Business Innovators Radio - Josh Sherrard, CEO of SNI – Philanthropy

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

There’s an old adage that says you should pay your fair share of taxes but not a penny more. We believe that to be true.We help business owners and high-income earners realize their savings by deploying time-tested tax strategies with decades of case law to back it up.Each strategy must pass through our sift of being legal, moral, and ethical.Get your complimentary analysis to see how much you overpay on an annual basis.Click the link below to schedule your complimentary analysisLearn More:https://www.stratnavinc.com/Schedule Call:https://www.navigatesni.com/NAVIGATEhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/navigateSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/josh-sherrard-ceo-of-sni-philanthropy

But I got to tell you, there's something powerful about giving sacrificial. There's something powerful about giving in such a way that says, you know what, I may suffer a little bit as a result of giving this away because I got to tell you this, you can never out give God. Welcome to the Navigate podcast. Today's episode will highlight philanthropy. We're your host, Adam Dirkson. And I'm Mitch Salanti with Strategic Navigators, where we save entrepreneurs 40 to 60% on their income taxes. on our very first episode today, we have our very own, Josh Sherrard. Give me a second here, Josh. You wear many hats. You're a husband, father of three, founder, president, and CEO of Strategic Navigators, as well as an author, Forbes contributor,

former pastor, and last but not least, philanthropist. I hope I didn't miss anything. Josh, welcome on. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you for coming on. Josh, you know, we want to hear about the Sherard Institute, your nonprofit eventually, but before we get into that, just tell us your heart for philanthropy and where that originates from you. Yeah, really, you know, my background as a pastor fielded me into going into business. And I truly believe that there is a place for entrepreneurs in society, in, you know, from my perspective in the church. And it's a needed role. The book of Romans actually talks. about how God gives different gifts to the church. And one of those gifts is giving and having the

faith to be able to give. And I kind of tell you, business is a faith journey. And so for me, creating my business and starting from scratch, it literally started from scratch where there were days when I wondered if we were going to make it. And, you know, now we're a nationwide company and doing quite a few things. So my heart and my desire is then I feel like I'm blessed to be a blessing. And you know, you can you can buy so many watches, you can buy so many cars, you can go on so many trips. And there comes a time when it just feels stale. And yet there's such a joy in giving. And that never gets stale. And so, you know, one of the best parts about what I do in the business is generating enough income so that I can give and be that philanthropist.

So let's hear more about where you like to give specifically what your heart's oriented towards and how that has sparked you to start your own nonprofit. Yeah, so the Sherrard Institute is our nonprofit. It's a 501c3. It's technically owned by the public. But my wife and I sit on the board and are the directors. I'm the chairman. And I've got several other friends that are advisors to it.

But really, it focuses on three specific areas. I like to say that we painted with broad strokes. So we've got Christian ministry, which would include anything, really, that is under that rubric. And then we've got humanitarianism, which allows us to do everything in the medical space with poverty. We can do all kinds of things in that world. And then finally, we've got education, which empowers us to be able to empower others when it comes to education. And so, you know, as I have kind of traveled the world, those three things are high on my, on my priorities. You know, we have a young son who has Down syndrome.

And as an example, we felt passionate about creating an environment for disabled children in Africa. And so we actually created a school for disabled children funded by our nonprofit called Gabe's House. And I just got a report recently that we have our first 20 graduates coming out of that school where They now have skill sets, whether it be sewing or computer work or something that they can do to contribute and feel some value and worth. So, you know, again, that's just an example of where we've been able to give and what drives us to be able to fund and fuel this philanthropy arm. That's amazing. Where did the relationship for Gabe's House even originate?

And where do a lot of these relationships originate when you do think about stewarding your finance? through the Sherrard Institute? Well, you know, for me, it's kind of a journey. And it's funny, when I launched the Sherrard Institute, I took a picture of the incorporating documents, just me signing them and just how excited I was to do that. And I posted it on social media. And within a day, I got a response from someone I knew from one of my churches.

And he said, he was very bold. He said, Josh, I don't know whether this even is in your radar. but I want to introduce you to a guy I know in Africa. And so I began a conversation, and sure enough, it launched into not only building a church for that community, but then building Gabe's house right next door. And it is actually also associated with an orphanage that has over 800 children in. So, you know, we're able to kind of fuel and funnel resources into that community. Even before I launched the nonprofit, you know, as we started the business, I've always

felt that it's important to give back. And we started doing some things even before the nonprofit, but I couldn't get the tax right off. And so I was sending dollars around the world, and I'm a tax planner. And I said, this isn't the way it's supposed to be. And so it was critical for me to create the Sherrard Institute as a mechanism to get the tax benefit and really kind of supercharge my giving. You know, it sounds like from that relationship, I know that you're pointed in a sense that, you know, the Shard Institute has its specific, you know, things that it gives to specific purposes. But it doesn't sound like you necessarily have an agenda as far as where those dollars are necessarily going and you're just open to whatever relationship is put in your life.

