Shakin' Hands

Ep. 37 | Rethinking Tax Strategy - Ryan Roe

• Jack Moran • Season 1 • Episode 37

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Jack Moran hosts Ryan Roe, a tax and business systems expert and aspiring DJ, to explore the balance between tax compliance, entrepreneurial ethics, and personal growth. Ryan details his journey of transforming a family tax business into a thriving operation, transitioning into fractional CFO work, and embracing life coaching, meditation, and personal growth.

Ryan Roe

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Welcome to Shaking Hands, where we provide the platform for entrepreneurs and thought leaders to share their stories in order to hopefully influence others to get out of the rat race and chase their own dreams. If you have any recommendations for guests or questions that you want to be asked, please don't hesitate to reach out. Anyways, if you enjoy the podcast, please like, comment, subscribe and share in order to keep the podcast growing. Otherwise, I'm your host, Jack Moran and this is Shakin’ Hands. Oh, I was just saying, as I work on stuff for your company and I just save it, for our in-person meeting because we're working with different personality types. Some people have the ability to, your view of the ability to do it, but it's just like your personality type with a little bit of, attention deficit might not work the best for that type of task. Well, at least you're conscious of, like, personality types. Like, a lot of people wouldn't be able to interface someone with my personality type. And I'm like, the fact that you're adaptable, with that personality type, just like you have different, different types of personalities that are essential for different types of roles and companies. So like you'll hear this word narcissism going around right now where, you know, it's not a great trait to have for your relationships, but somebody who's very confident in themselves. That's a necessary trait to have a seemingly necessary trait to have to run a really large company. It's like a wonderful trait that I see this character trait in, like a lot of people at the heads of large companies. And that's a narcissism is a hard word. Sociopath is a hard word. But somebody who's like Billy believes in themselves, are selfish enough to the point where they can seemingly disconnected from reality sometimes. Is that a characteristic trait that I see at the heads of companies? And so for someone like you who's very outgoing and who's very good at cutting deals and going seven hours without food and waking up at 4 a.m., and somehow that helps you focus better. It just feeds into that personality type that you have that's completely different than than my personality type. I have to stay fed every two hours or my the part of my brain that does complex math occupations just stops working. And so, you know, I've, I can recognize that in other people, primarily because my experiences with my family at a young age, my father, he was more of your characteristic, type and I mean, the other way. And because of that, I'm a great fit to support people. And so I've sort of started building a business off of it's very interesting that, you mention that because when you know how we do our book club in the morning or whatever, we're reading the Elon Musk book. And that was literally the lesson that Jose gave today was. So what prompted it is in the chapter, he's got this guy, I forget the guy's name, but he's basically like been working with him since the beginning. I think like 10 or 15 years. He's with him in the organization of space X, and he's pushing him out because they had some like, they had some FAA like regulations and come to them where they violated the regulation. And Elon Musk was like, just violate it and we'll like deal with it later. And so they interviewed this guy that had been working with him for 15 years, and he just kind of threw Elon under the bus. Like he told us that where Elon felt like he should have been loyal and like covered for him. So now he starts pushing this guy out. That's been like in the organization for 15 years. And the lesson today was like how Elon is like not a relationship guy. He doesn't really give a fuck. Like he doesn't care that the guy's been there for 15 years. He has no problem, pushing him out of the organization with zero empathy. Which is good, because he's, like, protecting his culture. But also, there's going to be a collateral damage of him, like being kind of narcissistic. And so what we were talking about today is like that balance, because now me, on the other hand, I'm more of like a passive person. So I kind of let you do what you want and get away with a lot within my company. So I trust people more. I empower them more. I don't micromanage, but I can tend to get walked over, and taken advantage of. So although their strengths of that personality type, they're also like collateral damage. And then Elon is the other sense, like he's not going to get walked over. He's not going to get taken advantage of easily. He's going to be very direct and cold. But then there's a collateral on, like, his staff getting burnt out. And, eventually he's going to lose trust and credibility and relationships. Yeah. There's, there's two BS. There's two pieces of work here. One is the personality type of the business owner who's willing to do just about anything for the success of his company. And then there is the other side, which is disconnecting your personal relationships from business. Both the things that I combat all the time one the second, in small business is you're hiring potentially your friends. So you have to learn how to disconnect on a regular basis, which doesn't usually work out too well. Yeah. Right. So on one hand you have somebody you can trust. On the other hand you trust them and they trust you not to fire them. Right. And the other thing is something that I deal with all the time in my job as working as, like a CFO for multiple companies is the business owner who's willing to cut every corner or potentially evade or avoid taxes. And how I balance the interests of my client versus trying to keep them compliant with the government. And it happens all the time. It's most commonly, unless it's a sales tax or even just business license applications for the city. I mean, I've seen so many where the business owner has never in 20, 30 years of business entered the correct business license receipt number. And the city has never checked them a single time. I have clients that have gone ten years without paying their income taxes. And then they're in charge of companies grossing 20 million, and the state finally catches them and only makes them go back five years. Hopefully the IRS doesn't watch this, and they're like, oh, he's going to collect 20 clients. This is all in the past because statute of limitations, that's all there is. So it's like balancing. And same thing with sales tax. If you're if you're functioning in a state outside of the current state that you're in and you do they change the rules like five years ago, you can create something called like a sales tax nexus in another state. If you do over a hundred K and gross receipts in that state, you're supposed to begin to file sales tax returns in that state, even if you don't owe the money. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. But again, businesses will go ten years. They don't even know that exists. And they never or sometimes they do. And and so it's like balancing that, with trying to keep them compliant versus trying to not have them pay a ton more in taxes than they were already paying. Is is a difficult part of my job, and it's something that I have to deal with the ethics on all the time. And same thing with the income tax preparation. It's like, you know, tax avoidance is perfectly okay, but tax evasion is not. And there's a very fine line. And I've been in taxes for five years now. I've studied it just about every single day of my work week. It's my family business. I'm a third generation income tax owner CIO of 30 franchises, and the more you learn about the income tax code, the larger the gray area gets, and it's unavoidable. I used to when I first started, it was black and white and I was like, I was always trying to do the right thing. But it's intentionally set up to be impossible to avoid the gray area. And that's because we live in a capitalistic economy. So, you know, I've just I've had to learn to, you know, set aside some of those initial Judeo-Christian values to be able to, you know, live in the world that we live in. So it's very interesting. And you bring up, you know, Elon Musk and all that stuff where he's like trying to avoid this. It's essentially an essential part of being a business owner is to push that envelope. Exactly. And, it's like, you know, it's like, what is it like if there are if the rules are dumb, we can break it. But if it's not, it's it's an essential part of business. And so trying to weigh all of that is very interesting. And so I've kind of chalked it up to, we try to not get caught and try to we, I create defendable positions. And if I can create a defendable position that I'm okay with, something to stand on when I'm taking an accounting perspective. But that's part of what I'm, I get hired to do. So what? So let's backtrack a little bit. How would you summarize like what you do. You just start with that. But yeah. So I started working for my my grandfather started an income tax preparation company in the 80s. And he, he was, serial entrepreneur and was aware of the value of creating a franchise model, a repeatable business system. And he had scaled it, over 60, 70 offices up and down the East Coast. And then, as serial entrepreneur nerds do, he eventually actually sold his half and moved on to something else. But before that, my father started working for him. And the person who we sold to have two had ran it into the ground, gave it to his son, and ran into the ground. And so my father bought it from him and ran the company for 30 years. So here we are 30 years later, and I got a degree in computer information systems and