Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Mistakes to Avoid when Starting a Business EP12

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

The Power Move Episode 12Learn and burn Entrepreneurship from serial entrepreneur John Gafford and his band of mayhem makers. From stripper poles to the oval office, business lessons are everywhere. This Week:The guys discuss mistakes people make when opening a businessA huge change to the tax code may mean it's time to liquidate some assetsWith Chris Connell and Colt Amidan

from the art of the deal to keeping it real live from the simply vegas studios it's the power move with john gafford keeping it real indeed gentlemen indeed indeed indeed welcome to the Power Move. I am John Gafford. With me, as always, back to being liquored up in the middle of the day. Cold Tom and Don. You guys broke my dreams of becoming an Olympian. Eric said I had no chance either. So now we've crushed your dreams, so you're back to drinking. And welcome back from his one-day absence, Chris Connell Esquire.

Welcome back, sir. Hey, thank you for having me again. So let's get right into it. Tell us the story. How did you break your wife's foot? Because I'm sure some way, somehow, it's going to wind up at least being your fault. It's so funny when you walk into a hospital with your injured wife. The whole time I'm going, I bet you somebody thinks I did it.

Did it? The whole time. You fell into the door. No, I fell down the stairs. I fell down the door. She literally fell on flat ground. I was talking to my father in my office. It was like 8.30 at night, watching football.

We had barbecued all day. She thought I was on a business call because she's a couple pops in. Let's call it what it is. So she just went to run after the kid who was going to run in my office. And we have this thing where she helps me out by by preventing, you know, I'm on a call with like, uh, you know, some servicing company and you know, whatever, you know, daddy, you know, she keeps me, that's mommy plays interference. She runs interference.

Like that one news clip that went super viral where the kids kept coming back. And so, uh, yeah, she just went and on flat ground. I mean, there's no great story. There's no skateboard in the middle of the living room. Literally just went to move and cracked her ankle, like literally broke it. You know, it's funny you say that. I was Hayden one time when he was a little kid. He was getting out of the pool when he was like four,

and he missed the short-armed it, you know, alligator-armed it with the short arms and went face first into the side of the coping on the pool didn't break anything because i guess little kids when their nose cartilage isn't developing much but we took him to the emergency room just to make sure and again the whole time i'm like they're gonna think we smacked them yeah right yeah so we get in with the nurse and i'm like you know i gotta tell you i thought that you know that pre-K cage fighting class would be good for him. But this is just ridiculous. And dude, the nurse just looked at me.

Did not find it funny. No, she did not find it funny whatsoever. And speaking of not funny, speaking of not funny, legend dies this week. One of my personal heroes, one of my favorite guys ever, Norm MacDonald, passed away. Those of you who know me, if you do know me, you have suffered through my favorite joke in the world. Those of you that know me and have listened to this show realize how much I despise O.J. getting off, too.

Something Norm MacDonald was literally a number one. Yes, he was. Well, they say that he got kicked off Saturday Night Live because he wouldn't leave O.J. alone. He wouldn't stop. It was just relentless O.J. Good for him. That is a power move. Yep, stand on OJ alone. He wouldn't stop. It was just relentless OJ. Good for him. That is a power move.

Yep. Staying on OJ. That is definitely going to be a power move for sure. But my favorite joke, the moth joke. You know, we debated today. Chris was like, you have to tell the moth joke on air. So sometimes you meet a person in your life where you go, what's something they do well? For John Gafford, being a great real estate broker.

And Colton's getting wonderful haircuts. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's the first time I've ever heard that compliment. You know, I didn't realize John was such a good storyteller in the way he tells jokes. And I like jokes. I have some elaborate, you know, ways of going on and on bloviating as is apt to be for an attorney. But I get paid hourly. John, we were at a backyard. He breaks us out. And I literally had just tears in my eyes because I remember Norm doing it, but it wasn't the same. It's never the same. It's never the same twice. So before I do this, because I am going to do what I'm going to warn you, if this isn't your cup of tea that starts to aggravate you at some point, just skip forward because we're going to talk about some pretty decent things throughout the podcast today,

including a great charity that's coming up called Kids Join the Fight that I'm going to help with. We're going to talk a little Gavin Newsom, and we're going to talk about three business mistakes that owners make, but also we're going to talk about some capital gains changes that are coming up that you need to hear about. Hugely around for this this is this is uh some of you may suffer through this i i don't probably want to hang out with you if you're suffering through what's about to happen if you just enjoy this as immensely as i do give us a call come hang out yeah this is you know this is a good filter this is a great it's like it's like this is this is how you know who your friends are like this if you don't drink yeah if you think this

is funny you can go to cocktails with us any time. If you don't like Led Zeppelin, if you don't like dogs, and you don't think this joke is funny, lose my number. Yeah, I can't help you. So anyway, without further ado, here it is, okay? So this moth walks into a podiatrist's office, right? And the podiatrist looks at him and goes, can I help you? And the moth goes, yeah.

Doc, I got to tell you, it's been a challenge lately. It's been really tough. Doc's like, what's going on? He's like, well, so I got this job down at the moth plant. And I get up every morning. The alarm goes off at crack of 630. And I roll over. Again, going to trudge myself through a meaningless existence,

get in my car and drive down to the plant where I work for, uh, you know, John Gregorovich. So I work for, and, uh, you know, I don't know what I'm doing down there. I don't think, I think you're making me laugh. It's making me, I. I don't even know what I do down there, Doc. It's like, you know, I don't even know if John Gavorevich knows what I do. All I know is he knows he has power over me and he likes it. And so, you know, I'll come up with great ideas to make the days go better and pass the time. And, you know, he takes my ideas and he passes them off as himself. Doc's like, man, that's kind of, that's not a good way to, yeah.

So you know what I do, Doc? I drink. Drink heavily. You know, there's a little, I go into the store and I stop there at the liquor store. It opens, you know, at 8, 8.15ish. Because the guy's always late because he's got some personal issues. But he hits the store open at like 8.15ish because the guy's always late because he's got some personal issues but he hits the store up at like 8.15 and I'll go in and you know I want to buy the big bottle but I can't

I got to buy the little red tops you know little screw-offs because that way I can sneak them in on my lunch pail and John Gregorovich won't see me drinking them and I drink to get through the day Doc's like so you got a drinking problem no I, I mean, that's just part of it. And then I go home. And, you know, I got to look at my family. I look at my moth wife and her just dead eyes looking at me because I've let her down. I'm not the moth she married. She had big dreams of a house in the suburbs and a white picket fence and the mailman coming by and saying, hey, look how happy those boss are. I wish I was that happy. And I just let her down. Those dreams

are crumbling right before her eyes. It's like, yeah, yeah, my son. I look at him with his dead stare and I can tell, you know, I used to be his hero. And all I see in him is the disappointment that I find when I look deeper within myself. And I got to tell you, Doc, the worst part is I don't love him anymore. Because he just reminds me so much of the shell that I am today and how much wasted potential I had. Doc goes, man, that sounds serious. Yeah, Doc. So I just wish I had any courage anymore.

