The Home Service Expert Podcast - How “Paying Yourself First” Can Drive Up Profit Margins

Episode Date: June 7, 2019

Diane Gardner is the owner of Adept Business Services. She has been with Profit First Professionals since 2005, with elite certification as a certified tax coach. She also owned B-G and Associates from 1981 to 1992. With her extensive knowledge from nearly 30 years of providing tax planning consultation and bookkeeping services, she co-authored the bestselling books Stand Apart and Why Didn't My CPA Tell Me That?, created the nationwide Get Off the Wheel practice management solution for accountants, and leads the Business Breakthrough Mastermind Group in her hometown of Rathdrum, Idaho. In this episode, we talked about business income, tax planning, budget preparation...

Before we get the podcast going, I wanted to let you guys know that the Home Service Millionaire book is available now at homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash success. And it's for free. All you got to do is pay for shipping. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash success. And it's a hardcover copy. And I put a lot of extra things in this book. So please be sure to order your book. And I also made it available on audio. Go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash audio and download your own audio book. Thanks. This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello. Hey there, folks. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello, and today I have Diane Gardner on the line, and she's going to be talking to us about individual income tax preparation, business income tax preparation, tax planning, bookkeeping, QuickBooks consulting, and budget preparation. She's the owner of Adept Business Services since 1995.

She's a certified Profit First professional since 2005 and has an elite certification as a certified tax coach. She's the owner of B&G and Associates from 1981 to 1992. She's nearly 30 years of providing tax planning, consultation, and bookkeeping services. She co-authored the bestselling books, Stand Apart and Why Didn't My CPA Tell Me That, as well as authored 10 other books. She created the nationwide get-off-the-wheel practice management solution for accountants and leads the business breakthrough mastermind group in her hometown of Rathdrum, Idaho. Rathdrum, did I say that right, Diane? You did, all 6,000 of us. Listen, I'm super excited to have you on

and appreciate you being here today. Tommy, I'm excited about being on your program. Thank you so much for letting me come and share some wisdom and hopefully some wonderful ideas and strategies with your listeners. Yeah, this is always great because we don't really realize how much we pay to Uncle Sam. And I love having tax specialists on. I've

had a few people total. I love Profit First, that book. I've read it. It's actually in my top five books. And I love what you said just now about the IRS. Can you tell them the tip that we just talked about? You bet. Tommy and I were talking before we went live, and I always tell my clients that we all need to pay our fair share amount of tax. There's nothing wrong with that, but there is nothing out there anywhere that says we have to leave a big tip for the IRS.

And I learn things new every year, Diane. I've learned that I always thought having used trucks made more sense since I have a small auto shop and just I can make them look good by wrapping them since we wrap our own stuff. We've got the printer and everything. And one day I had five trucks break down and I started to learn more about write-offs and just how it made sense and paying it forward and just really learning. And I got to tell you, these little tricks, I don't want to call them tricks. It's just more of an education. It saves so much money and time. And there I thought I was in the automotive recovery business. Well, I'm actually in the garage door business. And so many people do the

same thing and they don't understand when their truck goes offline for two days, how much money do they lose? And we used to do more commercial garage doors and I never understood why a company would pay two grand to have us out in the next hour. And so I realized like a discount tire, a big O, that one well, that one well of service is worth so much money per day. When it's not working, nothing works correctly. So, you know, you've been in this business for over 30 years, and I'm sure you've got a ton of stories behind this. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got started and what's happened since 2015

when you learned about the profit first technique, I guess? You bet. I started out probably like any other accounting, bookkeeping type person. I thought I was in the business of just doing bookkeeping and accounting and tax returns and stuff like that for my clients. And I went down that road for many years. I was no better, no worse, no different than all the other accountants in our general area. Well, I ended up closing up that business that was down in California and came home to Idaho

and started up again. I didn't know anything any different in college. They don't teach you how to be an entrepreneur. They don't teach you how to make yourself different, become a celebrity, become an author. They don't teach you any of that type of stuff. So it wasn't until 2009 when the Great Recession hit us that I was sitting here in my office one day as I'm watching my construction-related clients or anybody that was

in that industry that was touched by the home market, watching them go out of business right and left and trying as hard as I could to get their books closed and to do that final tax return and to do whatever I could to help them as they were on their way out, sitting there thinking, you know what? If I don't do something different in my business, I am going to be in that same line of people. I had to come up with a way to make myself different, to stand out from all the hundreds of thousands of accountants out there. And so at that point, I started doing research. And I found that even during recessionary times, there are businesses out there who are making a ton of money.

And decided that I needed to find something that's a little bit more economy recession-proof or whatever. And so I started learning about doing tax planning and proactive tax planning and proactive tax planning and how that whole program works. And as a result of the education that I got, I was like going back to school again. I am now an author of about 11 books and I speak all the time. I'm interviewed on podcasts and it's amazing because now I have clients all over the U.S. searching me out. Hey, can I work with you?

Hey, will you work with me? Can you save me money? Can you help me set up Profit First in my business? Those types of things. And it's such a wonderful feeling to be working with clients and prospects of people who really want to make a difference in their business and want to do things better. And consequently, they make more money in the process. So this is an off-track question, but when you have a company that's a pretty big company like

Facebook, Google, there's Yahoo, there's Amazon, there's all these large companies, there's Yelp, and I've been in Yelp's headquarters. They all have beer taps and a lot of drink and they have fun drinking games. Stupid off-topic question, but I think it applies and a lot of drink and they have fun drinking games, stupid off topic question, but I think it applies to a lot of home service companies because sometimes we'll go back to the shop and have a 12 pack or 24 pack with some of the workers or whatnot. And some of the times it's cool atmosphere, but I know that you, you risk a lot of litigation. And I was thinking these big,

huge companies probably form a separate company within their company, like at Yelp. I don't know how they would take the risk of someone getting in a car accident for millions of dollars of liability. But is there any light you could shed on that as far as, it's just a question I was thinking the other day because we're moving into a new facility. My best guess would be they would have some sort of a separate company and potentially not even owned by the same owners, mix it up a little bit so that it couldn't be construed as one company

because they're definitely taking on a lot of liability if they're serving alcohol and then people are getting in their cars and driving and they have a lot to lose if something went south and somebody had a bad accident or something like that. So I'm sure they've run it by their attorneys and they've been able to put together some way to protect them over and above just their insurance policy. There's so many things we do that we don't really think about. And it's so crazy how this whole country has become so litigious. And I just think you need to cross your T's. You can't have too much insurance. And I'm not an insurance salesman, but really cross

your T's and dot your I's. And it goes just as much as accounting. Do the same thing as make sure you're in the right structure. And I love LLCs. I mean, I have a lot of LLCs. And you tell me a little bit about, you've worked with a lot of home service companies. You told me a couple great stories, which I want to share here in a little bit. But as far as structures go, if I'm just getting into a business, home service, because that's the most listeners are, can you tell me about the advantages of one versus another and how you would really, what questions you would ask before forming that institution. You bet. Now, Tommy, a lot of that depends on what state that somebody is living or operating in.

