Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Making Sense of Taxes with Shawn Finnegan from Taxhive

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. This podcast covers topics that expand human consciousness and performance. On the Make Sense podcast, we acknowledge that it's who you are that determines how well what you do works, and that perception is a subjective and acquired taste. When you change the way that you look at things, the things that you look at begin to change. The Make Sense podcast is sponsored and primarily funded by the Make Sense Academy, our private community where open and curious seekers of growth and expansion apply the make sense principles and systems to move from simply going through life to growing through life. So check out the Make Sense Academy risk-free for less than you'll spend today on shit that you don't need. Welcome, my friends, to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. Welcome to the Make Sense with

Starting point is 00:00:53 Dr. J.C. Dornick podcast. It's almost comical to recognize that in the make sense ecosystem, our cornerstone system that's there to help people reclaim control of their reality and learn to think for themselves in a world that is quickly becoming one that thinks for us. We inappropriately call this system the IRS, which stands for the interface response system. But when it comes to taxes, the relationship that most people have with the other IRS is complicated. We dread it. We avoid it. We joke about it. We joke about it. it, but rarely do we really understand it. Today, we're going to pull back the curtain and explore how the tax system actually works, and more importantly, how we can work with it instead of against

Starting point is 00:01:44 it. Joining me today is a new friend that I originally met in an annual conference called Creative Con. He's someone who has mastered the art of navigating this strange financial landscape we're speaking of. Sean Finnegan is the co-founder of the new highly relevant company called Tax Hive. Sean's not only an accomplished entrepreneur and investor, he's actually the guy that you probably heard about that managed to pitch and sell Kevin O'Leary, otherwise known as Mr. Wonderful, from Shark Tank on becoming his business partner. Wait till you hear that story. From becoming jobless during the 2008 recession to building a multi-million dollar company, Sean knows the highs, lows, and strategic moves that it takes to succeed. Today, he's an investor and a

Starting point is 00:02:30 partner in multiple ventures, including tax hive, helping entrepreneurs protect their assets, minimize tax liabilities, and grow their wealth. Whether you're someone who fears the IRS, ignores it, or just wants to learn some great ways to keep more of what you earn, this conversation might just change the way that you look at taxes forever. On a personal note, what I love most about Sean is that underneath his big thirst and drive to grow impact-driven companies, his most valuable assets, is the time that he gets to spend with his three daughters.

Starting point is 00:03:03 Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast, Sean Finnegan. I'm so excited to have you here. And, you know, the whole premise of the Make Sense podcast is to take a topic and make sense of it. It's interesting because I met you as a person and I don't look at you as like some sort of tax guy. But I also know that you're, that's part of your creative genius. When I first met you, which was at Creative Con, and we're, I had some. somebody chirping in my ear just about an hour ago saying, hey, make sure he's coming back to CreativeCon. So there's your message right there. Great. I appreciate it. I just remember meeting you

Starting point is 00:03:39 and just getting to know your character and, you know, that you have so many other stories. But what I'd love to do is begin with a couple of questions in the realm of taxes, because I want to make sense of taxes. There's a very interesting relationship that humans have with taxes. It's got to be perceived as something that works against us, something. in the realm of an enemy because we're always trying to evade it. We do a lot of things with taxes that we would never do with somebody that we love. So my question is, and then I'd love to hear a little bit about tax hype, is the IRS, which by the way, my cornerstone system is called the IRS,

Starting point is 00:04:17 but it's the interface response system. So it's a little bit of a play in taxes, right. Is the IRS something that was built for us or against us? So great, great question. And I remember seeing you at CreativeCon walking in. and seeing you just crush it on stage as the MC. And I was like, man, that is, I always go into a live event. I'm like, I want to get to know certain people in the room.

Starting point is 00:04:39 I have a strategy going in. And you are one of those priorities for me is to get to know. And we've become fast friends and I really appreciate it. I love this question about the IRS. I think it's probably the most three most, maybe the three most feared letters ever put together as IRS. And people really are terrified of the IRS. So whenever you're afraid of something, What happens is just human nature, you like you just said, you want to keep that far away.

Starting point is 00:05:06 You don't want to keep that close. If you're afraid of spiders, snakes, you want that to be as far away from you as humanly possible. And I feel like that's how it is with the IRS, that we fear something. We don't want to talk about it. We don't want to see it. We're so afraid of an audit, everything else, that people just end up freezing and not doing anything because they're afraid of rocking that boat. To your point on your question, the IRS, the whole tax code, is written for one purpose.

Starting point is 00:05:35 And that purpose is to increase GDP in America. They actually want your business to be successful. Why? Because it means your business makes it over a longevity of many years. And you bring in a lot more tax revenue. Then if you start it and it fails, there's very little tax revenue. So the whole code is written to help a business owner take advantage of, of deductions and credits to offset that income, keep that important money in your business

Starting point is 00:06:03 so you can grow and scale. And then guess what? It becomes much bigger tax for the whole nation. So my answer is 100% lean into it. Just do the exact opposite of what your brain says. Lean into the IRS, lean into the code. The code is your friend. You do it right.

