Episode 163: Vulnerability Is A Life Journey With Dr. Jackie Meyer
What does it take to go from living on your own at 15 to founding a game-changing tax technology company? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Jackie Meyer, CPA and founder of TaxPlanIQ, to explore her extraordinary path—from early independence to building a thriving tax practice and tech platform. Through the lens of vulnerability as a life journey, Jackie opens up about the mental health challenges many professionals face as work and family blur together—and how she’s breaking the cycle of burnout. Tune in to hear how she created a life of purpose, set boundaries that stick, and found true success on her own terms.
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Vulnerability Is A Life Journey With Dr. Jackie Meyer
Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs, where I interview Dr. Jackie Meyer, who is a 40 Under 40 honoree with CPA Practice Advisor, and a pioneering serial entrepreneurial speaker. She focuses on practical solutions that enhance tax and financial literacy, from recruitment and retention to leveraging AI in accounting firms. As a former founder of an award-winning CPA firm, she now leads TaxPlanIQ, a SaaS tax advisory platform that was part of AICPA's 2023 Accelerator Cohort, and is writing a book on The Balance Sheet of Life.
Her innovative ROI method of value pricing emphasizes aligning pricing with client value. She addresses cultural and workaholism issues to prevent burnout and turnover. She speaks to tens of thousands of financial professionals and taxpayers annually, providing transformative solutions for entrepreneurs to thrive. Her mission is to improve health, wealth, and relationships for all. During this interview with Jackie, we go through her journey from moving out when she was fifteen years old, to eventually becoming a CPA and getting her doctorate, to now running TaxPlanIQ. We discuss the mental health struggles that so many of us encounter as work and family converge, and are trying to break the cycle of burnout.
Tune in to her story of creating success, having time for family, and guarding her boundaries and work-life balance. For the audience, we do talk about the traumas that occur between parents and their children, and also parts about addiction. I want everyone to be prepared for that when they tune in to this episode. Make sure that if you are encountering any trauma in your life, involve a medical professional who is a therapist that can help you with the right course of action and the right medical plan to make sure that you are safe, and that you create the right boundaries in your life as well.
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Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs. I'm so excited to have my friend on here, Jackie Meyer from TaxPlanIQ. Jackie, do you want to give a little background on yourself before we get started?
Sure. Thanks so much for having me, Amy. I'm Dr. Jackie Meyer, CPA. You can call me Dr. J. No, I'm still working on that. I am currently the founder and president of TaxPlanIQ, a SaaS software for accountants and financial advisors to do all things tax planning and advisory, but I'm also a recovering CPA firm owner, which I'm sure we'll get into. Got lots to discuss.
I’m so excited to have you here. Why don't we start with where you grew up? Where are you from? What did your parents do for a living?
I'm a native Texan. I'm currently in Southlake, Texas, which is close to DFW Airport. I was born in Austin. My dad was in IT engineering. He worked at TI, Texas Instruments, for many years. My mom was a homemaker until she decided she wanted to go out on her own. She divorced my dad. We moved to College Station. She was a single elementary school teacher. My sister, who was two years older than I, and I gained a lot of maturity and independence during those years because my mom struggled with some mental issues along the way.
How did your mom become an elementary school teacher? Is that what she went to college for? Did she go back to school?
She had a Master's in Education. She was also a dance teacher. She was doing dance lessons at home when she first had us, and then she got back into teaching once we moved.
Were you close with your father before you moved?
Jackie’s Turning Point & Early Independence
Yes, we were. He eventually met someone new and remarried, and that didn't work out so hot. During our high school days, I was quite the wild child. I moved out when I was fifteen from my dad's place. We were not very close to him then. What was fortunate, though, is that in college, we reconnected with him. He is a wonderful papa to my kids, Gabe and Alex. He's here all the time. He's actually staying with us right now.
That does make a huge difference, even if there's trauma in the background. When you can recover from it and move on in the current day, that makes such a big difference as far as the relationship and being able to get that back on track.
For sure. It's been a blessing to have him in our lives. To see him put so much effort and love into my kids makes up for everything.
How old were you when your parents got divorced?
I was about six years old.
You moved away fairly young, then. When you said that your mom had mental health issues, what was going on with your mom at the time?
