The Center Place Accounting
Donna Ray, the proprietor of The Center Place Accounting & Consulting Companies, and I’ve a buddy in widespread — Paula Nuñez, the proprietor of the Tampa Metropolis Dance Heart and the founding father of the Tampa Metropolis Ballet.
“I was the chief director of Tampa Metropolis Ballet,” Donna says, “and they’re at present nonetheless one in all my purchasers. I nonetheless deal with their bookkeeping and accounting.”
Donna says she first launched The Center Place through the pandemic, “whereas I used to be nonetheless the chief director of the ballet, as a result of I’ve two youngsters and their college was closed, so I wanted to dwelling college them and earn a living from home. I additionally was taking good care of my father, who has since handed away, so it simply made sense to be as impartial as I could possibly be primarily based on the wants of my household.”
She provides, “I despatched out a giant e mail blast at the moment to folks I’ve identified across the Tampa Bay space for a really very long time that my companies had been obtainable and that appeared to be all that it took.”
The concept for her firm didn’t simply come out of nowhere, nonetheless. Donna has a complete of 30 years of expertise working in accounting.
After a decade of working within the Cayman Islands as an IT director with Cox Lumber Co. and Senior Accounting and later as mission supervisor with Constancy Group of Firms, she returned to the U.S., which was nonetheless recovering from the monetary crash of 2008. She enrolled on the College of South Florida and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) diploma in Girls’s and Gender Research.
After that, Donna says, “I discovered myself working for nonprofits for the primary time. I accepted a job on the Helen Gordon Davis Heart for Girls as director of the Girls’s Enterprise Heart in Hyde Park, the place I labored with lots of of entrepreneurs in any respect ranges of expertise and with a wide range of wants — from writing enterprise plans and constructing monetary projections to accessing capital. That’s the place the Tampa Metropolis Ballet discovered me.” Each nonprofits additionally prolonged Donna’s abilities with grant writing, reporting and constructing relationships with neighborhood stakeholders and company companions, in addition to with metropolis, county, state and federal funding authorities.
She provides that since then, she has served, “lots of feminine entrepreneurs, serving to them both launch or with their enterprise. However, my focus was on finance and accounting, and that was form of my specialty, serving to folks construct enterprise plans, monetary statements and projections.”
A Various Vary Of Expertise
She brings all of that have along with her to The Center Place, “and I’ve been actually fortunate as a result of I’ve all kinds of purchasers. Some are in for-profit industries, some are nonprofit. I additionally work with a regulation agency and a few retail corporations.”
Donna says she supplies an expert degree of service that goes past simply bookkeeping.
“I focus quite a bit on software program implementation,” she says. “One nonprofit contract [I have] proper now was implementing seven totally different distinctive expertise stacks for them, and implementing Quickbooks On-line and payroll and mainly automating their whole group.”
Initially from Chicago, Donna moved to the Tampa Bay space within the Nineteen Eighties. She grew up as an aspiring younger dancer, “however I had a really sensible father who stated, ‘In the event you break your leg, you could have a backup.’ In order a youngster, she began out in enterprise administration and, at age 19, as a authorized secretary at a regulation agency in Clearwater.
Whereas her intensive skilled profession was centered on accounting, IT, mission and nonprofit administration, Donna continued to check and dance with an area Tampa dance firm and in addition carried out with the Cayman Islands Nationwide Dance Firm, the place she additionally taught ballet and Gyrokinesis, a motion remedy particularly designed for dancers. After returning to Florida, she taught on the Patel Conservatory for Subsequent Technology Ballet summer season program.
Donna was thrilled when Paula Nuñez approached her needing assist for the Tampa Metropolis Ballet. “I assumed, ‘This can be a excellent alternative to work in an trade I really like and supply my enterprise experience to assist TCB develop and to assist skilled dancers in Tampa,’” she says.
