S5, E2 Don't Run Away, Plant Seeds and Harvest - Journeys of Accountancy

From Farm Life to Finding Accounting at Idaho State Hello, I'm Joanne Wood. Speaker 2 And I'm Mark Cowen, welcome to Journeys of Accountancy. Speaker 1 Today we speak with Crystal Searle, Vice President of Finance and Accounting, Coleman Oil Company. Crystal, thank you for joining us today. Speaker 2 Thank you for having me. So let's start with your background. Where did you grow up and what led you to study accounting in Idaho State? I grew up in Burley, ID, just about 2 1/2 hours here from Boise State, and I grew up on a farm surrounded by lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, big, big, large extended family. And what what took me to Idaho State to study accounting during my sophomore year of high school, I needed to fill a spot with an elective credit. At the time, I thought I wanted to major in speech pathology. I have no idea why that was even in my realm of thinking. I didn't know any speech pathologist. I had never talked to a speech pathologist. But that's what I thought I wanted to do. And one of my friends was signing up for an accounting class and I I thought sure why, why not I need to fill a spot. Ended up taking the class my sophomore year and then a second class my junior year. And by the the end of that year I had decided I really do like accounting. It makes sense to me and was something that I wanted to do when I went to to college as a a major. Speaker 1 That's interesting. My daughter is in speech pathology right now and she would say the exact opposite of you. That accounting does not make sense to her and so she went speech pathology. So that just goes to show that all our brains are a little bit different. Applying the Law of the Harvest to Career Growth So you got to Idaho State knowing you were going to major in accounting. OK. So then you started off right away there. You grew up on a farm. So what sort of skills? I have a lot of students that they grow up on farms or ranches and they think that that won't translate into the world of business and accounting. And I keep trying to tell them that is not true. What sort of attributes did you develop on the farm that you think are very useful to you today in your career? One of the the first things that comes to mind is a work ethic. And I think a work ethic translates into nearly any career, but particularly from an accounting standpoint. It is a profession that has deadlines and key things that must be done at certain times, either from a regulatory standpoint or to meet deadlines within the company, to provide information, to make key decisions to others within the organization. So, you know, I grew up with, didn't matter whether it was, you know, Christmas or a weekend, the middle of the night, if there was a problem that needed to be solved on the farm, it had to be solved. And maybe not all of the time I was the one solving the problem, but around me I was seeing that that's what was happening and you just got to get get the job done. I think another thing that I learned was what I'd refer to as the law of the harvest, that what you plant is what you ultimately will reap from a physical standpoint, plant a seed and it's growing to grow into a crop that you will be able to harvest and either enjoy to eat or to sell and make a profit. But from a non tangible standpoint, I think that's really helped me frame up how I've approached my initially, my education and then career that you always have to be planting seeds and eventually those will turn into opportunities and time to harvest. But there are times where during your career you're you're in the planting and the watering and the the wedding phase of things. And occasionally you get some, some harvests and a career is has lots of planting seasons with some, some harvests along the way. Building a Foundation: KPMG Training, Networking, and Problem Solving OK, so let's start with the planting. You get an accounting degree from Idaho State and you started working in BIG4 in audit at BIG4 accounting firm KPMG. So kind of tell us about how did you get that job? And then, you know, kind of take us through your whole KPMG experience because you were there for several, correct. Yes. So my journey at KPMG started as an intern sometime around my sophomore, early junior year of college. I was introduced to the concept of, of internships that really hadn't crossed my, my mind before and thought, well, that that's a good way to go get some experience and enrich the last year or so of my, my education and get a feel for is this really what, what I want to do? And I decided if I was going to do an internship at an accounting firm, I wanted to do that during the busy season, whether that was for tax or audit. That tends to be in the January through March or April time frame. I also had taken a tax class by then and knew that tax is not what I wanted to do. So I, I locked in on an audit internship and went through the recruiting cycle with KPMG and did an internship for about four months with KPMG and at the end of that experience got a full time job offer that was to start about would have been probably about 16 months after I finished the internship. So