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How Your LLC Fails · The Perfect RIA

0:26
Jamie: We all know what the S stands for, don't we?
0:29
Shenanigans. Welcome back TPR Nation. This is Jamie Shilanski
0:33
in an episode of Worlds to Conquer. And today we are going
0:36
to be talking about my favorite types of small businesses, which
0:40
are S corps. And we all know what Subchapter S stands for.
0:44
It's for shenanigans, because that is what I see most business
0:50
owners do repetitively. They start up a business, they make
0:53
it an S corp election, because all roads lead to S corps. In
0:57
fact, I was sitting with the CPA and he said that it's a standard
1:00
joke that in the CPA community, that if the answer on some type
1:05
of continuing education or examination CPE is on there, and
1:09
the answer could be a sub chapter s, always take the S
1:13
election, because that is where almost all the correct answers
1:16
lie. And certainly, when I went to structure a couple of
1:19
organizations with different attorneys and CPAs, because when
1:22
you start up different practices and different lines of work and
1:25
you're bringing in multiple people - I want to explore all
1:29
of the options in front of me. Now, under the Tax Cup and Job
1:33
Act, there were a lot of really great restructurings that
1:36
sometimes a C Corp, as in Charlie, a C Corp, made a ton
1:40
cents for people, but there's also different levels of
1:43
taxation that you can pay. So really start off by saying that
1:46
if you start a company, because a lot of people get confused
1:49
when I talk to them about this, and even if they're in the
1:51
profession of finance, and especially if they're not in
1:55
finance, if they are one of these poor individuals out there
1:58
that have a really brilliant idea or skill set, and they
2:01
absolutely have a hobby that they love, and so they love it
2:04
so much they decide to turn it into a business so that they can
2:07
forget why they loved it in the first place. Then I want to make
2:11
sure that I have these conversations about how we
2:14
design and structure different entities. So the very first
2:17
thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take a legal
2:19
assessment, that's my very first approach. And I say, Do we have
2:23
a single individual? Do we have multiple individuals, who's all
2:26
coming into this organization? And then I take a little bit
2:30
different approach to those people. Most people decide to
2:33
say, hey, what do they have in place right now? And let's get
2:37
the entity structured as such. I say, what are we doing in the
2:41
next five to 10 years? Where's our goal at, what is the
2:44
ultimate this? And the reason I ask those questions is because
2:49
often we start up an organization and don't give
2:53
ourselves an exit strategy. We don't know how to either get out
2:57
because we want to, because we have to. I can't tell you how
3:01
many people I have talked to in the business world that have
3:05
started really incredible businesses and painted
3:08
themselves into an absolute corner because they did sloppy
3:13
financials and they had no long term planning in mind. So I sit
3:18
down and you know, does this mean developing a business plan?
3:21
Sometimes, sometimes it's worth it. Depends what we're doing and
3:25
if we go borrow money, if we need to find investment, etc,
3:28
but I'll build a business plan always in that case. But a lot
3:31
of times when I tell people, oh, let's start with the business
3:33
plan. It's such a laborious task for them that it just sucks all
3:37
the energy and all the fun out of what they're trying to
3:39
create. So instead, we do a lot of vision mapping and say, Okay,
3:43
great. What does this look like long term, where are we going,
3:45
where are we headed? What does this look like? And the very
3:49
first question that everyone gets super excited about is,
3:52
what to call the business? What should I call this business?
3:54
What is the website domain that I should have? I want to have a
3:57
rock star killer name. Now I'm not attached to a name. I think
4:00
a name should be pretty clear about what you do, but keep in
4:04
mind that our RIA or ask is named Shilanski and Associates.