For states that are LLC-friendly, like Idaho, where I'm at, and I believe Washington is as well, my favorite entity is an LLC because it is a very flexible entity. It gives you that limited protection that we all want and putting that fence around our business, protecting our personal assets from anything that could go wrong in that business. And so an LLC is always, well, I would say always generally my first choice because it has the ability, it can act like any other, like other types of entities. It can act like a sole proprietor. It can act like a partnership. It can act like a corporation,

whether it's an S-corp or a C-corp. And so it's a nice hybrid type entity that I can do a lot with in the tax planning arena. But for states that are not LLC friendly, I would probably lean towards recommending an S corporation, even though I don't like to do that on startups because of the costs that can be involved. But you need that protection. You've got vehicles out on the road. You're potentially touching things that could have high liability attached to them. So depending on what kind of

a business they're in as a service business. But there's a lot of different factors that come into that. And we always do an entity analysis when we sit down and meet with a client. And we go down the list of the pros and the cons of each of the different types of entities and let that client see what their choices are. And sometimes they look at me and go, wow, I didn't know we had all these choices. And it's like, yes, we do. But we want to narrow it down to what is the one that fits you the best today,

but still gives you room to grow for tomorrow. Because I see all the time, businesses that have outgrown their entity type and they're not working real well when they're an entity type that they've outgrown. I think that's really powerful to have a strategic coach. You know, I used to talk to people all the time and they're like, this is kind of embarrassing, but they said, yeah, I'm, I'm actually losing 200 bucks this year. I went to H&R Block and I mean, this was like eight years ago and I'm like, you got to go talk to my guy. And he ended up getting like $2,700 back.

But, you know, really getting the right person involved in what you're going to pay anywhere from 20 to 50% of your income is super powerful. I've heard of this term and I'm pretty familiar with it. But I think the listeners could gain a lot from this because I think this is a huge mistake that happens within the home service industry because we're not necessarily as organized in our books, but there's what's called Pierce the corporate veil. And I know these questions aren't what we're supposed to talk about, but sometimes I go off topic just to get the knowledge base. Can you tell us a little bit about what we need to do to make sure that we're not putting ourselves at risk when we're spending money on other things within

the company? You bet. But first of all, I'm going to have to say the caveat. I am not an attorney. So this is from the accountant standpoint. That's accountant's viewpoint. Piercing the corporate veil is when you do something that's not allowed as an accepted business transaction for the type of entity that you're in. So let's say I'm working on your books, Tommy,

and I see you paying a lot of personal bills out of your business check register. And I'm gonna sit down and have a conversation with you and say, Tommy, did you realize that there's a potential here that you are piercing your corporate veil by paying all these personal expenses out of your business account? Do you have a personal bank account?

Sometimes they tell me yes, sometimes they tell me no. And if Do you have a personal bank account? Sometimes they tell me yes, sometimes they tell me no. And if you do have a personal account, can we get these automatic transactions switched over to that bank account so it's not coming out of your business account? Because if you had a lawsuit on your hands, a litigious attorney is going to be looking for any way that he can get around that corporate veil or that hedge of protection that we've put around that business by becoming a particular entity like an LLC or an S Corp or a C Corp or something along those lines. So piercing the corporate veil, unfortunately, is so common in the service business industry because they're just not, sometimes they're not paying attention. They're busy. They're just running and they just go and they just whip out sometimes they're not paying attention. They're busy. They're just running and they just go

and they just whip out a credit card and it might be the wrong one. And those things can start happening. Well, I'd say I'm probably guilty of it. I mean, especially in the early days. And this is another off topic and then we're gonna go on the questions we have here. But I think one of the other big questions that I get a lot of the time is it's so much of an advantage to have 1099

employees. And I've been down this road a million times and I chose in every business that I own is to make them W-2 employees. But there's so many advantages, including I don't pay the same taxes on that employee. I don't have to pay the same insurances because they're supposed to be insured by themselves. I just don't have the same overhead and I lose a little bit of control. And there's so many disadvantages, I think, because they're 1099, they're supposed to be doing other work. But can you talk to me a little bit about maybe you've ran across somebody that was doing 1099 and they really didn't pass the test of a 1099 employee? I wish I could tell you I've never seen that before.

But unfortunately, I see it almost daily. And there's no such thing as a 1099 employee. They're either an employee or they're an independent contractor. As an independent contractor. As an independent contractor, they do have to be available to do work elsewhere. They have to be available to the general public. You would like them to have their own business license, their own workers' comp insurance, their own liability insurance, those kinds of things to protect you so their actions do not come back and hurt you as the business owner.

As an employee, yes, you do pay more taxes. You pay payroll taxes and workers comp and things like that that you don't pay otherwise. The other route is fine until you get caught. And I'll give you a little example. I have a client who's not in the home service industry, but he's in the towing industry. And the state that he was working in caught him on something else, and it turned into an audit of his employees through the Department of Labor. And he had a few of his people out there as 1099s.

And it did not go over well with the state. And they paid a humongous fine because they did not have them classified properly. And that was a very, very painful fine. And it caused him to lose a lot of money that year because unfortunately the penalty part of the fine is not deductible. Only the interest portion was. And he was not happy. And it was just a disaster all the way along. But it had been something I had been telling him for about 10 years is that you're not going to be able to get away with this. Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. Just, you know, and on he would go. And it's always better to set them up as an employee when they do not meet the 1099 requirements. And the three biggest requirements is who has the liability. If that

1099 worker is out there working on a job site and something gets broke or something falls apart or something bad happens, where's the liability going to land? Is it on that person or is it going to default back to your company? So that potential for liability also flips the other direction on payment. Do they get paid because they're working by the hour or do they get paid when you get paid on the job? So we look at those kinds of things. We look at who's in control. Are they saying, I'll be available to come in and do that job next Wednesday at 10 o'clock and I expect to be out of there by 2? Or are you asking them, hey, I need you there. Can you come in all day Tuesday

and all day Wednesday and we'll get this job finished up? Who's supplying the materials, the tools, those types of things? Yeah, that stuff is great. I mean, one of the things that I've gone through is if you do decide to 1099 somebody like I 1099 my painter, well, it was just the guy that I needed paint on. I mean, I'm definitely not a, he's not full-time for me. I use them a lot of the time, but he takes on other work. He shows up in my shirt, but I don't demand his time. And I made him form an LLC. So I was paying the LLC license bond and an insured. So it made a lot of sense because I wanted some control. He doesn't need to be here at any meetings. He just needs to show up to my customers when we agree he's going to show up like any 1099 would.