Starting point is 00:06:21 You don't have to worry about the repercussions. You do it with compliance and you do it with professionals. You're in great shape. So what you're saying is, is I should be like super psyched to pay taxes. What I'm saying is you should be super stoked to figure out the code and use that as a friend, not an enemy. That's probably what I was hoping you'd say and that would lead into the next question.

Starting point is 00:06:43 It's such a fascinating thing. I think it's something that starts off warmer kids. You know, I just remember always hearing my parents just complain about it. And then I became one of these people that labeled myself as like, oh, I just wish that somebody else could just handle all that. I'm more of the creative type, and I just want to deliver the goods and make the money. I don't really want to know what to do with it.

Starting point is 00:07:06 So then there's this whole world, which leads into what you're doing, where we become like super codependent, even to the point where we could have a totally crappy accountant, but still find ourselves dependent on them just because of their knowledge base. That scares me. Tell me a little bit about tax hive

Starting point is 00:07:23 and what is the unique methodology behind how you, solve people's problems. Yeah, so we started Tax Hive five and a half years ago. Tax Hive became a partner to Kevin O'Leary, the Shark Tank guy. So we met him many years ago. We did live events with Kevin for a lot of years. And then we pitched him on Tax Hive and he became a partner. He's been preaching this from the rooftops that business owners should take care of their taxes and use a who to help them with, you know, getting it done right. And so Kevin has been an incredible partner, been here, with since the beginning with us five and a half years ago. And we do three things. We do tax filing. We do bookkeeping. But what what makes us unique is the tax planning piece. So there's a lot of

Starting point is 00:08:11 an accountants. I think one of the misconceptions we run into the most is all accountants are created equal. They all know the code inside and out. Accounts actually have specialties. So they're just similar to a doctor. If you need a knee operation, you're going to go to an orthopedic surgeon for that. You're not going to go to your family doctor. And for us, if you need actual tax planning, which is stacking up deductions to offset income, that's when you come to tax hive, because that's what we do. We do a lot of proactive stuff. Most accountants, they get really busy during tax time. They want you to bring your stuff to them in tax time and file, but very few of them actually do proactive forward taxation. And that's where we're completely different that way.

Starting point is 00:08:52 Where does the hive come from? I mean, that's the first thing. Because once again, when I hear tax, I just pretend I didn't hear it. So I hear hive. Where does the word hive come from? That's really cool. So we debated the brand and the name. If you look here, it is a true hive.

Starting point is 00:09:07 I was about to say this background behind you, I feel like, you know, there's some purple honey coming out of it. Yes, but we're surrounded by incredible employees of tax hive. And we track everything. So we track how fast. The reps here pick up their calls. We track satisfaction rates. We track everything that we can possibly track through the customers.

Starting point is 00:09:31 And if you walk through here, I hear the same thing. So, wow, this is a buzz. There's tons of energy. And that's what you see as you walk around tax. I can tell you that when I talk to my accountant, he doesn't sound anything like that. I don't know if he listens to my podcast. So you touched on it. And I've heard you tell this story before.

Starting point is 00:09:50 But, you know, it's interesting because we're doing this. interview and it is the 15th. You've just celebrated your birthday and I've shared with you that I'm going to be on the 17th. But you told that story about Kevin O'Leary and how that happened. I would love you to share that. But what's interesting, and I don't know if you heard it, I would assume you have, but he was just recently interviewed on one of my favorite podcast, the Diary of a CEO. And everybody saw that. So like there's the Shark Tank version of him. That interview really made me say, How did Sean land that deal? And I know it wasn't like your typical land. So if you could just share that, because that's, that's an inspiring story. So the first time I actually met Kevin,

Starting point is 00:10:31 uh, was about eight or nine years ago. And, um, I was going to pitch him at the time on getting on live events. So as you see, millions of eyeballs see his brand on a regular basis. We're like, let's sell tickets. Let's promote Kevin and put them on stages. So the first time I met him was actually at his office in Toronto, Canada is from Toronto. His office. is an incredible office right downtown. And I remember we booked an appointment with them. I had like 15, 20 minutes. And my whole purpose in my appointment initially was to, hey, I want to pitch this guy on getting on live stages, book him all across the U.S., promote his brand and sell tickets. And so this was in the middle of winter. So I had 30 minutes. I was literally, I could not sleep thinking about this because

Starting point is 00:11:16 he gets pitched on the hourly basis wherever he goes. So super nervous about it. And, uh, It was early in the morning. I'm heading in. It's like 10 degrees below zero. My brain is frozen. I stop in literally I'm three blocks from his office. I stop in at a 24-hour bank just to try to get my head clear because I have like 30 minutes to pitch this guy. And a thought came to me, Stephen R. Covey first seek to understand and then to be understood.

