How One Mom Went From 100 Tax Clients To $200K In Software Sales | SBA Podcast EP 32

 Ross (00:00)
Person, you got your badge over there. You know, it’s all good. It’s just us. Awesome.

Baldeep (00:02)
Yeah. All right. All right, well, we are recording. Let’s kick it off here. We’re here with Chandra for another Service Bureau Accelerator interview series. Ross, why don’t you go ahead and kick it off?

Ross (00:17)
Sure. Chandra, welcome. Thanks for joining us. How you doing today?

Chandra (00:20)
Thanks for having me.

Ross (00:22)
Awesome, always great to see you. So real quick, Chandra, why don’t we, to kick things off, if you want to just introduce yourself a little bit—like share your story, your experience in the tax industry, kind of the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. However much or however little you want. We could be here for a while, I’m sure. But yeah, just kind of introduce yourself real quick and we’ll take it from there.

Chandra (00:38)
You sure? You sure? Right.

Chandra (00:47)
Well, my name is Chandra. I started doing taxes in 2017. I started off just some humble stuff, never ever thought I would be a tax professional. Basically, I just wanted to help a friend and realized I was good at marketing. I had a hundred clients my first year doing taxes. She wanted to take my money after she realized I was good at doing taxes, and then I went out on my own. And then I met you guys my first year actually doing taxes on my own.

Ross (01:25)
Wow. That was under the ESM, right? Yeah.

Baldeep (01:25)
Right, yeah. That was ESM—Early Season Marketing. Yeah.

Chandra (01:28)
Yeah, Early Season Marketing is where I met you guys, and it was the biggest investment I ever made at that time for myself. And when I told my husband, I was like, oh my God, I’m not gonna throw the number out that you guys charged me. But I was like, oh my God, I gotta make this work. I completely, you know, to be honest, put a lot into making sure I grew, and that’s how I came to where we are.

Baldeep (01:53)
You didn’t pay that much. Could have been more.

Ross (01:53)
Awesome.

Chandra (01:55)
At that time that was a lot. Yes, it’s worth more.

Ross (01:57)
It definitely could have been more. Awesome. So, where along the lines—maybe you just want to share—what was the interest in joining Service Bureau Accelerator and becoming a service bureau?

Baldeep (02:17)
Oh, I remember this. Okay, okay. You wanna know the story? I don’t know if I ever told you the story, Ross. All right.

Chandra (02:18)
No interest. None. Baldeep forced me to become a service bureau.

Ross (02:28)
Maybe I’ll just ask Baldeep. So, what was the story with Chandra becoming a service bureau?

Baldeep (02:34)
So, before we took Service Bureau public, it was an idea. We were like, all right, cool, we’re gonna launch it this next year. I think that was like the second year you were with us in ESM, right? You had been with us two years in Early Season Marketing, and then we were like, okay, cool, we’re gonna launch Service Bureau. The time is right for the industry to get shook up on this side of the business. Right? So we did the webinar—the very crappy, crappy webinar we did to the…

Ross (02:46)
I saw…

Chandra (03:01)
It was great.

Ross (03:02) No one understood. Everyone’s like, what’s this? Wait, so what’s a service bureau?

Baldeep (03:03)
No one understood the webinar. So what does that mean? What did you get? It was a bad webinar, but we did it to the private Early Season Marketing group and we sold a decent amount. A lot of people bought it. There was a lot of confusion because it was a bad webinar, right? It’s not as good as the one that’s presented these days. And I think like a week or two went by or something. And I called up Chandra. I was like, Chandra, what the fuck are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?

Chandra (03:28)
Follow up.

Baldeep (03:31)
You need to sign up for this. I literally—didn’t I think you were gonna open up a food truck or something? You were like, yeah, I’m gonna do the food truck. And I said, no, you need to do this. And that’s how Chandra signed up for Service Bureau Accelerator. I made her pay us money to do it. I was like, no, you need to do this. So if you wanna elaborate from there, that was kind of—remember that?

