One of the best things to promote business growth and keep ideas fresh is to collaborate with like minded professionals. It helps to have a supportive tribe of people to keep you on your toes and offer a new outlook on your business. For the digital agency world, one of these great gatherings of folks is the Digital Mastermind Group. Officially speaking, Digital Mastermind is a community of digital agency owners who believe in the value of collaboration and peer learning in the industry. Not only are they leaders in their agencies, they are leaders in the market.
Every year they hold a conference that accommodates about 30- 40 notable industry professionals. This allows some amazing collaboration to take place. If you are looking for a fresh spin on solving the challenges and new tricks of the industry, this is the place to learn them.
Accountfully and Digital Masterminds
For the last three years, Accountfully has sponsored the annual event. We also attend each year. It is a great time, with amazing speakers and an opportunity to hobnob with some of our clients while learning some new insights in the marketing world. This is a great relationship that we continue to nurture because of its value. Not only does it get us closer to understanding the ins and outs of the digital marketing world, it helps us with our own business operations. Since we have quite a few clients in this space, we feel it is important to understand their business space too, but that is not the only benefit. We typically come out with great ideas on both strategic and tactical ends of running our business as well.
This Year’s Agenda Did Not Disappoint
This year’s general theme was centered around business leaders and their associated challenges. While most of the subject matter was marketing focused, a lot of valuable general business information and discussions occurred; topics such as legal, accounting, human resources, etc. Multiple challenges and solutions were brought up, from accounting for non-billable time, setting price points, to which proposal software companies used. It really ran the gamut of operations topics that affect every business owner and was in such a positive, intimate setting. It was super refreshing to be involved in a tight knit group of helpful folks sharing so much insight. Getting out of the day-to-day and adding some perspective to our business operations, was a welcome learning experience.
The Spotlight Speakers - Amazing Backgrounds With Amazing Insight
A lot of the day involved unique collaborative sessions, but there were also three spotlight speakers who were featured. Each spotlight session was held by industry experts that offer serious value to the audience - not tacky sales pitches. This year’s speakers were Michael Gass, Michelle Royal and Emery Ellinger.
Michael is a business development trainer, consultant and speaker who focused his talk on social media and its value for bringing in new business. He has revolutionized the social media space since 2007 and is the author of “Fuel Lines”, which is one of the top 100 blogs in the world.
Michelle is an artist and innovation expert. She is the Chief Innovation Officer and founder of Royal Innovation Design Group and helps C-Suite executive focus their efforts to develop their team, realize their vision and implement it to its success. Her insight on solving the correct problems, identifying new market spaces and understanding the tools to use and focus of efforts toward accomplishing new initiatives was invaluable education.
Emery is the author of the book, “Turn Your Blood, Sweat & Tears Into Cash”. He specializes in helping agency owners turn their successful businesses into a marketable entity that sell for maximum value. He started the company Aberdeen Advisors, Inc - a marketing and advertising advisory firm, after building and selling his own multi-million dollar marketing company. He offered expert thoughts surrounding building and selling a large marketing company helped business owners looking to create value in their own ventures.
A Collaborative and Exciting Format
The format of the summit is one that really lends itself to collaboration and networking. Outside of the amazing speakers, were daily BarCamp sessions, networking opportunities and roundtables. BarCamp sessions facilitate great off-the-cuff insight from each participant. A subject is offered and the speaker discusses the topic for about 10 minutes, then continues the flow by answering questions. The speaker discusses a best practice, great win or challenge to the group.
At the end of each day were hosted dinners and gatherings, so the participants could continue the conversations and introductions in a less formal atmosphere over a cocktail and some awesome food. No corporate “blah” catered event boredom here!
The Takeaway - Learning From Our Peers Means Staying On The Cutting Edge
It is so important to continue to learn and grow as a company, as well as share valuable insight to others looking to get better at what they do. It’s what keeps companies and leaders on the cutting edge. Peer to peer learning and collaboration is a priceless learning tool in any industry for expanding knowledge and improving business operations. We take pride in being involved in learning the industries of our clients and experiencing the growth and learning opportunities when networking with the best in the business. Accountfully will continue to sponsor and attend this event each year moving forward. We are excited to for next year’s summit already!
If you are a business in need of some collaborative knowledge and could benefit from some assistance behind the accounting scenes, let’s talk. Taking the hassle out of your day to day bookkeeping and accounting tasks means more time to focus on driving your initiatives forward and focusing on growth. We can also be that strategic partner, helping to guide your dreams forward and being there when you need our collaboration and industry knowledge. Tell us about your business and let’s talk about how we can get started together.
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