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ZacTax is a financial analysis firm that helps city officials understand their revenue streams and make smarter financial choices. Today, Chuck is joined by its founders, Chad Janicek and Patrick Lawler. They explain how they work effectively with local governments and how their work is helping drive a cultural shift toward stronger and more productive cities.

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  Chuck Marohn 0:00

  Hey, everybody. This is Chuck Marone. Welcome back to the strong towns podcast. We've been talking budgets recently. We just got done with a member drive and are switching back into budget season. There are so many ridiculous, crazy, interesting things going on at the city level, and there's one group that is neck deep in all of this stuff. Zach tax is out of Texas. They're a firm that does financial analysis work with cities. I've got Chad janicek And Patrick lawyer here to chat with me today. Chad, Patrick, welcome to the strongman's podcast. Thank you,

  Chad Janicek 0:46

  Chuck. Very excited to be here, especially reciprocating. We had you on our podcast a few months ago, and it's really good to get the chance to talk with you again.

  Chuck Marohn 0:55

  It was very nice, Patrick. I feel like this is way overdue.

  Patrick Lawler 0:58

  It's been a while, but for sure, yeah, excited to be here, and a lot of cool things going on that we get to talk about, and some of the stuff that you guys have done, we're excited to have a conversation on

  Chuck Marohn 1:07

  Well, you guys are doing fascinating work. I would like to have our audience know a little bit about you. You started this firm, Zach tax, and I know you've gone through all the iterations that that that we've gone through at strong towns, was like, here's kind of what we're doing, and here's what we figured out, and here's how that changes. A lot of lessons, what prompted you to go down this path, and maybe what kind of key lesson got you to where you're at today, the work that you're doing with cities and that kind of thing. Chad, you want to start, it's kind of

  Chad Janicek 1:43

  hard to see what prompted us to go down this path, because I think that we we always had the idea Patrick and I met in graduate school trying to get a Master of Public Administration, and, you know, we hit it off pretty quickly, but we both had kind of an entrepreneurial spirit, and so even though we knew we were going to get into local government, we always kind of had our eye on our exit strategy, sort of like when we get out. How can we, we kind of do this on a on a broader scale? So we always kind of had our eyes on on different opportunities, and we went through a lot of iterations, a lot of different things or attempts to, you know, to find either a product or a service that we could provide. But it wasn't really until we started working together in a city that we kind of hit on on our flagship product, which is, which is Zach tax. We do sales tax and property tax analytics for cities, mostly across Texas. But we're also moving out west into California, Utah and Colorado, which has been fun and interesting too, but I don't know, we just always kind of had this idea that we would probably use the experience we had in local government, but branch out into our own thing, and try to help not just one community, but hundreds of communities, if possible. Patrick,

  Chuck Marohn 2:47

  talk about some of the some of the lessons that you've learned working with cities. I worked for an engineering firm for like, five years, and then I ran my own shop for a dozen years, and I was a transformed person by the end, because working with government is way different than working in the private sector or anything like that, and you all are doing, I would say, almost like the intimate work that can be uncomfortable at times. You know, you're pointing out things that are working, things that aren't working. Tell me some of the key lessons that got you where you're at today,

  Patrick Lawler 3:19

  right? I think, I think one of the early lessons we learned in working with city governments, even though we were in city management, was when you try to change a role or maybe eliminate a position. Typically, it was very difficult to work in that field, right? We built a software package before Zach tax that basically we called Park man, and it was this great software. And just so everybody knows Chad codes everything, right? I'm the operations guy. Chad's the brain. I like to call us pinky in the brain. He doesn't really love that very much. I kind of sit back and say, Well, you know, brain, we're going to take over the world. But the reality of it is, is like we started to try to do this, and we built this software package and learned some really valuable lessons there. The software package would have eliminated basically the supervisor role in parks departments would have automated work orders and equipment on trucks and efficiency, you know, who was faster replacing sprinkler heads, who was faster at fixing jungle gym equipment, things like that? Right? And we went out there, we won an award in Texas. The Texas Parks and Rec Association actually gave us an award for the technology, and we still couldn't sell it, because the people we were selling it to were probably not going to be working very much longer in that job if we did it. So we kind of learned that we've, we've gone into some of like the HR functions, which are very, you know, rigid. I guess you would say HR and government is just very tough to get through. And so we were working in a city, and we just kind of landed on Zach tax, because we were working in a city that was sales tax dependent, and we needed to know, what did we make money on, and what