How To Make Attending An Accounting Conference Worthwhile

Today we're at the probably the largest accounting conference in the U.S. intuit Connect. But most accountants, they've still actually never gone to an accounting conference. How do you do that calculation? Like the ROI of is this worthwhile for me or not? I've gone to way too many conferences. Today we're going to talk about what are the ones worth considering, kind of depending on what is the work that you do. But also other fun stuff like how do you get a free ticket and just kind of some best practices for how to make sure that if you are really going to take the time away to do that, was it worthwhile. So accounting conferences, let's get into it. Okay, so if you're thinking about going to an accounting conference, first thing to look at is the programming. Because different conferences are made for different types of firms. Tax conferences, in my experience are generally going to be more technically oriented, whereas accounting and bookkeeping conferences are kind of the polar opposite. They're more around, more around using tech to run a more productive firm and more around the running of the business. But I can tell you, any tax like conference that I've been to, the focus has been almost 100% technical things and law changes and rule changes and all that stuff. And that's fine, but it's not like a complete solution. Like, if you are a firm leader, if you're a firm owner, you got to somehow scratch that itch of how am I learning as an entrepreneur? Am I learning from other firms that are like, you know, thinking through things like how do I price engagements and how do I manage scope and how do I manage client conversations? That's oftentimes every bit as big, if not like the biggest thing that keeps you up at night more so than the technical stuff. And so the selection of the right conference for you, it ought to kind of be led by like, where am I at in my journey right now and what do I feel like I need? Because there are for sure people who are earlier in on the journey that gobble up those sessions and like need to be in every single one. And you show up at the beginning and you got your little notebook and you're like, okay, nine o', clock, we're going to be at this. Ten o', clock, we're going to be at this. And you're just scribbling notes down the whole time. And then you'll see people that are like later on in that conference so cycle and they're like, man, I just go to the conference. I don't go to any of the sessions though, I'm just here to hang. Some people go to conferences and don't even buy the ticket and it's still like worthwhile for them to just come and hang. So the right version of that for you, it is very dependent upon where you're at in the journey. But most important things to consider, like if you're looking at the list of potential events that you can go to, is, is this built around like technical needs that I have right now? Is, is it built around technology needs? Like are we not effectively using technology right now or is it built around business needs? Kind of one of those three things. Business needs obviously gonna be very oriented around the business owner, firm partners, that sort of thing. Tech leadership, that's usually more through an accounting angle just because unfortunately we've had so little in the way of exciting tech for tax. But then the more technical firms that are more tax leaning, those, I find you will have a much more diverse turnout of folks that work in the firm versus just the firm owners. And so you come to something like connect here, which is really about the business and about how they're using technology. And it's pretty much exclusively firm owners and with sometimes like a couple members of leadership that come along too. So definitely watch out for the programming. What's going to be most relevant for you? Larger conferences, like in a couple hours here I'm giving a talk and there are 11 other sessions going on at the same time as my talk. So some conferences, they've tried to simplify and condense and create a more shared environment where it's like all the same, people are going through the same track. Other conferences have kind of gone the other direction where they explode it out and try to make those sessions as contextual as possible. And so you will have 100 sessions crammed into like a couple days. There's pros and cons to each. It ends up feeling a little bit less like a shared experience the more you break it out. But at the same time, like the more relevant the session is to you, the more helpful it'll be. Unfortunately, oftentimes what happens here is this is a way of like. And this is getting into the economics of accounting conferences. This is a way to like placate the sponsors who want to have their own sessions. And so like, you know, half of the sessions going on at a time are really sponsor driven, like via a specific software platform. And they may have other people on talking about how they use that platform, but at the end of the day it is still like Through a very specific perspective. And, like, the reason that this room even exists is the software platform is trying to sell this thing, right? Some conferences are good about managing that. Others kind of can feel like a big commercial where it's like, man, I just paid like 1500 bucks to be here, and now you're making me sit through commercials. So when you're starting out, like, going to your first conferences, I think the programming is the main draw for most people. But I would say over time, it kind of transitions to everything