I idolized her until I got old enough to realize that something was not quite right. She always struggled with anxiety. She would get upset when there was some potential weather thing going on, like when a tornado was coming our way, she would freak out. The thing is that in the grand scheme of things, she lost her dad, my grandpa, when she was pregnant with me to a sudden heart attack in his mid-50s. I think that took her from being the head of her class in college, one of the biggest early risers. She wanted to be an attorney like her dad and her brother, but her dad didn't let her.
Why? Was it because she was a woman?
Yes, because she was a woman. He wanted her to be a teacher. She did what he wanted, but she lost him. She was very close to him. I think that completely flipped the script on her. I don't know if she ever truly recognized that grief, and so the anxiety grew. Eventually, a counselor said it was schizophrenia. It was all over the place. I don't speak to her right now, which is one of the hardest things in my life, but also one of the best choices I've ever made. I encourage others, please don't think that blood is always thicker. You have to be around your family all the time. If they're emotionally abusing you, they don't have to be physically abusing you and whatnot, then you might need to take a break or step away permanently.
It's such a hard discussion. I've gone through the same thing. We've maybe talked about it in the past, but it's very hard. What I've found over time, and I will say this to the audience, is that for some reason, when you talk about a relationship with a father deteriorating, people are more understanding of that than a mother, unless they have gone through that with a mother. There's such a strong bond between a mother and their child. For some people, even imagining that can be hard. I do want anyone tuning in to understand that when you go through something like this and you have to put up boundaries, it's an extremely hard process to go through. What was the process that you went through to realize that you needed that?
I appreciate you asking that. It took many years. Finally, after the 50th time that she had done something crazy. When my kids were little, she showed up randomly at my office, and she thought I'd been kidnapped by my husband. There was no reason for this to be a thing at all. The cops ended up showing up at our house. I wasn't home. I had already gotten to work, and Mark was there. He was like, “Everything is fine.” I internalized those kinds of things and was always trying to help fix them when it's not fixable at a certain point with mental illness.
My husband was like, “I think you might need to step away.” He's very tight with his family, and he puts family above everything else, so when he said that, it made me second-guess myself and be like, “You know what, this isn't right.” I also started seeing a counselor who encouraged me to set appropriate boundaries in my personal life. It is so ironic because I'm the boundary queen when it comes to the business world, but that always seemed easy because it's work relationships versus your mom.
There is a difference. I've realized that in my journey as well. Business has a set of rules. Almost everyone buys into the rules of engagement and how that works, but in your personal life, there's no such thing, unless that's been agreed upon. Your story about your mom, I went through something similar, where I was like, “I cannot have this pass on to my children. With her too close to them, this is going to repeat.” I didn't want another generation repeating.
One of the things that always stuck with me was that there was a person very early on in my career. It was one of those one-night dinner business trips. I never saw him again after that. A story he told me during it was that he had a religious family, and his brother had run away. He ran away when he was eighteen and joined a gang to have a family. When he finally got out of that and had his own family, he called it a circle of trust of no one can penetrate this. It’s like, “I have to protect these people so that whatever is off in my life doesn't affect them.” I think that starts coming into play when you become a parent.
I'm glad you brought that up because that was a big piece of it. It was different when I saw how she would interact with my kids and how anxious, upset, mad, and all these awful feelings I would get when she would overly focus on things around me and the kids. I was like, “I don't want this to happen to kids.” You're right. The kids were young then, but I was starting to see those signs that this wasn't just going to impact me. I don't want my kids to have major depressive disorder, which I had since I was probably 10 or 11, or anything like that, to impact them. I made that decision.
Independence, Trust Issues, & Stability Over Passion
Going back to being fifteen years old, where did you go, and what led you to make that decision?
First, I moved in with my boyfriend and his mom. My sister was seventeen. She was moving out on her own, and I moved in with her.
You and your sister had made this decision to go out on your own for safety, or what was it?
I did it on my own first. She had found an apartment and stuff like that. She was working at an apartment place-leasing building, and so she had a good deal. It was a good point in time for us to move in together, and so that's what we did.
You were still going to high school during this time. What did you think you were going to be when you grew up going through all this?
Nothing good. Growing up in College Station, Texas, where A&M is, you're exposed early to all of the college stuff, like the drinking and everything. My sister took on way too much responsibility as a teenager and ended up having a pretty bad eating disorder. Alcoholism also affected her well into a couple of years ago. I was always pretty smart. Even though I was skipping enough school to have to go a week in detention, I was still making B's. I would go to the library. I would get these Stephen King novels, and I would read them all during school. I couldn't trust anybody around me. I didn't want to interact with anyone there. I felt out of place socially because imagine if you can't trust your own parents, how do you form appropriate relationships with others?
