Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 229: Tax Strategy for Your Boring W-2 Clients and Beyond

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229: Tax Strategy for Your Boring W-2 Clients and Beyond · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: When I was running my practice, I dreamed of having a tax professional that would do actual tax strategy, like not just get behind my ideas right, like Roth conversions or more traditional things like QCDs, but someone that could actually sit down with my clients and tell them if they should buy their car through their business, help my boring W-2 clients find clever ways to strategize to save tax dollars right.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Should they do an Airbnb for their lake house, like these little things that make sense?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Can they figure out a way for them to deduct their Starbucks obsession?
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: And yes, the tax strategist in this episode shares a story about how she helped a retired client deduct his Starbucks addiction.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: But you know what I'm talking about that advice that goes beyond just filing taxes and saving money short term like an actual tax strategist.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Enter Shana the tax goddess and yes, that's the name of her company, and she's known as the tax goddess because she is one of the most highly credentialed tax strategists in the United States.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: In this episode, shauna gives us a glimpse into the world of tax strategy and how they help advisors' clients get creative and save a boatload of tax dollars without really getting into any of the dark gray area of the tax code right Like we want to do this and we want to keep it legal.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So I know you're going to find this episode particularly entertaining, but also very, very interesting, and I know it'll stretch us to start thinking about tax strategy through a slightly different lens.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Let's dive in.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Look and I know you're here listening to this podcast because you know it's possible to have an abundance of energy left over for your friends and your family and still have your dream business.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about the business that you are running instead of it running you.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: If you're new to the Efficient Advisor, welcome.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: I'm Libby Grywey and I have strep throat and I don't normally sound like this, but I started, built and sold by 37 a 100% referral-only planning practice that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And we did that through systems and processes rooted in client experience, and I'm here just to walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same and to help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: So move over exhaustion and get out of the way.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Advisor ADHD.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love, and I know this conversation around tax strategy is going to help you get there right.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: This is going to help us think through the lens of saving our clients' tax dollars in a totally different way.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: All right, let's go.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: All right, shauna, I'm very pumped for this conversation because I love me a good tactical takeaway, things that advisors can do literally tomorrow to start moving the needle in their own business or doing better planning for their clients or creating a better client experience.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: So I think this conversation is going to be like super fabulous and we talked for a few minutes before recording.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: We're already best friends and so it's going to be fine and it's we're going to.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: We're going to have a good time.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: So if you would just give us kind of an overview of how you got here and what you do, because it is so unique and interesting for that CPA tax prep space.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: So how I got here is a very long story.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: I actually started off in astrophysics, so completely different Girl.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I went to school for engineering physics.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: You did Really.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is so cool, no wonder we get along, yeah we're best friends.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, sorry, All good Continue continue and so, really well, just like you, right, really, it creates this.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: It's a mental set of numbers and problem solving, right, it's that?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Engineer, astrophysics, like all those things.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Those are numbers and problem solving.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: And so, without the long story, I ended up in accounting finance, thought it was the most boring thing ever.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Recording history, like just preparing tax returns is recording history.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: So I'm a CPA, I can always prepare a return, but, like felt, a little boring to me right.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: I didn't fall in love and I didn't become the tax goddess until I found tax strategy right.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Tax mitigation how can we use the rules to our advantage?
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: All legal, all above board, right, because I'm a redhead, red and orange do not go together.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: We're not going to jail, it's not happening, but you know.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: So how can we use these tax strategies and combine the tax strategies?
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: It's not just one and one set of rules, right.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: We look, our team looks at a little over 1,500 tax strategies for every single client.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: And so you'll get somebody who has real estate, you'll get somebody who has an operating business.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: You'll get somebody who is a consultant right, like financial advisors right, yeah, I'm a consultant for my clients, these kinds of things, and not all strategies will apply to all people.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: So typically, when we see your what I call your standard CPA and we need standard CPAs right, they file the returns, they keep you from going to jail, they tick all the boxes, they make sure everything was filed properly on time, no penalties.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: But when we see our standard CPAs but when we see our standard CPAs right they're so focused on getting the form done, getting it filed on time, that they often will just miss the bigger picture, not through any fault of their own, but one face down in tax terms all day.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Two, they don't have time to study, or?
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, being a strategist is an expertise, right, I mean, I've got my master's in tax?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Certified tax coach, certified tax professional.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Certified tax strategist is an expertise, right, I mean, I've got my master's in tax certified tax coach, certified tax professional, certified tax strategist.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: I'm in the top 15 in the country for what I do.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: So when you think about your day-to-day CPA filing the return versus somebody who specializes and really focuses on strategy, they're two very different things right.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, so every advisor listening is like sort of like, at least for me, right.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I'm sort of like salivating, like ah, where were you when I was running my business?
