Dan Godwin – CPA and Tax Expert with Advice for Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

when and who should be concerned about tax deductions.

she goes, your number one job is to keep my husband out of jail.

What are the most common deductions that people miss or don't think of?

Can you help us understand from an accounting perspective, the difference between

a sole proprietorship, an LLC, an S-corp or a C-corp?

Hey there and welcome to From the Ground Up Show, the show where we inspire and encourage the next generation of free-thinking leaders by telling the stories of those that have

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I am re-recording this intro because we had some technical difficulties and the audio for this interview got goofed up.

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this show is a little bit different.

Typically we highlight, individuals that have foregone the traditional white collar career track of college directly into a job.

We focus on blue collar entrepreneurs and those that have just blazed their own trail.

But today we are going to dive into the depths of a white collar career track.

We're going to interview a CPA.

And the idea here is that we should be able to get some advice very applicable to our listeners that are in the blue collar trades, that are entrepreneurs doing their own thing

and try to figure this out.

So I am really excited to have Dan Godwin joining us.

Dan is a tax specialist and CPA living and working in Sheridan, Wyoming.

He grew up in a blue collar family and now serves many of them in his capacity as a CPA.

Dan is a proud father of two children, a grandfather to a beautiful three year old girl.

He is now a partner of Mohatt, Johnson and Godwin and has been handling my taxes and my business dealings for many years.

I can personally attest to his knowledge and experience.

We are truly honored to have him on the show.

Dan, thanks for joining us.

appreciate you having me John.

Awesome.

Well, the first thing we do every show is we want to learn a little bit about you.

So can you tell us a little bit about how you grew up and where you come from?

Well I pretty much grew up and shared my whole life I think I moved I was born in Illinois but I moved out to Sheraton when I was about three years old and have lived there ever

since I've had a short stint

away from college and did some work in Casper right out of college and then it was about back in 2004 and back in Sheraton and I've been there ever since.

Okay, I know you mentioned that you grew up in a blue collar family.

Can you tell us a little bit about your home growing up?

What was life like as a kid?

My dad, my early years my dad owned a commercial DuPont paint store.

He liked to

paint carlies and old cars and things like that.

he did So he did that.

So that.

So So that.

So he did So So So So So did So that.

Do you share your dad's passion for Harley's and sports cars?

No, I never did.

Harley's, the motorcycle scared me to death.

Okay.

Well, I know as a CPA you have some secondary education.

Can you tell us a little bit about your education and what it takes to become a CPA?

Well, the education track took me on a lot of different paths.

think my parents thought I was going be a doctor by the time I got done, but ended up being an accountant.

I left high school and my number one goal was just to go find a place to go play football.

You was my big passion back there when I was 18.

And you find out right away that it's not for everybody.

You know, your high school sports are probably the best times of your lives.

And so I chased that around for a couple of years.

I went out to Minnesota and played.

And then I went back to Helena and played.

And ended up just deciding I wanted to go to college.

And so I ended up at the University of Minnesota.

for a year and ended up transferring back to the University of Wyoming and ended up getting my undergraduate degree there and my master's degree in tax at the University of

Wyoming.

Okay, so how do you go from college to a partner at mohat Johnson and Godwin?

What was your career track like?

Well, know gives you the basic background, kind of some of the tools you need to understand what you're going to be working with but

It seems like the partnership to track in an accounting world is a little bit longer than maybe say illegal world.

There's a lot to learn.

The IR internal revenue code is vast.

So to feel comfortable enough to sit down and have clients pepper you with questions and being able to think on your feet and try to answer those questions, you need some

experience.

I started working in Casper in 2000.

I started out in auditing, and I knew right away it wasn't for me.

But the firm I worked at was auditing and tax, and I really enjoyed the tax work.

So I shifted over to another firm down in Casper and did all tax.

And then when I got up to MoHat, Johnson & Godwin, I mean, it was a different firm name at the time, but it was about 2009.

January 2009 when they asked me to become a So was a good eight, nine years of just kind of grinding away and hoping someday that you got that opportunity.

And so, yeah, I've been thankful to have had that, the previous partners, John Perdier and everyone else gave me that opportunity and I appreciate that.

Yeah, it sounds like an important part of that career track is picking the right partners to go to work for early on.

Did you know that coming in?

Was that done strategically?

Well, coming from Sheridan and knowing that I wanted to move back, you know, it's a small community, it's really similar to Buffalo, right?

And so you start asking around and like, know, where's a good place to go?

know, Mo'Hatt Johnson got the firm at the time was the name that kept coming up.

And so

That's where I applied and that's where I've been ever since.

But yeah, you want to make sure, know, any business you go into the business in partnership with the right people, you know, makes it, you want to try to make it work a

little bit fun.

That's great.

What were some major turning points or maybe some pinnacles in your career that you remember?

turning points.

oh Well, auditing would be the obvious one.

I started uh interning for a firm, I would leave on a Thursday, I'd drive to random school districts across the state of Wyoming and audit a school district for three or four days

at a time.

And I just knew that it wasn't for me.

So that was probably the first big career change.

uh

for me and I mean I was still obviously doing accounting but auditing and tax are two different worlds and so that was the big change for me within the profession.

For those of us that aren't in the tax world, can you help us understand maybe the differences of what kind of things you do in the tax world versus auditing?

Well the auditing is, I always laugh at what we

the school district over in the city of Wyoming, Wyoming, Indiana.

I just remember you show up and the district manager rolls in with uh the card and he's just got inkjet files just stacked up on top of it.

He just drops them off in a room and you're going through and just testing transactions one after another.

It's just a lot of But you're testing for fraud and you're doing all these other things, internal controls.

and you're giving them an assurance that their financial statements are accurate.

In the tax world, know, we're focused on, let's try to minimize our clients' tax liabilities.

Let's work with them on a plan to do that.

Let's work with them on a plan to get set up for retirement down the road.

And every tax return is a little different.

You know, you got a radish climbing that

that client that's much different from a roofing client, right?

And so to me, it's, a lot of people tell me like, oh, your job sounds boring, you do the same thing every day.

But to me, there's intricacies between each client that are different that kind of makes it a little more fun, I guess, so to speak.

Well, I'm probably not cut out to be an accountant either, but I sure know that auditing is definitely not for me.

Yeah, that was tough.

What was the most difficult thing you have faced in your career?

Well, I was thinking about that and I think I probably have to break that up.

in your personal life, and again, this isn't just for accountants, this is anybody that wants to be self-employed and run a business is finding a good work-life balance, you

know?

A lot of times we do this, we start out and we're young, know, we're getting married and we're having children and you're trying to figure out, you know, how do I balance these

things, but still be able to be successful and serve your clients.

So that was probably, that was probably personally one of the toughest things.

I worked for some guys down in Casper and this guy's name was Jack and I'd show up every morning during taxis in the 4 a.m.

I believe about six or seven o'clock that night.

show up the next morning, and I have a sticky note on my computer that said, where are you?

I think part of it was kind of in jest, but at the same time, he had a question, and I wasn't available.

And so just learning to say, I've got to do a good job at the office, but at the same time, my wife and children needed me on loan too.

So yeah, that was tough.

uh

professionally, it's just you come out of college and you don't know anything.

And that might be a difference between like if you're a good electrician or a good contractor, you know what you're doing when you get started.

And there's some different hurdles.

But I come out of college and I've read the textbooks on tax.

And I understand what depreciation is or what retirement accounts are and things like that.

But applying it to the real world,

and being able to communicate that to your clients, that's hard.

It's daunting challenge to try to take what you've learned in college and apply it to the real world.

I can imagine that.

In my own business education, I actually studied accounting quite a bit and I actually had enough accounting credits I could have sat for the CPA exam when I graduated.

But the first year I went to look at my own taxes is like, man, I've studied all this stuff and I don't know what I'm looking at.

I don't know what to do.

And that's why I work with a professional like you.

When I first went to college, thought I was going to be some sort of a sports trainer.

When I went to Laramie, I was like, that's not for me.

And I was like, I'm just going to take a business path.

And I started taking some business classes.

And I took accounting.

My wife at the time, had already taken the class.

I was lost.

was like, damn, it's incredibly, you know, what's this mean?

And we're still good friends to this day.

I tell her all the time, if you had to help me get through accounting, I would be where I am today.

That's great.

So an accountant's education goes a lot further than just your schooling.

You have a lot to learn as you dive into the industry.

Yeah.

From an accounting standpoint, though, since then,

I think the biggest challenge I've had in my career was COVID.

The number of tax law changes that came out around starting in late 2019, 2020, there was all the money that was available and everybody was trying to their fair share of that, but

there was two payroll credits or whatever.

It created a lot of burnout.

It's affected our industry.

The accounting world is very old.

You know, the average age is getting up there.

And so people are starting to retire.

And I think we saw a big drop off for lot of those people.

We lost one of our partners because he's like, COVID was too much.

He's like, we can't do this anymore.

So it created a lot of burnout.

COVID was tough.

So has that turmoil continued the last couple years or was it kind of focused there in 2020-2021?

Has it settled out or are things still changing a lot?

Yeah, we kind of we kind of joke because we still we still you know people prior to PPP loans and employer retention credits the IRS is just recently started to release some of

those employer retention credits you know four years later and so when we with these clients are bringing these letters and we're like you know we

We don't want to hear the word PTP anymore.

It just brings back that PTSD type of a situation.

But it's basically, it's for the most part, we're getting back to.

Do you see some young blood coming into the industry?

Is that maybe a vacuum coming up in the career space?

It's tough right now.

Attracting talents in small towns like Buffalo and like Sheridan, it's hard.

There's not a lot of kids that are going into accounting.

And I think part of it is that uh being in public accounting,

They hear the horror stories that work in January through April.

