Carter Cofield & George Acheampong Jr.: Save $100K+ With These Tax Strategies | DSH #1498

Their place, right?

But if you're going to be advising clients, I feel like you should have the licenses to do so, and that's how we're going to start teaching, right?

Because the financial influencers are going to give you the relatability, the financial professional is going to give you the credibility, right?

But it's kind of like watching paint.

Boring is hit.

You know what I'm saying?

So we saw that.

It was like, well, we're not, we are those guys in the technical system, we're not those guys.

Okay, guys, we got Carter and George here.

We're going to talk about saving money and investing money.

Let's go.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

You guys just came from the Hormozy event, right?

Yes.

Yep.

Yeah.

We'll learn how to grow and scale our practice so that one day we can exit.

Nice.

Shout out to Hormozy, man.

Yeah.

Printing.

Printing.

Dude, inspired a lot of guys like us.

Yes, absolutely.

Sure.

Including myself.

I read both his books.

Game-changing material.

Game-changing.

How long have you guys been working together?

Oh, us?

Yeah.

How long has it been?

Five years?

Yeah, about five years.

Yeah.

So Melon and Money started five years ago?

Well, the full story is I started it in 2017.

And then it's just an e-commerce brand, believe it or not, right?

I was a financial services professional, wanted to spread the word.

I was like, I don't want to buy billboards.

T-shirts seemed like a logical thing.

And so I started a merch brand as a financial advisor.

Then we met two years later at a financial services conference.

And at the time, we were like kind of stuck out like sore thumbs.

Financial service people are boring, right?

So like old white man boring.

So we kind of stuck out like sore thumbs and we stayed connected

and then decided at minimum, let's just idea share for a little while.

It ended up turning into meeting every other Monday for two years straight.

I'm just like, hey, what's working in your business?

Before we knew what a mastermind was.

Yeah, before we knew what it was, it was just like, let's meet for an hour and a half and idea share.

That went really well.

Both of our businesses independently grew.

And then from there, it transitioned into, well, let's share this with other people.

And then we created a podcast and did that for another two years.

And it's like, this is really working.

But all the while, I was referring him clients because my clients were doing really well financially and but needed to save money on taxes.

Yeah.

His clients were doing really well financially, but needed to figure out what to, where to invest the money after he saved the money on taxes.

So we're just referring business back and forth, like, this is silly.

Let's spin the wires back and forth, like, bro, like, what are we doing?

Yeah, let's just, let's bring it together.

And because we had a long enough period of time of just collaborating and idea sharing and understanding each other's personalities in our complementary strengths and skill sets, it was like, this makes sense.

And then we came together, joined forces.

And yeah, so it's been about five years all in, but two years formally with our firms being together.

Got it.

Well done.

You got good at saving people money, huh?

Yeah, yeah.

Cause my thing is this.

We, as entrepreneurs, you know, this, we work really hard for our money, like really hard, 80 hours a week, you know?

And just for the government at the beginning of the year to say, hey, give me 40 to 50 percent of all that hard, hard-earned money you just made.

And I just don't think that's fair.

And most people don't understand that the tax code is actually a rule book that teaches you how to legally avoid paying taxes, right?

but um most people don't understand the rules of the game therefore they can't win and so that's why that's why i decided to teach about taxes and how to keep your hard-earned money the happening to me with my first account old school guy you know like 70 80 years old he didn't know any of the new stuff oh yes and that's a common issue a lot of accountants are old yeah they're old and they stop studying the tax code and so they just tell you what to pay right and there's a difference between a tax prepare and a tax strategist a tax preparer's job is to file your taxes a tax strategist job is to give you tax strategy so you don't have to pay taxes and most people don't understand there's a difference and if you hire a tax strategist you actually i work with my clients for free because i always save them more money than they can ever try to pay me damn so that's that's i think that once people understand that difference they're they're good to go that's a borrow that's an easy sell at that point for you yeah yeah yeah like you have a hundred thousand dollar tax bill i'll charge you x to get rid of that smart and i'm sure you're similar with your investing stuff right yeah it's just very complimentary uh relationship and so it's like you said you saved the money on taxes now now what right because obviously as an entrepreneur that's your your big investment really it's like i'm betting everything on this winning um one philosophy that we live by is that wealth is made through concentration it's preserved through diversification right and so it's like as you're making all this money as you save money on taxes yes we want to double down reinvest into the business and keep it keep it growing but i should also probably be building wealth in the background um and so that's what we do we take that tax savings and then we help them reinvest it into the stock market show them how they can leverage that to buy other assets and i'm sure we'll get into more details as the podcast goes yeah that's i love that bar can you say that again wealth is made through wealth is made through concentration it's preserved through diversification that's a bar bar holy crap i thought him well i thought him well except the guy that's four years younger than me right but but yeah

it's good to have that friendly competition absolutely yeah iron sharp design we make each other better right like one thing i can say about him is i so i used to have a financial advising license but i met him like he's so much smarter than me in investing so i let him handle that and that that means i can spend all my time focusing on tax strategy.

