Ask better questions about tax-planning proposals

Source transcript, with paragraph breaks added for readability. Speaker identities have not been inferred. Verify quotations against the recording.

We're going to challenge the one adviser almost every business owner trusts without question. Nine times out of 10 when I take advice from others, it's been in their best interest, not mine. Well, the game ends December 31st at midnight. You can get a degree in accounting or become a CPA, get a master's in taxation, or become a tax attorney. You don't have to read the tax. So, I read 77,000 pages twice. You want to pay the taxes that we are required to pay, but there's no need to pay more than we are required. The way you make more money is not to work harder. It's to pay less in taxes. 2.6 million in capital gains tax on 13 million. The tax team's able to show them how to mitigate that entire 2.6 million. This is a one shot, one bite of the apple. And so you damn well better slow down, take your time, and get it right the first time cuz there is no second chances. What's the one thing that you would want

business owners to understand about protecting what they've built and stop overpaying taxes? Welcome to Beyond the Bottom Line. I'm your host Joey Lon and this show is about pulling back the curtain. How the ultra wealthy actually protect and grow the money without the gatekeeping or the complexity. Today's episode might make a lot of American business owners uncomfortable because we're going to challenge the one adviser almost every business owner trust without question and that's their CPA and their tax attorney. And I have two guests today. Joe Epie is the founder of Leveny Wealth in Fort Lauderdale. He has an accounting degree from Hawai State. He was trained the same way every CPA was trained, but 30 plus years ago, he saw the gap between what accountants learn and what business owners actually need. And he spent his entire career filling that gap. So, he's also built a true family firm. Uh his wife is his business partner. Both his sons are in the practice and they've helped hundreds of families already with tax mitigation results going

back decades. Then we got Joshua, who is the CEO of Safe and Secure Financial, a best-selling author and the inventor of the MTL process, which is a system designed to turn your savings into tax-free lifetime income. He's been featured in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and NBC Nightly News. But what makes Joshua different is where he come from. So he spent 20 plus years as a funeral director before entering finance. He sat with families in the worst moments of their lives and saw what happens when wealth protection fails. So, if you have a CPA and you think your taxes are handled, this conversation is going to change how you think about that relationship. Welcome to the show, Josh and Joe. Thank you. Joe, let me start with a uh opening question for you. So, I know we've talked a little bit be uh before the show. It's going to be interested because you're actually a CPA, right? You have an accounting degree. I'm not actually not a CPA. I have a degree in accounting. I

never took the test to become a CPA because of the fact that it really didn't prove anything. All it did was show that you could pass a test. Well, you were trained the same way every CPA in America is trained, right? Well, correct. Got it. So, again, so that's what's going to make it interesting. Uh, and again, somewhere along the way, you realize that something was missing uh to serve business owners at the highest level when it comes to tax savings, financial education, uh, and all that stuff. So, I want to I want to get your your thoughts on what did you see from the inside from those years of training uh that made you say like, yeah, the way we're being educated is just simply wrong. Well, I think a lot of it had to do with my life experience. So, I grew up in the automobile industry and my grandfather started in Canton, Ohio in 19 uh 29 on $300 of barred money uh with a gas station. His family was very very

poor. He went to Ohio State fall quarter of uh 28 and uh he was supposed to get a job in the theater there and it fell through. So, after fall quarter he had to come home. By June of 29, he got his uh father to take a $300 mortgage on the only asset they had, which was a not a very nice house, but they could get a $300 mortgage on it, and he opened the gas station. And then the Great Depression hit, and that saved my grandfather. So, my grandfather um was selling gas and used tires and used parts, and people were just keeping their cars on the road during the depression. Yeah. Yeah. And he got in the used car business after World War II. But in 1955, he bought a Chevrolet dealership. And in 1961, as it happens, the year I was born, um, he got an opportunity to go onto the first company board in the United States that was going to sell credit life, accident health insurance, and extended warranties on

car loans. And he decided it was going to be part of the industry. So, he checked it out. They were looking to put 21 new car dealers on this original board. Um, they had to invest $43,000 in the initial stock offering and he didn't have the 43 grand, but my grandmother went through the depression with him and had saved every dime she had made working in the can and gave it to him in cash. And back then you could use cash and nobody questioned it. And he bought the stock and my grandfather spent an enormous amount of time while I was growing up with me because my father was an extreme narcissist. And so I spent a lot of time after school in his office and stuff. And he was always showing me stuff in the business and his investments and stuff with his big black ledger book. And he always taught me to look ahead. What's next? What's next? What's next? Right. You got to get in front of things. Yeah. And so spin

the clock forward 10 years. It's 1971. I'm 10 years old. I'm sitting on his lap in his office. His best friend's sitting across the desk. And he sold that $43,000 investment for $2.7 million in 1971, which is like $30 million today. Yeah. His best friends give him a hard time, EP, that stock keeps going up and splitting and up and splitting. What are you doing? And he said, "Listen, I can wear one suit at a time and I can eat one steak at a time. If I'm careful with this money, my my life is my family's good for a long time to come." Six months later, Acceleration Life filed for bankruptcy. What he saw coming was competition for the first time. And so he got out. And so that lesson was drilled in my head from the time I was a little boy. Get out in front of things. So Josh and I have been working together for close to 25 years now. And but when Josh came into the business, you know, he he

did not know a lot about that. But by 2012, Josh was working virtually. Okay. Well, I saw the death of bricks and mortar coming four or five years pre-COVID. So by 15, I was already on a bandwagon that bricks and mortar dying. If you're building, you better build. It's multi multi-mixuses you can find or you're not going to survive. And then COVID threw it off a cliff. So I was 70% Zoom in my practice pre-COVID. And the minute CO hit, I went done. But what my grandfather did by drilling that in my head was got me out in front of what was coming. Right? So that always got me thinking in that direction. And what I realized from accounting school because I see everything in patterns is that we were collecting data. We were trained to collect data when the year's over after January 1st of the following year. Well, the game ends December 31st at midnight. Every single year, there's nothing you can do. So you're asking a CPA to record history. That's how

we were talked about to figure out what deductions are available, you know, from what they did instead of doing actual tax planning and tax mitigation work, right? And every client, especially those that were W2 income earners, were complaining they had no way to lower their taxes. So that set me on my journey of trying to figure out right and I have actually bothered to read the tax code twice. And here's the reason why this keeps happening over and over and over. It's because you can get a degree in accounting today, become a CPA, get a master's in taxation or become a tax attorney. You don't have to read the tax code. So I read 77,000 pages twice. Not too many pages are in our tax code today. 77,000 pages. It is not complicated reading. It's just a lot of reading. And everything in that tax code is incentive based to get people to do things. Now, we're not accountants and we don't practice account. But what we do is we're educators, right? because I've learned

in my life experience and I'm going to be 65 um in the month of April that nine times out of 10 when I take advice from others it's been in their best interest not mine. So good decisions come from proper time, proper information. The bad ones come from lack of time, lack of information, too much alcohol or some combination thereof. Our job is not to tell smart people what to do. Our time is to our job is to provide them with time and information so they make their own decisions with confidence and competence because we make decisions first emotionally on the emotional side of the brain. The logical side of the brain comes in second. So it's very important that we slow everyone down. And that's why this time of year is the perfect time to start working on your 26 tax planning because today you have opportunities to go back and clean up 25 and 24 and 23 without amending tax returns. Right? So you can literally get back up to 100% of what

you paid, right? And all we do for our clients is educate them to meet with our tax team so they're ready and prepared to meet with our tax team. And by the time they go to execute in the end, obviously we need attorneys and accountants to execute. The attorney and accountant can ask them any question they want and they're going to be able to answer it with confidence and competence because they have been educated and they know what they want and why they want it most importantly. And so nothing dis drails at that point. If you do it any other way and give someone advice, when the attorney and accountant start asking questions, they're going to they're going to start getting buyer remorse and nothing's going to get done. We would have wasted all our time and the and the client would have wasted all their time. Interesting. So, you're saying uh your your upbringing taught you to always be on the lookout about of what's coming and years ahead, prepare for that, right? Um,

so I'm trying to see again, put in my own words, the the lesson there. Is it that you think that traditional accounting training again like you said you've read all the pages and they're not even requiring to read those tax pages right for CPAs um do you think that the training is not appropriate and they're not looking ahead and more in the past and that is what is causing that big gap right is that am I saying the right thing yes you're saying exactly the right thing because everything we do as well as we're educated and trained Yeah. Right. And even certified financial planners, I know a ton of them come from a place that's a great great positioning, but they've been miseducated, mistrained. We'll get into that later. Right. So, so it's just really taking it upon yourself to take the responsibility to get educated. And so, you got to find an educator. And that's what we serve as. But we're not just an educator, we're a facilitator. So our clients, our best clients

are those that are looking for an advisor to not just educate them to these things because everybody's kept financially illiterate in the United States, but more importantly, someone that can help them execute so that it actually happens efficiently because if you try to execute on your own, it's going to get bogged down and then you're just not going to do anything and then nobody accomplishes anything. So really that's what we look for is people that don't just want to learn about this stuff but need help implementing it because that makes it work. Implementation and execution is the key to everything. That's why the most prepared team always wins the game. It's all about preparation and execution. But I I would say before implementing anything like you got to have the education part which is what's lacking in the first place, right? Like the second step is the implementation. But if you don't understand what you're being implemented on, right, then it can't it can't be efficient. It can't be right or it can't be efficient.

