want a 35-hour work week, you can get it at one of those firms. And I'm not saying that if you want a 70-hour work week, you can go get it too. Like everybody's offering different options, whatever fits your lifestyle that you want. And if some of this just funds and money, like, like original firms can offer dinner to their employees. And they're taking it for their employees, just like they took your view, right? But the big four can roll in with Chick-fil-A and pizza to a college campus. Right. They do have a recruiting, right? Yeah. Right. So it's like, like, it's the story's fine, but who's hearing the story if you're eating a slice of pizza? Yeah. That's paid for by somebody else. Yeah, it's tricky because I also think that it's all part of the machine, right? The college is used. Well, look at how many people joined our business school and got jobs. And if you really look at the top, like they have those like 20 companies and 15 of them are accounting firms that they're pushing people into. Because so that they use this as a way to recruit students, it's just a big machine. Yeah. In many ways, we're focusing on the wrong metrics, right? You've got firms that are focused exclusively on top line revenue. And that's not a metric that makes for a good work life balance job experience. And then you've got, you know, colleges and universities that are focused on their, I don't know what you call that metric, but, you know, they're how many of their students get into the top firms, right? And they brag about that. But that's not what makes for happy people either. It's like it doesn't consider that in the equation. So it's funny that we as accountants are focusing on the wrong numbers in so many ways. You know, I do think that the the regional firms, the middle size, the smaller firms, will be the ones to figure out the business model faster. Just because I think, you know, not only do they have, you know, they're, they're a little more agile to make those changes. Often those sorts of things are within the control of a smaller group of people. So I think they can get there quicker. But I also think that they're more incentivized to do it. Because like I said, a couple of minutes ago, the costs of people and technology and all of those things make it really hard to be successful in that, you know, small and mid size firm world. We've seen record profitability in firms for the last three or four years. I think that's going to start to get squeezed because of the data point you gave earlier where those starting salaries have really started to jump up, thank goodness. You got to give firms credit for that. They've made substantial increases. And that's not just in the first year, right? Like they have to then go and make adjustments throughout the firm. That's a huge investment that they are making. And sometimes these investments don't have to be huge. They just have to be creative. And I love this example. In accounting today, this practice profile article, it's about a firm called MIZE CPAs. They have found success in recruiting and retaining talent through creative strategies. At a college career fair, the firm offered squish malo plush toys as giveaways, which generated excitement and resulted in close to 50 to 70 resumes. David, I know having been at your house, just how much your daughter who is nearing work age loves squish malos. So they're right on it. Well, not just that. The accounting twins, the accounting twins just graduate with their accounting degrees a year ago. And they're all into those squish malos. So yeah, this is a good marketing. Yeah. Is that you say it's squish malos? Squish malos? It's like a marshmallow, but it's a, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. No, my daughter loves them too. Yeah. That's so funny. So, you know, maybe just have some, you know, good swag at your career fair booth that these younger folks want, you know, ask your kids what's, what's a good one? I think that's genius. The firm's also done a pet adoption event where they held a cutest pet contest and handed out branded swag. Other strategies include hosting bring your dog to work day and providing monthly surprise gifts to employees. Yeah, I think that's a good strategy. Really differentiate yourself from that firm where you're going to have to wearing the suit and tie. Not that there's anything wrong with that, right? If that's what you want, you want to go to New York City and you want to wear the suit and tie and walk around a skyscraper and audit Coca-Cola or whatever. I guess you'd be going to Atlanta then. But, you know, either way, right? That's great. If you want that, that's great. But if you want the family, more family atmosphere, it firms it off for that. And I think you're right, Jen. We need to, we need you to better job promoting that. That's how we keep it. Yeah. And I think you got to follow through it, right? Because they might have gotten a lot of resumes with the squish mellows. But then you've got to back it up and actually build the firm and the culture that delivers on that. Don't burn them out after two years. Yeah. Like you say goodbye to your squish mellow because you won't see it for two more years. Well, that's, that's what you use as your pillow at your desk. Are you streaming to it? Yeah, it's on you. Exactly. When you sleep under your desk. So I have a feeling. Yeah, go ahead, David. Obviously, like speaking of like image and stuff, I don't know if you saw the Cal CPA rebranded last week or the week we can have a go. And it's great. It's rebranded. But they made this video and the video is not worth playing because a lot of screenshots and this stock photography. But the very end it ends. And it says the members club for California CPAs. And I just thought that's like really great branding. It makes it like this exclusive like club. And so are you guys doing any creative marketing, Jen, to get to make it see more cool and exclusive to be in the PA society. PICPA. PIC, yeah. No, that's okay. We're actually going through rebranding right now also. So we're not quite there yet, but stay tuned. But yeah, I think we do have to update our image to be reflective of the profession we're serving. Well, I think that is a great way to wrap this up. Jen, if folks would like to connect with you online, learn more about PICPA, maybe become members. Where would you direct them? Yeah. So PICPA.org or I'm on LinkedIn. All right. And we'll have a link in the show notes. David, where can people track you down? I'm on all the socials just David Larry. And I am at Blake T. Oliver. Thanks again to everybody who joined us live as a reminder. You can follow us on YouTube. You can get notified when we go live. And we love hearing your commentary. Thanks HK, Billy, David, Aaron, Nathan, Sean, Michael, for all of your commentary. We really value it. And we listen to our members, our listeners. And we hope that all of the state societies, and now it's been the ICPA, we'll listen like Jen Prider at PICPA. Bye, everyone. Bye. Bye. Time for the class of fives. Your counting clients don't want another shiny app they have to log into. They want to be met where they live in their email inbox. Finn daily does just that. Finn daily automates the communication of key financial data by sending it to your clients inbox daily. Try Finn daily out for free at findaily.io. That's findaily.io. Sick of waiting for same day ACH transfers that stick to bank hours or paying high fees for credit cards. 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