3rd Anniversary Celebration with Hector Garcia

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Alicia Katz Pollock: Welcome, everybody, to this week's episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. It's actually a special day today. This is actually the third anniversary episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, and I have a very special guest with me, the person who got it all started in the first place, Hector Garcia. How are you doing, Hector?

Hector Garcia: I'm [00:00:30] doing great, Alicia. Congratulations. Three years for a podcast. It's not coming right. At most podcasts last ten episodes, and people call it quits. And the fact that through the good times and the bad times, you keep, you keep going. It's a testament of how passionate you are about this and how perfect you are for this role.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I super appreciate that. I mean, it's a passion project and it, you know, we haven't missed a single episode in three years. So we're like 155 or [00:01:00] 156 episodes. And it works for me because it allows me to keep tabs on everything happening in the industry, which just dovetails perfectly with royal wise.

Hector Garcia: That's great. And also, we should give credit to the folks that have collaborated like Dan and Dan DeLong, like Matthew Fulton, like Marjorie Davis. And I think you've had all the collaborators too, but the ones that regularly show up, I only come in once a quarter or so or and I haven't been doing [00:01:30] such a good job at coming once a quarter, but sorry about that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. No, it's and huge shout out for me as well to Dan Spot and Marjorie for, you know, filling your shoes as a co-host. It's been it took three of them and it's been a pleasure working with them. I also want to send a shout out to our producers, earmark and Zach in particular, who does all of our editing. So I could not do this without you guys and Christine as well.

Hector Garcia: All [00:02:00] right, let's get right to it. So what do you want to talk about today, Alicia?

Alicia Katz Pollock: So I thought it would be interesting to do our third anniversary by taking a look at what's changed in these three years. You know, it's rapid change and slow growth, both at the same time. So, you know, I want to hear from you. How do you see the industry has shifted in the last three years?

Hector Garcia: Well, the first thing that's really obvious and evident that wasn't three years ago [00:02:30] is the proliferation of non QuickBooks options on the accounting world. So, you know, when we started this podcast three years ago, we were probably sitting pretty, pretty on a big moat that Intuit had in the small business accounting space. And I believe they still have a pretty big moat. Like, I don't think there's a lot of industries in which one player has as much, you know, of the of the market [00:03:00] share as as QuickBooks has in the small business accounting category. And even with all the competition coming out, Intuit is still super strong, super, super strong. But what's very, very obvious is that what felt like an impossible task, like creating a real QuickBooks alternative. Have you seen Xero trying to do this for years and putting millions and millions and millions of dollars just haven't been able to, and all these companies come and gone [00:03:30] all of a sudden you have a couple of companies that, um, again, I don't think they've taken over a lot of their customers, but they're getting some traction. They have a lot of money behind them. And the underlying narrative that is allowing that to be true is AI. So, um, even though Intuit has been on the AI discussion from the very beginning, I believe that all the smaller companies or [00:04:00] high tech companies or the, you know, newly polished up, minted and freshly funded companies that, you know, they have AI in their in their name or in their AI first or AI native and stuff have probably created some influence in the market and have led people to believe that if your accounting system is not AI first, it's a thing of the past.

Hector Garcia: And that's allowed them to get a lot of funding, which has allowed them to give [00:04:30] enough marketing and enough wine and dine money to get accountants out. Get him convinced to switch to that solution. Now, I personally, and I might be a little biased just because my world is so QuickBooks. I don't see any of these contenders as like a true QuickBooks replacement. Like even the, the ones that are making true headwinds like kick and digits and even zero. Kind of feels like it's making a comeback lately. You still look at them head to head. And I still choose QuickBooks because [00:05:00] of the feature set, because of the amount of customers that have it, because of how easy it is for customers to use it, and how much power I'm allowed to have in those files as their accountant. But with that said, what you're actually seeing is the speed in which these apps are being developed and new features are showing up. It's just astonishing. And they are beating into it to this game. Just because Intuit needs to be a lot [00:05:30] more cautious about releasing things. You know, it's like it's not like Intuit doesn't have a history of releasing broken things, you know, like, and to speed that up and release more broken things, that would be a challenge.

