Tech & marketplace leadership discussion and firm-level change management

Summary

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AICPA Town Hall Series – May 28, 2026

Episode: Tech & Marketplace Leadership Discussion and Firm-Level Change Management
Host: AICPA & CIMA
Featured Speakers: Susan Coffey, Erik Asgeirsson, Rachel Dressen, Rene Lecert, Kim Blasco, Kelly Visser, Melanie Lauritsyn
Main Theme: Navigating technological change, regulatory updates, AI transformation, and effective change management in accounting firms.

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Episode Overview

This episode provides a comprehensive update on critical developments affecting the accounting profession, with a focus on the rapid transformation fueled by AI and technology, major regulatory shifts, and change management at the firm level. Executive leaders and expert guests dissect updates from Washington, explore the impact of generative AI on accounting practices, and deliver practical insights on how firms can successfully navigate advisory transformation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. DC Update: Legislation, Elections, and Regulatory Environment

[00:10 – 14:56]

• Primary Elections & Legislative Impact:
  The primary season is in full swing, directly affecting legislative agendas with retiring members and incumbents losing races. “As expected, you have your surprises, predicted outcomes, and members retiring or losing ... This impacts legislation and what may or may not get done in the coming months.” — Rachel Dressen [02:05]

• Budget Reconciliation Status:

  • 2.0 Bill: Narrower, funds ICE and CBP, with potential additions (e.g., White House ballroom, DOJ reimbursement fund). Delayed to next week due to Memorial Day recess.
  • 3.0 Bill: Broader, would encompass tax issues and directly affect the profession. More activity in the House than Senate at this stage.
  • Summer Focus: Appropriations and government funding.

• AI Legislation:

  • No sweeping federal AI bill yet; activity mostly at the state level, focusing on privacy, security, upskilling, and innovation.
  • Bipartisan congressional bills support AI-related job training and data sharing.
  • Executive orders and funding proposals for workforce and AI infrastructure continue as priorities for the administration. “Anytime you look at the newspaper, there’s at least one article on AI ... Congress and administration are following it very closely.” — Rachel Dressen [06:07]

• AICPA Advocacy:

  • Letters sent to Congress supporting legislation on beneficial ownership information reporting and broadening accounting’s role in STEM education.
  • Push for accounting to be included in K–12 grants to strengthen the talent pipeline.

• SEC & Regulatory Updates:

  • New proposed rule to raise the Sarbanes-Oxley 404b threshold, potentially covering 81% of companies.
  • Ongoing 60-day comment period for public feedback.

• Tariffs and Trade:

  • $85B in tariff refund applications, $20B disbursed.
  • Upcoming USMCA renewal talks.
  • Administration rolling back some Taiwanese tariffs.
  • AICPA has a dedicated tariff resource site.

• Recognition:
  National Accounting Day (May 19) acknowledged in Congress, highlighting CPA contributions to the economy and communities.

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2. AI Transformation and Marketplace Leadership – Rene Lecert Interview

[15:59 – 33:20]

• Pace of AI Change:
  “To go fast you need to go slow ... It’s happening so fast, but firms need to step back and be thoughtful.” — Erik Asgeirsson [16:14]

• GenAI Model Revolution:

  • Major leap in enterprise capabilities (notably via Anthropic Claude).
  • MCP (Model Context Protocol) eliminates traditional data flow structure needs, enabling seamless integration:
    “Unstructured data can become structured … That’s a huge game changer.” — Rene Lecert [17:55]

• Practical AI Innovations:

  • Example: Automated agent sorts emails/Slack for follow-ups, boosting personal efficiency.

• Vertical vs. Horizontal AI Solutions:

  • Vertical vendors (e.g., Bill.com) focus on deep integration and friction removal for specific accounting tasks.
  • Horizontal models (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI) excel at general efficiency tasks but may not always fit complex industry needs.

  “For deep operations, look to vertical solutions; use general models for research and new workflows.” — Rene Lecert [20:37]

• Areas of AI Impact:

  1. Automation: Repetitive tasks, tax return/bookkeeping, closing.
     • “AI is going to do much more of the mundane layer … freeing accountants to be strategic and creative.” — Rene Lecert [23:51]
  2. Detection: Identifying anomalies in large data sets.
  3. Querying Unstructured Data: Actionable summaries and insights.
  4. Cost Concerns:
     • Firms must set and monitor AI budget usage due to potential runaway costs.

• Strategy for Adoption:

  • Experiment in-house with new tools, but rely on vendor solutions for scalable/mission-critical needs.
  • “If it’s not out there, build it … but solution providers will keep delivering better tools.” – Rene Lecert [29:16]

• Survey Data & Mindset:

  • 87% of accountants aim to leverage AI; those who dedicate time and transform see double the progress.
  • Key takeaway: Human expertise remains the “weak link” (and competitive edge) even in an automated landscape. “Your expertise is the differentiator. Everything else gets automated, but expertise can’t.” — Rene Lecert [31:55]

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3. Firm-Level Change Management: Advisory Transformation (Kim Blasco & Kelly Visser)

[33:35 – 46:47]

• Transformation Challenges:

  • Technology is the catalyst, but people and process drive success.
  • Change management is toughest in the shift to advisory—requires a new firm identity.

• Nine Dimensions of Transformation:
  (Strategy, leadership, revenue model, operating model, experience/career paths, client experience, technology, culture, and growth pattern.)

  • Transition from compliance-focused to proactive advisory at the core.

• Case Study – Larson Gross Advisors:

  • CEO Kelly Visser recounts transformation journey:
    • “We tried pivots for a decade, but real change came only with high-priority commitment and starting over.” — Kelly Visser [38:32]
    • Leadership alignment was key, including top-down commitment and buy-in.
    • Significant time investment (13 months) and specialized hiring paid off.

• PE Backing as Catalyst:

  • Private equity enabled faster growth and enabled significant change investment.

  “You have to change your relationship with change … Just live it and be transparent with your team.” — Kelly Visser [40:23]

• Human Side of Transformation:

  • Trust across leadership and teams is crucial. Setting expectations for ROI is important (often 18 months to see results).
  • Required building confidence to guide clients proactively, powered by technology and standardized workflows.

