Episode – Karen Collopy

Jamie Gruol: Welcome back to this edition of Diary of a Tax Practice Owner.

I am super excited because we have Karen Collopy, who is actually one of our clients. And Karen has a very interesting journey in her tax practice because she was a former revenue agent with the IRS and she became an enrolled agent and began preparing tax returns in 2002. Karen’s niche is serving clients who are two steps up from TurboTax.

So she works with those with the simpler return, and she only handles individual or business owners who file a Schedule C. Karen brings empathy and compassion to her clients while helping them to understand their tax liabilities. So I have a feeling, Karen, that a lot of people that listen to this podcast to resonate with the type of niche that you serve. and I’m excited to help them see how they can build a tax practice that really allows them to flourish in life because that is what you have done since we started working together in 2021. And I am thrilled to get to share that journey with them. but let’s go back to your IRS days, even maybe before then, like, how did you end up working at the IRS?

I would love to hear the story of your journey to being a tax practice owner.

Karen Collopy: Yeah. So thank you for having me. Yeah, I graduated from college. IRS was hiring. that was not my plan. I was interested in a small, tax firm I figured that’s where I would end up working. I interviewed with a couple of those places, but nobody was really hiring.

At that point, it was a little bit of a hiring freeze, but IRS was hiring and they hadn’t hired in, I think, five years. So I interviewed with them. I did not have a job the day I graduated from college, but the next Monday they called me and said, you’re hired. I talked with a friend of the family who had worked there and sort of told me how that worked.

he actually had gotten his EA and then ended up getting his CPA after that. he was like, you stay at the IRS for five years, you get your EA and then do what you want. by chatting with that guy, he was like, make sure you at least stay for five years. 

I didn’t have any other jobs. I had, just graduated from college. And, worked there for five years. I audited small businesses. I audited Schedule C’s. that’s really why I’m doing the kind of practice that I’m doing, because that’s what I knew.

I never worked for any other firms. I never, prepared or audited any, S corps or partnerships or audits. Well, I did like one S Corp, one partnership and no C Corp. So I didn’t have any experience with that. So that’s why I don’t do those. I don’t prepare those returns and there is enough work to go around just preparing returns for schedule C and rentals too.

I do schedule E. So, people that are my power partners that are, financial advisors and estate and a trust attorneys. They are like, you’re a unicorn. We cannot find people who will prepare a tax return that doesn’t have, these entities with it. They don’t want to touch it.

So they are trying to find people. for their clients that will prepare a tax return. So there’s plenty, plenty, plenty of work to do.

Jamie Gruol: Absolutely. So tell us, how long did you work for the IRS?

Karen Collopy: So I worked for five years. I specifically was like,I got married in the middle of that. I, purposely was like, we’re not starting a family until I’ve been here for five years. us accountants, we’re planners. I worked that out and yeah, I was there for five years.

Karen Collopy: I got pregnant. I, had my babies and quit my job. If I could have stayed and had a little bit of a, tax practice on the side and worked part time at IRS, I would have done that. But that’s a conflict of interest. You can’t prepare tax returns and work for the IRS. so then I was basically stayed home mom with this tax business on the side.

I started in 2002 with five clients and then the next year, I think I had 20 clients and I just grew very slowly as my kids. Needed less of my time. once they went to preschool, I had a few more clients and then once they got into elementary school and were, gone for longer during the day, I had more clients.

And then when my littlest went to middle school, I moved into my office here. So I was working the house before that In 2017, I was connected with a CPA locally who had bought a business and wanted to focus on women owned businesses. And again, those LLCs, those S corps, those partnerships, and she, had this big, Group of her clients that were retired and just wage earners.

And, wasn’t going to focus on that. That wasn’t going to be her niche. So I bought a handful of a bunch of clients from her. And in two years I doubled my practice. 

Jamie Gruol: Wow.

