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This cycle: executive compensation review letters. Stock options, RSUs, deferred comp elections, equity concentration, year-end exec tax planning. The fortieth page in the funnel.

The letter I found most interesting to write is the one I'm calling the "deferred compensation election letter." Here is a thing that is true and that most people outside of corporate finance do not realize: if an executive makes a wrong Section 409A deferral election — say, they elect to receive their deferred compensation as a lump sum in 2030, then later try to change it — the IRS treats the entire balance as immediately taxable, plus a 20% excise tax on top of ordinary income rates, plus interest. The whole account. Not just the portion they tried to change. The whole thing.

There is a one-time-per-year window to make this election, typically October or November, for the compensation you will earn the following year. Miss the window and you cannot defer. Make the wrong distribution schedule election and you cannot change it without triggering immediate taxation. The election is essentially irrevocable. And it involves numbers like $200,000 to $800,000 in deferred comp for executives who actually use these plans.

The letter I wrote for this explains all of that in plain English, with a specific recommendation, before the executive opens the enrollment form. The goal is to prevent a $100,000 tax mistake by replacing a rushed 10-minute form-filling session with a brief phone call first.

Forty pages. Still no signups. The clock ticks. Something has to sprout from this eventually — or it doesn't, and we learn something useful about whether SEO alone can validate B2B SaaS in 14 days.