Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Aleksander Dyo Managing Director of Wealth Excel

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Aleksander stands out in the financial landscape for his deep expertise in complex Qualified Plan models and innovative Financed Charitable Gifting techniques. Catering to a sophisticated clientele of business leaders, high-wage earners, and high-net-worth individuals, Aleksander has masterfully orchestrated tax savings exceeding $60 million.With a career spanning over a decade as a wealth creation strategist, Aleksander is on a mission to empower his clients to safeguard and enhance their wealth using Advanced Pension Plans and Charitable Gift Financing strategies. As a dynamic serial entrepreneur, seasoned venture investor, and trusted advisor, Aleksander applies his extensive firsthand experience to offer practical, impactful wealth-building strategies.Aleksander is the mastermind behind the Pre-Tax Wealth Creation Blueprint—a comprehensive, step-by-step framework designed to significantly boost tax savings, reinforce asset protection, and accelerate personal wealth growth.His fluency in English, Russian, and Korean allows him to serve a diverse range of clients effectively. Aleksander is known for his straightforward personality, results-driven focus, and out-of-the-box thinking. These qualities have cemented his reputation as a “financial surgeon” of creative solutions for wealth creation, making him a sought-after strategist in the financial domain.Learn more: https://wealth-excel.com/ | https://cgf101.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-aleksander-dyo-managing-director-of-wealth-excel

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with this Alexander Gio, who's the managing director of Wealth Excel. Alexander, welcome to the program. Thank you very much, Mike. Pleasure to meet you and be on your show. Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you. I always love learning about different people's perspectives and industry and how you serve your client.

So let's get started with your story and background and how did you get involved in the financial services industry? Yeah, surely. Thanks very much, Mike again. I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show. So, well, I've been in business. Wow, this year marks my 21st anniversary. I can't believe that if time flies by so fast, I just remember that I join one firm and then quick enough became independent and voila, 20 years past. I'm still doing what I'm doing and I'm so passionate about it. And in the past 21 years, all I can say is that I've served so many amazing people, my clients and or collaboration advisors and CPAs that I worked with.

And over the course of this 21 years, we started to focus on two areas or in other words, expertise of ours that. we helped our clients with mainly focusing on the tax savings and charitable giving. And as a result, our focus became to specialize in two areas. One would be advanced pension plans where we provide comprehensive third-party administration services and asset management. And second strategy that we specialize in would be finance charitable giving. And we handle a, everything from underwriting to execution of the loan and life insurance collateral for our clients. So as I mentioned, we work mainly directly with the clients and or collaboratively with CPAs, insurance agents, financial and investment advisors.

And in that capacity, we are acting almost as an extension of their services to help their clients with those verticals such as tax saving strategies and charitable giving. And I would say our role is to enhance clients' perspective and build pre-tax wealth and also cater to these advisors to enhance their offerings by leveraging our expertise to help their clients to achieve great of tax savings. So that's kind of who we are and what we do, Mike. You know, I heard tax and tax savings several times, and that's such a huge focus because you can have amassed a huge amount of money for retirement. But if you have done it in a tax favored way, then you're getting ready to face a lot of, you know, obstacles that way. So I love that you focus on that. And another phrase that

jumped out at me is I think we've all heard of the phrase charitable giving, but talk a little bit about what financed charitable giving is. Oh, yes. I am fascinated about the fact that not a lot of people aware of charitable gift financing strategy. However, a lot of people already, believe it or not, doing some form of finance charitable giving. And the concept is fairly straightforward. And I think the easiest way to explain it without going into the weeds of its technicalities is looking at the world of finance in general. So anything from your home, I would say investment properties, cars, equipment services, vacation, anything can be financed.

And I always ask a question then, why not charitable gifts? and in fact, a lot of people who donate various causes already use very common form of financing called credit card. And the classical example I give all the time, if you watch a commercial over Red Cross and you're compelled to give and you conveniently pull out your credit card and say, okay, here's a credit card number, please take however much, let's say 10,000. believe it or not, you just use the form of a finance charitable giving because it's not you who's sending a cash or even writing a check, but in this modern society of world that we live in,

conveniently using a credit card, temporarily borrowing from a credit card company is okay. And IRS recognizes the fact that even though you borrow the money, you're entitled to a deduction at the time of you borrowing and giving to a charity, because charity recognizes that gift and issues a receipt in your name, not in the name of a credit card, but then how you deal with a credit card later, whether you repay next month or you go on an installment payments or you never repay it back, that is, well, of course,

in the latter situation, you will have consequences. However, IRS does not challenge of the fact how you repay the credit card, when you repay the credit card for the purposes of a deduction. You were entitled to a deduction at the time of you borrowing and giving, not to wait until the debt is repaid. So, and this is exactly the revenue ruling 7838, which been, this strategy been around since 1978 in one form or another, it's just never been sort of programmed in a way of dealing with these specialty lenders who only lend for the purposes of giving, but we all use one or another already finance charitable giving. So that's kind of how I would describe it.