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Because we all wanted that, that CPA.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Like we always had this like pipe dream that we were going to partner.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: We're going to find this CPA who was like super financial planning, focused, right, like not the guy or girl that's going to shut down our suggestion to fund a Roth 401k versus the 401k, cause they're looking at this tax season versus lifetime.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, eight years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now and we always wanted that person.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: That would be like, okay, we're going to look into the crystal ball and we're going to look forward a few years and we're going to think strategically about this versus that versus that, like kind of like what you were saying, that reactive versus a proactive approach to tax strategies.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Like I mean, that's always like oh, that was, that was the thing we could never nail down, and I know that's true for so many advisors.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: And so we want to have the conversation around advisors collecting tax returns and doing some of this more strategic thinking.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Or how can advisors start looking at returns proactively as opposed to just retroactively looking and saying, oops, we should have done.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Or like, oh good, you did your backdoor Roth correctly and maybe here's an opportunity or there's an opportunity.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: What are some of the things, or what do you think is the best approach for an advisor who's wanting to really get started in finding that low hanging fruit when it comes to providing tax strategy?
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I'm going to tell you honestly, the tax returns come second in my mind.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, step one is knowing your client, and I know, as financial advisors, that's I mean, that's your job, right Is to know your client, know their goals, know their risk associations.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: You know how.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Are they super conservative?
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Are they willing to maybe branch out and become an entrepreneur?
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: You know these kinds of things, right, and the reason why I say that is because every strategy is not for every person, right.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: You may have somebody that says listen, I have a lot in the market and I'm already pretty set on my life insurance side.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: I'm interested in diversifying into real estate, into crypto trading, into something else, right, besides your standard day-to-day kinds of things.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Those kinds of people are amazing for great.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Maybe we should talk with your tax strategist about buying some Airbnb properties, about buying some long-term rental properties.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Right, build up that passive portfolio for you.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: You get people, and I'm sure you've run into people where, every month, they have a new idea on something that's going to make them money.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: You're looking at her right now, right.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Well, and even you know, because I know that there's there's in my mind there's a very clear distinction between somebody who's a W-2 who, listen, I show up at eight, I leave a five, I get paid, and I get paid well, and I'm very happy with that.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: My and my business life ends at 5 PM.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Right, For those kinds of people, we tend to look at investments.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Right, Are you interested in solar?
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Are you interested in oil and gas?
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Are you interested?
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: So this is all about knowing your client.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Where else do you want?
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: To be right, but if you've got somebody, so that's one way to look at it.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Right, If they're happy with the W-2, they just want to make money and they want somebody else to deal with headache, castle, whatever of owning any kind of business, rental properties, an active business, whatever the other side of it is, you'll get.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Whether they're W-2 or just entrepreneurial by nature, you'll get what I call the business owners right, who are like every month I have a new idea and I'm going to set up a small schedule C to hire my kids to have a lemonade stand to do a thing.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Kids to have a lemonade stand to do a thing.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Right, and so, as an advisor, from my perspective, part of your job is to know your client well enough to say listen, no matter which one you are, there are always tax strategies, Always Right.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: And it's really a question of what do you want, Right?
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Do you want to open a business in your garage and maybe you don't have kids, you're single and you're ready to put in 80 hours a week to have your W-2 and open a business?
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Let's do that.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Let's figure out what the best tax strategies for what you want to do.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: And that's where the tax returns and the cash availability kind of comes in.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Because if you're looking at the first category, right, I'm a W-2, I don't want a business, I don't want rentals, I don't want any kind of stress beyond my W-2 job, which is fine.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Getting into investment great idea.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: But you gotta have cash.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: So, do we have cash?
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Do we not have cash?
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: How much cash do we need?
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Is it 50,000, 100,000, 500,000?
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: And what are the ROIs on that?
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: And that's really where, from that perspective, your tax strategist and you, as a financial advisor, work together to determine.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Listen, I'm getting an average of 7.5% in the market and when I run the calculations on this particular investment, yeah, I get this great tax write-off in the first year, but the returns are miserable.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Like you were talking about, the 401k Roth versus not long-term Roth, returns are great.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Right, Tax-free forever, Yay.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: So really, I think knowing your client is number one.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Okay, Knowing and this is where the tax turns come in how much cash do we have?
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: What opportunities do we have?
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: How much could be invested not invested, put into a business, buy a rental property, whatever it is?
