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- [00:03]
A
Hello everybody. Welcome to the Audit podcast. I am your host sort of today, but I am Trent Russell. I'm usually the host. Today I am the guest. So if you checked out part one, you know that Eric Wilson did the interview and then we just kind of kept rolling with it. So here is part two of this episode.
- [00:23]
B
Again, in all your free time, you added another thing in which is your most forward facing public item, which is the internal audit podcast. Here we are on the podcast.
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What made you. I know you talked about this a little bit before, but what made you really decide to jump into this?
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A
I'd always liked podcasts before. They were cool. And I remember I was at a client site when I was in public accounting. Like I remember where I was sitting the cube that I was in. And I remember looking through itunes, store, whatever it's called back then for audit podcasts. And there was one, I think some of the like bigger firms and stuff had tried it a little bit, maybe even then, but there's only one person who had put out like 15 episodes.
- [01:10]
And I think I reached out to him on LinkedIn because he hadn't put anything out in a while. And I was like, hey, what's the, are you doing like a seasonal thing or what? And he said, it's just so much work, I don't have time to do it in a full time job. So he backed off of it. And so that was kind of what I'd always wanted, to do it a little bit. And then just over the years I felt like it's similar to the conference. What I wanted wasn't out there. And so we built it. I just wanted a Q and a session where the person being interviewed is the person who did the most talking. Even other Q and A type podcasts I listened to where they get like, you can tell I'm just like, host, shut up. I'm not here to listen to you, I'm here to listen to the guest. And so that's why my usually is pretty direct and I don't give too much of an opinion depending on what it is. But I was actually talking to a friend of a friend who was leading these like roundtable groups for leaders or something like that. And I said, oh, okay, well, I've attended a bunch of those. I have some feedback on what I liked and what I didn't like and how I would run one if I did it, if that guy wants to talk. And so I was talking to that guy and we were just kind of hanging out. He was starting on his own also. So we were talking, and I told him. I was like, hey, I just, you know, for the most part, I'm still trying to figure everything out. So, like, I just reach out to thought leaders caes, and just kind of shoot the breeze, understand the market and see what's going on with no, really no intent other than that. And so we hung up the phone. Thirty seconds later, he called me, and he's like, hey, my best friend runs this podcast production company. It's called Sweet Fish, for anybody interested, super successful. And so anyway, I think you should start a podcast. You're basically already doing it in these conversations. All you have to do, which made it sound super easy, is record the conversation and publish it. And I went, perfect. I've always wanted to do that. Anyway, that was, like, the little motivation to do it. And so hung up and went on LinkedIn. And I said, hey, I'm gonna start a podcast for internal auditors. I don't know how to start a podcast for internal auditors, but we're gonna start a podcast for internal auditors. And I really did that to hold myself accountable. Like, if I put it out there, now I have to do it. And so that's really where it came from. And then I think we've launched or published our first episode. I think it was two weeks before what I called that Tuesday in 2020, when, you know, like, everybody's in the office. And that Tuesday was like, nope, everybody go home. And so it ended up somewhat fortunately. I mean, to say that, you know, there's anything fortunate that came out of 2020s feels weird, but a lot of people had a little extra time on their hands. And so when I would say, hey, I know you don't know who I am, and this sounds like something that's made up of this audit podcast. But, you know, if you could come on for an hour and.
- [04:00]
Educate the audience on everything that you've learned across your career, that would be cool. And people who I would not have expected otherwise to take me up on it, took me up on it.
- [04:10]
B
So it's so funny you say that. All you have to do. So the advantage of growing up in a family of salespeople but not going into sales is I know all the little lines. And the all you have to do line is such a sales pitch because it's just used to. They're like, oh, perfect. That's all I have to do. And I'm sure what you found along the way is it takes a lot. It takes a lot to get this thing up and running along with the conferences and everything else. But, uh, I mean, you're doing obviously a phenomenal job with it. It's interesting. I had another podcast reach out to me, and I won't say the name to come on, and we had it scheduled and then it rescheduled. And it rescheduled. Um, and I finally reached out to the person, so, hey, what's up? And they said, well, actually, we're going to discontinue the podcast. It's just way too much work to. To manage this. So I, I think it seems like. And I obviously don't know the statistics. The majority don't. Don't really make it that long. So the fact that you made it all these years and you're doing this, I mean, it's. That's great. When I was doing some background for this, that morning that I was doing the research, you had 256 episodes published that morning, and I think there's been several published since then. So, I mean, that's, that's impressive. And you've obviously got some momentum there. How many, how many a week are you. Are you putting out?
