Firm Growth Forum 2023: Opening Remarks

Opening Remarks by Dan Hood, Editor-in-Chief at Accounting Today.

Transcription:

Dan Hood (00:10):

All right. That was very percussive that that's a driving rhythm now fully awake. I was not fully awake until about three seconds ago. Now I'm afraid I'm going to some kind of atrial fibrillation, but I want to. That was exciting, and it's the kind of energy that we need here today at Accounting. Today's inaugural firm growth forum. So welcome all of you. Thank you so much for coming. Woo. That's right. That's right. This is very exciting stuff. I'm very excited about this. I should tell you who I am. I'm Dan Hood. I'm the editor in chief of Accounting today, and I'm very psyched today because this is kind of, even though it's the inaugural firm Growth Forum, it is kind of the rebirth of an accounting conference that Accounting Today did about 12 years ago called the Growth and Profitability Summit, which was a great show.

(00:54)

Unfortunately, hurricane Sandy, more or less put a stop to that, but we're excited to have it back. We've got some people who actually attended Pro as we called it, so we're psyched to have them with us, and we're psyched to have you here because this is the kind of event that we think is really valuable for the accounting profession in that it brings accountants together to talk amongst themselves. Now, we've got a lot of great presentations here, but one of the key value points of this conference is talking amongst yourself. There is no problem that an accounting pro firm faces that another accounting firm hasn't solved or have a solution for or have an idea about. So we're going to encourage you throughout this. In addition to listening to all the great sessions, we've got all the great panelists, all the great case studies and briefings.

(01:32)

We've got to talk amongst yourselves as much as possible. We're giving you lots of breaks to meet each other and share ideas and share thoughts and learn about what's going on at other firms with your peers in the profession, because that's a key element of how accounting as a whole moves forward. One of the things that separates it from a lot of other industries and a lot of other sectors really makes it a profession is that willingness of accountants to share and help each other grow and growth. As we said, it's right in the name. It's a major issue of what we're talking about at this session, so as I say, we're very excited to launch it. I'm very excited that you're all here. We couldn't do it without you. We also couldn't do it without our sponsors, so I want to make a special shout out to them.

(02:09)

We want to thank our platinum sponsor, Zoho, our gold sponsors Avalara, and Safesend, our silver sponsors Paro and tax file and all of our other sponsors. You'll get a chance to meet a lot of them out in the foyer out there. I encourage you to talk to them. They brought a lot of tools, services, and solutions. They're going to help you grow your firm, make a better firm, build the kind of firm that you want to work in, and that in the end is what we're really talking about here today. There's a couple of ways apart from just going to their booth, talking to 'em, engaging with them, where we're going to recommend that you pay attention to because there're opportunities to really understand the kind of services they're bringing and the kind of solutions they can enable at your firm. There are a couple of case studies that will help you understand how they can serve you and how you can grow their practice with them.

(02:51)

There are a couple of lunch briefings that are happening. There's also a special event or two parts of a special event that's new for us for any of our conferences. It's called a Lightning Round. We're going to do a very brief, quick formatted interview with every sponsor to get a sense who they are, what they do for accountants, what their tools can do for you and how they work with the accounting profession. One of the great things about the accounting profession is that software vendors specifically want to work with accountants because you are the most trusted advisor of your clients. So we're going to have that. There's going to be two sessions of that one tomorrow and one on Wednesday. It'll be a chance, just as I said, to get to know what they're doing. I'd figure out what value proposition they have for you, and then you'll be able to go and talk to them individually when you have a chance during some of the breaks.

(03:36)

I also want to talk about an event that's happening later today. It's called the Experts Panel. That's going to be happening at the end of the day, right around cocktail time and it's, we're going to get some of our speakers from today and put 'em on the hot seat out again, out in the foyer. We're going to be asking them questions. We're going to be taking questions from you to get their sense of what's going on and answer your specific questions. You can submit those questions through the Umbrella app. If anybody's got the umbrella app, I know many of you have signed up for it, you can send them to me. I'm Dan Hood in that app, and if you select my name, there's a chat function. Just chat me, send me whatever questions you want to ask them, and then we'll get through as many of those as you can.

(04:12)

If you don't have the Umbrella app, that's okay. There's index cards and pens cause we're covering all aspects of all possibilities out at the registration desk, and you can put those in there throughout the day and we'll gather them up at the end and we'll go through as many as we can, and I guess that that happens right around cocktail time. We will not interfere with cocktails. Let me be clear about that, but we'll keep that going as long as people got questions. We'll try to get as many answered and it's the kind of thing where you'll have questions all through the day, gather them up, send them to me through the Brella app or again through the index cards and we'll try to get to as many answers as we can. My phone has turned itself off. All right, here we go. I want to talk briefly about CPE.

(04:53)

I want to talk briefly about it, but I'm going to talk at length about it because it's pretty important to make sure you get cpe. You're going to want to scan the QR code at the beginning and the end of each session, so when you go in scan, when you go out, scan, and then at the end of the conference, you're need to fill out an evaluation form for all the CPE. Obviously you need to have attended the sessions to be able to evaluate them. That's available at the registration desk. There's QR code for that as well that you can scan.

(05:22)

That I think is pretty much all of our housekeeping items. There's obviously, there are signs everywhere directing you where to go if you have questions. There's County Today, staff and Horizon, that's our parent company. Our event staff are here to help you. If you have any questions, stop me or anybody from the staff or anybody at the registration desk and they can direct you where to go. The short version is this is our main conference, main conference room, and one of our breakout tracks will be here and then over on that hallway. It's very dark hallway, but it is, I promise you, when you look down, that's where one of our breakout sessions will be taking place all over there. If you look down the hallway, you're like, that's awfully dark. That's the place to go. I promise you we'll have people directing you, promising you it's not a trap.

(06:03)

Also, as I said, there'll be a lot of events happening out in the foyer in addition to chance to meet all of our sponsors and so on. There'll be a lot of, like I said, to meet the experts. Session will be out there as be the lightning rounds, so it's all one of ice sinks. It's all sort of self-contained in this area and there should be plenty of signs, but as I say, if you have any questions, feel free to ask anybody you spot from either preservation desk or from accounting today. Alright, that is all the housekeeping stuff I have today other than to finish by saying again, thank you all for coming. We're excited to have you here.