How did college even come to be? During this high school experience, did anyone stand out and give you an example of how you were going to survive?
I looked up to my sister because she was so responsible in those days. I didn't have a true role model or mentor because I was a loner. My mom was always worried about money. Being a single teacher, it was always her focus, money or men. She had a lot of boyfriends, too. Around 15 or 16, I was like, “I am deciding for myself that I'm always going to be able to take care of myself financially and mentally. I don't want to ever have to rely on another individual, whether that's money or otherwise.” I realized I have to get a decent job to be able to do that. My dad was an IT engineer in the business world, and I was like, “That seems like a steady way to go.” I ended up graduating from high school a year early, and I went to college for my undergrad in Finance.
How did you pick that?
It was what I thought would be stable. Business seemed easy to deal with because there are not a lot of emotional aspects to it. I knew I could be financially independent that way. That was it. There was no passion there.
Yeah, but it did serve a purpose for you. How did you feel about business and finance as you were going through it?
Early Career Choices & Entrepreneurial Drive
I liked it. I was a smart aleck and wanted to be the smartest person in the room. I loved challenging the barriers for females. I always felt like I could do anything that a guy can do. I was always pushing boundaries. I started working at fifteen as well. I started at Marble Slab, scooping ice cream. My sister was the manager there before she went to the apartment complex. I did Chick-fil-A at the A&M Commons building.
Vulnerability: I loved challenging barriers for women. I always felt I could do anything a man could do, and I was always pushing boundaries.
I was a NAPA girl, which is pretty embarrassing. I wore these tiny little NAPA outfits, and you're in a calendar. You drive these NAPA Auto sharks around. My sister got me that job, too. I then ended up working at a mortgage company and wound up making my way up to loan officer at age nineteen while I was doing my undergrad. That was quite an interesting experience as well.
What did you like about it?
There was a lot of flexibility. In a world where I saw my parents having very strict schedules that they had to accommodate for not as much money as they should have been making, the loan officer thing is so independent. It's so independent that if you don't know how to sell, go out there, prospect, and stuff like that, you're not going to do very well. I didn't do that great at it. It did start leading me more down the finance path. I switched over to Countrywide. I got in the back door at Deloitte of Dallas and worked my way up into the high net wealth division. That's what piqued my interest in taxes and tax planning. I went back and got my Master's in Accounting at SMU.
You never did your undergrad in accounting. You went back for your master's. Where did you go from there?
I met my to-be husband, Mark, in December of 2005 when I was graduating from my undergrad. He was the most stable, trustworthy rock of a person that you would ever meet.
Did it freak you out?
A little bit. Honestly, I think I just turned 22. I had already told myself that I was never going to get married. I'd given up on dating because I'd felt like I'd already had tons of boyfriends who were awful. I was out having fun. I met him at this ugly Christmas sweater party. He asked me on a date, and he pursued me very strongly. I was like, “Whatever, this isn't going to go anywhere,” and then it did. Almost nineteen years later, we're still together.
That's so nice. What did he teach you?
Career Setbacks & Entrepreneurial Leap
He taught me that people can be good, kind, and trustworthy, and that it's okay to have a family. I didn't want to have kids. Now, we have an eight-year-old son and an eleven-year-old daughter. I don't know what I'd do without them. He changed things up. He's very much more of a worker bee than an entrepreneur type. That would cause a little friction here and there. When I would be constantly butting heads at work, not realizing I was a natural-born entrepreneur, he'd be like, “What's the big deal? go with the flow.” I'm like, “Go with the flow? That's not who I am.” I ended up getting fired from a smaller CPA firm that I transferred to after Deloitte. Deloitte, I did the bare minimum time. I was so upset with how they treated people.
What do you mean by that, the hours?
The hours were killer. It was this insane competition. Who would be there the longest, even if it wasn't the busy season? Partners were nuts. They had some mental things going on. It was a bad environment. I did that right at that two-year mark. I found a smaller CPA firm that was about 25 people, one of the only independently owned women's firms of that size at the time in DFW. I went in as a senior tax consultant and kept pushing boundaries. Finally, they were going through a bit of a financial rough patch, and they decided to can me in 2010.
