Live from Las Vegas: The Best of AICPA Engage 2025

Gene Marks (00:00)

Hey, everybody, it's Gene Marks, and I am talking to you from the floor of the AICPA Engage 2025 conference here in Las Vegas. I am talking to a bunch of accounting professionals, luminaries, and thought leaders that will be sharing what they're doing and where they think the accounting profession is going when it comes to technology, recruiting, and overall firm development. And we're putting together it all in a special episode of THRIVE.

Announcer (00:24)

Welcome to THRIVE, a Paychex Business Podcast, your blueprint for navigating everything from people to policies to profits. And now your host, Gene Marks.

Gene Marks (00:37)

So, let's start things off by hearing from Mark Koziel. He's the president and CEO of the AICPA and the visionary behind this incredible conference. So, first of all, Mark, thanks for speaking.

Mark Koziel (00:47)

Thanks for having me.

Gene Marks (00:48)

Really glad that you're here. You've been kind of busy. First of all, tell me about the show like Engage. I mean, I'm looking around. We're on the floor right now. There's a zillion people here. It seems like things are going well.

Mark Koziel (00:59)

Yeah, 5,000 people this year. The energy is electric. You know, one of the things is I was there at the beginning when we put this together to say, you know, we need to bring these conferences together. And this was always part of the vision. And, you know, seeing that to give them an opportunity to be together, all 5,000, but then also separate into their, you know, their tribes, to be different and have a sense of community, really important. And it just the energy, the buzz had a lot of great feedback, a lot of great conversations with members over the last two days.

Gene Marks (01:35)

Let's talk about technology. Yeah. Okay. To start with. So, will AI replace us?

Mark Koziel (01:40)

No, absolutely not.

Gene Marks (01:42)

Give us your thoughts.

Mark Koziel (01:43)

It will enhance what we do. It will allow for us to do different things down the road. I believe we'll see that. You know, I had a slide that I've been using because I, like, constantly, how many times have we heard over, you know, our lifespan of accountants being replaced by some level of innovation along the way? Right? And so I had to go back in history to figure out that in the 1930s was the invention of the electronic calculator that was going to put us out of business. The 1970s, 80s was the advent of VisiCalc and the spreadsheets that was going to put us out of business. The personal computer, oh my God, people could do business things themselves on their own computer or that's going to put us out of business. AI, you know, blockchain, we heard about that recently. AI most recently.

Gene Marks (02:32)

The overall cloud, workflows, all that stuff. Yep. Right.

Mark Koziel (02:35)

You know, even some of the technology technologies who are here today, like Intuit with QuickBooks and TurboTax. TurboTax is going to put the small firm out of business in tax. And every small firm I talk to, they say, I welcome our clients trying TurboTax just once, because they're going to realize the value that we bring and they will mess it up so badly, we'll actually make more fixing it than if we had just done the return ourselves.

Gene Marks (03:01)

So, wait, so why hasn't all these technologies put us out of business?

Mark Koziel (03:05)

I think because the profession keeps reinventing itself along the way.

Gene Marks (03:11)

Right.

Mark Koziel (03:11)

And at the end of the day, and this is what I didn't realize coming into the profession, it's that client relationship that's paramount. So the client is what drives what it is that we do. And as long as we continue to focus on that, they'll allow for us to come and do things for them differently based on what the innovation is allowing us to do. AI is not going to replace you, provided that we continue reskilling and upskilling you to be able to embrace it, use it differently, and interact with the client. I think client accounting services, such a great example. And, you know, we had the. We had our AI symposium, AICPA and CIMA in March. And of the five insights that we had, number one is that, you know, bookkeeping is already automated and it has AI adopted in it. And then bullet number four was about advisory services. And advisory services started to see more AI. But, you know, we started the conversation, you know, CAS 1.0 conversations, 14, 15 years old. Now we're on CAS 2.0, and that conversation's at least five to seven years old.

Gene Marks (04:21)

Sure.

Mark Koziel (04:21)

And that's really what AI is creating, is the move from 1.0 transactional to 2.0 advisory. And so, upskilling all of those folks we have on our CAS team to be able to say, these are how you should be interacting with your client, become paramount.