4:07
So what do we sound like? We sound like a law firm. That's
4:10
what we sound like. In fact, we get calls every single week that
4:13
says, Do you guys practice XYZ type of law? So it's not saying
4:18
that you can't name yourself, you know, wealth partners or use
4:22
your last name, it certainly works. And if you don't think
4:25
you works, think about Charles Schwab, when Raymond James,
4:28
Edward Jones, come on. It works. Schlotzsky's deli. It's a deli
4:32
franchise, brand that sells delicatessen sandwiches. It
4:36
works. Guys, everything out there works. But you need to
4:39
choose what's your long term strategy? Is this something that
4:42
I'm building because I want legacy and I want name
4:44
recognition? Because that's what that is, that's ego and that's
4:47
okay? Or is this something that I want to build and I could
4:50
potentially hand over to someone's to run it some other
4:53
day that isn't tied to my face? Is it tied to my name? And I'm
4:57
not the only one responsible for the brand.So we sit down and we
5:00
kind of troubleshoot that, and the naming convention really
5:02
gives a lot of insight when you have conversations with small
5:05
business owners about where they're headed, and also opening
5:08
up other doors, other possibilities, other ideas. So
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once we have a talk about that, and it's a great Okay, let's go
5:14
through like, the risks now, right? So whenever you do a SWOT
5:17
analysis, so strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
5:21
threats. That's what SWAT stands for. So you draw four boxes on a
5:25
piece of paper, you identify each one of those and go through
5:27
them. And if you're sitting there with a business owner who
5:31
is the one that's really driving the conversation, this is the
5:34
one that's the most charismatic, the one that gets done, the one
5:37
that really drives the idea forward. They're always your
5:40
biggest strength. And as soon as I write that person's name down,
5:43
I immediately go to the diagonal box under threats, and I write
5:46
that name down again, and then always, and they always end up
5:48
looking at me like, What are you doing? I'm not a threat to the
5:51
organization we just identified. I'm the biggest strength, yeah,
5:53
but if you are one person and you are the biggest strength to
5:56
an organization, that means you're also my biggest threat,
5:58
because our success now hinges entirely on you, and you get
6:01
into one bad PR or litigation issue, and now we can't recover
6:06
from that. We've got a lot of spending to have to do. So I
6:08
want to identify that and also get some thinking about maybe
6:11
this is bigger than just me. Most of the successful small
6:14
business owners that I know didn't mean to build as big of
6:16
organizations as what they did. It wasn't what they were five
6:18
years old and certain out to. They just found an area that was
6:21
either underserviced or had a really great idea and said, I
6:24
can do this better than somebody else. And then they get started.
6:27
I mean, you want to talk about the number one hack to get rid
6:29
of head trash. And I'm telling you right now, the second that
6:31
you start feeling inadequate, not good enough, not smart
6:33
enough, or, like everybody else has it figured out, go to a
6:36
mastermind. Go to a small group of other people operating at a C
6:40
suite level. So those are your chief operating officers, your
6:43
chief executives, etc. Go in a room with those people start
6:46
having conversations, start, you know, picking their brain, start
6:48
asking them questions. And you know what, you're gonna
6:49
determine real quick, that not a lot of people are smarter than
6:52
you are. It's incredible how you can get it in a room full of
6:55
really expertise people and discover that you have the same
7:00
stuff, your makeup of the same mold. They might have one or two
7:03
things figured out better than you do, but they have the same
7:05
struggles, the same battles, the same problems that you do, and
7:09
they're trying to navigate it through as well. And guess what?
7:11
They also have head trash. I've never once met with somebody
7:15
unless they were a completely out of touch narcissist that
7:18
didn't have some type of head trash that they weren't good
7:20
enough, weren't smart enough, weren't thinking things through
7:22
enough. We weren't being strategic enough. And so if you
7:24
want to ditch that head trash go into a room full of just other
7:30
people who you think are smarter and learn, and if they are
7:32
smarter, great, now go learn from them. Go figure things out
7:37
from them. But they will start working and identifying and
7:40
giving you ways to problem solve all of that head trash. All
7:43
right, so now we can decide, all right, we need to create a kind
7:47
of company that can be handed off to somebody else. Now we're
7:49
going to choose the legal structure, and so sole
7:52
proprietor limited liability companies. I'm a big fan of
7:55
limited liability companies, but there are two types of limited
7:58
liability companies you can set up, you can set up the standard
8:00
LLC, or you can do an LLP, a limited liability partnership.
