What a conference room teaches you about your own firm
Thirteen sessions in two years, rooms from 50 to 376. The questions that come up every time say more about how small tax firms actually run than any survey.
I have given thirteen conference sessions in the last two years. About half were technical: depreciation, S-Corp basis, state apportionment, IRS letters. The other half were about running a firm. The slides are different. The questions afterward are not.
The three questions
After a depreciation session in Phoenix with 362 people in the room, the line at the front was not asking about Section 179 phase-outs. It was asking how to get clients to send the fixed asset list before March. After the S-Corp session in Anaheim, the questions were about reasonable compensation for about four minutes and then about how to stop re-explaining the same thing to the same clients every year.
Every room, three questions:
- How do I get clients to do their part on time?
- How do I stop being the only person who knows how anything works here?
- How do I price this so I am not working for free in April?
None of those are tax questions. They are the questions of a one-to-four person firm whose owner is the system.
Why I teach both tracks
I came to tax from enterprise software, where the job was never “what is the rule” but “how do we make the rule happen every time without a hero.” The technical sessions are the rule, with the math on the screen so nobody has to take my word for it. The practice sessions are how to make it happen every time.
A room that just learned the depreciation ordering rules is ready to hear that the fix for late asset lists is a client ask with a due date and a consequence, logged, with a follow-up that fires without anyone remembering. A room that just built an operating canvas is ready to hear that the canvas is useless if the technical work underneath it is wrong.
What I ask organizers for
Fifty minutes is enough for a technical session if the audience is practitioners. The practice sessions want 100 minutes and a handout, because people fill in the canvas while we talk and leave with something they can put on the wall Monday. Either way, no product pitch from the stage. The ventures are on this site. The session is the session.
If that is the kind of room you are planning, the sessions are here and the booking form is at the bottom.