Gene Marks (04:39)

Yeah. You talk about upskilling. You know, I just want to dig into that a little bit more. Like you use Microsoft Office. And like me and like everybody else, you know, we're using like 10% of what it does, you know, so it's like we're driving a car in Texas in August and we're not putting on the air conditioner because we don't know where the button is. It's ridiculous. And nobody invests in the training. What I think it's an opportunity for the AICPA. And I'm wondering what the organization might have planned or what you're thinking of to help the profession get upskilled.

Mark Koziel (05:14)

Yeah, so we're talking to a lot of the technology-related companies. We already have some of that embedded into like our CAS training of that very directly. You know, tax has fallen a little behind. So, tax research is AI-driven right now. And we have a partnership with Blue Jay through cpa.com and that's just exploding. I mean everyone's seen the reliability of that and so, but tax prep isn't there yet. But we're having conversations with companies that are looking to get into that and then audit, it's getting integrated. So, you know, all the work we're doing around DAS, so it's getting trained up with the tool and how AI integration can happen with it. And then, you know, conferences like these, making sure that we're focused on AI and upskilling its pieces of that and embedding that into staff-level training that we offer as well becomes really important.

Gene Marks (06:08)

As AI reshapes the accounting landscape, Daniel Hood, editor in chief of Accounting Today, joins me to discuss why mastering change management is essential for the future of the profession. What are you covering in AI and the accounting profession?

Daniel Hood (06:24)

You know, I think the story of AI really for accountants is adopting, getting comfortable with it. And it's going to be a thing where it's a little bit... There's a whole story about you don't need to know how to build a watch, just need to know how to tell time. For most accountants, it's just going to be about knowing how they can implement it into their practice. They won't know how to, they don't need to know how to build an agent, they don't need to know what an agent does, well, they need to know what it does, but they don't need to know how it does it. Right. So, I think that's the big story is getting accountants to realize two things. One, that you need to adopt AI in a big way, in a bigger way than just technology. Right. You can't be a grudging sort of, yeah, I'll do it because I got to do it. You've really got to get in there because there will be firms that will absolutely get in there first. And you know, they talk about AI is going to take away people's jobs. It's not AI, that's going to be taking away jobs. It's accounting firms using AI that's going to be taking away work and so on. So, I think that's the big story is the need for firms to adopt and get, I'm not going to force them to be enthusiastic about it, but they need to embrace it seriously and take it seriously and work it into everything they're doing.

Gene Marks (07:26)

You know, the demographic of accounting firm partners is skews older. I mean, you know, they're, you know, I think like the average age of the U.S. small business owner is like 56 years old, according to. Yeah, it's like, so there's a lot of succession planning, but then there's also a lot of change management issues. Like people just don't want to change, you know. Are you seeing that?

Daniel Hood (07:46)

Oh, 100%. 100%. And to be fair to it as, to be as fair to accountants as we need to be, this is true everywhere. Right. Nobody, very few people like change. Right. I think it's, it's much more true of accountants in part because that's just their nature of their profession. It is, it is a small "c," conservative, careful, you know, assess every risk before you do anything kind of thing. That's one of the reasons it's so useful to their clients.

Gene Marks (08:08)

Sure.

Daniel Hood (08:10)

But it's also, for the longest time, for generations, accounting firms didn't have to change, right? In ways and most other industries did have to at some point or another between roughly 1930 and call it 2000, most other industries went through some changes or other accountant did not. So for the older generation, you talk about the, you know, the higher up, they never had to change and their boss has never had to change. So it's not built into their DNA to sort of say, well, at some point we're going to face change. Now they're facing this enormous tsunami of change, just as every other industry is. But they have no history of it and they have no muscles for it. And that's why that change management skill... I, you know, people ask what's the biggest thing for accountants? I think building the muscle for change management, learning how to do it. Because it's not just going to be one change and once you finish adapting to this change, there's going to be another and another one and another one. And they're going to be in totally different areas of your practice. Sometimes it'll be a new service area, sometimes it'll be a new form of recruiting, sometimes it'll be a new way of marketing, sometimes there'll be new technologies. But to be able to assess developments, to decide, does this matter to me? Is this going to impact me? Figure out who it's going to impact, figure out who should lead the change. Having that as a muscle, I think is something that every business certainly, but accountants in particular, I think are going to need to work really hard to develop.