That's why the preparation is everything. Yeah. And when you think about it today with AI, preparation is really everything because talent is unlimited and execution with a lot of things happens automatically if the preparation was done right. Interesting. So we impress that upon everybody. It's so important to, you know, we're here to provide the information and education. so they can make wise decisions on what's best for them. Joe is an excellent at providing our clients with this information providing, you know, in a way that they can understand it. But it still takes time regardless of someone's intellect, highest intellect or whatnot, you know, it it doesn't happen overnight. Nothing good happens overnight. Like Joe said many times as well, you know, you haven't built your business overnight. We're not going to accomplish this overnight. So yeah. Yeah. That's good. Very interesting. Uh Joshua, on your end, you said you spent 20 years as a funeral director before you entered financial services yourself. Most people wouldn't connect those two careers together. Uh but I think there

I think from my understanding of what you're what you said and and explain to me is that they are deeply connected. Um what did you learn sitting with again grieving families that shaped how you think about financial planning? Well, when I was in my late 30s making, you know, getting ready to make the change, I I I didn't see any, you know, I had no clue actually what I was getting myself into. Um, you know, people have certain feelings about why they're on this earth, what they were placed here to be. Joe knows um maybe strategic coach, you know, unique ability, you know, we learned that when we were younger. Um, everybody has a unique ability and my unique ability I found at a young young age, you know, um, was to help people and I had uh, especially when I went into the funeral business by a summer job, by the way, but I immediately noticed that, oh, you know, I don't want to overstate it, but it was like a calling for me.

You know, some people use that phrase. It really was. So, and um, it meant a great deal to me. I did not make any money doing that, by the I was an employee for 22 years actually you know and um I worked very very very hard you know and u because I was extremely dedicated to the work to the families in this business I think we have clients in my previous business we had families so you know I was dealing with people obviously at really what most difficult time of their lives you know they've lost a loved one be it an elderly parent being you know a spouse a sibling And God forbid, you know, unfortunately too many times I had to deal with, you know, tragedies that I prefer not to speak of. So, but uh over the years in my mid30s, I you know, I had three children and we had my wife and I had children very young and I wasn't making any money and I wanted to spend more time with

my kids. I was working six days a week and in the evenings, etc. And um you know I wanted to make a change and uh a um friend and colleague of Joe's and I somebody that we both know um you know I'd gone to him for guidance and he said oh come work with us in the financial field and I was like oh yeah that's not for me you know I'm a counselor I help people you know in a hard time and he goes no no he goes we help people also just in a different kind of way and it took me like a couple of years until uh Howard literally dragged me into the business, frankly. But, uh, I really did need to make the change for more than one reason. Um, and the first two years I was very, very lost, frankly. Really fish out of water. I met Joe probably the first week I was there. He was in an adjacent office to where I was at the time, you know, but

we were all in under the same umbrella. And um it took me a few year maybe more than a few years frankly but I found my way and I found that indeed I was helping people because it's always been very important to make a positive impact in people's lives and I got that you know when I was a funeral director and I got it every day really because I I mean I work in a you know my you know I work in a densely populated area at a very busy funeral at the time you funerals every single day and people every day would thank you very much Joshua for your help and you know for helping us through this difficult time and I certainly wasn't getting them in the financial field by the way people hey thank you very much for those mutual funds or that life insurance or the long-term care whatever the case may have been when I was young in the business um but over the years um I did find that

I was making a difference I just wasn't getting you know you didn't I didn't you didn't see it immediately but over the course of time and a lot of people that I was dealing with especially when I was younger and over the course time was helping people with retirement and that's a transition period. So I still help people in a transition period as well in that regard. Certainly not the same type of emotional transition period as previously but I did find that I could make a positive difference in people's lives in this business. And some of the things like when I was a funeral director I'd see like you know in a eulogy people would talk about you know there were philanthropists you know funeral for a philanthropist and like I was like oh that is amazing. like I was like this is amazing and then I came into this business and I'm like oh we helped create that philanthropy which I was a mindblow to me I was thought it was so cool um

and you know but there were the other aspects of it like if you don't mind my saying like as a funeral director you know we had two you know there were I saw it all really but you know there were so many families that were so grateful that or a spouse so grateful that my husband took care of us financially and I don't have to worry now that he's passed away or unfortunately did deal with a lot of younger deaths and people had the life insurance to be prepared for that and to take care of it. But then I saw the opposite as well. People, oh my god, what am I going to do now? And then you also saw the families that like the family, you know, family that had a certain amount of wealth but had not done the planning. Oh my gosh, you know, the uh family dynamics there of the screaming matches at the funeral. I mean the things I had to umpire you know many times uh with families and

the the need and then I got into this business and like oh we help with that planning we put these ducks in a row for families so when these events occur this family can feel you know they can focus on what's important to them emotionally at that time not worry about the money families will always have an issue of course there's always going to be some issue but we're able to and this is what I love and working with Joe as well you know that we're able to because Joe's really the tech t tech tactician here. Um, but we're able to provide these plans, put them in a neat, you know, I often say to our clients, well, Joe's going to create this structure for you and show you how the planning's done and he's going to tie it in a nice little bow for you and just have it all there done. So, it should never be that situation like when I was back in the funeral record and at the funeral, all these

families bickering and this and that. it ultimately it'll happen somewhere along the way, but we're going to do everything we can to um mitigate that as well as uh mitigate tax. Josh's ability Josh's ability to counsel with our clients is second to none because of his previous experience. Yeah, he is probably one of the greatest listeners that I know because that's what he had to do as a funeral director. He had to take it all in and figure out how to ease that pain. Well, again, time and information. He took the time and got the information so he could do his job better than anybody else was doing it. And our clients tend to want all four of these things or some combination of them. Maybe not all four, but they want less risk. They want less taxes. They want to be able to consume more while they're alive. And that may be for their family purposes, for charity, for whatever purpose, right? And they want to be able to leave more when they're gone,

either to charity or to their family or both, right? And the advantage with the big beautiful bill of the planning you can do today, you basically can end up owning 1% of everything and control 100% of everything, right? own 1%, control a 100% and control it till you decide you don't want to control it anymore, right? While reducing risk and taxes and spending more and leaving more. But in addition, because of the bill, estate tax protecting your family into perpetuity, right? Creditor protecting your family into perpetuity. When I say credit or protecting, I always make the joke it's OJ Simpson proofing yourself, which will protect you from everybody but the IRS, a good divorce attorney unless you have a good prenup. But other than that, you can asset protect. And the one thing I know about litigators, they take cases they get paid for. So if you're planner and you're asset protected, no litigator is taking that case because they can't get paid. They don't care about winning or losing. They care about getting paid,

right? So, so having your assets where you can bring them in when you want to, but you're not forced to is a huge, huge advantage in this latigious society that we live in, right? And the leveraging that the Trump tax bill allows you to do is just second to none. the leveraging on each generational passing if you will and it picks up more and more income tax protection which is the risk going forward Joey it's not estate taxes you could give us a billion dollar estate we'll plan around the estate taxes it's income taxes right and today when you can take pre-tax money in these IAS these qualified tax bombs if you will and you can convert it for very minimal taxation to Roths today, right? And and the advantage of having money in a WTH is beyond the fact that there's no minimum distributions because now you can take your real estate and put it in your Roth. And now you have a tax neutral bucket to buy and sell real estate for the

rest of your life, right? And if you take it out, it's taxfree. And when you pass away, and you never have to take it out because there's no minimum industry, when you pass away, it goes down to the next generation. and they can do it like that for another 10 years and then they have to roll out that portfolio to themselves. Well, guess what? It's an aftert tax real estate portfolio. It's never been depreciated. They won't pay tax for another 10 years, right? So, there's such a tax opportunity there, but you got to know about it ahead of time. You can't get to 59 and a half and say, "Hey, what do I do now?" because it's too and right now as Joe has mentioned the big beautiful bill is that you know we've been doing this tax planning for years especially legacy and and estate planning taxes and as well as other types tax mitigation but the big beautiful bill over the last year or so opened up these new opportunities for us that

