How a 35-year consulting veteran organized her business and got her time back with Zoho Solo

Featured Solopreneur

Kathy Montella is the founder and sole consultant at Paradigm Evaluations, a firm that supports grant-funded organizations with needs assessments, program evaluations, and data-driven strategies to drive positive community outcomes. She has been doing this work for over 35 years and, like many solopreneurs in the US, is currently working past retirement age.

"I will never fully retire. I love what I do too much," Montella told us.

She sees Paradigm Evaluations as her way of better supporting herself financially while also paying that support forward to the communities she serves in her local area. With a focus on nonprofit, tribal, and government organizations that rely heavily on demonstrating program success for continued funding, Montella provides the community-based insights and project planning guidance they need to not only stay operational but achieve sustainable growth and impact.

The Challenge

First and foremost, Montella's work at Paradigm Evaluations is dependent on outcomes. That has always been true, but as public funding gets tighter, she told us that it's even more imperative to be able to demonstrate success, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness for programs to qualify for grants. Not to mention that the job market itself has become more competitive.

Before finding Zoho, Montella was running Paradigm Evaluations primarily through Excel. She had tried software programs in the past, but they were either discontinued or too cumbersome for her to manage without feeling like she needed an accountant. Excel was enough to run her business for a while, but as the amount of work she took on increased, she ended up needing a more organized way to record her monthly work and invoice clients.

She found herself paying for QuickBooks but still doing large tasks, like her yearly taxes, by hand. "I would print off all my statements for the year, put them in a spreadsheet, and try to add everything up," Montella noted. This took a lot of time that she could have otherwise been spending on her clients or expanding her service offerings.

As most solopreneurs do, Montella wears many hats. While Paradigm Evaluations is her main focus, she also takes on outside analyst work and adjunct teaching positions at local universities. This meant that she had multiple disparate projects to keep track of, and she found that she would miss things occasionally because there was no centralized place where she could view all of her tasks. She wanted a program where she could track these outside tasks alongside the needs of her business without having to switch applications.

The Solution

When Montella originally found Zoho, she didn't start with Zoho Solo. She began with apps like Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books. What she appreciated most was that they all had free versions that she could try before deciding whether a purchase was worth it. What prevented her from going all in on the multi-app model wasn't that they weren't meeting her needs. Instead, it was the fact that they were not built to cater to solopreneurs.

"At one point, I think I had five different Zoho products on my screen, and I didn't like jumping around from program to program," Montella explained. She realized she needed a simpler interface where she could get the features she needed most from the different Zoho apps but from one location. Zoho Solo fit this need perfectly.

The fact that Zoho Solo also had a true free version was a huge selling point for Kathy, who has since transitioned to a paid version to get more from the application and help support its development. "It felt like honesty," she said, comparing it to other apps that force users to enter a credit card number and sign up for a trial. It helped her feel more engaged with and welcomed right from the start. "You know what you have is good and you let people decide for themselves, and I appreciate that," she continued. "We don't have a lot of choices these days, and it's nice to have one."

Implementation was surprisingly easy for Montella. She appreciated the mobile-first design and was surprised to see that the UI wasn't overly crowded with features she didn't need like some other applications. "There's no learning curve," she commented. Everything she needed from the program was right there on her device.

She built out her client list in Solo's Contacts module first. Currently, she does work for five clients at Paradigm Evaluations, all with individual projects that she invoices for. Then she built a comprehensive task list, linking tasks to specific clients so she could better track what work she was doing and for whom. Her typical billing scheme is a flat monthly fee based on estimated hours, and she maps tasks to the month on the invoice so clients can track what work was included in their flat rate.

For expenses that go beyond what was estimated for the month, Montella uses the Expenses feature to associate them with a client and add them to an individual month's invoice. Invoices come with a shareable link, allowing Montella to send them to clients via email or text. Included is a link to pay through the client's preferred payment gateway, making the process simple for Montella's customers as well.

Benefits & ROI

Zoho Solo has given Montella the organizational tools to pivot between projects and meet client demands in a more structured, timely manner. Tracking tasks is easier, invoicing is faster, and there is a centralized record of work she can refer to in order to provide a more contextual experience to her clients and better track her financials.

This has made her services more competitive and given her the bandwidth to take on new projects that she may not have been able to before. Not to mention that Montella was originally just using Solo to track her work at Paradigm Evaluations. Now, she puts all of her work into Solo, including for hourly positions, which has made her more productive and organized across the board.

This sentiment was also echoed after experience with Zoho Solo's customer support. "Anytime I have a question, I always get a good and thoughtful response," she noted. This has helped her feel like supporting solopreneurs and small businesses is something Zoho genuinely cares about and that her feedback will be listened to as she continues to expand her use of Solo.

Lastly, Montella reminded us that the benefits of a mobile-first application that is user-friendly enough for someone her age to pick it up and run with it cannot be overstated. "I have been learning for over 70 years. I don't want to have to learn anymore, I just want to do. And the way Zoho Solo is set up, I can just do," she commented. One of the reasons she became a solopreneur in the first place was that she didn't want to be bound to a time clock or to a desk.

Looking Forward

Montella is looking forward to taking advantage of more features in Zoho Solo as 2026 progresses. After transferring away from Zoho Books in 2025 because it felt like more than what she needed, she started doing her taxes by hand. This year, she has transitioned to tracking all of her business expenses in Zoho Solo instead for easier filing in 2027.

One challenge she still has to overcome as a professional service provider is balancing scheduling across all the different calendars her clients use. She keeps track of her appointments in Zoho Calendar, so she is looking forward to the upcoming integration between Zoho Calendar and Zoho Solo.

Zoho Solo is looking to integrate Zoho Payments in the near future as well, which will give Montella another option for receiving quick and easy payment from clients.

Beyond Zoho Solo, Montella has branched out into a couple of other Zoho apps. She has replaced Survey Monkey with Zoho Survey, and she has started using Zoho Meeting instead of Zoom or Teams. Together with Zoho Solo at the core of her ecosystem, she is hoping to see both productivity gains and reduced business costs during the next year as a result of the switch.