Gene Marks (09:26)

Building on Daniel's insights on change management, Nicole Ksiazek, senior director at Sage, reveals how psychology plays a key role in driving successful change in accounting. Let's hear her perspective. You're going to start up your own CPA practice?

Nicole Ksiazek (09:40)

Yes.

Gene Marks (09:41)

What kind of a practice would it be in 2025?

Nicole Ksiazek (09:44)

In 2025?

Gene Marks (09:45)

Right now.

Nicole Ksiazek (09:46)

Right now there's a lot of industry focus on family offices. And I think that that's really interesting.

Gene Marks (09:55)

What do you mean by family offices?

Nicole Ksiazek (09:57)

So a family office can be, you know, high net worth individuals, but what happens is they have their hands in many different areas of business. So, an example is a family office could have trusts set up for all the children.

Gene Marks (10:12)

I see.

Nicole Ksiazek (10:13)

They then own properties in multiple states.

Gene Marks (10:16)

I know exactly what you mean.

Nicole Ksiazek (10:17)

They have a farm for the horses that they then work with. So, you know, it's one business, but then you have multiple practices underneath it. So, I think that that would be really interesting.

Gene Marks (10:32)

That's super cool. And you know, I know a guy, I mean, we're both in the Philadelphia area, so I know a guy who our kids played little league together. He did just that. He was his own... And he was and still is the accountant for a large real estate developer in the Philadelphia area with lots of developments in the bluebell and Montgomery County area. And he handled their family business.

Nicole Ksiazek (10:56)

Exactly.

Gene Marks (10:57)

And their family business. It was not the real estate. It was everything. You know what I mean? Like, just like you said. And that is a growth area.

Nicole Ksiazek (11:03)

It absolutely is a growth area. Especially as we're getting to a point where generational wealth is getting ready to be handed down.

Gene Marks (11:09)

Yeah. You know, I don't even think you need experience in accounting. You need, you need to be a psychiatrist to do that kind of a work. So, I don't know...

Nicole Ksiazek (11:17)

Well, so what's really interesting though is one of the questions that you had was what would I have told myself in college?

Gene Marks (11:25)

I was getting to that. Next. So go ahead. What would you have told yourself?

Nicole Ksiazek (11:28)

I would have told myself to major in accounting and minor in psychology.

Gene Marks (11:33)

I can't believe you say that because people ask me, like, if I were to go back to college, what would I take? Same answer. I would take psychology. Why?

Nicole Ksiazek (11:42)

I would take psychology because I didn't realize how much of the accounting profession is working with the emotional side of individuals. In all aspects. Compensation. Everybody gets uptight about the money there. Mergers and acquisitions. Do I actually do this? What is this going to do to my family if I go through with this? You know, even making decisions that aren't emotional, but you still have to manage the emotions.

Gene Marks (12:19)

Couldn't agree with you more. And I always think that, like accounting, and no disrespect to all of us in the profession, it's not that hard to learn. Okay. But being a good psychologist, I mean, I...

Nicole Ksiazek (12:32)

Change management. So, you know, we're dealing with new technology. Many firms come to us, and they decide that they're going to use Sage Intacct in their practice.

Gene Marks (12:41)

Right.

Nicole Ksiazek (12:43)

One thing that we try to work with them on is to make sure that the change management factors and the education is going up and down. And what I mean by that is you have to have leader buy-in, but you also have to have staff buy-in. So when you are looking at new technologies, involve the staff in those decisions. We have three that we are looking at. I would love for you to test this out and provide your feedback. Was this easy to use? Any concerns? How would you support this? And that's that change management psychology. We often find that sometimes individuals think that they need new technology where it might actually be processes that need to be adjusted. And so then getting back to the psychology, you have to talk them through that side of it.

