How to Use Community Partnerships & Engagement to Scale Your Accounting Firm (Jessica McCracken)

In this episode, Jessica McCracken, the Strategy & Partnership Leader for Accountant Segment at Intuit joins host Roman Villard to discuss her unique insights and strategies on leveraging community partnerships and engagement to expand firms’ reach and impact.

This episode is filled of insights for anyone interested in understanding how community engagement can be a powerful catalyst for business growth. 

Jessica's experiences and advice are not just inspiring but also packed with actionable takeaways.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Building community and industry partnerships for accountants
• 4:17 Collaboration between tech and accounting industries
• 8:47 Providing constructive feedback to software companies
• 13:34 Storytelling and partnerships in accounting industry
• 18:44 Innovation and growth in the accounting industry

Transcript

Roman Villard
So excited to have you here. Thank you for joining Accounting Flow. How are you?

Jessica McCracken
I am good. I’m hopping on a plane on Sunday to see, so many people in person at QuickBooks Connect last week could not be more excited. I will be packing and sleeping until then, but ready to go?

Roman Villard
Yes, we were recording this before QuickBooks Connect, this will be released afterwards. But the whole, a large portion of being at the event is building community is meeting with partners. It’s developing relationships. Like I’m so excited for that.

Jessica McCracken
We have 3,000 of the academy community coming in. So we’ve got app partners, accountants from all over the country. Of course, we do. It is a US show, but we have a few folks flying in, I caught the name of a couple friends from Australia who are flying into the show a good contingent coming from Canada. I know we’ve got some folks that have office managers at their outsource partners in South America that are coming. So it is going to be a great time. And we have three jam packed days with killer speakers. And I think some of the big speakers, Ryan Reynolds are big names, but really killer speakers from the community too. So I think we’ve got some of the best and brightest for firms to learn from.

Roman Villard
It is, it feels like the Super Bowl for accountants like, oh, it’s gonna be the best. I’m super excited about that. Real quick. So before we dive into the topic of building community and engaging in partnerships as a firm owner, can you give us the elevator pitch on who you are, what you’re doing and what that looks like today for you?

Jessica McCracken
Absolutely. I am Jessica McCracken, I am the Strategy & Partnership Leader for Accountant Segment at Intuit, that has a whole lot of big corporate words. But I work across the business Intuit’s huge, making sure things are better for accountants. So hey, do we have the right things happening in payroll to give you guys the best solution? Oh, hey, this TurboTax thing might impact you guys. We’re going to do this new offering, how do we build it from the ground up with you guys in a better way? We’ve moved the pendulum a few times over the last few years of like, Okay, we’re gonna launch an MVP, and then when we clearly hear from accountants is like, that’s not enough of an MVP for us. And so really working to embed accountants deep in our teams. So we collapse that learning curve, and then industry partnerships, so big organization, education efforts, how can we get involved in helping outsourcing and talent pipeline, all of that work? melding the industry with Intuit the more deeply.

Roman Villard
Yeah, I love that. And so you’re, you’re kind of the epicentre of, of relationships and community and making that happen to create a better outcome for all accountants that are using Intuit products.

Jessica McCracken
Exactly. Because then that trickles down to all the small businesses on our platform, too.

Roman Villard
Okay, perfect. So we’ve got the perspective of somebody who’s on the vendor side, major corporation, lots of products. We’re talking to a lot of maybe smaller, younger, firm owners, folks that are developing their practices and just starting to figure out how, how do I go about building industry partnerships, or, or building community to help me further my understanding to build a company? How would you start to think about that if you were in the shoes of a firm owner today? How would you approach starting to build industry relationships or building community?

Jessica McCracken
So, I think it’s about using your voice and like really like crystallising what your perspective and your strengths are, I think I see a lot of new firm owners are like, Oh, I’ve not been doing this very long. I shouldn’t be reaching out to app partners. I shouldn’t be doing this. I’ve spent a good portion of my career into I’ve also done startups. And what stays the same across is we need more hand raisers. So if somebody comes to me, I don’t care if they just started their firm, or if they’re to top 50 firm. If they’re like, Hey, this is a problem. And this is what you’re doing in the software today. And this is why it’s a problem. And here’s some stuff I think you should think about. We want to work with you like we want that every tech partner, we’re an open platform, right? We have hundreds of people on our platform from the tech side, too. We all want that. So that’s number one. And I think through starting with the tech partners, you also get connected on councils on advisory boards at conferences to so many other people, that it really accelerates starting to form that network.

Roman Villard
Woof. So making your voice be heard raising your hand. I think that’s something that innately accountants struggle with. Have you have you seen that or do you feel that way as well?

