Living The Red Life - Pay Less Taxes and Earn More $$$? with Tom Wheelwright

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

Taxes! How do we make them fun and not so scary? Our Man in Red, Rudy, met Tom Wheelbrook on Richard Branson's Necker Island and struck up a like-minded rapport for making more money and paying less tax!Tom has 40 years of quality experience in the tax business and runs a network of 65 CPA firms around the US. He’s one of the top tax minds around, and today he's sharing his sexy tax strategies on this penny-pinching episode of Living The Red Life. Rudy and Tom are showing us how to see the tax system as a series of incentives that can work for both you and the government if you play the game right. Going with the biggest tax firm is not necessarily the best, but paying top dollar for the right financial advice is totally worth it. The advice here today is free though. Everything from leasing electric cars to renting out your house tax-free is offered up to all our hungry Red Life entrepreneurs out there. Turn those small pennies into big dollars and come join us in Wonderland!"Your best return on investment, for sure, is going to be your tax advisor. By far." ~ Tom WheelwrightThe first 1000 to click here and send the promo code from the podcast can claim one of my courses for FREE!  - https://m.me/rudymawerlife In This Episode:Why is having the right tax advisor so important?What are some of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make with taxes?What are the best ways to build wealth while paying less tax?What is the secret to dealing with an audit?Having the right mindset to deal with your tax?Sexy tax strategiesWhat is the Augusta Rule?How can you get started on Tax-Free Wealth?Learning not to be afraid of your financesConnect with Tom Wheelwright:Website - https://tomwheelwright.com/Wealth Ability - Tom Wheelwright, CPA | WealthAbilityTax-Free Wealth - Amazon.com: Tax-Free Wealth: How to Build Massive Wealth by Permanently Lowering Your Taxes eBook : Wheelwright, Tom: Kindle StoreInstagram - Tom Wheelwright ® (@tom_wheelwright) • Instagram photos and videosConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/rudymawer/Instagram - www.instagram.com/rudymawerlife

But also realizing that how you make your money and how you invest your money has a big impact on how much tax you pay. So, you know, you take your money and basically the rule is if you save it or spend it, you'll get taxed on it. Yeah. Okay. But if you reinvest it into productive assets like real estate, business, agriculture, energy, things like that, things that the government actually wants you to do. You know, when you do that, then your taxes can go way down, but... My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast,

and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. I have an

island special today and what I mean by that is we met on a deserted island. We fought for our life, we barely survived. It was like that, is it Tom Hanks movie? It was very similar to that but luckily we survived and now we're here and we've become friends since and hopefully doing some business. So welcome Tom, good to have you here. It's great to be with you, Rudy. Yeah. And just so you guys don't have to worry, this was actually Necker Island. It was the opposite of a deserted island. And we had a very great time and it was one of the best weeks of my life, at least. It was amazing. Really amazing. Quite the resort, quite the experience with Richard Branson.

Yeah, for sure. And a lot of my members, you know, I did an episode on it talking about my experience and a lot of the members know. So it was fortunate because I left early because I actually had a mastermind event and you came in late. Right. So it's kind of good. We got to connect for a day and play tennis and speak about all sorts of fun things around business. And what we're going to talk about today, which is taxes and, you know, how to make taxes fun and not so scary. So I'm super excited to have you on here. Like I said, I haven't done a show on taxes, but I have spoke about it quite a lot to my inner circle members and my mastermind members and all the stuff I've just learned over 10 years of entrepreneurship. And I'm, you know,

my background's a scientist. So whenever I attach myself to something, I like get really deep. So there was a year or two where I got really deep into taxes. And I think it's good because it prepared me, right? It prepared me for many years to come and to know when an accountant's full of BS and doesn't know it on who to find. And, but 99% of entrepreneurs don't have that baseline knowledge, which is where you come in and help educate and fill those gaps. So I'm super excited because, you know, making money is hard, but as many billionaires and ultra successful people say, keeping it's even harder. And a big part of that is taxes. So how did you get into this world? And tell it just for people that don't know you, let's get a two minute summary.

