Joey takes this episode solo, interviewing Microsoft MVP Certified Trainer and Founder of Excel University, Jeff Lenning. They delve into the critical role of Excel skills for young accounting professionals. Joey shares personal experiences, highlighting the gap between college education and workplace Excel demands. Agreeing with Joey, Jeff discusses the inadequacies in Excel education and outlines his company’s comprehensive training program.
“I was stressed out, cranky, grouchy, and missing family events. That was the catalyst for me to figure out how to get Excel to do all the things I was doing manually.” – Jeff Lenning
The finer details of this episode:
Episode resources:
Timestamps:
Introduction to the Podcast (00:00:00)
The hosts welcome listeners to "The Young CPA Success Show" and introduce the topic of Excel skills.
Excel in Early Careers (00:00:22)
Discussion on how college education often leaves graduates unprepared for Excel demands in accounting.
Feedback from Employers (00:00:54)
Employers express concerns about the Excel skills of recent graduates and the need for better training.
Excel Training at Summit Virtual CFO (00:01:59)
Insights into how Summit Virtual CFO addresses Excel skill gaps through dedicated training resources.
Course Structure for Excel Training (00:03:19)
An overview of the comprehensive six-course Excel training designed to prepare accounting professionals.
Genesis of Excel Skills in Auditing (00:04:43)
The importance of organizing data in audits and its relation to Excel skills developed during careers.
Challenges of Legacy Workbooks (00:05:36)
Discussion on the inefficiencies of using outdated Excel workbooks and the need for improvement.
Importance of Continuous Improvement (00:06:48)
The necessity of enhancing workbooks to reduce time spent on monthly closes and improve efficiency.
Excel's Longevity in Business (00:09:57)
Exploration of why Excel remains a dominant tool in business despite advancements in technology.
Excel's Versatility Beyond Accounting (00:12:48)
Personal anecdotes on using Excel for non-business projects, showcasing its broad applicability.
Half-Marathon Training in Excel (00:14:00)
Discussion on planning personal projects like training schedules and vacations using Excel.
First Half-Marathon Experience (00:15:24)
Speaker shares their experience of completing their first half-marathon and the challenges faced.
Maintaining Training Structure (00:16:13)
Importance of having structured training plans to stay motivated and consistent in exercise routines.
Here are the extracted timestamps and their titles in chronological order:
Running Routine and Energy Boost (00:17:48)
Discussion on morning runs and their impact on daily energy levels.
Exercise and Career Structure (00:19:10)
Connecting running routines to creating structure in professional engagements.
Discipline and Goal Setting (00:20:16)
The importance of discipline, planning, and setting goals in both running and career.
Value of Preparation Over the Race (00:20:21)
Emphasizing that the real value lies in preparation, not just completing the race.
Community Support in Races (00:22:50)
Highlighting the joy and community support experienced during marathons.
Excel University Overview (00:23:59)
Introduction to Excel University and its development over the past 12 years.
CPE Credits and Practical Skills (00:26:10)
Importance of practical skills in CPE courses for CPAs.
Evolution of CPE Training (00:27:37)
Discussion on the shift from traditional CPE classes to modern, interactive formats.
Course Structure and Support (00:28:35)
Overview of the blended learning approach in Excel courses, combining videos and live support.
Future of Excel with AI Integration (00:32:47)
Predictions on how Excel will evolve with AI technologies and user support features.
Microsoft Copilot Introduction (00:34:23)
Exploration of Microsoft Copilot as a native AI tool enhancing user experience in Excel.
Running and Music Preferences (00:35:59)
Discussion about music and nature during running, highlighting personal preferences.
Engaging the Mind While Running (00:37:05)
Speakers talk about using running time to think and develop ideas.
Favorite Podcasts (00:39:13)
Introduction of the "All In" podcast as a new favorite for engaging discussions.
Excel University Resources (00:40:26)
Information about Excel University courses and a free CPE course for CPAs.
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 00:00:22 Well, I'm glad that we're talking about Excel, because one of the things that that I've sort of noticed in, in my career is that I think if you were to ask me ten years ago, like, what did college leave me the most unprepared for? It was the amount of Excel that I was going to need to use early in my career in public accounting. And I know it's changed a lot in 15 years, but it still kind of feels the same. First kind of question to kind of get our juices flowing on Excel a little bit, what do we get right about training people on Excel and what do we get wrong?
Jeff 00:00:54 That's interesting. So, first of all, I've also heard from employers that the Excel skills coming out of college is not where it needs to be.
Jeff 00:01:07 In other words, college doesn't adequately prepare accountants and finance folks for the real world, for them for their jobs. So it's actually interesting because I do have several accounting professors at colleges who teach their accounting class, and they are like, I know I'm not the Excel person to teach these kids, but they need to know it so they'll actually have them register for my classes so that they can better be prepared. And so, the feedback we're getting from those students and from those professors is like, when they go to interview, they're locked because their Excel skills are so above other people who are interviewing. And then, you know, a couple of years into their job, they stand apart amongst their peers also because of their Excel skills. So, in this profession, Excel skills are definitely a thing that they are looking for.