Gene Marks (13:34)

Yeah.

Nicole Ksiazek (13:35)

What are you doing now? What would you like to do? And not what would you like to do in the next month? What would you like to do in the next six to 12 months? And how can you work together to make sure that you're making the right decisions for your firm or for your business or for your family practice to make sure that you can move forward effectively.

Gene Marks (13:53)

With AI being such a hot topic at Engage, and everywhere else these days, Roman Kepcyk, director of firm technology strategy at RightWorks, explains why CPA firms need an AI policy and how to create one. You know, obviously it's been a while since you and I have talked and a lot has changed over the past 10 minutes, let alone the past like two years. What are you seeing? I mean, you speak at so many conferences, you deal with CPAs all the time. Do you find that most CPAs are still confused or still in the dark about AI? Still tentative about using it? Like, absolutely, yeah.

Roman Kepcyzk (14:32)

Absolutely. And the class I taught this morning, we talked, we do a survey, like, how many firms actually have a generative AI policy in place. And two years ago it was 20%.

Gene Marks (14:43)

Yeah.

Roman Kepcyzk (14:43)

This morning it was maybe 24, 25%. And these are medium and large firms that know better.

Gene Marks (14:48)

Tell me about what should be in an AI policy.

Roman Kepcyzk (14:50)

Well, you know, actually you can ask ChatGPT or Claude and it'll give you a great policy there.

Gene Marks (14:56)

So good. Best place to go for an AI policy because it knows it.

Roman Kepcyzk (15:00)

But the first tip, like for all of our firms that has to happen is you have to set the ground rules, which is the policy, and you have to educate everyone because there's a lot of shadow AI going on. You know, everyone has on their phones, which unfortunately also has their Outlook, their Teams, you know, so the data is flowing in. And so up until January of this year, you know, we were pretty much just promoting education on generative AI, how to use ChatGPT, how to set up the policy, how to set up your subject matter experts to identify opportunities for tools. I do a tax debrief session that we identify those problem areas and then we have them look for solutions for generative AI that's there. But I think the big thing that's going to happen, that changed for me in February was this whole agentic AI. You know, once OpenAI developed the model context protocol, the MCP protocol, all of a sudden all of us who are Microsoft-centric or Google-centric or Amazon-centric, we realize now ChatGPT, which writes Copilot, is this is a tool that can allow us to connect to different databases. So, I think the most significant thing that we're trying to educate people on now is you need to have that baseline of understanding generative AI, but be ready for generative AI.

Gene Marks (16:13)

Yeah.

Roman Kepcyzk (16:13)

And understanding what it is and teaching your people to look for it.

Gene Marks (16:17)

Next up, Sabrina Parris, president at Honeycomb State Tax Strategies, talks about the surprising connection between beekeeping and bookkeeping. She also shares why smaller firms play a crucial role in the industry and reveals what sets the great ones apart. So, first of all, so, Sabrina, Honeycomb State Tax Strategies. Why Honeycomb?

Sabrina Parris (16:41)

So I'm a beekeeper.

Gene Marks (16:43)

You are?

Sabrina Parris (16:43)

Yeah, just a hobby beekeeper.

Gene Marks (16:44)

Why didn't you tell me that before we started talking? That was going to take up our whole conversation. So you're a beekeeper?

Sabrina Parris (16:50)

Yeah.

Gene Marks (16:50)

In North Carolina? Okay. Is that like a bee-friendly state?

Sabrina Parris (16:54)

It is for sure. So it's funny my newest batch of bees not doing great this year, but every year's different. But yeah, I really kind of was thinking about how kind of like the, the bees are so strategic and how they set everything up. And I thought that really tied in really well with what I want to do, which is kind of think about big picture, your strategy and help CPAs with their clients in that regard.

Gene Marks (17:19)

That is amazing. First of all, you know what? To heck with this conversation. I have a million questions about beekeeping. I guess it'll have to be another time for another day. But you know, why state tax strategies? Does that mean you focus on just state and local things?

