How This Tax Planner Sold $130k of Tax Plans in 60 Days

The number one thing is I really thought that it was going to be a slow trickle because we niched so specifically into a very specific pain point. I just opened up a 9 to 5 Monday through Friday calendar and bookings were really slow. And I was like, oh like is this like not resonating? Are people not seeing it? And then we looked at the metrics and like people were watching it and they were even clicking on it. We weren't seeing bookings and we're like, what's, what's wrong? And you gave a very good advice to be like, you're working the same hours that they're working, you're taking calls same time, you need to change your calendar to talk to their pain points. And I think that was huge. We opened up those calendar slots and now it's literally like those slots are completely filled up for the rest of the year. We have to open up the calendar to be open more days in advance, to literally be like there are more people wanting to book than we have slots. Since we've started doing the ads specifically, which was another thing that you helped me to identify is the ads were very specifically aimed at the target audience that we want wanted. We've done probably 130k in sales. I think sales and ads are like those two. The double headed dragon that takes you there. Daniel Kohler I own with my wife GTG tax planning. We do taxes for a bunch of 1099 self employed business owners. But then there's also a large niche in our space of software engineers, software developers, software salespeople in the tech industry. That comes after I became a tax planner after being a transplant from the film and tech industry.

What made you realize you needed to find some outside help with your marketing?

So I, I'm based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. There's a very large exodus of tech companies after they've been established in Silicon Valley and they've used the talent of Silicon Valley in Los Angeles like the developers and the, and you know, the business geniuses that are out there on the west coast after it's done, Utah becomes a very attractive place for them to move their long term operations to or some of their like admin and sales and sort of the like legal parts of businesses to Utah just because they can get access to a much wider pool of like language talent if they want to go international in Utah. And so there's Silicon slopes is what they call it. You know, it's just we, we borrow, you know, we borrow from the big places to, we're a little small town. So we just pull it over here to Salt Lake City. But so we started to have a slew of door to door salespeople that would then move inside of a tech company to go do tech inside sales. And I noticed this change in some of our clients and they started to get exposed to things like RSUs and their pain point of moving from a 1099 job where they could go and they would sell and then they could take their expenses before they paid taxes. And that was hugely beneficial to them. But then they moved to an Inside Sales W2 Type Commissions position and all of a sudden they started to experience this complete lack of the ability to apply any strategy to it. And so they started to get really frustrated with that. And that pain point really resonated with me because I remembered my time at Netflix like being punished for the success of the company, but also working in a weird like regulatory part of Netflix where I saw the taxes being filed and I saw the company make, you know, 32 billion a quarter and pay zero corporate income tax and me make, you know, a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny decimal fraction part of that. And because of that plus my employee stock absolutely getting destroyed on taxes. And so I thought this has to be like I'm being exposed and reminded of this problem now because of this transition of my clients. But I might be missing out on a larger group of people that I can really help if I was to a refine my marketing. So I could speak more to this direct pain point that I was reminded of through that experience of my clients moving from a very advantaged 1099 position to a very strictly, you know, these are the rules, this is what it is, is a very common experience that tech like W2 earners and even just tech earners, tech startups in general hear that a lot of just like it is what it is. Like there's not much more that can be done. And it's mostly that there is stuff that can be done, but it's, you know, not very typical.

Before we started working together, what were you doing to try to get in front of more of those people?

Largely it was just going to local like networking events. And I realized the events that I was going to, I was getting a lot of clients in the like the contracting space in real estate. But after I had done that brain dump, immediately after I had started to think about my offering and what I had to offer in a different way. And so I started to go to more like directly tech related silicon slopes types, events, tech conferences, Tech expos. Like, anywhere that would take me, I would go and I would present. I now knew what I was telling the HR person at that company, what I was telling, you know, if I met a sales team manager, you know, at like, a Utah Jazz game, be like, hey, this is, you know, what I'm doing. This is what I can offer to your team. And then you go do it for that small team, that one manager's team, and they go, oh, yeah, the rest of the teams need to hear this.

You start to get some of the. Right. Referrals coming in.

Exactly. Right. Yep.

We only talked at this point, by the way, about, like, step one in this process on understanding who we're selling and how to properly sell it to them. Right. That's not all we did, though. Right. So we launched some ad campaigns. You told me before we started this call that you've got six sales calls coming up this afternoon. Tell me about the, like, the actual, like, numbers from those ads that we're running. Like, what was your revenue like before? What's your revenue like now? What was your lead flow like before? What's your lead flow like now?

