The Proven legal $10 Million Tax Free Exit Strategy - Garrett Gunderson

Our guest today is Garrett Gunderson, a financial entrepreneur, author, and wealth strategist

“who has helped thousands of business owners create lasting prosperity by focusing on cash flow,”

efficiency, and economic independence. Garrett has proven that true wealth isn't built by sacrifice in your life. It's built by maximizing your value and keeping more of what you earn. The show starts now. Everybody, welcome back to the show. I'm excited that you came on back, man. Thank you. Thanks for coming back, man. Appreciate it. So, the first episode, it was really kind of felt like you and I would just sit around having a coffee talking back and forth about life,

liberty, and what it's like to be an entrepreneur. There's so much more to you in what you do. You're one of the leading individuals that I know on financial advice and financial expertise. I really wanted to kind of unlock that open on this episode and talk about what are some of the things that people come to you and like like, can't believe they don't know this and one of the most frequent things that you talk about when it comes to financial advice. And I feel like entrepreneurs don't

know so much about tax. It's amazing, right? Because they get a CPA or an enrolled agent and they're

like, oh, I got a tax strategist. No, you got yourself a historian. They're going to tell you what you owe after the fact. And there's going to be so many things directly in the tax code that they're going to make you feel like, well, I don't know if I should do that. That sounds risky. That's completely down the fairway, black and white, and easy. And even further than that, the reason why most people know is because if you don't have a attorney that's coordinated

in the strategy with the accountants, you're missing out because the type of corporation you choose is massive. For example, if someone's a C corporation that's been in operation for at least three years, when they sell, they could sell for up to seven, a half million dollars tax free using section 202. And if they've been in business for five years, that's $15 million tax free per partner. And yet, if you didn't select the right entity, you might not have that tax advantage, right? And

maybe a CPA is not looking at that. They're just going, hey, I need to file these taxes. And worst case, you talk to them at the next year for the previous year. And they're only strategies usually to delay tax. And delaying tax and saving tax are completely different things. So really, there's this easy framework. Number one, you got to have the right team. So just timely data. You know, I don't care if it's a CFO because you're an established company, a controller, or a book

keeper, you just got to have the timely data because if you're talking too late, you're missing opportunity. Second is, you need the strategist that helps you maximize tax deductions. So deductions

“is kind of the second category. The third category is you have to have an attorney. Now if you're”

under a million dollars revenue, a corporate attorney's fine, but when you get a bug that mark, you want to tax attorney. And they're responsible for how you classify your income, which is

a game changer. And then finally, if you own real estate, you want an engineer specifically a

cost segregation engineer because there's all this bonus depreciation people to take if they're in real estate now that gives them major windfalls of like deductions now. Now to a degree that could be a deferral because if you just sell it out right after you capture it, but I could have you borrow against real estate not pay tax, roll it over to another piece of real estate not pay tax or do a charitable trust or you donate the real estate to a charity, then sell it tax free and you

get a lifetime income while you're alive. Off of that trust, the charity just keeps at least 10% of what's left over. Rather pay the charity 10% in the government 20% personally. So that's the team. The second thing is how do you maximize deductions? Well, every time you spend money

“say, does this relate to my business? And if you're not sure, meet with your tax team, right?”

And that's the tax attorney or tax drivers. And man, Charles, I feel like the best tax strategist are actually financial people, not CPAs. CPAs are trained to file taxes. You want

them, they're essential. They keep you compliant, but to expect them to be proactive when they're

mostly reactive, they're filing 800 to 1,000 filings a year. It almost becomes a commodity. You need some of that sees the big picture and sees how everything works together and helps you navigate it. Now, the better tax deductions are the better like, you know, category here is things like Section 199A. That's a 20% deduction off the top. Then you only pay tax on what's left over as a business owner. That's one thing that a lot of business owners miss. It's been out for several years now.

280G, which is you can rent your home out for 14 days to your business, write it off in the business, because you're using it for business purpose. And then not claim it as personal income. So that's just 14 days of tax deduction. Most people miss. Maybe they had a team retreat. Maybe they were filming. There's a number of things that you don't just let anyone over to your house, but you might decide, hey, you want to film in other rooms and just what you're in now. Another tax strategy,

everyone should know, but I don't know why everyone doesn't take advantage of it. Just having a home office, you get to write that off. It's a percentage of utilities, all that kind of stuff. That's another piece that, you know, if you have the kids, you could pay your kids. Just over $15,000 now per year tax deductible the business tax free to the kid and you still control that money.

basic. But one that I thought argument against is this thing called 1302J. We happen to have an indoor pool.

“We have a sauna. As you know, you know, I have a cold plunge. You know, I have a gym. So all the maintenance”

tours that if I make it available to my employees, becomes a right off the maintenance does. We'll guess what? I've employees called my kids in one of my companies, so I make it available to them. And all of a sudden, the maintenance is right on. Some people might feel like that's aggressive. It's just within the law. Now, I know some people that might say, oh, I'm going to make it available to my employees. They don't make it available to other employees. That's the problem.

It's a specific company that's only got my family inside of it that make that available. So like these aren't the game changing things in tax reductions, but there's a lot that's missed there. The better strategy is if you're a business owner and you do have a wife or kids, as you set up a family company that takes your right off instead of taking too many right-ups from the business. That way, if you have partnerships or that way, you know, if you have

other people involved like employees, you're not just stripping that business to pay for everything that you want, you're taking money into your family company and then taking your right-offs there, because that family company doesn't have value in the marketplace or the existing business does.

