In this episode of the Working Moms of San Antonio podcast, hosts Erika Radis and Marie Lifschultz introduce their new coworking membership program before welcoming tax preparer and bookkeeper Cassandra Guilan, who specializes in the beauty industry. Cassandra shares her professional journey—from insurance sales in California to becoming a mom‑focused tax consultant in Texas—explaining why she left corporate employment to gain flexibility for her family. She discusses the broader scope of tax work beyond the annual return, covering quarterly estimated payments, sales tax, annual reports, and the importance of year‑round tax planning for small‑business owners. Cassandra demystifies common misconceptions circulating on social media, clarifies the difference between tax credits and deductions, and outlines what expenses are legitimately deductible (ordinary and necessary business costs, tools, supplies, equipment, renovations, cost of goods sold) while warning against improper write‑offs like personal beauty treatments. The conversation also delves into her strategic rebranding from Total Tech Services to Galán Consulting, the role of niche marketing and social‑media presence (primarily Instagram/Facebook) in attracting beauty‑industry clients, and her first networking experience in Texas, highlighting anxiety, preparation, and the value of community connections. Throughout, Cassandra emphasizes education as a core part of her service, aiming to empower mom‑entrepreneurs to feel confident and avoid costly tax surprises. The episode closes with a call for listener feedback and community engagement.
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Welcome to the Working Moms of San Antonio podcast. We're your host, Erika Radis and Marie Lifschultz, a realtor and lender here in San Antonio. But most importantly, we're working moms just like you.
This podcast is all about creating a space where we can come together, share stories, and learn from each other. We love connecting with local moms in business Hearing about their journeys and how they're balancing it all, because let's be honest, it's not always easy, but it's so worth it.
Before we dive in today's episode, we're excited to share some big news with you all.
Our business community and coworking memberships are officially open. Whether you're looking for a supportive community of moms in business or need a beautiful space to work and grow, we've got just what you need here at Working Moms of San Antonio. You can visit the link in our show notes or workingmomsofsanantonio.com/membership for more info.
Now on to today's episode. Grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and let's get started.
Hi everybody, my name is Cassandra Guilan. I am a tax preparer and bookkeeper, and I specialize in the beauty industry, but I I have other clients in other different industries as well. And so we help you get your books together and file the taxes as well. I have a lot of clients, it's mostly like individuals that are like rushing to file because they want their refunds, right? And I'm like, but we still need everything. And if we're missing anything, it's just gonna delay whatever refund you're gonna get anyway, because we're missing the income and it's underreported. Before I started doing taxes, I was an insurance agent. I used to do, I had my PNC insurance license. And that was back when I was in California. And, and I really liked doing insurance, but, but you know what, I noticed that what I like most is educating the, the consumer. So educating them about like their coverages and everything, making sure that they're covered. I noticed that when I do taxes now, I like educating about taxes and how it works. So when I used to do insurance, I first started out working for a broker. So very small broker, mostly sold like mercury. And then I went to another broker where I did sales, which was nice. Everyone, you know how sales is. And then, um, but at that time I was working like 6 days a week, 10 hours a day. This is also the time that I was pregnant with my daughter. So by the time I had my daughter, I was like, I don't want to work this much anymore. I want to like, and in general, I just didn't want to work for anyone anymore. Like I'm tired of having to ask for the time off or like, having to worry if I need to take my daughter to the doctor, that I'm gonna be like late or have a day off or like, and they were really strict, the company I was working for back then about attendance because they wanted us to be making sales. And so I left them and I went to State Farm and I was mostly doing customer service for an agent that had already been around for like 20 years. And it was just the same thing. I just, I didn't wanna work for anybody anymore, but I liked doing that and I had always, and I had always had friends like in other industries like taxes and more friends in insurance and people that have like car dealers and stuff like that. I guess kind of those industries always like correlate together. And I had this friend who has a tax office out in California and I asked him about it, like, how do I get my license? How do I get into this? Because I had always heard that like tax people only work like 4 months out of the year. I was, and at the time I was a new mom, so I was thinking, oh, this is like perfect. I could be with my, my baby whenever. And so I did it and the first couple of years was like that, was mostly like just tax season for me. And over time you learn that there's so much more to taxes than just filing your tax return. Like it's not just filing your tax return one time per year. It really depends on, you know, like what your income sources are. Like you had to do quarterlies or if you're a business owner, we have much more than that. We have annual reports, we have sales tax. And stuff like that. So it's more of an all year long thing. And especially if you're trying to plan for your taxes to save on them. So when I moved to Texas, it was still just me. And like our first year of Texas, we were struggling a little bit. And I'm very open about this. I'm not, I'm not like one to hide anything about things that I've been through. So when we first moved to Texas, me and my husband and our two kids, we struggled a little bit because his job that he was set up with was the railroad Union Pacific. And they kind of like, I don't know, I don't want to say like lied, but it just wasn't what they told him. So they said that it was like, we work all day long, 365 days a year, and blah, blah, blah. And it ended up being like part-time on call. So it wasn't what we expected. So we struggled a little bit. I did Amazon Flex just to get by and make sure that our rent was paid and stuff like that. Amazon Flex is basically like you deliver Amazon, but with your own car. So you're still self-powered. Yeah. And so while I was doing that, at the same time when we moved to Texas, I had hired a marketing coach because I knew when I was moving to a new state that it was possible my business could do less instead of more, instead of growing because of the whole new area. And so even though I had always been virtual and I always had clients in like other states, but it's mostly because I've always gone on word of mouth. So I knew moving to a new state, it was possible that could like slow down a little bit. And I had hired a marketing coach and he's the one that taught me that I needed to niche down. Yeah, since back then I was open to like anybody and everybody. And it was even back then, it was having the mindset like, well, if I niche down, I'm like rejecting business for anybody that comes across me. And it's not really true because people come across me now that are not in beauty and I still take them on, right? So he's the one that taught me the niche down and how to do my online presence with my social media. I already had a website, but he taught me how to tweak it a little bit. And so anyway, my social media like Instagram and Facebook, I don't, I don't really use anything else like Twitter or LinkedIn or anything like that because that's not where my market is. That's not where they meet you. So. He taught me all of that. And once I did all of that, that's like where I rebranded because I used to be Total Tech Services. Then I rebranded to Galán Consulting because I wanted a more professional look. And around that time when I rebranded is when Claudia found me on Instagram. So she found me on Instagram, like she said that she had to like look like she was looking for someone that specialized in that. And because I had just recently optimized my presence. She was able to find me like that. And it's so—
just really quickly for our listeners, because maybe they don't know, we had a gal on here before, Claudia Aceves, and she, she's a permanent makeup artist, and that's how sort of we all come to know each other. So that's who she's referring to. Yeah.
