Rethinking Accounting Education

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Alicia Katz Pollock: Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. I'm your host, Alicia Katz. And, well, I've had a really wild year. And as I'm getting back from Intuit Connect and about to head out to reframe, it's given me a chance to do a little bit of introspection and getting my head out of my work and taking my hands off the keyboard occasionally is important sometimes. And I needed to check [00:00:30] in with myself about why I'm doing all this and why am I working so hard. And I realized it all comes down to changes in our industry. Accounting is evolving, and how we approach education in this space has to evolve too. Now I have a master's in teaching, but instead of teaching seventh grade English, I chose a direction with real and immediate impact on the world. And after 15 years, I just can't do the same thing the same way all the time. So stepping back and exploring the context is really [00:01:00] essential. So I asked my good friend and fellow educator, Matthew Fulton from Cloud Apps, Inc. to help me articulate these ideas and share them with you. How are you doing, Bob?

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Alicia. I'm doing phenomenal. Thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of this. You know, I feel honored that we've known each other for so many years that I've I've seen your journey and your progression over, over time and especially this year, it's been a very extraordinary year for you. Why don't you kind of fill in the listeners on what's been going on for you? [00:01:30]

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Well, in the span of just a few months, I was named Insightful Accountants top ProAdvisor educator. Royal Wise received the BDO Alliance Growth Strategy Award, and I was selected as one of Ignition's top 50 women in accounting. And, you know, saying all three of those in one sentence really feels surreal. And I'm grateful. You know, these organizations are recognizing my work. I'm grateful to the people who nominated me, especially the people [00:02:00] who voted for me, and most of all, to the students and my clients and my colleagues and my community members and all the team members who have shaped everything that we're doing.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: You know, knowing you as well as I do, it's very obvious that you deserve these awards. But, you know, I kind of always say, you know, awards are are lovely. But the interesting question isn't always about how did you get three awards in one year? I think what I'd really like to know a little bit more about is what [00:02:30] work were those awards actually recognizing? And, you know, what does the work tell us about where our accounting education needs to go next?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, when I look across the three awards, I see three different perspectives on the same body of work that we're doing. So the Educator Award, the top educator, reflects the teaching itself, you know, making complicated software and accounting concepts understandable, practical, and usable. The Growth Strategy Award from BDO [00:03:00] reflects the business model behind that teaching. We've taken a lot of time to get clearer about who we serve, listening to our participants and the learners and the firms, and figuring out what they actually need, and designing and redesigning our structure so that we can scale without losing the human support that makes education effective. And the top 50 women in accounting recognition reflects that wider impact creating opportunities, mentoring women, building community, and helping the profession [00:03:30] adapt to all of this change that we have going on.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah, there's no question about the amount of change. Now, tell us a little bit more about the work underneath the recognition. You know, in particular, I want to hear more about, you know, the three projects that, like you were saying, represent you where you think professional education is heading.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, if I think about everything that we do, I can kind of put it in three different buckets right now. There's the new bookkeeping incubator that I started this year. The [00:04:00] brand new interactive QBO step by step book that I've been developing with consultants in this leader group and an evolution of the Royal Wise Owls community. And you know, on the surface they look like three different projects. But really, to me, they're all different responses to the one persistent problem of knowing something is not the same as being able to do it with confidence in the real world. And, you know, we live in a time where we're just inundated with information. You know, [00:04:30] if you need to know what to wear, a button is in QuickBooks online, you can just do a search for it. If you need a demonstration, you can search around on YouTube and find a video. And if you want a specific short answer, AI can at this point produce one in seconds. But having an abundance of information and quick answers at your fingertips doesn't at all eliminate the need for education.