Sabrina Parris (17:33)

Yes. So I started my career at Deloitte long time ago, about 20 years ago. And I was in the multi-state group.

Gene Marks (17:39)

Right.

Sabrina Parris (17:40)

Our group didn't do any compliance. We just did research. It was attorneys and CPAs, and it was all research and strategies that would support the compliance groups.

Gene Marks (17:49)

And this was in North Carolina?

Sabrina Parris (17:51)

It was, Charlotte office. And I moved, moved to Hickory, just an hour away. But much different client base there, smaller CPA firms. And what I realized was that smaller CPA firms do have that need, but it's not as frequent and they, they don't really have the resources for it. Right. They can't have a full-time SALT person necessarily and don't really know where to go. And when the pandemic hit and a lot of employers were dealing with, you know, letting their employees work all these, remote, and suddenly it was a big problem for a lot of CPAs. Right. Like this thing that they hadn't had to give a lot of much thought to. And what I hate to see is for CPAs who have very good clients to tell those clients, hey, you've outgrown me, I'm going to refer you to a bigger firm. What I'd like to see them do is keep those clients and then bringing subject matter experts as needed.

Gene Marks (18:47)

Sure. I mean, really like state tax in North Carolina. Is that complicated? I mean, you guys are such an easygoing state. Is that complex?

Sabrina Parris (18:56)

I wouldn't say North Carolina in particular. I think it's more kind of how NEXUS works and how allocation and apportionment works. And you know, a lot of this is just, it's not something, it's not something I see a lot of like first and second years and even seniors really getting exposure to that.

Gene Marks (19:14)

You've worked with, you've worked with a bunch of CPAs, both individuals, small firms, regional larger firms or whatever. You must have come across a lot of firms that you are like, these guys are crushing it. Like, I love these guys. They run a great firm. You know, I, this kind of firm I would work for if I were, you know, crazy enough to want to do that. What is it about them? Without naming names, like, you know, like...

Sabrina Parris (19:37)

Sure.

Gene Marks (19:38)

What is it about those firms?

Sabrina Parris (19:40)

The cool thing about AICPA Engage is that's where you're going to meet a lot of those people and that's where you're going to get a lot of their ideas, because they're very generous with their ideas.

Gene Marks (19:47)

Talk to me about some ideas. What have you heard?

Sabrina Parris (19:49)

Automate everything you can. But again, like, don't automate out yourself. Right. Like, don't automate out the human element. You still, you don't want your clients just talking to robots all the time. But whatever you can automate so that you can really make those, like, human interactions worthwhile, like, that's... And so, they're, they invest in the technology, they invest in the people, they make sure their company is a good place to work.

Gene Marks (20:13)

Sure.

Sabrina Parris (20:13)

And a lot of the other things kind of fall into play.

Gene Marks (20:15)

Right, right. So what about culture in those firms? Like, what firms have you run across where you're like, this is, this is like just a good place to work?

Sabrina Parris (20:25)

Right.

Gene Marks (20:25)

What do they do?

Sabrina Parris (20:27)

So they spend a lot of time on the front end making sure people are a good fit. And my personal philosophy with hiring is that technical skills can be taught. You know, someone as long as they have the minimum requirement, an accounting degree, some experience, maybe not if they're fresh out of school. But the real important thing is what kind of problem-solving skills do they have? What kind of people skills do they have? Do they work well in a team? And if you can start structuring your interviews and your hiring process and your recruiting process to really get to the root of what are your core values as a company?

Gene Marks (21:00)

Yeah.

Sabrina Parris (21:01)

And how do you find potential employees that fit those core values? And then the technical stuff can fall into place.

Gene Marks (21:08)

Why is the accounting profession struggling to attract fresh talent? Calvin Harris, the CEO of the New York State Society of CPAs, dives into the heart of the issue, offering valuable insights on what's behind the recruitment gap. Are you a CPA?

Calvin Harris (21:22)

I am. I am a CPA.

Gene Marks (21:24)

And you still maintain your certification?

Calvin Harris (21:26)

I maintain my license. I don't practice. But I'm licensed here in New York. Well, we're not here in New York right now, but I'm licensed in New York and Maryland.