She additionally works with Diaz Shafer, P.A. an immigration regulation agency in Tampa that was on Quickbooks Desktop however wished to modify to Quickbooks On-line, “so I did that for them.”
Donna additionally has achieved contract work for Davis Faculty in Rwanda, Africa, in addition to for Drong Ngur Jangchubling, a Tibetan Buddhist Heart in Wesley Chapel, and Skate Park of Tampa: She’s additionally the Board treasurer of Dance Tampa Bay, led by Shana Corrada, E.D.
Donna supplies full-service month-to-month accounting companies for companies of all sizes and industries, together with payroll, gross sales tax submitting and software program integrations. “Quite a lot of purchasers first come to me to deal with their bookkeeping,” Donna says, “However I additionally do software program implementation, monetary projections and can assist you develop your enterprise by providing monetary recommendation from a novel perspective. For more information, name (813) 391-6890 or go to TheMiddlePlace.com.—GN
Celly De Freitas Of Clear-It!
Clear-it proprietor Celly de Freitas has been cleansing properties and companies within the New Tampa, Wesley Chapel and surrounding areas for the final 26 years.
However, she says, that wasn’t all the time the plan. She was a instructor in her native nation of Brazil and deliberate to proceed that profession when Celly and her husband, Rogério Buchner de Freitas, moved to the Tampa Bay space, “but it surely was very laborious for me to go to varsity (USF) right here, as a result of I didn’t converse English as effectively then as I do now,” she says. “I ended up leaving USF to go to high school for the skincare enterprise.”
As a way to assist pay for that education, she began cleansing homes and, regardless that she did find yourself opening a skincare spa, “I used to be making much more cash cleansing homes, so I let the spa go after about two years,” Celly (above left) says.
Right this moment, not solely does this Wesley Chapel resident converse and perceive English (in addition to Spanish, Italian and her native Portuguese) fluently — regardless of nonetheless having a reasonably thick accent — she has a workforce of twelve Brazilian girls working along with her, all of whom additionally converse and perceive English, Spanish and Portuguese.
“I inform everybody who works for me that they’ve to have the ability to talk with purchasers in English,” Celly says. “You might have to have the ability to perceive what the purchasers need and do no matter they ask in relation to cleansing their properties.”
She says she often makes use of a “workforce” method, sending no less than two and typically three members of her workforce to every job. “It’s rather more environment friendly this manner,” she says. “We will clear much more locations after we work collectively.”
Celly, who has been an American citizen for about 20 years, isn’t often really working with the groups — she’s the one coordinating the schedules and checking up on all of her staff to verify they’re getting to every location on time (and calling or texting the purchasers when one in all “my ladies” is operating late). “However, when I’ve somebody out sick or they’re caught someplace, I’ll nonetheless go and assist out,” she says. “And, I attempt to be as versatile as doable when a shopper wants to alter their schedule, too.”
The Covid-19 pandemic undoubtedly took a toll on Celly’s enterprise, however says she was capable of survive as a result of she acquired a PPP (Paycheck Safety Program) mortgage from the federal government, “and continued to pay all of my staff who didn’t return to Brazil, regardless that they weren’t capable of work for a number of months. With out that cash, I might need misplaced all of my purchasers.”
Clear-it provides (and is licensed to supply) residential and industrial (“We’re licensed to do medical and dental clinics, however not hospitals,” Celly says) cleansing companies, together with month-to-month, bi-weekly and weekly companies, one-time cleans and move-in and move-out cleans. “Now we have wonderful references, too.,” she says.
Most of Clear-it’s purchasers are in Wesley Chapel, New Tampa, Lutz and Land O’Lakes, she says, “however we do journey just a little additional for some purchasers, particularly these one-time cleansing purchasers.”
She provides, “We actually concentrate on these move-in cleans. We often find yourself getting the [new homeowners] as purchasers as a result of we do such an excellent job.”
For extra details about Clear-it and/or a free job quote, name (813) 505-0431. — GN
