🎙️ From Accidentally Acing Accounting to IRS Enrolled Agent: Diane Hagerty’s Journey Through Divorce, Starting Over, and Simplifying Tax Nightmares
Diane Hagerty, IRS enrolled agent and owner of Grassroots Taxes in Springdale, Arkansas, shares her journey from teenage musician forced into accounting class by nun with no other options available—tried failing, got hundreds instead—to discovering natural talent balancing checkbooks and explaining financial concepts, through divorce at 35 walking away with nothing starting from scratch, to solving $898,000 IRS bill reduced to zero for client with addiction issues and acres of broken-down tractor trailers. Through stories about government losing payments and forms constantly, debunking internet tax myths about putting houses in LLCs, and rising from ashes giving valedictorian speech at University of Phoenix after rebuilding life one knuckle pushup at a time, Diane reveals how consistency beats year-end panic (10 minutes weekly versus giant pile in April), make money first before expensive business structures, and finding your people plus staying busy helping others transforms adversity into superpower simplifying thousand-page legislation into actionable plans.
✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:
- Accidentally discovered accounting talent: lazy teenager waited until day before school, nun said only accounting class open, tried failing but got hundreds on every assignment
- Natural financial gift emerged early: balancing friends’ checkbooks, reading letters, explaining concepts without studying while everyone else failed accounting
- Divorce at 35 starting from scratch: walked away with nothing to avoid fighting, lost kids/business/friends, hadn’t worked in years, no college degree finished
- $898,000 IRS bill reduced to zero: client with addiction issues, broken-down tractor trailers everywhere, IRS made up numbers when he stopped filing, took 3.5 years solving
- Government clerical errors constant: Arkansas Department of Finance loses payments, never credits forms, charges late fees despite filed extensions—just overwhelmed with volume
- IRS representation requires credentials: only attorneys, state CPAs, or enrolled agents can represent taxpayers before IRS during tax issues
- Tax preparation industry largely unregulated: anybody can prepare returns at big box places after taking class, no credential standards required
- Consistency principle beats panic: 10 minutes weekly recording receipts/mileage prevents giant pile in April, know how business performs before accountant tells you
- Make money first philosophy: test business idea before expensive LLCs/structures/fees, see if people buy product before paying state/setup costs annually
- Vacation tax deduction requirements: must do business activities daily that require physical presence—meetings, networking, visiting similar businesses—not just checking email
🌟 Diane’s Key Mentors & Influences:
Catholic School Nun: Forced accounting class day before school started—only option available—accidentally revealed Diane’s natural financial talent despite trying to fail
Ex-Spouse (14 Years): Entrepreneurial but not good with numbers, Diane did books while he made money, learned business operations through their ventures
Church Community After Divorce: Small supportive church became family providing emotional support, holiday dinners, “you said it girl” encouragement during rebuilding years
University of Phoenix Faculty: Supported top-eight competition for valedictorian speech, platform for “Rising from the Ashes” Phoenix metaphor after starting over with nothing
Random Helpers Throughout Life: Teenagers’ moms saying pull life together, church people fixing cars unexpectedly when couldn’t pay back—inspired pay-it-forward philosophy
👉 Don’t miss this conversation about accidentally discovering hidden talents when forced into discomfort, walking away from everything at 35 to start over, and transforming adversity into superpower simplifying government complexity for people scared of letters they don’t understand.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE
Transcript
Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspote and today’s guest is Diane Haggerty, an IRS enrolled agent and the owner of Grassroots Taxes in Springdale, Arkansas. Diane and her team are dedicated to helping individuals and small businesses navigate tax rules without fear.
Grassroot Taxes offers services like tax preparation, bookkeeping, payroll management, and business formation guidance. They also share free educational resources through a blog and YouTube channel, focusing on practical tips for everyday financial challenges. Her firm is recognized throughout the region for its friendly, hands-on approach, encouraging clients to ask questions and stay informed.
Diane’s background includes hosting local workshops, representing taxpayers before the IRS, and helping entrepreneurs build more sustainable foundations for their businesses. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line.
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All right, back to our guest today, the owner of Grassroots Taxes, Diane Haggerty. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.
Diane Hagerty (01:55)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Anthony Codispoti (01:58)
So Diane, I understand you’ve got a weird origin story of how you got into the accounting field. I’m on the edge of my seat. What is that?
Diane Hagerty (02:07)
Oh, well, when I was a kid, teenager, I was a musician. I played music. I was going to devote my life to music. I write music. was in, you know, tried to do Broadway and tried to do a bunch of other stuff, played music, wrote music. If it didn’t have to do with music, I didn’t care. So school was kind of, you know, other than band and choir, school was just not my thing. So here I am being lazy.
Not doing my stuff in the summer. I go back to school day before school start, pick up my books, pick up my classes because I failed to do that. And I was going to Catholic school that year and there was this old nun and I went in and I was like, so I want to take these classes. And she’s like, well, your first period classes and available it’s full. And I was like, all right, well take, how about this one? And she’s like, it’s full.
You had all summer to pick out your classes. The only thing that’s open first period is accounting. That’s what you’re taking. Here’s your books next. And I was like,
I didn’t even know what accounting was. Like I was just, uh, I was just a party and kid with a guitar, you know? So, um, I was like, account, are you serious? A business class? I’m a musician. Are you serious? So I was like, that’s it. I got plenty of credits to graduate. I’m, I just won’t go. Like I just won’t pass the class. Like I can fail. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need the credits to graduate. I got plenty of credits. I just have to put in my time, right?
Anthony Codispoti (03:17)
That was so far outside the realm of what you were interested in.
Diane Hagerty (03:44)
So I tried to fail this class and I tried so hard to fail this class and I got like hundreds and 98s on like every assignment. I could not fail this class if I tried. just, and everybody else was failing and I’m like, this class is so easy. ⁓
Anthony Codispoti (03:57)
So hang on, Diane, sorry to interrupt. Sorry
to interrupt, so when you say you tried to fail, you just weren’t studying. You weren’t putting in any effort, but it was just coming easy to you. Okay.
Diane Hagerty (04:06)
did not care!
It just came so easy to me. And then it was like something else. know, somebody was like, I keep bouncing checks. And I was like, well, you balance your checkbook and they’re like, how do you do that? And I’m like, do y’all people know anything? You know, here I am like, you know, 18, 19 years old and you know, really didn’t care about anything. And, I was not the most,
entrepreneurial kid, you know, and it just, you know, here I am like always balancing people’s checkbooks and reading letters and understanding stuff for people and explaining stuff to people. And, and it just kind of came naturally. And then I met my spouse of 14 years that we know we haven’t been together for like 20, but, you know, he was very entrepreneurial, but he wasn’t very good with numbers. So, you know, I did the books, he made the money.