else. And I'm definitely in that everything else stage where, like, there's just magic things that happen when you get that many of a specific type of person into one space after programming you. The thing that always got me super excited was the expo hall and just all of the exhibitors, all the software platforms. You will almost inevitably discover some new people doing some new stuff. Even for folks that you already use, it can be great to meet some of the people behind the platforms that you use and share feedback. And there's almost this just, like, inherently inhuman side of buying software to where when you actually make a connection with the folks behind that platform, you will unlock, like, a totally different level of, I don't know, definitely loyalty. But also often for the first time, you feel like you have a voice. And what can be this, like, impossibly big machine where it's just a platform, right, and you don't know anybody there. It's a good opportunity to build relationships with the platforms that you are most invested in. Where it's like, I really need this platform to be working on the things that are valuable to us. It's an opportunity to have your voice heard and that, like, human connection element of it, like, it really makes a difference because all those people return home and their future vision for the product, like, it's. It's a product of all of those conversations that they have with people and turning up to these conferences. Like, it. It's. It's an opportunity to be one of those voices that's speaking into where it's headed now. What gets me most excited about these events is simply, like, what you're able to do with the folks who are here and the conversations that you're able to have. A lot of that is oftentimes facilitated by all of the extracurricular stuff that's happening outside of the conference. So software companies will spend as much money on, like, the booth, like, their presentation in the expo hall as they will on all the events they run outside the conference, from dinners to, like, little Kind of outings the day before the conference. Like there's always things going on. That is one nice thing about Intuit Connect being in Vegas. Like there's just an abundance of things to do every single evening because people are hosting events here and there and it's easy to get to, easy to walk around like Vegas. So much of what is appealing to people about Vegas is so lost on me at this stage in my life. I'm just a sad, sad, hollowed out old man. I will say what's nice when they, and a lot of them, they run out of the ARIA in Vegas here is you've got like the conference in, in the hotel itself. And so you just, you never even have to go outside. So there is like a lazy side of it that is appealing. But I would say that's another, like that ought to be another consideration in what is the right conference choice for you. You have folks like Western CPE that will do sort of destination continuing education conferences where they host them in Hawaii and like all these kind of cool places where you can roll that into a trip. They really know their audience. Working with tax people, how do we make this trip deductible? That is one mistake that I made probably early on in going to conferences, I didn't know anybody. So you already kind of have the awkwardness of going and trying to make friends and trying to make small talk with people and you kind of run in, you do the programming, you do everything that's on the agenda and then you kind of bounce. When I would say the coolest things happening at conferences are the things probably, probably that aren't on the agenda. It helps tremendously if you can go and do it with a friend or like make a friend early on in the conference. Just have a buddy to run around with. It makes the whole experience infinitely easier. And you get so many people out to the same conferences that oftentimes you can kind of develop this just like conference sort of hang crew. And to have a built in friend group at any of those conferences that you go to, it's just infinitely more fun because you're not on an island. They will hear about something, they will invite you to the thing. You end up just being much more engaged with what's going on and just like the kind of the magic and the serendipity of those conversations just happening by spending time with people that do this stuff. Most people would say that's like the most valuable thing that they get from conferences is the networking. In fact, we had a comment on a YouTube video recently from someone who's never been to an accounting conference and they said they're just so expensive they can't justify the cost or what is the ROI besides networking? And it's a little bit of everything, but there's also a world where the networking is also worth that. And it's funny folks mindsets. It's just like it's a very big spectrum from the types of folks who will commit time and money to the big picture things that are not like the daily triage, but they will commit time and money on things that they think will probably ultimately be beneficial, but there's not going to be a very clear, very explicit ROI to it, maybe ever. And then you got people on the other end of the spectrum where it's just really, really hard to ever justify deviating from the stack of projects on the desk just because you know exactly what that project right there is worth to you. And any time away there's a very clear dollars and cents towards what does that actually mean? It's not only that I'm not able to work on that project and so I'm not getting paid for that, is that