Joey 00:01:59 And not only is it a thing, I'll kind of pull the curtain back on how we do things at Summit Virtual CFO by Anders we identified that a long time ago that, like having a great tech stack and a well-designed Excel template, is, I would say, probably the most important thing that we do with our forecasting and stuff.
Joey 00:02:19 And we actually hired a number of people, and we have a whole department in our division that is dedicated to just kind of helping us solve that gap of Excel. And I thought I was good. And then I met Jake and Steve and Colin and Max and Martin in our IT departments, like, no, no, no, no, those guys are those guys are sorcerers. I'm just I'm just a guy messing around with some formulas. So, it's definitely something that businesses notice and, and schools notice. And I'm glad that you, your kind of using Excel University to fill the gap a little bit in terms of getting people prepared. You mentioned kind of a professor not knowing how to do it. That really mirrored my experience in college when I was, I think it was a finance class where we had to do some Excel modeling, and I was like, do you know what I'm doing? So, I'm glad that kind of filling the gap. What when you design these courses, what skills are you most honing in on in today's world? How are you using Excel today and what are you teaching around?
Jeff 00:03:19 Yeah, that's really good.
Jeff 00:03:20 So, basically there's six courses and I think of them as like one great big course. But you know, it takes like one year per course. So, it took me six years to build the content. Right. Because I go pretty in depth. You know, some of the Excel training you'll see online is really surface level. But I take people very deeply. So, in any event they're kind of six courses. And so, I really I basically looked at all the Excel things that helped me automate my monthly close. So, all the actual useful, practical, relevant Excel features. And so, I built this huge Excel workbook that was like, okay, I need to talk about all these things, but I can't talk about pivot tables till I talk about tables I can't talk about. So, there's all these like prerequisites. So, I actually laid out all the topics in what I think to be like the exact right order. And then so I teach them in those six courses. So, it's everything from overall workbook design, thinking about automating recurring processes to formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, Power Query like VBA macros, like that whole kind of gamut.
Jeff 00:04:34 And I released them in kind of the order that is like low hanging automation fruit all the way to kind of, you know, the more challenging things.
Joey 00:04:43 And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I thought I read from your bio that you got your start in Arthur Andersen's audit practice. Is that correct?
Jeff 00:04:50 That is correct.
Joey 00:04:51 So, thinking about like it makes like the genesis of that really makes sense when I think about what we're trying to do in an audit. Right. Like when you think about an audit work paper or any type of work paper, really, you're taking a set of data and then you're just organizing it in a way, and you're testing it to see if it makes sense. You're either going to do a full test or a sample or whatever it happens to be, but it's all kind of the same. Genesis, right? I've got a bunch of data, a bunch of raw stuff that's just sitting here, and that data doesn't become information until I organize it in a manner that allows me to make a decision from it, so I can totally see the genesis of how that sort of started and where it ended up.
Joey 00:05:29 What did you take from your audit career that is really leading you to to where you are now?
Jeff 00:05:36 Yeah. So, here's the thing. So, I came, you know, I'm a CPA and I went through this traditional route of, you know, university big six or big four and then on to industry. But I learned that accounts loved the delay method. Do it like last year, right?
Joey 00:05:52 My goodness. Yes, yes.
Jeff 00:05:54 Or you know, the Sally method. Same as last year. Whatever. There's tons of other acronyms. And so, it's kind of like, you know, at Andersen it was like, how did we do this last year? I'm just going to use the same approach. And so for like certain things, that's a great recipe for success. But like with Excel, it definitely is not like if I inherit this workbook that my manager did and maybe my managers. Right. Well, this is like a workbook that's been in place doing this thing for like ten years.
Jeff 00:06:23 Well, there's been updates to Excel and there are better, more powerful, more automated ways to do things. And so, it's like I need to really be focused on how do I improve this workbook to get it done faster, because it's kind of like we're time pressured, we're deadline prompted. And so, when we get to a deadline, it's kind of like, I just need to get this done. How do I do it before? And we're not.
Joey 00:06:46 And I don't want to break it.
Jeff 00:06:48 Yeah, I don't want to break it. Yeah. I don't want to say, like, how do I get this done? It's just like, I just need to get it done. and so, I just think that that's very interesting because if you actually take the time to improve the workbooks, that's when things are going to change. And so you're not going to spend two weeks doing a monthly close, you know, you can get it down to two days, those kinds of efficiencies.
Joey 00:07:09 Well, and I love that idea too of the Dele method or the Sally method, whatever acronym you want to use.
Joey 00:07:14 There's an inherent assumption in that method that the person who did it before you did it, right?
Jeff 00:07:20 Yes.
Joey 00:07:20 And it's like if we even think about whether that was the right way to do it or not. I mean, if you don't know what to do and you're a young staff person and you don't, you're not literate in Excel. Yeah, you're going to default to, well, this person structurally in this organization, I've been told this is a person I can trust. They have moved up. Clearly they're good. I'm just going to follow the path that they've laid and yes, yes. Good. But in our memorial, Adam Hale, who's our CEO, here's his famous saying, yes, but yes, but we should test it to make sure that that's correct. Or to your point that there hasn't been an update or something that has happened over the years to make things better.
