Accounting Myths 101: Suits, Ties, and Other Lies

The Young CPA Success Show: Episode 30

“I feel like way too often when somebody hears the word accountant, they think of a man in a suit and tie sitting behind a desk just pumping out tax returns. I don’t have a suit and tie on, I am not a man, and I’m not doing tax returns. I’m in this industry having the best time of my life,” remarks Hannah Hood. This episode is all about shaking things up for the next generations of accountants! Chayton Farlee, current accountant student, shares his journey and insights, emphasizing the need for practical experience and mentorship. Hannah, Joey and Chayton discuss the evolving landscape of the accounting profession and the importance of engaging younger audiences. They highlight the importance of modernizing perceptions of accounting, leveraging technology, and proactive outreach to attract new talent.

Intro 00:00:00 Welcome to the young CPA Success Show. If you're a young accounting professional, this podcast is your ultimate guide to navigating your early career. Join us as we share valuable insights, expert advice, and practical tips to help you kickstart your path to success and excel in the accounting industry. Let's embark on this exciting accounting journey together.

Joey 00:00:23 Hannah, I don't know how you feel about this, but we have kind of organically found out over the last couple of weeks that we need to change our content creation, and it sounds like we need to start a TikTok.

Hannah 00:00:37 Yeah. Yeah. Like, I don't know how I feel about this. I have a little bit of mixed feelings about it. Like, I spend way more time than I want to admit scrolling TikTok. So, I mean, it makes sense, but yeah, like kind of putting that out into that space feels a little bit scary. But I feel like us starting this podcast felt a little bit scary in terms of starting this in this space.

Joey 00:01:00 I kind of feel a little bit like this is a very like fraternity specific reference. So, some people might not get it. But like when you're active in the fraternity and like you graduate, right? And you come back a couple of years later and you go back and you're like, oh, this is kind of the same party that I was at before, but it's not quite the same. And now I'm just the old guy who's hanging out at the college party. That's kind of how I feel when I think about us going on to TikTok. But I also think it's important because, you know, we talked a little bit about this on our upcoming podcast episode that we're recording today with Chait and Farley, who's an accounting student at the University of Pacific, California. and we did a home and home where we were on his podcast as well. It's called Accounting Conversations. I highly recommend everyone listens to that as well, because we had a really good time talking with him over the course of two days about what his experience as a student is like versus our experience.

Joey 00:01:54  And I think the thing that I learned from that is that it's our job and our responsibility to start disseminating this information in a way that is consumable by the people who we want it to be consumed by, which in in our cases, we're not making this for us. We're doing this for the next generation of people who are coming into this industry. So, I do think we're going to have to just lean into being the old guys on the podcast and just, you know, try to do a little bit more on the content side.

Hannah 00:02:23 Yeah, we're just going to have to get our get our walkers out and get on, get on the TikTok and do the thing. But I know that I am the most influenced of the influenced on TikTok. So, like, I know if it's done well, it works like there is something to be said for what you put out there and it is reaching the audience and kind of going back to our podcast episode with Geoff Barton, the storytelling aspect of how we are able to reach our audience there.

Hannah 00:02:50  But I would say the same is true for anybody listening to this podcast who's passionate about changing the way that people think of us as accountants, because I feel like way too often when somebody hears the word accountant, they think a man in a suit and tie sitting behind a desk, just pumping out tax returns. And, I don't have a student tie on. I am not a man and I'm not doing tax returns. And I'm in this industry, like having the best time of my life over here and could not have ever imagined what this would be. Whenever professors are saying to you tax or audit. So if you're passionate about that, I feel like this is an opportunity for us to like, gang up on the industry and like, put some content out there and see what change we can make.

Joey 00:03:42 Well, and, you know, I guess this is one of these days I have a feeling producer Rob's going to come in and say, hey, Joey, we're starting the 100 days. The 100-day, LinkedIn challenge.

Joey 00:03:50 We're going to have to do like 100 days' worth of LinkedIn connections and LinkedIn work, which is kind of on my personal list of things that I need to get better about. But Jaden had some really, really good tips, especially for students, about how to start distinguishing yourself earlier in your career. As somebody who's a thinker about accounting, somebody who's involved in creating community and invested in working with people and making good connections, I think that's always the thing that's the funniest about LinkedIn is it is very professional. So sometimes you do get somebody who's like, hi, I'm connecting with you because I'd like to try to sell you something.

Hannah 00:04:26 But every day.

Joey 00:04:27 Every day, please don't do that to me. I don't like please don't.

Hannah 00:04:31 But don't be that person.

Joey 00:04:32 Yeah, but like if you're like, hey, I just wanted to ask you some questions about, you know, what accounting is like. What's the world like, you know, or really start investing in those types of relationships and those types of things.

Joey 00:04:45 That's a very good thing for you to do as a student. And Jaden gave some really, good advice about how to get started with that because he is so much better at LinkedIn than I am. Like I am just terrible at it.

Hannah 00:04:57 Yeah, he is so consistent.

Hannah 00:04:58 In fact, I'm pretty sure that's how we connected is he reached out to me on LinkedIn like he had been listening to the podcast. He reached out to me there and we connected, started having conversations, and then it just really evolved into us being on his podcast and him being on ours. And now, we've been able to take advantage of tapping into his perspective. So, I'm really excited for you all to listen to what he has to say, because he really has a great perspective, because he is boots on the ground right now. And when it comes to actually being in the classroom and seeing what it's like and really giving us a lens into what is actually going on in his internship and how he's making these connections.

Hannah 00:05:39 So, I'm excited for y'all to hear what is actually going on right now and that.

