Adam Larson: 00:21

Welcome to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and today, we're joined by Justin Smith, the CFO at FinQuery. Justin brings deep insights from the finance and tech sectors. We'll discuss the pay gap between accountants and other professionals and the future of accounting education and the impact of technology on learning. We'll also explore how FinQuery's investment in employee development boosts satisfaction and retention.

Adam Larson: 00:44

Additionally, Justin highlights effective communication, transparency in financial plans, and the importance of celebrating achievements. So tune in as we delve into these critical topics with Justin Smith right here on Count Me In. Well, Justin, I'm really excited to have you on the, podcast today. We're gonna be talking about leadership and growing efficiently. And to start off, I thought we could talk about a little bit about, you know, what's the current state of leadership within organizations, especially now that we're a couple years from the height of pandemic.

Adam Larson: 01:19

What we did before the pandemic isn't gonna work after the pandemic.

Justin Smith: 01:24

Yeah. Look, I, I think I think in many ways the game has changed. Organizations are functioning in a certainly just geographically more disconnected, you know, manner. There's there's work remote, there's hybrid, there's and there's a lot of tensions, I think, that exist within organizations. You know, many companies want what they perceive as more collaboration and people think about that, in terms of, you know, being geographically co located.

Justin Smith: 01:51

Workers, I think, are, looking back over the last 3 or 4 years. And in many ways, rightfully saying, hey, there's a lot of great gains that we've had. And, you know, we were able to to find, you know, levels of productivity. And I I think workers want to hold on to that. And then there's, you know, other other tensions that we're seeing out there where, you know, prior to the pandemic, there was a I think there was a focus on growth that, you know, people still wanna see in today's time, but expectations have come down.

Justin Smith: 02:17

And a big driver behind that is, the fact that cost of capital prior to the pandemic was a step change different from where it is today. Rates were were on the descending rate path. Who knows what the curve of that's ultimately going to to look like? But I think most people think, at least in the near term, we're not going back to a zero interest rate, you know, time period. And as a result, the ROI or the threshold at which you're gonna invest in demand generation and growth is different.

Justin Smith: 02:44

So the punchline is, I think that companies and workers have to be much more intentional about how do they set themselves up, and position themselves from a collaboration perspective, from a growth expectation, and, you know, how do they effectively, you know, meet in the middle so that, workers feel respected? They feel like if they found a home where, you know, they want to to invest for the next 2, 3, 5, you know, 10 years of their career. And then companies also feel like they've got people that are engaged and bought in and and truly want to be there. The way in which I would say things have not been is that culture remains paramount. If you have a group of individuals that have shared goals, shared philosophies, have a desire to win.

Justin Smith: 03:37

I mean, that's that's that's the winning formula. That's what everybody

Announcer: 03:39

ultimately wants to get to. I just believe

Justin Smith: 03:39

that in the current time period right now, things have ultimately wants to get to. I just believe that in the current time period right now, things are more challenging. And so it's more important and more incumbent for leadership to have a clear, concise set of expectations that are attainable and that they have a workforce with leaders that are truly committed and based.

Adam Larson: 04:02

To me, you can read any headlines in the last year or so, and many organizations have had to tighten the belt. They've had to let people go. How do you create that culture and that that feeling of, hey, I want you to invest your time in here and stay here as an employee. If, you know, just 6 months ago, they're like, oh, we let go, you know, 10%, 30%, 40% of the staff. And and a lot of people are feeling burnt out.

Adam Larson: 04:23

They have more work on their hands. You know, how do you how do you balance that? How do you how do you help your teams get there?

Justin Smith: 04:28

Yeah. So I well, there are there's multiple dimensions to this. I think the first part Mhmm. If you are any company that is that is going into a period where a riff is imminent or, you know, coming out of a period where, they had a a large reduction force from the first the first part's empathy. Because Yeah.

Justin Smith: 04:45

You know, our our livelihoods, it's more than money is a for so many people, it's a reflection of of who they are. And, yeah, I think you also have to realize that for the people, it doesn't just impact the individuals that are no longer with the companies. It impacts the people that stay because there's there's a heightened level of paranoia about their job. But we spend, just from a social perspective, we we spend more time with the people that we work with than the people that we that we love and that are, you know, our family members. And when those individuals are no longer part of an organization, at times, at no fault of their own, because, you know, the business environment has shifted, it it kinda tears it its surgical fabric.

