Conferences and Community

Today, our guest is Dan Hood. This is not Dan’s first time on the show. I think we’re at number three now, but that’s because he is such a great guest, so looking forward to today. Dan—you all know—but Dan is Editor-in-Chief of Accounting Today. He also hosts the Accounting Today Podcast and coming up for year number two, the Firm Growth Forum Conference, which will be May 21st and 22nd of ’24 in San Diego, which I will be at, and looking forward to it. Dan, welcome to The Unique CPA—again!

Thanks for having me back, I’m psyched. At some point, I’m just going to be on every episode just lurking in the background, you know? I could be your Andy Richter. I could be your Ed McMahon.

We need that. That’s a great call. You know what? I think we make a pretty good team. We need to think about that. Alright. But I digress. But I like the Andy Richter and the—because you you did multiple generations there, too.

And I’ll throw this out. I’m worried that the digressions are coming fast and furious. Andy Richter played a CPA on a TV show. His TV show. He was a CPA. That was his character, and they actually reached out to us, like, because they were like, can we have copies of Accounting Today on his desk? 

Really?!

Yeah. He was a tax preparer and a CPA. 

And was that called Andy or something? I kinda remember it.

It was Andy Richter Controls the Universe.

Okay.

And it lasted for, like, 6 episodes. It did not do terribly well, but…

He is funny, though. Alright. So we’re going to work on that.

I think they actually, they got the accounting well. I mean, they understood it. They had a whole, thing about tax season, and they were—they understood the world. They knew the life. So they’d done their research.

Were they putting a negative spin on tax season at all, which we see a lot of people do, or…?

Oh, I would say they were putting an accurate spin on tax season. He was busy, he working late, so.

Alright. I’m going to have to go watch those 6 of that. So it’s, anything with the name, with accountant theme or accountant in it, you know, we all as accountants, we all have to watch—Ben Affleck in The Accountant. 

Exactly. 

And then what was it? There was a there was, I think it was even maybe a BBC show, was it BBC? There was some kind of sitcom out there about people working in an accounting firm. I never saw it. Is that something you heard of, or no?

No. I gotta look it up. That’s cool.

Wait. You’re the trivia guy. You’re supposed to know these things. So I come to you for this.

I’m strictly North American trivia!

Alright. Well, I might be wrong too on the BBC end. Alright. Let’s get back on track here. 

We had a topic.

We did. I think we do have a topic. Also at this stage, we are going to talk today about the importance of community, the importance of getting together as a profession, as professionals, the importance of being able to rely on each other and help each other, all that kind of stuff. And we’ll see where the tangents go because we will have tangents for sure.

But this one just came to me this morning and you and I talked briefly before we started recording, but honestly, everything seemed to change for me and the importance of the profession and all these things that happened when I started hosting The Unique CPA podcast, which is almost four and a half years ago now. And so you’ve been doing it a lot longer than I have—I’m not saying you’re older than me, I’m just saying you’ve been doing it longer than me—and so I thought let’s just have a discussion around what podcasting at the beginning has done for, you know, what we feel is done for us personally and what we think it helps, you know, maybe others in the profession, you know. When did The Unique—The Unique. That’s mine—when did the Accounting Today Podcast start?

I think just about 5 years ago. 

Oh wow!

No no, so we’ve been doing, I don’t know, a couple of guests for a long time. Maybe as long as 10 years, but it hadn’t been a formal thing. It was sort of whenever we had, you know, someone we were talking to, but sort of more formally, I’d say 5 or 6 years ago. So not that much older than The Unique CPA.

Oh, wow. Alright. And then for me personally, the podcast has just built this, you know, community—community, we’ll probably say a lot today—that I never would have been part of, never met half these people—more than half that I know today. Which for me is extremely important that that I’ve been able to developed these friendships and community with people. Do you see something similar? Has his podcasting, you know, changed you?

