Redefining the Role of the State Society with Jen Cryder

Hello, and welcome to the Big Four Transparency podcast. I'm very excited to present your guest today, Jen Crider, CEO of the PICPA, the state society advocating for CPAs in Pennsylvania, and honestly, a lot, a lot beyond Pennsylvania as well, which I really admire. Welcome to the pod, Jen. Yeah. Thanks, Dominic. I'm so excited to be here. And I, you know, we've had a chance to chat about this. I really love being able to serve the profession. So let's, happy to talk about those ways. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe as a starting point, do you want to walk us through your role a little bit with the PICPA and kind of what, you know, maybe a couple of notable wins that you've had during your time there as well? Absolutely. I've worked with the Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs for about a decade now. The last couple of years, I've been the chief executive officer, but prior to that, I was the chief financial officer and the chief operating officer. So I spent some of my time running the business in those other roles, but the last couple of years as CEO, my role has been a lot more external out there in the profession. It's been fascinating to see not only across Pennsylvania, but really across all of the US, the accounting profession. There are probably more issues right now in play than ever before. So I really think my role is honestly just such an honor and a privilege to be able to work on behalf of CPAs across the country. When I look at the last couple of years, we've tackled lots of different issues. We can focus on what has happened within PICPA. I've done some very cool stuff, but nationally, I've had the chance to be part of conversations I never could have imagined back when I was in practice. I had a lot of opportunity to play a role as the profession has been changing licensure in the last couple of years. We're talking now about other topics coming down the pike after that one, changes in the rules around continuing professional education or the definition of a test or how the CPA title is used. All of these things are really impactful in the day-to-day life of a CPA. I didn't realize any of that when I was in practice. So most people are probably hearing that thinking, what is that? I don't even get it. But all of these different things that the profession works on absolutely impact the life of a CPA day-to-day. And I mean, you're getting involved in all of this at a very interesting time, right? I think that from my perspective anyway, it doesn't feel like there's been a ton of drastic change in the profession. If we look from maybe 2015 to 2020 or something, and then it feels like all of a sudden everything's changing, requirements on credit hours are changing rapidly. There's a lot that's happening here in terms of addressing the pipeline shortage, advocating a little bit more for people. So I think you're in the position at a very exciting time, for sure. It definitely is. The PICPA is nearly 130 years old, which is an incredible legacy. There's honestly some pressure to that. The organization has been vital to CPAs for that long. But when I think about that period of history, the things a state society or any professional organization had to do to support CPAs, it was sort of a short list. Because what a CPA was, that definition, was pretty static for most of those 130 years. And then, like you just said, in the last couple of years, all of a sudden, it's an infinite list. So it's an important time to be in these organizations, whether, you know, like in my role as staff or for CPAs that are engaged in the state society's volunteering, interacting, engaging. There is so much to say about what is happening in our profession, and these organizations need the input of the practitioners in the profession to make sure we get to the right answers. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And for people listening, you might be thinking a kind of a certain way about what, you know, being the CEO of these state societies means. And you have absolutely broken the mold of that, essentially. So let's talk about that a little bit. When you came in, what was that like to decide, you know what, we're not going to just focus on Pennsylvania. We're actually going to do all these kind of national initiatives. We're going to collaborate with all of these other state societies, and in a certain way as well, kind of provide resources to them. Which I think is absolutely fascinating, where, again, for someone who's trying to get involved with the state societies, the PICPA is almost like a bridge into probably 30 other state societies as well, right? Which I think is really fascinating. So what is it when you come in that you kind of decide, you know, here's the maybe traditional scope and here's the definition of my role, but here's actually what I want to do and how I want to operate. Like, how does that kind of come to be? Yeah, I will never forget. I spent 15 years in public accounting before joining the state society, and so I will never forget coming into PICPA at like 100 miles an hour out of public, which was not what happened in associations, right? There's no 100 miles an hour in associations. Yeah, there's no 30-day, 90-day plans, like none of that for sure. No, no, no. And I just remember the pace was so jarring to me. But what I brought from that public accounting experience with me into the association was a real practical, like, lived experience being in a firm through busy seasons, through deadlines, through, you know, losing a client, losing the senior on my engagement, all those things. And I knew how hard it was to pick my head up from the day to day and look around the corner and see what was coming. So pretty early on in my time at PICPA, I set a vision for the organization that said we are going to solve real practical problems for CPAs and we are going to create opportunities that they couldn't otherwise create for themselves. So the vision that I set for the organization was totally grounded in we're going to play like any other commercial entity. The days of somebody joining just because it was the right thing to do are long gone. And so we've got to provide value commensurate with the dues that we're charging or the registration fee for the learning course or whatever it is that we're doing. And there are so many problems to solve and opportunities to create, but I could see pretty quickly that all of those things for us to be focused on, we're going to be almost outside