Yeah. So actually I've been in it my whole life, really. I was in the bookkeeping department for my dad's print shop when I was a teenager. So that's how long I've been in the accounting world. But I got into tax because I really liked the law, but I didn't want to hang out with lawyers. Yeah. Okay. So that's how I did the tax. It's both law and numbers and I'm good at numbers. So, but I've got 40, I've got 40 years in this business. So I spent years with Ernst & Young, three years in their national tax office. I spent four years in-house with the Fortune 1000 company as their in-house tax advisor. I spent, I was an adjunct professor in the master's of tax program at ASU, Arizona State

University for 14 years. And then I built, bought, sold CPA firms. And now I run a network of about 65 CPA firms around the US. And you have kind of emerged into this, what I would call the internet marketing, digital marketing entrepreneur world, right? So now you're speaking, you're actually here in Tampa because you're speaking. And that's how we met on NECA through the entrepreneur bubble. And I think we're your best clients because most entrepreneurs are awesome at making money. And then they just fall flat on their face, right? Yeah, actually, you're our only client. Yeah. Okay. So we won't serve anybody that's not an entrepreneur. Wow. That is our sole market. We

just are big fans of entrepreneurs. We're entrepreneurs. And we, and in fact, even our members have to be entrepreneurs before they can join. They can't just be an accounting firm. They can't just be an accountant. They actually have to be entrepreneurs. Yeah. I mean, it's just such a gap, right? Because it's like, as an entrepreneur, you get scrappy, figure out marketing and sales eventually because you have to, but you never really get a chance to breathe and stop most of the time to then go well how do i keep all this money and i realized you know i grew a million dollar business at like in my mid-20s and i remember my first big tax year was like i got like 150k one year and then the

next year was 350k and i just paid it right because you just like assume it's part of it and then you get like more and more successful in bigger circles. And you go, actually, I shouldn't be paying maybe this much tax and doing it this way. And there's probably better optimization strategies. And we start hanging out with people like you and hiring people like you that show us the right legal way, obviously, but the right way to do it. So why do you think in this entrepreneur world, it's so everyone's so under equipped? You know, I think people are scared to death of taxes. Even Einstein said it was the most difficult thing in the world to understand. And so I just think nobody's, you know, my job is to make it simple and make it like you said, fun, actually. And, you know,

when you get a big refund, that's pretty fun. It's not that hard if you understand the basics and once you realize that the tax law is really just a series of incentives yes and primarily for entrepreneurs and investors that's when it gets fun because i think that's what you said on a podcast or book that was like a trigger for me too right it's like because i'm like from the gaming sport background once you know the rules of the game you can like learn how to do the moves and the plays, right? Well, it's like we're all in the game. Yeah. We don't get to choose whether it's the game.

Yeah, exactly. But we get to choose whether we win the game or whether we lose the game. And it's a big loss when you're losing the game. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, and what are the biggest mistakes you see people make, entrepreneurs make with their taxes? I presume it's just that they just like do no advanced strategies and just wire a bunch of money every year. Well, and they don't have good tax advisors.

I mean, they're looking for the cheapest tax person. That's like looking for the cheapest marketing person. It's even worse. It's a really bad idea. So I literally, I taught my assistant and some of my staff. I said the only two times have I ever asked you to find someone or hire someone where I want you to go and find that most expensive person is like attorneys and accountants. Right. Every time I was like start at the bottom and work up and see where you can find affordable and good quality. But it really is one of those like you get what you pay for and you can save 10 times more of the right people. Well, and the challenge is that in my world, the big firms are not necessarily the

best firms. So what you end up with is you end up with, you know, a very big menu of items and they're just trying to get people through. And so, and then the local firms, they can be really good, but they have no network, no systems, and so forth. They cap eventually too, right? They do. They're good to a million or they're good to five. Absolutely. Yep.

Absolutely. So you really need people who can grow or that have a network where you can actually move to a different firm if you need to. Yeah. So that you can actually stay within the ecosystem. Yeah. Well, and I even found that with attorneys, like when I started to have a cheaper, normal kind of one, now I use a major law firm and it's like, depending on how severe the issue is, I go to one of the senior partners, right. Or

go to a specialist outside of that. Or if it's something simple, I go to one of the junior people that's just changed their contract. Right. And I mean, accounting's the same. It's like the biggest thing I've learned in 10 years is pay more for accountants, pay more for your attorneys, because if you don't, it will cost you 10 times more. Oh, for sure. Your best return on investment for sure is going to be your tax advisor. Yeah. Yep. So, so say, you know, mistake number one, I would say for people is singing, they just have to like, oh, I make this much and I do my 33% and I do all my normal. I remember most people when I still speak to them, tax strategy is more like, what can I write?