Hector Garcia: So Intuit is going through an internal transformation where they're trying to figure out how much of their legacy that, uh, of what they have created over the years and the community they have, they have built, and what people are used to using needs to be maintained, versus how much of these trends [00:06:00] they need to latch on to just so they're never seen as irrelevant. So Intuit is going through a highly philosophical transformation. And I've felt that when I spoke into a lot of folks at Intuit product managers, product designers, where instead of just having straight discussions about this feature being broken or this not working, or this or we needing this or feature parity with desktop, we're having philosophical conversations around, should QuickBooks even solve this in the first place? [00:06:30] You know, like, is it something it's a rabbit hole worth going to? Does this affect enough people? Do we have do we create a straight mechanism for this, or do we create more of an AI chat? You know, sort of self discovery, self learning mechanism to solve this. And that is a significant difference from my perspective on how you know my beloved, my beloved QuickBooks and, you know, into it as a software company is approaching the marketplace and is being influenced by all these newcomers.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. [00:07:00] Well, there's a whole lot to unpack in, in just what you said, like, you know, taking it back to your original comments that when you and I started QuickBooks really, truly was kind of the only game in town that there was zero, but adoption was low. And then all the AI forward options started showing up like, you know, digits and, and puzzle and all of those. And now zero is undergoing a resurgence. Like, you know, [00:07:30] literally as we're recording, this is zero con. And a lot of people that I met in QuickBooks connect are all at zero con. And I really think that the going back to the industry changes now, multi ledger is a thing. You know, I still perfectly feel like I've got job security because Intuit is still doing so much development and so much growth. Um, but it's the industry has [00:08:00] shifted that it's not a monopoly anymore. Now it's a choice.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. I've, I don't think I'm going to I'm just going to be totally transparent with you. I know Intuit listens to this podcast and all the accountants listen to this. I think it's important to like, always hear the truth. Okay. You know, a lot of people I've spoken to that have gone to a different ledger or are in the process of evaluating or putting a couple of customers there. They're not really looking at it from a multi, like you said, multi ledger. They're not not from a practical sense. [00:08:30] They're like, oh, I wish I had customers across four different software so I can learn four different softwares and be lost in four different softwares at the same time. No one in our industry looks for that. I think for the most part, we look for predictability, repeatability, um, uh, job security from the, from the perspective that we feel pretty safe, that we know what we're doing in that software. We don't want to be in three different softwares. I think the people that are going there are mostly going out of spite [00:09:00] like this. Just, uh, I don't know if you watched Larry David, but you have the spite store, right? Uh, in that episode, right? Where, where, where people are just just very jaded or very offended or very frustrated with some sequential thing that has been happening to them, you know, via their Intuit relationship, whether it's something broken with QuickBooks or something with the connected services or some, you know, constant complaint with their clients, whatever it is.

Hector Garcia: And they're like, you know what? I'm done. I'm going to look for something else. I don't think they're genuinely [00:09:30] evaluating the two things and saying, oh yeah, Xero is a better software because it's not, and it's just not objectively and subjectively, nothing is a better software because QuickBooks has been doing this for 40 years. It's like it's like looking at another spreadsheet software other than Excel and admitting somehow that this other new shiny thing that has five years in the market somehow is better than Excel. It just isn't. It's just no physical capacity for it to be. Could it do a couple of things a little bit better? Yeah, it could it be a little prettier? Yes, [00:10:00] I think all that is true. But fundamentally as a, as a, as a ledger, as a database with the amount of connections and deep roots that QuickBooks has with apps and banks and stuff like that, I don't think there's a true contender out there. I'm not saying there can never be. I think Intuit should definitely always be protecting their their business, but I don't think that it's. But it just isn't. So like the people that are doing this, it's because they are like basically saying, I'm done. I threw the towel. And there's a whole plethora [00:10:30] of reasons people listening to this could, could connect with. Whatever the reason there is, because there isn't one specific one, but the biggest overarching one. And it has been for a while, and I think it's been a constant theme of this podcast is the whole Intuit expert thing, I think.

Hector Garcia: I think Intuit really, really wrongly positioned Intuit experts or QuickBooks Live or a combination of the things. Um, I think for a little bit of a while there were a bit cavalier about it. It's not, it wasn't [00:11:00] like a mistake in positioning. It was more like, man, who cares? We're so big, you know, we are going to target every type of customer, every type of revenue. I don't give a crap. Um, and then obviously it backfired. And then they're, they're now being okay, listen, you know, we have this a huge amount of resources we invested with our QuickBooks Live folks or Intuit expert folks. We have this incredible human resource, uh, knowledge base sitting here. We're not just going to fire, you know, whatever, 5000 people, 500 people. I don't know how many there are. I don't [00:11:30] know how many experts are there. We're not just going to fire them. We have to like reposition them to do something a little bit more useful. And also, Intuit has already positioned their product, especially their higher end product. The QuickBooks Online Plus advance as a price point that doesn't really match any of their competitors. They have to add value with additional human intelligence, what they call AI plus AI, and that's where Intuit experts are being repositioned. So the this this combination [00:12:00] of the SaaS SaaS SaaS a couple right by coding their own software.

