Ep. 24 How Jessica Works 35 Hours a Week While Running a Six-Figure Tax Firm With a Lean Team. ( It’s Possible! )

Jamie Gruol: Welcome back to another episode of Diary of a Tax Practice Owner. I am your co host Jamie Gruol and with me, I have,

Jessica Smith: Jessica Smith. Hello, everyone.

Jamie Gruol: we’re back for another heart to heart about Jessica’s tax practice and how she got where she is today, where she is running an efficient tax practice with clients. She loves working with high value clients. She works less than 35 hours a week, year round, less in some seasons. She’s able to take evenings, weekends, spend the time with her family. And right now we’re launching this podcast in the heart of tax season, Jess. So people are feeling the pain of long hours, overworked, just they’re ready to just throw in the towel. And there’s probably some people that want to burn their practices down right now,

Jessica Smith: There’s a countdown to the April 15th deadline is what I’m seeing. People are like, it’s this many days. And I’m like, please stop doing that.

Jamie Gruol: it’s sometimes it does bring on more pressure.

Jessica Smith: Mm hmm.

Jamie Gruol: I want to talk today just to the tax practice owner who is feeling the hurt. They are, they’re done. This is the last tax season that they are going to work these long hours because they see other people out there enjoying life, spending time with their kids, going on spring break with

Jessica Smith: Mm hmm.

Jamie Gruol: I know your birthday falls right in the middle of tax season and you

Jessica Smith: Yeah,

Jamie Gruol: a mission of your own to take time off on your birthday and you do it without guilt, without. fear of what you’re going to return to. I think a lot of people don’t take time off cause they don’t want to like deal with the inbox when they come back.

But I want to talk today about your journey to working 35 hours or less and how you got there. Cause it doesn’t happen overnight, right? Like it

Jessica Smith: no,

Jamie Gruol: I’m sure. So can you take us back to 2020 Jess, who is starting her own practice, in the early days, if you are somebody that’s just starting your practice, let me also give you a permission slip to hustle, to grind, to work long hours, because you are figuring it all out.

You’re learning on top of building on top of doing, and you, there is a lot that happens in those early days. So if that is you, shame yourself for doing the work. But let me also say. You can have the vision for Jessica’s lifestyle business that she has created., and so let’s go back to you early days, Jessica, and what

Jessica Smith: it,

Jamie Gruol: like?

Jessica Smith: well, I mean, a lot of, I think a lot of what, what a lot of tax practitioners are experiencing, especially if they’re coming from a firm or if they’re new to firm ownership. We all have this idea of tax people only work three months out of the year. And it’s 80 hours a week from, middle of January to middle of April, right?

So there’s this like, this concept that tax season is only during Those three months and anybody who works in the industry is going to be working 60 to 80 hours and that’s just how it’s always been. You’re going to hear that a lot is that that’s how it’s always been and that made sense when we didn’t have tools to improve our efficiency.

I mean, let’s be real when we had to do things by hand and you literally had to like write on a tax return and then like fix the mistake or fix, and do all the manual calculations. Yes, I could see how if you were serving it, I wouldn’t be able to serve 200 clients with manual processes. It’s just it’s not in not without working all those hours.

So coming from, this idea of it’s always been this way is I think how a lot of people start out and it’s. easy to, to feel that you have to have a high volume tax prep only kind of, practice in order to reach that like income goal, that level of success. Cause that’s what a lot of, that’s how a lot of practices operate.

Now for myself, it was very, very hard because when I made that shift into like full time firm ownership on my own, I just had a baby. Rin was born May of 2020. I mean, I, I know that I say this kind of in jest, but like, I really did go back to work five days after I had her because the tax deadline had moved that year and I was trying to make sure I got all these returns done before then.

And it was part of the, like the hustle part of things. And it was difficult, but I realized very, very early on, I didn’t want to be stuck behind a desk for that many hours because When the kids got sick, what were they supposed to do? Oh, just sit over there and be quiet and I’ll get to you. No, they, they want to be, they want to be cuddled and held.

They need, and they, they need care. Same thing. Like if I get sick, right? Like there’s, there are life events that, that were taking place. And I was like, I can, I absolutely cannot be. grinding 80 hours a week just so I can make all this money and then coast through the rest of the year. That just, that never worked well for me.

