Ep.18 – How to Build Systems That Keep Your Tax Practice Running During Personal Crisis with Tonya Yudizky

Jamie Gruol: Welcome back to today’s episode of diary of a tax practice owner. I’m Jamie Gruol, one of your co hosts here, and I’m excited to have one of our members from workflows for tax pros, Tonya Yudizky. A tax manager with over 20 years of experience who is helping her clients achieve their financial goals through tailored tax preparation, planning, and strategy in 2020, after being laid off during the pandemic, Tanya embraced the opportunity to start her own full time firm.

While also homeschooling her children. In 2023, Tanya faced a personal health crisis that we’re going to talk about today that has caused her to close her business, uh, and open a business with a close friend. Through these challenges though, Tanya has developed a deep sense of resilience and adaptability that have shaped both her personal and professional lives. And Tanya has continued to build meaningful relationships with her clients, offering these customized. financial strategies that have helped to prioritize their success.

Tonya, I am so excited to share this story of what you have been through your diary, truly of building your tax practice. Because as I shared, you have had several major life events that have impacted you and Despite all of that, you have found success in being a mom, being a wife, in being a business owner.

And I’m excited to share the story. So welcome. 

Tonya Yudizky: having me. Yes. Uh, it has been a whirlwind of a few years for me. 

Jamie Gruol: Post pandemic was not enough for most humans, right? Then we have all these life events too. So,

Tonya Yudizky: exactly. Yes.

To start a business and doing all of these things in the midst of all of that as well. So, yeah. So I, I want to take it back a little bit. So

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: not a traditional kind of like found the accounting field and fell in love with it kind of girl. That’s not how I really ended up in this space. So out of high school, I joined the military ended up having to come out of the military unexpectedly after a medical discharge didn’t, could not do what I did at the military on the outside. So I walked into one of those, big square buildings that was having some training and, uh, ended up. It was a stopgap at the time, right? I needed a job. But that’s where my love of taxes started all those years ago, uh, I’ve been doing it ever since as a side job for years and years while I was also got a corporate job I was a executive assistant for many years for small businesses.

So I got to see the other side of the barrel as well, and help run some really nice companies. 

Jamie Gruol: Were you always

Tonya Yudizky: then

Jamie Gruol: tax or accounting when you were in those other careers or

Tonya Yudizky: I wasn’t, I was always in operations. So what’s nice is that I get to bring that operational mindset. To our business owners and our clients. So I get to see it from both sides. Like now that I’ve really learned the accounting side after opening my own business but also the tax side.

And then I get to bring in the operation side as well, which has been nice.

Jamie Gruol: that’s awesome. So how did you decide to open up even as you were just running the side business? How did you make that decision to step into that role?

Tonya Yudizky: So in 2020 during all of the pandemic I ended up losing my job. And then wife looked at me and she goes, well, it’s time to just your money where your mouth is. And I’ve been doing that. I’d had probably about 15 or 20 tax clients at that time. And she told me to suck it up buttercup and this is what we’re doing.

She didn’t want me to go look for another job and she was very supportive of me what I love doing and which is taxes. I do love, generally love taxes, like in the way most people love other things. So that’s how it all got started. And I ended up with some programs at the time that really helped me focus on taxes, because when you do start, everybody’s like, well, you have to do books and taxes.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: so I got into some of the bookkeeping places and programs that, to this day have even helped me decide that’s not what I wanted to do.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah, I, it’s whenever you, when you start a business, you do, you have to figure out what feels right to you, what aligns with your, the way your brain works and the things that are intriguing to you and you find creative and you can force yourself into the old traditional model of tax and bookkeeping and making that work.

And yes, you can make some money doing that, but it. I feel like when we come to work day after day and it’s a drudge every day, it really quickly will burn you out, right? Like that’s just not even, you just lose your zest. And so you just eventually either resign yourself to the fact that it’s going to be like this forever.

And then you hate your business and your life forever. Or you say, this is not for me and you burn it all down. So when you made that shift over to just tax, did you have to let go of some clients? Did you just, Move into not, they like attrition, like slowly away or like how did you manage that?

Tonya Yudizky: I did, I had some straightforward discussions with clients and I moved them more to a DIY model where I would help them get set up on a good accounting software. We love Xero personally. That’s. That’s our thing. But then I just looked over it for them and I showed them and so that I knew that they had clean books for taxes every year because I worked when I started.

