Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Scott Blackley Founder, Trucess Tax Advisory Discussing Understand the Business Before Choosing a Strategy

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Scott Blackley, CFP®, EA, ABFP®, APMA®, AWMA®, CRPC®, LUTCF® Founder, Trucess Tax Advisory LLCScott Blackley is the founder of Trucess Tax Advisory LLC, a proactive tax planning and advisory firm built for successful business owners, high-income professionals, and affluent families who want more than a tax return filed on time—they want a strategy designed to reduce their lifetime tax burden and help them keep more of the wealth they’re building.Scott’s perspective on tax strategy comes from a background that extends well beyond tax preparation. As both a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional and an Enrolled Agent, he works at the intersection of tax planning, financial planning, retirement, investments, and wealth management. His advanced training is reflected in his ABFP®, APMA®, AWMA®, CFP®, CRPC®, EA, and LUTCF® designations.He founded Trucess Tax Advisory on a simple premise: tax planning has to happen before the return is filed—not after the opportunities to act are gone.Traditional tax preparation looks backward, reporting what has already happened. Trucess works the other direction. Scott and his team evaluate a client’s full financial and tax picture proactively, looking for inefficiencies, missed opportunities, and strategies that may never have been considered.Depending on the client’s circumstances, that analysis can span business and entity structure, retirement plans, real estate and cost segregation, income and deduction planning, Roth conversions, charitable strategies, investment taxation, and other advanced planning opportunities.But Scott believes a strategy should never be implemented simply because it creates a tax deduction. It has to make financial sense first.Every recommendation should have a clear purpose, a measurable potential benefit, and a place within the client’s larger financial plan. Scott believes clients deserve to understand not just what they’re doing, but why they’re doing it and what the strategy could actually mean for their financial future.That philosophy shapes how Trucess operates. Every engagement begins with an evaluation of the client’s current position to identify meaningful planning opportunities. If Trucess doesn’t identify a solution, there is no cost for the initial evaluation.For Scott, tax planning isn’t about chasing loopholes or simply lowering this year’s tax bill. It’s about coordinating taxes with the decisions that build, protect, and ultimately transfer wealth—and looking several moves ahead.Learn more: https://trucesstax.com/Investment Advisory Services are offered through Rossby Financial, LLC, a Registered Investment Adviser. Rossby Financial, LLC and Trucess are not affiliated.Securities transactions cannot be conducted via email or voice messages. Any related requests, or requests for distributions, must be confirmed live with the client.Rossby Financial, LLC does not offer tax or legal advice.This email transmission and any documents, files or previous email messages attached to it may contain information that is confidential or legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you must not read this transmission and that any disclosure, copying, printing, distribution, or any action or omission of this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please immediately notify the sender or return and delete the original transmission and its attachments without reading or saving in any manner.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-scott-blackley-founder-trucess-tax-advisory-discussing-understand-the-business-before-choosing-a-strategy

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 back with Scott Blackley, who's the founder of Truces Tax Advisory, and we'll be talking about how to understand the business before choosing. using a strategy. Scott, welcome back to the program.

Mike, it's great to be back. And thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure being here with you. Yeah, you're welcome. And I'm excited to talk through your before strategy. That is something that I think a lot of people, sometimes they feel like they get a little bit of this from this person, a little bit of that from that person. But if you've got a tractor run on and a plan and a checklist, that business owner feels well taken care of. So this is a conversation on that first point, the B, the business. Talk a little bit about how we need to understand a business before choosing a strategy because you think about recommending a tax strategy. What do you have to understand?

Would it be similar to a doctor going, oh, you're in pain? Let me give this prescription. And you said, I don't even, I didn't even tell you where the pain is. Right. So I think it's important that before anyone, or I recommend any type of deduction or anything that we need to understand the business and the life that the owner is trying to build, right? Not necessarily the business, but the life that the business owner wants.

And that goes back to their values and where we're going. And so when we're looking at the before method, the B is the business, right? Understanding the business before choosing any strategy. And so before we look at any single strategy, what does that person need? And so first I need to know how the business makes money, whether the profit is predictable, what the cash is really, what cash is available, right? How many, or how is the owner paid? Is he just taking money whenever he needs it? Is his personal account mixed with his business account like they probably shouldn't be?