were able to do things much more efficiently for people quicker easier less hoops to jump through and so like now I've seen some of you know the things that Joe does for our clients and he's really taking it to a different level and it's made it so much easier for us to to get it, you know, get it to them and and help them to implement it as well. Well, and especially we could clean up 23, 24, and 25 later this year. And what that's going to do is put actual dollars back in the pocket. And the reason why they're not amending their tax returns, Joey, it's really simple. we're able to create um with the use of some solar programs later this year some tax credits that you know meaning that you know you invest a dollar and maybe you're going to get six or $7 of tax credits. Well tax credits are like a dollar of tax. It's not like a deduction. It's actual you know a dollar of tax credits like paying

a dollar of tax, right? So, right now we're very focused on 26 tax planning. And why with our tax team? Because if we know we've got the taxes handled for 26, now we can create those solar credits later and then take them back to 25, 24, and 23. And you're not amending a tax return. You're filing a one-page form with the IRS that says, "I paid you by check and now I'm paying you with tax credits." You're not reducing your taxes. So, they're not going to audit you. They're not you're not reducing taxes. All you're doing is saying, "I'm just exchanging the payment form." And they cut you a check back within about 90 days. So, when you can put money on the very front side of a client relationship and serious money, right, back in a client's pocket, you know, I've seen them go as high as 60 70% of what they paid in those years. We create enough solar credits because they have enough income to do it with this year. I've seen

them get 100% what they paid back, but they're not not paying their taxes. They're just using a different form of currency to pay it. We always talk to people about, hey, we all we're all good citizens here. We want to pay the taxes that we are required to pay, but there's no need to pay more than we are required to pay. We want to pay what we're legally and ethically required to pay. But the code is written for reasons and it's to benefit clients. And like one of our clients that we were speaking to the other day. Um, and he had his views about how the government uses money. Let's put it that way. And we were talking about these strategies for him to put this money back in here. And he has some charitable, you know, you know, things that he wants to do. And we said, "Here's this x amount of money. It was quite a bit. Um, it's coming right back to you. And now you're going to be able to direct

that to the social services or where charities that you that are important to you where you want to put it. And he was yeah look some people are going to put it back in their pocket. That's fine too. But he was so he felt so good about the fact that you know what because you know I mean the government has a certain amount of waste. We all know that. I'm not knocking the government, but you know, but he was so happy to say this money is coming right back to me that I thought was going to the government and now I'm able to put it to this charity and to this uh civic area that it's really important to me and not I mean from my that's what I'm all about anyway. I mean to that what puts a smile on my face. Yeah. I mean I I'm making a living while I'm doing this which is great. A win-win situation. There's nothing I like more than that. So I love to see when my

clients are happy and makes me happy. We make a living. It's fantastic. Yeah. I think as business owners the the number one thing you start the number one reason you started a business was to have the freedom right financial freedom freedom to do whatever you want and that freedom also translates into where where your money is going right where your taxes going you want to have the freedom to decide where that's going and uh especially in our day and age it might not it's not that hard to find better ways to to to to to spend or to put your money than uh where the government is putting it right everybody has their views uh but if he can gain back the control through some actual tax code incentives for business owners, then I guess that's where the win-win-win comes from, right? Well, yeah. And Josh made a valid point when he said, "We all need to pay our fair share." Yeah. When we have to put the roads and the bridges, and we live

in the greatest country on earth. Yes, we have our issues, but you still can't find me a better country to live in than the United States of America. Yeah. Right. So, we all have an obligation to pay taxes, but we don't have to fund the whole thing ourselves. Right. Right. And the code is written with the incentives because it incentivizes business. And we've been in the past been able to show our clients how to set these programs up on their own. Ridiculously expensive, ridiculously complicated, and doesn't always execute as clementally. These programs that the tax teams use are are turnkey programs. Number one. Number two, they're vetted for like two years, right? Um they have former IRS prosecutors on their team um that literally will um def beat up you know clients before for the IRS blew up right and now they're making sure everything they're doing is by the code and the due diligence that comes out after an an initial call with our tax team is second to none. It's, you know, it's

it's all the legal opinion letters from major major tax firms. If there's private letter rulings involved, they're there. Um, it's all the codes they're using. It's a video for the CPA. There's K1 example filing. And they also have a tax team, you know, a tax a sister company that is a accounting firm. They're not looking to poach anybody's attorney, anybody's CPA. They want to work with them. they're an extension our team so there's no fees to meet with our team right um it's just getting the right players on the team so that people get the right time and information so they make the best decision so they get the best results for them and their families and they come out how they want and there's no surprises down the road that's what it's really about that peace of mind of knowing all this hard work because we have business owners the stories that we that's the greatest thing about our job the stories we get to hear about how people created their wealth and the

obstacles they overcame and their perseverance. And we had a client on the phone the other day. He was 83 years old, sharp as attack, and still manufacturing clothing at 83 and you know it has to do with sheep skins and stuff, but it's just an amazing story. And he's still working like in seven. Oh my gosh. He said, "I don't know what I do if I stop working. Like, I have nothing to do." But it was so funny because when I said, "What's your age?" Uh, he wasn't on the Zoom. Actually, he already didn't have the camera on, so I couldn't see him. I go, "What's your age?" And he says, "83." I'm like, "Oh, wow." As in like, "Oh, I never would. I mean, he I wish I sound I don't think I sound as good as he does, you know, or I sure won't when I'm 83." Yeah. We made some fascinating people because you you made a point. Love doing that. Yeah. Yeah. You made a point uh Joey before about about

independence, financial independence. Yeah. And for a lot of people that means they they think it's means they got to stop working. No, it just means you're doing things out of choice, not out of financial necessity. Most people are working to pay their bills. And you know, people spend more time working than doing anything else. And the real purpose they're doing it is to gain financial independence. Yet, they spend more time planning their vacations than they do their financial independence. There is no doovers with planning. You don't get to wake up at, you know, 68 or 70 or whenever you're ready to kind of pack it in and go, you know, I don't like how this came out. Let me try this all over again. This is a one shot, one bite of the apple. And so, you damn well better slow down, take your time, and get it right the first time because there is no second chances. And when people need a special uh second chance, especially if we're dealing with special needs planning,

the parents are long gone. Yeah. And there is fix, right? So, you know, our wealthiest families can make lots of mistakes along the way and still everybody's okay. But if you're dealing with a special needs situation or you've got wealth, but you're not right. And that's the greatest thing about our tax team. These strategies have been used for years by the ultra ultra ultra wealthy, the rockers. This is how they increased and built their wealth, right? And the CEO and founder of our tax team, Roger, was doing this um using a uh business creation program, but for the ultra ultra wealthy. And he said to the person that was running it, we need to take this down to, you know, people like Josh and I and you, Joey, and our clients that, you know, are not the billionaires of the world, but have had success and are independently, you know, comfortable. Um, to be able to take advantage of some of these exact same strategies because the strategies are are exactly the same because everything

fits into a pattern. That's just the numbers are a hair smaller, but it lets people take in a state that may be, you know, 15 million, 20 million today, reduce their risk, reduce their tax, spend more, and lead more lead more to the tune of, you know, a 4x, right? because because some of the products that that need to be used, right, some of the financial service products, frankly, there's one that has to be used if you really are going to have a good plan, which is the one that's the most favored in the tax code, which is whole life insurance, right? And permanent life insurance because of how the code was written in um 1913 when it was written. Um the code was originally and most people don't know this code was written in 1908 the first time and income taxes were put in to pay for you know previous wars and things and it was put in temporary in 1908 and 1911 they accomplished their goal and income taxes disappeared in 1911 and

in 1913 they wrote the code that we live under today. The start of it was 1913 and income taxes were put back in in 1913 as a temporary tax and 112 years later we're still paying a temporary. Yeah. I guess temporary is permanent. 112 years is still temporary and it's not going away. And it's not going away. But the two oldest exemptions in the code are the reason why all the money in the United States sits in insurance companies because the 700 section and both of these exemptions are from 1913 when they wrote it. Backs up policies themselves. Inside buildup is tax deferred. Death benefits come out taxfree. Well, that can't leave our code. I mean, it could, but if it did, it'd be a disaster because the government's broke and if you die, they can't do anything for your family. I mean, if you die, you get $255 for social security towards burial because when they put it into the code in the 30s, that's what it costs to bury someone. And they've never

raised it. So, when you die, a lot of widows or widowers go down to the IRS and they're in that blackout period where they're not really eligible yet. They're not 62 yet, so they're not eligible for benefits yet. And they think they're going to start getting money and they get a check for $255. That's a that's a shock for a lot of people, right? because they're not even aware that there's a blackout period from the time your kids are raised until you're of actual social security age that there is no benefit for a survivor. There is for minor children but not for for a a spouse, right? Or a partner. So, you know, just understanding how even social security works, right? When do you start social security? Because if you start at 62, you're taking a 25% permanent hit. If you wait till 70, you get 32% more. But you have to look at if you take it at your filing age, you know, how long do I have to get it to make up