What did that feel like for you when that happened?
It was the worst feeling of my life. I remember calling my dad and bawling. He says he encouraged me to go out on my own at the time, but I don't remember all the details of that conversation. It was the best thing that ever happened to me because I don't think I would have left. I felt a lot of loyalty to that woman owner. I don't think I would have left and done all the things that I wanted to do if they hadn't canned me. I'm appreciative of it now. I started working at CCH, or Wolters Kluwer, as a tax trainer and consultant. I had my steady W2 job, and then I started working for my own firm on the side.
I created a CPA firm, and people liked what I had to offer. I was so passionate about the work. I've always been so into saving people money. I think, hearing my history, you can probably understand why. I love that knowledge being so powerful and being able to find people's savings within seconds. I hate the idea of people not utilizing the tax code to the fullest benefit. I feel like they're being taken advantage of. I fell into that, paid off $80,000 of student loans in my first year at my CPA firm, and then quit CCH because it grew so quickly and kept growing from there. It was a pretty amazing time. I never thought, looking back, I would ever be able to have enough cash to pay off $80,000 worth of any kind of debt.
Vulnerability: I hate the idea of people not fully utilizing the tax code. It feels like they're being taken advantage of.
At that time, you were doing mostly tax compliance work?
Balancing Business & Motherhood
It was pretty traditional. I would do tax planning advice, but it was $150 an hour. I would charge maybe $1,000 a year per client. My firm was growing pretty quickly and ended up hitting over 250 clients within a few years. That would have been fine because I'm an excellent workaholic if I hadn't had kids. Having kids rocked my world. I got no time off. I planned both of my kids for December to avoid the tax busy season, but what was I thinking? I didn't know anything about kids. I was having them right before tax busy season. That was awful.
I went through a lot after having my daughter, Alex, in December 2013. That spring was the worst. I was so burned out. I was micromanaging. I had 3 or 4 helpers at the firm, but I was still in the middle of everything. Honestly, I feel like I had a mental break in a way. I almost feel like my mental capacity is half of what it used to be.
What is it that you felt like at that point when you feel that way?
I felt so tired all the time. My body hurt, and I ended up being diagnosed with chronic fatigue because that's what they tell you when they can't figure out what else is wrong with you. Now, I spend tens of thousands of dollars on maintenance every year for that, but I'm in a much better place. That's the good news.
What did you do to find your way out of it? Had you gone to therapy at all prior to this?
Therapy, Burnout, & Shifting Practice
I had. I was not very receptive to it. I did not like feeling negative feelings. I felt like if I started to feel them, they would never go away. I realized, over the years through counseling, coaching, and whatnot, that you have to allow yourself the time to sit through those negative feelings, and they do go away. If you don't recognize them, then it's going to fester in your body. It's going to fester in your mind. I did EMDR therapy. I've done ketamine therapy. I've done all the therapy.
What was the most effective for you?
EMDR was very effective at determining where I got stuck in certain traumas as a child, but it was so draining and exhausting that it was a full-time job to do EMDR.
You want to explain what that is for people who don't know what EMDR is?
It's eye movement therapy. You're working with a counselor. You close your eyes, and they're tapping your legs or something. They're essentially having you go back to find a memory that maybe you've been trapped in or a trauma that you've been trapped in earlier in your life. We all have traumas. We all should have been counseling. I think people minimize some of those traumas, and that hurts them a lot more than it helps them.
That word itself seems like it has to be something extreme, but it's something that shifted you, whatever that was. It's important to understand what those points are in your life so that you can acknowledge them and then decide how you want to move forward.
Eventually, honestly, I hit a cap or a wall with that. I stopped doing that because I would come home so exhausted. It was hard for me to interact with my family and do all my business stuff.
How did you shift your practice so that you could manage all this?
I started going to conferences and trying to find people whom I can learn from. I started accepting that I didn't have all the answers. I couldn't figure it out on my own. I came across a business coach. His name is Chuck Bauer. We are night and day opposites. He is a very demanding dude. I guess I'm pretty demanding, too, but I'm a little more friendly about it. He was offering these group masterminds. He's telling you, “This is what you need to do.” He had these practical steps and procedures you could take to form better boundaries at your firm or standardize your sales process, basic stuff that I hadn't done, and a lot of small accounting firms don't do. That's what leads them to burnout.
