Contact Information
Phone: 408-942-6888 x344
Email: stevensona@cpconet.com
Partnership/LLC and individual income tax compliance and planning services.
Is there any advice you would give to a person who is starting out in your chosen career?
“Work hard but also be patient with yourself. I’ll never forget the first corporate tax return I worked on as a first-year staff accountant. I had so much trouble and thought for sure I’d made a mistake in my job choice because I just didn’t know what I was doing. But now I’ve realized, I wasn’t alone with that feeling and after passing the CPA exam and moving from an inexperienced staff member to a manager, I hope to ease those fears in new staff that I work with.”
What keeps your clients coming back?
“Reliability and patience. Clients should feel that they can count on their professional advisers to be responsive and available to discuss complex issues that they may not understand. We have to remember that not only did we as CPAs go to school and take tests in our field, but we deal with the issues every day. Our clients, on the other hand, may think that tax code sounds like a foreign language, so we need to have the ability to not only do the work but to teach the theory.”
What words of wisdom would you pass onto your childhood self?
“To not let the opinions of others influence me. As kids and teenagers, we all tend to be worried about what other people will think of our actions and choices. But now, I realize that in the ‘adult’ world, no one really cares if you were the prom queen or the leader of the chess club; it’s more about who you are and what you contribute to society.”
If you could time travel, would you go to the past or the future and why?
“I would go to the future. If we had some idea of what the world will be like 10, 20, or 50 years from now, maybe we can work to make positive changes in the present that will carry forward for the upcoming generations.”