Because if I had any courage, I'd reach into the nightstand because I keep a gun and I put it up to my moth head every night. You know, I just want to pull the trigger, but I'm too much of a weakling and just I can't do it. I don't want to give John Gavorevich

Jack at the factory the satisfaction of knowing that he cracked me and throw me over the edge because in some twisted game that he plays in his head, I know that he cracked me and throw me over the edge because in some twisted game that he plays in his head i know that he would think that way the podiatrist says man that's a lot of problems this you need a psychiatrist you know this is a podiatrist office why'd you come in here moth goes because the light was on so thank you recipe storm that was that that was my he hijacked entire entire segment of cody o'brien with that joke and wouldn't let it go so thank you for bearing with

me i hope you think that's as funny as i do if you don't let's face it if you didn't think that was funny you're not listening anymore because you just turned this off you just completely shut this off so every time it's funny just because this poor guy you know he's just he's struggling with this that the lives of quiet desperation that most men lead yeah they look at my son and like it's just this horrible horrible reality i'm just like came in because the light was on well you know the funniest part about that joke is actually what i watched it i put a link to it yesterday and i i was talking to people and i said uh the funniest part was the very beginning was first talking to uh to conan o'brien he's like

no so because where do you get your material he's like well like for example i got some great material on the way over here you sent a car for me and he's like yeah well, like for example, I got some great material on the way over here. You sent a car for me. And he's like, yeah, it's like, so the driver told me the joke and halfway through it, Conan's like, how long was this commute? Did they pick you up in Connecticut? Like where were you? This is going on in Boston. Oh God. Which is just crazy. So he was such a great comedian. Oh, it was the best such Either people hated him or you absolutely loved him, in my opinion. I read a great quote today, again, being the internet. I have no idea if he said it, but if he did, it would be such a Norm thing to say. Something apparently he said years ago, when he said, I don't know why people say you lose the battle to cancer, because if you die,

the cancer dies. So the way I see it, he didn't lose. That's fighting to a draw. I thought it's a very Norm MacDonald thing to say, and I thought it was great. So that's that. Dirty work. Dirty work is a film, by the way. It's not a movie. Yeah, it's a film that should be taken in. It's a film.

It should be taken in. But let's talk about some other stuff, man, that happened. Let's talk about Gavin. Actually, I don't want to talk about gavin we actually i'm not talking about that yet because i want to talk about this because norm dad passed away yesterday and he died of cancer which is very terrible um and i don't i don't mean to go from something that was so funny and celebrating to something that's kind of a downer but a friend of mine in new orleans uh he's a family that's friends with everybody that i know there their uh eight-year-old son, Walker, just lost a long battle with cancer last week. He succumbed to that, or as Norm would say, he fought it to a draw.

I think to say that's better. But the only reason I bring that up is because Walker was such a unique little kid that he wanted to make sure that this didn't happen to other kids. So he started a foundation called Kids Join the Fight. And my kids got invited to participate with this. I'm going to put you guys on the spot to invite your kids also to invite to be with it. And what the goal of this is, is it's kids raising money for pediatric cancer. Apparently, one out of every 245 children in the United States at some point in their life will have cancer. And there's such a small amount of money of federal funding that is currently given to that issue that they just want to kind of shed light on that. And this is kids raising money through anything they can. Lemonade stands, kickball tournaments, mowing yards, whatever it may be, any type of fundraiser they can have.

And the goal is before the end of September, because September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, they want to have an event in all 50 states. This has really gotten some legs behind it. I know that the Barry's, which is Walker's family, I think we're going to be on Good Morning America this week. It's really caught legs. And if you see something like this, if you have any ideas for what we can do to make that work and I'll, I'll let you know how it goes, but we're going to do some, the kids are going to do something. I already told my kids and you start planning something to raise some money.

I've predated cancer. I've made a commitment also from simply Vegas that no matter what they raise, we are going to match that. So hopefully it'll be a big amount and we can write a big check. And you know, even though Walker fought cancer to a draw, we can definitely maybe help another kid. Pick up where he left off

and keep his memory alive through that foundation, which I think is great. That's such an ugly thing to watch kids with cancer. Yeah, it's hard. I know that for a while, and again, not to take a super serious turn, but when your son had some issues and you guys didn't know what was going on,

sitting in those waiting rooms was tough. I won won't even talk about because i'll cry still but yeah it's ugly no joke it's ugly so god bless everybody with that god bless so we're gonna do that and make sure that that goes along but um let's you know mike get let's talk about the election yesterday yep let's switch gears to that so newsome survives yesterday and 62 but here's my question why are people so surprised oh it was i know it's it's become such more even more of a uh democratic state than it was how many years was that 20 years ago when arnold yeah it was 20 it's been 20 years since arnold right brown got recalled in oh 506 something but it's been a hot but when is the last time california went red in a national election it's gonna be blue here's the thing part of what was in that recall was literally talking about um you know illegal immigrants and all this

stuff and and you know i've immigrants and all this stuff. And, you know, I've talked about this a long time ago, not taking a partisan side on anything. Right. I'm an independent. I look at issues independently. But at some point, there's going to have to be recognition in, you know, certain parties that if you want to sway the base to your side, you're going to have to find way to uh reach out and connect with them now when you talk about a base of a population especially in the the latino community hispanic community you talk about people that vote democrat but that are literally born republicans

like very religious very conservative very family oriented all that stuff and i've always wondered and i don't like i said take a position but I'm always very curious as to why that isn't sort of like the main focus with the modern Republican. And in the bill, though, in the bill, literally kind of still is sort of demonizing, you know, not in so many words, but, you know, tangentially demonizing almost, you know, a community that they that they you know would be weaponized for them if they used it properly yeah that's funny you say that i was at a charity this was years ago um and a guy got sat at our table and uh he was in the republican um uh forum and he was

higher up and my wife's mexican and he sat there and that was his question. He goes, I do not, we cannot understand why we can't get the vote when you guys, your, your whole, you know, religious, everything is Republican. And, you know, that always, I was like, wow, he's right. You know, why can't you get that vote? Well, I think what you see is you see people that are, it's like if nine, the problem is, and it's both political parties actually, but the problem is if nine things check my box and number 10 upsets me, I'm not voting the other way.

I just don't vote. See, that's a huge issue for Democrats. That is, I'd say, the number one issue for Democrats is they won't hold their nose. Not to get put into a political talk, but this is a very objective, in my opinion, way to do it. That Republicans are better at kind of holding their nose. A lot of them didn't like Donald Trump but still voted Trump as opposed. Whereas a lot of Democrats, if you're not a perfect candidate if you haven't um done those things to the extreme that you're on right yeah if you're slightly left then you'll be less worried about the sort of a

mispronoun or whatever all those different things but the further down you get the line you have less nose holding and you have things like independence and you have the you know things like well okay okay well so back to the left. Do you think that Democrats are losing some of their party with some of the way out there pronouns, all of these things? I think that on a long enough timeline, there will be a swing back to younger people going, wait a minute, because it's unsustainable. Yeah.