Really, that is exactly right. I come across people all the time. And sometimes, again, I'm not going to shy away from the fact that I am a believer. I feel like God leads me and guides me of just recently, I felt a big burden to give some money away. And I felt like I had a dollar amount in mind from the Sherrard Institute. And I reached out to one of my contacts and I said, hey, I'm thinking about giving away X amount of dollars. Do you have any ideas? And that person came back with four ideas of four different families that are in various, you know, parts of the world that fall under the three categories. And I'll just give you the example of one.

of those. It's a woman who's single and she's in Italy right now and she's a doctor. And her whole purpose is to help people with medical needs. And she wants to go into some of these very rural areas, even in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and some of these places and help them. And I was able to help finance that journey for her and she was waiting for the dollars to be able to do it. And so the timing, as you say, I think it's important to be open because that giving opportunity will come to you. I also think the important factor in that is it's not self-serving. I didn't feel like I had to give away money because it was going to stroke my ego or it was going to help me in some way. It was just a burden that I had.

Typically, I give away more when we make more. This was not the case. I just felt led to do it. And, you know, again, it's just the best. part of what I get to do is to be able to give stuff away. I want to hear your future aspirations with the Shrard Institute, too. I know that, you know, it's something you've been super excited about since you've started around 2019, 2020, and you only want it to grow. What do you see it doing, you know, in the next 5, 10, 20 plus years? Well, at this point, my staff, inside of my organizations

basically spend some of their time to help to make the Sherrard Institute work. So we're also giving from a time perspective. My vision in the next 10 to 20 years is to actually have a full-time staff for the Sherrard Institute. There are several branches that I want to go into. My sister happens to be a social worker, and she's working heavily with the Kathy family who founded Chick-fil-A and with their nonprofit. And I want to partner with them and start to work. address some of the situation of foster care in the United States. And so that may be a full-time

role going into that realm. I also am very passionate about the medical space. I think there is just a tremendous inequality in terms of medical care for those that are poor. And I really want to create some environments. We have built some medical camps and medical resources across the country and across the world before, but I really would love to build a hospital. And I'd love to be able to take that angle in an impoverished country. And then from an education standpoint, I want to create a pretty robust scholarship program. We already give scholarships away to many people for college, for Christian education, for graduate work. But I want to create a more robust program that incorporates a council that will actually be interviewing applicants. Because right now it's really

just me and my wife and we kind of make the decisions. But I want to be able to empower a council to that. So long term, you know, this is going to ride alongside my estate as it is now. And I hope that my children will one day be the board members of the Sherrard Institute and they will carry the torch. I've got several family and friends that I can incorporate as well. But by the time I hit the dirt, I want to be able to leave at least $100 million in the Sherrard Institute that will hopefully perpetuate and never get spent so we can just spend the interest. That's the dream. That's awesome. Josh, we all love to hear stories.

Can you tell us a story of we work with business owners across the country? that's our bread and butter. But can you tell us a good story of a business owner that maybe wasn't of a giving mindset and was in that process like you mentioned earlier, you know, buying the watches, buying the cars, you know, all that stuff, but then had a change of heart or maybe you challenged them and said, hey, what do you think about a nonprofit or such? And then you turned around and you made an impact with that. Do you have a good story of a client that comes to mind?

Yeah, I do. Actually, there were a couple of brothers and a dad that had a business. And, you know, I sat down with them. I had done their tax planning. Their business had grown at least fivefold in the time that I had worked with them, partly because of our strategies. And, you know, they were facing additional tax burdens. And I said, guys, one of the ways to do that to mitigate or lower your taxes,

to give some of it away. And they began to catch on to the fire. philanthropy. And what ended up happening is they realized they were in the trade industry. And they realized that there's just not a lot of energy out there to help educate and train tradesmen. As a matter of fact, we live in a country where it seems like it's more attractive to go and get a 40-year degree than to go get a certificate to be able to do trade work. And I got to tell you, if we don't turn that around, we're going to be hurting pretty bad in the next 50 years. And so So this group created a nonprofit.