8:04
And so both have pros and cons, you want to really bring in an
8:07
attorney. At this point, you want to kind of go through a
8:09
rudimentary sketch with your clients, what's most appropriate
8:12
for you, just so that when you do bring in the corporate
8:15
attorney, and do not use your estate planning attorney. Estate
8:17
Planning Attorney to work on what they have it in the name
8:19
estate planning, you need to go hire a business attorney,
8:23
somebody that does with Corporation, small businesses
8:26
and even potentially litigation. You need to find somebody that
8:29
specializes in this. Do not choose a general practitioner,
8:33
because they are going to have glaring problems inside of your
8:36
operating agreements and buy sell agreements and your
8:38
succession plans. Make sure that you sketch out your long term
8:42
objectives. You sort of like a checklist. Does this apply? Does
8:45
this apply? So that way, when you bring in the attorney, you
8:48
flushed out a lot of these ideas and concepts. So you're working
8:51
with your business attorney, and they'll bring up the great
8:53
things like, hey, actually, I don't think you need this.
8:55
I think you need that. And they'll talk to you about all of
8:57
the reasons a limited liability company draws a moat around all
9:01
the assets, serves people protected. They'll talk to you
9:03
about piercing the corporate veil, so what is piercing the
9:07
corporate veil mean? When you set up a corporation, you are
9:10
trying to distance yourself as an owner or shareholder from the
9:14
entity. So in your mind, I want to think about, you know, the
9:16
only the human has a heartbeat. But when we breathe life into
9:19
this unlimited liability company. When we create it, we
9:22
are giving it life. And what we want to do is we want to say,
9:25
Hey Jamie and her LLC are two different entities. I don't want
9:30
to take all of my family's wealth and assets and tie it
9:33
into this company. I want this company to operate independently
9:37
of me and my family, and so when I do that, I set up this
9:42
corporation. Now I have to abide by the laws and regulations of
9:47
your particular state, because this goes off the site so it
9:50
stays specific about how my LLC should be operated. You can't
9:54
just spin up an LLC and fail to do any of the work. If you fail
9:58
to do any of the work that it takes to create an LLC and
10:01
maintain an LLC long term, then you'll do what is referred to
10:05
piercing the corporate veil, and piercing the corporate veil is
10:08
literally taking a pinprick into the red balloon and saying, ha,
10:10
gotcha. You were supposed to set up this corporate entity. You
10:13
were supposed to run it like this. You failed to do so.
10:17
Therefore you're going to lose all of the liability protection
10:21
that you had with the LLC so piercing the corporate veil is
10:24
not impossible to happen. It happens if you run your business
10:28
sloppy, that's what this is, or somebody else opposing counsel,
10:31
just as a really good attorney, that could happen too. I mean,
10:34
you can do all the things right and think you've completely
10:37
protected yourself, but somebody else's attorney just might be
10:40
better than you were and be able to pierce it. So how do you
10:43
protect yourself? How
10:44
do you make sure that you are going things, and when you're
10:46
working with clients who have set this up, creating this as a
10:49
value add, to check in with them constantly and say, Hey, do we
10:52
have these things, you know, are we abiding by Corporation laws?