The concept of perfection and never being incorrect or never making mistakes is one that's untenable. It's not one that can last forever. So when you have somebody that, the guy who lost his job for Jeopardy, he had some lame tweet seven years ago and he lost his job for it. Ken Jennings had some stupid tweet, lost his chance at it for we're talking about things people say seven years ago i've said fucked up things in this chair yeah you know like because you try you take your shot colt's planning on saying something crazy the next 10 minutes are you guys ready shots yeah and do you think you say you don't think it will stay extreme. I mean, it's been pretty extreme for the last, you know, 15, 16 years. And I think that, I think that we have such more of a independence, you know, independent

voter, but no one will ever vote that because then they think their vote doesn't count, right? Like there will never be a, it'll always be two parties in my opinion. If you found a party that party that because everybody likes to say this everybody that grew up with our generation or younger say I'm socially responsible social I mean we get into the facts about which party spend more Yeah I always wonder why people say they're fiscally conservative and vote for things that cost a lot of money like war right? But that's just personal if you're fiscally conservative socially liberal Okay, leave the stuff out about who you can marry,

the more moral stuff. Leave that out. Talk about fiscal conservatism. Find that base. You could have a third party that would crush. I don't see that happening. See, I told you about my goal for political party, what I want to do.

I think I could run for political office. This is my platform. You ready? My platform is this. I will be there as an empty vessel. I will be sailing the sea as an empty vessel. And here's what I mean by that. Every single issue that comes up, I will have one left-leaning, I'm sorry, I will have one left-leaning assistant, one right-leaning aide. I will have them write every issue that comes up. I will have them write their opinion on it on both sides of the aisle. I will then go like American Idol, and I will say, fastest finger, vote. Text this to vote this way, that way, and my constituents.

I will control it, and then whenever my people say I should vote, I will walk in and push the button. You know what that sounds like? What? Democracy. I know! Shockingly, right? Shockingly. We don't live in a democracy, though. We don't live in a democracy. We live in a republic. A representative oligarchy. Yes, we live in a republic. We don't live in a democracy. That's the biggest mistake a lot of people

make. They don't see the difference. I mean, like, republics are still, you know, have the element of, but we live in an oligarchy because what happens is you vote in your oligarch. Your oligarch goes to Parliament Hill or Capitol Hill or wherever you go, and they vote kind of how they're going to vote.

They're going to do what they're going to do. They either apologize or say thank you. That's not democracy. If you get in on this party, that's how you should vote. If you want to elect me to any position in Washington as part of the Internet party, I'll call it because you just kind of go on the Web site and vote. There you go. Can we try that? If American Idol could do it, why can't I do it? Can we try to make a push and see if we can get one of us on some sort, even just a simple council. We know it's not going to be you. No, but I feel like it's you, John. I'll be the Olympian that supports you and we'll go from there.

I was just about to say something that was going to ruin all my political chances. And then here we go. Just today. But no, I think that's great. I think there's no reason why you shouldn't have that be a guiding star as a politician, right? Why would I, on voting day, come in there? Allegedly, these people are talking to their constituents to find these things out. But they're not.

They're not. No one's ever spoken to me. They're going in. The lobbyist walks in, hands them a bunch of money, and they vote the way the lobbyist says to vote. It's kind of like how the NCAA didn't pay their slave labor either. I've always said that we really should have more businessmen

that will make business decisions. You've got attorneys. The thoughts and feelings of Colt do not reflect that. Business people. I'm sorry. Ladies do business now too. A lady can be anything she wants now, Colt. Welcome to the 21st century.

See? This is going to go viral. Is it? Colt's done. You're done. You just lost it. You ruined the whole thing. I told you on purpose.

With one comment. We're looking like you, John. Oh, Jesus. You're on it. I'm going back to questioning. Horses don't ask questions, Colt, do they? They don't ask any questions. I do all the work. Like, what's the caliber of the rider on me? They don't ask that question. Or don't ask any questions like what's the caliber

of the rider on me they don't ask that question or they always answer the right way nay that's getting crickets i actually have crickets on the board i never thought to use it that was crickets for you that's just brutal that was terrible you're gonna fall at the math dad so hard the math joke with that is what you're coming with which is just terrible but the thing i thought we were talking about earlier that with gavin newsom that was so nutball was what would have happened had he lost so had he lost he had if he didn't clear 50 majority 50 plus one right the next person with the highest amount of votes would have taken office. So based on the

rules of California. So I think the next leading guy has something like 12-14%. So with 12% of the popular vote here's your new governor with 12% of the popular vote. 100% of the people here is your new guy with 12%. Here's the deal. Number one I think we can agree on a couple things.

Why anybody would want the job as governor of California I have absolutely no clue. You can get into the French Laundry. Yeah, that's a good call. So other than getting into French Laundry, I don't know why you'd want that job. I mean, the state is... It's a total... Any government official, honestly.

Why would you want... It's a total... He's an empty suit. No. Gavin Newsom is an empty suit. The guy is not anybody that I find personally. I see him as being an opportunist. I see him as being somebody.

He made his own money. I will give him credit for that. He's one of the few politicians he made his own money through the help of family friends, but he didn't grow up rich. So I respect that. That's what I want in business. But then his political career seems to be very opportunistic. And I don't't like I said

I the next guy he would have I would I would Last time I checked we got a governor this state that seems like he's done quite well Since he's gone from one position to governor this isn't it wild that every single congressperson leaves office a millionaire Yeah, that is not something. No, it's not by accident But not only not taken lightly. Yeah, that should be something that is prosecuted. I think that there should be absolutely no way for that to happen. Just like before COVID, when everybody started selling stocks

off. That's what I was going to say. You should be prosecuted for insider trading. Period. And it'll never happen. It'll never happen. So obviously we can all agree that California is the worst state to be governor of. I'm going to say probably worst state. Worst state more than Louisiana?

Florida? The floods, yeah. Constant. Yeah, but constant. Human tragedy. No, but you get to become a positive figure during those times. That's true. You know, so I...

And you actually get to serve people. What I don't get is... Yeah. A lot of people die in my life. Hey, you know what the best state was? 9-11, right? You know what would be the best state to be part of, Governor? Remember when Rudy Giuliani was?

Remember when Rudy was a hero? Yeah. Remember when he was? Wow. He was a hero. What would be the best state to be governor of? What do you think? Oh, man.

