In the 30+ years we’ve been in business, we’ve interacted with and supported tax preparers and business owners in so many different ways. They find our website searching online, they discover us on social media, they meet us at IRS tax forums… Never in our 30+ years has someone found us the way Monica Brewer did and at just the right time in her career.
Monica Brewer is the owner of Brewer Financial Firm, an award-winning tax office in Columbus, Georgia. Monica has been a tax preparer for 14 years and a tax business owner for eleven. Her firm has four full time employees and then they hire additional preparers seasonally based on their needs during tax season.
From Tax Trainer to Tax School Operator
As a tax business owner, Monica knows how hard it is to develop training materials for new hires every year. There’s a lot of research, writing, and preparation that goes into it.
But a few years ago, Monica stumbled upon The Income Tax School in a very unusual way.
“A few years back there was an office that was not too far from my office that got evicted. I had seen a real nice desk sitting by the side of the road. I went to look at the desk, and found an Income Tax School book in one of the drawers. I took the book with me and then noticed a website,” says Monica.
Upon exploring our website, Monica discovered that we offered a turnkey solution to training your own preparers and running a tax school.
“When I was training just off of my knowledge and materials, I would get information from the IRS website, any seminars that I had… I was constantly doing research to find the standard deduction. I would put it in my own words to train them and help them understand what they had to do as far as tax laws and what was required. But once I had that book, I was blown away. There’s so much stuff in here!” explains Monica.
Monica became a licensee of The Income Tax School and began running her own tax school. Now, she is able to train 5-10 students at a time, and chooses her new hires based on the students who score the best in her class. We’ve always touted the benefits of running a tax school for extra revenue and a recruitment tool for tax season. It’s also great for the community as it offers a chance to gain education and start their own career.
Licensee to Curriculum Developer
Last year, Monica needed to get her CE Credits, and so naturally went online to the Income Tax School.
“After signing up, I got an email about The Income Tax School needing a Curriculum Developer. I jumped right on it!” says Monica.
She’s been a Curriculum Developer with The Income Tax School since November of 2019 and has been a great asset to the team! Now that she has been helping develop curriculum, she has also been using that to promote her expertise as a tax pro. She calls herself the “tax expert.” Her experience working for us, has helped grow her firm – despite the fact that we are in a pandemic.
“Since I’ve been a curriculum developer for The Income Tax School, it’s helped me. Especially with this pandemic. I’ve gotten more clientele, more people who want to be tax preparers. It really has helped me. Once I started advertising and promoting myself, they look at me as the expert,” says Monica.
In fact, a lot of people call and ask to speak to “The Tax Expert.”
“I’m really happy that I was able to implement and become a part of The Income tax school. This year I decided to start branding my company in a different direction. For so long, it was called Phoenix Business & Tax Solutions, but I wanted to brand it in a different way for people to take me more seriously. I just wasn’t getting to where I wanted to be. I decided to rebrand to Brewer Financial Firm and expand and build a brand off my last name. Brewer Financial Firm is BFF so we’ll be your BFF!”
Monica was looking for a way to set herself apart from the competition in the area. After rebranding, and then becoming a Curriculum Developer, she started seeing business coming in.
“When I got The Income Tax School books in, I saw a paragraph that was not in there that I knew I had added. I was like, ok, this is unbelievable. Here it is in black and white. I had to share it on Facebook. People really did start gravitating towards me. I started getting all kinds of clients after putting it out there and tagging The Income Tax School on social media,” says Monica. “It really did help my company and got me to start branding my company the way that I wanted to be branded.”
As you can see, thanks to The Income Tax School and the amazing drive Monica has to succeed, Brewer Financial Firm was able to become more efficient using our materials as a licensee, create a way to recruit for the tax season using our reputation as a leader in education, create additional revenue by running her own Tax School, and join our team as a paid Curriculum Developer, which gave her firm more klout. We love helping tax preparers and businesses, and love to tell their stories. If you have a story about how The Income Tax School has helped you, we’d love to hear it!