Jeff 00:08:01 Yeah, that's for sure. That's for sure. And, you know, like when I was so I was the accounting manager at one role so responsible for the monthly close.
Jeff 00:08:10 So it's all the journal entries, it's all the reports, the financials like all that stuff. And so, the workbooks that I inherited were done by my manager. Right. And so, I don't know, I just it was taking two weeks to get the monthly clothes done. And I was super stressed because I was just overwhelmed and all this stuff working late nights, working weekends, like all of that whole scene. And then I'm just like, actually, my CFO came to me, one of these monthly closes where I was stressed out, cranky, grouchy, grumpy, that whole scene, and he's like, hey, Jeff, hey, can you do this new report? And I get that moment like I was just like, no. Can you find someone? Yeah. And first of all, that's like, not the right answer. and second of all, I did do the report and it was great, but that was kind of a, you know, catalyst for me, like, Jeff, what am I doing, man? I'm cranky when I'm at work.
Jeff 00:09:02 I'm missing family events. I'm staying up late. I'm coming on the weekends, like what is going on. And so that was kind of the, the catalyst that I used to really drive home. How do I get these workbooks to do themselves? Like how do I get Excel to do all the things I was doing manually? Yeah.
Joey 00:09:20 Well, I love Excel because I when you think about business, right. Like Excel has been around for what, 25, 30 years? Like, I can remember some initial things from the 90s and those 90s versions of windows. That's an eternity in the software game. What do you think it is about Excel that's allowed it to have the staying power? Because, you know, I would imagine with all the stuff that's happened over the last 30 years in technology, somehow Excel stays the king and everyone's gunning for the king, but Excel saves the King. What do you think it is about them that allows them to stay so relevant?
Jeff 00:09:57 I know you're right about that.
Jeff 00:09:58 Everyone is gunning for them, but I feel like they have, probably a billion workbooks. I don't even know what the count is, and billions of lines of VBA code that are just in all these organizations. And it's kind of like, it's the Swiss Army knife of tools. So, some tools allow you to do certain things, whereas Excel, you can do it right. Really. You can use it for like practically anything. And so I think that since it's been so, engineered for so many different disciplines and, you know, there's engineering there, science, there's accounting, finance, all these and everything exports to Excel. So it's kind of like that's the lowest common denominator. And what's what's interesting is, Microsoft is continuing to innovate in, in the Excel space and invest resources into Excel. So like there's always new things coming out. And in the old licensing model where we'd get a new version every three years, we wouldn't see those changes until, you know, every third year and now it's coming out like monthly.
Jeff 00:11:03 So there's just always these new capabilities and updates. And I'm a Microsoft Excel MVP. So, if you're not familiar with that program, there's, you know, a thousand or so MVP selected in different product lines. And so anyways, we get to go to this MVP summit every year and learn about all the new things that are coming out. And so I can just tell you, like they are still innovating in this product and things like Power Query, they're game changers. Power pivot is a game changer. So it's fun to see all these new features come out. And, and I think that's why they're still the king.
Joey 00:11:39 Well, they're thinking about things so holistically. To like the package of the office suite makes so much sense because it all works really well together. And I'll be the first to say your point about it can be used for anything. Hit really close to home. And I'm going to tell a little story here about how I used excel in a non accounting way. A couple of years ago my wife came to me.
Joey 00:11:58 This was during Covid, right? So, like honestly, probably four years ago to the day around when she said this is when we want to do this. We had a space in our house that didn't really fit right. It was like a little counter with some cabinets in there, and it was like, yeah, okay, I mean, this is fine, but is this the best and highest use of the space? And we looked around and we're like, no, we really want bookshelves in here. So, my wife was like, okay, you need to design the bookshelves. And I'm like, well, I'm an accountant. So let me tell you how I'm going to design the bookshelf. So, I went into Excel, and I put in Excel. I created like I measured the space, and I set one of the little, you know, rows of the of Excel and the columns to the right length to say this is going to represent one unit of what this is. And I designed the bookshelf in Excel, l and it was drawn to scale.
Joey 00:12:48 And I knew exactly how many Billy bookcases I needed to buy from Ikea to go in there, and exactly what the width of the boards that I needed to be to put them in there and where to do it. And it was such a versatile tool because I could scale it up or down for what I needed, and it works very well with linear things. Doesn't work great with curves, but I'm an accountant so I like straight line. So, it worked really, really well for that. And I know I'm not the only person who does that.
Jeff 00:13:15 Oh for sure, I love that story too, because it's okay to use Excel for non-business things, right?
Joey 00:13:21 I felt so accomplished. I was like, look, I was creative. I did some creative stuff in Excel today.
Jeff 00:13:26 Yeah, well, I laid out my our garage. We were also planning some shelving, so I just took the dimensions, put it all in the equal unit. So that was like a couple of months ago.