So how has his historical, meaning how has he always been paid? What are his habits? And then I ask about the employees, do we have an exit plan, debt? What upcoming purchases do we have? The owner's personal go. Do you want to go? Where does he see himself, right? And then are we building a second location?

We plan in a cell? Are we trying to retire early? Those answers change what makes sense to that business. owner, not only now, but in the future. And two owners, right, can each earn 500,000 a year and need completely different plans because they're on completely different tracks. And maybe one of them's 100% owner and doesn't have any other business. And maybe the other guy is just peddling on the time, right? And it's passive. So it's important to know what that structure looks like and what each person is looking for. And so I want a written picture of the business before I offer any

strategy. You know, it reminds me of the author Stephen Covey that wrote the highly effective habits of highly effective people where he says, begin with the end in mind. You know, tell me all about the business. Where do you want to be? Where are you at now? Because it's almost like that diagnosis without that prescription or the prescription without diagnosis is malpractice in that medical sense. If you just started saying, here's the tax strategy and they come to find out that something in underneath the hood in that business, was conducive to something different, you missed an opportunity or you might have made a mistake. So I love that approach.

Don't even, let's not even make any moves yet. Let's talk. Let's get this whole intake. And it kind of might feel like an audit, right? It was like, tell me this, tell me this. But it's an audit with a good outcome. Right. So why not just look at last year's returns?

Why not just go, okay, come on in. Nice to meet you. Give me last two years returns. And here's the strategy. Well, there might be some things, you know, that you're not. able to ascertain, right? I would say that that's what people get a lot. And it's okay if you don't look at yourself as a fiduciary, and we're just trying to peddle the next return. The main thing I would say with that is the return is a starting point, but it's a snapshot of the past. It doesn't

show whether a big contract was signed a week ago or last week, right? Whether the cash is tight. How's cash flow, right? Are we, we okay? Is it tight? Is it going to be rough the next couple of weeks, a month, year, six months? Do we have a big contract coming in? Whether the owner is about to buy a building, right? So how are we going to do that? It also doesn't tell me how much complexity the owner is willing to take. So on the strategy and everything that we made, even though there's a lot of things that we can do, the business owner has to be comfortable with it. And I mean in a sense of understanding, and have that trust to say, yes, let's do that, and let's follow it up with the paperwork and make sure what's going on. Because the IRS wants you to write things off, right? It's in the tax law, but it wants you to have documentation of what's going on. So a strategy that looks attractive on last year's numbers may be a poor fit for the year

that we're actually in and what's coming. So the return, like I said, is just a starting point, but it's a snapshot for the past. Yeah, I love that. it's not the end of the story. It's really should be the beginning of the conversation, especially if your new client is coming from another preparer because you don't know what they put into it. Now, if it's you working with your client from last year, you've done all of that work, but you've got to make sure that you understand what got them to that point, right?

Yeah, that's true. And so, you know, when we sit down with the business owners and looking back in the past and asking them all the questions, you really need to figure out where the person's going. And a lot of times, if you're not going deep into that conversation, you're just getting surface answers. And what happens with surface answers

is you don't get the full benefit of working with a professional that's trying to help you. And so a lot of times when we meet with people, and they're surprised, right, by some of the first things that we do. And so they expect me to, sit out and just throw deductions at them. And we're not trying to just throw deductions out of them and say, hey, let's do this. Let's do this. Move forward with us.

You can't do that ethically and hope that somebody's in the right place. So one thing that I will say is, and I think a lot of people like it about us, and maybe it's just the way I grew up, but I have never worried about losing anybody's business over the truth. So if I can't sit down and tell you something because I'm worried you're going to pick up and walk out because you don't like it. Well, then we're probably in the wrong relationship. Yeah. I need, I need people that we're helping and moving forward to understand that I'm here to help them. And sometimes tough love and understanding is what we need to do. Yeah, that's a great point. When you're meeting with someone for the first time, what have you found are some of the questions that you're asking that you need

to understand that they find a little surprising, like, oh, I wasn't expecting that question. I think I may ask when they want to stop working, right? And for the top A personality, maybe they don't ever want to stop working or they don't think of their self ever stopping because they've always had to go 100 miles an hour. And they're just looking at the next thing to conquer. But what keeps them up at night, right? So what is it that you're worried about at night, right? What is it that you're stressed about?