the idea typically with these internships is you do them a year or so before you graduate, do the internship, if it goes well, you get a job offer, go finish your last year or so of school and have a job waiting for you after you graduate from college. Just want to pause right there. And you said something about how you wanted specifically to do an internship during the busy time. And that's something a lot of students don't necessarily think about. They're just looking for a summer internship or, you know, but what did you view as the advantages of doing it during a very busy time at KPMG? So first, I got the true experience, right? It wasn't maybe a lighter, cushier summer schedule. So I, I knew what I was getting into. And one thing that I really appreciated about my internship experience at KPMG is they treated me like a, a true staff. It wasn't like, oh, you're the intern, so you go home early. We don't want you to see what really happens. No, I knew exactly what what was happening and what it entailed. And maybe keeping a little bit with the, the planting theme, right. If you put in the effort to do something that's maybe a little more challenging, I got a more enriching experience out of the internship. That's not to say that a summer internship or something that's not necessarily during the key busy time isn't a good experience. It just, it will not be the full experience and you'll miss some things still worthwhile to have. Just I appreciate having that, that full robust experience and knowing what I was was getting into. Speaker 1 Let's dive a little bit into the maybe the wedding part of this planting. So oftentimes students are coming in my office even right now and saying I'm going to do an internship and I'm going to take 15 credits and I'll have 18 credits. Were you a full time student while you were doing your internship? And what did you have to weed out of your life to figure out what that schedule was going to be like so you could be successful? Speaker 2 So I was attending school at at Idaho State in Pocatello and the internship was in Boise. So I did not take classes during that semester and so that required some planning. Not only was I going to physically move from Pocatello to Boise for a period of time, but it meant that the school schedule got a little bit disrupted. Ultimately took me effectively another year, not necessarily of class work, but I graduated a year later than I would have with without the internship. But there were so, so many benefits to it that it was worth it. And typically with an accounting, public accounting internship during busy season, you're not going to be taking classes. It just you don't have time to do that. You would probably fail at both because it's important to during the internship because it's almost like a six month job interview because they're watching you, seeing you can you handle it? And they really get a good idea that you can handle it. And that's why they gave you an offer to come back full time, correct? So you went to work full time after you graduated, eyes wide open because you exactly what you're getting into. And you ended up doing quite well there, advancing all the way to senior manager. So kind of tell us what kind of things did you learn at KPMG? What kind of an experience was it as a full time worker over several years? My experience in public accounting, in particular KPMG, was an absolutely fantastic experience. The amount of training and the quality of training from both a formal and informal standpoint was fantastic. Each year we would go to a week long training somewhere else in the country with people of our same level from the firm's all across the country and up on our, our technical knowledge, some soft skills. We would also have online trainings throughout the year that we would do. So I really appreciated the, the training aspect as well as the people that I got to work with, just fantastic people that even if I haven't seen them for 10 years and I've actually been out of public accounting for about 10 years now. A couple weeks ago I I met up with someone that I met at KPMG. We hadn't talked for 10 years, but we were both going at the end the same city. So we met up for dinner and it was like we just picked up exactly where we had left off 10 years ago. And I can do that with someone that I haven't seen for 10 years or someone that I haven't seen for 10 days. You build fantastic relationships and it's just a fantastic way to network. When you work at at a big Four, you have not only a national network, but international of all of the KPMG Co workers, but you're also developing relationships with clients at various companies. And there's been times when I've needed to tap into that network. And it's very rewarding to say, all right, like I've built these relationships and no one feels like you're taking advantage of them because you're asking for something. It's just part of what we do because we like each other and we've we've been through things together. And when you have a need and can call someone, say I need help with this thing, it may be a professional thing, it may be a personal thing. That's an incredibly rewarding experience. And on the flip