Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Mowbray and Cherina Rowand.
🎙️ Interview Summary: Mowbray & Cherina Rowand Purpose of the Interview
To showcase the entrepreneurial journey of Mowbray and Cherina Rowand, co-founders of The Rowand Group and One Stop Taxes, the largest Black-owned virtual tax preparation service in America. The interview highlights their business evolution, scaling strategies, community impact, and the creation of the Black Tax Festival.
🧭 Interview Outline 1. Background & Origins
- Both from Memphis, Tennessee; met in high school.
- Started tax preparation in 2010 as a mom-and-pop operation.
- Transitioned from brick-and-mortar to virtual model by 2015.
2. Business Philosophy
- Entrepreneurship is defined as service to others.
- Mowbray is the visionary; Cherina is the implementer.
- Emphasis on scaling with structure: legal, accounting, HR.
3. One Stop Taxes
- Grew from a single office to over 1,000 virtual franchise locations.
- Offers free training, no startup costs, and shared revenue model.
- Built a platform allowing clients to submit documents and sign remotely.
4. Virtual Tax Model
- Designed for convenience and accessibility.
- Clients and tax preparers never need to meet in person.
- Platform includes document upload, e-signature, and cloud storage.
5. Franchise & Training
- Learning Management System (LMS) for onboarding.
- Training includes tax prep, customer acquisition, and platform use.
- Strategic partnerships with local businesses (e.g., dealerships, daycares).
6. Black Tax Festival
- Combines networking, education, and recognition.
- Includes IRS updates, business workshops, and the Titan Awards.
- Open to all entrepreneurs, not just tax professionals.
7. Expansion & Diversification
- Own restaurants in Memphis and the Dominican Republic.
- Franchised Fat Tuesday and Esco Restaurant (did \$1M in first 6 weeks).
- Own a yacht for rental experiences in the DR.
- Plans to develop a restaurant strip near FedExForum in Memphis.
💡 Key Takeaways
- Vision + Execution = Growth: Their complementary roles fuel business success.
- Virtual is Scalable: Transitioning to virtual allowed exponential growth.
- Community Impact Matters: Black Tax Festival fosters education and recognition.
- Diversification is Strategic: Restaurants and real estate expand their brand.
- Mentorship & Learning: They study successful entrepreneurs like Tilman Fertitta.
- Faith & Family Drive: Their journey is rooted in love, planning, and purpose.
🗣️ Notable Quotes
- “Entrepreneurship means being a servant to other people.”
- “The same thing that works at \$1M doesn’t work at \$15M.”
- “We had to fire ourselves from some jobs and hire professionals.”
- “We built a platform where you can do taxes from your couch.”
- “We started before social media—we know belly-to-belly marketing.”
- “Recognition matters—people don’t get it at home or work.”
- “We’re trying to bridge the wealth gap through proper paperwork.”
- “We bought a yacht in the Dominican Republic to rent for experiences.”
#SHMS #STRAW #BEST
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm ru Sean McDonalds hosts weekly Money Making Conversation
Masterclass show. The interviews and information that this show provides
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(00:21):
a small business owner, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, influence or nonprofit,
I want you on my show. Now let's get to
this interview. My guess our gas are the co founders
of the Rowing Group.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
They used to be an LLC not in It's cool.
I'm gonna ask them about that and.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
The vision areas behind One Stop Tax is the largest
black owned tax preparation service in America. Were more than
one thousand virtual locations nationwide and the creators of the
Black Tax Festival. They have expanded their business portfolio into restaurants,
real estate, and hospitality.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Wow, we got a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
This is a money making conversation for real Please welcome
to the Money Making Conversation Masterclass.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Sharina and Mowbray rowing, thank you so much. I'm glad
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Well, first of all, I'm glad that you got to Memphis.
Shirre on what's going on there?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Lock it down? What's happening? Yeah, born and raised Memphis
Center C.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I've been in Atlanta almost a decade right now, but
I played football University of Memphis.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Okay, still they undefeated right now, right Memphis undefeated.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
I'm not gonna jink some right now.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
We came back and beat Arkansas ball not going crazy.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
We congratulations man.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You know, hopefully by the time the airs they still
be under fan I hope so.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
But I'm very familiar with with Memphis.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Been there a lot, you know, the little watch the
little ducks go down by, coming by, the kids come down,
go down the hallway. You know, people at the hotel.
If everybody ever been there a hot chicken? Yeah, you
know down there. Steve Harvey, who I management in the years,
Marjorie Harvey is from Memphis.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Family is from Memphis. So I'm very familiar. Been up
there a lot. So never went up there for Elfas.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I will tell you that I have never went up
there for Elvis, but there for me now Serena, where
are you from.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
I'm originally from Memphis as well.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Okay, I apologize for just assuming he was just Memphis
because you had logos are yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
As well, went to the University of Memphis, and we
actually met in high school.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Never dated in high school.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
Okay, and we met surely after he graduated, and you've
been together.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
So you guys are entrepreneurs, Yes, sir, I'm gonna start
with you. What does entrepreneurship mean to you?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And so it means to me, entrepreneurship being able to
set your own path. It means being a servant to
other people. And that's what I define entrepreneurship as finding
a service, finding how you can serve people, and then
you can ultimately build a business around around their service.
And so I just try to be better at that
than most people.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Now, you know, Serena when he says that building a business,
you guys are partners. Let's talk about that business first,
because definite, I always feel that you gotta have a
business to expand the business.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
It's it's called scaling.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So you guys are scaling now, but in the early stages,
what was your vision for the business.
Speaker 5 (03:08):
Well, Mowbray is our visionary. Mowbray is the big idea guy.
He always is coming up.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
With He's a big idea that.
Speaker 5 (03:14):
He's a big idea guy. Right, He's always like, Babe,
I got it. And for me, I'm the implementation person.
I'm going, Okay, if we're going to go from A
to Z, this is the way we have to get there.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
And so that's kind of how the dynamic has always.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Somehow, somehow, she complimented herself in that and that, like you,
you always got these ideas, but she got to.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Come in to clean up. That's how that came on
across to me. I'm I'm glad you said it. I'm
just gonna tell you that, brother. You know.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
But that's a good thing because my wife does that
to me, you know, And I would tell you I
don't want to listen to her. She'll talk about rashon,
you're slearring your words, you're talking too fast. I go whatever,
but whatever, whatever, And I'm taking notes. I'm taking notes.
I'm taking notes. You know, I'm not on here, but
I'm taking notes. How does that work with your mobile?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
You know? I always tell the look I know you're
going to figure out how to do it. But let
me get the.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Vision out first, right, and then must I get you
then start asking me questions, But how you gonna do it?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
How's it gonna work? You thought about all their parts here.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I'm just trying to see if I want to do
it first, and so yeah, I kind of cast the vision,
make sure that there's something that I know we want
to do, and then we start figuring out the pieces
of it. She want to figure the pieces out before
we get the idea out first.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Well, you know, now I agree with her, you know,
because a lot of people jump out there on faith.
But I would say that's cool, but please jump with
a plane, that is right, Please jump with a budget,
because I would tell people that when you start a business,
there are three things. You should have an accountant, lawyer,
and if you have employees hr those are and people
(04:47):
want to cut corners on all three of those. Now,
being a person, Maubray, you know, you're you're you're you're
expanding along with SHARENA outside of taxes, which means that
you're picking up employees, real estate, restaurants. We're gonna get
into individuals and also gonna get to the black tax festival,
which is another contractors and all those things. And I
(05:10):
know that I'm not looking at just two people, y'all,
not the two main operations at all. So when I
say the word accountant, I say the word our CPA,
our bookkeeper, I say the word legal, I say the
word HR.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
What do you say back to me? You know, I
say gotta have it all?