And that’s the way it worked for a long time. So that’s how I got into accounting. And it was all because a nun had no other classes to give me because I was too lazy to pick out the classes I wanted when I had time and waited until the day before school started.
Anthony Codispoti (05:14)
Isn’t it funny
how doors open for us sometimes because other ones closed? So how did you go from there? How did you go from there doing the accounting and the bookkeeping for the business with your husband to actually starting your own accounting firm?
Diane Hagerty (05:20)
I never would have known.
That’s because I got divorced. ⁓ The marriage didn’t work out. We grew in very different directions, became very different people. ⁓ And so I went off on my own and everything that I learned and everything that I did for our businesses, I figured I could do that for other people. That would be easy. And that’s what I started doing. I started doing bookkeeping and accounting.
and eventually got my, my EA finished my college degree. Cause I hadn’t done that for several reasons. ⁓ you know, and over the past 30 years, I’ve, ⁓ you know, really built it all up again, you know, now I’m, now I’m kind of a big deal. I an EA, ⁓ it enrolled agent. It is, ⁓ you take a test, basically it’s, it’s a three day test. It’s, it’s really difficult. ⁓ but the IRS,
Anthony Codispoti (06:12)
So explain to us what is an EA? What does that allow you to do? How do you get that sort
Diane Hagerty (06:28)
you know, test your knowledge on taxes on pretty much every area of taxes, business, representation, personal taxes, like, and the questions are from all over the board. You don’t know what you’re going to get. Um, but it’s a three day test. And if you pass, uh, you can, you’re an enrolled agent, have enough knowledge in taxes that you can represent people before the IRS. So basically, and most States accept that too. So if you’re having tax problems, you want to go to an EA. Um,
We’ve.
Anthony Codispoti (06:59)
tax
problems specifically. That’s what the EA is useful for.
Diane Hagerty (07:01)
Yeah, yeah. So I’m not, I’m not a CPA.
I don’t do accounting. I don’t do, ⁓ like corporate audits or audits for, you know, your licensure. I don’t sign off on how much money you made for public accounting. Like I don’t do public accounting. I don’t do things that are for other people. I do stuff that the government’s going to see. I do accounting that reflects back that the government’s good.
Anthony Codispoti (07:26)
So explain a little bit more about that. What does that mean? So I’m one of your clients and I hire you to do what probably?
Diane Hagerty (07:34)
I do everything else, you know, any accountant could do. mean, I have a degree in accounting and small business management. ⁓ So, I mean, I could do bookkeeping and payroll and sales tax and, you know, all the other things that, you know, any accountant could do. However, the real dividing line is CPAs are licensed by the state. They, they’re an association. They kind of judge each other. They’re peer reviewed. have to, they judge each other’s work similar to doctors, engineers, you know, they hold the standards high.
further, you know, further what they do. Sorry, I’m just kind of at a loss for the right word I’m looking for here.
Anthony Codispoti (08:10)
And so,
so who’s going to do my taxes? Who’s going to actually prepare my taxes to file? Is that the CPA? Is that an EA? Both can do that. Okay.
Diane Hagerty (08:14)
Run.
Are you asking me if a CPA or an EA both do taxes all the time? Sure.
Anybody can do a tax return. The tax industry is pretty much unregulated. You can choose to get education and you can choose to get some kind of credentials through the IRS, but there’s really no standards.
of credentials to prepare a tax return. mean, anybody can go to work at one of the big box tax return places, take their class and start being a tax return preparer. ⁓ The IRS does not regulate who can prepare a tax return.
Anthony Codispoti (09:00)
That’s interesting. But they do regulate who can represent somebody in front of the IRS when there are questions to be answered.
Diane Hagerty (09:06)
Absolutely.
Right. So you have to be either an attorney, a CPA with your state, or an enrolled agent to represent taxpayers in tax issues.
Anthony Codispoti (09:20)
So does being an EA give you some kind of extra access to the IRS that being a CPA at the state level does not?
Diane Hagerty (09:26)
No, it’s exactly the same with the IRS. All right. But I mean, to be a CPA, you don’t have to do taxes. I mean, they don’t teach you individual tax returns when you go to get a degree in accounting. You learn that by doing it. ⁓ You learn the basics of taxation and how it works and how the government assesses taxes and with a graduated tax bracket or, you know, things like, you know, how the taxes are applied and how to figure it out. But
Anthony Codispoti (09:28)
the same. Okay.
Diane Hagerty (09:56)
You know, at the end of the day, you learn taxes by doing it.
Anthony Codispoti (10:00)
Now, so
I hear about you representing clients in front of the IRS, and that just kind of makes my skin crawl. Like it feels like that would be a pretty scary encounter. Am I right or am I being over dramatic here?
Diane Hagerty (10:08)
Yeah.
you are not being over dramatic, you should be terrified. ⁓ I’m in Arkansas and I don’t want to trash talk Arkansas too much, but everybody else does ⁓ apparently. ⁓ But the Department of Finance here, the people that collect the state income tax, state sales tax, payroll taxes, things like that, the State Department of Finance, they just rule of
Anthony Codispoti (10:18)
Okay.
Diane Hagerty (10:44)
charge you money and send you a letter and say you owe money. And a lot of people don’t know why and they’re scared of, do I pay this? And I’m like, didn’t I tell you to pay that back in April? And they’re like, yeah. I was like, did you save the receipt? know, like the download code or whatever that shows you paid, did it come out of your checking account? Well, yeah. I’m like, well, show me where it came out of your checking account and show me your download code and let’s send it back with the letter. And they had no idea they already paid it. Why didn’t they credit their payment? I don’t know.
They do it a lot. ⁓ That happens a lot. People file forms by own paper and they’re never approved. They’re never received. ⁓ The missing payments is a big one. And then a lot of times they’re just like, you’re late. We’re going to charge you this amount of money. It’s like, I filed an extension.
Anthony Codispoti (11:34)
So do you think they intentionally lose these forms and these payments or is this just poor record keeping?
Diane Hagerty (11:34)
Did you?
It’s just government.
It’s just government. I mean, they’re just overwhelmed with volumes and volumes of information. And, you know, if they get 99 % of it right, that’s, that’s great. But 1 % is an awful lot of people when you have millions of people in your state, you know.
Anthony Codispoti (11:55)
So what you’re describing there sounds like clerical errors on the part of the government. And while it’s concerning, that’s not maybe scary. What are some of the scary encounters that you’ve been through?
Diane Hagerty (12:09)
Oh, wow. Okay. Let’s go back to almost 20 years ago.
Wow. About 20 years ago, I had a client contact me just out of the blue to solve who I was or knew who I was. I don’t know. And he’s like, I’m having a little bit of a problem. I’m wondering if you could come over here and look at it. I have a lot of vehicles and trucks and it’s like, okay. So it wasn’t that far away. It’s like 20 miles from here. So I drove over there later that week.