And a lot of wealthy families do that. So I'll pause here for a second before I get to the

big ones which is how to classify income, which the tax attorney helps with, and there's four major ways to do that. So I want to reverse all the way back on there. One of the first thing you said was to just see company versus an S Corp and all of that. When you're running into this and you have someone who doesn't have this experience and has been working with the CPA instead of so when he's a strategist and really understands this is a true financial guy, how do you pivot out of that?

Do you how do you switch your company from like, hey, I'm an S Corp. I probably should be a C Corp because I've got a sell and it's going to be this exit and it's going to be this even time. Oh, it's going to be this multiply blah blah. Is there a way you could do that after you've got

“the, you know, the cart down the road a little bit or you like, you're screwed and you have to switch it”

around. How have you survived that? Well, the clock won't start taking until it's a C Corp. So you're just, you know, if you, if you just start a new C Corp, if you convert your S Corp, if you're an LLC, it's a very easy. Because an LLC can do an S election or a C election. So you just change the election and how you how you tax that and become a C corporation, right? So that would be suffice. If you're an S Corp, you're going to have to convert it to a C Corp or make that change,

right? Or start something new and then maybe have that relationship with the business. There's a number of things we'd have to kind of consider to figure out what to do and I'd bring an attorney and to do that. So it's, it's not that it's an impossible thing. It just, that's when the clock starts taking thing. You can't reverse the clock. It's not like, hey, I've had this company for 30 years and I just made it a C Corp that we don't care. This is not going to be true to as a

new entity and we're going to rock and roll from there. Right. And, you know, the new rules that just came out with a big beautiful bill, it used to take five years for that to happen. You know, start getting benefits after three. So they have shortened it, you know, limits it to seven

half million total benefit after three years where it's 15 million after five. And there are some,

“there are some exclusion. Certain companies wouldn't, it wouldn't exist. So you have to make”

sure you're in the category in the type of company that would work for. We've had, you know, we've had companies sell in 70 million dollars tax free because spouse is an owner, kids have small ownership, trust is an owner and the main individual is an owner. So there's a lot of tax benefit through that. And, you know, an LLC and S Corp passes through. So one of the works things I see is I see a lot of partnerships in an S Corp. S Corp are very frigid. They're very

inflexible. And so I've seen businesses do huge numbers with an S Corp, but I'm like, wow, you're, you're definitely first off overpaying tax and undervaluing the value of the business, because the C Corp gives you different share classes if you have a raising capital that you retain earnings. So you don't have to pay tax. The people get scared because I go, you have to pay corporate tax and personal tax. But, you know, there's these other advantages that kind of help you out.

And by the way, interestingly, if you have a C Corp and an LLC or an S Corp do a small amount of revenue, the C Corp is going to pay less tax on a small amount of revenue than an LLC or an S Corp because those pass through to someone individually. So S Corp, too inflexible. LLC, much more flexible. C Corp, you know, it's just, there's a, there's a little bit more ownerous in managing it, but there is a lot more opportunity in managing it. So I, a lot of businesses

are LLCs that's the most popular one, but they may just want to consider like holding intellectual property in a C Corp or holding a piece of that business in a C Corp. So there is an option that they can have an exit and get some tax benefit and also retain earnings and maybe even have a medical reimbursement at a town which you can't have an LLC or an S Corp from a tax advantage standpoint. There's a lot of stuff right now about the virality of where you form

your organization either the Coc Islands or Delaware or Wyoming or we're all these different things. When you're going down this path and you're having professional financial advice, not just someone who talks about the past, but it's solely focused on the future of your finances. Where do you tell

going to do offshore like Coc Islands or Nevis, that's because you're moving probably towards an

asset protection trust internationally and then what happens with that is yes you will protect your assets for sure and you'll also make it a little bit harder to access that money at the same time. And I think it was like 2013 the U.S. was like hey we're seeing too much money go overseas. We'd like to keep some of that money here so they set up a domestic asset protection trust. Doesn't have the same precedent where we could see for decades that you know they're

nearly impossible to penetrate and people haven't got into them. They just don't have as much you know data because they're newer but they're essentially like well Charles why don't you set up here domestically? We'll give you a provision that says you can choose your distribution trustee so you still own those assets the trust does but you can have access to that if the distribution trustee says yes now you might have a distribution trustee that you go sideways with you can

fire them and hire someone new so it's still arms length. Own nothing control everything. Those types of things like a domestic asset protection trust the state matters heavily because some states it takes six months before now it's irrevocable and nobody can get to it including creditors and some states take three years right so it might just take a lot longer if you're incorporated in certain states Alaska was a big one early on but they take longer than

Nevada you know it seems like Nevada and Wyoming are really popular but they're still taking

“longer than Utah the problem with Utah is you know have to make a you have to make a public”

declaration that you set this up in some type of trade publication so your creditors have a chance to come and look at it and it's a little bit more inflexible of changing trustees and stuff like that than Wyoming and Nevada. I'm going about to decide if we want to make this easy because we want more coming to us you know they're they got registered agents they've got you know entity set up where you have addresses and all that kind of stuff so those are what I see is

kind of the two most popular although back of the day as you know Delaware was the king of sea corpse way back in the day it's not quite as much because we've just seen you know we know where people aren't going to go it's California right people aren't going to incorporate in California deal with those kind of laws and the kind of issues that might be you know might happen there um so yeah it's more like your asset protection then your corporation although the corporation

where it's set up and you just got to look at like some states have pretty unfavoral laws to businesses