And really, those tax seasons are getting condensed.

The brokerage firms don't send out their 1099s until late February.

And then you got until April 15th file.

And they don't want to work those hours.

Maybe they can go do it in private accounting, or maybe they can go do something on their own.

We go down to university, we want filming, and try to recruit.

There's just not a lot of kids coming out that want to come back to a small town.

So could be the hours.

It could be the pay.

I'm not exactly sure.

I think that our industry as a whole, I think they make it too difficult with the testing to try to obtain your CPA.

um And so we've had to shift our focus on who we're trying to attract.

uh

take chances on maybe a kid that focused on finance in college.

But I was interested in trying to tax.

uh And so we've done that, and we've had some success doing that.

And we've found a few young kids that are still striving to get that CPA.

yeah, it's been tough.

And I think that's probably the case on a lot of small businesses.

Help is one of the hardest things.

That's what you hear from small business owners across the board is finding help is hard and finding qualified help is impossible.

So how do you manage the seasonality of your business?

mean, is there a way to find some balance there or do you just like take off November and December every year to get ready for the chaos in the spring?

How do you manage that?

We work hard.

A lot of taxpayers and clients, taxis and stress will work on them.

The stress will on us because we're working a lot.

It's stressful on them because they don't like the word IRS.

They don't like those letters.

Internally, it just creates tension, angst.

people don't want to get extended because they just want to get it over with and put it behind them.

And they don't want to have to worry about it.

We could extend your tax return until October, but that's another six months of worrying about it.

So we're trying to get as much done.

But when I first got into the industry in 2000, we worked hard through April 15th.

And then it felt like we had two, three months break before extension season kind of picked up.

It's not like that anymore.

We're working year round, pushing hard through the summers even.

And I don't know if that's just because there's not as many accountants.

were to take on more work or just naturally we're having to extend more more clients because the tax season itself between January and April was so condensed and we just don't

have the time to push out that many tax returns.

I can attest to that on the client side of things.

mean, my secretary, treasurer, and I plan on working New Year's day every year because we try to put together everything that we need to give to you so that we can be the front of

that line.

And we aren't waiting, wondering when the KGB is going to show up wanting their money.

Well, you know, like this year, the IRS has already come out and said, because they always shut down here for a few weeks to do all their updates with their computers and they said

the filing season won't open until at least the first week of February now.

And so normally it might be the second or third week of January.

So that's just going to push it back even further.

It doesn't mean we can't get in there and start working on things and then we're ready to file and things like that.

But you know, the people out there that pay attention to that news, they may not even think about doing their taxes until later now when they hear that type of stuff.

So still get your stuff together.

January 1st.

January 1st, your email will start ringing from me.

ah What is something that you wish you would have learned earlier?

oh

I the biggest mistake for me is you learn how valuable communication is.

It's not necessarily that we should be to learn more about taxes earlier.

You go from being a young accountant to thinking about yourself as a partner when you come in.

You're really focused on

still do the tax part of it.

But what you find out is now you're in charge of that business relationship with the client.

And so the communication with the client is probably the most important thing.

so you don't really have those opportunities when you're young.

And they just say, prepare for this tax turn.

Prepare for this tax turn.

So that's probably the biggest thing that I've known early on.

I would have made my start of my partnership position a little easier.

So yeah, I think that's probably the main one.

That's something that applies to a lot of industries.

We see that in the trades.

There are some people that are excellent at what they do.

They're great craftsmen, but they have angry or disappointed customers because they're just not great at communicating.

It is a totally different skill set than having the skill of whatever your craft is and then being able to manage customers.

They're two totally different things and

both affect the customer.

And I hear it, you when you hear it talking to different people, you I called the contractor, and he won't even call me back, you know, and we're the same way.

I mean, we get busy like you guys do.

I'm not saying I have a response time of five minutes or anything like that, um but they even if you're, you know,

I'm gonna get back to you.

You know just give me some time if you're calling back there to you later They still appreciate that at least getting a response you know so I think that's good for you know

whether it's my industry here, you know Any other small business is just just respond you know and and and let them know you know if you don't have time to do it least call and

tell them you don't have time to do it because that'll help you down the road

know you're busy busy busy right now but during a slow time that person may call you back because you may be one of the only contractors that call them back even if you couldn't

help them at that time.

Is there something that you've changed your mind about significantly throughout your career?

Maybe something where you had a pretty set opinion and as you've matured or grown or seen things, you've changed the way that you look at that and your opinion has shifted?

Yeah.

I've learned that when you, when you were working in a small business, you're an owner partner or whatever, you wear a lot of hats.

I mean, and I think that that's

One of the things going into it, whether it's you're the main contact with your clients, whether you're doing the tax work, but then you have the HR.

You have an employee that leaves unexpectedly, and then you've got to figure out what are we going to do?

How are we going to get the work done still?

How are we going get that position filled?

You've got to care about the financial up-and-coming being of the firm.

So which partners are responsible for that?

Any small business owners wearing a lot of hats.

that to me was kind of a, you know, I come in as a young partner.

I'm just relying on the elders in the firm to take care of all that stuff for me, you know.

But eventually they transitioned that work to you and then pretty soon, you know, you just, you got to delegate the work, you know, because otherwise you just keep adding more

more to your plate.

And then next thing you know, you're like, what am I doing?

So yeah, I would say that the HR part of it is hard.

Because you want your staff to be successful too.

And you want them to be happy.

It's not like you come to work and have fun.

But you at least want them to an enjoyable experience.

They enjoy coming to work.

so figuring out ways to do that is not always easy.

Is there a major mistake that you wish you could have avoided?

Yeah, I can think of one and being an accountant and I sit and preach to my clients all the time about use the resources that are available to you if you don't know what you're

doing, go ask the professionals.

And I got into a business deal and I didn't think I needed to an attorney review the agreement.

I got burned on the deal.

But that was several years ago and I learned my lesson.

So.

Yeah, you just never know.

When you're dealing with contracts and stuff like that, you read it, and it all sounds good.

It's not necessarily about what you're reading.

It's about what could be missing that you're not reading in a contract.

And I think that's probably the hardest part for oh looking at contract is what's not in there.

And that's what attorneys are good at and have been trained to do.

And so I would highly recommend reading.

relying on your attorneys to help you in any type of business transaction.

That's some good advice.

Yeah, I'm always looking close at contracts because the purpose of a contract is to try to have an even deal that's fair to both sides, but that's kind of impossible and usually

whoever produced the contract, it's leaning a little bit to their side.

For sure.

I agree.

Yeah, absolutely.

Awesome.

Well, we got to learn a little bit about you and your background and what it takes to become a CPA.

Maybe the last question on kind of that line of questioning for a young person out there looking for a career.

Do you think there's a future trying to become a CPA?

Is that still a good quality career track?

And maybe along with that, if you could go back and do it all over again, would you?

I would do it again.

um Like I said earlier, from the outside I look in and people are like, I don't know, I'll be an accountant.

It kind of boring, repetitive work.

And I just look at it a little bit differently.

Each one of my clients is different.

I enjoy the interactions with clients.

I enjoy sitting down and meeting with them and having conversations with them.

It's fun when you pick up a young client that started a new business and 15 years later they're still with you.

They're doing well.

So I enjoyed that and I would do it all over again.

There's a lot of opportunities in our profession.

To be an auditor, to be a detachment preparer, there's a lot of, like I said, the industry is getting older.

lot of them are retiring and we need young people to come in and fill most of the

I think the industry needs to look in the mirror and figure out how to make it more attractive.

And it seems like the daunting task of having to take a CPA exam at the end of the day.

The CPA exam initially was the first test that AI couldn't pass.

Wow.

So why we making it so hard for people to get into the industry?

uh

The test is a lot of it is just trying to trick you on the questions and things like that.

it's like, you have the resources to figure out the answers once you get your CPA.

The clients are going to try to trick you.

want the right answer.

why do we set it up that way?

back however many years ago, maybe there was an overflow and they were trying to limit who could get into it.

I think there needs to be changes made for sure.

Good to hear.

Well, I really appreciate that you enjoy finding a young client and sticking with them.

And that's what you've done for me.

I think it was uh maybe eight or nine years ago when we started working together.

When we first started, we had a business doing about $2 million a year.

this year we're going to break $10 million.

And you've just kind of walked with us the whole way.

actually, just this week, we closed on the sale of

our business.

My wife and I exited and are now passing it on to the next generation of ownership and I think they're going to continue to use you as their CPA as well.

So we have really appreciated that stability and uh growing with us and just helping us learn as we have grown and matured our business.

You've been a pretty invaluable resource.

So thank you.

Now that we've learned a little bit about you,

We'll dive into the meat of maybe the advice that our listeners are waiting for and help us all get a little better prepared.

I think something that often gets misunderstood and maybe you could clarify for us, what is the specific role of a CPA?

What sort of thing should the customer of a CPA expect?

And maybe.

Like you said, the key part of a contract is not what's there, but what's missing.

What are the things that people think a CPA's role are that really aren't?

Yeah, and so yeah you touched on a couple different things there.

You know just the first part of the question, the specific role is, what do you need?

know a CPA firm can offer a lot of

No, let's work for different types of services.

So do you need bookkeeping?

Or do you have an in-house bookkeeper?

So maybe that's part of the rule.

And then it just expands from there.

mean, obviously, you're there to get the tax prep done.

But do you need your inflating?

Or do you got to get grasp on that?

Are there transactions that are happening throughout the year that you need advice on and how to structure that transaction?

And so the CPA role should be that they can fill in any gaps that you don't have.

Maybe you have an in-house bookkeeper, but you just want somebody to look at your books quarterly.