Jessica McCracken
Yeah, so I recently took over our partner counsel. And it’s so funny, one of our friends is very insightful. And he was like, hey, look, accountants are rule followers. And so, when you tell us how to like where you want us to engage, we will try to do exactly what you said. It’s an interesting balance for us of like, you’re here because you belong here. Like when I pick up the phone to call you Roman for advice on something, it’s because of who you are, like, that’s not me doing. That’s you, you got yourself here. And so learning to like, find that but also to have that confidence of like, hey, no, I know what I’m doing. I’m doing it for the right way. I know I’m doing it for the right reasons. Helps like helps you craft that It is what helps us. So learning from running something like counsel, it’s how do we give enough guardrails that you guys feel comfortable, I’m looking for this type of feedback, we’ve already made this decision. We want it to come to life, or we’re trying to make this decision. If you think we’re wrong, tell me we’re wrong. So that like framework has helped give you guys like the basis of how to talk and how to engage. But it’s still like a learning process, especially as tech changes, AI is coming in and everything else for like, what is that lane to best engage? And how.

Roman Villard
Yeah, you brought up kind of an underlying message moment ago about like, the core motivations for raising your hand. And, you know, it’s an interesting conversation point, because, on one hand, you want to say, “Hey, I think these product improvements would be great, because they would benefit me and my clients”. And I think for for what you’re alluding to, in regards to councils and different initiatives you bring people in for it’s more of a how can how can you provide input and feedback in order to help the masses and not just yourself. And so looking at it through the lens of like, I want to be a productive element of the industry and not just try to create a feedback loop just for my own benefit? Is that kind of something that you’re alluding to here?

Jessica McCracken
I so I think it’s a little bit of both. So what we really excel at is building software. Here, it’s a company, it’s our DNA, right? I’m not an accountant. I never have been, I know so much about you guys. Because accountants have opened their firm doors for me, I’ve spent time in offices, I sat in on client calls for a decade now. So I know a lot about that. We don’t know the bet. So some of the things that we bill, is because you were like, Hey, I have no way to do X with my clients. One of the features in QuickBooks Online is the books review us for month and close. We actually got that because we had a team with a little extra time. And we were talking about like, things that take the offices time. So we sent an entire product development team, to an accountants office in Ohio, he’s a good good advisor of ours, they spent the entire month like just literally sitting in this was pre COVID. sitting and watching the accountants work, I’m seeing what they do. And that bore books review, which is used by many people inside a QBO. And it’s something that if you guys waited for us to see the need without telling us the knee, it wouldn’t have come. So it’s both sides of that, because let us both be the experts. You guys are the experts that are being accountants. We are experts at tech, but it has to have both of us to build something synergist.

Roman Villard
Definitely, definitely. And if I’m I’m picking up firm owner in Ohio, I believe this individual has maybe seven, eight employees like this isn’t a massive, massive firm that’s providing this feedback that’s causing massive product changes to intuit, it’s been rolled out to 1000s of firms like this is coming from a small firm that’s providing this feedback.

Jessica McCracken
It is in small town, Ohio, you know exactly what I’m talking about. So Jacobs, a beautiful example of that he was on our council, like six or seven years ago. But he has such an understanding of the products in the ecosystem. And he and a few others who are long term advisors articulate the problem very clearly. And that’s why things like I don’t like telling our PM’s what to do, just like I wouldn’t tell you guys how to do something right. But they are so good at like, this is what’s happening. This is the scenario like they let us fall in love with their problems with them, instead of solutioning for us. And their ability to articulate which they’ve honed over the years and they’ve taught masterclasses to other people on the ability to articulate what’s going on, is exactly why we keep tapping them even though. Yeah, that one is a seven person firm in Iowa in small town, Ohio.

Roman Villard
It’s amazing to see the impact that that small seven person firm in Ohio can have on an industry and particularly like one of the largest software providers in our space. Like it is mind boggling to me that, you know, a company of Intuit sizes is reaching down to a lot of ways to get that feedback to reincorporate it and like really taking that with a lot of value. Like that’s, that’s really cool.

Jessica McCracken
We do accountants give us lots of feedback, we get over 10,000 pieces of feedback a month in QBO. About our various products do that little gear icon on the top right, we read most of it, not gonna promise we read all of it, but we read most of it. And that drives a lot of the changes we make is that when now if you say something one time once and you’re the only person, we’re not going to action that. But when we start to see themes of like, hey, like, we built our new report builder, that’s a perfect example. You guys are like, pump the brakes. These are the things that are missing it with kind of completely redeveloped it, because we were watching everything that came in, and then we often will, hey, you submitted feedback. Can we talk some more?