Hector Garcia: All these AI native tools that have been able to grab some of the market, some of the accountants being a little bit frustrated with a couple of actions that Intuit has taken of repetitive, you know, uh, issues over the years, that combination of things intuitively, if something's got to change and the biggest low hanging fruit is the one thing that feels like they'll be sticking it in our eye [00:12:30] with, which is Intuit experts, aka QuickBooks Live, aka you might be competing with us, even though Intuit has always said their intent is, listen, you know, we're going to expand the pie. You know, we're going to attack those, not attack this. We're going to work with those clients that can't afford accountants yet. We're going to create a higher floor for your pricing. So we're going to create kind of a base price. And let me tell you something. This is partially true because when QuickBooks Live came out, a lot of accountants realized, Holy crap, my pricing [00:13:00] is way low because your pricing as an individual, local, trusted, highly accessible single accountant working with your client should be a lot more expensive than one 800 QuickBooks, right? So so it for some people, it created a real nice lift of your base prices with TurboTax live was also very evident. Like even for our firm, which we thought were pretty sophisticated, the minimums for TurboTax live were like above some of our minimums. We're like, what the heck? We got four CPAs on staff.

Hector Garcia: This makes zero sense. [00:13:30] So in in a way, depending on how you looked at it and how you framed it into it could have helped the market, the bookkeeping market and create kind of a bottom. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was just market confusion is, you know, marketing the services to, to clients that have an accountant or clients receiving from, you know, maybe not from a direct connection, but from other connection. Oh, Intuit also does bookkeeping or calling one 800 QuickBooks or whatever, and whoever they talk to couldn't see that there was an [00:14:00] accountant attached and they made the offer verbally or the other side of the coin, which is all pro advisors. You know, at some point got an email saying, hey, you want to work for Intuit? And it happens to be that all nine of my employees are advisors. And it just feels that they're poaching my employees. So just a lot of moving parts that cost a lot of accountants to get frustrated and got us up to this point. So I am so glad and I'm so happy to have been in the room where Suzanne, [00:14:30] the CEO, and many of the executives said, hey guys, it looks like we really royally screwed up on the way we positioned QuickBooks Live. You know, we're going to be on our way to rebranding this thing, but it wasn't. It's not disappeared yet. Rebranding this thing and repurposing the employees for this.

Hector Garcia: The one thing that I think was a huge miss for Intuit, and I think it still is, and I still have a chance to say this and narrate this, assuming it's true is because of QuickBooks Live or because of Intuit [00:15:00] experts. We learned so much about what you accountants need, that we have been able to use that intelligence to give it back to you in better tools. Now we got to figure out if that's true in the first place. But that would have been a great way to message back some of the, you know, seemingly positive things that you could have gotten from what from the most of the industry feels like a negative thing, which is the whole QuickBooks Live Intuit experts challenge. So long story short, long winded [00:15:30] way for me to say I'm glad this is being repositioned. I am glad the accountant relationship is being valued more, and I'm really, really looking forward to what else they do in terms of actions, not promises. What we get to hear at Intuit Connect, and then in 2027, when the new platform Intuit Accountant Suite, which is supposed to not just be a client list, but like a whole central command for all your clients, platform agnostic, you can have all your clients [00:16:00] regardless of where they are. I think that if they deliver big on that, on those actions, I think they could literally transform fairly quickly how people perceive into it as a as a partner to the accounting industry.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, again, there's so much in there that, um, when they came out with, with QuickBooks Live and what you were saying about the price point, I believe it was $400 a month. There were some people going, oh my God, that's way more than I charge. And [00:16:30] like you said, transforming their pricing. And then there were also people who were like, wow, they're really undercutting me. And I think most of those people found out that the services that were provided were not nearly as, as comprehensive as the work that they were doing. And I also really appreciate what you're saying about Intuit learning from the experience. And I'm really, really glad that at Accountant Counsel and that you were there when they finally kind of woke up. I'm glad that something was [00:17:00] said that made the entire C-suite go, oh, wait a minute, we're actually committing suicide if we continue down this path. And I, the a lot of the initiatives that they've been putting in for the last month, I have seen a huge shift. It really brought peace of mind and made me super happy to hear your experiences that, you know, again, you were not you were literally in the room when it [00:17:30] happened in the room when it happened. Um, for those of you who are, um, Hamilton fans, um, there was somebody else in the room when it happened. Um, and the, that I really have witnessed a shift. Like even the fact that Intuit is now sponsoring the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast is we're still unofficial, but the fact that they're acknowledging that there's a lot of the men's to be made throughout the industry and they are repositioning [00:18:00] QB live.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I like that they didn't just fire everybody and cut the cut the head off the department, because there's a lot of investment in capital in real human beings there that even though the service wasn't great, we can't blame the bookkeepers who were part of it. And the fact that they're moving it into the human intelligence layer to match the artificial intelligence layer and provide direct support services in product for QBO plus and advanced. I [00:18:30] think is huge. I do have respect for that. I have you know, you know, I've been doing this long enough to want to make sure that their implementation is right so that it doesn't smack of the challenges that we've had in the past. But I like where they're going in particular. Every time I talk to somebody, the phrase that they bring up is nail the basics. I'm hearing it over and over and over and over again from literally everybody that I talk to. It just comes up in their conversation. [00:19:00] They'll say, oh, well, we're putting our attention on nailing the basics. Or they'll say, oh, I'll do that during my nailing the basics time. Like, it sounds like they actually have scheduled time on everybody's schedules where they go backwards, not just developing new things, but taking a look at all the feedback that's coming in and dialing in what is still rough and polishing it. And that not only are they reinvigorating the relationship with us, but they're also reinvigorating their [00:19:30] relationship with their own software.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, and I wanted to add a comment. You mentioned that they're now sponsoring this podcast as well. Um, and that's not the reason why we are saying good things about it. I mean, we're like, truly, like, you know, we've forever, we've said, you know, the things that we've said about it. And, you know, I think I'm seeing a combination of good things and bad things. So it's like, I'm pretty sure I really hope that people don't like read into that. But I wanted to say something about something I like about the Intuit is doing. So [00:20:00] a couple of years ago, our friend David Leary, who was one of the producers of Earmarked Media who produces this podcast, uh, mentioned to me something called the Cluetrain Manifesto. And I was like, what is that? And he's like, well, basically it says markets are conversations. And what it means is we got to pay close attention to what people are saying to each other, talking about it and asking about their software. I think for a very long time into it [00:20:30] kind of just looked at their feedback form. And I know, Alicia, you've talked about how important the feedback is and how important it is to give into a feedback, but that's the feedback that gets too into it. I think that a more valuable piece of feedback is the conversations we have in this podcast is a conversation you see in social media is the long run, the long runs you see in Reddit, the responses to the rants and how people go.