I started the transportation industry. There are not a lot of good tax professionals for the tax for

Jamie Gruol: Gotcha.

Tonya Yudizky: industry. And so I got. A really big start there because we had so much experience. My wife was a truck driver for many years. So we, uh, transportation is 1 industry that I know very well

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: from just being involved in it. And then from there, it was. Just saying, Hey, I can help you set your books up, but I’m not going to handle these for you. And so really, it was coming up with those processes that I could roll out very easily

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: And zero made it really easy on that end of it.

Jamie Gruol: Well that’s good.

Tonya Yudizky: Hub doc works really well. So they’re able to not send me shoe boxes of receipts at the end of the year.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: I did get for many years. , that made that piece really easy. And then, rolling from there and finding tax dome, made things more automated for me and easier was really, eye opening when I can teach my, 80 year old truck drivers, how to use a system and then actually use it successfully that makes things. That was like a dream on my end. And so being able to have those processes and when you have clients that will say, Hey, I hate doing taxes and I hate dealing with this, but this lady makes things easy.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Invaluable at that point. . Yeah. So you came to us in 2021. I think it was the end of 2021, if I remember correctly.

Tonya Yudizky: it

Jamie Gruol: And.

Tonya Yudizky: patent

Jamie Gruol: You were in that still that growth stage, right? Like your wife had said, like, make this work. You knew that you were going to grow. And were you seeing people coming to you through referrals and like starting to have that momentum that you knew going into tax season?

Like, I think you came to us and you were like, I know I need to get my stuff together because if I don’t. This is going to be a hellacious tax season. So what was the, where were you at when you found us in looking for some support in like this actual creation of the system of using tax down? Had you been on tax down a while?

Like, where were you then?

Tonya Yudizky: actually. I found you when I found TaxDome. So, you guys introduced me to the world of Taxdome, which was nice because I was looking for something at the time I had, I was using another CRM and I was piecing things together with Zapier and trying to wrangle all of my growth,

Jamie Gruol: Yeah,

Tonya Yudizky: And that’s difficult.

Jamie Gruol: it’s a lot of effort, right? Like when you try and piecemeal all these things together and zap them together and make them work, you can create some amazing systems, but the maintenance of that is exhausting.

Tonya Yudizky: it is. And I was by myself. In late 2021 my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and we lost him very quickly. But the other problem with that is, is that I was self employed. I’m homeschooling two kids. father is 400 miles from me. And so I’m traveling back and forth. I’m also going through a huge phase of growth because it was in September. So it was about this time that we got the diagnosis. So it’s also my growth time, right? So this is when everybody’s looking for those. people to file 1099s for you, those people to start getting their taxes together and that kind of stuff. That’s when it all comes up. So got a lot of growth going on.

I’ve got a lot of moving pieces. I’m traveling every other week to Dallas. And I really just needed from Houston to Dallas. And I just really needed that other piece of the puzzle that could automate things. That I didn’t have to like babysit every day to make sure that they were moving. And I was still making progress. And so that’s when you guys had a big push and I found you guys and I was like, maybe tax don’t actually fix all these things

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: to do. honestly, it really did. So I ended up making that choice in December, right after my father passed. And so I was the executor of my father’s. So I’m in Dallas going back and forth every other week trying to get everything taken care of and set up a whole new system all at

Jamie Gruol: Right. That’s

Tonya Yudizky: for a tax

Jamie Gruol: That’s

Tonya Yudizky: Started January 1st for me, because I do file 1099s for all of my clients because they don’t have bookkeepers.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: me as a tax pro because I worked specifically with the vast majority of my clients were all transportation and their pilot cars and their owner operators and they’re those types of things. So they don’t have. bookkeeper, it’s just them

are issuing 1099s to everybody.

So that’s, I was really busy. And so, oh, I set up TaxDome in three weeks using y’all’s system, which

Jamie Gruol: yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: amazing for me because it took me way longer than that set up all of my other systems.

Jamie Gruol: Well, and I wanna add too, like you’re technically able person, right? Like I think that is something people, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, I resonate with Tanya, like I can set up tech, I can do things. What was the peace of mind that having someone to guide you through and not have to like figure it out?

Like what was that experience like being on a new software?