Roman Villard
Yeah. And so do you believe that just across the the product, software’s that exist that serve accountants, that generally when somebody’s raising their hand and saying, “Hey, I got an issue, I’ve got some feedback. I’ve got something I’d like to share with the team”, that most partners is going to be pretty open to that and have an open door have that type of dialogue?

Jessica McCracken
Absolutely. I would say that how matters a lot. So a friend of mine who was on our council, she’s very graceful. She’s one of those people just like the way she gives feedback. And we were sitting down and talking. And I don’t know, Spring this year. She talked about the fact that she learned how to get feedback from us, we have our own way of doing things every company does. And now what happens is she starts working other app company, and she kind of is like, “Hey, here’s what it is”. And she said, like, the way we taught her to give feedback in that form, it works so well, that she consults for companies like half of her time. And it’s because she learned like the right way to work with product teams, and how to talk about the problem and how to set that up. And she has an open door invite with everyone she reaches out to because she has articulated that. So I’d say we see both sides, like we get the angry that like, yeah, you don’t know what you’re doing. I can’t believe you did this this way. Those people I do protect my product teams from I’m not gonna put those people in touch with my teams. But if you are like, you don’t have to be an expert, this, “Hey, this is what’s happening. And this is why it doesn’t make sense:”. Yeah, every app partner needs more feedback like that.

Roman Villard
And so is that how you recommend recommend to advisory council folks to provide feedback? I’d love to dive a little bit deeper in on, like, how do you recommend individuals provide feedback in the most constructive manner.

Jessica McCracken
Help us understand the problem. I say it about product teams. But in reality, nobody likes being told a solution, right. And from our side, with our size, we have several million small businesses on our platform, we have a million accountants on our platform. So almost a million. So when we, when you say, I need you to build this export to this, I can track my stuff in, in sheets. That’s the way you do it. And it may be the right way. But our data is huge. We can see this across hundreds of thousands of accountants across millions of small businesses. And you may not know something we know. But if you say Hey, I can’t do this one thing. This is where I get stuck in the product. This is where I try to do things. This is where I’m at, we can then say, “Okay, walk us through what you’re doing as a workaround, for sure”. And then we’re gonna go to a bunch of research on our site, and we’re gonna see how other people are using those features. What is being used, what isn’t being used? Is there a need that’s being filled? Only by app partners, right, with an open API, we have plenty of people who have a niche that they solve very well for their technology? Do we see everybody who’s in that part of product has to go to an app partner, we have such a lens, that we will get more once we fall in love with the problem with you guys. That’s where it starts explaining the problem, so that we can think about it together. And we can be thought partners on the solution.

Roman Villard
Yeah, help us define the problem. It’s interesting, because you know, clearly a company like Intuit has thousands of people who are helping solve these problems. And so being able to articulate that matters when you have an army of people who are able to help solve it, and then and then maybe work with you want a solution after the problem is clearly identified. Okay, so once you have maybe a line of communication open with with a software partner with the vendor with the general ecosystem, what are what are maybe other ways outside of feedback that you can engage that you can support that you can help move the industry forward, but via these relationships?

Jessica McCracken
So maybe it’s the fact that I started my career in marketing, and I have a marketers heart. So I love the story. So I think that as people, we love stories, it is who we are. It’s stories we tell ourselves about who we are. It’s the story we tell about our firms, about our companies about our impact. And I think that, like when you guys talk about the numbers of the clients, right, you’re not talking about like, well, you have this much in this account, you have this much in this account. The people who do advise really well are telling a financial story. Yeah. And that’s, and we have several sessions next week, etc, on financial storytelling, because that’s the impact. And same thing, like if I need to win somebody over on like, hey, accountants do this differently than small businesses, and I need you to change your roadmap. I never start with the numbers. I always start with, let me tell you about Roman the companies and customers he serves and the impact he has, and where he gets stuck on our platform because we don’t let him do this. And that always whether it’s internal to us, whether it’s to clients, whether it’s to peers, telling the story of impact, telling the story of who you are, will always be a hook. And it better amplifies the message of whether it’s product feedback, whether it’s wanting new development, whether it’s realising that a niche is something that we need to fill or the talent pipeline, right, you know that well, the talent pipeline, if you tell a story about your firm, you’re gonna have a lot easier time recruiting. If you have a strong brand story, you’ll get people to engage in a different way. So think about the stories that you can tell whether it’s about the product, whether it’s about the solutions, whether it’s about the clients, or whether it’s about an unmet need that you’re trying to rally people around supporting.

