Conference

It was a good conference in Las Vegas. It’s a conference for small firm owners, so we always get lots of good business ideas. This year, we had an additional agenda. We’re at capacity for our mobile office jobs, but there is more demand for what we do. It’s fun to promote what we offer, but we can’t do that without adding capacity. We want to recruit another team or two to do what Judy and I do, travel around Colorado and New Mexico in an RV, working with nonprofit organizations. How hard could that be? All we have to do is find the intersect between the population of Certified Public Accountants, and the population of people who have RVs and want to live full-time in them. We’ve put some ads out, but haven’t had any qualified responses yet.

So we went to the conference armed with handouts. At the roundtable luncheon for small firm owners, we always break into discussion groups. I presented my problem to the discussion group. The moderator got hold of it and had me present it to the entire room.

A couple days later, at the breakout session for building a specialty practice, I got called on again to explain to the full room what we’re doing for a niche practice and what we’re looking for. I was introduced with references to old hippies, Bob Dylan, and Willie Nelson.

Lots of good exposure; a few hundred people heard about us. Nothing has come of it yet, but I’m sure we got a lot of people thinking. We handed out cards, so no telling who will get in touch with us.

It was a good conference.

Some days

Some days are more fun than others. The first part of Monday was fine; we met our new client and got a good start on the job. It was less fun when Annie ate rat poison. Luckily, Judy saw her do it, got her to stop, and cleared all the unswallowed poison out of her mouth. Within fifteen minutes, we had Annie to the vet, and the vet had given her a shot to induce vomiting. Most of the poison got out before it made it into her system. D-con rat poison thins the blood so it won’t clot. Annie will be on blood thickening, clotting, medication for the next few weeks, just in case.

Judy and Annie settled in for a quiet recuperation back at the motorhome and I went back to work, but then Judy tried to knock herself out by accidentally walking into one of the motorhome slides while she was outside. She didn’t actually knock herself out, but she did knock herself down. Left a mark. Mild concussion, taking a few days to resolve.

A while back, Skip asked us to keep track of all the mistakes that can be made while motorhoming, so he’d have a complete list of things to avoid. Well Skip, we’re still working on it.

Life on the road.

Killdeer

Killdeer in Cortez at the KOA. Eggs perfectly camouflaged so they'll be safe. No predator is going to spot them right in the middle of the driveway.

Sunday

Travel day. Ridgway to Craig. Pretty much straight north for two hundred miles. Still in Colorado. Nice drive. Here for a new client starting tomorrow.

We spent last week in pinon juniper/riparian. Saw a lot of different kinds of birds, fifty altogether. Now we've gone this far north and guess what.... we're in pinon juniper/riparian. No juniper titmouse yet, but we'll keep looking.

Cortez

Of course the stop at Cortez last week means a cart ride with Bernie.

Las vegas

In Las Vegas, we spotted the Euro-coach. German guy, had it shipped over to him so he could tour the US. Thirty-three feet altogether. Ramp comes out the back and the little car winches right up inside.

He can speak english much better than we can speak german, but conversation was difficult. We gather he can stay for three-years, but his coach can only stay one, then it has to go back to germany. He was interested in our motorhome. He might buy one to use for the next several years, but he wants to go to mexico too, so might have to get something smaller.

Life on the road.

Ridgway

Our front yard.