222 9 More Reasons to Attend Accounting Firm Conferences

I can trace almost all of the biggest, most impactful changes in my life back to accounting conferences. Like, genuinely, it all started with accounting conferences. But the vast majority of accountants have still not been to one. Maybe they're grappling with, what is the ROI of this? Like, why would I do it? So let me run you through my framework for why it's absolutely worthwhile. Something that everybody needs to be doing and something that you need your team to be doing as well. I used to send my folks to accounting conferences. Come on in, let's talk accounting conferences. I realize, as I just said, that you ever, like, look at your life and you're like this. I would have never thought I was doing this thing. You're listening to a podcast about accounting conferences right now. Bless your heart. Whether you're on the treadmill, whether you are clanging and banging. I've been thinking a lot lately about, like, how. How you explain to people what we do as an accountant. We've all been in that situation where you're at the party and a person starts talking about what they do, and then it goes to the next person, and they're like, oh, yeah, I do this and that. And you're like, oh, it's gonna come around to me. Do I run? Do I make a break for it? And it comes around to you, and you're like, yeah, I'm an accountant. And everybody's like, oh, okay. And things just kind of stall out there. But when it comes to, like, being a grownup and doing cool things, I almost feel like the less understandable it is, usually the more compelling it is, the more interesting it is. That's definitely the case when it solves to solving. When it comes to solving clients problems, you want clients to be impressed that you understand that nuanced problem that nobody else understands. But there's part of the human experience that's pulling us to the mainstream. That's pulling us to be like, yeah, but what if I made this video or this blog post, like, something that anybody could read or anybody could benefit from? Uh, if you're tuning into the podcast on YouTube today, we are coming to you from London. Uh, it has already gone from full sun to cloudy and about terrain in the first three minutes of the podcast. You're missing out on some vibes today. So I'm at a conference right now. I'm at digital accountancy show in London as I'm shooting this. It is April 16th, which, if you're not a US tax pro, that's a big date that's the day after the biggest deadline of the year. Whether it should be the biggest deadline is another debate. But. But it is. It's the day after the biggest debate of the year. And only two years ago I was coming off of a tax season in a 40 person firm and just to like teleport back to that point in time, that time in my life, it was a lot like running a business that size was a lot. At the time we were understaffed. Some friction with my partner, which was a bit of a stressor. I had a one, a three and a five year old. We'd recently had a miscarriage on the fourth child. There was a lot, a lot going on two years ago. If you had told me back then, two years from now, on April 16, you'd be in London speaking at an accounting conference. I mean, that would be as unthinkable for me as it probably is for most of you right now. Unless you live in London, then it's not that impressive. Assume you live on the west coast of the United States, you know what I mean? But there's so many things that I have been bumping into lately that have been stark reminders of how you are closer to something you couldn't imagine than you realize. I was scripting a main channel video recently and I'm bringing back, quote, unquote, roast a firm, if you remember what those were. Basically people anonymously submit information to me about their accounting firms and I create a video about the firm and like recommendations of what to do next. Basically just consulting like out in public where everybody can see all the information shared anonymously. And, and it lets people kind of put their advisor hats on and be like, yeah, no, that firm should go do this and that. Which is a whole lot easier than looking in the mirror. Right? But, but because of that, I think it's a helpful exercise. It puts, it puts your own, your own bleep into context. It's a reference from an amazing commercial. Your bleep don't stink. Go YouTube it. Or his bleep don't stink. But I was, I was going through the, the submissions that I have on that form and there was a $1.8 million tax firm, good sized firm, a bit of a legacy firm, and on average 70, 70% of their clients are charged between 250 and $500 a year for a tax return. That's, that is 75% of their business is once a year charging people between 250 and 500 bucks to do the tax prep. There's another firm in there, There was a new upstart firm that'll do 400 grand in revenue this year and their tax planning packages. So start at 12 grand. And if I walked into that $1.8 million firm and said, why aren't you charging 12 grand for tax planning? Those people would say, like, that's unimaginable. That's unthinkable. We have never charged like they don't do. From what I could tell, they didn't really do much tax planning at all. It was