I was doing that. I was implementing pretty well. He said I was a 90% implementer. I got pregnant with my second kiddo, Gabe, in 2016. That's when I had all these flashbacks of having Alex, how bad it was, and how I got no time off. I've made incremental improvements in my practice, but I'm still overall burned out, which I love your opinion on this, Amy. I feel like burnout is not necessarily curable. I think once you hit it, there's always maybe long-term effects of it, or it's much easier to go back into burnout mode if it's happened to you before. I had this theory around. I've been analyzing that lately, but it seems like anyone I know who's been through burnout is never 100% cured from the negative consequences that happened to them.
Vulnerability: Burnout isn't necessarily curable. Once you experience it, there may always be some long-term effects.
It's important, at least in the work that I do with it, to get behind the habit. People try to fix the burnout, but not the belief system and the programming that got you there. You have so many levels of what's going on in your life, and you're burning yourself out, but you've also got this belief system that I might lose everything. I might lose all my money. I might have a mental breakdown. All those things are sitting in your head. Until you solve that, the habit that gets you into burnout keeps repeating itself. What's hard for people is to get into the programming of it, and understand how to shift that programming so that you can have a better outcome, if that makes sense.
The Influence Of Fear & Scarcity On Decision-Making & Business Growth
I remember a couple of people pointing out to me over the years in my firm that my decision seemed very fear-based, a fear of losing money and a fear of going crazy, those exact two things.
You have gone through losing everything in your life, which I did, too. My mom lost her business when I was in high school. We sold everything down to my bedroom furniture. Once you've gone through something like that, and you're in a scarcity mode of working three jobs, trying to get everything so you can survive and still have the dreams that you want for your life, I don't think that leaves you easily. That's a survival mode you had to go into.
I remember a similar story. I started my business with my first son, and then I started doing adjunct teaching at colleges. I added up to three colleges, plus the teaching. I always wanted a backup to the backup to the backup. I started the business so that I could have more flexibility in my schedule to be with my son, but then I was running on fumes. I remember my ex-husband saying, “If you can't make this work with your business, then go get a job because you're making this worse for yourself.” I did have to say to myself, “This is fear. Can I do this without a safety net? What do you do to make sure you're protected?” I don't know if you've gone through that yourself, but that's a lot harder to go through without the safety net.
For sure. From a childhood perspective, we didn't have one major event. I know that you did with your mom's business. It was a constant scarcity mode all the time. As an adult, I haven't heard it said that way, but I agree. You're doing the backup to the backup to the backup. Even once I fixed my firm, I sold 60% of my clients in 2016, because I realized I had to get rid of the ones that I wasn't bringing the best value to. I couldn't value the price to get my time back, get my life back, but then I added coaching.
The Integration Of Coaching Into Business & The Shift In Purpose
I started coaching with my coach, Chuck Bauer, and I started TaxPlanIQ. It is going as well. I'm doing much better with that. Chuck retired, and so we retired the coaching program. I sold my firm in 2022. I stepped aside as the CEO of TaxPlanIQ in 2024 so that I could know what it felt like not to have every responsibility in the world. It's a work in progress, but I'm getting there.
At the time, we were working through stuff with your business together, I think 2022, timeframe 2023. What you did do is take some of the things that are most purposeful for you, which were the coaching, and brought them in. A lot of times, and this by no means was a failure, but in anything we innovate or create, and it doesn't work out in the way that we thought, we think it's a failure, but there are always good pieces in there that you can utilize somewhere else. That was a lot of the work that we were doing at the time on how you can bring this into TaxPlanIQ. How has that felt to be able to bring it all together?
It's been amazing. In 2024, we fully implemented our top subscription program called The Growth Program, which has coaching, one-on-one consulting, and all that stuff included in someone's TaxPlanIQ subscription. It is doing like a killer. People needed that. I was resistant, wasn't I?
You saw it as a separate thing.
I did. I saw it as a separate thing, but the little secret for SaaS companies or any company is the human element. That's going to keep us shining as AI takes over more and more compliance. That was a good move for sure.
Knowing where your purpose is. As much as you love the tax part of it and tax advice, what you love is being able to see the transformation in people. We don't have to be 100% good at everything. We need to find where our lane is, and then find the people who are good in the other lanes, which is a hard thing to do. How has that been to shift that mindset from having to control all three things?