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, and those relationships are amazing. And you wouldn’t think it because you’re like, well, it’s a it’s such a technological thing, right? We get on a virtual call and we you know, talk through screens and everything like that, and then it all gets sent out to the digital file that people listen alone in their car or in where they’re working out and stuff like that. You wouldn’t think that it would create that connection, but it really does. Part of it is for us as hosts, you’re in people’s ears. You’re literally like, they’re alone with you when they’re listening to in many cases. It’s not a communal activity. But there’s sort of your voices in their ears and and people talk like, I listen to you all the time, and you’re like, I don’t talk to you all the time, and then you’re like, no, actually, I guess I do, I just didn’t realize I was talking to you. 

And so it’s neat. It really does create that sort of and I, you know, I have this way with podcasts that I listened to, same sort of things. Like, you feel like you know the host, you feel a connection to them. But there’s also the whole process of just talking to somebody for 20 minutes to 30 minutes on in-depth on a topic, that just creates a little bit of a connection, right, or as you said, a community. That feeling of, I know this person, we have a connection. And that’s huge for any profession, I think, but for accounting, I think, particularly because so much of an accountant’s work is we talk about the client relationship and how important that is in interacting with clients, but really most of the time, the work you’re doing for clients, they’re not there, right? You’re alone in your office.

Right. 

You’re doing your work on your own. You’re not having that communication, that interaction. and so any of that is great. So, yeah, the podcast, just in terms of opening up my understanding, just basic understanding of all the issues in accounting, but also creating a lot of relationships with both people I’m interviewing and and people who are listening. I’m sure you’ve had the same thing.

Oh, yeah. For sure. There’s many podcasts I point to as, like, that specific conversation had such a big impact on me and the direction I’ve gone for the last four and a half years now, that it never would have happened without somebody else suggesting to me that we start a podcast and somehow deciding I should be the one to host it I never considered in a million years until they said it. So, yeah, it’s been big for me, personally.

I want to ask real quick about yours. You said, you know, for 10 years, maybe doing it overall, but more structured the last five. If I recall correctly, when you first started doing it for the longest time, you actually had people in studio, with you, is that right? 

Yep. Yep. That was primarily, I think for the first 2 years or so. That was most of it. We would do occasional ones when we really started a lot of them were over the phone. But when we started more formally, as you said, you know, that 5, 6 years ago, we tried to have everybody into the, only have people into the studio, just for audio quality. Audio quality’s gotten so much better, particularly through the pandemic, everyone’s got better. Microphones, everything got better. Just the platforms, right? Zoom, we happen to use Zoom, but its audio quality is much better. There’s others. Everyone’s improved their quality that way. So, yeah, we used to have it in person, and that was, as you say, that was great to have the person there because that in the end is what it is, right, it’s all about creating these conversations and talking to people.

And so even now when we do things over Zoom, every once in a while, our producers would be like, you know, if you want to turn off your camera, that’ll help preserve bandwidth. You know, sometimes you’re talking to someone and they’re remote or their, you know, that are on Wi-Fi in a train station or something like that. And our producer will say, you know, if you want to turn your camera off, and I’m always wanting to say, no, no, no, don’t. I want to be able to see them. I want to see the person I’m talking to, just because it’s a very different experience to talk to a disembodied voice coming out of a digital speaker, but when you’re actually looking and talking to someone, it creates a very different feel. And I think that that feeling, that conversational feeling, translates even for people, as I said, who are listening in their car or through their you know, their headphones while they work out, you still get that sense of, I’m listening to a real conversation.

Yeah. I agree completely. It’s the same thing: Somebody will say I can turn my video off if that helps. I’m like, no, no, no, no. I like seeing the facial expressions. I like that even though we’re not together, it feels like we’re connected together right now. And I think that’s just such a I agree with you that I think it actually translates into a different conversation with being able to see each other. So that’s important. 

So let’s pivot a little bit. I’m going to get to some more things on the whole aspect of getting together—that’s one reason I asked that question about that. But before we even get to that, there’s other forms of now being able to communicate to educate. You know, podcasting isn’t the only one. You know, we’ve seen, you know, a bunch of people doing TikTok and having their YouTube channels and just social media in general from, you know, Twitter—I guess, X now, which I don’t understand that whole change, but that’s not—I’m not gonna do that.