“and that's why you want to be careful about that and just because you're in a certain state”

and you set up a corporation somewhere else you're still paying the state tax from the state you're in you're just abiding by the legal structure or you set up the legal structure and the rules that they have right so where who has better protections who who support you or has easier setup and has you know things like that but then even if we get the third dimension here which is trust right so we have we have an asset protection trust which is what we're talking about and corporations but

there's also perpetual trust people go to South Dakota because it's perpetual you can keep that going forever where Nevada eventually after certain amount of generations dissolves the trust so you know that another did layer is like what if you want this to go from generation generation versus just what's best now so it sounds a little bit complicated but that's why you want to have a good attorney they just kind of know it's going on and you know then you you can definitely use AI to

figure some of this out but we know the AI likes to make some stuff up so you know well I think

it's in the name of AI AI by itself is an artificial intelligence it's always hard to collect

“it's just always incorrect that's just the reality it's just you have to get to deal with that”

in the brief set speaking about being always incorrect what are some of the things that people just blatant mistakes that you hear all the time that guys just please stop doing this here's the top 10 things stop doing these 10 things well so let me I'll finish the tax thing because there's a lot of mistakes in the third category which is reclassification these are the four things number one you want more passive income protects purpose than active income active income like

W2 as the highest tax against it so one of the mistakes I see business owners doing is taking huge salaries instead of salary plus distributions when you're operating as a business owner you can take distributions when you're operating as a business front or you take a salary when you differentiate those two you can avoid self-employment tax which is at least 15.3% on the top dollars and on some of the dollars at least 3.2% once you've maxed it out but that's a perpetual

savings of 3.2% just because you took two pay checks instead of one the second thing is

when you can have a capital gain asset instead of you know ordinary income asset a lot of people put their assets in retirement plans that means it's permanently now going to be an ordinary income asset I've seen people be like I'm going to buy this real estate instead of my Iran like real estate's a capital gain asset capital gain is 20% or the income is 37% why would you penalize yourself and you can't depreciate it anymore so you use that advantage so I just see a lot of

the next generation with a step up in basis meaning it goes to them as if to the full value is what was paid no tax on that game and then also if we do decide to sell we've got strategies to offset that capital gain which we wouldn't have an ordinary income or we pay 20% to the 37% so I like seeing more capital gain based assets we know you know there's tons of people to talk about buy a borrow die where you're borrowing against those assets I mean you know when you die it

steps up in the basis so you pass it on tax free you know that's that's a that's a that's a big

strategy and then the third thing is that people just aren't maximizing tax free strategies like

there's a lot there's not a lot of them but the ones that are awesome are you get to be charitable and you actually get a benefit from being charitable charitable lead trusts charitable remainder trusts so it's whether or not you want to fund something towards a charity now which gives you tax benefits later or whether you want to donate something now which gives you income now and the and a little bit of a tax about it's up front like there's things like that are donor advice funds

or section 1202 like a lot of people make the mistake in business that they think they're going to sell their business and they wait until they get a letter of intent or they get a broker and then they try to do the tax strategy and they've just negated over half of the tax strategies so

“not for problem and then finally I think the biggest mistake in tax will be the fourth one is”

people let the tax tell like the dog they spend a dollar to save 37 cents and they wouldn't

spend the dollar otherwise right so they're buying something like a vehicle that they didn't really want that appreciates and value because they can do a section 179 which allows them to write the whole off the whole thing off in that year but now they have appreciated asset that wasn't that useful so I want to use tax arbitrage spending dollar get more than a dollar back right there's not a ton of these strategies you know they they they think with them all the time like there's equipment

leasing strategies that you can I don't love those because you're you're financing equipment for that could that equipment out know the value of it in the future but it gives you this bonus depreciation short-term rentals where you're buying a rental you're getting huge depreciation on it right away which has benefiting you historic easements you're buying something that's in a historical area you're preserving the facade they give you a major benefit that you still get a rented out and use it

because you preserve that facade buying art and donating art if you know how to buy art properly it's a donation game here in the United States so people could buy and donate and get more than what in the tax benefit and what they spend again if they know how to buy it properly which usually comes from buying a collection of art at a discount holding it for three years and then donating it afterwards so that's kind of tax arbitrage so those are just four tax mistakes we still got

“six more mistakes that are non tax related but you know I think the fifth mistake would be a lot”

of entrepreneurs just try to do too much on their own so it lands on their plate and now they're like oh you got to handle my finances and now they've got to describe to the attorney what they heard from the accountant it becomes confusing so they just kind of like let it go I don't know what happens is they overpay tax or they don't automate things like I think they automate investing I'm about automating savings and deliberately investing if you automate your investing that'd be like

automating your marketing it's not working you still put money into it we wouldn't do that as business owners but we do that with them as investors so you automate the savings off the top live off the rest don't overly budget just be able to be productive with it because it's so much mental space the budgeting you've already saved it off the top and then invest in what you know I believe investor DNA investor DNA says who am I and what kind of investor am I some people are

great at real estate though the people aren't some people are good at buying businesses other people aren't some people are good at intellectual property other people aren't like you've got to figure out what you're willing to pay attention to what you're willing to dive in and create an ability towards and then only invest in alignment with that diversification is when we want to preserve not when we want to grow too many people prematurely diversify and spread themself thin it stunts the

growth and then what they do is they get frustrated when it's not performing as well as their business