Alicia Katz Pollock: In some ways, it's made good education more important so that you're not, [00:05:00] first of all, spending all your time searching for that needle in a haystack answer to your question. The harder part isn't finding the answer. It's the hard part is knowing whether it's the right answer for this client, this file, this workflow, and this moment in time. And you need context and you need judgment. And you need to be able to notice when something is unusual or if you're going to implement something. Understanding that there might be consequences downstream. Maybe you're not [00:05:30] asking the right questions. And sometimes you might need a second set of eyes. And it's especially true with bookkeeping and accounting technology. With all the new AI apps coming out and all the software changes that, you know, you can teach somebody which menu to open, but it doesn't teach them what a clean set of books looks like. And I can teach you how to reconcile an account, but that doesn't prepare you for a messy file with duplicated transactions, old balances, and [00:06:00] nervous clients.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: You know, I've always joked for years that thanks to YouTube, I can pretty much do anything. I can learn and do anything I want to just by watching some videos. And then I do try to go do something like electrical work by watching YouTube video. And I get shocked when I don't know as much as what I think I would. So, you know, I correlate that back to you. For years you've taught the mechanics of QuickBooks. Um, but you know, what I'm hearing from you is you're, [00:06:30] you're extremely interested in learning now, like now and the entire journey of from knowledge to capability. And I guess I would love to share a quick, my favorite quote, which is Aristotle, which is wisdom is equal parts experience and reflection. So it's that whole journey from knowledge to the capability, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, it's like we can teach a business owner the basics, but there's always a larger context. You know, they [00:07:00] come to me to answer like, why is my sales tax wrong? And then we have to teach about the about destination versus home based sales tax. You know, you have to understand the whole context, the whole context, or we've got bookkeepers who are certified, you know, they're taking the ProAdvisor certification, but it doesn't mean they're ready to actually work on client books or experienced professionals. How do we keep up as the software and the workflows and the expectations are [00:07:30] constantly changing. And one of the things that I'm particularly interested in is creating learning environments where people can admit what they don't know before small mistake becomes a big one. You know, I talked to firms all the time. They're like, oh yeah, well, we have a training program. They know that they can come to me when they when they have a question. But no, junior wants to go to their supervisor and say, I don't know how to do this because. Like their resume said that they know how to do it. And so they don't want to admit that they don't know something. And so they just kind of keep [00:08:00] making mistakes and hope nobody notices or self train, which takes hours of time.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. I mean, those questions are the common thread. It seems like through all three of your projects, um, you know, let's, let's start with, uh, the, the bookkeeping incubator. How did that get started?

Alicia Katz Pollock: The bookkeeping incubator I just started this year in 2026, just in February. So it's brand, brand new. And it really just stemmed from practicality that back in 2023, I [00:08:30] wanted to take my clients from individual consulting appointments where I would meet with them in just in, in January for year end cleanups or a couple times throughout the year to answer questions or get the reconciliations caught up. And I realized that that wasn't really serving my clients. And yeah, my clients could actually use real bookkeepers, but my client, my my day to day clients tend to be micro-businesses and who can't really afford ongoing bookkeeping. So I [00:09:00] invited one of my owls members back in 2023 who was early in her bookkeeping career, and I asked her to be my outsourced, contracted bookkeeper. And, you know, she had a solid foundation. She was certified and she had a few clients. But like a lot of new bookkeepers, she didn't have much experience and she didn't have any confidence and she didn't have a support structure for complicated situations. And so I worked with her on my client books. And over the next two years, she grew tremendously. [00:09:30] And she learned because she was doing real work and she wasn't doing it alone. She could talk to me about the context. She could ask me questions and get feedback, and she had someone to turn to when the answer wasn't obvious. And what I really liked is that she could tell when something was wrong, even if she couldn't figure out what was wrong. She could tell.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: That's huge.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And after two years, she started taking on bigger clients. She landed a $4,000 a month client, and she built her practice up to ten grand a [00:10:00] month. And so at that point, you know, Roy was is now small potatoes and it was time for her to move on. And that is a successful outcome. You know, I'm sad she's leaving. But like hey, I won big. Yeah. Um, and so when I started thinking about, okay, well, how am I going to replace her? I realized that I just didn't simply want to replace her. I was like, okay, well, what made that experience work? And can I replicate it? And can I create it intentionally for more people? And [00:10:30] that's how I came up with the Royal Wise Owls bookkeeping incubator.