Yeah, no one understands that.

And it’s not like, x.com. It’s still twitter.com. Isn’t that terrible?

I think so. Yeah. That’s weird.

Oh man, I can go on a hundred different tangents in a second.

That’ll be my 5th appearance. We’ll be dissecting that, why it makes no sense.

But so all the social media and all these platforms, I mean, what have you seen from that? Do you think this has helped the profession, helped the individuals? Is this an area that has, you know, helped community building even, through social media and that? What have you seen in there?

Absolutely. Yes. I would agree. 100%. I think that is a—as you talk about all these things, I’ve been thinking about what they’re really, all those things are different ways of carrying on a conversation within the profession, right? Our podcasts, I mean, our podcasts are literally conversations, but they’re also a conversation with the audience and with people out in the profession.

But social media does the same thing. When people send out TikToks, you know, debunking weird tax information that’s going out, in other TikToks, right? That’s a conversation. Back and forth, and it’s spreading. Social media, same way, X, conversation. You see it all the time when people are responding and sharing and responding and and then keep them going in conversation just rolling through Twitter threads. Twitter threads. I can’t even call them an X thread—an X thread. 

It sounds like a superhero there. We’re doing X threads.

Right?

It’s the X Men threads.

Marvel’s going to start suing at some point. But all those ways, even blogs, right? I mean, just accounting firm blogs are ways of having conversations that for a long time, there was no—and it wasn’t just the accounting profession—but nobody had ways to have these kind of conversations, right? There weren’t that many ways to create a broad conversation. And now we have all this, we have all the different kinds of social media that can be videoed, it can be written, and it can be podcasts like we’re doing. 

Then there’s, you know, the more traditional form, right, of, you know, getting together in conferences. We’re going to get together in meetings, getting together for lunch, whatever the case may be. Just finding new ways to have conversations within the profession or around the profession, I think is a huge, huge, huge thing for everybody involved. It’s just, the more we can talk about what we’re all doing and what’s moving things forward, and what’s holding us back, I think it’s great. I think that having all these different ways to do it is great.

Yeah. I agree. I mean, I look at people like, you know, Jason Staats with his social media network he’s created. And now a platform for people to get together. It’s all about people getting together. You create it with social media, but then it expands beyond that. Duke Alexander Moore with his TikTok and his 4 million followers on that. Lorilyn Wilson and her TikTok.

That’s who I think of. (Duke Alexander Moore). He’s all about correcting. He was, that’s why he got on, was to correct all those, it’s like, oh, there’s TikToks full of tax laws, and I need to fix that. 

Right. Oh, yeah. And same thing, I think Lorilyn Wilson does the same thing with, TikTok, I think, as well as where she is. And so all these things. But then, you know, I probably wouldn’t have have met any of them without podcasts, without social media, and now I’ve got to meet all of them. But the cool thing is that we go from recognizing people on the podcast and these other mediums to feeling, as you mentioned, kinda feeling like we know them, because you see them so much and you can relate to them, and especially if they’re doing something that, you know, you’re passionate about. 

But for me, you know, we did this, we built this community with The Unique CPA during the pandemic. But then when I got back out to the real world, to conferences, that’s where these relationships really blossomed then. That’s where you really get to know being out and being able to hug somebody at a conference has made such a difference. And so the one of the things that we really wanted to talk today about, was conferences. So we’re actually to the subject now. But I think we set that up.

2 to 3 [topics] later.

Exactly. You know, it was 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon or whatever, we got to the conference now. And so from a community standpoint—conferences in person, I just don’t think you can beat it. I think from that standpoint, conferences, I tell people all the time, conferences have changed my life. Getting together with people. And so let’s talk about real quick and, you know, about your conference because there’s a couple things. The Firm Growth Forum, you had it for the first time last year in San Diego. It is going to be again this year in San Diego. Kinda give me the origin of, you know, coming up with this idea, and of the conference. And did it take a year, 2 years, 6 months? And how did it come about?