Jeff 00:13:34 So I totally get where you're where you're at there. Yeah.
Joey 00:13:37 Yeah. No, it's the perfect tool for that. And it's again, if you think about things linearly like I do, it's great. You know, once you start trying to put in like some, you know, nice, lovely architecture curves, like it starts to not work. But you could also just say, hey, this is where the this is where the pretty part's going to go. It's going to go in this little square right there. There you go, go, go at it. Have fun.
Jeff 00:13:55 By the way, did you put your Half-Marathon training plan in Excel?
Joey 00:14:00 not only have we put the half marathon training plan in Excel, my wife will do book planning in Excel. I plan all of my vacations in Excel. I plan all of our. We used to have food recipe lists and things that we would plan in there. We plan out our weeks food in Excel. Everything is awesome we do.
Jeff 00:14:20 Hey, how is your training going, by the way?
Joey 00:14:23 The.
Joey 00:14:24 Okay, so we ran the first one. Oh, you.
Jeff 00:14:27 Got it done.
Joey 00:14:28 We got it done. It was not. It was not great. It was okay. We ran the Tucson Half Marathon with one of my coworkers. she absolutely toasted us. She rocked it, but it was also her home course. So, I'm going to say she had the, she had the advantage. I finished ahead of time. I had a little thing going on with my knee where, you know, it was. It was kind of an overuse thing that I kind of had to just sort of manage throughout it. So I was kind of. Did the Galloway method. For those not familiar with running the Galloway method is you, you kind of walk for a small unit and you run for whatever type of unit you want. So I did like a one walk to three runs, kind of managing that on the way in because it didn't hurt when I walk, only when I ran. So, you know, but it was great.
Joey 00:15:11 I've got the medal somewhere in this office, but, no, it was it was wonderful, and I, I can't wait to do the next one.
Jeff 00:15:18 Good for you. And I wasn't sure, in listening to your prior shows, was that your first half?
Joey 00:15:24 That was that was my first half. It was my wife's second. So, she ran and she. And she did. She beat me by about eight minutes, which I think was I was happy it was eight minutes. She would have preferred it to be 12 or 14 or 16 because, you know, again, we like to get a little competitive here. But yeah, that was the first, the first half that I've run. I think I'm good. I don't think I need to do a marathon. I think I'm good with just the half and then maybe get back into, some, some triathlon type stuff and, you know, do some different things, but it was a really cool experience. Thank you.
Joey 00:15:56 Thank you for asking.
Jeff 00:15:57 Yeah. Good for you. Yeah. My wife and I are the same way. She's. She's faster than me. She's been running a lot longer. She's done like 50. I've only done like, 11.
Joey 00:16:05 So I was going to ask if you if you do what are what are some of the things you're looking for when you're when your kind of like, oh, I want to do my next half marathon.
Jeff 00:16:13 Oh. So, I kind of use them as a way to keep on training. If I don't have this race coming up, it's easy just to go, oh, I don't know. Maybe I'll do something else today instead of run, you know. Right. Yeah.
Joey 00:16:24 You got to have that structure.
Jeff 00:16:25 Yes. And so, when I have that out in front of me, then I know I kind of keep on the plan, the Excel spreadsheet, the plan. It's like, well, it's on the plan. So, I have to run today even if I don't feel like it.
Jeff 00:16:35 So that's been helpful. But yeah.
Joey 00:16:37 What's fun. And this is something that we talk about a lot on the show. I didn't become a runner until later in life, and when I was starting in my career, like I was super unhealthy, didn't eat well, didn't exercise well. And I know that's a really common theme. Like, I love to tell the joke, I didn't gain any weight in college like I didn't have the freshman 15 didn't have the junior 30. I stayed relatively, you know, lean and in shape in college. And then the second I got into working, I realized that in Manhattan, Kansas, the local Pizza Hut had a stuffed crust Tuesday buffet. all you can, all you can eat stuffed crust pizza on Tuesdays. And that was when the, you know, the first year, 45 kicked in. And it took a really concerted effort to like a manage the nutrition and those types of things, but also carve that time out into my day to get the exercise and get the movement.
Joey 00:17:32 And it doesn't always have to be run in a 10-K or a 20 K. Sometimes it's just, hey, I'm going to move my body today for 45 minutes. It can be whatever I want it to be. What are some tips that you have brought into your life that allows you to have that structure, to get that training? Because I think that's super important.
Jeff 00:17:48 Yeah. For sure. So, for me, it is having that next race and then just kind of forcing myself to stick to it. But recently, what I've tried to do because I notice here's what I noticed. I notice if I wait till the end of the day to do the run, it's easier to blow it off than if I just set my run and close out the night before. Yep. And then I wake up and my clothes are right there. So, I put them on, and I just try to get like three miles done, maybe even two miles done in the morning before I head out, and then not only do I get the run done, but it's also like I feel like I have way more energy throughout the whole day.