Justin Smith: 05:22

So I think empathy is a really important, you know, aspect to understand how has this impacted your team to ensure that, and hopefully this is the case for companies that when you cut, you cut once, you don't go back for 2 or 3 or 4 rounds. We've all seen examples where that's happened. And Mhmm. No amount of empathy and no no amount of relating people is gonna give individuals comfort, confidence if management doesn't have the ability to understand the depth of the cuts that that they need to make and and be one and done. But I think going back to your your questions to hit it on the head, clarity is the single most important thing any organization can have.

Justin Smith: 05:59

If you want people to have confidence in their in their role, if you want them to have confidence in the company, confidence in the objective, I think management has to, number 1, have clarity around what are the objectives that you're driving to? What are the markers that define success? Whether those are financial KPIs or whether those are r and d milestones or, go to market milestones with establishing partnerships and relationships. You need to understand what is the end goal, but what are the markers along those lines? I would all I think all of us would like to think that our goals are 60, 90 days out, and so we can hit them and achieve and move on.

Justin Smith: 06:37

But Yeah. Many of them are multi year. And so clarity is what are the markers that we need to hit, you know, along the way so that you can tell your team, even though we're not we're not at the the end point of of whatever our immediate objective is, we're on that path. We're doing the things that we need to do. And then more specifically for the individuals within certain departments, your department is doing what it needs to do or by the way, perhaps it isn't.

Justin Smith: 07:10

But here's the course of active action so that we can get back on it. I think if if leaders have are are very thoughtful and clear around the most narrow set of objectives and mile markers along the way, and then they can tactically communicate those to the rank and file so that they understand what those shared objectives are. I think that that is critically important. Communication

Announcer: 07:36

Yeah.

Justin Smith: 07:36

And thoughtfulness. I'm really carried the day for for companies that are navigating transitory, timelines.

Adam Larson: 07:45

I like that. I like thoughtfulness. Communication is very important and being thoughtful too because everybody's going we're all human. You know, whether you're a CFO or whether you're a staff accountant, you're a human who has feelings and emotions and being thoughtful and being mindful of those person's emotions and feelings as we're navigating all these waters together is is huge. And it's almost like you need to have empathy as well for what people are going through.

Adam Larson: 08:09

And how do you balance empathy, thoughtfulness, and challenging with, hey, I still gotta meet the bottom line. Like, those 2 don't always go hand in hand.

Justin Smith: 08:16

No. But I mean, this comes back to having an achievable plan.

Adam Larson: 08:19

Yeah.

Justin Smith: 08:20

I mean, they're they're we we we all know the examples of of companies, where, you know, leadership starts out the year and they put forth a budget that is less a financial target that they have. I I I like to think about a budget as, you know, a set of numbers both from a revenue and from a cost perspective that you have 95% plus confidence that you're gonna not only be meet, but you're going to to exceed. There are there are companies that take a different approach, and, they may establish budgets that are aspirational. And if you, you know, you look back and say, you know, how many times have you hit your budget in the last, you know, 2, 3, 4 years? If the answer to that is never, or if the answer to that is, hey, we get 50% every single year.

Justin Smith: 09:03

You've got a management expectation problem.

Adam Larson: 09:05

Mhmm.

Justin Smith: 09:06

This is not about it's not about lowering your expectations. It's a matter of understanding what is your what is your TAM, what is your go to market opportunity, and and where is the company positioned today? I think companies should maximize their opportunity set. They should be bullish. They should be aggressive.

Justin Smith: 09:23

They should have, plans that everybody should stretch for. But you should also have a level of recognition of where are we today? What what is our go to market strategy? What is our product strategy? What investments do we have to make in r and d?

Justin Smith: 09:40

What are the implicit risks that we need to, understand and anticipate? And, you know, that sense of an achievable plan that again requires stretch, it requires effort, but putting forth an achievable plan, whatever that may be, is critically important. So that again, the team understands there's a multiyear pathway that we're moving toward. And even if growth this year doesn't sound that compelling, that's fine. We're on this multiyear path.