side, when I get those phone calls or emails of, hey, can you help me with this? Absolutely, yes. I would step in and do anything for for any of those people. So I appreciate the networking and relationships that I developed at KPMG. And then the third thing I would would highlight is the problem solving skills and the ability to think critically through situations that that was the name of the game every day. Yes, there's, you know, standard auditing procedures and every company has cash and accounts receivable and and similar things that you're auditing, but the systems are never the same. The people that you're talking to at each of the clients is different. There's challenges that come up every day that you've got to to navigate and solve the problem so you can get the work done and get through the audit process. You grow up on a farm and that says something about you that you were able to successfully do that. Your work ethic, as we've talked about before, you go to Idaho State, which is a respected university and people respect that, that you have a degree from Idaho State, you go to KPMG and people know what that is and know what that involves. And so it kind of marks you as somebody who's had this experience. And what I was interested in talking about here was that you mentioned all these relationships that you built up at KPMG and the Big Four, they refer to you as alums, right? Almost like you graduated from there just like a school, correct? And so it's sort of a continuation of school. You're all kind of going through the same experience and just like you can meet with one of your college friends and catch up very quickly, you can do the same with KPMG. Just found that was interesting. Speaker 1 What I've really liked is you've just talked about too is the problem solving. I think that in the current place in our educational system, AI is very prevalent and people keep thinking, well, AI will answer that. I don't, I don't need to think. And I think if we lose that work ethic and that problem solving, it's gonna change the world. And at some point, we're not going to have that work ethic and problem solving, and we're going to be farther behind than we are right now. So as you've talked about this, you know, you've got great relationships, you've learned great skills, and eventually everybody seems to jump from public accounting. How did you know it was time to pivot? Pivoting from Public Accounting to Stinker Stores And how did you find your job with the stinker stores? And what was that transition like? Speaker 2 So we first the, the pivot was I found a great opportunity and I think, you know, there's, there's highs and lows in life and there's highs and lows in, in any job. So in my first advice for anyone who is maybe not happy in a job is don't run away from something like run towards something great. And for me, I found a great opportunity with stinker stores And why I was willing to make that jump was I had kind of lost some of the, the passion for public accounting. Like I said, it was a great experience. I'm so glad I had it, but it just kind of stopped being as fun as it had been. And when I first sort of had that realization, it terrified me because I remembered being a student listening to professionals come and talk to me at, you know, various organizations. They would say, yeah, when your job is not fun, you need to find a new one. And I had the thought, this isn't fun anymore. Uh, to go find something new to do. And I, I really thought I would be a lifer at KPMG and in public accounting. And at the time I was having those thoughts and considering, all right, is it, is it time to go do something else? A former partner at KPMG reached out to me and asked if I was interested in a CFO type role at a privately held company and I said sure. He said, all right, send me, send me your resume. I sent him my resume and said, by the way, what's the name of the company? I didn't even know the name of the company when I when I sent my resume, too many replied back with stinker stores. I thought, that's interesting. You know, growing up on a farm, I didn't go to the gas station to buy fuel. We just had a pump that we filled it up from. So I'm like, this could be interesting. I really don't interact with so let's gas stations. Speaker 1 Let's go into that a little bit because I grew up on the farms too, and most people don't understand that the gas trucks come to the farm and fill up your gas barrel essentially, or your fuel tank for you. And that's how you know to get gas. You just go up there, get gas, you don't pay for it. Speaker 2 Yeah, Now obviously after I had graduated from high school and moved on, I and had been at KPMG for 9 to 10 years. I, I had bought fuel regularly at convenience stores, but it is not something I grew up doing. So we went went through the interview process at Stinker and met the the family that owns the company and the the rest of the leadership team. And it ended up being a fantastic fit and was really a great part of my professional journey. It was a transition though, to go from public accounting to private industry. And part of what I think helped me to be successful in that transition was, again, you've