business information management. And initially intended to be a programmer, but after a couple of years working in software sales, I came back and worked for my family business. And when I first started working there, you know, is the same situation where you hire your friends and they just take advantage of it and push it. My father, he did a great job running the company. And it was it was time for him to try to take a little bit of a step back. So we hired somebody else. But yeah, that was 15 years in. And then for the last 15 years that guy did a great job. But for the last few he hadn't. So I the my second day of ever going to work for my family business, I walk in and the man who's supposed to be running my family company is sitting in his cubicle with a handle of bourbon, drinking it straight at ten in the morning. So, within eight months, I had fired him. But I that was the second round. I was like, well, this place, there's some crazy stuff that's got to change here. Multiple other stories like that. But basically a year later, Covid hit, and that gave me an opportunity to get rid of a couple people. And I changed up all the processes for the company. And here I am, four years later, still running that company. And so I've been functioning as a CIO as, as well as the manager of a tax firm. So every year we do 4 to 5000 returns in our office. And then across all of our offices, all 29 of the other ones, we do like 20,000 tax returns total. So any time any of the other offices needs help with the tax return, it helps with their tax software. I provide that support, provide the marketing. And so I've been able to see just about every situation you can see with a company that's under 20 million when it comes to taxes. So yeah, we have the retail business. And so that's, that's what I do for my, for my job. But I also went back to school for accounting. For the last three years, I've taken classes at 4 or 5 different schools, online or locally here, in pursuit of my CPA, which I'm two out of the four exams in with the CPA, I'm taking the third one at the end of next week. So that's the most difficult. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And then after that one more exam and then I can check that box off. But you know it's not even necessarily necessary. I'm already doing the job. You don't have to be a CPA to do the taxes. Just a little credibility. Yeah. It's credibility. I mean, I already charge a pretty good amount of money for somebody to sit in front of me just because I have five years of experience. But I made that a personal goal to excel in my field. So that's what I do with my job. I have a side business as well, but we can. Yeah. So what's the what's this model that you're going into that you're that I've started utilizing? Yeah. So, I, I read a book a while back and it was. I can't read the name of it. Goodness gracious. But it was the story of the book was to your goal of your role in the company should be to replace yourself. And so I've always had that idea in my head of how can I work on my business instead of in my business, to get it to a point where I don't have to be the one doing the work. So with income tax preparation, even with a traditional CPA for a model, you most of the time have to do the work. You know, people want you to do the work, so like they trust you. You're the one who has a skilled income tax. Preparation is a highly skilled field. It's a personal service model. So, that means I would only be making basically as much money as I was putting into the business. And that's not ideal, right? I want to be able to retire early and still keep my money. Yeah. We have the retail business, but it still takes a lot of oversight, and it doesn't make, enough money to really get where I want to be. And so I sort of see where in the field my skill set could adapt to, where I could outsource a portion or all of the work. And I also keep that, that, that monthly revenue coming in. I also live the life that I wanted, maybe not be chained to a retail retail space. And so I moved over to fractional CFO work. And that's a fancy word for you. Hire me as your CFO. So, that allows, you know, for it makes sense for companies that are, you know, grossing anywhere between 1 million to 30 million, 20 million because they're at a place where the business owner is tired of running the QuickBooks, running the accounting. They're tired of answering all the emails, dealing with all the the cash flow issues, building reports on their own. They're they don't maybe they don't have time to run through their profit and loss statement to really cut down on expenses or double check the cost of their insurance or all those things. But now at the same time is they don't want to pay for an internal accountant. And we're we're not talking about a bookkeeper for $100 a month here or somebody to run your payroll. We're talking about a CFO or somebody who's involved in the company, learns about your company, is able to make those decisions on your behalf. Who has the skills, the experience, to do so. And so because of that model, there is a lot of routine monthly work that's done. And also that model has is pretty, pretty frontloaded on the work when you come into a new company, you do a lot of work upfront to streamline things, get the process even better than it already is. And then after you build out that process after a few months, it makes it really easy for me to train an assistant to, to stick to that process and then on a monthly basis of anything these review I can still manage over check off things, make those big decisions. I still prepare the tax returns. So that's the model that I'm I'm pushing into right now as I work on hiring someone to replace me as the manager of the of the family business. And, I'll still maintain I'll be basically be functioning as the fractional CFO for that company, too. So that's currently where my head's at. That would give me some more time to pursue my hobbies, which is, you know, making music. That's what I after some trips down to South America, I discovered, maybe not doing taxes every day for the rest of my life might be the most, but the most fulfilling. Oh, how did you figure that out in South America? Yeah. But he's been to that, right? So, at about 25, you know, we can get into the new the real life of things. Yeah. You know, we live in a toxic world nowadays. The food is is, you know, it's surprisingly it's surprisingly toxic. So at 25 years old, everybody's body has a different level of resiliency to the environment. An a twin. My twin is an amazingly strong human being. At about 25, I started dealing with some very hard core depression, which I think it's good to talk about that kind of stuff. Of course, at the end of a breakup. And so but it turned out to be more than that. So I have a hobby of basically learning about my body, now because of it. But after about a year and a half of fighting this trench warfare with the depression and reevaluating everything in my life I had, it was something that now I know has ran in my family. But at the time I didn't know any of that. I didn't even I wasn't emotionally intelligence. My, I, I had to learn that myself. And throughout that year, I always fell back on my religion. And I finished the entire Bible on audiobook. And my life just continued to get worse and worse and worse, and I couldn't figure it out until I basically left the church and find a life coach. And I think that's something that a lot of people discount or don't don't think about what worked for them. They always think therapist, therapist, therapists or five therapists later, I was nowhere in it was, these therapists, you know, some of them were smart. Some of them are great, some of them are less smart. Some of them are actually just really people who are messed up and who just listen. But they can't give you advice. You need direction in life, and sometimes you can't get that from your parents. And so I found a life coach locally, which he's an amazing person. You know, plug him. Yeah. How plug? I'm his name's cubby. His company's called Wide Awake coaching. He was actually one of the founding members of the local band here called Stoplight Observations. And he left the band, after getting in a car accident and studied eastern medicine and started a life coaching business to help kids make amazing company. But anyways, he took me in. He taught me about so much, so much. He taught me about like, meditation and again, eastern medicine. I was primarily Judeo-Christian before that. And so through that, I ended up finding healing. And then I began to travel the world. And make new friends. And that's how I met Jack. That's how I met you. And I was like, what's the one thing that I've been, like most afraid of, slash. Most taboo in my life. And that's to go to Peru and drink ayahuasca with the shamans. So that's what I did. I flew down there by myself, and spent a week at the at the Arcana retreat center in, Bomba, sacred Valley of Peru. And it was one of the most amazing weeks of my entire life. The whole week we basically meditated on our future, meditated on our lives, and it was the point of it was to go deeper in yourself and to try to pull away that, like the ego and get you out of your environments. Especially being in southeast. You can get lost in this culture. You know, see the trucks driving around? It's like, are you appreciative of other people's cultures or is that just. And so you get lost in that. And so down there, we drank ayahuasca three times in one week. I mean, it was like a they put you on a diet for a month and, it was everything down from the social stuff to like masturbation to all this crazy diet they put you on to clear your mind and, the like when we were there, like, they wouldn't feed us food for like 12 hours on end when it was time to drink the ayahuasca. And so you would go into this pitch black temple for six, seven, eight hours and it would you'd be there with, you know, 25, 30 people who were complete strangers. And they had these shamans who live in this remote village in the Amazon, who have been drinking ayahuasca since they were like ten years