Joey 00:05:44 Yeah. And start making those connections between, and especially, like, thinking about your internship with how it relates to what you learn in college because the, you know, there is a connection point and a gap that needs to be, bridged during those two things. So, the quicker you can get started on that, the quicker you can figure out what you want to be when you grow up and then tell me what I should be when I grow up, because I still don't report back. Yeah. Let us know. Let us know what you think.

Hannah 00:06:10 I'm really excited to dive into everything with you today. Thank you so much for coming here and taking time out of your day to be with us, because I know you're very, very busy, but welcome. So why don't you start by just telling us a little bit about yourself? I know we are not necessarily strangers, but I feel like we spent a lot of time talking about us when we were on your podcast.

Hannah 00:06:30 So now I want you to tell us about you.

Chayton 00:06:33 Yeah. So, I'm a junior accounting student at the University of the Pacific, so I'm just outside of the Bay area. Yeah, I kind of stumbled upon accounting after Covid. So, I originally was supposed to start school during Covid, and I didn't want to do the online thing. So, I was originally enrolled in classes, and I like I was supposed to go to Idaho to go to school and they ultimately, like, closed the borders to Idaho. So, there was no way that we were going to be able to even get to school. Then they switched it too online. I didn't want to do that. So, me and my girlfriend, who were dating at the time, ended up getting married, and then we moved from California to Utah, and I just started working and I was actually cleaning carpets. So did some carpet cleaning, did flood and restoration work, and started listening to podcasts and kind of started to learn about entrepreneurship and businesses.

Chayton 00:07:41 And so when, when Covid was over and I decided I wanted to go back to school, I knew I wanted to do something with business. So, I started doing informational interviews, kind of like an interview we're having right now, where I would talk to CEOs who my parents knew or my mother and father-in-law knew. I talked to a couple CFOs, talked to some accountants, some CEOs, and everybody said, the people who know business the best are the accountants. So, I said, hey, I don't know exactly what I want to do in business someday yet, but I'm I want to be the best at whatever I'm doing. So, I'm going to go study accounting and make sure I have that background in business to be able to move and do whatever I want. And as I started studying accounting, started learning about LinkedIn and started doing even more informational interviews with accounting professionals, I started realizing that I loved accounting in and of itself, and not just the idea Of being good at knowing businesses.

Chayton 00:08:54 so then kind of fast forward to like a year ago, maybe like eight months ago, I started finding podcasts like the young CPA Success Show, the Accounting Podcast with Blake Oliver and David Leary and a bunch of these, Jason stats, Logan Graff, a bunch of these other kind of accounting. I don't know what you would call them. Social media influencers, maybe.

Hannah 00:09:23 Are we in that category, Joey? We are influencers.

Joey 00:09:27 I'm not. I'm not influencing anything. Except, you know how to get to the fridge for my next snack here in the afternoon. But I appreciate being lumped into the the high, high company there of our good friend Blake Oliver, who we really like as a, as a, as a podcaster and a human being. Yeah.

Hannah 00:09:44 Absolutely.

Joey 00:09:45 Sorry we derailed you. No.

Hannah 00:09:46 We did. Sorry, sorry.

Chayton 00:09:48 So I started running into these people and I started realizing, like, what's going on in the accounting profession because in class they don't talk about this, right? Like in class, it's just like, oh, like accounting has been the same for the past 20 years.

Chayton 00:10:05 you just go to big four, put in your time, yada, yada. Like, there is no concept in the classroom of like, what's actually going on in the accounting world. So when I started listening to these podcasts, I'm like, oh my gosh, there's a huge shortage of accountants. Their technology is coming in and completely changing the game. And the accountants I'm hearing on podcasts and talking to, and informational interviews are making a whole lot more money than everybody's telling me in the classroom that you could do in accounting. And so, this light bulb went off in my head and I was like, oh my gosh, like, I need to help other students, like, see all these amazing things that are happening in the profession. And so, from there, I kind of decided, okay, I'm going to get really active on LinkedIn. I'm going to start commenting and being active with all these influencers. Well, I quote influencers, whatever you want to call them on LinkedIn, getting to know them, building relationships with them.

Chayton 00:11:17 And at the same time, I'm going to start creating content that can help students find these resources. and, you know, not a lot of students are on LinkedIn that might surprise some people. But I had a class last semester. I was one of like three people in a 60-person class that regularly went on LinkedIn. So, I wanted to find some other ways to be able to reach students, and I love podcasts, so that's why I started my podcast, Accounting Conversations, where I just interview and get to know accounting professionals. And it's great for me because I get to have one on one conversations with amazing people. But the main goal of it is to help young professionals see the amazing opportunities there are in the accounting industry right now, and if you only have your head stuck in your textbook and you're only listening to your professors. Granted, professors are amazing resources and they're doing great things in the classroom, but if you don't have the perspective of what's going on in the real world of accounting, I feel like you're missing out because then you only think it's tax and audit, and you think you're going to go slave away for the next, I don't know, six, seven years until you're a senior manager and you decide, okay, I'll jump ship and I'll go do something else.

Chayton 00:12:48 Now, when really there are a million different things you could go and do in the accounting industry right now and be successful at any of them because of the shortage and the amazing opportunity we have.

Joey 00:13:04 So it's really interesting you say that last piece, because that's the part that's resonating with me. And I think back to my internship, which was in 2012, I think it was when that was. But the number one thing that I remember taking away from that is like, man, there's a lot of different ways that people like earn a living for themselves, and you don't really see it until you get in there and look at these things. I still remember the best business that I ever saw, and it was a guy who was, a former, veterinary professor at K-State who moved to, you know, I think it was like Telluride or, I think it was Breckenridge. It was Breckenridge, Colorado. Moved to Breckenridge, had this great business where vets from all over the world would send him X-rays.

