I attended a 3-day conference recently. I have never been to one of these before but this time it was online. There were a number of sessions each day and for each 40 minute session you had a selection of topics and speakers. And it was all from the comfort of my own desk.

Now, you are probably thinking that a 3-day conference about accounting is somewhere on the wrong side of watching paint dry, and some it certainly was. But accountancy is an exciting place to be at the moment, with all the new technology at our disposal and all the forthcoming dramatic changes to the tax system, which are going to force us to radically rethink how we deliver our services. Don’t worry, we are already on to that.

Probably the most interesting session was entitled ‘Nice to meet you, let’s get married”. The sort of title that grabs your attention, especially at an accountants’ conference. As you probably guessed that session was not delivered by an accountant but by Bryony Thomas from Watertight Marketing. This is a company with a very different take on marketing. The first thing that hit me was that there was a strange woman proposing to me online, even though we had never met. I held my nerve! The next thing was that she described a marketing funnel as a sieve. I really was paying attention by that time because it made a lot of sense.

I am accustomed to the idea that you market and fill your sales funnel and the prospects gradually move down the funnel which get narrower and narrower until you make the sale. But it really is a sieve! The reason it gets narrower is that prospects escape from the funnel (or sieve) all through this process and that it why it gets narrower toward the bottom. So, Bryony Thomas queried, why not put tools and strategies in place to plug the leaks in your funnel, to make it less sieve like.

The next thing that struck me was that there is a book, which I immediately ordered and am in the process of reading. Its an interesting read.

Early in the book it speaks about laughter as a therapy for anxiety. I think this was more of an aside, but it reminded me that I actually know a laughter therapist, Linda Birnie, albeit that this is just one of the many things that she does. Before you go jumping to any conclusions, I would point out that Linda has a PhD from the University of Aberdeen, which means that not only is she a smart cookie, but she also has significant knowledge and experience to back up her work. She trades under the name – Thinking Space.

Linda Birnie is a registered clinical hypnotherapist, coach, and trainer. She established Thinking Space to enable people to benefit from a unique blend of hypnotherapy, coaching, training and laughter based activities. She believes that learning and development, at it’s best, is a pleasure and a source of joy, freedom, and growth which is also good for your wellbeing. Sounds to me as though you can laugh your way to mental resilience. But as everyone knows, accountants don’t laugh!

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Alan E Long

The Long Partnership

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