mostly just tax prep. And so for a firm that's charging most of their clients, on average, 250 to 500 bucks a year, for you to come in and tell them you need to go charge 12 grand to do tax planning, that's just gonna be unthinkable for them, right? And there's a whole bunch of examples of that in all of our lives, in all of our businesses, where, because you haven't done it, and interestingly, because maybe you don't know anybody well, that's done it because of that, it feels unthinkable. And I honestly think there are so many things in our lives that we are closer to being fundamentally different in an unimaginable way than we realize. Now, in this specific example, the way I think you normalize that is being in community with other people who have done that. So for the people that are running that $1.8 million firm, you could send them a video of mine and be like, look, people are totally doing this. Look at how convincing this is. The reality is, I think what people need to see more than a compelling argument, and maybe both is best. But what they also need to see is stories of real people who have done it and found success, not like glossy promotional things. For a software where it's like, it's obviously this edited video where the person's speaking glowingly to how the software is. That crap isn't real. Like, it might be helpful, but it isn't real. What I need to see is, like, real conversations with firm owners done through a lens that isn't biased. It's not going on a vendor's channel. It's not a sponsored talk at a conference. It is a real conversation. When you see people having success with that, you're no longer a first mover. Because I don't think we generally wanna be the first one to do something like, that's just not how accountants operate. But for the people running this bigger firm, who ought to be more successful in charging more, but they're not. It's the opposite. If the people running that bigger firm hung out every week with folks who had done this, who were charging 12 grand for tax planning your business, too. Think about it. If you're going to breakfast with a bunch of people every single day. Like, if you're having those every week and you're having those conversations every week and. And you're getting used to it, and you're picking into like, but how about this? And how about that? And I know that you're here, but where did you start so that I could understand how to get from A to B, gang? It's just a matter of time until you are there, until you are that. So the question then becomes, how do I, like, work and live in community with folks that are doing things that I aspire to do? Like, that is the best hack that I can give you. Not another webinar, a how to or anything like that. It's more nuanced than that. Like, how can I make friends with these people and go through my journey with other firm owners that have done this stuff? Because that's where it becomes accessible, where it becomes normal, where you can approach that with an entirely different level of confidence. Like, if you just try to slap 12 grand on the thing that you're already doing, like, you're gonna be like, no, I heard that other people do that. So we're doing it. Like, you're not gonna come into that with any confidence. As opposed to if you've talked to a bunch of people who have already done it, you're like, nope, this is what we do. Now. I know that there's a big market for it. We're still finding it, but this is what our firm does now. And accounting conferences are a great place to find those really, really smart people. I gave an AI talk today, and one of my top tips was, if you want to learn more about AI and stumble into more AI use cases, stop trying to do it yourself. Find the other people who are doing this thing too, and set up a group chat or a Slack or something like that. So that rather than just going through and learning, like, through your own tunnel vision and your own experience, you're doing that transparently with a bunch of other people. So you're benefiting from all of their learning experiences as well. Like, isn't that just fundamentally better? It's more optimized for learning, but it's also a whole lot more fun. Like, so much more fun to go through this with friends. This episode is sponsored in part by Liveflow and Gang liveflow just shipped Excel support. Yippee. So previously Live Flow was for bridging Data from your QuickBooks file to Google Sheets and it now works with Excel. Hold for applause. Basically a way to like extend QuickBooks to do so so much more. Because QuickBooks has its own usage limits and like user access is not very granular. So having A bridge between QuickBooks and your favorite spreadsheet is kind of augmenting QuickBooks in many ways. Whether it's like doing advisory work with a client, whether it's giving very fractional access to maybe only specific data. Like say you got a director of marketing and they need to see everything that hits the ledger under marketing, but nothing else. Never in a million years is like QuickBooks user permissions going to let you do that. Whether they are internal team members, whether they're external stakeholders, gives you a super easy way to give granular access to stuff from the