Take a look at them to see if the in-house person is doing it the way that they should be to help with your attachment prep.

So that would be the first part.

We can do as much.

And this is what I my new clients.

I said we can do as much or as little as you need to do.

If all you want to do is come in at the end of the year and bring me your books and have me prepare your text, then we can do that.

Cost is obviously a concern with it, and it should be, Try to minimize your costs as much as possible, but get the help you need.

um And if you don't need bookkeeping, and you just want some tax planning and tax prep, that's the role that they should play for you.

If they're selling you the bill of goods,

We have to provide everything that shouldn't necessarily be the case.

And I know there's firms out there that ask their model.

We do it all or we won't.

We're not a good fit.

And if that's the CPA firm's role, that's not a good fit for your business.

So they'll profit the next time.

But then the second part of the question, the misconceptions,

I would say the first thing that uh sometimes gets misconceived is uh clients look at us as a financial advisor.

While we do advise on your finances, uh we're not stock brokers.

We're not following the stock market.

We're not going to help you make decisions on where to put your 401k into.

And then the other side of that is legal advice.

People think that we can provide legal advice.

That's just something we can't do.

And sometimes it doesn't even seem like it's legal advice.

It's like, OK, can you help me get set up with the Secretary of State?

Well, you're planning to have an attorney.

You can't just set up with the Secretary of State or go out and do it yourself.

But we can't do that for you because it's considered providing legal advice.

And so I think people look at that and it's like, well, he's a tax accountant.

So he should be able to help me with some of this legal stuff.

We can't always do that.

It sounds like that's probably a conversation everyone needs to have with their accountant and it's something that you've educated me on and that I see all the time as I talk to

other contractors and as they tell me what they're doing it's like, oh my gosh, your tax strategy is terrible.

Like, well, that's what my accountant told me to do.

And I'm usually like, did your accountant

tell you to do that or did they tell you that you could do that?

You know, are you asking good questions and have you had that conversation of are they advising you on what you should do or are they telling you what legally you're allowed to

do?

That seems like that's a line that often gets blurred and is that a conversation that people should make a point to have?

Yeah, I mean, I think it definitely can blur the lines.

you know, we pick up clients and, you know, I'm not

saying that anybody's out there giving bad advice on purpose.

But I have ideas on how I think things should be done.

But recently, picked up a client who had another accountant doing his stuff and recommended that he was putting real estate into C courses.

And for me, that's just a general rule of thumb that you never do.

When he shows up with three C courses and he's got real estate in them, it's like, OK, now what we need to do is let's figure out how to correct this and move forward.

But if there's any question of who should be doing what, you need to have that conversation with your accountant.

And I believe that small businesses, we're worried about, we've got to get out there, we've to build a business, and we've got to control the cost.

But you need to build a team around you.

And so having an attorney that you can bounce questions off of, and talking to your accountant.

I work closely with financial advisors and attorneys for a lot of my clients.

You know, they built the team and they'll say, don't really know the answer to this or whatever.

Can you call the attorney or can you call the financial advisor?

And then we start talking, you know, and that's how it should be in my opinion.

I love that you guys do that because yeah, the end of the year is always crazy for us as business owners.

There's all kinds of stuff happening that's over my head.

And so the fact that you work with my financial advisor and I just signed a letter saying that you guys are allowed to talk to each other.

You guys can just take care of it and I don't have to be in the middle screwing stuff up.

another lesson that maybe I learned the hard way.

is I was working with another CPA before I started working with you and every year I would ask, is there something different I should be doing?

And I thought I was asking the question, asking for some good advice on tax strategy and one year I came in frustrated and was like, hey, how come you didn't tell me I should have

done this?

And he said,

You know, Eric, my job is to file your taxes, not tell you what to do to avoid them.

And we were just kind of missing each other.

And that was a real wake up call for me that you have to ask the right questions to get good answers.

When I have lot of new clients to come in and they, you know, obviously there's some people are better at understanding tasks.

you know, they spend more time trying to understand it.

And then there's some people that do that.

It's like, don't want anything to do with it.

I don't know anything about it.

trying to understand your texture is big.

I get a lot like begging a new client, there's not all the time, but a lot of times they'll say, do you have the time to review my stuff quarterly?

Can we meet twice a year to go over my stuff?

And I think those are great questions to ask.

If you're looking for a new account, a new accountant, that's questions that you want to be asking.

I was like, are you going to, if I call you, can you help me with your tax plan?

Yes.

And if they say they don't do that, you may want to go to the next accountant and interview that accountant.

know what mean?

So.

Well, that leads me right into my next question.

It's uh how do you go about finding or vetting a qualified accountant or maybe even just finding the one that is the best fit for you?

So.

In my opinion, it comes down to a comfort level.

And a lot of the times you're moving from one accountant to a new one, of time.

A lot of times people are just starting a new business too.

I was like, I've already, I was used to having a W2.

I've always prepared oil.

I think I need an accountant.

That's a good idea.

But it comes down to a comfort level.

And I wouldn't just pick one unless you have somebody that you trust that says,

Hey, I go to, know, Agile and say, God, go give him a shot.

And if you're comfortable with that, because your friend gave you a good recommendation or whatever, that's fine.

But if you're out there and you're just randomly calling accountants or looking at the society's website and looking for accountants, I would probably try to go talk to two or

three of them and, know, and see who you're comfortable with.

When I have clients that want a lawyer, I give them two or three names.

I don't ever just say, yeah, just go to this one, you know.

Because I want you to go sit down with each one of them.

And which one feels right to you?

You can have a conversation with them and be like, I don't know.

Something doesn't feel right.

Something's off.

Whatever it is.

And so I think that's the biggest thing is just being comfortable with who you're talking to.

And do they feel like they're trustworthy?

Do they feel knowledgeable to you?

I think you know what they're talking about.

And just go on from there.

uh When they're doing those interviews and trying to feel comfortable, are there some specific questions that they could be or should be asking to kind of get that feel of

whether it's a good fit?

Yeah, I think you need to an idea of what services that you need.

You know, go back to that conversation, you know, do you provide any bookkeeping services?

Do you provide that?

A lot of times, if you can find somebody that has the bookkeeping and the tax under one roof,

Sometimes that's it because they just blow into each other.

Bookkeeping, having good books flows into the year, and tax mining, and tax prep.

And it's not an all be all if they don't.

But maybe because they recommend a contract bookkeeper.

Maybe you don't have enough work to hire an in-house bookkeeper and pay him whatever you need to pay him.

And maybe they have recommendations for that.

So figuring out exactly what services you have.

And figuring out if the accounting firm that you're talking to provides those services that you do need.

I think that's a good question.

But then again, do you provide consultations?

Or in your situation, hey, I'm just here to prepare the texture.

If you're comfortable with that, maybe that's good fit for you.

But it's not for everybody.

So I think those are good questions.

We'll dive right into the nitty-gritty here for someone that's maybe starting to grow their business or even just starting out from scratch.

Can you help us understand from an accounting perspective, uh maybe understand the difference between running a business as a sole proprietorship, an LLC, an S-corp or a

C-corp?

Yeah, that's a big question.

the thing in that question that jumps out at me is we're talking about a choice of identity.

I'm going to start a business.

How should I form this business?

And people hear the word LLC all the time.

And that's a limited liability company.

But that's not really a business structure.

And it's probably one of the things I talk to clients the most about is they say, well, should I start an LLC?

Well, yeah, that's fine.

Start an LLC.

An LLC is just a

It's just the, it's a little bit like the company that's set up with the Secretary of State in Wyoming or any whatever state.

You have to tell the IRS that they recognize LLC.

You have to tell the IRS how you want your LLC to be taxed.

And then there's default methods.

don't know if it's just me and I'm gonna start a new company and I create an LLC, I'm gonna default to the Zolderbridership.

Taxes, know, an LLC taxes Zolderbridership.

But you can have an LLC that's C-corp, you can have LLC that's an escort, you can have an LLC that's partnership.

So I think that's the first thing, is realizing that LLC is not a form of taxation.

It's really just a paper that you file that kind of creates this, oh that there's another entity over there where we're separate.

it's a legal thing.

We're talking about the limited liability on that, and that's a legal issue.

A lot of people use them.

I believe one was...

one of first states to use LLCs.

It's still one of, I guess, the states that is the simplest or has the most generous laws.

I know a lot of people from other states form LLCs in Wyoming.

And so the idea behind the LLC is that if something was to happen and there was some sort of legal action against you, the assets in the LLC are subject to that lawsuit, and the

assets outside the LLC are protected.

Now, there's a lot of things that you need to do.

m

on a day-to-day basis to make sure that you're protecting the LLC and treating it as its own separate entity.

So if you're a sole proprietor and you've got an LLC and you're still using your personal bank account, that LLC really won't provide you any benefit because you're committing your

money between personal and business and things like that.

This is one of those questions too, where you go ask five or 10 accounts

Would you rather be an S-Corp or C-Corp partnership?

And you might get five, 10 different answers.

I go to continuing ed.

And there's some professors that teach those classes that live in I-MIC partnerships.

And they think that's the best choice of entity.

They don't have any S-Corporations.

There is a lot more flexibility with partnerships in terms of you can specifically allocate certain things.

And S-Corps and C-Corps, you don't do that.

uh

So there are advantages.

There's plenty of advantages to all of them, depending on what you're doing.

If you're a real estate company, you go buy a rental house and create an LLC, you don't want put it into a seat court.

We don't want to do that.

maybe it's just a single window for LLC, which is a sole ownership.

So it's always a good conversation to have.

with your account when you're starting a new entity is, and do it early.

Because you don't want to, we have people that'll start a partnership and they'll start paying themselves wages out of the partnerships as partners of the partnership.