So we sort of—you pointed towards some of what sparked it was that coming out of the pandemic, our sense was that there was an appetite for getting back together, right? Getting back out, traveling, being willing to get together and and go to professional conferences for all the reasons I think we’re going to get into more deeply in a bit about why they’re great, why they’re so valuable. As you say, that personal interaction seeing people realizing that people have legs, they actually have, an actual leg, not just—

And dimensions!

Yeah! They can move around. That’s huge. We felt there was an appetite for it, and to be honest and give full credit to Accounting Web, because they had had a conference, the year before we started and had done very well with it, and they weren’t able to continue it. And so we said, you know, that’s great. We’ve been thinking about this, they did a great job of it, and they sort of proved the case. And so we jumped in to say, you know, this there is a a space for accountants to come together and talk about all the issues that matter to them, and to focus very specifically on on growth, which for us, that was the topic we think that is a big driver for a lot of accounting firms. 

We saw, I’ll maybe take a little bit of step back, saw, as people became more comfortable traveling and getting back together out, meeting up in person, we saw some of the great accounting shows out there, and there really are some great ones. They became really big, right? One of the things was they came back and they wanted to be really big. And so you know, you think of the Engages and the Scaling New Heights, which I think there’s, I get a lot out of those shows and I really like them, but they’re huge. And we saw, they have a lot there. Their size is one of the things that makes them great, but it also rules out some other things, right?

And we thought, you know, a smaller, little bit more intimate show where people have a lot more chance to talk amongst a smaller, more selected group of people in our case, you know, we’re looking at firm leaders and potentially future firm leaders who are looking to grow firms, you know, from—it’ll depend on your firm size, but, you know—anywhere from 7 million to 20 million to 30 million, whatever the case may be. Because you’re looking to grow when you’re looking to take it from that small firm size up to, just what ends up being a very different level on a different type of accounting firm. And so we’re aiming to have the show be all about that.

And like we said, that fits for a small group of people because then they can share, talk amongst themselves. It’s all about the conversation, right? Everything we’ve been talking about is different forms of conversation, whether it’s a podcast or social media. And, having that live, in-person conversation, right? That’s the ultimate form of conversation is a literal conversation that you have you know, in the corridors of a show. So that’s, I got far afield again.

You’re good.

But that’s what drove it was that sense of, there’s a need for that kind of close interaction at a relatively small show where you have a chance to really talk to a lot of people and have in-depth conversations with people about, and the issues that matter to you and the solutions will help you move forward. And that was what drove us. When we started last year did pretty well, and we’re looking forward to this year as well.

Yeah. You did. And I was very fortunate to be at it last year, very fortunate to actually get to speak a few times last year, and had a great time. But what you said about the just getting together and even the classrooms are great, you learn a lot, but the in-between sessions where you’re just talking to people are as—and you said it—as important, if not more in my opinion. And I can specifically remember at the hotel last year in San Diego, being out on the balcony, having multiple conversations, meeting people I’ve never met before, and just learning things from them and feeling the sense of, really, we probably said it five times already, the sense of community with somebody that, hey. You know? Yeah.

And that’s one of the things when you’re with people, because as professionals, we, especially in the accounting profession, although that’s the only profession I really know. But especially in the accounting profession, we always feel, or often feel, like this is something we’re specifically dealing with ourselves—and nobody else is dealing with this. And how come this other person has everything put together, but I don’t? And then when you’re out there, you find, okay, they struggle with this part of the tax code, or they struggle with managing these people. And so do you see that getting together helps just from a, hey, I really do belong to this community. That’s I think, important.

I’m not alone! Yeah. That’s huge, right? Because, I mean, think about it. If you’re accountants, who do you spend time with? You don’t spend a lot of time with other accountants, you spend a lot of time with your clients who have no idea, right? Half the reason they hire you is they have no idea what you’re doing and how it works and any of that. So there’s a, and I don’t want to call it, you know, the sort of existential loneliness of the accountant, but there’s an element of that, right, of am I doing this right? Am I having this problem because I’m doing something wrong, or because I’m bad at this, or why am I having this problem? Or how do I solve this problem, right, more importantly?