I think that a big turning point for me was as both kids were getting into school age and childcare was a little bit iffy, I had to make the decision. Is it, am I going to still work or am I going to have to like completely quit altogether? Because I can’t in my mind work the number of hours I have always led to believe is going to lead to my success versus finding a better work life balance that everyone says is impossible in accounting.

And it wasn’t impossible. It just took a little bit of work on my end and really learning the different ways to Minimize the mindset of like you absolutely can have a successful firm and have normal working hours and normal doesn’t have to be 60, 80 hours a week.

Jamie Gruol: Was it someone like, did you, were you inspired by someone else? the industry? Were you inspired by other industries? Like, how did you start having that shift? Because I think to your point, like a lot of people came from the mentorship of somebody above them who was doing the manual way, who was grinding, who was, it’s just the way it was.

And then you started seeing like there were other ways. So how did you like, where did you start seeing that?

Jessica Smith: And I know that people have probably heard this a million times for me, but with, with someone who has ADHD, because I was seeing so many things fall through the cracks, which was only adding to the number of hours that I was having to work. Cause I was then having to make up for the fact that I didn’t have a process or a system or something in place.

Because, oh, I forgot that this had to be done and then I was trying to fit it in, into all the other work. So, for me, really understanding how I function better with routine. With scheduling things with having a system that can do some of the otherwise manual work that I would have to do on my own and do it without me having to tell it to do it.

Those were all really powerful, all like powerful things that really helped me to accomplish that. And then also just establishing really good boundaries. With the new clients that I was onboarding. I, while I am getting back to working some weekends, it’s mainly early on Saturdays, just because the kids usually aren’t up and ready to do anything until noon.

But I shortened other work days because I was, I went from having more eight hour days and actually went to like more five to six hour days on certain days. And then the, those other hours are taken care of on like early Saturday morning. But I don’t feel overwhelmed. I’m, I don’t feel like if I step away from my desk and I go on a field trip with Blythe to the zoo, that I’m going to completely derail all the hard work that I had to do.

’cause I wasn’t there for that one day, that one eight hour day to get at work done. ’cause so much does, so much work’s in the background for me now. And I had to relinquish some of the control. You have to just understand that sometimes having your hands in every little bit of your business is not, that’s just not how successful businesses run.

I mean, you would never go to the CEO of Bank of America and he’s looking at every single, every single customer account for whether or not they have fraud. No, he hires a team of tellers that come in and they train them and they perform that job for him because his job now is to do other things. That CEO kind of mindset was another thing that helped me tremendously was looking at this as it’s not just always being me, the solo practitioner, the only one doing all the work.

I was able to allow and leverage other people, computer technology to benefit the, the time period that I’m spending doing all this work.

Jamie Gruol: Yeah. I think that that is so critical because You run a very lean team.

Jessica Smith: Mm hmm. Mm

Jamie Gruol: part time staff working, part time hours, not even some more seasonal,

Jessica Smith: hmm. Mm

Jamie Gruol: a very lean team and you’re able to do that because of systems

Jessica Smith: hmm.

Jamie Gruol: what those systems do for you. So you, and love tax dome and that is where you were able to really leverage that feature. I’m curious how you would see The streamlining of your client communications of your workflows of, using tax dome, was that really like, did you start seeing like momentum in that and it allowed you to just continue to iterate and make it better and better and more and more efficient and that’s what got you here today?

Because it wasn’t overnight. Like,

Jessica Smith: Mm mm.

Jamie Gruol: apparently say this has been like a 5 year journey.

Jessica Smith: Yeah.

Jamie Gruol: are,

Jessica Smith: Well, I mean, I think in general. A lot of business owners in a similar position as me, we’re always trying to find a more efficient way to run our practice, a more efficient way to do things than how we did in the past. I always tweak things a little bit every single year as a test to see, is this going to give us a better result that we want to move forward with kind of indefinitely.

And I think that’s a pretty A pretty common thing, but it can be difficult for accountants cause we don’t like change, for me specifically, I felt really good that I was getting positive responses from my clients for the changes. One thing that I’ve always spoken about that I thought was really great was a lot of the automated emails or a lot of automated messages, the way that I have formatted and worded those items appear as if they were actually written by me.