They actually created three, but one of the nonprofits they created was specifically designed to scholarship and train individuals in the trade that they actually were in. And the byproduct of that years later is that they have graduates who have been properly trained, who are now ready to enter the workforce. They're not all necessarily coming to work for this company, but I got to tell you, they don't have a lot. a shortage of where they need, where they can find workers. So that's a great story of how, again, giving back to society, to the community, was able to turn around and then re-impact business, you know, and that's a, that's the cycle of how it works. You know, we, we see lots of different stories of people who, uh, just experienced the joy of giving. I actually worked with an NBA player years ago. He wasn't anybody you would know, but a small time guy. And,

And he basically was making a lot of money and he wanted to give some money away. And I said, well, let me help structure that for you. And we were able to do that through another nonprofit and eventually create one for him. But at the time, he gave some money to create a community center and a very impoverished area. And I remember him saying to me, man, Josh, it feels so good to give. And I was able to share with him the reason that it feels good to give. It's because we're made in the image of the great giver. And so when we give, we're doing the very thing that God does all the time.

And so that gave me the opportunity to be able to share the story of how we've all been created and how we all have a purpose and can be redeemed through Jesus Christ. And I love hearing that. And you touched on something, Josh, I wanted to bring up was you're super excited about everything you talk about in a philanthropy perspective, like, you know, the hospital, you know, Gabe's house in, was it Uganda, you said? Or Kenya? Gabe's house is in Mabasa, Kenya.

Kenya. Every, everything you talk about when you talk about giving, you're super excited about it. This NBA player had a big heart for it. And I just want to hear your perspective on, you know, people listening to this. When they're thinking about giving, you know, do you believe they should be excited that that God gives us, whether they believe, whether it's from a faith perspective for them or not. But, you know, I think us three believe that the Lord gives us, you know, a heart to give to certain causes. And I just want to hear your perspective behind that.

Yeah, you know, I think at the end of the day, every human being loves to be able to give. And we think that we can only give out of excess or out of extra. You know, we feel free to give when we've been satisfied. But I got to tell you, there's something powerful about giving sacrificial. There's something powerful about giving in such a way that says, you know what, I may suffer a little bit as a result of giving this away because I got to tell you this, you can never outgive God. And I have experienced this time and time again. I don't preach a health and wealth gospel where you give to get. but I will tell you that when you give, it is amazing how that can circle back around to you in different forms.

You know, it may not be a dollar for dollar transaction, but I can tell you, even if you just tried to bottle up the emotions and the joy of giving, you know, that to me is priceless. And so at the end of the day, what is motivating us is it's almost like a drug and a good drug, if I can say it that way. because when you get into the habit of giving, you want to do it more. And you want to experience that joy. I want to tell you another story about Uganda. There was a village that was out in the wilderness, and it was about a six-mile dirt road to get into town. And this is a village where they planted crops. And they had these ox and bull carts kind of thing, and they'd bring their crops into town on this dirt road, and they'd sell their crops.

Well, when the rains would come, the road would turn to slush and mud. And so there was no way to get the crops or the harvest into sell it. And as a result, the crop would spoil. And these people would go hungry because that's their economy. And I was approached by some missionaries in that area. They actually took a video of them driving in their van along this dirt road and there's potholes and this thing is going up and down. And I said, well, how much would it cost to put asphalt down there?

And it was a surprisingly low cost to put six miles of asphalt in Uganda. And so I said, let's do it. And so this was actually pre-Shirard Institute. This was when we were just getting started in business. I said, let's do it. And we did it. And what they told me was that road has now impacted over 30,000 people on an annual basis. And the response from the village was, this is going to change our lives for generations.

So again, I feel small in the grand scheme of that impact because it wasn't me. It was a series of people coming together. And again, God providing the resources. But if I can be a part of that for the rest of my life, be a part of some things like that, then it makes the hard work, the stressful times, the difficult things that I may go through and work totally worth it. And it's a joy. So it's an addicting drug that I think once people start to take part in, it's a good thing to be addicted to me.

Agreed. I love that. Love hearing those stories. Those resonate, I think, the most with just about every person. Josh, I'm on the Sherard Institute website right now. And I'm seeing all the different places that you have some examples and testimonies of places that you've given to. And you said earlier it's open to the public. They can give to it as well.