Why are you laying there with your eyes open? you know at midnight when you should be sleeping, right? Whether their children are going to join the business. So that is super important because just because they're your kids doesn't mean that they need to be in the business, right? Yes. And that's hard for a lot of people to hear. And then also what they do if a buyer showed up tomorrow, right, and said, how much cash do you need personally, right, to walk away?

and whether they understand the difference between profit and money in the bank. And those aren't like side questions. People need to know that. And it's my belief that you should be ready to sell your business any day, anytime. If somebody walked up to you, you should know what that price is. And whether that's because you want to get out of the business or you don't, but you want to move on to something else. But if you know what your business is worth and you know what you're doing,

then it's always, you're running the business to sell. Most people that are in business and want to save taxes and all that other good stuff, they're in it to make money and they're in it to sell because that's the retirement package. But it's funny how nobody's ever evaluated that price or that cost, and they don't even know what they would take or what it's worth. And so it's important to know what that is. But that way that we can determine whether the tax plan will help their life or just create paperwork. And so that's the biggest thing that we need to get over.

You know, that's probably a topic for a weekend seminar, eight hours a day for two and half days, which is, you know, how do you want to exit your business? And I would venture to say that someone at certain ages might answer it at different times. You know, when you work with the business owner and their, you know, started the business five years ago, they might answer that question differently than some business owner that's had the business running for 25 years. But I know maybe from a 30,000 foot view, what are some of the considerations? Like, is it that $1 figure and I want this and give me a check and I'm out?

Or is it I want to sell it to employees? Or is it I want to have a little bit of a chunk of a check, but I want to kind of stay part of it. And maybe, you know, do a little bit of, you know, face of the business for, you know, once a month come in and do some things. What are some of those things that you're guiding your clients on? everybody's different and everybody wants something and it's important and it's important to know like we have a we have a gentleman that we're working with now who has a company and you know they probably went from six million worth last year to probably almost 12 or 13 million right now

and if they hit it right we're talking about a 20 or 30 million dollar company in, you know, two to four years. Well, their exit was actually six. So when we're looking at what they're doing and the growth and the economy and what's hit and what's going on is in their eyes, what's more important, oh, we're going to keep this for six years, or is it when it's going well and everything's up and you're going to evaluate that company and more that you want and you're going to have a better sell price in four years. are you okay stopping two years earlier if that price is right? Yeah.

And how does that change your business goes? How does that change your personal goes? And then what do we need to prioritize and what's important to you? Is it working the six or ten more years? Or did you build the business so that you could sell it and get out of it and spend more time with your family? And when we answer questions like that, I think people start to understand that we're not in here to have a name on the wall. we're here to make a better life for ourselves and our families and the people that we're trying to leave a legacy to. And it's important to understand that. And a lot of times you don't slow down long enough to understand it.

Yeah, that's an excellent point. Just knowing where you want to go and understanding how one thing impacts the other. You mentioned personal goals. You know, and I think that a lot of times people are like, oh, well, in my business, I want to do this and here's what the exit would look like. but how do personal goals change a tax plan for a business? Because some people would think, well, personal is my personal life. And they're different. But there's got to be some overlap, right? I think it is a big difference. And I think people look at things way from a different standpoint.

So when I build my business model in the financial and the tax side, I did it a little different than most people. Most people put work in the middle, right, and then they build their life around it. And I'm a big Jim Rohn fan. And Jim Rohn talks about, you know, the better life you live or the life you're trying to reach, then everything else just kind of comes up with you. And so when I draw that circle, I put myself and my family in the middle of it, and I figure out how am I going to do my work around it?

