Brian Tankersley, CPA, and Randy Johnston, discuss the 2025 Scaling New Heights conference, one of the largest educational and networking events for accounting and tax professionals. Watch the video, listen to the audio, or read the transcript. [See part 2.]
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Transcript (Note: There may be typos due to automated transcription errors.)
SPEAKERS
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA, Randy Johnston
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 00:00
Randy, welcome to the accounting Technology Lab, sponsored by CPA practice advisor. With your hosts, Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley,
Randy Johnston 00:11
welcome to the accounting Technology Lab. I get to have a live recording with you, with my co host, Brian Tankersley, it’s always a pleasure to speak with you, as you might be able to tell we’re coming to you from scaling new heights in Orlando at the World Marriott center. Now, Joe is going to run his program here at this location through 2029 we got to see a lot of our colleagues and friends that we’ve known for years here. Brian,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 00:38
yeah, it’s truly been old home week. I mean, we saw, you know, one guy that you and I saw, Doug Lebon, has, you know, worked for zero, worked for sage, and we’ve probably known in 15 years anyway,
Randy Johnston 00:50
yeah, and he has actually, I think, created a very interesting new product for doing SAS inventories. And you know, that is something that we’ve put in our presentations for the last three to four years, maybe a little longer, because we think people are Squandering a lot of money by over subscribing or under utilizing SAS software, and it’s really hard to know what you got subscribing. You know, even in personal if you think about your Netflix and Disney and Amazon and all those accounts you have for video streaming. All of a sudden, what am I spending the money on? And, you know, $5 here, $10 there, pretty soon you have some serious money.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 01:28
Yeah, I was telling, I was telling Doug, I don’t know that I want his product to look at my AI spend right now, because it would probably frighten me. But cool. Well, we actually went through and shot video of the entire trade show floor, all 140 booths. We interviewed probably 10 or 15 people. And so that’ll be coming out on YouTube. You got to give me a little bit to do that, because what I’m going to have to do is I’m going to go through and actually put chapters in it when we go to whenever we have interviews. And so you’ll be able to see all the products that are in there. And there were some interesting ones, you know, the digits, AI based ledger, the puzzle AI based ledger, you know, now they’re not ready for your construction clients yet. You know, they don’t have job costing. They don’t have inventory. But it’s, it’s interesting times. But
Randy Johnston 02:19
speaking of inventory. You know, we saw our friend Pete pastos, who was did no, did settle. Had settled the inventory company. And then what was, my guess is there probably six products that did inventory.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 02:31
Oh, at least, at least six. Yeah, it was, it was good. And, you know, the the interesting part here is how, the, how, the, I guess, kind of the mood on the street. I mean, it really struck me that, you know, there are a lot of people that are just done with into it, given that they’re killing off desktop Yeah. And you know, I’m, I’m not stating any opinion one way or the other. I’m just stating the fact of what the other human beings told
Randy Johnston 03:02
me, yeah. And in this case, two and a half million copies of desktop still in use, yeah. And those, those users are going to go somewhere. So
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 03:09
friends and these advisors are hot. I mean, they are hot. And so that’s part of why there’s so many inventory tools here, because the inventory in QBO is not quite up to the level of QuickBooks Desktop, and so that the, you know, the folks, if they go to QBO, they’re going to have to have some kind of inventory
Randy Johnston 03:28
tool. Yeah, so friends, here’s maybe a couple of insights. And Brian, I’d like you to add the color too. But the tone of the conference, besides the people being hot about into it generally upbeat, both the AICPA engage conference this year and scaling new heights, there’s a lot of optimism about what is to come. The vendors presence in both of those shows were good. We’ve got podcasts in both situations, but just walking the show floor, talking to the vendors, most of them were quite excited about their new products. The attendees are quite excited about the opportunity with their clients downstream. So that is actually kind of an upbeat message that I didn’t expect. Yeah.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 04:12
Well, I will say that that the presence of PE here there, I have not seen any PE here. Okay, so, so this is quite different than the AICPA show where, where there were all these PE funds and all these PE people just swirling around. I mean, you could almost, you know, at at one of the hacker cons, they have a game they play called spot the Fed. We actually have a play, a game Randy and I, when we walk these shows, we call it spot the PE, and it’s always the person in the blue navy blazer, okay? And
Randy Johnston 04:44
don’t give our secrets, you know, that’s right, they’re, they’re
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 04:47
going to now start wearing something different, you know, they’ll wear a tweed jacket or something, I don’t know, but, but it’s a, it’s, it’s interesting how the PE was very present in big firms. Firm, big firm America, and then when we come back to small firm, bookkeeping firm, you know, Caz, there’s really not as much PE here, although the vendors owned by PE were here, but we it, it still didn’t have the same kind of vibe.
