I don't make it terribly easy to meet with me. Some people don't like that. Some people are aghast that I value that time (at least two in the last week alone).

But meetings are where we connect - it's where we can humanize and understand. So why do I make it so hard to meet with me?

To be clear, I don't make it terribly hard to meet with me. I set boundaries:

• I expect to have the information we're going to talk about;
• The time to review it in advance;
• And for that care and attention to be compensated.

I lay out these boundaries during new client onboarding. I let them know my services aren't meeting-driven and that meetings don't often happen. These boundaries help me work with my brain and keep the compliance driven work moving forward.

Compliance services are inherently reactive. When we meet about them, the meeting itself is also reactive. Compliance meetings also don't get to better or different solutions than a consistent set of instructions clients need to follow.

Meetings become actively advantageous when we're able to focus on collaborative problem solving. A place of reactivity isn't the time for that collaborative problem solving.

Besides all of this reactive vs. proactive discussion, meetings have an inherent cost. They're more than just the time during that meeting or the value provided through advice given.

• Meeting Preparation - there's always at least 15 to 30 minutes of preparation prior to a meeting, even for a purposefully short one. More isn't uncommon.
• Meetings Run Long - especially with and for me. I'm long-winded and much more concerned with being in the moment than I should be. I find it awkward to artificially shut off a meeting that has conversational value just because a clock is running. It's not uncommon the goal of a meeting isn't being reached until the very end. And no, the solution isn't longer or shorter meetings or even better agendas.
• Meeting Followup - there's always followup after a meeting - either items I need to look up and research and summarize, to-dos for myself on behalf of the client, or, more often than not, items the client needs to take care of and resolve.
• Waiting Time - we don't talk about this enough. It's the time between things - the time spent waiting for the meeting time to arrive; waiting for the meeting to start. It might also be the time spent between the meeting and waiting for transcripts and AI notes to be summarized, a recording to be rendered, and that information to land in an inbox. For a client, it's also the time between the meeting and receiving the follow-up.

The real value of meetings isn't the meeting itself, but the action that after a meeting.

Action isn't going to be taken because there was a meeting. Best practices aren't adopted because of a meeting. These things happen because they're clearly communicated, that communication is received, and the client chooses to act on that communication. Followups and ups and reminders are what get things done.

Accountants, tax professionals, and other professional service providers can see the actions being taken and the actions not being taken in the paper trail left behind. We know when a client is ready to start being proactive - when they're ready to start thinking ahead.

Flat-fee, compliance based service offerings are reactive in nature - they're not the time or place to start thinking ahead. As of the time of writing this, 99.9% of my clients are in that reactive mode. They need and want the compliance, and, as excited as they might be to start being proactive, there are actions they need to take before proactive services can start.

I actively use the results of compliance based services to make best practice recommendations so clients can move into being proactive - so they take action on their own - and so meetings become more useful and valuable.

Post 10/15, I'll push the idea of Monthly Maintenance more thoroughly. This program is designed to meet the feel-good desire many have with and from a meeting during a productive, co-working session. There's a promise of others being around experiencing something similar. There's also a professional - me - right there to help keep a client from getting stuck in their DIY journey. And, hopefully, start moving them from being reactive to being proactive.