• Actionable Framework:

  1. Strategy & Vision alignment (define advisory as core proposition)
  2. Leadership alignment (buy-in and visible commitment)
  3. Standardization (industry/service mix, culture of process consistency)

  “Alignment has to be more than buy-in, it’s shared accountability and visible commitment.” — Kim Blasco [45:39]

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4. Technical & Regulatory Updates (Melanie Lauritsyn)

[47:50 – 55:57]

• Quang Case Update:

  • Uncertainty around refund claim deadlines for failure-to-pay penalties during COVID.
  • IRS appeals make timeline unclear—claims may face automatic denial, so communicate risk with clients and consider protective claims.

• CP53E Notices:

  • AICPA working with IRS to improve clarity and processing issues for direct deposit and estimated payment notices.

• Priority Guidance Plan:

  • 193 recommendations submitted to Treasury/IRS across all tax areas.

• Disaster Relief:

  • Tax filing relief extensions for Georgia/Hawaii; Disaster Resource Center recommended for updated info.

• SSTB (Specified Services Trade or Business) Status:

  • Advocacy to eliminate SSTB limitations (cost estimated at $900B); pushing for parity in phase-in ranges.

• SAFE Act & Extensions:

  • Current legislative scoring challenges are impacting future implementation for simpler extension (125% paid-in rule).

• First-Time Abate Developments:

  • Automatic abate implementation; AICPA seeks better notice alignment and reasonable cause consideration.

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5. Audience Q&A & Final Insights

• SEC 404 Comment:

  • AICPA will be submitting feedback on the proposed rule.

• Clarity Act Timing:

  • Too soon to confirm July 4th signature, but AICPA actively involved.

• Advisory as Differentiator:

  • Tech and AI free up time for advisors to deepen client relationships and trust.
  • Transition requires firmwide buy-in and capacity to train and mentor new generation advisors.
  • “All this tech means more time for client relationships—which is what solidifies trust and adds value.” — Kelly Visser [59:17]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Trust is going to be the ultimate moat … Firms need to pull together capabilities and help clients get back to their passion.” — Rene Lecert [27:15]
• “If you stop and ask, ‘If I could do everything over again, what would I do with today’s AI?’—That’s a powerful question.” — Rene Lecert [23:51]
• “You have to be comfortable with change and lead with transparency and trust.” — Kelly Visser [40:23]
• “Alignment is more than buy-in. It’s shared accountability and visible commitment.” — Kim Blasco [45:39]
• “Your expertise is the differentiator. Everything else gets automated, but that can’t.” — Rene Lecert [31:55]

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Key Timestamps

• [00:10] DC update and budget reconciliation
• [05:48] AI legislative landscape
• [10:34] SEC, tariffs, and regulatory topics
• [15:59] Rene Lecert on AI and marketplace transformation
• [23:51] Cost and strategy for AI adoption
• [33:35] Kim Blasco & Kelly Visser on advisory transformation
• [38:32] Larson Gross story/case study
• [47:50] Technical update: Quang case, CP53E, guidance plan
• [55:57] Open forum/Q&A
• [59:17] Final thoughts on advisory value

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Additional Resources

• AICPA CAS Benchmark Survey – Encouraged for industry benchmarking ([46:58])
• AICPA disaster and tariff resource centers: [visit aicpa.org]
• Upcoming AICPA PAC breakfast at Engage (June 9)

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Summary Takeaway

This episode underscores that while AI, regulation, and economic pressures are reshaping the accounting landscape at a breakneck pace, the profession’s true differentiators remain human expertise, client trust, and deliberately managed transformation. Firms that lead with strategy, invest in leadership alignment, and embrace change both technologically and culturally will unlock new value for their clients and themselves.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the AICPA Town Hall Series, your resource for the latest news and updates on pressing issues facing the accounting profession.

[B]

Good afternoon and welcome to the AICPA Town Hall. I'm Eric Ouskerson, one of your hosts for today. Today is Thursday, May 28th. We've got a great program in store for you, some really important current topics that we'll be covering today. So let's, let's look at today's agenda. We're going to kick things off with a DC update. We're six months, almost six months into 2026, a lot going on down in DC and we'll be covering that with Rachel Dressen. I'm then going to have a technology discussion as well as talk a little bit about the marketplace with Rene Lacer, clearly one of the technology visionaries for the accounting profession. We're going to talk about the models. I mean, there's been dramatic changes over the past six months related to the capabilities of these AI models, the anthropic cloud and what's happening with the other model companies. We're then going to have a session led by Kim Blasco related to practice evolution. So a lot of good leadership tips will be shared during that session. And then Melanie Lauritsyn is going to provide the technical update. Let's kick things off and bring Rachel in from our DC Studio. Rachel, I was thinking about that. It's almost June. We're six months into the year. It's a very dynamic time. Primary season, we got the elections coming up. Stock market surprisingly is up for the year now, tremendous AI spend. All of these factors I know are playing into the DC environment and we're going to cover a number of them. But first off, let's maybe kick things off talking a little bit about the primaries and the state of the reconciliation process.

[C]

Yeah, Eric, it's great to be with you. And you're exactly right. We are in the middle of primary season right now. So depending on where our town hall viewers are living right now, either they've had their primary or they have a primary coming up. And as expected, with any election cycle, you have your surprises, you have your predicted outcomes, you have your members who are retiring or the incumbents who lose in their races. And this primary season has been no different. So it's been very active, like you've said. But we follow all of that very closely because it also impacts legislation and what they may or may not be able to achieve in the remaining months of the year. So you mentioned budget reconciliation, and I know this is something that a lot of CPAs care about. And we do, too, just because, you know, there's budget reconciliation 2.0 and 3.0. So we're following 2.0 because, you know, of course, you know, they have to get to 2.0 before they get to 3.0. And 2.0, as a reminder, is just that more narrow bill that funds primarily ICE and cbp. But there are discussions around, including funding for the White House ballroom to include that in the Budget Reconciliation 2.0 bill as well as at the end of last week, they were discussing in the Senate whether or not they include some parameters around the fund that the Department of Justice had announced for individuals or entities to receive some reimbursement if they had, if they alleged that they had been hurt or there had been, you know, any misdeeds by the federal government to them. So the Senate had originally planned to pass that Budget Reconciliation 2.0 at the end of last week, but they decided to wait and do it next week. They're in a recess this week for the Memorial Day week. So that's the status of 2.0. And then with 3.0, which would be that broader bill that would include things related to tax issues and other things that could have a more direct impact on the profession. That bill is one that they are still considering doing. And in the House there is more movement on it than in the Senate right now. In the House last week, the speaker had a meeting with some of the key committee leaders leaders to discuss what they might include in a 3.0 bill should they move forward with that. So that's where they are on Budget Reconciliation 3.0. And then, you know, as we look towards the summer, they'll be focusing on appropriations, which is something that we're following as far as government funding. And you know, how that might shake out over the next few months. So that's kind of the lay of the land right now.