But every other employee of mine is a true W-2 employee. And I just feel like this is a huge thing for the home services. And if you're out there right now listening to this, I think Diane has a lot of wisdom when it comes to this because she sees it every day. And I've seen businesses literally go out of business in California because they're retroactive. They say, how long have you been doing this? In a state like California, Washington, New York, even Illinois, a lot of the times they'll go backwards and they'll literally make you pay. They don't want to you down necessarily because they wanna get paid. But at the same time, it can be enough to where you're like,

if I owe this much, it's not worth it. So good stuff there. You know, tax planning is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but not a lot of people understand what sets apart tax preparation from tax projection. Can you tell me the differences of what those two are? You bet. There's three different levels of, I'm going to call them engagements in the accounting

world. The very basic bottom level is just tax preparation. You engage your accountant, your tax preparer, whoever it might be to simply prepare your tax return. And I always say that you ask them to put the right numbers in the right boxes to get it done and get it filed on time for you. That's all you're asking them to do. Well, the next step up that little ladder is tax projections. And there's a lot of accountants that meet with their clients once, maybe twice a year, throw out some projections, some numbers. We think it's going to be this. Let's adjust your estimated payments. And they're basically done. But at least they've done some sort of a tax projection and you don't have a major surprise at tax time. Well, the next rung up that ladder

is actually true tax planning. And that's where you're being proactive. You're sitting down with somebody who can help you prepare a plan for the next three to five years. They're going to review your entity type. They're going to look at tax strategies, things like retirement planning. Can we write off medical expenses through your business? Can we hire some of your family members, maybe your children, maybe it's parents, anybody that you're helping to support? Is there any way we could hire them and pay them through the business? Because under the new tax law, they can make up to $12,000 and not have to file a tax return. So it's pretty nice to shift some income down if we can. We're always looking at, are they taking a home office expense

if they really do have a home office? Or are they really maximizing their vehicle expenses? We have a lot of people out there with fleets and then we've got others that might only have one or two vehicles. Are they maximizing that or are they not? Just simply because they don't know that they have choices in how they do it. Are they writing off all their meals, their business meals? And do they know the difference between what makes a business meal and what doesn't make a business meal? Because I'm surprised how many people

in the home service industry think that they can write off every meal they eat. It doesn't work quite that way. And then a lot of them are just so paranoid from of the IRS that they really have never been told that they really could do a planning and that they can do it legally and be blessed by the IRS with the tax strategies that are used because all we're doing is pulling tax strategies right out of the tax code and educating you, teaching you how to use them in your business, and then helping you implement them.

So that is kind of the difference between the three different levels, all the way from put the right numbers in the right box, file it on time, up to creating a plan, meeting with you on a regular basis, whether it's quarterly or semi-annual, whatever works best for that particular client. And following along behind, we're also a full range accounting service. So if you need bookkeeping done, we're watching those numbers and reporting back to you and things like that so that we can keep an eye on that taxable income and help you update the plan as needed. So there was a lot there.

I'm going to unpackage a little bit of it because I love just if when people listen to this podcast, if they could take one gold nugget out, it's a success for me, I would say. Because the only reason I do this, well, I learn a ton from people like you, but I think it's just so important to educate the whole realm of the home service niche out there. So when you say, I thought, and I could be wrong,

I probably am wrong, but if I go out to eat with somebody and we're discussing business and we're actually talking, whether that's now, okay, if I go out with my girlfriend and we're discussing what we did last yesterday in business, that might be different. But typically when I go out to eat versus eating at home, it's a business function, unless it's a wedding of some sort or something, a special event or a birthday. So can you go into detail? Because I probably don't have a clear definition on what's acceptable and what's not when we go to lunch, dinners, breakfast, whatever that may be. You bet. And under the new tax law, those rules have relaxed just a little bit,

which was pretty good news. You basically need to have the assumption or the awareness that you're talking business, number one, and that you might be able to either pick up some new business or you're furthering your relationship before you really had to show how that you were able to increase your sales by meeting with this person or increase something that because you met with a vendor, now we don't have to show that quite so much. So we're basically that we've discussed business of some sort, that there is a general assumption, you know, that we might be able to work together. Let's say you and I went out to meet

and had a meal together or something. We may or may not end up working together, but at least we've exchanged some business information versus the guy in his truck who's out there working, he's hungry, swings through McDonald's, orders a meal and throws it in with his business expenses. So it's a completely different type of meal there. Yeah, I wouldn't consider fast food unless you like talking to the girl at the counter there about her garage door. Or her plumbing or her electrical or whatever. Yeah, exactly.

Those are hard. You cannot really defend those to an auditor. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And I appreciate the clarification. So small businesses, I mean, how likely is it that the listeners right now in the home service niche are overpaying in their taxes? What would you say? Oh, probably 90, 95% of them are. And everything's legal. Like, look,

you know, I think that people push it to the edge and it's all fun until you get caught. But like, I talk to people, they're like, I drive this car this many miles to work. And then I drive my wife's car this many miles. And then there's writing off the miles versus just your straight gas fee. And then there's having a home gym. I don't understand it at all. And I know there's probably some gray area. Can you just talk a little bit about what we could use our home office for and what's acceptable or not? Right. Okay. So home office is where you do your administrative and your management type work. So that doesn't mean that just because there's an office in your building that you cannot have a home office. Because if you do all of your,

say your invoicing and your, the management stuff, the HR stuff or the whatever that you end up doing to keep your business running, your marketing, your social media, any of that kind of stuff. If you're doing all that from a home office, then you potentially have the ability to write off a home office in addition to the office that's in your building, if you have an office in your building. If you don't have an office like that, then it's a lot easier to make that home office qualify. So, that helped just a little bit on that side. But then if you're talking about a home gym, that gym has to be available for all of your employees.