the traditional association space. And it was not always easy because with a legacy of nearly 130 years to build on, there's a lot of people that feel very connected to that legacy. And so when you talk about, I know those things were incredibly important, but we have to shift and focus on these other things because this is what is coming for the profession. A lot of people over the course of my 10 years here at the organization felt like we were getting too far away from that history and that legacy and all of those things. Ultimately, I think especially right now, we are seeing the rate of change play out to be so rapid that I am thankful that as an organization, we had the courage to make a lot of those hard choices because we're better positioned today for it. Yeah, well, so particularly in a nonprofit organization, like how do you even bring about that kind of level of organizational change? Because, you know, I've felt sort of like a bull in a China shop in a lot of roles I've been in. I think we have maybe that kind of common characteristic between you and I. But like for me, it's usually I mean, I haven't gone in as CEO or CFO either. I've kind of it's been more junior roles so far. And so for me, that translates into a lot of frustration usually, right, where it's like I'm in this thing and it's like, oh, like, let's move. Like, let's do this thing. Why is this system broken? Why haven't we refined this? Why haven't we dedicated energy to this? And so and it always kind of feels a little bit like you're swimming through molasses, right? And so you've managed, it seems at least from the outside looking in, that you've kind of managed to to change that, right? Like you've managed to change the structure around you as well, where it's like, OK, we're no longer swimming through molasses. We're actually like we're going to make this like a proper machine. That seems like an incredibly daunting task. And again, when you layer in the area of it being a nonprofit, you know, like the incentive structures are probably not quite the same. Like it's a little bit different. It's not this like grow at all costs mentality. And so how do you make that happen? Yeah, there have been plenty of of days that have felt like swimming through molasses. You're absolutely right there. I think we made it happen because we had a board of directors who are CPAs, volunteer leaders that really were bought into the vision and enabled and supported me and kind of gave me the courage to take those risks in the same way that we've got an incredible team that made it happen and executed when I came back and said, hey, here's some crazy ideas that we're going to try. They showed up every day and helped make that happen. Without those two groups, the board and the team, none of this would have happened. And then the last thing I would say is I just. I'm a CPA, I was an auditor for so long, I don't know how to acquire companies and I don't know how to venture fund things. But as an auditor, I knew how to ask really good questions and think through. So I use those skills that I had and I combine that with the vantage point on the profession. I can see all of these different things that are happening and I spent my time in my job thinking about where is that going to go and what's going to change and what do we need? So I was able to sort of use that auditor mindset to put those pieces together and build a compelling vision that the board would get on, you know, get on board with and the team would get behind and all of those things. So it was just like the knowledge of the profession and that instinct almost. Yeah, I mean, it seems like there's a lot of kind of first principles thinking from what you do in terms of, again, you alluded to an acquisition. So you acquired CPA Crossings, which is a for profit organization. Probably an incorporated entity or something like that. Right. Within a nonprofit, which I don't think I've personally really heard of before, other than maybe the whole open AI kerfuffle, but that's for another time. And so that's a bold move. I'm curious, A, what the vision was and B, was that met with resistance? How do you even kind of come to that when, again, the status quo is like, no, that's not what we do. We try to build all these resources internally. So, yeah. Can you walk us through that kind of move and as well as a little bit of what what CPA Crossings does? Yeah, absolutely. We came to that in the same way that every other bold move happens. It was a burning platform. So when I came into PI-CPA, our revenues were generated based on membership dues and CPE course registrations. And we could see the demographics of the profession were driving dues down. And we could see that all of that in-person learning that we were doing was not successful. There was no margin. It was way too high cost and people weren't showing up. And so my partner, Adam Batchelor, and I were looking at the financials saying, this is not going to be sustainable. What do we do? Our organization was incredibly fortunate to have some deep reserves to leverage. And so we started thinking outside the box, not how to solve that problem as an association, but how to solve that problem through a more corporate mindset. And we landed on we've got to diversify revenue outside of those traditional association places. We have a lot of competency in upskilling CPAs. Let's see if we can turn that into revenue. We pulled we again kind of built that vision with the board and they absolutely saw it. It's a board full of CPAs and they said, yep, absolutely not sustainable. Diversify revenue. Let's dip into our savings and turn those reserves into a recurring stream of revenue. And over the last seven years, that has played out to be far more successful than I ever imagined. And we'll talk about what CPA Crossings is and what it is becoming. But I'm so thankful that we had the support of the group at that point in time because it has made our organization far more strong than it ever would have been. And it all is in service of the mission of PI CPA and in supporting the profession. So CPA Crossings is maybe 20 years old in its history, and it was always formed as a learning company focused on CPAs. And it was always virtual first, which is so interesting for the founders that that built this company 20 years ago. They started only with webinars at that point in time because they knew that that's how CPAs would learn. And so when that came into our portfolio, we bought the company from the founders, sort of worked with them over a few year period