for waiting till 70, right? Because it may not chronologically make sense to do it that way, right? And the other thing is is that whether social security is taxed or not at retirement depends on what ordinary income is, right? So you so putting your money in the right buckets along the way. And that's why this is not like I get to the end and then figure it out. No, you need to be doing active planning all along the way. And that's why you have to have a coach for that, if you will. And listen, if you don't like our personality today, go find someone else to be your coach. But you need a coach. You've not schooling and have it come out the way you want to. I promise you that. It's just too complicated and it's not, you know, it's not your area of expertise. And that's why I say all the time, everything else in life, I'm the village idiot. I've been married for 43 years. My wife will yell that across the

party if I say, "Honey, what am I?" She'll yell, "Village idiot." Because I know what I do incredibly well. Probably better than anybody else you'll meet. He's very good at what he's very good at. I am the village idiot, right? I do the dumbest things all the time. The difference between Eastern time and Pacific time. I have to take care of them. It's very interesting because both of you guys come from obviously very very different upbringings, backgrounds, set of outcomes, set of obstacles, but you seem to both have came to the same conclusion and I think that's why you guys make a great team which is we have actually something very much in common Joey and that is at um so after my debacle in the car business I relocated to Columbus, Ohio took a job as a sales manager for a Toyota dealer dealership cuz that's what I knew. And I didn't see my family for 6 months. I had to come home from work on a Tuesday afternoon and tell my wife to

sell the house, get rid of the pets, and my boys were three and two months at the time. So, I told her they were expensive and kind of in the way. Get rid of them, too. But eBay didn't exist, so we kept them. So, no one has to worry that I sold my kids. But, I did keep them. And um and um I didn't see them for six months and they joined me in Columbus. I bounced around to a few stores there. I turned a store around. I got fired for that job because the grandson got grandma's stock and became CEO and I wasn't making him look good. And I went to Florida anyways um on vacation. Was supposed to be a paid vacation. It wasn't paid. And they owed me a a um $3 um $90,000 bonus. It was due December I mean uh it was due May one of ' 92 and the vacation was April of '92. I got called in the office and fired the day before my paid vacation. So

I didn't even get my paid vacation and it was employment at will and contract at will. So I did a lot of praying in Florida and God put me on a different path and went back and sold cars for a couple years in Columbus and then we moved to Florida after we got our house sold there. We moved to Florida in 1993 to start over like the rest of the world does with $30,000 to our name and not another penny. Moved into a winter home that my parents had in Boca Woods that was paid for but they couldn't afford to use. My wife takes a job as a dental hygienist. We're living off our income. I open up my practice. January of 94, my mother-in-law in Cincinnati, Ohio gets diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. So by 96, my wife spent half her time in Ohio helping her mom die. And I need full-time helping the home for my kids, and I need at least one staff person I practice, but I have no money. So

I'm cash advancing credit cards for everything. Jerry, my mother-in-law died January of 98. I'm 36 years old. I'm $125,000 deep in a personal credit card debt. November that year, I had my first three coronary stances at 37 years old. Okay? because stress will accelerate anything and progressive coronary artery disease runs in my family. And May of 99 at the rip blood age of 38, one of my stances collapsed and I had an emergency double bypass and I've had four more stances along the way and I've had heart attacks in 08 and 11. I've learned three lessons the ridiculously hard way in life. It's easy to make money, it's hard to keep it was the first one. Second lesson is that when you don't do great things with your money, I don't mean bad, I mean great, it gets taken from you. So at at 28 years old, right? My wife and I on paper worth over 3 million, we didn't know the first thing about charity. We were young. Nobody even taught us about that,

right? So we lost everything. And lastly, we're all put on Earth for a purpose. And most people don't figure that out. I clearly know what my purpose is. It is to give people this education to give them time and information. Not concerned whether they do anything with it or not. That's not my issue. My issue is that people get an opportunity to understand. Then they get to do with proper time and information what they want to do with it. And it could be nothing. I don't really care. We have I mean it. He is. We have a shortage of people coming into this industry literally. And so I bring young people in. We're going to have a 100,000 financial planner shortage in 10 years in this country. That's a huge problem for the country because every day people are not going to be able to get financial advice and that's dangerous. So I bring young people in right out of college and I teach them new people to anything can't sell anything with confidence. So

I teach them to sell us in an appointment and only us. And then and they tell that client, they can tell us to, you know, kiss off when we're done. We don't care. We care. They get a chance to learn it. Hardly anybody ever does, Joey, because when you're given the right information and it's logical and it makes sense to you and it's verifiable, people and it and it helps people's financial situation. They tend to take action on it. And so, you know, we just have this wonderful opportunity out there. And while this tax bill is the bill of the land, you have to take advantage of it because, not to make a political statement, but nobody knows what's going to happen in November. Yeah. Of for the midterms. And if it goes to the Democrats, there's a very good chance that 26 is the last year you're going to be able to take advantage of this bill. No, I don't know that for sure. Nobody knows that for sure. They may not be able

to take it out. It may go a couple more years, but depends. Sooner or later, right, sooner or later it's going to end because permanent in the tax code means till someone changes, it just means it no longer sunsets. The provisions from the 17 tax bill would have sunset at the end of 25. So instead of letting them just sunset, go back to the original, they just made them permanent, right? which means it's not going to sunset, but someone's going to change it and probably sooner than later because let's face reality with nobody really paying taxes now and nobody really working at the IRS right now, our government can't sustain long-term at this kind of level. It's just imposs it's mathematical impossibility. So, something's got to give. Yeah. No, it's interesting. Again, we talk about this huge gap of education, this gap of uh relying on certain people, one person to do to save you everything, to save you in taxes and give you financial advice and the dangers of that. Um I know between

of you of the two of you, you guys met with hundreds if not more business owners from all levels, six, seven, eight figures, nine figures probably, I don't know, but a lot of successful people, right? When someone comes to you and a business owner comes to you only relying on their CPA for tax advice, financial advice and all that stuff, what does the damage typically look like? What are we talking about like in dollars left on the table because of this because of this? It depends on the size of the client. Depends on the client, right? Let's say a seven figure business owner, right? Paying a couple hundred figure business owner. It's it's multiple millions of dollars, right? Because we work with business owners also on the business consulting side for those that you know have an execution system the place most people and ask them if they have an execution system in their business they say to me what do you mean how I kill people and I go no how you make sure

all these wonderful ideas that are in your head how do you make sure they actually get executed on because everything comes out if you don't execute nothing happens right and so they said well you know we have meetings and I said so do you have an execution system and they go I don't know what that is well I happen to use one called the 12week here is something I sell, you know, and it's Googleable and it's, you know, a program that anybody can purchase and use, but it gets you doing everything intentionally in life and everything on my schedule is blocked and colorcoded. Now, I may have buffer time on there that's red personal buffer time. Don't bother me. It could be gray buffer time work on, you know, calls or tasks, but and everything's color coded, so I can tell what my schedule mix is just by looking at the colors on there. But I don't think during the day. I execute. I execute. I execute. I execute. I execute. So even my goof

off time is intentional, right? And businesses that don't get into this AI, they're going to be hurting in a year. I promise you, a year ago was too soon. A year from now is too late. And so we we insist on our business consulting clients do that, right? Want to embrace AI and then we will help them do that. But I have a rule with my clients. If two 12-week year periods in a row, which is, you know, they're 12 weeks of and then a week off, so there's four of them in a year. If two 12-week in a year periods in a year go by and they don't do what they said they're going to do, I terminate the relationship because I do not want to help people. It's frustrating to help people that don't do what they say they're going to do. I can't help them, right? So, I cut bait quickly and I tell them, right, I'm very strict about this, right? We're a little too old for that. You know, we've

been doing this a long time, right? because this is for this is serious stuff. It's extremely important and I don't want to put my app Joe like the other day our client yesterday such a nice guy by the way lives in Indiana not originally from there from but you know he lives there. So he's built his business quite successfully already into the multi-millions. He's growing. He has many things on the table that he's going to continue. As a matter of fact, yesterday in our meeting, Joe, he just told us about this new part of his business he had already implemented. We had no idea. We hadn't met him in only what was it 3 weeks like you know all of a sudden boom he tells us this other piece of the business. So we are going so the planning that we're already doing for him now is saving him what are we putting back in his pocket hund well literally hundreds of thousands of dollars right now. But it's not just the planning that we're

