Rob Pillans, General Manager of the Proactive Accountants Network kicks off the Conference
Abhi and I are currently in beautiful Bali, Indonesia attending our third Proactive Accountants Network Annual Conference.
We have been a member of PAN for some time now including having spent time in the Coaching Club (a business coaching club for accountants).
I will freely admit, in the lead up to this year’s conference I was pretty busy with our own business and hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to the conference nor paid a lot of attention to the schedule and the speakers. I am sure I am not the only person that has had such a feeling, whereby they have signed up to go along to something they know will be great and will help the development of themselves and their business, but when the crunch time came and they had to leave the office, they struggled to pull themselves away!
Well I have to say, and I write this as a reminder for myself for the next time I am considering signing up for such an event, it has been an absolutely amazing three days, and there is still more great stuff to come. And had I not come I would not have known what I was missing, but now that I have, I am so glad I didn’t (miss it).
Abhi and Duncan were lucky enough to meet the amazing Alan Weiss!
Day 1 featured the world leader on Value Pricing and Business Consulting, Alan Weiss. I realise many won’t have heard of Alan, but I can tell you he has written 55 books on these and related subjects (number 56 is in the works as we speak) and he is the person to speak to if you want to learn about how to price your products and services and how to offer high quality consulting services that clients will come back for time and time again. You can learn more about Alan at his business website www.summitconsulting.com. If you ever get the chance to see Alan present, I highly recommend you get along, you will learn a tremendous amount that you can incorporate in to your business immediately (as we have done). You can pick up any number of his books on Amazon and all are well worth the investment.
One little idea that took hold for me is that there is a choice everybody makes every time they want something (be it going on a holiday, or buying a new car, or whatever it may be). The choice is to either to Make It, or to Take It! Meaning you can either go away and come up with a strategy as to how to make the money you need in order to purchase the thing you want Or you can choose to take the money you need from somewhere (being from your savings, redrawing on your mortgage, taking it from a credit card with plans to pay it back later, etc). The concept is simple and downright obvious, and we all make decisions at one time or another to do one or the other.
Usually when we choose to Make It we effectively choose to save some of our earnings over a period of time. But Alan suggests you take it to the next level, that you view even saving from your existing earnings as a form of Take It and instead whenever you want to buy, particularly, a luxury item you change your mindset and come up with a new way to earn the money you need from a new source.
Be it from a small new business venture, or from a new product or a new service or a repackage collection of existing products and services. Whatever it may be to expand your own offerings to the world! If you can do that, not only will you earn more from your business, but before you know it your business will have expanded to something you only hoped for, almost without you even realising it.
The highlight of Day 2 was a session by the Proactive Accountants Network Director, Colin Dunn, regarding how we can expand and improve our outsourced management accounting services. We are continually increasing the number of Clients for whom we are taking responsibility for their entire accounting and financial function and using high quality, prompt data and reporting we are able to produce to assist our Clients manage their business’ better and make better, informed, timely decisions. Colin’s advice will only strengthen our skills in this area.
Day 3 contained some real eye openers. Rob Nixon, Founder and CEO of the Proactive Accountants Network took centre stage. Those Clients of ours who were smart enough to come along to our Your Business By Design seminar already know just how good Rob can be on stage. Rob has a high performing business that runs smoothly without him being on the ground each day and being involved in every little decision made. This means he is able to spend his time travelling the world seeking out the best business minds and learning from them. His insights, which apply to any business, not just accounting firms, are first class.
We also heard more about the ever expanding practice of accountants outsourcing work overseas. I have to say, there were a lot of accountants in the room who were stunned to hear what some firms were already doing. I will admit to being skeptical and frankly down right against outsourcing. However it appears the opinions on the matter of Australian small business is changing, and at some time in the future I will look to open a conversation with our Clients as to how they feel about the idea.
The other great thing about an event like this is everyone is hear to contribute and assist their fellow industry members. Even though we are competitors (albeit it from different locations around the country and the globe) this is the one time the most proactive accountants come together to help each other help our Client’s better.
Accountants and their own advisers from all over the country come together to share and learn from each other.
I have once again been reminded of the value of such events and I would encourage our Clients to strongly consider attending similar such events either in their own industry or even just events targeting the broader business community. In fact, it has inspired us to look into the viability of putting together something similar of our own for our own Clients, so please let us know if this is something you would be interested in attending?
You can learn a little more about the Proactive Accountants Network by visiting the website here.