“next issue or mistake is they they I think it's really important to grow your business that some”

people don't have a a way to turn business wealth in a personal wealth so they grow their business the business has an insatiable appetite and then they are one dimensional they don't have an asset class outside of that so if you get start pulling some money off the table with an asset class that's non-correlated to preserve and protect that so you have a baseline and a foundation that's

key and then finally I think we're probably close to the tenth mistake is they invest for accumulation

instead of cash flow create cash flow so you have financial independence recurring revenue from assets that cover your expenses then you can reinvest all your active dollars and exponentially grow versus say 10% chase 10% and wait for 30 years that's a really slow bad process that people mistakenly fall for the show volume of things that you just did was an absolute master class there's there's so much there that I'm I'm gonna got to go back and watch so because there's

things that you're doing that I'm not even doing so I love what you talked about with the investor data and respecting that there's people coming like do you invest in crypto do you do NFTs do you do

on the planet at the time he told me he goes don't invest in shit you don't invest in period full

“stop if you do not understand it do not put money in it you got to stay where you're comfortable”

to stay in your lane and you know outsourcing that and when you talk about investing because again you're one of the most financial editor individuals I know what do you focus on for cash flow what are you doing because I know I know you're scaling I know what you're doing and again because we have our dynamic I know you're back at here a little bit better the most people can you share with what you do for your passive income and your cash flow and your kind of

your generational protection downrange for your kids and so on and so forth so I've written 10 books and I look at each book as a piece of real estate and then those books continue to produce even though they've been written in the past so I'm an intellectual property to create recurring

revenue kind of guy so that creates you know right now my focus is media how can I create

reaching reputation because it's not just what I know it's who knows me and so how can I reef those people so we can shift certain screen the people we can help the best and then we can give away to the people that we can't help are very best whether they pay us or not so that's kind of like brand and reputation and then that intellectual property is evolving now because that's including certain tools that make something very easy and efficient to get diamonds to big long

workbooks of the past right like just we could help someone build a family crest like this with the tool and so when I talk about it it's like here go ahead and do it that engages them with us so with that I then have a program called multiplier and in multiplier it is acted because I do teach once a week but I like teaching but people are paying every month and they get coaches and they get you know an app or they can communicate with each other and they get a financial network so

I'm actively building that but the way that I'm building that is with all the intellectual property that informs them to like who I am and what I do which is active up front becomes more past of this time goes on because I've got books that have been producing since 2008 and still selling and it's still in you know top 20 in certain categories and I think I have four books right now in the top 100 of Amazon categories and some in the top five those are because you know it's something I

develop the skill for and even though it's active up front it becomes more past and more time and I think that's the myth of passive income people think I just hand it off and I get past it and I'm no more active you are upfront the more passive it becomes because of selection because of strategy because like why would someone get someone 15% a year just because they hand it a money there's got to be something more than that to get that kind of return and so it's usually about like

unique viewpoints and it's about like specific types of deals and quick timing or stuff like that I don't want to be in that game of real estate because it just hijacks my life and I don't want to be tied down to a property that has property taxes and maintenance and that kind of stuff I had a hundred plus real estate properties I'm divesting on I'm only going to have two

“by the end of this year you know it's like that's what I want to manage I think it's just like”

part of my early ambition is like I just want to own a lot of real estate because that's where people store well that's where some people store well other people store it with like you know they go and acquire businesses and that's cool or they do intellectual private I think that's the big three real estate business and intellectual property are the big three kind of asset generators now there's a thousand ways to do real estate there's a thousand ways to do intellectual property

there's a thousand ways to thousand ten thousand different types of businesses so it's about narrowing the focus and figuring out what to do from there yeah the right heart chili peppers just sold their the entire book of all of their stuff and I was like doing it I didn't know it was for sale because those are some of those things that just produce and produce and produce but I agree with two said passive income is actually a little active and we talk about this all the time the money is

made before you sign on the deal not when you're actually in the deal it has to make sense before you make money on the buy yeah make money on the buy right isn't complicated in anywhere shape before so when people reach out and they want to do that and they want to get educated what are some of the normal problems they run to right off the bat when they come to you and you're talking about how you've got the books and you have all that again author as well what are some of the

ones you're just like I before you buy any of the books please just do this for the love of yeah what is the thing that you just wish they're just just do this or they brought to you before

“they started working with you I just like I think it's hard for people to be honest about their”

finances because no matter how successful they are they always feel like they should be further ahead

yeah and so they always like there's this weird thing that when it's not going well they're like I just need to get to the other side of this I just need to figure this out first right and so just delays everything because the thinking that got him in a situation isn't going to be the thinking that gets them out of it and if they just get rid of the guilt the shame or the embarrassment and be open they can accelerate the results because all progress begins when honesty exists and so

we've just created a firm that there's no judgment zone of me if someone wants to read the books or watch the videos to get there it's just going to require more time and that's fine we'll keep putting that out we'll make it extraordinarily affordable so no matter where you're at you can have

have time so they just buy the result because we can help with the sequencing and the implementation of it but it's just a matter of being open and honest and you know not delaying because there's

never a good time you never like oh you know and in two months I'm just going to have all the time

