How Do You Know All This?

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Alicia Katz Pollock: In this week's episode of the unofficial QuickBooks Accountants podcast, this one's going to be called How Do You Know All This? And this is I've been getting questions in my email and on socials going, well, Alicia, how do you stay on top of everything? How do you know all this? How did you get to be the the queen of QuickBooks [00:00:30] that you are? So I wanted to share my origin story for those of you who have not heard it, and then let you know of my resources and how I do all of this so that you can up your game as well. Because, you know, I love being able to be an authority on the topic, but knowledge is power, and I want all of you to have that power as well, to be able to live your best life and help your clients to the best of your own abilities. So any Inspiration [00:01:00] that I can give you to improve your world is just, you know, that's a treat for me. So the first thing is like, how did I wind up here? And, um, I came in. I'm one of those nontraditional hires. I was not trained in accounting. I was not trained in bookkeeping. I am homegrown and really, honestly self-taught that I started, uh, many years ago, back in the early 90s. [00:01:30] Um, I had a jewelry company, and I actually made astrology charts into necklaces. I also have a master's in teaching, and I was substituting in the schools, but it was really kind of hell to be with these seventh grade 13 year old students who I was subbing for an English classes, and there were no lesson plans and they didn't want to be there.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I found that I didn't want to be there. And so I decided to lean into my jewelry company [00:02:00] Instead of using my master's in teaching that I had just graduated from college. So I went to college to be a seventh grade English teacher, and I realized very, very quickly that I was not going to be happy doing it. So I was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is a very woowoo community, and I started learning about astrology, and I've always been creative. And so I started making these astrology necklaces that were wearable, readable astrology charts. [00:02:30] And in order to make the jewelry, I had to buy components and craft the jewelry and then sell it. And so I started using QuickBooks for Mac back in the early 90s. And so that's when I learned about cost of goods. And should beads be inventory or non inventory. Now underlying all of that is I've been a computer geek my entire life. I got an Mac when they very, very first came out in the early [00:03:00] 80s, and the first thing I did at the age of 13 was turn. My my dad had a dental office in the basement of our house, so I would go down after school, and my job was to create an appleworks database and literally type in thousands of files, names, addresses, phone numbers.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And that is where I became a speed demon as a typist and built my first database. And then we used that to send them to print out mailing labels to send out their postcards for their [00:03:30] cleanings every six months. So that was like the first job that I had at 13 was building a database, doing the data entry and doing bulk mailings, and I just loved computers. I when they the first one came out, that was all dos. I was playing adventure games by text and then paint came out with the brick patterns, and that was just spectacular. And so I literally grew as the computers grew and learned [00:04:00] how to do everything digitally. And so that was kind of my my claim to fame. So along the way, I was still new, that I was a natural teacher. And so I went to school, got my master's, and when I was making the jewelry, it was, you know, as you can imagine, not enough to make a living off of. So I headed over to the Santa Fe Community College and started teaching in their Adult Basic Education program for GED and English as [00:04:30] a second language. And so I was doing teaching and building their database of their students so that we could manage them.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And then that's where the and Santa Fe Community College had a planetarium. And that's where I got interested in astrology and invented the jewelry. So going back to selling the jewelry, I really enjoyed the QuickBooks part of it almost more than making the jewelry. And [00:05:00] as I was cobbling together my living in being a 20 year old, I was now substituting in the schools, making jewelry and helping people with their computers and working in the Adult Basic Education program. And I found that helping people with their computers was just more and more rewarding. And so I started teaching how to use how [00:05:30] to use word and how to use PowerPoint and how to use Excel at the community college. And then when I then it came time for me to move. Now, along the line in Santa Fe, I also got a license in massage therapy, but that is completely outside this story. So we're going to leave the massage. The massage, the massage therapist chiropractor story over to the side. So I moved to Portland, Oregon. The [00:06:00] easiest way for me to make a living, having moved, is to work at another work at a business college teaching Microsoft Office. So I became Microsoft Office Certified, certified in word, PowerPoint, access and Excel, and I actually recorded access training and PowerPoint trainings for Lynda.com, which is now LinkedIn.com, and this is back in 2010.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So I was helping people with their computers and helping people [00:06:30] with Microsoft Office and did my first content creation. And as I was helping people with their Excel and their Microsoft Word, they started asking me, well, can you help me with my QuickBooks? And at first I was like, well, I've used it, but I don't really know how it, you know, I don't know if I can answer your questions. And then I realized that, wait, I could actually figure this out on the fly. But I didn't feel like I was an authority. I was just I just kind of felt like I was making it up as I went [00:07:00] along. So I started self-teaching myself beyond what I needed for my business. And I would set up files for people, and I would always run them by bookkeepers to find out, like, did I do this right? What do I have to do differently? What am I doing wrong? And the feedback that I got was actually, Alicia, you seem to have a knack for this. Like, these are bomb proof. You're getting everything right. Which I didn't believe them, but I trusted them. [00:07:30] And so I started doing more and more QuickBooks support for people. So I became kind of their their roving IT department to help them with anything they needed from their spreadsheets to their QuickBooks. So at this point in my journey, I met my husband, Jamie Pollock, and Jamie was also an IT guy.