But something that's really catchy on the front of the page here is. is the crest or the emblem. Did you design that specifically yourself? What's the significance of that? I did design that myself, and I actually designed a family crest shortly before the Sherard Institute crest, and it has a lot of the same parts to it. But really, my idea and my heart behind that, I've kind of taken the lion as our family animal, and so that sits there on that crest.

but then it's the peace leaves or the humanitarian leaves that envelop the globe and just almost giving the world a hug. And, you know, that concept of saying, we're going to lift high the cross. I think the lion is holding a cross. And we're going to lift high the cross and we're going to give the world a big hug. And that's kind of the idea behind what we're trying to do in the Sherrard Institute. And, you know, we do that a lot through the Christian ministry. and of course we do that through the humanitarianism, you know, when you build a well or you build a road or whatever it might be.

But I also believe that you have to give into the future. And that's where the education side comes in. You know, so if I have partnerships with schools or seminaries, you know, one of our strategic relationships is with a group called the 222 Foundation, which specifically works on businessmen and women mentoring those in ministry. Because when you graduate from seminary, you don't have any business school. You don't know how to run a church. You don't know how to run a staff or anything like that. So the 222 Foundation helps to create these mentorship relationships.

And so, again, the Sherart Institute comes in. We say, we're going to provide scholarship for that seminary student, but we're also going to provide resource for 222 to make sure that this happens. So again, it's kind of casting into the future and saying, it's great to give now, but I want to plant some seeds that are going to grow in the future. Well, I think if everyone listening, their inner philanthropist is activated at this point, that's fantastic. Thank you, Josh. Kind of just to switch gears here. We are a tax savings group. So let's talk about some tax benefits behind a nonprofit, a 501c3. We talked a little bit earlier about how that came to be and some of the advantages of it. But this podcast is called Navigate. It's after the book that you wrote. You are an author. In your book, you do talk about the 501C3 and the nonprofit. Can you give us a little snippet of that?

Make us hungry to go read that book and talk to about some tax benefits for a nonprofit. Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of times, wealthy families will be given the opportunity to create a family foundation. And again, the family foundation is a little more self-serving than the nonprofit, and it is owned by the family. there is a tax implication to a lot of what goes on inside the Family Foundation. I want you to think about the Clinton Foundation or the Gates Foundation. These are groups that are going to have some benefits to them. There's going to be some philanthropy involved,

but I can tell you that there is some self-serving mechanisms involved as well. So the true tax code around this 501C3 is the nonprofit tax code that says that it has to meet a certain standard of giving back to the community. So this is not a family foundation. This is technically owned by the public, meaning that it's controlled by a board of directors. Just so happens that my family sits on the board of directors, but I also have some other non-blood relative non-family sitting on the board. And you have to have that. Another key factor that you have to have in a nonprofit is it has to be forward facing, meaning other people need to be able to give to it and give significantly to it. So we have literally hundreds of people that give to the Sherrard Institute,

love to see that get into the thousands as they support various ministries or missionaries or causes that we may be a part of. We free of charge, we process that giving. And so that's another aspect of the Sherrard Institute. I will tell you that from a tax perspective, all of this giving shows up on Schedule A of your tax return, which is where your charitable contributions go. That trickles then back up into your $1040 and that shows, hey, if I made a million dollars this year and I gave $100,000 to a nonprofit, I now am going to pay tax on $900,000. So there's an immediate tax benefit. It's a dollar for dollar reduction. One of the interesting things that I see with this is, you know, you can put the money in to a nonprofit like my due in the Sherart Institute, but you don't

have to deploy it right away. That money can be invested. You can go buy land with it. You can go buy strategic things that are going to grow, and all of the growth then is not taxed. So that's, again, strategic thinking. So you can give up to 60% of your adjusted gross income to a charity. And then the other fun thing about this is you can give from your charity to other charities, like I was saying with the 222 Foundation. So people come to me and they say, well, how does that differ from a donor advice fund. Well, a donor advice fund has a lot of restrictions on it because you can only give to the charities that are listed on their site. When you have a nonprofit like this, the freedom within your structure is there and it's a beautiful thing. I can go and I can carry a checkbook in my briefcase.

I can carry a credit card in my wallet to be able to give to those causes and things and people that fit under my rubric that I want to give to and meet that standard. And so it just gives you a lot more flexibility, a lot of freedom. So the tax benefit is a dollar for dollar. But again, I feel like it's meeting and scratching the need of those that kind of reach that level of, okay, what's next? You know, what do I do after this? Now, is that secluded just for business owners?

Or is that for high wage W2 earners as well? minimum that it makes sense to deploy that strategy? Yeah, I really don't recommend the 501c3 to anyone who's making less than three quarters of a million dollars a year. Ideally, it would be a, you know, something that we might put into a million dollars or more of adjusted gross income. And this is after all of our other strategies, by the way. So business owners that work with us, we have a lot of strategies we can offer.