And of course, what we do, we do a full comprehensive approach of entire, systemization of how this finance charitable giving in a larger scale for folks who make a million dollars plus of AGI can capitalize on 60% right off to finance up to 90% of that gift. And that gift amount qualifies for charitable deduction, as well know, up to 60% of AGI, which reduces the client's taxable income substantially. So that is the power of leveraging, Mike. Yeah, it really is. And I'm curious what the strategy is as far as that debt that you're borrowing,

because obviously this is not the right plan for every single person you work with. So it's special people, and we get that. But then are your clients tending to leave that debt on there for a while, or are they paying that debt off in a shorter period of time? Oh, very good question. The loan comes with very lucrative terms. So number one, it's no personal guarantee. It's a non-recourse loan.

There is a collateral in place called the life insurance. And the repayment of the loan is uniquely structured so that life insurance contract is used to pay the loan sometime in the future because the loan comes as a balloon note, which effectively will be triggered repayment at the time of a death. So we use the life insurance to allow and enable client to permanently have safety net just in case whenever God forbid happens to them and they pass away, the life insurance death benefit kicks in and immediately repays the loan. So that is the period of repayment. Yes.

Yeah, it doesn't have to pay ongoingly. They're not required to pay interest every year. So the interest is simply added to the principle of the loan. And at some time in the future, life insurance, death benefit will be used to repay the loan. I love it. I'm familiar with permanent life insurance strategies. And we don't need to get into the weeds of it. But I love how you tied the money.

that together because a lot of times people think, oh, I've got insurance, I'm good to go. But if you can use it in this really advanced way that you're talking about, it gives multiple benefits. So I think that's huge. So when you're talking with your clients, what are some of the common challenges that they face? And how is your firm providing solutions for that? Oh, yeah, and not a good question. So a lot of times we hear, oh, it's too good to be true. How come I've never heard of this? Why would any lender allow us to borrow and what's in it for them? Who are the lenders? Why, if the strategy had been since 1978, my CPA, for instance, never brought it up

or, in fact, my other financial advisors. And I always say, look, there are so many strategies that you may not be aware of. It doesn't mean that this strategy is either, A, too good to be true. B, are in some shape, of form, grayish, absolutely not. We're dealing with the law, and the law is very particular and specific. It's revenue ruling 78, 38. It's not the interpretation of the law. It's not strategy in the way.

It's not how you do it, what you do. It's the law. And if so long as we specifically abide by the law and follow the steps that the law allows us to do you as a potential client entitled to a tax deduction. There is nothing wrong with it. Almost the same way you use the credit card. Nobody asks you a question about why did you use the credit card for the purposes of giving? Same way here. Why would anybody ask why these lender or that lender would lend you for the purposes of giving? It's no question asked. But I would say it boils down to maybe top five type of situations when the clients ask.

And my answers are like top five would be, well, the qualifying parameters, if you will, of clients, it's $1 million plus of AGI. And it's a limited pool to begin with. Not a lot of people make the kind of money that we're talking about to make sense of for this point. particular strategy. Number two, I would say, even though we deal with these type of clients who make a million dollars, but they're not necessarily maybe charitably inclined. Because, well, that's how the world is. Some people are compelled to give. Some people are just absolutely not.

There's nothing wrong with it. But that particular aspect would automatically rule out them out of the strategy because one of the conditions for this strategy to work, they must be charitably inclined. This is essentially the cornerstone of a strategy. That's what it begins with. Number three, I would say time constraints because these individuals often lead very busy lives, as we all know. And they may not simply have time to explore or maybe like research different giving and tax saving strategies. They rely on the resource. that they already have built around them or maybe go to those advisors that they trust enough. But those advisors are not equipped maybe with more advanced type of strategies.

So there are many, many reasons and they simply don't want to invest their time in dealing with this type of sophisticated strategies. Number four, I would say maybe like habit and comfort because we're all creatures of habit and we are accustomed to their maybe, well, them I would say, current financial practices and are certainly reluctant to change. So some of them are very much open, but many of them are like, you know what, I'm okay and I simply don't want to make waves and create possible paths for IRS to audit my books, which is misconception to begin with. But, But that is usually in common what the clients would say.