Alicia Katz Pollock: He worked for Symantec at the time, and he really kind of admired all the freelance computer work that I was doing, [00:08:00] but he was a PC guy and I was a mac girl, so I taught him everything that I knew about Macs and Macs support that I was doing in the field. Then I got hired by Macpac, an Apple reseller in Portland, Oregon, and I started teaching Mac classes for Macpac. And while I'm teaching at Macpac, I'm thinking to myself, okay, I'm teaching classes here in Portland to this group of people here who are nearby this store, who can make it [00:08:30] at this time. Wouldn't it be nice if I could, like, record these and send them out and anybody could watch them any time? But the world had not caught up with me at that point, so I just kind of put a pin in that. We tried recording. Some of them didn't really work. I did try doing a screen capture recording, and I actually put out my own self paced video for how to use Mac OS that, you know, that's when you would print [00:09:00] out the burn the CD and put it in a plastic container and print out the labels and put the labels on yourself and stick them on the shelf. So I was literally printing out my own DVDs of my, uh, of my Mac trainings.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So, you know, I'm building this and building this and building this. Then came the day when my I realized that I wanted to go to QuickBooks connect, because I was really still enjoying all the [00:09:30] QuickBooks work that I was doing. And so I went to QuickBooks connect, and I needed a sub to cover my classes for me. So Jamie came in as my sub, and now the average age of the class is that people at Macpac were, um, probably in their 60s and 70s. And I have to say that the little old ladies loved him. So that's when he caught the teaching bug, and that's when he became our Apple trainer. And [00:10:00] here I am in San Jose at QuickBooks connect. And the first sessions that I went to were certification training. Laura Redmond was the very first one and Dawn Brolin was the second one. Now, if you've ever taken a session with Dawn Brolin, she spent most of the time hooking candy at people, like pegging them with candy and little squishy things that one of the vendors. Little squishy toys. And when it came time for the evaluation [00:10:30] of as I gave her a three out of five, I gave Dawn Brolin a three. And what I said was, I came here for certification training, but this woman is certifiable. So that was the first input that I ever gave at at QuickBooks connect.