Chandra (03:49)
Yeah, you told me. He was like, my hot dogs would never make me rich. It was hot dogs on the food truck, and I sold the food truck. But yeah, that’s absolutely right. Like I always—and I tell people, I don’t have mentees. I hate that word. I have people—my clients—they use my software. I always tell them that I didn’t do service bureau because I’d seen everybody else doing it or…

Chandra (04:21)
I wanted to sell software because it looked like she’s making a million bucks. It was because I was not forced, but somebody saw something in me that basically was like, “You can do this.” And so I always tell people, don’t just do things because you see somebody else good at it. That doesn’t mean you’ll be good at it. So I always say I was put into this because I felt like my mentor referred me to be a service bureau. And I know why—because I’m good with implementing. Throw me a training out there, I’m gonna watch video by video and I’ma do it. And so I guess I just follow the rules pretty well and I would be okay. But we’re gonna get into the fact that it took me three years to really get into being a service bureau, so we’ll talk about that later.

Baldeep (05:06)
Yeah.

Perfect 👍 Continuing with Part 2 (05:14–10:00) — fully cleaned, formatted, and timestamped.

Ross (05:14)
To be—well, in all honesty, it took us about three years to really fine-tune the program so that everyone gets it. So, a little bit of it’s on us too. Awesome. So what’s been like—and one thing I will say, like, I’ve definitely noticed that with you, Chandra, is like if there’s videos there, you’re following and implementing. You do the ABC as we lay it out. It’s like that’s exactly what we want. So yeah, you do a good job of that. But what have you been doing with your service bureau?

Chandra (05:19)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Baldeep (05:21)
Yeah.

Chandra (05:35)
Mm-hmm.

Ross (05:42)
Let’s ignore the first couple of years again. That’s kind of like the learning curve, right? We still get that a lot. Obviously, there’s a lot more people now that are more familiar with service bureaus. There’s a lot more talk about it in the industry. A lot of people are already kind of like maybe learning, or they’re like a halfway service bureau. So they kind of get the model, and then they get into our program, and then it’s like, all right, now here’s the strategy A to Z, and they go and crush it. But early on, when we first launched the program, we saw that a lot with members who started the same time as you in that first year.

Ross (06:10)
It takes a couple years, and then it really kind of clicks, and then it starts building. What was that gap where you really started building? Like last year, you had some massive growth, right? And then this year again, you’ve got some massive growth. But what was your model in order for you to kind of grow your service bureau? Have you been recruiting preparers? Have you been working with EROs? You want to kind of share a little bit about that?

Chandra (06:33)
I just sell the software.

Ross (06:35)
Sorry—did my audio crap out? Yeah, that’s me. Sorry, go ahead.

Baldeep (06:37)
I hear her. That is you. Yeah.

Chandra (06:42)
Yep, so I just sell the software. Like you said, the first two years I tried different avenues—academies, would never do that again. But you guys laid it out in three different structures on how you can really grow it. I tried one way because that’s how I was sought out, thinking I could get EROs because people were like, “I want you to teach me.” Yeah, I taught them, but they didn’t do anything. So basically, I do the software, and that’s it.

I had someone reach out to me yesterday and was like, “Hey, I got somebody that needs software.” And I’ve got a referral form, and one of my questions on my referral form is: Do they know how to do taxes? If they click “no,” I send them an email back saying, “Thank you for your referral, but I don’t. Thank you. I can refer them to somebody else that teaches taxes, but I don’t have time for that.”

So yeah, I just basically run ads, of course, to people that know taxes and hopefully have at least 10–15 people, and we can grow from there. That’s how I do it. I actually like small players better than the big people because they see more value in me with their growth—starting from 10, 15, next year they go to 40, next year they do 75. By the time they get to 100, they think they can build a service bureau.

So I don’t know what that means, but a lot of people think that now. And that’s just my passion—helping the small people, because I didn’t have that when I first started out.

Baldeep (08:08)
Huh?

