About Taz

I’ve never really fit into one professional box

About a 5-minute read

I studied accounting, built my career in start-ups, and have worked across finance, operations, systems, technology, projects and problem-solving. The common thread has always been figuring out what’s actually going on, understanding what’s needed, and then doing something useful about it.

That’s ultimately how TR Support Services came about.

Why TR Support Services exists

When I started TR Support Services in 2023, I thought I needed to package what I did into something easy to explain and sell. So I focused on websites and digital systems.

Then I started talking to women about their businesses, and working with them.

They might have needed a website, but they also needed help with their bookkeeping. Or choosing and setting up systems. Or organizing a growing workload. Or researching something they didn’t have the time or expertise to figure out themselves.

Sometimes they knew exactly what they wanted. Other times they needed information, another perspective and some good questions to help them make a decision.

As I worked with more women, I started to understand the gap I was actually filling: growing businesses that need experienced support but aren’t quite ready for permanent staff or a collection of specialized providers.

TR Support Services has evolved because I’ve listened to what my clients actually need. And I expect it will continue to.

The work I do now

Since starting TR Support Services, I’ve worked with:

I’ve built and rebuilt websites that have helped clients move forward with their businesses, pursue opportunities, contracts and jobs. I’ve set up books with sensible charts of accounts based on how businesses are structured and what they need for accurate tax and GST/HST reporting. I’ve designed media and marketing materials including newsletters, brochures and flyers.

I’ve also had plenty of initial calls with prospective clients that started as conversations to understand what they needed so I could scope and quote the work, and turned into brainstorming, clarity, priorities and actionable to-do lists. Eventually, my clients realized that process was valuable in its own right and I started offering Clarity Sessions.

Increasingly, I’m also working alongside business owners on an ongoing basis: crunching numbers, organizing information, keeping track of priorities and tasks, solving problems and simply making the load lighter so they have more capacity for the work that only they can do.

I learn something from every client I work with. I get genuinely invested in their businesses and what they’re trying to achieve, and that doesn’t disappear when a project ends.

In fact, there’s something slightly bittersweet about the temporary nature of much of my work: I love working with my clients, but I also love helping them move forward to the point where they don’t need me anymore.

I love working with my clients, but I also love helping them move forward to the point where they don’t need me anymore.

There’s a lot behind TR Support Services

I studied B.Compt through the University of South Africa (UNISA) and did my articles outside public practice at the Automobile Association of South Africa. I have fond memories of driving around the Kyalami Race Track, where the AA was headquartered, auditing advertising signage!

I love numbers and data because they tell stories. Give me a pile of information and I want to organize it, understand what it’s telling us, find the patterns and work out what we can do with it.

I also spent more than a decade working in telecommunications start-ups in South Africa. My work crossed finance, operations, projects, sales, systems, data, technical support, process improvement and change.

And that isn’t an isolated story. My telecom start-up years are full of stories about solving difficult problems, building things from scratch and, most importantly, working with some pretty incredible people.

How I think about work

I’m curious. I ask a lot of questions.

I like understanding what is happening before deciding what should happen next. I collect information, connect dots, spot patterns and look at problems from different angles. Then I want to turn that thinking into something practical.

Technology is part of that, and increasingly that includes AI.

I use AI in my own business and in client work where it makes sense, from research and problem-solving to building Google Workspace applications using AppSheet and Apps Script. I also help clients understand where AI might be useful to them and how they can use it more effectively.

But using AI responsibly matters too. I consider privacy, what client information is being shared and whether AI is appropriate for the work at all. My clients can choose to limit or completely exclude the use of AI in their work with me.

For me, AI is another tool: understand what it can do, understand its limitations and implications, and then make an informed decision about whether and how to use it.