Starting point is 00:11:42 Because I was like, you know what? How many of these people around Kevin just pitch him, pitch him, pitch him, pitch him and say, hey, this is my universe. Come over here. If I can get a shark on my universe, then we can be successful. I wanted to first seek to understand what his universe looks like. And then to be understood on the opportunity. So I come in and I'm like, hey, Kevin, big fan. I'll watch all your stuff.

Starting point is 00:12:04 I just have the one question for you. What is your brand looking like for the future? Where do you want to take this thing? Where is it going? That was my question. His answer was like 30 minutes itself. It was like, and as he started talking, he like, on his best selling book, it was actually running for prime minutes.

Starting point is 00:12:21 of Canada and I do live events. And as he's talking, I can see his whole ecosystem unfold in front of me. And then I was able to say, well, this is how we can support you and your ecosystem. Boom, boom, boom. We get you on live stages. We can sell the book. We can promote your brand. We can help you on the running for prime minister. And then it was a yes. And that was how we started our first relationship with him. And so we worked with Kevin for years, actually traveled with him on the road, promoted him on many, many stages. I've been in hotels and every kind of the belly of any hotel you can think of, Kevin and I travel. That's how we first got to meet Kevin. I've seen a couple of other interviews where you've told stories of like what it's like to walk around with him

Starting point is 00:13:03 and just watch him get pitched, like even just on the run. I love what you said. You know, I'm a big fan of communication and breaking barriers and uncrossing the arms. And it appears that Kevin was already kind of looking for you. So that worked to your advantage, but you could have done. You could have blew it. I mean, like this guy is, that's like auditioning for Juilliard, you know, pitching Kevin O'Leary. I love what you said. You seek to understand rather than be understood.

Starting point is 00:13:31 The other way that I refer to that is to care before you share. And all the answers that you're looking for while you were pacing back and forth in that bank trying to get ready for this talk, the only reason you were nervous about it is because you didn't know what to say. You don't know the right thing to say, but you let him talk. and you said, oh, let me fix this problem for him. I love it. Yeah. I just want everybody to know this is a very, very unique human being here that just happens to also be super knowledgeable about taxes. So I want to, I want to get that stuff out there. And then I'll let you like really meet Sean Finnegan.

Starting point is 00:14:04 Sean, you know, one of the things that you did that I thought was extraordinary is you gave all of these examples, or not all of them, but just some of them, kind of like a window into what it's like to work with tax hive. You gave some examples. of some things that people can be doing that they didn't even know that they could do. And then you followed up with that and did something that I've never heard anybody do from stage, which there was a glimmer of time where I thought maybe you had lost your mind, but he's from stage. He gave everybody his cell phone.

Starting point is 00:14:34 I mean, not just like some phony baloney cell phone, his cell phone. And I have to tell you, I've been doing that since. Nice. Well, it's extraordinary when you speak to like a hundred people. They don't all text you. But the ones that want to be. Right. The ones that want to talk to you do, and it was pretty cool. So could you just share, I don't know, one, two, three. Just yummy bits of advice of things that people might not know about when it comes to taxes.

Starting point is 00:14:59 Yeah. So, you know, finishing up with the Kevin thing quickly, we, so we stopped doing live events. We met with Kevin about five and a half years ago, pitched him on the tax hive business. And he's been saying this forever. And about two minutes in, he stopped us. And he's like, I'm in. This is something I've been looking for because I've been presenting this. Now I can have people do it with compliance with a great firm. And so we really have gone down the path of, okay, how do we figure out what the average business owner needs, not the big business owners. They know exactly. They have departments for that.

Starting point is 00:15:30 They can go to the big four accounting firms. But what about the main street business that needs, you know, 10,000 of that business means a, you know, make it or break it sometimes. How do we help that small business owner? And so we've really, as a team, gone down the path of really there's, you know, over 1,400 deductions you can take. And our team specializes on those deductions and then figuring out what the right fit is for this business owner. So you can stack up deductions. Most business owners take one or two. They could probably

Starting point is 00:16:02 take five or six or whatever the number is. They could take a lot more. And generally it's because you, you nailed it. They've never even heard of these things. They've heard of the basic ones, you know, the car, everything else. So there's just a few that every business owner, it's a accessible, you should do. There's three. I would give you a quick three. Number one, if you love golf, I really like golf at one point in my life. I lived in Augusta, Georgia. I snuck out on the course in the middle of the night because I wanted to see that spiritual hallow ground place. And it is amazing. And if you stand here on the course and you look around, what you see is there's zero hotels in that area. All you see, as far as the eye can see, is just neighborhood after neighborhood.