And so you need to kind of be careful how you do that because depending on the size of the number of employees you have, you may not want them all traipsing through your house. But it works ideally the best if you have a small group as maybe yourself and a spouse and maybe just a couple of employees. Then the swimming pool, the gym, those kinds of things are much easier to write off. Makes a lot of sense. And especially if you don't have a ton of employees that are meeting at your house, which is an advantage and a disadvantage. They can afford to be cheaper, but the problem is they're not a real

business. I don't want to belittle anybody on the call here or on the podcast, but I just feel like when you get to a certain size to have a place of work outside of your home where it's actually a business with business hours and people walk into a real business, because I always ask this question, Diane, if I were to take a trip right now

and I'm paying for everything, Diane, I'm paying for you, your husband, your kids, your dog, we're going together, but we need to leave tonight and we're going for three weeks. I'm paying everything. What does your business look like in three weeks? And most of the people at a home office say the business falls apart. I run it. It's my home office. I do the inventory. I'm doing the taxes. I'm taking the phone calls. And to me, that's not a real business. That's a job. And I don't mean to belittle anybody because a lot of the people on here are starting out or they're working towards it, or they wouldn't be listening to

the podcast, bettering themselves. The biggest question I get, Diane, is it's so hard to find good people. And we started offering insurance a couple of years ago, maybe a year and a half, two years. And we haven't quite got into investment portfolio for them, a 401k or a SEP IRA or any of that stuff. Talk to me a little bit about the tax incentives for a business owner to go that route, other than the fact that you can attract great employees. You're like a magnet for people that have kids or a family

or just looking to be proactive about their insurance. So what are some of the advantages? Because I get a lot of these questions. How do I get great employees? I'm like, what kind of magnets do you got out there for them? And I think this is a really good question that a lot of the people might be wondering. You bet, yes.

Yeah, if you're not able to offer any benefits, it's pretty hard to compete. But on the flip side, if you're just getting started, it's hard to be able to afford any benefits. So you're going to get caught in that catch-22 until you get to be a certain size where then you can start adding benefits. Benefits can be something in the form of a simple IRA, which is a nice place to get started in the benefit arena where your employees can contribute into a plan where they actually own their own IRAs. You can contribute to as the owner, and then you end up matching a small percentage.

Generally, it is either 2% of everybody or 3% for those who choose to participate in the plan. So you're matching, say, 3% of their salary. And most of my clients, they're contributing each month so that they don't have a big chunk at the end of the year they have to send into the simple plan. And then there's also a SEP. A SEP allows the business itself to make a contribution. So there's no employee payroll withholding. SEP is nice when you have a smaller size business with just a couple people because what you do for the owner,

you have to do for everybody that qualifies as a full-time employee. So you don't see as many SEPs when you get into the bigger size businesses. You know, they kind of go from a simple up to maybe a 401k of some sort and there's lots of different varieties in the 401k arena.

That particular one allows you to contribute more and withhold more, so that allows people to make higher contributions into the plan, but it has fees because it is a true qualified plan. So you will pay fees because there's tax returns that have to be submitted, there's rules that have to be met, there's testing that has to be done, because the IRS does not want you to contribute too much for yourself and not enough for your employees. And so there's lots of rules and that could be a whole topic just by itself, just different types of retirement planning and 401ks and that type of thing. But those are kind of the three that I see the most out there in service businesses is some one shape,

one type of those three retirement plans. And that's a great place to start with trying to get some benefits in place so that you can attract better quality type employees. Yeah, I think there's so many advantages to doing stuff like that, but you gotta ask yourself too, is the juice worth the squeeze?

So a lot of times I'll ask my employees, what's the most important thing to you, especially the guys juice worth the squeeze. So a lot of times I'll ask my employees, what's the most important thing to you, especially the guys out in the field. And you'd be surprised like not having to drive their own truck covering gas. I think some of the times we jump to certain conclusions without really doing a questionnaire and finding out what's important to the guys. And although those things go a long way, you wanna do the biggest things that's gonna get you the best talent the fastest. And some of the times, it's so funny

how many people in the home service industry, especially the guys that I've hired, they really care about that check, weekly check. Just, it's so about that and that they're willing to drive their own vehicle. They're willing, they don't realize. So I have all my own vehicles that I give them. I pay for the gas.

I pay for the insurance. I pay for the iPad. They want to go train with somebody. They make 150 bucks for the day just because they're going out there bettering themselves. And so many people don't understand the difference of when they got to be a 1099 and they're driving their own truck and they're saving for their own taxes. They're paying their own gas. They're paying their own insurance. And it's, you know, roughly $1,500 to $2,000 we're covering that they don't really realize that or the part of the taxes that you're covering. So I just think it's, it's mind boggling how much more

we cover and then people, but when they go work for somebody else, they don't realize it because they're not paying their taxes as a 1099. The year ends up and they're like, oh, I'm just going to write everything out, but they still owe 20 grand, but they don't pay it. And then what's the government going to do? Do you think they're going to go after them or they're going to go after you? And that's what happens a lot of the time. They raise a red flag. They call the IRS and they say, I worked for this guy the whole time. Right. I worked for him only. He made me show up to the jobs. And that's how I think the whistle gets blown a lot of the times. And it's a big mistake. The most common way I see the whistle being blown is somebody who's being paid as a 1099

or independent contractor. When you no longer need them, they trot down to the local unemployment office. And that is the fastest way that a whistle gets blown. Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah, because they go in, I'd like to file for unemployment and most states require the employee's name and social security number every quarter, along with the amount that you've paid them.

So they've got it right there in their database. They pull up that company. It's like, oh, we don't see your name on this list. And boom, there's a guaranteed audit right there. Wow. If people are listening right now, I would just recommend before it's too late, really thinking about this stuff. And I always talk about, Diane, that sometimes you hate to go to the doctor because you don't want to hear the news. But when you go regularly, and I used to feel the same way about my balance sheet. I mean, we're a huge revenue company. I mean, 120, 140, 160 grand a day. And I always looked at revenue and I'm like, things are pretty good, but the balance sheet actually take into effect

the expenses. And sometimes it's not good news. And sometimes we're losing money in a particular area because we're in 12 states. And what I've learned to do is love the balance sheet. And right now, if I knew that I was at risk of litigation because I was 1099, there's no better time than today to contact somebody like Diane and make a difference. So that's the word to the wise. You know, we talked about some of the big mistakes business owners and professionals make. But is there any other ones that you think could save thousands of dollars while we're on this topic? The biggest ones that I generally see is that people just don't know that they can put together

a plan. We all kind of live in the world of we don't know what we don't know. And when I sit down and talk with someone and just show them how by putting together a plan, this is what could happen. They look at me, it's like, I've been in business for 20 years and no, or 25 or 10 or five or whatever it's been. And no one's ever told me this. I didn't even know that you could put together a plan and you could actually plan your way