And I pulled in and there’s like acres of tractor trailers and most of them are in various states disrepair. Like I don’t think any of them were road worthy, but there was probably a hundred. I mean, there was just acres of tractor trailers, old beat up trucks that probably didn’t run, ⁓ like flat trailers, like a flat bed trailers with like fences around them for like trash, probably 50 of those. Like.
everywhere, just parked everywhere amidst this piles of garbage. And he was kind of a dump. So I went up there and there was literally IRS agents, three of them walking around, numbering everything, writing everything down, taking pictures. This was 20 years ago. They didn’t have iPhones. They had a camera. Right. And they’re like,
Anthony Codispoti (13:28)
And so what was the issue from a tax perspective?
Diane Hagerty (13:49)
taking pictures of the license plates and taking pictures of the vid numbers of all these trailers. And I was like, ⁓ who are you? Cause I’m about to be his accountant and they’re like, we’re with the IRS. And they flashed their badges and I’m like, okay, this is going to be an interesting day.
Anthony Codispoti (14:08)
So
explain it for us. Why were they so interested in these vehicles that weren’t being used?
Diane Hagerty (14:14)
Well, he apparently had some health issues. had a very positive, big growing business using all these trucks. And he was, you know, pretty big deal in the community, I think, you know, provided a lot of jobs, had, you know, millions in sales. mean, he was a pretty big, small business and he had some health issues and required some surgery and the surgery required some.
medications afterwards and and it turns out he got addicted to these medications and well the business just kind of fell apart he kind of stopped paying his taxes ⁓ he also stopped making money because any money he made he would immediately spend on bad ⁓ bad yeah it was very unfortunate and he was him and his wife were literally falling apart
Anthony Codispoti (15:04)
Yeah, sounds like a pretty unfortunate situation.
Diane Hagerty (15:11)
I mean they were mentally falling apart. They didn’t know where to go. It was really tragic and I felt so bad for them that I didn’t walk out on them and I was like
if you’re gonna pay me I need a contract you know you’re gonna pay me or I’m just gonna start taking stuff you know and selling it
Anthony Codispoti (15:32)
So what were you able to do
for them? How could you help them out, Diane?
Diane Hagerty (15:35)
Turns out the bill that the IRS was sending him was for $898,000. I don’t have a copy of it here to show you, but I saved a copy of that. And it’s hanging on my wall. $898,000 they were trying to get out of him. At the end of the day, since he had gone out of business and not made any money and didn’t have any money, I got him out of all of it. He wound up paying zero to the federal, zero to the state.
of that $898,000 bill. Why? Because, I mean, if you don’t file your taxes, they make up a number and he made a lot of money. And since he hadn’t made any money in several years, they just assumed he wasn’t filing his taxes and making tons of money. Whereas he was really losing a lot of money because he had, you know, lost, you know, all semblance of health. So.
Anthony Codispoti (16:26)
You know, and I, I’ve seen
this before from a personal perspective, I had a business ⁓ that, you know, used to pay sales tax and then the business wound down and it wasn’t making income anymore, but they still expected me to file those sales tax returns. And so they just started sending me bills for made up numbers. ⁓ And so was the same kind of thing here that, you know, they didn’t sort of get the memo that they weren’t making any money anymore. So they sent this giant bill to get his attention.
Diane Hagerty (16:54)
that.
Anthony Codispoti (16:54)
Clearly
it worked, but you went to work, you did your thing, you waved a magic wand and said, hey, not only they not making money, they’re losing money, so they don’t owe any of this. And the problem went
Diane Hagerty (17:06)
It
took three and a half years to solve most of it, but yeah, he was my project for about three and a half years, but ⁓ he did have enough money coming in from selling off the stuff to keep me paid. So I stuck around until we sold the property and paid off everybody, ⁓ which, you know, it took three and a half years. was, I’ve had a lot of projects like that. So.
Anthony Codispoti (17:15)
That’s pretty messy.
So
that’s a good example of how dealing with the IRS can be really scary, ⁓ especially when you don’t have experience for somebody like me or the client that you were describing. Let’s take a step back though, Diane, and kind of paint a bigger picture for us on the services that you typically provide for your clients. We know about the IRS engagement. What else is involved?
Diane Hagerty (17:57)
Like what else do I do? Okay. I take a lot of phone calls. I do a lot of free consultations. I probably do a hundred a year free consultations. People call me and just having questions. They just don’t know. And you know, that’s kind of lot of what I do is explain stuff to people because they don’t know. Like nobody teaches this stuff, which is why I started the…
Anthony Codispoti (17:59)
Yeah.
Diane Hagerty (18:24)
videos and the blog and stuff like that. Because where else are you going to learn this stuff? It’s like, how do know you should get an LLC or not? How do I know if I should be running payroll or not? How do I know if it’s, you know, should I be charging sales tax? Where do you look this up? Where do you there’s no place to look this up and know this stuff. And they don’t teach it in school very much, at least not applicable to individual states where every state has different rules. ⁓
Anthony Codispoti (18:53)
And so what you sort of collected a lot of the common conversations and questions that you get on these free consultations and you turn them into blog articles and YouTube videos that you can send to people say, hey, check this out.
Diane Hagerty (19:06)
Exactly.
Well, how I really started the YouTube channel was during the pandemic because, you know, they published this one piece of legislation that had, you know, an alphabet soup of stuff. had the PPP and ERC and everything had a three letter acronym and nobody will, should I do this one or this one or this one? I’m like, hold on, let me read it all. And I sat down and read through all the legislation and I got a big
poster board that was like three by five and I write real small and I made all my notes. And then I was like, all right, I know what it is. And I had one person call me and then the next person to call me out the same question. Then I’d get three emails with the same question. And I’m like, I’ve got to be able to get this out there to everybody at once. This is ridiculous. I’m wasting days just explaining the same thing over and over. So I had somebody start filming me.
In which case it was really difficult because was pandemic and I didn’t want to be around anybody. So, uh, my videos changed from time to time and style because it was different people doing it in different places. But, um, you know, through the whole pandemic, I was like, you know, this is how it is. This is what this is. This is what this is. Does it work with this? And I’d make, you know, I just made probably 50 videos just on the, the pandemic stuff. And then I, you know,
It came and went and then I got back into it and I go in phases where I’ll make a whole bunch of material and then I don’t. But anytime I get a question or like a strange question, I write it down and eventually I’ll make a piece of content on it. ⁓
Anthony Codispoti (20:50)
What’s
probably the most commonly asked question that you get?
