Last week I attended Accountex North at Manchester Central. This is a large accounting exhibition which takes place every year in Manchester and around the world at other times in the year.
Us accountants and bookkeepers love it for various reasons; we get to spend a day together, there are loads of great talks from fellow professionals, software companies, governing bodies and HMRC are there too, doing their best to field the barrage of well-intended complaints. And, we get 8 legitimate hours of CPD for attending (with my CPAA licence, I need 40 hours for the year so a good chunk is earned from Accountex).
My top 5 takeaways from this year are…
1. Eliminate the grey! And focus more on the green. Paul H Diary Detox talked about how much we do that is not essential day to day and kindly shared the goal %s for “Doing” (red), “Managing” (amber) and “Leading” (Green). Grey is “Floating” I’m going to aim for 70% Green, 20% Amber and 10% Red with NO GREY! I’m currently at around 30% leading, 40% managing, 20% doing and there’s 10% of floating in there for sure. Thank you Paul for your insight and I’ve added your book to my wishlist.
2. Take myself out of the business more, so that I can work on the really important things that matter to me about my business. Keep talking about my core values. Thanks to the absolute force of nature that is Rachel Harris who shared so much of how she does things in her business in a much more detailed way than lots of people do, this showed how brave and confident she is in what she does. I’ve been working with my husband on detailed CBC focus notes for a while and this talk was the encouragement I needed to crack on and get them nailed down.
3. FreeAgent is still the best software company around! I’ve been an FA partner for 6 years and just love the support they provide and the friendly, professional and confident approach plus the best merch! Loved catching up with Chiara, Gem, Natalie, David and Drew. Somehow, some of the newbies still don’t know who they are!? I chatted with Mimo and Apron who are yet to integrate with FreeAgent but do have integrations with other accounting software providers. Next year, bring me a FreeAgent t-shirt and I’ll go round promoting you guys even more 😊
4. Niching helps with your marketing, but you don’t need to sack all the clients not in your niche OR not accept any new ones that aren’t in the niche. No need to follow someone else’s rules. Thanks Bev Flanagan. Also, I’m glad so many other accountants are niching down into construction and property, and these are not my favourite areas.
5. Don’t be afraid of AI. Thanks to XBert’s contribution to the FreeAgent talk and some gentle persuasion from Chiara and Dave at FA I’ve booked a call with Wilf. Thanks Tony Stevenson as always for a great talk and panel hosting.
If you’re an accountant or bookkeeper and have never been to an Accountex event before, I highly recommend you look them up and attend one near you.
Caroline x