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Okay.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So it's a paid internship. They're paying me for the training, but I am paying them as employees. And so it bridges the gap between accounting, education and real world bookkeeping. The the cohort are actually working on accounting. On my actual client files. I've got about 20 files that are divided up, 25 clients divided [00:11:00] between five participants. And so they're doing the work and they're getting paid for doing real client work. But the work is happening inside a structure where they're getting supervision and review and documentation and ongoing support. And that's the distinction that matters, is that it hands on doesn't mean on your own by yourself. Yeah. I'm not throwing them into a complicated client file and hoping they figure it out. That's not experiential learning. And that [00:11:30] would be risky both for the learner and for the client.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. So combining hands on experience as you learn creates a much safer way to encounter real world complexity, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, exactly. So basically the incubator is a small cohort, five paid interns, and I matched the clients to their experience level and to their interests. So the people who wanted construction got construction, right. And then I meet with them every Monday. And do we [00:12:00] do the hands on work together and then they finish it the rest of the week. I review their work, we do problem solving, and I even help them with the communications like, okay, well, do you want to reach out to that client or should I? And then they draft an email and I kind of massage it and figure out, you know, how they could say it better. And the goal isn't just answering, what do I click? I'm really trying to help them develop critical thinking. You know what's happening here? What evidence do I have from the client's history? [00:12:30] What are the consequences if we choose to do it this way or that way? Um, what else do we need to ask the client about? And then I realized that, okay, well, when I come down to the end of the year and we do the year end review. Well, the people in the incubator are interested in starting their own firms. And so that means that just doing the work isn't enough. They need to progress from being the practitioner to being a reviewer. So while [00:13:00] this first cohort, like what I'm calling level one focuses on managing real books, they're doing closes, they're doing reconciliations, they're doing professional communication, they're building workflows and learning software. I needed to actually implement a level two a second year to the incubator, which I'm just about to start now at the end of the year. And so that's going to take these people who have been doing the, the work and add file review and cleanups and troubleshooting [00:13:30] and supervision and practice management. So I'm basically bringing in a new group for level one, and everybody who's been level one is going to become level two. So the level, the people who've been doing this for the last year are now going to take my place and learn how to supervise.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: You know, a problem I often see in business is that we often are promoting people from one level to the next without really explicitly teaching them those transitions, like the different [00:14:00] roles. Um, I always say it's really easy to forget what you had to learn. So then as managers, we kind of wonder why a technically strong bookkeeper struggles to lead a team. Well, it's one thing to do. Work yourself in comparison to actually lead others, right? Or why a manager gives corrections without helping someone improve their judgment. So the manager just goes and fixes the work instead of like helping to educate them the why? They made different changes so they can start to do it in the future.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, no, [00:14:30] you totally nailed it. I mean, that's something that you really have to keep in mind in our profession is that being able to perform a task is different. It's a different set of skills to review the task. And reviewing is also different from teaching or supervising someone else. And we just kind of assume if somebody is good at good at the work, they'll be good at supervising. And it's a whole different skill set. Yes. Yeah. And so that's kind of my goal with the Royal Wales Bookkeeping Incubator is to treat these as learnable skills. So [00:15:00] it brings together different kinds of learning that they're with me, they're learning their QuickBooks expertise. And then they're going to be taking an accounting lifecycle course with Marriott Martinez so that they can learn the, the, everything that they need to know about the roles and responsibilities and accountability of being a bookkeeper. Every month they have a meeting with Richard Ropa Roberts, their own private roundtable lab, about running a practice. And so they can [00:15:30] talk about their issues and the emotions behind the, the learning and the, a lot of the facts that, you know, I don't have the time to teach them with just managing the bookkeeping. And so this allows them to learn and develop the habits and get to know the tech stack that they need to handle the work. And you know, the confidence doesn't come. You don't get confident from pretending to know everything. It comes from having a sound learning process that if I'm, [00:16:00] if I'm teaching them how to learn, that's as good as teaching them actual content that if I can teach them how to investigate, how to document, how to communicate, when to ask, and how to learn from a review. That's the kind of confidence that I want education to create, you know, grounded capability.