Can I write this off and not this? But you realize actually that's almost irrelevant in some ways if you do other stuff. Yeah. I mean, first thing is, I think, understanding how the tax law actually works. Realizing, yes, it's incentives. But also realizing that how you make your money and how you invest your money has a big impact on how much tax you pay. Yeah. So, you know, you take your money and basically the rule is if you save it or spend it, you'll get taxed on it. Yeah.

Okay. But if you reinvest it into productive assets like real estate, business, agriculture, energy, things like that, things that the government actually wants you to do. You know, when you do that, then your tax can go way down. But the cool thing about that is those are also the best way to build wealth. Right. Yeah. So it's this combination of tax and wealth that they can either work against you or they can work for you. Yeah. I mean, I experienced that the first couple

of years I made a lot of money, but then I spent a lot of money. And it wasn't just personal spend, but it was maybe like an investment that wasn't, it was just like I invest in a private company. So it wasn't something that I could get a tax advantage on. And then you invest all that money and you realize, actually, I've got to now pay 33% on whatever I just invested too. So, you know, and I'm always a big believer of putting all my money back in the business first. And then once I've really done everything I want to do, it's like, well, I still have EBITDA and profit left. Okay. You know, here's what I'm going to do. And I remember when I first started it, yeah, taxes were scary. The idea of taxes was scary. The idea of the IRS was scary. And now it's more like I feel comfortable with it because, you know, I've got good people around me and I've learned

and I've listened to people like you, your podcast books, and I understand how to, I know the rules of the game, which is super important and it doesn't take much to learn. No, it really doesn't. I mean, you know, I've written a couple of books, Tax-Free Wealth and Win-Win Wealth Strategy. And the reason I wrote the books was because, you know, billionaires, you know, super millionaires, they have really good tax people. And so they're going to pay less tax. They don't have to learn the rules that well, but the average entrepreneur, where do you go? Yeah. And so I, my job is to make it simple and make it so that people understand that this is a game that you're not doing something that the government doesn't want you to do. You're actually doing things the government does want you to do. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not, this is not, this is good social policy and people are a little

uncomfortable with that because this whole tax the rich thing, you know, and the rich are bad. So there's a lot of that going on right now and entrepreneurs feel it. But the reality is the tax law doesn't work that way. It works in favor of the... When you can actually get in more trouble if you just do what everyone does, where it's like, oh, I'm going to write that clothing off because I can't wear it. Then you're cheating. Then you're actually not doing it. Actually, the statistics show over 50% of the cheaters are small businesses. Yeah, because they don't know the actual legal advance.

Exactly. And so they cheat. Yeah. And we were talking offline, like the IRS see that. So how many new auditors have they ordered? As many as 87,000. I mean, there's at least going to be 50,000, 60, many new auditors so like as many as 87 000 i mean there's at least going to be 50 60 000 new auditors and they're coming online now and they're training them and i'll tell you two

to three years from now people who've never even heard of having an audit are going to start seeing and it's about one is that right one percent it's less than it's way less than one percent now but it's going to be we expect it to be closer to 3%. Wow. 3%. But, and let's talk about audits. Cause I also, I like, I remember when I started, it was the worst idea ever, worst thing that could happen. Heard horror stories from a couple of entrepreneurs. Where'd you sit with that? If you get audited? Well, so I'll give you, I'll give you a secret. Okay. All right. You ready for this? Sure. Okay. Repeat after me.