to a lower tax liability. And they're just amazed that they can do this, especially if they've been in business for very long. Yeah, you know, it's funny. We went to bi-weekly payroll. It just made more sense. And it's truly bi-weekly. We had three payrolls in March,

which actually lowered our profit for March. But a lot of people, when we switched to bi-weekly, needed a cash advance. And at that point, I realized that we needed something to give them some financial stability. So we got into this program Dave Ramsey offers where it monitors how much is going to true expenses versus night out in the town. And we've noticed that only 20% of the people have even logged in and it tells you how much

they've done. But it's amazing how much money, I mean, a lot of people make and they just don't have any way of budgeting the money they're bringing in. Their expenses outweigh their income. And it's crazy because the question I was going to ask you is about digital tools. And that's a pretty cool tool. And obviously, we use QuickBooks and we're actually outgrowing QuickBooks. And QuickBooks Online is not a great tool from what I understand, and that's why we don't use it. But can you talk to me a little bit about technology and what you recommend for every facet of keeping receipts to just what to use for your company if you don't have an advanced CRM or something like QuickBooks?

You bet, yes. Yeah, I always suggest that they get into something at least like QuickBooks. I'm really not a big fan of QuickBooks Online or QBO because if a company is very big at all, it locks up the program. And we're unable to print certain reports or see things because it tells you that the report is too big.

Please export it to Excel. Well, then it won't let me export because it's too big. I get this catch-22 with QBO where the desktop versions don't do that. So, you know, we always say, you know, please do at least something like that. Don't do nothing. Doing nothing is the worst you can do. Digital tools are amazing. There's several different programs out there where you can take pictures of receipt and it will download them. I don't necessarily think they're completely accurate, but they're better than nothing. And use the technology that's

available to be able to keep track of your receipts. There's tools for keeping track of mileage. Keep track of all that stuff because your accountant needs them and they need you to arm them with correct information so they can spit out good numbers and good information for you. Yeah, I was using a neat desk for a while. There's a lot of apps. They make it simple. You take a picture of the receipt.

You know, there's a book about starting your day. It was, I'm trying to think of the name of it, but it's like, make your bed. It's like, start the day by doing something right. And I'm going to be honest, I'm pretty sure I didn't make my bed this morning, but I did the last two days. So anyways, it's so simple to take a picture of a receipt.

It's so simple, it's so timeless. It's like, boom. And then it uploads to QuickBooks, everything's there. And it's not that hard to do. I just think just keeping track of this stuff, because I always say the phrase, hope for the best, plan for the worst. And nobody likes to get audited, but if you're making money at some point, this is going to happen. And if they see a bunch of red flags,

it's so nice when everything's just, I get punched hole in a lot of financials. I can just see this doesn't make sense to me. And I look at our financials on a weekly basis. We do a report, we call it the non-financial position of the company. And I get to look at our financials on a weekly basis. We do a report. We call it the non-financial position of the company. And I get to look at every single market and where we're at. And I'm like, based on last month and last year, I'm just having a hard time with this. Let me take a deeper dive.

And I'm no pro at this stuff. So I'm only imagining that someone like yourself could punch a hole in something super fast. So I think cross-center T's and dot and R's are so important in this industry, the home service niche. Very, very important. That was a very good statement. Now, when I would say yes and amen.

You know, when a business owner hires an accountant, there's a list of basic expectations the owner has to think about in regards to the service that they could deliver. What are the things that any good accountant should be doing for you? Well, over and above doing things accurately and timely, because we kind of just expect your accountant to do that. One of the things that I hear all the time is I never hear anything from my accountant. They only reach out to me every, you know, maybe it's a quarter or

every once a year. I hear those comments all the time as I talk to people all over the U.S. And so I would say great communication is something that your accountant should be providing to you. But that means on the flip side, you need to communicate back because we do have clients that think communication is a one-way street. Getting things done when they say they will get it done. That is one of my pet peeves is if somebody says, I'll have it for you next Tuesday and you don't hear anything from them for another week or so, that doesn't fly in my book. So when they say they'll get something done, get it done at that time. And if something comes up, because sometimes we all have unforeseen things in our lives,

let the client know or let the prospect know just as soon as possible that, you know, such and such has happened. We're going to have to extend that out, but we should have it done by this date. Just keeping in contact with people and keeping that communication lines open. Does that help a little bit? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Those are great pet peeves. I think that I'm definitely like a thousand view type guy. I'm macro, not micro. And the biggest thing when I got into business, I knew I needed somebody good. And what the definition of good is, is relative on the size you are. Because you could have a decent bookkeeper if you're a three-man show.

But as you start to grow, it becomes more and more important to have the right person in that spot. So I knew that I didn't like the tedious day-to-day. I didn't like to pull licensing and make sure insurance was up to date and do that type of director of finance or just an advanced bookkeeper would like to do. So I think it's a scary thing to give up. And you always want to know how to look at your reports and

keep track of stuff and checks and balances. Make sure your account looks right. Check all your credit cards. Look at this stuff on a daily basis. It's a 10-minute check. But when you get really good at it, I think it's a great thing to outsource or bring in when you eventually get to that size, which I think typically, you know, several million dollars you start thinking, should I bring this in versus outsource? But a lot of, there's a lot of great bookkeepers that could do things a lot faster,

more efficient than most of the people out there that are so busy working, I'm gonna say on their business as well, but they shouldn't be doing pivot tables on their accounting if they're focused on roofing. I just think that's a waste of time for a business owner to do that. Yes. And I just think it makes sense to outsource. And it's the last thing people give up, but it's the most annoying thing they should have given up earlier because they don't know all the newest, latest facts. That's not

what they do for a living. And I'm a big fan of just getting someone that's a pro at this stuff. And I made all the mistakes and I'm talking from experience about mistakes, not because I'm a big fan of just getting someone that's a pro at this stuff. And I made all the mistakes and I'm talking from experience about mistakes, not because I'm wise, just because I've made every mistake in the book. You know, we talk a lot about tax accountants. Tell me a little bit about what a tax coach does. Okay, tax coach is different than just a tax accountant because a lot of people call themselves a tax accountant

because they do income tax returns. But that's about all they do. Where this tax coach person is going to come along beside you, they're going to help prepare that plan or they're going to actually prepare a plan based on usually some questions and dialogue that's had and put together a plan and then be willing to implement it for you if you want them to. Or you can take it to your current accountant and ask them to implement it, but basically put together a plan that's going to allow you to pay considerably less tax than what you'd be paying previously. Because tax coaches like myself, we're constantly taking continuing education classes so that we can find you various things that are, I'm going to say,