10:56
Are we doing our bylaws, our articles of incorporation? Are
10:58
we doing updates? Are we getting memos out to all of the
11:01
shareholders. Are we also giving them copies of the financials on
11:05
a regular basis? Are we documenting them? Are putting
11:07
inside of our corporate binder? Are we doing all of those
11:11
things? Now, if you're doing all of those things, here's where it
11:14
gets a little sloppy, and this is why I want to talk to so once
11:17
we set up the legal entity, we have to make a tax selection,
11:20
and you can decide if you how you want to be taxed as a
11:22
partnership, as S corp, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not a CPA
11:25
or atorney. I just like the business planning and
11:27
development. And then I bring in those experts in those
11:31
particular field to help me final construct this. So I think
11:33
of myself more as a general contractor building a house. I
11:36
got to have a little bit of knowledge on a lot of stuff in
11:39
case things go wrong, or I got to check up on certain things,
11:42
but I'm not the guy that's responsible for pouring the
11:44
concrete correctly. How do we do that? How do we make sure that
11:48
we're keeping ourselves free of making sloppy mistakes? I just
11:52
mentioned all the ones before, making sure you're doing your
11:54
due diligence and following all the rules, but then also make
11:58
sure that if you have capital calls, did every single person
12:01
make the capital call? If every single person didn't make the
12:04
capital call? Did we now trigger buy-sell agreement. And here's
12:08
the one that I see constantly with small business owners,
12:11
because it's just easier for them. Or maybe this is how they
12:14
got started before, when it turned was a hobby, and then
12:16
they turned it into a business. Or maybe they have real estate.
12:19
This is where it gets more technical, and you as a
12:22
financial advisor, have to pay attention to this, and you pay
12:25
attention to this for your clients and for yourself.
12:27
Co-mingling assets. When personal and corporate assets
12:31
are mixed together, you make it very difficult to distinguish
12:35
between the two. The court may decide that the corporate veil
12:39
was pierced because you commingled those assets. So what
12:43
does that mean? That means separate bank account. Means
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separate titling. That means separate deposits. The way that
12:50
I see a lot of this kind of go sideways very quickly is when
12:53
business owners have to cut checks for things, and they just
12:56
use their personal account, and then they transfer money back
13:00
and forth between their personal account and their corporate
13:02
account. Corporate account with no documentation as why? Another
13:07
way that I see it go sloppy is they make deposits in their
13:10
personal account that really should have been for the
13:12
corporation and made out to the corporation, but maybe they knew
13:16
the person really well as a vendor they'd work with a long
13:18
time. Somebody was out of town, somehow, some way, something got
13:23
mistaken, and it went inside a personal account when it should
13:26
have been inside of the corporate so really paying
13:29
attention to make sure that we have the tying these wall up
13:32
between the two is a critical aspect to making sure you don't
13:36
pierce this corporate veil that I'm speaking of. So when we talk
13:40
about corporate shenanigans, right? Those S corp elections,
13:44
these are the things that we want. Now. What are the other
13:47
areas I see this happening that become super, super sloppy. Two,
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there's two other sloppiness always occurs with S corp
13:54
people, and don't think you're exempt from it, especially if
13:57
you work with a lot of small business owners and you think,
13:59
Oh, they're being sloppy. This is the time to look inside and
14:04
see if you are equally as sloppy as they are. And here are the
14:07
two other methods that I look at. One, what kind of
14:11
shenanigans are we running on the profit and loss sheet? Where
14:15
are we writing off things that we really should not be writing
14:18
off just because we're getting the business deduction. Now,
14:21
does that mean I'm saying you can't have your kids on payroll.
14:23
You can't have your spouse on payroll this? No, I'm not saying
14:27
that at all. You absolutely can. What's your long term plan if
14:31
you're building an S corp, and it's only ever going to be you
14:34
and your spouse, you and maybe one child that you're running it
14:37
with cool run those types of things. You put the spouses on
14:40
payroll, put the kids on payroll, start funding different
14:43
things, buy the cars through the company. I'm all about getting
14:47
legitimate tax write offs. I could be a patriot every single
14:50
day of the week for half off I spend cutting a check to the
14:53
IRS. However, that doesn't negate me from the
14:57
responsibility of making sure I'm documenting those things and
15:01
doing them legitimately. Now this is the other part of the
15:05
nanny shenanigans that I just talked about with running games
15:07
on the profit and loss. It ties into the second part of the
15:10
shenanigans that I see, and that is a failure to have a
15:13
succession plan in place. You will not live forever. You will
15:18
not live forever. And you can ask Sybil why you shouldn't. So
15:22
with that in mind, you want to make sure with the company, how
15:26
are you transitioning your clients? How are you making sure
15:29
somebody inherits this book of business or maybe buys you out?