But sometimes, I mean, just recently I was talking to a couple of doctors. out on the West Coast who I'm making roughly three quarters of million dollars. And they told me on my call, hey, we give a lot of money away and we don't get a tax benefit from it. Perfect opportunity for us to insert the 501c3 for that family. So it really depends on the situation. You have to be philanthropic minded. You can't put a 501c3 in place just to save taxes. I won't. I won't do that for someone. If someone comes to me and they just kind of have this sense of, hey, I want to save a lot of money, that's great, but the motivation has to be to give. And then the side effect is that you get the tax benefit. Perfect. So someone comes in looking for a consultation on their tax savings. We save them significantly on their taxes and they're looking for as their business. Because that's what happens when a business owner gets more money or creates more money. They invest into themselves, their best investment. So then they in turn generate more revenue and now they need more tax

strategy. And just repeating what you said there, you don't do the 501c3 solely to save somebody on taxes. There has to be a heart behind giving. Did I hear you correct? Yes, absolutely. And I've actually said no to some multimillionaires who were just in a very, for lack of a better word, greedy sense, wanting to save money on taxes. And I said, no, that this isn't for you because you don't, you're not passionate about anything. You don't want to give. And so once that switch is flipped, then the 501c3 fits. But that's a key component, you know. And it's amazing how many opportunities there are out there. You know, I've got one, one individual who has a 501c3 around the carbon footprint. And basically, their objective is to plant, you know, thousands of trees.

I've got others that are around animals and the humanitarianism around, you know, helping and saving animals. You know, got others around the environment and protecting and preserving various species. So it doesn't just have to be ministry and it doesn't just have to be hospitals and roads. It can be a lot of different things that help to elevate and grow society and protect the world. Like I said, give the world a big hug, right? That's kind of the mindset around philanthropy. So it's not a one-size-fits-all. It's whatever is the heart of the entrepreneur.

So similar to our tax strategy, it's not a one-size-fits-all. It's a personalized tax savings plan for them. Awesome. So before we wrap up here, I want to touch on your book real quick. Is there anything that you want to, any snippets you want to give the audience about your book that just, you recently published, just as a, here, think about this. We talk more deeply on this in the book. You know, there's a, there's a quote that actually really well captures this very well. And I've named the company Strategic Navigators.

We have kind of a nautical theme because I do feel like we're going places. And the idea is that the optimist may say, hey, things are going to change. You know, it's going to get better. And so I'm just going to sit tight and wait for things to change. The pessimist will say it's never going to change and it's just going to be this way and we're stuck. and the strategist is going to come in and say, hey, let's lift those sails. Let's harness the wind for us to be able to move forward.

So you have to step into your planning. You have to step into your business. You have to step into the future proactively to change and to grab onto opportunities. Because if you don't do that, it's just going to pass you by. And I've come across a lot of people that feel like they are under the burden of business that they're under this, I have to work hard all my days just to be able to pay the bills, that is not the American dream. That is not what we have the opportunity to do.

We have the opportunity to harness the wind. And really by doing the right planning, getting the right advisors around you, even the smallest entrepreneur can radically change his world. I like to say that we can make a splash and have a ripple effect all around us. And philanthropy is just part of that. But being a business owner is part of that as well. And so I would say, go to the book. You can see my heart to a little bit of the story about how I got here. The book is a place where I was just, I wanted to put on the paper the why. Why am I doing this? And that I hope has come across and shares a lot about not just saving money on taxes today, but also saving money on taxes tomorrow. You know, we build tax shelters that protect people and again perpetuate wealth for all these.

causes. The thing I like most about your book, Josh, is that you are very gifted. And I think it even touches on that in the preface, very gifted at taking complex issues and essentially dumbing them down for someone to easily understand them. So the tax code is very complex and you're bringing that down to an entrepreneur level where they just want to know the cut and dry, can I do this? Can I do that what should I do here and you're able to translate the tax code in a way that people can understand very easily. Well, I like to say I like to be the dumbest guy in the room, Adam, because what that does is it helps me be surrounded by smart people and I just want to be a sponge and soak up what they're saying. And then I can elbow the guy next to me somewhere and say,

hey, did you know about this? And so if I can be a purveyor of that good news and be able to communicate that with people that I'm hitting what I'm called to do. And it's opening doors that I never dream possible, which is exciting. Love it. There's a lot to think about in this episode here. Thank you, Josh, for sharing your heart and your why. That's fantastic. Thank you, everybody for listening to Navigate. Click on the link in the description to our website to start your inquiry and get your complimentary analysis. We'd love to see how we could help. Thank you. Thank you.