accounting file and even keep it updating live from the data in the accounting file without having to like spill the whole beans. Give them access to everything. Lifelo's been doing this for several years with Google Sheets and now you can do it with Excel too. Go check it out. Link in the show Notes this episode is brought to you in part by Team up, helping you recruit top Filipino accountants without any ongoing monthly fees. The difference between Team up and all the other offshoring options is that Team up helps you hire staff directly. No middleman. You work directly with your new hire in the Philippines. Hire the person, not the company. Guys. Gals. Gang. Here's just a few reasons to hire directly. You have access to higher level talent. Makes sense. You have complete control over team culture and training. They keep 100% of what you pay them and it's a lot more affordable for you so you can retain your team for the long term. Team Open source accountants with experience working at US or or Australian firms familiar with tools like Xero, QBO and Dex also recruit specialist roles. Team leaders, tax specialists, administrative assistants. Thought experiment. What if you had an executive assistant for the first time this tax season? Just throwing it out there. What would they do? Start at that email video I did on the main channel recently. Get help with that stanky ol inbox. I digress. Team up recruits these talented folks for a flat one one time fee of 4,000 US American dollars. That's it. 4K one time. Somebody at Robert Half just did a spit take. Robert Half reference. We ever gonna get Robert Half to sponsor this pod? Not anymore. And they can connect you with an affordable employer of record if you need help with payroll and compliance once you hire that person. Big fan of hiring in the Philippines. You know, I did a bunch of that. Check out the link in the description to learn more about Team Up. Now I tell my story because, like, it just constantly blows my mind how much has changed over the last two years. And I hope that there's a part of that that can open your mind to no matter where you're at today and how you're feeling, you're closer than you think to something totally different if you make intentional decisions to start getting there. But I can tell you where all that started for me was 2018 0con at San Diego. If you were there, drop a comment below. 2018 0con in San Diego. It was the very first accounting conference I'd ever been to. I didn't even own the firm at that point. I talked my bosses into covering some of it, but I became so convinced that this would open things up for me that I'm like, I gotta be there, I gotta do this. And this might surprise you. I'm not an extrovert in any way. Like, I'm very introverted in some ways. What I do now makes it a little bit easier because I don't have to initiate as much and like, people will come up and introduce themselves and all that. And in some ways that actually is really nice and helps mask some of the discomfort I have with like, pretending to be an extrovert. But when I got to this conference and I knew nobody, what was really easy for me as an introvert was to geek on technical stuff. I'm not a small talk guy. Like, I don't enjoy it, I'm not good at it. But I sat down with my little sack lunch and at that table was a lady in her, in her 60s who was like, I need something to do. And I'm thinking about starting a bookkeeping business. I'm local and I just came here to hang out. Another lady, probably middle aged, who ran a successful bookkeeping practice. A guy next to me who basically was doing outsourced accounting for Kaiser Permanente, which is like a massive health group. Like, he oversaw like all of that, like, accounting department in a box. His firm did all of that for them. And like Netsuite and my I. My mind was just blown by that. Like, are you kidding me? And at this point in time, I was starting to build our cast practice within our firm, which is kind of like, we called it managed accounting. Kind of like managed it. And I Was like, well, you're my hero. Like, that's the pinnacle of the thing I'm imagining building right now, working for big, cool, impressive companies. I didn't know if that was actually something we wanted to do at the time or not, but that was all. My first morning. I think it was breakfast. They did, like, a light breakfast thing in the morning. That was the first table I sat down at. And I was immediately like, okay, I got a lot to learn. And I got a lot to learn from the speakers, but. But I got a whole lot to learn from all the people that are there hanging out. And, like, that just opened my entire world, that conference. Like, everything changed after that. I approached problem solving completely differently. Cause I put aside my ego to think I was doing cool, novel things, and I was gonna figure it out myself, and instead realized there's literally nothing I'm doing that somebody else hasn't already done. And the fastest path to figuring that out is just asking around, see what people have done, what worked, what didn't work. And it all started with conferences. So let me run through. I've jotted down kind of nine notes if you're not convinced yet. Nine more reasons