Diane Hagerty (20:57)
What’s this letter mean? Seriously? I got, I got this letter. have no idea what it means. get people send me pictures of letters all the time. it’s always something different. mean, common questions. How do I start a business? I teach a class on that. ⁓ I get a lot of questions on nonprofits too. I just taught another class on nonprofits. that’s on.
Anthony Codispoti (21:03)
How about like a more general topic? what’s…
Diane Hagerty (21:27)
the library’s YouTube channel. So if you have a link to that.
Anthony Codispoti (21:30)
So these classes that you
teach, they’re also online or some of them in person? Do you charge for them? Are they free? How’s this work?
Diane Hagerty (21:36)
⁓
I generally teach classes that are free to attend and I try to get them filmed and put on and get the original thing and put it on my YouTube channel, or at least on theirs, or get, know, get a link so people can watch my content. ⁓ cause I, I don’t, I mean, I get paid to teach. Sometimes I don’t, a lot of nonprofits that are, I live right near the university.
And there’s a whole lot of like business startup seed places, ⁓ entrepreneurial engines for people that are majoring in small business. Like how do you start a small business? And they have funding from like Rockefeller foundations. ⁓ I don’t know, but a lot of them are like software developers, stuff like that. That, you know, they want, they want to scale up, then they want to buy your company. You know, they do this whole scale up, make money and I don’t know.
Anthony Codispoti (22:07)
of Arkansas.
Diane Hagerty (22:36)
But a lot of, you know, but they also have to deal with everybody that’s like, I want to just start a car detailing company, or I want to start a delivery service, or I want to, you know, open a restaurant.
They’re not, they’re not, they’re not profitable. mean, somebody’s got to do it, you know, but it’s like, if you’re not good at, if you’re good at cooking, that’s great, but you have to be good at running a business to run a restaurant. have a lot of people, a lot of great cooks that lose a lot of money trying to run a restaurant because they know how to cook, but they don’t know how to run a business.
Anthony Codispoti (22:54)
Don’t open a restaurant. Why? Because they’re not profitable, they’re hard to run. What’s the deal there? Okay.
So Diane,
who’s your ideal client? Industry, size, geography, who’s a good fit for you?
Diane Hagerty (23:28)
You know, that’s a really hard question. Because when I have people come to me and they have it together, you know, they’ve got everything on spreadsheets, they got all the facts, they just need this, this and this. I’m like, yeah, that’s great.
You could have done that yourself. I’m just getting my approval stamp and putting it on there. I didn’t do anything for you. And the people that come to me that are just a complete disaster and like they can’t figure anything out. They’re terrible with numbers. They don’t have any receipts. They, you know, and they have no idea what they’re doing. I really enjoy working with those people because I feel like I’ve made a change in their life. You know, I made a positive impact in their life and I’ve got a one to
the road to doing things right and not getting in trouble in the future.
Anthony Codispoti (24:22)
So is there like a minimum or a maximum size or certain industries that you feel like you specialize in or is it, hey, from zero to a hundred million or a billion?
Diane Hagerty (24:32)
Oh,
I don’t do really big businesses. No, they, mean, anybody that’s really big, I mean, once you start bringing in a couple million a year, you probably need somebody at a desk in an office that works for you, that your employee that’s keeping track of all this stuff. I’m kind of the training wheels for those, you know, like a lot of times, you know, people use me and then they get bigger and I’m like, all right.
You need to hire somebody and like, then we check on the person they hired and make sure they’re doing stuff right. And, ⁓ and I review them at the end of the year. have several people that have grown out of me, but I still, you know, complete their tax return. And some people move on to a bigger, a bigger firm. Cause he, like, there’s some things I don’t offer. Like, ⁓ you know, like I don’t have a whole bunch of partners. It’s just me. ⁓ so I can’t have any one client take up too much of my time. I have to deal with everybody else. So.
⁓ you know as you grow.
Anthony Codispoti (25:30)
So anything
from startup to about one to two million and that’s sort of the point where they might graduate from you.
Diane Hagerty (25:38)
Yeah, at least. Yeah. I’ve had people that made even less money. I mean, it depends on how many transactions you have. I mean, some people have, you know, a zillion transactions and some people make several million a year and have 50 transactions a month. So, you know, it really depends on how much you have to keep track of how many employees you have.
Anthony Codispoti (25:57)
Gotcha. So all this content that you’ve put together, all this advice, whether it’s free or paid that you provide to folks, what is low hanging fruit that you typically recommend to your clients to help them be more tax efficient?
Diane Hagerty (26:16)
Like what’s the easiest thing? Like what would I tell people if I could tell you, if I could give one piece of advice? I got a few. So let me, let me start with that. ⁓ the thing I say the most, ⁓ the thing that I have on a lot of stuff is make money first. And if I ever finished my book, that’s the name. Make money first. I have so many people trying to start a small business.
And they’re like, ⁓ I need an LLC. then that LLC needs to be owned by a corporation and that corporation needs to be owned by a trust. And that way I don’t own anything and I’ll never pay taxes. with like, a that’s all a bunch of lies that that’s not real. That’s that’s content people make that is they’re not tax accountants. You’re going to pay higher taxes most of the time if you do that kind of shenanigans and B.
All that costs money. You know, it costs money with the state. It costs money to have it set up for you. It costs money to keep track of all this stuff. It costs money every year to have an LLC. You gotta pay the state. You gotta pay this fee. You gotta pay that fee. And if you don’t file a tax return, you can get fined if you file as a business, you know? So small businesses, make sure you have a viable idea. Make money first. Get through that. Have somebody buying your idea and thinking it’s great.
Anthony Codispoti (27:39)
So I can go ahead and go out and start
selling my product or service before I get the LLC registered and I meet with my CPA and all that stuff. You’re saying go test the idea, get some clients, get some money coming in.
Diane Hagerty (27:52)
Exactly. See if you have a good idea. know, see if you’re growing. if, you know, I mean like, okay, I’m going to start a business being a painter and I’m going to paint houses. Well, I’ve never painted a house before. If anybody hired me, they certainly wouldn’t recommend me to their friends. I would do a terrible job and I probably would fall off the ladder. You know, I mean, make sure that you’re selling a good product.
that you’re the best out there, that you know what you’re doing. ⁓ That, you know, being really good at something is great. ⁓ And have, or, you know, so I have people that are like, well, I want to sell my art and want to put it on t-shirts, you know, and they’re like, at this point in time, you don’t even need to have inventory. I have several people that do that. They just draw the stuff and they put it on a website and people order that shirt on the website and the website makes the shirt when they buy it and then they ship it and you get a commission for your artwork.
And that’s great unless nobody likes your artwork. So, you know, put it out there before you start all this business structure and all this other stuff. You know, you can, you can deal with that, you know, when you have the money to pay for it, make money first.
Anthony Codispoti (29:02)
So make money first. Make money first.
