Interview with Jassen Bowman: His Start in Tax Resolution and Marketing

Canopy was excited to chat with Jassen Bowman, a tax firm growth coach, tax resolution marketing expert, author, and consultant. You can see a lot of his work at Taxmarketinghq.com. We split the interview up into a few parts - here is Part 1 on how Jassen became a tax resolution marketing expert.

How did you get started in tax resolution and marketing?

I've always been a marketing person. Even when I was in the navy, I had a side business developing websites back in the late 90s. When the tech bubble was growing, I was building good, old-fashioned brochure style websites for local small businesses where the navy had me stationed. 

I ran the marketing side for a major tax resolution firm -  we did a lot of online marketing, telemarketing, and direct mail. Within 17 months, I grew the business by 353%. 

When I went into private practice in October of 2010, three things happened: 1) I was doing tax resolution work on my own, 2) I launched my own data service providing the tax lien data to tax resolution firms for marketing purposes, and 3) I started consulting other tax resolution companies. 

By early 2012, I had started the taxmarketinghq.com blog and that's when I started doing more of the broader training, books, and courses. 

How do you get your marketing ideas and strategies for tax resolution?

I brought a lot of my marketing knowledge into tax resolution from other industries that I had studied.

One of the problems that business owners have is that they only look at what is going on in their own industry, which is a ridiculous mistake to make. 

Accountants, attorneys, enrolled agents - they should not be looking at what other accountants, attorneys, and EAs are doing for marketing. Because if they look at what other tax professionals are doing for marketing, and if they do the same thing, they are going to get the same results - which is next to nothing.

It's best to take the best ideas from other industries and apply those ideas to the industry that you are in. Most CPAs and tax attorneys would never think to look at the world of ecommerce, for example.

It's important to study and understand what Ebay is doing, what Amazon is doing, what tech startups are doing in the online space. There is a lot to be learned from their customer acquisition techniques and how they do branding and marketing. Business owners need to take that knowledge and apply it to their own industry.

I've never had an original idea a day in my life. Everything comes from looking at other industries.

As an example, I am a tax professional, but I belong to a coaching program for dentists. Because dentists and chiropractors are the 2 fields within the overall health community that have to market their services and have to be more creative, because these are often more optional services. Those doctors have to be marketers and there is a lot to be learned from how successful chiropractors and dentists do marketing. I get lot of great ideas from that program.

Want more insights from Jansen? Check out Interview with Jassen Bowman: Communicating with Tax Resolution Clients.