old. And they they had these Ikaros chants that they can sing and they sing these things for 5 or 6 hours long, and they bring in all these instruments in the pitch black, and they have the but they, of course, have a medical professional check you out before you go and stuff like that. But DMT just removes the ego. And you also see these amazing, amazing fractional light, like, fractal patterns and so after you sit there for five hours going through that, in the pitch black, obviously people discuss, like throwing up on it. I was terrified to go. I mean, you know, I had only met one person in the whole town who had done it before I could I could talk to and actually spoke about it positively, which is very interesting. People just kept telling me, oh, that's it'll make you evolve. And I'm like, okay, you cool it. But, so anyways, after doing that three times, yes. The second time I did throw up, I, it's sort of like my whole intention for the week was like, what is my purpose? And it just kept coming back to me. It was just like, you just want to plan events for your friends that they can enjoy. And it's so interesting that that sort of came out of that week, because when I was in college, I have a side business that we haven't discussed, which is running the the fraternity tailgate a lot of the University of South Carolina. So it's like a 7000 person fraternity college party. And when I was in college, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I loved it, I loved it so much to where now it's my second job is helping to run that. And that purely came out of me just doing something that I love to do and not worrying about whether it was going to make me money or not. So that's something that some advice that I always give to people, when they're younger and they're asking me what they should do with their life, I'm just I always tell them I'm like, how about doing something a little bit countercultural instead of trying to just pick a role that, you know, you can make money it maybe try doing something that you love. And if you don't know, take a week and go somewhere else to try to figure that out. And then once you start doing something that you love, the money will always come. That's sort of my opinion, and I don't even take my own advice right now, which is very interesting, and I'll get into that. But I'll be remiss if I don't talk about the, the toad venom down in Peru. So down in Peru, at the end of this amazing week of drinking ayahuasca and seeing Machu Picchu and becoming friends and uncovering layers of your soul, we spoke about the Buford toad venom. On the same day we were about to do ayahuasca for the third time. And so there's a guy who is in Peru who literally just milks the venom glands of toads and delivers this product at the retreat centers, and you can smoke it. And it was the most intense experience that I have ever had in my life. I mean, immediate I mean, you they have to sit you down and hold your hand the whole time. It's so intense, like immediate blackout, hyper ventilating for the first like two minutes. And then after that, whatever your subconscious thinks heaven is, you're going to see it. That's pretty intense. Yeah, that's really crazy. So obviously there will be extremely intense fractal patterns because it's DMT. But mine was me flying through these fractal clouds into whatever heaven was. And for a moment you experience whatever you think that is because you it's coupled with such hardcore euphoria that, I mean, it's going to be an amazing experience. But before I went in to do it, I was terrified because we're in this serene temple in Peru and we've got we've got 15 people here, so we got three groups of five go in the temple to do this. And I was in the third group. And so, I mean, there's people on this trip who this guy next to me, he was like a private military surgeon and in the Middle East and like, he's clearly healed here with some PTSD. And this dude's jacked and he's, like, covered in tattoos. He goes in before me and just starts screaming like bloody murder. I'm sitting here out there in this grassy field, trying to meditate as I'm about to go into this mode that I'm expecting it's. And then another woman screams bloody murder and starts running around the temple and I'm like, oh my God, I'm a doc. I was like, I'm going to die before I go into the smoke, just tell. I'm like, this is it. Like, this is what my moms warned me about. And so I went in there and I did not die. And it ended up being an amazing experience. But there were people full on screaming to like, release whatever's the deepest, deepest trauma they have. And it's such a healing experience. And some of the people had been down there 2 or 3 times. It was people down there full on meth addicts. You just never touched it again. So after that experience, I came home and I did evolve as a person. It changed my outlook on life. I, I realized that I loved, like I loved, like, what's one thing, one thing I've been scared about doing my whole life. And it's something that's really common now. It's, you know, it's I always loved music and I love going to these festivals and these concerts, but it wasn't a job. It couldn't be that for me. Like I'd never be good at making music, is what I told myself. And I said, fuck it, I'm just going to go. I'm going to try it. So I bought a DJ board, paid for one class online, and started learning how to deejay. And then I can, you know, my travels. I started recording DJ sets, like in Costa Rica and Tulum around the world, and I ended up becoming involved with the community here in Charleston, who plans a bunch of underground DJ parties. And at one of those events, I met a girl there who was deejaying, and now we're dating. So is this crazy chain of events through this experience that have led sort of to where I am. But back to the professionalism. It's, you know, I'm at a point in my life where I, I'm already five years into the accounting. I am very good at it. I do enjoy it. I love helping people. That's sort of the point, right? People come in to me with their tax problems, which are seemingly insurmountable to them. They have no there's no way out of it for them. And then within an hour of meeting, I'm able to provide them a solution, save them money and then gain their trust. And these relationships last forever. So yeah, these people were always thankful. And so every day I get to I get to experience that. But every day I'm confronted with people's worst tax problems and they become mine. So it's like, okay, so it's a very stressful job. Yes. I got to be on top of my I had to be very routine. That's where the computer information systems degree comes into play. I'm very well organized when it comes to computers. That's sort of my skill programing. I it's like learning. It's like learning a new language, particularly speak to computers. For some people, that's great, but that's not for me. I need to be just some decent people. And so I'm sitting here, you know, 29 and I'm like, okay, well, what's the next step forward? Like what's the highest use of my time? I've spent three years working towards the CPA for six months. I'll have it. And you know, that's why I'm pushing into the fractional CFO. That's why I'm working on hiring somebody else to replace me. And my father's business is I'm starting to want to prioritize some more of the time, so I can focus on things that are deeply fulfilling, which is making music. My first song is hitting Spotify in a few days, which is great. And, it's just a, you know, it will that's process still be as rewarding as it currently is if, if I don't have the job, you know, it's like, that's a really hard industry to break into and a really hard industry to make money. And I'm not sure I even have the personal strength to be a DJ and go on tour, something that have learning. And I, you know, that's what I want to do. So yeah, I'm sort of at this crossroads where I'm, I'm pushing a lot of effort into the fractional CFO model because I see that as a path towards gaining some more time freedom. Income taxes are not our season. Also, naturally, I have a ton of time when it's not January to April 15th. But anyways, that's where my life's at right now. Well, it's interesting to hear, like your limitless thinking, even talking about deejaying. You are early in the industry and in skill set of deejaying, yet you're already talking about going on tour as a DJ and the possibility of going on tour. So you're already visualizing out out ahead and you aren't limited in your thinking where, you know, based on your own work ethic and your input, that whether or not you, that's something that you want to pursue is up for debate still. But if you can achieve it, you don't feel limited in that belief, which is super important. And something I want to ask you about is we've had these conversations before. Were you like, you know, satirically laugh at me because I'm very risk of, I'm not I don't give a shit about risk. And I'll jump into things like and kind of be lax a days ago about it. And your what you've described to me and correct me if I'm wrong is that you're a little bit, more conservative, in those decisions. But it seems like through what you're, you've been describing, you have made a conscious effort to throw yourself into these, like this, these situations of discomfort. What is the process, first of all, for someone who doesn't have that personality type like myself, what is the process for you to be able to throw yourself into these uncomfortable situations? And then what has been the result of that? You've talked about a little bit like, you know, you met your girlfriend through this chain of events, but like, why is that that important to your development is consciously doing more of those things? Yeah. That's huge. That's a huge point. So starting back even to when I was a child, I had a phobia of asking people for things. So I had a twin brother. My mom would put us both at the mall food court, give us both money, and said, go buy your own lunch. I was so afraid to do that. I would throw myself on the floor crying because I was so afraid of my mom. And I would