Joey 00:13:52 He'd spend about 3- or 4-hours reviewing X-rays. He'd spend the next 3- or 4-hours skiing. And that was his life. And I was just yeah, I was just like, that's phenomenal. Like, that sounds fantastic. But it's, you know, obviously, like you start to look and see all of the different things. And that's the thing about accounting. And look no further than our Anders website. Right. Like it used to be back in the day. To your point, Shane, you'd sit there and say, hey, here's our tax team and here's our audit team. We've got like a forensics team, we've got a legal team, we've got the CFO, we've got it. You know services. We've got all of these different areas where you can consult and learn. And I mean, it's 10 or 15 different things that you can do with your career. and I think to your point, the earlier you can start having those conversations and thinking about, what do I want my future to look like? The easier it's going to be for you to, you know, put yourself in as many opportunities as possible to make that happen.

Joey 00:14:50 So I think you're on to something with kind of getting started now.

Hannah 00:14:54 Absolutely. And I feel like part of the reason why I ended up leaving the accounting industry whenever I did it was a multitude of reasons, but I also didn't realize what all my options and my options were in this industry as well. Like, I didn't realize where it was headed, like, I, I really just didn't know, like, you don't know what you don't know at the time. And I mean, I feel like students are probably very much in that same situation right now. You know, you obviously trust what your professors are telling you. You trust that that's what it is at the time and you're not. I don't think enough students are being curious enough about what else could be out there for them in accounting, but I also think that it's a crying shame that more professors aren't also opening up their mind to what all this industry actually is right now and what it can be and where it's going. So, you you're in it like your boots on the ground for us right now in there.

Hannah 00:15:50 What do you think would change that for professors, for people in the classroom, to actually adopt a mindset of there is more to life than just tax or audit?

Chayton 00:16:02 I, I think we need to rebrand the accounting profession. you know, from a legal perspective, being a CPA allows you to sign audits and submit tax returns. There's other certifications you can get to sign off on tax returns. But, I think we need to show that the CPA is about adding value, that accounting isn't just compliance. It's really adding value to your to your client. Because a lot of businesses for the longest time just viewed paying for a CPA as, oh, I have to do this because I have to be in accordance with the law, right? But CPAs can do so much more than that. I mean, just take the CFO services, for example. The expertise that a CPA can bring to where they can help small businesses make on the spot financial decisions because they've built out what the future is going to look like.

Chayton 00:17:11 And because they have that strong foundation of accounting, they can use the historical data to make decisions. Now, but I don't think students see that. Like, I had three students last semester in one of my intermediate financial accounting classes, had like three students drop out after the class because they were like, this is too hard. I don't want to keep doing accounting anymore because this class is too hard. And you know what? The accounting courses are hard. But when you get your boots muddy and you actually do accounting work, it's fun. It's not. It's not like sitting in a class trying to hand right out an income statement and determine where the errors are. You actually get to be a part of the business and be you get to see where the money's actually going. You're not just getting some weird examples from a textbook. so, I think we need to rebrand the CPA to where it's not just about compliance, it's about adding value. But I think we also need to do better about showing students what's actually available after school.

Chayton 00:18:28 I know the Big four's focus is on tax and audit. Of course, they have their consulting arms, but I don't see very many accounting students going towards the big four for consulting. That's a lot more business analytics students I feel like nowadays. But if we could. So let me give you an example. I have an internship with a CAS firm right now. So, client accounting services, cloud accounting services, whatever acronym you want to use for CAS. Three months ago, I didn't even know CAS existed. I didn't even know what the acronym was. they don't they don't talk about CAS in your accounting classes. But that's arguably the future of accounting. If you want to work with small businesses because everything's going to be in the cloud. So, if we could do better at showing this to, you know, high schoolers who are choosing accounting, right? I can't tell you how many people I talked to who took an accounting course at the end of high school, and they like that bookkeeping course.

Chayton 00:19:38 That high school course is what set me off to wanting to do accounting. So if we could show them the exciting things like CAS consulting, virtual CFO work, IT consulting, forensic accounting, all these things that are not just tax and audit, I think we would have a lot more students that would be willing to go through the grind of accounting courses because they could see that in the end, that's not what it's going to be like every day. But when you tell students that your financial accounting class is what the rest of your accounting career is going to look like, nobody wants to do that. I mean, I wouldn't even want to do that.

Hannah 00:20:16 No, no. Not. That would be dreadful to think about that being what it actually is for the rest. So that's interesting that you're actually doing an internship right now. So, what are you learning in that? Do you feel like it's different than your classes? Do you feel like you're being able to get your hands in there and really get dirty and see what it's like.

Hannah 00:20:39 What are you experiencing with that right now?

Chayton 00:20:42 Yeah. So, I don't know a lot as a beginner accounting students. So, the firm I'm with, which is so special that they're doing this, it's almost like a mentorship program. And I'm getting paid to learn every day. Right. So, like, right now, I've been helping with a couple of tax returns for some small corporations. I've been in some dirty books that need to get cleaned up and been working with those. And I think the funniest thing that I've worked on so far that no accounting students know about, I am for sure of, is I've been able to work with some firm management software. so, like to name a few. Carbon tax dome keeper. There's another one I'm forgetting. Kanopy. So I've been able to get certified and learn about these software's, and there's a whole other side to an accounting firm than just the actual accounting work. It's the actual management of how the workflows through a firm. So obviously you have to click documents from clients

Chayton 00:21:57 You have to pass off the different work to different teams. And some team members can have access to certain documents in some can't. So you have to be able to manage who's seeing what and who's allowed to see what for legal reasons. But what's really cool is it I used to be in operations, so obviously I did the carpet cleaning and I've taken some operations courses in school. So the operating side of an accounting firm is just so interesting. Right.