And I think, as you say, when you go and you talk to everybody else, you say, oh, wait. We’re all having this problem. This isn’t me. And if we’re all having this problem, then we can probably all solve it. And I would say that to me is even more important. I mean, I think it’s absolutely no question that that sense of I belong to a profession and all the members of my profession are like me, and we share the same issues and same concerns and the same goals and that sort of stuff. But I think the element you said, you know, that accountants are a lot like other professions, and it is in that case. 

But there’s also an element of where I think it’s very different from other professions, which is that accountants will tell other accountants anything. They love to share what’s going on with them, because they want to make the profession better. I don’t know if it’s a conscious decision, but accountants will tell other accountants things about their business and about how they’re doing things, and what problems they’re having and how they’re solving problems, that in no other profession or industry would people share that way? They would treat everything, all of this as proprietary information, and they would never share. So you could ask an accountant, hey, tell me, show me your business plan. They’d be like, oh, sure. Here it is. And they’ll hand it to you, you know, and say, oh, this is how much revenue we made, and this is how we broke it down. I’m not saying that they’re giving away the store or anything like that, but there is a willingness to share among accountants that is wonderful.

I mean, it’s a—I say it a lot—people have probably heard me say this a lot because I’m constantly surprised by it and delighted. It’s super helpful for me as a journalist, but it’s also to watch accountants share with one another and give each other insights and information, tips and strategies, and best practices, and all that sort of stuff—it’s amazing. And it’s one of the things I love, love most about covering the profession, partially because it makes my job very easy. You know, I don’t have to say would you tell me this and have somebody say, I’m going to tell you that. That’s crazy. Why would I share that with you? You know, that’s how I make my living. 

But accountants are super invested in the profession and super invested in the success of the profession and the success of other accounting firms. And I think it’s great. And you should say that’s what comes out, when you get together, right? The sense, one, I’m not alone because we’re all sharing these these issues, but, two, we’re all sharing solutions on how to solve and to move forward together.

I agree completely. And one of the things that you just said about, you know, the openness to share—sharing your knowledge is kind of a mantra of mine. Because you’re just going to help everybody, and yourself at the same time. If I share the fact that I can educate on research and development tax credits, that’s not going to stop me from getting more business. That’s probably going to help me get more business because they’ll understand that, hey, he’s the expert—or I’ll say our project managers are the experts. I can just talk about it. They actually do the work.

Tri-Merit, full of experts.

Tri-Merit’s the experts. But when you do that, when you share, it just builds everybody up: Hey, I can educate somebody on how they identify saving $500,000 for a tax client. Now they’re not going to be able to do the calcs and everything, but they just now became a hero in that client’s eyes, because they just saved—I’m picking a number—$500,000 on taxes. So there’s nothing wrong with that. It helps everybody, it helps the client, it helps the tax adviser. It helps us.

So I agree completely. And then one other thing on that, because this ties in two things that you said. So social media and sharing? So Logan Graf, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Logan, but Logan’s a YouTuber and on Twitter / X. And I think he started last year, maybe two years ago, where he basically just goes through his financial statement, his personal business financial statement with everybody on YouTube. He’s going to explain: Here’s what we did this last year, here’s the profit we had, here’s the hours we worked, here’s, I mean, all this stuff. And he’s new. He started his firm recently. But there’s so many people that talk about that episode that he puts out on YouTube. 

Yeah. 

And shares what they’re going through. He probably gets advice from others from that too, so it’s helpful for him. So, yeah, I love that knowledge sharing part of things for sure.