I like that. What else you got?
Diane Hagerty (29:08)
⁓ my other easy advice, especially for small business owners is consistency. I have so many people at that time of year, we’re recording this now in December. ⁓ you know, you might be listening to this in January. You might be listening to it at another time, but this time of year, everybody’s like, I got to go through all my receipts. have all these.
bags and stuff and then it’s March and then it’s April and that comes and goes and then it’s September or October and you’re still adding receipts from last year and you’ve lost half of them at this point. Consistency. Consistency is the best thing. Every Sunday I sit down for five or ten minutes and I go through my receipts, my payments,
everything that I need to take care of and I take 10 minutes if it takes longer 10 minutes what I’ll do next week you know or maybe I feel like spending a little more time on it but I promise myself I’m gonna sit down for 10 minutes every Sunday and do something and most of the time it doesn’t take that long because again I don’t have a lot of transactions but you know I calculate my mileage for the week which is a lot easier than calculating your mileage for the year
Right? Try to remember, oh wait, how many times did I go to the post office? Yeah. Um, I know I went on Wednesday and that’s one trip to the post office I can put down, right? It, you don’t forget things, you know, just spend 10 minutes a week, you know, record your transactions, gathering up your receipts, looking at your stuff. You need to know how much money you’re making. If you don’t know how much money you’re making and how your business is doing it to your accountant tells you when you file your taxes in April.
or September or October, ⁓ then how do you know you have a successful business? How do you know what you’re doing? It’s your business, you need to know how you’re doing. And the only way you can do that is consistency. ⁓ Even if it’s five or 10 minutes once a week, it’s better than nothing. And that way you don’t have this giant pile of work at the end of the year that everybody dreads. And then I have to wind up filing an extension and ruin in my summer vacation because I have to come home and
to taxes for people that didn’t do their taxes in the spring.
Anthony Codispoti (31:27)
So I want go back to something you said just a minute ago. You said if you ever finished your book, it would be entitled something, something, but you make money first, but you actually have finished a book. It’s available. People can buy it on Amazon. What is it?
Diane Hagerty (31:34)
Make money first.
that’s a, what I did on my summer vacation, no crossed out what I did on my business trip. So make your summer vacation a business trip by doing business stuff every day on your summer vacation. ⁓ you know, and it gives you some, lot of pointers and things you need to do, how to make your vacations tax deductible. And it’s also a log of, you know, day after day, like how much money you spent, where you ate, you know, you can write right in the book and it’s a workbook.
tells you how to add it up. If you don’t feel like adding it up, it’s all in there. Just hand the book to your accountant and ⁓ you know, it, records everything you did on your big trip, how much money you spent and why your trip is tax deductible. If you ever get audited, guess what? Here’s the business stuff I did every day and why the whole trip was tax deductible. It doesn’t matter that you worked for 30 minutes and you had fun the rest of the day. If you work for 30 minutes a day doing something on your trip, guess what? It’s tax deductible trip.
Anthony Codispoti (32:40)
So let me put this to the test. I took my family on a cruise for spring break last year. And each day I was on the trip, I’m checking email, I’m sending Slack messages to my team, I’m responding to things. Does that check the box? Not exactly.
Diane Hagerty (32:58)
No, cause yeah,
all this stuff that you said, checking your messages, something like that, you can do that from anywhere. You didn’t have to be there. Now, if you went on one of these cruises where you go out on land every day and you, I, I, know you do podcasts. I don’t know what else you do employee benefits. But you know, if you set up a meeting with a podcaster that you know in Cancun.
Anthony Codispoti (33:09)
Okay.
Diane Hagerty (33:28)
Right. And met with them and talked about stuff and had a meal or coffee or a drink with another podcaster. And then you got back on the boat and the next day you got off in some fancy Island. don’t know. I don’t, I don’t cruise. Um, and, and there, you met with a podcaster there, then it would count. have to do something that you couldn’t do from home. All right. Shaking hands. Yeah. Every day now.
Anthony Codispoti (33:51)
Hmm. Okay. And I have to do something each day that I’m gone?
Diane Hagerty (33:57)
Would your family’s cruise tickets be deductible? No. Unless your spouse is also a member of your business and your spouse is also doing said businessy things on land where you physically have to be there. Now, could it have been a phone call? Could it have been a zoom meeting? Of course, but being there in person and shaking hands counts as an ordinary and necessary expense. Meeting people in person to build that trust.
or to network with people, that always counts. You can make it a trip. But ⁓ you’d actually have to meet with somebody, go somewhere. I mean, it depends on what business you’re in. I have a lot of people in restaurants and they buy ingredients in foreign countries and bring them home in their suitcases and visit their family. Right? ⁓
Anthony Codispoti (34:50)
Okay, that’s interesting.
Now what about on this cruise if I had taken pictures of myself and my family at some of these exotic locations and then use those on my website?
Diane Hagerty (35:02)
That’s kind of iffy. That’s kind of iffy. You really need to have a meeting or go to a class or visit a place of business that’s similar to your place of business to do networking or compare your business to theirs. It has to be where something you can’t do it. And just taking pictures of yourself. No, not the whole cruise. Yeah.
Anthony Codispoti (35:04)
Okay. I like black and white. I don’t want gray.
Okay.
That’s dicey. Okay.
All right. All right. So that this is the basis of this book is how to take your
Diane Hagerty (35:36)
Yeah, and it’s only,
it’s only 26 page or 24 pages. It’s the minimum number of pages that, that I’m allowed to publish. So yeah, so it’s super easy. It’s mostly a workbook. It’s a lot of lists. ⁓ and if you don’t, I mean, if you’re going to go on vacation and you’re planning it, there’s all the planning pages of, know, this is what I’m going to do every day when I’m on a trip. This is ideas of stuff I could do that would make that day tax deductible. So you have to do business stuff every day, ⁓ that you couldn’t do from
Anthony Codispoti (35:40)
⁓ quick easy read and the worksheets too, huh?
Great.
Diane Hagerty (36:05)
you know, email. mean, just going somewhere else and checking their emails. You have to have contact with people. You have to go places and meet people.
Anthony Codispoti (36:10)
Okay.
That makes sense.
I’m glad I understand the rules there. Okay, so give us another one, Diane, what’s another piece of tax efficient advice that you often provide to your clients?
Diane Hagerty (36:24)
Let me think ⁓ Don’t don’t don’t believe all the stuff on the internet For one and of course that’s weird because I’m on the internet and I’m like, yeah, believe me, but don’t believe anybody else It’s just you know, that sounds like a cult ⁓
Anthony Codispoti (36:39)
Like what’s something that you’ve seen often repeated
on the internet that is not actually true is bad advice.