I'm like out of pocket while I'm doing that. So there's like this double whammy of the ultimate cost to me of going out and investing in this thing. I mean, I think everybody can agree that it is a balancing act, but never investing in those things almost certainly isn't the right answer. Right? Like you are ultimately investing in yourself and the shortcuts that access to your peers and the folks at these conferences can afford you. Let me tell you about an app that perfectly combines three very important things that normally you need a bunch of different tools for the app. It is one of today's sponsors, ClientHub. Let me tell you the three things they combine. Number one, an amazing client experience. Because the whole portal experience, the client facing stuff in Client Hub, it was actually thought out from day one. It wasn't like this bolt on where most practice management systems are like, we're going to make the ultimate operating system for your accounting firm. And then later on they're like, oh, it looks like we all need to have client portals. Let's make that now. ClientHub was built from the ground up to be super easy for the client to use. That is trifecta point number one. Trifecta point number two is it is also super easy for you to use because my gosh, do practice management systems now require a PhD in learning how to use A super complex thing. Not Client Hub. They're keeping it simple in like a good way. Third part of that trifecta, deep bookkeeping workflow. Sorry tax people, sucks to be you. Client Hub very good for bookkeeping, controllership, cast, stuff like that because it's got super deep integrations with Quickbooks and Xero and even has like some built in month end close automation stuff now so you can sign off on like all the, all like each account on the financial statements like right inside a client hub. Very cool. They're taking it to a very different level of depth specifically for bookkeeping than most practice management system. And you get all that in one platform Buddy. What more do you want me to do for you? Worth checking out if you're doing accounting bookkeeping stuff. Learn more about Client Hub. See the link down in the show notes. In a world where there's more just AI over hypery than ever before and you see a new landing page every day that's like oh this sounds exciting. But then you can't actually tell if there's anything real going on there. When all that's going on, it's nice to know what things actually work, what are real, what firms are like actively using and having success with. I'll give you one tool, Stanford Tax Buddy. They were kind of first aboard like the AI tax workflow hype train, but they're now, I don't know, three or four years in. I know I probably well over a hundred accounting firms that love Stanford Tax is a really, really good solution for better organizing your 1040 work. It gives you a single place where you can pile all those documents in. It creates this like AI checklist based on the prior year tax work of exactly what items we need from the client. Then I can just chuck all those documents into one place regardless of how they come and it'll automatically check those items off the checklist and then give me like an actual like work paper in the cloud as an alternative to an Adobe Acrobat PDF. Whether your clients want to work with another portal or not, there's a lot of people that are just now using Stanford Tax internally because it saves you a pile of time on the just the managing of the documents and all that stuff. It's a great company, they've been around an AI accounting solution that's actually really really good. Worth checking out if you do 1040 work. Learn more about Stanford Tax. Check out the link down in the show notes. This is, this is more of a thing for firm leaders probably than folks working in Firms, maybe not. I don't know. I've got so many examples from running my firm of where if I could have just had the right conversation or two, it genuinely would have saved me a year. Like we're going into renewal season right now, right? Like things that folks have told me about the little changes they made to their renewals that made a huge difference. Where I'm like, dang, had I learned that three years prior, like the entire business would have been more profitable. Tech selection is huge, huge, huge. It's very hard to run a firm and like properly navigate tech selection without having access to other people that use the tools. Not only the tools that you use today, but the people who use the tools you're considering moving to. Like, that's immensely valuable. I've shared the story before of putting a 40 person firm on the wrong platform. And it took over a year and so, so much money. And then we got two months into rolling out that platform and we realized like, we've made the wrong decision. Like now what do you do? Do you admit to the whole team who's been complaining along the way that they were right all along and we did choose the right platform? Do you go to a different platform? Do you try to stick it out even though you know that is like the wrong platform? Especially for the big high stakes decisions that you do in a firm? There's no replacement for like access to peers that can help you navigate those conversations. And this is where attending my first accounting conference, I think it was zero con in San Diego in 2018, like was probably the single biggest turning point in my career because I sat down at the breakfast on the first day and there were three other people at the table and there was like 70 year old lady there who was like, I'm