always got to be reaching out and networking and our careers aren't meant to be completed alone. If you're doing your career alone, you're kind of doing it because there's, there's a lot to learn, there's a lot to do and we, we all need to band together and, and help one another through the various phases and portions of, of our career. The Accounting Behind Convenience Store Loyalty Programs The convenience store industry has a national organization called the National Association of Convenience Stores and they put on a few key events each year. And I would attend those and go to various education sessions. And then I was part of a group, sort of a peer share group where I would get together a couple times a year with probably 12 or so other CFO's of convenience stores throughout the country. None of them were competitors. And we would spend a couple days talking about the things that were challenging us in our current roles and our companies, talk about industry trends, share best practices. And that is something that is absolutely a highlight of not only my time at Stinker, but my entire professional career, the relationships that I built there and what I learned from that group. Then I also had a a fantastic relationship with the owner of Stinker Stores who was my boss. Charlie Jones was a fantastic mentor who really helped to integrate me into not only the convenience store industry, but to private industry and having a key financial leadership role within an organization. Speaker 1 Got a fantastic mentor and a skunk and you've talked about you had this group of people that you got to meet with and learn from and find out the convenience store model. What are some of the accounting issues that are unique to fuel? Because we're so used to just going to the pump and getting our gas, I don't think we think about what goes behind the scenes. Speaker 2 So on the retail side of fuel, so Stinker stores is primarily a chain of convenience stores. So when we talk about fuel at Stinker, it's what most listeners are probably used to, going to a convenience store and filling up with fuel. One of the big trends in that portion of the industry is loyalty programs. So like everyone's got an app, they want you to earn points based on coming and spending dollars in the store. Also having special deals for those who have the app. So loyalty program accounting is is a big deal for the industry. Those points are eventually going to be converted into a reduction of sales dollars when a customer goes to the store. So at the time customers are earning those points, it's creating a liability for the company that they're going to have to pay the customer in the future through a reduced sales price on some items. Say when it comes time to when the when the customer cash is in those points for whatever discounts or whatever they're going to get. So then you have to account for it at that time. Or is it just natural because fewer sales revenue come in? How do you reverse the liability, I guess is that? Yeah, you just, you would receive less cash at the time they go to the register. Speaker 1 So in your daily register print out from each store, there's got to be some type of transaction that you would see to know what royalty. Speaker 2 We're actually working on setting this up a little bit at my current company. And the way we're we're looking at tracking it in the point of cell system is the points effectively become a sort of tender, meaning like Cash, Cash is a tender, a credit card is a tender, like a means of payment. So the points become a means of, of payment. And companies can set up their loyalty programs many different ways. A typical one is though you earn points, you know, you maybe you earn 1 point for every 3 or $5 that you spend and then you can either cash those in for a reduction on future purchases or maybe you have to use those points for something specific that the company dictates. Speaker 1 So the point of sell is keeping track of that so you can watch that liability go up and down based on what happened through the register, correct? Navigating Mergers: Integrating Systems, People, and Culture And then another accounting issue in the fuel industry is the industry is one that is consolidating, meaning there is a lot of acquisitions going on and the acquisitions are getting bigger and bigger. So if you've rolled the clock back maybe 10 to 15 years ago, you'd have some of the early baby boomer generation. Who had some convenience stores or maybe a fuel distribution business that was relatively small but had provided them a good living and they have children that don't want to take over that business, so they're looking to sell. So maybe someone of the the same size would buy that either convenience store or fuel distribution company. Now what's happened is you've got regional players and regional players are now exiting the business. So instead of I just bought Bob's location, you're buying what John bought from Bob, plus a whole bunch of other assets over many years. So these acquisitions are starting to get quite large. And with acquisitions not only comes the accounting of actually recording what happened in the purchase, but you get into integrating