I will never speak to. The IRS. The IRS. It? Sure. Okay. Repeat after me. I will never speak to the IRS. The IRS. It's not your job. That's my job. So really the key for an IRS audit, there's two keys. First of all, your tax return was prepared thinking that I could get audited. Yeah. So all that documentation is already there. Second of all, the person who prepared your tax return knows how to handle the IRS and knows

how to handle that audit. Because the minute you get that notice, you should be sending it to your tax professional. They should be handling it. You don't ever have to talk to the IRS. There's outside of a subpoena, it's practically, there's absolutely no reason the IRS needs to talk to you. Yeah, that's good. And I think I also learned that in the early days, you know, just with simple stuff, payments and such would never been audited. I would, you know, speak to the IRS. Now I have a firm and they're like ex-IRS employees, right? And stuff where, you know, they've learned, they understand the game, right? And how to play the game and the rules and they handle anything that's above my account, you know, my accountant will send to them or my attorney if it's, you know, so I have this triangle between

accountant, attorney, tax attorney and IRS people. So, you know, so that triangle of a team and you don't need them much, right? Right. When you're not getting all, but they're there if you get a letter or there's an error with a payroll tax payment or something. Because it can get messy if you don't handle it right. It can get very messy. Payroll tax can get the messiest because that's when they come with the gun. We had one. If you don't pay your payroll taxes, that's where the agent shows up, not the auditor.

And they're law enforcement. And they do carry guns. We actually had one because we were with ADp when i first started four years ago and obviously you learn and they forgot to file my quarterly four years ago and then all of a sudden the irs mailed all my clients they don't even mail me and they say that i owe taxes and we look into it and it was this like small quarterly 30 grand thing and it took months to figure it out and yeah we got like we got more in fines than we did at what we owed like 25 grand and we got 30 grand in fines yeah and now we're fighting actually with adp to say hey you're liable and they're like oh well there wasn't money in the

account i'm like it's not possible because it was a payroll process and we had bank statements to prove it and but again the nicest thing is four years ago, that would have like freaked me the hell out, would have been a disaster and like six months of stress. But now it's just a firm and I've probably got a five, 10 grand bill. But it is what it is. And I've had the creative energy to handle multi-million dollar things. Right. And that's something you learn through entrepreneurship that's so, so important. You know, we can talk about the sexy tax strategies, but I mean, that mindset and energy perception and dealing with it is equally important. It is because you don't want to use

your energy that way. You want to let professionals use their energy the way they, you know, not your energy. Yeah. And they don't care, right? They know what to do. They know how to handle it. Yeah. They talk to the IRS. I mean, you know, I talk to the IRS, and they don't care, right? They just, it's not, they know what to do. They know how to handle it. Yeah. They talk to the IRS. I mean, you know, I talk to the IRS whenever I need to. So it's no big deal. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second.

Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of value, a ton of knowledge. I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests. And I want one thing in return. What I would love is for you to subscribe and leave a review. The reviews and the subscription

grows the podcast. It allows me to bring you even better guests. It allows me to invest even more time and money into this podcast to bring you the latest and greatest, the best entrepreneurs from around the world that are crushing life, crushing their business and giving you all the tools, the mindset hacks, the knowledge business and giving you all the tools, the mindset hacks, the knowledge and the environment you need to be successful. So do me a favor if you've got any amount of value from today's episode so far or any previous episode

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It would mean the world to me. Send me that screenshot. I would love for you to leave that review and I would appreciate it very, very much so we can keep growing this show and make it awesome. So let's get back into the episode. I appreciate you guys and let's dive back in. Yeah, so let's talk more now into like some sexy attack stuff.

What is a typical entrepreneur not doing that some go-tos that I know it always depends and that's a hard question, I'm sure. But well, the first thing is to ask the right question. So, so I get people come up to me all the time and they'll say, is this deductible or is that deductible? And that's basically the wrong question. So the better question is to ask, how do I make this deductible? Yes. And because I have even found that things that are not on there, obviously deductible, that the cost of them can be made deductible. So there's always a way to work with the Internal Revenue Code.