Roman Villard
And it feels like that all still kind of weaves into the lane of feedback. And so how would that storytelling then connects to a deeper partnership? Or how is it leveraged internally? Perhaps it Intuit like, I’m trying to think of like, how does that sit in a different Lane than like squarely providing feedback on this is a problem I’m experiencing.

Jessica McCracken
So I think it’s not limited to products. I’ll I’ll lean back to one of our earliest conversations. You very clearly told me that story of the talent pipeline shortage, which we know and will take action on at some point. And then you said, this is what I’m doing. I’m talking to my alma mater, I’m getting people together, that we can go petition at universities, and until you showed me that passion that like you were doing, I was like, Oh, my God, we have relationships with the Federal Bureau of education, and so many big universities from recruiting efforts, we can help you do that, like, let me give you resources to do that better. And that’s where it wasn’t a product. It wasn’t feedback, you told the story of what you’re trying to do. And I realised I can help you with it.

Roman Villard
Yeah. Yeah, it’s so interesting, because oftentimes, when you’re when you’re starting to form relationships, and industry, they can take on flavours and directions that you never you never thought possible. And to your earlier point, it’s just a matter of raising your hand and like being willing to come out of your shell and have that conversation.

Jessica McCracken
Exactly. And that’s where you’re meeting a bunch of education leaders, right? That’s where we have that I’ve talked to teams across the company about like, Hey, this is the action that community and industry are already taking. How can we instead of doing it on our own, bolster them? Let them do it?

Roman Villard
Yeah.

Jessica McCracken
So it rallied us.

Roman Villard
That’s good. That’s good. And so accountants generally have, I don’t know what the average number of partners that they have. But I suspect it’s dozens, perhaps about partners that they work with. And so it can be really easy to get overwhelmed with, with, Hey, I shouldn’t have this type of relationship with all of my vendors, I don’t need to give feedback to everybody. And so how would you recommend people approach? You know, what are the right partnerships to like, really go deep on and engage in versus the ones that maybe don’t require should not require that kind of time and energy, because at the end of the day, it is it is time and energy.

Jessica McCracken
I would say it’s a melding of what are you most excited about, and what is most important for your business. So if you are a firm that specialises in restaurants, let’s say you have farm to table restaurants, boutique hotels, is a firm on the East Coast, it does this, you need a very specific set of tech software, your GL is important, of course, we’re important for restaurant service, the GL is not the most important thing. And somebody who’s in that role, they’re gonna have so much expertise on what is needed from the tech partners that serve restaurants. That is absolutely where they should spend their time, like, don’t spend all their time with us. The GL is here to support. But if you know, in and out the way a restaurant operates from an accounting standpoint, and exactly what it needs to be successful, That’s badass. And that’s not something that everyone can say everyone has some level of GL expertise. And I bet if you know restaurants that way, your passion is restaurants, not the GL side. So that’s an easy example of passion is their need is their expertise is their focus on that. If you are great at giving feedback, you’re great at telling a story, every partner is gonna want to work with you. I think many people going to QBC have felt that pain of like they’re being asked and pulled to be on every one stage, we will all burn you out. That’s that is the fact that we will ask so much. And I think you guys are trying to run a business and serve clients and do that focus on what matters the most for you. And what you’re most excited about. Don’t make us all happy. Turns some of us down.

Roman Villard
That is gold. And I think a lot of people should probably, you know, hit the 15 second back button about six times to hear that again. Because what you’re talking about just hits at the core of staying focused and being a really good and juicy advocate in the smartest way possible for your firm. Like you’re establishing this hierarchy of of systems and tools and trying to understand like, how does that passion excitement and then ultimately like client experience all coalesce into what are the right systems to then be really lean, leaning into like that? Oh, that’s so good.

Jessica McCracken
And it’s such a like fire thing to say to your clients, right? If you can be like, Hey, I know this thing was really hard. Guess what this company built it. I got you like I developed it with it. I have so much confidence because I developed it with them. Like what a point of pride for you guys like you just change something for the entire industry you support.

Roman Villard
I did that with the prospect yesterday. You know, it’s not something that comes up often. And nor is it something that like I think people should like where’s the badge of honour and like promote left and right but at the same time, like it is worth worth promoting to the extent that like, hey, we have industry relationships and like we are really focused on moving things forward in our industry so that you as a client have a better You’re experience. And ultimately, like, there’s benefit to the app partners, to your firm to your clients. And this ripple effect can be really, really powerful. And the people that get it get it, which is really cool.