- [05:22]
A
So we do one Q&A week, and then we started this newer one a few weeks ago. It's the IA on AI podcast. So very similarly to why we've started anything I wanted to know, like, yep, here's all the AI news, but how does that relate to internal audit? And I didn't find anything really out there.
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And so I went, let's just do. There's another one called the Daily AI Brief that's very similar to what we do. So they do theirs every single day. And I would listen to it. And I went, well, I'll just do what they do, but for internal audit. So it's like 10ish minutes usually. And it's just like, hey, this is everything that happened, AI related in the past week. Here's how to think about it from the audit perspective or the risk perspective. All right, everybody, have a good day. And then we let them go.
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B
Yeah, that makes sense. And those quick hit ones, I didn't really like them at first because the whole idea of a podcast is, you know, you're supposed to hear a conversation that goes on, but. But I like what you're doing. The mix of the long format, but then also the quick hits. I think that's, that's a really good balance between the two.
- [06:26]
A
Hey, everybody, we're going to take a quick break from our guests, and if you need to get analytics Or AI actually working in your internal audit department, or if you already have some of it, you feel like you're not really getting exactly what you need out of it. You know there's more you're not getting that. Go to the show Notes, look for the Green Skies analytics link. Click it on the website. There'll be other links that you can click that'll take you directly to a calendar to schedule time. It's literally three clicks to get the time scheduled to get it figured out. All right, back to the show.
- [06:57]
B
Okay, so you've had a ton of guests on wide range of individuals. When you think about the guests you have on across the board, what's something that you wish more guests would bring to the table when, when they come on the podcast?
- [07:14]
A
My favorite follow up question to ask is how H o w like how do you do that? And so I wish they would come maybe more prepared with this is what we did and this is how we did it. Whether that's a technical thing or some program that's being rolled out.
- [07:31]
So probably that, but I mean that's part of the host job is to try to dig into that and understand what's going on. And I will say there was one person that we had on is Hal Garon. I mean he said it, so I'm okay saying who it was.
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And I asked him a question. So quick backdrop how. Retired as a CAE, I don't know, 10 years ago, publishes a lot on LinkedIn. A lot of thought leadership. I mean like true thought leader. And he said some brilliant answer about something, I don't know what it was. I said that's awesome. How do you, like, how can we do that? And he's like, I don't know, man. I'm the thought leader. You guys go figure it out now. But I appreciate the honesty and transparency there. Not trying to like piece something together.
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B
So yeah, that and one, that's important too because you hear, you know, some of the. Sometimes you listen to people and they get asked the how and then you can tell they're just kind of BSing their way through the answer. It's. I would rather have somebody just say looks, it would be great if we did this. I haven't really thought about how, but ultimately we all know we need to get here, so. So it's a good balance. But that's, that's good feedback. I'll keep that in mind as well. But. But yeah, I think that's to your point. Just going back to the conferences and everything else, it's we talk about things all day, but if you don't actually understand how to apply it, you know, it's. It stays fairly superficial. So that's great. Okay, so you think about all the podcasts you've done. Are there any that are particularly memorable to you or anything that really stands out as being surprising or insightful that somebody brought up during a podcast?
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A
Maybe the most surprising thing that ended up being super insightful. Also, pretty much everybody talks about the importance of relationships. Like, that's been the, the number one takeaway. If we threw everything into AI Tool and said like, top takeaway number one, it would be the importance of relationships. To hear that over and over and over and over again. Over the summer, we did this retired CAE series. So we had four retired CAEs. I think each had been retired for about two years. And that was to kind of go like, hey, you don't have to. There's. The politics are involved. You can tell us really what's going on, you know, as a CAE that maybe we don't hear about publicly. And one of the guests that, you know, we asked some softball, basic question, what would you do differently? Something like that, which I didn't even want to ask. I was like, this is the lamest question. But they said I would double down on relationships. And I went for whatever reason at that point, I went, oh, yeah, of course, like. And of course what he meant by that is, yeah, we always talk about relationships, and I think very few people do it with intent. You know, it's just kind of like natural or like it's a typical water cooler, saw you on the elevator or something like that. But I think when you do it with intent, it makes a significant difference. And so that's since that episode. So for the past four months, we've doubled down on relationships.