Alicia Katz Pollock: But looking at Laura and looking at Dawn and Michelle Long and MB Raymond and I was watching all of them going, I can do this. I'm a trained [00:11:00] instructor. I have a master's in teaching and this looks really cool. So I asked Donna Ohman if I could become a trainer, and the following year they put me on the QuickBooks Live road tour. So there used to be a road show that would travel around the country to different cities and teach people how to use QuickBooks. So I had made it to the big time. And so now I'm traveling around the country with Mariette Martinez and Heather Satterlee and Michelle and Erin [00:11:30] Dyer and Carla Caldwell. Like that was my my home team, my crew. And so we would travel around the country, um, teaching QuickBooks. And now Jamie was back at Macpac teaching the Apple stuff. And when I would come back, I would we would, uh, keep helping people with their Apple computers and their QuickBooks computers. It got to the point where I was getting so much more QuickBooks work that, you know, originally we would pick up the phone and whoever had room on their schedule got the next client. [00:12:00] But we decided then that Jamie and I would kind of split our split our focus. He would become the Apple guy and I would become the QuickBooks girl. And so I just at that point started focusing completely on QuickBooks training.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Back in 2017, when there was a giant snowstorm in 2017, 2017 or 2019. Gosh, I'm losing track. But there was a big snowstorm in Portland, and I had a really important client that [00:12:30] I had to get to. And so I started searching for web technologies that would allow me to do screen shares and join me was the one that I was already using, but it was really hard to use. And then I discovered Zoom. So I'm like, hey, let me try zoom with this client. And so I did the zoom and I was able to talk to her face to face without having to travel all the way across the city. And I could screen share, and so I could do the work. And so I was an early adopter of Zoom. And [00:13:00] then that's when I. That remember think thinking back a couple years ago to when I was thinking. Mm. If I could just broadcast these classes. That's when I started being able to broadcast my classes. I realized that I could invite people in and they could, um, take the classes and watch what I was doing. So I started broadcasting my classes using zoom. And then Covid happened. And what happened [00:13:30] then is, um, we realized that we wanted to introduce the world to zoom. And so we put out free zoom trainings, and this is this is March and April of 2020, and especially to the seniors that Jamie was working with, with their Apple technology.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So we put it out to our entire community and we full on our first zoom training. We had 86 people show up for the zoom training and the average age of the people in there. Well, it wasn't quite 86. It was probably [00:14:00] closer to 70 or 75, but we had 75 seniors log in to our first major zoom class and they're all going, is this thing on? Can they hear me all at the same time? So it was like cacophony. It sounded like geese. And so we figured out where the mute all button is. And Jamie and I taught people how to use zoom so that during Covid, they could stay connected to their families. And then now [00:14:30] that people started getting used to zoom, that's when our royal wise trainings really took off. The world had finally caught up to our vision. People understood that you didn't have to be local to take a class, and that you could now record it and watch it demand any time. And that's when royal wise, like just our trajectory really started exploding. So now fast forwarded from there to here. Um, I [00:15:00] just started doing QuickBooks content all the time, and now going back to, well, how do I know all of this? All of that is how I got here. But how do I stay here? How do I develop, and how do you develop your expertise in QuickBooks online? The very first thing that you should do is use it yourself that every everybody can have.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Not everybody. Everybody who is a bookkeeper [00:15:30] can have their own free Qbo for accountants profile. And if you're already were using desktop, I recommend that you import your file into your qbo and you get its Qbo advanced, you get elite payroll, you get elite online bill pay. They give you full access to everything at no charge, because the best way to learn is by doing it yourself. And what better books to learn on than your own books, because you know your company [00:16:00] backwards, forwards and sideways. And so then you can implement the features. Now I crack up my CPA, or maybe I make steam come out of her ears. I'm not sure which, because what I do is I put QBO through its paces. Even though I'm a cash based company, I run my books, accrual my annual memberships. I use the deferred revenue tools. Um, I try [00:16:30] out all the different methods of of QuickBooks payments. I literally try and make every single feature work for me, even if my, you know, my company's still kind of small. So even if it's a feature that's beyond what I need, I still really try and make it work and I'll, you know, run all kinds of reports just to see if I can get the exact report that I imagine.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So that's the first way that I really gained my expertise is just really trying every single feature. And how does it apply to [00:17:00] me? The second way that I gained my expertise is by helping other people with their setups and their troubleshooting. Like I said, I didn't come into this from a bookkeeping perspective, so it wasn't me learning to be a bookkeeper and then learning how to use the software for my bookkeeping clients. Instead, I was coming in as a consultant when somebody reports weren't right or they were having trouble with the feature. I was the person that they would call and I would get to [00:17:30] show them how to make it work for them. So coming into it from a troubleshooting and consulting perspective gave me more insight into more features, because instead of just focusing on the features that my client needed, I was focusing on what else they could do. And especially with setups when somebody is migrating from desktop to online. That's the biggest time to talk to them and say, [00:18:00] well, what features could you use? What would improve what you're working on now? And that way, again, you're always keeping on top of the newest events and the newest things happening in the software. So the fact that I was working on setups and training and troubleshooting as opposed to bookkeeping, is one of the reasons why I have the breadth of knowledge that I have now.