say, what's the worst that could say is no? And I'm like, yes, that's the worst that could happen. It's so bad. And so throughout my life, I've had to consciously confront this fear, speaking in front of people that a lot of people share, that fear, you know? And not everybody is risk averse as, as as you are as confident as. And so I've had to consciously combat that throughout my life. And there was a couple of moments where it really changed. One was working in software sales, having to pick up the phone every single day, make 20, 30, 40 dials a day and get rejected on 39 of them. And then the second you make a sale, you give it to somebody else. They get the commission not going to name any companies. But anyways, so that was one point where I got over and I realized I was good at it. And that fear, I leveraged it to actually map out the the way the phone call would work and get really good at doing phone sales. But obviously I didn't like that industry. So another point was when I went to that year of depression, I'm going to plug cubby over at Wide Awake again. I mean, the man changed my life. He taught me about. He was the first person to explain to me how the universe works and that unconditional support that we talked about, which is a very difficult concept, and that's what we're currently addressing, is and it's something that I've found and a lot of people will talk about it. Rick Rubin, you know, it's like you, whatever you choose, great things will happen. So you have all these paths laid out to you, and whatever you choose and put your energy into, amazing things will happen. So it's like, well, I'm going to go on vacation next week or not, I go on vacation. It's going to be great. I stay back here and I work harder. It's going to be great. So it's the same thing with like, you know, your path that you're choosing for your life. And that unconditional support concept is very difficult. Because, when I apply to where I'm at in my career right now, it's like, oh, I could have started learning how to make music in college. And majored in that, and my life would be different. Or I chose to do what I did, which was my family business, because I needed a job and I thought I'd be good at it. And of course, I ended up being great at it. But yeah, when I was in the life coaching, it was like we basically set aside these goals for the future. We took it my personal, my characteristics and divided them and 12 characteristic traits of my life and rated them all. And then we picked a few of them to work on, what was like relationships? One was I believe in myself, one was my career. And yeah. So I learned to repeat basically affirmations in the power of the subconscious mind. So that's something that I never learned about, especially not being raised in a hyper Judeo-Christian centered family, which is very common down here. The Bible hints at the, you know, the subconscious, but it speaks about it in abstract terms that are difficult to understand. And because everything has to be dies in this frame of of the religion. But, you know, your subconscious does not pick and choose what it grabs onto. It grabs onto everything. You know, whatever you watch before you go to bed, it's going to grab onto that. And so you have to be really conscious of what conscious of what you what you feed into your subconscious. And so I was able to leverage that to change my beliefs about myself. So we would be discussed again at the beginning of my life, coaching was what are your limiting beliefs about yourself? So like just write those down, like I can't be a DJ or I could never make great music, or I'll always be depressed or you know, I won't be a CPA or I won't be able to get clients. And so you write all those down. We literally named it. We named this subconscious aspect of yourself. I called my Dorothy because like, Dorothy. And then we would we would go around and and flip all of those and say, okay, what were those of you believe in yourself? And of course, it's James Bond. So we were just like. And so I learned because, like, I didn't even believe those things myself. But belief is extremely important. I mean, we can we talk about the, the you know, what happens when you take a sugar pill? What's it called? The achiever, but placebo effect? Yeah. You know how that has a very high chance of healing people. And then that's just one specific example of of your belief. And your subconscious is going to believe what you drill into there. And eventually you can convince yourself of things. And so I've been able to over the last two years, be intentional about the way my, my. But the thoughts in my head before this, I had no idea the power of the thoughts in my head. But after dealing with a year of chronic negative rumination, I mean, depression is intense. If you've never had it before, like, you're not going to understand how intense it is, but it's like essentially the equivalent of somebody taking a lighter and holding it up to your skin all day long. That's how painful it is, and that's how distracting it is. And it's characterized with different things and it's caused by different reasons. And the research on it is so limited. I mean, they tell you, they give you these pills that just mess you up way worse. And ruin your life. And you're not even going to get into that right now. But, my depression was characterized by chronic negative rumination. So, like every 15 seconds, a thought would come into my head that I did not control. But it was extremely painful. And every 15 seconds, all day long for a year and a half, and it was for me at the time, it was my breakup, which doesn't. And the aura was like something negative about my life. My depression was. But that's turns out caused by hormonal, hormonal problems. Which a 26 year. Like what? How do I have hormone problems at 26? And this is. And I'm pretty open about it because I want other people who are hurting to experience that. Plus, like I've, I've, I found healing and my wife's amazing. I have nothing to prove to anybody. You know, it was a straight testosterone for me. And that was most likely caused by my environment. All those things in your environment that are bad for you, that you don't know about, are causing people's bodies to break down much sooner. The quality of the food, all the horrible stuff they put in me. If it's not organic, it's going to be horrible for you. I mean, in America, it's going to have pesticides, it's going to have antibiotics, and it's going to have terrible stuff in it. So I had to take a I had to basically learn to start cooking at home only, or like putting water filters in all the water on the house, like I ran a water test, you know, a water. They do a great job at the water place. But like, I'm sorry to get off topic, but like I, I've never put a lot of effort into learning how to defend myself against the environment that I'm living in. Shopping at Farmer's Market, I what I was this is a crazy when I was in, Peru drinking ayahuasca, the guy who was sitting next to me because I've been dealing with gut health issues. Again, it's something people really commonly share between the ages of 23 and 26. Of course, I was a frat boy in college. Okay? I, you know, party, drank 4 or 5 times a week, did all the drugs, flew all over the places. But anyways, by 25, 26, I was having stomachaches every single day. And I actually found healing over the past year. But it took a long time. I eventually I connected with a place, in Mount Pleasant that the guy next to me was like, you need to do a colonic if your gut hurts. And I'm like, what does it colonic? That sounds interesting. He's like, that's when somebody shoves a tube off your butt and cleans it out. I'm like, that sounds horrible. I don't want to do that. And so but, you know, I, I really try to keep an open mind to the world. And so I went and did it and it was horrible because it helped for a couple of days. But I got connected in that place to a doctor of clinical nutrition, who was able to run a host of tests on me to discover really cool facets of, pieces of information your, your gut biodiversity, your mineral ratios in your hair. To learn what your body's deficient and I. What was this company go. So the woman who who does it? Her name is, Doctor Tara Meyer. It's TV and health.com. She's amazing again. I sent her to all of my friends because you can run a feces fecal test, basically. And a hair test and, and, and a bunch of other tests and, you can learn what your body's lacking in. And so most people's gut health issues are caused by a lack of microbe, gut biodiversity. So mine was a, like, 20 or 30%. And you can actually see maps of people who live in cities. Their biodiversity is so low. So, like, where did your gut biodiversity come from? It comes from vaginal birth. So you're going to see the microbiome that way. I was C-section, so that's an interesting concept. My brother was vaginal birth and is also comes from you eating a plant off the ground with dirt on it. We don't do that anymore. So most people's biodiversity is 20, 30, 40% of what it's supposed to be. Mine was at 20. So of course, super high targeted probiotic and a ton of supplements to balance out all those minerals potassium, magnesium, boron, a bunch of other ones that are really cool. So I already been supplementing for years, but now I had a reason an actual a test and data because remember hormone issues. So we're trying to solve that. So here I am seven months later and my gut health is significantly improved. And my gut, my biodiversity is only up to 45%. And I also I never get a stomach aches anymore. I mean, maybe once every two weeks, maybe a month, I could drink a half gallon of milk and be fine. It's incredible. So that's how you solve the gut health issues. But the world began. The world we live in is toxic. And that's why I was dealing with the depression. And it's crazy how it's all cyclical. Yeah, yeah, it's all cyclical, right? Yeah. Life is cyclical. And so. Yeah, I mean, just tying that back into my life right now and believing in myself is I've been able to overcome these, this intense suffering which life is not fair. It's way worse