Once you understand the law, it's pretty easy to work with. The other thing to remember is certainly everything you put back in your business that's actually there to make money for your business is probably going to be deductible. Whether it's equipment, whether it's payroll, whatever it is, it's probably going to be deductible. So I always tell people exactly what you said, you know, put your money first back in your business until you can't put it back in your business. And then you're going to start putting other places. When you put it other places, just think of, okay, what are other productive assets? And I would probably choose one asset class, either real estate or agriculture or energy. I mean, those are kind of the three big ones. And if you're not going to put it in your business and then just, you know, get good at it,

get a good team around you and then continually invest. Well, and I think one thing I would add is, which I would never have thought about this years ago is, say you have 300 grand. The obvious thing then is go to some rich, successful person or investor person and say, where should I put this money? But I would probably now say, go to someone like you and say, where could I put this money that's tax efficient? Right. Right. Because you might find different random investments out there, but if they're not tax efficient, you just lost a third of it. So now it's going to have to have really high gains to catch up i will say my clients always call me yeah before they make an investment and say what's going to be the tax consequence

yeah of making this investment because you can put it in the stock market get nothing yeah right but if you put it let's say you put it in an oil stock right you get no tax benefit but you put it into an oil well, you get this big tax benefit. And the difference is enormous. Yeah, well, you might have a 33% saving and even if the investment gives you 5% less, the net gain's massive.

Well, and the thing, it's the after-tax rate of return. Now there's not the before-tax rate of return. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good. So looking at investments based on different tax setups, super. Yeah. Yeah. Good. So, so looking at investments based on tax, different tax setups, super important. Sounds like. For sure. And the big one right now, of course, is renewable energy. Yeah. That's the one that was big, the big legislation last year called the Inflation Reduction Act. Sorry, I can't say that without laughing, but it increased the tax credit to 30%.

If you put it on your business, you also get tax deduction. So it's, I mean, the government will pay up to two thirds of the cost of your solar panels in it and battery if you do it on your business or your rental real estate. So it's a huge benefit to be doing that. I mean, you got to think if your rate of return might've been 5%, now it's 15%, right? Because you only put in a third of the money. So it's just such a good, you know, if you can get it done, you get the right people to do it, and you can actually use the energy. It's really, it's actually a very strong investment right now. Nice.

And what about the, you know, there's a few that in my space get thrown around a lot. So I want to ask you them and get some opinions, right? So classic ones, the Range Rover and the car and the truck, right? Well, okay. If the Range Rover car or truck will actually serve your business and it's something that you want anyway. But what you don't ever want to do is spend money to save taxes. Your tax rate at the max is like 40, even 50% in California, right? That's your maximum tax rate. So you

don't want to spend a dollar or say 50 cents. But if you're going to do it anyway... Or if you're going to buy an 80 gram Mercedes, a random one versus a Range Rover and you love both. Now I will tell you the key right now. The key right now is leases are better in a luxury car than buying it. Interesting. From a tax standpoint. And they're way better. I mean, they're not a little bit better.

They're way better. Now, your range is a little different because it's a heavy enough car that you can deduct the whole thing. I think they're changing that next year, right? Well, it starts changing this year. Okay. They're lowering the percentage. they're lowering the percentage. They're lowering the percentage. But the key there is that one other thing is on the electric cars.

So if you make over like $150,000, you don't get that electric car credit. And very few cars get it anyway. But if you lease it, you do. Oh, interesting. So that's actually a loophole. Leasing electric cars. Yeah. If you're

gonna if you're gonna get on an electric car lease it three years down the road you can buy it out that's fine but you know when the lease is up yeah buy it out and that's same with i think any luxury car if you can lease it at a decent you know interest rate then leasing is from a tax standpoint it's two or three times better than buying it. Wow good to know. Next one ready? Yep. The Augusta's Law. The Augusta rule. Yep. So the Augusta rule is where if you rent your personal residence out for 14 days or less you don't have to pick up any income. Yep. So it's great. So you know you can rent it out you know you can rent out Super Bowls coming to Tampa you rent rent your house out. There's a guy in my neck of the woods, Scottsdale, Arizona.

He rented it during the Super Bowl to Rihanna for $85,000 a night for 10 nights. $850,000 tax-free. Crazy, huh? It was amazing. So simplify that for the audience because I know it. It's really simple.

If you rent your personal residence out for 14 days or less during the year, you don't have to pay tax on the income. Now, if you actually can figure out how to rent it to your company. Well, that's what I do. You can now get a deduction at the company and not pick up the income. So I host private events there. You have to make sure it's actual business. Well, we get specs from nearby hotels and everything. That's the way to do it. Yeah. You know, we get specs from nearby hotels and everything.

