Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Chase Insogna CEO and Founder of Insogna CPA

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Chase Insogna is an expert in tax planning and financial advisory with over two decades of experience. As the founder and president of Insogna CPA in Austin, Texas, his growing experienced team help transform the financial futures of many valued clients through strategic tax planning and advisory services, with a large vertical in e-commerce businesses. His firm is renowned for being proactive, communicating timely, transparent pricing, and exceptional client service. Recognized recently by the Inc. 5000 Region List for 4 years , Chase and his team are dedicated to helping business owners achieve their own financial freedom, sharing practical advice and insights, and leveraging expertise for business growth.Learn More: https://insognacpa.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-chase-insogna-ceo-and-founder-of-insogna-cpa

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 us, Chase and Sonia, who's the CEO and founder of Insanya CPA. Chase, welcome to the program. Yeah, thanks for having me, Mike. Hey, I'm excited to talk to you because I know you work with a very specific target audience.

So I always love when companies really define and delineate, here's who we serve. So I want to dive into all of that. But give us a little bit of your story and background and how did you get into the financial services industry? Yeah, long story short, I've always been entrepreneurial and just never knew what business that would be. but, you know, after getting my CPA in 2009, I started this firm in 2011 with the premise on just helping business owners bridge the gap between having a bookkeeper and having a tax person. And those two are never incentivized to talk to each other. That was the original premise. And then from there, you know, we've just basically scaled and gotten better advisory, more like taxes, tax planning, budget forecasting, you know,

weekly cash flow with larger clients. And really add that kind of value add that most firms don't do with real-time communication. You can call our office any time. We have Slack channels for our monthly clients. And so we embrace technology. We have always been like paperless. My team's all around the country. Our clients are all around the country.

While we have a large focus in e-commerce that we've been doing. doing since I've been doing it since the early 2000s. It's, you know, we work with all different types of business owners that are looking for that proactive advisory and tax planning that into 1231 that most, you know, firms aren't communicating timely with them. You know, that's a really, really good point. Proactive, not reactive. And I feel like most firms, like you've articulated, they wait to you to free. you to come in and here's your documents and your forms and they fill in the blanks and they pull up last year's tax return and they hoard it over to this year and then they change the

numbers to be what reflects this year and it's like okay next and and that's doing the job but that's like being an order taker in in a sales sense but what you just described is like okay let's do all that and that's where we begin our job you know where other CPA firms or bookkeepers or tax preparers they leave off there we start there and we look for ways. We ask you questions. We find ways to make things better. What is the first place you start with a business owner in that realm to go? Where's some low-hanging fruit?

Yeah, great question. I mean, you know, certainly we like to help with the transactional work because it allows us to see the data in real time. And we were data entering one to three business days, reconciling the end of the month. So we can see very quickly our team of 20 people currently, you know, will react and communicate with a client. If things go on, their business is up or down, you know, things pop out at us, you know, is this going to be the same thing for the rest of the year, et cetera? But, you know, some low-hanging fruit when I have an initial conversation with somebody, you know, usually it's their structure. You know, are you an S-Corp? Should you be an S-Corp? I mean, I just got off a call where, you know, the person was already considering an S-Corp, but they were rolling it into a holding company.

and an S-Corp can't own an S-Corp, so this business that he reached out to should be a partnership so that his S-Corp can own it. So that's really the first initial questions of structure, and then from there, tax planning around it and making sure you're getting the best benefit for your money. So that's how we start kind of our initial advisory is structure. Yeah, that's a good point,

because you've got to have that baseline like should you be a S or an LLC taxed as an S. I mean, all the variations for that benefit. What's what you mentioned you have a little bit of a specialty with e-commerce businesses, not that you're exclusive to them, but what are some of the uniquenesses of an e-commerce business versus a traditional maybe brick and mortar? Yeah, again, great question. It really just depends on obviously every business is different. I mean, majority, you know, are.

If you're either per charging products, you know, LLC, likely an escort makes sense for you. If you've got, you know, if you operate a warehouse, you know, we've got employees there. It might make sense to separate that out and lease it to yourself. So you separate some liability. You know, and if you're on the East Coast, West Coast, you know, it might make sense to be a C-Corp, just depending on taxes and, you know, how all that rolls up to your 1040 personal return. So, you know, obviously different by everybody, but that structure question is what I initially dig into because it really does drive how our first step of advising and proactively

tax planning with you begins. Yeah, that's a super good point. Also, you mentioned about cash flow, you know, like periodic meetings with businesses that have cash flow, probably an e-commerce store or certain types of brick-and-mortar, you're going to want to have those kind of conversations to go, okay, maybe annually is not enough, maybe even quarterly is not enough. What's the frequency that you recommend kind of sitting down in or Zoom to Zoom, having that kind of a conversation to make sure the cash flow is going to the places that it needs to go? Yeah, yeah, obviously, I keep saying it depends on the business, but it's definitely true. But, you know, with larger clients, I mean, if you're doing seven, eight figures of e-com,

