MIKE ORNELAS, EA Platinum Mastermind Member Spotlight
Not many tax resolution specialists can trace their careers all the way back to their childhood. Mike Ornelas, EA, owner of Sacramento Tax Resolution, is one who can. His parents had a tax prep business, and Mike showed an interest and aptitude for the work. “I was 8 years old when I first started. My mom promised me candy in exchange for doing work with entering the expenses from a client into Peachtree,” he recalls. “When I was a teenager, my parents would regularly ask me to do tax or bookkeeping tasks for them.” Mike was home-schooled, so he could help out in the business when his school and homework were done. In the summers, he worked full time. After college, Mike settled into the family business full time. He was still in his early 20s when he began looking for his own niche in the tax world. He didn’t like the technical aspects of the business, so he asked his dad if there was something else he could do to benefit the business. That something turned out to be marketing. “My dad’s entire marketing campaign consisted of sending a letter to 10,000 new homeowners in late December, early January. He would also send a letter to a couple thousand new business owners, and he would get some clients from that. That was the extent of his marketing campaigns,” Mike explains. Mike got the go-ahead to look into marketing for the family business. It was the beginning of a mission that continues to this day. Mike started his quest by seeking out “the gurus” in the tax and accounting industry. That search led him to a book by Dan Kennedy, where he learned about Chauncey
Hutter, who was the guru for growing a family tax prep business. Mike decided to travel cross-country to attend a Hutter event. Mike shares that he learned a lot at that event and told his dad, “We need to raise our prices.”When Mike started looking into the client files, he found a tremendous opportunity to upsell. Mike says, “Some needed bookkeeping, and some of them were in tax trouble. That first year alone, we added about $50,000 to the bottom line.” Mike decided to target tax problem clients, and he found a resource in the corner of his dad’s office. This was during the ‘90s, and Mike’s dad had attended a Jack McDonough seminar and brought back a binder from the event with information for getting tax resolution clients. Mike looked into taking a course with McDonough but learned that he’d moved on to work with tax attorneys. So, Mike sought out another guru: Larry Lawler. It was at a Lawler event that Mike finally connected with the mentor who would help him triple his income in just two years, and that was Michael Rozbruch. “During the seminar, they were talking about how to help clients resolve their tax issues, and 99.9% of what they were saying was going over my head because I had no experience,” Mike says. “I remember that Larry kept pointing to this guy, also named Mike, in the back of the room. This Mike had all the answers.” It was 2008, and Michael Rozbruch was still running a very successful tax resolution practice. Mike (Ornelas) was quick to let Roz know that if he ever
Mike and Amelia Ornelas
started a coaching group, he wanted to be one of his clients.
Fast forward to 2018, and Mike had gone out on his own. He needed to build his business, and in 2014 when Roz Strategies launched, Mike purchased the Tax Resolution System and Toolkit, and in 2020, he joined the Platinum Mastermind. But it was the coaching call Mike had with The Roz Man that changed his business forever. “Rozbruch said, ‘You need to work on your numbers, and you need to work on your closing rate because your closing rate is abysmal.’ I took his advice to heart,” Mike says, “and the business — it’s grown. We made $956,000 last year in revenue. So, essentially, in two years since joining the coaching group, we’ve tripled our revenue!” Mike says he doesn’t understand people who won’t make the investment in the Roz Strategies coaching program. “You can’t argue with results,” Mike says. “Michael’s advice and insight and guidance have been the fuel that has really ignited our growth. The results speak for themselves.” Now that Mike has followed the program, it has given him the “margin” in his life he needs to spend quality time with his family as well as pursue personal interests that include watching movies in the theater, going to the beach, and volunteering with his church, which he calls his passion project. “Having my own business has allowed me to free up my time,” Mike says. “It’s been really rewarding.”
4 • www.rozstrategies.com
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