putting into you know the for right now and the back taxes that we're also going to it's the planning that we're doing moving forward that is going to he didn't really have the proper structure I mean he's very good at what he does he's creating these businesses and the you know real estate the industry that he's in as well different industry and putting these things together he wants it to be there for his family he wants to pay he's you know He wants to pay the taxes he should pay but as we say not more than that and his structure wasn't really quite right and Joe created has create been creating this structure for him ongoing because he has new parts coming in and this other piece that we're putting in for his future which will mitigate taxation in so many ways and also for the legacy which is very important to him. So, we're putting hundreds of thousand dollars of money, you know, back into his pocket. And that's not even, you know, one

of the wealthier clients, so to speak. So, look, like Joe said, it really depends. Look, we have client I have Joe has traditionally dealt with higher net worth clients than I did earlier in my business. And that's why I'd say, "Hey, Joe, can you help come help me with this client of higher net worth?" Because he had that. Now, I've been doing that for some years now, so I'm much more in tune with it. But still, Joe is a little better at the crossing tees and dotting eyes, but so, you know, if you're dealing with somebody that has a, you know, $500,000 and, you know, W2 employee, no disrespect to W2, you know, there's certain type of planning for that and maybe, you know, that's more about just helping them make sure their retirement is is secure or even up to four million or five. We were dealing with somebody this morning. He's done very well for himself. He's worth about 6 million, but you know what? 6 million is a lot of money to

some people and not a lot of money to other people. So, it's how much are you spending? What's your lifestyle, right? It's all about the net. Where's the, you know, where's your cash flow? And he was like, he was very concerned. He was a little bit, oh yeah, he's just a couple years older than us. Joe's about to be 65 or 66. And he was like, well, I want to make sure I don't run out of money. And it was interesting that he said that cuz he's not going to run out of money. He had enough money. But that's not the point. The point is he needs, as Joe said, and I'm very big as well, the peace of mind to be assured he's not going to run out of money because he spends a good amount, but he's not going to run out of money anyway. But he said that to us, I want to make sure I don't want to run run out of money and I want to make sure my wife

is taken care of. So, we here we are. And he had, by the way, he sold his business. He has a substantial um tax burden coming up from that this year. Joe already this morning, you know, educated the money. This was a few meetings now, but, you know, gave him another step about how we're going to be putting that money back into his pocket. And also the planning moving forward, making sure he'll never run out of money, making sure his wife is taking care of his children and grandchildren, all those things that are important to him. And I always like to ask, what's important, you know, what's important to you? What's important about your money to you? Or, you know, what do you want this to accomplish? Because money is just, you know, so so it's like it does for you, not what you know, right? If you think about like appliances, there's all these different appliances out there and you got to plug them into an outlet. Well, the structure, Joey, is the outlet,

right? And it has multiple plugs that you can plug in. So, until the client understands structure, that's why we start there. They're not going to understand how the tax mitigation plugs in. They're not going to understand how the financial planning plugs in. So we start with this outlet and make sure spend all the time in the beginning getting them to understand their outlet, what their structure is because a lot of the structures we're setting up for their overall plan, whether that's a series of, you know, the attorneys are setting up a series of LLC's with a master at the top or a series of partnerships with a master at the top. We're also helping them reduce the risk of audit because when people have multiple LLC's out there and then they're filing them as, you know, on a schedule C or a schedule E, which is saying to the IRS, look, I I you know what my income is. Now, I'm going to take these expenses off that you don't really know about, and it's

not on a reform, it's on a schedule. It's not a tax return, it's a schedule, right? Or if I got 25 S returns coming over to my 1040, they think you're flopping stuff between companies. Well, this is just my opinion. This is not a fact. This is my opinion. But if I have everything owned by a master and that master is the only one that reports over to my personal, that's clean. Number one, now I only need to worry about doing estate planning with the master. And now I can set the master up where I own 1% and control 100% and I don't sell those 99% away because that also controls 99% of the revenue being distributed from that entity. Yeah. like asset allocation because a lot of people will say, "Oh, yeah, my my assets are, you know, diversely allocated, but yet then I'll review it and yeah, they've got Schwab and Fidelity and Marilynch or whatever, but yet all their funds or their stocks or their funds, they're all in the same categories

because none of those advisors have, you know, seen each other. So they're, you know, so they're really overweighted in certain ways. So, like a lot of people will have their business entities and they'll have the different trusts or the different LLC's or the decimated appropriately. And again, I'll throw it right back at Joe and he just is able to, hey, let me review this. Let me show you how to plug it all in together just well, it's basically collecting enough data on the front side, right? For example, when I have a married couple, the the technique you do for estate taxes and to keep lifetime income is you sell the shares to a grantor trust, which means that the person is responsible for the taxes of that trust, the the grtor, so the individual because in the United States irrevocable tax, irrevocable trusts have a very very compressed tax schedule. Last year you hit at 154 of income you hit the 37% bracket and the reason they did that is back when we had kitty

taxes years ago people would put them in these irrevocable trusts to try to lower the taxes. So now at 154 so we just pull the taxes right back to the grantor so that it gets back to that spread out tax level. So nothing changes from a tax standpoint, a control standpoint, an income standpoint because when you sell the shares, now if it's a husband and wife, you have to split the ownership in half and each cell half because the note is an installment. It's an installment sale, no different than any other installment sale out there, except the note is unique. It's called a self-cancelling installment note. And so it's like a lifetime annuity. It pays them that payment based on the government AFR rate for as long as they're alive. and the day they die, the note's gone. So nothing falls back into the estate, right? And by doing this, now you have 99% already out of your estate. So if you bought a million dollar building inside your master partnership, for example, 990,000 of

that is already out of the estate plus the future appreciation. So if that's a legacy building, it's staying in the family forever with no tax effect because the fact that you sold those shares, you have not used any of your lifetime exemption up. So all you're going to use your lifetime exemption up is on, you know, maybe your personal residence if you didn't put it out in a trust, you know, before you died and things like that. But look, it was 675,000 a person when I got in the business. is over 15 million a person today, right? They could lower it substantially. They're not going to lower it to less than a million a person. I don't think they're going to lower less than 5 million a person. But even at a million a person, if you got 2 million still to give away, you're not going to have that much in your taxable estate when it's only 1% for the most part that's in your estate. So this definitely estate tax protects your family

into perpetuity. It gives them this creditor protection. It gives them income tax protection because you know the one thing we haven't talked about is the key to growth investing which is never sell your asset at the wrong time. Right? And I always use this example with my clients. You bought a piece of real estate 2009. Okay? And you bought it right? It was after the correction. It's on the inter coastal in Florida. You have a waiting list waiting to rent it. Your ROI is through the roof. Right? And now we hit the next correction. Well, you're not selling that 09 property because the value is weighed down, but your RI is through the roof. You got a waiting list, but you want to take advantage of that new savings opportunity, right? And so, we have to find a savings conduit for cash that's liquid up front because it's important if the market crashes or real estate comes up, you got to be able to jump on it. But if somehow that savings conduit could miraculously

recreate that same liquidity on the back side of savings so I could buy that new opportunity without selling the old one, I'd win every time. Right, Joey? I'd win every single time. So that's two features people want in their in their savings. Right. The third feature I find people want is tax deferred growth because money grows faster if I'm not taking some of them and give it to the government every year. The fourth thing they tell me they want is they want to take it out without paying tax. The fifth thing they want is when they take it out. Like my buddy took out a million and a half out of whole life insurance. Okay. Bought a house in North Carolina mountain home, built a mountain home for 1.5 million, but it was a loan against his whole life policy at Mass Mutual. And because of that, he was able to um get the 1.5 million from the general operating portfolio, the insurance company. It's a mutual company owned by their policy holders and so

he has the right to do that and they file a lean over his cash value and his death benefit. So if he had 10.5 million of death benefit and he borrowed a million and a half and he died the next day his family gets another 9 million. He already got a million and a half taxree. It was in advance but the loan is on top of the policy. So the money never came out of the policy in effect. So he gets the dividend on it. So last year based on a 6.4% 4% dividend. It was a $96,000 dividend went in the policy. The dividend's been raised to 66 this year, so it'll be a little more. And there's also more cash there, so it'll be a little bigger. But the interest acrruel was 75 grand. So he picked up 21,000 of net cash value, 21,000 of net death benefit. He's never going to pay this loan back. Next year will be bigger. The arbitrage is bigger every single year going forward. And that will net

off the growing policy at death. And that house stays into perpetuity in the family as a family legacy asset, right? It's leverage, it's tax advantage, it's liquidity, all those things. And it it's it happened in my life too. I mean, in different ways. So, and the fact that they pay you interest on the money like you never took it out, right? And then they give you a multiple on your savings as the seventh feature. The longer you live, the higher the multiple. Give it to whoever you want taxfree. That is the statutory definition of whole life insurance from a mutual company that does not recognize the loans on the way out. Right? And you have to realize in this country and in our country, every dime, the bulk of all money sits in insurance companies. It's not in the government. It's not in the banks. We have 73 billion in the Federal Reserve of the United States of America. makes us the strongest economy in the world cuz we're the only nice house left in