For example, we're likely monthly, if not weekly. And that is really, you know, again, data entering in real time coming out with weekly forecasts so you can plan your cash appropriately. Obviously, you've got inventory to buy. You know, it's very tricky when you get into purchasing and then you're waiting, you know, two, three, four, six plus months to maybe sell it in Q4. And then with the data, you know, it's not just about cash flow, but also about operations too. So we get into more where we have a virtual dashboard and send that out. And we really

dig into the data so you can then work around operating your business financially and properly. So for example, if we're looking at what are your top 10 states, what are your top 10 cities, and those the top 10 products you sell in each one. If you're working with PPC ads or you're paying for Amazon ads, for example, you would want to know what your what your main products are in each of those areas or even by address in a subset of a city so that you can you can we then advise on like what you should be looking at to spend your money on versus just advertising that product in the United States for example or in a state for example drilling down you know specifically so we it's not just financial for us it's more operational too

is where my controller team comes into play and and has those weekly monthly with the business owners. So they really know where to spend their money in properly. Yeah. That's a great point. And it makes me think if you are having

that frequency of conversations and notice a slight pivot or change that needs to be made, it's so much easier to make it then versus quarterly or annually where it's like, oh, we've got to backtrack and we've got to make big changes

because this tiny little, you know, pivot here and pivot there. That's easy to do. very true um i mean with my you know my own business here i mean running cpa firm so i mean i you know i put a budget together annually but you know i kind of look at it as the year changes um you know maybe it's labor changes maybe it's purchases and just kind of you know use it as a guide basically to how you know my year is going to look um and then you know also manage my teams around that too and make sure we're on track for meeting our goals.

So, you know, it's not just sending out a P&L like most people do. I mean, that's kind of the old school. You know, here's your financials. You know, good luck. I started off, you know, explaining them. I like to say we like to explain it like a fifth grader can understand. So we try to dump down the technical language. So anybody can understand what it means because that's really important.

when you're trying to grow a business to understand what the numbers mean. And so that's what I think our team does really well. That's initially what I started off years ago with the business doing with clients. And so, you know, we're actively engaged in their business. You know, we want to help them. We want to be proactive. So if they have things they're thinking about, we want to be that first call. They're making and say, hey, how this is going to affect me?

You know, what does this look like for taxes? it doesn't make sense to purchase of this year, next year, hold off. All of these kind of variables are things we're thinking about. And then we get into obviously tax planning. You know, if you're making a bunch of money and you've got a bunch of tax owed, you know, what type of vehicles, you know, do we recommend you do? We're not a financial advising firm, but we have referrals. And, you know, is it a wildlife fund that you, you know, get 60, 70% back in the first year?

is it a boiling gas lease where you're getting almost 100% back on your cash you're putting in as a tax deduction and an active status. So, you know, just as an example, like those are kind of like the fourth, fifth step of where we would go once we get engaged. But it really all starts from the transactional making sure your numbers are clean, which is why we like to reconcile them. So we know the financials are accurate that we're advising on at the end of the day. I love that. It's very sequential and makes total sense, which is like the engineering accounting person that you are. So that's awesome. You mentioned team a couple times. Talk a little bit about the team because I venture to say that you've got like your internal team of your bookkeeping tax, that kind of thing. And then the external like what you just mentioned where, hey, you know,

let's consider some other alternatives of investment or opportunities. That's not us, but we've got someone on our team that we bring in. that we bring up to speed. How does that all of that look? Yeah, so our team, you know, our business is singular in Sony CPA, but it's not just me running the show here with a couple of helpers. They're a little bit different because I've always operated as a business, not like a lifestyle.