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: And the third one is having that strong partnership with somebody who's going to back you up, as you said right, Because if you tell the client, hey, there's options, you better have somebody that says, yeah, and here are the 1500 options that we can do in your case.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I can't tell you how many times a CPA blew up an amazing, beautiful, gorgeous opportunity for a client because they just either didn't understand it or didn't see it, or didn't know it, or it wasn't traditional.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Or they weren't willing to look at it.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: That's the part that always bothers me is like oh, I've never seen that before, so that's not a valid thing.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know all the things.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Show me the research, show me the details so that we can figure it out.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: So finding a tax strategist that'll work in advance, proactively, and back you up, yep, yep, that sounds lovely.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: As you said, you wanted a partner.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: You got to find a partner.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: That's, I mean, that's what it is.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: And again, I want to make sure that I'd be very clear here.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Right, Just because you have a tax strategist as a partner does not mean that your client's original CPA relationship needs to go anywhere.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, Because you've got clients that have been with their CPA for 20 years, they love their CPA, right, but they're coming to you saying, but is there anything else?
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Is there anything else we can do?
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: right.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: There's got to be something else.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Like I'm reading all these articles that Trump's paying 2% right.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: How do I pay 2% right?
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Like, how do I get there?
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: And so, really, this is a third piece of your team here.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Right, Is the CPA finding the tax returns, you as the financial advisor doing your financial advising right and the strategist bringing in options.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: So Okay, so give me some examples.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Let's start with like a boring W-2 couple.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: They don't have a whole lot of bells and whistles, maybe some options, something like that, but for general purposes their tax returns pretty vanilla.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: What are some of the things that advisors could use?
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: A tax strategist or like what's some of the stuff that a tech strategist would really look at and say like, oh, here's where we can make a big difference?
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: I think for me as an advisor, that was where I had the most like head trash around.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Like can I really add value here, besides saying, oh, you should fund an HSA or you know like so what is it that you're looking at?
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Absolutely Well.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: So if all we got is W-2, okay.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: So the first question I would be asking are you willing to do anything else?
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to go for purposes of this example.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: No, I'm not right, I'm straight W-2.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: I don't want to buy rentals, I don't want to open a business, right, so I'm knocking that off the plate.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: The next question is what kind of legacy do you want to leave for your children?
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Now the reason why this question is so powerful, all right is life insurance can provide legacy for children.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: An irrevocable life insurance trust can provide legacy for children.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: A CLAT, crat, crt, crut will allow you to do charity and leave legacy for children, right?
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: So if legacy for kids or grandkids, or setting up a foundation to maybe you're really into the charity side, setting up a foundation, something like that, if any of those goals speak to you, there are strategies for that, right.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: So, okay, not a business, that's fine.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Not charitable?
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, you're gonna spend all your money.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: You're gonna slide into the grave with zero.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: The kids ain't getting a penny.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, you're going to spend all your money.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: You're going to slide into the grave with zero, the kids ain't getting a penny.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Right, you worked hard, you're going to spend it.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: We're not doing it, okay.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: So now what?
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: What is important to you?
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Do you want to buy a yacht and sail around the globe for a year?
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, you know.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: What do you want to do with this money that you've made and you've earned?
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: What is it right?
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Dogs Let me pick on dogs.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Most people that have dogs love their dogs, right, we're all over the moon about our dogs, right?
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Do you want to create a dog sitting service?
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Not really a full business, like it's not like you're buying a brick and mortar building, but like you're going to dog sit your neighbor's dogs?
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Now we have an option.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Right, it's like a little tiny mini business.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Maybe we've had people that really enjoy driving like just driving around driving cars.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Are you willing to do Uber, lyft, grocery delivery?
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Mentor cruise is a big one, right.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: There's options where, especially if somebody knows what they're doing and they've been doing it for a long time be a mentor for kids, for other professionals, right?
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: Maybe you enjoy teaching.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: So, really, it comes down to me as to what do you want to do in life.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you want to sit in front of the TV and do nothing, I don't think there are any.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Actually, I lie.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: I was about to say I don't think there's any tax strategies for that, but there is it's called investing in films.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Not to say I don't think there's any tax strategies for that, but there is it's called investing in films and you get tax credits for that.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: So you know, you name it.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: There's almost a strategy for any goal, desire, whatever it is that you're looking for.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: So, Okay, I like that, so it's beyond the typical.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Like so we had I think it was like a 15 point checklist that we ran every tax return through and we'd say, okay, your kid's going to parochial high school, so you should fund the 529 and turn around and pull it out and save the money in your state taxes.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Or you should do the Roth versus the 401k, versus you know you're not maxing this out, or your you know your charitable thing.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Could we do it this way versus that way, so you get a standard deduction versus a.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: You know, like whatever, like there are a billion different things that we kind of would look at.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: What do you see as kind of a gap for most advisors?
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Like either from a knowledge standpoint, that we need to start to learn and understand about taxes, or like the biggest miss that we have for our clients?