systems and processes and people and culture. That's something we're actually going through in my current job and company at Coleman Oil. We're merging with a company that's about the same size as us and we're both really large companies. So kind of the phrase I've been saying lately is you name it and we're integrating it. All of the things name a system, name a meeting, name a department, everything is is getting integrated. So that's not necessarily a technical accounting issue, but it is a key part of everything we do every every day and impacting our work lives in very significant ways. Speaker 1 Oh, and it's also impacting not just technical, but you're merging people. And so you've gone from strong technical accounting skills to merging people. And that's a completely different situation. And people are scared of losing jobs, and they're scared of losing their life and who they are. And how has that transition been going? Speaker 2 You hit on all the things. Yes, all of those things are what are on people's minds and what we commit to do as a leadership team is to be open and honest in communication. But right now there's a lot of things we don't know. We're I think 90 days into this, this merger process and we are hoping to not hoping you say we are planning we will have the ERP or our base accounting system unified by April 1st. And until we get to that point, there's really not a lot we know about what the future looks like with great clarity because right now we're running two different systems. So we're kind of still like two different businesses, but working on blending to the best we can. So during a time where, yeah, there's a lot of unknowns and it's uncomfortable, we communicate openly and honestly and frequently. So I've, I've been spending time on airplanes and in hotel rooms and making an effort to be physically where the company we're merging with is and make sure that I'm not just a face on a computer screen or a name on an e-mail, but people know who I am. We spend time together and then making sure that supplementing those personal visits are starting to bring teams together in meetings virtually because we can't all be in the the same location. So it's lots of contact and communication. And when someone has concerns, say, yeah, let's let's talk through them and may not know all the answers, but can at least listen and and start to understand and what are those concerns? Speaker 1 So you've went right back to planting. This time, instead of planting the crops, you're planting relationships and people so they feel comfortable through this transition. Speaker 2 Absolutely. And experience too because you're going to take as stressful and as uncertain as things are, it's tremendous experience integrating and you and your staff can take that and use that in other positions in the future as well. The Complexities of Wholesale Fuel Distribution and Card Locks One of the other accounting issues that we deal with in the fuel distribution business primarily. So I'm going to switch gears from the the retail side of fuel business to maybe something that people are a little less familiar with and that's what we call the wholesale fuel business. So when you pull up to a convenience store to fill up with gas, you probably aren't thinking about how did the fuel get there. Now, companies like Maverick have their own fleets of trucks that bring in the fuel, but someone who owns only a handful of convenience stores probably doesn't own a truck to deliver the fuel. The truck's expensive. It's dangerous to haul the fuel. So you need a specialized driver and then you need special relationships and and contracts to be able to go get the fuel from the rack where the fuel comes off the pipeline to fill the the truck. So wholesale fuel, one of the things we do at Coleman Oil is deliver fuel to some of those customers who don't have their own fleets of, of trucks. And then we also deliver fuel to farmers. We've talked about farming a little bit. So if a farmer needs to fill up a tractor, they're not going to drive it into a convenience store. They're going to have tanks on their property that they fill the 10,000 gallon tank up with fuel and fill the farm equipment from that. Well, somehow that fuel needs to get into that tank. So we deliver to farmers, orchards, ranches, construction sites that would be using equipment. And then one thing that was new to me when I started traveling to North Idaho for my current job, there's not freeways up there. There's lots of of highways that go through small towns and there's the logging industry is pretty prevalent in that area. And then there's there's some just really remote rural towns that don't have a convenience store. But what they do have are these things that are called card locks. And what those are is a location that looks like a gravel parking lot that will have a couple fuel pumps and maybe a large fuel tank above ground. And companies that have fleets of vehicles that are maybe delivering logging that are in the logging business or transporting other goods, or maybe a farmer who lives in that rural area who's not going to drive into town, which is 45 minutes away to fill up their vehicle. We issue what