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B
Nice. Okay, so I'm gonna put you on the spot here. Uh, name drop. If there was one person that you could get on your podcast, who would it be?
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A
Who would I want to have who.
- [10:33]
B
Has not been on it?
- [10:34]
A
We've actually already had them on the show multiple times. Uh, so when this person left their full time position and kind of semi retired, I'd reached out to a couple people from their organization and they'd all shot me down. I mean, it was like either they didn't reply or it was just a no. And I went, okay, they must have some kind of policy that they can't do this. And so I saw where this person had retired and I went, sweet, now we can have them on, maybe. And so I sent him a message. This was while they were on, like, their retirement trip. They were, like, literally in Hawaii and sent them a message on LinkedIn. And they replied and said, yep, sounds great and wonderful. And so that was Richard Chambers. And so we've since had him on multiple times, and he's become a mentor and a friend. And so that's why I'm, you know, even more grateful for that first time that he came on. And I'll be honest, like, I really didn't know his whole story. He spoke at the Chartered IA event that I was emceeing. And so I was like, yeah, let me go. I've heard most of what he's said before, but I was like, yeah, I'll just go. If I know somebody that's speaking at a conference, like, if I know them, I just go sit in the audience just of support, regardless if I care about the topic. And so I went. And he told, like, his kind of his career story and where he started out and where he ended up. And it's insane. Like, he is a stud. He had, I think, when he was, like, 32, he had, like, 300 auditors under him under some, like, government agency. He reported to Colin Powell was his boss.
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There's some kind of thing that only five, I think it was five citizens get to go to this, like, master's graduate program. And, like, I think it was Colin Powell who, like, recommended him to go to it. And so he went and got. That's where he learned about. I think it was, like, international studies. So that then prepped him to be this global IIA icon that ended up being in, like, the relationships he was able to build. And I didn't know this. The IIA was like. I think they had, like, three months of cash before they were about to.
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Basically go red. And that's when they brought him in and they're like, we should have hired you the first time. We didn't. And so. Because I think he'd interviewed before. And so they brought him in and then, like, just blew it out of the water. And then all things he's done for Audit Board. So, yeah, definitely. Richard coming on as frequently as he has also is. That was. That was like, my go to. That's. That was who I wanted, I guess, the most.
- [13:11]
B
Yeah, that's great. Richard's. Richard's a good guy. He. I had the chance to hear him talk a couple times when I've served on committees for the iia, and he was still over it. And he would talk at our committee meetings and things like that. And it was, it was, like I said, it was a fascinating background story there. So. Okay, where can people find your podcasts if they want to listen to them or watch them?
- [13:33]
A
Yeah, so the Audit Podcast, you should just be able to search for it. There's not a lot of them out there. And it's very aptly named the Audit Podcast. Probably what some people don't know is that we do these full video episodes now and put those on YouTube, which is really helpful when people need to, again, show how something's working. We let them share the screen, pull up a slide or two, whatever demo stuff that you've built. So YouTube's actually a really good resource right now also.
- [13:59]
B
Okay. Okay. Couple questions. Close us out here. You, I mean, you, you get to hear from a ton of people, you get to see different companies, you're doing consulting work, you're doing the podcast, conferences, all these different things.
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When you think about five to ten years from now and all these conversations you've had around technology, relationships and everything else, where, where do you see the profession and what are some skills that auditors today should, should be focusing on to get ready for where we're going to be in a relatively short period of time?
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A
I think in 10 years, the idea of internal audit testing controls isn't going to really be a thing. AI can do that right now. It has been able to do that for 10 months.
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So people need to start thinking through, okay, if we aren't testing controls, what does that mean?
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And I think these skills that are going to be needed is more around AI governance. So we're going to have all these agents swarming around the organizations. How do we gain comfort around basically the work that they're doing? So that's what I would leave it with.
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B
So from a skill set standpoint, today people should be trying to get their arms around that. Even if it's not, I'm going to become an expert. You should at least know the terms and everything else that's involved with it.
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A
Yeah. Take a little bit of time and understand how the tech works. Doesn't have to be at a code level, it doesn't have to be too specific, but understand how the technology works, how an LLM or gen AI works, and then the, the, the risks that are coming around. Agents. Imagine you just have a million agents in your organizations or on your organization's network.
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B
Yeah. So looking backwards then, from the time you started doing all these different ventures and even your time At EY and everything else.