Justin Smith: 10:12

Here's these other things that we're doing that may not show up in revenue today, but they're positioning us for growth next year because we've got this great new product that we're developing, and it's gonna be coming out in the Q2 of of of 2025. And, you know, we believe that in a short period of time, there's gonna be some acceleration. Making sure that individuals understand Mhmm. And are are effectively aligned on those goals. You don't have to share financials.

Justin Smith: 10:39

You don't have to, you know, go full mono with, teams. In fact, I I think that you shouldn't because invariably, there's going to be be, volatility along the way. Nobody's gonna hit, you know, everything perfectly. But explaining to individuals and making sure that they recognize that the company has a plan. It's multi pronged.

Justin Smith: 10:59

Everybody rose the boat. And as long as you're focused on exactly what you should be doing as part of that plan, then you're achieving success. I think again, that's just an important piece from from my perspective. And and by the way, the one one other item I'll just throw out there, as a CFO and and and I was a former banker, I spent nearly, a decade at Goldman Sachs. I I stay very connected with what are happening in public markets because Mhmm.

Justin Smith: 11:24

Private companies, it's opaque. No one ultimately knows, but public companies, they're putting out analyst reports, companies are giving guidance. You know, we should I I share with our own, employee base that expectations that public companies have for themselves. And these are the biggest companies that have the best ability to compete. Their own growth expectations have come down materially over the last 2 years.

Justin Smith: 11:46

In fact, they've 50 Yeah. You have nearly 50%. I'm not sharing that data to alarm anybody or concern or lower expectations. But the point is, if if you're talking about your forward growth and your forward growth is coming down from what you've messaged to employees, historically, being able to go out and say, hey, this cohort of best in class companies, they're seeing the same they're also focused on margin. They're also focused on these exact same priorities.

Justin Smith: 12:18

So if we wanna think like, act like, walk like, and talk like the biggest and best in the industry, we're actually doing that. And our talk track is in line with theirs, even if it may not feel like that to you in context of where the market was 18, 24, 36 months ago.

Adam Larson: 12:35

So based on all the everything you're saying, I love how you're giving your employees a shared sense of purpose as you're making clear the the goals that are attainable. Because I think sometimes organizations come out with these very lofty goals that have no no stickiness to them. No no actual, like, substance to them. And being able to address it in that way, I think, is is hugely important for organizations because you need that shares as a purpose to make sure everybody's aligned. Because if everybody's not wrong for the ride, you know, the the train can't keep going if all the workers aren't doing the same thing.

Justin Smith: 13:11

Yeah. Well, that's that's that's absolutely true. And, you know, I think about our our team and and this may be too obtuse, but just at a high level, I think about our team kind of breaking into 22 core 2 cohorts. There are individuals who come to work because they need a job. They're they're fine with the level they're at.

Justin Smith: 13:29

They don't they don't wanna escalate. They just quite literally need need a job. And and those are important people to have in any organization. There are certain roles that, you without naming specific ones that, you know, somebody may go into that role and they could be there for 5 or 10 years with the same role and same title. 1st, the other cohort of of team member that they're really career oriented, they're competitive, they want progression, they wanna see success, they need to see success, in order for them to stay.

Justin Smith: 14:01

That that is the cohort of of employee that you really need to engage with. The best companies out there are are mission led.

Announcer: 14:11

And

Justin Smith: 14:11

you know, when I was when I was at Goldman, I had the good fortune. Many of my clients were the successful companies that broke through venture stage and growth stage and private equity and, you know, ultimately tapped the the public markets. And there was definitely a success bias of the companies that that I had the opportunity to work for. You just see pattern recognition over and over and over in many of these companies where it doesn't matter what type of I mean, it could be a compliance software or I took public a company that did back office for trading and hedge funds. And, if you sit there on the outside end, if somebody looks at the company, it's not gonna get anybody excited.

Justin Smith: 14:46

You're not gonna go to cocktail parties and talk about compliance software. That's not gonna make you popular, I think, in anybody's circles. But when you get into the curtain and you're you're engaging with the employees and you're preparing them for, testing the waters meetings and the roadshows and the, you know, post, your public world where they'd be engaging with the markets, the employees are just on fire. I mean, you you walk out of those meetings feeling like you grew a foot because everybody's just excited and pumped about the opportunity. And you also have to sit just, kind of like take stock back.

