Behind the Scenes of 'Scaling New Heights 2017'

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Go back in time with me to Friday, July 29, 2016. We had just wrapped up "https://www.woodard.com/conferences/2017-scaling-new-heights-conferenceScaling New Heights," compiled all the data from your evaluations and documented everything each of you told us. 

And we’re wondering: How in the world will we ever top the 2016 conference? 

On this beautiful summer morning in Atlanta, we’re holding our first internal brainstorming meeting for "Scaling New Heights 2017." We’re all super excited, because "Scaling New Heights" is a deep and shared passion throughout the organization. We know the conference is one of the most effective ways we empower small business advisors.

The conference room is packed. All the team members are present and eager to contribute.  Each team member brings his or her unique perspective and special strengths to the table.  The walls are covered with blank 20-inch x 30-inch Post-It Notes. There is a stack of multi-colored markers on the table.

By the end of the day, the Post-It Notes will be covered with drawings and words of all colors and the markers will be strewn everywhere.

We already know our theme: “Face the Yeti.” We all understand the meaning for advisors, that they must face the challenges that stand between them and their continued climb up the mountain. 

To set the mood appropriately, Liz has added a delighter to the meeting – homemade S’mores and hot chocolate. The entire office smells delicious.  

All of us love our brainstorming meetings but Joe Woodard especially thrives in meeting environments. He's clearly in his element. Fully energized and feeling he and his team can change the world…he leaps up, blue marker in hand. 

He goes to the first blank page affixed to the wall and asks, “What are the ‘Yetis’ small business advisors face?”  

After an hour or so of brainstorming and listing dozens of challenges on the walls throughout the room, we find five categories emerging:

  • Becoming and Remaining Distinctive
  • Building and Leading a Team
  • Finding and Retaining the Right Clients
  • Moving Beyond Bookkeeping/Compliance into the Role of Advisor
  • Staying Current with Technology

Then Joe challenges us, “What are the qualities needed to Face each ‘Yeti’ in these categories?” 

The brainstorming moments at Woodard are “safe zones,” interactions where all ideas are welcome – however unorthodox. It's the perfect team environment to foster educational innovation. 

The team captures each idea onto a Post-It Note and by the time we are finished, we have exhausted every available marker and every inch of available space on the Post-It Notes.  The more outlandish ideas become refined by the group (a process we call “falling off the wall”) until we are left with a shared vision and a fully adopted starting point for our training and conference plans. 

The list of essential qualities includes:

  • Ability to creatively solve issues and overcome challenges
  • Recognition of one’s own potential or abilities (confidence and self-realization)
  • Personal and professional effectiveness
  • Connection
  • Knowledge and technical skills

With the list of essential qualities clearly in our minds and detailed on the wall, Joe challenges us to find one word that connects each of the qualities – one word that is key for advisors to overcome all the challenges we cataloged. We all see it at the same time and clearly identify it: “Courage.”

We write a final, summary Post-It Note to serve as a compass for all the training we will produce for "Scaling New Heights 2017," and the note hangs in the wall of our training and event production space as a constant “True North” for us all:   

Just as you guide and encourage your clients along the paths to success, we believe it is a vital part of our mission to provide guidance and encouragement to you as you make your climb. Sherpas, climbing experts, guide the climbers of Mount Everest as they literally (or at least mythologically) face the “yeti” with each step.  

In preparing for small business advisors to face the “yeti,” our “Sherpa” mission is now clear: We need to provide training that emboldens attendees of the conference – that musters confidence for their climb, through practical and highly applicable skills. We must engender courage for each person attending the conference - a bold, ambitious goal never achieved in a four-day conference. You might say we decided to “Face a Yeti” of our very own. 

Over the next several months, we continually refine our plans for the 2017 conference, formulating a concise list of professional and personal qualities that stave off the daunting, intimidating “yetis.” We call these “Yeti tamers:”

  • Knowledge
  • Connection
  • Confidence
  • Self-Realization
  • Motivation
  • Process/Systems

The final step: Create paths (our meaning-infused, highly intentional word for “tracks”).  These paths provide a framework for attendees, tying the learning at the conference to the specific types of “yetis” each attendee will face after returning to their practices. 

As with real hiking and mountain climbing, the paths at Scaling New Heights are not always straight or even, at times, easily defined. They also fork, combine, or split. As a climber, an attendee of the conference may start on one path and find that an offshoot of that path is too attractive to ignore. 

Some paths are steeper (i.e., highly advanced training with numerous prerequisites) and some are more easily traversed (i.e., fundamental training that benefits all our conference attendees). Each path may offer its own summits – not the summit of Everest itself, but accomplishments nonetheless that offer their own sense of victory…and a fresh view. 

A climber at "Scaling New Heights 2017" may make it to one of these incremental summits and then embark on an entirely new journey, with its own path, leading to yet another summit. 

Here are the paths we have forged for your climb:

Refining Your Practice Path

  • Right Services Fork
  • Right Clients Fork
  • Right Pricing Fork
  • Right Processes Fork
  • Right Team Fork

Living Your Dream Path

Technical Expertise Path:

QuickBooks Desktop Technical Fork

  • QuickBooks Online Technical Fork
  • Tools & Utilities Fork
  • Apps Integration Fork  

IRS Representation Path

QuickBooks Certification Path

  • QuickBooks Desktop
  • QuickBooks Online
  • QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions

You may choose not to follow a single path, but instead jump between paths. This is YOUR climb and there is no “wrong” way to make it.

And so, we are enormously pleased to offer you the most innovative, high-impact, and relevant training we’ve produced to date at the upcoming Scaling New Heights… training that was specifically designed to equip you to face your “yeti.”  

We urge you not to miss Scaling New Heights 2017. To learn more about the conference and register to attend, click here.  

In the next article in this series, we'll give you detailed information about each exciting path available to you at "Scaling New Heights 2017."

Carol Oliver is a CPA with an accounting degree from Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. She is a certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor (QB Online, QB Desktop and QB Enterprise Solutions). Carol has worked in the accounting software consulting and training field for more than 18 years and is a certified trainer for multiple accounting software products including Microsoft, Crystal Reports and F9 (a financial report writer).

For 10 of those 18 years, Carol spent about 75 percent of her time training on accounting and accounting technology, and she developed numerous software user guides, as well as curricula for many different courses. In 2011 she joined Woodard Consulting, providing services that included software integration, financial statement analysis, and customization and development of applications in Method.

In early 2014, Carol accepted a position with Woodard Events as Manager of Accountant Education and Training, allowing her to return to her first love - training accounting professionals. 

As an author, consultant, Intuit contractor and national speaker, Joe has trained more than 75,000 accounting professionals in the areas of practice development, changing technology trends, and how to maximize the use of QuickBooks in their accounting practices.

Joe regularly publishes articles for various publications and has been featured repeatedly in Insightful Accountant, Accounting Today and AccountingWEB, in both articles and in video interviews.

Joe is CEO of Woodard Events LLC, which delivers cutting-edge education, coaching, resources, and a community for small business advisors and small business owners within the accounting industry. In 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016, Joe was recognized by Accounting Today as one of the Top 100 Influencers within the accounting profession. In 2008, Joe was recognized by CPA Practice Advisor as one of the top 40 up and coming thought leaders under the age of 40.