[B]

A lot of comments coming in about the primaries. Clearly, with two sitting senators now not going to be participating, I guess in the fall elections in Texas and in Louisiana, it's just going to make it for a more complex environment with the two reconciliation packages. Is that correct?

[C]

You have the primaries and everything that's happened with those and like you said, the outcomes of those that can impact the legislative agenda. But also redistricting. I didn't mention that. But that has also been a top of mind issue as we've been in the middle of primary season. Like you said. What's going on?

[B]

Well, Rachel, Right now, every day everyone's talking about AI and the models, what they're doing. We're going to be getting into it. It's changing the capabilities of the firms and a lot going on in D.C. and the states related to the regulation of these new capabilities.

[C]

Exactly. Yeah. This is an issue that anytime you look at the newspaper, there's at least one, if not many more articles on AI. And it's an issue that is also top of mind for those in Congress and the administration. So from a congressional perspective, they don't have one comprehensive bill as they are trying to debate between privacy and security and encouraging innovation. There isn't one bill. And as you mentioned, you know, in light of that, a lot of states have taken action on AI. And so in a lot of state capitals you've seen some legislation related to AI. But from a congressional perspective, they're also looking at it from, you know, upskilling also. And there have been a lot of bipartisan bills that have been introduced related to upskilling and, you know, bills that would encourage funding for job skills related to AI or education or data sharing between companies and the federal government. So there's a greater understanding on the impact of AI. And then from the administration, they also have taken a close look at that and have been acting on AI. The President, one of his first executive orders was related to AI when he first came into office at the beginning of last year. And this has been a priority issue for them as well as not just encouraging innovation. They view this from a security perspective, but also for that upskilling view. And they also have proposals out there for funding for job training related to AI and infrastructure and things like that. There's a lot going on related to AI and Congress and the administration are following it very closely.

[B]

There's a lot of parallels with what we'll be talking about at Engage in a couple of weeks. There is with these new capabilities, you're going to have to evolve the services you're providing as a firm or if you're in a finance department. And clearly there'll be skill evolution. So I think that's an important topic. I might get into it a little bit with Renee. It's also going to create new opportunities. So it's going to need new skills and there should be new opportunities. But it is clearly something that regulation is needed as this moves forward. So we've got a couple of important co sponsor bills here.

[C]

Yes. So the AICPA sent a couple of letters to Congress last week that they wanted to mention. One is in support of this legislation related to the beneficial ownership information reporting. As a reminder, this was a rule that came out a couple of years ago that was related to trying to curb money laundering and it would require beneficial owners to provide information or else they would have, you know, steep penalties and potential jail time. So an interim rule was put into place at the beginning of the Trump administration that says that this only applies to foreign owners and legislation has been introduced just to put that into statute. The AICPA said a letter to the Hill in support of that legislation, which also includes a provision saying that any information that has already been received by FinCEN needs to be safely destroyed within 90 days. So we sent that letter last week as well as a letter related to accounting in stem. And this is the legislation that we think would help with the pipeline. And what it does is it includes accounting in these existing K12 grants so that students can learn about accounting at an earlier age and then hopefully when they graduate, it's something that they want to pursue when they go to college. So really excited about these letters. And this DAM letter was signed by the AICPA as well as all of the state societies. So we really thank the state societies for all of their support and work on supporting this bill.

[B]

Well, another big development at the SEC is the proposed rule related to 404.

[C]

Yes. So this is a proposed rule that we have been anticipating for quite a while and it was released last week. And basically what it does is it increases the threshold for companies that are required to comply with 404B of Sarbanes Oxley. It increases it from the current 750 million of public float. And according to the SEC, this would cover about 81% of companies. We are currently reviewing the proposed rule. It's, you know, a few hundred pages and there is a 60 day comment period which ends on July 20th. And after that comment period, then the SEC will review all those comments and then come out with the final rule on that.

[B]

So a lot more to come on that.

[C]

Yes. And then on tariffs. Just wanted to keep everyone updated on this because I know it's something that a lot of people are following. So the most recent numbers related to the refunds for tariffs are around 85 billion in refund applications have been accepted for processing and about 20 billion have been dispersed. And this is the program in which you can apply for reimbursement from the tariffs that the Supreme Court said were not constitutional. That started back in April and they're still in phase one. And there is not an update on when they might start the other phases, which would be the more complicated cases then related to trade. The US Mexico, Canada Agreement, the USMCA that was passed in 2020 has a requirement that on July 1st of this year, the three countries must meet to decide if they want to continue to extend this agreement for 16 years or have it end in 2036. And so actually today and tomorrow, the current USTR, the US Trade Representative, is leading a delegation to Mexico. And then just lastly on tariffs this week the administration announced that they are waiting, starting to roll back some of the tariffs on Taiwanese goods. This is in response to an agreement that the administration had made with Taiwan earlier in the year. And again, we have a resource page on our website, aacpa.org that will always have the latest updates on tariffs. So if you want to visit that, you can get the most recent information.

[B]

Yeah, and we'll make sure we put that out in the upcoming Tuesday newsletter because it is a good resource and it's just evolving area that you need to stay current with. And look at this 20 billion dispersed. So that's pretty significant.

[C]

Yep. Yeah. So just the last thing I wanted to mention is National Accounting Day was last week, May 19, which is a day that is recognized, you know, among many organizations, including the aicpa. And we had some exciting news to share with the town hall that Brian Fitzpatrick, the congressman from Pennsylvania, he inserted into the Congressional Record a statement on National Accounting Day and just recognizing all the great work of CPAs and the fact that, you know, CPAs have a tremendous impact on the economy and, you know, small businesses, large businesses and their communities as well as, you know, in his statement he mentioned the fact that CPAs license, they go through rigorous education and licensing requirements and then also that they have unique advanced skills and math and technology, which all tied together with stem. So very excited to see that the profession was recognized in such a great way.

[B]

Yeah, that was excellent. Great to see. I know we were actually at the AICPA Council meeting in Marcosial, celebrated this day at that session, which was excellent.

[C]

Great.