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I just mentioned that troubleshooting because I was coming [00:18:30] into it from a problem solving perspective. I realized that I needed more communication with support than I was getting just by dialing the support number. And somehow I just found myself getting in touch with the project managers. Some of it was meeting them at QuickBooks connect every year, and just making connections with as many different programmers as I could. Some of it would be I would put in feedback and they would actually ping me to get [00:19:00] more information about what I was saying. And so over the years now, I've developed these deeper relationships with a lot of people who work at Intuit, so that when I do come up with something that's problematic, instead of calling support and hoping I get somebody who knows what I'm talking about, I actually can now email directly to those developers. And so that way I kind of get the inside scoop. I do have to be careful what I say because some of it is under NDA. And so every [00:19:30] conversation ends with, well, what can I say and what can't I say? And then I have to wait patiently until I can say all the things that I want to say. But that definitely has helped with my levels of expertise then with my clients. A lot of because I was coming at it again from a troubleshooting perspective, I began to realize that, wait, I can't just be a troubleshooter.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Some of some of my clients need [00:20:00] me more often. Hmm. Guess what? They need a bookkeeper. And for a long time, I referred them out to the bookkeeping community. And I would find a right fit bookkeeper for each one of my clients who came to me for troubleshooting so that they could get ongoing actual accounting, help with the daily routines or the monthly routines. And so I developed a big network of local, uh, local and national like minded bookkeepers through the [00:20:30] all star accounting professionals and the Woodard Group, led by diamond here in Portland and, uh, different communities. And then my husband looked at me one day and he said, well, Alicia, you're leaving money on the table if they're already coming to you. Why are you sending them to someone else? And that's when I started my bookkeeping, uh, arm of royal wives. Now, for me, the only clients that I want are the really super easy routine ones who really just need [00:21:00] quarterly or monthly reconciliations and double checking. Their reports are right. I don't do accounts receivable and accounts payable on a daily basis. Um, but I, I by having my own dedicated roster of bookkeeping clients, that allowed me to really dive into the world of bookkeeping technologies and workflows and SOPs and hiring.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I had a membership program through [00:21:30] the Royal Wise Owls through all of my training classes, and there was one woman in particular who always asked really good questions. Her name is Brenda Spandrio, and when I would work with Brenda, I really enjoyed working with her because even if she didn't know. Now let me let me put it this way. She could tell when something was wrong, even if she didn't know what was wrong or why it was wrong or how to fix it. She could identify that there was a problem [00:22:00] and she would bring those problems to me. And I realized that that of probably any trait that an employee could have, that is probably the most important one, because somebody can have be an expert. But if they don't know when they're making mistakes, then you're you always are going to have to watch after them. And she could tell when there was something she didn't know. And she asked the questions in order to get the information. So I hired Brenda. Brenda became my outsourced bookkeeper. And [00:22:30] then that allowed us to explore all the different tools like right Tool and keeper and, um, where we wanted to use keeper and where we wanted to use asana. But that brought me into the realm of how to run a small bookkeeping firm. And so that added to that section of my expertise. I had mentioned the ASAP and the Woodard Group communities, I realized that joining some [00:23:00] of other communities would also help with my expertise, and so I joined a bunch of them.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I was part of the Intuit Trainer Writer Network until it folded, but that got picked up by by Woodard. And so they have a Woodard instructor writer network. I became part of Mariette Martinez's Master Your Books community. I joined Complete Business Group as a qsp. I mean, actually, that happened a little bit earlier, but they're one of my communities. I joined Richard Roberts's [00:23:30] Roundtable Labs and became part of their Not Your Not the Only One roundtable. I joined Nancy McClellan's ask a CPA and I'm part of the earmark community. And so I had all of these different communities, in addition to the royal wives community that I had already been a part of. And that helps me, uh, hear what other people are having trouble with and what their struggles [00:24:00] are so that I can think about the solutions and how to tailor my content delivery so that it was solution oriented. And so I always have an ear out for the questions that people are asking, and then build those questions into my content. And then there are also a lot of other information sources where I get my knowledge. And so, you know, we have the episodes for the ProAdvisor in the know program and even [00:24:30] the ProAdvisor certification tests. I really like the recertification test in the spring, because it makes sure that I really that I'm not missing something that I really am keeping on top of all of the changes.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Facebook has been amazing for me. I'm part of a lot of different Facebook communities. Hector Garcia's, uh, QB Power hour, the right tool community. Veronica Visor Tax five M community. And of course, I have my own, uh, [00:25:00] training for QuickBooks users community. And so again, answering questions on on Facebook, whether I already knew the answer or it gave me an opportunity to go research, the answer was a big part of how I gained all of my information and authority. I've been a long time subscriber to Insightful Accountants newsletter insightful accountant there. Monday Minute is one of the places where I go to find out what has recently been announced because, um, Murph is always on top [00:25:30] of it. And so he finds things that I miss. And so I get a lot of my information from Murph and William Murphy. And then, of course, now all of the different podcasts, the accounting podcast, um, David Leary and Blake Oliver's podcast helps me keep tabs on what's happening in the accounting community. Although, guys, I know that you dropped the cloud name, but now if I ask Siri for The Accounting Podcast, it gives me anybody's The Accounting Podcast, not your The Accounting [00:26:00] Podcast. And so I miss being able to say play the most recent episode of the Cloud Accounting podcast, in which case it always knew.