for some other people. And you know, it's it's hard to be grateful all day for like all the time when you go into a job. It's so stressful. But I was I've been able to leverage the suffering into creating a super deep, turning depth of character for my life. And I used to be judgmental, and I wanted to be the cool kid and all of that, and now I don't care as much. And I think that's part of maturing. But also I'm open about these things to help other people. And so I'm applying that to my professional life as well as I continue to try to find people whose I can use my experience and skills can help out and also create the life that I love. You know, I'm in at this point now. It's like, what is the highest and best use of my next ten years? You know, I'm 29, so you got a couple of different ideas that work there. It's like, how do you be capitalism? You know what you're not, you know, it's like, take the amount of money that you would make on an annual basis that you want to spend 100 grand, let's say, and multiply that by 25. And the theory is that is how much money you have to have in the bank and income producing assets to be capitalism. My personal thing is it's much lower than that. That's at a 4% rate, but I know I can make anywhere between 8 and 10% on entirely passive investments. So my nuts like 1 million to 1.5 and basically cash, the 2.5 is in total assets. So that's how you beat capitalism. Basically. That should be anybody's goal from the start. And obviously you're young and you want to spend all your money traveling. And my 20 to 27, I did the same thing. But I've been able to learn that to be able to do the things that I love, I have to begin building that at a younger age. You know, learning financial literacy is something that you get from your parents, just like, you got your, social intelligence, you know, those two things or something that I didn't really learn at a young age. And so when we're looking at like, what's the highest and best use of your time moving forward right now, it's like, okay, you can try to beat capitalism like, that's good. And then do what you want. Or you can do something else that's extremely fulfilling to you that maybe that doesn't make as much money. For me, that would be making art, making music and so on. When weighing those two options right now, I'm trying to find the best in between. I think that's where a lot of people are, because you don't want to be the starving artist, you know? But you also don't want to be the 45 year old CEO who has no true passion in their life. You can convince yourself eventually that you love your job, right? So that's sort of where I'm at. And it's like my skill set. I have a I have a practice where I could be good at just about anything. You know, I spent 45 days making learning how to make music, and I released it and sent it to a DJ man. He said it was good, like a famous DJ. And so it's like, what do I choose to do with my time and these next ten years? Because, you know, especially when women become involved in the biological clock starts to tick and they want to have kids and you gotta have a lot of money to have kids. You know, the school system ain't that great down here in the southeast. I mean, we're like one of the third worst in the nation. So you they got to go to private school. And, you know, I want to have that boat really like that boat. So it's like trying to balance all of those things together and, and sort of where I'm at is I'm going to just keep sprinting for the time being. And take some. So it's like living on. You recommended me that book The Way The Superior Man, and it's like living on your edge, right. So it's like constantly, every day taking that little bit of extra risk or that pushing that little bit further than you normally would. For me, that takes that, that takes the is it looks like having overall goals. So it's like for me, there's always an overall goal going on. It's like right now it's getting the CPA and it's been like that for three years. But that's always been that little. Like anytime I have free time at work or something like that, there's always a goal to put it into. And so I'm whole. And so after that it's going to be and even right now, because that's just the way life works is the fractional CFO business. It's I'm going to push effort into that on the front end. And hopefully over the next few years I can pull back a little bit, have a little bit more money and then I can focus on doing things that I love. I mean, that's sort of my plan right now and the best I can see it. So it's good that you are, the most important thing is that you are conscious of that plan. You're starting to visualize it, which is putting you that much closer to executing it. This exact same thing happened in the last episode to where I was planning on getting into a business talk, and we got into a deep personal, talk, which is unbelievable. I think that stuff's super beneficial for people and like, if not more important than the hard skills, but you do have a lot of hard skills to offer. So I want to, get into a little bit of those two. I would start by saying the first question that I would ask is going into what you mentioned before, this kind of, dysfunctional business, that was your family business, and cleaning that up and getting it operational. And then now starting to do a model where you are offering that as a service, essentially, and you're doing it for me, you're cleaning house for my business currently. Which has been immediately beneficial. What did you learn from cleaning things up at your parents business that you are now applying to that new service and like, yeah, where do you start? What are let's start with that. Yeah, yeah. I think that one of the hard skills that any business owner and used to learn is how to read their profit and loss statement. You have to put it priority. You have to prioritize, your accounting. And I work for a lot of people for years. I help them get their business started, and we watch it grow and at first it looks like literally just people whipping out an Excel spreadsheet at the end of the year and printing out their bank statements. But for any new business owner, it's don't make an LLC, don't get a separate business account for your business expenses, get a debit card for that, and then just use that as a way to keep track of your expenses. And then after that, you pay off for 40 or $50 a month for QuickBooks. And you could do that yourself. You have to learn to do that yourself initially. But you'd be surprised very quickly. You can get a bookkeeper for 100 bucks a month, and then they can run your QuickBooks and make that thing pristine. And then all you have to do is learn, learn how to manage your money. And the same thing with taxes. When you're self-employed, you pay taxes and nobody's taking the taxes out of your paycheck. You got to pay the taxes at the end of the year, and you got to plan for that. I mean, the IRS has tons of rules like making estimated tax payments. And so and, I basically like because I have a background in taxes and I've also been running a company that's, you know, grossing a few million with 29 other offices that I provide support. So I've been able to learn a lot about how to run a business in South Carolina. So you've got a lot of different facets, but it all comes back to that profit and loss statement. So I've developed an understanding on how much things should cost. When I'm looking at a profit loss statement and I've gotten really good about trimming the fat. And so that's sort of where my ideas start out at first. So important, it's so important. And as a business owner, you may have the skills, but you might not have the time. And, or you might be so exhausted from pushing so hard that you get too busy working in the business instead of on the business. Right? That's the that's the key. And so the the hard part, the good news is that I've, I've got my family business at to a point where it's, it's running. So it doesn't take up a ton of my time, especially in the offseason. So I'm able to do that for other people's businesses. And so it's, you know, hard skills like getting the insurance quoted by somebody you trust or evaluating your relationships with all of your vendors and seeing if there's a lower price somewhere else. You know, we've talked about this developing the internal, manual of like the internal processes and stuff like that on how you can learn. But it's also, you know, you know, saving the most money on taxes. So, like, a lot of times, you know, you'll hire a company and you, they don't actually sit down with you to do your taxes. So like the traditional CPA firm model will email you an organizer and then you'll send them a copy of your income statement and your balance sheet. And then you'll fill the bubbles out over the five pages over your email and deliver it all to them, along with all the papers that you think you need. And then they'll it'll go into the black hole for 2 or 3 months, and then you'll get an email, and then they'll ask you a question or two, and then you get it done. That's the easiest way to do it for them. It's not the best way to do it for you. And so my family's built its model from doing income taxes on a more personal service level. So actually learning about your company sitting down for an hour and a half, every decision I make on your tax return, I verbalize it to you and you can tell me whether that's right or not, because that QuickBooks know, even from an accountant who's is very experienced, isn't going to get it completely right. So there's a huge, huge opportunity to save money on taxes. Also a huge opportunity to cut down on liability. So yeah. And you know, cash flow management. So that's another big one. You know, you got a company that's got cash in the bank. And this is pretty, pretty standard. People on my generation know about this now. But in the past it wasn't like high yield savings accounts money market accounts. Those were not really common. You got to manage the cash wisely. If you got 100 K sitting in there, that's your cushion, then that thing, 80% of that better be in a high yield savings