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I can say knowing all three people of the team, you've got a very powerful group for these people to be learning from for sure. So, um, you know, if, if you want to learn more about the bookkeeping and incubators, [00:16:30] paid internship, uh, how and how it works, the link to it is in the show notes that you can.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So yeah, there's a whole 15 page perspective about the whole design.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Oh, wow.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So now tell us, tell us about your second project, the interactive QuickBooks training portal that you've been working on. It sounds pretty amazing from what I've heard.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's, it's honestly revolutionary. It completely stemmed from AI being able to take the printed page and turn it into an [00:17:00] interactive website. And so it's that that knowledge to capability gap that I was talking about, this hits it from a completely different direction. So I've been writing QuickBooks textbooks now since 2020. I took the the Sleeter group's original QuickBooks desktop book and updated that and modernized it. So like it had credit cards in it and then rewrote it again for QBO. And you know, I love, I [00:17:30] love courses, right? I love the discipline of an actual textbook where you organize the, the information really carefully. You build the concepts one on top of another, and you create a path with a storyline through the complicated material. And then of course, what makes it super challenging is that it's QuickBooks. It's changing all the time. And so that made it really hard for a traditional book to remain fully current. And QuickBooks is changing the interface moves, the workflows [00:18:00] evolve, new features appear, AI is being woven into the experience, and the screenshots start aging like as soon as the page is printed. Because even like the colors change and the people who were teaching the class in colleges and in schools were having trouble teaching it because you're teaching dynamic software on a static materials. And so the publisher, Kristeva Consultants, um, was, was approached by the [00:18:30] Sleeter group with this brilliant idea. Um, Tom Sleeter is the one who is developing it. So we've been completely re-imagining what a textbook can be. So what it is, is we've renamed it to QuickBooks online step by step. And the resource is an interactive e-book in the browser. So it keeps the whole structured sequential nature of the curriculum and the textbook.

Alicia Katz Pollock: But it it's now all surrounded with interactivity and instant feedback. [00:19:00] So the learners literally go step by step. It'll say, click this button, and then you go back and you do it and you go back and you cross it off and then it'll say, type this information and you go type it in and then you check it off. And so it guides you literally step by step. And then at the end of the unit, you export to Excel the whatever report that you run. And then you upload it into the smart grader and it tells you what you got right, what you need to go back and fix. It's [00:19:30] got the ability to check your understanding. It's got self graded quizzes, it's got teacher graded exams. It's got tons of of screenshots and it all works inside a real QBO environment. Basically you use Craig's landscaping, the test drive file in the light version, or if you get the the standard version, the complete version, you can you can also use additional files for case studies [00:20:00] for imagine photography and yin yang graphic design, and then actually apply what you learned in Craig's landscaping to files where you're really generating the information and doing the bookkeeping. And what I really love about it is if a step changes, it has a little flag on it, and you can click the flag and you can tell us what's different, and then we can go fix it and we can go update it. And within 24 to 48 hours, which isn't the software, it depends on my time. I can go in and fix [00:20:30] the manuscript and upload it, and now it's correct for everybody moving forward.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I mean, how many hours do you think you've spent creating and updating this information over these years?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh, I think full on 10,000 hours. You know, that's that's what they say. I can't remember if it was Lao Tzu or who it was, but what they say the number of hours you need for mastery. I have full on worked on this book for probably 10,000 hours. And this is going to make it. You know, if I had a change to make, I would have to go rerun the whole lesson [00:21:00] in order to get up to the point where the screenshot changed.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: And recreate the content to be able to use into that. Right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: So yeah.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: And so all of that, of course, is because when you're trying to help people learn, there's a big difference between getting an answer correct on a quiz, right? Especially open book quiz and successfully creating the transaction or the report yourself and seeing the end results.