Ross (08:19)
That’s awesome. And that’s such an overlooked area as well. Like, I don’t know how often we get on coaching calls where someone says, “I’ve got this one big client,” and they’re fixated on that one potential deal. It’s an office that they know or a friend of a friend, and they do 800 products, three locations—whatever it may be. And they’re just hyper-fixated on that.

We’re like, “Hey, that’s cool to have in the pipeline, but what other deals are you working on? What else are you trying to bring in?” A lot of people are just out there trying to harpoon a whale versus, like, sitting there casting and bringing in fish all day long, right? Those smaller hits build over time. Especially, like you said, you can then show them how to double their numbers over a couple years. They end up being little whales themselves.

Chandra (09:04)
And then they think you’re the best person in the world. Mm-hmm.

Ross (09:09)
It’s awesome. And so you’re running a lot of ads, right? Doing a lot of marketing campaigns. What do you feel like—because I’m looking at your numbers—like, you almost doubled. Like two years ago, okay, what you did last year, you basically almost tripled. You like doubled and a half your previous year. And then this year again, you’ve almost doubled that volume again this year. Probably by the end of it, once we get through the fall, I’m sure you’ll catch up.

Chandra (09:37)
Right, right.

Ross (09:39)
What do you feel like was the big thing? Was it just kind of rinsing and repeating, doubling down on your process? Or was there anything specific that kind of made everything click a little bit more this year to see that jump again, to double your business again?

Chandra (09:56)
It was basically running the ad programs. I know I started the first year pretty late with running ads after the convention that we had. I just went in and did well, of course. This current tax season, every year I have a—I don’t do really big goals because I know I’m hard on delegating, so I know it’s just me.

So one, it was 1,000 products next year, so I wanted to double and get to 2,000 this year. Last year my goal was 1,000, so I did that and I’m like, I want to double that. But I really got frustrated because I lost some big people this upcoming year. They’re still with you guys, so kudos to that, but I just lost them from me. And that was my motivation. Like, this is a rinse and repeat. You’re gonna lose some people—

Baldeep (10:42)
Bye.

Chandra (10:52)
Keep going, and that’s just what I did. Just keep going. That’s it. Like most recently, I had another girl that thinks she’s bigger than me all of a sudden now, and I helped her. Nothing against that—I want everybody to grow—but I would have referred her to you guys before she went somewhere else. But needless to say, I’ve already found somebody else for that volume.

So my goal is, like, if I feel like I lost this amount of volume, I need to go harder. Even if I have to turn up my ads a little bit more, I feel like if I can replace it, I’m steady. I may not be growing as much, but I like to stay steady. And so that’s just what I do.

I do have a set schedule because, again, I’m still in the tax industry. I’m moving out a little bit more each year, I’m lessening my clients because I am focusing on support with my EROs. But with that being said, I start running my ads—I turn them off so I don’t get distracted. I don’t want to waste money, of course, running ads and not doing my whole spiel. So I turn it off in January, and then I turn it back on in May, and then I just sit here and run the business from May up until December and do the work.

Baldeep (12:07)
Do the work. Instead of cooking up hot dogs in the food truck, you’re calling down leads and closing down sales, right?

Ross (12:17)
In fact, you were just on a demo before jumping on this call.

Chandra (12:20)
Yes. Right, right—just on a demo. And I had three yesterday—two sold, and this one just sold as well. I’ll tell you guys later. But yeah.

Baldeep (12:34)
Okay. Yeah. And to touch on your point, like, hey, you like the small people—you realize, hey, retention is important—but hey, you may lose a client that does a hundred products, right? But if you can add three or four hundred products relatively quickly by running ads, you’re already replacing them and then some. The goal is, all right, just keep adding. You’re going to lose two to three clients a year, whatever that number is. But if you can add fifty to a hundred, it doesn’t matter.

Baldeep (13:03)
Well, we need to get you to fifty to a hundred, but—

Chandra (13:05)
I know, that’s my goal. That was my goal.

Baldeep (13:08)
Yeah, you know what would help with that? What would help with that is if you hired some people to help you. But we can talk about that later too.