Starting point is 00:16:45 So the Augusta National Tournament is for two weeks a year, 250,000 people descend on this small town of Augusta, Georgia every year. Anyone who lives in Augusta, Georgia, they're like, I want out of this town. So they go fishing, they go on vacation for two weeks, and what do they do with their home? They rent it out. Not for B&B rates. If you go to pierspace.com, you can see what your home can rent out for. but they rented out for kind of Marriott ballroom level rates.

Starting point is 00:17:14 And so many times it's $1,000, $2,000 a day, whatever that number is, then they go out of town for two weeks. So they come back, call it $30,000 in revenue. For years, they did this and they got tired of paying taxes. They got a lobbyist went in front of Congress. Say, hey, let's get a carve out for us. We want to be able to save this money and not pay it for this $30,000. So $10,000 would have gone to taxes.

Starting point is 00:17:37 So federal made it a code, and now it's Rule 280a. Nickname is the Augusta rule. Now, what that means for every business owner watching this is you can rent out your personal residence to your business. Your business cuts a check. It's the best check you ever cut from your business right to your personal property, and that money that you pay yourself is tax-free. We recommend doing one day a month if you're doing board meetings, doing it at your personal residence,

Starting point is 00:18:10 has to be a real business purpose for doing it. But you can go up to 14 days a year, pay yourself that rent for the property and not pay tax on that revenue. So we have a client who saved their rent was 19,200 tax free. These are all just things that you can do right now. This isn't difficult. You have to have an agenda. You have to track everything else. So that's one of the three, I'd say, J.C.

Starting point is 00:18:33 God, that's crazy. I'm just thinking, like, I need to get some people together and go carve something out myself, you know? I love that idea. I didn't know that there was carving capabilities, but that's awesome. So do you want to throw us another one? Yeah, yeah. So I'll hit you with a couple more. And then I'll give you one that's an interesting one that just came out in the big beautiful bill. But a second one is very simply in 2025, you can actually pay your child, your home. dependence. You can pay your children $19,000 per child per year. They have to do real functions in your business. I love this one because I think every business owner, small business owner should sit down with your family, sit in front of a board, make a list of all the operational duties of each child and actually teach them real job skills. I mean, there's the theoretical side of learning. And then what I feel is the best is the mentoring and the mentorship side of learning. I feel as far superior. So you as a business owner can help your child learn the game of business.

Starting point is 00:19:38 And you can pay each child $19,000 a year tax free. And what can they use the money for? They can't use it for rent. But most of the things you're spending your money on now can come out of that child's account. So that is a no-brainer legacy play. That would be number two. That would be a no-brainer for any business owner. And it's a legacy play.

Starting point is 00:20:01 Let's say number three is a lot of people watching this just have an LLC. Well, the problem with that is LLCs are incredible, but if you make over 30,000 bucks a year, you should consider doing within your LLC, keeping your LLC, but doing an S-Corp election in that LLC, it'll save you 15.3% in self-employment tax. So if you're making $100,000 a year, literally will save you $15,000 by setting up that S-Corp election in your LLC. Those are three things that add up to thousands of thousands of dollars in savings. And I'll give you the bonus for this interesting. There's a lot of really interesting things that have come out of the big, beautiful bill. One that's never been done in history is you can

Starting point is 00:20:48 actually, when you purchase a car, any kind of car, as long as it's made in the USA, you can write off the interest you pay in payments of that car. So if you're planning on buying a car next year, if you want to consider doing Made in the USA, it will give you another deduction that's never been done before. It's super, super unique. First of all, that's awesome. I'm sure a lot of people are saying, well, why the hell did my accountant not tell me about that? Is there some sort of a game? I'm getting this feeling now that somebody's going to get that experience when they go to a place like tax hide. But is it that accountants are just trying to play it so safe or they're saying, oh, this guy's crazy or they just don't

Starting point is 00:21:32 know. Why are accountants not going above and beyond trying to save their clients money? It's a great question. And I get this one a lot. But from my perspective, you know as the good to great book, you get the right people on the bus around you to find success. I'm a huge believer in that. We are at tax. And to be fair to the accountants, most people have hired them to do the wrong job. So the accountant's the equivalent of going in a grocery store and you get all your items and you go to the checkout counter and they check out your item. That's what an accountant does for the most part. They're just a filer. That's an important position. It needs to be filed with compliance during tax season, right?

Starting point is 00:22:09 So that is one person that should be on your power team. But what I'm going to tell everyone else is you should go hire a new position that you've never considered that's also an accountant that is your tax planner. It's a totally different skill set. A lot of people will look at that filer and say, hey, why didn't you help me pick these items out or why weren't you a personal shopper? And all they're saying is, hey, you brought me this stuff after the buzzer sounded, the game's over, and I'm just filing what you sent. As opposed to a planner can be proactive. They can go around the store with you. They can say, hey, watch out for this.