Well, you're not supposed to do that.

But if you're an escort, that's what you do.

So before you get too far down the rabbit hole and you're doing things you shouldn't be doing, and we have to unwind them,

you know, communicator with your account on, Hey, do you think's best here?

So it sounds like each one probably has its own role depending on your ownership structure, the entity that you're running, what type of business or industry you're in.

They're probably all a little bit different, but could you give us an example just from the tax perspective with each type?

How does money flow through that entity to the owners and what?

implications does that have on how it's taxed?

So if you're sole proprietorship, you get no deduction for the money that you take out of your own company.

And you can put the money in and you can pull money out as freely as you would like.

There's just no deduction for pulling money out and putting it back in your personal account, any of your profits.

so you just, whatever your gross income, unless your expenses are business expenses, not distributions.

That's your taxable income.

You're going to pay self-employment income taxes on that.

Partnerships are similar.

You really don't get a deduction for any distributions out of a company, whether you're an S-corp, whether you're a C-corp or a partnership.

They just reduce your basis.

um But partnerships, if you work for the partnership, you would get what they call a guaranteed payment.

And the partnerships and S-Corps are what we call pass-through entities.

And your net income and in a partnership, your guaranteed payments, that's going to flow through to you on a K-1.

Your K-1 gets reported on your individual income tax return.

So overprider gets reported on your individual income tax return.

There is no K-1.

uh So partnerships and S-Corps are similar in how that income flows through.

C-Corps is they file their own tax return.

They pay their own tax.

partnerships and S-Corps generally do not pay income taxes.

Okay, so for an S Corp and a C Corp specifically, could you give us an example of a time that one would be more beneficial than the other?

Well, C-Corps of the C-Corps were kind of the thing.

know, we see a lot of ranches, know, maybe they were set up back in the 50s and 60s or whatever and they're all C-Corps.

You don't see very many C corps anymore because C corps are known for having double taxation You know, so let's say you have a piece of land in a C corp and you sell it the C

corporation pays taxes on gain on the sale of land well now you got the money from the sale of that property sitting in there and Anything comes out of the C corp is taxable to

you So you can you can take it out as a wage and get a W-2 that's taxable income to you Or you can take a dividend from the C corp

Well, now you have dividend income.

And so that's where the double taxation comes in.

But right now, C-courts have a flat tax of 21%.

So if you have a very successful S corporation that's passing through income to you, and say you're in the 30 % tax bracket, so that pass-through income is going out and you're

paying 30 % on it.

Well, if it was in a C-court, maybe you would have been paying 21 % on it.

Yeah, but after that 21 % then it's locked into that C Corp and you'd be paying that 30 % again to take it out.

then the wages are coming out and it's going back to your effective tax rate on your individual income tax return.

Yeah, I have a lot of friends that own a C Corp and they have a ton of money in the C Corp, but they feel like it's locked up because that money they've already paid taxes on

that money, but then to pull it out and spend it, they have to pay taxes again.

So they feel kind of stuck.

The money is locked away.

Well, you feel that way.

And the C Corps have rules that are passive investment income rules that if a certain percentage of your income is from passive activities, and you're not distributing the

money, there can be penalties for housing in the C Corps for too long.

things that you

Again, kind of an advanced idea, something that if you have C-courts that you definitely want to be talking to your accountant about.

There's also ways to make S-selections in the C-court.

Wait five years, and then after five years, can pull those assets out as a distribution, which distributions out of an S-court are tax-free.

You don't have to pick it up as dividend income.

But in that first five years, if you have an appreciated asset, then

and you sell it in that first five years, they're gonna tax it as if you distributed it out of a C port.

And they call that a building gains tax by doing that.

But if you wait the five years and all those assets that sit there, all that appreciation, you can pull it out as a distribution on an escort tax free, as long as you have the basis

in your escort stock.

So we're kind of at some high level.

Yeah, it gets very complicated very fast.

uh

But like you said, if you're talking to your friends, it's like, go talk to your accountant.

Maybe an escort election makes sense to you.

And we see that a lot, too, like these old C.D.

Corps.

We've done, they're already thinking about retirement.

It's like, well, why we make another selection now?

And in five years, when you want to close this thing up, we're not going to have that double tax.

You can enroll something back from a C.D.

Corps to an escort.

It just has that five-year waiting period.

Okay, uh I was under the impression that you could turn into a C-Corp or if you had an S-Corp you could turn into a C-Corp but you couldn't roll it back.

Okay, yeah, if you have an s-election and you lose your selection if they determine a you would default back to the secret core which could be

Okay, so I guess correct me if I'm wrong here, but my understanding is uh generally for most like contractor type corporations outside of real estate or ranches or something like

that that an S Corp in a state that allows it is usually the most beneficial more so than like a sole proprietorship where you're going to pay Social Security and Medicare and

federal taxes on what would have otherwise been distributions or

profits and in a C Corp you're stuck in the double taxation having to pay taxes as the C Corp and then again on the distributions but and an S Corp allows you to pay yourself a

salary and also pay distributions free of the Social Security and Medicare taxes so you're only paying taxes once so if we're painting with a really broad brush is that accurate?

I tend to have a lot more S courses than I do partnerships.

But like I said before, there's people in practicing, out there practicing that will always favor a partnership.

They'll figure out ways to try to manage the

self-employment tax.

So if your partnership is similar to the sole proprietor, all the income is subject to self-employment tax.

The thing that they ask, of course, how you do.

You're an employee of your own business.

So you have to take what they call a reasonable wage out of that.

The income, the net income that flows out on a K-1 is not subject to self-employment tax.

So in essence, what you decide you pay yourself is the reasonable wage.

is what you're paying for self-employment taxes.

Because when you pay yourself a wage, I would hold one half of the social security and Medicare, and then the company pays the other half.

You're the same person.

So you're paying the whole thing.

And so figuring out what reasonable compensation is, uh and the IRS, like a lot of things that they don't come out and tell you exactly what it is.

Like I wrote something down.

reasonable compensation for like services by like businesses under like circumstances.

That's how they define reasonable compensation.

Now, there's been important cases that, so there is some standards out there.

There's been some rule of thumb that people right here take 50 % wages, take 50 % distributions.

Be the highest paid person in your company.

Those aren't going to stand up under IRS audit.

But more than likely, if you're doing something with these general rule of thumbs, you're not going to get audited.

In 20 years, I've never had a reasonable comp audit in our office where we've had to try to defend what we paid them.

But I've seen court cases where I remember this one that sticks out.

It was a dentist's office.

One of the dental hygienists was making just a little bit more money than the dentist.

And they said that's not reasonable compensation.

But if you look at it, it's like, the dentist is probably going to make more money than the dental hygienist.

But even in a small business that does a small blue collar business, who's the most valuable person in the organization?

It's probably you.

You should be the highest paid person.

If you're in the S-corp, you should be the highest paid person in your corporation.

you're in the face of the corporation.

yeah, figure out how reasonable compensation.

The one thing I would say is don't ever make a zero.

Don't set it up in best corporation and not pay yourself wages and distribute all the money out to a lot of clients.

All the tax credit, what are the red flags?

The bearers, unfortunately, doesn't give those to us.

But if you're if you're taking zero wages and distributing now, you know, 50, 100,000, 200,000 dollars in distributions a year, you're going to get on with it eventually.

So sorry, I'm getting into more of a specific example here, but would that remain true for like a silent partner or an owner that is not actively working in the business?

Do they need to be pulling a salary as well or can they take only distributions?

So

2 % shareholders are the ones that need to take reasonable compensation.

But if you look at their bright line rules, so you could say, I own a roofing company.

What do other roofing companies pay the general managers of their company?

say it's $100,000 a year, and you're paying yourself 20.

Maybe that's not reasonable.

Or you could look at it and say, what's

a fair remark about you average hourly wage and here's my hours I worked this week pay me so if you have a silent partner even if they have more than 2 % of the company and they're

doing nothing for the company it's just an investment for them you wouldn't be required to pay them a salary there's one line on the texture and this is officers compensation and so

you put the number on there the officers that you're paying

It doesn't I don't think there's a requirement that says every single officer has to be paid a wage That was how I'd always looked at the reasonable compensation was if you look

at If you were not an owner or not an officer, but we're doing that workload What would you expect to pay that person and if you're in that range that should be reasonable?

And that's pretty safe approach

There are good conversations to have with your account, least to give you the comfort level one.

Typically, conversation is, is this too little of an amount to pay for myself?

Because obviously, the goal is to push down your wages and increase your distributions.

That's the goal.

But at the same time, you don't want to open yourself up to an audit unnecessarily.

You can also pay yourself a reasonable wage.

Something that gets thrown a lot and I personally think there's a lot of misconceptions about is tax deductions.

We hear everybody talking about tax deductions and doing this for the deduction or getting that deduction for that.

And yet the vast majority of tax filers takes advantage of the standard deduction rather than itemizing.

Can you help us understand the difference?

What is the standard deduction?

when and who should be concerned about tax deductions.

Well, I think all taxpayers should be to some extent.

I mean, it's something that should be analyzed.

mean, so the IRS just, the standard deductions just in the amount that the IRS says, this is what, if you're single, this is the amount you get.

If you're married, this is the amount you get.

you know, for single, I think it's around 15,000 now.

For married, it's a little over 30.

You know, that's just double.

We just have a lot of people that are itemized at deductions, but

you know, several years ago, 2017, I think it was, they went in and they almost doubled the standard deduction.

So unless you were paying mortgage interest or you had large charitable donations or maybe you're elderly and your medical expenses are just through the roof, a lot of people that

used to itemize didn't anymore.

So, and taking the standard deductions, there's nothing wrong with that, but if you have a mortgage or you give,

charitable donations of any size or maybe you have a specific thing that happened in your medically.