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I mean, it's revolutionary for the instructors because when you're teaching this in a classroom, it [00:21:30] was really, really time consuming because in order to grade the students, you had to actually go into the student files using Intuit Education's portal and actually pull up the student files and go check their work, which is, you know, running six reports per student and then comparing them to a PDF of the instructor's manual with the screenshots and just the amount of time it ought to take. The class was ridiculous. So now that students can run a report [00:22:00] and then export it to Excel and then upload it into the smart grader and it tells them if they did anything wrong, it's just it changes everything for the teachers. You know, I've been field testing the course for the last three months in my I call it my hot class, my hands on training class. And so I teach the book and it takes me three, 12 weeks. And I've been so I've been field testing the course with 20 students. And this year, for the first time, I'm not spending [00:22:30] all my evenings doing grading. I can just log into the portal and see this teacher, see the student status. I can see how far through the book they are. I can see what mistakes they're making. They can ask me questions. And if somebody is stuck or falling behind, I can just see it right there in the statistics on the dashboard. And what's really cool and really gratifying for me is that some of the students that are in the class, this isn't the first time they've taken it. They've taken the class. Last year, I had one student who's in here for her third time, and [00:23:00] they are loving being able to check off the steps instead of like figuring out what page they're supposed to be on in the book. So the interactivity really makes it fun.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: You know? Um, some might say that artificial intelligence is going to make teachers irrelevant. I mean, you've, you yourself have just shown how you can go from a teacher teaching directly, just from a book to this interactive, uh, environment said. Right. I personally, I think it gives teachers an opportunity [00:23:30] and truly kind of the responsibility to design better learning experiences, don't you?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, it's really a big shift in pedagogy and a big relief for the teacher so that you're not spending your time doing your grading, you're doing, you're spending your time working directly with the students. So since the software can provide the immediate feedback, that frees you up as the instructor to focus on the parts of the curriculum that need a human being, where you can now contribute your expertise about [00:24:00] misconceptions, give real life examples, give personal encouragement, and have more in depth discussions about all those you know, the messy edge cases that don't fit neatly into an answer key, because your time has now been reallocated away from grading multiple choice questions to actually having time to have real discussions in the classroom.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. So let's talk about your third project. You know, you are. You're evolving the Royal wise owl community, [00:24:30] I believe.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm. Yeah. And this actually came as a direct result of the bookkeeping incubator, but also recognizing how quickly accounting the industry is changing, that the, the learners in my incubator and the learners in the community are not all at the same point. And they don't all have the same goals either. So we've for the last 15 years, our focus has all been on narrow, narrowly focused on teaching QuickBooks online [00:25:00] and software training. But as we're listening to where students are at and talking to the owls in our in our community meetings every month, it became clearer that I needed to branch actually in two different directions, both at the same time. So one branch is for people who want to become bookkeepers and where they can become stronger, more complete bookkeeping professionals. Cas practices. Right. Firms. Growing firms. And while [00:25:30] your QuickBooks skills are essential, running a bookkeeping practice is way more than software mechanics. You need to understand the accounting life cycle, the responsibilities on your monthly, quarterly, and annual compliance issues. Knowing how to review a file for accuracy. How to clean up clean up messy books, how to communicate with clients, scope creep, pricing, security, all of that. And so they needed [00:26:00] more business skills than what I was already teaching. You know, sales, sales, marketing, as I mentioned, security with Wisp plans, right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: What's happening with AI? All the buzz about advisory? How do you price your services? How do you write an engagement letter? How do you hire the right staff? How do you delegate tasks and how do you move from being a solopreneur to a firm owner? Yeah. Right. Um, and so, and then there's also, as you grow the, [00:26:30] the need for deeper exposure to specialized industries that have their own workflows, like construction or cannabis or real estate, right? So we're developing that broader how to be a bookkeeper curriculum, both through my own teaching, but also through having guests and bringing in more, uh, more guest speakers. So in November and December, we've got Mariette Martinez coming in to do an accounting lifecycle course. And that's a key part of the foundation of the program. But then I've [00:27:00] got other people coming in, and we're going to have probably one guest instructor every single month. We've already contracted with Veronica Wasek, who's going to come in and refresh her diagnostic and clean up training on our platform. And then all those other topics I just listed literally are the courses that we're adding in 2027. Um, and again, the important point here isn't the size of the Royal Course catalog. It's the shift from teaching isolated techniques to supporting the whole person and the whole [00:27:30] professional.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: And you mentioned you're shifting in two directions. What's the other one, though?