Joey 00:18:31 Yeah, no, I feel the same way. It's there's two keys for me. It's like I've got to have a good breakfast, I've got fuel. Well, and then if I do that and I hit my exercise block, I think we usually try to do it, in the winter time, usually around 10 or 11 in the morning here because it's, we get kind of cold in the mornings in the wintertime, and then it warms up to the 40s or 50, which is great for running in the summers. It's like, you gotta get out there by 7 a.m. but if I'm not, I'm right there with you. If I don't get it done in the morning, I just drag all day. And if I'm like, the worst case thing is I'll just do it. This afternoon. Never happens. Like one out of ten times. Does it actually happen in the afternoon?
Jeff 00:19:07 Yes for sure.
Joey 00:19:10 Yeah, it's really interesting when I think about just sort of the there's a lot of, there's a lot that I feel like I bring from running and training and exercise to the, to the career, whether it's, you know, we do the same type of thing when we talk with CFOs here in our business about creating that structure.
Joey 00:19:29 One of the things that's hugely key for us when working on client engagements is similar to what you do with your plan. You've got to sketch out your week. You've got to put these little blocks of time in there and get that, get that. We call it the meeting cadence, get the meeting cadence set, get the meeting cadence scheduled and then follow it. So, I think that's a really good life lesson for anyone who either A wants to be a runner or just, you know, wants to kind of start thinking about how to be more successful in their career because that's a huge key for us.
Jeff 00:19:59 Yeah. And I think those same habits carry forward into the workplace. You know, also that just that discipline and setting a plan, following the plan, setting a goal, actually doing the hard work, the grind that it takes to get to that goal. Those are all great life and career lessons for sure.
Joey 00:20:16 Well, and the other thing too, that I loved about your thought there, because I do the same thing with those races.
Joey 00:20:21 You kind of keep it up. The value in the race is not the race itself. The value really comes from the preparation and the building of the habits and building of those types of things. Like, I've noticed that over the last couple of years, as we've gotten more regimented with our running, like, you know, I've, I've my numbers are better. You know, we track all our, our blood work and everything throughout the years. And it's like, okay, keeping that baseline level higher has led to lower blood pressure for me. My wife's blood pressure is incredible. She's much better at it than I am. But like lower blood pressure, our cholesterol numbers are where they need to be. Our heart is super healthy, like those types of things. That is the true value of it. Not just running the race and getting the medal.
Jeff 00:21:08 Yeah, I agree, I feel like almost the race is just an easy celebration of the training plan.
Joey 00:21:14 Exactly, exactly.
Jeff 00:21:15 Yeah, I know.
Joey 00:21:17 That's a great way to think about it. We're just we're just celebrating at this point.
Jeff 00:21:20 Yeah, I've only done one full and like you, I'm like, I'm good with that. I don't need any more Fulls. Right? Yeah. Like it's a whole other like 13 miles is very nice. 26 is like a little much. But in any event, I was diligently following the training plan. I go to the Marine Corps full, I do the race, and I'm like, this is easy. What have I been so terrified about? Like, this is actually. And so, it was just a super fun race. You're running around seeing all the different Washington, D.C. monuments. And so, yeah, it was it was really it was really cool. Like, I'm good, but I'm glad I did it once. Well, and.
Joey 00:22:00 It's it it's interesting you say that because when I, we, we love to watch the New York City Marathon. We watched the Chicago one when they showed it, obviously we watched Boston.
Joey 00:22:09 That's a big one for accountants because it's always on April 15th. So, you know, we'll, we'll or usually it's on April 15th. So, we'll, we'll usually watch that. and the thing that I see the most from everybody there is, everybody is smiling. When you watch them on camera. Everybody looks like they're having so much joy and I and I'm sure deep down they're probably all a little bit miserable in certain cases, especially as you get to the end, you get to like 20, 21, 22. From what I've heard, it starts. That's when the mental wall starts to hit in of like, oh, I've still got I still got a ten K left and I'm at 20 miles. That's a lot. but even with that, that is the overwhelming sense that I feel when I watch that it's just the sense of joy.
Jeff 00:22:50 Yeah. And I think for that race to Boston, like my wife did, that and the community support is so insane because everyone's out there cheering you on.
Jeff 00:22:58 So, yeah. What a what a great, what a great event. Well, let's.
Joey 00:23:06 Let's tie that back into, you know, to accounting and excel in these types of things. And, and when I think about as I've moved up in the organizations I've moved up in my career. I like this idea of passing down these skills, kind of like the audience or the people viewing that race or passing along their joy and using it to fuel they're runners and fuel those people, them. That's that to me is the hallmark of a great leader. If I'm empowering you with the skills and I'm empowering you with the motivation and the drive and the desire to go out there and take my workbook and make it better, that's what I'm ultimately trying to do. I want to make sure we spend some time talking about Excel University, which is, you know, looking at the notes here, you launched it in 2012, so it's 12 years old at this point. You mentioned about the first six is what it took for you to build it out.
Joey 00:23:59 So, you've had kind of half of its life was in the building stage. Half of it's been in the implementation and improvement phase. How's that been going over the last 12 years? But specifically, once you got it built and now, your kind of improving on it.