15:33
So we got a couple of different options. There's a lot of
15:35
private equity money going around right now. If you have
15:38
not read the Plunder, put it on your must read this summer list.
15:41
It is jaw dropping material. But if you want out of this
15:46
business, or if, God forbid, you become disabled, and you have to
15:50
get out of this business real quick. How many financial
15:53
advisors raise your hand right now. Just move your index finger
15:56
if you don't want to put it up all the way. But how many of you
15:59
out there have disability insurance on you, on you. If you
16:03
don't, it's cheap and you're stupid for not having it in
16:06
place. Because what happens when your greatest asset becomes
16:11
disabled and you can no longer give clients advice? There's a
16:14
lot you can do as a financial advisor, but if you can't think,
16:18
if you can't communicate, that is becomes very problematic to
16:21
being an advisor, so making sure that you have disability covered
16:26
on you, because a lot of us advisors out there, myself
16:28
included, you've got one primary breadwinner in the household.
16:32
You have one. Your whole lifestyle is funded off of one's
16:36
person's income. Primarily, that doesn't mean the other person or
16:40
other party doesn't contribute, that's not what I'm saying. I'm
16:43
saying that if you lost the ability to earn your income
16:46
there would be dramatic changes in your life, most likely.
16:49
That's why we get into finance, and if you've been in this
16:51
business longer than five years years, this probably applies to
16:54
you. So making sure there's really great, cheap resources
16:59
for joining certain associations and getting disability insurance
17:02
put in place, we're pretty much a low risk factor. God forbid
17:06
something happened, like a car accident, but it's not like
17:08
we're running around with nail guns all day in our line of
17:11
profession. So there's no excuse or reason we shouldn't have
17:14
this. So as we start looking at the succession side of things,
17:17
how are we going to bring somebody else in? Either life
17:20
goes as it should. And you want to retire one day, you know,
17:23
late into your 60s or 70s, and you want to hand this practice
17:27
off to a protege, Junior advisor that you're bringing in. You
17:30
want to do a buyout with other advisors. You want to sell it to
17:33
somebody else. How have you set up your financials to make that
17:36
happen? What succession agreements do you have in place
17:39
right now? What do your clients know about this succession?
17:43
We're all required to disclose what you know on our disaster
17:47
recovery if something happened to the core members of this
17:50
where, how do people access our accounts? Who shoud they
17:53
contact, etc. But have you sat down and really mapped it out,
17:57
and if you've mapped it out, have you communicated to that
18:00
person who you're thinking of leaving all your book of
18:03
business to that. These are your intentions. This is how it
18:06
works. Now I have seen successions go really well, and
18:09
I have seen successions go really bad, as most of us who've
18:13
been in this business greater than 10 years, we all have our
18:16
stories to tell. So one of the things that you have to be
18:20
careful of is a lot of advisors structure their succession so
18:24
that they're spouse is the one inheriting a portion of their
18:27
book of business, their income coming in for X amount of years.
18:31
Now, if that is the case, you need to make sure it is spelled
18:34
out with the person that is going to be receiving that
18:37
because I just recently, gosh, no, actually, it wasn't recent.
18:41
It was about six years ago. There was a financial advisor
18:44
who passed away. He left to his daughter, who was just recently
18:48
licensed in the business at that time, and he unexpectedly died
18:52
of lung cancer. Signs. He went into the doctor thought he had a
18:56
chest cold. They said, Nope, you've got advanced lung cancer.