One of those real sweet cupcake states. Like Vermont? Just something where you just kind of call it in. Delaware. i'm going i'm going with like the montana the world it'd be pretty solid be pretty sweet maybe i've been maybe i've been watching too much uh yellowstone yeah i was going to say california money comes in a little sleepy it'll be hard to pull uh tables at the french lunch you're not going to be president from being governor montana no i think i think californ California might be the best. There is so much money to be taken

on. Washington would be pretty sweet. Oh, that's true. Washington. Culture says there's so much money to take in California. You're not making a good case for yourself. My bribes would be amazing. The corruption in this room already.

Maybe John Gafford and Colt Ammon and running mates. No, no, no. John Gafford and Colt Amidon, running mates. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The thoughts and opinions of Colt Amidon do not reflect the thoughts and opinions of the Power Move. Yeah, it's funny. Yesterday when you weren't here, it was like we started saying a couple things

and he's like, whoa, we don't have counsel here. We don't have counsel. We don't have counsel. He's like, what's the breaks? Let's just talk about something good. Monday night football. That's what we talked about yesterday. Yeah, we kept it pretty light yesterday.

But you know what? But I do want to shift gears. Let's talk about, because there's a lot of business owners that listen to this. And if you are in real estate or if you're an agent by yourself, if you're an independent salesperson, if you are an independent contractor of any sort, you own your own business. I mean, you are a business owner that owns your own business. And, you know, I want to talk about some mistakes these people seem to consistently make and and how they could do better and things that you see are what

you see uh i've got three major things that i'll tell people not knowing your demographics right it is the biggest uh one of the biggest things um not having proper experience and not being properly funded. Those are my three major ones that I see people will automatically fail. Well, I think those are realistic, but I think that those are almost three good reasons to go start your own business. Like if you don't have the funding, where are you going to get it? Sink or swim, you know? No, but when you come to me, I get so many calls that somebody needs probably $2 million to do something. They're like, I got 80,000 and I got another 10,000 in

this bank account. It's like, you have, you have so much. Yeah, no, I know what you're saying because being underfunded as a rule in business sucks, right? So you have to understand your business. The number one problem, I think, I don't know if we've ever talked about this, but I tell people this every single time they come to me with a business idea. Let me see your business plan. They go, I don't have one. I go, why don't you have one? And they go, well, it's just an idea.

I'm like, don't talk to anybody about your idea. Until you have a plan. Other than getting. Yeah, no, until you have an actual plan that you're doing. And together, right? But the number one mistake people don't do is put together a business plan. And here's the thing. It doesn't matter what your business is.

Your idea is worthless. There's not a good idea out there that's worth a shit. No. Without execution. Well, you know, it's funny. Andy Frisella today, I was watching, I just saw a clip on Aaron Wag's Facebook, and he was at lunch with Andy Frisella. And Frisella was like, dude, you don't have to be the smartest guy in the room.

You just got to be the guy that executes. The world is littered with people with great ideas. They don't have the gumption to get up and actually go do it. Well, you can have a bad idea and make it work. You can execute it. Like for example, you know what's a bad idea? Serving somebody six margaritas in 15 minutes and then towing their car when they go to a concert, Chili's. That's a bad idea. Terrible idea, Chili's. Don't do it, Chili's. Don't do it. But the other thing is being inexperienced. I know a lot of lawyers that go cut their own shingle, and they go and they learn because it's kind of trial by fire.

And some have the fortitude to put in the work it takes to figure it out and take the cases that aren't over their skis and figure it out. And then if you fail, then you kind of go mea culpa and you go back to a firm where somebody else has done the work for you already. And I get that, but you'll sit there and see people just don't do any market studies or anything like that. Are you talking about just more being a vacant dreamer? No, I'm talking about people that have plans. Because Colt's in commercial real estate, for those of you who are just joining us for the first time. Colt is the commercial director here at Simple Vegas. And I might sound like an idiot most of the time on this show.

Yeah, he's here for entertainment, but he's actually really, it's kind of like Rain Man for commercial. Like, not really good at anything else, but knows commercial inside and out. Definitely triple net. Triple net. Triple net. It's got to be triple net. Definitely.

Taxes. Taxes. This is making where we can, none of us can run for governor of California. No, well, no, but I think what Colt's trying to say is that people that come to him,

they're like, I need you to find me space. And when you apply for space somewhere, the landlords actually want to see if you're real, they want to see your plans. They want to see your financials. They want to see this stuff. Yeah.

And, and that, those are the questions he's getting. So he's asking those questions preemptively because he knows it's coming from the landlord. And I think that again, like there's, there's a liquor store right up the street and it's like, I walked in there and they had every low end liquor there is. I'm like, okay, you're across the street from literally billionaires. And they're like, oh, we're just trying to figure it out. And I'm like, okay. And a half a mile down the road is Lee's Discount Liquor, which is the larger, like, what were you thinking? Dominant force in the market. Absolute dominant force. You know, it's funny because I see

so many people maybe at a different level. See, at least the people where you're talking about are at least trying to mobilize on that step of it. If you take that two steps back, there's a lot of people trying to get money and put together businesses. Trying to raise cap. Trying to do this stuff. Let's do this. Let's wait. And then after the break, let's come back and let's break it down step by step where we think people

screw up as they go along and they build these things. So guys, we'll be right back with more power move in just a second. How do you fail at a liquor store? I think it's probably filled you well hey it's john gafford if you want to catch up more and see what we're doing you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we have things we talked about on the show as well as links to the youtube where you can watch us live and if you want to catch up with

me on instagram you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout. Welcome back. Welcome back for part two of today. This is episode 12, boys. 12. Sliding into home. This means we spent 12 hours in a room with Colt's just general demeanor.

The next governor of California. It's a first year law associate work day. Yeah, exactly. 12 hours on one day. We spent that, which is great. But welcome back. We're in the middle of discussing. If you're thinking about starting a business,

you have started a business. Some things from personal experience. I think that success leaves clues. I think failure leaves bigger clues. And we were kind of talking before the break about saying we were going to break down we were kind of talking before the break about Saying we were gonna break down each step kind of of opening a business and where the pitfalls of that can be

So let's start what ideas you know some about the idea for what it is right now You asked something while we were off air you said what you know What do you I think is the best idea to financial freedom as it franchises those things, right? What was the question? Yeah, because I was wondering, you think about who you know that's, who are the wealthiest people you know, what do they do, right? Some people say doctors, lawyers,

but it's like the people that I know that are really worth a lot of money to start talking about, it's eight, nine figures, big money, they own a big company. Yes. They own some kind of company. Yeah. Okay, and it's got multiple people under them

because that's the only way you can leverage yourself is that people under you doing it. But in what way is it the guy that owns 10 McDonald's is the lady that owns, uh, well, well it's, let's talk about that because one of the, the really successful guys that I know, um, that I've invested money with is, is a guy named Aaron Wagner owns a company called Wags Capital. They have restaurants and it's what they do. They are experts at QSR restaurants. Their portfolio includes Crumble Cookies, which everybody in Vegas knows what that is. Everbowl, which I'm invested there.