thinking about starting a bookkeeping business. There was another lady there that ran like a team of 10, which at the time that was about the size of my cast practice. And then there was another guy there who did just like outsourced accounting for companies and was doing it for this like massive medical company. And it was in the exact same space that I was trying to build a cast practice. And he was serving like the biggest, most impressive company there was. And all these people were sitting at a table eating some sort of like fufu chia pudding because it was at Zero Con. And just the conversation going from person to person and realizing like how rich the knowledge of each of these people sitting at this table were and how much I had to learn from every single one of them. And it's not until you see the wildly different journeys that other people take that you realize just how narrow your own lived experience is. And, like, there's no replacement for living it. But to, like, get a peek into what these other people have done, it just gives you a massively more clear kind of framework to make decisions from. Like, not unlike listening to the podcast. Like, folks that will, you know, listen to the podcast and get the confidence to go out and run their own firm or just feel like they're more plugged into the ecosystem and the way that people think about running firms. Because you listen to the podcast. I mean, all of my expertise, like, it's the product of having those conversations with people, right? And even when people come to me today, still I get probably coaching emails. Coaching emails, probably every day, like, can you come and help coach my firm? And my honest answer to those people is, like, the way better and way cheaper alternative to coaching is just having some friends that do this stuff, too, that you can bounce ideas off of. Like, I'm. I. There's. There's no better coach to you than the person that is in a very. In very similar circumstances. And, like, even somebody in my position where I talk with a lot of people and I see a lot of things like, can I coach firms? Absolutely. But the infinitely more useful thing is to have a very specific targeted question and chuck it into a group of 100 other accounting firms and be like, oh, yeah, no, we tried that hosting provider. Here's what worked and here's what didn't. They're going to try to upsell you on this, do this, don't do that. Yeah, we rolled out this platform, but it doesn't integrate with the system that you're talking about in the way that you think it will. We kind of went down the same trap. And, like, these conversations will save you so many headaches. I didn't realize that this was even a thing and that anybody did this until I went to. Started going to accounting conferences. And the people I met were just incredibly open and, like, so helpful, and you could ask them questions. And if, like, if you could get over the social anxiety and the just kind of awkwardness that is meeting new people. There were just so many gold nuggets I was picking up, and I very quickly returned from that conference, and I'm like, okay, maybe I should start hanging out on social media. Because a few of the folks that I talked to, like, they were hanging out on Twitter at the time, and I'm like, okay, maybe there actually is value to doing this. And this first conference was kind of a domino to opening my eyes to the larger network of people that do this stuff and just how much I had to learn from them. And it's so funny. Like, my. Or maybe three months after that, my partner was like, I can't remember what he said. It was something like a kind framing of telling me that I'd all of a sudden become a know it all. And not necessarily in a bad way, but it was like, where does this come from? Like, all of a sudden you have this, like, this level of confidence in what you're saying that is like this kind of weirdly extreme conviction almost about these little nuanced things where it's like, how would you even know the answer to that? And I'm like, because I've talked to this person, that person, that person. I could tell you they did this. This other thing happened. And this person tried this different approach. This other thing happened. And so based on all of that, with where we're at right now, this probably makes sense for us. And it was like, I was probably early 30s at that point, and it was just like, condensing all this sage wisdom from all these other people where had my partners had those same conversations, they would have come to the same conclusion that I did. But my level of thought had just, like, elevated so quickly from having those conversations. And that would never have started. And had I not gone to an accounting conference. But nobody's gonna go to an accounting conference to say, like, oh, I hope that a magical moment happens over pancakes, right? Like, that's not how we make these decisions. You go through the agenda and you're like, who's gonna speak there? What are they gonna talk about? Is that relevant to me? Is that not relevant to me? And I think that's a fair place to start. Like, after all, like, every conference is kind of designed with a different type of person, a different type of firm in mind. And so you gotta find the one that is the best fit, fit for you. But there's also just so much value in showing up. Like. Like we talk about with social media. You can't guess, like, what positives can come out of these things. Oh, my gosh. I've seen this so much with the events we've been hosting lately, where it's like every single dinner we run. It's crazy. Like, the