Randy Johnston 05:16
It did not. And, you know, I was reflecting on that because I actually had not observed that Brian had been here in Orlando since a Saturday. So the show runs Saturday to Wednesday, and
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 05:26
we’re recording it Tuesday, late Tuesday afternoon,
Randy Johnston 05:29
so we’re not quite complete on the show, but now that you’ve said that, I think I only saw one firm that was PE backed, yeah, and, and I’m trying to be thorough about that, but I believe that might be the only one. There might might have been one more. It wasn’t quite clear, some two, whereas in Vegas, dozens.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 05:52
Oh, easily dozens. I mean, they were. Look if, if the P people had been sharks, had been sharks, we would have been in the middle of a remake of jaws. I mean, they were just everywhere. Well,
Randy Johnston 06:01
it was the 50th anniversary, you know. But you are right. They were just and they were actually, there was blood in the water, and they were after, it is the way I saw it. And
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 06:14
it was a good day to it was a good day to be just an observer. Yes, it
Randy Johnston 06:19
really was, now in terms of just sessions, you know, we have been through all but one of the keynotes here for scaling new heights. And, you know, we just actually watched a guest from Amsterdam. Believe he
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 06:33
was, yeah, is it David? David Allen that wrote the famous book Getting Things Done? He’s 80, believe it
Randy Johnston 06:40
or not, and he had a wonderful methodology for being effective. And I thought that was good. But the basic keynotes, you know, large attendance. Reported attendance here is about 1800 under the roof, as it was told to us. And the room here is big. We could almost turn the committee around as we finish up, and you can see it, but I don’t think that’s material. The quality of the attendees here was actually a notch above what I had seen
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 07:09
in the past, and they were really hungry for knowledge. And I’m
Randy Johnston 07:13
not trying to insult the prior attendees, but these people were serious, is probably the way I would say it. They’re not here for a good time. They’re here to learn and have a good time. But, I mean, you know, sometimes people go to conferences just to have a good
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 07:27
time. Yeah, this was not a Tony Robbins conference where you know you’re you’re figuring out your personal power. This is one where people are here to accomplish real business objectives, for their for their small cast practices.
Randy Johnston 07:39
And one of the other things that I thought was interesting this time was many of the main stage guests were practitioners that had their own client accounting services practices, and they were telling their stories that was interesting. And there were, there was a lot of personal stories shared, and Brian, I reflected on, you know, how that had an impact in this group. But they are a tightly knit group in terms of their their relationships and the way they learn from each other. Now
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 08:09
the interesting part is how willing they are to help each other. Because I know I had a question about about Google workspace and Google script in my session on on automation, and I didn’t know the answer, and one guy spoke up and said, hey, I can help you with that. Yeah. And so it’s, it’s nice to see the collegiality here, because it’s, you know, none of us get through this world alone. It’s nice to see people trying to help
Randy Johnston 08:36
each other, yeah. And this was really people helping people. And, you know, I know your sessions were appreciated. Mine were but many,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 08:44
Oh, you are a rock star. I mean, I bet some of the people face Hutchinson five times a day to pray.