It's always the question to ask is you want me to round up my medical expenses, do you want me to round up my donations, you want me to, know, the mortgage interest is easy,

we're just gonna give you a mortgage interest saving rate.

But now, with this new tax law that's coming out, things are going to change again.

Everybody's probably heard of the salt production, the state and local income tax deduction got limited to 10,000.

Well, now that's going to 40.

So people that maybe you live in work in Colorado and you have to the Colorado state income tax, well, that may help you.

Now, property taxes.

there's ways.

And you want to talk to your accountant about this too, because if you're right on that threshold of, say you're married and you've got $29,000 in deduction, so you're going to

take the standard deduction.

But there's ways to where you can say, I'll bunch my charitable donations this year.

I'm going to double up and pay all of my property taxes in one year versus paying one half and just paying one half.

And so you can make that extra property tax payment, things like that.

donations you get you can give it instead of waiting until January 1st to give your 2026 donation give it on December 31st even though you've already given them donation in that

same year and you know if you're worried about the charity saying well you didn't give us anything in 2026 just go talk to them and let them know what you're doing you know I'm

doing some tax fighting here and I'm gonna double it up this year but you may not get anything in 2026 so what you end up doing is one year you're gonna itemize you're gonna

save a little bit of tax the next year you're probably not gonna itemize

then the next year you'll probably, you know, so there's some, there's some tax planning that can go into that.

If you don't have any mortgage interest and you, you know, you don't give money away to charities and things like that, you're probably not going to itemize it, you don't need to

worry about it.

But it's a good conversation to have.

So the standard deduction is an amount that you can write off as a deduction with no proof, no evidence.

You don't have to track it.

You don't actually even have to have those deductions.

You can just claim it automatically.

So if someone's deductions, their mortgage interest, charitable donations, medical expenses, local taxes, all of that, if they're nowhere near that standard deduction

threshold, they're going to take the standard deduction

And what they give, their charitable giving, isn't going to matter a lot on their taxes.

you never have to provide a backup for the standard deduction to the IRS.

This is just an amount they give you.

And so if your deductions are close to crossing over that standard deduction amount, that's where you really need to be paying attention, gathering everything up, having the

evidence, and being ready to present that.

If you're going itemize, then you're to want to make sure that your donation receipts have the correct verbiage on them and things like that.

You're going want to save those for the seven years in case you get audited and all that.

But if you're not itemizing, there's nothing to save.

You can throw away your medical bills and your domination receipts and things like that.

Gotcha.

So a family that's maybe average, I think that average household income in the U.S.

is like $78,000 this year.

And the standard deduction of having a $30,000 deduction for a married couple, most people are going to fit into that bucket where they're taking the standard deduction.

But if you have a much higher income, like you said, or have a special event that causes some

higher level charitable donations or a big medical expense or something that is um gonna throw you over that amount.

You really wanna pay attention to those deductions and think about itemizing.

And I think for 2025, if you could give me a second.

man, you're prepared.

I'm pulling stuff out of thin air and you're over here with actual numbers.

Well, as part of this

change.

Okay, this is it's gonna be for it's gonna be for two thousand and twenty six so in two thousand twenty six they're gonna offer and they did this a few years ago they gave

everybody like up to a three hundred dollar deduction for charitable donations even if you didn't itemize that's coming back in two thousand and twenty six and it's gonna be up to

two thousand so if you know if you're the person that you know you know buys a calendar here you know for 25 bucks and does it for a hundred bucks you know

throughout the year but it doesn't matter to a lot to help you itemize.

Keep in mind in 26 you want to keep those receipts because you won't get a benefit out of it.

It has nothing to do with itemizing or the standard deduction but you'll get the write-off on your tax return.

yeah that could help anybody that gives just a little clear in there.

We're going to dive into something that based on my limited understanding is a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

So maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong or set the record straight or maybe confirm for everybody else out there.

But especially in the contractor world, it seems like everybody is wandering around and they love to throw around.

Oh, I bought a new truck because my accountant told me I needed to for the write off.

If you don't need something.

Is it ever a benefit to spend money specifically for the quote write off?

I do not advise my clients to just go buy equipment to save taxes if they don't need the equipment.

I think taxes is about the only thing we do where you say, I'll go spend a dollar to save 20 cents.

If you need a new pickup, it's going to help you.

You're going to get the right offer for it.

But I think.

A lot of it comes down to let's try to manage our tax liability.

Let's not try to make it zero every year.

There's a lot of clients that are 100 % tax adverse.

They don't want to spend $1 to the IRS.

they don't take my advice.

And that's fine.

It's their choice.

But I think preserving cash can be good idea sometimes.

Yeah, thank you.

That clarifies my position.

It's always a net loss if you do something just for the tax write-off.

If you need a new piece of equipment, or maybe even if you just want that new pickup and you are considering spending money on it anyway, that's great.

Absolutely.

Take the write-off.

Take advantage of every write-off, every tax benefit you can get.

But if you're doing something for the sole purpose of the write-off, you're going to be money behind.

It's always going to be a net loss.

That's how I look at it.

If have clients that are talking to me about how they're looking at buying something in January, February, or March, I'll be like, you might as well do this.

Maybe there's taxable income comes up this year, but they're looking to buy the equipment the first part of the next year.

It's like, why don't you buy it now?

That's a good idea because you're going to buy it anyways.

You need that piece of equipment.

But if you're just like, how much taxable income?

because I have clients do this.

Their tax planning is tell me what my tax point is so I know how much money I'm gonna spend.

Is that your problem?

I was just going to say, feel like that's one of those areas where you have to make sure you're asking the right question.

If you ask your accountant, how do I reduce my taxes?

Well, buying a bunch of stuff and writing it off will reduce your taxes.

But if you ask the better question of how do I end up with the most money at the end of the story after any taxes I might have to pay have been paid, you might get a different

answer.

You know, if you just keep, you know, I've had situations over the years where this happens and you communicate to them that it's probably going to happen.

If you're just out there buying equipment, buying equipment, buying equipment, pretty soon you don't have any cash or maybe everything you bought you had to finance.

Now you're in a situation where maybe the banks aren't as willing to give you the money to buy equipment.

So then you come into this year where it's like, I didn't have the money and I couldn't get the financing and you can't buy anything.

And then you've accelerated the appreciation of everything you've bought in previous years.

You're going to get stuck with a big tax bill.

And it's going to hurt.

that's where I like to try to avoid.

And it's not always easy to avoid.

But you have zero tax this year.

You'll have a bunch this next year.

These big peaks and valleys.

it's like, let's figure out a tax bracket that works best for you.

And let's try to keep you in there as close as we can and manage that tax liability.

is kind of the way I approach to that.

There's this big thing between we're trying to make the balance sheet look as good as possible for banking purposes, or other issues maybe down the road.

But for tax purposes, you want it to look as terrible as possible.

So you don't have to pay tax.

So there's a fine line in how to balance that.

And there's ways to do it.

I just think in the long run you can get yourself into trouble if all you're worried about is just buying equipment and you don't need the equipment because maybe might be losing

money on the equipment and you're not using it.

Or maybe you're not making enough profit off the equipment because you're not using it.

So I think one way or another you're probably losing it if that's your only approach.

It makes me cringe every year in December.

I have a whole pile of friends that say it yeah, I bought a new truck because my accountant told me I had to or yeah check out my new skid steer because the the accountant

told me I needed to spend some money and I always just roll my eyes and like man you are asking the wrong questions

Okay, can you help us understand some of this other accountant language, other stuff that gets thrown around a lot?

What is the difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction?

Tax credits are a dollar-for-dollar reduction of your tax liability.

know, examples of tax credits are like, you know, some people make it an income tax credit, child tax credits, dependent care credits.

So,

If you qualify for those type of credits, they're just going to reduce your tax dollar for dollar.

And then there's a few of these credits, certain education credits, the additional child tax credit, the income credit, they're actually refundable.

So if you have $1,000 liability, but you've got a $3,000 education credit, you're going to get $2,000 refund.

So some of them are refundable.

But the opposite of that is the just a

deduction versus the credit so if you take that thousand dollar deduction and your tax rate your effective tax rate is 20 percent you're gonna say 20 cents or 20 bucks on that

thousand dollars right so it's not deductions they're not dollar for dollar they reduce your taxable income dollar for dollar but then that's time your effective tax rate and

that's your savings

Gotcha.

So tying into our last topic here a little bit, if there's a tax credit available, you want to take advantage of that every time.

That's a dollar for dollar.

You're going to reduce your taxes.

It's basically whatever you're spending that money on, you're going to get that for free because you're going to get a credit to cover what you spend.

But a deduction is only going to reduce your taxes by your.

tax rate.

So we only want to take advantage of deductions if that is something that you would have done anyway.

yeah i mean you want to you want to you want to maximize your deductions obviously for taxes i mean you if you spend

and how much ever on insurance, not like, let's just take half of it this year.

But yeah, you want to take as many deductions as possible to try to reduce your taxable income for sure.

And part of going back to that conversation we had about buying equipment earlier is have conversations with your accountants about if you do need to buy new equipment and you want

to a piece of equipment.

Do you need to fully depreciate it all in one year?

Do you need to accelerate it?

Another general rule of thumb is that if you finance equipment, don't accelerate the depreciation on financing equipment.

You also have that conversation with your accountants.

Do I need to depreciate it this year?

Or can I preserve some of it over the next five to seven years?

Okay, so something you've helped me understand a little bit is that a lot of tax deductions are not necessarily forever.

They're more of a deferral.

especially when it comes to real estate, this is something I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around, but maybe you can help us out here.

I hear a lot of people, they invest in real estate because of all the tax deductions.