“to finally get my finances handled and then two months goes by you pay more tax than you need to you”

had more interest that went out the door your insurance is a design properly so you're one accident away from having a money that comes out of your account they didn't need to your overpaying those insurance companies and there's a ton of fees and the investments that are creating drag I remember I met this guy and I told him it was going to be 20 grand to work with us yeah I just I do a day and a half workshop became to it and he's like 20 grand that's crazy and like well

we're going to guarantee that we save you that or we cover the difference including the full 20 grand he's like okay that's cool I said and did you feel like you paid a lot of fees in your investments last year goes not really I'm like what we did the analysis it was $19,130 did you make or lose money last year because we lost money I'm like and you paid $19,000 so we're just barely more than that by the way he had 41 businesses 38 physical therapy practices and then

three car practices and we saved him $39,000 a month but see the way finance works is they just

love to basically say we'll just automatically take the money out so you don't fill or see it you know

instead of like if you pay it's a little bit like we'd have a revolution overnight if all the fees that went to finance had to be transferred manually or sent by a check or put on a credit card people would lose their mind but they just don't see it so it's a matter of like that visibility and seeing what's going on for you instead of learning a tactic and chasing some tool like seeing and assessing where you're at I'm in finding 10% or more of that income that you can put back in your

pocket that's our specialty and when you get this and people like hey I've got this extra 10% and you're reversing this and you're reversing the expenses and people go okay I'm completely oblivious of what vehicles I need to use and listen you saved me the money that's great but I really want to talk about earning that income and look at those different things and maybe they're not book people maybe they're not intellectual property people do you have an environment where you bring

“them in it's okay here's what you're going to want to do here's the best thing you do go buy a”

bunch of parking lots or let's go flip businesses or whatever it is how do you help them get to that next part because most of the people and everyone's all the time if you're great at being a long care guy and you're phenomenal in your own 700 different locations you probably suck at certain other things you're probably not that great over here and thinking if you're a great picture doesn't mean you're going to be a great hitter it's just you need to understand that

let me get it and there's a lot of ego that involves with entrepreneurs and I think one of the proven most proven thing is hey I'm intelligent here therefore I'm intelligent here and it's just not the case so when people come to you and they're like listen I'm going to run my business and I'm going to scale it and I'm really good at my business but I suck at the passive income play what do you do with those guys yeah and in those that's my favorite situation because I'm

going to encourage them to grow the business I'm going to say that is your well generator is the

“business let's pick one asset class that we can take money off the table as you're growing”

that business so the business is insatiable appetite doesn't eat up all the profit you know and so we just picked that one asset class and like for some it's what's the least risky thing that we could do that it won't even earn close to what the business earns but now it's

stable it's secure usually makes their spouse feel amazing because like oh cool we've got this

there that we can count on you know maybe it's maybe it's only getting 5% but it's you know keeping up with inflation and plus it's 5% without taxes but what we look at is this we've done the research the average 401k if people could double their rate of return versus just save the tax that we help people save and just save the interest by either restructuring loans or renegotiating and straights or realligating funds they're 400% better off with efficiency than doubling the return

with the average account balance so we go there first because now we've got this extra fuel we've got this extra money so maybe they don't even have to take any money out of the business we've just found it through tax savings through interest savings through investment fees that they didn't know they had or insurance that was it doesn't design properly and then we build that asset class so they could just keep growing that business growing that business because if they start going

I want to get it pasted income I'm going to start buying real estate I could tell you what's going to happen they're not going to have to spend a bunch of time in real estate or they're going to go to a syndication and the syndication they have no control over there is no liquidity they hope it works out they hope the economy doesn't change and if it does they just took a loss which means now they feel bad and now they're upset because they're not as productive in their business

because they're fighting with their spouse because the money that was lost in his real estate syndication they knew nothing about they had zero control over so I'm all about simplification and focus business asset class we'll find the money to help finance that asset class and we can't get all the way there we'll do it through some business growth but like I'm just going to discourage

that point I'm going to refer them to other firms that this is all they do full time private capital

venture capital I'm not going to touch that with them because I'm here to help the people that are on the way up get to that place where they have access to the people that are in that upper echelon that have been around for 50, 60 years that have handled different economic cycles that that's our whole thing is due diligence on that all day long I just couldn't if I try to

“do it I'm serving too many things and I wouldn't be an expert at these other pieces yeah I think”

you're talking about you know what you're saying before staying in your lane it's kind of inch wide mild deep if this is what you're doing and this is what you generate here and come string for you let's let's protect that let's scale that let's reduce the taxes let's reduce your exposure and let's put you in the best vehicles that when you do want to exit it that you're already lined up for that and most entrepreneurs just aren't having that conversation when they

form the business they're just like hey I had this idea I'm like I don't really care about your idea I want to know what your exit plan is before you start your business and if you don't do that we're going to run into massive issues so I think coming in also on top of that say okay this is my exit plan yeah sure I have this idea of the business but I now know my exit plan but on top of that I know how to protect my assets and I know how to protect myself from taxes

and in the liabilities that are going to come into I think that's where you come in where most people just don't have that they've got someone talking about the past but not talking about the future which is kind of like driving forward by a looking in the review mirror it just doesn't work very well in any way shape or form yep from there when you go into it and your students are talking to you what are some of the questions that you know you mentioned this before we started recording

there's people that you work with they're like hey I didn't even know that that that was a thing and they're like oh hey I'll give you this no problem what are some of the things like like you don't know this what are some of those that you run into yeah what's interesting you mentioned earlier just because someone's really smart at one thing people almost assume they're smarter to bunch of other things and so like the thing I here's about people don't know they don't know