Karen Collopy: was in 20, like tax year, 2017, 2018. And then, just kind of going along. And then once I think kind of once COVID hit, I was like, I got to figure out this digital world because this time.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah. Tell us about this. This is the juicy part, guys.

Karen Collopy: This is it. So this whole time I was paper full. If, if that’s what you want to call it. I, I never worked in a digital office. The IRS is still hardly digital. So, I know what that looked like. I never worked with digital work papers, none of that. So. While I didn’t do a clients come in and you sit across from me, I prepare your return and then you leave.

I never did that. Clients always drop their papers off and I did their return and then they came and pick their papers up or I emailed, what secure link kind of a deal and they would drop off the 88 79 or they would mail them to me. That was, I did all of that, through. Tax year 2020.

And then I was like, I got to get this figured out. So that’s when I found you guys and, learned how to use, digital work papers, what to do with these PDFs, how to like, I was so like, I do not understand how I’m going to use this computer screen with these PDFs.

Jamie Gruol: that.

Karen Collopy: I need to feel these, I need to flip through them.

They need to be highlighted. I want these three W2s to have a total, so that matched line old line seven on the tax return, with the wage total and with the withholding for federal and the withholding for the state. So I just was so confused on how that was going to work.

And so, all of that was, coming to you guys. Doing tax dome. And then, I don’t know if you guys remember, this, my first year with tax dome, most of my clients uploaded stuff. I had a handful of clients who we use Dropbox and they would upload, their PDFs, whatever, but 97 percent of my practice was paper clients.

And so then the first year. They uploaded most of their stuff and I had kind of tags as either like a hybrid or paper or whatever. And a colleague was like, it’s okay. You can print. The stuff that they upload for you. So that was good. my first year I used tax do, but I still printed everything.

my mom was my secretary at the time, and she still did everything that she had done when we were paper full. So she printed those, she, highlighted and tallied and totaled and, we still had all our paper files The next year I hired a digital admin and she and I figured out I learned how to use tick tie calculate

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Karen Collopy: so she then, takes my PDFs and, does her thing and basically does what my mom did on paper.

Or, highlights, tallies, totals puts them in the order that I want them, W2, INT, DIV, the whole way. And so then, and then my, because my mom was like, I can’t do this. I said, no, no, you’re fired. You’re, you’re not allowed to do these digital. However, she still serves a purpose in my firm where my, 25 paper clients.

And they’re you are only, only if you’re retired and like you, you really like not.

Jamie Gruol: They’re your legacies, right?

Karen Collopy: exactly. Yes. I love them. I retired people. They’re great. So they are allowed to, share an email address. Between the two of them, if they’re joint or, be fully paper, come in. So they come in with their papers, my mom sits down with them, goes through their documents.

Where’s your social security statement? Where’s your 2 9, 9 r? So she, I, I need this. I don’t need that. She scans it and then. She logs into tax dome in our admin account and goes and fills out the online client organizer with the client next to her and then submits it. So all of my clients, whether they are paper or digital, go through the same exact process now.

So that took a couple of years to get to that, but. Everybody’s the same. And so no matter, how you all your stuff is in there, we do the same process on our end. Because last year, my paper clients kind of fell through the cracks a little bit. I didn’t really, I didn’t know who had turned their stuff in and who and well, basically the people who had not turned their stuff in.

I was like, I forgot about you. I’m sorry. What, whoops, here we are. And I need your stuff. I’m gonna put you on extension. So that is my, CS, my mom is still involved and serves a great. Part with, the clients love her. They commiserate about how computers are terrible and technology’s always changing.

And so she hugs them as they leave and, sends them off with their documents after she has scanned them and, then they end up with a paper return that I either mail to them or they come back and physically sign, but that’s down to about 25 clients as opposed to almost everybody.