Tonya Yudizky: And

Jamie Gruol: Having it all there.

Tonya Yudizky: Yeah, so I can figure out most any things. So to give other people what so my system before I was running keep and I had done a lot of the automation work myself inside keep which. Requires actual coding, like you got to know, you got to know, um, I’ve been in, in CRMs before, like Salesforce, which also requires a lot of coding and those types of things.

And so in order to move over to tax dome and just not have to right away, all of the different things where I was at.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: my life, I just didn’t have that brain space and I didn’t have that brain capacity and I just wanted and I needed something that was easy. So being able to watch the videos and follow the templates and be like, put this here and put this here and put this here and really just have somebody else do that piece thought for me

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: really what I needed. At the time, which is why I invested and I wavered on it for a while because I had already spent so much time and effort into my old systems.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: And really, it was a discussion. My wife is my greatest proponent.

Jamie Gruol: Wonderful.

Tonya Yudizky: she’s my greatest support and has been for years. But really it took. And at the time she was over the road.

So a lot of our conversations were hour long conversations at like 2 a. m. on the phone.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: Me going, I don’t know if this is what I should do. And she looked at it and she basically just told me, she’s like, is it going to make life easier? Are you going to be less stressed? And. Is it something that you can put together the holidays?

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: I said, I think so. And she goes, do it like, don’t worry about the investment. It will figure itself out. And it did. It really helped me, especially over the next three months in tax season where I almost tripled my client intake,

Jamie Gruol: It was a lot. You had massive growth. It was amazing.

Tonya Yudizky: was a lot of growth very quickly.

There was absolutely no way I could have done that without a really good system in place. And I didn’t have that at the time when I found Taxdome and I found you guys. So really, the program helped me figure it all out and gave me the pieces so that I could do what I needed to do for my family which was massive growth. I went from about 30 clients to, like, really, like, 150 in about, 90 days during tax season. And it was insane growth. And it’s just me. So that was that whole year. That was crazy for me.

Jamie Gruol: So the burning question is did you stay sane during that growth though? Being a mom and a homeschool mom and a what, like, did you maintain your sanity?

Tonya Yudizky: did. And that was really the biggest part about it. Yes. I still worked insane hours because, well, you had to, when you, it’s just you still have that many tax returns to do.

Jamie Gruol: Right.

Tonya Yudizky: but I was able to maintain my sanity. I was able to be a good mom and a homeschooling mom and a wife and take care of the house.

And a traveling life at that. So,

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: well, a lot of the times I played single mom because there just wasn’t anybody else here.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: I didn’t have that support. My mom was great. My mom moved in with us shortly after my wife went back over the road to help with, uh, bridge that gap for us. But you know, she was also called to help my brother at the same time who needed that help with the bridging of the gap.

So, it was adjustment for all of us at the time. It’s really been. An amazing ride during that period, because COVID was still very active during then too. So we’re still very locked down and schools are still closed and all of that. So there wasn’t really a whole lot of out.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah. There’s

Tonya Yudizky: But everybody needed help, and everybody needed help with the EILDs and the PPP loans, and those became

Jamie Gruol: so much going on.

Tonya Yudizky: Yes, so, I got a lot of growth from that as well, and was able to manage those filings through TaxDome, and being able to know enough that I could put together other workflows that helped automate life

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: time was nice too.

Jamie Gruol: Love that.

Tonya Yudizky: then I just continued steady growth for the next year.

I ended up hiring an admin. She was wonderful.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: admin helped me was able to jump in and help. And she learned a lot of how to put workflows together and those types of things. And then, I had a stroke last year. And it was two days before tax season ended. So there was still a lot of extensions and things that I was going to finish, but didn’t get finished.

What was nice was I still had the systems in place and because I had the systems in place. My admin was able to step in and know exactly which extensions she needed to file. Well, she couldn’t do the tax return. She could certainly hit the button to file the extensions. And she did. But she knew exactly which ones had been filed and what hadn’t filed.

It was easy for her to mass message our entire client list and be like, Hey, we are closing up shop because of a medical emergency.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: Feel free. We’ll do notifications inside in one area. She didn’t have to go to some other software to do that and figure out what the difference was. So it made things easier. easier at a time when life was not easy.