Yeah. It’s amazing. It makes everybody better. and it’s it is and I I think this keeps bringing us around to the, you know, it is easiest, often, it’s easiest in person. Right? It’s just, it’s easier to do. Or even if you’re going to get it started in person. It’s easier, when you say, it’s not like accountants are just handing out their spreadsheets left and right, and all that sort of stuff. You know, you develop a certain amount of trust. Now accountants tend to trust other accountants or other CPAs just because they know, hey, we all belong to the same profession, we went through the same test, etc. But you have that personal connection with someone that you’ve met in person, or even if you’ve met them over, you know, over a podcast or a virtual call, you have a little bit more trust just from having built that relationship in person. And then you’re able to then, develop it, you know, later on. It’s easier to email someone your financial statements if you’ve met them in person, or easier to email them the, you know, your proprietary information. When you’ve met them in person, you could say, I know this guy, he’s not going to steal it and run me out of business.

Yep. Alright. So I think we’ve established the fact of how important getting together in person is and how much that helps us with everything. I just want to go into a story real quick that what you said about Accounting Web and their conference from 2022, I think, is when it was. Yeah. May of ’22. Seth Feinberg was running that. And I saw that conference too, and I had FOMO. I’m like, wow. This is cool. Why am I not there? How did I not know about this? And so I looked at that, but then was very sad when I saw it wasn’t going to continue, because I had sent to our marketing team, hey, we gotta go do this one next year, we gotta be part of this. 

And so what you mentioned that you’ve looked at that is kinda setting the stage for how important it is to get together and the idea for the Firm Growth Forum came out of that? Same thing with our conference, the Bridging the Gap Conference. The same idea came. I’m like, oh, there’s a need now because, unfortunately, Accounting Web isn’t continuing with this. And I honestly at the time thought, and there’s a date available in May. Maybe we should take that date! Which I’m glad we didn’t!

We took it, we thought, we’re like, yep. That’s a good time.

Right. Which I am honestly glad. We didn’t have time to do it because I think I started  coming up with decided to do that, like, 3 months before that date would have been there. 

Right.

But we pushed ours back to August. Now moved it up to July this coming year. But that need was there. And I think it’s been shown with you what your conference was last year, with our conference. So let’s just talk a bit about the two conferences and just what we’re looking to do, you know, who we’re looking to attract and what we’re looking for people to get out of it. Let’s start with the Firm Growth Forum.

Alright. Like I said, it’s in the name, it’s about firm growth, and it’s about enabling that. And there’s a sort of a, the more we look at this, the more it becomes clear that there is this cohort of firms that are looking to go from, you know, it’s two, three partners, maybe as many as five, $5 to $7 million worth of revenue. And that’s so you can make a very comfortable firm out of that or anything smaller, make a comfortable living, and there’s no need to grow larger than that.

But, there’s a cohort of firms that are at that size that want to grow, want to grow significantly. And if they’re going to do that, they have to change in fairly significant ways. It’s a bunch of different things about technology and about how you hire and recruit people and bring them onboard. It’s really how you structure your firm and manage it and think about it, you know, and how you manage your partner group and manage accountability and all those sorts of things. 

There’s all these changes that come into place when you want to go beyond that, when you want to grow from $7 million to $15 million, from $15 million to $20 million, from $20 million to $40 million. There’s a set of structures and best practices and strategies and tactics that you need to implement, and changes you need to make in the way you run your business. And that’s sort of our overall focus is hopefully to give people the tools they need to be able to manage that transition in a bunch of different areas. So there’s technology involved, there’s management, and corporate structure, and as partners, you really almost want to become a corporation as opposed to a partnership. It could still be a partnership, but you need to think a little less like a partnership and a little more like a corporation. There’s elements of recruiting because we know that’s a big issue for recruiting and retention, both, big issue for accounting firms. 

So basically helping them with all those things. We also have some other areas we’re touching on—artificial intelligence, it’s a huge issue. And so a few of us know where it’s going to go or what it’s going to do. That’s we’re going to be focusing a little bit on because we think of some other things that handled properly, that can turbocharge some serious growth if you’re willing to embrace it. We’ve talked about the need to get with AI before it tramples all of us, because if you’re not using it, you can do better. 

But so that’s that’s our focus, right, is to help firms take it to the next level because there’s a lot of a great accounting firms out there that are very comfortable where they are, do a great business serving their clients well, making good livings. But then there’s firms that want to you know, get bigger and and grow. And not just for growth’s sake, but because for all the things that brings along, right? The bigger reach, more revenue, ability to do more things for your people. So we’re looking to enable that. 