Joey 00:22:29  And a lot more fun than the actual doing of an accounting firm. Let's just call it what it is.

Chayton 00:22:34  Yeah, 100% it. It's so fun to see workflow through a firm. You know, you have reviewers and you have actual people who are working on the tax return. You have actual people who are doing the payroll or doing the bookkeeping, and that's a side of accounting they also never talk about in school. Like I think they just assume, and you know, not everybody's going to do this. So I don't know why they assume it, but they assume everybody's going to go straight to the top, go work at a big four or a top, you know, 20 firm, and you will never work in the operations side of the accounting firm because they don't even hire accounting staff to do that at those big firms.

Chayton 00:23:19 But if you go own your own firm or you go work for a five-person firm, you're going to be a part of the operations every single day. You must know how the workflows through a firm Well.

Joey 00:23:33  And even if you aren't involved in it, having an understanding of like for instance, a budget, right, like that was the first thing that they didn't teach us in school that I learned in the tax shop is like, hey, you've got a budgeted amount of time because there's only so much we can build for it, and we have to have this much time for review and this much time for work out, and we've got to pay you and we've got to pay everybody else to do it. So, like, here's the amount of time that you need to get this in. They never once talk about that in school. You learn that the hard time and the sad part is there's no way to learn about a budget until you blow your first one. It's kind of your your accounting rite of passage that you've got to get yelled at by the partner in charge for blowing the budget on a on a project.

Joey 00:24:12 But like, you know, that's part of the game. That's part of the gig. But to your point, if you can get people to understand that relationship early and it speaks not just to operations but resourcing, I mean, I can't tell you how many times we have conversations internally in the firm about resourcing I'm actually supposed to be in a meeting right now talking about resourcing. This is taking precedence as it should. But, you know, when we talk about resourcing, how many people do you even need to get this work done? And a lot of times you don't, you know, a lot of that sort of I mean, we might gatekeeping it a little bit where there's kind of like you've got to you've got to be in the trenches a little bit to get kind of given this knowledge. But I do think some exposure to it at the student level would be really helpful, just so people understand what they're getting themselves into. So, then, you know, my dad and this was the number one piece of advice he gave me in my career that I had like blatantly ignored, because I didn't know any better.

Joey 00:25:13 Yeah, I didn't know any better. Sorry, dad. but he had said, you know, you can sell. There are two things you can sell in your life. You can sell your time, or you can sell your product. And he was always saying you need to figure out a product to sell, because nobody is going to value your time the way that you do, and I didn't know what that meant until I got into a billable hour type situation and being told, hey, I don't think your time is worth as much as you do really hurts. But that's why you see firms like our kind of trying to. We talk about it with our creative agencies to productize your service. Right? What are we trying to do? We are trying to turn our time into a product that people are buying. That's the whole idea behind class. So, it's all related. And to your point, the quicker you can get exposed to it, the better and the more informed decision you can make as a student.

Hannah 00:26:07 Yeah. And finding whenever you're exposed to that, finding somebody who's been there and done that mentorship is such a big deal. So, Treyton I love that you're getting that exposure through your internship like that is insanely valuable. I think about to my internship was with the Native American tribe that my family is a part of, and the CFO There. He took me under his wing and like, he let me see, backstage, really what goes on during the audit. What goes on during the day to day during on the governmental side, on the gaming side of what they got to do. Like, I really get to pop the hood and see how it all worked. And that was so exciting for me. And I think that really did help, like opening my eyes to all the possibilities of what it could be for me and like what I liked and what I didn't like. I learned a lot through that relationship, but finding a good mentor can be hard. One way that I've seen people find mentors and I know, like I have mentors that probably don't even realize they're a mentor to me because I just follow them on LinkedIn and think of them as a mentor as of such.

Hannah 00:27:13 but one thing, you are great at it, Jaden, is LinkedIn. You mentioned that earlier and you're so consistent and you are great at networking there, and I feel like that could be insanely valuable for our audience. So, I want you to talk a little bit more about that in terms of the approach that you take to that, because you can find mentors there, you can find job opportunities there. You can create a brand for yourself, which is exactly what I think that you're doing. So, I'd love to hear more about that.

Chayton 00:27:40 Yeah, I haven't been so consistent over the past a week with all my exams, but fair enough. I, I don't know, I it kind of just I kind of stumbled upon it. I don't feel like it was something I like, took a course on or had someone explain straight out to me. But I think what it all goes back to me is relationships. So I hate social media. Me and Joey probably have that in common.

Joey 00:28:09 Like I'm so bad at it.

Chayton 00:28:12 I haven't been on Instagram or any of that stuff since I got married. Like I got married. I have no reason to be on those platforms like it. What's the point of Instagram nowadays. Like in my opinion, like it just, I'm going to go compare myself to the best version of everybody else all the time.

Hannah 00:28:34 Like it's a curse and a blessing. Like it? Like I love social media because the sake of I have a family that lives all over the country. So, like for me, having kids, like I'm able to post there and like for my friends that are way off, like it's from the connection side of it. Like I love it for that reason, but it can be. There are evils to it as well. And comparison is absolutely one of those things.

Chayton 00:29:00 Yeah. And I'm, I don't know, I'm the type of person where if I'm friends with you and you don't have my phone number and you haven't messaged me in a few years, like I'm not going to respond to a Facebook message if you have my phone number, like, I don't know.