And like a lot of EPA firms do. So we have a team of 20 people. I mean, I have an accounting team, I have a tax team, I have a controller team. And it depends on the type of conversation. depends on the expertise that will roll in somebody in the conversation to help you. And then when it comes to things that we don't do in-house,

then we have our recommended referrals or recommendations that we would make and go have a conversation with these people most of the time. We're not full disclosure. We're not making a referral for people we're referring things out to. And so we're really just doing it because we, we how we approach helping people as if we were you and your business, you know, what would we do if we were in your shoes? And so that's kind of how we approach the advice and our expertise and say, you know, the things we highly recommend you, you know, you consider because this is what we

would do if we were you. And you've got a section on your website and you've mentioned this a second ago, but about building wealth. And of course, you don't really. really think of a CPA bookkeeping tax firm with building wealth. But what you probably are looking at it is you're going, I'm knee deep in your numbers. I see all kinds of opportunity, which could be, hey, what if we could adjust this or cash flow that or use some of this money this way and to create some tax benefits, all of those things you mentioned. But talk a little bit about the building wealth side of things because I've always thought of it like the bucket with holes in it and the bucket with holes in it.

You know, you can't plug up all the buckets, all the holes because, you know, you got to pay taxes. You got to, you know, there's going to be some leakage. But if you can find what's falling through the cracks and rediver that into building wealth, now you're really cooking. So where do you guys start the focus on building wealth when you're working with your business owners? Yeah, great question. I mean, and again, I approach it as if I were in your.

shoes in your business. Same thing what I do with my own money. My philosophy is, you know, save and put away for a rainy day as you build your business. So at the heart of what we do, that's what we're trying to achieve for clients. So, you know, instead of, you know, Forbes had a thing where like 80% of small businesses never sell. So think about, you know, what's your exit strategy? Is this a lifestyle a business? Are you looking to exit in three to five years or 10 years? You're looking to sell it? Is a private equity? Is a private owner? I mean, generally, most people don't get their business sold, even though they want to. And then those that have been running in 20 plus years, and now they're kind of at the end and they're worn out, so to speak, and they want to exit the business, you know,

are you going to get the blood, sweat, and tear value that you put into it? So my philosophy is, you know, grow and save as you're growing your business. And so at the end of that rope, let's call it 20 years, I'm not counting on hoping to sell my business and hoping somebody is going to buy it for what I think it's worth. At the end of that rope, I will have achieved, you know, financial independence because I've been saving along the way and investing it properly and growing it through different investment vehicles. and that's at the heart of what we're trying to educate our clients about. And whether it's, you know, maybe you're starting a business. So, I mean, certainly we're not going to recommend to save money then.

But, you know, the first step, I mean, just do a personal IRA, which is, you know, six or seven thousand a year, depending on your age this year. And from there, you know, maybe it's just a SEP IRA for your business or, you know, maybe it's a 401K or, you know, you want to max out. So depending on what your goals are and your cash flow and what you're looking to do, you know, we kind of ask these questions. So we educate ourselves to know what right answers we should give you and what the advice would be if we were in your shoes.

But beyond just, you know, basic retirement planning that we help our clients with. I mean, from there, you know, we're looking at, I'm like points and miles. So from there, we're like recommending the right credit cards based off your spend. So maybe you get cash back. Maybe it's, you know, travel and kind of benefiting that way because you're already spending the money. And then again, you know, the next level would be like if you're making a ton of money, you know, those higher level kind of tax strategies where you get into charitable trust. You get into, you know, the funds, the oil and gas, the wildlife I mentioned earlier. And there's all different types of vehicles that we're aware of that we refer out depending on the conversation with clients and if it makes sense for them.

Yeah, that makes make total sense. And like you've said a couple times, and we know this, I do a lot of work and interviews with financial professionals. And it's like there is not one solution for every single person. It is not a template. It is not a cookie cutter because everyone is different. and everyone has different goals and outcomes and stages of life and all of that. So being able to hear that you have a large team that puts the needs of the client first that is proactively thinking is a massive shift in how I would venture to say a lot of business

owners have been experiencing their tax professionals. So I think it sounds like you guys have it just all buttoned up really nicely. That's spectacular. I like to think so. I mean, we start, once you onboard as a client, we start with 10 or 15 questions that we ask and, you know, what are your goals and kind of learn more about you. Because at the end of the day, I mean, it's a people business. So we want, you know, we want to know where proactively helping you and what your goals are and not just be your point cookie cutter and like everybody's the same column. Like, this is what you get.

And make sure, you know, you're achieving what you want to achieve. 100%. Well, Chase has been a real pleasure chatting with you. If someone is interested in learning more about what you guys can do and reaching out and connecting, what's the best way that they can do that? Yeah, it's just hits up on our website. In Sony CPA, it's I-N-S-O-G-N-A-C-P-A.com. And unlike a lot of firms, we actually call you back the same day or likely the next business day at most. Or, you know, or respond to your inquiry. online. You're welcome to call us to at 512 8991, 8200. And somebody's always answering the phone from 9 to 4 Central every day, 20 through Friday. That is awesome. Well, Chase, thanks again for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. 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.

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