Gene Marks (21:33)

Yeah, right. So, did you do that... Like, what were you doing before you took over the society?

Calvin Harris (21:37)

Yeah, let's see. I was the chief financial officer at the National Urban League in New York.

Gene Marks (21:41)

Got it. Okay, so why did you keep your certification through all of that? Because I had my own reasons. But I'm curious.

Calvin Harris (21:47)

Well, look, I say the first thing is that I worked pretty doggone hard.

Gene Marks (21:51)

I worked my ass off for that. Yeah, I agree.

Calvin Harris (21:54)

There you go. So, part of it is just a point of pride. I'm proud to be a CPA and I don't have any regrets on becoming a CPA. Now in New York, the way New York defines the practice of accountancy, I didn't have much of a choice in terms of getting licensed in New York to stay appropriate. But now in New York as CEO, you can make a case that I don't necessarily need it in the same sort of way. But yeah, I'm active. I do the CPE and everything. I have renewals coming up before the year's up.

Gene Marks (22:26)

You know, it's funny with me as well. Like I love the profession. I've always been passionate about the profession. Yeah, I'm like, like you super proud to be part of it or whatever.

Calvin Harris (22:36)

Absolutely.

Gene Marks (22:37)

Why do we have a recruiting issue?

Calvin Harris (22:40)

Yeah, you know, I think it comes down to relevancy and just not telling good stories. We lean too hard into things that are not going to appeal to anyone. And I think if we go back to our younger selves, we should sometimes ask ourselves, would I be interested in that?

Gene Marks (22:58)

Yeah. Well, give me an example. Like what do you mean?

Calvin Harris (23:00)

Easy. Anyone during a busy season, whether taxation, audit, or whatever, to where they're saying, I'm, oh yeah, I'm working 80 hours a week, I'm working 90, I had to sleep at my desk to get this thing done. And you say that to a group of students.

Gene Marks (23:14)

Yeah, it's not great. That is not great.

Calvin Harris (23:16)

I'm pretty sure they don't want to hear that. Now might that have happened? I mean there's a whole different conversation on whether there's a way you could structure your business so you don't have to have that be your experience. But for goodness sake, no one wants to hear that.

Gene Marks (23:27)

Yeah.

Calvin Harris (23:28)

Not if you want to recruit them in.

Gene Marks (23:30)

Yeah. It's not a badge of honor. It really isn't. You know what's funny, I think it's changed with young, maybe like back in the day it was a thing where like, hey, you know, there's 100 hour weeks on Wall Street or there's 80 hour weeks during the busy season. It was like a thing. But like it change, you know. And I think if you tell that story to a kid right now who's 21 years old in college, you're like, screw that, man. I don't want to be in that. Do that for a living.

Calvin Harris (23:51)

And when you combine that with, you know, that relevancy issue, telling a good story, issue with not always having, even though we're much better, but being competitive in terms of salaries, if we're not competitive enough, and we're all in the midst of a huge licensing movement, New York has its own story to tell on that. But when you combine all those things together and then you're also hearing, oh, I'm just saying what I've heard, it's not all true, but I got to take this hard test, and I have to go to school for all these years, and I'm not going to get paid as much as my friend who went to school one year less than me. And by the way, I'm going to work my butt off the whole time. Yeah, I don't want to do that. Count me out. Let me find another profession.

Gene Marks (24:40)

Our conversation on recruitment continues with Jeremy Wortman, the owner of HRD Initiatives. Jeremy highlights just how crucial a strong company culture is when it comes to attracting and retaining talented CPAs.

Jeremy Wortman (24:55)

Organizational psychologist by training. And I focus on the public accounting world, specifically in talent management organizational culture. So, I'm passionate about helping business leaders be more intentional and strategic about how they hire people, and the employee experience they bring, and how they retain them.

Gene Marks (25:12)

All right, that is great. Tell me a little bit about that. I mean, hiring and retainage is a huge issue in the CPA profession. Talk to me a little bit about why it's an issue and where you think that's going.