Justin Smith: 15:18

But why are they so excited about compliance software? Well, they're not. They had a mission and they felt like they competed against their competitors. They felt like they had a mission to, to get to a certain customer base to prove that they were enterprise worthy, that they moved from SMB to enterprise. And when they do that, everybody feels like they have a collective win.

Justin Smith: 15:40

Those types of things don't happen by chance. There's not a scenario where, you know, people just gets 5 customer wins and all of a sudden, boy, they're on fire. Those are objectives that were set by a CEO, most likely in in many instances, a founder who who had a burning desire to prove, hey, we can be the best. We can be the industry leader. We can launch 2 new products and get them up to scale.

Justin Smith: 16:05

Whatever that objective is, it is critically important that among your cohort of employees who are what what I what I characterize is kind of like the athletes of an organization that are truly driving new initiatives, repositioning, transformation, that cohort of employee has to be absolutely engaged with whatever the objectives are. And they all they need to understand not only what is a team win, but to borrow like a baseball analogy, they need to understand that their own batting average expectations so that, you know, when they're connecting with the ball, they need to know how are they performing against whatever their their expectations are. So that clarity around company objectives, team objectives Mhmm. And even if there aren't these big visible wins as an organization, our long term objective is x and you need to do y and z along the way. I think that's just a just a critical component, to getting people excited, engaged, and feel mission led.

Adam Larson: 17:05

Yeah. Mission led is is hugely important. And when you when you switch from, like, goals and it's like that and switch to a mission as opposed to, like, the tagline or whatever, it it really kinda changes your your mindset of how you look at what your organization is doing as opposed to just, well, I just gotta do my task today and get home. Like, no, I wanna be part of this bigger thing that's pushing this this boat forward, and you have a better sense of purpose.

Justin Smith: 17:27

Yeah. And and by the way, you also have to celebrate publicly, you know, within your your organization when when somebody does something. I mean, we had this is this is going back, but it was this was a big celebration. So when I when I joined Finquery, we had, we had a a a a day sales outstanding. So our accounts receivable, it basically took us a little over 2 months on average for us to collect.

Justin Smith: 17:49

Over the course of of a year, we moved that from a little over 2 months to to 1 month. And and there were a number of things. So so we did some software. We, we had some new approaches with our customers and engagement. But that freed up for our for our for our organization.

Justin Smith: 18:04

So putting aside any new sales, I mean, that was quite literally 1,000,000 of dollars of cash got freed up. And we're we're profitable. So, you know, we don't we don't have a debt dynamic. But if you're a company that is growth stage and you're using a revolver or you have to go borrow capital, if you move if you had that type of move, what let's say and I'll just pick a number. Let's say you freed up $5,000,000.

Announcer: 18:29

Yeah.

Justin Smith: 18:30

Well, interest rates right now are nearly 10%, for revolver debt. So freeing up $5,000,000 means not only did you do you have that cash, but you caught you cut your interest expense by half a $1,000,000. If you're gonna go have to raise money by freeing up $5,000,000, IRR expectations, in venture and in private equity, they're approaching 20%. So you freed up dilution, in your company. Being able to frame it to individuals in a way that they're probably not thinking about it.

Justin Smith: 19:01

They're just saying, hey, look, day sales outstanding goes from 60 to 30, and it's just a number on a performance metric KPI. I dimensionalized it in in front of our entire company to say, hey, by the way, our accounting team brought in x percent of the overall cash earned this year. Accounting never gets revenue recognition.

Adam Larson: 19:22

Yeah. That's huge.

Justin Smith: 19:23

We we talked about it in that sense. And I'll tell you my accounting team is well deserved. They're they're very smart, talented, hardworking. And I mean, I I think they felt like that they were walking 6 inches taller for for a month or so. And by the way, well deserved.

Justin Smith: 19:38

Yeah. We should have felt that.

Adam Larson: 19:41

So we can always we always measure success in an organization by financial terms. And a lot of times, if the employees are doing well, a lot of times that reflects in, you know, the revenue and and the bottom line of what's happening. But should we, as organizations, be measuring kind of things like non financial, like, employee satisfaction, overall well-being? And should that be part of our, like, measure of success? Like, hey.