are called fleet cards. So it's a fuel card that can be used sort of like a credit card that gets swiped at the pump. And it can, it can be used at other pumps except just ours. There's a whole national network of these companies. So they swipe the card that we have issued at these pumps, but they don't get a bill from Visa or MasterCard. We have to voice them for the fuel also. If they don't pay, we bear the credit risk. So we're now switching into the realm of like in a convenience store, you walk in and pay your then pay with cash or your credit card and it's visas job or your bank's job to collect that from you. We are bearing the credit risk for these fuel cells, which means we have a whole department who's dealing with collecting from the customers, assessing credit worthiness before the customer even comes on board. And then we've got to collect from the customers, which means following up sometimes needing to make a reserve on an account, meaning we really hope this customer is going to pay and we're going to exercise all of our legal rights to get payment and you work with them on a payment plan if needed. But if we think it's got a likely chance of not being collectible, we need to reduce our accounts receivable and record an expense that well, this is kind of bad debt and not going to collect. Speaker 1 So personally, I got to dive into this case. I knew it. So you just explained my brother's job. Believe it or not, he is certified to haul gas. And this is what he does. And his very busy time is during the summer when he's going out and delivering the gas and he does not responsible to collect. But his biggest challenge is even as you're talking, if the dispatcher doesn't organize it right, it won't cost the company more money because they'll pay him overtime because he can't carry often as much gas as he needs to get to these farmers. So there's also management that's going on on the expense side of that. So you've got a lot of things to control there. Assessing and Managing Credit Risk in Fuel Sales But to talk about the collection side of it is big because as much as we try to teach students that not all cells are good, they don't trust us that there's bad debt. I think we just have that trusting instinct because as students, if you don't have the money, you swipe your credit card and it gets rejected, right? Or there's not money in your debit card, it just gets rejected. And it's hard for them to understand that we have to give people credit and build that relationship and we're taking risks. So what are some of the things that you do to try to eliminate your risk? Because not every customer is good. Speaker 2 So one of the things we do is have a credit team and customer does not get to be a customer unless the credit team reviews either, you know, financial statements or we get reports from credit reporting agents to be able to what type. Speaker 1 Of assess the credit party, the agencies do you use? Speaker 2 We're currently using DMB done in Bradstreet. So assessing credit frequently we we will ask for personal guarantees, which I'm I'm not an attorney. You are Mark, right? Yes, but correct me if I'm wrong here, Mark, but the personal guarantee is an extra layer that the person signs that effectively says, yeah, if I don't pay this, you can come after my personal assets. And maybe if they can't pay our bill, probably means they can't pay other bills, which means maybe there's not going to be a whole lot of personal assets left. So it's more a little bit of a symbolic thing, but something we can hold over the customers heads. And then the other thing is if someone is in a tight spot, I mean, ultimately most people do want to pay and we want the money. So we'll work with them on a collection plan. But in addition to having the credit team review before we issue credit and set credit limits, we have a collections team that follows up on late accounts and people are getting phone calls and reminders. And some of our, you know, our credit team has relationships with those customers so that we can, if funds are tight for a customer, we want them to pay our our bill 1st. And they're more likely to do that if we've built up those relationships. I hate to overbeat to death the analogy, but so by delivering the fuel to these rural areas and having the fleet cards, you enable farmers to plant their seeds, literally. And by having the credit people review the potential customers, you are ensuring that you're using good seeds in your business. And then when it comes to collections, you're trying to deal with the problems of harvest because maybe you're not be able to harvest everything that you planted because of the collection issues. Yes, had to extend that out further. I mean, I'll expand also a little bit on what we do. I mentioned the credit limits. The credit team sets credit limits and then we monitor the accounts to not exceed the credit limit. Or I mean, sometimes there are times where, yeah, the credit limit needs to be allowed to go over for various reasons. But we, we then watch those accounts real closely and there's times where customers aren't maybe being responsive and we've got to tell them, you know, we're, we're not going to