Tax season is right around the corner. If you’re like most integration firms, you likely have a hefty tax bill heading your way. I’m all for giving Uncle Sam his due, but at the same time, there are definitely smart strategies out there that Crestron dealers can employ to reduce their tax burden heading into 2018.

Charitable donations, deductions for travel expenses, starting retirement plans for employees…there are a lot of useful ways to keep that tax bill low.

There’s one strategy in particular that we employ a lot because it’s beneficial both now and in the future: investing in tools, technologies, and resources for your business.

With the holidays here, it seems a fitting time to talk about a challenge that faces so many Crestron programmers: time. Programming systems, making changes to those systems, meeting customer preferences, fixing glitches… everything takes time, and if you’re not careful, programming starts eating away at personal time.

When that client calls and complains about the interface during your holiday break, what do you do?

Over a decade ago, an executive from one of the top home automation brands asked to meet with me at CEDIA. Meetings like this were fairly common, as PanTech Design would handle a lot of out-of-the-box programming projects. But that wasn’t why the executive had called the meeting. No, he had the express purpose of telling me to “brush up my resume because they were going to put me out of a job.”

I looked him dead in the eye and said “you’re absolutely wrong. The only way to get rid of programming is through a lot of programming. But good luck trying!”