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Well, the gap is a big one, but we can't make you all tax strategists, right.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, like that would take.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: You know, I think I've been doing it for 25 years, so it might take a little bit A little bit of time, just a hair.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the biggest gap and maybe the better way to describe this is the IRS allows you to deduct anything that is ordinary, necessary and reasonable, okay, and normally those terms are related to a business, but they also allow for charity, they also allow for rental property, like all of these things.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Okay, so is there something again I keep going back to?
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Is there something that the person is doing that they want to get written off?
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, it always makes me smile because generally, men I'll use the example women have hair and nails and clothes and all of these kinds of things.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, men have Rolexes and cars.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Those are the two big things.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, you're laughing because you know where I'm going with this.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, so can we do something around how you're spending your money?
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: We do something around how you're spending your money, and so when you say what is the biggest miss that I see happen with financial advisors, they have y'all have been so trained this is the only thing we can look at.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: It's almost like having blinders on right, that just taking a step back and saying wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Where are we spending the most amount of money?
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: The most, the most amount of money, the most, the most amount of money, right, I remember very clearly I had a client who and this was way back when 15 something years ago, right, he used to buy three Starbucks a day.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Okay, he's still on the three Starbucks a day habit.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Okay, at this point, the dude's spending like $45 a day at Starbucks.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure he's like paying for the CEOs hits, college or something, right, I mean, he spends a lot of money at Starbucks, okay, so if that's your itch, if that's what's important to you is to have your three Starbucks a day and that's what makes you happy, think big picture.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: How can you, the advisor, work with your clients?
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: You're spending this money.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: How can we make a benefit from it?
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: And maybe there is no way, but how can we?
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: In this case, right, with my Starbucks guy, we actually had him become a professional taster, almost like a sommelier for Starbucks.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: He created a blog, started talking.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, he loved Starbucks, that was his thing, he enjoyed it.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: He did it on his free time, right, yeah, talking about which mix, how many pumps, which foam anyway, I don't do all the Starbucks, but finding being open to the idea that almost anything can help your client from a tax perspective.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: So how do we figure it out?
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Right, and from that standpoint, being proactive to talk to the strategist and the CPA and the client, which is what you guys do, right To figure out, is it something they want to do?
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Because you will get some people that say nope, I've had clients tell me I don't care how much tax I pay, I don't want any stress, I don't even want to think about it, I don't, I just want to spend my money Like okay, that's okay too.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Right, so yeah, okay, so random side note, but I'm going to guess there's advisors who are experiencing this.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: But let's go down the small tangent for a second about influencers.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: So let you rolled your eyes.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: I rolled my eyes.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: I'm so curious, so for people who have like okay.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: So let's say I have a client who loves shopping and she's like well, I'm going to make an Instagram account become an Amazon affiliate and I'm going to do these things Like let's talk about how does the IRS view these influencer or like mini influencer businesses?
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: And I appreciate the fact that you tacked on mini influencer down here at the bottom.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, so there's a very famous court case, okay, and it's a little risque, but can I, can I talk just a little risque a little bit, okay.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, if you're easily offended, you know, let's plug your ears for two seconds.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, Okay, so, but but it's the best court case to describe kind of what you're talking about here.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: All right, so there was a professional dancer and air quotes professional dancers, so everybody knows what I'm talking about.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Professional dancer, got it.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: She went and got some top half enhancements, got it.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: She wrote it off as a tax deduction for her because it's ordinary, necessary and reasonable.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: We come back to those three terms right, ordinary, necessary and reasonable for her business.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: The IRS said no, that's personal, we're not allowing enhancements to be done as a tax deduction.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: We disagree.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: It went all the way through appeals, went to like a very top level judge and the judge turned to the IRS and said let me get this straight.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: She got enhancements, she made more money, meaning she paid you more in taxes and therefore you're saying it's not a tax deduction.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: And the IRS backed off.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: And the reason yeah, the reason they backed off is because you got to make money.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: If you want the deduction, you got to make money.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: So when we come to influencers right, you see these people, oh, I've got hundreds of thousands of followers.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: We come to influencers right, you see these people, oh, I've got hundreds of thousands of followers, you're making a hundred dollars a month on YouTube income or whatever like wherever their platform is okay, on Instagram, whatever, it's still a hundred dollars.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: But if you were to write off a $50,000 Rolex or your hair, your nails, your makeup, your shopping habit of a hundred thousand dollars a year against $1,200 a year worth of income, no right, the purpose of any business in the eyes of the IRS.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: You got to have profit motive and you don't have to make money, but you have to have profit motive.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: And if you don't have profit motive and you're still spending that kind of money, it looks like a straw man.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: It looks like you're just taking your personal shopping and trying to write it off.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: So what about like losses in the first year?
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Like, hey, I'm trying to make money, I'm in the building stage, can I deduct my hair, my nails, my extensions?