They just launched a new hot chicken sandwich place. They've got a couple other good things that are coming through. It's all real cool. But they have got it down so much to a science that they go through and they just understand the cost of goods sold. They understand how to move the needle with things. Am I reducing costs here? It's just like turning dials for them. Because QSR restaurants are much simpler.

QSR stands for quick service restaurant versus one where you go in and sit and Peggy, the begrgy, the begrudging waiter comes over and helps you out. Like Chili's? Yeah, like Chili's. Talking to you, Chili's. No, when that happens, comes over and just does that. But, you know, the QSR restaurant model is very successful. So Aaron has a mixture of what he does, which is they will, A, they've done some ground-up concepts where they've said this is where we're going to start with this and we'll just ground them up.

Or then, B, he'll go and find something that's humming, right, and doing very, very well. And then come in and say, Hey, look, we want to partner with you to grow this business. Cause in most cases, in some cases, the restaurateur that started it isn't capitalized. They don't have a huge, they don't have a bunch of capital to make that expansion and they don't have the network and they don't have the infrastructure to make it go either. And that's what these guys have gotten very good at doing. You know, talk about that. You know, we, we entered into restaurant know, we had an interesting restaurant yesterday, and I'm going to give them a shout out again today on the podcast. So there's a new restaurant that I went to yesterday up on Henderson on Horizon Ridge.

I'm sorry, Horizon Ridge and Eastern, not Henderson. Eastern and Horizon Ridge called Cubana Died. And me, you know, before I moved to Vegas, I lived in Tampa. I love Cuban food. I love it. I absolutely love it. Good Cuban sandwich is the biz. And unfortunately, most of the restaurants in Florida,

there was one downtown that was amazing. But ever since that thing kind of closed up, Cuban's been really hit or miss in Vegas. Super hit or miss. The one on Fremont? No, no, no. It was on Las Vegas Boulevard right by where Soho is. They actually owned the one you're not too happy with.

Oh, they did? Well, the one downtown was great. The other one, they're on the blacklist. So I just kind of written them off for bad service. And I think that's something you said, like they'll go in and help. You might be an amazing chef and creative, but you might not know how to create a business model franchise. And that's when you need to reach out to help.

Well, there's Cubana Dog Deal. It's a quick service Cuban restaurant. You go to the counter, you order your food, you you sit down then the person brings it out and sets it down and we were there for maybe three minutes four minutes yep and the dude that owns the joint comes over the table and no this is not a flex but he just says excuse me are you john gafford because you know in in my local little ville of hendo i'm kind of a big deal i don't know whatever he's probably seen the power he's probably probably yes anyway he says no thank you so much for coming in uh nice to meet you i'm gonna send you um some some special stuff over like okay great and uh it was amazing and you know he made that nice little touch and it wasn't just

us i mean i felt special for a second but this dude was like working the run. I mean, they were really doing a good job. And the food was exceptional. And I came back and I saw that he was following me on Instagram, which is how he knew who I was. And I shot him a message. I said, hey, everything was – actually, he shot me a message saying, did you think everything was really good? And I said, everything was great, man. I said, being from Florida. And this brings me to my next point. Rather than reinvent the wheel,

I'm thinking to myself, I'm just going to get with Aaron Wagner and try to duplicate what he does with his deal because I have a lot of experience back in the day with restaurants as well. And I was like, maybe I can do the same thing with him. So I just sent the guy a message back saying,

hey, look, I'm very well capitalized. I have a lot of great connections. If you ever want to make this thing really boom and go big, let me know. And I'm going to a mastermind group this weekend where I'm going to have a conversation with Wags about this place because I thought it was good. It's unique. It's different from everything else. I mean, you know, it's not another hamburger. No, it's not another hamburger joint, which is great. And I think that brings us to what you were saying. So if you're going to start a business,

don't reinvent the wheel. I mean, and here's the thing you got to do. If you are going to reinvent the wheel, if you're like, I have this great million dollar idea, I'm telling you right now, the best thing absolutely that has happened to entrepreneurs and people that want to own their own business in the last 20 years. The internet.

Well, the internet, but specifically on the internet, the best thing that has happened is Kickstarter platforms. And here's why. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no. So you're wrong. It's not even about the funding. It has nothing to do with the funding. I know where you're going.

It has to do with, do you have a product that people actually want to buy? In my office right now, I've got a little jar of vitamins. I keep it in there. It's a blue bottle and it says,

Azura Specialty Nutrition Vitamins. It's a blue bottle. It is now 21 years old. No'm not going to open and eat it even though it probably still be better than flintstone vitamins crystal pepsi yeah exactly crystal pepsi exactly at the same time and that represents a time when my sister asked me if we wanted to open at the time she was a big multi-level marketing person she was the head of a very high person in amway ran their whole business for them she was the business manager for them some very important people in amway and she's like i want to start my own multi-level marketing company we're going to split away we're going to do

nutritional supplements i know how original right even 20 years ago wasn't that original and we went all in on it right we had marketing partners we had a friend of mine that was a former florida gator football player supposedly had emmett smith on board there was a lot of moving parts to why we wanted to do this. But what do we do? When you're going to launch a product, what's the first thing you do? You go out and you order all the products, right? Order it all.

Oh, yeah. Spend all your capital. So we ordered all the product. We ordered all the vitamins. We ordered all the whey protein. We ordered all the fat burners. We ordered all the creatine. We ordered all the penis pills. We were all of it. And privately, I was assuming when you said the blue bottle,

John. Yeah, exactly. And we put it in a warehouse. We stuck it in a warehouse because we were going to need it on hand when we jumped off the planet and blew up. Turns out nobody really wanted it. And it sat and died in a warehouse. Now, granted, we had a lot of other moving parts that made that business not work, but I told myself I would never again build a product that I didn't know people were going to work, that people were going to do,

because it was a major loss. Sometimes I think in life, though, you do have to feel the dreams a little bit. If you build it, they will come. Like, I think there are just some things that, you're talking about a market that's so saturated saturated you have to figure out what your edge is. But there are some things. What's your moat?

What's the moat? What's the moat? Yeah, what's your moat? None. What is the weirdest thing you've seen make money? I mean, you can go really hacky and say Pat Rocks, but it's just like. Right. No, personally.

Like, you personally have, like, met somebody that made money. It was a weird way. Because I know we all meet interesting people, business owners, money people. What's the weirdest way I've seen somebody that makes money? Other than OnlyFans. I mean, OnlyFans is definitely up there. I mean, recently it's the crypto mining. It's just bizarre to me. Yeah.