Jeff 00:24:15 Yeah. So basically, for the first six years, one course a year. Okay. So, I got those done and now my time is really spent more on, like you said, improving it but also developing tons of free content. So, in other words, most 80% of my time now is just spent building free content, whether that's YouTube videos, blog posts, newsletter. By the way, if anyone wants to get on to the newsletter, I send out one a week with a video tutorial Excel university.com/tips. There's a hyphen in there, so it's Excel University. Com slash tips. And there's a newsletter in there. anyway, so then I spent time doing that. And then I've really spent time on automating the business. So just like I spent time automating my Excel workbooks, getting that monthly close from two weeks to two days, and Excel was the main platform I used to automate that.
Jeff 00:25:06 Now, in my business, there's other tools that are used to automate that, So I've well replicated that for my business. So now it's like, getting, you know, getting prospective students is automated, nurturing them to give them Excel tips and to show them Excel is a big place and to show them I can help them and be their guide. That's all automated, in terms of setting up webinars, that's automated. The quizzes are automated. Getting the certificate of completion CPE credit is automated. So that's where I've been spending the majority of the time, it is just getting all that stuff like totally dialed in. Well, I'm.
Joey 00:25:46 So glad you mentioned CPE too, because that's one of the obviously a big thing for CPAs is getting their CPE credits. And one of the things I've learned, and noticed in my CPA career, like once I got the licensing and had to do the CPE, when I looked at what I was doing every day, I didn't really need to stay up on audit procedures.
Joey 00:26:10 Like, I know yellow book audits are a thing. I couldn't tell you what a yellow book audit is. No clue. Right over my head. It's never been something that I've had to worry about. No, it's a thing. Couldn't tell you. The type of relevant CPE for me is how do I build my skills? How do I build a toolbox that I can use to do things? And that's why I love hearing you say that these courses can be taken for CPE credit. That, to me is incredibly valuable for us because it's practical use cases that you can that you can do. It's not just sitting there. And I love I love my boy Peter Lento from Becker. But at some point, like Peter Lento has taught me everything he's going to teach me. You know, a debit is a debit and a credits a credit. I need to understand how to implement it and use it. So I love that those are interactive courses that you can take and get some CPE credit for.
Jeff 00:26:59 Yeah. And let me talk about that for a second because I grew up with, I'm a little old school, but like when I was getting CPE Credit. It was like you go to an eight hour live class and they're teaching you skills that you can use, but I've seen it evolve to almost like, let's just have this webinar off on another screen. Let me click the attendance checks and I'm just doing it for compliance. I'm not doing it to like build my skills. So, I feel so good about my classes because they do give you practical skills and help you improve your career like CPE was originally intended to be.
Joey 00:27:37 Yeah. It's funny. Back in my when I was getting started, we had a group within our firm that like, did the eight hour live CPA shows, like they'd go around the country and do the. I think they usually did like 2 or 3 day webinars. So you can get like 16 of your 40 hours in two days. And it's they, you know, their thing was like, hey, we come to you, you don't have to come to us, which is a whole I mean, my moms told me all the times where she's like, yeah, I had to fly out to San Diego for a week and spend all, all the week in a conference.
Joey 00:28:03 And that was my CPA for the year.
Jeff 00:28:04 Yes.
Joey 00:28:05 So I love the on-demand nature of it now. But to your point, you're going to get out of that what you put into it. If you're just sitting there saying, yep, I clicked the attendance button. I answered the Becker quizzes, you know, I did those things, but I was just doing it because I had to. I didn't do it because it's something that I wanted to do or something that I thought I was going to need to use. Yeah, you're not going to get anything out of it. But to your point, if you can make it something that you're going to use and learn from and grow from and start implementing in your practice, that's how CPE was meant to be.
Jeff 00:28:35 Yeah. And so, the way I structure my courses is they're really a blend of sort of the technology piece and the live what I learned in live session. So, I gave hundreds of live eight-hour classes all over the country. And so, it's like on demand videos that you would stream at your own schedule pace.
Jeff 00:28:57 Then there's the practice exercises. So, you can actually like practice the skills in this safe workbook. for the things that we talk about. Then there's the quizzes. The exam 70% unlocks the certificate of completion. Some of my classes also include live office hours so that these are zoom calls. So, you're like, hey, stuck on this exercise or even like I have this Excel question or even like, let me share my project workbook. And so I'll help them with that. So, it's kind of a nice blend of, of the on demand, what the technology can do, plus kind of the live support. So, it's a really effective format, I think.
Joey 00:29:33 Well, and that live support is so key to because it's one thing, you know, it's great to have someone that you can talk to and get some, some real life feedback on, on like, hey, here's what I'm trying to do. That's what that's how we use our, our, our tech team internally is, you know, if I go to them and say, hey, I need this, they're like, yeah, I can, I can maybe do that and it's going to be decently effective.