Hector Garcia: That's the exact same problem. I'm having X or Twitter or whatever. And I think, um, Intuit and most corporate [00:21:00] America approach to that is to have a standard response, maybe a bot that says we care. Sorry about that call. Our support will help you. And like, it doesn't really do anything. And people reply saying this is an automatic response doesn't do anything. Now they're investing in where the conversations are happening because that is your marketplace, right? If if people are saying appraising software, which doesn't happen very often, by the way, I believe people are 100 times more inclined to complain about something with the [00:21:30] software than going online and saying, Holy crap, this is amazing. This saved my life. Right. And for the most part, I think that happens only in a group or a, an area where there's a culture of encouraging that. But in the QuickBooks world, in the bookkeeping world accounting world, there never was that. There was always a culture of just continuously complain and bitch about the things that are broken with it. And everybody piled on to it. And if [00:22:00] Intuit is not actively adding to the conversation and saying, hey, we heard you, we took action.

Hector Garcia: Look at how we responded, not just call at one 800 QuickBooks will help you. This is what we did. Executives saying, look, I'm listening to you, I got you. I've, we're going to make something happen and actually make something happen. And it's okay if they use influencers and, you know, people like me or you or whatever to like amplify the voice if they have truly fixed it, like it's okay to do that because they're not trying to fix the narrative, they're [00:22:30] trying to fix the product and a well and a good product and a good service and a good company speaks for itself, which lends to people like us that are pretty transparent about how we feel, be able to like go back and go, you know what? This requires a praise and that we do it. The more people in the community go, you know what? This was really good today. Let me, let me, let me praise on that. But accountants are just such a negative people. I'm just not a negative. We're just so busy, so, so tired, so [00:23:00] frustrated with everything that happens in our world that the software getting in the way is just one more thing. Usually the straw that breaks the camel back and people just explode.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, and that's true for anything on social media. Nobody posts goes to social media to praise something they always go to seek answers when they have trouble. And, you know, and it's also interesting watching the difference in the conversations on Facebook versus Reddit, for example. Um, but that's one of the places where I've [00:23:30] always felt like I had a role in a mission was doing that balance of, you know, that's why I do the look what I found, where it's like, here's the new things, here's what's been fixed, here's what they're developing. And being that that positive voice in the space. Because for all the for one negative comment in on social media, there's a thousand people who are using their QuickBooks just fine and enjoying it, but they're not taking the time [00:24:00] to go to, to social media to say, hey, look at this awesome thing that I just did. Unless it's like really special, but they're just heads are down and getting the work done. And I think there does need to be that, you know, that's why I do what I do. I think there needs to be a balance in the narrative. And, um, so that's why people come to me to listen, to learn what's new and see the benefits and all of that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And it's also, we have my compliments to intuit that when they started [00:24:30] sponsoring this, the conversation was, oh, now you need to be our voice piece. Mhm. No, I am still independent journalism and going to let them know what's not working and let you all know what you need to do to fix it, because I do believe that this still is the product underlying the financial stability of all of the small businesses in our country. And we need QuickBooks to work. Otherwise, all the small businesses fail. And so that's [00:25:00] kind of my, my mission to, to do all of this. And so I want to follow up with what you're saying and thank Intuit for coming to their senses in 2026 and realizing that the path that they were on was alienating the people that built them and, um, backing up and taking a step back, even while they're pushing the, pushing the technology forward with AI. They're stepping back and making sure that they are protecting their relationships [00:25:30] with the individuals who are using the software and making sure that the software is a solid platform moving into the future for sure.