I mean, people were doing fidget spinners. You think of those fads, just whatever. There's a transgender lady that makes sex toys that kills it in this town. Kills it. Sex toys companies, they make a fortune. That's what I'm saying. I met the guy that made the rubber bands that were shaped like animals. You just took rubber bands and shaped them. People put them on and he,

I met him and he was buying like a $3 million house because of that. I think anything you can buy from China and mark up 8,000% and then sell it on the street corner is going to, is going to make you a pretty good solid space. One of the guys I was on the apprentice with made a bunch of money over the years selling glow sticks on the Jersey pier. You know, who knows? That's what I'm saying. When you think about who do you know that's kind of popped the most, what kind of leverage model do they have? How many people did they have underneath them? Did they have a commission sale set up? How do you get to that

level from one to the next? Because so my business is weird. I can only leverage myself with the type of cases I take, or I can hire a bunch of attorneys and generate hourly work. I only have two paths to go. And that's, I think, true with everybody, right? I think you've got a third path that you've just got to find something. Wow. That's under a different LLC. Giving legal advice naked on OnlyFans.

Different LLC. I think that then you create something that maybe attorneys use, right? You see a lack of something maybe in your database or whatever. And then you go do that, right? Yeah, sure, sure. Look for solves, you know, like if you want to make money, just solve problems. But I think if you have a product, you have an idea or you have something like that, prove the concept first. Make sure it's proved. If you don't have an idea, if you have no idea, but you want to go into business for yourself, look for something that's proven. And have somebody around

you that's smarter or understands what they're doing. So a lot of times these people, they want to play, you know, they want to be they want to helm the ship. They want to be the cook crew. So one of my clients is a company in town called Foodie Fit. They are just spectacular.

They do such a great job with their concept. I ate their food this morning. They are lovely guys, unbelievably great people to work with. And the barbacoa is spectacular. It's great. Spectacular on the barbacoa. The product really stands by itself,

but in order to get that product out to people, first off, and it's actually economical, it makes a ton of sense. The guy who started it is a chef. He just wants to cook He doesn't want to be a marketing guy. He's not a marketing guy. He's a finance guy so he brings on a couple people that knew him and They both have their specialties and it's it's they kill it Yeah because they he knew where his weaknesses were these two gentlemen knew what their strengths were and what his weaknesses were and they formed like voltron to have this

wonderful great business and did you just bust out a voltron reference what would voltron be with just like one green cat or whatever yeah yeah they would make it like you gotta have everything working together and you've got to know where your weaknesses are. Don't give away all your fucking equity to the first person that asks you on a date. Yeah, and I can tell you this too. I get pitched a lot of equity deals from people that are looking for capital

and when they come in and they're like, there's a fine line that you've got to look through there. I mean, you watch Shark Tank, you see this. It's got to be worth your while to mentor somebody and invest your capital i i got offered a i got offered a weed deal the other day and they made me sign an nda and i was like oh this is going to be some new tech caesar's park no no no he signed an nba and now he's about to spill the beans on no no no no no no because, no, no. Because that's the thing. That's the thing. There's nothing. The deal was with the feds.

No, there's nothing. And still, John DeLorean shows up, and then there's a briefcase. No. But you sign this NDA, and if I sign an NDA, I'm expecting something like this. Something cool. This is cool, right? Unique. Something unique.

And you know what they were going to do? Check this out. This is what they were going to do. They were going to start a grow facility grow marijuana and then sell it to dispensaries and i was like jude i've seen this i can't believe you just violated that india i'm not a part of this equals mc something yes i'm done no and the thing about it was was you know i'm looking at this i at this plan, and they wanted a fairly large investment, and they wanted like, it was a preferred investment for the first three years, with a decent return on it, but you didn't actually get the return. But then what it was, was they would compound it over three years and then use that to, to convert

to equity. But the equity would be a future value of the company. So I was kind of like, look at this. I'm like, you want me to fund the whole bill for your company and then you want me to get a diluted position in two years and not make anything on my money for, it made no sense to me. Yeah. Those ships have sailed too.

Yeah. It made no sense. The marijuana thing is, is not what it was. Probably solar marijuana. But the point, but the point being, the point being is, is if you're going to go get somebody that really knows what they're doing in the space that you're trying to do business in, you need to offer them enough of a chunk that it makes sense for them to want to mess with it. Right. But here's, here's the other thing you have to always be careful of young people doing business. I had a gentleman approach me the other day, and he said, hey, can you read this operating agreement?

This guy wants to give me all this stuff. It's worth X amount of money. So I take a look at it, and I go, I'm sorry, he's giving you what? I go, well, he's going to buy me a new truck. He's going to do this, this, this. It's like 80 grand for 30% of my company. I'm like, well, on one hand, your company's not worth shit. No, it's like 80 grand for 30 of my company i'm like well on one hand your company's not worth shit no it's worth zero it's worth zero today but you are doing this thing and it is a

really cool concept and i think if you get with kind of like those other guys that that guy got with it's really worth something and you are performing and it is actually a thing and it's making money so you're not just it's not an idea it's actually something that's happening yeah tangible but this guy clearly didn't have the kind of experience for these things because he goes, oh, yeah, he's giving me a truck. I go, well, what? Well, he's signed you over title to a paid-off truck? He's like, no, no, no.

The company will have to pay for the lease. Oh, my God. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Yeah, you just went from giving you a truck to just he's basically going to. You're paying your own. His name's on the lease. That's it?

For 30% of your company. What is he putting in? Zero. Because here's the thing. Let's say your company is actually worth a shit. Yeah. Let's say it is. And I'm not saying that you should live under that sort of embarrassed

millionaire thing. Like I'm not a millionaire yet, but I'm going to be. Yeah. Thing that a lot of people falsely do. But to think, okay, planning for the future, what is the equity of my company worth? What is it worth? I believe in this company.

I want to be a $10 million business. Okay, so 30% is $3 million. Well, I think you also got to appreciate the fact that when you're looking for investors like that or you're a guy, you ask yourself a question. Is this a strategic partner or is this dumb money? And dumb money, not meaning the person is dumb, but meaning they don't bring any knowledge

or any connections or any skill set. They're just but meaning they don't bring any knowledge or any connections or any skill set they're just money they don't bring anything to the table other than money and you need to be like that's a loan that's a lot thank you yeah that's not business and he goes oh well you know and i'm like look save up the money it takes to rent a new truck or something don't give away the farm on somebody that's not going to like you said great point strategic partner yeah so this guy with the foodie fit got two other guys that were strategic partners in different ways and it's obviously worked out very well yeah and they all work together let's say a national wanted to buy them out or let's

say they wanted to expand and needed to raise money or needed to raise equity well then they can all kind of equally dilute and work that out later, right? Right. But if you've given away 30% of your farm for a loan, that's now you've got 20% left before you're a minority shareholder. And I think... Or an interest LLC holder. I think a big thing is people don't have stuff in writing. I mean, me and you talked about that before, but I've seen that.