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: My enhancements, all those things.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about it, okay.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: So, if you think about the tax filing system, okay, so it starts January 1st, let's just say 2024, january 1st 2024, it ends December 31st 2024.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Your taxes are due.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: As an individual, your taxes are due October 15th of 2025.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: So you really have a year and 10 months.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: If you are not making profit, income, big numbers of income, in a year and 10 months, I mean, what do you think the IRS said Now, absolutely Okay, you are absolutely allowed to lose money for the first couple of years.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, if you're a giant drug company like Pfizer, they will lose money for 15 years and then make billions.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Right, but it's a known, it's a known thing.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: The IRS knows that that's a pattern with the drug companies, right?
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Massive, massive, massive deductions and then huge income in one year With influencers.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Influencers are still a very new kind of category from that standpoint.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: And everybody is one.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: It's like everybody is one.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: So that's why I'm like, okay, let's go down this.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's do this.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Yo, I love it.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: Right, you've got to have profit motive.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, you have to show why ordinary, necessary and reasonable.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: So if you're, let's say you're it is shopping, right, let's say your thing is shopping and clothes and whatever right, did you spend $100 on an eye palette?
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: And how many?
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: of those eye palettes, specific eye palettes did you now show?
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: I guess it's makeup, but you know makeup for the non-eye shadow, sorry, eye shadow.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: I'm so sorry.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Two women talking.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Sorry, gentlemen, sorry gentlemen.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: But yeah, if you, you know this eye shadow palette, right.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: If you promote it and you're really on Instagram and you're doing all your stories and you're doing all these things, right, and you don't sell any of it, maybe you decide I'm just not going to deduct that particular palette, right?
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: If you're doing clothes as you said, you know influencer on clothes.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: If you're doing clothes and you're doing an Amazon because you mentioned an Amazon store if you're doing tennis skirts I don't know whatever it is you're doing, right, and you don't sell a single tennis skirt, maybe you decide not to deduct it.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: So just because you spent the money doesn't mean you have to deduct it, right?
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: And this is where both your CPA and your tax strategist would work together at the end of the year, right, and say maybe you don't want to deduct that one.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: It will throw you out of the range of what's acceptable for losses for influencers for this kind of thing.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Got it and so like what for a client?
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: So I'm thinking about like a couple of people in particular that are in my, my ecosphere, that are these what I would call micro influencers, maybe even mid-level influencers.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: So so if we're telling a client like hey you, you know, in the example of you gave him the Starbucks guy is the requirements of running a business and filing like a separate LLC return if that's the case, and having to track expenses, like how do we determine if it's worth that effort and maybe a little bit of cash?
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: Like a great question.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: I love it so.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: So I always take that question against whatever your tax rate is.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: So, if so, if I didn't have this business, whatever it is, I'm doing right and my tax rate is 30%.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, I know that for every dollar that I can write off against my income, I'm going to save 30%.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: So I also know my Starbucks guy knows that he's spending $45 a day, right, and I've never actually I haven't run that calculation a long time.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Let's see $45 a day times 365 is $16,425 at Starbucks.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Right, we're spending some money.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, and let's just say he's at 30%.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: So his savings, if he writes off all of his Starbucks, all of it is $4,927.50.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Let's round it to five grand.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: Okay, if you decide to go the business route, you must have a tax return, you must have books and records, you must have proof that you were trying to have a business.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: You were posting on Craigslist, instagram, youtube, blah, blah, blah.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: You can't make one post on Instagram and be like I'm an influencer, like, no, you're not.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: You have to prove profit motive, right, and that's actually a pretty big component, right, and the only person that can decide whether five grand is worth it is you, the client right.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: So if we were talking 50,000, maybe right Like I don't know, and so it's very dependent on the person.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so interesting.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: And so, like in the Starbucks example, he would have to be what was the total that he was spending 16,425.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: So he would have to be what was the total that he was spending $1,645.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: So he would have to be at least making the $1,604 to be able to deduct the $1,604.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Is that like?
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Am I like a fair assessment here?
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Kind of so for the first couple of years, right, like any influencer, like any blog poster, like any anything, right?
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: You're not making that comment in the first year, and so this is really where it's hard for an outside party to judge.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: Only you as the taxpayer, only you as the taxpayer, know how much effort are you going to put in, how much time are you going to put in?
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Are you really really like really really you're going to try to make this a business?
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Is it really going to be a thing?
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Are you going to spend money on advertising?
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: It's one of the keys from the IRS, right?
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: If you have profit motive, even if it's small, even if you only spend $5 a day on a Facebook ad, you're spending money on advertising.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Why would you spend money on advertising if you weren't trying to get clients, right?
