- November 23, 2024
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Insurance brokers Tom and Donna Murray have merged with Michael Testoni, of The Tax Advisory Group LLC.
After 10 years of working out of their house, husband and wife Tom and Donna Murray, of Murray and Murray Insurance PA, have found a new home in the offices of Michael Testoni’s accounting firm, The Tax Advisory Group LLC.
“That was his junk room,” Donna Murray said, laughing and pointing with her thumb down the hallway. “Now it’s our office.”
Around 2005, the couple’s business base shifted from Northern Florida to Palm Coast, so they relocated accordingly. And after years of informally sharing referrals with Testoni, the trio has made their partnership official, forming the Global Asset Protection Group, in Palm Coast’s West Pointe Plaza.
“We believe (America) has changed forever,” Testoni said. “We’re going to be trying to provide Americans with the ability to have asset protection, investments and foreign accounts.”
More locally, the Global Asset Protection Group will meet as a trio with all of its clients, whether he or she comes in for strictly health insurance or just tax assistance.
“When we meet a client, everybody meets the client,” Testoni said. “There’s a natural link between investments and tax. … I hook up people with Medicare, and we do long-term care for seniors. … It all interlinks.”
Working together in every meeting, Donna Murray said, helps to highlight the crossover between insurance and taxes.
Take Tropical Smoothie, for example. When the restaurant’s current owners moved from New York to Palm Coast, they contacted the Murrays for health insurance, mentioning during their consultation that they were also looking to open a business.
So the Murrays connected them with Testoni, who specializes in restaurants. The Murrays set up the company’s insurances and Testoni established their tax rolls.
“This is how we expand our business,” Murray said. “We have been able to put together something that no one else offers. … We don’t want to call it a one-stop shop, but it really is.”
In nearby units are also lawyers and payroll people whom the Global Asset Protection Group work with to help businesses launch.
Another major aspect of the company’s mission is to maintain a strong community presence. But to Murray, who is also president of the United Way Women’s Initiative and the new president of Chicks with Cans, that is nothing new.
“I’m an advocate for my clients,” she said. “I make sure the bills are paid. I make sure that someone holds their hand.”
She also teaches ballet at Grand Haven, is on the board of Grand Haven’s Women’s Club and is the president of the City Repertory Theatre, which Testoni is currently working for free to make a 501(c)(3) — normally a $2,500 to $5,000 charge.
According to Murray, community awareness has not only helped her company keep its clients for the long haul, but it has also helped her network, which is huge, considering she and her husband’s commissions have seen a 50% cut since the recession. And the same as in business, she has big plans.
For this year’s annual Team Feed Flagler food drive, she is looking to double Chicks with Cans’ 2011 collection to donate about 140,000 tons.
She has also doubled the Women’s Initiative’s fundraising events for the year and started a program to move the Team Feed Flagler trophy to each Chicks with Cans business owner’s store, accompanied with a sign-up sheet, so that new people will constantly see it and register to help out.
The Global Asset Protection Group has also volunteered its services to Palm Coast’s Business Assistance Center.
“One reason we do that has to do with our belief in helping and watching the community grow,” Testoni said. “We have to do that in our own backyard.”
With Donna Murray taking something of a presidential role in the Global Asset Protections Group, and Tom and Testoni more “technicians” — “She’s the legs and we’re the concrete,” Testoni said — the new partnership aims at starting a trend in Palm Coast. They want to make business referrals and community service cool.
“Our objective is qualitative,” Testoni said. “We believe that being able to not only give our customers value-added service but loving them, in the long term, the numbers will follow.”
And at least for now, they’re happy with their current size — happy to become a “big fish in a small pond,” in order to maintain real relationships with their clients.
“The only way to really get people back to work is for people to start helping one another,” Testoni said.
“It’s not a matter of waiting on the government or getting a pay back. You have to start giving a little more.”
For more, call 446-6620.
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