Jamie Gruol: Oh, so good. Okay. There’s a lot of things I want to break down here because I think there’s some major milestones that I want for you to talk to because there are a lot of people listening to this that are exactly where you were. Maybe they’re not 100 percent paper. Maybe they have some combination of Dropbox or other client folder document management system. But they feel stuck in the old way of doing things, right? The paper, it’s what they learned. It’s how they’ve always done it. They’re afraid to make the shift. They don’t know what that burden is going to be or what it’s going to take of them. And I want to get real with them today and with you and talk about it because You had to make a decision back in 2020 or 2021, that something had to change. What was the tipping point for you where you were like, I can’t do, you had like 150 clients or something at that time, right? Where you were exclusively paper with them.

Karen Collopy: Yeah, actually I was looking, let’s see. So, 

I had more than that in, I probably had about 250 clients Or so, and now I have about, I’m on track to have about 425 clients this year.

Jamie Gruol: That’s so awesome. So when you had 250 clients, keeping those clients organized and getting all the documents and managing, like sending them emails and doing all the things that you were having to do manually, what was that like tipping point? Because there’s a lot of reasons people make the shift.

They’re like, they see the light and they’re like, Oh my gosh, it’s available to me. They get sick and they, have no choice, but to make a shift or they get so burnt out. It’s either do it or burn it all down. Right. So like for you, what was the experience?

Karen Collopy: so, I guess I just wanted to continue to grow. My daughter was heading off to college. We now had college expenses we needed to pay for. And I was in this networking group and this estate and trust attorney that I’ve got connected with, He was like, you have to continue to take clients.

You cannot stop taking clients because I have clients. I need to refer to you and we love you. You’re great. You take such good care of these clients. You cannot stop taking clients. So you need to figure out what you need to do to scale your business so that you can grow.

So that was, kind of part of it. And I also just. In my head and, people that I had talked to seemed to be that like when you are solo, just by yourself and granted I had my mom sort of helping.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Karen Collopy: but when you’re solo like that, 300 tax returns kind of seemed to be about where you could do it all by yourself.

And more than that, you were going to need more people. So I was inching towards there and again, just, that estate and trust attorney that was like, Karen, what are you going to do? You got to figure this out. So, and then I think too, I was like with COVID and I’m like, okay, now’s the time to figure out how to do this digital office and making that shift.

And yeah, just all of the time that I have now back or being able to use that time to grow with all of the automations. I mean, I had no idea. Oh, Here is one of the things I guess during COVID, I needed to send an email. Oh, I guess what happened was that the extension went that year to July.

Jamie Gruol: Right.

Karen Collopy: So I needed to send an email out to all of my clients.

I can’t remember if it was everybody or just the ones who weren’t done yet, whatever. So I’m like in Outlook typing in everybody’s, I mean, like, and granted they’re in my address book, but I got to pull up everybody’s name. And that took me like an hour just to get all of the email addresses in.

Like I could, I tried to call, I forget exactly what happened. I just remember this took me forever. I don’t want to have to do this again,

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Karen Collopy: know, to be able to, to send an E one email out to everybody to say, Hey, extension is to, July, here’s what’s going to happen. 

I have a mail slot in the front door, slide your stuff through. If you haven’t already, given me your stuff, most of my clients, because I have a March, I have an early March deadline when COVID hit, I already, most people had already given me their stuff. So I really wasn’t a whole lot of people that needed to be dropping by, but I was like, there’s a note on my door.

If you need me, knock and I’ll come out and talk to you. But whatever. So I think that’s what it was is I sent an email out to those people that was like, here’s what’s gonna happen. But that took me forever to figure out how to do that email. And now I mean, five minutes to grab who needs who’s in a certain spot in my pipeline.

And then I’m saving those emails, to there in tax dome so I can copy and paste it or I can, adjust it a little bit with, some words, whatever, so much faster. Like, that has just been

Jamie Gruol: talk about that because the efficiency that comes out of having a tool that can help you eliminate the administrative efforts that come from just the day to day business, especially for a solo practitioner, right? Like when you are the only one doing the things you have to be efficient, and you found that in that year when you were able to eliminate just the An hour, like you get that one hour back.