to attend accounting conferences. Number one, consider the fact that by going to accounting conferences, you're actually contributing to the community as a whole. Behind these events are real human beings who put these events together, and our vendors who come and they sponsor events and our speakers, and they come, and there are little baby Jasons like me who are gonna belly up, belly up to the breakfast table. All just, you know, rosy cheeks. And so with such a zest for the profession, I wasn't, you know, the calloused person that I am now. And you might be sitting across the table from that person who has something to learn from you. And so, like, don't forget about the fact that deciding to go is actually contributing to the profession as a whole. Like, you're being part of it. You're being part of everybody getting better together. Number two. Okay, number two was the fact that you could add to other people by being there. So that was a. I rolled both of those into number one. Number three, you're adding to the tech ecosystem. The folks that, like, buy these expensive booths and turn up to exhibit there are folks that are committing themselves specifically to our space. Good example was talking with some folks that do offshoring today while I was at the conference. Offshoring's a great example of something that we all get an unbelievable amount of outreach for. But how do you know if they're actually any good. I can tell you. A great way to separate what's the expression, the wheat from the chaff. Probably shouldn't use expressions that I don't know what they mean. A great way to identify the ones that are here for the long term are the ones that are investing in the space, showing up at conferences. And so you being there is helping them. You're having conversations with them, asking them about the product, telling them what you want in the product. You're giving back to them. Like the ecosystem folks, the tech folks, all the people that service our industry who, by the way, we super, super need. Because our space would look completely different if we had to just rely on general tools that were tools specifically for our space. You're giving back to them by being there. Number four, you generally get super smart speakers at conferences. You get a lot of big brain folks who are founders or successful firm runners or Internet think people. It's just a fun collection of folks at a conference like this. So to see the talks, I'm not a guy that goes to every talk. And some conferences I still feel today are a little too weighted towards sponsored talks or talks that are like sponsored in disguise, where it's not always super clear that the reason that person on stage was because they're a gold sponsor and dropped, you know, 80k on a whole package which included some stage time. Not all conferences are this way. This conference here actually does a great job of emphasizing thought leaders, like having a curated list of people that are really compelling to hear from. That's also not to say that there aren't tech people who are not really compelling, because there are. There's a lot of really smart folks. But sometimes that line can get a little too blurry on what's sponsored and what isn't. But in general, you're going to hear from a bunch of smart people. Number five, you're gonna meet the humans behind the software products that you use, which is actually really cool. Products can feel like cold and lifeless. But I don't know about you, that's one reason why I kind of shy away from humongous tools is you'll have an experience with a company that's in our space, that's a smaller company, and you may need support and they may get back to you right away and even like ship something in the product tomorrow. And you're like, that just blew me away. Like, you have my undying love and affection. And that's a really cool thing that's unique to folks that just work in our space and to know the people behind them, that's really fun because there are people that are doing their best, just like you are, but oftentimes because the way we interact with it is via a product, like, we assume that there's nothing behind the scenes, or maybe we don't pay it the same respect that we would an actual person that we're talking with. Number six, some conferences are in, like, super fun destinations, so it can be an excuse for a fun trip too. Maybe you get the family to tag along. Maybe it's just a way to hang with your maidos for a couple of days. Not all of them are fun destinations, but most of them are pretty good. Number seven, you just got a really unique collection of really smart people. I guess I alluded to this in number four, but if you think about the people who make the time to go to an accounting conference, it is people who are more willing to invest in themselves than most. So you've got the folks that don't go and they're like, I don't know, I can't see the roi. But then you've got the people that do go. Why are they going? Like, odds are they're probably thinking more big picture about, like, what's best for my firm, what is best for me. Like, and that just ends up being a really interesting collection of people who will take time out of their busy schedules. It is not that you