[B]

Well, Rachel, thank you. We'll be bringing you back for Open forum. I'd now like to bring up Rene Lecert, someone who you all know well because he spent his whole career building solutions for the profession for firms, for members in business and industry. He initially built out PayCycle, which was one of the first online payroll companies, and that was sold to Intuit, and it basically is the platform that Intuit provides their payroll service on today. And then he founded BillBill.com in 2006 and really helped us build out the client advisory services area. The outsourced accounting services movement started then with the cloud, moved to cloud accounting, cloud bill payment and here we are today Renee. And we're in another massive inflation inflection point. We're going to get into it, but just welcome. It's great to have you here with us.

[D]

It's great to be here Eric. Always good to talk to you and the members of the ICPA and hard to believe that you and I have been doing this now for over two decades working together and we've seen a couple of things. So happy to talk about AI and what that means for everybody out there.

[B]

Yeah, that's well said. And we are in a moment here related to what's happening with these gen AI capabilities. Everyone's calling it now the AI model companies. One thing I was thinking about Renee coming into our discussion today is that to go fast you need to go slow. I mean it's happening so fast. But it's important for the firms members in business and industry to take a little bit of a step back in particular because when you look at what has happened, we talked a little bit about this a few town halls ago but it's dramatic what's happened over the past hundred days. The new capabilities in particular, what Anthropic Claude is offering to the enterprise environment is remarkable in some ways it's almost good to be a second mover right now because the first couple of years of the Genai movement, the models weren't as good as they are today. And what I'm seeing right now, and I talk to companies that are supporting all areas of the practice, the audit area, the tax, the accounting services area is everybody is integrating this. So everyone's integrating the models into their platforms. And it is, it's exciting but it's daunting as well because things are moving so fast. You've been in technology your whole career here your comments on like the last six months and last three years with this gen AI movement.

[D]

Really great setup Eric. I mean everything that has changed because of AI is because of the models. There's an acronym that some of you probably heard, some of you probably use them called MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. What that does is it actually eliminates the need for any structure around the data flow that happens between systems. So if you think about unstructured data become structured that simplifies how we might connect to all the other systems that are part of every one of the firms, businesses and their clients. Like, it's a lot of stuff that has to be connected. It's a lot of stuff that the, the individuals are connecting behind the scenes and making sure that all the data is where it needs to be. So just to give you an example of this, yesterday I was feeling somewhat, you know, I don't know, annoyed about like not being able to keep track of all the things that I ask people to do. In about 10 minutes, I created an agent that reads all of my email and reads all of my slacks every day and actually creates a list of things that I've asked people to respond back on. And I woke up this morning and that list was there. There were five things I hadn't heard back on. Like, think about that efficiency. I'm not worrying and wondering where things are. And it's because of this ability to take unstructured and make it structured. And so in my experience, when you ask that question, context, like, I've been doing this, I've worked with EDI, I've worked lots of APIs over the years. That stuff is hard because the structured was required to be perfect in order for data to flow. And that's not true anymore. Right. The unstructured to structured is a huge game changer and that's why people want to integrate. It's why things are accelerating. It's why the models are learning and getting better at taking that unstructured to structured approach. And it's something that I think all of us need to be thinking about because that has accelerated. I do think you should be running in some respects, but you should also be very thoughtful. Don't just randomly run somewhere, like, be thoughtful about what it is that you want AI to do for you and your firm.

[B]

Renee, there's a lot of discussion going on about what you just, you used one of the models to do that agentic task for you to help better manage your inbox. But there's a discussion going on. When do you use. So when is it going to be a vertical solution provider that's doing something? A vertical solution provider? It could be someone like you in the bill payment space, someone operating the general ledger space in the tax arena, some specialty capabilities. And when will the models be the right tool to use? I think everybody's seeing the capability of anthropic cloud and the models on things like creating PowerPoints and documents and doing other things like efficiency gains that you just described. But how do you think about that? The vertical play versus leveraging a horizontal AI model?

[D]

Yeah. So I think, I believe in software. I believe in the process of writing software I think it takes expertise and commitment and just a non stop focus on actually executing on a vision. And so I think the verticalization of those applications, that's still going to happen. I think AI is going to enable more software right now. It's also, that's the case if it enables more, there's going to be more of a need for this MCP protocol layer that connects all the different packages that people have. So I think if there's something like if you're comfortable and there's something that you can build for yourself, like I just did, like that's kind of a simple hack. If there was a solution, if it was built inside of my email Slack integrations already, I would use that because there's going to be improvements. Right. The, the dedication. If I think about what we do at Bill, like we care about one thing which is eliminating friction for SMBs and accountants that they that are served by them. Right. Like that friction is real. We wake up every day, we hear about it from, you know, close to 10,000 accounting firms, hundreds of thousand businesses. We hear every day about all the friction that people have with their financial operations. Well, all of that funnels into our team that we're then able to make a better solution. So company A or accountant B may not even know that there's a friction point that they're experiencing because they don't know how to codify it. But we're going to fix that. So I think it's going to be really depending on how folks are thinking about how important the task is. And when it comes to some deep things around operations, I think people should be looking for the vertical solutions. Kind of like what we're focused on automating financial operations and using the AI capabilities for their research, for the stuff that's not yet been done for them, for their own efficiency inside the firm.

[B]

Yeah, well thanks for that perspective. I think there's systems of records in the accounting arena and the tax arena and the audit arena where you really want to be very, very careful with the data sets and how you're doing the configuration and how you're working those processes. This kind of highlights three big things that these new gen AI tools are doing. I mean it's driving further automation. One thing, there's questions coming in about costs. You don't always want to use a model company to do everything related to automation because it can be expensive. That's what's going to be. Microsoft just came in and told I Guess a bunch of their engineers, they got to pull back, or some employees, they got to pull back their use of some of the models just because of the token costs. So automation, though, is clearly something that the AI is doing. Detection, the ability to kind of look at massive data sets, find anomalies, drifts and KPIs. And then you just kind of brought this point up, this querying of unstructured data, and kind of bringing kind of real summaries and actionable steps or just insights that you can leverage. So why don't you talk a little bit about how you see these three areas and even address that cost question, which people aren't really getting their arms around yet? I don't think.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, the cost one, maybe that's the easiest one to address. We're all accountants here. Have a budget, make sure people don't go over it. Right? You need to have one because it can run away from you. And that's something that we have heard from businesses and you see in the industry. So I would just make sure you have a budget, make sure that you will find that some folks on your team are very good with the AI tools. They manage their budget, they get more efficiency, and others will be less good. And so just like any other tool inside the firm, you're going to need to kind of manage that. So be paying attention, I think, you know, in general, like how to, you know, continue this conversation on how to use it. Like, there are many tasks that are kind of repetitive, they're mundane. And that's something that actually limits the capability of the expertise to come out from everybody that's on this call. Like, we don't all go to school and then go do our jobs, to actually just push paper all day, right? We go because we want to impact the clients we work with. We want to have a difference, make a difference for our firms. And so if we can use AI to actually enable us to have more time, to be strategic, to be creative, like, that's the power and that's what we see. So, you know, we talk about actually moving to AI native. So if you were to actually, inside your firm, stop and say, if I could do everything over again, what would I do with the AI capabilities that are out? That's a really good question to ask. It's what we're doing at Bill. We're actually making a significant shift and how we think about building the solutions that we build for accountants. And that's going to be because we believe AI is going to actually do a Lot more on this mundane layer. And so this approach, I think, is, I think, really important that, you know, folks be very thoughtful about, you know, what it is that they want to shift way where they can leverage their expertise. I think one of the examples that I've, you know, shared recently, going back to college, like, you know, when I was in college, getting The B was 20% of the work, getting the A was 80%. And so when you get back to these models, just thinking about this, like, we're going to get to B very quickly with these models, but the accountant, that's what's going to make the experience for the client an A, and that's the expertise. And by the way, that's going to shift. Like, as time goes on, we're going to see that the models will be able to do more, but then your expertise will get more refined and better. That's what I believe. I think it's going to be an unlock for creativity and expertise and it's going to make work far more interesting when folks are able to do the things they love versus the things they really can't stand.

