There have been some big changes this past week at Woodard Events, LLC, including the recent filing of a Chapter 11 petition, a change of venue for the upcoming Scaling New Heights® conference, and some employee transitions.
We sat down with Joe Woodard, CEO of Woodard Events, to discuss some of the changes that are taking place at his company.
IA: Ok. Let's start with the big news of the day – The Chapter 11. That is a bold step, especially for a company as successful as yours – with a thriving conference and strong contracts with Intuit. Why take this approach?
JW: First, I'm glad you asked that question. It is my goal to have transparency around this decision. I'm glad to have the opportunity to tell your readers what is happening.
Woodard Events has been a leading innovator in the accounting space for the past decade, and we have developed these innovations without any outside capitalization – meaning I have been a bootstrap-funded entrepreneur. Innovations like Tech Makeover, Woodard.tv, and of course a world class conference come with significant development costs. Even though the company has had strong financial performance over the years, without venture capital or private equity capital we accumulated a measure of indebtedness. To better manage this debt, and to ensure strong and reliable operations going forward, we chose to restructure the debt by filing a Chapter 11. That restructure, combined with our streamlining of the company's human resource costs through standardization and automation, work together to ensure the show and our other programs will continue to thrive.
IA: The petition lists some hotels. Can you explain what is happening with those listings?
JW: We reserve hotels far in advance of each year's conference, as hotel properties large enough to house Scaling New Heights are few and are in high demand. The shift to our new venue caused us to incur some contract cancellation fees. We hope to effectively negotiate these fees as part of the bankruptcy and make sure we take care of these hotel properties as much as possible. These cancellation fees were a big consideration for us with taking this step.
IA: So…no risk around the show. It is happening?
JW: Absolutely. This June we are going to host the largest and best Scaling New Heights in our 10-year history. Our show partner, Intuit, is fully supporting the show, we have world-renowned speakers coming to address an important technology-driven shift impacting accountants and bookkeepers, and we are in a great new venue. The Chapter 11 is simply a debt restructure. We look forward to continuing our legacy of providing powerful education and resources to accountants.
IA: Tell me about this great new venue. Why change locations?
JW: The new, larger venue provides several benefits to our attendees, but the primary benefit is breathing room. When we originally booked our event for the Hyatt Regency Atlanta – back in 2015 – we had no idea the show would be this large by 2018. With an expected attendance of over 1,600 (attendees, sponsors and Intuit representatives combined), we were running into space constraints. Our new, roomier venue makes the show available to all accountants and bookkeepers who want to attend, allows us to involve a wider range of small business solutions/innovations within an expanded exhibit hall, and provides more space for movement between breakouts and networking experiences.
There are also a wide range of affordable hotels that support the new venue, providing additional pricing options for attendees.
IA: So, I’m sure your team is working very hard right now on the transition of the event to a new location, but some people are wondering why they didn’t hear from you directly about the venue change – instead stating they learned about it through Insightful Accountant or social media.
JW: Regrettably, the email we sent to all attendees and sponsors on Monday didn’t reach everyone the way we had hoped. We sent it through an SMTP relay service, and as a result many of the emails were caught by junk filters. We appreciate your help getting the word out. In whatever way people learned about the change, we are just glad they know. And, of course they can contact us with any questions at info@woodard.com
IA: I wish you well on the transition to the new venue. But, the location shift with Scaling New Heights isn’t the only change taking place in the company right now. There have been some employee transitions as well. Can you speak to that?
JW: Absolutely. Over the past couple of years, we have deployed many interactive systems that have streamlined the workload around the conference, like an enhanced conference attendee portal, a new conference instructor portal and an enhanced conference sponsor portal. For our internal operations, we standardized much of our processes and deployed new tools (including customer service tools) that allow us to effectively produce the conference and support accountants with smaller teams.
So, with a streamlined workload, I made a difficult but responsible decision to right-size the company, and that means some roles were eliminated on our org chart. Other roles shifted to contracted or part time positions.
Some of the transitions at Woodard were not related to this shift. But, most positions were eliminated as part of the organizational change. We are helping former team members as needed to find new positions with other companies. We care very deeply about those who have left us recently and we wish them well.
I want to say that the team that remains is rock solid and highly experienced – veteran producers of our conference and other educational and coaching programs. Going forward, “team Woodard” is fully capable of delivering education, coaching, community and resources to accountants with the same excellence you have come to expect from us.