Hector Garcia: So you asked me about the kind of the state of, of everything, and we kind of talked about into it. Maybe we can, you know, move off into it. I'm excited about Intuit Connect. I'm going to go, uh, I'm gonna, I might teach some stuff, which also gets me very excited. And, um, and it's okay to like get paid to teach something because you're gonna, because you're a better teacher than their own product managers. That's okay [00:26:00] for them to do that. And I think it's totally okay. Now do I do, I hope there was a Hector Garcia type person inside into it that would make amazing videos and walking people through stuff and explaining them what works and what doesn't work. I wish that existed, but that doesn't exist. So I think they still should, um, until they hire someone like that. And if you remember Woody Adams, Adams back in the day used to be I didn't, it was just to make great videos. And, you know, he used to really connect with us when he made videos. But like right now, you know, they have like their own product managers [00:26:30] or like actors making videos and it just doesn't feel like, like, like the circle gets closed. So I think they should continue to work with people like me and other people like you, even like people like Jason Statham or down the long or whatever. And it's like, hey, make videos about this and show people your own spin in this specific feature, or hire people like us to teach classes and get people certified. That stuff is still really valuable and went into it, got rid of the training writer network, which kind of was what did that.

Hector Garcia: I think that [00:27:00] sort of fell apart a little bit. So I'm hoping that with the new Pro Partner program, they also in parallel build a sort of a influencer partner program or or training partner program. So we can have a lot more of us that are, that have that proclivity to teach on top of, on top of practicing, because we get excited about teaching things about QuickBooks where we don't have to go out there and sell our books or sell our courses where Intuit can fund us some of that, uh, some of that, some of that training. Because [00:27:30] I think that what makes accountants in general much more confident in what they do, which will translate to better fees, better service, better clients, is feeling confident that they know how to use the tool, they know how to use it from A through Z. They know what works. They know what doesn't. They know that if it breaks, there's a specific workflow to, uh, escalating that, uh, they know they have a specific support person or they know how to get, uh, support, you know, together with a client or by [00:28:00] yourself. If, if something is on fire, like a confident, a technically confident accountant is going to be a much more competent accountant and a much more profitable accountant, and a much more value creating accountant. So I think Intuit should continue to invest in training. And of course, Alicia and I are, you know, we're biased towards that because we believe training is like what? Literally what makes the world spin?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Now, one thing [00:28:30] that I do know that Intuit is doing as part of the Pro Partner program is a mentorship program or mentorship tier of some type. They're, they're calling it the industry advisors program, I believe. And the kickoff call to get that started is actually happening this week, I believe. Um, or when we're recording this. And so I'm really curious to see what that is. Is it individual mentorship? Is it a new training arm like you're talking about? I'm really curious [00:29:00] to know what they are, what they are imagining and is and where I get to fit in on all of this. Um, and, but I love that idea of them adopting the, the external trainers on the internal side. I mean, I've noticed that I was a Intuit QuickBooks connect trainer for almost ten years. And in last year, most of the product training was all done by the program managers, the product [00:29:30] managers and internal staff. And, you know, I kind of miss being on the stage, but I do get to be a sponsor this year. So Royal Wise is going to have a booth in the exhibit hall. And so I'm excited about being able to participate in a whole different way.

Hector Garcia: Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I agree man. So on the non Intuit stuff, uh, something else that's happening with the industry, which I find it very, very interesting, is that I believe the average accountant or accounting firm feels 1 or 2 ways. One [00:30:00] super empowered with AI feeling like the world is their oyster and there's all sorts of really amazing sort of hidden potential there. And every day they're pushing Claude and ChatGPT to the next level. Maybe they're investing in AI courses. Maybe they're investing on having a full time AI person inside the firm. They're experimenting, creating their own version of apps, in some cases creating replacements [00:30:30] for like their QuickBooks or their Bill.com or whatever. Right? That's like one type of firm. And that one is, is very exciting to look at. But also they're, they're kind of exhausted because like experimenting with AI is like, is no picnic. Okay. There's just a lot of iteration. There's a lot of things that don't work. It's a lot of investment of your own time and resources and a lot of, let's call it non-billable time that you have to invest to do that. I think it's worth doing it. I think that should be in moderation. Like we should always be, [00:31:00] you know, adding value to our customers. We should never be neglecting our customers because we're chasing some shiny object. I think that's half of the profession. The other half is freaking out because they feel left behind, because they maybe they play with ChatGPT and they can't get it to do the things that they're expecting it to do.