Randy Johnston 08:52
Well, I hope not. I’d rather have a completely different orientation. But what I do know is the practicality, and that’s what we try to do here in the accounting Technology Lab too? We try to be pretty straightforward and practical. We may not get all the balls to strike called exactly right, but we try to always have the ones that are in the strike zone called and the ones that are clear balls, you know, but the ones that are close, we’ll miss a few. Sometimes we get fooled. But what we also learned is we probably have another dozen products or more that we need to dig into for you, and we will try to analyze those fairly. So, you know that that’s that’s the real deal,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 09:32
and we’re going to try to get to the fit of it. And, you know, again, the the thing to understand here is, just like there is somebody for everybody in the dating world, there is a right practitioner for certain applications, okay? And what I hope you get from this, because we try to go a little bit deeper it I what I hope you get is a sense for where the right fit is for these
Randy Johnston 09:57
things, and what was fast. 18, as we were doing just a few of the interviews, particularly the CEO mango, who said, Look, lots of people buy the wrong size, practice management, sometimes too small, sometimes too large, and here’s where we fit. And many of the vendors actually would respond to the question, here’s what we do, here’s where we fit, and here’s what we don’t do. And that was also pretty fascinating, because you don’t see that type of honesty as often. I don’t believe
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 10:29
well, but it’s so much more critical for those new companies, because if they get on with the wrong people and people talk trash about them, they’re dead in the water. Yeah, because those early those early adopters are so hard to get but, but it’s, it’s refreshing, because, again, there is a right product for everybody, and there’s an almost right product for everybody, and you just have to do the homework, how many, how many practice management tools you tracking
Randy Johnston 10:56
there? Well, I’m practice well, it’s now up to 61 practice management products and portals, 91 portals. And you know, I’m going to have to possibly adjust the numbers once we get done analyzing what happened to us at engage and here at scaling new heights. So, you know, it’s hard for you to be able to to filter all of those products appropriately.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 11:18
Well, I can say categorically that in the 20 years I’ve been going to big conferences out of my 3032, year career, this 33 year career now this is probably, there’s probably more new innovation at this time in the accounting firm space than I’ve seen just about any time in that 20 year
Randy Johnston 11:41
period. Yeah, that’s very fascinating. But I do want to revisit one topic of importance to me, some of the legacy vendors that have had good products have also upgraded them, notably zero being one of those, Zoho being one of those. And they understand that they’ve got to stay up and compete also. So just because there’s new shiny lights doesn’t mean that some of the traditional lights aren’t aren’t going to be completely agreed. And we’ve been noticing that the attendees here tell us they’re taking their QuickBooks Accounts and they’re moving them to zero. They’re taking their QuickBooks Accounts and moving them to Zoho. But you
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 12:17
remember? You remember though, when when Microsoft Office accounting came in from like 2005 to 2009 and then then zero came in about 2010 ish, you remember how, how into it really brought their A game. Then that’s the thing I’m so excited about, is this competition is really making everybody better, and it’s making everybody really, really decide who they are and who they aren’t. And I think that’s part of why people will tell us who they what they do, and what who they don’t fit for.
Randy Johnston 12:51
And it is clear that the CEOs are passionate about solving a problem in which the product development, product managers behind it all that’s coming out. Well, we wanted to give you a little bit of a sense of the conference while we were here again, you’ll see the walk through from the floor, but we’ll have another episode for you on the AI impact here at scaling new heights. I think that’s big enough to cover it separately. So for the moment, any closing thoughts, Brian on just the overall event,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 13:22
you know, Woodard. Woodard organization puts on a great conference. And again, this is probably, in my mind, one of, probably the best organization for CAS support in the country. You know. Again, it’s, you know, AICPA has their program that fits well with big firms for small firms. This is this is the game.
Randy Johnston 13:45
This is the game. All right. Well, it’s been a pleasure having you with us in the accounting Technology Lab. We’ll see you again in a future episode. All the best. Good day.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 13:53 Thank you for sharing your time with us. We’ll be back next Saturday with a new episode of the technology lab from CPA practice advisor. Have a great week.
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