Starting point is 00:22:45 Let's do this. They can help you. And they can help while the game's going on, stack up deductions. And then a filer looks at it, and they're just going to take your information that you've seen. set up for the year and then file it and save you all that money in taxes. So this filer, poor guy or gal gets a bad rap because they're like, why haven't you saved me money? But we actually hired them for the wrong job. What he's saying is, is don't leave this conversation and go chew out your accountant because you might not have hired a tax planner. And that's interesting.

Starting point is 00:23:16 And to all the accountants, I would recommend that you become a tax planner. All right. So here's an interesting question. We're in 2000. And a lot of people are sweating it. Super behind in taxes and delay, delay, delay. And there's a very big, almost, I would say, majority of people, they're not making enough money. Like taxes have become credit cards. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:40 And people are living in fear that they're just going to get stomped one day and like taken away in a wagon. What do you recommend to that person that is just frightened to death because they don't have the funds and they're just way behind? And I say this from a serious place because I know you know what it's like from another story. I'd love to pull from you to have a rough time. So a lot of people out there contemplating, checking out. So what do you recommend to that person?

Starting point is 00:24:07 Yeah, so I'll give you a quick example. So I have a good buddy. His name is Scott. He does construction and he does big metal buildings. He does an incredible work. So for years in his business, he's pouring all the money into his business. And for several years, he's not making money. so he actually doesn't need to pay taxes.

Starting point is 00:24:25 Like he's dumping everything in. He's just trying to build, build, build. And so he's in construction with buildings that he owns and everything else. And two years ago, he comes in rolling into my office. And he has shirts all like unkempt and he looks pretty hammered. And I said, hey, Scott, what's going on? And he said, well, I just got my tax bill. And it was like $350,000 of which I don't have.

Starting point is 00:24:47 I haven't set money aside in taxes. And I said, well, why not? And he's like, well, for years, I didn't have to. In fact, I got a refund. So why would I spend the time to stack up deductions when I don't really need to? And I said, well, how many deductions did you take last year? And he said like two. And he's in construction with literally his trucks are all.

Starting point is 00:25:07 You can depreciate all your trucks with Section 179. Like there's so many deductions this person could have taken, but he just felt this false sense of security. And so he was in a position where he got a bill of $350,000. dollars and in order for him to pay that bill he had to liquidate trucks land buildings everything else and it just my heart broke for him he became a tax-type client and now we're going to save him in the hundreds of thousands of dollars that he gets to keep that money in his business and grow his business the government's going to get their fair share in all sorts of other taxes we on average pay over 50% in taxes but as a business owner that's the one you have control over and a lot of

Starting point is 00:25:48 business owners, they freeze. They don't want to look at it. So put their head in the sand and they just pray for a miracle and that's not a solution. Just get out ahead of it. It's not a ton of work. Start just being proactive. And then when tax time comes around, hey, you're like celebrating. Hey, I've done it right this year. I don't have to sweat. I have my product. I have to worry about my service. I don't have to worry about taxes in addition to it all. So just get out ahead of it. Get, you know, take action now. Wow. What a reframe to set a goal to be excited about taxes. I remember people would say, hey, you know, that's great. You're paying so much in taxes. It means you're making a lot of money. It's like, get out of here, man. I don't want to talk to you. Worse advice ever. Right, exactly.

Starting point is 00:26:32 I know for me, this strikes up a lot of questions and I hope that this kind of frees people up from that mental prison that there is no way out. There's always a way out, you know, and sometimes you've got to go through a tough season. I don't think that the IRS's agenda is to destroy people's lives. It's just to have people learn and play the game. I want to give people an insight into an amazing story that I heard from you when you just went all in at the wrong time. And isn't that a funny way to look at that? That's the biggest fear when people, people are so afraid of like putting all their chips in one basket, but then it being the wrong time. And right now, that's, that's prominent. But if you could just quickly share that story because it was just so inspiring. I don't know if it was considered a

Starting point is 00:27:17 miracle of itself or just that you never stopped. You just kept on going. But you know the story. I'd love to you share that. Yeah. So like me growing up, I was raised by a father who was a bookstore manager for 40 years. Literally stayed at one place as a manager of a bookstore, even kill, never made much money at all. And then I have this mom who raising five kids on a fixed income was the ultimate side hustle mom butt kicker. It's like the rich dad poor dad book. It's like I had this even kill knows how much he's going to make down to the penny to the side hustle mom who's just the ultimate marketer and did preschool, sold pizzas, all sorts of stuff. And I really wanted to take after my mom. So I never wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to be a business owner. So I was always

Starting point is 00:28:05 looking for my shot. You know what I mean? And I decided to take my shot in 2009, which I wish someone would have shaking me in 2009 and said, don't take your shot right now. It was a really bad recession going on. It was a really tough time of our nation's history. And I decide, now is the time for me to go launch a business. Just like a lot of people watching, I did the projections. So I had a spreadsheet. I put in my projections and my spreadsheet. According to the spreadsheet, I started figuring this thing out and I would become a multi-millionaire. So I call it my aha moment, my spreadsheet millionaire moment, Right. So I saw this number and I was like, oh, man, even if I did this number, I could make this much. And it was a lot of money. So I was really excited about this business. The whole business was to do these live events, promote big brands, sell tickets, go crush it. So I'm excited. 2009. I literally am going to a sandwich shop with my spreadsheet every day to just plan this business. And now I have very little in savings. I don't come from money. I'm not going to call my dad and say, hey, can you You cut me a quarter million bucks to start this business.

