Ron and Ed welcome back Joe Woodard, CEO of Woodard and host of the Scaling New Heights Conference at which Ron and Ed will be delivering keynotes and sessions. We chat about the conference, artificial intelligence, and other issues facing the accounting profession.

A Bit More About Joe Woodard…

As an author, consultant, business coach, and national speaker, Joe has trained over 100,000 accounting and business professionals in areas of practice development, changing technology trends, strategic consulting, and how to maximize the use of accounting software in their practices.In 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, 2018 Joe was recognized by Accounting Today as one of the Top 100 Influential People within the accounting profession. In 2008, Joe was recognized by CPA Practice Advisor as one of the Top 40 Up and Coming Thought Leaders under the age of 40.Joe regularly publishes articles for Intuit publications and for Insightful Accountant, and Joe has been featured repeatedly in Accounting Today and AccountingWEB in both articles and in video interviews. Joe is the CEO of Woodard Events, LLC which includes education, coaching, resources, and a community for small business advisors and small business owners within the accounting industry.

Use these show notes to follow along with the audio:

Segment one:

Paul Dunn (co-author of Time’s Up!) helped Joe Woodard craft a better vision statement: Every vision statement should have an implied but known…”so that”.
For example, the Woodard vision statement is to transform business through business advisors…”so that”? So that business owners can have more intention and capacity to give to their family or other important people in their life.
Does Joe embrace AI as an opportunity or is he scared of it? He’s not scared but he is nervous from an economic perspective. Can we pivot fast enough so that authors, storytellers, and artists can find a new way to bring the human touch to their work.
Summarizing Joe’s take on AI: An intelligence - artificial or not - has the ability to draw conclusions and take action. When it can improve upon itself, we can’t even predict what it is capable of doing.
“Data and knowledge are about the past. They say nothing about the future.” —Ron Baker
Joe used the word prophetic on the show today and then dropped this one on us! “Wisdom is the fusion of knowledge and soul with a mix of emotion.” —Joe Woodard

Segment two:

Everything AI came full circle today on the show. Joe suggested that in order to keep AI from becoming too powerful, the “gods” should probably give it different languages so that it is difficult to communicate amongst themselves.
Ed summarized a great conversation from Russ Roberts and his guests on a recent show: “AI doesn’t know that it knows. Humans don’t know why we know.”
Joe’s experience with the Metaverse is one in which barriers around age, nationality, and ethnicity are broken down.
Snowcrash and the MUD from Dungeons and Dragons are two of the earliest known references to what we call the Metaverse today. If you haven’t read Snowcrash by Neil Stephenson, please do :)
The history of the Metaverse is inseparable from social media which is why Facebook did what they did in renaming and refocusing the organization as Meta.

Segment three:

You don’t go to the Metaverse to get your job done. You go to the Metaverse to interact. It breaks down global barriers and language barriers.
Why haven’t we seen the Metaverse become an economic powerhouse yet? We haven’t seen the aggregation of economies. We haven’t seen further adoption of blockchain technologies. YET.\
Joe mentioned Metcalfe’s Law on the show today. If you are not familiar, Metcalfe's law states that the financial value or impact of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system.
Related to adoption of the Metaverse, there is also a technological barrier right now. The resolution on headsets is still a bit low and that can cause a feeling of nausea in some users.
Did you know that Accenture purchased 60,000 headsets for VR training? Check out this article https://www.consultancy.uk/news/29463/accenture-buys-60000-oculus-headsets-for-vr-training

Segment four:

It’s a little hyperbolic but Joe is known to say, “Give away the compliance to get the advisory.”
The nature of tier 1 is record keeping and the product is very responsive. The nature of tier 2 is real time, operational, and interpretive in a Controller level. In tier 3, you are a business coach.
Joe is really excited about Scaling New Heights this year. Leverage the environment around you like a hawk leverages its environment and SOAR.
A big THANK YOU to Joe Woodard for joining us today. If you have not recently, check out Woodard.com to see what his team is up to.

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.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits.