I am so excited to share that I went to Hector Garcia's FIRST ever conference, titled "Creative Business Models for Accountants". Before you say that accounting and creativity do not belong in the same sentence, hear me out. Many of us firm owners are very forward thinking, and feel the need to be in the driver's seat of change in our industry. One of the first things that REALLY appealed to me about having a cloud-based bookkeeping and accounting firm was the ability to work remotely, and have a remote team, which I do. It means a great deal to me that I employ super-smart bookkeepers that are able to work hours that work for their families. When I came back to work as an entreprenuer, I decided that it was extremely important for me to have a creative process while running my business. What I mean by that is that when it comes to compliance accounting, of course there are standards that need to be followed. We follow GAAP standards with the client work we do but when it comes to what TYPE of firm I want to have, how we bill clients, how we keep clients updated on what we do, how MANY clients we take, and what type of role we want to have in our community of peers is ENTIRELY up to us. Standards, procedures, rules, traditions, and tech are always changing.
We are now dealing with AI, and rather than rejecting AI, I want to adapt, bring it into my firm and use it as a tool. There are many repetetive tasks that can be automated so we can better serve our clients. There are also unique and creative ways to market our businesses. We are no longer shackled to our metropolitan area. I don't ever go into client spaces because my tools are here in my own office, so that means I can service clients based anywhere. I focus on US clients, but I could go international if I wanted.
Hector Garcia, who is the Quickbooks world's biggest YouTuber and influencer had a conference with Ron Baker and Chris Do as featured speakers. Ron Baker is a leading voice in subscription billing and Chris Do is a genius at marketing. I am obsessed with flipping things and doing them in a different way, which is why you are reading this blog in Shopify, which was originally engineered to sell product, but I am using it for my service-based business. The conference was also run by Carlos Garcia and Vanessa Vasquez, the current Quickbooks Pro-Advisor of the year- quite an achievement!!
I learned SO much from this crew. I brainstormed incredible things using Chat GPT- how to create a subscription business for silly everyday things like Legos or a drill. I learned that the antiquated hourly billing method is NOT for me- we need to build in time to troubleshoot issues with our clients and I do NOT want to nickel and dime them with that stuff. I also learned that NOBODY has a better community of peers than we do, and that the creative possibilities are endless. Thank you to Ron Baker, Chris Do, Vanessa Vasquez, Carlos Garcia and especially Hector Garcia!!! See ya at QBC and I will see you next year at #reframe!!!!!