That's a loaded question, Amy. That's a tough one. I guess side notes, as I redirect, because I don't know how to answer that exact one yet. What I didn't mention is that, as a kid, I wanted to be a counselor. I wanted to help people with their mental health because I couldn't solve the familial problems that I was having. I steered completely away from that because I was so worried about being emotionally attached to people.
What was so neat is that by doing the coaching with accountants, I felt like my life came full circle because I was able to help them with their businesses and help them overcome these awful emotions, burnout, and things like that. There was still that little layer that kept me from getting way too into their personal lives. It was so nice. I felt like everything came together because I've always wanted to help people. I also have that barrier, a very strong internal belief that I need to protect myself, but that was cool.
Setting Boundaries & Protecting Emotional Energy In Coaching and Leadership
I do think that is an extremely important lesson in any kind of consulting, coaching, accounting relations, or whatever it is. As a yoga teacher, I've certified I don't even know how many yoga teachers at this point, part of the training is to make sure that you know how to sit beside someone but not let it pour into you too much, or to know your lane. If someone needs a therapist, you're saying, “I'm at my limit, and this is actually for someone else.” I would say this also. I've talked to a lot of managers of companies who become mentors, and people aren't trained to do those things. People start sharing things with them, and they're getting emotionally involved. There has to be a line between what coaching is and making sure someone is protected with a medical professional when you need it, and us as well.
Honestly, that all comes back to appropriate boundaries. One of the best books of all time, if anyone is identifying with this boundary problem at all, is Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud. He talks about taking on other people's responsibilities that don't belong to you and the weight of that rock on your shoulders. He makes it so easy to understand across personal and business life. I was so codependent with my family members that I was taking on all of their emotional turmoil constantly. I didn't know that you weren't supposed to do that.
We've had some similar situations. I know, for me, it was very much about trying to keep everyone together. I'm like, “If we do this, we'll get there. If we do that, we can do it.” I do think there are certain things you're born with, where you can keep reinventing yourself and keep pushing yourself, but not everybody is born with those things. You think because you can do it that other people can do it.
What ends up happening is you start holding everyone together, and then the rubber band breaks. It's one of those things where it's been a learning for me, still always, of where my boundary needs to be in each relationship, so that you are protected, and you get the most out of that relationship, but your expectation isn't more than what someone else can handle or what you can handle. What have you seen with TaxPlanIQ as far as its growth and evolution since you started it?
The Evolution Of TaxPlanIQ & Reframing Selling As Serving
It's amazing. Check back with me a year or two from now because the future is so bright. We're hitting 500 firms that we're working with on our SaaS subscription model. 2024 has been all about implementing the training programs alongside the software, but also automating the tax planning process. I've gotten it down this spring to where you upload a client's 1040 PDF, it reads, analyzes, and proposes strategies in 60 to 180 seconds.
Within three minutes, you not only have all these strategies adding up to tens of thousands of dollars based on that, those missed opportunities on the return, you have the pricing methodology I created called the ROI method of value pricing, that's suggesting how to price that plan. You're creating proposals, presentations, and tax plan reports, all within three minutes. It's mind-blowing.
That's very cool.
It's so hard to get accountants because they are stuck in this compliance rat race to move to tax planning. This is one more thing that's going to fuel us to be like, “You can do it.” We're adding bulk upload of returns right now. We're going to tell you, “Give us a hundred returns.” We'll tell you which ones look like the best opportunities and then focus on 1 or 2 of those. It eliminates every burden or excuse as to why people don't or can't do tax planning, which I think is the future of the profession.
Vulnerability: Tax planning is the future of the accounting profession.
I agree with you. This is anything, but I would use this category because if I'm used to doing tax compliance, and people are calling me because I'm compliant, and I have to get my tax return done. I'm not used to business development. You're an entrepreneur and are at ease with those conversations. How do you get people past or over that when they think of selling as a bad word, but to be able to get past, “I can do this, and it is helpful?”
First of all, I like to try to reframe selling as serving because I hate selling. I'm an extreme introvert. People don't know that about me because I'm so passionate and so driven in the work I do. All of these bad, good, and all the things that have led me to the life that I'm at now have made me into this person who cares about those specific, crazy little niche things, like tax planning and strategies. That passion always tends to outweigh that little introverted Jackie, that's like, “You don't want to talk to people today,” but I made it so foolproof because the ROI method sells itself. I used to do this in Excel before I created TaxPlanIQ.