stories that come out of it, from firms merging to hiring people to, like, there's just so many cool stories that seem to come out of every single event. And that's just like the tactical business outcomes. The bigger thing is probably like making new friends and leaving the room with, or leaving the event with a few people's numbers, especially if it's like the local events that we're hosting. And so they are local friends. But it's just one of those things where the only way to ensure that those things never happen to you is if you never actually show up. Like, if you're never there. And that for me is still the biggest, the biggest upside of going to accounting conferences. And maybe there's like, maybe there's a bit of privilege in that where you're like, oh, isn't, isn't, isn't that nice? You got all the time in the world to be able to go to accounting conferences and swing open the doors to serendipity. But you've got to be living like somewhere in the middle there, right? Because the right answer is not to never lean into high leverage opportunities where, you know, meeting somebody that can be the partner to like to you and kind of be the other half to that thing that you don't enjoy doing and ultimately find a more fun version of running the business. Cause now you've got the right people around you. Like, these things don't happen if we are just like cranking in the basement by ourselves. Like, which was the first 12 years of my career. I was just in a vacuum doing stuff that I thought was cool, never talking to anybody about it. And in hindsight, just, you know, spending so much time trying to find and make my own solutions for things where there were already off the shelf solutions, thinking through the same problems that a lot of other firms have had thought through. But, like, they were already on the other side of that and they had wisdom that would help me not have to waste all that time trying to navigate the same decisions. Okay, can we talk about sneaky, backdoor conference stuff? So at a conference like Intuit Connect, if you're eating on your own dime, you're doing it wrong, buddy. There's a meal for everyone where somebody's footing the bill. And I am still an accountant, so I appreciate that. But also there are ways that you can basically get your entire conference comped. So ways to get a free ticket. The easiest way is helping out a software company. So the biggest problem software companies have at an event like this is they will have a whole bunch of sales reps, but these sales reps aren't accountants and they're still struggling and learning to speak accountant. And so the very best Sales rep. In many ways, standing at a booth is somebody that runs an accounting firm who is a raving fan of an app. So go through your app stack right now. Who do you absolutely love? Like, what do you have in your stack? Like, if you had to pick a single app, in fact, I would challenge you right now. What is the app in your app stack that you are the biggest raving fan of? Drop that thing down in the comments. Post what that app is. If you do that right now, I guarantee at least one person will find that app who had not otherwise discovered it. There's gonna be a lot of things, like, right tool and like, very unique, like kind of one of one sort of apps. What is your favorite tool? Post that down in the comments. But then next time you think about going to a conference that this company's gonna be at, shoot them an email and be like, hey, like, do you want help work in the booth? Like, offer to work the booth for a day or for a half day. Sponsors or exhibitors get a certain number of exhibitor badges that they can distribute for the people that work on their team. And it's not the worst thing to, like, go and hang out for a half day and talk about a platform that you love. Like, it's actually kind of fun and you meet a whole bunch of cool accountants along the way. But that's a great way to, like, get your foot in the door and get a ticket for free. Some of these events, like, especially the big national events, which are the most expensive AICPA events, you can pay over two grand just for a ticket. Connect is usually somewhere between one and two grand. We'll talk about more regional events too, here to wrap up. But easiest way to get a free ticket is probably offering to help out a software vendor. Second easiest. I don't know if easiest is the right word. Second way is speaking. So most of these conferences, they have a sort of time window where there's a call for speakers and you propose, you know, speaking session theme, and you give them a session title, session description, and then it goes to some council of elders and they decide who's gonna speak and who's not gonna speak. And you would think that there was a more comprehensive vetting process than just people chucking titles and session descriptions into an intake form. But I can tell you, even for the most big and impressive conferences, the process is no more sophisticated than that. I shouldn't say that AICPA actually has a more complicated process for how speakers and themes and all that get approved. But Most conferences, it really is just like pitching them on what you can talk about. It doesn't mean that you identify as this amazing speaker. Most people aren't. They're technicians. And so they're kind of just sharing what they do and what they're passionate about. And those are the best talks, like the super polished, slick, like, keynote speaker, like there's a place for that. But the coolest talks at conferences like this are just the practitioners sharing