account. And you can get even more creative with the money management. Through private wealth management, you can use something called a liquidity access line, where you can invest the, you know, you got 200 K in the bank, 100 K's your cushion. You put the 100 K into the liquidity access line, which is literally just a stock market account. They made 10%. And you can actually borrow against the money that you have in the market without pulling the money out. So that allows you to make 10% on the money, hopefully paying the company that you're borrowing 6 or 7%. So that's like one example of managing your money. Another is saving money on taxes. So pushing money into your IRAs. And like I as a business owner, there is, you know, the SAP IRA or the simple IRA or my favorite, the safe harbor for one K. So you got to get a, a financial manager or private wealth management. I mean, you'd be surprised how little money you need to get a private wealth manager. People always think you gotta have a million bucks saying no, but you need to know somebody or start making phone calls. And if you got 20, 30, 40, 50 K, somebody will take you on. I know a guy right now. It would take you up to ten K, and they can help you make those really cool decisions, like moving money by the end of the year to save you some money on taxes. So save you money in taxes. Should be the, a huge priority. Also, something else big that we do for clients is a tax preparer is tax structuring. So like you have your legal entity and then you have your tax entity. And those might not be the same thing. An LLC can can function as many different types of tax entities. So when you have an LLC you can make it into an S corporation or a C corporation, or the LLC can function as a partnership. Those are the most common plug on the partnerships, though. If you go make a multi-member LLC, you have to file a separate partnership tax return that has a separate due date than your individual income tax return, just by the fact that you created a multi-member LLC. People mess this up all the time. If you go make a multi-member LLC, you now have a filing expectation at the IRS to file a 1065 partnership tax return by March 15th of the following year, not April 15th, and the penalties that they charge on that tax return is scaled, not off if the tax return owes money, but just off of the month. So it's like $220 per partner per month. Late penalty people will come into my office. But yeah, I created a partnership two years ago. We just didn't use it. I'm like, well, now you've racked up$4,000 in penalties at the IRS. Now you want to start using it. That's not how it works. Now the IRS is aware of that and you'll forgive the penalties if we write a nice letter. But let's say you started using that business and started making money. It takes a whole process. So anyways, but another big thing to do for clients is tax structuring. As corporations, the most common strategy, it's the best strategy. So you can get into the nitty gritty. But let's just take an example. If you're a single member LLC and your company is making $100,000, net profit, so that's after expenses. You know, how much in taxes are you going to pay on that? So you've got four different types of taxes we've got to worry about. You've got your income tax, you've got your state income tax, you've got your Social Security and Medicare tax. So Social Security Medicare is grouped in as it is called self-employment tax. So the people who run their own businesses and the single member LLC fashion get taxed a lot. The the self-employment tax ends up anywhere between 12 and 16%. And then your regular income tax bracket will average out to anywhere between, let's just say 15% of the IRS level. So now we're already at 27. And then you have your state income tax that let's just say 5%. So now you're at 33% taxes on anything that you have your bottom line. Like that's a lot of money. And if you didn't plan for that, having only all that at one time, that could really get you in a bind. And I have people that are many years behind. And when it comes to the crazy tax circuit, essentially scams that you hear about on the radio, where the IRS has some new rule, whether they will give you your dad, they don't just forgive your dad. And it's not that simple. If, you know, if you own anything, the IRS is going to make you leverage it to pay your taxes. So, like, if you have a vehicle with equity in it or a house, you're not getting your debt forgiven. But if you're broke and on paper you look broke, then the IRS will put your debt into uncollectible status, which means so long as you stay current, they're going to ruin your credit for the next nine years. But you don't have to pay them back in taxes. So I've helped a lot of companies build their way. Build, a build out of tax debt is something that I've done. You know, companies owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. We've been able to basically cut that down by hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I'm prepared to see those types of strategies as well. But back to the example of the the single member LLC owner. So again, you're making $100,000 and now you're paying 33, 34, 35% in taxes on that. That's a lot of money in taxes. So what you can essentially do is just file a piece of paper at the IRS 2533 form, and they accept these things with no questions asked. And you can subject your single member LLC to a whole different set of tax rules. So, the U.S tax code is this is a reflection of our economy. It's capitalistic. So the more you learn, the more money you have to pay to pay somebody who has learned, the more money you can save on taxes. And it's a wonderful system. It's the best way it could possibly work. So you either you get good at it or you get out. So, the S Corporation is an example of that. So it's very common in the tax industry. But you can essentially cut that tax bill from like 33, 34% down to like 20% or 25% just from filing a piece of paper and following some rules. And so that's one of the ways in. But you have to do it at the right level of the business isn't making enough money. It's not going to be worth it. So the minimum would be like 50 or 60 K grossing to begin that. Because there are some crazy rules that you have to follow. For example, one of those is you have to pay yourself via a reasonable wage, so not to get too crazy on it, but when you're an S corporation, you pay yourself in two ways. Now one to a W-2, you send yourself and one to a owner's draw. And those are taxed differently. So that's an example of a tax structure strategy. But that doesn't work for every situation. So that's another example how I can save businesses money basically by coming in and analyzing their books, analyzing the internal processes, reevaluating their relationships with their vendors, and then also managing their money properly, evaluating cash flow, pursuing lines of credit, you know, evaluating whether that is the best option. So those are some of the primary ways. And on top of that, I'm also managing your accounting. So, you know, you have somebody who's very good at it and also doing the taxes in an actual personal manner. So what. And we've talked about this a little bit. What do you think of. And I've like mentioned these to you or I've been like what's on Instagram today. This guy and he's like put your money here and it has a trust over here. And then you have nine different, c quirks that are paying out your S corp and like, right. Yeah. So I obviously get questions about my clients all the time on these Instagram reels that they see. So there's a couple out there that are very popular. Some of them are legit, some of them are not legit, but most of the time there are people who are good at marketing who are selling ideas, and they just lead you into buying a strategy handbook of the stuff I just told you. So for the majority of people, these strategies do not work. There are a few that do work. For example, people like to reference the Augusta rule where you can rent out your house to your business for two weeks and then not have to claim it on taxes. The IRS has seen all of this before, so. Or it's like another one that that works is paying your kids. So at what point can you start paying your kids and how much can you pay them. And they don't have to file a tax return. And you can write that off. So those are a couple that are like are kind of legit, but you have to document it so well because the IRS will question them. And all day long we can choose how much tax to avoid on your tax return in an effort to avoid more scrutiny. Right. So part of the tax strategy is to avoid scrutiny. And if you go file a tax return claiming that you rented out your house to your business for $20,000 for two weeks, they're going to question that. Not only do you have to mail in your tax return with a letter on it, so that's already a telling them about it. But you're also okay. So yeah, you can save 20% taxes. That's a few thousand dollars. But now you get to go through that entire process and you might get out of it. Is that worth it? For a few thousand dollars plus is $20,000 for two weeks of market rate of your house's rent? No, it's not. It's probably half that. So yes, you can hire your kids. That's cool. But the kids actually have to have a business purpose in the business. So it's like you can't if you get audited. And the kid was just there doing nothing because he's seven years old, or even better, three years old, then it's not going to, you know, they're going to disallow that deduction. But now if you created a YouTube ad with your kid on it every other week because your wife doesn't work, and charge the market rates and. Okay, that's fine. Another big one is real estate professionals. So like, people love to say their wife is a real estate professional. And that and the purpose of that is that you can deduct passive income. So if you got a, you know, a lot of people love their Airbnbs, but if it's a side business and, you know, other people stay professional and you make over $100,000, you're not going to be able to deduct those losses. Passive, passive