of time as they transitioned into retirement and brought it into our state society and began operating that entity and went from webinars to lots of different virtual learning options. But the thing that was the most interesting to me about CPA Crossings was the idea that it could be a platform first to solve problems for state societies and then second to solve problems for the accounting profession. Because we ran a state society, it was so clear that with this platform, we could solve state society problems better than any other vendor could because we lived them every day. We knew what they were and where the pitfalls and challenges were. So in addition to providing learning through most of the state societies around the country, we're doing novel research and thought leadership and content and some of those other things that you might think of to turn to your state society for. But we're doing it at scale so that we can get better content and thought leadership and knowledge out there in the profession than any of us could do individually. So that idea of how together can we solve problems better than we could individually. It's interesting to think of the company as a platform and where that can go into the future. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, even as like, you know, someone who's contributed dues to organizations like that, like, I think it's nice to see them take a take a shot with those dues instead of just kind of like letting them sit in a bank account or something like that. Right. Like, you know, to me, if I'm paying in dues and I can see an organization building to make those go further, right, like making investments in the future and doing things like that, I think that that's kind of a I feel like that's like an underrated or even forgotten part of of being a part of one of these organizations. Right. It's like, yeah, sure. Like there is a kind of level of service that you want to provide to people. And there's the kind of continuation of that. But too often, that's kind of where the puck stops. And I think like just being able to kind of look at that and then just being like, OK, actually, we have these funds. What can we do to drive further? I think that that's often missing. Right. That's often kind of a part of the attitude that's missing. And so I think it's super admirable. And like if I were someone who were contributing dues to to a state society, be part of that, like I'd be pretty pumped about that because it's like now. Right. Like you might be able to multiply those dues and then reinvest that into providing just like so much more service, so much more for what we're putting in. Right. So, yeah, but that tends to not really be the attitude. Typically, that is exactly the model. You've got it. You've got it right there. Like we have this in common. I think I'm a CPA. I plan on being in this profession for a really long time. I firmly believe that the profession needs state societies to be strong. And so I am kind of like putting my my own career and reputation on the line and in trying to make this organization one that's really strong and sustainable and by extension, making the other state societies really strong and sustainable. So excited to have the opportunity to do that. Yeah. And so what in your journey like led you to be involved with the PICPA? Because again, like I think you you seem to have like an excessively kind of in the best sense of the word sort of capitalist mindset of like, OK, more expansion, do this. Right. And that's not the type of organization I would expect you in. And that's what makes this so refreshing is seeing someone like that who maybe doesn't belong in that type of organization, making that happen. Right. Yeah. And when I say doesn't belong, I mean, traditionally speaking. Right. And so, yeah, what what what led you there? It's so interesting to hear you reflect that back because I even today, it's been more than 10 years since I've done an audit, but I only think of myself as an auditor even today, which is about as far from a capitalist mindset as you probably can get. Right. It's all situational for me. I was in public for 15 years. I loved public accounting. It gave me and my family a life I never could have imagined. You know, my parents had no idea what a CPA was. They still don't understand why I can't do their tax return today. And I still have to try to explain that. So for me, it's all relative to I care so much about the profession and I have this opportunity in this platform to impact it so I can learn. I know I can ask good questions and I know I can learn. So as I'm identifying these opportunities or these challenges, I sort of use that passion to fuel the advocacy that I do, you know, either how do we diversify revenue or how do we change a law or whatever, whatever those challenges are. And so speaking about that, I guess, you know, when we're talking about these kind of out of the box things, you've also done more than just acquire CPA crossings. You've also very recently kind of partnered and been a part of the seed funding of Excel Labs with Jodi Paydar. I'm curious to understand maybe A, the vision there and B, again, like what's it take to break that mold now? Like now you're now you're getting into like VC funding. Like that's that's interesting as well. That's right. That's right. Never would I have imagined in my career that I would get mergers and acquisition experience at a small nonprofit. So now add to that list of things I never could have imagined VC experience. It is truly a testament to the power of the CPA more than anything else. We are so excited to be partnering with Jodi Paydar and her partner Katie Talon on Excel Labs. So since we have built out CPA crossings as a platform, we have continued to look at the profession and ask those questions. What are the problems to solve or opportunities to create? It is evident to everyone right now that artificial intelligence is a part of that mix, right? I think the biggest challenge the profession faces today is workforce development in the age of artificial intelligence, right? Because I started my career footing columns of numbers and photocopying auto programs. All those things don't exist anymore. We need people to come out of school and be able to accelerate to value so much more quickly than ever happened before. So I kind of felt that to be a pressing issue in the profession and was keeping an eye out there for like who's doing interesting stuff in that space. How could we partner at PI CPA or CPA crossings on that? And when I