Hector Garcia: Right? Or they're watching these videos of people saying, I was able to automate this and that, and it's like not working for them or like the gap between how comfortable they feel with it [00:31:30] and getting there is so big or feels so big that they don't want to invest in, in learning that process. And I think that that needs to be fixed. Like we gotta figure out how to get those that are being successful at, you know, with AI, the experimentation and stuff, a few of them and helping the other ones bridge the gap. Now, I'm not saying that our profession should go 100% AI, and I'm not saying our profession should be 100% against AI. I think that the folks [00:32:00] that are being cautious about the security and safety and privacy of our clients data with using AI. It's a good thing, I think. I think that accountants have for many, many, many years been the stewards and the protectors of our clients private data. They should continue to, to, to do so. So I think they have a point. But and the guys or the folks that are testing new things, you know, they've seen many industries disappear because you don't get on, you know, [00:32:30] the new thing, the new trend. You don't get on with the times and all of a sudden you're 100% irrelevant. They also have a point. So we need as a group to come together and say, grab folks, the folks from Group A and Group B and help each other bridge the gaps, like the ones that are going buck wild with client personal data, you know, maybe bring them down, you know, to earth and go, hey, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta safeguard this data because there's so much fraud and so much identity theft nowadays.

Hector Garcia: And then the folks that are like, no, no, no way, no way. I can't [00:33:00] put a bank statement in there because, okay, you're taking three times as long as the as the next person and then all of a sudden you are like this old curmudgeon that charges for their time. And it makes no sense to hire you because I can hire an intern that knows how to use ChatGPT to do the work in half the time. And yes, there's, there's judgment and personal experience in between. But I believe that the perception of knowledge and experience as the most important thing is diminishing, because people so quickly get answers [00:33:30] to some so many advanced questions and advanced concepts with AI that they no longer feel that you need the professional that used to be the gatekeeper of that knowledge. Like, for example, five years ago, if I had a legal question, I would do some research online, but I wouldn't feel safe until I talked to a lawyer. Today, like 99% of my contracts, I write them with GPT and I like, I read them and I'm like, that kind of makes sense. I already read a bunch of contracts that my lawyers did. [00:34:00] It kind of makes sense. The other side probably uses ChatGPT to verify that none of the language affects them.

Hector Garcia: We are just using AI for a lot of the stuff that we thought, or we felt. It was gated by a professional in the past. This same thing is happening with accounting and tax. So if we are not figuring out how to reinvent ourselves, our clients are just not going to see the value on working with us. And it's not just the value in working with us. It's [00:34:30] like sometimes some people in some cases prefer to talk to a machine. I know that, I know that sounds weird, right? Because I don't want to call customer service and talk to a machine. That's horrible. Yes, but in some cases, I'm better off talking to a machine. This is what I need. This is what I mean. So I'm a software developer. I'm in the software development world, and I have a couple of developers that work in my firm. I mean, in my company, they're great. I love talking to them, but sometimes [00:35:00] it's just much faster for me to explain to AI have AI give me a sample, iterate on it, go back into AI and spend three hours working with AI, not talking to a human. And I prefer that over how slow it is to talk to a human and wait until they come back the way until they think. So there's a little bit of that shift where the interaction with the human is losing a little bit of value in some of the categories. And as accountants, if we don't reshape our positioning in terms of how [00:35:30] great it is and how much of a premium it is to be able to chat with us, the stuff that we used to have conversations with people about, like how to categorize this, how to like the 80% of the time we were spending over minutia, our customers want to replace that because it's just going to be much more pleasant to like bang it out in ChatGPT than have a conversation with someone on a follow up conversation.

