 Hello, everyone. Today I'm going to be interviewing Andrew Stil, a CPA and a CFE. Andrew passed his CPA exam recently. He's going to share with you some of the tips that's going to help you prepare for the CPA exam. What is unique about Andrew is he was he used my YouTube, but also he was an actual student in my classroom. So we're going to go ahead and speak to Andrew tonight or today. And he's going to share his experience. First of all, Andrew, thank you. Thank you so much for agreeing for this interview. Happy to be here. Thank you. So basically, I'm going to be asking you the following questions. It's all about your exam preparation. How did you prepare for the CPA exam and what can you share with your fellow future CPAs? Yeah, so I used a CPA prep course. You might be familiar with it. I'm not sure if it's changed names since I first used it, but I used Roger CPA and then I'll get into my process of that. But I also supplemented it with your videos on YouTube and those were incredibly helpful. As far as my process, it was pretty much to follow along with the study plan that was included with the CPA study materials, go through several lectures every night. I would highlight the text as I was going through the lectures. I used a lot of these. They're very helpful, sticky notes and different color coded. I had different color codes for which which pays red meant I have no idea what this is, so I'll go back and review this later. I then would just drill questions in the test bank and review, like I said, your lectures on YouTube. The big help was was I downloaded the lectures to like in an audio book format and I would listen to them on my commute to work. So that was my process. That's an excellent, excellent technique, whether you're using those color notes to just alarm you what's difficult and what's not for you. And for the retention purposes, downloading the audio. What would you say was the hardest part? Let's start with the hardest of the four section. Which one, in your opinion, was the hardest? So I would consider myself a finance guy. My major in college was finance and I actually waited till I had been in counting for a couple of years before I started. But I think reg or audit were the hardest for me because I had never really done taxes or audit, but which is probably a little bit different than what most people say. Finn was definitely very hard. But I struggled more with the concepts in reg and audit. I see. So I would assume BEC was easy for you because it included finance. Yeah, I'll be honest, I really didn't study for BEC. There you go. Good point. And the reason I mentioned this, because each individual will have different difficulty on the exam. So if you have a finance background, BEC is relatively easy. While reg, which is taxation and audit, you may not be familiar with them. And this is the point I always try to tell the students. It depends on your background. If you're working in tax regulation will be easy. If you're working in audit, audit will be an easy exam. Did you use any particular strategy for for the multiple choice versus the simulation? Or you basically you try to understood the concept then apply it? How did you do anything special about that? So the multiple choice, like I said, I would just drill questions and anything that I that I didn't get right. I would, you know, most of them, most of the courses, I believe, give you the ability to see the answers in the format of question and then the answer. So anything that I got wrong, I would print out and then write by hand and sort of try to memorize the concepts. Kind of like a punishment, I guess, where, you know, I would study the question and the structure of it. And I used, I wrote them on note cards as well, and I would just test myself, pull them out during my lunch break and test myself. As far as the simulations, same process. If I got it wrong, I would print it out and reread it and sort of figure out how the concepts got grouped into the simulation. So if that makes sense, it's like, you know, some of the simulations test several different concepts and it was helpful to understand like how they would group them together. But you would agree it's the same material as the multiple choice, except that they are framed differently and they're tested together. I agree with that concept 100 percent. And I like your strategy because when I was studying as well, Andrew, what I used to do, I used to even have notes in the restroom. So I won't even waste any time notes in the car if I'm warming up my car. You know, 20 years ago, you would need to warm up your cars. Now cars are more advanced. You don't need to warm them as much. So I would have notes everywhere. You did lunchtime warming up my car in the restroom whenever to take the to make the best to take advantage of my time. I have two more questions for you, please. What advice would you give to students who are studying now since you went through the whole process? Yeah, I would say the best advice I was given is if you study, you will pass and really just make a plan from the beginning, stick to it. I know there's probably going to be a temptation to veer away from the plan, whatever life gets in the way. But if you make a plan and stick to it, you'll get it out of the way. And to that same point, start as early in your career as possible, get it out of the way and you'll appreciate it later because it'll sort of fast track you if you stay motivated and it's one accolade that you can have on the end of your name and get it out of the way early. You won't regret that. Absolutely. Now, talking about your career, what advice would you give to someone who are starting their career since you already went through a couple years? So what would you tell them? What would you tell them something you would wish somebody told you when you started your career in accounting? Seek out good mentors, people that you admire and respect and want to be when you grow up, I guess, other than that, a little bias. If you have an opportunity, say you started the Big Four and I really, if maybe you're still in college and you have an opportunity started the Big Four, I would definitely recommend that they have incredibly robust training programs, the caliber of people that you're going to be learning from is top tier. And another thing I would say is say you start your career in public accounting, whether that's audit, tax and make sure you stick it out for a couple of years, even if you feel like you don't like it. We're overwhelmed, right? Or overwhelmed, yes, please. Get a good base foundation understanding of audit or tax or even if you start an advisory and maybe you don't want to be an advisory anymore. But stick with that company, I'd say, and see if you can rotate internally. If it's a good enough company. But like I said, you know, there's always opportunities to rotate internally and just build that base foundation knowledge and and you'll see it might get easier if you stick it out as opposed to jumping. Two to three years, you would say, Andrew, right? You know, like go through that baptism of fire. Two to three years, it's going to be rough the first couple of few years, right? Absolutely, I would say one more question, bonus question. I know you're a CFE. What could you tell us? Why did you use certified fraud examiner? Is there any reason just to kind of share it, just to give other people an idea of what to do next? Yeah, I guess this would be another advice. I'm not sure what they're teaching in in school these days. It's been, let's see, I graduated in 2011. It's been almost 10 years since I graduated, but I didn't know much about forensic accounting. So I got into forensics and the CFE is certified fraud examiner. So I do fraud investigations as a significant portion of the cases and engagements that I work on. So the CFE credential was a relatively interesting credential to get. And yeah, it was it was an online examination, so you don't have to go anywhere. Self study. Yeah, it's a valuable credential that's respected. It's the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. And it's easy, as you said, I'm a fellow CFE as well. So I know it's a take home exam, basically. Absolutely. Andrew, I really appreciate your time and we're still going to meet for that coffee once covid is over. I know we have we've been talking about this, but since covid came along. I really thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it and thank you and I'm pretty sure everyone who's listening to you, they're going to appreciate the advice that you gave them. Stay safe and hope to meet you in person again in the city of Philadelphia pretty soon. Thank you very much for having me. Pleasure and I look forward to that coffee. But to anybody listening, you have a an incredible resource at your hand with these Farhad lectures. So. Thank you, Andrew. Have a good one. Bye.