Podcast
Summary
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- A new perspective of (tax) & (investment) returns
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- What it means to be efficient with time
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- A true look at what marketing is all about
On Today’s Podcast You’ll Find…
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- Youtube: Shauan Wekherlien – The Tax Goddess!
The Tax Goddess
Shauna Wekherlien is the owner of Tax Goddess Business Services, a CPA firm located in Scottsdale, AZ. Tax Goddess is a firm that focuses on tax strategy and planning to help lower and minimize taxes for business owners and investors.
At the time this was written, her firm had saved their clients over $740,264,635. Talk about lowering and minimizing taxes!
Shauna earned the name ‘tax goddess’ after needing to market herself at a networking event, and 60 seconds to do it. Quickly, she decided ‘tax goddess’ was an eye catching and head spinning name, so she went for it.
A marketing friend at the same event loved how it sounded, and 17 years ago, Shauna the Tax Goddess was born.
Savings or Investment?
Shauna’s firm is nearly 20 years old. She started her career at KPMG preparing taxes and working in the high wealth financial planning realm. When she started her own firm, many things were new to her including sending faxes and bookkeeping. After hitting the five year mark and hiring a secretary, Shauna noticed a gap during the planning process with her clients.
She tells us, preparing taxes is fine and people will pay for this service, mainly because they have to. She realized clients are really after:
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- Guidance
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- Strategies
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- Deep dive detail on questions around their business
Nervously, Shauna charged $1,200 to a client, which later produced the client with $80,000 in savings.
In some scenarios, charging that much may make the client gawk at the price tag, and further supports Shauna’s initial hesitation. Yet years later, she now has examples of charging a client $80,000 for services that yield the client a savings of $600,000.
She’s certainly creating savings for her clients, and it makes us wonder: Would we pay $80,000 to achieve a $600,000 savings? There is no doubt that is a substantial ROI.
This is a paradigm shift from the traditional dollar amount expense (x) in exchange for (y) service. It becomes less of an expense when Shauna and her team can provide savings of $600,000 and more of an investment.
With this mindset, an $80,000 investment with this type of return starts to become worth it.
Time Savings
Shauna attributes some business efficiencies to a book written by Tim Ferriss called, The Four-Hour Work Week.
She learned from his book that time savings can lead to and generate room for the more creative side of business.
Shauna tells us that KPMG taught her how to be a CPA, which is great and necessary. However it didn’t prepare her for running a business.
This is where Tim Ferriss comes into play. Shauna says if we are spending 10-12 hours a day doing technical work, we leave little time to think through marketing systems, expansion, hiring, and further business development practices.
An idea as simple as using a system that will send automatic reminders opposed to having a secretary call and confirm appointments is where her journey began.
With the time Shauna saves from automation, she can turn her focus on growing and learning new skills.
According to her, this is where her value add is in comparison to other competitors entering the market. We’ll cover what she thinks about vision in the next section.
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Around the Corner
Shauna is a part of the Tax Goddess sales team. This allows her to learn through experience. Of course books and content are powerful tools to learn, however one of the most effective ways to achieve this is by action.
During conversations with clients, Shuana has learned:
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- What they are hearing in the marketplace
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- What they see in the marketplace
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- Who their competitors may be
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- What concerns there are and how they are being addressed
Shauna tells us by being a part of the sales team and their process, she’s able to pick up on the data that is relevant to their day-to-day.
Shauna gives us an idea of what ‘sales’ actually means to her. The typical answer may be the less attractive scenario where a pushy finance bro is selling you a subpar product. However, sales is actually about building relationships and learning who the client is.
By investing into relationships with the client, the term sales moves from the idea of needing to sell something to learning more about others.
There are a couple different ways to find the Tax Goddess herself, and her team. Check out the details below to learn more:
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- Youtube: Shauan Wekherlien – The Tax Goddess!
If you enjoyed the interview, leave a review. It helps us get the word out. Also, if you really enjoyed it and there is a shift in how you think about the future of your firm; share it with a fellow firm owner that needed to hear something Shauna mentioned today. For more on Jetpack Workflow, visit www.jetpackworkflow.com/blog.