That's the way to do it. Good. So, and what about the controversial one that I kept hearing about? I didn't end up doing, but I did a lot of research in was conservation easements. So to be clear, conservation easements are a code section of the law.

Okay. Okay. The IRS hates them. Yes. And they just changed the law. So it used to be, there was no limit on how much the deduction was. There was some friends pumping million, like a lot in that. Right.

And so you can end up with like 140% return. Yeah. Right. Just from the tax benefits. Yeah. And the IRS is attacking everyone. That's what they say. Right.

But now, actually, I think they're better now. Okay. Because first of all, you can't do more than two and a half times the cost of the land. Okay. Right? But what's going on is that when I'm seeing conservation easements now that actually have an investment side to them. So they're actually producing cash flow as well as the easement. So they might be, for example, an historic structure.

Yeah. Right? Where it's got a conservation easement that you can't build up or you can't develop out, right? And so there's still a charitable contribution you're making because that difference in value of perspective value, but you're getting cash flow from it. I actually like that way better. I've never liked the pure conservation easement. That was like a 5X, right? Yeah. It could be like five times what you put in. You get a $500,000 deduction for $100,000.

It's no wonder the IRS is challenging them. And at 40% tax rate, that was basically double savings, right? Yeah. That's what... I didn't do it because I got warned by attorneys that they're going to hammer on that. And they have. They continue. Literally, every one of those is under audit right now. Wow. Yeah. So, so there's all these advanced strategies, right? And the reason I wanted to ask you a few of these is I've learned these from hiring people, going to events, hearing people like you speak and searching. How does a normal, which leads me to the next part, right? To wrap up today, someone not, isn't going to spend 10 years like me going to all these

masterminds, meeting billionaires and all these people that know it. How do they, what's the easiest way for them to start getting this knowledge, doing it the right way and starting this journey? Honestly, I would start with my books. Tax-Free Wealth is a massive bestseller because it's really simple and it goes through all those different strategies. My new book, The Windman Waltz Strategy, actually talks about the different types of investments that are tax preferred. So actually walks through that and actually walks through 15 different countries. So that's a good supplemental book. If you want to really understand that, I even, I do a great bonus chapter that's how to get the government to pay for your Ferrari. Okay. So, and it's a true story, actually a true story where the, my client got the government to

pay for his Ferrari. I'm so very cool, but I would start there with that kind of education, right? Get really basic education, start to understand it. Chapter three of tax-free wealth tells you how to find a good tax advisor. That's important. So I put that chapter in there so that people would have an opportunity there. And then if you just want to push the easy button, you just call my office at Wealth. And you have firms? We have firms that range from people

just starting out to the most, I mean. And they're all vetted based on everything you do and your criteria. Exactly. We train them. We don't let them talk to a client until they've been trained for at least six months. And they're already experienced before they come to it.

So we do, we train them twice a month, every month. They're required to do the training. So, and they use our system. So it's a pretty tight system. I think one of the biggest things, I think it was maybe from your book or maybe someone else, you tell me biggest light bulb moments for me was there's different types of like, because I think people assume and I used to that your accountant's your tax expert. But now what I teach my clients, at least whether

this is right or wrong, or you maybe said this is your accountant's preparing the books for the IRS and just doing a lot of the time. That's all they do. Right. They prepare. Hey, here's the books for the IRS and just doing a lot of the time. That's all they do, right? They prepare, hey, here's the books. Now I'm going to just segment them and show them to the, you know, send them off, right? But you have, it's very hard. You have to find more advanced ones that will be proactively doing advanced tax strategy versus reactively just filing. And that's what I think the big difference is you need to find one or hire. I've found I have to hire a second person some of the time until I find the right one that can be the quarterback of the tax stuff. And I will say, I think that the person who does the tax planning should do the tax return. But it's hard, right? It's hard. Well, that's what we do. Yes.

Right. Yes. And it is hard to find that. But the reason I say that is because the tax return is actually how you report the tax strategy to the IRS. So it's actually part of the planning. Yes. The tax return. And so we've actually had people say, well, can I keep my old accountant? Yeah. And you do the strategy.

And I'm going, it won't work. It almost never works. It's tough. Yeah. It's really hard. It's the holistic view. Right. Exactly.