It's like, “I think we can estimate about $50,000 of tax savings for you based on things you haven't been doing for years that you should have been. Our fee is $10,000 or whatever that ROI proposition is. It's a net return on investment. It's win-win.” You have clients where you show them that and in a couple of minutes, they're like, “Why wouldn't I be doing this? It's an investment in me.” It's one of those business structures that our CEO at TaxPlanIQ, Dave, always says, “It's win, win, win across the board.” The clients win, the accountant wins, and everyone wins. It's so fun.
Rapid-Fire Q&A
I'd like to do some rapid-fire questions at the end. You pick a category.
I made you do a lightning round on my Concierge CPA, so here it comes back on me.
Family and friends, money, spiritual, or health.
Am I picking one that's important?
Pick a category.
I would say health, but I'm cheating because my final doctoral project was a book on balance in life. I think that there are four health categories. There are some categories of health. There's financial, there's time, there's social, and what was the fourth one? I don't know.
Things or actions I don't have that I want for my health.
I would say I need to get into a good workout routine, but I did. I hate working out, which is hard to admit because all of the best performers in the world are these amazing athletes and whatnot. I did find the quickest, most efficient workout possible called The Exercise Coach. My husband and I have been going and doing this AI street training for twenty minutes twice a week. I'm feeling strong. I'm excited about that. I'm feeling good there. I could still probably increase my vitamin levels and make sure that I'm eating healthily throughout the day, but I do supplement, I have bars, and whatnot, because I know sometimes I'm prone to skipping meals.
Things or actions that I do have that I want to keep, as far as my health.
I regularly go to many different kinds of doctors to make sure that I'm in an optimal state. Most recently, I was feeling tired. I have hypothyroidism, along with chronic fatigue, but it turned out through the blood work that my B12 and iron were low, too. I started doing shots every other week, and that's increased my energy levels in general and reduced my brain fog. I want to keep up with that.
Things or actions I don't have, but I don't want to have them.
I don't work any overtime. I don't work any nights or weekends. I mentioned to my husband that I have three presentations that are due tomorrow, and your podcast interview. I'm interviewing someone on my podcast, and I was like, “So much to do.” He's like, “Yet you're watching Hallmark movies.” I'm like, “ don't work nights. You know that. I made it work today.”
I get you. Once you stop, you have to stop. It's all work is about. Last one. Things or actions that I do have that I don't want, that I want to get rid of, as far as we have.
We have five animals in our house, and they are a cause of terror. I don't know how that goes into action, but I can smell if one of the cats peed in the hallway. We have got to figure out what's going on with our animal situation because they are the best friends in the world, but something is off here. I need help. Let me know. How do I fix that?
Is there anything that we haven't talked about or that you want to stress before we close out?
No, I appreciate the time with you. I have empathized with you over some common scenarios in our past and admire the work you're doing. I love digging this deep. I feel like every year, I can share more and more authenticity around myself, and it's almost healing to be able to talk about these things. I hope that someone in the audience has found some insight there. I had a former coaching student reach out on social. He was like, “I'm feeling like you mentioned in coaching that you felt back in the day, and I don't know what to do.” I was like, “I can finally help somebody through this.” It's all good. I'm feeling blessed in a good place right now and just have to keep working through it.
I was talking about this the other day, that the mind is a fascinating thing that keeps peeling back. One thing feels back and another one, you're like, “Wait, that's there,” like something that you've always known, and then it flips. It seems a never-ending process. It's fascinating, being open to that and sharing, which I so appreciate that you did. I think there are many people who struggle silently with so many of the same things, just different stories, different flavors. Thank you so much for being on. I appreciate it.
Thank you so much, Amy.
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Now, for my Mindful Moments with this episode with Dr. Jackie Meyer. We went through a number of areas in this story of Jackie, and I want to make sure that everybody realizes that anything we discussed during this interview is the things that worked for Jackie or the things that worked for me. Everybody has to go their own journey and make sure that they are talking to medical professionals and getting the right advice for their situations, that in no way are there any recommendations of the right way to go about trauma that you go through.