Chandra (13:16)
I put that on my application I just did.

Baldeep (13:20)
Okay.

Ross (13:20)
Perfect. That’s a big topic for SBA Elite. It’s a big topic that we’ll be covering for sure. Everyone’s kind of—a lot of people that are going to be in that group—it’s like, that’s the next step. It’s like, all right, now we’ve got to start building our team because you’ve only got 24 hours in a day, right? So how you’re using that—we’ll break that down for sure.

Do you want to—are you cool if we shared like some—

Chandra (13:25)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ross (13:46)
Some revenue numbers? You know, we don’t have to get too specific. We’re just curious if you’re—well, we don’t have to break down the actual volume numbers, but perfect. Well then maybe it would be even better—do you know your numbers? Like, do you know kind of what you ended up doing last year and what you’re projecting to hit this year?

Chandra (13:53)
I don’t care. I love numbers.

Chandra (14:07)
No, because I didn’t look at the final numbers at the end of the tax year. Last time I looked at it was when it was time to send out bonuses, and I don’t really look at it after that anymore. Everything that comes in after that is just extra to me. So I think it was like 1,100 funded products, maybe—that was, I know, at least in June. And then this year, I’m at 1,800, maybe.

Ross (14:10)
Okay. Yeah.

Baldeep (14:19)
Yeah.

Ross (14:36)
Yeah, I think just over 1,900. Oh, I guess what I’m looking at may not be fully updated. You might actually be over 2,000. I don’t know—close to.

Baldeep (14:40)
I don’t know. I don’t think so. No, she didn’t because of the awards. I already know which tier she’s in. Very close. Very close.

Chandra (14:45)
I don’t know. I don’t think so. I was mad.

Ross (14:51)
Right, right, there you go. Okay, well, I’m going to do some quick—

Chandra (14:56)
I was like, I was already doing the math in my head like, didn’t get there.

Baldeep (15:00)
No, very close.

Ross (15:02)
I’ll do some quick back-of-the-napkin math. Looking at some of those numbers, looks like between service bureau and add-ons, you’re probably just a little under $200,000 in revenue. Yeah. Does that seem about right?

Baldeep (15:10)
1,903 funded this year.

Chandra (15:23)
Hmm.

Baldeep (15:26)
So I remember.

Ross (15:31)
And you doubled last year. So if you think of it—if you double again and then double again—you’re gonna be in that seven-figure territory pretty quickly in a few years. So how does that make you feel?

Chandra (15:45)
It really doesn’t seem real. I still feel like I’m broke for some reason. But no, I’m getting rid of debt. That’s why. Once I get rid of that, I’ll see it. But sometimes I have to go and just pull a report to see how much money I’ve truly made, and I’m like, wow, I’ve made this much money.

Baldeep (15:51)
Because your expenses are going up with your income, which is not what you need to do.

Ross (15:52)
Yeah.

Chandra (16:14)
I don’t even talk about it, to be honest, to my spouse. None of that. I can’t—because they would really be like, you know… They think I probably don’t be doing anything in this little room. But, you know, I just feel like I’m more financially free. I actually do probably less work because my goal is to be more for my kids. And y’all know, I got a lot of children.

Chandra (16:43)
So, with that being said, the finances have really helped. I got two going to college. I just bought one car. Another one has a paid-off car that always needs to be repaired, but I’m humbling him to understand that I’m not buying him a new car. So just things like that—it doesn’t seem real that I’d ever be making this type of money doing what I like to do.

Baldeep (17:08)
Yeah. Yeah, I remember when we had a conversation—maybe it was two years ago—I think you had just made the same amount of money that you did in your tax office with your service bureau. And I was like, okay, well, that was your first goal: match the income. Because now you essentially doubled your income, right? And that year you’re way past that now.

Chandra (17:19)
Right. Yeah.

Right.