Because what we do is we're going to look at not just this year, but next year, four years, five years down the road. We're going to look at your family. We're looking at your estate planning. So you really want to take a very broad picture of it rather than being narrowly focused. Okay, this person does this and a bunch of specialists. I'd rather have somebody who can look at the whole thing and then has, yeah, they might have staff who's preparing it, but they at least look at it before it goes off.

Yeah. We found like, it's kind of like with marketing, right? If you just have a Facebook ad person that runs ads, they're always blaming the website. And it's like what we do as an agency is we look at the website, build that, the copy, the offer, the ads, the back end, and it's that holistic round. But there's only a few of me that do that in the world, right? It's very hard to find that. Same with us.

There's about 65 firms that we know do that. And I mean, that's why I'm excited to connect with you because I love how you're trying to change that industry because I think it needs it for all the entrepreneurs, my audience, my members that I support because it took me 10 years to get this knowledge and in this position. And it's like, if I had this eight, nine years ago, I would have saved millions, probably a couple of million in taxes. And that couple of million would actually be now 5 million,, right? Because the way I could have leveraged that for other things. So it's super important. Yeah. We actually calculated once that somebody, I had a friend, we saved him $20,000.

Okay. But we saved him $20,000 a year. And after a number of years, investing, it came $4 million. I mean, it's a lot of money. So, you know, you don't want to give more money to the government than you actually have to. And it's not that hard to plan for it. And you can actually make more money by doing those things the government wants you to do than, you know, just, you know, sticking in a savings account. Yep. Well, luckily I learned all this, the hard way to start in my twenties, but because I started, you're 31 now, so I figured it out and I feel good about it for

the rest of it. And that's why I did dive into it. Cause I was like, this is a good investment of my time and energy to really grasp this for the rest, the next 30 years. Right. And if you're listening today, it's never too late to start, but start today, right? Cause within a year or two of finding a good firm reading the books just getting the foundational knowledge you don't need to become an expert but like i teach with facebook ads you at least want to understand the basic concepts so you don't get taken a fall right because if you have zero clue then you're just going to get taken a fall and not know right so get the basics because you like always say, there's two inevitable things in life, right?

Taxes and death. That's right. So it's going to be with you the rest of your life. So learn the rules of the game and go read the books. It's fantastic. I love them.

And I'm super excited for you to be on today. Thank you. Any final words of wisdom for all the entrepreneurs around taxes and wealth? I would say don't be afraid of it. Yep. I've actually had't be afraid of it. I've actually had a couple of people tell me that tax free wealth was a good beach read.

Okay. So it's not. No, it's light. Once you understand just the basic concepts, then you need a good CPA to actually do the details. But you've got to understand the day-to-day because I can't change your taxes, but I can tell you what you need to do to change your taxes.

No, I think it's a great holiday book, actually vacation, because I remember when I listened to it, I knew a lot of bits in there, but then I was like off Googling and like researching and diving deep because my analytical science side. Right. So actually, I think it's great when you're on vacation because you're going to be reading this thing. And obviously you don't go super deep on one thing. Right. You touch on a lot. So it's like, you're going to get really excited about, wow, what could I do with this like concept now? So yes, I could see it. It's very light. It's very well written. It's very flowy. And it's, it is exciting because you're turning one of the most feared things in business, most complicated things in business to, hey, I can use this now as a tool. And that's what

entrepreneurs love. We want to learn how to use things to grow ourselves and our businesses. So, yeah. I've never met an entrepreneur who want to know what they can't do. They only want to know how to do what they want to do, right? Yeah. That's what this is about. How to do what you really want to do in the first place and have more money that you can invest in and invest back into your business. Great. So where does everyone find you? I know you talked about the books, but. So certainly you can find my podcast is The Wealthability Show.

You can go to wealthability.com. That's where you schedule a call with us or I'm certainly all over Instagram and social media. Good. Well, thanks for coming in. And I'm sure we'll be on a deserted island again at some point. But until then, guys, study taxes,

go study this, understand it and embrace it and use it to grow yourself, grow your business and grow your wealth. And until next time, keep living the red life. See you guys soon. Tom, appreciate it. Thanks. Bye.