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: So there's kind of these key factors and it's like a merged list, depending on what you're doing, of what the IRS looks at as to whether you should be flagged, not flagged, audited, not audited, and that's where you need a strategist.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, love that.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you for going down that rabbit hole because, as you were talking, I'm like there has to be.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: You know, I can think like now, right, so I sold my practice in 2019, but I can think like now, a couple of people in my world that, like this is what they do and I'm like, oh, I wonder if they would be able to detect that or how does that look like.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: So I have to imagine advisors are running into this influencer thing and Like that's how the IRS gets clear, Because the IRS, from their perspective, which is as clear as mud, okay, they've given taxpayers, all taxpayers, a very clear statement Profit motive ordinary, necessary, reasonable To them, that's to the IRS.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: That's clarity, that's clear as mud.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: They know what is ordinary reasonable Right necessary is a pretty subjective term.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Mud Right Necessary Right Necessary is a pretty subjective term.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Right, right, so, yeah, so, really, when this influencer thing, I think I mean we are already starting, because influencers really started four or five, maybe six years ago, and you know.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: So now we're starting to see court cases coming in.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Mr Beast is a big one that always comes up as an example.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: You know what's reasonable, what's not, but the guy's making millions, so for him it's not a problem, right, what?
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: What we're really discussing here is the little guy, right, the one that's just starting, and you just now have 5,000 Instagram followers or whatever, and you're making 25 cents or whatever you know.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's, it's an interesting world and unfortunately, I just don't have any specific details at this point because the court cases haven't cleared so.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Fascinating, okay, so thank you for that.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: So let's go.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, what else should advisors be looking at?
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: So we talked about kind of a boring vanilla person and really like going a little extra level on how they spend their money.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Like I'm thinking in my head like wow, I didn't do that in my own business.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: That's really fascinating and interesting.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about some things that you kind of come up with or explore for the less vanilla tax return people.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: So maybe like a little Rocky Road situation.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: I don't like the Rocky Road.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Now I just want ice cream.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: That's a whole nother issue.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: But thank you Causing problems here, yeah.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: So when we talk about the rocky road right, what type of rocky road?
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: So are you into rental properties?
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: I live in Arizona.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Real estate is huge out here, right?
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: I mean it's 40 to 50% of people have at least one rental property.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Could be a long-term rental property.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Could be Airbnb short-term rental property okay.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Once you have either a rental property or a business air quotes, business of any kind okay.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Could be very, very, very small micro business, like your influencer.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Could be your Uber driver okay.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Could be a brick and mortar.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: You bought a Subway franchise okay.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: Or you've opened up a McDonald's, you know whatever.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: That is okay, okay.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Or you've opened up a McDonald's, you know whatever.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: That is okay.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Once you have something that is not vanilla, your world of options, just massively.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: I mean we go from 15 to 20 strategies to the 1,500 strategies for business owners, because 100% hands down, the tax code is written for business owners period.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, fascinating.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, so go ahead.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: No, no.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: So I was just going to say when, when you, once you have a business.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Now we're talking about putting kids on payroll, writing off your dogs as security, using your home under the master's exemption or Augusta rule to get 14 days of tax-free income, right.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: Renting your home out for the Rose Bowl right.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: And I mean we have people in Arizona making $100,000 for 14 days.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: So you know, and these are just examples, I mean it can really be absolutely anything.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: I mean up to the point depending on the size of your business, right, if you've got clients that have bigger businesses, you know, 1 million, 5 million, 10 million kind of businesses.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: You're talking about captive insurance companies.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: You're talking about setting up cash balance plans to find benefit plans.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: I mean the world just opens.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Those bananas.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: So how does an advisor find a tech strategist?
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, there's not that many of us, like I said, there's about 15.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, so there is an organization out of California.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: They are the people that rank us, certify us, all this.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: They're called the AICTP, which I should probably know what that stands for American Institute of Certified Tax Planners.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: I think Don't quote me on that.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: I think so, but it's the AICTP and there's different.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: There's three different levels of a tax strategist Okay, so CTC certified tax coach is like the base level.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Now they're still tax strategists, okay, but maybe they're new.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: They've been in practice 35 years, right, they're not the top of the right.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, it takes a while to kind of get the education.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: You have the next level, ctp certified tax professional.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: So those are your five to seven years, right, and then you have certified tax strategists.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: Now, to give you a little bit of an idea, at the moment I just looked at this the other day I think there's about 800 certified tax coaches or above.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: So that's not a lot of people out of everybody in the entire US, right, I think there's.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: If we look at CPAs, there's 665,000 CPAs, right, so I mean the numbers are just spectacularly off, right, and so, yeah, so I suppose it depends on the complexity of your client, on the relationship that you want to build, on the type of clients that you want to work with, right, your W-2, plain vanilla.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: You do not need me.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: You don't need a CTS top, you know.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Whatever I mean, I'm in the top three.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: They refuse to tell us who's number one, which is always annoying, but I know I'm in the top three of the rank.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: But you know you don't need somebody like what we do right.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: I mean we tend to work on clients where gross revenue is minimum a million, because the types of strategies that we bring are meant for the bigger clients, right.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: So also figuring out which strategist is right, for maybe you have two strategists you work with, one with your small clients, one with your big clients, you know, it just kind of depends.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Right, okay, okay.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: And so you have a accounting firm with a digital team and all of the things I know.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: I'm like totally putting you on the spot.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: But like, what?