And that took some time because you have to find a way to neutralize what you’re trying to say so that it could be used in multiple capacities. Right? So to be able to have an automated message that feels personal. but truly isn’t was a learning curve for me. But once I realized that my clients were, responding positively to those kinds of communications that helped me find other ways to add more technology to take the onus off of me.

And It’s a learning process. I wish ChatGPT was something that I had when I first started because I think about something like the rewriting of emails and whatnot to have a specific tone and a specific, like, thing that you want to communicate. That has helped me tremendously.

And I was, I always had a very good writing style in general. But once I started to incorporate that into chat GPT, it has lessened the amount of time that I spend sometimes like rewriting what I want to communicate. But that was a really big stepping stone. Getting back the positive feedback from my clients helped me to want to pursue improvements in that system consistently and to make sure that my clients were getting what they thought was that personalized high touch service.

Even if it meant that I was going to increase my own personal reach out. In those limited capacities when necessary, because I’ve designed the rest of the system to feel so personal that now instead of every little thing being something, oh, I’m going to personally respond to them a good portion of those are now automated, but it allows me the freedom to when the client when I can tell the client needs that personal response.

I’m not bogged down with like, Oh, I have to get out all these status reminders. Right. I have to tell everybody where they are in the process. I don’t have to do that anymore. So I’m not wasting my time doing like the stupid little status reminders. It’s an automatic, like, here’s where we are.

And, credit TaxDome for helping me tremendously with making that possible. The features that they have released and that they have, available They, they make a really big difference in, in my practice specifically.

Jamie Gruol: 100%. 100%. We see it time and time again, honestly. so I’m curious. And I want to kind of feedback to you the positive reinforcement you’re getting from your clients because there’s a lot of people that are starting, like making the transition over to automation, implementing our workflows for cash for his model, which is based off of your model and trying to make that transition over to a more automated firm.

And they’re sometimes getting negative feedback, especially initially, right? So I

Jessica Smith: Pushback my favorite word.

Jamie Gruol: word a lot, right? I have a lot of pushback happening. I’m curious how you overcame that in the early days, like looking back, like you were an early adopter of technology. So you didn’t even have the luxury of being like. You don’t like it. The guy down the street’s doing it too,

Jessica Smith: Yeah.

Jamie Gruol: is becoming a common thing for CPAs, for accountants, for tax professionals. How did you handle that in the early days when you were getting that pushback? Cause you always give really great advice in our community to people that are feeling that and really are emotionally charged around like, Oh, did I make the right choice?

Right. So I’m curious. Nope.

Jessica Smith: a lot of business owners. Because of their own fear and their own scarcity mindset, it is really easy for someone to create a problem before it’s even happened. And they want to try to resolve the problem before it’s happened. So I see this a lot.

And you and I, we’ve worked with a lot of tax professionals. I’ve seen this so many times. They haven’t even hit the send button. For the new technology and they are already saying that their clients are not going to do it or they’re afraid of pushback or they don’t know how their clients are going to react.

They’ve already created a scenario in their mind that it’s going to be a problem and be, and with this, this scenario that they created, they are now trying to find a solution for it. You cannot resolve a problem that doesn’t exist. So let like first, just let the problem happen. Like if you’re, if your clients are going to have objections. 

I feel like the word pushback in this scenario sounds like the client is the one that has all the power for how the systems are supposed to be put into place when the reality is they’re objecting to a change that you have adopted and you have to, as the owner of this business, overcome those client objections.

Jessica Smith: And it’s kind of, the old saying, like make it their idea. You have to point out that these changes are for their benefit. Do we benefit from the improved efficiencies as tax professionals? Absolutely. But the benefit to the client is you won’t have to know or question where your tax return is in the process.

You won’t have to You won’t have difficulty scheduling an appointment with us because we have a link that we can send you. There’s no back and forth with the email. You can go and access your documents at any point in time if you’re going to go buy that new house or refinance that loan. You don’t have to wait for me to be available to make sure a copy has been provided.

So I see a lot of that where these objections that people have are just to a change that makes them uncomfortable and so We as business owners have to learn to overcome the objections in a manner that allows the client to see that it’s for their benefit and stop creating problems before they happen.