Right. And now people be like, “I need you to do my taxes.” I’m just terrible with that. Like, “Yeah, you can send it to me, I’ll get to it when I can,” but it’s just not a need to chase tax clients anymore. Which is why—I don’t know if you guys know—but I did get rid of my brick and mortar, because I’m like, who needs to know me now? You know me. If I’m gonna do taxes, I’m gonna sit right here in my own virtual office.

I don’t have to worry about running ads or anything like that, because I know where my focus is. And people will still try to distract me and say, “Well, you know you can be doing this or do TikTok or go live.” For what? I said no. I had to tell my face no.

Baldeep (17:51)
Right.

Chandra (17:55)
My focus is here.

Ross (18:09)
That’s your office that you got set up, right? I saw that on your Facebook. You’ve got the building—is it kind of like the backyard? You got that set up? That’s sick.

Chandra (18:14)
Yeah, in the backyard. Yes—the tax shed. Yes.

Ross (18:39)
That’s awesome. Yeah, the software shed. Awesome. So, long story short, now a few years in as a service bureau, you’ve basically stopped doing taxes as far as running the tax business, right? You’ve pulled back from that. You’re working less and you’re making multiple times more income.

Chandra (18:42)
I have relatives that will reach out to me and say things like, “Well, you know, you can…” Because they always want to go on vacations, and for some reason I’m a travel agent because they want me to book everything. And I’m like, no, y’all—

Ross (18:43)
[laughs] Sounds good.

Baldeep (18:52)
You—

Ross (18:56)
Serial entrepreneur, Chandra. You’re a serial entrepreneur.

Chandra (18:58)
I am not the travel agent! But they say things like, “You don’t do nothing all day.” And it kind of offends me and I want to snap back sometimes, but I just play it cool. “Okay. My bank account doesn’t say what yours does.” You work seven days a week, 12-hour shifts—but okay.

Baldeep (19:16)
Tell me how you really feel there.

Ross (19:16)
Awesome. Yeah.

It’s fine though—you know, being just the silent killer, working quietly.

Chandra (19:25)
And that’s who I am. I stay quiet. And I learned that from you guys. One thing I learned—and I was just telling one of the people I was doing a demo with yesterday about who I am—is you won’t see my face plastered on everything. Because that’s—I don’t feel like that’s the way of growth. Not in my demographics, because we already have a bad tarnish in the tax industry.

And so when they see my ads and my website, they say it looks so good and clean, but you know, I’m not all over it. I haven’t ever done a photo shoot for my software. I used to do it for my tax business, but I’ve never even had the interest to take pictures and flyers and things like that.

So that’s just one thing that I take from you guys and run with. You guys’ model—all I see is that little alien astronaut. And so that’s the brand. So that’s how I’m trying to navigate the same way and just be a brand.

Baldeep (20:16)
You—

Chandra (20:19)
Navigate the same way and just be a brand.

Ross (20:22)
Yeah, for sure. That’s huge. Talk on that too, because I’m sure there’s probably a lot of people who think that, right? They see a lot of other people out there as service bureaus or whatever, who are like—just, you know—their personal life is all over social media. And it’s like, “Shit, do I have to do that in order to be successful?” It’s like, absolutely not.

There are so many different ways you can be successful, and Chandra, you’re proof of that. You’re working in your software shed, running ads, taking sales calls, and closing deals all day long, right? So—

Chandra (20:34)
Mm-hmm.

Do I have to? No.

Chandra (20:46)
Right.

Ross (20:52)
And your face doesn’t have to be plastered all over the internet. Because a lot of people don’t want to do that, right? So yeah, that’s awesome.

So, I’d love to hear—because, again, you’ve been in since kind of the origins of SBA—but I’d love to hear, obviously you’ve seen a lot of iterations of the training every year. You have to do Foundations again because I keep recreating it for you. But do you want to just share a little bit about your experience going through our training platform—the type of training and content that we share? You want to talk a little bit about how you’ve been able to leverage it, what you’ve been digging into, and things like that?

Chandra (21:30)
Yeah, so basically it has gotten a little bit more streamlined since I started. I don’t think—I mean, I’m not saying that’s a good or bad thing though. I really liked everything all over the place. Yeah.