Joey 00:29:53 But if I can go to them and say, hey, here's all the data, here's what I where we're getting it from, here's how I want it to look. Help me automate these pieces and move it in there and make this, you know, so that we've got to click an easy button and go. They're able to do that very, very effectively because we're having that back-and-forth communication of like okay, what's this feature that you want. What's that feature that you want. So, it's really nice to be able to have someone talk to about that to because a it helps me get better too. As someone who's even thinking about automation, automation does not come naturally to me. I am a brute force person. I have always solved everything through hard work, and more hours, which is not smart. That's not what I should be doing. I should be thinking about how do I get to the outcome with the least number of steps possible? That's the best way to think about it.
Joey 00:30:43 So I like that you're providing a great resource for kids there. It's great. And not just kids. Anybody can take the class.
Jeff 00:30:50 Yeah. Oh, for sure. My main audience is CPAs who need CPA credit. I also do have, you know, the college, you know, its students enrolled. But mostly it's going to be your accountants finance, you know, sitting in cubes, cranking out Excel spending. You know, more than like once a month in Excel, like you're using it on a periodic basis. But the other cool thing about the office hours is that even if you don't necessarily have a question, you join the office hours and you're seeing how other people are using Excel. Other students are like, oh, I never thought of that. And so, it's very motivating and very like you can kind of learn how to apply Excel. So, it's pretty fun. No.
Joey 00:31:31 And I love that because that's the number one way that I've, I've described our model is we throw all of our ideas in the middle and the best idea wins.
Joey 00:31:39 That's what you want an organization. So, I like that you're that's a great point because you might be trying to do the same thing as someone else and they're like, oh, I figured out a different way to think about it. And the light bulb goes off.
Jeff 00:31:49 Yes, exactly. That's great. So yeah.
Joey 00:31:52 Well, one thing that I kind of wanted to end with here, and this is this is something we're always thinking about as as a forward looking, future focused firm. We talked a little bit earlier about how Excel has has stayed the King for for a long time, but we've had more transformation in the technology space and applications of AI and other types of things that are happening in the accounting industry. How do you see Excel changing in the next one, three, five, ten years? Whatever. Like the short to medium term is in the technology world. Short term might be ten years for me, but maybe in technology that's like two years, right? How do you see Excel changing over the next couple of years, or whatever? The short medium term is, to respond to the changes that we're seeing in the world with AI and other types of intelligent business tools that are kind of rolling out every day.
Jeff 00:32:47 Yeah. So, I see Microsoft as really focused on helping the user accomplish more. In other words, they know it's a big place. They know it's intimidating. They know it's scary and things aren't surface or things aren't, like, readily available unless you kind of know where to look. So, they're always trying to make it easier to use so that you can leverage it and get more power out of it. So, they're really focused on that. So, at the last, you know, over the last couple of years, it's all about integrating AI. So, with their copilot product, how are they able to help you use Excel while you're in it? How do they use it to do some commanding or, you know, taking some actions on your behalf? And how do they help you, you know, write code and things like that? How do you understand formulas that are in there? So, I inherited this workbook from my manager's manager. And there's this formula with like 20 nested function like what is this.
Jeff 00:33:45 Whereas hey this is what this function does. So I think those are kind of be the changes that you're going to see helping individual users Leverage it and get more out of it.
Joey 00:33:55 I like that you mentioned copilot because as of this recording, that's been out. I've noticed it over the last 2 to 3 weeks specifically. I think I remember seeing the first ad for it in the Super Bowl, if I'm not mistaken, was I think the first time I remember seeing, oh, yeah, this is this is a thing that Microsoft is doing is that I would imagine, if I'm not mistaken, that's the first iteration of their kind of AI tool that's meant to be native to their applications. Am I thinking about that correctly?
Jeff 00:34:23 Yeah. So, think about it like ChatGPT. Right. But then it's customized for your data. So, it's not like I'm asking a generic question at masking question about this workbook that I'm in, or about this PowerPoint that I'm in, or about this word document that I'm in.
Jeff 00:34:38 And so it's understanding this document, the context depending on where you store your files, it's understanding the data in your, you know, whole OneDrive type of thing. And so, it's able to kind of access all of that custom data rather than just generic like LM train data.
Joey 00:34:55 Okay. Well, I think that's going to be a huge thing. And I've been kind of playing around with it a little bit. And you know obviously firms use different sources for things. In fact, summit before we merged, we were we were like a Google house. That was kind of our thing. And Anders was more of a Microsoft house. So we had to have a little bit of a change there. As we moved from Google to Microsoft, I was always more comfortable with Microsoft, so I'm, I, I was not as upset with the move to edge from Chrome or those types of things, but that's going to be something I'm very interested to see how we play with over the next couple of years is, you know, how do we start kind of synthesizing this tool into our into our workflows and into our thought process? Because, again, if it's not native to you, you're not going to think about it.
Joey 00:35:37 If it's not something if that's not a muscle or a lever that you're used to engaging, you're not going to do it. So I think we have to kind of retrain ourselves a little bit to know that these tools are there and how to get them there. So yeah, I'm very excited for the future.
Jeff 00:35:51 Yeah, it'll be interesting because as vendors start to integrate this new technology, then we get the benefit of it.
