6 Key Ingredients of a Successful CPA Study Routine

Hey, it's Nate with Super Fast CPA

Now, you may have seen some of our videos or listened to one of our podcasts or seen one of our

free trainings. I wanted to answer the question, how can we help you pass your CPA exams specifically

How do our products and strategies actually translate into you scoring higher in less time

so that you avoid failing sections? So I'm going to do this video from overview to more detail

So if you just want an overview specifically of how our. products can help you pass faster

And then if you want to watch longer to see as we get into the actual details of how we

create our review notes, which is why they're more helpful than other things that you

will find out there. Why our pro course has such a high success rate

So a super fast CPA, we have two core products. We have the pro course and then we have our actual study tools

The review notes, the audio notes, and then our quizzes that also include

mini sims. So the pro course teaches you a step-by-step study framework, and this is mostly based on

my own study experience, where I studied the normal way for three months, only to fail far

and then after that I had started my full-time job in public accounting. So I only had about

two hours a day. So I switched to some of my own ideas about studying, and I went on to pass all

four exams in the next three-month period. So all four in three months, using the strategies that you will learn in the pro course

Now, we've been doing this for several years now, and we've helped thousands of candidates

we've had thousands of customers, and we've consistently refined these strategies in the framework

That's not to say it will make your CPA exam experience easy, but we have multiple examples

I mean many examples, but specifically in podcast format. We've done interviews with some of our past customers, and we have many examples of those

interviews where somebody that was dedicated that was putting in time and effort, but

their studying just was not yielding the results on testing. And they go through our pro course, they simplify their daily process, they spend less

time sitting in front of their review course, and they get much better results

much faster. The main thing with our study tools is to simply provide you with highly effective

study supplements that you can use all throughout your day to pack in extra time. Now again, back to

my own story, I realized about a month into my job. You know, I only had two hours a day to study

and I would look at my phone constantly and so I, at one point it dawned on me. I look at this

thing all day long, you know, 100 or more times a day. So I need to get some

study supplements on my phone that I can use every time I would normally pull up my phone

and look at ESPN or play games for a few minutes. So that's exactly what I did. However

the study supplements that I had access to back then, the audio notes were way too long

way too confusing. It took 50 hours to get through the audios one time, whereas our audios are

very succinct. You can get through them in three to four hours. The key idea being repeat exposure

You just listen to these whenever you have the chance, whenever you're driving, and over time, over the weeks, you will end up listening to these from start to finish many, many times

It's the same idea with the review notes and the quizzes. Whenever you would normally pull out your phone and read your favorite time waste or sites or look through social media or text your friends

you would just switch that time with reading the review notes and taking quizzes on the app, switching back and forth between those two things

So when you have a main study session each day with your review course, and then you add in reading our review notes, taking quizzes on the phone, and listening to our audio notes, you know, whenever it makes sense besides all that, whenever you're in your car getting ready in the morning, that is an incredibly powerful combination. And that's why our customers have so many success stories

The key idea being, let's say you study two hours in the morning, and then you listen to audios as you get ready in the morning

Then you listen to audios on your commute. And then again, let's even say half the time that you would normally look through your phone on social media or, you know, just time waste or stuff looking at your phone

You replace half of that time with reading our review notes, taking quizzes on the app

So that easily adds an extra one, two, or three hours a day

in addition to your main study session. So two to three hours a day over an eight-week study plan

that gives you 100 plus extra hours of exposure to the material

That will obviously pay huge dividends on test day because your retention will be much higher

You will have a much deeper understanding and comprehension of the material

So before we get into this, I want to point out the three big obstacles to passing your CPA exams

Now, you may or may not have recognized these consciously, but every CPA candidate, when they run into struggles with the study process or with what they see on test day, it comes down to one of these three things