Ross (21:45)
Well, I was going to say—to be fair—you’re someone who actually went through the original training and did the whole thing. So yes, it was streamlined, but now it’s shorter and sweeter in some areas.

Chandra (21:55)
Yeah, and for those that—I’m not gonna say that’s a good or bad thing, because with the streamlined process, to me, if that was me coming in, I would feel a little bit—I’m gonna be honest—overwhelmed, because it is a lot to do. And really, no one is going to sit down and just—for some reason, people won’t sit down and just do what it is on day one.

They will watch all the videos and say, “Okay, now I gotta do this.” So I do appreciate where I came in, where it was just a lot, and we just went with the—what is it called—the coaching calls. And once you did the coaching call, you threw the recording out there, and you could just go back and watch the recording.

And that’s how I learned how to do things—just stop and play, watch it, implement it, press play, and go back. This process is still the same. I won’t say that it’s not good at all, because I haven’t really gone through that—what is it—seven-day program. I went through a little bit of it, then I stopped, because I’m like, okay, I know most of this stuff now.

So the things I just go back into—which I signed up for—is the marketing class. That’s tomorrow. Because again, I feel like I’m not a professional at that. I have my system that I purchased from you guys that makes it easy, but on the flip side, I do want to still learn how to—

Ross (22:58)
Seven-day launch, yeah.

Chandra (23:22)
—for the people that don’t have the system. I like how you guys still teach it in a way that, if I didn’t purchase Nitro Ads, I could still understand it. That’s what I’m trying to get good at—just running the marketing in a sense that, if I didn’t have it, I could teach it to my EROs who don’t actually have the software.

Ross (23:38)
Yeah, yeah, really just mastering those skill sets, right? Like going in—because there’s always stuff you can learn more and more of. And that’s one thing—you’re the student type of character where you want to continue to learn and absorb more and more information, just get better and better, right?

A lot of people, they’ll watch a few videos and be like, “Okay, cool, I got it.” It’s like, well, do you really, though? You don’t think you could probably learn a little bit more, right?

Chandra (23:43)
Right.

Chandra (23:54)
I’ve always been.

Chandra (24:05)
Mm-mm. Right.

Ross (24:07)
So that’s always awesome. And yeah, the call tomorrow is actually gonna be really good. I got the slides finished off earlier today, so they’re gonna be a solid breakdown. Awesome.

So yeah—training. You take action, you implement all of it, which is great. That’s what it’s there for. That’s the only way—you can watch as many videos as you want to, right? But at the end of the day, you actually have to do the work to make stuff happen.

Awesome. And then a couple last questions here for Chandra.

Chandra (24:23)
That’s the only way. That’s the only way. That’s the only way you’re gonna learn.

Chandra (24:31)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ross (24:37)
When it comes to support—again, we have our ticketing platform set up, we kind of help with bank enrollment, all that kind of stuff—do you want to just touch a little bit on your experience? And I don’t mean support with the software tech support, but actual support with us—for your service bureau—training, coaching, whatever that may be. Do you want to just kind of talk a little bit on your experience using our support systems?

Chandra (24:53)
Yes, of course.

Chandra (25:01)
The support system is amazing. I’m not the phone-call type person. I don’t like customer service. I don’t like to be on hold. I am a ticket person. So I feel like that is the best way for me. I don’t know if it works for anybody else, but I know for me, I love it because not only do you guys respond pretty fast, it’s like anything that you need—it gets answered.

There isn’t just one short thing that you guys answer when it comes to support. For example, my last support ticket I submitted a few days ago was something where I was like, “Oh my God, they’re gonna kill me for asking this question.” But you guys still came through. And so that gave me more reassurance that I can still ask those questions that I feel like maybe they don’t want to be bothered with—and you always have an answer for me.

So I love the support. If you use it, you’ll get the support. It is what it is. You can’t just say it’s not there. Just submit whatever it is on your mind. I always suggest—whatever it is, they’ll answer.