We see like on average people get 10 to 15 hours back per week. Do you feel that that aligns with what you experienced from going from the paper environment to the electronic environment, even the first year when things were not as efficient as they are today? Did you see that massive ROI on your time by implementing tax dome and the methods that we taught you how to do?

Karen Collopy: for sure and definitely the, clients checking in to be like, Hey, where am I at? And I used to, if someone would email me and say, Hey, it’s been a couple of weeks. Where am I at? I would get up out of my chair and go to my files and physically count them and say, you’re numbered 37, in my queue.

And so I’ll, it should be another, whatever, a week or two, I’ll be in touch

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Karen Collopy: with tax dome. Now, those status updates that they get as they’re, moving along.

Jamie Gruol: Mm hmm.

Karen Collopy: mean, I might’ve gotten maybe two or three people checking in, This year, and that’s it. And I can just easily write back.

it takes me less than 1 minute to, look on tax stone to see where they are and say, you’re in the queue. I’ll, I’ll be with you in a week or so, or whatever it is.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Karen Collopy: has been wonderful to not have to, do that. And then even just providing better customer service to my clients because the way that I have them tagged.

So, like everyone who’s tagged as estimated taxes, they’re going to get an email, around September 1st. I don’t do that. That actually I do manually because as clients,

Jamie Gruol: It’s so easy to do manually. 

Karen Collopy: yes, because like, as like the one that went out in June, people who wrote back to me and were like, hey, I fixed my withholding. I’m not going to pay the estimates or whatever. So I’ll remove the estimated tag from them. Or maybe as new clients are coming on and I’m adding them as estimates.

each quarter I’m manually moving clients into the message that they’re going to get, but they appreciate that. come January, everyone who’s tagged with an IP pin tag is going to get an email or a message and text them. It says, hey, don’t forget you have this IP pin number.

It comes every January. Make sure you grab it. If it comes in the mail, if you, did it online, you got to go online and grab it. And I’m going to need this number because I can’t file your tax return without it. They appreciate that stuff. and that takes me two seconds to do, but it’s super value.

To them.

Jamie Gruol: Oh yeah. Absolutely. I love that. So you shared as you were kind of talking about how you have some of these paper clients and then they kind of fell in the cracks because you didn’t have the standardized process. One of the big things that we talk about in workflows is that you need to have a standardized way in which you perform the work that you’re doing, right?

Everybody goes through the same process. It’s like in a factory, like a car factory, you don’t see them like treating some cars differently and putting them through a different process, like pulling them off and then painting them a different color and then putting them back. Like, they just don’t do that, right?

Everything goes through the exact same process. How did. Making that transition into the standardized process when you were with us in workflows, how did we help you in seeing the possibilities of how using the tool attack stone and standardizing and shifting your operations to a more standardized model? How are we kind of players in that process for you? Just because I know not everyone’s brain thinks that way. And so sometimes you need some coaching around that. So I would love to have you show your experience.

Karen Collopy: Yeah. So, you guys had a, a video or whatever was like, here’s how to handle your paper clients. And so you had, thought about it, gone through was like, here’s what your pipeline would look like, tag them as a paper client there, you’re going to get a task that says prepare, the information for the paper clients and mail it out or whatever it is that you do with that.

So yeah, you guys thought about it ahead of time. What would the, what would it look like? What would the, what are the issues that are going to come up with that? How does this process work? And then how do we fit that into our pipeline? And so, yeah, definitely this year was great. And I mailed off their organizer and everything at the beginning of the year, they’re all tagged.

And actually they even, there’s a separate, I have a new stage in my pipeline that is like. Paper client holding kind of because that’s where my mom would then go to find their job card. To then, once she would open their job card and get to their organizer and fill out their organizer for them.

And then, once she clicked that it was done, then it moved auto move to the next stage where my digital admin would then take those scans and, do her part. Absolutely

Jamie Gruol: Love that. So let’s, let’s just, we’ll get real for a minute. So you’re a very bright woman. You worked for the IRS. You have your enrolled agent. You’re very smart in the tax industry. Would you have been able to figure out the systems that you have today if you hadn’t found us? And you may have found tax dome, but would you be where you are today and have the success that you’ve had without workflows for tax pros?