And I think that's that microcosm of entrepreneurship, right?

Like if you got wearing six hats,

you're not going deep in any specific thing.

So we make each other better and we make our clients richer.

That was my issue when I first started entrepreneurship.

I was trying to do everything.

I think a lot of people fall in that trap.

Yeah.

And maybe in the beginning, for a period of time, you do, right?

Because you just don't have the resources.

It's like when we first started collaborating, he had his business, I had mine, we would joke about it, but like each day of the week was a different day.

Like today's CEO day, today's content creation day.

Right.

And so like starting out, you kind of have to, right?

But when you, after a period of time, you got to realize that, look, somebody else should be doing these things because at the end of the day, like where we're at now in business, we want to focus most of our time on the things that only we can do.

Right.

And we want to delegate mostly everything else because that is the highest impact time that we can spend.

Yeah.

What are some of the hottest investing strategies right now?

Yeah.

And to be honest, like, I'll speak to our philosophy at a high level i don't i don't follow like the good thing about investing is it's not really a trendy thing right it's pretty tried and true but we do have a structure that works for us that i think is unique yeah and so what we do is uh we tell our clients like all right you're doing well in your business and we need to we need to figure out how to how to preserve some of your wealth and grow it right and so we follow this philosophy that i like to call the burger king investment strategy right and essentially what that is is mcdonald's spends lots of money every year deciding where they want to put their next mcdonald's but burger king doesn't spend anything and the reason why they don't spend anything is because they just put their restaurant across the street from McDonald's.

Oh, well, you've already done it, right?

And so it's okay to be a copycat if you copy the right cat, right?

We just talked about Harmozi offline.

Like we're all following the blueprint, right?

It's like he's done that.

Why wouldn't we copy him?

And so with the investing, there's investment institutions like Charles Schwab, Fidelity, you know, the big ones, right?

And they spend tens of millions of dollars a year deciding what are the investments that should be inside this fund, right?

And so those funds typically are what we call ETFs, which is an exchange-traded fund.

The way I like to explain it.

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Is if you go to your favorite mall, there's hundreds of stores, right?

And if two or three or even 10 of those stores aren't doing well, we don't expect for the mall itself to close down.

We know that if there's Apple in there, these all these other stores, the mall is still going to be fine.

And so when you own ATF, it's the equivalent of owning the entire mall, right?

So if a few companies that are in the fund aren't doing well, you're still okay.

And that's a great strategy for the average retail investor because it's like, okay, well, if I just hit the buy button at this fund that Vanguard's put together after spending tens of millions of dollars on analysts and research, at minimum, I'm at least going to do better than the seven, eight percent right that they tell you that you should expect from the stock market.

That's level one, right?

We check that box, then we say, Okay, cool.

The same way I can go walk inside any mall and know that, well, I know that Apple store is doing way better than Journeys or whatever the little mom and pop stores are these days.

I don't go, I'm just online guy.

Yeah, I don't go to the mall anymore, yeah, right.

But we know there's certain stores that are going to outperform the other stores, but we own the whole mall, so we're okay.

So, with the next level strategy is like, okay, cool.

If I have ten thousand dollars to invest, maybe I invest $7,000 in owning the mall, i.e.

the ETF.

But in the other 3,000, I pick some of those individual stores who I know are going to do well.

So maybe I buy individual shares of Apple or Meta or

Meta's Facebook or Tesla or whatever, right?

And so what ends up happening is you get more exposure to the top companies in addition to having the diversification of the safety of just clicking the buy button on buying the ETF, right?

So then that's level two.

Then level three is like, okay, great.

So I got, I got my base.

I got the outlier outlier companies that are going to help my portfolio perform well overall.

Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to say, you know what?

How can I maximize the equity that I have?

Because

in real estate, we consider equity, you know, what you have in the property minus the debt service, right?

In the stock market, because it's you own 100% of your shares, right?

