Heather Spell and her husband Gentry spent the last decade as ticket brokers, finding their customers the best seats for sports and entertainment events in the Sacramento area.
Folsom, CA – Spell expects their first year of business to generate around $100,000 in revenue and says they’ve had in excess of 1,500 leads at their first center, just through May.
“It was a fun business, but as ticket prices continued to rise and the Internet began to change the market, we started looking around for other endeavors,” says Spell. One of her ticket-buying customers was Roni Deutch, the high-profile tax attorney who was just starting her Roni Deutch Tax Center franchise. Heather, Gentry, and Lakota Verberne (Gentry’s sister and Heather’s close friend) jumped at the chance to try their hand at franchising. So far it’s proven a good move.
They opened their first Roni Deutch Tax Center franchise near Sacramento in Roseville about a year ago, and Spell says they already have their eyes on a second location they’d like to open by summer. They also are the area developers for the Las Vegas market. Their goal in Sin City is to sell 50 units over the next 5 years.
“This is my first experience with franchising,” says Spell. “I knew Roni and I knew that she had a great business and knew what she was doing.”
Spell says that as a franchisee she has access to 24/7 help desk for support on all kinds of issues—and that her background in running and operating a business and knowing how to manage money was a big advantage coming into franchising.
“We’re in a great location in a strip center with anchors like TJ Maxx and Panera Bread,” she says. There’s a lot of traffic and a busy interstate highway buzzing nearby. “I knew we would have a good location because when I was looking for real estate: Roni was riding along in the car with me.” Spell and her partners didn’t completely give up their ticket broker business and still conduct some of those transactions right out of their 825-square-foot Roni Deutch Tax Center store.
One of the challenges Spell has had to face is common to many franchisees—finding quality employees who will stick around. “I’d never really had to worry about that with the ticket brokerage business, but this has been different,” she says. A seasonal part-time job that offers no benefits can be tricky to fill, but she says the great ones she has found have been real assets to the operation. “It’s rewarding to find employees who work really hard just like me.”
Right now there’s one manager onsite, and during the busy tax season she has as many as seven full- and part-time employees. Spell and Verberne have both been certified to prepare tax returns and both spend time in the store. Spell handles the bookkeeping, payroll, and bill paying, while Verberne busies herself with the area development responsibilities in Las Vegas. Husband Gentry handles the store’s unique out-of-state tax return business, a special niche market for the franchise.
As a young mom she says she initially thought that maybe she could expand to as many as three or four units, but after attending a recent industry conference (ours) she now believes “The sky’s the limit. We could do 10, 20, or maybe more.”
About Roni Deutch Tax Center
Roni Deutch has built her reputation as one of the most successful tax lawyers through hard work and dedication to the needs of taxpayers. Her competitive spirit and insatiable work ethic has made her a household name with one out of three American adults knowing the name Roni Deutch. Through her years of practice, she saw that many of her clients’ tax problems were caused by sloppy and unprofessional tax return preparation. Ms. Deutch decided it was time to put her experience to work for taxpayers across the country. Roni Deutch Tax Center is now filling the need for competent tax return preparation. An affordable franchise opportunity, a Roni Deutch Tax Center franchisee can expect to invest between $26,500 (tax preparation business conversion) and $99,950 to open a tax center with the average investment being about $65,000 for one location.