Like allow the problem to come to fruition because you realistically, until you know how someone’s going to react to something and how they’re going to present the problem to you, all of the little ways that you’ve resolved it, this could be the one thing that you didn’t think of , like testing your system for mistakes, right?

You’re not going to be able to test, test and weed out every single problem until the problem has presented itself. It’s okay for problems to present themselves. That’s how you fix them, hopefully, and find new ways to do things better. And if more business owners and tax practitioners specifically, removed the word pushback from their vocabulary, and it’s no longer that my clients are pushing back.

My clients are objecting because this is uncomfortable. How do you make them more comfortable? Improve your communication. Hop on a call with them if that’s necessary. Maybe hold a group training. They’re like, Hey, here, we’re going to show you guys how to use the portal. If you’d like to join me, it’s free for you guys.

If you’re not available to come, I can record it, whatever. But, but don’t just. agree to your, to like, Oh, I’ll just get rid of it because the clients don’t like it. It’s not any different in any other firm. They’re going to find the exact, they’re going to find the same problems in other firms. And if a client has enough, if they’re, if they want to give you the objection, the likelihood of them wanting to work with you is still there.

Try to find a way to have a middle ground. You can overcome objections if you look at them as opportunities and not just like, Oh my gosh, they just hate it so much, just scrap the whole thing! That doesn’t, that doesn’t resolve what you were hoping to get out of the change to begin with.

Jamie Gruol: Oh, so good. So good. So I think, I think you were spot on in that. A lot of people get there. The overwhelm that they’re feeling is not even truly real, right? Like, they too, you, you tax professional as you’re adopting tax dome as you’re adopting any other new tool, whether it’s your tax preparation software or, practice management software or email signature, right?

Jessica Smith: Mm hmm.

Jamie Gruol: you’re having to learn a new skill. You’re having to learn a new way of thinking, a new way of working. And that is hard enough in itself.

Jessica Smith: Right.

Jamie Gruol: thing that overwhelm and that pushback idea gives people is they start over complicating things. You know, , the workflows that we have created and the workflows that you have, we keep them as simple as possible intentionally because it makes maintenance easier. It makes updates easier.

Jessica Smith: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Jamie Gruol: and when you start trying to solve for every little snowflake issue within your client base, you start burning yourself out. You are, you’re taking yourself right back to where you were when you were worn out by the manual work that you were having to do. And that keeps you stuck. Like, a lot of people come to us and they’re like, I implemented your systems and I’m still working 50 hours. And I’m like, and did you listen to us on the standardization conversation? Because I’m willing to bet if we went into your system, I’m going to find a very complex, probably manual system that you tried to override because of your fear of change yourself. So when you invest into a system of someone showing you how to do something better, you’re Really listen to why they’re saying this is going to make it better. This is

Jessica Smith: Exactly.

Jamie Gruol: and, and be willing to change yourself, be willing to improve the way in which your work, be open to new ideas about how you can work more efficiently. I mean, the number of people that tell us, Ooh, I really don’t have your return reveal process that uses video reviews, but I don’t know. My clients probably won’t like it. So I’m just going to stay with the one on one session.

Jessica Smith: Oh!

Jamie Gruol: like work. To then work another 40 hours a week every single week.

Like that’s why you’re working 80 hours a

Jessica Smith: Mm hmm.

Jamie Gruol: you’re, you’re making 40 hour windows to meet with people one on one instead of saying, I’m transitioning to this new, more efficient way of working. Right? Like they just literally have mind blocked themselves away from their true desires, their true vision for what they want in life it’s scary and it’s new.

So

Jessica Smith: it’s just not possible to make everyone happy, right? We even see this with, Our industry all the time, there’s different personalities, there’s different ways that people have expectations. It’s super important that regardless of the system that you choose, if you’re going to make a change that is there to, again, it’s going to benefit the client.

Make sure that you’re just communicating with them. Take the time to show them how to use it. Take some time to create some extra tools. I have a client guide, that I, that I updated this year. I had used it many years ago and I updated this year and I’ve gotten a pretty good response because now my clients are like, Oh gosh, I have this step by step, now I know what to expect.

It’s this, here’s this step by step process for what I can expect during, during the engagement. Don’t be afraid to create some extra support tools so that your clients at least are. On board with the change, but you’re not going to please everybody and you have to be okay with allowing the people who are just really, really against it to allow them to leave.