So the first one is just general overwhelm. It's very common for somebody to start the study process, to go through a few lessons, and they start to realize how big of a process this is really going to be, how much material there really is, and it starts to just become

overwhelming. The other thing that happens as someone's trying to go through this process and sift

through all the material, they find themselves day to day, just kind of on a hamster wheel of

watching a video lecture, not understanding it, starting it over, that's not working. So they

look through the chapter, that's not working, they look at the practice questions, now they're

more confused. So this general overwhelm of what to actually spend your time doing when you

sit down to study. So that's the first big issue. If you're going to sit down and study two

three, four hours a day, you need to know that that is actually paying off and moving towards

your goal. There's nothing worse than spending eight weeks, having spent three or four hours a day

and then you get a failing score because your study sessions weren't actually affected

The second issue is time. So sticking to your study routine, simply finding enough time in

the day to study. So the other problem with the traditional way of studying is you're supposed to

study three or four or five hours a day, you know, depending on the dates that you put into your

exam planner. And then, of course, what people realize is that most of our time is really spoken

for. It's extremely hard, especially consistently every day, to find four or five uninterrupted hours

and just sit in front of your review course and study. That just ends up not happening multiple

days a week. And then, you know, if you're trying to study four hours a day and you miss a day

Well now you are looking at eight hours the next day but obviously that not going to happen eight entire hours So it easy to see why people quickly get off track

The third issue is retention. So let's say you do have a effective way of studying and moving through the material

And then secondly, you somehow manage to find the four or five hours a day every single day

But let's say about week four or five or six, you realize that you've completely forgotten huge points

of all this stuff you spent time studying in the beginning. So the retention issue is how do you

effectively cover 200 or more topics and then remember it well enough to go in and pass on exam day

So these are the three big issues. A lot of CPA candidates struggle with all three of these

at some point and almost every candidate struggles with one or two of these, you know, at different

times. So now I want to describe the normal way of study. What I mean by this is you watch every

video lecture, you read every chapter, and then you go through the practice problems. Now, the idea

with the traditional way is really that you're trying to master each lesson up front. You go in a

linear format one by one, and you don't really look back at anything until the end when you do a final

review. Now, the problem with mastering each lesson up front as you go is it takes a huge amount of

time and effort up front to really get comfortable with an entire lesson's worth of material. And that

leads to the second problem where you spend all that time and effort, but as we said, you will

inevitably forget huge portions of all this time you spend in the beginning. The other issue is

that most candidates, they spend 80% of their time goofing around with the video lecture

starting it, not understanding it, watching it, re-watching it, starting it over. You might even get

all the way to the end and think you understand it, then look at the practice problems, realize

you have no idea, so you go back to watch it for a second time. That is a huge waste of time

So now I want to cover the six key ingredients that every successful study routine needs to have

The thing that made me realize these six key ingredients was doing all these interviews with some

of our past successful customers, once they had passed their exams. But doing about 40 of these

interviews, I started to realize it's interesting that they might describe it a little bit different

but all of these people mention these same like six key things

Now the first few are elusibly obvious. They sound very obvious, but they're easier said than done to actually accomplish on a daily basis

So the first key is your daily study routine that needs to happen the exact same way at the exact same time in the same place and it needs to happen every single day

As part of that study process, you need an effective way of covering new material

So it should be surgical, meaning you should approach every lesson the exact same

Now, contrast that to, you know, someone who doesn't have a specific way of going through new material

some lessons that they might be generally familiar with or, you know, just easier subject material than other lessons

They don't have that much of a problem. They go through the video, they get it, they do the practice problems

But then they run into some of the harder lessons, and that's where they really get stuck between watching

the video five times or working on the questions, you know, or looking through the text to try to

find the answers to their issues. This third one is a big one. And this is one that a lot of people

leave out. And again, unknowingly. They don't realize that they're not taking this extra step

And I refer to this as capturing the understanding. You need to have some way of when you come across

material, it's either hard for you to remember or it's just confusing to you or, it's just confusing to you

or that you, for some reason, you just keep missing problems on

And as you know, there are just some topics that for whatever reason you just personally really struggle to understand

These are the things that you have to have some process of breaking down

putting them into your own words, and capturing the understanding. What I recommend for this is flashcards