Hector Garcia: It's just like everything about talking to a human nowadays or many things, it just feels like slow, [00:36:00] right? Compared to to the speed in which we get answers. And not for everything, of course. Right. Like I, in some cases, I want to give my doctor a self-diagnosis what I think is wrong with me, and I want that person to think hard about it and not just say, oh, I know what you have. I don't, you know, so so we have to figure out at this point, what is that thing that requires that human, uh, slowing down the process and the human conversation? And what is that thing where customers are want to skip the human, [00:36:30] reposition ourselves and tell the client, okay, we're going to build this thing for these type of things that annoy you to talk to me about. And we're going to take all that time and reposition it to this awesome thing you do like to talk to us about, right? And that's something that we need to like do right now because the market is shifting fast.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I think one of the, the factors there is availability that with the a human being, we're all on our own agendas and our own schedules. And then when you have a question, you have to wait for the other person to have time to answer [00:37:00] your question. Whereas AI is instant availability. And I think that's where some of that speed comes in. But that's also exactly right. Where does that, um, the human role where it's not as much about facts and figures, it's in the, the acknowledgment of the chemistry inside your brain and the thing that makes you human and your soul and bringing the soul into accounting and bringing the soul into industry. [00:37:30] I mean, I just spent this weekend, I had a task to change the name of, of one of the characters in my QuickBooks use case in the payroll section. And if I had had to do it manually, I would have had to rerun the entire payroll section of the training to all grab to grab all new screenshots, and that would have been a 10 or 15 hour project. And I told ChatGPT to find the name Ernest Withers and change it to Douglas Wood. And it went. And it did it for me while I [00:38:00] worked on something else. And that, to me is a fabulous use of AI that just saved me 15 hours, and I just let it make perfect images for me. But I still want to talk to my CPA about my taxes. I want them to use their expertise and their experience to give me guidance based on my situation, in the context of other people doing similar things in my own [00:38:30] industry. So, you know, I, while I do like using, I've been using AI to like figure out some statistics and KPIs, but I still want to talk to somebody to help flesh out the direction that I'm going to go with those with that knowledge. And I think that's kind of where your what, you know, reflecting on what you're saying there.

Hector Garcia: Exactly. And like to put like a bow on it. You said, I still want to talk to my CPA about this thing. Now [00:39:00] I want you to think about this. Every client has a version of that. But that last word, this thing is different for every client, right? So what a lot of accountants do, a lot of bookkeepers do is we decide what is the one thing that we're going to monopolize our time on by talking to our clients, where our clients may all want a different experience, right? Like, and what we usually end up monopolizing the [00:39:30] time on is like, really like, from the client's perspective, really dumb and useless things like it's this personal or business, like for the client, it feels like you're not adding any value to my life by questioning every decision of every expenditure that I make. Right. So I think your clients want to talk to you. They want to talk to us. But everybody wants to do it differently and everybody is going to have their own version of, I would love ChatGPT or like some AI tool [00:40:00] to do this. So every accountant should have their own. Just a suggestion, like a high level suggestion, their own white label branded chatbot that contains your own internal knowledge that you know the client's file, your voice, whatever, and let your clients go ham on talking to a, some sort of AI tool in which you could always go back and look at for context, and then let your clients choose their own adventure and go, and what I really want your attention for and [00:40:30] your voice and your Zoom call or whatever is for these three items. And that's going to be different for every client. Mhm. And if we're able to customize that, I think we can get over this hump.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's like almost Making your making your own chatbot for your company and having that be one of your services where it's got your specific expertise in there. But I still think, you know, having a chat that goes to a human being is still, you know, the [00:41:00] high with the AI. And again, I really like that Intuit has leaned in on that. And they're not just going to AI to AI. Sorry.

Hector Garcia: Great.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, so Hector, we've talked about the, the, the state of the industry and the state of Intuit. What about the, the state of Hector? What's the, um, what are the changes and how is your life and your world and your business has evolved in the last three years.

Hector Garcia: Oh, thank you for asking. So, uh, I'm [00:41:30] doing a lot of work with my extension with right tool. We, uh, have over 50, 000 active downloads in the Google Chrome web store. That means it's been installed and not uninstalled in 50,000 instances of Google Chrome or chromium based browsers. And usually about 10% of those end up converting to paid customers. So we're also very excited to have a big contingency of paid customers, a really good Facebook group where people every [00:42:00] day tell us what's broken and what they wish it would do. And, and can you help us with this? And, and we're out there, you know, like responding and fixing and, and just trying to help everybody's, uh, all, all the QuickBooks centric bookkeepers lives better through right tool. So that right now, it's taking a lot of my time. Something else that's taking a lot of my time because it's, it's end of summer and it's fall is preparation for, uh, the two events that I'm traveling to. I'm traveling to interconnect [00:42:30] in Las Vegas in October. I recommend everybody, if you haven't bought tickets yet, you know, um, consider going to Las Vegas Interconnect to see what exciting things they might announce, this year and for next year. And of course, my event in Miami Reframe, which Alicia, you're you're coming to it. So I'm kind of heads down working on those two things. Uh, my firm, my accounting firm still chugging along. I've, I'm the, I'm the I, I, I have, I'm an avatar.