And at the end of the day, I think it boils out to the education. And that's what I'm doing. And with a group such as the ERT, I think it's a perfect example where me being as a specialist in these two areas, one of which would be this finance shared book giving, we just need to do a better job of educating potential prospects, clients, and about the benefits and possibilities of structurally. giving strategy. So that's how I would probably describe it, Mike. Yeah, 100% I love it. And I think that when people say it sounds too good to be true, show me the proof, and you can pull up hundreds of years of use of this financial instrument, because I know that people have used a

permanent life insurance contract for many, many financial tools for so long. So when you can point to the tax code, point to the use from decades and decades, it really helped. people feel better. Can you think of an example of when you've been working with the client and your firm really made a big impact in their financial well-being using one of your strategies? Oh, yeah, we face this every day, but just to further your explanation about the validity of a transaction, this strategy comes with actually before we do anything for the client, they would consult with a tax attorney. And the tax attorney, when it comes to sophistication of the strategy, would provide them a written tax opinion letter. And that tax opinion letter not only covers all of the

laws and any pending cases, if there are any, any cases in the court that resulted in any type of outcome. And by the way, this strategy had zero negative outcomes. in any court settings, which is good to know. Therefore, the tax opinion letter comes with so-called highest confidence opinion letter, which essentially loosely speaking, but in legal terms, I'm not obviously a lawyer, but the lawyers say it's a will opinion, meaning the IRS will accept the strategy as a valid transaction because of the fact that all boxes are checked. So A, the confirmable note agreement between the client and the lender, B, the actual funding of the charity. C, charity confirms the

receipt of the funds and issuing the charitable gift receipt. And finally, obviously, the client adopting that charitable gift receipt and filing their tax return. So every single purpose for the reasons to prove that this transaction is a kosher and 100% bulletproof in the way that everything is confirmable. So the client receives that peace of mind to confirm the validity of a transaction. They also have ability to confirm from a legal standpoint of why and how and so on forth on the transaction side. And only then we kind of go into the needy, greedy of underwriting and so on and so forth. Now, to address your question when it comes to helping clients, we deal with

very interesting group of clients. No kidding about that, because I would say the ideal client profile is someone who is a charitably inclined, B, adjusted gross income of $1 million or more, liquid net worth of $2 million or more, and total net worth $5 million plus. So to begin with, it's a limited pool, but by definition it's a very interesting group, yet very humble group. And we can go over the strategies and the steps that it take and the time. timeline associated with those steps. I kid you're not. Most of the time, a lot of people say, I wish I met you five years ago. Last year, three years ago, I could have saved so much money

in taxes, number one. And I could have made such a bigger impact in the community. I could have amplified my gift 10 times more than I have actually gifted. all of these very positive comments by the time they understand the strategy, they fully bet this strategy and feel very confident and comfortable with the strategy, that's all they say, as if they kind of regretted the fact that they didn't have invested enough time to look into what ifs and what out there that may give them this kind of amplification. and gratitude the torres of increasing their gift. And of course, it comes with the tax deduction anyways to save on taxes massively.

So I can't give exact specific case because all of these cases have one thing in common. And I just described just a few components of that one thing in common is gratitude. And their willingness from that point on to say. Wow, I did something really profound and I really love it. And they tend to continue and renew this program year after year, year after year. And that's why our renewal rate of clients coming back to us and doing it year after year is averaging about 75%. Mike. Wow.

That says a lot. When you can say 75% renewal rate and those people are saying, I wish I had come to you soon. that shows that they're very pleased with the process and comfortable and confidence. So I think that is spectacular, Alexander. If someone is interested in learning more about what you guys do and reaching out and connecting with you, what's the best way that they can do that? Yeah, thank you very much. So we are always open to new clients in a way to help them to understand about the strategy,

see it themselves, and really comprehend the power of this strategy. And the best way to contact us would be A, by going to our website. Our website name is wealth-excell.com or by calling us at 213-302-8,000, 213-302-8,000, and request information about

finance charitable giving and we will be gladly to show them what the strategy is. Or in fact, they can go to our specific lending page called CGF101.com. C. Charlie G. George F. Frank 101.com. And it would give them the full spectrum of information about charitable give financing and then further they can contact us and have a conversation. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been a real pleasure talking with you, Alexander. Thank you, Mike. And it was pleasure to meet you as well and be on a show. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.com.com

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