investments like that are really, people like to use the fancy word called costs, segregation studies. That's some of the something big that you'll see around the internet for those gurus. And it's where they are. They use, you know, legal talk strategies to front load depreciation. So depreciation is when you have a fixed asset like a house you can the IRS has certain rules about how you are forced to write off the value of that home against the act and the income that you're making. So it's like a rental house, for example, the value of the structure. And off the land you can depreciate according to the tax code over 27 years. So 1/27 of the money you put into the house, you can write off each year against the income that you made from that rental. Okay. So since that deduction doesn't exist in real life, you might look like you're making money on this rental house every year. But when it comes to the tax return, that thing's a loss every single year. And if you make less than $120,000, you can actually take that 4 or 5, sometimes $10,000 loss and write it off against your W-2 and save yourself some money on taxes. But it quickly fades out. You know, after 100,000, you're not really taking that deduction anymore. And so people if you're a real estate professional, you can take that deduction no matter how much money you make. And if you have three 4 or 5 six rental properties, then it starts to make sense. But there's a there's very strict rules that the IRS has in place. Primarily, it has to be your primary thing being a real estate person, or they actually have specific number of hours you have to work. So you have to document those hours. So that's another really common example. And people like to use the cost segregation study to frontload that depreciation, which will increase that loss in the first year and offset your W-2 income. But most of the time, unless you make less than 120 or your real estate professional, you can't get that. And then that passive loss just sits there. So let's get back to the complex strategies. So for the people that make a lot of money, the ones that really are a scam, you've got creating trusts like nonprofits, okay, you can create a nonprofit for your family or a big one, which is leveraging seven different types of entities to try to save yourself money on taxes. Both of them don't work for most people while they may. While they may be legitimate strategies, they don't work for most people. So let's say like a trust that you want, let's say you've got $10 million in the bank and it's making$500,000 a year, and you want to pay less money in taxes and you've already got enough money. So then you can take a chunk of that money and put it into a nonprofit that you created and that you control to take that deduction for writing it off. And then you can hire that nonprofit, can hire your kids, and then now your kids are making some money, and then you get to write off 20% of of the however much money you choose to commit to that every single year. The problem with that is it's now locked up in a nonprofit. Nonprofits. They have to use that. You can't just use that money for whatever you want. So yeah, it would be a decent way to create a thing for your kids inheritance for your kids. It's not good for you. So it doesn't work for most people. It's the same thing when people try to develop a strategy where they create a partnership, and then the owners of that partnership are a few different types of companies. So like the partnership will pay the S Corporation, and the C Corporation will hold the the membership and the partnership. But they have the structure and specific ways to get around some rules. And so you send a certain amount of money to the partner to the C Corp every year, and you send a certain amount of money to the S Corp every year, and then you get some passive partners on the on the, on the partnership, and then they become active partners and you make yourself a passive partner and all that stuff is way over complicating the situation. You would need to hire somebody to manage all of that stuff on a monthly basis, probably paying them a decent amount of money. So for most people, that doesn't work. And even and some of the primary facets of that strategy are for tucking money away. So like they want you to that strategy revolves like tucking money away into a C corporation. C corporations have a flat corporate tax rate, which I think is like 22%. It's always there, okay. It's going to sit there at 22% and that's where it stays. That might save you money on taxes. If you're a higher owner and you're paying 33% like we just talked about, or even higher 40%. But the money tucked away there, it's locked up. So most of those strategies don't work for people. It mostly comes down to a on a person by person basis. And then doing the simple things the tax structuring, maximizing those deductions. Yeah. So the majority of those, those those ventures that you see online, they don't work for most people, then they're just trying to sell you a handbook. So so you can learn more about the basics of tax code. Okay. Next question would be what are the the biggest mistakes that you see business owners make. Yeah. So like one is creating a multi-member LLC. This is always this is a classic is people want to go into business and so they go make their multi-member LLC and they start their partnership and then they go buy something, or they both put in a bunch of money into this partnership. But even worse, one person puts in 100 K and the other person fits put in 50, but they don't generate an operating agreement. If you're ever going into business for somebody else, you go to a lawyer, Google it, say lawyer operating agreement. You pay them $500 and then go over your entire business with you, and you draw up an operating agreement with the other person before you go into business. So, so many partnerships go bad even even if it's as simple as something is you in a home and you're buying a rental property, it can go bad. And if and if there isn't a clearly defined operating agreement and there's stuff in there that you would never think of, like what happens if you die and your kid gets control of the property and then wants to sell it? Well, what do you do in that situation? Do you go to arbitration for a year with a lawyer, or can the other partner buy you out over ten years? That's what we decided on. So that's an example of where you have to get an operating agreement. And if anybody comes to me with a multi-member LLC, not only that, they probably laid on the taxes because they didn't know they had to file a separate tax return. They have to get an operating agreement. So that's one of the biggest things that I've seen, business owners make mistakes on. But another one is they just overpay for stuff because they don't know, or they think that they have to put a bunch of money into some sort of expense, like marketing, because they think they needed to, to run their business. Another, another big one is companies don't ever develop those internal systems. So, for example, my brother runs an office furniture company here. He's been running that for nine years now. And it's it's quite profitable. I mean, you know, he's he started this company building cubicles and selling used office equipment around town. It's incredible. But now he's got huge contracts. And about two years in he was still using maybe even longer in that 3 or 4 years. And he was using physical paper files for everything in his business. And so I graduated college and my computer information systems degree. And so I came in and I function as a little bit of a business consultant for him. And we started implementing in, a, enterprise resource planning system, an ERP system for him. And so over the second a few years and the failed implementation, but we finally designed this customized computer system for his business, which is drastically increase the value of this company. So, again, working on your business rather than than working in your business is something that is extremely important to be cognizant of as you're starting your company, because you can get so lost working in your business. And if you're if you're about to start a business is take a second to pause and go somewhere else. I think about, do you really want to be in this industry? And if you're in this industry, is it the best choice? There are some industries that are just terribly more difficult than other industries, for no other reason than just the fact that you're maybe selling a physical product instead of one that's that's intangible. So those are a few concepts, a lot of a lot of small business owners, when they're starting off, they don't they don't keep track of their books. So they come to me and they miss so much on their tax return. And I'm not going to sit there and go through your bank statements for a year for you. You have to do that or they'll co-mingle funds. That's a big one. Co-mingling funds is a it's a legal term. So people talk about like which state is it best to start your LLC in? Business owners always love that because like I said earlier, business owners love to push the envelope and not pay taxes. They are aware of how much trouble they can get into, and a lot of times they don't care. And like we discussed earlier, a lot of times they shouldn't care because the rules are usually made by business owners who the rules are kind of flawed from the start. So again, back to the ethics. But, I mean, I don't know what I was getting into. What state. Oh yeah. What state to start the LLC. And, and so people are like, oh, I want to sort of Delaware LLC or Wyoming LLC. It's like why people don't understand no taxation works. If you make money and you earn the money in if you are the way taxation works, income taxation, if you were domiciled, that means your house, your place of business, whatever is in the state, that state gets the tax. All the money you make. If you make money in another state, that state also gets the tax, all the money that you made in that state. So if your LLC is based in Wyoming, but you're still businesses in South Carolina and you're working