Taxplow

Command premium fees for your accounting and tax practice using AI

Founder

Bizpayo

Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO)

Howard Advisory, LLC

Growth and Profit Advisor

Gartner

Senior Analyst

Helping accountants get to their first $1M and beyond

My story begins years ago when I had an advisory firm but was struggling to increase margins.

I was a one person practice 100% remote.

I was trying to be everything to everyone.

I did not have a niche.

I did not have an ideal client.

I took any business that would hire me.

I did not stand out among the thousands of other consulting firms.

I competed mostly on low price. 

My friends and family would always see a stressed-out, black circles under eyes, 80+ hours/wk working person would have zero personal life.

I took a hard look at my business and found a lot of waste.

Too many services and too many different kinds of clients.

I decided that I needed to focus.

I began to focus on how I could productize my services.

With a business partner I helped develop an automated payment and Google reviews platform (BizPayO) that helps accountants get paid faster, without the expensive fees and which snagged a Google Review after every successful payment.

Through the payment app I found that most accountants were not charging enough.

That inspired me to launch a second SaaS company, a pricing application (Taxplow) that shows accountants what they should be charging based on the services they offer, their location, the client’s situation, and a couple dozen other key data points.

But the problem is bigger than this.

Accountants needs help differentiating themselves and coming up with a unique offering.

One that would help create a moat around their business.

So they would not become just another H&R Block or low-cost accounting firm that would position them as just a commodity.

I'm now sharing everything I learned over the years.

How to to run a 100% remote accounting firm and create a truly unique offering.

If you are an entrepreneurial accountant or tax pro, join me and follow along my journey.

My mission is to create one million, 100% remote, diversified solopreneurs by 2026.

All aboard. 🚆

Marc Howard

Mark V. Smetanin

Unlock Success for Airbnb and Short-Term Rental Business. Recently by Improving the Product - Increased Engagement by 42% , conversion rate by 74%, and acquired 2.5M new users.

As a product management leader with over eight years of experience in payments, e-commerce, Airbnb business, property management, I am a fan of technology and its application to drive business growth.My expertise lies in product management, agile coaching, portfolio management, and strategic planning.I have experience in increasing user engagement, optimizing technical processes and leading high-performance teams.

Key Highlights:

Director of Product Management: Enhanced user engagement by 16% and improved product value description by 14% through strategic market research and collaboration.

Senior Product Portfolio Manager: Managed a $1.2M project, leading to an $8M revenue projection and a 17% increase in Net Promoter Score. 
Risk assessment methods were applied, which reduced project disruptions by 24%.

Head of Product Strategy: Increased customer engagement by 42%, improved conversion rates by 74%, and acquired 2.5M new users—reduced marketing expenses by 28% by addressing critical pain points.

Skills and Expertise:

Product Management/Product Owner: Agile Frameworks, Scrum, Kanban, SAFe
Technical Proficiency: Jira, Asana, Hubspot, Salesforce
Industry Expertise: Fintech, E-commerce, Property Management, Vacation Rentals
Certifications: PMI-ACP, PMI-PMP, CSM, CSPO

Professional Experience:

Nine years in product management, agile transformation, and strategic planning
I have experience in leading cross-functional teams to deliver high performance products.
Skilled in negotiating and managing key partnerships and stakeholders

Interests:

The God's Flow State, Coffee, Stand-up comedy, Kite surfing, Skiing, Music, martial arts (2 black belts), Reading, and Hiking.

Technology Stack:

Jira, Jira Service Desk, Hubspot, Asana, Zoho Projects, Microsoft Project, Basecamp, ClickUp, Todoist, PipelineCRM, Freedcamp, Hive, Monday, Trello, Time tracker, Pivotal Tracker, Slack,Excel, Powerpoint, MS Sharepoint, MS Visio, MS Project, MS Access, Prezzi, Numbers, Pages, Photoshop, Lightroom, Planview, Linux, FreeBSD, Quality Center, ZohoCRM, ZenDesk, Zoho Desk, Fresh Desk, Vivantio Help Desk, FreshService, Salesforce Service Cloud, Hootsuite, WordPress, HTML, CSS, OBS, Mindmaps, Focus Matrix, Dropbox Paper, Skitch, Insightly CRM, Payment Gates (Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Square, Braintree, Stripe, Paypal, Authorize.net, 2checkout, Payoneer, Bitpay, Shopify Payments), Google Analytics, Google Search Tool, Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, MCP, Rentals United, Avirato, Expedia, Booking.com, Airbnb, VRBO, PMS, Glovebox, Coterie, Risk Advisor, AWS, Crowe CRM, Salesforc

Lead Product Manager / Product Owner / Consultant

•     Improved a Product using a customer journey map, understanding and prioritizing the most critical pain points in the most profitable segment. Provided clear concept and design strategy. Collaborated with Dev and UX teams. Increased customer engagement by 226%, Improved conversion rate by 74%, and acquired 2.5M, new users.

•     Planned and facilitated an extraordinary spike for (AI) Artificial Intelligence tools and prompts. Fixed and resolved seven major issues when team members just felt stuck. 

•     Raised team confidence after the last check-in. Positive emotions and gratitude are on our happiness radar. The current sprint is 100% happiness VS 78% at the previous sprint. 

•     Organized the most efficient communication with stakeholders and implemented advanced product backlog refinement, reducing the backlog by 16%.

•    Stepped forward with special coaching from our Unique Coach and very advanced Scum Master. Differentiated workflow steps, business rule variations, variations in data, and interface variations, polished and deepened INVEST criteria. Dramatically improved the slicing of our vertical stories. Delivered value ~20% faster with the smallest increments to our customers. 

•   Implemented automated test script, additional smoke test after the build is released to QA, and code review by peers. Armed new Definition of Done (DOD) for our dev team. Changed Sprint Planning Agenda. Raised team confidence level in delivering the sprint goals to 94%. 

•    Implemented automated test script and code review by peers. Armed new Definition of Done (DOD) for our dev team. 

•     Collected the data via Web-tracking and customer interviews,  tested and validated assumptions with the development team. Provided much precise anatomy of personas. Redesigned current marketing campaign reducing waist by 28%

Spikes:
Sustainable and environmentally conscious business practices
Enterprise Agile: Changing your culture

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Marc Howard

Mark V. Smetanin

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