[B]

Yeah. Well, Rene, what's going to be coming out over the next couple weeks when we're on the floor exhibit, floor of Engage and we're into sessions, you're going to hear announcements about basically the automation of the tax return, the automation of bookkeeping, the automation of the close. And these are all, all of those things are happening. And then there's going to be a lot of concerns about, okay, what does this mean? And I think even the session that we have coming up with Kim Blasco, it's going to mean evolution of your people strategies, evolution of your business and process strategies as you leverage these technologies. One thing that we do know is that the outsourcing of this work to firms is going to continue because it's actually more complex to put together all these capabilities today than it was yesterday. So the small businesses or the individuals, they're going to be like, I would like someone else to do this for me. Great, you're automating it. And give me the insights.

[D]

100%. I think the asset that we focus on that I think every accounting firm has, is trust. Trust is not something that comes out of thin air. Trust is something that you build over time with the expertise that you have, with the relationships that you build. And that trust matters. I mean, you think about this. For Bill, last year we had over 8 million fraud attempts. We stopped them all because of our technology. And that's something Our clients don't have to worry about, the firms don't have to worry about. So ultimately, trust is going to be the ultimate moat. And I think that's something that firms should feel very good about, that they have these trust relationships that like you just pointed out, you, the firms need to pull together the capabilities and help the clients understand what it is that they can do from an efficiency perspective. Because the client wants to get back to making pizza or, you know, building a house or whatever it is that they do. They don't want to be doing financial operations, they don't want to be doing taxes, they don't want to be doing payroll. They don't want that. They want to actually get back to their creative passion. So I think trust is going to be a key thing here is one of the things and why I've always been, you know, a huge, huge fan of the accounting profession and huge supporter is because trust is essential to every piece of work that the accounting accountants in this country do.

[B]

And when I was, there's questions coming in about when should they leverage solutions versus doing building. And you started up that example, say, go build something. I in many, I think it's always good, it's always good to experiment and to see the power. We've got a lot members of our team here that are building their PowerPoint presentations using Claude now and that's excellent. But I think let the solution providers lead too, because if you looked at some people building off of OpenAI ChatGPT three years ago, you know that it was good as experimentation, but now you've got these other models that are moving faster and we'll see there might be another model company that then leapfrogs and does something that's really unique for our category. So I think the solution providers do have an advantage to help the firms.

[D]

Absolutely. And I think one area to focus on from a building perspective with AI inside the firm is if there are not tools out there that you need to be able to move your practice forward, that's a good example of something to build. Now if you're going to invest a tremendous amount, you should make sure that it's something that you want to invest for a long time. Because having built software, once you build something, you're always supporting it. It takes time to support. It grows. People have things they need. So I would, I would probably ask that question. But if it's something that's likely to get built by others, I would work with your partners. I mean, every one of these, every one of the Firms here has relationships with their, with their providers, if you will. And so, like, work with people like us, like Bill, and say this is what we need to get more efficiency and we're going to do it like we're in the business of making software and the business of making it easier for you. And we are going to continue to put our people, and we have thousands of people behind making this easier for folks. That's going to be true with every software provider out there. So I think that's the distinction. If there's nothing in the market today that could help you, I think it's probably good to play with. And so I think that's a good way to think about it.

[B]

Rene, on this slide here. Sorry, a little frog in my voice there. This was some data you recently produced.

[D]

Yeah, we just did a survey to find out. And I think what this shows is, you know, accountants are leaning in. They want to do more with AI. They have, you know, their ambitions are high, 87%. What we do see is they're kind of, you know, in those people that are really high on it, there's kind of two categories, ones that are trying to transform their firm practice and the others that are optimizing. So you can see the percentage is there 40 and 53%. But what I will tell you is that the firms that are actually transforming, putting additional effort, they're probably putting in 20% of the time, you know, into this, they're actually seeing much stronger outcomes. And so, you know, they're one and a half to two times more likely to get meaningful progress. That's what we see in the survey. And so I think the client responsiveness is better. It's probably 34 versus 22%. So all these things are just saying, look, this is something that if you, if you, you know, care about your practice, you want to take advantage of technology to actually go do what you really want to do, which is to serve and advise clients, then you need to embrace the technology. You need to figure out how it's going to be a part of your practice. Not just, you know, five years from now, but how it's going to be a part today. And I think, you know, one of the things that maybe I'll just, you know, leave from a recent talk that I attended with a Stanford economist, all this, you know, this thread about AI, there's plenty of people, you've heard about the SAS complex. You've heard about people saying it's going to eliminate all the white collar jobs. And he went through all the data. And there's been multiple transformations in the US economy over the last 200 years. All of them had a massive start and then ultimately, you know, it slowed down. And his argument was that there's always a weak link. Things can only go so far and that the people that actually are the weak link have the most value. And so the reason I'm bringing up this example is I think the expertise that accountants have, that will become the weak link. That's the thing you have to enable to, for to shine because it is that expertise, that knowledge, and you build expertise across your clients, across time, across industries like that is something that's very hard across relationships that you have. All these things lead to a different opportunity to serve your client. And that becomes the weak link in the system. Yeah, everything else gets automated, but your expertise can't be automated. That expertise is going to be the differentiator in the future. And so I think it's really important to make sure that, that, you know, we as a profession continue to work on whatever that expertise is. And so something I'm passionate about and something I feel really strongly that we have opportunities there.