Ross (26:05)
I’ve been trying to tell everyone—just use it. Just open a ticket.

Ross (26:15)
Yeah, yeah.

Baldeep (26:16)
Like, “Do I still have that thing that I had in the beginning that I stopped using? Is this still available to me? I have this one scenario that I kinda need help with.”

Chandra (26:20)
[laughs]

One scenario—and the crazy part about it, it doesn’t have to be a long list of things you thought about. You need support? If I just wake up this morning like, “How do I log in here?” you guys gotta answer!

Like, I really want to do this—even with me reaching out saying, “Hey, I just need…” What was it, Ross? I don’t know what I needed. I had a question about something and you—

Baldeep (26:40)
[laughs]

Ross (26:43)
Exactly.

Chandra (26:54)
—you took the time. Like, most of us still think we just want to have access to you guys because that’s who initially trained us. And I was like, you can get it—just send a ticket if you have questions to them. And that’s what I’m trying to get to that point—I don’t want to be too available.

And so the phone number thing is kind of frustrating, you know? So I really like that. I take a lot of you guys’ stuff and try to use it in my own business as well. So kudos to the support. And I know you guys have hired a lot of people.

Ross (27:28)
Yeah, no—

Ross (27:32)
Well, I was going to say, we’ve hired a lot of people because there are some questions that we do get a little sick of. We hire people to answer some of those for us. But like you said, we’re still in there. We’re still always available, right? That’s what I always love doing—pretty much every other day, at least, we get someone sending in their offer.

New people going through, they’re like, “Hey, here’s my offer. Can you guys review it?” And we’ll take a look, give feedback, and do all that. So if you need an offer review as well, they’re happy to do that.

Chandra (27:55)
Yeah.

Ross (28:02)
But yeah, no, that’s awesome. Moving forward from support—this year, right? So like last year, your goal was to hit 1,000. The year before, you wanted to hit 1,000—you did that. Your goal for this past tax season was to double. You pretty much did that as well. What’s your goal this year? Double again? What you looking—double again?

Baldeep (28:11)
And you did.

Chandra (28:22)
Yes. So now double means double two times two is four. If I can just add on a thousand every year, then I feel like I’m growing. Because again, like I said, I do lose people—not that I lose them, but like I have a couple people that are ready to build a service bureau, so I still keep their volume. But at the same time, I’m like, I’m losing my—

Baldeep (28:30)
Cut!

Ross (28:31)
Yes.

Chandra (28:50)
—service bureau fee. In my head, there’s still money being paid out to me. But that’s why I really don’t mind just selling software. I always tell them you’ll never see me marketing a service bureau, because it’s just not what I really want to do. But I’ll be here for you guys if that’s what you want me to offer you.

So yes, that is my growth—just a thousand more products each year is truly growth to me. I don’t try to compete with other people to make myself feel bad that I’m not doing enough work. Nope—I’m growing.

Baldeep (29:27)
[laughs]

Ross (29:31)
Yeah. Well, I think you’ll definitely be hitting it, looking at those numbers and the growth you’ve been doing.

The great thing—and kind of the crazy thing—in business, right, is once you get past that $100,000 mark, that’s where a lot of people struggle in their businesses—to get into that six-figure territory. Once you’re there, you’ve already got the framework laid out. From there, to go from the $100,000 to a million, from six figures to seven figures, it’s like—you just gotta do the same thing over and over.

Maybe get a little faster, more effective, more consistent—that’s it. You just gotta do the same thing over and over again and get a little better at it. And over time, you just continue to grow and scale.

So, like, you know, I definitely think the thousand-a-year mark for you right now, where you’re at, is 100%. I think you’re gonna probably crush that by the time we have this conversation next year.

Chandra (30:25)
I hope so.

Ross (30:27)
So what would you say—is there anything that you’re most excited about this year for your service bureau? Like, to hit that goal, is there anything you’ve been planning to do, or something you’re excited for?

Chandra (30:40)
I’m excited about the Elite program. I’m excited about that—just to see what’s coming up for that. No, I’m not really too excited; I’m just trying to stay grounded and consistent at this point. Because as fast as you can get it, you can lose it if you don’t stay consistent.