Starting point is 00:29:13 So literally the bootstrap to start. And then I was like, in order for me to keep this business going, I need to go raise funds. And I've never raised a penny in my life. So I launch out there and I go talking to many angel investors, just individual investors. And I, through networking, met with 70 investors. Wow. Over many months, many knows. My first pitch was my worst pitch just with like anything in business.

Starting point is 00:29:41 this is a start that stops you. Your first one's your worst one. That was the experience I had as I go launch out there. And I'm just all over the place in my pitch and trying to analyze it and eventually got a little bit better. But I had a lot of knows, but I had 23 people say yes. And they gave me $1.5 million in financing and funding over the next maybe five or six months. I got 1.5. And that was a happy day.

Starting point is 00:30:07 When that money came in, I got the money into my account. I remember going on LinkedIn. in putting that I was a CEO. My friends thought I was a baller. My parents were proud of me. My brothers and sister were just like, man, he did it. And it was a really happy moment. We're partners here with Kevin O'Leary in one of Kevin's quotes is in business, pooh-poo happens. And over the next 12 months, just trying to figure out a model. Pupu happened to me. My first event was a total dud. Direct mail was hit by a hurricane. I still had to pay David Bach, tens of thousands of dollars to speak on stage.

Starting point is 00:30:42 Just disaster after disaster. And during that time, I got so knee-deep in crocodiles that I just felt this constant pressure of losing money, hemorrhaging money at times, overhead, mistakes, costly, mistakes, everything you can think over over the next 12 months. I was so, I felt like an island by the end of the 12 months, just trying to figure this thing out. And at the end of 12 months, it was, I lost the 1.5, but it was worse than that because I had, I put my house up for literally on the hawk. So I leveraged my house and my only car I leveraged to try to keep this thing going. Hadn't paid myself in months, anything.

Starting point is 00:31:25 No savings in the bank. So I felt like this failure and just a pounds per square inch pressure because what about the family? You know, you're looking, I have three little girls at the time. and I'm looking at these little girls and I can't even put food on the table. What about your friends and family thought you were awesome? Parents thought you were amazing. What about the people at the office that thought you were amazing and had faith in you and confidence that they signed on the bottom line saying, I'm going to work for you?

Starting point is 00:31:53 What about 23 people that gave me $1.5 million? That's hard earned dollars, that they had to work really hard for in order to invest. Rock bottom for me was on a Thursday night because Friday payroll was due, and that was like at the end of my rope. payroll was like $3,500 and I had $2,000 in the bank, something like that. And I'm literally praying for a miracle. Friday morning hits. Like that night I don't sleep.

Starting point is 00:32:17 I just look at the ceiling all night long. Because what does it mean on Friday? I have to tell people that spent their 40 hours that week working for me that I can't pay you. That's a painful hard time. So I'm praying for a miracle on Friday morning. A miracle doesn't come. I go to lunch. And I'm like, have I overturned every rock?

Starting point is 00:32:38 Have I looked in every place? I don't even have a thousand bucks in the world that I can go leverage or find. And I'm leaving to come to come back from this lunch to go explain to the team what's going on. And I get a phone call from my controller. And she's like, hey, Sean, I was digging through the safe. And I found $3,000 in petty cash. What do you want me to do with it? And I was like, well, I want you to hang on to that money.

Starting point is 00:32:58 And I screeched my tires. And I drove back to the office. I picked up the $3,000 of cash. I went to the bank. It clears instantly. So I cleared that money and I went into the teller. I remember just physically writing each individual this contract called the check and hand delivering, going back to the office, hand delivering each individual looking in the eyes like how hard that was to deliver this check.

Starting point is 00:33:19 And from there, I said, you know, like I was asking, you know, a business owner is what's more motivational, the pain and failures or is the success. And for me, I was motivated by a failure in that moment more than anything I've ever been motivated by in my life. And I said, well, today is the day I have to make changes starting now. And I started analyzing and became an expert that afternoon on all the mistakes. I made a list. And what I found was my biggest mistake I had made over the 12 months was I stopped building relationships and business. I was so knee-deep in crocodiles. My head was in the sand that I stopped reaching out.

Starting point is 00:33:57 I stopped building alliances. I stopped talking to other people because I felt like I was the high-flying CEO that could go figure it out the self. had I gone through some of these problems and either gotten some mentors to help me, or had I helped other people who have communities, what if I had reached out to them and I could have put my product on their stage and vice versa? Instead, I just felt like I was the king of the world for many months, and then the money's gone. And I decided that afternoon to reach out to some of my people in my network.