Diane Hagerty (36:45)
Like a lot of the things I see especially are like setting up trusts or having one corporation own all your LLCs and having your house in an LLC. I see a lot of…
Anthony Codispoti (37:01)
And why are these bad ideas?
Diane Hagerty (37:04)
They cost money and they really don’t save anything or make you anything, especially when it’s your personal property. And if you associate your personal property with your business and your business fails, you could lose your personal property. So that’s, you know, that’s always kind of scary. I’m just like, Oh, I put my house in my business and go right off my whole house. Well, first of all, it’s based on how you use it. Uh, so if you get audited, they’re going to see how much space is actually just business. And if you’re like living in that house,
and it’s not all office space, then you can’t deduct your whole house. You can’t deduct personal living expenses. So, that’s one. It’s the other one I was thinking of. the deducting. that’s the other one was that the, they use the Augusta rule and, you know, rent your house to your business for two weeks and, and it’s tax free income. No, you’d actually have to vacate your house and use it for a business purpose.
Anthony Codispoti (38:02)
you
Diane Hagerty (38:02)
for two weeks. You’d actually have to, you like, I mean, your business would have to use it for two weeks and you can’t live there too. Can you fudge records? I suppose, but I’m not going to do that for you. So.
Anthony Codispoti (38:10)
So if I have a bedroom in my…
If I have a bedroom in my house
that has a desk at it that I work at, can I deduct a portion of my mortgage or the utilities?
Diane Hagerty (38:23)
Well, not your mortgage payment
because that’s between you and the bank, but you can depreciate a portion of your house and you can deduct a portion of the taxes and your mortgage interest and your utility bills. There’s a much easier way to do it rather than doing all that. Cause that’s a lot of math. About 15 years ago, 10 or 15 years ago, they changed it to a flat rate where you just take $5 a square foot up to 300 square feet in your home. And they don’t ask any questions.
at all. If you get audited, you’d have to probably show your work as to how you came up with 300 square feet or send a picture, but it’s pretty simple to deduct five dollars a square foot. So you get a $1,500 deduction for using a portion of your home and they really don’t ask any questions on that. ⁓
Anthony Codispoti (39:14)
Okay, that’s a new one for me. I learned something today. Bonus. ⁓
Diane Hagerty (39:19)
Yeah, but you do have to
be working at home. And if you rent an office and you kind of look like you’re in an office, it has to be your primary place of work. Yeah, it has to be your primary place of work. Yeah. So I don’t get the home office deduction either because I’m, I, even though I worked home a lot, I have an office that if people come to, so.
Anthony Codispoti (39:26)
so I can’t do both. I can’t do both.
Okay, there we go.
So what is it about your process that helps take some of that feeling of being overwhelmed away from your clients, overwhelmed by payroll, overwhelmed by bookkeeping, overwhelmed by compliance issues?
Diane Hagerty (39:55)
Well, I start out every call with what’s going on. Tell me what’s going on. And usually once they start, they, ⁓ I listen, you know, and sometimes I listen for a long time, you know, and they tell me everything that’s going on. I’ve had a lot of people, ⁓ tell me, I used to have a different office and I had a couch in there people would say, you know,
I come in and they like sit on the couch. The next thing you know, they’re laying back on the couch. They’re like, I feel like I’m at the psychiatrist. I was like, well, yeah, I kind of am. kind of figure out, you know, where your problems are coming from and figure out why you’re overwhelmed and kind of simplify it. ⁓ Figure out what we can do, get some actionable steps and make a plan going forward. And I have so many people come to me just for that, just, you know, to figure out.
you what’s a problem, what’s not a problem, what they should be scared of if they’re not, what they shouldn’t be scared of that they are scared of, which is usually exactly the way it is. Everybody’s afraid of, they’re going to send me to jail. I’m like, no, no, they’re going to take your money. They’re not going to send you to jail. Sending you to jail costs them money. They want money. One thing, money. ⁓ So yeah, they can, they can take your money.
Anthony Codispoti (41:12)
So is there not
a tax violation that could send people to jail?
Diane Hagerty (41:17)
there is, but you, has to be pretty egregious and it has to be outright that you intentionally tried to commit a crime and to fraud the United States government or the state government. ⁓ It has to be pretty egregious. You have to be, you know, running some kind of scam or I only have read one person go to jail. They weren’t my client.
It was a relative of my client that was kind of financially stuck with them. So I had the relative as you know, that, but anyway, it’s a long story.
Anthony Codispoti (41:55)
And what did they
do? I want to get an idea of what it takes to cross that line.
Diane Hagerty (41:59)
I
can’t really reveal a whole lot, but ⁓ they ran a, there’s many, many kinds of nonprofit organizations. So it wasn’t a charity, ⁓ things like ⁓ homeowners associations and private clubs and a lot of other things are charities. And this was something that I didn’t mention a different kind of nonprofit that’s not a charity, that is not a for-profit thing. And they were running one of those.
Anthony Codispoti (42:01)
Okay.
Diane Hagerty (42:28)
as ⁓ they were they were stealing a lot of money from people ⁓ saying they would get certain benefits they were using the money for things that was not what they said they were using it for and at the end of the day there was no money left to pay the taxes that they should have been paying on the money that you know was not used properly so yeah they were
basically running a scam and ⁓ not a nonprofit. And they got a lot of other people drug into it financially, especially a lot of the relatives. And I really felt bad for the relatives, ⁓ but he did wind up going to prison. And that was…
Anthony Codispoti (43:14)
No. Do you think it was
more the stealing money from people and not using for the correct thing? Or more of the not paying taxes on that?
Diane Hagerty (43:22)
Well,
they caught him because he wasn’t paying taxes. He went to jail for not paying taxes based on the fact that he scammed people out of money and used it for personal use. So basically all the money he was scamming became taxable income to him and that’s how they got him. And that’s basically how they got Al Capone too. That’s how they get you, you know, because I mean, if you’re going to steal money from people, that’s great, but you have to report it as income.
Anthony Codispoti (43:40)
Hockapong.
Diane Hagerty (43:50)
⁓ If you don’t and you’re living way outside your lifestyle
Anthony Codispoti (43:52)
Just to be clear people, don’t think
Diane meant that it’s actually great if you’re gonna steal money from people. I think it was just sort of an expression.
Diane Hagerty (43:59)
So yes, it’s not great to steal. No, don’t do that. Don’t
steal money. But if you decide that that’s how you want to live your life, ⁓ if you don’t report any income and don’t report that you’re living this luxurious lifestyle and you own a lot of real estate that you paid cash for and you own a lot of vehicles that are registered with state and have tags on them.
and you paid cash for them, you know, or wrote a check or whatever, not necessarily came in with green money. But I mean, if you’re not financed and you’re buying all this real estate and you’re buying all these cars and you’re buying all this stuff, you know, the government’s eventually going to wonder why is this person not filing a tax return if he owns three Lamborghinis that he has to pay for tags every year? Where’s he getting the money? And that’s
99 % of the time that’s how they bust people because they’re living a lifestyle that’s not supported by their tax returns they’re filing, or they’re just not filing at all. And that’s where the criminal charges come in. ⁓ When you’re intentionally defrauding the government, people that just forget to pay or forget to file, or they’re just scared, they’re not going to jail. They just want money.