I appreciated how vulnerable Jackie was opening up during this interview to share what has gone on in her life and share in a way so that you can relate to the struggles. A lot of times, and especially if you look at Jackie, you probably see her with success and think that it just came. When you hear these stories, you realize that everybody has a story. Everybody has gone through things that they decide whether to accept in their life or to rise above it, keep moving, and keep innovating for themselves. I think Jackie is a great example of that. We talked about the fact that when she grew up, her mom struggled with anxiety and some mental health issues that affected Jackie and her sister.
Through that, by the time she was fifteen, she had moved out of her house. A little later, she was living with her sister, who was seventeen at the time. Due to that, she found ways to survive in her own ways, which was truly about sticking to herself, where she didn't feel like she related to a lot of children at that time, which many of us can relate to, even if our story isn't as extreme. Sometimes, when you're a teenager, you can't find your place, and you find the things that help you survive.
That's what Jackie did. She was in a college town. She was admittedly acting out at that time, but still kept a head on her shoulders that she did not ever want to be in the situation that she had seen her mom in and living this life of scarcity of always worried about money or men, that she wanted to be dependent on herself and make sure she was independent. She graduated from high school early, and she went into finance because that meant money. A lot of us don't put more into it than that.
When we find our college degree, we haven't understood our purpose yet. Somehow, it comes to speak to us along the way, which I think Jackie's story is so telling with that. She said that even when she was younger, she wanted to be a counselor, but she didn't feel like she was well enough herself in her own story that she could help others, which has led her to be a coach. Now a coach in business and a coach with other accountants that are trying to move into this tax planning realm and make successful businesses out of it, the coaching that she provides is not only from a business perspective but an emotional perspective as well of understanding what it's like to be a tax accountant, of understanding what it's like to have those hours and that be the norm.
When you want to break that norm, how do you go about doing that? Part of doing that is looking at your business model, what resonates with you, and how you want to shift it. Part of it is taking care of yourself individually as well, whether that's with a therapist, a coach, or your advisors in your business. These third parties are so important to be able to give you guidance when you can't find the answers yourself.
That's why you're asked by your clients to be involved with their businesses, because they don't know what you know. It's the same thing. We got into, after we went through her story, getting comfortable with vulnerability, and vulnerability shows up in so many ways where we might notice fear is coming up for us. It's that fear either getting in the way or it's a whisper to us that it is time for us to seek that outside party that can help us to get to that next level, whether that be in business, whether that be for us personally.
It's being open to that and being vulnerable to the messages that are happening inside of us or outside of us, that we don't even realize how all of those interconnect. As she said, so much of this has intermingled into what she does in business, where now this is a part of becoming a customer there where they do this kind of coaching to help you with getting it to the next level and passing over that fear.
I'm so thankful to Jackie for sharing her story. It is quite a story, as so many of our guests have as well. Being open and vulnerable enough to know that by her talking about it, getting more comfortable talking about it, it helps others as well. I would say the same for you. If it opened up anything for you reading her story, make sure to listen to those whispers of where you might find that outside guidance, whether that be business coaches, therapists, consultants, whatever that is a coach outside of yourself, so that you can achieve what you want and be able to get out of something that you may feel stuck. There might be something in what you're doing that will create your next inspiration.
Thank you so much for being a part of this show. It means so much to me to have the support of our audience to tune in to these stories. Hopefully, you find lessons in them as well and share them with your friends and colleagues that it can help as well. Remember that the energy that you create is contagious. Stepping into that intentional energy is so important, and stories like this inspire us to do that.
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About Dr. Jackie Meyer
Dr. Jackie Meyer, a 40 under 40 honoree with CPA Practice Advisor 2018-2022, is a pioneering serial entrepreneur speaker, focusing on practical solutions that enhance tax & financial literacy, from recruitment and retention to leveraging AI in accounting firms. As the former founder of an award-winning CPA firm (2010-2022), she now leads TaxPlanIQ, a SaaS Tax Advisory Platform (AICPA 2023 Accelerator Cohort), and is writing a book on The Balance Sheet of Life.
Her innovative ROI Method of Value Pricing™ emphasizes aligning pricing with client value, addressing cultural and workaholism issues to prevent burnout and turnover. Jackie speaks to tens of thousands of financial professionals and taxpayers annually, providing transformative solutions for entrepreneurs to thrive. Her mission is to improve health, wealth, and relationships for all.