Starting point is 00:34:27 That's the best place to start. And I reached out to a couple of individuals I'd known for years that were super successful. They came on board ultimately as a partner. It was incredible seeing them. They were relationship experts. They came on board and then I saw that they brought a big truckload of these relationships. I'm like, whoa, in this relationship, in this relationship. And all of a sudden, we went on this run.

Starting point is 00:34:50 And we went on this crazy run over the next 12 months. I was able to pay off all of those original investors, the 1.5 plus interest to all of them, took the business back personally. And it was only because of that one thing in building relationships. some business. And ever since then, I've literally made a covenant that I am going to get comfortable, be uncomfortable. And I've reached out of my comfort zone. If Creative Con calls me, I'm going to be there. If JC is like, hey, jump on this incredible podcast. Let's do that. I'm on and just get comfortable doing this stuff. Because that's what you have to do if you want to scale your business.

Starting point is 00:35:21 Super cool. What I love about that is that you're there now. Was that insane story, any part of the igniting motivation behind tax hive? Was it motivated? by like helping that guy out what was that about yeah so i think you know like tax i could have operated without relationship with kevin and we'd have we'd have done solid but in in the spirit of building the relationships and scaling the relationships like who is someone we have a good relationship with that if we put their face and they're like this image on the marketing we could get a multiple on what we're doing and i think that's anyone watching this There's influencers.

Starting point is 00:36:03 You have a community. Reach out to people and just say, hey, I'd like to do a collaboration and work together. So the whole kind of idea behind Kevin is like, hey, let's actually get a relationship built here and form an allegiance between each other. And then scale this thing. And that's what we experience. And part of it is coming from that background. It's fun to know you at a phase where you've recovered and succeeded and obviously are probably poised for bigger and better success than ever. I'm excited to find out what happens with you on a regular basis.

Starting point is 00:36:35 Appreciate it. One interesting question, and I think that I've heard you somewhere speak about this, what is it that lies ahead in the realm of AI and taxes? I know that this is something interesting because a lot of people are using like online services and I don't know anything about that. Are you guys integrating AI? Is it something to be excited about or no? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:37:00 So accountants, it's generally a pretty archaic space. So a lot of accounts, we've actually seen accountants still using paper files. So gives you an idea of kind of what the industry is. There's ones who have great tech, but we've invested heavy in tech. The customers will fall through the cracks unless you have very good tech, good tracking. You cannot scale without it. It's required. And there's a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to doing someone's taxes.

Starting point is 00:37:25 Like you have to pull up their last year's taxes. You have to gather a lot of information. And if you talk to anyone in the accounting world, that is a heavy lift. Why do you never generally leave your account? It's because you've done all that heavy lifting up front where you've submitted last year's taxes and all this stuff. So Tax Hive is very much invested in AI, helping that process with a client to make it as intuitive as possible that when you onboard, it's a simple process and using AI at multiple

Starting point is 00:37:56 different levels to help gather information. And then we have a vault that keeps all your information there and it's safe that the customer can look back on and they have a portal that they can log into at any time. And that process has made all the difference. Now you can scale. Now you can bring on multiple customers and putting them into a system because they're tracking at every level and each customer has their own login and everything else. And we heavily rely on AI on the gathering of information in that whole process. So we lean into it. We're big fans. Yeah, it's fascinating. There's all this doom and gloom about, and you know, you probably get a different answer from another accountant, like an old-fashioned accountant that's not doing investing in the tech and

Starting point is 00:38:37 stuff. And I can understand why he wants to hold on to the good old days. It's not AI that's going to replace humans. It's humans that are using AI that are going to replace humans that are not. I think it's very attractive to look at working with a human that is very, very much. in tune and in alignment with the advantages of AI. I have a question. You come from the event space. Are you still doing that at all? We just do the events right now for our tax-type customers.

Starting point is 00:39:04 So we have a building here. Tax-Sive customers get to come in to see our office. They get to meet the team. We do that every month and we do a different kind of event series all around the tax-ive with the tax-ive brand. I recently became friends and I'm going to mention his name just because he gave me just an awesome question. This is just a big, big shot in the personal growth self-development event arena.

Starting point is 00:39:27 His name is Giovanni Marciko. And, you know, this is a guy that does events with Seth Godin and Simon Seneca and all those dudes. Anyway, he asked me a question and I'm bringing it to you today and you have no idea what this question is. So good luck. Here's the way it goes. What is your impossible dream? And let me explain what I mean. What's something in the future that you'd love.

Starting point is 00:39:51 love to accomplish or create that would feel like a dream come true beyond imagination. That's a great question. You need to text me that question because I'm going to use that one as well. I will. I will. And that's a good thing to say while you're thinking about your answer. Yes. That gave me a pause so I can be thinking, right?