And then at the same time as we’ve been talking all through this, just get people talking, get accounting firms talking to other accounting firms, sharing their ideas. I love, one of my favorite parts of the days was, you know, at the end of the day, we’d have these round tables where you just get a bunch of, you know, ten seats, nine of them would be accountants, and one of them would be one of our staffs or just to facilitate it. But just everybody talking amongst themselves. And usually after about three minutes, the facilitator would just sort of sit back and be like, you guys are great. You guys are taking care of it. Talk amongst yourselves. And I think that’s amazing. And they were sharing fantastic ideas. I was scribbling ideas down furiously as I’m listening to them.

So, that’s what we’re at. So, you know, and I, fortunately, I’m glad that we didn’t have overlapping dates because I went to to Bridging the Gap last year, and it was great. And, you know, I think you cover some of the same ideas, but just a different feeling there. And, just as great. Just as great. Not going to say it’s greater than the Firm Growth Forum. Just as great. They’re too evenly matched, brilliant things, fortunately, they never have to compete.

I agree.

But, yeah, I, you know, I don’t know if you want to talk more about Bridging the Gap, because I think people should know about that. Suddenly I’m taking over, like, I’m the host. Tell us more about that, Randy. You’re like, “It’s my show! Shut up!”

I’ve had podcast hosts get on here before, and they take over, which I have no problem with. So you can take over all you want. 

It’s so hard not to!

Plus you’re so much better at it than I am. So it doesn’t mess. So this would be from now on, actually, I’m going to hand the reins to you.

I just talk faster. That’s all. That’s my one skill. I speak.

You’re actually slowing down today. This is good.

Trying. Everyone, every time, you know, I talk, people are like, you are way too quick. Stop. Slow down. Anyway.

Oh, I do the same. Because we get excited! We’re passionate about what we’re doing. So that comes through. 

Yeah, just real quick. Everything you said, that’s what we try to do with Bridging the Gap. It’s just, you know, how do we be better overall as people and professionals, and work less, so we’re not dealing with burnout and, you know, have a better work life balance and manage our firms, and AI, and technology. And, actually, we’re going to add a little tax track to ours this year, just from a standpoint of that’s really my thing, is I talk tax. So we figured, you know what? And Tri-Merit’s thing, since Tri-Merit foots the bill for a lot of this. We thought we’d get a little cool tax stuff in there. 

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Jordan Goodman—he’s a SALT expert out of Chicago. He’s going to just talk about SALT. And honestly, he is an unbelievably great presenter. And that’s the other thing, and you and I, I’m sure we’d agree—hey, there’s a lot of very knowledgeable people out here and getting that intersection between having great knowledge and having great presentation skills is the people we want because it keeps it entertaining. And so I know all the speakers you had last year were very entertaining, so I appreciated that. 

And so yeah, very similar from that standpoint. Luckily, at least two months apart this year.

Last year was about three months apart. We moved ours up to July this year. So 2 months apart, but looking forward to both. 

And you know, you’re absolutely right the way you described it shows that—there’s a lot of overlap right in terms of how to run a practice better and all that stuff. But I will say one of the elements of your show that I really loved, and it’s not the singular focus of it, but I think it’s a neat accent to it, put it that way, is since you have a great focus on sort of the human side of all this, right? It’s important to grow, it’s important to build a successful practice to serve your clients well, but it’s also important to look after your own mental health and well-being and your employees’ mental health and well-being and to remember that we’re all people and that we need to be careful of ourselves and be careful of those who work with us. I think that was a neat—as I say, it’s not the singular focus to show by any stretch of imagination, but it’s a strong element of it. And I thought that was very cool.

Because in part, not just because it’s nice, but because it’s it’s when it comes to recruiting and retention and all those sorts of things. It’s hugely important, right, to make sure that you’re you’re not driving people out, right? You’re not burning them out. That’s a huge problem. And to be paying attention to that isn’t just nice, it’s super valuable for how you run a practice.