“how to sense when something's a scam that's the shocking thing now look that's what happened to”

me in my 20s I thought everybody like because I made the mistake of as 19 I bought my first home

right before I turned 20 and rented it out to other college roommates and you know sold it for bought it for less than 100 sold the product in 70 I'm thinking dude I'm so good my brother-in-law needed some cash for an investment deal I gave him 25 grand I put it in escrow he got the deal gave you back 50 grand three months later my dude I'm a badass and my buddy Joel's like hey I got a friend gonna lose his house you could buy it you could read it Jim because I just got him a

job there's a ton of equity and he said when he refinances he'll split it with you we know how to improve his credit my great so no money down you know sales for 190 grand more than I bought it for we split that 50 50 so my first three deals I'm in my early 20s being like dude I'm so good at this I'm so good at this and so if that's good I might as well do 100 properties and I might as well start at hard money lending fund and I and all of a sudden into all these things that I'm not the

expert in but people trust me because I'm articulate and I've got other expertise and why I had to learn the hard way was about a 45,000 square foot building there was 45% owner in when that person got in the trouble that meant I got in trouble because I didn't have the rate of buy it out and then we lost the building like I just got had my fingers in so many things starting new businesses complimentary things but then what happened was my health starts to suffer I don't have and it's like

this is what's fascinating because social media is trying to paint a life for people that if you just grind life away you'll have all the great things but you'll be alone to ever enjoy them and that's the thing that's hard to understand is why people are so motivated by crappy stories around money

“because they think there's a shortcut or there's a secret and if they get that they'll get ahead”

I mean I know that's probably different than what you expect me to say but I just see on so many entrepreneurs that lose so much money putting in things that don't make any sense because the story was so compelling I wrote a book called Money on Mask in that book I talked about this category of person called the high roller the high roller plays a game called opportunity but they make they cut corners they take shortcuts so they're kind of like ride the highs and lows they're

likely to go bankrupt more than once and they bring people with them because they're great at fundraising they're awesome at parties they're great at complimenting you they're so good to be around but they're not going to any details and so if they don't have the right people behind them it is so dangerous and they're just so compelling because they're like hey why don't you take my uh ridiculous luxury car for a driving like dude that's so nice of you and then

hey you want to fly private with this oh this is amazing and then you find out that that was all

raised capital they were supposed to go into investment deals and you know it wasn't real and how many stories do we hear all the time nationally about people that raised a bunch of funds lost at all I mean for people that couldn't afford to be in those deals and now they're desolate and they're hopeless and all that kind of stuff that's the thing why is it that every rapper wants to be a baller and every baller wants to be a rapper it's the same thing why is

every entrepreneur want to be an investor to the point that they or put everything they know about their entrepreneurship because that's the thing they need most intimately understanders their business

and it's like taking that good money from the business siphing it off and putting into things

“that are broken promises and those broken promises destroyed marriages they destroy families and it's”

like I'm I just want to be an advocate for that uh not doing that because you know part of why want to be ridiculously successful is because I want my kids have a great network I didn't have a great network I came from a coal mining town so I learned from people that sounded good but weren't real and sold me stuff that they couldn't fulfill on and all that kind of stuff I learned that during you know my early years because I didn't have great attorneys to protect me in my early

years now I'm bringing to my attorney he's going to tell me all the things that I can't see and the things I need to look for and ways to navigate the deal because I've got a network of people I've got people that I can go to and say what do you think about this that might sniff it out and so many people are missing that but that there's that belonging that the entrepreneur wants because sometimes it's the lonely role so they invest just to be in the kill kids club

and that investment just goes away they've got ten different small investments you know that add up to one large investment and they can't be in all the meetings they don't know it's going in those boardrooms and then they find out and I could really hire right now but I got my money tied up and things I don't understand. Yeah there's so much there that you talked about regarding entrepreneurs being such a lonely road it's an exceptionally lonely road it's just it is what it is

and you're going to run into that environment we're like hey I want to go do ABCD and E but I'm so alone maybe there's an easier way to do this because most entrepreneurs are burnt out because they're trying to do everything and buy that they're doing absolutely nothing and you talked about your health fell in as well as you go in this environment if a locking in on what's proven and surrounding yourself with people that don't get in your face

I don't want to be your friend has been really interesting for me get hiring people that are not there to be nice to me has been really really valuable when I hired my first lawyer I was sitting down was like how do I how do I pick my lawyer what do I do like pick the person

“you're terrified of I was like okay and that's how I hired my first lawyer I picked the guy”

that was absolutely stirred up and everyone that I've employed for me that are my law on my law team I'm terrified of them because then I go at least you're on my team because like you go for go go get that and say out of my way and I just give them everything and how that transparency because I'm smart enough to get on my own way not because it was some gift that I got

but because the first time I lost a million dollars I was sitting down with my mentor at the time

and he sat with me because what's going on I was like I just lost a million dollars he's at tall which you lose ten I'm like what you just did we all lose a minute he was and you're getting to the point where you lose ten and I'm like wait what does that's the cost of the game and it goes against what social media talks about where this is when you call this hustle porn or you're getting up at four o'clock in the morning and have 17 meetings work out 17 more times

and wait wait and six o'clock you got to do it all over it it just it doesn't work and it's not effective long term because people are looking for shortcuts instead of strategies so looking for shortcuts instead of the exact way to do it long term that you just have to dig in and I like which said before like hey you've written ten plus books that's great and as an author we both know that we put our best in there because there's just this you know imposter complex that we

have or they inferiority complex that we have put it in there but that's going to take time and