Anthony Codispoti (45:08)
Gotcha. Let’s shift gears, Diane.
They’re just going to charge you a lot and penalties and interest.
Diane Hagerty (45:22)
And or, you know, you could have somebody like me to try to get you out of them too. So I’ve done that quite a bit too. So.
Anthony Codispoti (45:27)
Okay, there you go. That’s the lesson for today. Well, let’s shift gears.
Diane, I’d like to hear about a big challenge that you’ve worked through in your life, how you got through it, what you learn.
Diane Hagerty (45:36)
in my life?
Big challenge in my personal life ⁓ I’ve been through a lot of challenges. I was like I said earlier, you know, I was you know, I wasn’t a very Entrepreneurial teenager. I didn’t care much about anything or do anything So I kind of lived kind of a carefree lifestyle and that they got me in a lot of trouble ⁓ I had to get out of that trouble on my own and I decided I was gonna live a better life when I was about 19 years old I
Anthony Codispoti (45:42)
You can go personal, you can go professional.
Diane Hagerty (46:08)
I tried to do that. So I set my standards a little higher and ⁓ I met Prince Charming and ⁓ we had a good life together until we grew into very different people. ⁓ And we went in different directions. You know, we had kids, we had a business, had, know, everything was right except for we just, it just didn’t work anymore. ⁓ And when I went out on my own, I walked away with pretty much nothing.
Because I didn’t I didn’t want to fight about it ⁓ I figured it would just ruin everybody’s life if we just spent the next 14 years fighting over the kids So I pretty much walked away with nothing and had to start over with the shirt on my back ⁓ And that was that was a real challenge. That was a real challenge. There was other people involved ⁓ That you know was out to get me for some reason ⁓ that I still will never understand it seems like a lot of our employees and
you know, everybody that, you I saw every day, you know, when you live together, you work together, you run a business together, you have children together. It’s like you’re always together, you know, so we don’t have any separate friends or separate, you know, everything was together. And, uh, you know, I lost most of the friends. I, know, I just, uh, you know, I decided to look, play the long game and not throw a temper tantrum and get me, me now, now, now.
and try to just make everybody’s life a little bit easier by not fighting and just letting everybody have their way. ⁓ So it was a challenge. I only got to see my kids on the weekends sometimes. ⁓ You know, I was there for, you know, everything I could do. And I had, you know, kids with special needs that needed therapy and needed stuff and doctor’s appointments. And, you know, I still had to take care of all that without, you know, and making sure they had insurance and filling out all the forms and, without
really seeing them all that much. It was very challenging. So I had no money and nothing to start with. And I literally started from scratch with nothing. And I hadn’t had a job in years. I hadn’t finished college because we wound up buying a restaurant. Don’t buy a restaurant. So, you know, it was, it was crazy. It was crazy starting over with nothing at 35 years old. I had
zero. ⁓ And I wound up having to build myself up and set my standards a little higher, but going from, I haven’t had a job in years, how am going to make any money? How am going to feed myself? And some days it was really difficult. It was really difficult. I went back to school. ⁓ I finished. I went to, can I say names of things? Because it’s kind of relevant. OK, I went to University of Phoenix.
And, ⁓ since I was doing so good and they were like, okay, you’re in one of the top eight and you can compete for the valedictory speech when you graduate. And I was like, okay. So I wrote a speech about rising from the ashes and being a Phoenix. And of course I won and gave the valedictory speech, you know, and that was, you know, that was, you know, it took me like 10 years to really pull myself up to where I wasn’t struggling day to day.
Anthony Codispoti (49:23)
Very relevant.
Diane Hagerty (49:33)
⁓ to be able to pay the bills and make sure the rent was paid and, you know, not need help with anything. ⁓
Anthony Codispoti (49:40)
How did you get through
those early days? I mean, it sounds like everything was just sort of stripped away from you at once. Your marriage, your business, your family, your friends.
Diane Hagerty (49:46)
Yeah, I was angry.
Pretty much. Yeah. I was, I had a lot of anger, but I, ⁓ I had a punching dummy. did a lot of knuckle pushups. I got really strong. ⁓ I exercised every time I got mad. ⁓ and that was a lot. I, it was, it was really challenging. You know, I joined a church that was supportive for the most part, ⁓ for several years, you know, and they were kind of like the family, the emotional support I needed that kind of helped me out. really was.
grateful. I’m still friends with some of them now. ⁓ You know, it was it was a really small church. It was, know, everybody was like family. had holidays together and had dinner at each other’s houses and stuff like that. So it was a that helped a lot, you know, have an emotional support because you really you really can’t go through life alone. A lot of people try to, but you really you really need to find a place where you know, you can find your people and have people to give you emotional support.
have that, ooh, you said it, girl, know, something behind you, you know? You didn’t need him anyway, you know? ⁓
Anthony Codispoti (50:59)
That human support,
that human connection is so important. Yeah. Through all aspects of life, but especially when you’re going through something that trying.
Diane Hagerty (51:02)
Yeah, that’s it, you know.
Yeah. Which is, know, again, brings me back to what I do for a living is people come to me when they’re scared and need that emotional support. And, know, like, I try to be their people, you know, I try to be their people.
Anthony Codispoti (51:08)
When you
And when you think back
to that time, how do you feel now? And what’s your gut feeling?
Diane Hagerty (51:24)
My gut feeling, I’m not angry anymore. guess I’m, I’m kind of, yeah. Yeah. Cause I mean, we’re all still family. Maybe we all have grandkids now and we see each other on holidays and we grandparent together sorta. I mean, you know, it’s, it was, it was very difficult, but you know, I think I feel really like I’ve really accomplished something, you know, like I really, in my personal life, because I came from, you know, pretty rough background. had.
Anthony Codispoti (51:27)
The anger is gone now.
Diane Hagerty (51:53)
pretty rough teenage years, know, and I guess a lot of people didn’t expect me to, I don’t know, live this long or become anything. And people are always like, yeah, you’re so smart. You know, it’s a shame you’re from the hood, you know? It’s like, so.
Anthony Codispoti (52:10)
So what advice would you have for somebody else who’s listening right now that’s going through an emotionally trying time, like what you just described?