Starting point is 00:40:11 So for me, we kind of mentioned this before the podcast started. You mentioned, you know, we had to rescheduled because your daughter wasn't feeling well. So I love, love, love business. Like I'm, we're in crumble cookies right now. We've launched a swig store in the last 90 days that I'm super stoked with. So on the business front, we want to be out there in our market with a lot of swig stores. And I'm excited about that beyond belief on that side. On tax hive, I'm excited to serve thousands of thousands of more customers.

Starting point is 00:40:48 I mean, we have grown this business and served so many customers. Our ratings are off the charts. And we want to make that in many more thousands of people. So there's so much I'm stoked for that I see this vision in a few years, me looking back, saying, oh, this is it. Definitely not where I want to be. There's so much more to do. But we kind of talked about this at the beginning.

Starting point is 00:41:10 And that's my perspective has changed. I have these three girls. And I have every minute I can spend with them. is my best pound-for-pound minutes in this life, right? So I always look at this. I have two married daughters at this point, a 19-year-old at home, and in five years I was thinking about this the other day, you know, my babies are ultimately going to have babies.

Starting point is 00:41:34 I'm going to be a grandpa. And I love this little girl that's left at home, and she's my best friend, and I go home every night, and I just want to hang out with her. And so my future vision in five, ten years looks different than it did, when I was in my 30s, when I was just grinding. I was like just trying to put food on the table, just trying to make things work. Now it's like I want the legacy to be with these three babies of mine, these three girls.

Starting point is 00:42:01 And I see in five years we're even stronger as a family than ever. And we cherish every minute that we have together. So that's so I have really two sides, my personal side and then my business side. A lot of people will ask me how I grind the way I grind. And it's like, well, I'm not doing it for me. And I say, don't take this a wrong way. I'm not doing it for you either. Even my clients.

Starting point is 00:42:26 I said, I'm doing this for my kids. You know what I mean? And there's nothing I won't do for my kids. What's great about your perspective. And my answer was similar to that is this idea is you can spend your whole life working for your kids and never spending time with them. So the perspective shift is important is, you know, live your life around what matters most. Spend the time with the kids first.

Starting point is 00:42:47 Yeah. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. You know, so cool, man. Thank you so much for coming here. How? So we've got the people that are like, oh, I'm calling this guy. And then you've got the people that are going to go, I don't know if I want to let

Starting point is 00:42:58 know how screwed I am. How should somebody approach you? Yeah, so we built a technology called the business blueprint. It's free. We'll make sure you get a link to it. So anyone watching this, that is the best place to take that first step. Because a lot of people watching this to be like, I don't know where really I am. Can I actually save money in taxes?

Starting point is 00:43:17 Is this something that? a fit. The blueprint, yeah, it takes five to, you know, five to six minutes to fill out, 17 questions, very intuitive the way we built the tech. And then that report gets sent to your email that will give you a series of things that you can do. If you never use tax I have service, you can use that blueprint to say, hey, these are things I can save right now and I could go to work on. So the business blueprint is an important step. That is the best place. We would love to chat with you. It's a painless thing. Sometimes like, oh, do I have to talk to someone? We make it painless. We just ask you a series of questions to seek to understand what your business is

Starting point is 00:43:57 and how you doing. And then we'll tell you if we can help you and save you some money. And so really, those are the two paths. Talk to our team. They're very friendly. They're great people. You can talk to them and get an idea of what can help you. Definitely start with the blueprint. that you know generally you can show where you can save thousands of dollars right now. Thank you so much. This was an interesting one. I was excited to speak to you just because I consider you a friend and, you know, somebody that I'm a bit enamored by. But at the same time, I was, confused. I have a weird relationship with taxes as well because, you know, I carry some scars and things like that. Yeah. I saw some things happen with my parents. But I think what I love about

Starting point is 00:44:39 this episode is that, and I don't know if maybe you work for the IRS or something, they've sent you here secretly, but you kind of have somehow lifted the dark cloud off of something, you know, that I think it's really important to free yourself from that negative relationship you have and maybe turn it into a positive, you know. So thanks so much for being here. I'm excited to have you on here again one day for your next move with crumble or swig. Well, it's an honor. I mean, the second. when I met you, we had this relationship. You were emcing the whole event. And I remember just the way you were dressed, man. It's like, bang. You had the glasses as part of your brand. It worked.

Starting point is 00:45:19 And it was like instant kindred spirits right when I met you and fast friends. So it's a real honor that you invited me on the show. I really appreciate it. Well, this would be what we call one for the vault. Thanks so much. Thank you, Jayce. Remember, all of the links to the information and resources that we discussed on this episode, you'll be able to find in the notes of the podcast and any videos associated with it. But most importantly, remember this. If you learned something today, give it away. That's how it's going to stay. So have a nice day. We'll see you next time. Makes sense.

Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Making Sense of Taxes with Shawn Finnegan from Taxhive

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