18:59
And boom, he was gone within, you know, six weeks. So his book
19:02
of business, he had already set up a succession plan. He was
19:04
leading it to his license. And in that succession plan, 80% of
19:09
the revenue went to the mom for the next five years. That was
19:15
the succession that was the how you're going to buy,
19:17
essentially, my book of business and and everything. Now in your
19:20
mind, you're thinking, Okay, what was the daughter taking
19:23
care of her mom? That's no problem. Have a great
19:26
relationship, really strong, close family. So it wasn't a
19:31
problem, necessarily. But did it create financial strain? Yeah,
19:35
sure did. Because this young girl just got licensed and was
19:39
building her own book of business, and now she has to for
19:42
the next five years, she inherited all more clients than
19:46
she had any capacity to manage. Just independently, she couldn't
19:50
go bring on her own book plus manage these clients, and she
19:54
gave 80% of the revenue to somebody else. So imagine right
19:59
now if anyone in your succession plan would work for 20% of the
20:03
revenue, that's huge. Just use round numbers. Let's say that,
20:07
and he was bringing substantially more than this,
20:09
but let's just say that it was $100,000 would she work full
20:13
time developing relationships and at this job with those many
20:17
clients for $20,000 that's the real question you have to ask
20:21
yourself so making sure that you've communicated this and
20:23
it's fair to both sides, their family didn't split up over
20:27
this. It wasn't something that was just a deal breaker. But
20:30
does that mean that, had they had a different relationship,
20:33
Had this not been a mother and a daughter, would it have been
20:36
different? Maybe, probably.
20:39
I don't know a lot of people don't want to work for 20% of
20:41
their revenue for five years before they have the prospect of
20:44
potato getting 100% so make sure you're having the conversation
20:49
with the person that you're doing the succession with, and
20:52
then what you want to do to tie those two things that I just
20:55
mentioned, the shenanigans and succession, is, I always tell
20:59
business owners, regardless of what your long term plan is,
21:02
build a business you could sell tomorrow. So keep your
21:07
financials clean. You know, if you're if you're doing
21:10
deductions and write offs, make sure you're documenting those
21:13
and the reasons why, make sure every single year you're doing
21:16
your ebitda, your earnings before interest, taxes,
21:20
amortization and depreciation. You know, if you party CPA, the
21:25
third party, CPA kicked me out and ebitda at the end of every
21:28
single year, and then I type it up in a resolution, and I go out
21:33
and I have all of the shareholders of that
21:35
organization sign off on it, and then it goes inside of my
21:38
corporate books. Now, why? Well, I have a couple of businesses
21:42
that are not with family members, and I want to make sure
21:44
that it's been the two of us, but I don't do anything
21:48
differently if it is my family members. With Shilanski and
21:51
Associates, a family owned organization. We do keep honest
21:55
people honest, and make sure we're all sitting there and
21:57
going over them because we are guilty, just like everybody else
22:02
out there, of over inflating our numbers, are thinking that we're
22:06
more than what we are worth, and so sitting down, listening to
22:09
industry standards and saying, Hey, what's the multiple that
22:12
people are getting on their practices right now? Great, pull
22:15
up my financials. Can I support that? But don't sit there and
22:18
go, Oh, I have a $2 million practice, and the multiples 10.
22:21
So somebody's totally going to give me 20, if you have not sat
22:24
there and gone through your financials with a fine tooth
22:27
comb, because many of us, even us, lansky's, we lie to
22:32
ourselves. We lie to ourselves. So if you pull yourself out of
22:36
that scenario, and you objectively go look at your
22:40
information, and if you say, hey, my revenue is $2 million
22:43
cool, pull up your profit and loss. Show me the deposits for
22:47
$2 million you know, log into your bank account, pull the
22:50
transactions, show me the deposits in which you make $2
22:53
million and that's what we need to see. Everything needs to be
22:57
evidenced and verifiable. That's SO, SO SO important.
23:01
TPR Nation, we talked a lot today about why I think the S
23:04
for sub chapter as election stands for shenanigans, and that
23:07
is because we are the ones doing the shenanigans. We are the ones
23:11
not holding ourselves and other people around us accountable.
