Eric Green started a seven-figure side hustle by accident. As a tax attorney, he would often host free seminars about complex tax resolution issues, like penalty abatements and liens, as a way to generate referrals for his practice. Soon, the interest in his seminars turned into requests for formal training, and Green began recording his teachings to be purchased online. His digital business, TaxRep, was born, and it quickly became apparent that his homespun instructional videos filled a gap in the market.
Today, TaxRep boasts 250 hours of professionally produced, on-demand training, accessible to 700 members who pay a monthly subscription fee. But the road to this multimillion-dollar destination was not at all linear, and Green says it took years—and plenty of soul-searching—to get there.
“I’d love to think... I had a grand plan for all of this,” Green says. “It [was] just one thing [that] led to the next.”
The Tipping Point
By 2019, Green was miserable. His family was healthy and his business was booming, but he was working every weekend and late into the night, damaging his relationships and his own well-being in the process. A consultant friend noticed this and reached out to help, asking Green to clarify what he wanted his day-to-day life and professional practice to look like. When Green didn’t have an answer, his friend delivered a blunt truth.
“He said, ‘Until you answer those questions, nobody can help you,'” Green says.
That interaction revolutionized Green’s approach to growing his business. Rather than grinding long hours at the office, he took a step back and built a new strategy rooted in visualization and actionable tasks. He now implements this approach in his own life to great success and shares it with his TaxRep members.
All of it, he says, begins with the non-negotiable first step of starting with the end in mind.
Drive in Reverse
Get specific about what you hope to achieve, as well as what you want your typical day to look like. Green insists this is the key to building a successful strategy in any industry. Do you want to grow your business, or scale it back for retirement? Does a collaborative office environment inspire you, or do you dream of working remotely? Would you prefer to have a fully trained support staff, or keep overhead costs low with a lean team?
“If you can describe what you want, we’ll try to figure out a way to get there,” Green says.
Knowing the destination allows you to work backwards with a guaranteed ending, rather than launching and following every shiny object along the way in the hopes that it will lead somewhere.
Green likens this approach to storyboarding a movie, where each scene has to propel the main characters toward a very specific ending, and anything that doesn’t pertain to the central storyline must be cut. For Green, that meant upgrading his customer experience modules with onboarding systems and adding a help desk to enhance user satisfaction and speed up new member engagement but turning down a profitable opportunity in the real estate space.
“If it’s not going to move the goal forward, it’s got to go,” he says. “Work hard, but... work hard with a plan, with a goal in place.”
Dream Big
Once you visualize your destination, it’s time to dream bigger. For an entrepreneur who wants to increase revenue, for example, if the goal is to improve net sales by 10%, Green says they should attempt to double their total net sales instead.
“It forces you to think outside the box, rather than just do more of what you’re doing,” he says. Setting wildly ambitious goals—in addition to smaller, more attainable ones—can spur brainstorming sessions that have outsized impacts. Simply by asking “what would it take” to reach those dream-sized objectives can push new ideas to the surface.
You may not actually achieve those loftier ambitions. But you’ll likely still accomplish something impressive along the way—and maybe even exceed your original goal.
Audit Relentlessly
Few business processes should be set in stone, Green says. Take time at least twice a year to run an audit of the systems you have in place and be willing to trim, evaluate or ax any that aren’t working. Green conducts these audits as full-day, formal events with his team to analyze metrics, identify areas of improvement, set big goals and innovate new ways to capitalize on revenue drivers.
He also recommends bringing in a consultant who specializes in your field to illuminate your team’s blind spots and bring the best ideas to light. This type of change management won’t always be comfortable. In fact, Green says this can be a “brutal exercise” because it sometimes reveals unpleasant truths about redundancy in departments or personnel who aren’t moving the needle. But the alternative is a stagnant or declining business.
“It has to be intentional versus, ‘I’ll keep working, and it’ll just work itself out,'” he says.
Put Yourself Out There
Green says the final step is to combat imposter syndrome.
In the earliest days of TaxRep, when his offering included only 20 hours of training, a major tax software company invited him into a partnership. It was a turning point for TaxRep, but Green almost backed out of the deal for fear that he hadn’t earned the right to be on the same level as the biggest players in the field.
Before he could turn it down, his mentor reminded him that this is what he had worked for, and encouraged him to be brave enough to open the door when opportunity knocked.
“You do need to put yourself out there at some point,” Green says. “Just take it step-by-step, chunk this thing out, break it down and get to the next thing.”
This article was first published in the May 2026 issue of SUCCESS Digital Edition. Read the full issue for FREE right here.