Yeah, so this year, before we had done any marketing, we had some really good growth. Like, we hit probably, you know, 50 to 100 new tax returns, 50 new clients. They were great there. We. We made, you know, a good, like, I. I would say probably another, like, 100, 120k more than we made last year, like, just during tax season. It was really good. They were really good word of mouth. But since we've started doing the ads specifically, which was another thing that you helped me to identify is I thought I was just gonna start doing the, you know, the Mark Kohler just start putting out videos, just like, just throw stuff down on Instagram, just start making a bunch of videos. But the ads were very specifically aimed at the target audience that we wanted, and it helped me jumpstart it. And so we've done probably 130k in sales since what was, like, the start of August, which is super exciting. We're in November now. And so, like, you know, that's. That's absolutely huge. And those are the sales that are, like, on the table. There's a lot of moments in advisory, too, where you find a mutually beneficial thing that the client needs. You know, those are just. That's just advisory work. That's not actual, like, deliverables of creating new entity structures, of creating, like, new accountable plans for their businesses. That's just getting them on the monthly, like, month to Month advisory.

That's awesome. I know there was a moment where we were talking and we had kind of built out the system and then we're talking about the actual like launching the ad campaigns and the amount of spend that was going to go into that. And I know there was a moment of like a little bit of hesitation. What was it that made you decide to like take that leap and go for it? Because obviously it turned out now, but you didn't know for sure that that was going to happen going into it, right?

I think the biggest thing was there was some of that, like, imposter syndrome. There was a little bit of like, if I don't have like a top of mindedness from having an existing like video reels ecosystem on my Instagram and I'm not someone that someone recognizes, like, why would they click on me, right? Like what, what do I have to offer that, you know, Carlton Dennis or the Mark Kohler's or the, you know, all those like super big influencers on the space are already talking to them. Why would they click on mine? Right? And it was that moment of realizing, like, there's like, let's just try it, right? And it was, it was a big ad spend because we had already launched several new things this year. So there was this moment of is this too many irons in the fire, right? Is this too many, like new things at the same time? Like, our budget was a little bit constrained at that point of this would kind of be like the. Not to get to Utah for a second. I'm gonna use a Christian analogy, but it's the widow's might, right? It's like throwing in that last coin into the well, you know, doing that last thing and being like, is this really going to make that big a difference right now? I know it will over the long term. Like, it's very clear. Just based off of doing that first exercise with your team and working through what the offering was, I think that in and of itself was worth the refinement period. But then doing the initial ad spend was this thing of like, what, what is that truly going to do? But by doing the ads and obviously having an incredible response because we were talking directly to their pain points. And the thing that really like took the wool from my eyes was having so many people on the calls, I'd ask them, like, why did you click on the ad? And they're like, I like the way you talked about my pain. Like, that was it. And so it didn't matter what I said. I could have literally just been like, RSU's employee stock plan taxes are bad. And then they would have clicked on the ad, right? Because it was just they hadn't heard a tax guy talk directly at that thing in that way and say, there are options. And most of them didn't even know, like, what I had actually said about what options were available. They just clicked on it because I said RSU suck. You know, they're, they're obviously great pay, but they suck tax wise. You can do something about it and they're like, cool. I've never heard anyone say, I can do something about it. And it's like, I think it was good to know that you can just put something out and talk to the person, make them feel that way. And sometimes that's enough. Sometimes that's plenty of.

Well, that's the thing, because you're talking to a person, you're not talking to a group of people where one guy's a construction business owner, one guy's in tech, one guy's in sales. You're talking to a highly specific person. And they can all very easily see themselves in what you're saying. I think that's what you, what you're hearing on these calls from them, right?

100%. And then when you talk to them, it's also in addition to that first refinement I did with your team, I mean, you do six sales call in a day. As the actual advisor, you also start to think about, like, what can I improve on my website? What can I improve in my, like, newsletters that go out to existing clients? Like, if these calls, if all these calls have the same questions that come up every time and you know, you always get that thing and you have to, like we talked about, set those really strong boundaries of being the advisor that takes the calls. They want to start like tire kicking and they want to start hearing like the actual broken down, like, what is that product? Like, start giving me a little bit of that product. And you have to be careful to be like, I can help you. But like, this is not that call. This is a call for me to understand, to, not to produce. But it's helpful to be like, if this guy wants that. Now, my existing clients that are already paying for my month to month, it's very likely they want to know these same things. And so then I go into my monthly advisory calls where I'm just doing fulfillment, and I go, hey, here's something that I was thinking about for you. Like, I've connected. Now this random person that I met because they clicked on a thing on the Internet and I've understood their pain. And I'm like, if they're feeling this pain based on the demos that I pulled this other advisory client from, it's very likely they're feeling that same thing. So then you look like you have a crystal ball and you go to your existing clients and they're like, how did you know? How did you know I was thinking about that? And it's like, because, you know, it's pretty, pretty statistically likely, you know, that you're having the same pain point as this other guy that clicked on the same ad that you know you clicked on before.

How has this changed the way you're thinking about growing the business like into the future?

