Alicia Katz Pollock Joins the Unbalanced Podcast
Royalwise founder and QuickBooks educator Alicia Katz Pollock is the featured guest on Episode 64 of the Unbalanced podcast.
In “The Community She Never Planned to Build,” Alicia joins hosts Candy Bellau and Sam Hallburn for a conversation about education, entrepreneurship, community, and the path that led her to build Royalwise.
The Alicia Katz Pollock Unbalanced podcast episode also explores an idea that has shaped Royalwise from the beginning: people learn technology best when they understand not only which buttons to click, but why each step matters.
Building More Than a QuickBooks Training Company
Royalwise started with a practical mission: make complicated technology easier for real people to understand.
Over time, that mission grew into something larger. Through live classes, books, coaching, videos, webinars, podcasts, and the Royalwise OWLS learning community, Alicia has helped business owners and accounting professionals build practical QuickBooks skills they can use in their daily work.
That community was not created overnight, and it was not necessarily part of a carefully mapped-out master plan. It developed as students returned with new questions, referred their colleagues, joined additional classes, and shared what they had learned with others.
The result is a learning environment where people can ask questions, practice new workflows, make mistakes, and finally understand how the pieces of QuickBooks Online fit together.
Why Hands-on QuickBooks Training Matters
One of the topics Alicia discusses in the episode is QBO Complete Hands-on Training.
Watching a tutorial can help you solve an immediate problem. You might learn where to find a particular report, how to create an invoice, or how to change a setting.
But isolated tutorials rarely teach the complete bookkeeping workflow.
You may know how to complete one task without understanding what happens next, how that transaction affects your reports, or how a decision made today could create problems at month-end or year-end.
That is why QBO Complete Hands-on Training is designed around active participation rather than passive observation.
Students watch Alicia demonstrate a workflow, learn why it works, and then practice the process themselves inside QuickBooks Online. They work through realistic bookkeeping situations involving company setup, income and expenses, reporting, inventory, payroll, projects, job costing, and year-end procedures.
The current 2026 program includes 12 weeks of live instruction, 24 sessions, hands-on practice files, Alicia’s QuickBooks Online Complete textbook, class recordings, and 72 CPE credits.
The goal is not simply to remember a list of steps. It is to develop the QuickBooks knowledge needed to recognize what is happening, choose the correct workflow, and understand the effect that choice has on the books.
Learning the “Why,” Not Just the “How”
QuickBooks Online changes frequently. Buttons move, menus are reorganized, and new features appear.
When your knowledge is based entirely on memorizing where something is located, even a small interface update can leave you feeling lost.
Understanding the reasoning behind a workflow gives you a stronger foundation.
You can adapt when the software changes because you understand what you are trying to accomplish. You know what information QuickBooks needs, where that information should flow, and what the finished result should look like.
That teaching philosophy is central to Alicia’s work and to the Royalwise approach. Technology becomes much less intimidating when someone explains it in plain language and gives you a chance to practice.
A Conversation About Business, Learning, and Community
Unbalanced features candid conversations about the realities of building and running businesses in the accounting profession. The podcast is hosted by Candy Bellau and Sam Hallburn and presented by Anchor.
Alicia’s episode offers a look behind the QuickBooks training and into the experiences, relationships, and decisions that helped shape Royalwise.
It is a conversation for bookkeepers, accounting professionals, educators, entrepreneurs, and anyone who has discovered that building a business rarely follows the exact path you originally imagined.
Listen to Alicia on Unbalanced
Listen to Episode 64, “The Community She Never Planned to Build, with Alicia Katz Pollock,” to hear the complete conversation.
LINK: Listen to Alicia Katz Pollock on the Unbalanced podcast
Interested in building practical QuickBooks skills through structured, live instruction and hands-on practice?