Chayton 00:29:16 So LinkedIn I see from a completely different lens than social media. Like, I don't even want to call it social media because I don't feel like that's what it is for me. For me, it's a platform where one I go to learn and to I go to build relationships with others. And I do that first by adding value to others and then hopefully through informational interviews or through podcasts or through getting to know them at a conference or whatnot. Like later this year, I'm going to be going to the Bridging the Gap Conference by Tri merritt in Chicago. So, I'm going to get to meet a ton of the people that I've gotten to know on LinkedIn. But it it's got to be all about building relationships. So, I saw this quote, and I'm going to butcher it because I can't remember exactly where it was from, but it essentially was in this age of consumption where we're constantly consuming media, whether it's YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, what am I doing to be a producer in that consumer environment.

Chayton 00:30:28 So, am I adding to the environment or am I just sucking everything out of it? And that really hit me because I want to be able to have an influence and an impact on the world. So that's why I started creating content on LinkedIn, because I don't really know any other accounting students on LinkedIn who are creating consistent content about how to do everything. So, I mean, I create content about how to use LinkedIn, how to do informational interviews. I've talked about some of the more modern firms like summit Virtual CFO. and you do that consistently over time and people start to notice. But LinkedIn is a little different other than other platforms, because commenting and being active on other people's content actually makes a big impact. So Writing good comments on other people's posts is almost more valuable than writing your own post, because more people see it.

Joey 00:31:31  So like if it is funny, I like that because like Hannah and I talk about sports all the time, and it's like when I think about the best, the best teammates I've ever had, it's always the people who come and say, I'm going to give as many high fives as I receive on the bench.

Joey 00:31:45 And that's kind of how LinkedIn is. It's like if you're it's more beneficial for you to give a high five to someone else, either through a collaborative conversation or, you know, anything that you're bringing that to. Your point is adding some value to it. It creates a it's a real democratization of the space, which I enjoy. It's not just, you know, all about trying to find the cloud. It's about how do we make the make sure that it's good. I like that.

Chayton 00:32:11 Yeah. So, like if I go and comment on one of Hannah's posts, all of her followers are going to see that comment. And Hannah has more followers than I do. So, if I'm just posting all the time, my post isn't going to get seen by as many people, but not only from that algorithm strategy, but from a just adding value standpoint. When you comment on people's posts, you're able to bring more traffic to their posts. But not only that, if you're actually knowledgeable in the topic, you're able to add value to others and add to the conversation, which for me is what LinkedIn has become.

Chayton 00:32:55 So I can't scroll LinkedIn anymore. If I'm going through my LinkedIn feed, I'm commenting on as many posts as I feel like I can comment on. Right? Just scrolling and liking like you do on Facebook or on Instagram. It doesn't. That doesn't work on LinkedIn. And that shouldn't be the purpose of LinkedIn. Like, I don't go on LinkedIn to go like all my friends achievements and see what they're doing. I go on LinkedIn to add value to others and to learn. And when it switched from being a social media platform to being this learning and adding value platform, it completely changed for me. And you get over the fear of posting and sending cold DMs really fast. So, you know, students are always scared like, oh, I'm going to send a DM to someone and they're probably way too busy and don't want to respond to me. If they don't answer, who cares? The worst thing that can happen is that they just don't answer. And the best thing that happens is that you make a connection with somebody that ends up getting you an internship or getting you a job, or maybe they just become a good friend of yours down the road.

Chayton 00:34:08 I feel like that's another mistake that students make is they also see LinkedIn as transactional. I'm going to make these connections so that I can get a job, when really it should be about building real relationships, because more relationships can last over a whole lifetime. But just being transactional, that's a that's a onetime message. That's a onetime situation. But I'm trying to build a network of people that, throughout the next 40 or 50 years of my career, can be a resource and a friend to me throughout all of those years.

Hannah 00:34:48 we definitely live in a what's in it for me? Society in general. Like whenever we look at things, whenever we transact with anything, we're generally looking at it as, hey, like, I want something out of this too. And I love your perspective of putting value into the world and not really worrying about what you're going to get out of that in the long run. Because like, like you said, like sometimes that just takes time to develop and just compound on itself.

Hannah 00:35:16 It just it starts out small and it's just going to continue to snowball and grow. And I'm sure at some point you will get something out of it, if you haven't already, over time. But that may not be immediate. We are also an instant gratification society. Thank you, Amazon Prime. And so it may not be two days turnaround time whenever you're going to get something out of what you're doing. But I feel like generally speaking you're going to be able to get something out of that. I know you mentioned that you feel like not a ton of students are on LinkedIn or taking advantage of that platform. So that being said, like in general with us trying to change the way that especially students think about us as accountants. Do you feel like you're reaching some people, maybe, you know, inadvertently there, or do you feel like it's more through your podcasts? Like where do you feel like is the best place to try to tap into that? And like asking for a friend in terms of how we can best reach these people.

Hannah 00:36:18 Just saying.

Joey 00:36:19 The friend is me. She's much better at LinkedIn than I am.

Chayton 00:36:24 I, I wish that professors were more active on LinkedIn, because I feel like professors have a real special way of connecting. I mean, professors are in the trenches with students every day. So if professors were coming on shows like Virtual Summit CFO.

Joey 00:36:45 We're working on that. By the way, getting some professors on here, because I agree with you, by the way. They're speaking of bridging the gaps. They're the ones who we have entrusted to bridge the gap between student and industry, right? Whether that industry is public accounting or industry accounting, we're relying on them to bridge the gap. So yeah. Yeah, that's huge for us.

Chayton 00:37:05 Yeah. So having professors that could be in the know on LinkedIn and then the students can say, hey, I have this professor that has 10,000 connections. I can go and connect with almost anybody in the accounting industry now because I'm connected with them, which allows me to connect with any of their connections.