are busier than all the people that turn up to conferences. It is that these people are making time and those are great people to like, jam with and hang out with and chat with. Number eight, for many of us, like, those conferences are the only time that you escape the silo and the group think that is day to day life at your firm. Like, we don't. We never realize how programmed we are by the routines that we go in that we are in each day sometimes that are not very intentionally designed. Like if you get up and you respond to emails first thing every single day, like, you're pouring that energy into solving other people's problems rather than. Than thinking about, like, what would be the number one thing for me that I could get done today, you know, and not to say that that's bad necessarily, but in your day to day, you just settle into these routines and you go through them every day and you see and talk to the same people every day. And your reality is defined by the staff that you work with and the clients that you have. And we can make decisions through that very narrow lens. Oftentimes rather than zooming out a bit and getting perspective. And. And I would argue that a big thing that's needed here is oftentimes a change of setting. Because if you're hopping on a zoom call with another accounting firm owner or something like that, that's great and it's better than nothing. But the reality is you've got a time blocked meeting on your calendar that day where you're gonna go do that, you're gonna finish work right before you get on the call and then as soon as you're done, you're gonna go straight back into doing work. And that is not a brain state that lends itself well to like zooming out and getting perspective. Right. And so that change of scenery combined with being around with smart people, there's just something about that that is kind of magic and leads to change in a way that doing stuff in your office doesn't. This episode is sponsored in part by Keeper. Keeper was my 2022, I think tool of the year. I do like an annual year end YouTube video of my favorite new stuff of the year. Keeper's hard to explain. It's not, not really like a practice management system. It's like a task management system. Had a baby with the accounting ledger because it pulls all the accounting data like into the platform. So the way that most people use Keeper is you'll have a bookkeeper like reconcile the bank statement in qbo. Also works with Xero now, but you have somebody reconcile the bank statement in QBO and then the entire rest of the month end close is managed from Keeper which is like a single hub for managing all the all of your closes. So the accountants generally aren't actually getting into QuickBooks anymore, they're managing it all from Keeper where it's doing like anomaly detection and making sure you actually are getting W9 from people. All these cool things that are built directly into the platform. And then if you need to change transactions because they're all there inside of Keeper, you just change it inside of Keeper and all that stuff Syncs back to QuickBooks now. Since then they've shipped all sorts of stuff like reports and like client facing portal. They just shipped receipts recently too, so clients can just chuck receipts in there. A very unique product because it lets you see the status of all of your month end closes in a single place like in this grid view that talks to QuickBooks so it can see like what's the locked period like all these things where normally you'd have to log into QuickBooks to see it. It's all managed in Keeper. Pretty cool. I'm supposed to send you to the link in the show notes. Don't do that. I did a demo day, a sponsored demo day for them on my YouTube channel maybe six months ago. It's like a five minute crash course on what it does. Go YouTube, search Jason Stats Keeper. That'll tell you what you need to know and then come back and click the link in the show notes. This episode is sponsored in part by firm360. You made it past the deadline, but do you have the right tools headed into next year? It's change season man, where you revisit what worked and what didn't work. And I'll tell you the minimum point of entry for an accounting firm these days is a solid cloud practice management system to keep all the goods, all the goods in order. My firm 360, they're just that they're doing it all in one place. Project management, document management, client management, E6 time and billing, advanced reporting. We did that roundup last year of like 14 leading cloud practice management systems. Firm360 is on the list and way ahead of the curve. Specifically on time and billing has always been kind of a weakness of cloud practice management systems. Firm 360 in particular put a ton of thought into that. A lot of the other PMs like still you gotta bolt on sort of other adjacent tools and you end up having like split data in this system and then the other data over here in this billing system. Man, you want that all in one place. Makes your life so much easier if you are sniffing around new PMs. Check this one out. Firm360 put a link in the show notes and then last one, number nine, you come hang with me. We, we can, you know, get a bagel, something