I see that all the time. Our partners, I go, you might be best friends right now, but give that five years of rough up and down. That's what I always tell people, the number one rule in real estate, everybody's cool until they're not. Until they're not. Until they're not. Dude, everybody's super cool.

Until they're not. I lost a lot of money last week because everybody was super cool. Everybody's cool until they're not. But I think that's important, too. If you're going to bring on a partner, if you're thinking about having a partnership with somebody it is more important in the document that you draft between you and your partner what happens when things go wrong than it is when things go right i think if you're going to have a partner you need to have a very

clear expectation spelled out of what both of you are bringing to the table right that is well everybody can see this is what i need to bring to the table this is the expectation is of me so there's no like well i thought you were going to do all that. No, I thought you were going to do all that. And then if it doesn't work out, if there's any assets at the company, who do they go to? If it's a buy-sell agreement, for those of you who've never heard of that, essentially what it is is one of you makes the offer to buy the other one out. The other one can either buy you out for the same amount or accept the money,

and then they keep the whole business. Or if there's a division of assets and intellectual property, down the middle but figure out when you get into business what's going to happen there oh yeah people don't will yeah people think like a prenup is the most unromantic thing on earth and it's like well no no no no prenup's not there assuming the marriage is going to fail yeah it's not what it's for yeah it's there if it fails now why things fail who knows who are you the same guy you were 10 years ago? No. Not even remotely, because that's why I don't have any tattoos.

Like, yeah, I like the band Tool, but I don't necessarily need it on my arm, because I'm like, I don't know who I'm going to be next. He's got the barbed wire. He's got the barbed wire. He's got the barbed wire. We were just talking earlier about some guy got some girl's name tattooed on her face, and she dumped him the next day. I mean, it's crazy to me that these people don't understand that things change.

Here's the thing. You don't always plan on things happening in business that have to do with you and I, let's say, uh, let's take our spouses out of it. Let's say I'm married to a crazy person and John's married to a crazy person and she goes to divorce John.

And now my interest in my business is handicapped because John and I didn't have the foresight to understand that spouses had to have, know disclaimers or quick claims against property interest or whatever of the business or that they didn't have an interest in the event of divorce you know there's ways to build these things into your company where you go hey i'm getting into bed with you not your wife not your so there's one if you're gonna have a serious partnership with money involved zip or what is it zip legal forms or whatever it is is probably not the place to go. Call a real attorney to have this stuff drafted. Call a trust attorney.

Call a real corporate attorney because they're going to understand that you don't even know what you're not protected against if you don't know what you're not protected against. It's not always you. What's funny is right now I'm moving everything over to some wealth management guys in New York. We were on the phone yesterday for about an hour and a half. And they were asking me questions about assets and trust and things where money is

and this and that and how to segregate. Who gets the pogs? Who gets the... Well, no, no. But their biggest concern was how do we carve this out? And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, well, for example,

we're going to go through and run a doomsday scenario on every asset you have. And I'm like, what does that mean? He goes, well, like for example, the building in Nashville, you guys are building. If that was to collapse and kill everybody in it, how are you insulated from that? I'm like, oh God, like I didn't even, I'm just saying, this is an investment. It gets built. It's going to cashflow. Life is good. Now you're talking about the building falling down and crushing people, stuff you don't think of.

How are you isolated in that you're not going to own any of your assets that's going to be held in trust? But who's going to go? Let's say it goes to a trust, but do you want things in life estates for your spouse to go to your kids directly? Or because they're 50% owned by your wife? Those are really complex things. Talk to an estate planning attorney. A real attorney to get those done. It's not that expensive either.

If you have enough assets that you're worried about, if it's not a set-aside Probate issue or something like that if you have real assets then get that done immediately not today I need to talk to you Chris about my one share of wings one share of when one share don't care Literally one share with China Killed on today. I woke up today thinking, no, yesterday was bad. No, and today goes worse. Sands gets worse. I'm going to be buried at Sands because I own so much of that stock at this point. I'm never going to be able to sell it. Unfortunately, I bought more than just one share.

Oh, God, you know what? We got to talk about that. Oh, taxes too. Let's do that for the last five minutes. But I want to talk about this. So we talked about if you're going to build a business, I'm going to prove the concept if it's your own idea. If it's not your own idea, find someone to

mentor under or just mimic what they did. For example, Dave Thomas of Wendy's, who was his mentor? Do you know? Ray Kroc. No, not true. Close, but not Ray Kroc. The Colonel Sanders. The Colonel. He worked for the Colonel. That's how he learned. So he went to learn the fast food business by working directly for the Colonel, went off and did his. There is nobility in working for someone else if you are learning what they do to take it. It happens every single day. The reason people want to come work for me on my team is because they know I'll teach

them everything that I know, and then they can go off and do their own thing. I just want to do it at the company. It doesn't matter. I don't mind training my future competitors. It doesn't bother me. But yeah, do that. If you have your own idea, prove the concept. If it's something that you're going to go out that is different from everybody else, ask yourself the question, is there a moat around this product?

Is there something that's different from everything else? If your product is very similar to 25 million other products on the market, it ain't special just because you thought it up. There's nothing special about it. And when it goes to real estate, when you see something that's for lease for $2,000 a month, figure it's going to be 5,000 by time insurance, by time, you know, that's you, you need to break down what your actual cost and overhead is going to be. Well, have a, again, back to what you said,

have a plan. Spend the time to build a real business plan and understand if you're going to open a restaurant, you need to price out everything that's going to be on the line. You need to price out what it costs to have a hood installed. You need to price what it costs to have a grease trap installed if the restaurant doesn't have one. You need to understand how that works. Plan for your target customer. Figure out who your target customer is. Open your business where it is. Why are we sitting where we're sitting right this second? Why are we in this office? We're here because the most expensive real estate on this side of town, I can hit a seven iron and hit it. When we opened here 10 years ago,

this center was like empty because it depended on in and out retail, right? Depended on shops and store owners. We didn't care. We just wanted to be based close to the expensive homes. Now, luckily, 10, 11 years later, the shopping center is full, but again, understanding where your clients are and being where they are. Right. Knowing your demographics, find out where people are going to be buying real estate and go get their first. Yeah. Find out where it is first. To your point, you know, something I just throw in is a, you know, there's a reason I'm sitting in this chair sometimes. If you, you can start your own LLC. People don't understand how easy this process is. It's so easy that sometimes reason I'm sitting in this chair sometimes. You can start your own LLC. People don't understand how easy this process is.