[B]

Well, Renee, that was a fantastic summary there. So look forward to having you back on a town hall sometime soon. Look forward to having your team at Engage. So thank you very much and look forward to continuing this discussion.

[D]

Excellent. Well, thank you, Eric, for having me. And just to sum it up, it's go time, people. Let's make it happen.

[B]

Thanks, Renee. So now I'd like to bring up Kim Blasco to lead the next section. So welcome, Kim. Kim leads our client advisory services [e-mail] thanks, Eric.

[A]

Today we're going to talk about firm level change management so you can jump to the next slide and how it relates to the firm's investment in advisory and really also think through how a lot of firms are seeing slower than expected results in their advisory transformations. I think the question firms need to ask themselves is, is our firm actually really built to deliver advisory? And if the answer to that is no, it's probably time to take a step back and think about what kind of transformation your firm needs to go through. So with that, I'm going to introduce Kelly Visser, CEO of Larson Gross Advisors. Welcome, Kelly, and thank you for joining me today.

[E]

Yeah, glad to be here. Thank you.

[A]

In a few minutes, I'm going to ask you to share your story at Larson Gross about transformation. But first I'm going to do a bit of level settings, so hang with me for just a second. And then I will bring you back into the conversation. So if we can move to the next slide. This is a slide that I'm sure most people have seen before or have heard us talk about, which is practice, transformation and the people, process and technology piece of it. Really, technology is the catalyst, but the people in the process are really who drive the success. This isn't going to change. It's been a cycle for a while. But what is changing with this is how fast things are happening today versus where we were at before, honestly, technology. And every part of the conversation that Eric just had was really about the technology piece of it and why that transformation is happening so quickly. So if we move to the next slide, we know transformation isn't easy and managing the change management piece of it is really difficult, especially from an advisory perspective. It can be a growth driver or it can be a growth blocker for sure. But advisory is unique. And it's unique because it represents a fundamental departure from the traditional firm model. And when we think about how that affects the operations as a whole, it really moves across the entire spectrum. So the evolution that Eric mentioned earlier as well is part of these nine dimensions that I have listed here. And I'm going to actually move through this very quickly. So if you think about strategy and where we're at today, we are really moving from advisory as an informal or opportunistic approach to advisory as the firm's core value proposition. From a leadership perspective, we're moving from fixed definitions of advisory to shared vision aligned at the partner level. And really, revenue models are moving from hourly compliance driven to recurring value based relationship driven. Operating models are moving from reactive and task oriented to proactive insight and outcome focused roles. From generalist with limited specialization to defined advisory career paths and deep specialization client experience. From backward looking reporting to forward looking guidance and decision support technology. From supporting compliance workflows to enabling real time insights and visibility culture. From accuracy and efficiency focused to curious proactive and client impact driven, which is probably one of the most important ones. Then finally the growth pattern from linear and capacity constrained to scalable and margin accretive. So when I think about firms and I think about what happens if they skip transformation, the transformation work that needs to be involved, we really see advisory staying inconsistent and personality driven scalability stays tied to a few key individuals. The firms drift back to compliance revenue and market differentials erode. So Kelly, your firm's commitment to advisory and to developing your cast practice has been pretty significant. I love your story, so I always want to share your story, you're the CEO of the firm. You also pulled in your growth partner, and between the two of you, you decided to go through CPA.com's coaching program, which is a 13 month program and a fairly decent time commitment. So clearly you guys were committed to developing your advisory and your cast practice. Today I'm going to jump ahead a minute and then I'm going to let you share your story. You guys hired somebody to lead your cast practice. You hired some growth individuals to sit inside of your cast practice, and then you staffed it to service the clients that you were going after. So I'm pretty sure most of the things that I just mentioned in the nine dimensions probably resonate with you pretty significantly, if not all of them. So share with us a little bit about the history of Larson Gross and your experience as the transformation that you guys went through. And really, your last couple years have been crazy. You've had a lot of different things that have happened in your firm.

[E]

Yeah, I wish I could say that we started with the 13 month journey and that would have cut the story a lot shorter, but we have had a legacy bookkeeping practice. And yes, I am the CEO and a tax partner. No, I did not work in the bookkeeping practice. And we knew where we needed to get to. And we tried to make pivots over the last decade, frankly, to get to a more scalable, technology driven CAS model. But I think, and it was articulated earlier, it was a passive investment of time. It was sort of something we worked on when there was free time, which that doesn't happen. And so where, I guess fast forward, what really drove us forward was myself calling it out as a high priority for the firm. So much so that I stepped into a leadership role because we needed swifter action. We needed alignment among the partner group. Because one of the things, Kim, that you rattled off was also an expensive level of investment. And it has taken time and it doesn't produce immediate results. And so you've got to have the buy in all around the firm, starting with the ownership group. And so me leading the charge in that set the tone and helped pave the way. It also put someone in a position to make decisions quickly because at the end of the day, maybe the punchline is we tried to do shifts. And I think really, if I were to encourage those on the call today, we really just had to almost start over. And I think when we did, when we took that mindset, that's when we really saw the lift happen.

[A]

Do you think? I know you guys took PE backing during this time frame as well, because why not? Let's throw something else in there. Do you think the PE backing changed your concept of how quickly you needed to move?

[E]

I think having a capital partner, when we looked back at all the options available to us as an independent firm, we looked at a model that would actually create an accelerant to the growth, the change that we wanted to experience. And so we found that in Crete Professionals alliance, that's our capital partner. And they're actually an enabler in terms of technology and infusing change with speed. And I just want to call out this idea with change. I think we also had to change our relationship with change. And there's an article that was recently put out in the industry called 2026, the year a county Stopped Talking about Change and Started Living it. We just have to be comfortable with it. It's not going away. And I think to the extent that you can embrace it and lean into it and just be transparent and honest with the team that we're going through this together to create, you have to have trust. And it starts with your team members too. When you're going through a period of transformation, if the team doesn't trust leadership, you're not going to be successful. And sometimes we avoid those uncomfortable conversations, but we can invite the team into it and go through it together and support with grace. Because in all of this, there's an evolution of our job, how we show up with our clients. It looks different and that's okay to acknowledge it. We can't hide from that.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's great. I do think the human side of it, you know, when you talk about the change management piece of it and the human side of it can be really, really difficult. I mentioned that. Right. And I know that one of the things that really has impressed me about the transformation that you have done at Larson Gross is your commitment to hiring the right people to sit in the seats. That's really hard for some firms to do. Those are upper level roles. Some of yours were upper level roles that you needed to do. How did you work through that with your partner group?