Chayton 00:37:29 that would be one way. I've slowly but surely been able to connect with more students by looking in non-accounting places, which is kind of interesting. So, I've tried to post on, you know, maybe groups on LinkedIn that have a lot of students in them and all students, not just accounting students. And then from there tried to target specific accounting students. But that's a good question of how we can go out and find the young students because, you know, it's hard. I've tried TikTok as well. So, I don't know if you guys.

Joey 00:38:12 Make I was going to bring that up.

Hannah 00:38:14 That's a good point.

Joey 00:38:15 And I think it's interesting because, like, when I think about my social media usage, I'll never get off the app formerly known as Twitter because that's what came up when I was coming up. And that's where else are I going to get these super awesome K state sports takes out into the universe for the 55 people who follow me to consume, but a lot of it has to do with, like, what your native tongue is when it comes to social media.

Joey 00:38:39 And I, I like a lot of stuff about TikTok. I think TikTok is great because it a forces you as a content creator to get to your thesis very, very quickly. Right? You've got 60s realistically at max to get your point across. If you can do it in 30, it is even better. Accountants are not typically known for doing that, so that's a challenge for us. The thing that's interesting to me about TikTok, and this is the part that's hard, is I look at a lot of a lot of TikTok and, you know, Instagram shorts and YouTube shorts and there's a lot of information out there that's just not any good. there's some I mean I love real estate but man real estate TikTok is unhinged.

Chayton 00:39:23 It's crazy.

Joey 00:39:24 It is sad tactics they tell people. I'm like what are you doing. Don't put your land in an S corporation please. For the love of God don't do that. But no, they're going to do it because somebody told them to on TikTok.

Chayton 00:39:38 So buy G-wagon, buy the G-wagon and write it off.

Joey 00:39:42 Exactly. And that's not a new phenomenon, by the way. I used to have tax guys that I would this is this is a true story from back in 2013. There was a farmer that I was working with who had a good year on the farm, which those don't happen often. So, as we say in the farm industry, you make hay when the sunshine. And so we were making some hay because the sun was shining. And he looked at his tax bill and he said, well, I think I'm just going to go buy. This is when like the brand new like, remember when Ford kind of redesigned the F-150 and they had like the sweet cover on the back and it was like a tougher looking truck. Every farmer was buying the new Ford F-150, and I remember looking at the guy and saying, like, look, do you need the truck? No, I just don't want to pay taxes. I'd rather have a new truck. And I'm like, okay, so let me.

Joey 00:40:27 I was like, why don't you just pay me the $70,000, I'll give you $30,000 back. Would you do that? And he was like, well, no, I'd never do that. And I was like, that's what you're doing right now. Pay the 35 and be done with it and save your money for something else. Because we made hay this year and guess what? We might not next year. So save that money and couldn't get it across. So he ended up. And of course we went out, bought not only to buy one truck, he bought three of them

Hannah 00:40:57 Jeez.

Joey 00:40:57 Yeah, that he didn't even need. And that's what I'm like, what are we what are we doing here guys. so yeah, that's not a new phenomenon. But what is new is the ability for anybody to go out and tell people to do that. And your situation might not be exactly the same as that person's situation, and you might have an adverse outcome. We see a lot with 1031 exchanges, too.

Joey 00:41:20 Lots of people love to talk about 1030 ones. There's a very specific set of criteria that has to be hit to do a 1031. Sorry, this kid that got very into accounting. But the idea behind it is, you know, I get nervous whenever I see TikTok because I'm like, I'm glad people are engaging in it, but how do you make sure that the information is of such a quality that its where it needs to be? And I guess that's where I'm looking at the professionals in the room, not gonna look at myself because I'm not one of those, but the professionals in the room. It's incumbent upon us to start kind of putting some of that good content out there and saying, hey, here's something you can actually act upon from somebody with a credential to support it.

Hannah 00:42:00 So Joey's basically saying, we're starting a TikTok. That's what that's what I hear you saying. We're going to be on TikTok. Is that what it is?

Joey 00:42:07 Producer Rob in the background is just like shaking his head

Joey 00:42:10 Roxanne, Roxanne is doing high fives. because she's been talking about TikTok the whole time. You know, I do think it's important. I think that's important from our perspective. And to not be curious to hear your thoughts on this. I think it's our job as the old heads in the room to disseminate the information to the students in a way that's digestible for the students. We should not expect the students to come to us. It's our job to go to them. And I think that is something that gets missed in a lot of those situations. As we see with management all the time. It's not my job as a manager to force you to come to my way of management. No, it's my job to learn about who you are. Learn about what makes you go and adjust my style accordingly. And I think the same should happen with information dissemination.

Chayton 00:43:00  Yeah I so I post I did bad this past week, but my goal is to do a short clip of my podcast every single day on TikTok, because TikTok is I guess the algorithm is funky in that if you start loading up days in a row, it like your algorithm can like go crazy.

Chayton 00:43:23 But I've never hit that point yet. But I feel like if every pot there's, you know, probably 30 or 40 really good accounting podcasts right now, if each one of them just took a one minute clip from one of their episodes and posted it a couple of times a week, I wonder how many accounting students who are just or prospective accounting students who are on the fence, or either wondering what it's really like, could maybe see a glimpse of light, or see something that could change their perspective on it, because that's the whole thing that needs to change And this is what it all goes back to, is the perspective around accountants is so wrong. And that's why we have the pipeline issue, right. And the underpayment of accountants and the overworking of them is a part of that. But that leads to the perspective of accountants are boring and accountants don't get paid enough. You look at consultants right now, consultants only have to get a four-year degree. From their words, they're doing crazy awesome stuff for companies because they're transforming businesses, and they get paid double what accounting grads are making after they get their master's degree and after they take the super hard CPA exams.