And in the pro course, we have an entire video, well, we have two videos on this

where as you go, you're classifying information into level one, two, and three

And level three information is the stuff that you would put into flashcards

You, of course, don't want to make a flash card for every single vocabulary word and formula and topic

because then you'd be rewriting your textbook and you'd be spending all your time doing that

So you want to classify the information into levels one, two, and three

And really, it's only level two sometimes. Really, it's level two information that turns into level three that you would put into flashcards and go through this process

But again, there's an entire video on that in the pro course. The fourth thing, this is absolutely huge

It sounds like it should be obvious, but again, most people don't come anywhere near this metric of spending 80% of your study time doing what you'll be doing on test date

This is the entire basis for our approach to studying. And again, it permeates every video in the pro course

So I won't go into all the details here, obviously, but this is the basis

This idea is the basis of our study approach, and it is why you can get better results faster with less time spent studying when your studying is based on the idea of getting good at what you're going to be doing on test day versus, again, the traditional approach is trying to learn every single thing conceptually, which again, it does not directly translate

into being able to answer exam questions. So you spend 80% of your time doing what you'll be doing on test day

On test day, you don't get tested as to how well you can watch a video lecture or highlight a chapter

Now, number five is like the game changer. All of these things feed into each other as to why this approach is so effective

So hopefully when I mentioned that the traditional approach is very flawed because you go through each lesson

one by one, you spend all this time up front learning each lesson only to inevitably forget

50% of more of all this time you've spent on each lesson and then trying to rush to relearn it all

in your final review. That should have been a light bulb moment if you've never thought through

that process. So again, our approach is based on a two hour morning session. The first 90 minutes you go

through new material and then the last 30 minutes you do a re-review test lit. Again, there's an entire

on how that whole process works in the pro course. But the key idea is that you get a base understanding of each lesson

and then daily you will be adding on to those layers of understanding

So that as time goes by, as the weeks go by, you get better and better at all of the things

you studied instead of going one by one and slowly forgetting huge portions of that That obviously more effective And again it why our clients get such good results after using our strategies and our study tools

The sixth thing is an 80-20 final review. So 80-20, of course, referring to the Pareto principle, you know, you get 80% of the results from 20% of the activities

And what we're trying to do is spend all of our time, or like 80% of our time

doing those 20% activities. So it's much more effective. You get much more results out of less time

So what most people do on their final review is they make the same mistakes that they made throughout their whole study process

So in the final review, the biggest mistake that you can make is go back to your 5 to 10 weakest topics

Remember that coverage is key on the CPA exams. Constant repeat coverage will yield much better results

then becoming an expert on the top 10 hardest topics. So you have an 80-20 final review where, again

you're spending most of your time on these very high-yield, high-efficiency study methods

which, again, are described in detail in the pro course. So as a quick recap, if you were going to take the full super-fast CPA approach

you would be doing a two-hour main session in the morning, 90 minutes of new material via the planting seeds method, which is detailed in the pro course

Then you would do 30 minutes of a 30 question review test list. Then you would do mini sessions all throughout the rest of your day

That means listening to the audio notes whenever you can, whenever it makes sense

in the car, getting ready in the morning, preparing meals at the gym. Second thing would be reading the review notes and taking quizzes on the app

whenever you would normally pull out your phone, and, I mean, I'm talking in like even 60 second increments

When you would normally just pull out your phone, one of the best ideas I heard from one of our customers on the podcast was she just had a rule for herself that whenever she pulled out her phone, if she got a ping that she had a new text from her friend or one of her parents or whatever, she would just force herself to go in and either read five pages in the review notes or take one mini quiz on the app

And she just got incredible results from doing that. So even if you don't do it every single time

even if you replace half of the time or a fourth of the time that you normally

you know, look at your phone throughout the day with these little mini sessions, there is a huge payoff from constantly throughout your day making these connections

to the different material you've studied into just rehitting, re-exposing your brain

multiple times a day to the study material. So you can purchase the pro course separately

from the study tools and of course the total bundle includes everything we have for all four sections