sell to you right now until, until you make some payments, you don't get any more fuel. And that then creates some interesting dynamics and relationships with the sales team. But we, we have a fantastic credit team that does a great job building relationships with the customers as well as with the sales team, because there, there are bad sells and the credit team sometimes has to rein the sales team in and give a little bit different perspective of why a particular potential customer may not be a good customer that will actually pay. So internal conflicts, basically you got the sales trying to sell more, but the credit people saying, hey, wait a minute, we want to make sure we can collect all of this interesting dynamics there. Yeah. But in business, you have to be able, you have to be willing to take some risk, right. If we wanted to guarantee that we never had to do a single write off, the way you do that is you don't sell anything. Well, that's not a very productive business. So yeah, we we need to take risks on on customers and most of the time it works out. But sometimes, yeah, you have to take the write off. Resetting and Growing: Career Break and Executive MBA Impact So just shifting gears just a little bit, I wanted to talk about you took a little career break between working at Stinker on the retail side and then working at Coleman on the wholesale side. I'm just curious about that because we I'm seeing more and more of that on LinkedIn, people deliberately taking some time back. You want to talk about that and how it helped you and just in general? Absolutely. I think it's great that these are becoming a bit more normalized. Like you mentioned, our careers last a really long time and I think it's OK to take a moment and pause and say, I want to do something different for a moment. So yes, I had an opportunity to take a few months and just be in a different headspace to live life a little bit differently for a few months. And during that time I was able to participate in some family holiday traditions in a different way than I had in the past. I also took a fantastic trip to Kauai with my niece and sister-in-law. That will likely be a once in a lifetime trip. I hope I'll get to Hawaii, you know, more time times, but to just go with the three of us was such a fun experience. Was able to do more skiing in two months than I had done in probably the 20 years prior to that. And also take a great trip to Florida and spend some time with friends that I don't normally get to spend time with. So it was a great way to just pause, get a little bit of a reset and think about what do I want the future to look like and how can I live life just a little bit differently for a few months. And you wouldn't have been able to do that if you weren't planting the seeds before. So this is kind of like a little bit of a harvest, right? Absolutely. Speaker 1 I want to dive a little bit into your Executive MBA program, so. Speaker 2 Our executive MBA is nationally ranked. Currently it's somewhere in the top 20. And just for background, it's where people who have a lot of experience come back to get their Masters of Business Administration, but they do it in a unique way, which I'm sure Crystal could explain. Speaker 1 Thank you for explaining that you've gone through that, you've graduated from that and you're now coming back to teach. But how did that program help your career? Speaker 2 Yeah. So I have a lot of respect for the executive MBA program at Boise State. When I was getting ready to graduate from my bachelor's degree, I had the internal debate of do I want to get a master's degree? If so, do I want to do that now or wait? And I came to the decision that I wanted to wait to do the master's degree until I at least had some work experience. So I graduated with my bachelor's degree. I had 150 credits. So I was able to sit for the CPA exam and and do the public accounting thing. But I always had lingering in the back of my mind, like, how am I going to ever go back to school and get an MBA? So the longer you're away from school, the harder that barrier of getting back into that mindset and that routine just seemed insurmountable. So I had been thinking about how do I how do I make that happen? And had explored the Executive MBA program at Boise State a few times. I looked at the website and looked into what it was about a little bit. And then as I was in this time period of transitioning with jobs, the stars aligned and doors opened that an opportunity came to join the Executive MBA program. And I knew if I didn't do it, then it was never going happen. So I remember getting the paperwork back that I had been accepted into the program. And I closed my eyes as I signed the bottom line, saying, yeah, I'm going to do this thing and sent it in. And I'm, I thought, what did I just do? And the thought running through my mind was, well, this program's only 21 months. So like, at worst, I can do anything for 21 months. But it turned out to be a fantastic experience. Certainly, I had to make sacrifice devices personally in a little bit of sleep, but it was manageable and definitely customized towards individuals who've been out of school for many years and gives a path