Got 10 minutes? That’s all it takes to sharpen your practice! In this episode of the Bissett Bullet podcast, Martin Bissett delivers two actionable insights to help you grow your firm without the overwhelm.

Is conference season overwhelming or just a waste of time?

If you’re not sure what you’re getting out of the events you attend, you’re not alone. In this episode of The Bissett Bullet, we show you how to turn any accounting conference into a worthwhile, commercially focused trip.

Part 1: Conferences Without Direction

Accounting conferences are bigger, busier, and more frequent than ever. But too many firms attend without a clear purpose, just grabbing merch, sitting in a few sessions, and going home unchanged. Without a plan, it’s easy to walk away no better off than when you arrived.

Part 2: Make Every Conference Count

I walk you through three practical steps to ensure your next conference delivers value. First, set a commercial objective - one sentence that defines success. Second, pre-arrange meetings before you arrive, so your time is maximised. Third, focus on three key takeaways you want to bring home. That’s how you cut through the noise and make your attendance worthwhile.

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ProNation is a global community for accountants and bookkeepers that gives you peer-to-peer support, expert guidance, and proven strategies to run a more profitable, efficient, and impactful firm. Led by Will Farnell, Lucy Cohen, and Martin Bissett, it helps practices of all sizes grow with confidence and better serve their clients.

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In association with CPA Trendlines

Is it conference season where you are? Are you looking forward or dreading attending the shows you think you should be at? Is there a way to cut through the overwhelm?

Of course there is, otherwise I wouldn't be talking about it. This is the Bissett Bullet.

Accounting conferences have been part of the yearly calendar for as long as I can remember, and I'm 27 years in at the time of recording this one. And they have grown in size and scale.

And of course, as technology has taken a much tighter grip on its influence over the accounting profession, then you find that they are increasingly in demand and in supply and in attendance at these conferences.

And sometimes it's the vendors who've got all the talking speaking slots and you have a vast array of vendors to choose from, even on single subjects such as which general ledger software should I use, which practice management software should I use? If I'm going to use outsourcing, which outsourcing company should I use? And you have this wide array of choice.

See, there's five straight away off the top of my head of conferences they have throughout the year and they have more than one, some of them as well. So that's a lot of your time to be taken up.

If you're in the US and that's where our two major audiences are, then you might be going to engage or scaling new heights or QB Connect or zero or other shows are available, of course, something of that nature. Digital CPA perhaps as well. So again, and for those shows, you've got to travel extensively and they're not all held in Vegas.

You perhaps have to travel thousands of miles to get to those over the year.

So if you're going to take all that time away from your practice and you're going to spend all that money on hotels and yes, of course you can claim it back, but nevertheless you're going to do it, what is the point? Because you know what, you don't listen all that well to the talks. I know I'd be the speaker on over 400 of them. You're not always paying attention.

Or maybe that's just me. So what is the point of going? Is it just to get away from the office and to go and get drunk, or is there something more to it than that?

Well, I found that over and over Again, the feedback I get is there was just so much to see. I felt overwhelmed. I didn't really know what to do. But you did manage to collect all the merch, didn't you?

You got around to get on all your T shirts and your mouse mats and your pens and your socks. You got around to that bit. But were you any the wiser as to what you should do to help your practice grow?

Well, as you know in the bullet, what we do is we set up the problem or the concept in the first part and then we bring the solution in the second part. But not before you've heard a word from our sponsors. Do you need more time, money, confidence or a better team? We know your struggles.

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Fourimpactdata.com that's fourimpactdata.com so how do you get the most from attending conferences? Well, here's the bullet. Okay? What I want you to do is to set an objective.

So when you go to the conference you might set the objective to meet friends. That's not what I'm talking about. You might set the objective to, I don't know, throw caution to the wind and go dancing.

That's not what I'm talking about either. I am talking about a commercial objective. So why go to this conference?

Hopefully it's not just to pick up CP or cpd because you could do that anywhere. So that's not the commercial reason either. So surely you must have a reason and an objective for going.

I want to learn about subject matter X. I want to meet vendor Y to be able to find out if this technology is the right fit for my firm, I want you to have a commercial objective. This trip is a successful trip to the, to the conference. If. Fill in that last bit for me, okay?

It's successful if, unlike I said in the first part, it's not as to whether you come back with the number of T shirts or not. It's successful if you now have a solution for your practice management issue.

It's successful if you've come away with five tips for how to get great quality hires going forward and new team members. It's great if.

That's the first thing I want you to do a commercial objective for going to the conference, which is expressed in a single sentence that says this trip is a success if. And then you have your justification. That's the first thing. The second thing is I want you to pre set up meetings before you get there.

Not hope that the person you want to talk to is going to be there. Not hope that they're free when you're free.

Not hope that your paths cross, not hope that you take the buffet at the same time, but rather make sure that you are saying, see you at 2 o' clock on the 5th. I'll meet you at the. And actually have meetings set up.

You could, depending on who's attending and who you look after in your client base, actually set up meetings with clients and prospects as well. But I'm not going that far in today's episode.

All I want to do today is to get you to think commercially about making the most of these journeys so they aren't wasted time.

And you don't just go back to the conference from the conference and go back to exactly what you were doing before, which, which is what we've been doing for 27 years that I've been involved so far. See why I should be in therapy. So on that basis, number one, commercial objective. Number two, set up meetings. And number three, learning points.

I want to come back from the conference knowing what I should be doing about this or about how to increase my fees, how to put a referral system in place, how to get around the new tax legislation that's coming in. What I want you to do is to have those three bullets in your armory before every conference.

And so not only will you enjoy your trip to Vegas for many reasons that we perhaps won't talk about, but you'll come away knowing the things you want to learn about. You got the answers.

You might have some new business opportunities or some referral opportunities as a result of meeting with clients and prospects if they are there.

And also you will have known that your wider commercial objective has been reached because you went to that conference to make it a success for a particular reason, and you'll know whether you've achieved that or not.

Those three things make conferences successful and beat the overwhelm of thinking that you have to do several laps of the vendor area and get around everybody. You don't need to get around everybody, you need to know what you're going for and make sure you get that.

And with that I will thank you as always for listening to the Bullet, wherever you are.

I said earlier that the UK and the US are our main audiences and they are, but we also have listeners around the world and we thank you wherever you are listening to this. And we will ask you always to take a look at the Martin Recommends page. You'll see it in the show notes here.

Martinmissi.com Martin recommends and you'll see what offers are currently available to you as a result of their relationship with me. And no, I don't profit from them, they're just there for you, adding value all the time. And until next time, take care. See you soon. Bye for now.