That's something they're chasing and going into real estate.

So you get

all these deductions in real estate, but then when you go to sell that piece of real estate, you're going to end up paying capital gains on all of those things that you

deducted along the way.

So it might still be an advantage.

You get to kick the can down the road and pay it later, but it's not going away forever.

Part of the good tax planning is kicking the tax liability down the road.

Can we defer this tax liability to a later year?

So there's some of that.

And I think that the direction that you're mainly getting at, and especially with real estate, is depreciation.

But I was young.

I had a partner from one of the firms I worked for in Casper.

He said that depreciation is an interest-free loan from the government.

Because what happens is you're getting, you you depreciate a residential house for 27 and 1 years.

And so you're getting a little bit of depreciation every year.

And you get 10 years down the road, and you want to sell it.

But what you're doing is you have to recapture

You have to recapture depreciation and recapture depreciation as ordinary income.

So you think that I'm selling this, that's all going be capital gain income.

Well, a of it's ordinary.

So you've converted capital gain income into ordinary income due to this depreciation recapture.

And so that's where they say, know, it's an interest-free loan.

They're going to get you on the back end with the depreciation.

Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that, but you just gotta be prepared.

can't just take the 50 % capital gain rate, 10 % gain and stuff, so my tax could be worse than that.

It's gonna be some sort of limited rate type of a deal.

You can take deductions for retirement expenses, but that's it, comes to you later.

When you start in retirement, unless you're in some sort of Roth IRA or something like that.

Retirement comes to taxable to you down the road, but you got directions for it upfront But that's why they're gonna make a pay tax on down the You know the other one let's see

But deferring taxes, I mean like just to the bigger point deferring taxes is kind the idea

you're gaining that inflation along the way you can pay that tax with future dollars that are worth less than today's dollars

Well, I mean, there's a lot of tax planning and we go back to real estate.

A lot of people are, everybody's heard of like kind of exchanges.

We call them the 1031s.

And first, if you're thinking about doing one of these, talk to your accountant early because once you touch the money after closing, there's no going back on it.

The like kind of exchange opportunity is gone.

Everybody's got to be helping out.

The whole idea behind it, like tax changes, you're doing is deferring that tax until you sell the second property.

Because all you're doing is reducing the basis in that next property that you bought, but that gain from the previous property.

And so now you have a bigger gain on the next property.

But maybe there's tax planning involved.

Maybe you hold onto that property and it goes to your errors after you die.

And then you're going step down the basis and nobody ever pays any tax on it.

But yeah, those are kind of if

If you can have conversations about how to defer tax, down the road, that's really a lot of tax playing.

I think because again, the idea is that we can get the liability down the road.

You know, so we're going to say taxes currently by taking the depreciation.

I think you would want to do that for sure.

Yeah, you just have to be careful in that in that situation.

feel like people it's pretty popular.

Let's go buy a house, fix it up and sell it.

That's a little bit different situation because that

that technically should not be capital gain income.

If you're houses, that would be kind of more of a trader business, since it's self-employment type.

So if you're into flipping houses, let's fix it up, let's rent it out for a year or two, then let's sell it.

But if all you do is go make improvements, and takes you start on a year for today, and you sell it after you've flipped it, that's going to be self-employment income.

These are all the reasons somebody needs a CPA.

could...

Well, you're probably talking to a lot of people that have the ability to go do that.

They can go do the work themselves, which makes flipping houses appealing.

But you might want to talk to the accountant about it.

It's not necessarily just capital gaining.

Yeah, if you're out there trying to do your own taxes, you can land yourself in trouble with the IRS real quick.

So, okay, this is probably going to be a really popular question.

What are the most common deductions that people miss or don't think of?

No, that's a good question too.

Obviously, you you got a set of books and all the business expenses are getting paid out of business account.

You're probably not missing much, you know, but you might have a small business and you you got your cell phone set up on an individual plan and the bills come into you

personally.

It's OK, because all small business owners are giving out their cell phone number, right, probably on their business card.

It's OK to have the business write you a check.

You can do it once a year, at end of the year, it's like, much did my cell phone cost me?

Have your business write you a check and reimburse you for your cell phone.

If you sit at home and you use the home internet, the home office deduction, there is a home office deduction, but it's usually a pretty small deduction.

That's one of those that you might be able to defer a little bit, but it comes through eventually.

But like, say you've got your internet at the house, but you have the internet to run your business.

The key is just any of these small expenses that you're paying out of pocket, but they're business related, just from your business to you personally, you just write yourself a

reimbursement check.

self-employment reimbursement, internet reimbursement.

Another one is for self-employed people, there's a lot of rules related to self-employed health insurance.

And so if you're paying health insurance, make sure you're communicating that to the account.

So you can get self-employed health insurance deductions or if you're asking for it, that it's getting accounted for directly because there's some special rules with self-employed

health insurance and ask for operations for 2 % shareholders.

I'm asking about retirement opportunities.

I I try to encourage, especially the younger generation that are going out to start their own business and doing this.

like, get started early.

What's a good retirement plan for me?

To get started.

And even if it's just a little bit of money to start, because it's going to help you down the road.

My daughter just started teaching this year.

And I told her, the first thing you do is fill out that retirement form.

Never proceed in your paycheck and never make that excuse.

I'll start that in a year.

I'll start that in two years because it's going to be a lot longer than that before you probably do the math.

But HSAs, if you have HSAs, make sure you communicate that you got an HSA.

Your account number is related to that.

And then the big ones, vehicles.

If you've got a small, if you've got a small proprietorship for a single man, the trucks in your name, figuring out what's the best way to handle that vehicle.

Do we want to take the actual expenses related to it?

Do I just want to have my company reimburse me for mileage?

And there's no set standard that says it has to be paid monthly, it has to be paid quarterly.

All this could be done at the end of the year, or you could do it monthly.

But tracking those, and the IRS wants to see you moving money, paying physical money from the business to you individually.

I say that I've never done it, but a lot of times, accountants do it through journal entries.

Hey, they contributed this, and they got a deduction.

But there's no money to change hands.

So you want to actually physically pay the money between the company and yourself on those things, whether it's reimbursement mileage or whatever.

So I would say those are probably the big ones that I can think of off the top of my head.

Something I hear from a lot of small business owners, again, they say, well, I'm self-employed, I don't have a retirement, or they think that kind of the big corporate

401k is the only way to do retirement.

What retirement vehicles are available for small business owners or someone that is self-employed?

Well, there's there's different types of fireplaces that you can you can use there's once called it

set fire.

And there's rules related to steps if you have an employee is that, you know, there's rules about when they qualify for that plan, how many hours they work, how old they are,

things like that.

And if you contribute 20 % of your net income, then you have to contribute 20 % for everybody that qualifies.

But set fire is a good vehicle.

There's just individual

Retirement accounts that are necessarily tied to your business, you know, if you qualify and put seven thousand dollars into a traditional IRA and you do that you need a deduction

for that there's limitations and rules of course, but But then again you want to talk to your account about well is a traditional IRA the best for me right now or maybe a Roth IRA

is better for me and I'm not going to get a current deduction but it's going to grow tax-free until I retire and when I retire pull money out of it and have no tax pulling

right and so

You want to have those type of conversations too.

uh But there's, yeah, you can have a simple library.

You can have 401Ks.

So there's all kinds of opportunities to start putting money away and get a tax advantage out of it.

You know, versus, you can just have a regular brokerage account.

You can start piling money into that, but you're not getting the current tax deduction to bring the money that goes into it.

So maybe, you know, if you've got that excess cash to do that,

putting some into your brokerage account but also taking advantage of your deductions through your retirement.

Yeah, so just because you don't work for a big corporation that has a 401k that you can sign up for does not mean that you're excluded from participating in the retirement.

Correct, correct.

There's opportunities out there for just the solo business worker for sure.

What are some things business owners could do to best prepare for tax season?

Or maybe what are the frustrations you have with clients that if you could get in front of them and teach them a lesson of, if you do this, this, this, and this, it would make my

life way better.

What can we all be doing to help make your life easier?

you know, most accounts, you know, starting with something as simple as they send out the tax organizer every January.

And really all that is is just a it's just kind a guide of what you had last year.

know familiarize yourself with what you did have last year.

It'll show you the prior numbers and you know that's what we're looking for to collect in the current year.

You know at the front of it will be two or three pages of yes and no questions.

Fill out those yes and no questions and let us know if things have changed from one.

I I thought that extra because the couples have forgotten to tell me they had a baby.

You know, that's stuff that we need to know.

I it's been several years ago, I had one lady that didn't tell me that she got remarried.

You know, so all these life-changing events need to be communicated.

And there's questions in there that are yes or no, when you just simply say yes and explain it and, you know, whatever.

But it helps you gather up all the information.

I think one of the things that can slow down attacks

is just piece knowing things.

know, like, I got a 1099 in the mail to the editor, run it down to the tax accountant, but we can't do anything with it because we're waiting on the other 15 things we need.

So try to get as much information as you can gathered up by going through that tax organizer and bringing it in at all at once, whether you're the client that likes to go in

and sit down and go through it with your accountant, or you just like to drop it off and tell me when it's ready to go to the line, you know, and there's nothing wrong with you.

drop it in a drop box like I do for you guys.

If we're missing something or we have questions about something, mean, there's nothing wrong with that.

bet because we're going to call you and we're going to get it out.

But just something simple like that.

I have lot of people that just don't even open the envelope.

I think it just goes back to the taxes.

don't want anything to do with it.

Tell me what I need.

The advice that the businesses, whether it's an escort or a partnership or just a sole proprietor, those are a little bit different.

You want to go through and try to make sure your books are in some sort of working order and try to do some beer and clean up.