Diane Hagerty (52:20)
Don’t give up. ⁓ Find your people and don’t give up. ⁓ You just, you know, just get out of bed and do what you gotta do every day. And you know, some days it gets really bad and you feel like you don’t have anything you’re supposed to be doing. You find something. That was the hardest thing. I had a friend who was like, Diane, you’re always so.
busy. It’s like you don’t have time. It’s like you’re always doing something. You have all these people that need you and you’re always like, well, yeah, because if I don’t, you get depressed, man. You know, you got to be busy. You got to volunteer. You got to help people, you know, look outside yourself because if you’re all you’re doing is looking inside yourself, you just get depressed. You know, you can’t, you know, you got to, you got to keep going. You got to find a goal and anything, you know.
Even with cleaning up your house or getting your taxes paid. Yeah.
Anthony Codispoti (53:17)
So you got busy and you found a tribe.
Yeah, you found a way to add structure and purpose to each of your days. That sounds like it. Is that is that accurate? Yeah.
Diane Hagerty (53:29)
Yeah, yeah. And
a lot of it is, you know, around other people, you know, it’s like you have a neighbor that that needs help, you know. I mean, literally, like my downstairs neighbor is a Vietnam vet and he only qualifies for like home nursing like so many days a week and the other days he needs his bandage changed. I’ve been doing that for like a year. Just because he’s my neighbor. It’s like, why wouldn’t I do it? I mean, like, wouldn’t you?
You know, giving to others, you know, making life about other people around you is ⁓ far better than making it about yourself and how much can I make and how much can I succeed and how much can I get, you know, because I’ve built this life that I’m so happy with and most of it is helping others, you know, one way or another.
Anthony Codispoti (54:21)
Do you think you would be where you are and helping so many people in the way that you are if you hadn’t gone through that?
Diane Hagerty (54:30)
No, ⁓ no, no, this is all this is all born from my own adversity. Yeah, this is this is all born from I’ve been there and I know how hard it is.
And I wouldn’t have gotten out it if I didn’t have the people that would occasionally reach out and give me a hand for no reason that I couldn’t pay back. When I was a teenager, there was a couple of people’s moms that were like, you really got to pull your life together. And church people that were like, you know.
I can help you get your car fixed, you know, like when I didn’t expect it and there’s no way I could have paid them back. I’ve had several people, you know, just help out for no reason, you know, and you you got to pay that back.
Anthony Codispoti (55:24)
I love that. So as you look forward now for grassroots taxes, what are you excited about? Where are you going? Growth, new services, new initiatives, new projects.
Diane Hagerty (55:39)
Well, I should have more content available on my website in the next few weeks. So maybe by the time people are listening, you can see additional content on my website so you can access my videos and my blogs on any subject just by searching and you can see all of my content on that. Hopefully that’ll be done. I want to make more content this year. I’ve been actually off being grandma for…
the past six months or so. I really haven’t made any new content since July. So my studio is set up, ready to go. I’m going to go do some microphone tests today and hopefully I will be recording again tomorrow. But we’ll see. ⁓ More content, more speaking engagements. I really want to be out in the public more if anybody is looking for a good public speaker for starting businesses. This would be me. I can have my smiling face there.
Anthony Codispoti (56:34)
Diane Haggerty, yeah.
Diane Hagerty (56:36)
⁓ I love teaching live classes. ⁓ People always come up to me after be like, this is the funnest class I’ve ever taken in my life. And I’m like,
My head just keeps growing.
Anthony Codispoti (56:49)
So
what’s your superpower, Diane? How would you characterize that?
Diane Hagerty (56:56)
⁓ that’s, that’s funny that you ask me that because people keep buying me Wonder Woman stuff. And like, as like gifts, like, like, here are Wonder Woman for Wonder Woman. I don’t know how I’ll shuffle a Wonder Woman stuff in my office that people buy me. ⁓ what is my superpower of simplifying what the government wants? Like understanding, being able to, I read really fast.
So being able to like read a thousand pages of legislation and break it down and be like, okay, this is what it is. And, and be able to convey that to people or, you know, just the basics of what the state says is this, but the federal says this, but you got to get a city business license and then you need insurance, which is a state problem. You know, like, you know, trying to sift it all out to this is what you need to do. A B C, you know, making people have action plans, what to do next. ⁓
Or even with like, you know, if you didn’t pay your taxes, this is what you need to do. You need to file your taxes and then you need to set up a payment plan and we need to do this, you know, setting an order of things, trying to just basically simplify things that are really confusing.
Anthony Codispoti (58:08)
That’s a great, ⁓ a great superpower and a great service to most people to be able to take the complicated and make it simple, make it digestible. So I’ve just got one more question for you today, Diane, but before I ask it, I want to do three quick things. First of all, anybody wants to get in touch with Diane, two things grassroots taxes.com. And by the time this interview is published, it’s going to be a brand new website with some new content on there.
and it looked great. You guys should go check it out. You can also email her directly dianne at grassrootstaxes.com. ⁓ Also as a reminder for my company, ⁓ you can be the hero that informs your clients. You can give more employees access to therapist doctors and prescription meds that I know it’s hard to believe actually puts more money into the company’s pocket. So you can reach out to us at addbackbenefits.com.
And if you can take just a moment, pause for a second, go to your favorite podcast app, leave us a question, a comment, a review that really helps other people find the podcast. I appreciate that. And so last question for you, Diane, a year from now, what’s something big that you hope to be celebrating?
Diane Hagerty (59:23)
Wow.
Okay, I didn’t see that question coming. Okay, what do I want to be doing? What do I want to be celebrating in a year?
Anthony Codispoti (59:31)
Yeah, something
big. You’ve got a big goal. Year from now, fist pumping in the air. You’re super excited. What is that thing that you’ve accomplished?
Diane Hagerty (59:36)
I’m actually thinking, mean, like, I mean,
personal wise, I’m thinking about buying a house this year, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen. But, ⁓ let’s, let’s see. ⁓ but other than that, I mean, just, you know, I’m pretty much a full-time, you know, grandma with a, a, in in a part-time, I have to go to work every day. No, I work a lot.
But I feel like a full-time grandma. So I just celebrate my my grandkids, you know, I just I love playing with them every day and just watching them grow up. They’re they’re awesome. They’re the light of my life. And I am that grandma and everybody’s like, Diane, you hate everybody. You’re like, no, grandkids definitely change your life and make you a happier person. I tell you that. They’re definitely the cherry on top of having to put up with teenagers.
Anthony Codispoti (1:00:24)
They find a special warm place in your heart, don’t they?
Well, Diane Haggerty from Grassroots Taxes, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you.
Diane Hagerty (1:00:40)
Thanks for having me.
Anthony Codispoti (1:00:43)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.
REFERENCES
Email: dianne@grassrootstaxes.com
LinkedIn: Diane Hagerty
Company: Grassroots Taxes
Website: grassrootstaxes.com