23:14
And it works fine and dandy till you want to do something like
23:17
retire, or you have to quit, or you want to move on, or you get
23:20
a smoking deal, and you just decide it's been real, it's fun,
23:23
but not every day has been real fun. I'm out peace out Cub
23:26
Scout. So you have to determine if you're going to and by the
23:29
way, just real quick sidebar, if you're going to clean up your
23:32
financials, it can take a few years for that to be reflected
23:35
on your profit and loss on your balance sheet and on your cash
23:38
flow. If I even have a business owner wanting to be wrapping up
23:41
and they sell it for another five years, three years, two
23:44
years, whatever, I get started today, cleaning up those things,
23:47
because it takes the only time, but you also have to have
23:50
evidence that things have been cleaned up. Like, why did you
23:53
have that dramatic shift? You know, maybe you sold a book of
23:56
annuities, and so for five years, as you ran out alone on
23:59
it, you had $1/4 million of income that you won't normally
24:01
have a business. Well, then guess what's going to happen in
24:04
year six, you're going to show a loss. And so if we show those
24:07
the loss of that income, not loss of net revenue, net income,
24:10
necessarily, but we show that loss of revenue, then what am I
24:13
going to do about that? How am I going to justify that? How am I
24:17
going to explain it? How am I going to show growth in other
24:20
areas? What is my long term strategy? What is my plan? And
24:22
how am I preparing my financials today to get me where I want to
24:26
be the future. TPR Nation, this is 100% about action items. You
24:29
know, everything that we do at The Perfect RIA is about driving
24:32
to accomplish your goals. We are in the pursuit of perfection
24:35
here, and we will not stop, we will not stop leveling up and
24:38
become better and better and better at what we do. So I
24:41
shared with you some of my tips and tricks and strategies that I
24:44
do with business owners. And remember, if you're employed
24:47
with a larger practice, you still have to think like a
24:49
business owner, because we are still in charge of our own
24:52
income, and we're still going to deal with a lot of clients that
24:55
are business owners. Either they're small business owner,
24:58
they have a side hustle, or they have real estate so how are we
25:01
helping them structure things that makes the most long term
25:04
sense to get them where they want to be. Action Item: Review
25:07
all of your financials. We talked a lot about piercing the
25:10
corporate veil. What does it mean? And could you potentially
25:13
have your own corporate veil pierced if you're not operating
25:16
efficiently? What do you need to do today to make sure, now the
25:19
one tip I gave you, co mingled assets. Co mingled assets. Easy
25:22
to do, because it so do you want to take the path of least
25:25
resistance, which depositing or drawing money, and sometimes we
25:28
allow sloppiness to occur, Chinese wall. You need to have
25:31
those divisions. You have that entity up. I've helped people
25:34
pierce a lot of corporate veils, because the business owners, co
25:37
mingled assets or sign things in capacity saying that they were
25:40
part of business A and signed as a business a member on business
25:44
B, which had nothing to do with each other, sure that you have
25:47
that Chinese wall up and you're really, really clear about those
25:50
distinctions. And then also, how are we doing the shenanigans?
25:53
What write offs are we taking that we need to document
25:56
evidence and show justification for the third action item?
25:58
What's your succession plan? What's your succession plan when
26:02
the good Lord takes you home, who are your clients going to
26:04
turn to? And what does that look like? Make sure that you have
26:08
that documented, communicated, and part of your long term
26:10
planning strategy, we have this at Shilanski. How many times
26:13
clients come to us? You know why we stay here? We stay here
26:16
because, God forbid, something happens to so and so, I know I'm
26:19
part of a bigger organization. I know I'm part of a team. I know
26:23
I will be taking care of ultimately. TPR Nation, this is
26:25
Jamie Shilanski in an episode of Worlds to Conquer. Go find
26:28
people who share your values and change the world.