Jamie Gruol: Right. So when you experienced that, I mean, any medical emergency like that is difficult. What peace of mind did having that system bring you in those first few weeks? First hours of recovery from your stroke and like hindsight at, 2020, of course, when we’re in those moments, how grateful were you to previous Tanya who made the decision to do take the leap?

Because it’s possible, like your old keep system would not have allowed you that peace of mind, but like, what were the thoughts that you had in that moment regarding your operations and making sure that your clients were cared for? And you knew you could hand off to your admin.

Tonya Yudizky: The fact that I, it was literally the peace of mind knowing that my admin knew where everything was because there was this 20 level, 20, 000 foot look at where everything was, right? She knew which clients she didn’t necessarily have to send the message to. She knew which extensions needed to be filed because we hadn’t filed their tax returns yet. She could look. And I didn’t have to think about that. The fact that my admin could step up and go, I got this because I know my system. works. was where it should have been.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: Able to really breathe and know that I could take care of myself in that moment. And I knew that I could pass off the baton to somebody else who, while they’re not the face of the company,

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: could take care of my clients at that time.

And that really does just breathe a sigh of relief at that moment. I knew that my clients were still taken care of and I knew, and I did have a couple leave because of it completely understandable, but at the same time, I also knew that my income level really wasn’t changing either. And when you’re self employed something like that happens, that’s the first thing that you always think about

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: How am I going to pay my bills now?

Jamie Gruol: Yeah. Well, and I was thinking too, like how many people, when they have that kind of situation happen, their spouse has to step in to help make sure that continues on, but when you’re in those moments of fear for your spouse and the loved one being hurt and needing to recover, like that’s the last thing you want to be thinking about there too.

So,

Tonya Yudizky: And my spouse really did help. She stepped in and she did some things as well over the next week. But those first couple of days, my advent was just able to get all the extensions done. And it was 

Jamie Gruol: yeah,

Tonya Yudizky: very tax tech savvy.

That’s how it goes. Right. One of you is like really good at all the computer stuff. And the other one’s like, I will run a saw. Uh, and that’s how it is with the two of us. And so for me to be able to not thinking horribly clearly at that time, cause my brain was recovering, but be able to walk her through, this. This is how you go. See who’s emailed us. This is how you go. See if there’s something urgent that somebody has to like, somebody needs to respond to those types of things. That was also really helpful because the interface is so nice. on both ends, which is also what I wanted, right? I didn’t want just a client happy interface, right? Make things easy for the clients. That is fabulous. Of course we want to do that, but I also wanted to make it easy for me, which, really was a blessing during that time because it was so easy. My recovery was also easier too, because I didn’t have to think so much about How to email somebody through text or how to send a message because it was so intuitive, even on, our side, as it is on the client side.

So that makes made things really easy to especially as I was getting back into. able to do the work a month or so later when I could sit behind a computer again,

Jamie Gruol: it’s a long time to take off. Right, right in the midst of all the things. So, so share with us where you went, because after you had your stroke and you recovered, you made some pretty drastic decisions about where you wanted to go. So will you share a little bit of that journey with us?

Tonya Yudizky: absolutely so Because my stroke was called a TIA or a transient that I don’t even remember all the technical

Jamie Gruol: Google it. You’ll find it. Yeah,

Tonya Yudizky: for us that we needed to make some additional changes in our house so my kids ended up going back to school, so I’m no longer a homeschool mom. Luckily my wife had already come off of the road and she had gotten a local job. So she was home all the time, which was definitely a plus. but the other thing was, is I couldn’t take the stress of being an owner of a company anymore. And that was really hard. I really enjoy owning a company.

I really enjoy making those types of decisions and seeing the potential and seeing the growth and doing those types of things. I just couldn’t take the stress of it anymore. While I’m having to still work on all of those things, about 18 months later, I’m still working on managing my stress and doing those types of things.

And so, my friend, Misty Newsome. here local. We actually met at a zero event three years ago. We’ve been business besties ever since we’ve worked really closely together. We had talked about me buying her tax book of clients actually. Hey you feel like you need to get rid of your clients and I don’t want to do taxes anymore.