like that. Number nine, it's that but it's also you can make friends. And that was probably the best thing I ever did, was make some friends that do this stuff. And it made it all feel way less isolating, gave me a bunch of confidence because I could bounce dumb questions off of them and we commiserate together and all of that. And as much as I have a support system at home and and everyone else tries to be supportive and tell you you're doing a great job and all that, nobody understands this quite like other firm owners. And so to have a relationship with other people who deeply understand that, that feels so good. Like there's a part of our monkey brains that needs that social interaction where you're working with, talking with People who understand what you do, where you can support other people who do what you do, and, like, you know, reciprocate that. It's not just about what can I get from them. There's something that really balances you out about having those relationships in your life. And most people, for whatever reason, like, don't. Like, they're still in this. I don't know if it's competitive or they're in this frame of mind where they, for whatever reason, won't collaborate and just have open conversations with other people that run firms like, as if we have something to lose or. I know there's a lot of people just haven't opened themselves up to that yet, unfortunately. But it makes a really big difference, and accounting conferences are a great way to do that. One thing I want to shout out before we wrap up, Accounting Cornerstone Foundation. It is a nonprofit to help people get to their first accounting conference. Basically, you apply for a sponsorship and they help cover the costs of doing that. If that's a barrier to making it happen, I would also call out, you know, a version of this, which is online communities which are. Are growing and definitely becoming more popular. To me, the best communities are the ones that are just connecting people to help each other solve problems. What I get most excited about at accounting conferences is just all the smart accounting for people that are there. Like, the stage speakers are cool and all that, but the first time I sat down in a room with like five other people that do what I do. Like, we're running firms similar to me, I'm like, how do I just shoot this into my veins every single day? Like, this is what I have been needing, and that's so energizing. The best online communities, I think, do that now, social media and stuff like that, that has no stakes where anybody can come in, lava bomb and go away. That, to me, it has value in its own way, but it is not a great way to, like, build lasting relationships. So if you don't have those in your life, I highly recommend you seek them out because they fundamentally change everything about how you go through the profession. You probably know at this point, I have an online community. I really only talk about it in my content. And that's because the specificity then that people come into the community with is really cool. It's a bunch of people who, like, vibe on this content like they're into it. And because I don't sponsor stuff or like, put that name out there literally anywhere else, when people come in, you already have that in common. Like what, have you made friends tomorrow with 10 other people that also listen to Jason Daly when they walk on the treadmill every morning? And all these people run accounting firms. That's pretty cool, right? Like, that's literally the extent of what I wanted that community to be like. To that end, we even capped it permanently at 500 members. I say this to bring up now under 11 now down to less than the last hundred slots in that community. If you feel like you need help making those relationships, you don't have that yet. Consider this community. We've froze all, you know, price increases. Price is never going to go up again on this thing. We're going to fill the last hundred slots and then that's it for this, for this form of realize It'll be that 500. Like that's it. And it's because what makes it really good right now is like kind of the small, more intimate nature of it and beyond a certain threshold you're going to lose that and it's not really going to be good anymore. We'll actually probably start kicking people out at 500. So there's some folks that have joined that like just joined to support me. But if they're not actively getting in the community and getting value there, I'm probably just gonna kick them out to make room for folks who, who can be active that way. It's like you've got 500 people in this really intimate space and it actually keeps getting better over time. Other things that we do in there, we've got a whole ton of software demos so you can just come in and watch 30 minutes on how's this thing work and not have to deal with the sales process for software. Lots of valuable conversation. Just always going in there from like more of a forum standpoint. Bunch of live events that we've got like over 10 live events this month, I think. Really cool thing we did a few months ago, advisors in residence. So there are consultants in the community that you can basically like book a call with once a quarter for all