what they actually do. And so if you're thinking about potentially doing this and speaking, try to find something specific where you have experience in the specific thing, maybe serving a specific type of person, using tech in a very specific way, and put that specific thing out there. Those are the talks that are usually most interesting. Especially as most larger conferences, they have different tracks that kind of fragment, you know, like this Connect conference. You got so many different things going on at the the same time. There's room for very specific talks. Those are actually the best talks. A conference where there's a single track, usually they will have more control over, like what those sessions are and they want more generally interesting things. But a conference like Connect, where you got a whole ton of different tracks, that's what they're looking for, is like the weird, unique stuff. Like, what's the unique experience you have that you can share. You get a free conference ticket. Generally. I haven't seen a conference yet that doesn't give you a free ticket for that. Boo. You know what's the worst, man? When you hire somebody and they start working for you and you're like, I thought this person knew stuff. The number of times I've been hoodwinked by somebody that interviews well and they have umpteen years of experience, and you pull them in and you're like, what? You don't. What? You don't even know your stuff, man. This isn't gonna work. Let me tell you what one of this episode's sponsors, Cloud Accountant Staffing, is doing about that. So Cloud Accountant Staffing, they help accounting firms find talent on around the world, be it the Philippines, South Africa, Latin America. And they have an online portal where you can go out and see folks that they have recruited, schedule interviews with those people directly on their platform. And one of the things now that every single one of those people have is a collection of assessments. I'm looking at one right here. Assessments for business tax, for individual tax, for critical thinking, for understanding instructions, their personality type. And so many of these things, like individual tax, this person I'm looking at, they're in the 93rd percentile. And so cloud account staffing, they have a huge volume of folks that they have go through these assessments and they hand pick the highest performers and they serve them up for you to make your wildest dreams come true. Cloud account staffing's backstory they're actually ran an accounting firm, hired some offshore folks, had an amazing experience and then just started helping other accounting firms do the same. Interested? I thought you might be. Check out the link down to cloud accountant staffing in the show notes. Hey, quick word from one of today's sponsors. Me. Me. Yes, I run a community realize that is for accounting firm owners and realize it's kind of the secret behind how I've done all of my content and been able to like financially turn thought leadership into a business. About a hundred firm owners in there realize is a systematic way to build connections with other peer firm owners. It's not a framework for how to run a firm. It's a way to introduce you to other super cool firm owners. Right now we're putting together small groups so you can have a group of like 5, 6, 7 other firm owners just like you that you meet with every single month run very similar firms. Having this for me, totally transformed firm running my North Star. Like my goal for you coming into this group is to make a new best friend, somebody that runs a firm because that was what I needed in my journey. The whole community is built around that. It's called realize Link down in the show notes if you want to learn more. Getting paid, it's not great. Some conferences will pay like a pittance. Some conferences will cover a bit of travel. It depends on like you have keynote level talks, then you have like breakout level talks and you have panels which are sometimes another like layer beneath that. It's not a great way to make a living, I'll tell you that. In fact you can't. In fact I can tell you as someone who will speak at 70 events this year, I mean the only way to actually make money speaking is doing the keynotes. But accounting conferences generally the big ones at least they all go out and they source their keynotes from mainstream keynote speaking lists, which is just a bummer. As someone who like can speak to like the accountant condition very specifically but can also do keynotes. I've sat in so many of those keynotes. Oh great example conference last year they had a big like mainstream AI speaker go up in front of me and they were like the gist of the talk was it was an hour long talk and the gist of it was, here's the thing, in 18 months time, AI is going to be doing what all of you people do. That's it. See you later. Thanks for having me. And then I got to go on stage right after them. And it's like this person does not know the first thing about what we do. They know that like they're an AI researcher and that's cool. And so they have like their own sort of perspective. But everybody in the room is like, what do I do now? Like it did not feel particularly actionable. Like there's a cool version of keynote speakers. Like Kinect always has really cool keynote speakers. Like Queen Latifah's here this year. Last year they had freaking. Oh man, who do they have? Last year I think they had Serena Williams was Adam Grant and Ryan Reynolds all in one year. And so like there's stuff like that where it's like cool cause you're just a fan and it's