So that’s my goal right now—just staying motivated and consistent and following through on my own systems and processes and implementing the basics. Just keep that going. And once I see consistency—because consistent to me means at least three to four calls a day.

Right now, I’m at about three calls maybe three days out of the week. So that’s what I’m trying to get more consistent with. And that’s what excites me—that the last few weeks since I came off vacation, because I blocked off my calendar, I’ve been busy.

​​Ross (31:40)
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s—remember, I know I called you, I was like, “Are you joining?” and you’re like, “I’m busy, I’m busy selling.”

Baldeep (31:40)
Good.

Chandra (31:43)
I had to find time for you guys today. I’m like, three slots—why they gonna force me? I was like, there are no more days! Like, yeah, they got this calendar set up real good.

Ross (32:00)
Yeah, we’ve tailored the calendar for our calendars. For our availability. Yeah, yeah. We have people that are like, “There’s no spots in the calendar!” Like, yeah, we know. We’re trying to make adjustments, but we’re only gonna take so much time.

Chandra (32:04)
I know, I see they did this.

Baldeep (32:05)
For our convenience.

Chandra (32:07)
Mm-hmm.

Baldeep (32:12)
You know, we don’t do 6 p.m., 7 p.m. coaching calls anymore. No, don’t do that anymore.

Chandra (32:19)
Mm-mm, me neither.

Ross (32:23)
Awesome. Well, we have two last questions—but one last question that I’ll ask, and then Baldeep’s got the final one for you.

So, last question for you: if someone’s looking at joining the Service Bureau Accelerator—maybe they’re looking at other options, because there’s a lot more out there today—but maybe they came across our program and they’re looking at joining, what would you say to anyone considering it?

Chandra (32:45)
If you want real transparency and dedicated people that want to see you win and grow, then join SBA. There are a lot of people out here—I see it all the time—that are just running these programs. They have these Zoom calls, they have open calls, and it’s a bunch of fluff. And I be like, y’all paying these people $5,000?

So I always tell people—even if I can’t service you, this is who I would recommend. Because I know they have it laid out to where, if you want to grow and do this business, it’s already there for you. You just have to implement it. It’s reasonable, and they show up, and they have coaching calls—and it’s not drama.

That’s the biggest thing. I’ve never seen it. If you guys had it, I wasn’t there.

Ross (33:36)
We try to avoid that as much as possible.

Baldeep (33:44)
We don’t have it. We see it—people like to have it elsewhere. We don’t have that shit in our group.

Ross (33:44)
Well, we see some. Every now and then.

Chandra (33:49)
Okay.

Ross (33:52)
Yeah, we can sit next to it, eating popcorn, and watch it.

Chandra (33:56)
Mm-hmm.

Baldeep (33:57)
All right, one final thing from me, Chandra. Once this episode hits the interwebs and someone’s looking at this and they’re like, “Hey, I want to grow my tax office”—where can they find you? Give us all the details. Where can they look you up if they want to work with Chandra?

Chandra (34:15)
Okay, so—not my personal page—but you can find me on my personal page, Chandra. I don’t really market software there, so you’ll scroll down my personal page and be like, “She’s probably not the right fit.”

But if you go to my Facebook business page, I think it’s just called Tax Guard Professional Tax Software. I post tips for EROs probably once a week. I have a lot of things going on my social media page, so it’s a real, active business page.

And then, of course, my website is taxguardprofessionaltaxsoftware.com. I have an Instagram page—I don’t know who runs it (I think I do)—and it’s @TaxGuard as well. But that’s about it. Other than that, you can just inbox me on Facebook on my personal page, “Chandra,” and I always get back with a call.

Baldeep (35:09)
Awesome. All right. Well, that’ll wrap up this episode of the Service Bureau Accelerator Interview Series. Thanks for joining, Chandra. Have a good rest of your day.

Chandra (35:19)
Yay! Bye-bye