Speaker 3 (05:27):
And you know, you talk about scaling what we have
when we first started the business Ms McDonald, and what
we have to have now. Now we have to have
a new attorney. Now we need a new CPA. Like
the same thing that works at one million dollars, it's
not the same thing they work at ten million, fifteenth.
In every stage, I didn't realize either. At every stage
we needed to kind of up the team a little bit.
(05:49):
And so yeah, so we had to allow people that
you know, to even know more about certain things than
us that can kind of help us with in some
of those arenas. We needed a big time attorney. We
had to get a different CPA through the business and stuff.
So those are been key key things. It's surrounding what
a real quality team as a business begins to scale,
because it's hard to scale without it.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
And I will tell you this, and I agree with
you because I remember when I and I asked the
money was coming in. You know, I had no problem
buying clothes, I had no problem going on trips, buying
the car for boy.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I was struggling paying that tax man.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I was struggling paying I didn't understand those those bills,
you know, because I went, like you said, I used to.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Have an accountant.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
It's nothing longer to have account Then I went to
a CPA firm. Okay, that check is crazy, you know,
but I know when anybody ordered to me, they had it.
They defended, you know, and so that's how it works.
But putting that structure together, he's pretty calm and cool.
(06:54):
His Sharina, talk to me about your rope.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 5 (06:58):
So originally I was the hire the attorney.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
It was all yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
Actually at the point where you realize, hey, we need
professionals in here. And I got to fire myself from
some of these jobs. Okay, so that's what I started
to do. It's like, hey, you know, we need a team.
And you know, over the years that team And when.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
You say that over the years, talk about the years,
oh yes, like when you really started being you know,
you all start with a party of too. You got
to start this the roots when you start bringing people on.
What was that year that it clicked kicked in?
Speaker 4 (07:34):
So we started doing taxes in twenty ten. Okay, just
mom and pop, me and I.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
We had an office in Memphis, Tennessee, and we were
just you know, learning how to do this industry. We
didn't have a ton of support, we didn't have a
ton of training, but we had a lot of drive, right,
and so we got to work, put our heads down
for a few years and the business was growing, but
not at the rate we wanted to. We knew we
wanted to scale, but we knew that that wasn't going
to be just us going out and getting more customers.
(08:00):
So by twenty fifteen, we had the idea of saying, hey, listen,
it's not just us that want to make a lot
of money during the first part of the year. Taxes
is a different industry from a lot of things we've
been able to see, right, and so when we found
that concept, we said, what if we put a system
in place to show other people how to do this,
and so we started one Stop Taxes, the franchise model
(08:22):
we started teaching people how to do taxes, how to
structure their companies so that they could be profitable, how
to find customers in their marketplace.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
And it grew from there.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
And so we looked up after a year and we
had ten new stores, one hundred new stores.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Now these now because we said a thousand virtual locations.
Now now we're talking about you said twenty ten, that
you said twenty fifteen. Were those was those brick and
mortar stores at the time. Okay, talk about the brick
and mortar financial model versus the virtual financial market.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
Oh, it's night and day. Right.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
Starting out, it was you know, paying all the money
out up front, trying to figure out if the tax
season was going to be able to sustain you for
the rest of the year.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Right right, Yeah, So those were things that it's kind
of difficult, you know, trying to you know, you got
a virtual a brick and mortar business, right when you
got three months you got to make money, but you
got to pay these.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Bills right right. So it's just insurance ensuring like dazz.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
So it's hard to scale with that type of model,
and it's hard to teach someone else how to start
their model when it costs so much money out of pocket.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Right, So that's what.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
We came a franchise franchiser, right, But what if we
can remove the doors and windows and make it to
where you can do everything online, do it all from
an app.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Now we're talking visionary talk.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Now, right right, because I think I'm talking about this
before you got apps, before people this visionary talk before
people even trust taking pictures of their documents on the sale.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
You're talking visionary talk, right, you know, visionary talk come with?
Are you crazy? Right? What you talking about? Yeah? Boy? Anybody?
Aybody documents? I ain't sending my idea on those their phone, anybody, anybody,
go ahead, you know what I mean? Everybody just rising
no money right exactly right through their phone.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Nobody's going to trust you, right.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Okay, before everybody started doing it, the sounds crazy. Okay,
let's go to faith. Now.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
See this is where faith comes in because because you know,
when you're a visionary, people tear down. So where did
y'all go when they were tearing down? When it was
called you crazy? When they would call it, but still
borrow money for you?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So you know, it's one of those things where you
got to just start showing people right, and you start
doing it, you know, you know, okay, the first year
gets a little bitch, get a little traction, and we
were okay with you know, this.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Is one stop, one stop. Taxis went from brick and
mortar to virtual. Right, Okay, let's talk about twenty fifteen.
You expanded. When did the virtual aspect? Was that before
more covid? Because covid has been a landmark of all
conversations I've had with small entrepreneurs or any business, did
you do it before covid?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
After coat?
Speaker 3 (11:00):
So we started in twenty ten wanting to be virtual.
So even even when we had the brick and mortar stores,
we always had a virtual component, okay, right, We always
had people other places singing, So it was kind of
slowly transitioning to it. From twenty ten we had the
brick and mortar locations, and then we realized we opened
up brick and later locations and people weren't coming in them.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
This is when I realized too, about marketing.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Just opening up a store, people don't just come into
a store because you open it.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And so we opened up brick.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
And mortar stores, no customers came in right, right, And
so we was like, that ain't the way to go, babe.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
All this costs customers. It's not it you know what
I mean.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
And then our wife that was your clientele, minorities or
so they have that block mentality, you know, first quarter,
don't worry about the rest of the year, you know,
especially so that's a problem too, Right, So you have
to deal with your income being shuttered maybe eight months
out of the year, right.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
Right, Absolutely, So again, season is a very seasonal business.
But again for us, as we started to grow the
franchises twenty fifteen, we started with a few stores. By
the time we got to twenty nineteen, there were one
thousand franchises in the system. And pre COVID, you know,
(12:18):
the world shuts down and we're already in place. We
already have all these stores that are five and ready,
and so that just kind of changed the game for us,
and it helped so many families within our ecosystem not
have to have the same struggles as that every also experience.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
You were virtual, yes, and the world became virtual, and
the world became zoom. The world became I don't mind
looking at you and talk about my business over a
small over a phone or a monitor. So let's talk
about this, because I would be honest with you, Margaret
and Serena. I am confused on how virtual works. Okay, okay,
(12:57):
I'm a traditionalist. You know, from a standpoint of when
I used to do taxes, I go on office, sit
down or waiting line, and come up here, somebody do
my TAXI. Now you're talking about you have one thousand
virtual locations.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
How does that work?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
So from the very beginning, we wanted to make it
to where people could be at home. Send it home
on my couch, get my taxes done. And if Mr
McDonald's my tax person, I can send him my documents.
He can prepare them from the house. I can sign
from my house. And neither one of us have to
go anywhere, right, And so we built out a platform
that does just that. I can take the pictures on
my phone. I can select your name and an app.
(13:34):
The documents are going to come to you. You can
prepare them right there, send it back for signature. I
can sign it. My files is in my in my inbox,
in the cloud, in the cloud, and neither one of
us has left home.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I got my cash advance in my pocket. My stuff
is done.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Tax refune deposit.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
No waiting in line, no, but no driving in traffic.
And this is impressive.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
This is impressive because accounting is neither of your background.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Correct, not really, this is a business degree. I took
some accounting classes, but I was say, it's all good.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
It's all good, you know. You know, look, look, people
ain't making donuts.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Who on the doughnut play? People ain't making amburgers. I
don't think my man own chickenil making a chicken sandwich. Okay,
So we talked about a business model. Did you guys
create it? But from an advanced standpoint and it's from
a standpoint of like they said, from personal experience? How
could I make it easier for me and then share
(14:34):
it through a business model? And that's why I, you know,
I have to commend that because that takes a lot
of goods.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Talk to me.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, it took a lot of goods to be able
to give people something they never heard of before. Because
when you tell a person we own a virtual tax company,
like what is a virtual tax.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
What is it? Yes? You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
It's like I said, I've heard it all and I'm aware.
I kind of aware of it because you know, AI
and apps and stuff like that. But especially when you
two guys would start, you know, they were just you know, hey,
social media was kind of still ramping up.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, we started before social media, right, we started, So
we started where which is good though, because we know
billy to belly. These kids they don't know billy to
belly anymore. Right, even in the app world, even in
the AI world, you still got to go talk to people.
You still got to understand some belly to belly billy
relationships with people. And so we can teach people the
old school side of it, and we know all the
(15:34):
new school stuff and AI to tech and all this
stuff as world too. But in order to make it
really successful, you really got to be able to do
all of it. And so that's kind of how we
hedged our bed. We went and show people how the
old school way and the new school way, and then
you put it all into an app and a platform
and they just took off.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Stay with us.
Speaker 6 (15:52):
More Money Making Conversation master Class coming up next. Welcome
back to Money Making Conversation Master Class with me Rashaun mcdonaldo.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
I'm speaking to the co founders of the Rowing Group,
the visionaries behind the One Stop the largest black owned
tax preparation service in America with more than one thousand
virtual location These are franchises, Yes, sir, How does one
get involved?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
How do they contact you?
Speaker 4 (16:20):
So we made the platform.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
The bullhont We originally we used to come from a
network marketing background, you know, when we were in our twenties.
That was one of the first businesses that we were in.
So there were a lot of things that we loved
about that industry. So when we created the platform, we
created it with that model in mind. And so we
don't have any startup costs to get going. We train
(16:45):
for free, We provide all of the tax software, put
people in the system because we believe that if you
truly take what we were teaching you, you'll go out
and you'll make money and then we can split up
on the back end and you know, it's no problem.
And so that has really been one of the since
that we've grown so fast, is that we've lowered that barrier,
that point of entry barrier for most people so that
(17:06):
they can say, hey, if I have a lot of drive,
but I haven't found the thing that will work for me,
maybe this is it. And so one Stop taxes has
been that for a lot of people over the years.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Well, you know the websites absolutely one stop taxes dot com.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
One stop taxes dot Com. And when they go to
that screen or go to that website, what what's the process?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
What do they do? What do they click?
Speaker 3 (17:28):
It's gonna right in the middle of stage. It's gonna
say build my business online. It's right as soon as
you go in the middle of the page, right, and
you can get clicking on the about if you want
to just get more information. Our direct phone numbers and
everything is on there as well. Our phone numbers are
our Instagram And if you want to just go in
there and just sign up and get started, you can
do that as well too.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Now, when you started, you're an LLC.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yes, now you're an S groupes court, I apologize's court.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Why did you shift? Well change?
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah, Well, initially it was just her and nine, so
we didn't have any employees, we didn't have any k ones,
we didn't have anything they needed to flow.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Up to us or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
And so as we beget one business, you know, you know,
just two of us entrepreneurs. But as we began to
have all these other entities, Black Tax, Fitts, Marti Garard
and Memphis, the restaurants, multiple restaurant groups, and so then
we have to start having KLN. We had all these
entities that we have, and so the k we needed
something where all this could flow back up, and we
(18:24):
had to change the whole structure. And so there's all
types of tax advantages when you when you switch to escort.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
But well it was just us too.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
You know, all we know is just LLC in the beginning, right,
and so a lot of people, most people, let me
give me a business. LLC is better than nothing, right,
But as the business grew, we had to also again
I had to change with it.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
So how does one market a virtual tax company virtually?
Speaker 5 (18:48):
And so we teach people how to one tap into
their warm market, because we believe that again, your customer
base should start out at least a little bit warm,
familiar people that want to support your business. So we
teach them to approach that warm market. But then we
start teaching them how to go out and align strategically
with other people that can send you more customers. If
you're in the tax industry, you have a lot of
(19:09):
different industries that can funnel and feed into that customer base,
and you can also help those customers or those businesses
as well with.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
Your customer base.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
And so we teach people how to go strike up
partnerships with a dealership, a car dealership, or daycare or
an apartment complex and different places where people often come
at a certain time of year and say, hey, I
need a lump sum of money.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
I need to be able to have a down payment.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
For a car or moving expenses. And now we have
a resource to be able to get that to.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
So is there an onboarding process to get a virtual
one stop tax location.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
So we built in this platform a whole learning management system,
so you actually go through all the different steps from
how to prepare taxes, how to get customers, what do
you do, how do you work the system? So yeah,
once you go through this complete train, it's all online
at your own pace, then we go ahead to issue
you out all the email addresses and give you out
access to the software and we kind of finish your
(20:08):
your onboarding process.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Once you complete the training, let's go to something big.
Like I said, we're not gonna talk about the mort
gro that's the first time I heard Martiro, but.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Black Tax Festival.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Why did HA started and why was their need for
the Black Tax Festival.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
We started it because we all of our stories are
virtual for the most part, and so a lot of them,
you know, they would sign up virtually all across the country.
We never met them before, and so it was so
we needed something to bring everybody together where we could
be able to meet. We can, we can put our
arms around and we can give them recognition for what
they've done, and we.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Get to hear their stories.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
And I'm telling you, well, you hear some of these
stories of where these people were when they heard about
this business and what has happened in their life because
of it. I mean, it just melt you down. I mean,
is it is an amazing thing. And so when we
started doing that, it just became important for us to
do it every year and it just kept getting bigger.
But now people push and work hard because they want
the recognition at Black tex right. You know, people don't
(21:04):
get recognition on their jobs at home.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
A lot of time now with the words recognition, how
are you recognizing people?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
So there's a whole award show that we do.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Okay, so it's a Black Tax Festival and as an
award show, yes, sir, so two.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
Days is all conference content. We have the irs coming
out to give updates. We have so many different speakers
coming to share business opportunities, to share their secret sauce
on how they've been able to grow and scale their businesses.
And so we curate this room so that it can
be a resource to everyone that attends, whether you're in
the tax industry or not. If you're just an entrepreneur,
(21:41):
this is a great room for you to be in
to just soak in the knowledge, network with people on
a high level, and hopefully leave with better than we
found you. And so that's always our goal at Black Tax.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Okay, So, because now I'm trying to shape because you
said a magical word, you don't want to have to
be involved with taxes to attend? Yes, Okay, how do
you get around with that messaging? Because it feels like
if I'm looking for a tax person, I'm looking for entrepreneurship,
I'm looking for a bank law, I'm looking for anybody
that can help me at scale. Those are type of people
(22:12):
that are going to be at the Black Tax person.
I'm not assuming that, but I think that's the purpose
career absolutely, yeah, and so yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
We definitely want to attract all those types of people.
And like we're bringing out our bankers from Chase to
be able to talk to people about actually, how do
you kind of banking you need because one of the
problems with us and it just pays me so much,
but we aren't. We are left out of the rooms
because we don't have the proper paperwork, we don't have
the proper financials, right, and so we're underserved, we're under insured.
(22:39):
And so we're going to bring gap people within these
different alliances so we can start kind of helping bridge
some of this wealth gap. So that's a big part
of Black tax fasts because us as tax professionals, we're
the ones that help bridge the gap.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Why because we're the ones do the tax returns favoritbody.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
So if you want a house, who you got to
call your tax guys right, right, And so us as
tax professionals that we're giving the right to all of
our clients nationwide, we can start moving the envelope a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And so that's why we bring.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Audis Triton Awards right Tight Awards, Tight Tightan Awards. That's
when you're celebrating the success of the Virtual Tax one
stop tax owners, they come in, what does that opening
day look like?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Walk me through each day of the Black Tax Festival.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
We'll start with what we call Breakfast with Bosses.
Speaker 5 (23:28):
It's a networking breakfast with some of the amazing business
leaders that we've been able to meet here in the
Atlanta area. We'll have, you know, a day filled with
general sessions and breakout sessions. So Thursday and Friday is
full of content like that, activations, things that people can
(23:48):
can go to breakout sessions, get workshops.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
In how to use AI and business these types of things.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
So to your point of just all types of different
business owners, like we talk we go through how do
you really use AI in your business? How do you
regardless of the industry, Like how do you take it
and help you scale your business? Like how are you
using SEO to become an expert in your market right
and to come to the top of Google searches? And
so it's a lot of things. How you use in
business funding? What kind of bank accounts that you have
(24:13):
business financials? Like how do you really go get business
credit as an entrepreneur, Because there's a lot of things
floating around of what business credit looks like, which is
we access to funding, which all of our business owners need.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
But what do you really need?
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Right?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Do we know what a personal financial statement is?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
You know the tax returns is needed properly law statements
that you got to have. Like once we start teaching
us really what's needed to go into these banks and
go be bankable, I think we start moving the needle.
So that's what we kind of do those first two days.
Last day we bring it off with the gala. So
the last day is the awards.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
We get recognition to all types of people.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
You know, how many categories are there are, how many
awards are distributed, and what are the types categories?
Speaker 5 (24:52):
C eight categories of the tax tight and awards, so
everything from top revenue stream to market guru and everything
in between. So we like to recognize people for different facets,
a community award, a tech guru award, So we like
to recognize people that are doing different things because there
are so many people that are doing amazing things in
(25:13):
the tax industry.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
We know, the thing I like about interviewing people who
are have a visionary approach to what you guys are doing,
is that you're scaling outside the original plan.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
You're also into real estate, you're also into a restaurants.
Why right, Well, you know it look like you're doing good.
Why you get when you get missed by?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
My wife said, why you wanna give me something else?
But you know, it's kind of a sense of to,
a responsibility to. And you know, once we got to
a certain I.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Know, Steve Over said jumping, you jumped already, keep up.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
And so after the text business got to a place
like we felt like it was time that where we
could start beginning to diversify, right, And then so we
started looking at different restaurants because we you know, we
love to travel, we love to you know, service people
provide great experiences with people, and so we bought the
fat tuesdays that they went off ready really well fatuosi
were So we bought one and we took it to Memphis, Tennessee.
(26:10):
But we we purchased a last franchise before they stop franchising.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Okay, so we bought the rights to the Tennessee market.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Shortly after that, two chains in his group and Snoop
started franchising.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah yeah, you bringing up so many names that.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Okay, okay, okay, okay, and so.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah, Snoop and two chains started franchising Esco so Boom.
We bought one of those, and then we took that
to Memphis as well too, and so again just kind
of going back there, giving back to our hometown. Even
though we live in Atlanta now, we still go back
there and we get back.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Well, the beauty of going back to a community, a
customer service or business they don't normally have, knowing your
market share, being a big fish in a small pond.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
All those things. Marketing is cheaper.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Rights cheapers believe that was playing it right.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Oh yeah, right right, because the yeah, I know, right
across the street is like the hotels right across the street,
and you're going, really all this is what you're paying.
And FedEx's right, there were a constant floor of traffic
and you're right there Atlanta, you'll be five times Oh yeah,
absolutely absolutely, and let alone trying to advertise, let alone
insurance and all that good stuff. So with that being said,
(27:28):
what is the future for your brand?
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Oh goodness, so many things coming down the pipeline.
Speaker 5 (27:34):
We have a few restaurants over in the Dominican Republic
and so we love being We didn't.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Just gonna slide that in that why would that? Let
me see?
Speaker 1 (27:48):
So on the cord, I heard about the Martigorol festival.
Now she's gonna throw out the Dominican Republic a restaurant. Okay,
keep talking, he said, if you may be longer than
I expected I thought I be at the of course,
don't you gonna throw it Domesic Republic?
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I can't keep it shut. But that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 5 (28:06):
But yeah, we we have some restaurants over there, and
we bought a yacht over there to be able to
rent out for experiences to people as well.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
And so you know, as we look at the next
few years, you know, we're trying to convince the kids. Now, hey,
you know, what do you.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Guys think about going and hanging over at the beach
for a little while for a few years.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
But you know, who knows, who knows? You're always moving on.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I've been I've been doing money made conversation match classes.
Twenty seventeen, first black couple ever came on my show
said the word yacht and just blew right past it
like they've said like, because they've said it a lot.
They've said that mall Bra and Sharena have said the
word yacht so much. They just like saying Pento board
(28:51):
pentover to them. Okay, continue with the story, keep yabad over.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
There and make me feel smaller here. I'm just gonna shrink.
I'm gonna be a tattoo.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
And so like now we're the place where we really
want to drill down into the restaurant absolutely scale. And
so as we scale, we want to kind of dig
into because their first restaurant, Esco Restaurant, I mean, I
maan it. We did a million dollars the first six weeks. Congratulations,
and so like when you have that, and what's that menu?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
What is that menu? So it's I mean it's stripping grids,
fishing grids. It's it's lamb.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Chops, lobster, turkey ribs, our specialty turkey ribs and so yeah,
so it's all of the you know, you all type
of cool food there. You know, steaks, lots of tails,
you know everything orsus Rockefeller, you know the drinks everything.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Oh yeah, I love it. Then we got the best
and so gumbo everything there.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
And so now I want to be able to see
how do we take these restaurants, what's what new concepts
can we get.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
We're gonna finish developing all the.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Restaurants in front of the fed ex Form, so we'll
own that entire strip there of restaurants.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Congratulations fed ex Form.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
There's three three total restaurants that we're going to open
there in the next twelve months. So just giving people
something downtown to and then keep expanding all of our
other and keep it safe.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Keep security a number one priority, absolutely, because that's the key.
When you get success, you skimp on the most important
things security because once the area gets bad from a
bad reputation, like the Linux Mall here and Atlanta almost
closed because of security issues with people doing silly stuff
around it, people feeling they was unsafe to go in
(30:28):
that shopping are beautiful mall almost shut down because they
had to up to security. Now people are comfortable going
in there. Traffic is popping back up because that's because
that's the you know, you guys have a first of all, y'all,
I don't throw the word visionary out as a joke.
I met that when I said I saw it early
on in the conversation affair when I was talking to you
(30:50):
sad about, you know, the vision to be able to
master a business, and that wasn't your educational background, which
means you had to educate yourself to be able to
be successful in that business. And that's why I've said,
there's no there's no apologies to say that you don't
have an accounting back on your business man, your business
woman and y'all very successful. What y'all do you know
(31:12):
the word chef in behind your name or in front
of your name, and y'all great restaurant tiers, and so
now you a chef and that's that's what life is.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
But you're business people. Tillman, you know he's not a chef.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Okay, every time you go on one of this restaurant,
that food tastes cool.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
If he put a restaurant, your boy going in or
till the restaurant tell you going in. He does not
mess around with his food and.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
He gives you off total. I study him a lot too.
He gives a.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
He's also owns the Houston Rockets.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Just get a little background, one of the biggest restaurant owners.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
In the country.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Correct, yes, sir, on part of the Wind Hotel. To
go to the Nugget in Las Vegas. He based in Houston, Texas.
One of the biggest donors, donors for the University of Houston,
but more poor you have eaten in his restaurant, I sweat.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
One of the things he says is always have eggs.
And it's like, no matter what people you know, no
matter what time of day, it is like, always get
people what they want.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
If you've got eggs in your restaurant, regardless of what
time of day is, sell to people eggs.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
So I kind of take that same.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
You know, it's about hospitality, like always saying yes to
the customers. So I spent a lot of time studying
people like that and taking some of those inspirations and putting.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Them into into our models as much as I can.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
So we don't have a lot of mentors in the
spaces that we're in, so we have to go out
and we have to read, we have to you know,
do personal development to make sure that we're feeding ourselves.
Is we're pouring out into the groups and pouring into
the staff.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
And things like that. So it's always important for us
to be awesome.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Interview here a lot of sound bite if we're gonna
drop on social media, because people need to hear two individuals,
a couple, a loving couple, you know, think differently, but
think together and to to accomplish something in various platforms,
various life before we go one stop taxes, How we
reach out on that, How we reach out for one
(33:09):
stop taxes.
Speaker 5 (33:10):
Start your own virtual franchise with one stop taxes at
one stoptaxes dot com. You can give us a call
at eight by five two one two eight nine eighty
three if you have any questions.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
We have a great team there to answer anything.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yet, thank you for coming on Money Making Conversations Masterclass. Awesome,
Thank you so much. It's not pleasure.
Speaker 6 (33:26):
This has been Money Making Conversations Masterclass with me Rashaun McDonald.
Thanks to our guess and our audience. Visit Moneymakingconversations dot
com to listen or register to be a guest on
my show. Keep leading with your gifts, keep winning,
Hi, I'm ru Sean McDonalds hosts weekly Money Making Conversation
Masterclass show. The interviews and information that this show provides
off for everyone, and it's time to start reading other
people's success stories and start living your own now. If
you want to be a guest on my show, Money
Making Conversation Master Class, please visit our website Moneymakingconversations dot
com and click to be a guest. But if you're
(00:21):
a small business owner, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, influence or nonprofit,
I want you on my show. Now let's get to
this interview. My guess our gas are the co founders
of the Rowing Group.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
They used to be an LLC not in It's cool.
I'm gonna ask them about that and.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
The vision areas behind One Stop Tax is the largest
black owned tax preparation service in America. Were more than
one thousand virtual locations nationwide and the creators of the
Black Tax Festival. They have expanded their business portfolio into restaurants,
real estate, and hospitality.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Wow, we got a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
This is a money making conversation for real Please welcome
to the Money Making Conversation Masterclass.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Sharina and Mowbray rowing, thank you so much. I'm glad
to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Well, first of all, I'm glad that you got to Memphis.
Shirre on what's going on there?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Lock it down? What's happening? Yeah, born and raised Memphis
Center C.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I've been in Atlanta almost a decade right now, but
I played football University of Memphis.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Okay, still they undefeated right now, right Memphis undefeated.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
I'm not gonna jink some right now.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
We came back and beat Arkansas ball not going crazy.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
We congratulations man.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
You know, hopefully by the time the airs they still
be under fan I hope so.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
But I'm very familiar with with Memphis.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Been there a lot, you know, the little watch the
little ducks go down by, coming by, the kids come down,
go down the hallway. You know, people at the hotel.
If everybody ever been there a hot chicken? Yeah, you
know down there. Steve Harvey, who I management in the years,
Marjorie Harvey is from Memphis.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Family is from Memphis. So I'm very familiar. Been up
there a lot. So never went up there for Elfas.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I will tell you that I have never went up
there for Elvis, but there for me now Serena, where
are you from.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
I'm originally from Memphis as well.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Okay, I apologize for just assuming he was just Memphis
because you had logos are yeah.
Speaker 5 (02:09):
As well, went to the University of Memphis, and we
actually met in high school.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Never dated in high school.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
Okay, and we met surely after he graduated, and you've
been together.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
So you guys are entrepreneurs, Yes, sir, I'm gonna start
with you. What does entrepreneurship mean to you?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And so it means to me, entrepreneurship being able to
set your own path. It means being a servant to
other people. And that's what I define entrepreneurship as finding
a service, finding how you can serve people, and then
you can ultimately build a business around around their service.
And so I just try to be better at that
than most people.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Now, you know, Serena when he says that building a business,
you guys are partners. Let's talk about that business first,
because definite, I always feel that you gotta have a
business to expand the business.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
It's it's called scaling.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So you guys are scaling now, but in the early stages,
what was your vision for the business.
Speaker 5 (03:08):
Well, Mowbray is our visionary. Mowbray is the big idea guy.
He always is coming up.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
With He's a big idea that.
Speaker 5 (03:14):
He's a big idea guy. Right, He's always like, Babe,
I got it. And for me, I'm the implementation person.
I'm going, Okay, if we're going to go from A
to Z, this is the way we have to get there.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
And so that's kind of how the dynamic has always.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Somehow, somehow, she complimented herself in that and that, like you,
you always got these ideas, but she got to.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Come in to clean up. That's how that came on
across to me. I'm I'm glad you said it. I'm
just gonna tell you that, brother. You know.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
But that's a good thing because my wife does that
to me, you know, And I would tell you I
don't want to listen to her. She'll talk about rashon,
you're slearring your words, you're talking too fast. I go whatever,
but whatever, whatever, And I'm taking notes. I'm taking notes.
I'm taking notes. You know, I'm not on here, but
I'm taking notes. How does that work with your mobile?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
You know? I always tell the look I know you're
going to figure out how to do it. But let
me get the.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Vision out first, right, and then must I get you
then start asking me questions, But how you gonna do it?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
How's it gonna work? You thought about all their parts here.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I'm just trying to see if I want to do
it first, and so yeah, I kind of cast the vision,
make sure that there's something that I know we want
to do, and then we start figuring out the pieces
of it. She want to figure the pieces out before
we get the idea out first.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Well, you know, now I agree with her, you know,
because a lot of people jump out there on faith.
But I would say that's cool, but please jump with
a plane, that is right, Please jump with a budget,
because I would tell people that when you start a business,
there are three things. You should have an accountant, lawyer,
and if you have employees hr those are and people
(04:47):
want to cut corners on all three of those. Now,
being a person, Maubray, you know, you're you're you're you're
expanding along with SHARENA outside of taxes, which means that
you're picking up employees, real estate, restaurants. We're gonna get
into individuals and also gonna get to the black tax festival,
which is another contractors and all those things. And I
(05:10):
know that I'm not looking at just two people, y'all,
not the two main operations at all. So when I
say the word accountant, I say the word our CPA,
our bookkeeper, I say the word legal, I say the
word HR.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
What do you say back to me? You know, I
say gotta have it all?
Speaker 3 (05:27):
And you know, you talk about scaling what we have
when we first started the business Ms McDonald, and what
we have to have now. Now we have to have
a new attorney. Now we need a new CPA. Like
the same thing that works at one million dollars, it's
not the same thing they work at ten million, fifteenth.
In every stage, I didn't realize either. At every stage
we needed to kind of up the team a little bit.
(05:49):
And so yeah, so we had to allow people that
you know, to even know more about certain things than
us that can kind of help us with in some
of those arenas. We needed a big time attorney. We
had to get a different CPA through the business and stuff.
So those are been key key things. It's surrounding what
a real quality team as a business begins to scale,
because it's hard to scale without it.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
And I will tell you this, and I agree with
you because I remember when I and I asked the
money was coming in. You know, I had no problem
buying clothes, I had no problem going on trips, buying
the car for boy.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I was struggling paying that tax man.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I was struggling paying I didn't understand those those bills,
you know, because I went, like you said, I used to.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Have an accountant.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
It's nothing longer to have account Then I went to
a CPA firm. Okay, that check is crazy, you know,
but I know when anybody ordered to me, they had it.
They defended, you know, and so that's how it works.
But putting that structure together, he's pretty calm and cool.
(06:54):
His Sharina, talk to me about your rope.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 5 (06:58):
So originally I was the hire the attorney.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
It was all yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
Actually at the point where you realize, hey, we need
professionals in here. And I got to fire myself from
some of these jobs. Okay, so that's what I started
to do. It's like, hey, you know, we need a team.
And you know, over the years that team And when.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
You say that over the years, talk about the years,
oh yes, like when you really started being you know,
you all start with a party of too. You got
to start this the roots when you start bringing people on.
What was that year that it clicked kicked in?
Speaker 4 (07:34):
So we started doing taxes in twenty ten. Okay, just
mom and pop, me and I.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
We had an office in Memphis, Tennessee, and we were
just you know, learning how to do this industry. We
didn't have a ton of support, we didn't have a
ton of training, but we had a lot of drive, right,
and so we got to work, put our heads down
for a few years and the business was growing, but
not at the rate we wanted to. We knew we
wanted to scale, but we knew that that wasn't going
to be just us going out and getting more customers.
(08:00):
So by twenty fifteen, we had the idea of saying, hey, listen,
it's not just us that want to make a lot
of money during the first part of the year. Taxes
is a different industry from a lot of things we've
been able to see, right, and so when we found
that concept, we said, what if we put a system
in place to show other people how to do this,
and so we started one Stop Taxes, the franchise model
(08:22):
we started teaching people how to do taxes, how to
structure their companies so that they could be profitable, how
to find customers in their marketplace.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
And it grew from there.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
And so we looked up after a year and we
had ten new stores, one hundred new stores.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Now these now because we said a thousand virtual locations.
Now now we're talking about you said twenty ten, that
you said twenty fifteen. Were those was those brick and
mortar stores at the time. Okay, talk about the brick
and mortar financial model versus the virtual financial market.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
Oh, it's night and day. Right.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
Starting out, it was you know, paying all the money
out up front, trying to figure out if the tax
season was going to be able to sustain you for
the rest of the year.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Right right, Yeah, So those were things that it's kind
of difficult, you know, trying to you know, you got
a virtual a brick and mortar business, right when you
got three months you got to make money, but you
got to pay these.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Bills right right. So it's just insurance ensuring like dazz.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
So it's hard to scale with that type of model,
and it's hard to teach someone else how to start
their model when it costs so much money out of pocket.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Right, So that's what.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
We came a franchise franchiser, right, But what if we
can remove the doors and windows and make it to
where you can do everything online, do it all from
an app.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Now we're talking visionary talk.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Now, right right, because I think I'm talking about this
before you got apps, before people this visionary talk before
people even trust taking pictures of their documents on the sale.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
You're talking visionary talk, right, you know, visionary talk come with?
Are you crazy? Right? What you talking about? Yeah? Boy? Anybody?
Aybody documents? I ain't sending my idea on those their phone, anybody, anybody,
go ahead, you know what I mean? Everybody just rising
no money right exactly right through their phone.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Nobody's going to trust you, right.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Okay, before everybody started doing it, the sounds crazy. Okay,
let's go to faith. Now.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
See this is where faith comes in because because you know,
when you're a visionary, people tear down. So where did
y'all go when they were tearing down? When it was
called you crazy? When they would call it, but still
borrow money for you?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So you know, it's one of those things where you
got to just start showing people right, and you start
doing it, you know, you know, okay, the first year
gets a little bitch, get a little traction, and we
were okay with you know, this.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Is one stop, one stop. Taxis went from brick and
mortar to virtual. Right, Okay, let's talk about twenty fifteen.
You expanded. When did the virtual aspect? Was that before
more covid? Because covid has been a landmark of all
conversations I've had with small entrepreneurs or any business, did
you do it before covid?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
After coat?
Speaker 3 (11:00):
So we started in twenty ten wanting to be virtual.
So even even when we had the brick and mortar stores,
we always had a virtual component, okay, right, We always
had people other places singing, So it was kind of
slowly transitioning to it. From twenty ten we had the
brick and mortar locations, and then we realized we opened
up brick and later locations and people weren't coming in them.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
This is when I realized too, about marketing.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Just opening up a store, people don't just come into
a store because you open it.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And so we opened up brick.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
And mortar stores, no customers came in right, right, And
so we was like, that ain't the way to go, babe.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
All this costs customers. It's not it you know what
I mean.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
And then our wife that was your clientele, minorities or
so they have that block mentality, you know, first quarter,
don't worry about the rest of the year, you know,
especially so that's a problem too, Right, So you have
to deal with your income being shuttered maybe eight months
out of the year, right.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
Right, Absolutely, So again, season is a very seasonal business.
But again for us, as we started to grow the
franchises twenty fifteen, we started with a few stores. By
the time we got to twenty nineteen, there were one
thousand franchises in the system. And pre COVID, you know,
(12:18):
the world shuts down and we're already in place. We
already have all these stores that are five and ready,
and so that just kind of changed the game for us,
and it helped so many families within our ecosystem not
have to have the same struggles as that every also experience.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
You were virtual, yes, and the world became virtual, and
the world became zoom. The world became I don't mind
looking at you and talk about my business over a
small over a phone or a monitor. So let's talk
about this, because I would be honest with you, Margaret
and Serena. I am confused on how virtual works. Okay, okay,
(12:57):
I'm a traditionalist. You know, from a standpoint of when
I used to do taxes, I go on office, sit
down or waiting line, and come up here, somebody do
my TAXI. Now you're talking about you have one thousand
virtual locations.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
How does that work?
Speaker 3 (13:11):
So from the very beginning, we wanted to make it
to where people could be at home. Send it home
on my couch, get my taxes done. And if Mr
McDonald's my tax person, I can send him my documents.
He can prepare them from the house. I can sign
from my house. And neither one of us have to
go anywhere, right, And so we built out a platform
that does just that. I can take the pictures on
my phone. I can select your name and an app.
(13:34):
The documents are going to come to you. You can
prepare them right there, send it back for signature. I
can sign it. My files is in my in my inbox,
in the cloud, in the cloud, and neither one of
us has left home.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I got my cash advance in my pocket. My stuff
is done.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Tax refune deposit.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
No waiting in line, no, but no driving in traffic.
And this is impressive.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
This is impressive because accounting is neither of your background.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Correct, not really, this is a business degree. I took
some accounting classes, but I was say, it's all good.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
It's all good, you know. You know, look, look, people
ain't making donuts.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Who on the doughnut play? People ain't making amburgers. I
don't think my man own chickenil making a chicken sandwich. Okay,
So we talked about a business model. Did you guys
create it? But from an advanced standpoint and it's from
a standpoint of like they said, from personal experience? How
could I make it easier for me and then share
(14:34):
it through a business model? And that's why I, you know,
I have to commend that because that takes a lot
of goods.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Talk to me.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, it took a lot of goods to be able
to give people something they never heard of before. Because
when you tell a person we own a virtual tax company,
like what is a virtual tax.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
What is it? Yes? You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
It's like I said, I've heard it all and I'm aware.
I kind of aware of it because you know, AI
and apps and stuff like that. But especially when you
two guys would start, you know, they were just you know, hey,
social media was kind of still ramping up.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah, we started before social media, right, we started, So
we started where which is good though, because we know
billy to belly. These kids they don't know billy to
belly anymore. Right, even in the app world, even in
the AI world, you still got to go talk to people.
You still got to understand some belly to belly billy
relationships with people. And so we can teach people the
old school side of it, and we know all the
(15:34):
new school stuff and AI to tech and all this
stuff as world too. But in order to make it
really successful, you really got to be able to do
all of it. And so that's kind of how we
hedged our bed. We went and show people how the
old school way and the new school way, and then
you put it all into an app and a platform
and they just took off.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Stay with us.
Speaker 6 (15:52):
More Money Making Conversation master Class coming up next. Welcome
back to Money Making Conversation Master Class with me Rashaun mcdonaldo.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
I'm speaking to the co founders of the Rowing Group,
the visionaries behind the One Stop the largest black owned
tax preparation service in America with more than one thousand
virtual location These are franchises, Yes, sir, How does one
get involved?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
How do they contact you?
Speaker 4 (16:20):
So we made the platform.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
The bullhont We originally we used to come from a
network marketing background, you know, when we were in our twenties.
That was one of the first businesses that we were in.
So there were a lot of things that we loved
about that industry. So when we created the platform, we
created it with that model in mind. And so we
don't have any startup costs to get going. We train
(16:45):
for free, We provide all of the tax software, put
people in the system because we believe that if you
truly take what we were teaching you, you'll go out
and you'll make money and then we can split up
on the back end and you know, it's no problem.
And so that has really been one of the since
that we've grown so fast, is that we've lowered that barrier,
that point of entry barrier for most people so that
(17:06):
they can say, hey, if I have a lot of drive,
but I haven't found the thing that will work for me,
maybe this is it. And so one Stop taxes has
been that for a lot of people over the years.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Well, you know the websites absolutely one stop taxes dot com.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
One stop taxes dot Com. And when they go to
that screen or go to that website, what what's the process?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
What do they do? What do they click?
Speaker 3 (17:28):
It's gonna right in the middle of stage. It's gonna
say build my business online. It's right as soon as
you go in the middle of the page, right, and
you can get clicking on the about if you want
to just get more information. Our direct phone numbers and
everything is on there as well. Our phone numbers are
our Instagram And if you want to just go in
there and just sign up and get started, you can
do that as well too.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Now, when you started, you're an LLC.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yes, now you're an S groupes court, I apologize's court.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Why did you shift? Well change?
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah, Well, initially it was just her and nine, so
we didn't have any employees, we didn't have any k ones,
we didn't have anything they needed to flow.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Up to us or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
And so as we beget one business, you know, you know,
just two of us entrepreneurs. But as we began to
have all these other entities, Black Tax, Fitts, Marti Garard
and Memphis, the restaurants, multiple restaurant groups, and so then
we have to start having KLN. We had all these
entities that we have, and so the k we needed
something where all this could flow back up, and we
(18:24):
had to change the whole structure. And so there's all
types of tax advantages when you when you switch to escort.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
But well it was just us too.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
You know, all we know is just LLC in the beginning, right,
and so a lot of people, most people, let me
give me a business. LLC is better than nothing, right,
But as the business grew, we had to also again
I had to change with it.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
So how does one market a virtual tax company virtually?
Speaker 5 (18:48):
And so we teach people how to one tap into
their warm market, because we believe that again, your customer
base should start out at least a little bit warm,
familiar people that want to support your business. So we
teach them to approach that warm market. But then we
start teaching them how to go out and align strategically
with other people that can send you more customers. If
you're in the tax industry, you have a lot of
(19:09):
different industries that can funnel and feed into that customer base,
and you can also help those customers or those businesses
as well with.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
Your customer base.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
And so we teach people how to go strike up
partnerships with a dealership, a car dealership, or daycare or
an apartment complex and different places where people often come
at a certain time of year and say, hey, I
need a lump sum of money.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
I need to be able to have a down payment.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
For a car or moving expenses. And now we have
a resource to be able to get that to.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
So is there an onboarding process to get a virtual
one stop tax location.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
So we built in this platform a whole learning management system,
so you actually go through all the different steps from
how to prepare taxes, how to get customers, what do
you do, how do you work the system? So yeah,
once you go through this complete train, it's all online
at your own pace, then we go ahead to issue
you out all the email addresses and give you out
access to the software and we kind of finish your
(20:08):
your onboarding process.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Once you complete the training, let's go to something big.
Like I said, we're not gonna talk about the mort
gro that's the first time I heard Martiro, but.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Black Tax Festival.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Why did HA started and why was their need for
the Black Tax Festival.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
We started it because we all of our stories are
virtual for the most part, and so a lot of them,
you know, they would sign up virtually all across the country.
We never met them before, and so it was so
we needed something to bring everybody together where we could
be able to meet. We can, we can put our
arms around and we can give them recognition for what
they've done, and we.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Get to hear their stories.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
And I'm telling you, well, you hear some of these
stories of where these people were when they heard about
this business and what has happened in their life because
of it. I mean, it just melt you down. I mean,
is it is an amazing thing. And so when we
started doing that, it just became important for us to
do it every year and it just kept getting bigger.
But now people push and work hard because they want
the recognition at Black tex right. You know, people don't
(21:04):
get recognition on their jobs at home.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
A lot of time now with the words recognition, how
are you recognizing people?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
So there's a whole award show that we do.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Okay, so it's a Black Tax Festival and as an
award show, yes, sir, so two.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
Days is all conference content. We have the irs coming
out to give updates. We have so many different speakers
coming to share business opportunities, to share their secret sauce
on how they've been able to grow and scale their businesses.
And so we curate this room so that it can
be a resource to everyone that attends, whether you're in
the tax industry or not. If you're just an entrepreneur,
(21:41):
this is a great room for you to be in
to just soak in the knowledge, network with people on
a high level, and hopefully leave with better than we
found you. And so that's always our goal at Black Tax.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Okay, So, because now I'm trying to shape because you
said a magical word, you don't want to have to
be involved with taxes to attend? Yes, Okay, how do
you get around with that messaging? Because it feels like
if I'm looking for a tax person, I'm looking for entrepreneurship,
I'm looking for a bank law, I'm looking for anybody
that can help me at scale. Those are type of people
(22:12):
that are going to be at the Black Tax person.
I'm not assuming that, but I think that's the purpose
career absolutely, yeah, and so yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
We definitely want to attract all those types of people.
And like we're bringing out our bankers from Chase to
be able to talk to people about actually, how do
you kind of banking you need because one of the
problems with us and it just pays me so much,
but we aren't. We are left out of the rooms
because we don't have the proper paperwork, we don't have
the proper financials, right, and so we're underserved, we're under insured.
(22:39):
And so we're going to bring gap people within these
different alliances so we can start kind of helping bridge
some of this wealth gap. So that's a big part
of Black tax fasts because us as tax professionals, we're
the ones that help bridge the gap.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Why because we're the ones do the tax returns favoritbody.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
So if you want a house, who you got to
call your tax guys right, right, And so us as
tax professionals that we're giving the right to all of
our clients nationwide, we can start moving the envelope a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And so that's why we bring.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Audis Triton Awards right Tight Awards, Tight Tightan Awards. That's
when you're celebrating the success of the Virtual Tax one
stop tax owners, they come in, what does that opening
day look like?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Walk me through each day of the Black Tax Festival.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
We'll start with what we call Breakfast with Bosses.
Speaker 5 (23:28):
It's a networking breakfast with some of the amazing business
leaders that we've been able to meet here in the
Atlanta area. We'll have, you know, a day filled with
general sessions and breakout sessions. So Thursday and Friday is
full of content like that, activations, things that people can
(23:48):
can go to breakout sessions, get workshops.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
In how to use AI and business these types of things.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
So to your point of just all types of different
business owners, like we talk we go through how do
you really use AI in your business? How do you
regardless of the industry, Like how do you take it
and help you scale your business? Like how are you
using SEO to become an expert in your market right
and to come to the top of Google searches? And
so it's a lot of things. How you use in
business funding? What kind of bank accounts that you have
(24:13):
business financials? Like how do you really go get business
credit as an entrepreneur, Because there's a lot of things
floating around of what business credit looks like, which is
we access to funding, which all of our business owners need.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
But what do you really need?
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Right?
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Do we know what a personal financial statement is?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
You know the tax returns is needed properly law statements
that you got to have. Like once we start teaching
us really what's needed to go into these banks and
go be bankable, I think we start moving the needle.
So that's what we kind of do those first two days.
Last day we bring it off with the gala. So
the last day is the awards.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
We get recognition to all types of people.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
You know, how many categories are there are, how many
awards are distributed, and what are the types categories?
Speaker 5 (24:52):
C eight categories of the tax tight and awards, so
everything from top revenue stream to market guru and everything
in between. So we like to recognize people for different facets,
a community award, a tech guru award, So we like
to recognize people that are doing different things because there
are so many people that are doing amazing things in
(25:13):
the tax industry.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
We know, the thing I like about interviewing people who
are have a visionary approach to what you guys are doing,
is that you're scaling outside the original plan.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
You're also into real estate, you're also into a restaurants.
Why right, Well, you know it look like you're doing good.
Why you get when you get missed by?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
My wife said, why you wanna give me something else?
But you know, it's kind of a sense of to,
a responsibility to. And you know, once we got to
a certain I.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Know, Steve Over said jumping, you jumped already, keep up.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
And so after the text business got to a place
like we felt like it was time that where we
could start beginning to diversify, right, And then so we
started looking at different restaurants because we you know, we
love to travel, we love to you know, service people
provide great experiences with people, and so we bought the
fat tuesdays that they went off ready really well fatuosi
were So we bought one and we took it to Memphis, Tennessee.
(26:10):
But we we purchased a last franchise before they stop franchising.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Okay, so we bought the rights to the Tennessee market.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Shortly after that, two chains in his group and Snoop
started franchising.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah yeah, you bringing up so many names that.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Okay, okay, okay, okay, and so.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah, Snoop and two chains started franchising Esco so Boom.
We bought one of those, and then we took that
to Memphis as well too, and so again just kind
of going back there, giving back to our hometown. Even
though we live in Atlanta now, we still go back
there and we get back.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Well, the beauty of going back to a community, a
customer service or business they don't normally have, knowing your
market share, being a big fish in a small pond.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
All those things. Marketing is cheaper.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Rights cheapers believe that was playing it right.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Oh yeah, right right, because the yeah, I know, right
across the street is like the hotels right across the street,
and you're going, really all this is what you're paying.
And FedEx's right, there were a constant floor of traffic
and you're right there Atlanta, you'll be five times Oh yeah,
absolutely absolutely, and let alone trying to advertise, let alone
insurance and all that good stuff. So with that being said,
(27:28):
what is the future for your brand?
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Oh goodness, so many things coming down the pipeline.
Speaker 5 (27:34):
We have a few restaurants over in the Dominican Republic
and so we love being We didn't.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Just gonna slide that in that why would that? Let
me see?
Speaker 1 (27:48):
So on the cord, I heard about the Martigorol festival.
Now she's gonna throw out the Dominican Republic a restaurant. Okay,
keep talking, he said, if you may be longer than
I expected I thought I be at the of course,
don't you gonna throw it Domesic Republic?
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I can't keep it shut. But that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 5 (28:06):
But yeah, we we have some restaurants over there, and
we bought a yacht over there to be able to
rent out for experiences to people as well.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
And so you know, as we look at the next
few years, you know, we're trying to convince the kids. Now, hey,
you know, what do you.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Guys think about going and hanging over at the beach
for a little while for a few years.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
But you know, who knows, who knows? You're always moving on.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I've been I've been doing money made conversation match classes.
Twenty seventeen, first black couple ever came on my show
said the word yacht and just blew right past it
like they've said like, because they've said it a lot.
They've said that mall Bra and Sharena have said the
word yacht so much. They just like saying Pento board
(28:51):
pentover to them. Okay, continue with the story, keep yabad over.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
There and make me feel smaller here. I'm just gonna shrink.
I'm gonna be a tattoo.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
And so like now we're the place where we really
want to drill down into the restaurant absolutely scale. And
so as we scale, we want to kind of dig
into because their first restaurant, Esco Restaurant, I mean, I
maan it. We did a million dollars the first six weeks. Congratulations,
and so like when you have that, and what's that menu?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
What is that menu? So it's I mean it's stripping grids,
fishing grids. It's it's lamb.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Chops, lobster, turkey ribs, our specialty turkey ribs and so yeah,
so it's all of the you know, you all type
of cool food there. You know, steaks, lots of tails,
you know everything orsus Rockefeller, you know the drinks everything.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Oh yeah, I love it. Then we got the best
and so gumbo everything there.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
And so now I want to be able to see
how do we take these restaurants, what's what new concepts
can we get.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
We're gonna finish developing all the.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Restaurants in front of the fed ex Form, so we'll
own that entire strip there of restaurants.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Congratulations fed ex Form.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
There's three three total restaurants that we're going to open
there in the next twelve months. So just giving people
something downtown to and then keep expanding all of our
other and keep it safe.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Keep security a number one priority, absolutely, because that's the key.
When you get success, you skimp on the most important
things security because once the area gets bad from a
bad reputation, like the Linux Mall here and Atlanta almost
closed because of security issues with people doing silly stuff
around it, people feeling they was unsafe to go in
(30:28):
that shopping are beautiful mall almost shut down because they
had to up to security. Now people are comfortable going
in there. Traffic is popping back up because that's because
that's the you know, you guys have a first of all, y'all,
I don't throw the word visionary out as a joke.
I met that when I said I saw it early
on in the conversation affair when I was talking to you
(30:50):
sad about, you know, the vision to be able to
master a business, and that wasn't your educational background, which
means you had to educate yourself to be able to
be successful in that business. And that's why I've said,
there's no there's no apologies to say that you don't
have an accounting back on your business man, your business
woman and y'all very successful. What y'all do you know
(31:12):
the word chef in behind your name or in front
of your name, and y'all great restaurant tiers, and so
now you a chef and that's that's what life is.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
But you're business people. Tillman, you know he's not a chef.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Okay, every time you go on one of this restaurant,
that food tastes cool.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
If he put a restaurant, your boy going in or
till the restaurant tell you going in. He does not
mess around with his food and.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
He gives you off total. I study him a lot too.
He gives a.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
He's also owns the Houston Rockets.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Just get a little background, one of the biggest restaurant owners.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
In the country.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Correct, yes, sir, on part of the Wind Hotel. To
go to the Nugget in Las Vegas. He based in Houston, Texas.
One of the biggest donors, donors for the University of Houston,
but more poor you have eaten in his restaurant, I sweat.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
One of the things he says is always have eggs.
And it's like, no matter what people you know, no
matter what time of day, it is like, always get
people what they want.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
If you've got eggs in your restaurant, regardless of what
time of day is, sell to people eggs.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
So I kind of take that same.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
You know, it's about hospitality, like always saying yes to
the customers. So I spent a lot of time studying
people like that and taking some of those inspirations and putting.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Them into into our models as much as I can.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
So we don't have a lot of mentors in the
spaces that we're in, so we have to go out
and we have to read, we have to you know,
do personal development to make sure that we're feeding ourselves.
Is we're pouring out into the groups and pouring into
the staff.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
And things like that. So it's always important for us
to be awesome.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Interview here a lot of sound bite if we're gonna
drop on social media, because people need to hear two individuals,
a couple, a loving couple, you know, think differently, but
think together and to to accomplish something in various platforms,
various life before we go one stop taxes, How we
reach out on that, How we reach out for one
(33:09):
stop taxes.
Speaker 5 (33:10):
Start your own virtual franchise with one stop taxes at
one stoptaxes dot com. You can give us a call
at eight by five two one two eight nine eighty
three if you have any questions.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
We have a great team there to answer anything.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yet, thank you for coming on Money Making Conversations Masterclass. Awesome,
Thank you so much. It's not pleasure.
Speaker 6 (33:26):
This has been Money Making Conversations Masterclass with me Rashaun McDonald.
Thanks to our guess and our audience. Visit Moneymakingconversations dot
com to listen or register to be a guest on
my show. Keep leading with your gifts, keep winning,
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