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Leaders of the Ledger from CPA Practice Advisor in partnership with Rightworks spotlights the people and ideas shaping the future of the accounting profession.
Each episode host Rob Brown interviews influential firm leaders, innovators and rising stars to uncover how they are tackling today’s biggest challenges whether it is client advisory services, AI and technology, talent strategy or firm growth through M&A.
Built on CPA Practice Advisor’s trusted recognition lists like the 40 Under 40 Influencers in Accounting and other collections of prominent professionals, this show goes beyond the headlines to share practical insights, personal stories and proven strategies from those moving the profession forward.
If you are a firm owner, leader or ambitious professional who wants to stay ahead of the curve Leaders of the Ledger is your inside track to the conversations and connections that matter most in accounting.
Subscribe now to hear from the voices redefining what it means to lead in the profession.
Speaker 2 (00:00.162)
Welcome to Leaders of the Ledger podcast on behalf of CPA Practice Advisor. We are shining a light on influential young CPAs that are coming through the ranks and trying to change things for the good and move the dial a little bit with the accounting profession with their firms and with mentoring and bringing others through the ranks. I'm thrilled to have with me today Caleb Jenkins. Good day sir.
Hey good to be with you here Rob. I followed you quite closely and it's been fun to see what you've been up to.
Well, likewise, and how paths have crossed before. CPA, were you always going to be a CPA? Were you like this at 13, 15, 18 years old? Caleb, tell us a bit about the origin story.
Yeah, so I'm actually not a CPA. I'm an EA, so very similar on the tax side, so I'm an enrolled agent, so not an executive assistant. They both might be in EA, but slight difference in their roles. But yeah, so the origins of that is, so my dad had an accounting firm that I, first 10 years of my life, was at our home.
location there was a front office and a back office behind our house and after school each day I was homeschooled and after school I would frequently go out into the office and do stuff and I mean whether that was filing.
Speaker 1 (01:26.06)
stuff around or shredding or plan on the computer or plan with Microsoft Flight Simulator or whatever the case might have been. So I got introduced into it through that and really enjoyed it. I would say probably the area that really triggered my love and interest in accounting was when I started using QuickBooks. So my dad had QuickBooks installed on our home computer.
for my mom to track her stuff for a couple small little micro business activities and she always struggled with reconciliation and etc. And so, because I enjoyed working on the computer, occasionally she would ask me to help her with something. so just like, I didn't know accounting, I didn't know anything, but it was a computer problem, so I would help solve that problem. Well, then my dad
uh... rather than i start making cookies for my dad during tax season uh... for the office not solely from a dad uh... but i'm i'm sure he if you have them uh...
part job sugar drives people through the
yes, so I enjoyed that. Then my dad's like, well, order for me to pay you. I need an invoice. And so I started using QuickBooks to send him an invoice for my cookies. And then that was great. And I'm like, while I'm doing this, might as well track my personal stuff. So then generated a class tracking, one for the cookies, one for my personal, and worked very, very well. And so
Speaker 1 (03:04.44)
Through that, I would say I learned accounting through using QuickBooks. It might be the backwards way to get into it, but it worked for me. from there, about when I was 13, 14, I started going through the real world training series on QuickBooks. I don't know if they even still exist. I haven't looked recently, but it was great, great education, great.
case study scenarios on how to use QuickBooks and really enjoyed that experience. so fairly quickly from there jumped directly into educating clients on the process. had a friend that had a landscaping business and probably within the same week that I was going through some of the first real world training stuff, he was needing help with QuickBooks.
I jumped on my four wheeler and rode out to his place, which was a couple miles from ours in the country. And so then sat at his desk and helped him with his quick books for a couple hours and really enjoyed that aspect of teaching in that experience. And so that really drove my love for the accounting profession as well as teaching the aspect of the relational side of accounting.
And it's a very incredible profession to have that relational component that you might not have in most other professions.
And that's actually where you've made your name, isn't it Caleb? Not on the technical side of it, but you're a teacher, you're a communicator, you're an educator on this.
Speaker 1 (04:48.79)
Some people think so. I would hope that's what people say of me, but I, yeah, I do, I do enjoy teaching. I do enjoy the communication, the relational side. I definitely enjoy the technical side too. Like I probably wouldn't be where I am if it wasn't a technical element to it, but the technical element, I mean, you're just trading one technical for another technical if that's all you are.
Yeah, well as a former high school math teacher as I am, I really understand the education side of it. There's something very noble about imparting wisdom and knowledge and counsel and expertise to people. When you come to being influential or being called an influencer, does that sit easily with you?
I'm not sure I use that label, but I mean, I would say when I started to become recognized or known, you might say, in the space would have been probably when I was 18 or 19 when I first started going to accounting conferences. being 18, 19 years old, you're...
definitely by far probably 10 to 20 years younger than almost everybody else at the conference. And then I'm not afraid to go up and talk to people either. And so like I went up to Joe Woodard after one of the first conferences I went to and just introduced myself. Fun fact is that at that conference, I just talked to him for like two minutes and told him about a little bit about myself that I worked for my dad and so forth.