And what happens is when you change from that thought process is now you start looking at things different. So how can I add more value? value, right? And then how can I spend less time doing that and adding more values for others? Because we get paid by the value we add in the amount of lives we touch and the right lives, right? We can, look, we can, we can help everyone, but we just can't save them all. And so it's important to also work with the right people. So we don't, we don't take everyone, Mike, we do do interviews, but it's important that you're our A client because everybody out there on the street deserves to be somebody's a client. And when I say A client,

client, I mean, that fits into our ideal avatar, a client, who they should be, what they're about, where they want to go on their lives. Do they believe in their family? Do they believe in faith and all that other stuff that I believe in? And when we match, I never have to look at the phone when they call and go, man, I wish I was talking to somebody else. What I do is I look at somebody and I go, man, this is a family that we get to help, watch grow. And because of what I do, their life is better.

And because their life is better, their family's life is better and their business growth. And that's what we're doing here. That's just amazing. Yeah, that's huge. And when people can understand that and hear that and sense that, that builds a business relationship with the focus on the right side, which is the R word, relationship, because it's not about a number. It's not about here's your returns.

Oh, we did the strategic proactive approach. We're building a relationship. We're making sure your family is taken care of. And I think that's huge. And I think that there's some decisions that business owners probably, need to make, but they don't know that they need to make them. You know, like the old saying, you know, you don't know what you don't know. How do you help business owners uncover those decisions that they don't even know that they

need to consider yet? We do a value discussion with everyone. And as we get down and we find out a lot of people, it's funny you say because, and you're in business too, Mike. And so I know you've probably done business plans and tracking and where am I going and what I need to do and whether you're doing the, you know, 12-week year, every 90-day plans. But what nobody does is they don't do that for their personal life. And they don't say, where am I trying to grow?

What am I going to do? They don't look at their bottom line and say, who do I need to hang out with more, right? So if you want to be a better father, you hang out with better fathers, right? If you want to be a better business person or you want to be physically fit, well, then you need to hang out with fit people. And I don't think people take the time to actually look at that. And one thing that I've done in the past is, who am I going to hang out with more? And then who am I going to hang out with? And who am I going to stop hanging out with? Right? Because we, and I think we do that in business. And business owners should do that too. And that's kind of what you're looking at, right? There's

three minute people, three-hour people, you know, three-day people, three-week people that you'd go hang out with all the time. And those are the people that you want to see and you want to help and you want to see grow. And so when you have that connection with somebody, you're generally trying to help put somebody in the best position. And you're not trying to worry about your pocketbook or anything like that. Everybody's got to make a profit. And we've got to do what we have to step into business and grow everything we have. But the most important thing is, is getting somebody to where they want to get. It's like Jim Rohn said, right? I used him before. Or maybe this is Zig Zig Zigler, I think that, you know, if you help enough people get what

they want, they'll have you get what you want. I think it was Zig Zigler. And I've heard it attributed to Zig, but he probably got it with someone else too. Yeah, right? Everybody gets it from somebody, right? But the main point is, is as long as you're sincere and you're doing what you think is right and you're putting people on the best thing for them and not for yourself, The tax side matches our financial belief. And we, you know, you have to know us to work on the financial side. We've opened up the tax side this year to other families and people that we've helped. It's important to know that there's people out there.

People are struggling. And people are making a lot of money and they're paying too much in taxes. And that money could be used for other things for either charity. It can be used to put back in the business, to grow the business, to pay another salary. You know, I used Disney earlier as a joke to pay for your kid going to Disney. But the main thing is we're all working and we're all trying to do the best we can with what we've got and why not take all the information that we have and use it to get us there the fastest way possible. 100%. You know, when you're talking about this, you know,

pillar here, the B in the before method business, understanding the business before choosing a strategy, what if you're sitting down with an owner that says, I want the most aggressive plan possible. What are the guardrails you're discussing with him or her about that kind of approach? You know, when somebody's asking about how are we going to be the most aggressive as possible, it's funny because aggression can mean different things to different people, right? If I ask you what a lot of debt is, you may tell me two or three thousand. I ask somebody else, they may tell me a million, right? So everybody's got this different picture in their head. about what that means.