Jeremy Wortman (25:23)

Yeah, so, I think it's such an issue because the paradigm shift that I've witnessed with the accounting profession working with them in over 20 years is, you know, they're a bunch of technical professionals that back in the day, you know, got a degree, rented some space, started pumping out work.

Gene Marks (25:41)

Yeah.

Jeremy Wortman (25:41)

Well, as they started growing, they started to actually have to hire folks.

Gene Marks (25:44)

Sure.

Jeremy Wortman (25:45)

And build a business. And the old school paradigm is butts in seats, get work out the door. Now they're actually running a business and they have to think about, wow, what do we have to do to entice somebody to work for us versus anyone else? Because the war for talent is huge. Right. And then, you know, again, because, and I've literally had partners tell me this, Jeremy. I've taken every class I needed to take to be a great technical accountant...

Gene Marks (26:09)

Yeah.

Jeremy Wortman (26:09)

I've never taken a class on how to be a great leader.

Gene Marks (26:11)

Yeah.

Jeremy Wortman (26:12)

So, retaining talent is huge because people want to work for good leaders, good bosses. They want to have a meaningful experience. And so that's why culture is so important.

Gene Marks (26:21)

So what do you tell your clients to do? I mean, you know, I mean in the... My son actually is a manager at PwC.

Jeremy Wortman (26:27)

Okay.

Gene Marks (26:27)

And he's 30-year-old guy, and there's like four or five generations of people in this workplace, and even people of his generation. I think he's officially a millennial. I mean, he gets frustrated by Gen Zs, you know what I mean? And then the Gen X's get frustrated with him and the baby boomers are frustrated with the Gen X, you know. So, you know, what advice do you give to your clients to retain good people and find good people?

Jeremy Wortman (26:52)

That's actually what my session was on two hours ago. That's when I spoke for an hour and 15 minutes.

Gene Marks (26:56)

Give us the highlights.

Jeremy Wortman (26:58)

And it's funny real quick about generations. I get asked to speak on that every once in a while. Every time a new generation enters the workforce, Time Magazine does this whole front-page episode, and what's interesting is...

Gene Marks (27:10)

You're right because this goes back decades. I know when I was a kid, they were doing stories on that.

Jeremy Wortman (27:14)

And each generation says almost the same thing about the generation before. They're lazy, they don't care, they don't want to work. So, I think that's comical, any who... So, you know what my best clients, what they do to attract and retain is they really do make culture a strategic priority. And I ask them to adopt a talent-centric mentality. That is every single person in your company has talented, agree or disagree and the entire audience today raised their hand. I agree with that. And if we embrace that and help our employees understand what those talents are and how they can bring them to work, they have such a better meaningful work experience. And so that attracts people because, you know, there's some data points I shared with my group today. People are leaving because of bad bosses, they don't feel like they belong, and they feel like the company doesn't care about them. Therefore, strategically focus focusing on culture pays dividends to attract and retain. But as we were talking this morning, that's a longitudinal process. It takes a long time to make a big change in a company. And we're all so short-term focused that I see a lot of firms give up on it because they don't see the change in a short period of time. So that's my thing. That's what I do with firms is really understand how you can create an awesome culture, operationalize it, and then create the supporting talent management strategy that really brings it alive.

Gene Marks (28:33)

You know, it's funny, I have some clients that I know, their employees are being paid less. They could get better jobs, they could get more highly compensated jobs, and yet they have little turnover. And it's just, it's almost like if you're going to spend eight or 10 hours a day at work, it's kind of like the work itself is, is almost, you know, secondary to just enjoying being at the company. Right. And who you're working with.

Jeremy Wortman (28:58)

Research that supports that. There, there's people... people are willing to take less money.

Gene Marks (29:03)

Yeah.

Jeremy Wortman (29:03)

If they're fully engaged. And those engaged employees, through all of these other tactics, they work harder for you because they want to, not because they have to. They produce higher quality work and they're less tempted to answer that recruiter's phone call.