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Like, what do you do and how do you know?
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Like, can an advisor hire you guys?
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Like, could I come to you and say I have clients and need tech strategy?
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, absolutely.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: So.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, I'm so sorry, I didn't want to completely self-promote, but, yes, of course you can go to taxgoddesscom and reach out to our team, right, and just say, hey, you know, I'd like to partner with Tax Goddess.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: So, yes, you brought up the digital team thing, which I just want to kind of throw in here.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: So, yes, tax Goddess, our firm has 105 staff in 17 different countries.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: All of them focus on US tax.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: All of them focus on US strategy right, we don't do taxes and strategy for other countries right, Everything is US.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: And one of the biggest questions that I get generally from our financial advisor partners is like I want to hire overseas, right, how do I find a CFP?
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: How do I find an assistant that knows finance?
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: How do I find a front desk, you know, telephone reception type person?
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Because of the nature of what we do, we've actually created a company back in 2018 called Talent Gnome, so talentgnomecom.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: We help other financial professionals hire overseas.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: If that's what you want to do, to be able to build a team, grow, expand.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: So we do recruiting and HR and like all that kind of jazz.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Fascinating.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: I love it, okay Okay.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: So you fall in that category you were talking about earlier, where you have like a new business idea every month.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: I yes.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: And I have been yelled at by my team.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: You're only allowed to give us one every month and that's max like period, right?
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, a hundred percent, yeah.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Well, I love this.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for just sharing all of this expertise and we'll make sure to link all of those things in the show notes because I know, like I said, for my practice, there's I can think of, like I can still picture 10 clients and I'm like, oh my gosh, we're like this was the thing we kept trying to get their CPAs to perform on for us and we just couldn't get it right.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Like it's little stuff, like I even just the other day I'm looking at another rental property and I'm like I'm wondering if I should have my 401k buy it Right.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Like, is that something that like?
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: oh, self-directed IRAs all day, Right Like.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: I'm like I wonder if I could have my Roth for what?
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Like, I'm like that's why I just need someone who can kind of, um, you know, spitball with me and look at stuff and say, yeah, that actually does make sense for you or no, that does not.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: So I think that's really really cool.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much for for coming on, and I think we have to have a separate conversation about some more things, uh, specifically related to financial advisors and running their businesses and how they can save taxes and do the things and how do they know if they should be an escort versus the this versus the that versus the statutory, whatever.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Like you know all the things.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Um, but before we sign off, I always like to ask my guests that are business owners what are two things that you do in your business to work more efficiently?
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: So it could be a mindset hack, it could be a software, it could just be a daily practice that you have.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Tell me how you have kind of moved your business, because obviously you've scaled to this huge organization and you've started multiple companies.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: So tell me what you do and how do you do it so efficiently.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: Absolutely Well, and you're right.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: My first answer is you hire a team that is smarter than you and better than you at whatever it is you're trying to do, like period.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Plain simple go hire talent right.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: From my perspective as a person, I am huge on time blocking.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: Everything in my life, down to the last five minutes, is time blocked, including dinner, including dog walks.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: I mean you, you name it right, it is time blocked.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: And for efficiency purposes, I mean that's to me that's the key, because I don't have to think about what am I doing next.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: I just, oh, calendar, yep, great time to do the thing, and and we get done.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Um, and I do believe, especially when you have multiple things going on in your life, whether it's a business and an influencer site and you know real estate or whatever if you don't have yourself organized, whether it's time blocking or something else, if you're not organized, it will explode, things will explode.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: So oh, I love, cause I always love when people talk about like calendaring and how they do their calendaring, cause I'm like see, see, I told you so, cause it's so hard, it's so people resist it so much, cause it feels so structured or it feels so whatever.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: And I'm telling you like, once you start doing like, a model week time blocking.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: it's the structure gives you so much freedom it's unbelievable.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: So, and like pure honesty, how closely do you adhere to that?
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: Like 100%.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: So, and like pure honesty, how closely do you adhere to that?