Chayton 00:44:57 So if I'm a.

Joey 00:44:58  Student and have to do the fifth year too, which is a problem like the fifth year in a lot of cases is prohibitive. I mean, if you're if you don't, you know, if you're like my wife who didn't have any support in college from family. Like. Not only are you not going into the workforce, but you're also paying $30,000 a year for the privilege of just being able to get that extra year to even sit for the exam?

Chayton 00:45:19 Yeah. So, if I'm a prospective student right now and my budget's tight and I'm super excited about making a difference right off the bat, because Gen Z has a lot of that good and bad. Yeah. Why would I go into accounting instead of going into consulting and.

Joey 00:45:39  Well, and even just like, not even just consulting to I mean, we see it a lot with tech, right? Tech is the number one thing that kind of got in the way of accounting over the last ten years. And it makes perfect sense.

Joey 00:45:48  Right. You look at I'm thinking, Hannah, I have this wonderful idea for, you know, and again, the Gen Zers roll your eyes. I mean, it's fine. I'm old, I get it, it's cool. But like those get ready with me videos right about, like, getting ready to do your day. I mean, I wonder how different it would be if people saw that in order for me to get ready for the day. I literally roll out of bed, go to my go to my closet, throw on a t shirt, walk to my office, and I'm there. It's like it literally, you can do the whole thing in 35 seconds.

Hannah 00:46:16  I think that's great content that we should put out into the world.

Joey 00:46:19  I think we should. You'll see my cats on it. Everyone's going to be very happy. But like, it's it is so different from, like, my dad and my mom's version of accounting where, like, you know, you literally wore a suit and tie to work every day.

Joey 00:46:33  And it was not only a suit and tie, but it's also here's my 45-minute commute in traffic, like when I was living in Dallas. Like, even on a good day, it was 45 minutes, and I was paying $5.35. One way to go on the tollway for the privilege of doing that 45-minute commute. It's just so different now than it was. And you're 100% correct. It's a perception problem. We like to think we're pretty cool. that's debatable. I mean, I think I'm cool. Hannah's got a group a a group of young guys who, like, keep us young and tell us all the hip lingo and everything.

Hannah 00:47:08 I'm trying to keep us young.

Joey 00:47:09 Trying to keep us young. But like, yeah, that's we need to have more content showing what an actual day looks like. for everybody, not just for, like, us, but like what it could be like. Here's what an internet day looks like. Here's what a senior accountant's day looks like. Here's what a CFO in our virtual CFO practices life looks like it's very different from what you think.

Chayton 00:47:34 Well, and even going. Going back to consulting and the tech problem where they're taking the talent and or accounting isn't retaining it. Why don't we show that accounting has tech and has consulting in it? Like, yeah, if you choose to shape your career the way you want to, you can be a personal consultant for multiple businesses as a CFO, you can be in tech through these accounting software's that helps automate the workflow. Like I love tech and that has been so exciting for me, seeing how I can use automations in accounting, because when you look at your uncle who's an accountant who has an office in downtown, you know, whatever Rinky dink town and has a stack of papers as high as the Eiffel Tower on his desk. You don't think that accountants are using tech? So, if we can get the things that these Gen Zers are already excited about and show them that accounting is full of it, how would they not be interested in accounting? And then you add the icing on the cake that there's a shortage right now, and your salary and your opportunities, if you decide to be an entrepreneur, are even higher than in tech and consulting, where it's saturated and already full of too many people.

Joey 00:49:08 I mean, that's the big thing that we're not talking about is, you know, the owners are accounting owners' trend older than any other type of organization in there that that we see out there. And you're right. People don't think about that's where they're going to go in. And it's funny because when I had first our first conversations with the owners of summit before, before the merger with Anders happened, the very first thing they told me was like, yeah, we don't really see ourselves as an accounting company. We're a tech company. We just do tech in accounting. And there, you know, the other thing too, that I think we're not doing a great job as accountants and maybe it's, you know, different for us, Hannah, because of our, our roles. But I feel like it's pretty consistent across most of our companies. Like I have complete control over my calendar. You know, I put into advance I got to give myself a couple weeks lead time here.

Joey 00:50:02 But like I put into advance in my calendar, an hour and a half every day where it's like that is dedicated time on my calendar for me to do workouts, exercising, running, lifting, cycling, whatever it happens to be. I know other people put in like kid drop off, kid pick up like Hanna. That's a huge thing for you, right? That's something that is very different in 2024 than it was even in 2015 when the expectation of an accountant was like no, no, no. You get to your desk at eight, you leave your desk at five or 7 or 9. In certain cases, if it's busy season and that's just your existence, you are chained to this desk for you. And that's just not how it has to be at all. I love the fact that, you know, I'm looking right now at my I'm pointing at my office computer that I can take with me anywhere. I have a portable laptop monitor those fits in a backpack that's about the size of your standard school backpack.

Joey 00:50:58 And with those two tools, I can do my job with 100% effectiveness from anywhere that I have reliable internet. The freedom that that gives someone, especially. I'm thinking about myself in my 20s, like when I was trying to figure out where I wanted to live. I didn't know where I wanted to live. When I was 25 years old, I was just like, I just wanted a job. But if you have that wanderlust or you want to do that van life thing, which I have this, like really weird fascination with van life, I could see myself doing that at some point. I'm a little bit. I'm too big for a van. It would have to be like a modified sprinter.

Hannah 00:51:32 Unless they get a school bus and like, redo it, you know.

Joey 00:51:35 Something like that. Yeah, yeah. The idea of doing that and saying like, look, we're just going to do this. And then, you know, I just log on for work for like eight hours a day, and then I just go play on the beach that I'm parked at.