[E]

It's always expectation management. You know, we live in a world measured by busy seasons and the trust cycle. Relationship building takes time. And that also is embedded in your internal CPA firm environments too, because you need your client partners to refer CAs into the relationship with often a tax client. But they've got to have trust that you'll. You'll serve that relationship really well. So we had to rebuild that we were committed to it, but we also set expectations. It's going to be 18 months before you really see the full return on the investments we've made in these hires. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that we're struggling or it's not going well. It's to be expected.

[A]

Did you have any portion of your journey where you really felt like there was now a signal that your approach to the transformation was working? Was there like any indicators, maybe some investments that you felt like paid off?

[E]

I think it's the ability to be confident, to say we're in a service business. Right. Professional service. It was really hard from a historical model, we wanted to adopt whatever the client needed in whatever way they came to us. I think flipping the script, so to speak, to be more confident, to drive based on our own expertise and knowledge. With this technology stack, with this workflow showing up this way, this is how we can do this really well. And you are going to be better served because of it. But that's a flip in the dynamic with the client relationship. But when we got confident to do that and then follow it up in action and actually show up in that way, that was like the proof in the pudding. And now being bold as opportunities come and encouragement, there's a ton of opportunities out there. Everything we're talking about today even is like all roads lead to cas is we can step up in that and say yes and then deliver in a way that's highly efficient and scalable, which is also all investing in technology, global resources. You need a certain amount of consistency in your workflows and your tools to be able to leverage the scale that's there.

[A]

Yeah, great insights. So if I think about firm level change and what that framework looks like and you can move ahead a slide for me, please. I think about strategy and vision being kind of the first part of that. Defining advisory as your, the core for your firm's model moving forward, being specific about what your advisory is about. Is it financial, is it operational, is it strategic insights? And then thinking about aligning target clients, industries and service mix, which is kind of what you were just talking about too. Standardization of your processes, you know, the way that you go to market, the way that you work with your clients. But the second aspect of that for me is the leadership alignment. Right. It has to be a prerequisite. You talked about, you know, how did you get your leadership team on board? It can't really be an outcome. It needs to be a prerequisite. So when you think about that that advisory buy in has to happen at the partner level. But alignment really means more than just the buy in. It means shared accountability, invisible commitment.

[C]

Right.

[A]

So more from an independent partner model to more of a firm first mindset. Did you feel like you guys moved towards that firm first mindset when you made the switch?

[E]

Yes. And I think I love that you're highlighting this because especially I'll give a tax partner bias. We often already get pulled into planning or advisory conversations. But at the end of the day, if this is all done well, the individual who's handling the CAS work is really in a position to answer those much more operational financial insight questions to really dig deeper. And so that requires the client partner to share shelf space. Our CAS team members need to be in the room at the table. And so I think what it's really shifting and what I love what the AICPA has done and CPA.com, it has really elevated CAS as a career path and that's really exciting for our team and for the future.

[A]

Great.

[B]

Well, Kim Kelly, this was fantastic. I know we've got some resources, then we're going to move on to the next section, but maybe cover these resources for us.

[A]

My one selfless plug. Right. So it is CAS benchmark survey year. So for all the CAS leaders that are out there that have not completed the CAS benchmark survey yet this year, please, please, please go on and complete the CAS benchmark survey. Gives us so much great information that we can share with. It will roll out at DCPA in December and I believe there is a link in the resources for you to be able to access that. And then we have a couple other resources here, a blog and a webinar, an on demand webinar if you're interested. You can go out and look at those as well.

[B]

Well, thank you. Thanks. Kim Kelly, thank you for sharing your journey. Very helpful. A lot of excellent comments here from the town hall community. Kim, look forward to having you back on Open Forum. So thank you both.

[A]

Thank you.

[E]

Thank you.

[B]

Melanie.

[E]

Hi Eric, how are you?

[F]

Thank you for having me.

[B]

Looking forward to the technical update.

[F]