“if you want a shortcut you need to be able to sit down and talk to actually to the person”

so when you're doing this and you're sitting down can you tell me a story with some of your clients that they sat down and they just were completely blindsided by something that they didn't even know because again maybe they were great accountants or great peptide guides or whatever it is but they were just absolutely blindsided over here but it's like geez I just completely lost yeah like I'll tell you one that we caught in time last year okay

we just had a client that bought a dream home and then they were about to move in and I was like and our tax drivers was like what do you wait till January I was like yeah why is like because if we make this just short-term rental between now January you're going to get hundreds of thousands of dollars through cost segregation and it was about to move in canceled the movers decided to browse stay in my house and you know I was a huge deal I've had people it was too late where they

called me hey I'm selling my business like how can we save tax and I had some of the just sold their business for nine million dollars and they're like how do we save tax and I was like well we can I wouldn't recommend most of the ways to do it because you've already sold it it's capital

gains and here's what we've done beforehand and that that's so common where people call us when

it's really late in the game like I weren't to talk to someone two years before they think about selling to prepare that and I just think that 75% of people that sell their business regret selling it you know 75% because it's what they know it's their relationships that they have it's their skill sets but it's a seductive story sell your business and then what you sell it then what like you know become an investor where you can invest and the phone's not going to ring for you to be doing things

because the business is sold and you might not like how they run that business especially if you sell it to private equity you might really hate how it goes so you know I kind of believe in like

quite a few businesses and I'm of the mindset of there are certain reasons to sell and there's certain reasons not to sell if you have no other tangible skills and you don't know where the next landing pad is that you're going to jump to don't sell the business don't just don't sell it if you're at the point where you'd rather you know take an early exit from life then stay in that business stop walk out you've done you've hit and most of the time people who you know run into it

and we're selling businesses it's not because you don't like the business it's that because the business

itself is even you alive because the employees the first business I ever sold I sold because I just

“consent the employees anymore I think I've done I'm like I just can't I've rebuilt this infrastructure I wasn't a”

good leader at the time I had no idea about decentralized command I had no idea how to do build a culture I I was like I can't I can't I can't and it was absolutely killing me and the day after I sold it my phone didn't ring no one reached out none of my employees because it was built into the contract I was just an abandoned island and I love it now I gave the exact fan of what to do to the guy who sold it for five times more nine years later and model tough to him I just could do it but be so you know

there are times to sell a business just like that I think there's times to sit down and plan this stuff out but not for a moment sorry but because that wasn't the right bit for you anymore or is the right business for you right and you have a plan you know you're doing nice well I think that's the difference so when people hire you it's because they want that plan two years from now it's kind of like saying hey I just got in a car accident should I put my seat belt on yeah that would have been a great

idea a mile back down the road but now let's talk about your hospital bills because it just that's where you are so when people come into that and they want to do that what do they bring to you do they just bring transparency do they bring their town do they bring their team what are the things they need to have do they you know is it in person thing how do they do that so this is our

staff so we do discovery session first we don't ask them to send anything in we're just asking

them questions where how are they on financial confidence what kind of entity have they set up where what keeps them up at night what's their loan structure like are they paying too much in tax or how much are they paying and you know who's on the financial team so we just get a good landscape then we do a report of findings the report of findings with general advice gives ranges of here's the tax savings here's the asset protection here's the holes and then they could join

our program at that point at the baseline okay and then when they're in the baseline we can do the full analysis because they've now paid us we've now got all their documents and we can say

“if you want to done for you program it'll be this much more per month if you just want us to”

coach you to tell you what to do and bring in the network they just stay where they are which is really inexpensive but you know basically if they want us to file the taxes do the tax strategy with for them they want us to set up the corporations and you know all the asset protection there's ones we've got all the documents we can quote what that is and then we just keep moving forward they get two calls a month with a results facilitator which means they're not paying

$600 an hour for an attorney or $500 an hour for a CPA we're gathering we're analyzing and then we're making this efficient as possible for those things to get implemented because a lot of CPAs could be good if they weren't meeting with clients all the time a lot of attorneys could do better if they weren't constantly explaining the same thing over and over we keep them in their expertise and then we handled the navigation and that's what really transforms having

a coordinated effort and a comprehensive team yeah because if you're a billionaire you just hire your

“own team yeah yeah that's that's a very expensive venture to have your own team like to have”

your own financial team that only works for you so there's not many true family offices which are just for one family working nowhere else that's become billionaires playground but you have multi-family offices where they take on a hundred clients and it's all the same team working for all those clients so we've been more like how do we have a virtual family office where nine remains in the same building not at not such a high price point to help these people out when they get to that

point where they need to private capital help we can refer them to a multi-family office that we partnered with to get that extra analysis even our investment advisor gives people access to deals they normally wouldn't have the capital to get into because of kind of having the number of clients that we bring in my goals to get them to grow their business and improve their lifestyle before investing in things they don't nothing about like let's do the priorities let's save the

money let's improve you know let's have a better life because just investing in things to

hope that they go up doesn't always end up that well for people that's called gambling that's

not called investor so they call it nothing but we know gambling yeah so when you're talking about you know scaling someone's business because we're like hey we want your business to get bigger a better and stronger and faster what is your firm doing to that one or what have you seen that have actually created those results both either with your clients or yourself so first we want to analyze is that a marketing issue is a sales issue is a retention issue is that a team

that's starting to create a lot of turmoil how good is the feedback that the feedback loop how

much data they have what's the you know where they least consistent and then once we identify that then we're like is it a higher and is it having the right higher like I just worked with my group last week on key hiring process and how they can find a team or how they might spend more for them but it's worth the extra money and the way to you know where do you find them at how do you interview to figure that out on the business side you know and then I mean it's interesting

because even some of the time we're just helping them with their health like we have certain