Or if you need help getting the books cleaned up, we can start doing that type of stuff in November and December to kind of get us out much further ahead.

Because we've got to start thinking about, do we need W-2 prepared?

Do we need 1099s prepared?

Do we need to send out stuff to get the information to file the 1099s?

So there's some cleanup work there.

So whether that's your in-house cookkeeper or you do that work yourself or asking for help to help get the books cleaned up, we're kind of closer to ready to go to work on the

taxes.

It's hard when you get somebody that doesn't do a good job with taking care of their books and they bring it in in March to try to have the time to try to get that done by April

15th.

It's going to be an extended decline more than likely.

clients to be like, that's fine, jump in.

Yeah, just trying to be prepared.

And we ask all of our clients, we want copies of your purchase invoices.

Did you buy new equipment?

Give us the purchase invoices.

Because they'll forget to tell us that they traded.

They'll say, I bought this for $50,000.

Well, they won't tell us they traded something else.

And the actual cost of the equipment was $150,000.

So we're always looking for purchase invoices on your big purchases.

We've got to gather up the loan histories if you have loans with the banks.

What we do in our firm is we go through what we call a balance sheet approach.

We're going to make sure your cash is direct and solid December 31st.

Your fixed assets are accounted for.

Is accounts receivable?

Are all the accounts receivable reasonable?

Are they collectible?

And we just go down the balance sheet.

Are the loans tied out?

Because we feel like if the balance sheet's tied out, then your income statement and what we're reporting as income has got to be pretty close to where it needs to be.

So it's not always foolproof.

yeah, talking to your account is busy throughout October 15 with extensions.

And after that, start bugging them saying, can I get in there for a tax year, you're in tax planning appointment.

And let's figure out where I'm at and what I need to do.

It just helps cut down on surprises at the end of year.

Like, you stuck me with a big tax bill this year.

It's like, well, I haven't heard from you since last year when you picked up your tax return.

I didn't know you had a hand in your year this year.

So communicating that type of stuff and trying to get ahead of where you're at with your tax liability, I would say.

But I think one of the things that small business owners, you know, like you've always had a pretty good grasp on how your taxes work and where you're going and things like that.

But there's people that are the complete opposite of that that just want nothing to do with it, you know, because maybe it's stressful for them or they're busy doing something

else.

I would encourage all small business owners to try to understand their tax return.

Try to figure out a way to just the basics of what's driving my tax liability.

Why am I paying $20,000 a year?

You know, and what can I do to help preserve that a little bit?

But just gaining a little bit of understanding of how this works.

You know, even if you don't want to, you know, you don't like it, you don't understand it.

ask stupid questions.

oh To me, they're not stupid questions.

And I get encouraged when I have my clients come in and just ask me the most basic questions.

It shows me that they're trying, that they care, that they're engaged.

And when I see people doing that, typically their businesses are a little more successful just because they're helping manage that tax liability.

Yeah, I can see that.

mean, I'm in the field talking to other contractors and stuff and there's a lot of them, they get mad at their CPA because they owe more in taxes this year than they did last year

and they can't explain why.

And I'm like, it's probably not your CPA's fault.

They're filling out the forms following the process.

And if your tax bill went up, it's because something changed in your business, not because your CPA did a bad job.

think that's the most frustrating part is getting a big tax bill and not expecting it.

But you've got to communicate.

Go back to the communication part and communicate often about where you're at.

If you go pick up a big job and it's going to be done by the end of the year, know it's going to increase your revenue twofold from the prior year, you should be communicating

with somebody about that.

You know, not just plop it down in March and...

So I remember this very clearly because it was not the answer I wanted to hear.

But one of the first years after I bought my business from my dad, I had an unexpectedly large tax bill and I was having coffee with him and was complaining about it.

And he goes, well, you have a huge tax bill because you had a huge year.

You made a lot of money this year, pay your taxes and quit complaining about it.

Like you have a tax bill because you made a lot of money.

So use some of that money to get the IRS off your back and move on with your life.

And I've given that exact message to clients that your dad gave to you.

And it doesn't always go over well.

That's not what they want to hear.

But there are where it's like, did well.

We're managing tax liability here.

We're not trying to get rid of it 100%.

you're gonna be, you're still getting ahead even though you're paying some taxes.

But like I said, the biggest thing is getting stuck with that big bill.

know, because maybe they spent all the money on buying equipment, but they couldn't get rid of the whole tax liability and it's like, what am gonna pay the tax with?

And know, they're just, and then there's just the idea of having to write a check to the IRS.

It just drives people crazy.

No, it's not.

I write up to do it.

I don't like it either, but.

Maybe this is a similar question and it's just something that's been on my mind lately with what we've been working together on, but how can owners best prepare for a liquidity

event or an exit?

How can we prepare our books to sell our business or transfer to somebody else?

I think it's good question.

It doesn't start, it shouldn't start at the end.

You know what mean?

And when you're talking like prepare the books, you go into business and in your mind you're thinking maybe I'll build this business up and I can sell it.

maybe the kids want to take it over or whatever, but there's going to be a buy sell, they got to buy data out on it or whatever.

But that's where we want to make sure that we're keeping, we're trying to build that biology from day one.

The business, yeah, cash is important,

It's not the only asset of the business.

And so these cash only businesses, people want to take a payment under the table and stuff like that.

But when people go into buy your business, they're going to be looking at maybe the last five years of tax returns.

And they're going to take the numbers that are on that tax return.

So if we've got a ton of bogus deductions that are you're mixing up a bunch of personal deductions and things like that, or you're not reporting revenue or whatever,

You're not doing a good job of building that balance sheet.

You want to make that look as attractive as possible at the end of the day when we're getting close to like, hey, it's time to do some succession planning.

But you get to within three or five years of retiring and you're like, the balance sheet looks terrible.

Well, you're going to have to find somebody.

I'm not saying you can't, but you're have to go find somebody and convince them of what you've been doing and hope they trust you.

that that is what you were doing and it really makes us much money versus just doing it the right way and forging income, keeping the personal expenses out of it and building

that balance sheet up and making it look like a valuable asset to some third party that wants to come in and buy your business from you.

So in terms of getting the books ready, I think that's got to start from day one.

And I have conversations with clients about that all the time.

What if you want to sell it someday?

But they're so young, but they don't know.

That's not what they're thinking about.

you mentioned it earlier more in light of like banking and finance, but there's just this weird dichotomy where like you want your banker to think that you're making a lot of money

and you want the IRS to think that you're making none.

And so it's kind of the same thing here.

And I know this is a learning curve for us.

It's a process we've gone through for a while, but uh same sort of thing.

You want a new buyer to think you're making the most amount of

money possible and you still want the IRS to think you're making the least amount of possible so you're paying the least taxes

And there's things you can do to, know, if the bank wants to see a financial statement, but your books are in terrible condition, it's, you know, it's hard to together a

financial statement.

So we're always focused on the balance sheet and make sure the balance sheet's in good order.

You know, most of our taxes are done on a cash basis.

But if you have receivables and payables and things like that, they're a cruel basis to tax items or

accounting item, you can go give the bank an accrual basis financial statement.

You don't have to give me your attached return.

You can say, yeah, but that is, here's my attached return, but that doesn't include my receivables.

Here's my receivables.

And they're all collectible.

I'm going to collect them in the next 60 days or whatever.

So you can do what we call a compiled financial statement for the bank that goes with your attached return.

And you can do that on an accrual basis.

So that's one way that you can help.

walk that line of maybe something that looks good but on the tax side, you know, something that's going to show them not making any money.

Yeah, so we're back to some of this terminology that gets thrown around a lot and many of us probably don't understand it very well.

What is the difference between accounting on a cash basis and accounting on an accrual basis?

Well, cash basis is really just what it is.

You pay tax on the cash you receive and you get to deduct the cash you spend, you know.

between January and December on your cash basis.

Whereas there's a cruel basis.

If you have accounts receivable, you've done the work, and the work's done by December 31st, but maybe you're not going get paid until January of the following year.

You're going to have to tax on that income in the current year.

Because on a cruel basis, you've earned that income, which you haven't received the cash.

But it works the same way with accounts payable.

I haven't heard this liability, but I haven't paid it.

until next year so you're get it that year and so that's that's kind of the biggest difference

is there maybe different types of industry or maybe different sizes of businesses?

Somebody's just trying to get their arms around their accounting and trying to do it properly.

Is there a time or a situation where it would make more sense to keep your books and do accounting on a cash basis versus an accrual basis?

I would if like if you if you have receivables and payables and stuff like that our clients are probably they're tracking them on an accrual basis.

We make what we call tax journal entries to adjust from accrual to cash for tax purposes.

Sometimes we do that inside your books.

We'll make a journal entry as a 1231 and we'll reverse it as a 101 so that you're back to the accrual basis.

uh So yeah if you track it on an accrual basis if you you're if you're in it

industry that has receivables.

It's less maybe the size of business or the type of business and it's more if you provide services and get paid in cash that day, you can probably run on a cash basis.

But if you have receivables or payables, either one, you probably need to be tracking it on an accrual basis.

I would recommend tracking it in your accounting system whether that's QuickBooks or you have some Excel.

situation set up for yourself because you don't want to pay for whatever it is but you definitely should be tracking here.

that's good to know I've heard people give the advice before that when you start out and it's a small business you just track your cash and Eventually when you get big enough,

it's gonna need to switch to an accrual based accounting But I guess that's not necessarily the case

I the very beginning.

I start working off an accrual basis balance sheet inside your accounting system.

Your accounts can make adjustments for the

a rule to cash adjustments to get what we need to report on the texture.

That's good to know, I'm learning new stuff today.

You know, we talked about the books side of that, but there's a lot of planning that goes into transitioning businesses, right?