fun to be there. But unfortunately like the bigger accounting conferences, when you go to those keynotes, like they're just the bigger, more general, more inspirational stuff. And then it's the keynotes where you get more the relevant to you content. And if you are applying to speak, like that's generally where that's gonna be is in the breakouts, the smaller tier accounting conferences. That's not usually, that's oftentimes not the case. They will like you'll have someone like me or someone in the industry that will do a keynote. Cause they just don't have Serena Williams money. Right. A third way to get a ticket for free is to be on like the council either of the software company putting together these events or sort of like the board or panel of folks that actually work to organize. So a lot of these events get pulled together. Like Intuit Connect is not the case. But a lot of smaller events get pulled together by volunteers. Like people that are just contributing their skills to make it happen. That's expensive in a different way. Right. But it does get you in the door on the cheap and you are creating something that is very cool. Like as someone who hosts events, I can tell you in 2025, like there's still nothing like in person experiences. Like I feel like we still haven't recovered from COVID where so much of work and all that just happens online. Like it's almost an inconvenience when you're like, I gotta meet with a client in person. This is weird. Like couldn't we just do this over zoom and they may literally live across the street, but you just don't do that anymore. And so to get a group together in person, especially a super high context group, and for the folks that haven't done this before, I think this is probably the missing link for maybe why it's not exciting is when I go to like a kids thing and I have to talk to other dads, I'm like, I would rather be anywhere else right now. I am an introvert. Like, that's not a fun thing to me. When I go to an accounting thing and I'm surrounded by a bunch of other accounting people, this small talk is paper thin. Before you get to the thing that you can both geek about. And then it's like two hours goes by and you're like, oh my gosh, like that was a really fun conversation. And that's just what it is like at accounting events because everybody does has so much in common. Like you just blow past the small talk and you get into really cool, really powerful conversations quickly. And there is nowhere else in the world where that can happen. Like you can have people that support you in what you do and can be interested and all that. But let's be real, at the end of the day, you're still an accountant. And that's only interesting to so many people to get a room full of accounting leaders and they can all just geek on. You know, the problems that they deal with every single day, that's, that's really fun and super energizing. Those are three ways to come up with free tickets, supporting a software vendor, speaking, being part of kind of the running of the event. Oh, I also have a fourth way of getting into a conference without a ticket is just going there but not actually going in the conference. There will be hundreds of people at Connect here who are here but not actually going in the conference. They're here meeting with people, they're doing all sorts of things. They just can't cross over that threshold into the conference. And that like there's a ton of ways to get value from this stuff. Especially if you're just trying to meet with a bunch of people that'll be here without ever going into the conference. Last thought on event size, because Intuit Connect is about as big as it gets in the US at the other end of the spectrum, you've got all sorts of small, little, like smaller ones are usually more CPE oriented I think, but you can go down to like state CPA societies and more little kind of local and regional events. And I would say Those are cool in different ways. If you're part of kind of the online accounting firm group think bubble, which is completely a thing, and we think that it is all of accountingdom, but it is such a itty bitty tiny little part of accountingdom. Like, I may have shared this statistic on the podcast, but for perspective, we went back 30 days on my LinkedIn, so I have almost 60,000 LinkedIn followers. I. I think my posts consistently have more engagement than anybody else in the accounting industry on LinkedIn. I don't think that's an outrageous thing to say, but we went back last 30 days, used a tool to pull every single person that had commented or reacted or liked or anything to all of my posts for the last 30 days. How many people do you think that is? Because you go on LinkedIn and it feels massive. You're like, this is the entire world right here. This is pretty wild. Every single person for 30 days. That was only 2,200 people. Now there's like 10 or 20 times as many people that will see it but not engage. Right? Like, they just kind of lurk, but that's not that many people. And the accounting industry, it's so much bigger. And I find that there's kind of this, like, whole separate group of people that just go to the regional stuff, and those people generally are offline and they're not super plugged into everything that's happening. Like, the people that listen to this podcast, the people that watch my YouTube videos, you all are like, in the top 5% or less in terms of how solutions are, where you are of, like, the different platforms that are out there and all that. Most people, like, you go to a state CPA Society event and there will be three or