Do you think? Yeah. Absolutely.

Karen Collopy: not. And really, I am a dinosaur in all of the tech stuff. Like I remember at one point at the very beginning, you had asked me what my tech stack was and I’m like, what’s a tech stack? I don’t even know what you’re talking about. and I think that is part of, because like I said, I worked for IRS before.

Forever ago from 95 to 2000. And then I worked for myself. So I didn’t have that working with other firms and learning different things from the different places that you work. So I absolutely would not have been able to figure this out myself. And, even though I’ve got my pipelines set and I’m, I’m happy with them.

TaxDome keeps continually improving and adding things. And so, every year at the end of the year, I’m like looking to see, okay, what stuff has come up for 2024 that I’m going to then implement into my system. And I love that you guys, when stuff happens, you’re there with a video. you just did the thing on the partial payments on the invoices and you’ve got a video out already.

Here’s what they did. Here’s the new thing tax dome is doing. Here’s how it’s going to affect you. Here’s how it’s going to affect your clients. Here’s what you need to do. And there we go. So, I mean, that is worth its weight in gold. And I am continually learning on, how I need to tweak my processes and systems.

I was just on a call before you, I was meeting with some power partners, some financial advisors that we refer back and forth. And. She was like your business procedures and things. She’s like, it’s great. We love working with you. The way that you run your business is, is awesome. And we’re so impressed.

And I was like, Oh, that’s, that’s a really cool thing to hear from someone because it’s just like little

Jamie Gruol: Yeah,

Karen Collopy: I have this, this small little business, but people are noticing and that a huge part of that is You guys workflows for tax pros, tax dome, me setting up my systems going, I was one of the OG, like not quite the first time, but I went through all of that, go through your whole entire write down your process and what client, what you want your client experience to be all of that and figuring out exactly what from start to finish what the client is experiencing and what our process is.

Getting that solidified and, and even like, for instance, I know someone was asking about tasks or something in tax dome recently. I’ve got my subtasks on, like for when I review, whether I review a return that I prepared or I’m reviewing a return that one of my employees has prepared. I’ve got, I’ve got that checklist and it’s in a subtask and I like it because I can check each one off because when I.

Try to do stuff on my own without my little list. I send during tax season, my admin is the one who finishes. She sends the invoice. She requests the signatures does all that. A lot of times she’s texting me and she’s like, Hey, where’s, where’s the call? It’d be 88 to 79. I don’t see him.

Whoops. Sorry. I forgot to move them from here to there because I didn’t, I didn’t follow my procedures and check, check my review process.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Karen Collopy: I wouldn’t have done that if you guys weren’t like, you need to have your systems in there. everybody gets done exactly the same.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah, I love that. you have had some, some massive growth over this last couple of years. So you first hired your virtual assistant who helped take off some of that administrative effort. So you could, again, focus more on your clients. can you just talk us through like the growth that you’ve seen over these last 

Three years, thanks to committing to changing the way in which you were working and moving towards virtual and leaning into the systems and allowing tax dome to be the brain of your business so that you weren’t having to remember all of those checklists of every single client every single time. So can you just give us kind of a high level of that as we move forward in the conversation?

Karen Collopy: Yeah. So like I said, I had about 250 clients before that. I’m about maybe 425 or so, 415, 425 by the end of this year, and it used to just be me and my mom. And then at one point I hired my neighbor kid. I’ve known him since he was a baby. He’s my son’s friend and found out he wants to be a CPA.

And I was like, awesome. You are hired. Come and work with me. So he used to come into my office. he had a desktop computer and he would work, at the office and I would help him, when needed. And then the next year he still was coming to my office, but I also had hired a friend I worked with at IRS and we started together and then she continued on.