So she found me and she had invited me to come speak at one of her events that she was hosting and it was like targeted towards beauty. I was like, okay, perfect. And this is also the first time I've done like any kind of networking. I've never done any networking in California. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. But in my head, I'm like super nervous. I deal with anxiety a little bit, so it's a little bit scary. So, so I did that and I showed up and remember like I had, I hired someone to do like my makeup because I'm really not big on makeup myself. Her son to do my makeup and my hair because I wasn't really knowing what to expect. I wasn't like, I didn't know if there's gonna be a ton of people there, if there's gonna be a little people or like how big her space was. I had never been there before. Yeah. So anyway, I showed up and I remember when it was my turn to speak, I like, like I almost like, what is it? Like you like choke up? Like I started stuttering. Like you get like a frog in your throat. I started stuttering. I was like looking for my words. I didn't even know what I was even like thinking or saying anymore. My vision was going blurry. And I almost panicked, but I took a breath and I looked at Sam like, I'm sorry, I'm just nervous. And then I went back and started saying what I was saying. And so that was like the whole start of me doing networking in Texas. And I think that that's what really helped me a lot here, especially locally, because like I said, even though I meet everybody at the networking events, even if you're not in my niche, I can still take you on as long as it's a good fit for both of us. A lot of stuff comes from social media, first of all, like TikTok. Yeah, it's so annoying. Yes, there's so much misinformation. And I like, I see some like stupid videos where they like open an LLC and then get a business credit card and now you have access to like $20,000. It doesn't work like that. It's so annoying. It's only, and then like, it's like, first of all, like, because that one is more like about getting access to funding, right? But it's like, we have to actually have a business and like some kind of activity and some sales and whatever to even get a business credit card. Like you have to build your business credit too. And to do that, you have to have sales and all these other things. But so anyway, back to taxes. So a lot of things I see mostly, well, especially in the beauty industry is like they want to write off things that like getting their own lashes done or getting their nails done because it shows off what they do. They think it's a form of like advertising or marketing and it's not. So I do have one client, she's a marketing coach, but she buys like skincare products and she reviews them and does like videos and stuff like that. That's a different story because you're actually reviewing the product and then referring it, probably giving discount codes and stuff like that. But simply like just getting your lashes done and because you're a lash tech, I mean, that's not a write-off. So that's the thing, a lot of people, they don't know what write-offs are or the deductions are. A lot of people don't know the difference between credits and deductions. Like credits are dollar for dollar, lower your taxable income. Deductions only lower percentage of it. And so when I do a lot of consultations and stuff, people ask me the same question, like, what can I write off? And I tell everybody the same thing. It's any, and it's literally word for word the IRS rule, anything ordinary and necessary to your business, you can write it off as long as it's not something that's like ridiculous, out of the ordinary. Like people want to write off like their pets because it's security, but it's like, when is your pet, is your pet there like after hours when nobody's there actually being like a guard dog? No, it doesn't work like that. So there's a lot of things, but I tell them all that same thing. As long as you need it for your business, then you can write it off. So tools, supplies, equipment, renovating your space, furniture, stuff like that, all of that's deductible. Retail products, those are cost of goods sold. So anything like that, those are all things that you can write off, but you just want to make sure you're not trying to go over the top and like go get Botox and try to write it off or like stuff like that. I really enjoy the educating part in what I do because when I do a lot of consultations, a lot of the girls that I work with or that I do consultations with in the beauty industry, they're all really new to like business, but also taxes in general, because they're usually younger, like they're usually like fresh outta high school or like college age, and they really don't know anything about all of that. And so once we get on the call and I explain it, and again, to really detail, they, they feel so relieved because it doesn't have to be as hard as it sounds. You just have to know how it works and how you can work it to your advantage. And once they know that, they feel so much relieved and like, It doesn't have to be scary or daunting as long as you're doing it the right way and you're not, there's ways to make sure that you're not paying like $10,000 at tax time as long as you're making quarterly payments and stuff like that. So it, like I said, it doesn't have to be as scary as it sounds.
Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the Working Moms of San Antonio podcast. We hope you love today's chat and found a little inspiration to take with you into your week. If you have a podcast topic suggestion or a question you'd love for us to cover, definitely send us an email at hello@workingmomsofsanantonio.com. We'd love to hear from you. And until next time, see you in the community.