Because if you think about it from, like, a week, I like to use the wheelbarrow. Right, if you have, if you have, if that wheel is not secure, the whole thing’s going to dump over the entire thing. So don’t allow someone to be the wobbly wheel. And derail the entire purpose of the wheelbarrow, which is to take.

copious amounts of dirt from one place to another without having to do it by hand. It’s the same thing with a system like this. You have to make that decision. How can I keep this, the tool that I’m going to use as a whole beneficial for the greater good, essentially for the bulk of the clients,

Jamie Gruol: Yeah, 100%. So I think the outcome that you have seen, and I would just love your confirmation in this just to give people some hope about, implementing systems and change and how change can be beneficial. You’re not working on Fridays now because your girls are out of school.

Jessica Smith: right? I think probably if I, if I were to

Jamie Gruol: a week, which absolutely possible. You’re working with about 200 clients, many of which are high value package clients. You’re running a multi six figure firm that is very lean team. So you have good profit. you have so many. Flags that people are wanting to like stake their claim on right like there’s probably six or seven of them there what would be like the one word of wisdom that you would give to somebody who is feeling absolute overwhelm? Feeling very inefficient wants to make a change Like what would be that one thing that you would say if you do this right now? You can change like two years from now can be completely different world for you Yeah.

Jessica Smith: choose one single word, it’s flexibility. Because you have to see outside of like maybe this rigid idea of what you think it looks like to run your practice and think that’s the only way to do it. Because even my way isn’t the best way for everybody. I think that’s what we, what we talk a lot about in our program is, while a lot of what we teach is centered around the way that I run my practice, it’s, it’s intended to be, Like a foundation, like a starting point, you can rock and roll with exactly how I do everything.

And if that works for your clients, fantastic. You have the perfect framework to just open shop and get going, but you might have clients that you function with slightly differently. So are you going to take my framework and then mold it and make it malleable to make it work for you? I think flexibility is where people are going to find something will work for them better.

You have to be open to maybe the way that I’m doing things is not. The best way for me and my clients and I need to allow for something different to come in and make a change here and I would say flexibility is going to be the most important buzzword 2025 word of the year, right? Flexibility, be flexible,

Jamie Gruol: ways in

Jessica Smith: right?

Jamie Gruol: I love that. So if you were feeling overwhelmed, you’re feeling uninspired with your business, you’re feeling in your

Jessica Smith: Mm hmm.

Jamie Gruol: Just look forward, look outwards. Like I think it’s like removing the blinders

Jessica Smith: Mm hmm.

Jamie Gruol: people like, this is a tenant that I, I, I’ve worked with a lot of mentors. I have learned to never work with somebody. That doesn’t have the business model and the lifestyle that

Jessica Smith: Mm hmm.

Jamie Gruol: Right. So if you don’t want a seven figure high pace, big team business, don’t build that. Don’t

Jessica Smith: Because I don’t want that. And that’s what I haven’t built. 

Jamie Gruol: And I don’t want that either. Like I want the like part time hours. You know healthy healthy wage business that

Jessica Smith: Mm hmm. Mm

Jamie Gruol: and the lifestyle that I want So I think that was one of my biggest takeaways in life And so if you find somebody that’s doing that then those are the people you want to work with Don’t go flashy. Don’t go fancy like just fine that you mesh with, people that have the same values as you, people that are living the life that you want to live.

And those are the people that you should invest into for mentorship, for support, for direction, for inspiration.

Jessica Smith: hmm.

Jamie Gruol: I think that’s my takeaway from this is that, just, you have what a lot of tax professionals want and possible. So use, use that inspiration, plant the seed and start doing the work to get to that desired life that you have. Well, Jess, I want to say thank you for sharing as always so transparently and openly about what you’re doing in your practice to really create the business that you love. You’re always willing to open your diary and I appreciate that.

Jessica Smith: Thank you. Thank you.

Jamie Gruol: Well, we’ll see you in the next episode of Diary and Tax Practice Owner, where we’re going to just keep spilling the tea talking. Juicy goodness and hopefully leaving you inspired for a better practice and life. We’ll see you again soon.

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