kind of hidden in the tax code that you may not have even heard about, or you may have heard the topic but didn't really know what it was about. And so we can explore those areas and see if they might qualify as a way to help you pay less income tax. So when I think of like a coach, it would be, do you have any veterans that work for you? Do you have anybody? There's so many different deductions and credits out there and strategies to make a lot of money. I mean, simple things is, did you ever think about going solar in certain states? Or did you know that replacing all of your LED or your lights with LEDs will get you this kind of write-off and it improves your dwelling that you own? And it's huge, I think, to know

this certain things. Like when I found out that the strategy behind getting an enterprise lease to own for four to five years and turning it back in, getting a credit for it of 10 to 15,000, applying that towards a new one and never having a broken down truck and having the newest looking wrap on it, it just, it made sense. And to not have somebody that knows this stuff is just, it's really tough to grow your business when other people are taking advantage of money that you're not. Right. And then Tommy, there's things like for the larger companies out there that are paying a ton in insurance every year, there are strategies like a closely held insurance company where you're able to self-insure

and you basically own your own insurance company. So you're paying yourself and you're able then to take those assets at some point down the road and start investing them in various things. And now you're making money on the money that you paid to yourself for your own insurance. So there's some cool tax strategies out there

for the little bit larger size companies, as well as there's cool tax strategies for the smaller ones too. And you know, when you think about self-insurance, because I'm in the middle of something similar to that is, how do I say this without getting in trouble? Well, this is, try to hire healthy people. If you can, one of the things is,

you could ask people if they smoke, and I'm not saying don't hire anybody that doesn't smoke, but what I realized is there's certain things that not only are a distraction for business, but it's unhealthy and it's a lot more expensive. And you'd be surprised how much money you can spend on health insurance as you grow. And they do this audit and they ask you these questions. And it could be very detrimental if you've got an office full of people getting ready to retire that are all smokers or just, there's certain things that come with age that I'm getting older too. It's hard to face the facts,

but not in my twenties anymore, like I used to be. So it's just a piece of advice of when you're hiring. A lot of times the average plumber is 47 years old. And when you think about that, it's crazy. And that's why I'm a big fan of building the right training environment to be able to make your own technicians. And that's an apprenticeship that turns into they're training your way and you're breeding the next generation of home service experts. And it's very, very powerful. But I wanted to ask you too, is a lot of entrepreneurs early on in their business,

they don't know about any tax deductions that they may qualify for. And I know we've talked about this a little bit, but I wanted to see, is there anything that most professionals aren't aware of that we didn't discuss? Well, if you're talking more of the startup type businesses and those type, the smaller businesses that maybe don't have lots of employees or anything, there is the potential for writing off all of your medical expenses through your business if you're in the right entity form and some things like that, if you're qualified. And so that's a huge one,

especially for somebody who doesn't have a lot of employees. It doesn't work real well if you have a bunch of employees because what you do for yourself, you have to do for them and you generally can't cover 100% of their medical costs. But for those that are in a smaller type size, if you could write off your health insurance premiums each month, as well as any co-pays and out-of-pocket costs. That's a big amount because right now, most people are not itemizing deductions anymore, which means you're not writing that off on your Schedule A form like you may have done in the past. And so we're able to take that basically from a place that may have been non-deductible for you on this year's income tax return and move it into your business and move it to a place that is now deductible for you,

potentially saving some self-employment tax as well as income tax, depending on a few things and if you qualify. This stuff is so powerful. I just don't think people understand how important a podcast like this is because there's so much money that we wrap up. And it's so boring to most people because they're like, taxes are taxes. You pay them and you go.

But if you realize you could get an extra a hundred grand back and a $1.5 million business, it's so massive. And not a lot of people, you said 90 to 95% of people are unaware of this stuff, which is mind blowing. Tell me a little bit about this business breakthrough mastermind group that you formed. That was a group where, unfortunately, they're no longer meeting, but that was a group made up basically of my local type clients who wanted to learn more about how to run their business better. And so we were meeting once a month and we talked about topics such as how to hire, how to fire, because it's easier to hire than it is to fire, and how to do it well.

And then we spent a bit of time talking about leadership. We spent some time learning how to read financial statements because that was a big question of them. You give me these reports every month and I just file them away. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's dig in and learn how to read them and let them be a gauge for your business. We spent time talking about how to market your business. Just basic business ABCs is kind of what it was.

And it was a great group of people. After a couple years, it kind of disbanded and we've not picked it back up again because now I'm working more nationwide. So I would need to do a virtual group. Yeah, those work out great. I mean, I just had a guy in here before the podcast and we were just exchanging notes.

He runs about a $50 million pest control and we were just bouncing ideas and just, we both had a ton of takeaways. And what's one of the smartest things I advocate is go check out other businesses, go check out the company you want to become with great cultures. And just, there's so much good advice and new technology out there to run a business. And if you could do that at least once a quarter in your local town, it really gets you far. And we've got a really advanced CRM. So I could call, they're a $2.4 billion company.

I could call them, they'll give me people in any city I wanna go to to meet up and check out their business. And they've got the KPIs and the stats that they're saying this company books 90% of their calls, they're amazing. They don't share data per se, but they're like, they're really, really well ran.

You talked a little bit about H hire fire, about your group. And I was listening to Tony Robbins just briefly the other day, and he made this comment. It's business is not about necessarily the people we hire. It's about the people we don't fire. And I thought that was really powerful because I'm a big fan of hiring the best and really doing a great job of pre-qualifying people and not letting them make it through training if they're not great at what they do and they don't have the smile on their face. And I'm a big person about great people and just the attitude and the culture. But a lot of times it's about the people we don't fire. We don't really realize that.

So that's a word of the wise is, if you were to sell your business, let's say you had one month to get it ready to sell. And I mean, you wanted it to be the cream of the crop. You had a person coming in to look at your business. And I mean, they were gonna go through everything. They were gonna interview every employee. They're gonna figure out who's the bad apple in there. They're gonna talk to other employees,

and they're gonna make sure that you're getting, every single person there is getting paid what they're worth. How many people there would you say, I need to get rid of this person before this audit happens? And that's what you really should be thinking about because there's a reason that you're thinking that. And you need to either have some serious one-on-ones and decide if that's the right direction

or don't let those bad apples ruin your business. And it's so tough because when you got to fire these people, you think I might be back on the streets again running jobs. But maybe that's better off than letting them just run all over you and treat you like crap and disrespect you in front of your coworkers or your employees. And it's a tough road. And I'm sure you might have been there or seen a lot of companies that have been down that road.

