Every individual, every person that I've met in an accounting firm, they are absolutely obsessed with customers and doing what's right. And it's just by nature. It's not something that they feel like they have to say. They're just obsessed with customers.
Welcome to On the Books. I'm Ted Callahan.
And I'm Jessica McCracken.
And Jess, on On the Books First, we're actually in the same room as we record today.
We are. And we're not the only ones in here. Joining us today is Sasan Goodarzi, the CEO of Intuit. Sasan, welcome to On the Books.
It's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Yeah, thanks for making time. I know our listeners are just really excited to hear what you've got to say. And to start off, we just wanted to ask you a couple questions for our listeners to get to know you a bit.
And so you've been CEO of Intuit for eight years now.
But thank you for giving me a chance to do this another year.
Yeah. Yeah. That'll be $20. And so I'm just curious. If you weren't CEO, what would your dream job be?
Yeah. You know, this has been literally my dream since I was a little kid. I would, and I still will do this. It's just a matter of when. I'd love to have an Italian restaurant in Miami, close to the water.
And you know, enjoy the food. And I may even have a ponytail and maybe a few tattoos.
In the kitchen or would you be DJing on like the outside patio area?
Oh, you know what? I didn't think about DJing, but I would rock that place. Yes. Yes. Yes.
So, Italian restaurant by day and then at night.
No. And day and night, and then ponytail DJ comes up. I would relax. I would work out. I would show up in the restaurant. I would DJ. I didn't think about that because I love DJing. Thank you for that. Did you know I like DJing?
Uh, you made a joke about DJing at your graduation, I think.
I love DJing. Yes. So, yes, that's what I will do. Yes.
What would your DJ name be at your Italian restaurant?
Oh, that's a good one. I don't know.
Okay, we'll come back to that one.
DJ Pop because I make things pop. Well, anytime I DJ. I don't know.
I just made that up. Please, let's not trademark it.
I'm going to walk in. Somebody's popping champagne bottles on the side every entrance. I like it. We might see it at Connect next year.
I can DJ at Connect. Except here's my problem. My daughter reminded me of this. I listen to the beat. I don't listen to the lyrics. And so I learned from my daughter. This is like 10 years ago. I was listening to this song. She was like, 'Dad, why are you listening to this?' I love the beat. She goes, 'Do you know what it's saying?' And I started listening to it and I was like, 'Oh my god.' So, I don't actually play my music in front of people that I don't know because I don't listen to the lyrics and I don't want to offend anyone. So, maybe I won't do it at Intuit Connect.
Well, or you know what you can do? This would be a good use of AI. You can have AI pre-screen your playlist and only hear your edited songs for the Connect and we can have a DJ off because we've got a number of former DJs in our ranks.
I'm willing to. I just don't know if the songs that I have will play to our amazing crowd at Intuit Connect, but hey, I'll give it a try. I think we'll just put it to people's vote. And then if I get booed off stage, then it is what it is.
Then you didn't win. Yeah, that's true. Another person.
Sasan, you travel a lot. And when you go around, you go to talk to employees, you talk to small and mid-market businesses, but you also talk to accountants. What are some things you've learned from accounting firms this year during your travels?
Um, you know, I'd say probably three big things. One is every, you know, things come down to individuals, right? But every individual, every person that I've met in an accounting firm, they are absolutely obsessed with customers and doing what's right. And it's just by nature. It's not something that they feel like they have to say. They're just obsessed with customers. So I would say that's the first thing. The second thing, which has been a real pleasant surprise for me, is I'd say for the most part, at least those that I have met, accountants are embracing the future because change is hard, right? We're all humans, we don't like change. But I actually see accountants embracing what's possible with technology, how they need to change, how it can be fruitful for their practice, fruitful for customers. The third thing is accountants never forget.
Yes, that is very true. Never forget.
Which is always a reminder for me we need to always do our best to do right all the time. Because you all have amazing memories.
Yes. Yes. I completely agree. So you started with the shared customer and that's such a unique facet of our relationship with our community is that we have a shared mission to go serve our customers, right? And if you think about some of the leadership lessons that you've been really developing that you learned at Intuit, we talk a lot about customer obsession. You used it even just as you were describing their passion. I'd love for you to unpack what has really been the hallmark of your leadership philosophy around customer obsession.
Yeah, I mean maybe I'll just talk about what I do and how I spend my time, which you would hope, right, is at least the good stuff of what I do is copied by others. And hence it's just the way I define customer obsession. And it's a series of things. It's not one or two things. One is I'm probably 30% of the time on the road. Like, is it tomorrow? Yeah, tomorrow I leave. Tomorrow I'm in reviews all day, experience reviews, and then I leave to go to New York and I'm visiting a couple of customers in New York just as an example. So one is just being obsessed with learning and curious about what a business and accountant is trying to do, what their goals are. So customer meetings and always being curious. Two is I'm always in our products, other people's products, just in general. I'm in our KPIs, right? Because KPIs, you know, speak the truth. And I'm always reading just our VOCC channel insights and I respond to, you know, nobody checks my email. You know, it's interesting because when you become CEO, people think everybody's doing all your stuff for you. In my case, I check every email and I respond to every customer escalation. And the process that we have is I want to know what we learned and what we're going to change. And I think those are sort of the things that I do which is all about the customer. And the thing I've learned is when I screw up, just admitting it and figuring out the right path forward. And I just think that's customer obsession. The last thing actually I would say is I do chats with our sales folks, frontline sales folks and frontline customer success and frontline engineers. Because I've learned over time you always get the real deal from them. And all of that is in sort of service of better serving our customers. So that's what customer obsession means to me.
I love that. And if you think about just how a lot of what we talk about is savoring the surprise. What would be an example if you think about in your career something you got wrong where then you were able to savor that surprise and then make a change specifically around your leadership philosophy?
Yeah. Well, there's so many things, ahas and things I got wrong. And this may or may not be what you're looking for, but in fact the most recent one that comes to mind is you all invited me to the accountant council. And I don't know if you all remember the topic, but it's an example of what you were asking about. So the topic was we were focused on building business intelligence stuff. And the goal was to come and show it to the accountant council and get their insight. And I wanted to join because I wanted to see and learn what the feedback was. And what I learned very quickly in that meeting was we were very focused on showing what we had built. And what everybody around the table was saying was, and in fact I counted it, I may get the numbers wrong now, but it was like nine out of 10 were using our platform, exporting data, putting it in ChatGPT, combining it with what they had in Excel, looking back at our platform and trying to figure out what the insights were. But the majority of them were using an AI tool to put it all together and felt that it was unsafe, it wasn't reliable, it wasn't accurate, but at least it was eliminating work and drudgery. And you know, I remember I don't know 30 minutes in that meeting, I said, 'Team, let's just listen to what they're doing versus what we're here to pitch them.' In terms of a product that we had built, Alex Balaz and I walked out of that meeting and changed the direction of the whole team. And in essence, it was why don't we build what we're now calling Intuit Intelligence in the platform, right? Let our partners ask any question they want in our platform. They can upload their data that's not in our platform. They can ask whatever questions that they want. So that's an example of just the leadership principle of you got to be obsessed with what the customer wants to do, not what you know, not be in love with what we've declared.