Alicia Katz Pollock: But I listened to Cloud Accounting podcast every week. I catch on the books Intuits ProAdvisor podcast. Nancy McClelland in question have a She Accounts podcast that I like a lot. Um, Jackie Meier, CPA has a has a podcast that I check into every so [00:26:30] often. And then I also really enjoy unaccountable with Tyler and Jeremy. Theirs is a a little more entertaining because they do it as a game show, so I check in with them every so often. So those are like all the ways that I keep tabs on what is happening in the community and learn all the ins and outs of the software. And I've gotten to the point now where, like I have to admit, my brain is kind of full sometimes when I listen [00:27:00] to this podcast, my own podcast I'm listening to, I'm like, wow, I didn't know that. And then I'm like, wait, I'm the one who said that? So I actually learned from my own podcast sometimes that I guess technically my brain is getting full because I'm all QuickBooks all the time, and especially now with all the new changes and having to update all of my content, I'm literally like all QuickBooks all the time. And you know, it's a [00:27:30] labor of love. But I get such good feedback from people in my communities and in my membership program that what I'm doing really, truly makes a huge difference for them in their profession.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Helping them save time, streamline, um, do good work, and learn how to explain things to their clients in a way that's really effective, that I'm just really grateful that I have developed this niche and this platform and this opportunity, [00:28:00] so that instead of teaching seventh grade English to people who don't want to be there, I get to teach QuickBooks. To all of you who are listening to this podcast by choice and joining the Royal Wise Owls intentionally, and that is just the biggest gift that I could ever ask for. So I hope hearing my my origin story and hearing about some of my resources is helpful and inspirational to [00:28:30] many of you. If in addition to this podcast, there's all of the resources that I create to help you. I just recently taught my Qbo bootcamp, which is perfect for your business owners so that you can explain Qbo to them without you having to explain qbo to them. I am doing my upcoming bank transactions class because I am the ultimate bank feeds geek. And so I love going into like, literally every single feature in the bank transactions feed and [00:29:00] all the best practices for using it with speed and aplomb. And then my reconciling course that's coming up. It's not just how to reconcile, but it includes the new reconciliation statements and how to troubleshoot a reconciliation, because a lot of people and even your clients think, well, reconciling is just simply checking off the transactions that are on the statement.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So what do you do with all the transactions that are not on the statement? And that's what this class specializes in. So it's as much a [00:29:30] cleanup and troubleshooting class using reconciling to figure it out. And I really enjoy that class too. So do head over to either the Royal Wise Owls and check our calendar for those classes in October, or the links are in the show notes. I'll also look forward to seeing many of you at Women Who Count and Intuit connect, and also at reframe. And for those of you who are going to be at Intuit [00:30:00] Connect, it does happen on a Tuesday, which means it's two to Tuesday. So make sure you bring a tutu with you and wear it on. On two two Tuesday we will have a photograph, so I'll send out information once I know when and where we're going to meet, and it'll probably be at over lunchtime. And, you know, let's have a little bit of fun. It's close to Halloween. Go outside your comfort zone and look pretty. And it's not just the women. The men do it too. So [00:30:30] bring your two 2 to 2 two Tuesday. So thank you all for being a loyal listener of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, and I will see you in the next one.