Am I right? I have. I've even walked that road myself over the years. And it's tough and it never gets easier for me. Unless you're a real prick, you don't enjoy firing people. Yeah, it's one of the toughest parts of being the owner. Yeah, that's why I have a manager that does it. One other thing is I really love the book Profit First

and in 2015, you became certified in that. And it's such a pay yourself first. And so many of us go pay our bills and then whatever's left over, we keep. But this one makes you think differently. It's pay ourselves and then whatever's left over is the bills you can afford. Can you explain the concept and really the whole tour

of what that's all about and how you become to think that way? You bet. General accepted accounting principles or GAP tells us that you take sales minus expenses equals profit. We've heard that our whole lives. And if there's anything left, then us as an owner get to take something. Well, in Mike's book, he flips it around and he says sales minus profit equals expenses. And so basically what we're doing is we're putting together a budget, but we don't like to use the B word because people kind of like, oh, I don't like budgets.

So we're putting together some percentages of how much should be spent in various areas of the business. I have my clients open up various accounts. So we'll open up an income tax account. We'll open up a profit account. We'll open up maybe a future growth account because I'm generally not working with small business. I'm generally working with companies that are $500,000 on up to several million. And so sometimes we're doing a future growth or we're doing an equipment replacement account because we know we're going to be replacing some trucks.

We're going to be replacing other types of equipment in the next year or so. And so we're creating these accounts based on what the business has a need for because I do deviate a little bit from Mike's book in that. And that is how we're able to get higher profit percentages because now instead of having 100% of that income available to be spent, we might only have 80% of the income or 70% of the income, depending on how much we've decided we want to allocate to some of these other accounts. So I've got clients who are wanting to move from maybe a rented facility into a facility they wanna buy. And so we'll set up a future building account and start, we just come up with a percentage, how much could be contributed to that each month. And it's a great way to get from point A to point B

and end up paying yourself in the process. And you get to take out a profit allocation, usually quarterly. And that's a really good feeling to have this extra money sitting there in your profit account, ready to be dispersed to you as a nice little bonus for the risk that you're taking, for all the liability you assume, all the stuff that we have to do as an owner. Yeah, you know, I was listening to Ben Shapiro the other day, and he did a speech at a college. Are you familiar with Ben Shapiro?

Just vaguely. So the guy was talking about socialism. I'm not going down a rabbit hole because we've got a few minutes left here. But he said, you know, I just don't understand this. Let's take it for example. He's at a pencil factory. Now you hire me and I'm sitting there making the pencils for you. Why shouldn't I share in the profit? Like, you know what? I believe in that it should be a huge partnership. Basically an employee owned, which is, which actually works. It's a, I forget what it's called, but an employee owned is a soap, soap, whatever it's called. But Ben Shapiro said, wait a minute. So I've taken all the risk. I bought all the machines. He goes,

let me ask you this. If we go out of business, do you go find another job? And he goes, yeah, but I should be treated more. I should get paid more for being there. He goes, wait a minute. This is what capitalism is all about. You go to any other place whenever you want. But if I saved up, spent all the money, taking all the risk, bought all the machines, you sit there without this with doing nothing. I'm taking all the risk risk, therefore I should get paid. And I mean, when he says it, if you look up like the pencil making Ben Shapiro, it's like the coolest, like two minutes at the end of it. And it was like, if the listeners are out there, I think they're in front of their computer, YouTube it real quick. But one last question until we get to the closing. Talk to me a little bit about,

and this is something I'm a huge fan of, is Parkinson's law about what we have in our account we're gonna spend if we don't do something like separate accounts and pay ourselves first. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? You bet. If you've ever heard Mike Michalowicz speak, he uses the analogy of a tube of toothpaste.

When you've got a brand new tube of toothpaste, you have no qualms with squirting a bunch out and oops, you missed the toothbrush, it landed in the sink. Oh, well, wash it down the drain, grab another chunk. And you're just, you know, vice hunky dory. Well, you get down to the end of that tube of toothpaste, and there's just a tiny bit left and you forgot to go to the store and get some more. So you've got to make that tiny bit last the next however many days so you can get to the grocery store, you're going to be a lot more careful of how you use that toothpaste. You're going to put just a certain amount on there, because I know I got to get it, it's got to last me three or four

more days, whatever it might be, five, and you're going to make that toothpaste last till you get to the day when you can get to the store. Well, think about your business in the same way. If you have a business and the cash flow is doing great and the profits there, it's pretty easy to say, sure, let's go buy such and such. Let's invest in whatever. Yeah, we can take the whole crew out to lunch. We can do this kind of stuff.

But if through planning, we've been able to shave off some money into these various accounts, now we don't have as much to work with. And so we're able to be more efficient. And so that's kind of how Parkinson's law works, is that whatever resources you have, you will use. And so if we can trim back the resources a little bit, tighten things up, it will force us to be more efficient, which will drive up our profit margins. That is super powerful.

I remember when I was 17, I started a Roth IRA and I was busing tables at the time. And I used to put $300 away back then when I was 17, a lifetime ago. And I realized back then, I never saw the money. It came out of a check and it just got thrown into there. So I never really saw it because I paid myself first. And trust me, busing tables, it was like 300 bucks was a pretty good chunk of change back then.

And it's a retirement plan. It's how you should really run your business. And we're going to spend, it's the difference between going out to a really nice $200 dinner. We're going to say, look, we're going to go to the store. We'll buy a decent bottle of wine, but it's going to cost us $40 versus that $200. And it's making decisions based on what you have after you pay yourself. And Parkinson's law says the amount of space, I got this huge warehouse I'm in right now. It's 19,000 square feet. Well, we had to get another warehouse and now we're moving into a 40,000 foot warehouse. And I'm going, Parkinson's law meant we're going to use up all the space. And we did. And it's crazy. We never thought we could, but then I realized I was getting out of the inventory game, but we use the time allotted available. When I used to have a paper for my master's program, I used to write

it the night before. And that's typically what we do is Parkinson's laws taught me a lot. And I know that this has been amazing. I wanted to ask you, Diane, other than the, uh, clockwork and, uh, profit first, what books would you recommend? And profit first is a must read. If you guys haven't read it, go out there and get it. It's available on audible amazing book. But other than that, what are some few books that you would recommend have really influenced you business, tax-wise, whatever it might be? Well, I'm going to throw out a couple more from Mike Michalowicz. You did mention Clockwork. Clockwork's an amazing book too.