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: Like, like, realistically, really Okay.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: So if this helps you at all, I'm German, I'm a Taurus, right, I'm stubborn as all.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Get out, right.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: I, by the minute, by the day.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: Now things happen, things happen, right, dog gets sick, you get.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Like, I mean, you're done, like, go do, I've got five dogs, so stuff happens, right, there's always something happening, things happen.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: But if something happens, I just move the time block to the next opening or whatever, like, I'm very, if it's on the calendar, it's on the calendar and that's the deal.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: I don't think I could, as I said, do as much as I do without being very strict on myself.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: And I agree with you that time blocking is so freeing because let's take, for example, today, right, I had a meeting earlier.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: I thought it was going to take an hour.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: I blocked out an hour, we were done in 20 minutes.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: I was jumping around like a little kid.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go to the kitchen and go get a snack and I get free time and I get to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: Right, like, I love it.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: It makes me so happy when something like that happens.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: So, there you go, I love it.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Appreciate you and we're going to have to have you back and talk some more things about, specifically, how advisors can save money on their own frigging taxes.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you, shauna.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me Such a pleasure.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you, shauna, thank you for having me Such a pleasure.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, am I right?
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Was that fascinating?
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: My big takeaways from this episode are really just a lot of what we talk about right here with just getting to know your clients even better, digging deeper, your clients even better, digging deeper.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: And you cannot do this if you are only doing annual reviews or investment updates.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: You have to have structure to your client service model that gives you the ability to go so much deeper with your clients.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying you have to add more time, right, like in our group coaching program, we get deep into theme-based planning and how to do your client service model a little differently to allow more time for this type of level.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Right, and it's so hard because you can't just get here in the last 15 minutes of a meeting after you've reviewed their portfolio and maybe touched base on all their insurances and maybe did a beneficiary update and then squeeze this business into the last end.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Right, and I'm also not saying you have to do it across the board for all of your clients, but do think about how you could strategically implement some actual tax strategy like this moving forward, and I know some of the examples in here are a little like whoa out there, but great, that makes great.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: First of all, that makes really great interesting content right For a podcast episode.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: But it expand for me.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: It expanded my brain so much further in my thinking.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, honestly, if a stripper can deduct her augmentation, like and get away with it and not get away with it, but the IRS go, yep, I mean what else is available to the rest of us, right, and what could be available to your clients?
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: So the takeaway for me is that the tax code is what's the word I'm looking for.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say more liberal than we think, but the tax code is available to us and we can be creative and stay within the rules.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Right, like the Augusta rule is a creative way for clients with businesses to rent their house back to them for a event that they're doing for their business.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Or I mean, there's so many different nuances of different things that we're doing and our clients are doing that maybe we hadn't even thought through the lens of tax strategy yet.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: And I know for me when I was running my practice, like I said at the top of the episode, that I would have killed for someone like this with some of my especially some of my clients that had really really high incomes that were just W-2 employees, or some of my business owners that had some potential for more creative solutions.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: So anyways, I hope you found this episode interesting.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: I hope it stretched you a little bit in some way shape or form.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: And in the email that went out here for this episode I've got a link to Shauna's business where you can get in touch with them and learn all about how they can help your clients and what that costs and all of the details.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: I've also got that link in the show notes for you as well.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: You can also find it out on the efficientadvisorcom under the resources tab.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: So all of the details will be there.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: You can set up a call with them, get the whole scoop and nothing but the scoop and see if you maybe have a client or two that this might be a great fit.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: So I'm just super fascinated.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: I took tons of notes during this episode that I can't wait to think through or potentially implement into my own tax strategy.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: So hopefully you're thinking through that lens too.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: I would love to talk more with you about this over in the Efficient Advisor community on Facebook.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: If you were at XYPN here recently and are new to the Facebook group, welcome.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: We'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: You can communicate with myself, and Shauna is in there as well, answering questions.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: I'm also thinking about let me know if this would be interesting to you, but doing kind of like a live happy hour Zoom call with Shauna and letting her just answer a whole bunch of questions that we might have.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: I know that's something she said she would be willing to do for our community, so super cool.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Also, you know I hang out over on LinkedIn.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: We are so close to 10,000 followers, you guys, so if you would I know it's a vanity metric and it doesn't actually mean anything, but for some reason I'll be honest I'm a little fixated on hitting it.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: So if you're not following us over on LinkedIn at the Efficient Advisor, find me personally, libby Greiwe, g-r-e-i-w-e, and if you didn't know, that's how I pronounced my last name, greiwe.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: I married into it, my maiden name was Tate, t-a-t-e, t-a-t-e, and I desperately tried to get my ex-husband to take my name and it would have been so much easier.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: But anyways, find me, libby Grywey, and I'd love for you guys to follow us.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: We've got some really exciting stuff.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: I just made some major, exciting investments in my business and a lot of it surrounding some content creation, some video production, and we're going to be dropping a lot of content over on LinkedIn and different content over in the Efficient Advisor community.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: So I would love for you to join us in both of those capacities and we will see you there.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much and I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: You.