Adam Larson: 20:01

Yeah. These numbers are looking good, but also our employees feel good about it. Like, is that something that organizations should be doing? What are your thoughts on that?

Justin Smith: 20:08

Yeah. I think that, I don't think that anybody should be looking at spot absolute analytics, whether it's a glass door rating to say, hey. Yeah. You know, we need to be 4.2 and not 4, but I think you should pay attention to trends. Yeah.

Justin Smith: 20:24

You know, the the to to borrow a cliche, you know, the rising tide raises all 5ths. And and by the way, the opposite of that is true. If you look at employee satisfaction, it was it it was pretty high in in in 2021 once people, you know, saw and and by the way, this is sector specific. I don't wanna be ignorant to the fact that there were there were many industries actually that were feeling a lot of pain. But within the tech sector where where I live, work and operate, those fairly robust time period because everybody was spending massively because Mhmm.

Justin Smith: 20:53

On the stimulus money and then technology was enabling people to to work remotely. And so it was a boom pie. So employee satisfaction was sky high because people were getting raises every single month. If you left one job, you'd get another one to work for, by the way. In some instances, people would have 2 at the same time.

Justin Smith: 21:09

And so the opportunity set was high. And so Glassdoor ratings were pretty high. But, you know, post what was it? I think the, slide in SaaS started in November of 2022. So from that period, on, you know, all those ratings, you know, started coming down.

Justin Smith: 21:24

I think organizations need to understand what where is the tide going and what is your trend relative to that to that baseline. For us, you know, we pride ourselves in in a handful of metrics. So we look at things like voluntary turnover. And we're very proud of the fact that our voluntary turnover based on we get data from 2 third parties on things like salaries and and in turnover and, benefits. And of both benchmarks that we get, we're well below the average.

Justin Smith: 21:51

A very important one for us is is engineering and tech talent, turnover because, yeah, historically, there are a lot of jobs. Those are easy to move remote. And our turnover is about half of what, you know, many of the benchmarks are. So there's many things that we could potentially attribute that to. But we think, and I think people ultimately vote with where they spend their time and where they spend their dollars.

Justin Smith: 22:13

And, you know, we are very fortunate, the fact that we've got an engaged workforce. So I pay attention to, again, voluntary turn turnover, pay attention to, tenure, and then we do a full 3 60. So not only do I rate my team members every single year, and it's by the way, not every single year. It's every 6 months. And it's not for the purposes of being, critical.

Justin Smith: 22:36

It's for the purposes of making sure that people understand, you know, where are they going? How are they trending? Yeah. Sometimes people go through, you know, tough tough moments in life or sometimes people get promoted and they're not they're not connecting with that higher level job. Management's not easy.

Justin Smith: 22:52

It's not for everybody. And so we wanna make sure that there's consistent feedback. And by the way, I get that feedback

Adam Larson: 22:59

too. So

Justin Smith: 23:01

if I'm not communicating something, if I'm not, you know, responding or engaging with people, I'm gonna get a visible scorecard. And so that's something that the, SLT or senior leadership team, you know, at our company, we actually look at our own scorecards. And how are departments showing in terms of feedback? What's the engagement of of sales? What's the engagement of of accounting and finance and marketing?

Justin Smith: 23:23

And if there are gaps, and and there's, you know, some disconnect, those are tough conversations we have with each other and not just just with our with our teams. So being open and receptive to that type type of feedback is important. And also recognizing a bad scorecard is likely more important than a good scorecard because it'd be a leading indicator of some challenge.

Adam Larson: 23:48

Yeah. I've always been curious about a 360, and I've always been like, hey, I wanna work in a realization that has a 360 so I can see it in play. Because a lot of times with the normal feedback is, you know, you have the your your your supervisor giving you that information, and then you might have a chance to, like, give a comment back to them, but it's not a true, like, 360. And you and and you're not always able to give feedback to your your cohort. So I'm glad it's been successful.

Adam Larson: 24:15

And and had do you feel it's been a successful, thing, at your organization?