Hector Garcia: I'm the, what would Hector do? Avatar. Right? So something [00:43:00] breaks in the firm and they want a second opinion about something and they're like, what would Hector do? That's when I get involved. And then I just give my $0.02. But you know, my partners, the ones that took over run the whole thing. My employees, you know, run the whole thing. Uh, all I have to do is like, step in when they asked me to step in. But what's really cool about, you know, still being affiliated with my accounting firm is that all the time they, you know, because they're using QuickBooks every day, they're telling me, hey, man, this thing is working really well in QuickBooks. This thing is not, which [00:43:30] helps me feed, you know, the new feature set in right tool, but also because Intuit does call me a lot for suggestions about something new that they're building. So it still keeps me relevant to tell them about, hey, I'm, you know, I'm seeing announcement. I mean, I'm seeing reports of this working really well, this not working very well. So I can give them a lot of feedback. So, um, I'm, I'm still a very QuickBooks centric, still making videos and still doing right tools still, you know, uh, teaching QuickBooks and is still running reframe. So nothing really [00:44:00] has changed for the most part. Uh, my world is pretty wild. Believe it just with those few things.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Are there still tickets available for reframe? Is it too late for people to sign up?

Hector Garcia: It's not too late. Last year we did sell out around mid September, uh, mid to late September. We had the last couple of stragglers. We are at about 148 I think is the last count. And we, we closed.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Just a couple.

Hector Garcia: So it's pretty close. Yeah, it's pretty close.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. What's your topic for this year. It's an advisory right.

Hector Garcia: It's called [00:44:30] Innovative advisory. So we feel that the word advisory it's kind of played out right. People are using and misusing it. They've been using it, misusing it for years. So instead of, uh, just being kind of like laser focused on telling people you have to move to advisory, you got to stop doing compliance. It's more about like how to be really, really different and innovative about how we approach advisory. Like how do we think outside the box? How do we give advice without the [00:45:00] clients knowing that we're giving them advice because that's when they're actually think it was their idea and they actually get to do the thing. Uh, or if we are going to give advice as a service that they actually are paying for it and know that they're actively engaged in an advisory conversation with us. So those are the things that we're going to be exploring this year is just like a different spin to what your industry has been pushing, which is, you know, get out of, get out of compliance and get into advisory because that stuff is easier said than [00:45:30] done. So we're trying to like figure out like how to actually do it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's great. One of the things I really like about reframe is it's kind of single topic and single focused, and I get to have my epiphanies and come out with my, my bumper stickers of the ideas that I want to implement in the direction that I want to go myself. And that's why I keep coming back.

Hector Garcia: Awesome. What about you? What's going on in your world?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, with all the changes going on in the software and in the industry, I've kind [00:46:00] of decided to deep dive into the really, what's new inside QBO that the conversation that I keep coming back to over and over again is they just raised their prices again. What are we getting for what we're paying for? And I've decided to like, well, let's surface all the new stuff that's in the software that we've been so busy over the last year, just getting used to the new interface. And we keep hearing about books, clothes and, and accelerate and [00:46:30] the firm level tools, but then even little things like I was just in a customer details area and I scrolled down to the bottom and there was CRM fields like word of mouth and like, how did they hear about you and who passed on the referral and all sorts of CRM things that are happening inside there. And so I'm kind of fascinated to continue rooting out all of those little changes. So I have a course coming up in early September on, um, on [00:47:00] the AI agents in QBO and identifying them all. And what do they do? I'm doing a class just on customizing QBO that one of the problems that I hear people have is the visual clutter or, you know, I don't want to necessarily use the word clutter, but there's so much there that you glaze over and you just focus on what you already knew because you don't have time to look at each button and see what it does.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So I'm doing a customizing class on how to cut through the clutter and [00:47:30] design your own Interface and and then courses on Intuit Accounting Suite. And so I want everybody to know, if you haven't already checked out royal.com that when I talk about a class being on a certain day, that's just the date of the live webinar. Everything that we do is recorded and turned into a QAS self-study course with Nasba CPE. And so anytime you hear me talk about one of my courses, you can just head over to royal.com and, and sign up for the class or become a member, [00:48:00] which gives you full access to every single topic that I'm talking about here. So that's what I'm up to.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. And you have job security for that because if all you're doing is always catching up with all the new things that QuickBooks come up with, you're gonna have work forever.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, it's fun for me. I love being a tech geek and digging into those little corners and finding all those little new things and all the shiny objects. And yeah, like I see the other [00:48:30] ledgers coming up. Like, you know, we've been talking about in the beginning with zero and digits and all of that. And the computer geek in me is like, oh, let me go check out that shiny object. But there's just so much for me to cover that my time is full.

Hector Garcia: Awesome.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. All right. Well, Hector, thank you so much for coming back and celebrating our three year anniversary with me. This was a great conversation. I love hearing all the insights that you have from the direct work that you're doing with Intuit. [00:49:00]

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I'm glad to do it. And I guess we're gonna record one more on internet, so stay tuned for that one.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. Thank you, everybody for listening in. This is Alicia Pollock from Royal Wise.

Hector Garcia: And Hector Garcia, CPA from Retool and Reframe.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And we will see you in the next one.