So I ask, well, what do you mean by aggressive? And if they mean taking every deduction, they legitimately qualify, I'm all in for being thorough, right? And if they mean taking a position without the facts or documentation, that's not a strategy I'd recommend, right? We want to make sure that whatever we're doing is ethical, lawful, and deliberate so that we get the best outcomes that we want. And we want to evaluate the eligibility, the cost, the audit exposure, the cash needs, and the business purposes. And the right plan should be one that the owner can explain clearly and defend with records. That's why I always ask, what do you mean by being aggressive?

You know, that's an excellent point in Communication 101. You know, we've heard that type of thing in sales when we're talking about sales objections. when someone has an objection and you assume it's one thing and you go off down that path and like, oh, that's not what I meant. But yeah, I mean, someone might say, you know, how much is a lot of debt and someone might mention a number and it's completely different. So clarify, asking great questions. That's a big lesson.

That's a huge thing. I know a lot of times I've been married for almost 20 years now. And sometimes my wife will be talking, my wife and I'll be talking for about 20 minutes before. Remember, it's the same conversation, but different topics. You know, like, you know, you're talking and you're describing it. And then all of a sudden you look at each other and go, you're not talking about that at all, are you? Right, right. That's a whole different conversation.

That's all you're going to 30 years. Exactly. So let's think about something here. This kind of makes me think about like a maybe like put your thinking cap on. How can two businesses with the same profit need very different tax plans? Because like we've said before. it is not a matter of everyone gets the same thing, right? It's like a real estate company or somebody that's got an LLC in real estate.

That's way different than maybe somebody that has an edgeback, right? Like we talked about on the last podcast, right? And it's important to know what they're doing and know that different businesses have different rideoffs and have different tax strategies. And so if we really understand what the person's looking to do and we understand where, where they're willing to go and what steps they're willing to take and if they want to, and how much paperwork they want to subtract. Because if we're doing taxes, we always want to make sure that they're done correctly and that we have the paperwork to back them up.

And so two different people, two different businesses, same income, right? One could have way more write-offs than the other person just because the situation they're in. And so you just have to look at people, I don't want to say case by case, because it kind to put some in a bucket, but you've got to look at people where they're at and then where they're going and then what we can do to get them to where they want to be the most efficient way possible with the least amount of taxes. Yeah, that's huge. And I think that's the big thing that people need to realize is, you know, you get these out of the off the shelf, you know, tax plan programs and it's fill in the blank and here you go. That's the same difference as just kind of being that

historian. You want someone that's going to sit down with you. Ask the right questions. Ask the tough questions, right? I mean, being able to have those questions in mind is something where, you know, you might not enjoy the, maybe the work it takes to answer that question or the feeling that it brings up. But if you then are prepared and have that foundation and that strategy in place, now everything else can work smoother. So Scott, any final thoughts on this first pillar on the business, understanding that business before choosing a strategy, before we wrap up with how can people reach out and connect with you. I just think it's important that people really understand that the business for everyone is different.

So just because your neighbor's doing something doesn't mean that you should be doing it, right? And just because somebody that's actually doing what you do at a conference says, hey, this is what I'm doing. Doesn't mean that his family's the same. It doesn't mean that his business is the same. he may be in the same industry, but it also doesn't mean that he wants the same outcome when he sells. Or maybe he wants to leave it to his kids and you want to sell. And so it's very important. And you can find us at truceshtax.com, T-R-U-C-E-S-T-A-X.com. And you can book appointments, find the information you need there, to get any help that you won't. But it's important that

people understand that everyone's different. We may put our shoes on the same and we may go to work and we may work from home or maybe we have an office, that's a distinction too. And so everyone's different. And because everyone's different, every plan should be set for that person as an individual. And it shouldn't be, hey, this is what we do for everybody. Because if you're working with somebody that does the same thing for everybody, then really you're not helping anybody because not everybody's the same. Yep. Something will get missed and some opportunity will get overlooked or some right off will get overlooked and you've got to have someone watching out for you. So, Scott, thank you so much for coming back on. This has been a really enlightening conversation. Thanks for having me, Mike,

and maybe we'll do it again. 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.