And you know, your parents transitioned the business to you and now you're transitioning again.

So you've been through this a few times, but you want to, again, communicate early.

what's going on, what your ideas are of how to do this.

Because there could be situations where there's tax savings available.

m There's installment sales versus lump sum payments.

They're transferring it through gift or they're transferring it through inheritance.

One has carryover basis, one gets a stepped up basis.

So there's a lot of different factors.

in certain situations, especially with a C Corp, example.

If you meet certain standards in your C Corp, you could sell your business and not have to recognize the gain on the sale of it.

But it's pretty limited, but there's a rule out there.

Or if you're going to recognize the loss, capital losses in the accounting world are terrible because you're limited to $3,000 a year.

Well, there's a rule out there for the sale of business stock.

that if you sell it and you recognize a loss, can treat things up to $100,000 of it as ordinary income, which is all deductible in one year.

So there's different situations where you want to be talking to your counselor about this type of succession of planning and things and how to structure them with your attorneys in

different ways to try to save the taxes on the transition on the sale of the business.

Yeah, that C Corp rule was something that caught me off guard a little bit for the longest time.

was like S Corp, S Corp, S Corp.

You don't ever do a C Corp unless you have to, uh, cause they just seem like a nightmare.

But then when we were preparing for the sale of our business, I stumbled onto that C Corp rule and was like, Oh man, this is the one scenario where that would be really nice.

would love to not be paying taxes on all of this.

Yeah, we don't see it very often because I think you got to be the original owner of the C Corp and that's.

the capitalization of the CECorp has to be under a certain amount, which a lot of our small businesses fall into that around here.

And so there's different rules, but you definitely want to go down that avenue to explore it.

What is one thing about bookkeeping or taxes that people just don't seem to get?

Bookkeeping and taxes.

I think if you don't understand bookkeeping, debits and credits, you're probably better off focusing on what you're really good at.

Use your time and resources to go generate revenue versus trying to spend the time messing up your books.

It's no different for me.

I need to focus on

If my job, what, where can I generate the most revenue?

And I need to delegate, you we talked about that earlier.

I need to delegate this to somebody else so I can, you know, be focusing on this.

And I think that that's good for anybody in the small business.

If you don't know what you're doing and then you're just, so you're, you got input into QuickBooks, that means nothing.

Then you go take it to your account and he can't make heads or tails of it.

You've wasted your time.

in all reality.

You're better off finding somebody that knows how to do it, whether that's a third party contract bookkeeper, that's somebody that you hired, or maybe it's the accountant in-house

bookkeeper that's helping you with that.

So from a bookkeeping standpoint, just focus on what you're good at.

And if you don't know anything about the bookkeeping, the accounting, ask questions.

I think that might be uh one of the unsung heroes of the industrial revolution is specialization.

Instead of doing everything yourself, use specialists to do it.

have employees or people all the time that give me a hard time because I don't change the oil in all of our company trucks.

ah like, man, if I am out roofing, I can make more money roofing in the same amount of time that it takes to

change my oil as what it costs to pay somebody else to do it.

uh the guy running the oil change place, he can probably make more money changing oil in the amount of time it takes to fix his roof than what he would pay to have me do it.

ah just hire a professional and let them take care of it.

I agree 100%.

And we just, and I get it, you I tried, I tried to manage costs in our business too, know, and uh, but you got to think about the lost revenue, not doing like you're good at, you

know, cause you can make more money than you're going to go pay somebody to do this.

And especially in your industry, mean, changing your oil is one thing, but you're not going to wind up in jail because you did it wrong.

with taxes, that might not be the case.

This is super random, but that comment reminded me, I was reading a book one time and the author said that he instructed his lawyer and his accountant on the three to five rule.

He always wanted to absolutely push the envelope on, uh, legality of avoiding taxes.

But, uh, if he were to get caught, he wanted his lawyer to be able to get him out in less than three to five years.

I have that.

There's a couple of their good friends of mine and they moved to town.

She's like, I need you to start doing our tax.

I said, OK, can do that for you.

And

she goes, your number one job is to keep my husband out of jail.

So he's clearly one of the tax-inverse clients I have.

But yeah, she's like, make sure that he doesn't go.

I think a lot of us probably fall into that category.

You don't want to pay more in taxes than you have to.

So what is one piece of advice that you would give to a small business owner or an entrepreneur to help set them up for success?

If you had only one piece of advice, what would you tell them?

It's been mentioned, but it's trying to understand taxes to the best of your ability.

And make, know, rely on your account to explain it to you.

You know, go in and ask questions.

Figure out what's driving your tax liability.

Maybe they have ideas on them.

We're not always the perfect advice from the industry to help you run your business, because I don't know anything about real estate.

I don't know anything about changing oil.

But we can definitely help you understand what's driving the tax situation and where you're at and ways that we can maybe try to, you know,

limit the tax liability.

And with that, is build a build a team of advisors around you to get the help that you need.

know, whether that's you you have a lawyer, you have a financial advisor, retirement advisor, you know, insurance guy, you know, know, a team around you people and you know,

whether it's an aid, it's just mentors.

You know, maybe you're young and you grew up and you've got successful business people around you that have been through the trials and tribulations that you're getting into,

you know, and talking to them.

But yeah, building a team around you people that you can trust and rely on to help you grow the business.

And that allows you to go focus and do what you do well and build your business.

One of my favorite sayings is, don't know what you don't know.

So what are the questions that I haven't asked?

Or maybe what are the questions that your clients don't ask?

Um

I can't think of any questions they don't ask off the top of my head.

I think it just kind of goes back to the conversations.

I have a lot of clients that drop their stuff off and pick them up from the desk, and I'll see them once a year.

They're not asking questions because they feel like the questions they have are some difficult questions or something to that effect.

And so I would just mainly just say, don't be afraid to ask the questions.

Because it could be something.

simple or you could be onto something that maybe is little more complicated.

So any questions that you think of, whether it's through an email or a phone call, or just ask the questions.

Ask any and all questions.

That's what you're paying us for, is to advise you and help you understand what you know.

Well, this is my favorite question that I ask of every guest.

Are you a person of a particular faith tradition?

if so, how has that affected the way that you run your business?

Well, I grew up going to church every Sunday with my mom.

I grew up in a Lutheran household.

uh Today, I don't go to church every Sunday, but I guess I'm just more of a spiritual person.

uh

price itself talking in my head to God.

I'm very thankful for where I'm at.

And I know there's reasons other than just, you know, me working hard to get here.

You know, there's other things that I've been blessed with and, you know, asking for, you know, help looking over my kids and my grandkids and, you know, things like that.

um In my, in my business, you know, I just tried it.

I just wanted to look at everybody the same.

you know, whether it's an employee, it's the guy working in the front desk, or it's one of my bookkeepers, or it's one of my partners, you know, I look at them all the same.

And I do the same thing with clients, you know.

I don't worry.

I've been doing it long enough that I numbers to number, you know.

I don't care if you're worth zero or 30 million, you know, it's like I look at everybody the same.

And that's kind of the biggest thing I've taken away from that spiritual type thing.

If somebody is interested in engaging your services or chatting with you about CPA services in more depth, what's going to be the best way to get a hold of you?

We actually have an office in Buffalo and we have an office in Sheridan.

yeah, just call in the office.

We refer to them as cold calls.

We have an intake sheet that the

The guys that answered the phone will help get that filled out and get its pass on to the partners.

And then we just kind of contact you back.

Right now, in our firm, the first question you're probably going be asked is are you open to being extended?

Because we just can't promise people at this point that you're not going to get extended.

So we want to be very upfront with that.

So do you deal mostly or maybe even exclusively with local clients or would you be interested in uh long distance clients as well?

We have clients in several states.

It's one of those things where we've kind of moved to where we're trying to focus more on local clients instead of dealing with people from out of state.

We've had clients for years and years, and then they decided to move in retirement, things like that.

And we don't get rid of them.

And I'm not saying that we wouldn't take on a client from the last day, but our main focus is Sheridan County and Johnson County, and trying to take care of those clients.

Is there somebody that you think would make a good guest on the show?

Somebody that has a unique story, a unique business, or maybe works in a really unique industry that would be fun to learn more about?

I thought about this quite a bit.

There's one name that comes to mind and it's Bryce Fisher.

I don't know if you know Bryce, but he was when I became partner, he was my very first

client that I picked up on my own through a referral.

And so we got to be getting close to 20 years.

And he was very young, and he started out in a successful business.

And the heavy machinery and reclamation work and things like that.

And he's just continuing to grow and doing very well.

think from a young entrepreneur's standpoint, think Bryce would fit the bill for sure.

But I also like what you did today, helping your listeners out by talking to advisors.

Maybe there's some managers out there that would be able to come on and provide some insight to your listeners as well.

think that kind of goes full circle on that.

Those are two great ideas.

I'm going to have to explore that and uh yeah, we might have to make that happen.

And I do know Bryce.

I had not yet thought of him to bring him on the show, but I think he'd be great.

I've known him for quite a while also.

Yeah, he popped in my head right away.

That's great.

All right, so last question to either settle or fuel the debate.

If you have a job to do and have to pick a cordless tool, which brand do you prefer?

I really try to practice what I preach.

I don't know how to do it.

I rely on your listeners to come in and give me a hand.

Okay, fair enough.

Well, Dan, thank you so much for joining us.

It really has been a pleasure.

I think the advice you've given is wonderful and I hope that people listening really take it to heart.

Yeah, thank you.

hope that...

I've given you some advice that can help you somewhere along the way.

Yes, and I really appreciate all you've done for us and for joining us today.

So thank you.

And thank you guys for joining us here on From the Ground Up Show.

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