Why don’t you come be my manager? And so I did. And so that happened. We started the transition about November last year, we’ve been together almost a year and it’s been fabulous for us because we’re both able, To breathe in our own peace Misty hates taxes about the same way I hate books. So it really well because she gets to handle all of the books, which she loves doing, and those upper level tax kind of type things, while I love doing taxes and kind of those upper level, like, CFO type stuff, so I love doing that. Looking at tax planning and strategy and kind of being able to breathe in that room. And so combining our forces has been amazing for us and our clients as well, because we’re able to offer more, than we could separately.

Jamie Gruol: absolutely. That’s wonderful. I love that you guys came to that creative solution and what a perfect time to allow you to heal and still continue to provide for your family and your clients. Most importantly

Tonya Yudizky: Yes,

Jamie Gruol: not most importantly, but like also your clients, they are not better, more important than you and your family.

That is for sure. Let’s clarify that.

Tonya Yudizky: and it’s also been nice because Misty and I have an understanding that I still get to do a lot of the, like, owner y type stuff, which has been nice too. So, like, we talk about softwares together, and we do things together, like we went to Zerocon, and we met with vendors together, and we’ve done kind of all of those types of things together. It keeps me fulfilled in that I want to be an entrepreneur space. I’ve owned a company in shim shape, former fashion since I was 16. So, it’s always been in my blood. My father was the same way, my grandfather, the same way. So I come from a long line of it. So it’s part of what I need to feel fulfilled. And Misty gives me the space to do that. And it’s been amazing. But then on the other end, it’s like, she asks me questions. She’s like, what would you do? And I’m like, ah, I’m an early adopter, this sounds a little fishy. So let’s not do this. 

Jamie Gruol: Voice of reason. We all need them every now and then.

Tonya Yudizky: And really for her, it’s been great that she’s told me that we get to bounce those ideas off of each other. Instead of just doing it by ourselves and trying to figure it out. So.

Jamie Gruol: So. You have been through a lot these last couple of years, you lost your father and you know how to heal from that. And you built your business to massive success. Obviously had your health issue with the stroke. If you were to give somebody a piece of advice and they’re in the day, like maybe in the early days or they’re in the really stressed period where they know they want to grow and they feel confined by the current processes they have or the current situation they’re in, what is a piece of advice that you would give to that person to help them move forward and move towards that ultimate vision of what they’re wanting to create?

Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: So my first piece of advice is to breathe and step back, and that’s really hard to do, especially when we’re caught up in, in the day to day work, really breathing and stepping back and figuring out what it is that we really want. So, when I was in my massive growth. I freaked out. I was like, I don’t know that this is what I really want.

And what’s my limits? And what are my things? But when I took that deep breath and I stepped back and I was like, This is what I want. is the number that I want to get to and this is why, but the question is how do I get there best so that I still get all of my other time. I still needed time to homeschool my children.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah. Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: and do all of the other things too. I couldn’t be tied to my desk for 80 hours a week. I just couldn’t. So. Really taking that step back breathing and thinking about not just where our goal is and what that number goal is, because that’s really important. But also how is the best way to get there? What systems do I need to put in place? Because there is always the unknown and. In the industry, it’s sad to say, but I am not alone in the fact that I had a stroke.

Jamie Gruol: Right.

Tonya Yudizky: they are very common in our industry. Along with other health issues that being confined behind a desk and behind a computer and dealing with other people’s stresses all day long cause us, so it’s really important to take that life. Effect also into consideration and what does the world look like if I can step away,

Jamie Gruol: Yeah. Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: am by myself what can I put into place if something were to happen? Because it’s not just me getting sick either. What would have happened if my kids got sick and had to spend a week in the hospital?

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: Those types of things as well. So what is the out plan or what is the pause plan as well?

Jamie Gruol: Yeah. I love that. And I think it’s something that as humans, are sometimes our mortality and our, the bad things in life we don’t want to think about, but as a solo practice owner, as somebody who is, and even if you have an admin, like if you have a small team, like you still need to be thinking about these other plans as well, because if you do have an illness or you lose a spouse or you have a sick child and you need to step away.

You don’t want to be thinking about the things that you need to be doing and the unread emails and, the extensions that need to be filed, like just being able to have the systems there. And if you are somebody that’s on the fence of, do I invest into the implementing of a system like tax dome and setting it up properly using workflows, that investment will pay you for years.

for years, not only in the time you get back from the reduction of administrative efforts, but peace of mind and increased capacity like what Tanya saw and being able to serve your clients better. There are so many components to the ROI that people don’t think about and that, investing into technology and having it work properly for you brings.