Then the next year at his conference, it was a different conference that I had told him that. And then next year at his conference at Scaly New Heights, right before the main stage, right before he was going to go up on the main stage, he came up to me. He's like, hey, Caleb, how's your dad? I was blown away by it. I'm like, no way. Like Joe's a well-known recognized national leader. And he came up to me and remembered my name. He remembered that I worked for my dad.
Speaker 1 (06:53.09)
He remembered a lot of different facts and details about me and I was just floored by that. But that aspect of being able to go up and talk to somebody and whether it's Joe or Ron Baker or Doug's leader or just whoever the individual might be and develop a relationship with them.
And I would say from looking at it from their point of view, which I would hold the same perspective now is if there's a really young person involved, like, yeah, to the teaching aspect, I'd love to help empower the next generation with something. And so if there's that opportunity, I'm probably going to doubly pour in something if they're receptive to that relationship. So because of that,
I might have had an inside track to getting into the best circles for relationship and for development far more so than I would have if I just went traditional track, you might say.
There's a lot of wisdom in knowing and being known and you drop in some heavyweight names there of two influences that have been in this game a long time. So they're all very well respected. How much in your view has the accounting game changed over the last few years, Caleb?
I would say it's changed a lot. mean, 10 years ago is probably a huge change from when we went from the desktop to the cloud era, maybe 15 years ago, but somewhere in the 10 to 15 year ago range. Then the last two to three years, I mean, five years ago was a lot of the remote work with COVID and a bunch of other changes and embedded in all of that, which that that was a huge, there was a bunch of changes through all that as well.
Speaker 1 (08:44.226)
Probably the most recent items are just the dispersal of generative AI into all of our life. And so learning how to utilize that and probably where we will start to see even more of that is as it becomes embedded into all of the applications that we use on a daily basis, not just a app that we go log into like ChatGPT to go do something with.
I think that will still have relevance and will still have a huge amount of use case in the future. when it becomes deeply embedded into our tax software, when it becomes deeply embedded into our accounting system, when it becomes deeply embedded into all of our other email systems and communication tools and workflow management tools and everything else, that will have a tremendous change on the profession.
And right now I think we're on the early side of that. But those that are utilizing forms of generative AI, AI has been around for a long time, so it's not nothing brand new. But I think it's really the, as Blake Oliver says, it's really kind of the iPhone moment where it becomes, it's now democratized to everybody. It's not just the
the few that know how to write code that know how to use AI. Now everybody has access to play with it and utilize it and go do something with it.
You seem to be describing technology and AI in particular Caleb, as a force for good. Would that be fair?
Speaker 1 (10:24.204)
I think there's both sides of it. the the just like with every technological innovation, I would say in history, there are pros and cons to it. So so I heard a sermon by pastor once that that was talking about long ago innovations and something. So he made the comment. This might sound crazy to this audience, but
the he made the comment just just looking back and thinking through our history as a society so the he was talking about the vacuum and and what the the challenges of the vacuum now you might say well what in the world are you talking about a vacuum for well so he said that prior to the vacuum most houses were wood floors and so and so the vacuum came out and it was promised hey
You might have a welcome rug or something in your home and like, hey, now you can clean your welcome rug really quick. So you're going to save all this time and you're going to be clean. You're going to love it and et cetera. Well, so that was true. It accomplished the end goal. The problem was soon everybody's houses were fully carpeted and now there was three times the amount of work that there was historically. And so did the vacuum help? Yes. Did the vacuum hurt? Yes.
Both can be true. Now, do we live a better life now that our homes are carpeted? Maybe yes. So that's not necessarily a bad answer. But I would say generative AI is probably in the same ballpark. Will it hurt? Probably, because it will create triplicate or seven times or 24 times or whatever you want to call it, extra amounts of work.
that we did not do previously. Will it save us time? Probably. It already is if you're utilizing it well. I mean, like I did a tax research case recently that I kind of knew the answer, but I needed to find the sites, the authoritative sites to go look at the details on it. And I did a little bit of Google searching on it and wasn't finding my answer to it.
Speaker 1 (12:44.962)
did a chat GPT deep research on it and it I went and use the restroom two minutes later came back and I had a really nice response. I wasn't caring so much about the response. I was looking for the links on where to go to to find the authoritative details on it. Clicked on them and it was exactly what I was looking for. Very clear, very definitive, which isn't very common in tax law.
So it was really nice in that case, but I really enjoyed it. So like that saved me probably three hours by just having a tool to go find me articles to go click into to tell me exactly where I needed to know the answer from.
Accountants, enrolled agents, bookkeepers, we know they're all technically smart, but how coachable do you feel they are? How agile, how able to learn the new technology? We know they can pass exams and rigorous tests and qualifications, but you've got to be really adaptable these days to be successful.
I think so. Yes. I adaptiveness I would say is one of the primary quality traits that a a candidate for for a new job whatever that if I'm hiring that that's probably I mean there's there's There's a bunch of other character qualities that I would look for in in the in the human element of an individual maybe above and before Adaptiveness, but from a working
for Caleb, let's just dip into those for a moment.
