Latest / Financial Planner Search / Less Tax, More Abundance with Peter Culver | Financial Planner Search
Transcript
- Gregory Wilnau: All right, we are recording. Peter, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. How are you doing? Peter Culver: Doing good, good, man. I appreciate the opportunity. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, I've been looking forward to talking to you. to get started, why don't you just take a moment and tell us a little bit about your practice and and what you specialize in. Peter Culver: The practice itself or the background first? Gregory Wilnau: Let's start with the practice itself. What you guys do. Peter Culver: Right, so I'm one of the co-founders of a firm called Wealth Thrive. Our focus is on helping entrepreneurs reduce taxes, build something that we call a life rich beyond money. So taxes is kind of the point of the spear that helps them create wealth, but that's not the whole story. What are you gonna do if you're wealthy? And so we're trying to help entrepreneurs kind of cover both of those vases. The quantitative. Gregory Wilnau: Hmm. Hmm. Peter Culver: and the qualitative. Gregory Wilnau: Because wealth is not just money, right? Yeah. I I Peter Culver: 100 % 100 % yeah Gregory Wilnau: love that. Okay, so entrepreneurs, a life rich beyond money, meaning, purpose, t helping with taxes, obviously. how tell maybe you could tell us a little bit about h what inspired you to do this, the story behind the firm. How did how'd that happen? Peter Culver: So I'll go back, but I'll go quick. So I was originally trained as a lawyer. It turned out that almost all of my clients were business owners from the beginning. And I practiced law for 12 years. And what happened was I had a client who decided to start a wealth management company. And I did the legal work. And too long a story for today, but what a eventually happened was they needed somebody to run the business on a day-to-day basis. So they said, why don't you stop practicing law and come and run this startup company? And I did. And I will tell you, I wasn't, it's kind of a funny story. I literally walked across the street and the office of the new company was across the street from my law firm. And I started doing that. And it's kind of interesting. worked in a nice law firm and library, Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Peter Culver: fancy furniture, all that stuff. We literally started our company with a card table when we started, but it was so much more fun than Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Peter Culver: being a lawyer. And so people will say, well, why was that? Very simply, when I was a lawyer, I would say I spent 80 % of my time reading, researching, writing legal stuff, talking to other lawyers, stuff like that. And maybe 20 % of my time talking to the actual clients. That ratio went upside down when I went into a business Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Peter Culver: that directly served entrepreneurs and I just enjoyed that so much more and I Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Peter Culver: didn't, when I started I didn't know what would happen but it didn't take long to realize that I think I had kind of found my sweet spot. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. So the work that you didn't enjoy as a turn as an attorney, was flipped around right? You got and you've had that realization. You like working with people. Peter Culver: Yeah, and I would say I didn't necessarily leave the law because I didn't like the law. It just wasn't as people-focused. It more intellectually-focused, I guess, or something like that. So anyway, was just opened Gregory Wilnau: I yeah, yeah. Peter Culver: my eye. And I remember when I was a lawyer, my favorite, I'm old enough, people had plants. I live in Connecticut. I live in an area in Connecticut that once was the machine tool shop. Center of America Stanley works come is where I am places like that I had lots of clients in that industry my favorite thing when I was a lawyer was to go on a plant tour I would beg them like let me come to your place and See what your business was like. I felt like I had a much better Just got a better sense of what they were about. So when I changed from being a lawyer to The wealth managed like everything was a plant to her. So it's great Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. No. I love that. I love how you're able to f to find and fall into something that truly gives you energy and that and Peter Culver: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: and that you love. let's talk a little bit more about your clients. So you work with int entrepreneurs. So maybe you Peter Culver: Yes. Gregory Wilnau: could take a moment to kinda to dis to describe the type of person who comes to you. I know they're entrepreneurs, but what's something that all of your com some of something that a lot of your clients have in common? Peter Culver: Yeah, so I would, and again, maybe it's quantitative and qualitative. So the arena we work in, for better or worse, we can do our best work roughly for people who make a million dollars a year or have some kind of liquidity event that's about a million dollars a year. Now there's a slight variation in there, which is if they live in what we call a high tax state. California, New York, New Jersey. That number is lower because the taxes are higher so we can help them. Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Peter Culver: What we call the low tax states, Florida, Texas, we can still help those people. They just need to Gregory Wilnau: Whoop whoop. Yeah. Peter Culver: be at a slightly higher level. So that's kind of the financial profile we're looking at. I would say the reason we love working with entrepreneurs is they tend to be quick decision makers, forward looking, optimistic, creative, numbers oriented type people. I think that's just a good fit for myself and my partner that those are kind of the same people we are. So, and you I would say from when I left the law, God, I don't know, 30 years ago or so now, mean. in a variety of different iterations, but all in the wealth management business. I've been an entrepreneur and the same is true of my partner. So we just line Gregory Wilnau: So you Peter Culver: up well with those kind of people. Gregory Wilnau: Sounds like that's because you are that type you are that type of person. Peter Culver: I think we share those attributes of being maybe creative is a little bit too much, but we're optimistic, we're forward looking, that kind of thing. you need to be that way, I think, to be a successful entrepreneur. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, I mean I would agree you have to look you definitely have to look forward or or it or it helps. Ruminating is the key to un rumination is the key to unhappiness too, looking back Peter Culver: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: r looking back too much. Other than learning from the lessons, right? You want to learn look back to learn from the lessons and then move on, I think. I love how you're there's a lot of synergy between you and your culture and and your clients. That's really cool. I want to talk more about how you work with your clients in in a little bit, but first I'd like to understand a little bit more about some of the questions that they typically ask when they might meet for you might meet with you for the first time. What's what's keeping them up at night? What are some of the questions that they have? Peter Culver: So again, the way our firm is designed is that kind of the front door in is addressing what is often one of their main pain points, which is paying taxes. And they have kind of two senses. it's just a lot. If they're really successful just in absolute terms, the amount of money they're paying in taxes is a big amount. We have clients that pay millions of dollars in taxes. Two, they don't get the vast majority of them recommendations from their CPAs about ways to reduce their taxes. Their CPAs tend to be more people who take the numbers that the entrepreneur gives them and puts them on the tax return and then tells them what they owe. And so I think they have sort of an instinctive sense that there must be a better way. or a different way, but I'm not Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Peter Culver: getting that input from my CPA. So, you know, the kind of questions they, you know, can I really reduce my taxes by how much? How would I do that? Are there any risks in doing things to reduce their taxes? So that's usually, that's the first part of the conversation is Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Peter Culver: tackling that. pain point that they have around taxes. Gregory Wilnau: That gut feeling kind of there must be something we could do here, but I'm not getting us n yeah. Peter Culver: And there is, there's lots of things they can do. And then it may expand from, whoa, wait a minute, now, let's just say I saved a couple hundred thousand dollars in taxes, what am I gonna do with that money? And that often opens up, excuse me, a broader question about what are they trying to do with their money beyond just getting rich and... Do they have charitable interests? What's their family situation? Where they are, they in their life journey. Do they have charitable intent? Those kinds of things. And that would go back to this, yes, it's great to be rich and I suppose everyone would rather be rich than not be rich. But surprisingly, I think to a lot of people, entrepreneurs don't, that's not the end of the story for them is just to have a balance sheet or Gregory Wilnau: Right. Peter Culver: a P &L. They, They want to do something and accomplish something with their life and they have lots of other goal. Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: Their next adventure. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Save on taxes and fund your next adventure. That's Peter Culver: Yeah, yeah. Well, and Gregory Wilnau: I love that. Peter Culver: we are, actually, if people look at the website, I mean, our tagline for Wealth Thrive is less tax, more abundance. And we chose that word abundance because we think it has a connotation that is much broader than just monetary wealth. Gregory Wilnau: Right. It taps more into meaning and purpose. I love too how you've showed how Peter Culver: And you've probably heard, mean, lot of entrepreneurs sometimes get afflicted with sort of the scarcity problem, you know, and they're so worried they're never gonna have enough, so then they have to have more and more and more. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Peter Culver: And I think we try and get them to slow down a little bit and think about what are the other parts of their life that are rich or could be richer? Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Yeah, because wealth is many different things than money. Many different things. I love how you've showed at least I'm I my suspicion is that you've illustrated these two points, the interlinking in your logo. You have the yellow side and the white side, and they're coming together. I think that's Peter Culver: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: how you've illustrated visually, conceptually, those things coming together. Peter Culver: Correct. Gregory Wilnau: So that's pretty cool. All right. What's a typical situation that one of your clients might need you to lead them through? Like, what's the most common situation? Peter Culver: So I think there are two. maybe three, but mostly two. So very simplistically, there are three types of taxes that we help clients address. Income taxes. So that's the tax on the sum of their W-2 wages if they have any distributions, if they own an entity, real estate income, investment income, all that stuff. That's going to generate often a requirement that they pay this year, next year, the year after that, an annual tax, either to the federal government and if they live in a taxing state, not like Florida, like you, they might Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Peter