four exhibitors there that I've never heard of. Like, nobody that said Intuit Connect is at these state CPA Society events. And people walk up to the little table of what they're doing, and it's these kind of little regional companies, and they will think that they're the only person on the planet that does that thing. And it's like, it's great for the exhibitors because it's like an instant sale, but the folks who are at these smaller events, like, they're just not plugged into the grapevine in the same way that folks who are hanging out online are. And there's downsides to that. There's also upsides to that. Right? Like, sometimes I wish I could be that kind of unplugged person that, like, was not surrounded by so much noise and, and you see a tool and you're like, yeah, what about these other 14 tools? I know about that do a version of that. Like how do I make sense of all that? Like in some ways it would be nice if, if we were less aware of some things, but those events, I like to like find more local folks and just have more conversations about local things that are going on. You'll find in my opinion the conversations are not quite as high level from a firm strategy and forward thinkingness. Like it is definitely a more traditional subset of firms, but they still have their value and it still can be very, very energizing conversations because it's rare to sit in a room of people that do exactly what you do. Right now you've been hearing it at the end of every podcast. Like we are running putting together a run of 14 workshops that we self hosted from scratch that I think are the best of both worlds. Where it's like all super local people, but also super progressive people because you're only there if you've heard about it from the podcast, from YouTube, from my social media newsletters, stuff like that. It's terrifying. It's the biggest financial bet we've ever made on anything. It might work. I'll be honest, it's still like woo hoo. Like people are definitely signed. Like hundreds of people have signed up, which is amazing. But when you're doing 14 events, you need more than, you know, just a couple hundred people. And even just in the last couple of weeks, bunch of people have signed up. Super appreciate it. If you are nearby, totally turn up. Like you would not believe the cool things that happen just from being in a room with a whole bunch of other cool people. If you're a little bit further away, this is what always blows me away. A huge percentage of people are flying in for these. So like if you're the guy in Dallas and you see the thing in Austin and you're like, I'll go when he brings it to Dallas. No, hop in the cart, get some friends, load up the van, head down to Austin. There's a guy in Australia right now that is bawling his eyes out that he's got to fly all the way across the world to come to one of these things. I don't know if anybody will actually do that, but I am constantly surprised at how far people will come from. So if that's you and you've signed up, thank you. Amazing. If it's not, check out the link in the show notes. I honestly could not even list all the cities off the top of my head right now. And that's not just because I'm in Vegas. So if you're thinking about doing this for the first time, definitely check out my run of events we're putting together. But conferences, they've genuinely changed my life. There is still like an ROI and a cost trade off sort of thing to do there, but I super recommend you doing it, especially if you can do it with a buddy. That makes it much easier as well. Anything you'd add to that? If you're a conference nerd, drop some tips down in the comments, probably around like conference selection because that's probably the first thing that people get paralyzed about when they're thinking about doing that thing for the first time. Right gang? Thanks for coming Hanging today. Catch you in the next one. Hey, real quick podcast friends. I'm coming to a city near you running a bunch of live events. Before the end of the year. We're going to be at Intuit Connect in Vegas. We're going to be in Toronto and Atlanta, Austin, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Louisiana, Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago, Washington, dc, Philadelphia and Boston. If you are there or anywhere near there within a half tank's gas up there, buddy, I want to see you. We put together some super cool events that I'm very excited about all around getting you and your team aligned heading into 2026. The biggest problem I had running a firm was I had an abundance of ideas but was always blocked by trying to get my team bought into those ideas and everybody working in the same direction. And it's why I believe the biggest way I can help you is actually getting your team inspired, getting everyone energized for the year to come. So it's not just you, but also because these are live events, you're going to meet a whole bunch of other local practitioners as well, which can almost certainly unlock some cool things for you. I'm especially looking at you solo firm runners and side hustlers where your team effectively is, the people you meet along the way, the relationships that you build, the people you can go to with questions when you get started, stuck on this or that. Going to be a super fun experience. Including for some of these events we're recording like a live interactive version of the podcast where you'll get to be part of the conversation. Very, very excited for these. I want to see you there. To learn more, head over to jasononfirms.com events and I hope to see you there.