The CPA Exam Playbook with Blake Carroll

A 76 does not prove you studied well. A 73 does not prove you studied badly.
We love looking at outcomes and working backward.
Passed? The strategy worked.
Failed? Something must have been wrong.
But life, and the CPA Exam, is messier than that.
You can make good decisions and get a disappointing result. You can make questionable decisions and still get away with a 75.
Which raises a much more interesting question: How much of passing the CPA Exam is actually luck?
Not “hope you get easy questions” luck.
I mean the mix of circumstances you were handed, the environment you choose, the decisions you make, and the randomness you can never completely eliminate.
That’s what I’m digging into in my next episode.

In this episode I talk about a quote from the book "High Performance Habits" by Brendon Burchard that can teach us how to be more present and get a deeper connection with our daily lives.

The CPA Exam is too demanding to live in the middle ground forever. In this episode, I talk about what it looks like to either truly commit to the process or give yourself permission to let it go, instead of staying stuck in a cycle of guilt, inconsistency, and half-commitment.

It can be incredibly difficult to admit something we think or believe to be true is wrong. But if you think about it so much of what you believe today is probably different from what you believed when you were growing up, what you believed five years ago, or even what you believed one month ago. In this episode we'll learn about what perspective to have when it comes to changing our minds.

What does it mean when you’ve built a good career… but part of you is hoping someone else will give you permission to leave it?

In this episode, I reflect on a period when I found myself hoping I’d get laid off from PwC and what that revealed about my career, my fear of making a change, and the difference between waiting for a decision to be made for you and choosing for yourself.

You probably already know a lot of what you should be doing to pass the CPA Exam.

Study consistently. Do cumulative review. Practice the things you’re avoiding. Put your phone away. Get back to studying when you fall behind.

Knowing those things and actually doing them are two very different problems.

That gap is what I’m exploring in my next LinkedIn Live through the work of behavioral scientist Katy Milkman.

Her research has looked at some fascinating questions:

Why can making a routine too rigid actually hurt follow-through?

Why might giving someone else advice help you change your own behavior?

Why do Mondays, birthdays, and other “fresh starts” make us more likely to pursue goals?

What can we learn from people who come back after missing a workout rather than simply celebrating the people who never miss?

We’ll take those ideas and apply them directly to studying for the CPA Exam. Sometimes the answer isn’t more motivation. It’s understanding what keeps getting in the way and designing around it.

I used to think consistent CPA candidates were just more disciplined, but that's not the case.
The candidates who make it through usually aren’t perfect. They just recover faster when life interrupts the plan.
That matters because most candidates don’t get stuck from one missed study session.
They get stuck from what they tell themselves after:
“I already messed up this week.”
“I’ll just restart Monday.”
“I can’t study unless I have a full block.”
That’s how one bad night turns into a bad week.

I’m talking about behavioral resilience: how to adapt, recover, and keep moving when your study plan collides with real life.
We’ll cover all-or-nothing thinking, critical choice points, and why flexibility often matters more than perfection.
If one bad day has ever turned into a bad week for you, this is for you.

What if having more time, more resources, and more options isn’t always better for CPA candidates?
Sometimes the constraint is what makes you focus.
That’s what I’ll be talking about in my next episode, using ideas from David Epstein’s book "Inside the Box."
We’ll look at why CPA candidates can get stuck searching for more instead of making better use of what they already have, and how the right limits can improve focus, decision-making, and execution.
Sometimes the better question isn’t, “What else do I need?”
It’s “What do I need to remove?”

I’ve spent the last month asking CPA candidates what they’re actually struggling with.
274 of you told me your biggest obstacle.
122 told me why you miss MCQs.
157 told me which story is holding you back.
And the results were pretty revealing.
I’m going to coach directly from your answers.
We’ll break down the biggest patterns I saw, what I think they mean, and what you can do differently because of them.

When was the last time you felt grateful for any part of your CPA Exam journey?

It's easy to focus on everything that's difficult: how much you still have to learn, how long it's taking, the sacrifices you're making, and how far you still have to go.

In this episode, I challenge you to look in the other direction. Be grateful for the opportunity to pursue the CPA license, the progress you've already made, the people supporting you, and the resources and time you do have.

Gratitude doesn't make the exam easier. But it can change how you think about the experience, how you feel when you sit down to study, and ultimately how you show up for it.