And worked there for 20 years in criminal investigation and then retired. They have a 20 year retirement. She’s a little bit older than me, but not really retirement age. And she was trying to figure out what she was going to do with her next chapter. And I said, do you want to work for me? And she said, yes.

So she lives in another state. And so then I was like, I got to get a server. How’s she going to log in? Because everything had been me working at my computer and, Ben working at the computer in the room next door on a desktop computer. So now we had this employee who was going to be in another state.

So we have the server and she gets logged in. So then. Ben can work from home as well. 

Jamie Gruol: Oh, thanks.

Karen Collopy: two of them are working from home, logging in, working. They’ve each got their own tech stone log in. My admin has a tech stone log in. So now there’s five of us, including my mom.

Oh my gosh, there, we are a team of five when, Karen is, she’s also Karen when she was out for some training, she came the, that first year we had a team dinner, the five of us out for dinner and it was just really cool.

Like I said, I never worked before. Yes. I never worked in a company like that, so anyway, so that’s, it’s just been very cool and yeah, everybody, they’re trained on tax dome and they, they know what clients they’re, everybody is assigned a tag. So, once a client, they, they’re assigned, they either get, a Karen or a K or a Ben tag and the admin, knows who they’re assigned to.

And then also now this was our 2023 was our second year for most of them. So they’re getting assigned the same clients that they were assigned last year.

Jamie Gruol: Mm.

Karen Collopy: So as we continue on, they’re going to remember like, Oh, right. Okay. The callupy client. I remember now there’s, She does this and he does that and here’s their kids and this is how old they are.

And the one was in college and now is graduated. So they’re no longer dependent, whatever it is, they are going to get to know these clients because year after year, for the most part, they’ll be assigned the same clients. And then also with now having the server and being digital and all that, Ben just left for college.

He just transferred. he’s now at school. He started school on Monday. But hey, he’s going to continue to work for me. And so come test time, he left with his laptop that I gave him and he is, going to be logging in and working for me from school.

Which is awesome because I originally, when I hired him two years ago, I was like, well, I got two years with this kid while he’s at the junior college. And then when he moves on, when he transfers, I’m going to lose him. So he’s still around and who knows, he might end up working for me as a side gig for him for many years to come.

I don’t know what, once he graduates and maybe works for a big firm, but he might still be able to work for me. For some of these clients and in the evening or on the weekends or whatever, so that has just, being able to have that, the tax dome, everyone’s got their stuff that everybody logs in and, knows what they need to do, what clients they’re working on, what the procedures are, start to finish.

It’s just all set.

Jamie Gruol: Love that. I love that you are scaling, right? Like this is your scaling through systems. And I would, when you look forward over the next couple of years, it sounds like, I mean, I love the setup with Ben, like that couldn’t have been any better, right? Like that’s so brilliant. And what a great opportunity for him to be able to say, I’ve worked for five years and a tax attorney, a tax practice and doing this work in real life. Time that’s flexible too for his

Karen Collopy: Yes.

Jamie Gruol: as a college student. That’s so great. But when you look forward over the next couple of years, do you see a trajectory of continued growth and how do your systems help to support that? As you have gone into this new phase of your career, really, where you are now scaling into a firm.

Karen Collopy: Yeah. So for this year, for texture 2023, I did not want to grow super large. I’ve in the past I’ve bought, so I bought clients in 2017, 18. I had another chunk of clients that I bought in texture 2022. And I was like, we need to just have a regular year and see, like, can we even get through, the amount of clients that we have with the systems that we have.

and I didn’t want to throw too much. At Karen and Ben with, new clients and whatever. So I’m like, let’s just have an easy year. So it was great. We had a busy, but smooth tax season tax day was April 15th as it should be. So we have our early March deadline. We, we made 

We even got through clients that had turned in, a few days after our deadline, all of that stuff was processed. So that was great because Tax year 2022. No way where we would, have met our deadline and luckily we’re in California and we had some terrible storms and we got our extension for tax year 2022 and I needed that.