It helps you really sit back and take a look at your business. Do you have the procedures in place so that you can take that three-week vacation that you mentioned earlier and your business just hums along while you're gone. So he's all about setting it up so you can be gone for four weeks at a time. So having the systems and procedures and stuff in place. Another one of Mike's books that I really, really like is his Pumpkin Plan book. Because when I read Pumpkin Plan, it was at a time when I was offering all kinds of services out there to my various clients and realized that only two or three of them were really making any money as far as profit went.

The rest of them, yeah, they were helping to pay the bills or whatever. And so we pared down the service offerings that we have. And now we really concentrate on tax planning and profit planning. Yes, we will do, but keeping an income tax preparation, but they're part of a program, part of a package that we do. And by doing that, we've been able to become more efficient. And so Pumpkin Plan was another great book by Mike Michalowicz. One of the books that I read many years ago was The One Thing by Gary Keller. Oh, yeah. That was such a good book because now when I come into work or actually before I leave the night before, I set it up. What is the one thing I need

to do tomorrow that will move me maybe in the direction of some sort I'm trying to go or that will allow me to accomplish something? But what is the one thing? So when I walk in the door the next morning, I've got my one thing set out there and I'm going to make it happen during that day. And so that book has been great that way. Another book that was super good was Three Feet from Gold from Sharon Lecter. Oh yeah, great book. Yeah, I read that book back in 2009 when my world was collapsing around me because I had clients going out of business. And all of us that are in business, at one point or another, you're going to have one of those times in your life.

I've gone through a couple of them. We had the recession. And then when I was down in California, we had a major earthquake that almost leveled our town. And so looking at something like that and deciding to never give up, keep pushing through, you're able to look back down the road and look, I only pushed through this far and discovered the gold that was on the other side. So don't give up. It's such a great mantra to have sitting up there, especially if you're going through a really tough time. Three feet from gold can really be a great motivator book for you. I love that. Yeah. The premise of that is they got this old mine and literally the guy's mining it and he gives up and says, you know, there's nothing in here. And then the next guy buys it and finds all this gold. It's just a few feet back. And it's a cool little, is it Napoleon

Hill that it's kind of? It's kind of based on that loosely, yeah. Yeah, so it's mostly his memoirs that they went off of. And yeah, it's Napoleon Hill. Yes, Napoleon Hill. There's another book that, since you're on this topic, Diane, that I'd recommend. I've talked about it on the podcast, but it's called Essentialism.

And if you get the time, I'd love to hear your feedback on that book because it does everything that you're talking about. It's about essentialists don't go after everything. They're not opportunists that just jump on everything. They take the time, they decide what they're going to go after, and they go 100% and they focus. And I think you'd really dig that book. So if you get the chance, check that book out and let's talk about it for 15 minutes. But if somebody wants to get ahold of you, Diane, what's the best way to reach out and hear more, maybe talk about getting involved with your tax services?

You bet. The best way is to go out to www.taxcoachforyou.com forward slash home service expert, where we are giving away our newest tax planning guide, chock full of all kinds of different strategies and things. On our Tax Coach For You website, there's also ways that you can get copies of some of my books. We basically give them away for free. We just ask people to help pay the shipping

and handling on them. Just a ton of information out there. There's lots more podcast interviews, blogs, all kinds of information on the main website. But basically, taxcoach4you.com forward slash home service expert. That's so cool. You got all those resources. And I think that people like you that are willing to give away this stuff, it just makes sense to work with somebody that understands what you do and the fact that you're

involved in so many companies that many of us aspire to be like is a great thing. So Diane, it's a pleasure to have you on today. The last thing I always ask is, if there's anything we didn't discuss or one last thing to leave the audience with, I'll give you the stage for that right now. It's never too late to put together a plan, but if you don't and you just continue down the road that you are

and you just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, and then you pay a super high amount of taxes and it hurts and you just then you just keep doing it over and over again. I think that kind of relates back to our definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So I would encourage people to stop and take action. Don't just say, oh yeah, the great idea, and then just keep on going. Take some action, whether it's ordering our tax planning guide, hopping on, ordering a book, do something. Because I do give free initial consultation where I'm happy to take a look at your last two years income tax returns. And I'll tell you if I see mistakes and missed opportunities, or I'll tell you, you've got an accountant that looks like they're doing a really good job. But a lot of times we're able to say, oh, what about this

or this or this? And then we can go back and amend tax returns and get some cash from previous years. So take action. Don't just say that's a great idea or that was some good information and file it away for later. Yeah. What you do is the smartest thing that I learned is go right now, put it on your calendar for tomorrow. If you don't have the time today, if it's nighttime, put it on your calendar, black out an hour and just go do it. Can you repeat that website one time? You bet. www.taxcoach4u.com. Taxcoach4u.com forward slash home service expert. Just go there. It's free. Literally, you can check some stuff out. If you could save a couple grand by reading that, it just makes sense. So like I said, Diane, it was a pleasure having you on. And let me just ask you one last thing. If somebody wants to get ahold of you personally or follow you, is there LinkedIn, is Facebook? I doubt Instagram, but I'll throw that out there. Or I can snap you, but what's the best way?

I'm on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter. I have a wonderful VA who is a millennial, and so she's really good at getting me out on all these places. Or they can just simply email me, diane at taxcoachforyou.com. Awesome, Diane. I had a really good time on this and learned a ton. I really appreciate it. I did too, Tommy.

This was an amazing show today. Thank you so much for having me on. All right. Well, go check that stuff out, guys. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you on the next episode. Hey, guys, I really appreciate you tuning into the podcast. I want to let you know that my book is available right now on Amazon. It's called The Home Service Millionaire. That's homeservicemillionaire.com. Just go to the website. It'll show you exactly where and how to buy the

book. I poured two years of knowledge into this book, and I had 12 contributors. Everybody from the COO at HomeAdvisor to the CEO of Valpak, and of course, Ara, the CEO of ServiceTitan. It tells you how to have the right mindset and become a millionaire and think like a millionaire. It goes into exactly how to turn on lead generation. Have those phones ringing off the hook for the customers that you want to be calling where you can make money and get great reviews. It also goes into simple things like how to attract A players. Listen, if you want a great apple pie, you need to buy good apples

and you need to know where to buy those apples. And it also talks about simple things like knowing how to keep the score. You should have your financial check every week. You should know exactly what's coming in and out of your account. You should know when to cut advertising that's not working. And more than anything, you should know how to cut employees that aren't making it for you. Listen, you might have a big heart, but this book is going to show you how to make decisions built on numbers. I hope you pick up the book and I really appreciate everything. I hope you're having a great day.

Tune in next week. Thank you.