a really crappy neighborhood. If anybody could bump us out as global currency, we'd be in big big trouble. But so far, no one has. So if Panama, Europe, I don't care the country, wants to do global trading, they have to ship their currency to the United States to convert it to US dollars. Canada the same way, right? So Russia shipped this money a few years ago. We shipped it back. That's how we shut off their access to foreign trade, right? Because we control that. Because if somebody could bump us out, that's 73 billion backs up 314 trillion in assets in the United States. There's 12 trillion in US savings and 302 trillion in derivatives bit by the Wall Street banks with our money. So clearly 73 billion does not cover $314 trillion. So FDIC insurance in the bank, 250 for a married couple, 125 for an individual. If your bank fails, you're good. US economy ever fails, you're going to get about $2.50 back on 250. And if you read the fine print at the

bottom of that poster in the bank, they have 20 years to pay you back. When you follow the money, you get to all the answers. Always get to the answer. Banks in the United States have to have cash to operate. It's called tier one operating capital, cash or cash equivalents. Okay. Um, every bank in the country is maxed out. They'd have 100% there if they're allowed. They're not allowed. The four big Wall Street banks finish 2022 with almost 200 billion in cash value. We have 73 billion in the Federal Reserve of the United States of America. And for every dollar we put in the bank in this country, they get to borrow nine from the Federal Reserve. That's how leveraged out we are in this country already. And now they're getting ready to rip the band-aid off all the restrictions they put on the banks after the last crisis. And we're getting right back to where we were. We're going back down that same slippery slope. So, you know, the last place money is going

to disappear from in the United States is insurance companies, right? If it disappears everywhere, it's going to dep disappear there. That's the last place, you know, because that's where all the cash sits, right? So, it's just a question of understanding how products work, understanding the things. And when I said earlier about cash flow, we only have our cash flow to work with. So all we do is look for reallocation because you know if you like my buddy funded this this house his money's working two places that house is appreciated and nicely and he still has his money working in his policy right because of life insurance and it's because of the tax code. It's not because it's some smoke and mirrors. It's just the tax code and everything in the tax code was incentivized. The government wanted people to carry permanent life insurance because they know they can't fund people at death, right? Social security was always intended to be a supplement. It was never meant to be a full retirement, right? And that's why

the government wants you paying tax every time you make a dollar, spend a dollar, use it one time, go back and pay tax again. They're broke. That works for them. It doesn't work for for for us. So getting educated allows you to avoid all this stuff legally and not with any tricks. Just legally by the code. Joe, you mentioned earlier and I was I'm very curious about that several case studies with amazing tax mitigation results going as far as 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, right? In terms of tax credits, like if I'm a business owner right now, I'm paying six figures a year in taxes. Like that definitely rings a bell in my mind, but I'm questioning all right like how does that actually work? Is that legal? Uh why does my CPA doesn't talk to me about that? Like because can you explain a bit more beautiful bill? I can tell you. Yes. I'll give you just some 30,000 foot educational overview. Like I said, this is not intended to be tax or legal advice,

but one takes advantage of real estate in the big beautiful bill. Bonus depreciation, which has now been codified in the code and guaranteed. Now, you can't just buy a property for no money down and depreciate the whole thing. But if you put 20% down, let's say you put a h 100,000 down on a $500,000 property, right? You can you can get a deduction against income for a half a million that year because you get to take all the depreciation expense the first year. And people say, "Yeah, but now I got to go find a property and rent it and all these things." And yeah, that's complicated. We've showed people for years how to set these stuff up on their own. these programs that are taxing, right? They're all turnkey, 100% turnkey. Everything behind the scenes, paperwork-wise, accounting wise, is done for you. Provided, you know, K1's to your CPA, uh the charitable stuff on. So, one of them is just involved with with real estate, but it's a very unique type of real estate. There's

a company in Utah called Box House. And Box House has the only patent in the world to create shippable boxes. Um they build boxes, duplexes, and bungalows depending on the size. The small one is a $70,000 down payment for a $350,000 deduction. That is the only client contribution. Um the balance of the 80% is put on an interestonly loan. The first payment starts January of 2028. There is positive cash flow off these. It's not guaranteed obviously, but and the reason why it's not guaranteed is because they can't assure you it's leased, right? However, we've had lots of disasters in these companies in this country. We've had fires in Hawaii and California and and hurricanes and flooding and right and so FEMA, let's just talk about Maui. 2200 homes destroyed. 6,800 68 have been rebuilt. Those other people in Maui housing is not inexpensive as you can imagine. So FEMA is spending close to $1,000 a night with families in hotels, Airbnbs, VBRRO's. So that's like 30 grand a month. Well, they can lease these units

from four to eight grand a month depending on the size of the unit and they're solar capable. Our government was also building data centers, AI data centers all over the country in very remote areas where they can get very inexpensive land costs and stuff. Well, they need housing for the construction people. So, their government is got big contracts with this company, right? FEMA and so um they use series LLC series partnerships which is some of the same structure we're showing our clients to set up and that's why we start with structure so that when they go into that call they're familiar with what they're talking about and again it's all turnkey it's very simple I mean you have to understand it but I'm saying as far as the mechanisms the client not have to go through the hoops or jump you know the the mechanism it was it's all turn key the way we are able to present you know implement this for our clients and we can stack some programs together. So for example

using the box house we can only mitigate 60% of income that's the limit to the IRS and what's the requirement to get access to that like do I like what's the non-negotiable that I need to have to get access to this? Is it anybody? So you need to so you need to be paying either $100,000 a year or more in income taxes. Yes. for it to make sense. Um maybe at 50 it might make sense depending if there's a you know big capital gains event coming up that there's some additional taxes. Um a household income needs to be minimum W2 of 800 to qualify for this stuff. Um but you know anybody that has a one-time huge capital gains event would be eligible, right? um for that kind of stuff because a lot of our clients that we come across that's they're facing. They've got a business and a real estate with their business that's completely depreciated to zero and they're about to sell their business for $15 million. I have a client right now

that we're working with. They're selling a business for $15 million. Their basis is two. So they're looking at 2.6 million in capital gains tax on 13 million, right? and we are the tax team's able to show them how to mitigate that entire uh 2.6 million. Right? So what that's also done is giving business owners that are thinking about selling their business but what's stopping them is that capital gains thing. No, you can literally with the right planning and the right strategies with the help of our tax team, you can literally, you know, think of the gross sale price as the net sale price. interesting less other cost that you have essentially, but I'm saying without having to be concerned and you can know this upfront, right? Because they can show it to you up front. Another one is leverage charitable giving, which is very popular. And people know if I donate a dollar to a charity, I get a dollar deduction. And people know if I donate a stock that's worth $10,000, even though I

paid $100 for it, I get a $10,000 deduction. So, it's kind of the same principle. And for a couple years now, they've been using the same device. It is a medical device through DNA Harmony, and it's for sale on Amazon for $300, right? And the IRS code is very clear in the right situation, if you donate the equivalent of cash, right? Like a gift card that buys an item, right? like a medical device, you get the retail value of the medical device as the cont as the contribution. Well, if you're buying them in millions in bulk, as people know, and you buy bulk inventory, you get a discount. So, last year they were able to buy these devices not for the 300 retail, but for $60 a piece. So, when you contributed $60 into this program, you got a $300 deduction against income. It was a 5 to1 leveraging. This year they were successful in negotiating it down to $50 for the manufacturing rights because that's what it has to be to work in the

IRS code. And so it's a six for one leveraging this year. So if you put a $100,000 right now, let's say you owe the IRS $600,000. Okay, but you have $600,000 of income you're trying to offset. Well, if you can get a $600,000 deduction, that's $600,000, right? You had to put a hundred into it. Well, on 600,000 of taxes, let's say you owe 150, right? Well, in that small example, you just got uh uh you know, a $50,000 net cash flow, but you also made a donation for 100 grand that you get to write off on your taxes, right? Like any other donation, it's always about the net. You know, there people are, but they're going to get a net cash flow that is substantial. And when people see that, sure, there's always questions and there should be questions. Uh we want people to ask questions, but when that bottom line shows that there's more money coming into your pocket, call legally, ethically, tees crossed, eyes dotted, and and really don't have to go through

a lot of the hassle that we used to in the old days before these things were available like this turnkey. Uh it's it's really pretty. And the other thing is it's it's eliminated the need to use to really having assets, real assets sit in the irrevocable trust, right? We can now own everything in a partnership, an LLC, and control everything by just having paper value as the only thing out in that irrevocable trust. And so it's really really for the first time ever, I say having your cake and eating it too. And when it goes away, I don't think we're ever ever going to see this in our lifetime. Probably not our kids or grandkids lifetime either because I don't see how mathematically can sustain. It just can't. But to not take advantage of the opportunity that's on the table right now is is kind of foolish. That's why I say if you don't like our personality for some reason, go find someone else. Everybody likes my personality. It's Josie. But go find someone else.