So, that was great. So tax year 2023, I’m like, we just got to see where we’re at. So again, for this year, we’re just a small growth. I’ve got like 30 clients that I’m interested in growing for this year. I’ve already onboarded. 16 of them, they have gone through my lead management pipeline, which I didn’t know I needed until I got set up my lead management pipeline.

And thank you. 

Jamie Gruol: It’s great.

Karen Collopy: I was like, it’s fine. I have a phone call with someone. I manually write these notes down.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Karen Collopy: I was spending time I didn’t need to spend. And now I send them an email and tell them I have a little blurb about here’s my minimum. Here are the clients I don’t take. Okay.

Here’s what I do that, perfect client looks like this. If you’re still interested, here’s the link to sign up for tax dome and, upload your last year’s tax return and fill out this client application. And only then will I have a, a 15 minute conversation with you. And at that it’s 15 minutes and that’s it.

And then most of these people turn into new leads because they’ve already sort of self Decided whether they’re going to be a good fit based on, the initial email that they get back from me. So, that’s all good. So I’ve got 16 new people already in. They’ve paid my, my hold my spot deposit and they I’ve got their last year’s return in my system.

So that’s all happening in this off season. Which is great because come the end of the year, I’m not going to be spending a whole lot of time onboarding new clients. I don’t take new clients during tax season. So I’m only focused on doing tax prep at that time. And all of my power partners know, Hey, I’m, Karen’s unavailable until about June 1st.

So I can refer her new clients between June and December. So I’ve got a small growth for this year and then maybe tax year 2025 might look to increase that. and then at that time, possibly then hiring someone new or maybe Karen and Ben are more efficient in the work that they are doing so they can handle more and they are doing a better job with.

Making sure that their returns that they’re preparing. I’ve taught them how to do their own self review so that by the time it gets to me. My reviews of their work should be like 10 minutes because they’ve already done their review and everything that should be on the return is already on the return.

And I’m just doing kind of a high level double checking. and then I have my own, my own more little more complicated. Clients that I’m working on, but if they can become more efficient, then they can handle more work. and then I can handle more work because the work that they’re doing is done right.

The first time kind of thing. And then if not, then I can look to hire another person to do the, tax input data entry kind of thing and get, more, more employees, yeah.

Jamie Gruol: continue the growth. I love it. I just want to commend you, Karen, for the efforts that you have put into achieving the practice that you want. I do want to end here. You shared with me before that this summer has been like a lot of time off. You’ve been, Not grinding all the time. You’ve caught up with yourself and you have the systems and the team in place. I would love for you to summarize for the person who is maybe Karen of 2020, feeling bogged down, maybe not a hundred percent paper, but just feeling bogged down and not Knowing how to step forward. What is the piece of advice that you would give to that person that gives them the hope and the next step that they can take to Karen of 2024, who is, working just a couple of days a week during the summer and is so far looking so far ahead and being so proactive towards creating more efficiencies in your tax season and in your tax year in general.

Karen Collopy: Yeah. So just by having tax dome and all of that set up and all of those processes and automations, I was able, this year I haven’t really had a nice off season in four years and part of that was, COVID and extended deadlines and all of that. But. This year we were able to get to all of our clients, the bulk of them were, filed by April 15th.

And then those that were sort of still in the process, I had the time because that, that chunk was already done. I was not concerned about this, people who hadn’t turned their stuff in because the, when clients are like, Oh, the deadline is, July or May or October, whatever, then they’re, they’re not, Going to give me all their stuff right away.

Right? So this year with actually having that April 15th deadline, that was great. Those clients got done. And then the ones that were in the pipeline, I, I was able to message them and be like, Hey, let’s get you rolling. Let’s get this tax return done and, be finished with it. I only have a handful of clients who need to be filed by October 15th.

I just sent them an email the other day, two clicks in my tax dome. And they got a message that was like, Hey, don’t forget your stuff is due to me by September 15th. Or I charged time and a half. So get me your stuff because I want to get that done so that those returns are filed.