Culver: have to pay tax to their state. So that's number one. And there's a series of strategies that work well against income tax. Because a lot of our clients are entrepreneurs, at any given moment, probably half a dozen of them are heading towards selling their business. So that's going to generate a capital gain, right? A sale of an asset for more than its original value. There's a whole set of other strategies that that can benefit from plus that is often a very life-changing moment for the entrepreneur. If they're still in their business and still working, they're gonna pay income tax this year and next year and the year after that. If they're having that kind of once-in-a-lifetime or maybe twice-in-a-lifetime sale of a business and exit, we call it, that starts to, we hope, get them thinking about, well, what am I gonna do after I sell my business? And many of them, aren't thinking they're going to go back into business. They're going to make some kind of transition. Gregory Wilnau: They're gonna retire, right? Peter Culver: Well, most entrepreneurs never retire because it's not part of their DNA, but they may Gregory Wilnau: That's the yeah. Absolutely. Peter Culver: decide that they don't want to work the way they used to. So Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Peter Culver: that kind of opens up, well, they used to get all their income from their active work, right? They worked in their business. If they don't do that, and they sold their business for cash, they've got to figure out how to have that cash generate the income that they need to live on in the future. That's a mathematical financial Gregory Wilnau: Sure. Peter Culver: planning type problem, but I think they start to realize that when we tell a great story, we had a client from Arizona, sold a business for a very nice exit, eight figures. So the exit's over. Gregory Wilnau: Wow, congrats. That's awesome. Peter Culver: Mike, how's it going? He literally said, I'm so depressed. I can't believe it. And we said, when we know, we hear the story all the time, but talk to us about that. And what Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Mm-hmm. Peter Culver: he said was, I really didn't realize until I sold my business, how much of my ego, my sense of net worth, my values, my day to day life were Gregory Wilnau: My identity. Yeah. Peter Culver: tied up in my business, right? And he's, you use this analogy. If I went into my company, I could wear my bathing suit and everybody knows who I am. It's like I have a sign on my forehead that says CEO, you know, he said, Gregory Wilnau: Uh-huh. Peter Culver: if I go to Walmart, nobody knows who the heck I am and nobody cares. so, and Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah. Peter Culver: it wasn't an ego thing. was more of that his identity was so tied up in the business. And so when our clients are going through that journey, we're trying to coach them. Gregory Wilnau: To prepare for that, right? Ahead of time. Peter Culver: The easy part is the math. We can show them how to pay less in taxes. How do you get ready for this life after you sell your business? And they should start thinking about that years before they sell their business. Many don't, but at least we can begin to sensitize them, if that's the right word, to think about. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, get get them get their brain to start thinking about it to get them ready and mentally prepared. I had a similar experience with one of with one of my businesses where I actually had I was the only one doing it for so long and then I put a team in place and the team was so good that I didn't have to do anything. Peter Culver: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: So so for six, eight months, I literally forced myself not to look at, touch, talk to my business or my clients. and for six months I did that. And man, I was so depressed and bored because I felt like I had nothing to do. I felt like I had no purpose. We get a lot of meaning Peter Culver: Well then this guy... Gregory Wilnau: and f and from from the work that we do. We want to feel useful. So yeah. Peter Culver: 100%. 100%. And that's maybe a more challenging job than helping them save money on taxes, but in a lot of ways it's a more interesting and meaningful job if we can be successful and we like Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Peter Culver: to try. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Well, you're you're illustrating those two things, the intersection of I think Peter Culver: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: meaning and and money, with your logo too. But and it seems like that's a common theme, for you. And that's the people part of it that you like. It's not as technical, Peter Culver: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: but it's much more nuanced. Where do Peter Culver: much harder? Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: where do you typically find your clients? or how do they they they find you? Where do they come from? Peter Culver: I would say a couple of ways. So one, my partner and I are very active in a variety of, if the audience is familiar with this, entrepreneurial sort peer-to-peer organizations. YPO, the Young Presidents Organization, EO, the Entrepreneurs Organization, something called the Founders Club. That's a similar, slightly excuse me, younger audience. There's another group called PEF, post exit founders. those are attractive to us, one, because they're entrepreneurial organizations. they tend to, the people who are members tend to have the mindset that we like, and Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Peter Culver: they also tend to kind of hit our economic numbers. So we've been active as members. as speakers to those organizations. My partner's a very prolific writer, emailer, LinkedIn, all that kind of stuff. I will tell you, we have not been as successful in that arena as acquiring clients. But... Gregory Wilnau: Which arena was that? you said social media, digital marketing? Peter Culver: Yeah, of just Facebook and stuff like that. think those other organizations where we spend a long time building up a relationship and a reputation and things like that, that's kind of our lead feeder right now. And then, you know, certainly any number of traditional ways, you know, you have a new client, you do a good job for the Gregory Wilnau: Referrals. Yeah. Peter Culver: client, they refer you to their buddy or whatever. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Though Peter Culver: But we've Gregory Wilnau: that's always nice, right? When somebody refr ref Peter Culver: that's the best. Gregory Wilnau: sends their friends or family to you, there is no higher compliment. You know. Yeah. All right. Peter Culver: That's the best, yeah. Yeah, I have a guy I work with. This little thing at the bottom of his email is something like, there's no higher compliment that you can pay me than referring a friend or a family member. That's well said, I think. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. I I agree. I agree. All right. So if we've talked about you, we talked about your clients and a let's talk a little bit more about your approach. So let's say maybe you could walk me through walk us through your actual process. So when when somebody becomes Peter Culver: 100%. Gregory Wilnau: a client today, what does onboarding look like? What what happens the first couple of weeks? Peter Culver: So the whole process, we would initially ask them to share with us some very, very basic data points about their financial situation. if anybody wants, if you go to our website, there's a little thing that says contact us and you click on a button, it asks you to fill out a super short questionnaire which asks for the following information. What state do you live in? As I said before, that may affect the opportunity level. What is your tax filing status? That's a little bit of a oinky-doinky thing, but do you file, are you married and you file joint, single, head of household, that has some impact. What do you project your income will be this year? And if they can do it, how much is W-2? How much is distributions, real estate income, investment income? Do you have any significant deductions that you anticipate this year? If they've already got some tax savings, we don't want them to do more than they need. So most don't have those because that's why they're coming to us. We ask them how much tax they've paid in the last three years. So in this case, that would be 23, 24, 25. And the reason is that one of the strategies that we use a lot in the right case gives the client the opportunity to go back in time. get refunds of taxes that they've paid in prior years. So that kind of Gregory Wilnau: Whoa. Psh, that is awesome. Peter Culver: opens people's eyes. So let's say we have that information. Then we have a tool that we've developed which very quickly will give an initial what we call tax projection. So it'll start to show Mr. and Mrs. Jones, they live in California, they're married filing joint, they made a million bucks last year. Here's the impact of using a series of different strategies that they might use. And then we would invite them to a phone call where we would show them that initial projection. It wouldn't be the final word, but all we're trying to do is give them a vision that if they work with us and they pay our consulting fee, they'll see in the right case that the potential Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Peter Culver: benefit is multiples of the fee. So hopefully that's helpful in making them see that it would be valuable. Then Gregory Wilnau: Absolutely. Peter Culver: if they become a client, we use a pretty structured process, which we call discover, design, deploy. And you could translate that maybe fact gathering, recommendations. implementation. So we want to first gather all the information we can about their financial life, balance sheet, income statement, past tax returns. If they have entities, LLCs, partnerships, corporations, there are opportunities to reduce taxes by things inside the entity before money even gets distributed to them as individuals. So we want to look at that. So we gather all that information, we probably have a short call with them, because we would have questions about their information. So Gregory Wilnau: Of course. Peter Culver: we take that information and maybe two or three weeks later, that would be the discover phase. Now we study up and we turn to the design phase and that has kind of two steps. One, we would say, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, we looked at your information, we studied all your documents, here are five ideas. of ways that you might reduce your taxes. And we'll describe those ways from two different perspectives. One, what's the math, right? If you did Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Peter Culver: strategy number one, how much money in taxes would you save? If you did strategy number two, how much would you save? That's pretty straightforward. That's just math. We also go through, I guess what I would call more qualitative aspects of tax strategy, which is How much of their time is it gonna take? Entrepreneurs tend to be busy people. They don't need a whole nother new project. How complicated are they? Some people don't like complexity. Some Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Peter Culver: people appreciate that complexity sometimes leads to a better result. How much of their money is it gonna involve? And then, Gregory Wilnau: Right. Or the details. Some people aren't details people, others are. Yeah. Yeah. Peter Culver: often important consideration is, it a straightforward, authorized, run-of-the-mill tax strategy that they've just never heard of before? Or is it a somewhat more creative tax strategy, some of which we've created ourselves? So you're trying to strike a balance between a good financial result Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Peter Culver: and a series of strategies that they'll be comfortable with. So we go through that, and let's say if we recommended five, we might end up with two or three that we center on, that we both agree, these make sense for Mr. And Mrs. Entrepreneur. And then you go to the third phase, which is we lead them through the implementation, the deploy phase. There's not a whole lot that they have to do there, but ultimately they're the taxpayer. They may have to sign some forms, Gregory Wilnau: Right. Yeah. Peter Culver: make some investments that will produce good tax results, things like that. But we're kind of soup to nuts. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Peter Culver: from analysis to recommendation to implementation. We're leading them through that process. Gregory Wilnau: I love that. And during the deploy phase, what does it look like to work with you? Do you guys check in like once a quarter, once per year? What is what does that look like? Peter Culver: So I think there two parts to that. One is... Usually because the cadence of taxes is annual We're trying to complete in the first year all the work we can to save him as much money on taxes in that year, right? So Essentially we do whatever is necessary to get him over the finish line and we're kind of an on-call advisor Because it's new to them at that point. They probably have not done this before Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Peter Culver: What tends to happen is if they like the results which is usually almost all the time and they like working with us, then they might continue next year if they're still gonna have to pay taxes next year. Then it tends to fall into more of a rhythm like you've talked about. Hey, let's check in at the beginning of the year so we have a sense of where we're headed. We'll check in with them a couple times during the year. What's it look like your income is gonna be during this year? What are some things that you can do? One of the things that comes up a lot is that if we can reduce someone's taxes by a significant amount, they may be able to reduce either or both their withholding on their W-2 type income, i.e. keeping money in their bank and not giving it to the government, or reducing their estimated taxes. So there's some strategy around that at the beginning. And then I would say, We might check in, most of our clients don't file until October 15th, but some do file on April 15th, so there might be a touch point there. Gregory Wilnau: Right, right, yeah. Peter Culver: April 15th is significant even if they aren't filing because they might need to make an estimated tax payment at that point, so we're involved then. I would say then usually right about this time of the year, okay, we got four months left. What do you think your year's gonna look like? And we're really trying to lock down the strategies that make sense and begin that implementation process so we get everybody over the finish line by the end of the year. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. I love how you've got a very structured process, but it creates the underpinning of structure that allows you to kind of creative creatively operate around to deliver ideal outcomes. Obviously, you know, outcomes are never promised in this industry. Peter Culver: Yeah, I I think that that may be a vestige of being a lawyer. So I tend to Gregory Wilnau: Ha ha ha. Peter Culver: have that. And maybe that was why I became a lawyer. I do have a Or I think an organized mind and I like processes. like Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Peter Culver: I think there's a happy medium enough structure so that it's repeatable and sensible and understandable, but not so much that it drives people crazy. So, yeah. Gregory Wilnau: Right. Stru structure with a goal to produce an outcome, not process for its Peter Culver: And we have, Gregory Wilnau: own sake. Peter Culver: you know, the individual clients all have different situations. And so you need some kind of unifying process so that Gregory Wilnau: That's right. Peter Culver: you're not just jumping on the phone and winging it with them every time. so, and we have a whole system to track where are the different clients in the various stages of the process so that for them, we get as much done as we can by the end of the year. And we want to do that because that's how we get paid. just to be honest, but Gregory Wilnau: I love it. Yeah. No, no, no. Peter Culver: yeah, so. Gregory Wilnau: Well, Peter, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing more about your story, your unique approach, how you work with your clients and your and your Peter Culver: The pleasure. Gregory Wilnau: process. For anyone who's interested in getting in touch with you, what should they do next? Where should they go? Peter Culver: Yeah, I think the simplest thing is if they go to our website, which is just www.wealththrive.com, they can do a tour there of a lot of the stuff we've talked about, but literally on the landing page for the website, there's a button that I think says contact us or whatever, and they can fill out two things. One, if they just want to, hey, I'd like to chat with you more about what you do, they can do that. If they're interested in an initial sense of what their tax saving opportunities are, when they click on that button, there's a little questionnaire that covers just the data points I mentioned a few minutes ago that then we put into our tool to generate that initial tax projection. Gregory Wilnau: So that is wealthrive.com Peter Culver: Correct. Gregory Wilnau: W E L T H R I V E dot com and then click on contact us. All right. Peter Culver: Right, yep. Yeah, and love to, we're always happy to take a look at someone's initial situation and see if it's a way to give them an initial concrete sense so that we don't waste their time and they don't waste ours and nobody wants to do either, right? So, yeah. Gregory Wilnau: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, all right, Peter. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story with us. I appreciate ya. Peter Culver: great. I enjoyed it.