Joey 00:35:59 Well, one of the things we like to do, we've talked a lot of business and a lot of learning and use cases, but we did spend a good amount of time in the middle talking about running. And I think running is great because we always want to talk to our guests and bring humanity out of the podcast, because we bring our whole selves to work every day. So, the first question, it'll lead into the second question. Do you listen to music when you run and train? Are you a music person or are your kind of earbuds out? I want to hear nature.
Jeff 00:36:26 That's really interesting I would say, mostly it's music or podcasts. and then sometimes it'll just be open. Yeah. How about you?
Joey 00:36:38 I tend to listen to I listen to music. except when I'm running on the beach. When I'm running on the beach, I want to hear the waves. And that happens, like, once every two years. So, it's not it's not often, but usually I've got I've got some sort of 2000 to 20 tens hip hop EDM type stuff to get me a little bit, a little bit pumped up. And that's where the second part of the question was going to go is, what's your go to running playlist?
Jeff 00:37:05 Oh, my running playlist. I listened to like some, some, skillet.
Joey 00:37:11 Oh, yes.
Jeff 00:37:12 You know.
Joey 00:37:13 Maybe I rpm.
Jeff 00:37:15 Yeah, exactly. It happens to match with my cadence, so it's. Yeah. If I'm mountain biking, it's more of like Skrillex kind of that kind of a thing. so, it kind of depends on the activity, but.
Jeff 00:37:27 But then if it's a long run, if it's a long run, my main goal is to just occupy my mind. So that's a podcast or audible book. Yeah. If it's a short 2 or 3 milers, the music is fine. But yeah, if I'm trying to just crank out the miles, I just find if I can get my mind somewhere else, then it's very helpful.
Joey 00:37:46 I've found, and I've mentioned this to folks I've probably mentioned on here before, I do most of my good thinking when I'm running. Yes. You know, like I sometimes like when you're in the grind of the day to day, like you're moving from meeting to meeting to meeting, like you're trying to minimize your content switching. You're doing all those things. I never find that I have enough time to synthesize. And that's when I do my most thinking. And sometimes my wife is like, why do you look like you're talking to yourself when you're running? I'm like, well, it's because I am like, I am forming my thoughts about what I want to talk about on the show or what I want to do with my next client and how I want to present certain things.
Joey 00:38:20 So, I love that idea of engaging your brain and keeping it occupied. And running is just sort of what you're doing in the background too, to catalyze those, those different functions of your, of your life.
Jeff 00:38:31 Yeah. 100 and it's like I listened to that same music so that I can think while it's playing. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. I've come up with great business ideas and things like that on, on these runs and you're right, it's like this quiet time that you normally don't carve out during the day because you're just inundated with all these things. But that's like this quiet time where you really can think about things in a different way. So, I totally agree with that.
Joey 00:38:57 Is there and one final question here. I know we were we're pretty getting pretty close to time and want to make sure we're wrapping up and kind of finishing the closing the loop on some of the things here. What's your go to podcast? Is there one that you know really engages your brain? Is there one that we're not listening to that we should be listening to?
Jeff 00:39:13 Yeah.
Jeff 00:39:14 So I recently discovered the All In podcast. And so that's my new go to favorite. Before that it was a lot of Jordan Harbinger interviews. but now yeah, it's the All In podcast is, is, is my go to okay.
Joey 00:39:28 Who's the host of that. That's not one I'm familiar with.
Jeff 00:39:30 Yeah. There's like, several different guys. And so, these are guys who, like, are old tech like bros, Elon Musk era guys. So, they are so smart and they comment on everything from tech to mergers to politics. Like, I don't know, they're incredibly smart. And so you just see things from different perspectives than, than I would think about things. So definitely highly recommended.
Joey 00:39:56 Well, yeah. And that's I would imagine that's probably a very future forward or future thinking podcast that they're if they're synthesizing all these things that are happening and saying, here's, here's what I see coming from this, here's my opinion. Yes, I like that a lot. I'm gonna have to add that to my to my list.
Joey 00:40:09 Definitely. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for joining us today. a couple of just quick housekeeping items. I want to make sure we've got all the different places where we can find not only you and your content, but where to go to Excel University and those types of things. If anybody is interested in finding out more about the courses.
Jeff 00:40:26 Yeah, probably the best place is Excel University. Com slash tips Excel dash University. Com slash tips. Tips. that's where there's you can opt in to the to the newsletter. Plus there's a free two CPE course. so, if you're a CPA, the free course qualifies you for two credits. you get into our LMS and it really that course focuses on like the big time savings things. So, like in Excel, there's all kinds of things. Some save a little bit of time, some save big time. That Excel Secrets course that's free is really talking about the major things that have the biggest opportunity to save you the most amount of time. So, it's a pretty good little course.
Joey 00:41:08 Perfect. Well, thank you so much. This has been a blast. I can't wait to see what comes from you in the future, but also where Excel takes us and how we're going to be transforming our lives in the next 2 to 3 years as the world changes around us. So, Jeff, thank you so much for spending 40 minutes with us.
Jeff 00:41:24 Awesome. Thanks for having me.
Outro 00:41:25 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.