sorts of different things. There's consultants for certain practice management systems where all they do is implement and help people like fine tune their setup. We've got an attorney in there now. We've got developer. We've got a no code pro where all that person does is run a no code agency. We've got several coaches where all they do. Like these are people that like professionally coach accounting firms. If you're in the community, you get access to these people. It's basically my Rolodex all of the people I would handpick and like recommend to folks to go get help from. I think there's some limits on it. Like you can only book a few of them a quarter or something like that. Because I do, I pay these people out of my pocket for every one of those sessions. But it's for the people who are like, I could use a coach but I don't know where to start and I don't know who to ask. Book something with Rebecca Driscoll, like she's one of the coaches there. Uh, I've got my carbon set up to here but like I don't know if there's a way to make it any better. It's like book a call. We've got a bunch of stuff like that to help people get advice and it may lead to like maybe I want more of a hands on coaching experience and we take something off platform and do a proper engagement with that person. If so awesome. We've built a meaningful connection. They're like, I don't get any cut of that. Like we've, we've enabled something really valuable and that's basically the idea is just to like get people help with what they need. Help with bookkeeping, tax firms, all sorts of firms. And they're not stupid credential requirements or anything like that. If you do accounting for people, if you do tax for people, if you do bookkeeping for people, big firm, little firm, lots of folks in there. We're actually four times a year we, we hand pick, we make these mastermind groups of five where we're going to match you with other people inside the community that contextually do very similar things to you and have similar firms. And then once a month over six months you meet with that group of five and all you do is just talk shop of like what's going good for you, what's not going good for you. And it's a way to force those initial connections. And I generally tell people like if in those first couple, you know, hopefully it happens in that first six month group, if not hopefully in the next mastermind group. Like hopefully you come out of there with a new best bud in the profession is really the goal. And that and that relationship takes on a life of its own, that's the very best outcome of these things. And it's why they actually have a like finite time window is I would like to place you into different groups with the hope of making several of those connections for you. Because there's nothing better than that man having friends that do this stuff like it is so refreshing. Anyways, sorry, that turned into an advertisement for my community. A bunch of other communities as well that do are doing really cool stuff. So if you can't get out to conferences, if that's, you know, the travel, if that's a blocker, if you don't have those relationships yet, online communities can be a cool opportunity. I don't think just going to conferences like puts enough of a feedback loop in you to ensure that you're constantly growing. If you go to two accounting conferences in a year, is taking a break and thinking bigger picture two times a year going to be like the optimal path? Probably not. Like that's where I think online communities come in and you have a tighter feedback loop of being able to share ideas and grow and iterate on. Okay, I'm selling tax returns for 250 to 500 bucks right now or month end closes or whatever it is. I see these smart people that are doing something I can't even imagine how can I go hang with these people? Like that's the idea is how can you get access and start normalizing something better on a regular basis. For me, like an accounting conference or two a year was not enough but still had a immense amount of value. So for like my personal growth stack, that's probably where I slot slot online communities in. Anyways, enough about that. I'll try to remember to link most of the stuff we've mentioned here in the show notes. If you have any specific questions about like what conference would be best for me, drop a comment about what you do, maybe where you are, general vicinity, because that can. If there's something close to you that may make sense and I'll hop in and share a couple of things that could be a fit based on your type of firm. If it's someone not North America, where I may not know, please drop a comment still. We got folks that listen to this from all over the world always blown away today like in the uk Met so many people after my talk who are like oh man, I listen to the podcast every day. I'm like really? I don't talk about American things too much, but if you aren't in the US pop a comment still. Cause we got people listening from all over the world that could probably add a suggestion there of like check out this or that conference. So highly recommend doing that tomorrow. We got Q and A coming up. You got any questions, drop them in the comments and I'll see you there.