Joey 00:51:45 Like, that's incredible. And you could have that life tomorrow if you wanted it in this organization. And I think we're not telling people that enough.

Hannah 00:51:55 Yeah. And I think one of the things for me, when presented with tax or audit. Especially looking at the big four, was the construction of me having to move potentially to one of these larger metropolitan areas, and that just did not at all appeal to me. I was like, I mean, I want to do a county, but I don't want to do it there. Like so that's just like not even going to be an option for me. So, I feel like maybe that just absolutely, funneled maybe some of what I thought that I could do at the time too. So, I think that there is so, so much that clearly that we need to get out into the accounting world, starting with students. So, I would say for our listeners listening to this, if you're taking away things from this podcast, I would say, number one, go follow Jason's podcast where he's having these conversations because we're.

Joey 00:52:45 Going to be on there at some point. I don't know, I don't know what your release is. If you can hear us for sure.

Hannah 00:52:50 That's right. Exactly. Absolutely. Get more LinkedIn, more active on LinkedIn. I think that is a takeaway from this conversation. And we've also got to start a TikTok. Like that's clearly a takeaway for me from this conversation. Yeah. Because I feel like your point is that if everybody who is passionate about this, where to put some short form video content out into the world and meet us, our listeners where they're at and the people who we are targeting, where they are at. What a change we might see in this industry. It might be a ripple effect. And that makes me kind of excited to see if we could prove the theory right and at least put some out there and see what happens.

Chayton 00:53:35 Yeah, I love that. I think one more thing that I could add to this, that maybe if there's any accounting firm owners out there who are listening is find ways to get to campuses to speak to students, and that doesn't mean you have to be on campus.

Chayton 00:53:54 at my previous institution Brigham Young University, Idaho. We had a virtual meeting with an accounting firm, either owner or several people from the accounting firm, every single week of the semester.

Hannah 00:54:08 That's awesome.

Chayton 00:54:09 And it can be a 20-minute call. And, you know, maybe you even threw a senior manager and a couple of associates on the call. You don't even have to put a partner on there. But being able to show the diversity of different accounting firms that are out there, instead of just letting the big local firms and the big four run the show at all of these universities, let's get the smaller firms out there and have them talk to the students all the time. I mean, Joey, I know you're involved with the high schools around where you're at with students all the time.

Joey 00:54:45 All the time.

Chayton 00:54:46 If more professionals were doing that, I think that even means more than just seeing something on TikTok.

Joey 00:54:53 Right Well that's I mean I know that's a big part of the, the Anders mission too is you know we have groups that go out to, to colleges and stuff too.

Joey 00:55:02 And it's, it's hard right. Because you know firms you look at it back to that old value proposition. Right. There's and I could spend an hour doing billable work, or I could spend an hour investing in my future. And the needs of the present always take precedence over the needs of the future. But we can't have that be the case anymore. We've got to go out there and start changing some things. And it's to your point, it involves talking with people you know honestly before they start making those decisions. Because how many kids do you talk to? Like not like young kids, right. Like the very first thing I say, I want to be a firefighter. I want to be a doctor. I want to be, you know, you know, I was I wanted to be a marine biologist. That was my thing when I was like eight years old. But no one's ever like, I want to be an accountant.

Hannah 00:55:47 No.

Joey 00:55:48 It's never it's just never comes across anybody's mind that way.

Joey 00:55:51 So, we've got to start in sectioning people with that earlier in saying it. And I guess maybe that's my parting message for, for all of us, our students and Gen Z leaders and even the future generations to like, I am fully aware at 37 that y'all are the future. Like this. We can shape this can be shaped however it is you want to shape it. Like we're going to need to take some cues from that. It's our job to be open and receptive to change which older generations have historically not experienced. I hope we're different as millennials. As the millennials start moving into leadership positions, we remember how frustrating it was to want things like work life balance and frankly, get laughed out of rooms when we talked about it. And now it's something that's the real thing that people talk about. We don't know what's important to y'all, but we want to know, we want you to tell us. We want you to help us, help you shape the world that you want.

Joey 00:56:52 so that's how you to your point about wanting to get involved early. That's how you can get involved early as a as a Gen-Z student is tell us what you need to see from your career and ask us, how are you going to make sure that can happen at this job? It's our job to make it happen.

Hannah 00:57:10 I love that I feel like that is such a great place to end. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast with us and chatting with us. If our listeners want to connect with you outside of this, what is the best way for them to do that?

Chayton 00:57:23 LinkedIn. You can send me a message. I'll respond. I've changed the hyperlink. So, it's just chat and Farley. So, if you I think if you just put LinkedIn slash chat and Farley, I think it comes up. but my podcast is also on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and on YouTube. So, you can find the Accounting Conversations podcast at any of those places as well.

Hannah 00:57:52 So yeah, we'll be sure we put all of that in the show notes as well.

Hannah 00:57:56 So that way people can click on that and just find that really easily. so thank you so much for your doing for our industry chat. And I feel like we need more people like you to have these conversations and put good out into the world, with no expectation of anything in return. So, you're a gem. You're you are awesome. So, thank you. That's right, that's right.

Chayton 00:58:20 Well, thank you so much. And I love what you guys are doing here for young CPAs and what summit's doing. Because it's really helping the wave of change flow through accounting. So, it makes a big difference.

Hannah 00:58:34 Awesome. Thanks.

Joey 00:58:36 Thank you.

Outro 00:58:37 If you're a young CPA looking to develop in their careers, we're always looking for great people. Visit our website for remote work opportunities with Summit Virtual CFO, or find all our open positions at Anders CPAs and advisors.