The number one thing is I really thought that it was going to be a slow trickle coming in at the beginning because we niched so specifically into a very specific pain point and a very specific sector. Like, even though there are a ton of people trying to serve this sector, like we're serving it in a differentiated enough way where you know, we're talking like not some old fuddy duddy, we're talking about like, do you buy and sell Pokemon cards on the side? Like you live in California and can't find short term real estate because you live in the Bay Area? You know, do you work remotely? Are you on like H1B visas has been a huge thing. It's definitely helped me to understand that I, I need to focus on more ads and sales as a company to be able to like refine the offering and refine my client base even more. And so taking these calls has really helped me to find like how important sales and advertising can be for scaling. Like, I don't think when people think of taxes, they think of it as it's a very service based business. And so you think because it's very addictive, you go, I don't have to spend any money on advertising, I don't have to spend any money on sales because if I really serve these clients very well, they're going to refer people to me. But that referral becomes like a golden collar and a golden leash that you get stuck to of like it can be addicting to not have to spend money and not have to think about those parts of your business. But you're going to be totally limited to your sphere of influence and the sphere of influence of your clients that are currently in your book. And you know, if you have a golden goose and they're your top referrer and they get sick or they leave that job or they leave that thing. Like, because you were dependent on something that you had no control over, it's now completely out of your hands whether your business grows or dies. Right. And so I think understanding that now the, the crazy part to me is if I open up spaces on my calendar, like you gave me very good advice too. I, I just opened up a 9 to 5 Monday through Friday calendar and bookings were really slow in the first couple of days, the first couple of weeks. And I was like, like, oh, like, is this like not resonating? Are people not seeing it? And then we looked at the metrics and like people were watching it and they were even clicking on it, but we weren't seeing bookings. And we're like, what's, what's wrong? And you gave a very good advice to be like, so you're talking to the right pain points, you're talking to the right people. We've refined it. But you're not available the time when people who have a W2, 9 to 5 are available. You're, you're working the same hours that they're working. You're taking calls at the same time. And so you need to open up the rest of the days. Like you need to change your calendar to talk to their pain points. Like they have Saturdays and Sundays, open up Saturdays and Sundays and take other days of the week off or, or do whatever. Right. And I think that was huge. We opened up those calendar slots and now it's literally like those slots are completely filled up for the rest of the year practically. Like we have to open up the calendar to be open more days in advance, to literally be like, there are more people wanting to book than we have slots. And so it also helped me to know like I was kind of running it as me being like a lead advisor and then having a smaller team of advisors and then tax prayers underneath that. I think I've also learned that, you know, if I want to, if we pour enough like gas on the fire, like we could probably scale this much faster than I had initially thought. Like the, you know, the place where I would be comfortable, like having, you know, a larger social media type role in the business and being more like a client lead gen rather than being just the fulfiller, being the, you know, owning a job essentially. I think sales and ads are like those two, the you know, double headed dragon that takes you there, you know, and so I think helping to know that a little bit of ad spend, like we're not spending an Absurd amount, but we're getting a lot of results. And there are results that are helping to also, like, feed back into the business some very valuable insights about, like, what we're offering, what we're doing, like, how we're priced. Because I think that's an interesting thing too, is like, being the person taking the calls is super valuable because you get invaluable insights. But knowing that they need those off hours. I'm already looking at, like, a couple of different solutions for opening up those alternative hour appointments that have been very, very popular.

What would you say to another firm owner who's maybe they're thinking about working with us right now? They're kind of on the fence. What would you say to them?

I'd say, like, so I really like the quote that says, if you Knew you were 30 failures away from your breakthrough success, how fast would you fail 30 times to get there? I think it's the same thing of, like, if you knew that you were $3,000, you know, a month, it just is a random number away from building your business five years ahead of time to where you thought it would be five years from now. Like, what would you sell? What would you do? What would you stop spending money on per month to do that? Right. To gain five years of momentum in a couple of months.

Yeah. I mean, I always talk about, like, your, your lead flow is the lifeblood of the business. Right? Because that's how you generate new cash. That's how, honestly, if you know how to market and you know how to, like, you know, I have a button I can press where I'm gonna get more leads from, that I can kind of overcome any kind of constraint I'm gonna run into. So I think that's a really astute observation. I really like what you say about, like the, the 30 failures away from success quote. And I think that's right. Right. Like, if I told you, even if I told you you're $100,000 away from, you know, pulling your business, pulling your five year ahead business to today. Right. How fast would you spend that? A hundred grand?

I think sometimes people can hide behind, oh, you know, I'm just like low and slow cooking this thing, you know, Like, I'm just taking it over time, and it's because they're afraid of that failure to be rejected. And so if you knew you were 30 ad campaigns from 510 Xing your business, what would you spend to get 5 years? Now what is the value of your hours? What is the value of your years? You know, if you could buy five to 10 more years with your young children, if you could buy five to 10 more years with your, you know, beloved parent, your beloved grandparents, your, your best friend that you don't know is not going to be there tomorrow, what would you do to get that now, right? What would you invest?