to get that degree. So it was a manageable experience, but it turned out to be incredibly valuable. Some of the the key things that I got from the program were first, the people I met. The program is in a cohort style, which means there were a little more than 20 of us through this program and we were with each other for that full 20 months in every class together and even broken out into smaller study group teams. And I, I will have relationships with those people forever. And it's 20 plus people that are doing great things in their careers and are key leaders at businesses throughout the Valley. The other key thing from the program was it made me more aware and more willing to think about things from a different perspective. And not that I wasn't willing to do that before, but it put my head in a different space that allows me, I think, to empathize with different perspectives in a deeper way than I was able to before the program. And another great thing was the opportunity. Each month we would have class for either 3 or 4 days. And these were full days like 8:00 AM to 7:00 or 7:30 PM. And yeah, that's a long time to be sitting in a classroom and engaging in the in the education process. But it was also an opportunity to step away from the spreadsheets and the computer screens for a couple days a week and put my mind in a different place where I wasn't thinking about the details of, OK, what needs to get done on my task list and what's on my calendar for today. But an opportunity to think about how can I be a better leader for my team, a better leader for myself, and a better leader for those who I support within the organization. Speaker 1 So I love that you've kind of wrapped that up like your technical skills were very strong and you've had to use those throughout your career. But as you're getting more into the mergers that you've talked about and the different things that are going on and as the feelings are maybe present as mergers happen, this executive MBA, because of your technical ability has allowed you to be able to help people different and to keep them at ease. And that's probably why you're traveling a little bit more as this mergers going on because you're looking at it in a different headspace. Speaker 2 Yeah, I think that's a an absolutely accurate point. Exploring Passions: Travel, Broadway, and Personal Growth So our journeys are not all about accountancy. Tell us what keeps you busy outside of work. Speaker 2 I enjoy traveling to new places. You know when when we talked about the time I took off from from traditional work, there was lots of traveling in that. I do enjoy that and I also enjoy just a good old vacation on the beach. I'm a big fan of live theater. It's been a while since I've been to New York City, but there was a span of several years when I was at KPMG and a little bit when I was at Stinker when I found myself in New York City fairly regularly, and during that time I saw 19 different shows on Broadway over the course of. Speaker 1 Water shows. Speaker 2 Hamilton was one of them. I've not actually seen Hamilton on Broadway those that was pre Hamilton days, but I I have seen Wicked four times on Broadway but Wicked only counts as one of those 19. Speaker 1 So diversity, they're not just repetition. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 2 I also love a good book. I mostly a nonfiction person rather than fiction, and then I enjoy being outside. Not necessarily sleeping outside, don't like camping so much, but anything outside where then I get to sleep in either my own bed or a very nice hotel, it's enjoyable. Speaker 1 Glamping, right? Like outdoor, but you need the glamping of the hotel. Speaker 2 Who would you say is the biggest star that you've seen on Broadway that you know, because a lot of times the film actors and the TV actors will be on Broadway. I know I saw Matthew Broderick once. Yeah. So I think I say saw Jane Lynch in Annie, Raven Symone in Sister Act Well. Speaker 1 That's a fun one. Speaker 2 Jim Parsons, I saw him and Harvey for the weirdest one I saw, like the weirdest Broadway show was Spider Man and that one, the accidents, yes. So I was so excited to go see it because because there had been so many accidents. Not that I wanted anything bad to happen during the production, but like, yeah, leading up to this thing, it had been shut down several times because there's some scenes where they have people dressed in Spider Man suits and they're just they're flying all over the theater. So that led to some accidents during production. But you know, I had a trip coming up. Things were were a go and the show was was happening and I got got my tickets and it was pretty cool. There were lots of people flying around. No one got hurt. But it was also a very weird production. I remember there were several times where they're singing, and I'm thinking, I don't know that that was actually a sentence that was just sung. It was a little bit of a bizarre production, but it was really fun. Speaker 1 Well, thanks again for joining us today, Crystal. Speaker 2 Absolutely, thank you for all you do. And for journeys of accountancy, I'm Mark Cowan. Speaker 1 And I'm Joanne Wood, join us for our next episode.