$200M valuation in just 5 years of franchising!

After an innocent conversation about Refund Anticipation Loans with a friend, I start Instant Refund Tax Service as a sophomore at the University of Cincinnati, using credit cards in a vacated H&R Block office.  Nearly 1000 customers return making it a successful tax season.  Location, location, location!!!

After graduating from the University of Cincinnati I grow the company from 8 stores to 24 stores all in the Greater Cincinnati area.  I liked to say I "stole" all my customers from H&R Block by offering better customer service, speedier refunds and various attractive incentives like car give aways.  In addition, I offered signing bonuses and double salary to recruit H&R Block tax preparers who brought business with them.  I grew the business from 1000 returns to 35,000 tax returns in just six years.

Only six years after its founding, I decide to sell the company for $3M ($6M in todays dollars).  I couldn't turn down the opportunity to become a cash millionaire at 26 years old.  Looking back I wish I would of kept it and started franchising in 2000.   

I negotiated a generous five year, ten mile non compete.  I moved 30 miles north of Cincinnati to Dayton, Ohio and plowed my new found wealth into my new venture, Instant Tax Service.  My thought was if I could turn a few thousand dollars of credit into $3M, what could I build with $3M?

I learned it was a lot more difficult managing a company with offices in multiple cities.  Ultimately I decided franchising offered the best solution for sustainable measured growth.  I recruited the VP of Franchising from a competitor and launched head first into franchising.  I set everything in motion to open nearly 1400 stores over the next four years.

Instant Tax Service becomes Entrepreneur Magazines fastest growing franchisor with 500+ new locations making the company with over 1500 locations.

We were growing very fast and our $15million loan from 5/3 bank was not enough to get us to where I wanted to go so I hired investment bankers, Duff & Phelps to sell all or part of my company.  We received about two dozen offers, some of which were from large banks like Bank of America.

Do you know what's more difficult than recruiting, training and retaining 70+ full time employees?  Having to let them go which is what I had to do to survive a debilitating recession.  My brother who is a West Point graduate taught me what they teach soldiers in battle.  Move on solider, move on.

The Department of Justice Tax Division sued me and my companies to force a shut down.  My lawyers worked out a deal where I could sell my company to a competitor but I choose to fight and go to trial.  Even with the lawsuit over my head, I continued to grow the business and even managed to raise $25M for a holiday loan program for my company Tax Tree and my companies had the largest net income that I had ever generated; nearly $12M

The Department of Justice uses discovery from the civil trial to indict criminally and sought a 30 year incarceration without a plea deal extended.  I choose an attorney that believed me and spent nearly $2millon defending myself vigorously.  The time between indictment and sentencing was six years, a majority of which I was on home confinement.  I used the time to raise my one and only son, learn philosophy and assist my attorneys to prepare for my trial.  The hard work paid off, my sentence is what you would consider a "win" against the government by ultimately being sentenced to a year and a day.

I served 6 months at FCI Morgantown, a prison camp labeled "Club Fed" where I lost nearly 40 pounds (from 210lbs to 173lbs), read 40 amazing books and reversed my diabetes from an A1C of 7.1 to 5.7.  I met incredibly talented and motivated individuals who some made mistakes and others who maintained their innocence.  I found the difference in a stiff sentence verses a light one wasn't the severity of the crime, it was the efficacy of the representation they choose.   For that reason, I will forever be grateful to my attorney Ben Dusing and his team.  

Eternally grateful for all the experiences in my life, good and bad I and started a consulting company that can help entrepreneurs overcome their individually unique obstacles.  “Nothing can alarm or harass him anymore, nothing can move him; for he has cut all the thousand filaments of willing which hold us bound to the world and which, as appetite, fear, envy, and rage, drag us…in constant pain. He now looks back, calm and smiling, upon the illusions of this world, which were once able to move and agonize even in his mind, but which now stand before him as indifferently as chessmen when the game is ended."