I would love if you wouldn’t mind sharing. If somebody’s. Thinking about like, maybe they have taxed on where they’ve had it for a while and it’s not, they, you came to us right when you got taxed on and you saw the value of investing into how to set it up, right? The 1st time, but if they’ve been on taxing for a bit, or are brand new to tax them, what is.

advice you would give them around workflows and the value that workflows brought to you and the work that you did in setting up your system so that you could step away in those urgent moments. Yeah. Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: as they are even coming from an operations background, right? We all know that everything has its way that it moves and I’ve worked in other systems as well. I’ve worked in canopy and I’ve worked in a sauna and I’ve worked in all of these different things.

But what’s nice that I like about tax dome is that you do get that 20, 000 foot view of where everything is at one time and. taking the time to step back and put thought into what a pipeline should be and what a workflow should be for this specific task. Even now, we a company Misty and I and our admin sit down and we’re like, okay what are we missing?

Right? What are these one-off tasks that we could put into a workflow? Because that makes not only the client experience better, but it also makes. Our experience better. I’m not feeling like I’m dropping all the balls and all the different places or I talked to Fred on Tuesday and he wanted an amendment, but I didn’t have any place to put it.

So I stuck it here in this random thing. So the best part about it was, is I had a conversation just yesterday with 1 of our clients. We reviewed their tax return for 2023, looked at their past tax returns, and they realized that not only were they uncomfortable with what their last tax preparer did, they wanted us to do an amendment. right away, I could drop that into our amendment. Workflow the call with them and get things started, though they’re like, okay, well, I want to do the amendment, but it’s going to be in a month when we can get our finances together for that part of it. It’s still there. I’m not having to remind them in a month that here we’re ready.

Are you ready now

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: really taking the time to flesh out the system. Is really important because it makes things easier. It’s not taking advantage of all of the different pieces in all. Of it,

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: yes, locking and signature pieces to an invoice is great. And it’s one piece of the puzzle,

Jamie Gruol: Right.

Tonya Yudizky: Having a central place to put all of our documents or to gather all of our documents, great. But those are just pieces of the whole pie, right? When I, when we look at systems, you want to be able to look at the whole thing and put it together and be like, hey, this is pretty.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: It needs to be useful to write a pie is pretty, but if you don’t have utensils to eat it,

Jamie Gruol: Exactly. That’s so true. And so how did workflows for tax pros help prepare you to be able to be where you are today? And a knowledgeable user in tax dome, uh, somebody who is able to set up these workflows and feel confident in dropping your clients into them knowing they’re going to have a great client experience.

How did we in the program? help facilitate that knowledge gain that you needed.

Tonya Yudizky: it helped me by breaking it down. Right? Nobody has 42 hours to sit down and learn a system. Right? I want to be able to learn something in quick little bites when I could.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: being able to watch a 5 minute video and implement in another 5 minutes.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: was key in order for me to put the whole system together at the time that I had to,

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: because I was dealing with everything else.

And so being able to get the knowledge in these bite sized pieces that made sense because it was in English

Jamie Gruol: Well, I think it makes sense. I want to clarify that because it’s makes sense because it’s in a chronological order. I think the one challenge sometimes people have with a new system is there’s all these pieces and what do I look at first and what do I need to learn first? And that’s where the overwhelm comes from.

That’s where people Pick it up and then put it down and then pick it up again and put it down. And they do that for a year and they’re still like, I have this cool thing. It’s a great client portal. I know it can do so much more. Right. And so that’s where I think a lot of people end up because They don’t see the A to Z steps that you have to go through that we’ve broken down and laid out on the platter for you to make that pretty system as you called it.

So

Tonya Yudizky: And absolutely. And, I was an earlier adopter of tax dome, so I’ve seen the tax dome materials. Flesh themselves out

Over time. But I think that a lot of people that would have been an early adopter, cause I love early adopting software that has a good place to go.

I tend to be somebody who looks at it and go, Ooh, that has lots of potential.

Jamie Gruol: yeah,

Tonya Yudizky: and they’re speaking the right language. So let me jump on that bandwagon. And Tackstone really has done a lot of really good growth and has really listened to us as far as users and those changes and that we needed, right? But the problem is that in the beginning, if you’re an early adopter and you don’t know somebody else that already knows the system, there’s not great help documents, right?