Alicia Katz Pollock: So the second direction is going back to actually going back to our roots and going back to working with business owners that, um, we actually started with Sbdc classes where I was directly working with business owners and my initial boot camp class. That's the one that's my, that my book is my first book was written on, um, that all came from [00:28:00] teaching business owners. And so I kind of, I kind of missed that. And then Intuit also recently introduced two different versions of QBO on the low end QuickBooks free and QuickBooks Lite that are basically like, you can make one invoice or you can make an estimate in three invoices And Intuit is going down market because while they've been focusing on mid-market and upscaling with Intuit [00:28:30] Enterprise Suite and more features in advanced, they kind of also realized that they needed to fill the top, top of their sales funnel to bring in new clients. And so that's natural for the small businesses because with all the new ledgers that are emerging in the market, in order for Intuit to keep their market share, they've got to be able to hit that low end and make sure that price isn't the determining factor, that simple start. Even though it's a glorified checkbook, it's still 38 bucks. And for somebody who [00:29:00] doesn't have income yet, they're looking at that $38 as a mountain to climb.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I would agree.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And what it meant for the Roy Wise Owls is that, you know, my, my, my classes are deep dives. I like to joke that. And, you know, long time listeners have heard me say this before, but like watching my classes is like going to a Disney movie. You know, you take your kids and they're enjoying the the fun, lighthearted stuff, but the parents are getting a whole different set of jokes. Yeah. My classes are like that. When you [00:29:30] put a beginner in my class, they get what they need, but the experts are still pulling out those deep nuggets that, you know, kind of the game changers for them. But that means that my classes are really super long and super dense. Three hours of me fire hosing you with everything that I know. And for a business owner that doesn't need to be an accountant, I don't want to bury them under this professional level. Troubleshooting in the same course as the fundamentals. [00:30:00] And so I wanted to break out a more clear, practical path that gets them oriented to the software, get QuickBooks set up correctly, do the basics of working with your customers and vendors, understand the bank feeds and the basics of running reports without Having to hear about how to use the reconciliation window as a troubleshooting tool. So what we're doing is introducing a new QBO basics class series specifically [00:30:30] for business owners in January and February. It's really my boot camp class, but instead of teaching it in one all day seven hour marathon whereby our six your eyes are rolling around in your head. I'm breaking it up into 790 minute classes. So it's going to start with bookkeeping and accounting fundamentals for business owners.

Alicia Katz Pollock: You know like what? Tracking your receipts and how to manage, you know, and that bartering doesn't mean that you're working for free. [00:31:00] And then moving them through setup and navigating the software and how to manage the customers and income vendors and expenses, and just walking them through the basics that they need for day to day, hands on work. And it's not really a watered down version of the deep dive course. It's its purpose built training because they're doing a different job. They need different things out of the software than a bookkeeper does. And that distinction is really crucial. [00:31:30] You know, great curriculums, not more content. It's the right content in the right sequence with factoring in the decisions that the learner is actually trying to make. And so yeah, so that's one of the new directions that we're going. Um, and at the same time, we're not neglecting the experience. Qbo users who are relying on our deep dive courses, those courses have to keep evolving as well. You know, the workflows keep changing. Ai [00:32:00] is changing what the software suggests, what we can automate. Intuit Accountant Suite is giving us a whole new set of tools for accounting professionals that never existed before. And Royal Wives has always maintained its excellence by continually rebuilding each class, every every between every year to two years and reteaching it and evolving each class because everything that was in it also changed. So [00:32:30] basically, we're doing three things simultaneously. Inside the owls, we're creating a broader professional pathway for bookkeepers. We're building a clearer fundamentals pathway for business owners, and we're revamping our entire established deep dive library for the current workflows and AI and Intuit Accounting suite.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I mean, that's a lot of motion, but I mean, it's not just change for the sake of change. It doesn't seem like. Right. Mhm. It sounds like you're [00:33:00] responding to the different learners, their needs for stronger, you could almost say like stronger bridges over a rushing river of industry evolution. Right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's a great metaphor. Yeah. Um, yeah. When I so like going back to where we started with the awards and the recognition. There's kind of a pattern there that the top ProAdvisor Educator Award is just reminds me that clarity is what matters, that people deserve explanations that respect their intelligence, [00:33:30] and don't assume they have knowledge that they haven't had the chance to build. The BDO Growth Strategy Award reminds me that growth isn't just about getting bigger. It's our growth came from getting clearer about the needs of our members and paying attention to participation and feedback, and making sure that we're aligned with what they really need, as well as finding a way to to create new ways [00:34:00] for learning to scale. You know, instead of the individual learner, we're really now available