Justin Smith: 24:20

Yeah. So we we had a, just really terrific dynamic, you know, chief people officer. She predated me joining Finquery. She put Yeah. You know, these actions in place.

Justin Smith: 24:29

I'm very grateful. When I was at Goldman, we we did the same thing. You know, we did 3 sixties. So

Announcer: 24:34

Yeah.

Justin Smith: 24:35

I have worked throughout the majority of my career at organizations who do these. The other the other part of this though is that there's an accountability. So going back to my comment around engagement, if you give somebody a review in a 360, so whether it's it's me giving a review to to somebody who who reports to me, or somebody giving me feedback, who's one of my direct reports, if there's something new on that 360, in some senses, that's a failure. And what I mean by that is if I if if there was an issue in my organization that was pulled out by, you know, team members, whether it's a direct report or, you know, 2 or 3, you know, levels down. And I'm finding out about that on a 360.

Justin Smith: 25:23

I I consider that a failure on my on my, side. And again, if it's 2 or 3 levels down, I consider that a failure of the people who are managing that individual because we should be engaging with people to where they feel like if there is a challenge, an issue, or a situation, it should be percolated immediately. So when I when I do my reviews with my team, my goal is for them to come out of them not only with a clear sense of where do they stand and, you know, what are way things that they can work on, But I also want them to say something to the effect of, yeah, this makes complete sense. We talked about x and y and z over the last several months. I I'm making progress on it.

Justin Smith: 26:00

I appreciate the fact that you called that out, and and this is what my path is. I I don't want the 360 to be that point in time where I hold anything new back. Mhmm. Because that's that's a challenge. That's where I think people feel like they'll say something to the effect of, well, why didn't you tell me?

Justin Smith: 26:17

Or they'll feel like potentially people are out to get them. Right? Because they'll say, well, everything feels fine when you've been working and yet you're putting this on my my review. That's a surprise. A 360 in in my view, I when I know that they're coming up and we do them in the fall in the spring, I always make sure it's just a good marker for me to ensure that I'm gauging with the team.

Justin Smith: 26:40

And I do one on ones with my entire team. That's a full accounting finance data analytics. And then I also run some of our services implementation and, have engagement on revenue as well. So it's a broader remit. I ensure that I'm connecting with every single person on my team, you know, during on a quarterly basis at a minimum.

Justin Smith: 26:59

Most of them on a on a monthly to biweekly so that there are no surprises.

Adam Larson: 27:03

Yeah. Well and that goes back to what you said before about having that clear communication, and that includes things like coaching and helping people improve on things. And I'll and the approach of if it's a surprise, there's a problem. I think that's a great a great way to do it. And and as we shift the conversation a little bit to, like, you know, we know you can read articles in in accounting, in different accounting, publications and see that, you know, keeping talent is hard.

Adam Larson: 27:29

Getting new talent is hard. You know? How has that impacted your team trying to keep your talent there? And also, you know, younger, people aren't going to school for accounting very much anymore. And how do you get new new accountants in?

Adam Larson: 27:40

How have you been, navigating those waters?

Justin Smith: 27:42

Yeah. So look, I I think I think pay is gonna be a big part of this. Like the Mhmm. The job, the job market, especially for accountants, like it's supply and demand driven.

Adam Larson: 27:53

Yeah.

Justin Smith: 27:54

I have long felt that accountants in general, are underpaid. And what I mean by that is if you compare what a, accountant at a big four is gonna earn, you know, 2 to 4 years out of undergrad and you compare that to somebody who goes to Wall Street on the finance side, there's quite literally probably x difference between the finance and the accounting side. So it's not it's not even close. And and then you also compare that to what people could earn in technology, especially if if you're AI oriented. There's there's gotta be a catch up.

Adam Larson: 28:27

Mhmm.

Justin Smith: 28:28

And over time, when individuals are smart and talented and and they're figuring out where they wanna spend time in their career, they're they're gonna look at and say, you know, what is the opportunity set? What's the job look like? And and what does the comp look look like? So I I think a big part, the accounting, especially in big four, my expectation is that fees for companies are likely gonna rise in the future because the fees that they're gonna need to pay their employees are likely gonna rise or we're gonna have to accept the fact that we're gonna have a slim down diluted, accounts. Like, we're we're gonna have something's gonna have to give.

