All you have to do is convince your boss to pay for your ticket. In trying to get your boss to cover the cost for Prestige Conference, it’s important that you show your boss the value of spending the money on a ticket is going to bring back to the office. A lot of you probably think, “I’m just a developer, I’m just a designer, and this is a business conference. My boss is not going to want to send me to this.” If you think that way, you’re right but only because you won’t ask!

Give me a minute and let’s see if we can change your Boss’s story

What you need to do is you need to get into his/her thinking and help them see it a little differently, ultimately have them begging you to go to the conference. To promote this change of thought, you must show return on the investment.

One of the things you’re going to learn at this conference is how Modern Tribe took a client project and abstracted it into a commercial plugin. You’ll learn about the potential value of a product like and some of the pitfalls and costs to support something like that. Being able to bring that kind of understanding back to the office is well worth the money spent. Unless you work weekends, you’re going to the conference on your own time and you have an example that makes it well worth $200 for your boss to buy your ticket to Prestige Conference.

Once you get your boss to convince you to go to the conference (see what I did there?), you get to learn from and talk with industry leaders that have built businesses from nothing. Jake Goldman is going to be talking about how he built 10up to be a premier WordPress agency. He grew his company from a one-man shop to over seventy people in less than 3-1/2 years. It’s a miraculous story! If you can bring that back to your boss and show how this knowledge will help grow business and impact the bottom line, that’s where it’s an easy sell. If even after all that you can’t sell your boss on springing for your Prestige Conference ticket, then you should come anyway. Pay for the ticket yourself because you probably should find a new job.

If you decide working for yourself is your path, Jennifer Bourn will help you learn from her mistakes and take more vacations while you’re at it. Her and her husband have been running Bourn Creative for over 10 years! The lessons she shares are always very eye-opening. You can read Jennifer’s post about Prestige Conference on her blog.

Those are some small snippets from the sessions we’ve announced so far. There are still three more session descriptions coming. Early Bird pricing lasts until Friday August 15th at 5pm Pacific. Make sure you get on your boss’s calendar so you can talk about this before the prices go to their normal price. Make the case to come to Prestige Conference for free by getting your boss to foot the bill. Most importantly, come learn the tricks of the trade from some of the best business leaders around.