to scale up to firm level training and the top 50 women in accounting recognition. You know, for me, that shows that leadership isn't about your personal accomplishments. It's creating opportunities for other people to help them succeed. And, you know, none of these projects is finished. You know, they're actually after 15 years of doing this. All of these are just at their beginning. [00:34:30] The incubator is still a pilot. And I tell the people in it that it's a pilot and I actually evolve it based on their needs. So they they tell me what's working, they tell me what's not working, and we shift it. So it's completely I, you know, it's going to I'm going to consider it a pilot for the next three years. Yeah. Um, the interactive book is going to keep changing as the software evolves and as we continue leveraging the AI background backbone and continue to build it out and build it out, and [00:35:00] the owls curriculum is going to continue to evolve because this profession is going to continue to evolve.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. You know, I got to say, is one of one of the most important habits we can, uh, model as educators and leaders is really it's a willingness to say that this is what we know now. This is what we are testing. This is what we've learned. And then this is what we're changing next, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And those, those questions and that thought process is really essential that everybody here [00:35:30] listening to this needs to ask those questions in your firm and not just assume that everybody knows what they're supposed to know. And don't assume that just because you told them once they understood it. You know, people, you'll train somebody on something and they'll, they'll look at you smiling and go, aha, aha, aha. Oh yeah, I understand, I understand, I understand, but when you go back and check on the actual work that you're doing, they might not have actually the learning might not have landed. Yeah. Um, and so all of this, [00:36:00] it's not for me. It's not at all about earning three awards in one year. I mean, yes, thank you. I'm grateful. Um, but it really is, you know, stemming from decades of teaching, writing, listening, updating, answering questions, making my own mistakes, rebuilding something that already existed, helping students get unstuck, and trying to build a better mousetrap. More. More importantly, it's absolutely not my work. Me, Alicia. [00:36:30] Alone. This is all of this is reflecting a community of people who are willing to learn out loud, ask hard questions, share their own expertise, and help one another. And, you know, I'm grateful for the recognition, but I'm really energized by where it's moving and where it's pointing towards that the future of accounting education isn't just give us more information. It's building better pathways from information to action, action to judgment, and from individual [00:37:00] skill to leadership. And that's what Royal Wise is building now. And if these awards mean anything to me, it means that I'm heading in the right direction.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: You know, I've always kind of said, together we all succeed. And it's been our relationship truly started. And with many of the people that we know, it's all been focused around giving back to community, helping others learn and helping them evolve their own knowledge, [00:37:30] their own practices. So this is something that you've given your time and your truly your career towards. So you're very deserving of these awards. Congratulations for everything that you've accomplished. And, uh, I know that this has been an amazing year. I can't wait to hear what 2027 is going to be for you as you reach for all of your goals.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Thank you. I super appreciate that. But you know, it's people like you and the, the support and enthusiasm and camaraderie and sitting on the phone for hours just [00:38:00] tossing ideas around that makes it fun. You know, it's not even just about the teaching. It's about the community and the friendships as well.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. You gotta be passionate about what you do. And you definitely have it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And you do too. All right. Well, thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about myself for, for 40 minutes. Um, but, you know, hopefully this was helpful for people. You know, I want your takeaway to be in your firm. How are you approaching [00:38:30] education? What changes do you need to make to how you are training people so that you get the success that you are looking for and the outcomes that you want for your clients as well.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: And those who for everybody who wants to learn more about your three projects. We said it once before, but you'll have links. The links will be in the show notes, of course, and then you can always reach out to Alicia directly.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, absolutely. First place to go is royal wise.com. Um, and then you can kind of navigate your way [00:39:00] into all of the goodness that's out there. All right, everybody, thank you for listening. I'm hoping that this gives you some direction that you can take and apply in your own firm with how you are approaching training and the the path of all of the people who are in your firms. Um, of course, if I can help in any way, you know where to find me. Um, please do head over to earmark.me and go ahead and answer the questions about today's episode so that you can get your CPE. And [00:39:30] also in the, in our show notes, there's links to all of our sponsors. Please click through to the sponsors. If you heard about any of the solutions that would be particularly relevant for your firm. That's how we get supported and how we can keep this podcast going long into the future. So thank you everybody. This is Alicia Pollock from Royal wise.com.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: And this is Matthew Fulton with Cloud Apps, Inc..

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