“tons of longevity people because that's what it is is the mindset and the health of the founder”

is part of the problem or they're just not sure on certain pieces so now we're looking at like how can we use a better data which AI is a little bit more efficient at gathering that internal data so they can make better decisions and know what to address next and you know a lot of this really comes down to the very first place that we go is people the second place is the processes and in a lot of you know like a lot of these small service businesses just have employees that are

negative employees that they hired out of convenience they're inexpensive to pay but expensive to keep right and and that's where really game changing results start to happen and then again then second one be marketing sales fulfillment and how long is the fulfillment from there and then just starting to get more visibility on what's the number say you know because a lot of the businesses we work with just don't know the numbers very well they're just they're just working they're just working

harder they're just you know doing their best but they're not looking at actually before it hits

the bottom line we want to see the trends and yeah I've got great people on that category we're

helping our clients all the time just integrate basic AI they're just not integrating certain efficiencies that are very easy to tap into because it's intimidating for them the nice thing is my team is pretty young on the coaching side but you know a lot of my coaches have owned and sold businesses you know so they even though they might be in their 30s they've already exited they've already bought they've already been through that process and a lot of them been with me since my

first company and so they've got 20 years of experience doing this kind of stuff but we're still in the recruitment of like how do we help people on the business side because we really start with personal financials first it's the low hanging fruit is easy business financials are a little bit more subjective at times right certain margins certain industries that kind of stuff so you know we we go where we know we can create the momentum so when it comes to hiring the a players

because this is the problem across the board we were talking about this before you said recording where do you recommend people go to go track these people down find more the a players and really hunt those individuals down and and create that there's just grand slams I tell them first

go to your key relationships and ask the key relationships who do you know that's amazing

at xy and so you don't say I'm hiring you go but you know it's like the best at AI who you know it's best at technology who do you know it's like a rock star assistant I want to get to know them understand how they operate because they probably have other people that are like

“them or most of 18 is already hired you have to recruit them away right it was funny because”

we were talking about a very specific thing that you're hiring for right now and you're scaling I was like oh I got a guy I'll connect to this guy and then I'll connect to this resource so you can have this you're like oh yeah I'm already talking to that resource so you'll find it's a very small world we would need to part and we'd look out for all that world is good yeah we got exactly to the same person but the same like this is the best in the world if you're going to go do this

if you're going to spend the money hire these people and you will know that you're in the right room with the white people when you hit that when you're like oh we're referring to the same thing we're checking out the same thing these are the same people and again worst states and states apart so I think you know you talk about your network being your network you talk about digging in on that when someone's looking into building their network and having that environment where they

come in how do you build that network how do you how do you bring those individuals together that think like you thinking connect like you okay in my twenties I didn't have a network of them my college buddies and I I definitely brought them into the business naively because I just you know didn't know any better it was kind of fun but it wasn't the most effective thing to do so I just started joining masterminds I joined you know wizard academy and in Austin Texas

maverick with the on excel or strategic coach with their and soul but mastermind talks with this and I just started getting in these curated rooms because now you're all the sudden you have all these great people and you know you're even in like what's apps groups with them or you get like a a roll at acts of like everybody's contact information so you can reach out to them when you're looking for something so

“that's that's kind of the key is you can kind of buy your way in that's the best shortcut you know”

yeah I wish there was another shortcut around that the only one that I've ever found that worked

it I found that the money isn't so much for the mastermind it became a filter to separate jet

“pop yes it's all it was and then you're in those rooms and there's I wish there was a better way to”

do it and that the the mastermind that you're paying five k for will have very different quality people than the one that you're paying 50 to 150 k for I'm just sorry it's a filter there's a

reason I fly first class it's not just for the comfort the the amount of business that I've got coming

out of the first class flight and the connections that I've had has fundamentally changed my financial well-being every single time so you got to pay to get in that room if people want to get in the room with you if people want to connect with you and spend more time with you because I could literally sit down and talk to you for days I love talking to you there are other people who want access to you

and the knowledge that you're having the expertise because not only will you help people scale

you're giving them their lives back and if something that'll all about you like here I'm going to give you the answer so I can help you out and I'm authentically going to help you out here's the proving way that I've done it for a very long time if someone wants to track you down and get a whole

“of you what's the best way to reach you and connect with you uh they can go to garrison.com jumping”

in the newsletter I mean that's like five minutes a week to transform your finance life um you know if you're on social media garrison is DM me and what name me one of the my books if it's if you put on mass for money and mass will hook you up or rock fell or rock fell or will hook you up or you know cows for killing security cows like we'll just we'll just give you the audio book that's a great way to really get to know me and get to know the work and you know just listen to it

while you're walking around or you know just look at youtube garrison tv youtube.com/garrison tv so websites or socials are kind of the best ways in today's world and then you know any of my books I think are really helpful to get a good understanding of what we do who we are and how we can help and then there's applications into our multiplier program at my website garrison you know as we've talked about a lot of the go man I want to implement those tax strategies well that's your

“multiplier if you want to get into discovery session you apply through multiplier and that's the best”

way to do it man thank you for coming on and giving so freely the stuff that you give away on or it's just ridiculous how much value it is and I hope people got a lot of value out of this one thanks man there's a lot of fun innovation rewards the curious and punishes the complacent stop waiting for the future start building for it while your competition is protecting the past

you could be creating what's next remember if your ideas never leave the drawing board

they might just be a imagination pretending to be innovation