Oh, yeah. For sure. I appreciate you pointing that out. It is a passion of mine, mental and and physical health, as well, because I think it’s so important to us as people, but it helps us in our job, obviously. If we’re burning out, that’s not helping our clients at all. It’s not helping us. It’s not helping anybody we work with. So making that a priority and actually even having a separate room at the conference, that’s a wellness room for the entire length of the conference, two and a half days, is something I’m pretty proud of.

Yeah! It was great stuff.

And, the one thing I wanted to point out, what you said, because I wanted to talk about that—what you said, at the end of the day, and that’s what you call the “wine down”, right? Is that those sessions, where—it’s not “wind,” yeah.

Yeah. It took me a long time to understand that, our events team was like, “They’re going to have wine downs. “Like they’re winding down?” They’re like, “No, wine. Like wine.” And I’m like, “Like wine?” And they were great.

They were great. And that’s the last thing I think we want to point out then is that fun is a big part of this. And what you guys did was fun, and, hopefully, we’re going to get some Dan Hood karaoke this year at your conference. Is that going to happen?

Oh, yes, you can’t stop it. It’s going to happen whether you want it or not. Oh, that’ll be enough.

Alright. Well, I can’t stress enough, the fun aspect and the community and the knowledge sharing and the growth and everything else about your conference. I’m really looking forward to where, as we sit, we’re about three months away from it. So Dan, if anybody wants to find out any more about the conference, where would they look?

Yeah. Absolutely. They can go to conference.accountingtoday.com, that have all kinds of information on this year’s conference. So you can register. You can look at speakers. You can see the agenda. You can check out the venue, which is very cool. It’s a different hotel than last year. We’re about that. But, yeah, conference.accountingtoday.com, and that’ll have all the information you need.

And one last thing, and I wasn’t going to ask this because you’ve been on three times, and I’ve already asked you multiple times, but I just thought about this. I want to ask you, you know, we always ask a question about fun things you personally do because we just talked about fun, and we’ve got a couple of answers from you in the past. But the one thing is that you just had a really cool fun thing—is you did a trip to Tanzania. Is that what it was? 

Yeah. That was insane, as a once in a lifetime kinda bucket list kind of a thing. That was very exciting. That was—I cannot stress enough how much everyone should go to some place in Africa and do a safari kind of thing if you can. I just constantly kept saying as I looked around, I’m like, this looks just like the nature documentaries except I’m here. Like, every time I look at the nature documentaries, you’re like, oh, that’s cool, but it’s probably all fake. Probably all, you know, It’s puppets and CGI. Well, then you’re actually there. You’re like, nope. Nope. That’s what an elephant really looks like, and it’s five feet away from me. 

Yeah, that was, it was insane. It was a whole thing was, very briefly—my sister a long time ago, through work had been able to go on a surf it’s like a two day safari. She worked at a company that did a lot of international travel. And my niece kept seeing pictures of this saying, I would love to go on that. I’d love to go on it. My sister said, well, if you graduate from college—when you graduate college—we’ll take you on a Safari. And, you know, assuming as we all did, my niece would never graduate from college, and even my niece was like, nah, I’m not graduating from college, but then she did, which was great. So then my sister was like, hey, so we gotta go on safari. So I’m like, well, if you’re going, I’m going to I’ll come along.

Nice.

It was really magical. And so it’s just, it’s really hard to explain how amazing it is, but when you’re there in the place and you like to just this is exactly what I would hope it would be, and more. It’s very cool.

Yeah. Well, I’ll have to put that on the list with my wife and I love traveling. That was not something—we’ve actually talked about it briefly, but that’s, I’m going to have to reach out for you for advice on that, maybe someday we’ll have to make that part of our itinerary.

Absolutely. I do not get a commission, by the way, on any of that. So you know, I’m just saying everyone should go. Actually, I have been hired by the Tanzanian government.

Full disclosure! Alright, Dan. Well, again, it’s always a pleasure. Thanks again for being on The Unique CPA.

Thank you for having me!