You can also purchase the section bundles separately. The section bundles do not include the pro course

So if you've struggled with the study process in general, I mean just with your review course

just feeling like you have no plan, you've spent week studying or even one day studying and you

you know, have really don't get anything done, then the pro course will be a

life saver for you. It will teach you exactly what to do. You will know exactly what to do when you

sit down to study each day. You will get better results out of less time spent. And then if you have

our study tools as well, that just takes the whole thing to another level. Because in addition to

your main study session each day, you will be rehashing the information when you listen to the

audios. You'll be doing the same thing visually when you read the review notes and take quizzes on the app

So a few features of Super Fast CPA and our study supplements that, as far as I know, other study supplements don't have

So because I constantly rant about getting good at what you're going to see on test day, that means questions

We based our review notes on questions. We went through thousands of exam questions and we took the most tested parts of each topic and then we put them in this format in our review notes so that you see the same concept

context and wording that you're going to see in questions on testing

Our review notes, I would say there's somewhere between, you know, like bullet point summaries

like very short summary notes, and a full on textbook. They're somewhere between there

I think they're the perfect balance. We get tons of positive feedback on the review notes and how effective they are

And then what a lot of people do is they will keep them handy while they do their main study

session in the morning. And before they dive into a full lesson in the review course, they will just

pull up the corresponding section in our review notes and read through it because it gives you

very quick, big picture understanding. The review notes and audio follow the same order as the

AICPA blueprints. Again, we have a video in the pro course about how to integrate the AICPA

blueprints into your study process because the AICPA, the people who create the exam, they have these

things that a lot of candidates don't even know about and even less actually use, they list out

by the higher order skill and the content area what you need to know how to do. And so we have a

video in the pro course about how to use that in your study process. We also, you know, the review

notes and the audios follow the same order. So you can just go down the list. So in the review notes

we use calculator-free examples and questions. So what I mean by that is

One of the most frustrating things when I was studying, you know, I was trying to fit in all this extra study time on my phone, which did make a difference

However, again, the study tools that I had at that point, my review course had an app, and I know that obviously I'm aware that every review course at this point comes with an app

The problem is they include these full strength questions, you know, on your, for the mobile study experience

It doesn't make any sense. you get a full income statement and a balance sheet and you're supposed to calculate, you know, some ratio with these huge numbers

So you either have to pull out scratch paper. So you might as well be doing a full study session at that point

Or you just skip it and put your phone back and you think, okay, yeah, that's why I never use this thing

Because again, the core focus of our products is to make it efficient and actually feasible for you to have these high value mini study sessions

multiple times a day. So as you read through our review notes, we put in example problems to illustrate

the concept we just, you know, explained. And the walkthrough problems will have nice round numbers

so that as you read it, it just is easy to follow. It's easy to follow the calculations and how that

works. And then we also provide journal entries to see, okay, from concept to example problem or

walk problem to how this looks in a journal entry if applicable And then the questions on our app are the same way So it very simple and easy to just plow through questions on our app because you not going to get hung up on difficult calculations

So you get to practice how the calculations work with simple round numbers, easily divisible

or whatever it is. And you just move through questions. And so you cover a lot more material much faster

And it makes it much easier to apply it to apply it to. full strength questions later, you know, when you're sitting in front of your review course and

you have a calculator and scratch paper. Again, we get a lot of positive feedback on our mini quizzes

It's such an effective tool to just do five questions at a time, you know, a dozen or more times

a day. It just adds up. As you do that every day, these mini sessions have a huge effect on your

retention and understanding. The other thing is, all the tools work right inside the app. With

other study supplement providers, you get access to a bunch of raw files and you have to figure

out how to get them on your phone, how to actually use them. With us, you do get access to those

source files if you want to use them that way. But everything works very nicely, very simply

right inside of our companion app. We also have a 60-day guarantee on our products. Nobody else

does anything like this. You get to fully take our strategies and study tools, integrate them

into your actual daily study process, use them for a few weeks to see the difference they will make

