My Story

 

My most recent experience was working for Intuit, first as a Turbo Tax Live Expert and then as a QuickBooks Live Clean-Up Bookkeeper. Prior to that, I freelanced for many years and worked closely with a local bookkeeping and consulting firm with a largely immigrant client base. 

I started my career in taxes with H&R Block in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1997. I quickly developed an aptitude for successfully interviewing my clients thoroughly and sensitively. I worked as a floater my second year as a tax preparer, and got to work in every franchise office and gained a huge and varied experience. During that season I met the supervisor of the Main Street Little Rock office who recommended to management that I replace him the following year.

The next year it was mine. I never enjoyed any job the way I did working for H&R Black and running my downtown office. My area clients were loyal and looked for me every year. I had the opportunity to watch some of my clients bloom in their small businesses directly from following my advice.

I went back to school to pursue a degree in Accounting, thinking I would become a CPA. I earned my Associate's degree in Accounting from Pulaski Technical College in 2001. I graduated with Honors, Phi Theta Kappa. I also worked for two semesters as an accounting and business math tutor, and I loved every bit of it.

I was disappointed after graduation to find that my degree didn't translate to the local job market. Every job that didn't require earning the CPA certification only required a high school diploma and paid barely more than minimum wage.

I did enroll in the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to keep working on my Bachelor's degree. Still, when the twin towers came down, I left and went home and sat outside in the sun with my five children watching the birds and the squirrels to escape the scaremongering news, and realized that my place now was to stay at home and raise my kids.

Over the years, in addition to a lot of freelance taxes and bookkeeping, I also took a few seasonal and temporary jobs. I worked for a some CPA firms, I was a full charge bookkeeper for a some time, and I even worked for the State of Arkansas as a tax collector.

I never gave up taxes entirely; I always helped someone every year, sometimes several someone's. But when my youngest kids started college, I decided to go back to school as well. It seems from my story that the natural thing for me to study would be accounting, wouldn't it? But no. I spent the last three years managing my daughter's singing career, making inroads into the art community, and discovering my previously suppressed talents.

When I started in 2016, I had no clear idea what I wanted to major in, so I didn't declare a major. I just took every class that sounded like fun. I enrolled in creative writing, ancient history, guitar lessons, film photography, choir, music appreciation, and photoshop classes. By the end of my second semester, I had settled on photography and studio art. I was having a great time.

After I graduated from National Park college with my second associate's degree, this time in art, while living full-time in my RV. I transferred to Henderson State University. I fell in love with pottery but finished strong in photography with a clear idea of who I wanted to be as an artist and creator. However, I missed out on some important things because I finished up in the middle of the global coronavirus pandemic. Namely, graduation and my senior show.

However, I took my full-time boondocking lifestyle to Texas and finally got to winter on the beach. After graduation, I was looking for a grad school program. I had intended to study alternative processes in film photography in a fully-funded program and teach. But with the pandemic, those kinds of programs weren't available to me.

I enrolled in a master's in teaching program at Liberty University online. I had to sell my RV and rent an apartment to make that work. But my health had taken a turn for the worse on the road over the winter when my RV kept breaking down, sometimes spending weeks stranded in a parking lot without propane or electricity. I barely survived the winter storm that knocked out power to most of Texas, including cell phone service, because I was stranded behind an AutoZone in Texas City.

I thought that moving into an apartment would fix everything. Still, the added stress of graduate school was too much, and at the beginning of my third semester, I ended up with a case of pneumonia that spiraled out of control until I was in kidney and then heart failure. My youngest daughter came to Texas and helped me pack up my apartment to return to Arkansas, I thought, maybe to die. But I worked hard at juicing and eliminating sugar from my diet, and I got better.

Having lost my confidence in my ability to make a living in art, I turned to my old love of taxes. I had been freelancing in tax and bookkeeping for many years, but I took a chance and signed on with Intuit, Inc. as a remote Tax Expert. My QuickBooks skills and high test scores made me attractive to the Multi Domain department. I cross-trained in QuickBooks for the clean-up team. Our job was to "clean up" a small business's books for the low, low price of $500 in 30 days or less to ready the client to move onto monthly bookkeeping. This was precisely in my wheelhouse. I love nothing better than delving into messed-up books and fixing them!

While I worked for QuickBooks, I earned my Pro Advisor Certificate and became a Certified Bookkeeper. Fortunately for you, the position with Intuit was only seasonal. Because I am available once again for freelance work, you get to benefit from my experience! Today, I am accepting clients in bookkeeping and payroll and I will expand my business to include tax preparation in the future.