And, yeah, I am middle of the week, middle of the day, like maybe I’m working 15 hours a week, in this off season and it’s been wonderful. And yeah, clients just know that they, that they need to get that stuff in and get them done.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah. I love it. And the season of growth, you can still have peace and balance and enjoy life.

Karen Collopy: For

Jamie Gruol: cool.

Karen Collopy: Yeah. And that’s also because my tax clients are pretty much done. I have the time to nurture these leads and get these clients on boarded and, review their prior year return and have a phone call with them. And, figure out, if they’re going to be the right fit for both of us and then, get their tax return into my system.

So then that way, I check for errors. And then also, come January. they’ll already be in my system and so that also then takes less time when we’re doing our tax return next year because they’ve already got their prior year return in the system and they have a client checklist so they know what to gather for next year and makes it all smooth.

That’s all in, all those forms are in tax dome for them. The organizer tells them where to look for their client checklist. They need to certify they have seen their client checklist to tell me that they got all their documents.

Jamie Gruol: So good. I love it. Well, Karen, thank you for sharing all of this with us today. Your journey, what has been done? I guess the last question I would ask is if somebody is considering tax dome and, has found us as workloads for tax pros. What is, would you recommend and what would you say to them to say, this is, this is my, my belief about it.

Karen Collopy: Yes, absolutely. It’s worth every penny. Just the fact that you have got all of the, the pipelines, the templates, everything that needs to go out, all the tasks, everything. And you have thought of, As a tax practice owner, how do I use this? What’s the best practice for this?

What are people expecting? You’ve thought of all of those things and, decided, here’s one way that you could do it. Take this as your inspiration, make it sound like yourself or use this part and don’t use that. I still don’t take a deposit at the beginning of the tax season.

So my clients get an engagement letter, I have not really ever had issues with accounts receivable. My clients have always paid me. And to me, I don’t want to do the bookkeeping of taking a deposit. Now it’s already enough that I’m taking this hold my spot deposit for my new clients. So, they’ve got a tag that whatever.

The accounting of it. I just don’t want to have to deal with taking deposits from all of my returning clients. So you guys off, that’s the best practices that you know that you guys do. And that’s not something I want to do. So I don’t have that part. So I, I’ve just figured out what works for me.

And, set my stuff up that way and yeah, I absolutely could not have done tax dome without your program.

Jamie Gruol: I appreciate you sharing that. And that’s all we don’t want to ever tell somebody how to run their business. That is not what we’re doing. I think there’s a lot of people out there that do, they say, this is how I had success. So you have to do it this same way. Our goal is to say, here’s how you can do it.

Here’s how you can, use the tool to its full efficiency and take advantage of all the features and functionalities of it. And therefore get back the time and the administrative effort that you’re putting in manual work. Right. And then if it doesn’t fit or it’s not a best practice that you want to adopt, great.

We’ll help you figure out how to, Set it up without that or just leave it out. And we always give options because we recognize that everybody’s a little bit different. The niches are different. The desires are different. The business owners are different. And that’s the cool thing about tax dome is so customizable and we love getting creative with it.

So it allows us to do that when we give you that space. Karen, thank you so much for being here. If somebody has questions for you and wants to connect, where do you hang out on the internet? Is, are you on Facebook, Instagram? Like where are you at in case they want to send you a DM and say, I love what you’re doing and I have questions.

Karen Collopy: So that’s probably the best place to find me. My regular Facebook settings are pretty tight. I just have a personal Facebook account and Yeah, that’s probably the best way for people to find me is through your group.

Jamie Gruol: in our Facebook group and tag Karen and she’d be glad to answer any questions you might have, she’s in there and hanging out. Well, thank you again, Karen, so much for being here. Thanks for sharing your story with us. And I’m so excited to see where the next four years take you because it’s going to be really great.

Karen Collopy: Awesome. Thank you.

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