And at that point, after a few weeks, if you feel like they really have not made a significant

difference in your overall just understanding, then we will refund your investment

The other thing that we do, we try to make this as value-packed as possible

I mean, we want to make this a no-brainer so that you get the help you need to make your study process

easier, more effective so that you pass faster. So we do not limit your time access

Even if you don't end up taking the exams for the next three years, you get unlimited access

to your purchase and all future versions are included free. With other study supplements, you either pay this never-ending subscription

You know, you pay that subscription for a year. You still haven't passed, you know, two sections and you're sick of paying it

Well, if you stop paying that, you get cut off from your access

So with us, you pay one time. You have unlimited access for as long as you need it

And you will keep getting the updated versions of our products. We usually update two to three times a year

And you will not pay anything extra ever. So we have a lot of reviews

You can see them all over our site. I think the best example, you know, if you want more information in that sense

is to go and listen to a few of the podcast. interviews that we've published. These are completely unscripted off-the-cuff interviews

You know, we just set up a call, make the call. We chat for 20 to 30 minutes about their study

process. And so go and listen to a few of those episodes because that will give you a very good

idea of how, you know, people are out using our products to pass their exams. And these are

filled with all kinds of insights and breakthroughs from the individual candidates that we interview

So the podcast is very, very helpful completely on its own. And the first thing I tell our new customers is, you know, you want to watch the pro

videos as soon as possible, but also, like seriously almost just as important is to listen

to some of the podcast interviews to supplement that as you were figuring out your own study process

A few specific episodes you should check out. Episode 31 is Thomas

He purchased our course and materials. but he already had an exam date and he'd been studying the traditional way

And so he stuck with that. And he kept doing that for over a year

And again, you can listen to all this in his own words, episode 31

After a year and not passing any sections, he had far coming up again

He switched, you know, jumped into our videos, switched to our methods as kind of a Hail Mary attempt the last two weeks

And he ends up passing it. So then he commits to our process, passes the other

three very quickly afterwards and was all done. So once he switched to our methods, he went four for four after a year of struggling with

the normal way. Julia, episode 26, quite possibly my favorite episode, because she describes in excruciating detail

again, I don't want to put words in her mouth, but you can listen to the whole interview

She made the study process this huge, very serious task, and she just happened to be missing

a few key things. She was spending way too long in between sections. She was, if it's even possible

she was putting in more work than she needed to and was just really confusing herself. And so she wasn't

passing. This went on for years. Her husband even started to suggest that maybe she give up on the CPA

She comes across our free training, invests in our products and our strategies. She has this renewed confidence

that she's going to be able to do it. She goes out. out and immediately schedules all four, which by now she's taken all four multiple times and failed them

So her husband thinks that is an insane plan, and she goes four for four

So listen to that episode. It's just very insightful, episode 26. And then the next episode is episode 12, which would be Jade

Jade is a self-described planner, so she had researched things online before she even started

the study process. She found Super Fast CPA. She got our bundle

And so she, from the beginning, used our strategies. She was studying all day, every day, but she was following the study framework

She passed off for within two months. So again, the pro course is to learn the extremely effective, extremely efficient super fast CPA study process that you apply to your current review course

It doesn't matter what review course you're using. It also doesn't matter what your learning style is

everything's adaptable but the key thing is that you're implementing the six key ingredients into your study process

and you can do those six things differently but we provide a step-by-step process and you can tweak those as needed

but your process needs to have those six key things and then the study tools you would use for ongoing repeat exposure all throughout the rest of your day

so that you're constantly improving your retention and understanding of the material your study

in your main study sessions. All right, so at this point, you can choose the bundle that's best for you below

or you can click on this video if you're watching this on something like YouTube

Go to the purchase page, choose the bundle that's best for you. Hopefully, you allow us to help you pass your CPA exams

If you have any questions, you can email me directly at Nate at superfastcpa.com

So thanks for watching, and I hope to see you in the members area