But do this. Don't ignore it. At least get educated so you can say no. And at least you're saying no to what you know you're saying no to. Because what you don't want is to wake up a couple years ago and not that I'm a believer in crypto, but you know, you could have bought crypto at $2 and now it's at 65,000 and you miss that train. Yeah. Right. Not just saying that train's going on or it's not going to collapse. I'm not saying any of that. All I'm saying to you is that, you know, the internet came out, right? And people made lots of money off of it and now AI is coming out and people are going to make lots of things off it. Now these things are available in the tax code for for what I call normal people, you know, people that are worth, you know, 8, 10, 12, 15 million and up, right? It's now available to them, right? And that was not available before. So, you know, it's it's

all about education, you know? people that are already worth that amount. It's high income earners that are younger now also. And so we've, you know, we I think by and large most of our clients are, you know, 55 and above, but we do have a certain amount of clients. And I love when we, like we met, we met a new young gentleman recently who's in a related field to one of my children. I have three sons and he's making about $800,000 a year. Very high income. Now, he hasn't amassed a lot of assets yet, but he's bringing that all in. and he's an entrepreneur. So, we're not only So, it's great to show somebody when they're 36 years old how to like literally change their lives. I'm I'm not, you know, literally I get so excited about this kind of thing, you know, um because it's I mean, there's no there's no diff, you know, you can't replace time, right? So, yeah, sure, we're able to do things for people our ages, you know, dramatically

as well. But when I see somebody who's 36 who's earning a very good living, he's got two young children. He hasn't, you know, accumulated money yet. he's been putting it back in the business, etc. But like the planning that we've started with him now and the projection and what we're going to be able to implement for him going forward, saving him the tax now, multiplying that money going forward, protecting his family at the same time. It it you know, Josh, you forgot the the best part of it. So, he's got enough already put away in pre-tax money. He's got he's got a lot put away in pre-tax earnings, right? Exactly. Yeah. So, for very minimal tax, we're going to convert his pre-tax over to Roth. Okay? For very minimal tax. And now he can start funding pre-tax again. And at his income level, he's saving 37 cents on the dollar putting it in. So, he can start funding it again because he's not going to keep compounding his tax and in another few years we'll

convert it again to Roth. It's really great dynamic that we're able to get, you know, when I was younger in the business, I heard something, you know, we were doing all these other tax efficient planning and whatnot and some and I didn't I had never heard the term double dipping because I was asking a question about the taxation in and taxation out and somebody says to me, "Oh, you can't double dip, you know, which is a phrase used for, you know, you can only use certain ways in the IRS codes." But now, we're not double dipping. I'm not saying this is what we're doing, but there's now this way that we're able to show people how to do a Roth conversion in the most efficient manner like we never could before because of these new strategies and then let them go back and start saving that tax deferred money again. So they're not creating this huge tax bubble that is going to hit them in the future. Cuz most people will tell you, you know,

if we ask the question, well, do you think taxes are going down in the future? Taxes are going up in the future. Are they going to stay the same? Most people say they think they're going to go up. And again, like Joe says, we don't have a crystal ball. We don't know. But the likelihood is, I mean, if you go to the um government's u consumer debt uh website, uh or national debt website, uh it's growing dramatically. And most people most people, Joey, in that circumstance, you know what they do? They keep funding pre-tax even though it's going to create a tax problem down the road. They're just paying so much in taxes. They want to cut it however they can. Right. Right. Yeah, but when you can actually really take advantage of the deduction, right, by by clearing out your pre-tax and right and a lot of times you can do it right in wherever it's sitting in an IRA if it's a 401k plan. Most of these 401k plans have the conversion ability

right inside the plan. And if it doesn't, we get with the employer, you know, usually the business owner we're dealing with anyway, we have them amend their plan. So that's an option. Then people don't have to do anything. and they can just do it right inside the existing 401k plan. It just goes from the pre-tax side to the Roth side and they get a tax bill on it and then we mitigate the taxes on the personal return because all the tax mitigation is happening on the personal return. It's not happening in the businesses. That's right. Yeah. No, that's insightful. Uh that's very valuable. I I want to end with with this question to you Joshua which is the uh the MTL method, right? The the made to last process. So, I want you to dig down a bit more into it. So, for a business owner to um to basically see the benefits of it, worried about whether their savings will last, whether they're paying too much in taxes, and whether their family's actually protected.

Walk us through how this works and how that could help them. Well, it can really work in in different ways. And um you know, when I wrote my book, Wealth Compounded, which was the second book I've written in my life, that was a financial book, whereas my first book was a personal book. But um uh my editor told me I had to name things like so like I'm not really a gimmicky person to tell you the truth. I don't like to you know put a gimmicky name on it but she uh convinced me a couple of things to to name and that was one of them. But um you know there it really again nothing is across the board the same for everybody. Uh and when I was younger in the business I really didn't know a lot but I knew my mom had just recently retired. She was 65. She had had a pretty rough life, frankly. My mom, first generation American, grew up quite poor, frankly. Parents divorced when I was a teenager.

She never remarried. Squirreled away every penny. Didn't have a lot, but um I convinced her to retire and to I wanted her to enjoy her retirement. Now, she did not have a lot of wealth. So, we're not talking about our wealthy clients here, but uh but that's when I started that. And I and my mom retired in '98. And uh I was not in the financial business yet by the way but I referred her to people who I eventually came to work with initially and they put her in some very safe my mom wanted no risk. So they put her in something very very safe and then 2000 came 2001 came 2002 if anybody remembers way back when and the market collapsed for three years in a row. My mom had just started retirement. Well if and I'm now new in the business and I'm saying all these people in this group that I was with you know coming in the office oh my god what am I going to do? Blah blah blah. you

know, we were doing I was with full service firm. We were doing money management, you know, all kinds of planning. Um, and my mom, she had she didn't have any worries about that at all cuz her money was very safe. Now, she wasn't looking to have the highest return. She wanted no risk. Everything is a trade-off, right? But she was going and doing everything she wanted and a couple years after, you know, was trying to find my way in the business. So, I'm in the business for two years and I come home one night to my wife and I go, "Babe, you know, it's 2003, so the market is still down." You know that was the worst 10 years in the in the market 20002 2010 right so in our lifetime anyway so I come my wife and and like I had been a funeral director my whole life people were like depending on me I'd always been you know I don't want to get emotional I apologize you know but um people had always

depended on me to help them and I was like I didn't you know and like nobody had any control over the market you know like so like and I know I realized I'm with these people and that have been in the business for 20 years and they didn't have any more of a clue per se you know as we still don't what's going to happen in the market per I'm not saying not to be in it. I'm just saying we don't know. Um so I came to my wife one night and go, "Hey honey, you know, look at everything I'm learning over these two years and what's going on with the markets." And I'm like, "Mommy is on a cruise to Alaska. She's not worrying about it." So I started learning the end of the business that would create certainty for people. whether that was with insurance products that created great guaranteed lifetime income or whether other types of products that would insurance products as well that would create tax-free lifetime income. And I really

delved into that. I changed a little bit of my mom's planning. So, and my mom, by the way, passed away this last September, 92 years old, and very grateful she had a really wonderful retirement. Again, she didn't have a lot of money, but she had enough to finally live life well in her retirement. And it meant a great deal to me that she could do that with peace of mind. And we've mentioned peace of mind a couple of times and I'm a real big believer in having life is hard enough like let's try to have some financial peace of mind, right? Yeah. And um and then I so I'm dealing with all these other people and I remember 2006 200 you know 2005 2006 as I'm getting into this planning for tax efficiency and tax-free income planning and I would speak at these you know we were talking I used to do a lot of public speaking not so much anymore but um I I used to I was talking at these events and whatnot

and I told people hey you know I'm not telling I have no clue what the market's going to do. This is 2005, 2006. I have no clue what the market's going to do, but but it's prudent if you're getting a little bit older or at a certain age and you have a certain amount of money to take this a certain I used I I always used the word prudent and I because I really believed in that it was prudent to move some of that money over. Let's put it in this safe secure vehicle that will grow for you tax deferred that will come out taxfree that will protect you along the way. And a lot of people came into the office. Back then I used to go to the office, you know, like and um they'd come in and a lot of people implemented those plans. They still have those plans. People some have retired, some have not, you know, it depends. But uh but that this has been there and it's worked for them

and I've seen how they have this peace of mind and the stability and the flexibility and flexibility is so important in life. I I cannot overstate the importance of flexibility. But so I was doing this and yes my and then I wrote my book and my editor wanted to call it you know give it a name a couple of names I have in there but um you know made to last. I wanted to make sure people could were confident that their money was going to last. Sometimes it's tax efficient sometimes it's not you know it depends on what's we have a tool that we created. It's a financial simulator since we know cash flow between bills taxes savings and investments should balance to zero. And if you have money created by a savings account, you're spending it, put it back in savings, putting it somewhere else. We have a spreadsheet that it's a financial simulator that we have a separate line for every revenue source with separate growth or degrowth rate next to that box.

