This week marked our fifth and sixth M&A conferences of 2025. We made the decision last year to commit to the conference circuit this year and we’ve implemented that plan. We won’t repeat the initiative in 2026. Working a conference floor hardly plays to my strengths, the travel makes regular work more challenging, and I risk travel burnout going to places I probably wouldn’t otherwise visit. Relevant to our current trip, I’m hardly a Disney adult or a theme park junkie.

Each conference is a bet, a wager that the time and money spent will generate a positive return. While for some of the conferences it is still too early to perform a final accounting, for others we knew immediately. This is all part of the iterative process of building a business. With each attempt, our aim ideally improves. There was a time, after all, when we went to startup and SaaS conferences even as we were leaning more into M&A work. At least these events had actual prospective clients and partners attending.

Conferences aren’t the only bets we’ve made this year, but they have taken up more time than the others. And since we track prospect sourcing, we know what’s working and what isn’t. Knowing what we knew at the time, each of the bets was justified. They just won’t be repeated. Making small bets is essential in building a growing business. It’s also essential to stay nimble by not doubling down on things that aren’t working to focus on the things that are. With the knowledge we’ve gleaned from the conference circuit, we have a different plan for our upcoming bets. Those bets probably won’t be the final version of business development either, but they should be slightly better than our prior efforts. It’s not a flashy process. It’s not a sexy process. But it has worked and it will keep working.