Jessica McCracken
Yeah, I mean, if you look at what’s happened over the last decade, I guess, like, think about manually reconciling 10 years ago, like you were looking at paper, even if you were in QuickBooks, hopefully, you were we’ve been around for like 30 years now. But if you were in QuickBooks Desktop, you were printing out bank statements on paper and going through with a highlighter and a red pen, bank feeds 95% of it’s done for you, and you’re only chasing a few transactions, it went through for something that took 10 plus hours a month for accounts for every account for each customer has to less than an hour, depending on the size and complexity and things go wrong sometimes. But like that, right, there is something that fundamentally changed the industry, that was a huge piece of changing from the hourly billing to value billing is because that is a massive amount of work that would away. That’s just one feature. And like, we have statement, auto import now where you get the statements real time we have like, all of those things that we’ve built. And that’s something that like, fundamentally shifted models, because of the change to billing because of how the process was done, because of how much time you guys spend in files, because of the integration between us. And every bank and the processes. Like that’s such a small change that somebody at some point is probably like this could be better. And it was a seismic shift for the industry.

Roman Villard
And this is coming from the perspective of somebody at Intuit, the the, you know, 100 pound gorilla in the room, right? And if you think about like that, that app ecosystem, all the way down to these really new apps that are coming out to try to solve this problem within the accounting space, like they are even more hungry for feedback and support and understanding of how the industry works. And so, you know, there’s just so much power in raising your hand in, you know, having your voice be heard on these things. And I think a lot of what you’ve articulated would be phenomenal for these firm owners. So like, if they feel like there’s a little bit more, and just haven’t raised their hand yet. Just give them that little bit of encouragement to do that.

Jessica McCracken
Yeah. And I think the beauty of those startups, they have focus. And that’s an area where we get in our own way. Honestly, you guys have felt that I’m sure but like, if they say, Hey, there’s this specific need, I can solve this need well, and then once they mature, they grow, they’re going to expand their portfolio of offerings. But that’s what it always starts with. It always starts with, I see a problem that I believe I can fix. And so a firm, new large mall, when somebody’s like, “Hey, I see that same problem, and I can help you fix it?” Like, that’s where innovation starts like that is that kernel that then turns into a big company?

Roman Villard
Yeah, man, I could go on and on and on about that. That is awesome. But I think we should start wrapping here, Jessica. So in your role, are you interfacing with new people, people that are raising their hands on a daily basis, weekly basis? Like are you come across that pretty often?

Jessica McCracken
I am. I will say I’m bad at doing it on email. So apologies for that. But I think the place that is here at the most is at events. We all have different ways we feel about conferences. I was one of those people that during lockdowns and code was like, I am so ready to be at a conference, I will always make time to go. I’m doing QBC. And then I’m back in Vegas two weeks later for digital and I was in Chicago, you know, a month ago for Randy’s event and all of that. And I will always do that because I get smarter every time you guys talk to me. And I get excited by like the new firms. I have a vision I have a dream. Like, I love an underdog story. I love like, tell me why you’re doing it. I will fall in love eight times a day for that. Right? So I always want to hear it. That seems like an easy way just because events are a real quick way to grow community. If you’ve never been to a counting conference, reach out to some folks on your social media platform of choice. We’re talking about it. And then just goes to the table. Like that’s one of my favourite things about things like QuickBooks Connect where lunches in one place, I will go walk up to a table and I’m like, “Hey, I’m Jessica, who are you guys? Like I’d love to know more about you.” And that’s such a beautiful way, especially for people just starting out who don’t have community to find a community.

Roman Villard
I love that. So if you’re looking to find a way to get in touch with Jessica, it’s clearly going to events and maybe hitting you up on LinkedIn and saying like hey, you won’t be at this event would love to find you. Is that a good medium for people to find you?

Jessica McCracken
LinkedIn is emails an awful option even for my coworkers unfortunately. But yeah, events LinkedIn like find me find me there. I’m not as proactive and posting as I should be. I some of my peers do this so well. And I just don’t know how they do it someday they’ll give me their secret sauce. But I am responsive if you reach out, so I would love that. Let me know where you are. And let me know the shows that you’re putting on like, Randy reached out about his event in August, Bridging The Gap. That was amazing from the unique CPA and it was Randy was like, “Hey, I’ve got this thing going on. You want to come?” Yeah, you do. So we can’t be everywhere but that’s such a powerful way of connecting to people.

Roman Villard
It is it is. So if you’d like to find Jessica McCracken, you can look her up on LinkedIn. But you should find her at a conference and go say what’s up. Thank you so much for talking about partnerships on accounting flow today. I’m thoroughly excited by that and just love that the community that comes out of it, so thank you so much.

Jessica McCracken
Absolutely anytime.