Belying the episode title there is more than one problem with continuing professional education (aka CPE). Ron and Ed were joined this week by two innovators in the profession — Blake Oliver of Earmark and Michael Kravshik of LumiQ — to talk about not only the problems, but how they are trying to help solve it.

About Blake Oliver

Blake Oliver, CPA, is an entrepreneur, accountant, writer, and podcast host who specializes in cloud accounting technology. He is one of Accounting Today’s Top 100 Most Influential People and has been named a 40 Under 40 in the accounting profession by CPA Practice Advisor. Blake also produces and co-hosts the Cloud Accounting Podcast, a Top 50 Business News show on the Apple charts and the most popular podcast for accountants and bookkeepers in the world. He is the Director of Marketing at Jirav and lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.

About Michael Kravshik

Michael Kravshik is the Co-Founder, CEO, and oft-times main host for LumiQ. LumiQ is a mobile podcast app where engaging conversations with business leaders count as verifiable professional education. With a slick mobile app, automatic documentation tracking, and new episodes weekly, we've made professional education something it's never been before: enjoyable.

Here are the show notes. Use these to follow along while listening to the show:

Blake started as an accountant and then became a product marketer at a tech firm. Through that experience, he started Earmark CPE as a way to fix the inconvenience associated with live classes.
Earmark CPE is a user generated community. If you have a podcast targeted towards accountants or bookkeepers then your content might be eligible for the platform.
Michael started about 18 ideas (his words :) ) with his co-founder before arriving at LumiQ. They approached CPAs with the idea and ended up launching an app to make CPE (CPD in Canada) easy and convenient.
We measure earned CPE in terms of hours because it’s the easy thing to measure. It doesn’t mean it’s right.
It is the collective hope of Blake and Michael that the industry changes for the better by learning continuously on a phone instead of cramming CPE into a few days at a conference.
The real problem is that you don’t want to earn CPE because it’s not great. That’s why LumiQ takes a professional, sometimes scripted, approach to the content they create.
In Canada, one minute is one minute when listening to CPE….ahem…CPD podcasts. Listening speed is not a factor.
In the end both Blake and Michael are creating CPE/CPD content that is valuable, interesting, and engaging. That means accountants and bookkeepers are going to keep listening whether or not it is required.
Bonus AND commercial free episodes are now available at the TSOE Patreon channel - Patreon.com/TSOE. Now sponsored by @90Minds. Need a mind? Hire one at 90Minds.com
What happens to live CPE in the future? We will find out soon if they come back post-Covid but they are trending down. It’s not a growth industry.
In terms of demographics, the C-level to staff members are all involved in Earmark CPE and LumiQ. You see different age ranges gravitate towards different content but usage is up across all demos.
What is the biggest issue facing the industry? Michael sees one of two directions from the larger associations: 1) We’re going to focus on the things we traditionally did. 2) We’re going to turn the CPA into an MBA (jack of all trades, master of none).
What’s the biggest challenge facing the industry? From Blake: The rules of accounting haven’t changed in 100 years but our economy has changed a lot. The data we are collecting is just not useful today the way it was in the Gilded Age.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) divided by the cost of acquiring a customer (CAC) is the most valuable metric for subscription organizations. It remains completely unaddressed by GAAP.
A big THANK YOU to Blake for joining us today! Check out his work at EarmarkCPE.com
A big THANK YOU to Michael for joining us today! Check out his work at LumiQLearn.com

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

This week was bonus episode 389 - “Marathon times”. Here are a few links discussed: