We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish.– Tony Robbins
After several years in the corporate world, I decided it was finally time to dive head first into the scariest part of business, entrepreneurship. So in 2014, I left the familiar path, broke through the fear of uncertainty, and started to build my own business.
Six months into it, I took a look at my income statement and realized I made a total of $6,000 in revenue, with no plans on how I was going to increase that figure. As the year was coming to a close one evening in December of 2014, I remember thinking to myself, “who can I help the most? What specialties do I possess? Who are my ideal clients?” It became clear to me that I knew more about the real estate industry and the professional service industry from personal experience and that was who I was going to help. Not only was I going to specialize in helping those in the real estate and professional service industries, but I was also going to learn effective ways to market myself and my business to reach those I wanted to help.
Back in college, I spent years learning how to dissect income statements and balance sheets, calculate complicated methods of asset depreciation, and understand the fundamentals of acquisitions, yet I had no idea how to sit across from another human being and ask for money. I also realized that besides knowing how to read financial information (the optics, as I like to call them), sales was the #1 thing that I needed if I wanted to become a successful entrepreneur in business.
And this is when my life changed.
Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.– Steve Jobs
I decided to hire successful business coaches who taught me how to embrace my specialties and how to use them to help others. This resulted in me becoming the “Real Estate Tax Advisor,” which is how I am known in the real estate circles.
Today, I run a successful tax advisory and accounting firm with locations in Miami and Plantation, Florida, which focuses on tax planning strategies that result in significant tax saving to my clients. In the last 6 months alone, I have helped dozens of clients in multiple states and in 4 different countries save tens of thousands of dollars in income tax. I have also developed an understanding as to how to use technology and social media to connect with clients all over the world.
With working and speaking with many real estate investors, I started to connect the dots as to why most of their businesses wind up failing. While most real estate investors focus in making deals happen and making money, they neglect the strategies that help them keep the money they make. This is where I have been successful and take pride in teaching real estate investors better ways to strategize and plan.
You can’t fix what you can’t see. Optics are the most important tools to measure the financial health of a business. Without optics, you won’t know what to fix– Jose A. Ramirez