It's so easy that sometimes when I'm doing them for myself, I'll just call my guy and he'll just do it for me. It's like I'm the attorney. I'm getting somebody who's not an attorney to start an LLC for me. It is not a difficult process, but people think that somehow that protects you. First off, an LLC isn't a business license. You have to get that separately. If you want to operate in Clark County, Las Vegas,

it's a different business license. And probably whatever city you're in. Whatever city you're in, there's different business licenses. You get a state business license with your LLC in Nevada. It's a state business license, but it's not in the county or place that you're operating. Different ones, check out, ask an attorney. The other thing is, if you're not willing to sit down

and figure out how to start an LLC, are you really ready to start your own business? There's going to be things that come up where if you can't sit down and figure this one thing out, I don't know, are you really willing to kind of handle some of the curve balls you're going to be getting? Yeah. Like, I think that's a kind of a low bar. And I think what Colt said earlier was understand what it takes to be capitalized. And for example, when we run our business here, we do for all of our businesses, this is how I just handle distributions. It's how we've always done it. It's always worked. It's what we do. We have a baseline for what it would cost to basically run this business

for six months without taking a dollar, without making $1 into the business, what it would cost for six months. That's the baseline that we keep in the account. On the same day of every month, we draw out everything that's over those on all of our businesses. We've always done it. But I don't have to worry about dips. I don't have to worry about,

even when COVID hit, it didn't really affect me because I did that. So many businesses are undercapitalized and open on a shoestring. And I think part of that is also if you're looking to do a franchise, that's when it can be dangerous. If you're looking to get into that franchise business, because some franchise companies, I mean, here's a little secret, kids. They're not really interested in you succeeding or not. They just want to get their franchise fee.

Well, yeah. I mean, they obviously want to get you paid so that they have a worthwhile thing, but they have no blood, sweat, and tears in your location. No, it's your money. As long as they get their French fries. French fries? That's the French fries. French fries. It's been a long day, and it's only going to get later.

It really is. I'm not going to lie. That's funny you say that because I was just with a huge retail broker. He handles the majority of the Vegas market. And I go, well, what was here? He's like, blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to say the business, but I go, well, we just looked at that across the town. He goes, oh yeah, their business model is they just want all your money up front. And if you

succeed, great. If you're out in the year, it doesn't matter, right? They have no risk. And that's it, right? Like the franchise thing, COVID show showed you how underfunded people were. Yeah. People calling you two weeks into shutdown, freaking out. You should not as a business owner be, you should, right. But not freaking out like some of these guys that so what do we think they closed? What's that? Why don't you think a lot of these businesses closed? Why did they close? Why didn't they close? What, during COVID or when? I don't see a lot of businesses closed right now. Oh, there was a bunch. Oh, there was a bunch, yeah.

But what services? The problem you just didn't see it is because the competitors picked it up to take their capitalization. Yeah, I think some of the other people stepped in and said- People just got scooped up. But there really wasn't a total shakeout. We don't see a bunch of tumbleweeds or closed for business. No, no, no.

I think the Paycheck Assistance Program helped a lot of businesses keep their doors open and stay through COVID. Yeah, because I was going to say there were some tools to use for business owners. Yeah, SBA loans and a lot of that stuff got them through. But I do want to talk about real quick before we're done, because we're almost out of time. Man, the hour just flies by like nothing. But there's a major change coming. If you own any type of assets, you know anybody that owns any type of assets, you need to listen to this because capital gains is going up. Going up.

You know, I don't know when the vote is on it, but I believe there's a bill before the Ways and Means Committee, and it's proposed to put it from 20% to 25%. Now, 5% increase in capital gains is quite significant. Yeah, it's a monster. It's a monster. That's 50 grand on a million. So you're talking about real money and an asset to be a million dollars in capital gains is not crazy. No, it's not. This applies to literally everything that's a long

term capital gain. Yeah. So if this gets passed, there's also a few life estate exemptions that are coming through the pipeline, too. But if you have assets that are ripe for long-term capital gains, held them for more than a year, and it's going through that process, you can 1031 them, right? You can always do that process. But if you're going to take, if you're planning on cashing out for whatever reason. Do it now. Do it now.

Do it right now. So if you have a commercial building, call Colt. If you have residential buildings, call any of the agents here, or residential properties, any of the agents here at Simply Vakes and help you with that. But yeah, it's time to start thinking about maybe a quick liquidation before some of the stuff goes. 1031 is a, that's such a great tool that everybody thinks it's only for the hedge funds. It's only for big money. It's like, no, you got guys that they're secondary, you know, your little investment home, make 200,000. Sure. Yeah. 5% is a lot. It's a lot of money, especially when you're talking about real estate

because those are the things with the potential to get you there. A lot of times, your regular income and these things, they're not going to hit you in that way. But if you have an asset that your grandfather left you, and whether how your tax basis was stepped up or whatever, you have to understand a lot of times those are going to be categorized as long-term capital gains, and this is the time when if it goes up to 25%, it's starting to greatly deviate from being that tax advantageous as like dividends or capital

gains have always been historically against income tax. Yeah. So if you're sitting at home waiting, you know, wondering to yourself, man, how are they going to pay for this giant infrastructure bill? Yeah. Here comes the check. It's going to be due so if you again if you have assets liquidate them move them into a talk to a tax attorney talk to a tax attorney don't this is not legal advice counsel this is legal information we're not giving legal advice here nothing we're providing an energy it's uh it's entertainment purposes only but as far as what i'm saying, make sure you talk to your tax attorney about whether it's right for you. Because whether these things do affect you, there's a possibility this is going to affect you in a large way. So talk to a tax attorney.

Make sure it's within your estate plan, too, because you don't want to obviously trigger other issues. But, yeah, talk to a professional. No, for sure. And, again, if you're watching us on on youtube make sure that you like and subscribe if you're listening to us on a podcast through spotify apple or any of the big ones make sure that you um subscribe to that as well so you get it and if you haven't seen us on youtube check it out because i'm just curious what you think my new hair do comment down in the comments let us know what you think of colts do or the meaning clean you know what you know what you can do you know what you can add now? Swimmer.

To the Olympic thing. You're getting the hairdo. You're getting the hairdo. It looks more like a diver. Diver. Diver. Do you ever realize that divers are in amazing shape and there's no need to be in amazing shape for diving? You know they just swim all day, right? Yeah. Well, no.

But not that they're not. Divers don't swim all day. They gotta swim to the edge of the pool. Then they gotta climb those stairs. They are in ridiculous shape. There's no elevator on the diving platform. But there's no need to be that way. They could go up with a dad bod

and do the same job. You couldn't make it up the stairs of the diving platform. Next we're gonna have to give a lesson on aerodynamics too. Join us next time as we give to give a lesson on aerodynamics, too. Join us next time as we give Colt a lesson on aerodynamics and we figure out what Olympic sport. Connell.com, Connell.com. That's it. Connell.com.

If they want to find you, how do they find you? Amadingroup.com, Colt underscore Amadon Instagram. And, of course, you can always follow me on Instagram at thejohngafford. And if you like what we do here, again, tell a friend because we don't appreciate that. But if you hate us, tell two because what happens, Connell? What do we like? Like being talked about. We like being talked about.

Don't matter if it's good or bad. See you next time. Cheers. Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we have, things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live.

And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.