Yeah, so let's go ahead and start talking about the Quan case because there have been some changes there. And for those of you who aren't as familiar with the Quang case, the Quang case, which came out last November, essentially said that the filing deadline during the COVID period was moved to July 10th of 2020. So that means that the people who were given issued penalties for failure to pay underpayment penalties estimated Penalties, whatever those, you could then request for a refund. And by the statute of limitations, you would have three years after the deadline, which would put you to July 10th of 2026, which is just over a month from now. However, IRS did appeal this early last week, and they didn't give specifics at first, but then they came out and they said, well, actually, our interpretation is that, yes, there was a postponement of the filing dates, but it was only for 60 days. And so what they're interpreting it to mean is that whoever got penalties between the start of the pandemic through March 20th of 2020 could have asked for a refund claim through March 20th of 2023. So that's a big gap in interpretation for it. So what that means for is, number one, if you did file a refund claim right now, based on the IRS interpretation, it will be an automatic denial, which means if you're going to pursue it, you would have to be ready for litigation. The other thing that you could do is file a protective claim, which would then allow you to kind of figure out what's going on with the courts, and then you would have 90 days from when the case was settled to then file the refund claim, assuming it was extended through July 10th of 2023 with the statute of limit. So our advice to people are to definitely have open conversations with the client, let them know the risks associated with it, the status of this, that it is a very fluid situation, and let the client decide how to move forward and where the risk threshold is at. Are they ready and willing to go into litigation? Those are the types of questions they need to ask. Moving on to the next slide, the CP53e notices have definitely been a hot topic for our members. We're very aware of people receiving them when they owe money to the irs, but yet is saying, hey, provide us your direct deposit. We're also aware that there have been a lot of issues when members are receiving a refund, but however, they're applying it as estimated payments into the next year, yet they're still getting these notices. Well, after many, many, many conversations with the irs, they've actually come to realize that, yes, the notices weren't very clear and they're looking at revamping the letter. And we are having those conversations with the irs. We're also providing recommendations as to what to do with the CP53e. In particular, we're saying, hey, you know, if you are exempt from it for next year, maybe have a check the box on the return so that they know not to issue this notice for you and to create issues and also, you know, for current years with estimated payments for them to actually align their systems with this and to actually be able to have somebody that will talk you through that versus the answering machine. So again, all this is changing. We expect to see changes soon in this, but we also expect to have conversations and continue to have conversations with the IRS on the next slide, the pgp, the priority guidance plan. Just making you aware that this is something that we issue every single year. And our team actually provided 193 recommendations to treasury and the IRS. And we cover all the subject areas, for example corporations, international employees, employee benefits, exempt organizations, individuals, self employed. We provide a hearty amount of recommendations there. And what treasury does is they get the feedback from various resources and places and they take a look at them to prioritize what they're going to be working on. And through the years we have seen them pick up some of our priorities and see the end of those to be resolved. The next slide with disaster relief. I just want to make you aware that Georgia and Hawaii did get an extension through August 20 for tax filing relief there. And we also have a link there to our resource center. And that resource center has much more than just who got the delay, the extended time to file and the delayed for tax filing and payments. But we also have a lot of really good information like the benevolent fund that's there and also information with the state trigger and also with the FEMA options of penalty relief or tax relief filing and payment relief with that. So take a look at that area whenever there's a disaster to help you get through on the next slide. This is something that we really want to touch base with you guys on and it has to do with the specified services, trades or businesses and where they land and how. Our ultimate goal is to be able to eliminate the limitation that SSTB's have, whether it be in the regulations or also in the code. But again, our ultimate end goal is to eliminate it altogether. But there is a cost associated with that and that cost is over $900 billion. So right now Cousthof came forward with a bill where they have a proposal which overall the rate increase for the qbi, which is a qualified income deduction, it would be increased from 20 to 23%. So that is beneficial. But for the SSTB's, they came up with a new calculation which really is not. It doesn't hurt much and it doesn't help much either. It's just kind of A wash in comparison to the current law. But we're actually talking with them to say, you know what, how about when you're in that phase in phase out range that the SSTB's get treated the same as the non SSTB's. So that would bring a little bit of parity. So we are working through that, bringing forward some solutions on that and hope to move the needle to bring us closer to where we ultimately want to be. Moving on to the next slide. Okay, the TAS act, that has been something that we've talked to you when it was a discussion draft and also once it got became a legislative bill. One of the things I want to bring up has to do with the SAFE Act. The SAFE act alone, they scored it to be of part A, about $4 billion. Now the safe act was supposed to be able to help with extensions where you could pay in 125% from prior year and then you would be exempt from penalties for that. However, now because of that cost, they're asking us to take another look at that. So we are considering various aspects of it and how to best bring this about for our members to benefit us during the workload, you know, the work that we have during filing season to make extension process a little bit easier onto the next slide. Okay. So again because of time, I just want to highlight a few of the topics here that we are working on. One of them has to do with a first time abate where the IRS has implemented an automatic first time abate for taxpayers who do qualify for it. Now one of the things that we're hearing from our members is that they're seeing it in the transcripts and not necessarily in a notice. And we definitely have some concerns around that and we've talked about, well, what about if you have reasonable cause, if that should be given to you and if we have the election to deny the first time a bait to be able to then take reasonable cause. So we are working with the IRS through that and everything else on this slide we have links to Eric.

[B]

Well, thank you very much, Melanie. Great, great overview. Some really good slides as well. So we're now going to bring Rachel back up. We just got, we can show you both. You're both together there in the DC studio. So Rachel, I know we've got this packed breakfast coming up at engage on June 9.

[C]

Yes. So AICPA members are invited to an AICPA PAC breakfast@engage 2026 that we will be holding on Tuesday, June 9th at the ARIA Hotel. Information about the packed breakfast is on the screen. If AICPA members would like additional information, they can use the QR code that is on the slide.

[B]

Okay, thank you. So let's bring the team back up and open forum here. So, Rachel, questions on the SEC's proposal. Is the AICPA going to be submitting a comment letter? The 404?

[C]

Yeah. So we are reviewing the proposal right now and we will take all of that in and digest it and then we either make comment as AICPA or with others related to the proposal. So.

[E]

Yes.

[B]

Okay. Question for you, Melanie. Do you think the Clarity act will be signed before July 4th?

[F]

You know, I don't know if it will be signed, but we are definitely providing feedback and hoping that the definitions aren't either as narrow or too broad. But really we're looking to it to not be burdensome for taxpayers when they administer it or implement it.

[B]

Okay, thank you, Kim and Kelly, I mean, there's comments. I mean, these are, it's kind of related to the session we had with Renee. And your session let you kind of expand on it. But it just, you know that the biggest differentiator for firms and for the profession is providing these advisory services. Kim, you're well aware of all the talk about tech automation, how it's accelerating right now. It's been occurring for your career last 10, 15 years. And what's your thinking there? Just on you've worked with so many clients and so many, many firms on the value prop.

[A]

Yeah. I think what tech is doing for us is giving us the opportunity to build advisory into our practices. I do think it's moving slower than most firms would like it to move. And part of that might be the commitment to it. And I think I said one of the great things I love about the Larson Gross story is the commitment that they have done with the advisory piece of it. And obviously throwing your, your CEO into a coaching program to build your advisory and cast practice is a pretty significant commitment. And I know Kelly felt strongly about it when they did it and I think even to this day she made comments about they were kind of dabbling and kind of now they've really jumped into it with both feet. Kelly, if you have something that you want to comment on that.

[E]

Yeah. I would also say from an advisory perspective, all the things we talked about earlier with technology and AI and concern about roles, what this is doing is it's allowing us to have more time to be in relationship with our clients to solidify that trust. And I think as we bring in the next generation of our team along because we've got to have more than we have today for strategic advisors in our firm. The best way to do that beyond classroom training is is bring them in the room. So you've gotta have capacity for all of that in your relationships with clients, which is how we're gonna be successful.

[B]

Well, that's the final word on today's Town hall. I'm now just gonna go to some closing remarks. Thank you, Kelly. It is all about outcomes, all about being strategic. Rachel, Melanie, thank you. And Kim, look forward to seeing you all at Engage. And just a reminder, the next town hall will be live from Engage in Las Vegas. It's June 8th at 4:15 Eastern. So that's when we will be kicking off the town hall. It's in your calendar. Invites. Look, it's going to be a great session, one you do not want to miss. We welcome your feedback in our shorter survey. So please take that survey, give us some feedback, give us suggestions for future sessions and hope you all have a good end of May and look forward to seeing many of you in person at engage. There's over 4,000 people that will be there in person, so hope to see you. Come stop by the booth and say hello.

[A]

Thank you for your participation.

[C]

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[F]

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