We get stuck in, I could figure this out and I could figure this out. The best part about your process was. That it was all figured out for me already, and I Didn’t have to go searching inside what little documentation was there and try to figure out how to put it together for what I needed.

Jamie Gruol: right.

Tonya Yudizky: And that’s what you guys did for me.

And so that was really the piece that helped because it took that stress off of me because it was the A to Z in a way that I needed it laid out so that it made logical sense. And so that I could take it and then apply it to everything else that I wanted to do. I was able to put out a sales tax. Pipeline and onboarding and all of those different types and pieces all of the different jobs and then easier when you guys learn it. So, I’ve stayed a client because I don’t want to have to go figure out what the newest update did.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: Just like when you sent it out yesterday, and then we got the notification today, but they’d already turned it on yesterday. Um, so there’s things of that nature that I enjoy doing too, because then I don’t have to use my brainpower to learn all of

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: Just borrow yours.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah. And that’s exactly why we do what we do is it’s just to help make that part of practice management and figuring out your operations and figuring out how this is going to impact you in the tech abuse of tax. Don’t how to make that easier and also creative ways of using the things.

Cause there’s so many cool ways you can use these tools to solve problems you didn’t even realize you had. That make practice management so much easier. So,

Tonya Yudizky: really is. On the other end of that, yes, I am a tech, I’m a tech savvy person who worked with development teams to do things like this for other companies. I could absolutely do it myself, at the end of the day, is it worth me learning all of these things? Or is it like I tell my clients, handle doing what you do best and let me do what I do best.

Like you don’t need to learn taxes because that’s what I’m here for.

You can hear whatever you want to hear and come back and ask me. That’s what I want you to do.

Jamie Gruol: yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: want you to try to implement something and make a huge mess. And then you bring the mess to me and I’m like, I don’t know what to do with this.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: this, you don’t have to start over. Really being able to. Take that piece of the pie off the table. Like I didn’t have to do that. So it opened me up to being able to do other things, which is really serve my clients better

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: end of the day. That’s what it is. And it wasn’t requiring me to spend another 8 hours a week trying to keep up with the software that changes all the time.

Jamie Gruol: Right.

Tonya Yudizky: that to you guys.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: and that’s really helpful. It’s like adding an additional department.

Jamie Gruol: True.

Tonya Yudizky: For a very affordable price because I can’t get a developer on my team for the price that I pay for you guys. So, that’s That in and of itself is well worth the investment.

Jamie Gruol: I love that perspective and it’s true. It is a whole nother department that you don’t have to. Well, Tonya, this has been fascinating. I really appreciate you taking the time. And if you want to connect with Tonya, come hang out with us in our Facebook group. We’ll drop the link below. She is on Facebook and hanging out in there.

I also want to thank Tonya. She is actually one of our community coaches in our workflows for taxpayers community. And that is, we offer that as a role within our community to people who are super helpful and giving of their knowledge that they have gained in the time being with us. And. Helping to share the best practices that we have in the program with our other community members and help make sure that they have a path forward and that they’re not having to figure it all out on their own either.

So I just want to say, thank you for always being an active participant in a leader in our community. It’s a pleasure to get to do that with you and help to build the culture that we have built in that community. So thank you for being a part of it.

Tonya Yudizky: Well, thank you, Jamie, for setting it up. You got, you and Jessica have done amazing things with that community and just being able to talk, not just about like workflows for tax pros and tax dome issues, but also, issues in general.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah.

Tonya Yudizky: Which has been really helpful and bringing together a huge community of really helpful business owners where, we tag people all the time. How do you do this? How do you do this? And it’s not just about running tax stone, but also about, how to run our businesses. And that’s keeps a community is built a community where it’s can be very lonely.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah, I love that

Tonya Yudizky: you for

Jamie Gruol: perspective. And that’s absolutely my mission in this world is to build a really strong community and to get to, to be a part of that it’s been great. So, well, thank you, Tanya, for being here today and, uh, appreciate your transparency, your vulnerability today. It, uh, is very admirable what you have done and the choices that you, the hard choices you have made, uh, to really provide a life for yourself and your family that continues to thrive.

So I’m glad you’re here.

Tonya Yudizky: Oh, thank you, Jamie.