Gene Marks (29:15)

Wrapping up this episode, Sherron Permashwar, principal and CPA at BMP Tax and Accounting Services, dives into why a purpose-driven approach is shaping the future of accounting. But before we jump in, I want to thank you for joining me on this journey through the Engage conference. This was just a sneak peek into the incredible conversations ahead. We'll soon be sharing full episodes on the Paychex YouTube channel featuring these amazing guests and plenty of others. So, stay tuned, you don't want to miss it. You work with other CPAs, other CPA firms. I mean, you've known people in the, how long have you been a CPA now?

Sherron Permashwar (29:51)

I've been in the accounting profession for three decades.

Gene Marks (29:54)

Okay.

Sherron Permashwar (29:54)

I didn't get my CPA until like five years in.

Gene Marks (29:56)

Okay, that's amazing. Okay, so you've met a lot of accountants. Tell me like what accountants like impress you? Like when you meet certain accountants or certain accounting firms and you think to yourself, like, these guys know what it's all about or they are doing a great job. You know, we're like, that's the kind of firm that is going to be around for a while, you know? What kind of characteristics do you think those people have that really just impress you?

Sherron Permashwar (30:24)

So it has changed through the decades.

Gene Marks (30:27)

Right.

Sherron Permashwar (30:27)

So what's impressing me now is more towards behavioral finance.

Sabrina Parris (30:34)

Right.

Sherron Permashwar (30:35)

So, the accounting way of doing things in a box, And the numbers, like you said, you can ask ChatGPT for certain things. The numbers are something that I think you can ask for, which, so, we have to think differently about our profession now. It's our behavior, our energy our positivity, you know, moving forward with technology. We did not touch that. But moving forward with technology, I totally believe anything, if used good, can work. AI is amazing. I am an accountant, not a writer. So, writing emails and writing letters and writing all these memos used to take me a long time because I... So AI helps me with that. I mean, it doesn't take me... I use this as a tool. I don't have it work for me.

Gene Marks (31:19)

Sure.

Sherron Permashwar (31:20)

You know, I change so many things around. I don't like a lot of things that it says, so I move it. I, you know, but it helps me organize. It saves me time. So embracing all of that, is that the form of the future?

Gene Marks (31:32)

Right.

Sherron Permashwar (31:32)

Yeah. And more communication. So, every generation wants to know what, they want to be involved. Just like medicine. It used to be, take two of this pill, and call me in the morning. We don't know what we took. We don't know what we have. We don't have anything. And accounting is the same thing. You have to... Everybody wants to know, what are they investing in? Why are they investing it?

Gene Marks (31:51)

Sure.

Sherron Permashwar (31:51)

Why are you telling me to do this? Why are you telling me to do that? So, the communication between the, between what's happening is so important, and accountants are not used to doing that. So that's our issue.

Gene Marks (32:02)

And you know, it's funny too, because I always, I've always thought that the old school of accountants, and listen, no offense on them, and this is the way they were brought up and way the generation was, just weren't the greatest communicators in the world.

Sherron Permashwar (32:12)

Absolutely not.

Gene Marks (32:13)

You just said it's like you need to learn about the person. You have to have bedside manner. And there was a lot of stories behind people's finances and company's finances, their mindset. And a lot of people growing up in the profession weren't taught to do that.

Sherron Permashwar (32:28)

No.

Gene Marks (32:28)

I think, again, I think younger generations get that.

Sherron Permashwar (32:31)

They get that they want their purpose. That's the thing about our pipeline issue too is if you explain to them why they have a purpose, you will get much more productive employees. When they have a purpose, it's not just a job anymore that you do. It has to have a purpose.

Gene Marks (32:47)

Great. Do you have a topic or a guest that you would like to hear on THRIVE? Please let us know. Visit payx.me/ThriveTopics and send us your ideas or matters of interest. Also, if your business is looking to simplify your HR, payroll, benefits, or insurance services, see how Paychex can help. Visit the resource hub at paychex.com/worx. That's W-O-R-X. Paychex can help manage those complexities while you focus on all the ways you want your business to thrive. I'm your host, Gene Marks, and thanks for joining us. Till next time, take care.

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