Speaker 1 (14:16.558)
somebody that has character, somebody that has honesty, somebody that has a work ethic, somebody that has a love for others, somebody that has a desire to do good in the world, somebody that, I mean, as a Christian, I'm going to look for, I don't necessarily need to,
I wouldn't necessarily require that they be Christians, as as a hire, but I'm looking for the qualities. mean, following the golden rule, doing to others as you would want them to do unto you. So something of that framework, like I want to have somebody that's going to the, the other qualities I would say that, that I would put in there, this, this is kind of bridging the, the aspect of just character as a human element versus the work ethic.
is Patrick Glenciani's book on the, I forget what the title of it is, it's right up on my shelf, it must, I think I gave it to somebody else recently here. So the ideal team players, so his book on that. the quality traits there is you're humble, you're hungry, and you're smart are three categories on that. So humility,
is a definite category that somebody needs to have. And that's not necessarily somebody that says, I'm sorry. It's somebody that says that recognizes their qualities, their gifts, their talents, and that is allowing those to be under control of someone else or of something else. And then the
aspect of the hungry is somebody that's motivated, somebody that's willing to dive deep into something, that's willing to put in the extra effort to get it accomplished. And then the smart is not necessarily intellectually smart, but human people smart. Somebody that knows how well or well how to interface with others and to be a good team player.
Speaker 1 (16:39.994)
with other individuals on the team. So I would place those as pretty crucial elements of the team experience and team qualities that I would look for.
So what would you say, Caleb, to people that are, they enjoy what they do, they're technically good, they've even got some of the personal qualities that you spoke about, but they're not particularly intentional about building their influence, their personal brand, they just think that good work should speak for themselves. The problem with that, I guess, is that there are too many good people out there and you've been able to affect a lot more change, influence a lot more people because you have branded yourself, you've not been scared to get out there. So what would you say to those people that perhaps a little bit reticent in,
building a profile.
Ask yourself the question, what do you want to see changed in the world? What do you want to see changed in society? What good do you want to accomplish? If that answer is, want to replicate something or I want to develop something, a lot of times you have to put yourself out there. So it's not about me. It's not about putting myself out there. It's not about developing my brand.
It's not about any of those elements. It's about accomplishing something in society that I want to see changed or that I want to see developed in society. And I'm just a tool that might be used in the toolbox that you might say. And if that requires me to put myself out there, so be it.
Speaker 2 (18:18.09)
We're gonna end with three quick fire questions Caleb. So I'm gonna ask you for one prediction that is definitely gonna happen in the accounting world over the next few years. I'm gonna ask you one thing that in your opinion needs to change so that accounting can be better equipped to serve the world. And I'm gonna ask you the thing that you're most excited about for what's coming up over the next few years. So I've given you a few seconds there to think about that. So.
What would you put your house on if you were a bedding man? What is definitely going to happen over the next few years in our world?
couple things. Probably the primary that I would say is we're definitely going to see new tax softwares. So for probably 30 years, we've been locked into the same five to seven tax players. I think we're going to get two to three new entrants into the space. So that's really, really, really exciting to see that because those are probably going to be AI first and they're probably going to be
They're going to totally change the game on what the experience looks like. So I'd place that as probably number one bet.
You said you were going with a couple? Was there one more?
Speaker 1 (19:27.462)
I a couple of the the other ones is is this is this is a negative one, but I mean they're innovated and changed and stayed current with the changing ones of time like Seven other tax firms up and down my street, whatever Just within two miles of me. They're probably not they're probably gonna have a hard time surviving
agree with that. second question. What needs to change in account?
I would say one thing that needs to change is we need to become, especially in the age of AI, we need to become more human.
Speaker 2 (20:10.926)
beautifully put. Appreciate your brevity there. Let's hit the last one. Challenging times but exciting times, plenty of opportunities. What excites you most for the game you're in over the next few years?
Probably one of things that I love the most is diving deep and trying to analyze and discover the root problem of something rather than just the surface symptoms. And that comes from some work that I've done through different organizations and developing countries.
on microfinance work as a volunteer for an organization. But there's just tremendous aspects on that, that trying to discover the root cause of poverty and poverty alleviation. And before we think that that's poverty is just them, poverty is inside of all every single one of us. There's just different aspects of it. There's emotional poverty, there's spiritual poverty, there is psychological poverty, there's, and then there's
Poverty is really at the core as broken relationships. So solving those broken relationships and equipping us to develop good and the four relationships that a lot of people have defined in the past 10 years or whatever, through a bunch of research, probably 15 years, through a bunch of research is our relationship with others, our relationship with ourselves.
a with creation, the earth, the human or the physical elements, and then our relationship with God or if you're not a Christian, just you're a higher deity, but I would place that as a Christian with God.
Speaker 2 (22:05.238)
Well, profound insights and very inspirational. Caleb Jenkins, it's been a pleasure and a joy to speak to you today on the Leaders of the Ledger podcast brought to you on behalf of CPA Practice Advisor. We are shining a light on the influences in the profession that are a force for good and making things better. We thank you so much, Caleb, for your passion, your insights, the education and the way you're trying to be a
change agent that's bringing good into the world. Thank you for joining us today.
It was my privilege, thank you.