in South Carolina and making at money in South Carolina, you're not filing a Wyoming tax return just because that state has no state income tax. That doesn't benefit you at all. Now, there are certain benefits to LLCs and other states like Wyoming, for example. They are non reporting state. So they're not going to tattletale on on you as the individual owner if it went to court. So that's a big that's a big plus. South Carolina is not like that. South Carolina will blow right to the LLC because you have child support. So that's actually a big plus of doing that in another state. And there are a few other benefits, but you don't want to overcomplicate things at the at the beginning. And a lot of businesses don't need a LLCs. An LLC is just to create legal separation from you and the business. So going back to co-mingling funds, if you don't think you're going to be sued, you don't need the LLC. And if you go to make an LLC, don't pay somebody to make it for you. Learn how to make it yourself. It's super easy. You just go to the Secretary of State's website. And here's a bonus for all the business owners. Don't pay someone to make an LLC. Go to the Secretary of State's website. Pay them $120 to start your LLC and get your articles of organization. Then Google get a yell at the IRS. Go to the website, plug in your name. The IRS will give you an iron, which is like a Social security number for your business, and boom! Now you can take the articles of organization and iron number, and you go to the bank and you start a business bank account, and now your LLC is made. That's all you got to do. Companies online will charge people 304 hundred bucks. Legalzoom sign you up for a year, retainer on a monthly basis to make your LLC. And like you can start you can do that on your own. And so then back to the co-mingling 24 hours. But it's instant, pretty instant. I do it all day long for people. And people just pay hundreds of hundreds of dollars for that. And it's just the classic scam people. It's a service and people pay for it. But it doesn't make any sense. And so it's like, but again, if you don't think you're going to be sued, why would you make a might make an LLC? And then there's the co-mingling of funds. So if you have an LLC bank account and you get sued and you're swiping that debit card for all kinds of personal expenses, the, the lawyer is going to shoot right through that thing because you're co-mingling funds. It has to be a separate business entity. So it's really important for small business owners to realize that you really don't get very much legal protection, particularly in South Carolina, if you're co-mingling any funds. So it has to be only business expenses in that business bank account. And then you start building business credit, and then you can get a business credit card. And that's sort of the natural life cycle of, of getting a business started and some and some common pitfalls. I had one more. Oh yeah. One more bonus for the people is, a very common scenario that I see is renting out your home to your friends. So in taxes, everything is a gray area, right? And if you can build a defendable position, you can still act in good faith and support your tax return. So if you have a friend who moves into your house and you're charging them below market rate range because she's your homie and they're Venmo ING you every single month, then do you claim that rental income on your tax return? A lot of people do. And they think that they have to, but it's not actually a rental income. What if it was just them helping you pay your mortgage? What if it was just sharing expenses? So there's a paradigm shift right there where you think about it differently now. You don't have to claim the income because you're, you know, there's no profit motive there. It's a below market rate, even if it's below market by a dollar. And, you know, you're they're just helping you pay your mortgage on a monthly basis. Why would you claim all that on your taxes the second you put up one third of your house for rent, it begins business depreciation and you have to do something called depreciation recapture when you sell your house. So basically you have to pay taxes on a third of the sale of your own home. When you whenever you go to sell it through depreciation recapture, it's smaller than that. But for simplicity so you don't want to do that. So that's another really cool thing. I had a few more, I can remember right now. Maybe they'll come back to me, but different ways that people save money on their taxes. Yeah. That's it. What is your definition of success? Then I have one more question after that and then we'll wrap it. Yeah. So. I, I've read some online or in some books and it's like a person achieving a goal that they set for themselves that's meaningful and that's always evolving. Right? I mean, it's the the nature of life. It's a goal that you achieve losing its luster is a necessary function of of life. It has a it actually has more of a purpose than you think, because it pushes you to continue to do something else. You can't change the rules of the game. The game is made up, you know, and you didn't make the rules, but you're forced to play this. This is what I talk about in my music sometimes it's like, who made the rules and why are we forced to play? But you have no choice. The only choice that you have is whether you have a good attitude or not, which does give you referee will because you don't perceive the same experience, two different, completely opposite ways. And that is the the experience is being awake and being alive. So you have that freedom to choose how you perceive this game. That seems like, completely controlled. That's right. And also your choice of perception actually impacts the game how it plays out. So we in the acronym, right. We had an acronym called Cab Tear. And I'm giving away a lot of covet stuff. But so Cab to R. And so it's your circumstances impact your attitude which impacts your belief which impacts your thoughts, which impacts your emotions, which impacts your attitude, which impacts your responses. So, and then that impacts your circumstances again, which and then go back to your attitude. Oh, excuse me, it was your actions and then your response and then go by. So it's a big circle based upon your attitude. So it all starts with your attitude and it spins around and then it impacts your circumstances again. So for me success right now and this goes back to well what is it for me? I, I write these note cards because I again try to have this sort of blind faith in myself that goes against my nature, which I think is necessary for life. And it's a skills most people don't have. It. And I write these like these five things in the present tense of what is my success. So it's like in present tense. It's like I'm the leader of a successful CPA firm. It's like I'm a sought after music producer. I am enjoying the relationships of my dreams with a beautiful woman. And it's like, I have achieved peak health in my life. So it's a combination of those five things, or I'm surrounded by beautiful people that I love, and I have hobbies that I genuinely and truly enjoy. So two years ago, I set up a lot of those goals for myself, and I've achieved a lot of them. It's it's really it's really incred incredible. It goes back to the universal supports, unconditional support of the universe. Whatever you choose, great things will be, will happen. And that's a really hard concept and something I struggle with all the time, because when you choose something, that you chose it because you thought it would be easier or because it just happened. Like your family business, it's hard to really be like, I chose that for myself. Like, this is the goal that I chose for myself and it's meaningful to me. So right now, success would look like by the time I'm like 34, I got a million bucks in the bank and the passive income, that's enough for me to. And I also have a passive business that's making me a decent amount of money to where I can be able to make art that is good, that's appreciated and respected, and by me and by others and is and is still fulfilling in the creation process for me. So that's currently my and also I'm still enjoying my relationship with it, which is truly fulfilling. And I'm still surrounded by people that I love. But the time getting the time back, but also maintaining that edge of of still being able to provide for my family is like is where I'm at. So what is success is a combination of a lot of those things, but I don't want to be running a personal service business when I'm 40, and that the 9 to 5 is dead like, and our kids will probably have to work even less than we do because of the internet. I mean, you can see kids right now, they just play video games and make way more money than I do. And it's like, you think a kid likes what he's doing every day. He's like, yeah, that kid's addicted to those video games. Like so yeah, I mean, he gets to make money off of it. So that's my my thoughts. Well, that's a very good perspective and a very interesting perspective. And I think it's going to be super beneficial for our audience. Just because you were able to articulate it so well and you went through your thought process and you were vulnerable and shared it. So I appreciate that. And I'm, I'm happy to have you as a friend and as an accountant. Where can people, if they want to reach out to you, just ask you questions about life or are interested in your services? Where can I reach out to you? Yeah. So my Instagram is at Ryan Anthony Roe. Where I am a and only ROI. My phone number is 843212 4400. That's my business line. I offer a lot of free tax advice and a lot of free tax help. It's becoming more and more expensive as we go on. But yeah, that's the best way to get in touch with me. And if you reach out from for tax services, make sure you tell them that came from Shaking Hands podcast so that it yeah, it doesn't increase my retainer. That's good. But otherwise thanks for coming out. That was awesome. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. All right. Sweet.

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