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What's the biggest shift that you've seen in how internal audit is perceived and what internal audit's doing? From five or ten years ago or.
- [15:54]
A
More to today, the teams that I've seen actually take on AI leadership is coming to them outside of internal audit is coming to them and going like, can you show us how to do that? We didn't know you could do that. And so to me, that's been the coolest thing that I've seen. It's been a internal audit can actually add value. We talk about that all the time. The ones that have gone headfirst in with AI, even if it's just we have copilot and that's all we have, and that's all we can, you know, use or something, there's still a ton that can be done with that. And so that's the biggest difference that I've seen.
- [16:25]
B
Yeah. Perfect. All right, last two questions here. What keeps you motivated across all this stuff? I mean, you're obviously incredibly busy. You've got a family, and your. Your family takes priority. Sounds like. So that's a lot to balance. What keeps you motivated?
- [16:42]
A
I just like to learn. If anybody's ever done a strength finders assessment, mine's. I'd done it 10 years apart from each other. Learning was my number one both times. So when I interview people, it's to learn the reason I have people show how to do stuff for the conference, it's to learn. So I like to read a lot of books. I like to learn stuff. And that's basically it.
- [17:05]
B
All right, light question here. We were emailing back and forth to get ready for this, and in an email, I'd ask some background questions. What do you got going on? What's interesting things like that? One of your answers, and I have to ask you said that you've been trying to grow a Moss Garden since 2020. What. What is that about?
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A
So it, you know, Everybody had their 2020 project.
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B
Yep.
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A
And I had this, I don't know, 50, 50 foot strip of my backyard that was shade. And so all I ever wanted in a backyard was just solid mint, perfect grass. And I could never get it. And so, but there was, like, chunks of moss growing up, and I was like, well, that looks cooler than the grass. And so I got into moss growing during 2020, which literally all you have to do is turn a sprinkler on for like, 10 minutes every day, and eventually you get moss. So I had a real nice spread at our. Our Old house and we moved. And so I've been working on getting the moss garden going over here.
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B
No. How's that going?
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A
I think that's the first time publicly I've admitted that. And I understand how you put it.
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B
In the email to me. So it's fair game.
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A
Yeah. Yeah.
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B
How's. How's the new moss garden going?
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A
It's coming along. I just added a little bit of a new piece to it. So there's a huge, like, gutter thing that had been running through it. And so I finally dug that thing out and moved it two weeks ago. So now it's a primo moss growing environment.
- [18:40]
B
Nice. I like it. Well, hopefully you'll post some pictures on. On LinkedIn or wherever else you're gonna. You're gonna post. Now that we've talked about it, I mean, I feel like you have to. Okay, so that's it. What else, Trent? What didn't I ask about? What else you want to tell us?
- [18:56]
A
Sure. LinkedIn, super easy. So just Google Trent Russell. LinkedIn, you can find me there. I don't think there's two. Actually. Don't Google Trent Russell. A friend of mine did that two weeks ago and sent it and there was a Trent Russell who, like, had some kind of plot to murder Ruth Bader's. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And so, like, my face is the one you.
- [19:16]
B
Just to clarify.
- [19:16]
A
No, it was not me, but my face is the one that pops up. It's Trent Russell, my face. And then you have to click the link and go, oh, it's not that guy. So don't do that. But then, yeah, emails. Trent Russell, skanalytics.com you can hit me up there or on LinkedIn.
- [19:32]
B
All right, perfect. Well, Trent, it has been a pleasure having you on your own podcast. I hope, I hope lots of people get to hear this and learn more about you, all the things you got going on. I've always been impressed when we talked about the. The myriad of things you're juggling. So hopefully it's been a good time for you being on the other side of the table. Not too stressful except for the Moscow in question. And appreciate it, man.
- [19:54]
A
Yeah, Eric, thank you for having me.
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C
Hey, everyone, thank you very much for listening to this episode of the Audit podcast. Whatever platform you're listening on right now, I'm sure there's a subscribe button somewhere, so please hit the subscribe button there. If you're listening through itunes or Spotify, feel free to go give us that five star rating. And it only took me about 16 seconds to give myself a five star review and it really helps to get future guests to come on the show, so we'd really appreciate that. Lastly, be sure to check out the show notes and follow us on all our social media channels, on Instagram, on LinkedIn and on TikTok. Also, if interested, please sign up for our weekly newsletter from the Audit Podcast.
- [20:31]
A
Thank you all. Have a great one.