saw what Jodi and Katie were building, I was just floored. I was so astounded. I find most people are building either a tool to do an audit better or here's a tool that's going to make your tax return prep process more smooth or a note taker or whatever. And they set out to answer the question, how do you keep the human being, the CPA relevant in this age of AI? And that struck are like for me, that really hit the core of our mission, right? To advocate for and protect the CPA. So I'm so excited about what they're building and really excited to be supporting and accelerating their work, but also partnering through CPA crossings to get what they're building out there into the world, into firms and into state societies. Yeah, yeah. So I'm a firm believer in the point that you brought up there around, you know, we need to figure out how to accelerate people into into the career and stepping into where we need them to step into. I actually wrote a newsletter about that around the context of AI and outsourcing of like, hey, is this really like all doom and gloom? And in the data that we collect at Big Four Transparency, we're actually starting to see the trend like we only started collecting data in 2021. But you are actually starting to see on average across the industry, the path to senior and manager shortening. And it's like, you know, one firm will do an initiative here and then, you know, one of the big four steps in and they'll go, oh, yeah, we might have an option for like high, high achievers to do this in 18 months instead of 24. Right. And then they introduce the second annual comp cycle, which gives an early promotion opportunity for high achievers. And then that eventually becomes normalized and that just becomes the standard path. And we have actually like we have the data on this. We have actually seen that path start to shorten a little bit. Yeah. And so a lot is actually needed to support that because, again, in terms of the demand and all the conversations I have with kind of candidates and people in the industry as well, it's actually quite hard right now to get a job as like a student if you haven't done the kind of typical sort of internship route, if you missed out on that and you're graduating, you're trying to find your first sort of opportunity in accounting like the demand isn't that strong and it's actually a little bit challenging. And then it's actually a lot easier to get in as a senior and a manager. Right. And so that behavior of hiring and kind of like talent demand tells you a lot about the industry where it's like, OK, well, a lot of what we're able to maybe automate or outsource is at the lower levels. And so maybe, you know, the pyramid shape of seniority needs to narrow a little bit. But the reality is like people entering the profession, like it's still kind of that distribution because people might move to industry and things like that. And I think, you know, I think public accounting has done a pretty good job overall over the last couple of years of like catching up on maybe some of the compensation stagnation that helps people stick it out once you're senior. Right. It used to be that you could leave for a 40 percent pay bump and that was pretty enticing. And now that's gotten eroded down. Right. And so basically the industry is telling us we need people to be able to step into these roles earlier. And so that's like a perfect alignment. I think being able to upskill people to do that is fantastic. I would love to see like an Excel Labs equivalency on like soft skills as well of like, you know, people need to learn how to manage a client file. You know, they need to learn how to be client facing, potentially get involved in business development and training other people as well. But I think this is a step in the right direction. And having those resources to just accelerate people, I think, is a huge win as well. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a great point on soft skills because they're able to, the way that they're building it, you can kind of load in different competency sets. So there is some flexibility where a firm or even in a corporate environment, you're able to sort of identify the criteria against which you want to develop people, which is an interesting, there's an interesting element of flexibility there for sure. I think we've done a lot on on attracting talent into the pipeline. Like you said, salaries are moving up. We've worked on licensure laws to broaden those pathways. There's there's a bunch of things happening there. But the fact remains that firms have to figure out how to retain the talent they need and want. The model for 100 plus years was up or out and it was built on, well, we're going to see so many people walk out the door every year that the pyramid works. And now that it's not a pyramid, they've got to be more careful in who they hire. But then they've got to build the firm to be a place that somebody wants to stay for a long time and build a career. That's a whole different model. Yeah, yeah, and again, there's so many angles to that, right, like I help with the comp side of the retention thing, but then there's yeah, there's the training and then there's all these kind of people getting involved in cultures that people are going to want to stay for. There's like so many facets to this that every time I see it kind of tackled in a new angle, I'm like, nice, cool. we definitely needed that, right? So- Yeah, absolutely. I'm so interested within CPA crossings, how we can pull some of those angles together. Yeah, well, both personally and probably on behalf of a lot of the profession, I wanna thank you for taking the time and thank you for challenging the status quo and everything you do and helping really push this profession further and also help push the standard of these state societies up to kind of pave the way for people who want to be in these roles, who wanna be involved in the profession, but are ambitious individuals and really want to kind of keep driving things forward. So I think you're really paving the way for a lot of people and setting a good example there. So thank you so much, Jen. Well, thanks Sam. I really enjoyed our conversation. Yeah, my pleasure. And I'll make sure I link Excel Labs in the podcast show notes for anyone who wants to check that out. I would highly recommend. I mean, Jody's well-known for her work as well on pricing. And so this is kind of the next chapter of that. So yeah, thank you, thank you so much, Jen. Great, thanks. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.