So we can because not everything goes up or down. We have the same thing next to expenses because principal and interest on a fixed mortgage is flat. Tax insurance inflate. A lot of people want higher inflation on travel when they retire. kids expenses go away, God willing, grandkids expenses pop in, all those things. So once we have this fully populated, future minimum distribute with no changes, we don't want them to we don't put a change into what they're doing today. We want them to understand what just not making a change what it's going to look like going out, right? And then we can play with variables. Well, what if taxes go up? What if inflation's a little higher? What if this expense, you know, gets out of control? All those thing. We do all the whatifs. And then once they understand their existing plan, we start building them additional models for educational purposes. And each one is designed to reduce risk, reduce taxes, spend more and leave more. And they don't move forward in the

end till they can say, I want this particular plan because it reduces my risk and taxes the most and lets me spend the most and leave the most. We know they know the why side. So, we know the logical side of their brain came in because when we get them to the attorney and accountant in the end to execute, the attorney and accountant are going to ask questions and if they can't answer those with absolute confidence and competence, they're going to start thinking maybe they're not doing the right thing, they're going to get in doubts and so we can't get to that point in the process. So, the client knows exactly what they want and why they want it. Because when the attorney and accountant see them answering all their questions and not us answering them, they know the client knows exactly what they want and then they all they have to do is draft. And that's how we save our clients money with their attorneys because the attorneys are not asking them all those

factf finding questions and figuring out what they want to accomplish. We're handing it off to the attorney and asking the attorney just to quiz the client to make sure they understand it basically. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. No. Um, again, that was extremely valuable and I think we could go on for another two hours if you wanted to. Uh, but I want to end I want to end with this uh with this question. We're always available for another call, Joey. Anytime. Sure. It was glad to jump on here. I'm not shy and Josh isn't Oh, I can see that. I can see that. No, that's good. No, that was very valuable. I want to ask you one more question. Uh, which is again if a business owner watching this again Joe, you've built this right with your family. Joshua, you you started this because again of your mother and and a bunch of other reasons, bunch of different origin stories. Uh if this episode outlives both of you, what's the one thing that

you would want uh business owners to understand about protecting what they've built and stop overpaying taxes? Talk to a professional. Make sure you're 100% OJ Simpson proof as best as possible and make sure you're taking advantage of everything the code has to offer. And you know there are people out there besides us that can help you with that. Um I will tell you that the uh preserve wealth group you know through you guys is probably in my career and it's pushing 35 years. It is the best uh mind uh mind group for me as far as you know our our Tuesday sessions and stuff where we bounce ideas off each other. the brainstorming. I think it is the most comprehensive planning that I've seen anywhere in the industry and it's because it's taking that 30,000 holistic view and it's not doing what most people do in this industry and it's where even Josh was before he got into a certain segment of the building business because it worked and it's it produces a good living

and it's helping people. It's doing all the things you want. But unfortunately, sometimes what's going on over here totally conflicts, right? What you do in your business has to dovetail in your personal planning. It's really all one and the same. You can't do this over here and this over here in a in a vacuum. It all ties together and it's all got to move forward efficiently together because the one thing I can tell you is things are going to change in life and you have to have your planning flexible so it can adapt to those changes over time and you don't get locked in and that's why I love the fact that the only thing that's unchangeable in here has nothing but worthless paper in it. So we we are amendable, changeable up until you become incapacitated or you pass away. Up to that we can amend anything. Yeah. And I would say that look you Joe, you asked specifically about business owners. So you know business owners I I often say that hey you

know I'm very good at what I'm very good at but I go and I get professional help in other areas because you can't be a jack of all trades and master of none even within my own industry for goodness sake or my son who's a physician. I mean, he brings if they need a cardiologist or neur neurologist, he brings them in. He needs a, you know, internist physician. So, but people and people that have their own businesses, you know, it's like their baby. They've created it and they often say, well, the retirement plan is their business because they're honed into it. But yet, and they're very good at making money, but like Joe says so often, it's easy to make money, it's hard to keep it. And when we're talking about keeping it, we're talking about again, are you paying too much in taxation? Where's the leakage? Where's it going through? Is it protected? We live in a latigious world. This is their baby. Okay. And of course, they have their families and they want

this baby to take care of their families. So they, you know, it's hard to get out of the tunnel vision sometimes for a business owner. And look, I'm a business owner. Joe's a business owner. Sometimes the shoe maker has no shoes. As the old phrase goes, you know, I've been guilty of that in the past, you know. So because we get so honed in on what we're doing in our business, we we don't see, you know, the blinders are on, so to speak. So take the time to, you know, get the professional help. Again, Joe and I are great. If I say so myself, I'm not being obnoxious. I think we're really, really good at what we do. There are other people as well out there. Do your due diligence. Check people out, but get the help. Take the time. It is an investment in their time to get this information to get it done right because that's what it takes an invest Joey one of my one of my Joeisms I have joisms is

the way you make more money yeah many the way you make more money is not to work harder it's to pay less in taxes yeah people are already working hard like I'm not going to go to a business owner and tell them to work harder I'm going to tell them maybe to work smarter using AI and things like that. But I'm not going to tell them to work harder. I want them to work less hard. I just want them to work much more efficiently and much more productive. And a lot of that is not paying tax. Yeah, for sure. Well, the tagline of Preserve Wealth Group is keep more what you earn, pay less in taxes, right? That's the whole thing. I think people that come to us and come to this show, they're all successful already and they're they're already maxing their hours, right? And now the next step is all right, how can you max out your wealth? Um, and I think that's the value we're trying to reduce your hours at the

same time and reduce your hours at the same time cuz you know what I lost six people in my life in 24 and one was a very very very 40ome year friend from our inner circle of three couples and it was a quick cancer thing that she died because they overtreat her with chemo and radiation she shouldn't have died it was stage one and it was treatable and that was my kick in the behind I don't skip anything now life is too short I go to every single Ohio State football game I mean life is too short. None of us know how long. No one's got a contract for tomorrow. Let me touch on that. Obviously, make sure your stuff's together so you really can enjoy it because you have the peace of mind. I know if I go tomorrow, everything's in place. My family's fine. Everybody's fine. Everybody's better than fun. Yeah. Right. That lets me really enjoy my time now. That's good. And just so right because you know, you know, you already

know about my initial uh business, you know, um profession and all. So I always understood the you know life is not infinite you know it's finite actually you know so but and then I had my own health problems in my 40s so I learned from that as well you know it's it's one thing when it happens to you but but one of the things that I've and we just did this the other day with that gentleman Joe I brought it up to him because he was working so hard and something that I and again I honestly I did get this from my mom because my mom had such a rough rough life and when she retired I said mommy you know she didn't know how to spend money again she didn't have a lot of But she had it. She had enough then. And she didn't know how to spend it because she I mean I have a client that's worth $25 million that still lives in a small apartment, has a 1944 Toyota or

something. I cannot convince them to live their life and spend their money. But by far and large, like what I did for my mom, I said, "Mommy, you have the money. Go live. Go do the things you want." Because I think it is so important. I don't want I mean, I shouldn't tell people what to do, but my wife will tell you I love to tell people what to do. You know, like so like but I want people to enjoy their lives. You know, there's again what what should entrepreneurs do? They're so focused again on their business. Hey, you've worked hard. You deserve it. Take some time. You've we're showing you how to protect these dollars. Go and spend time with your family, with your, you know, we can never get that back. Go travel. What was the guy wanted to go to Italy the other day with his wife, right, Joe? That guy. Yeah. You're going to go to Italy, man. We're going to help you. Okay. to. So, it's not just about the

planning that we're doing and having it all in order. Like Joe was saying, it's about having the freedom to go and do and live and do the things that you want to enjoy. It's not all about the almighty buck, if I say. Josh, we're uh 12 minutes late for our 3:30, by the way. Yeah, I I I took care of that. I did that. Let's Let's wrap it up here. But again, guys, thank you so much for your time. That was amazing value. I think we're going to have to run it back again. Um, and again, if you're watching this show, the only thing we're asking is comment your takeaway, like it, share it to another business owner that uh would learn from from from the value we've provided today and and subscribe to the channel for more that that encourages us to bring uh qualified guests like we have right now today. So again, thank you for your time and we'll see you guys