Justin Smith: 29:01

This type of dynamic, like, today, it it still probably works. But if you play this out and you assume that the trajectory of the trends stay, you know, in in place for the next 10 years, like, something is gonna break. And and and ultimately, accountants are conservative. The, you know, the the overseers are conservative. There's discussion around, you know, reducing the requirements from an accounting perspective.

Justin Smith: 29:23

So the number of hours that you have to have. I believe that with education, and and innovation or technology combined with education, we should be able to do things more efficiently.

Justin Smith: 29:34

I mean, I the the US and and I'm probably going off on a pitch of diatribe. Like, why why is, why is dental school 4 years, chiropractors 4 years, medical schools 4 years, medical school's been 4 years for a 100 years. And we've gotten infinitely better in education. And yet, we can't figure out how to truncate that. Whereas, you know, you look at international, the actual, like, 4 didactic orphan of medical school is 2 years, and yet we're still at 4.

Justin Smith: 30:00

Boy, that doesn't make sense. No. So there's there's a I think in US education overall, you know, we need to recognize that technology, and just availability of information has allowed us to potentially train people more efficiently. And I I think that that's gonna play out, should play out on the accounting side

Justin Smith: 30:20

Combined with, I just think increased remuneration.

Adam Larson: 30:23

Yeah. How important is things like training and development for your team to make sure that they're staying on top of things? And do you allow them extra time saying, Hey, I wanna make sure you have time to do this.

Justin Smith: 30:35

Yeah. So we we do this a couple of different ways at Edge inquiry. 1, the founders of inquiry, and this has been something we've we've done for years predating me. I'd love to take credit for it, but it was admittedly in place before I joined. We have a very generous, learning and development and budget.

Justin Smith: 30:49

So we actually give a couple $1,000 to employees to spend however they deem relevant to their job or or to their growth. So if you are if an accountant wants to learn and go take an AI course, we'll we'll we'll cover, you know, a few $1,000. And by the way, we'll also give them the time to go and do that. Yeah. So, you know, having the opportunity and the time to be able to upscale is a is an important component.

Justin Smith: 31:15

That's an area, frankly, a lot of people in our organization are spending time is understanding AI. Not that we're all gonna go out and we're gonna become, you know, AI engineers, but I I think we can all agree it's gonna impact what we do in some form or fashion. So giving people, you know, the opportunity to invest in that. But some people use it for public speaking courses. Some people use it for, you know, different types of classes because actually, we had we had some individuals in our company that wanted to move to product, and they weren't in product.

Justin Smith: 31:43

They're actually, in accounting. And so they went to a few conferences and and and learned about product and and refined their skill set and ultimately made the move over there. So it's easy to say that you support employees to learn and develop their skills and capabilities, but it's another to put actual dollars behind it. Again, not just not just giving them a stipend, but also allowing them to take time to do that. And that's I would surmise that many of the individuals at Finquery part of the reason that they stay is that they know that they can grow not only linearly in their job, but they can also grow tangentially through the opportunities that we we provide them in that flexibility.

Adam Larson: 32:26

Well, and that's hugely important to staying connected to the goals, staying connected to the company culture, feeling like that you're heard, your needs are wanted, and that that they want you to they want that you want them to feel like that, hey, we want you to succeed. We want you to upskill. We want you to become better at what you're doing, which goes back to everything we've been saying so far.

Justin Smith: 32:44

Yeah. That's exactly right. So you've got a people are smart and and treat them as such.

Adam Larson: 32:50

Yeah.

Justin Smith: 32:50

They pattern recognition is is one of the things that human beings do really well. And if you're if you're saying something that's inconsistent with the way in which you're acting, you could you could get grace on that for a short period of time. But over time, it's gonna erode confidence. It's gonna erode engagement, and you ultimately get what you get.

Adam Larson: 33:08

Yeah. Well, Justin, this has been a wonderful conversation. I appreciate you sharing all the things you've learned in your journey so far, and I hope that, everyone got something out of it today. And just thanks again for coming on.

Justin Smith: 33:20

Appreciate Adam. Thanks so much for having me.

Announcer: 33:24

This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.