That's 100% equity.

And so what you have the ability to do is you can borrow against.

the value of your portfolio to then buy other investments.

And this is where we really supercharge strategies.

It gets crazy.

Right.

So you have, so what happens is, okay, I got this $10,000 invested, right?

Following this Birking investment strategy.

Great.

You mean to tell me that this investment institution will give me a line of credit just based upon the value of the portfolio?

So not that my $10,000 is going down, right?

They'll give me a separate line of credit for, let's just call it 50% of the value of my portfolio.

So if I have a $10,000 portfolio, they'll give me a line of credit for $5,000.

I can then use that money to invest in anything else.

Wow.

So now my portfolio is growing, thriving, uninterrupted, right?

Didn't sell anything.

i got to five thousand i can invest elsewhere and of course if you have more money you can extrapolate this out 50 000 100 000 whatever borrow 50 borrow a 50 of your portfolio value and then use that to invest in other assets because now what happens is your portfolio is growing you got a lot of credit to buy other investments and we typically recommend that those investments that you buy are cash flow producing investments like real estate or uh buying a business that you could own but do not run reason being is because if it's producing cash flow you can then circulate that cash flow back into your portfolio, which now is going to allow that cash flow to grow at the same rate as your portfolio.

Investing, like, bro, it's like, it's like the closest thing to legal money laundering I've ever seen.

Like you're investing the same dollar, one, two, three times.

Wow.

And if you invest it in real estate, you get this thing called depreciation, which I'm sure you've heard of, right?

So now, in George's example, let's say we have a million dollars.

Now we borrowed a half a million dollars to buy a real estate property.

And let's say that with the half a million dollar

money, we could buy a two and a half million dollar rental property.

Now with a good depreciation strategy, you can get a million dollar deduction for buying that real estate property.

Now you have a million dollar tax deduction that you can write off against your active income in your business if you do the right strategies, short-term rentals, whatever.

But it's just like, how do we maximize, instead of investing the same dollar once, investing it two, three times, and then using that investment to save on taxes simultaneously.

Because what most people will tell you to do is tell you to buy low, sell high.

On the surface, that sounds great, right?

Like I bought this investment for low, I sold it high.

And in some instances, that could be right, right?

Like, we started a business, and at some point, we'll exit that business, right?

I can't keep it forever.

But when you're building wealth, right, why not buy low and sell never, right?

So, if I can invest in a portfolio, allow it to grow, and because I can still get access to the money as if I sold the investment, so I don't have to sell it, it seems like a better idea, right?

Because now, when I'm getting the access to that money, I don't have to pay something called capital gains tax.

Cause typically, when you, when your investments grow, you got to pay capital gains tax, right?

When you borrow against it the irs does not view loans as income so i borrowed against it pay no capital gains tax sure the investment institution is going to charge me five percent to borrow the money a lot a lot less than capital gains tax but here's the here's the kicker the irs will allow you to deduct the loan interest off the borrowed money holy crap yeah so i don't see the risk in this strategy it's very minimal risk if you if similar to here's what i'll say similar to a credit card what the same thing they tell you with a credit card is if you can have a line of credit for a hundred thousand dollars you probably shouldn't use the full hundred thousand yeah So as long as you are being mindful about, hey, okay, I can borrow up to this dollar amount.

I've already pre-vetted out what I'm going to use the money for.

So don't borrow the money to then go buy stuff, right?

But you pre-vet it out to, oh, I'm going to buy that real estate or I'm going to invest in that business.

And I've done some due diligence on what I expect the outcome to be.

Of course, nothing's perfect.

We don't know exactly what's going to happen.

If you do it that way, the risk is very minimal.

I'll say this.

I've been a financial advisor and wealth manager for 13 years, been adopting this strategy for more than half of my career.

And I've never had one client who have done it and it has not worked out for for them successfully.

Damn, yeah.

So, back to your example with the million, and you borrow 500.

If you lose the 500, do you lose the million?

If you lose, no, okay.

So, so if you use, I'm assuming you're asking, if I borrow $500,000 against the value of my portfolio, right?

And I'm unable to now pay it off, do I lose the million?

No, is the million access collateral?

So, if for whatever reason you can't pay back the loan that you borrow, then you could at that point sell a sum of your shares to cover the

got it.

Yeah, okay, right.

Yeah, I don't see the risk then, to be honest.

This is a really good strategy is this the life insurance play it's i always like to say concepts govern specifics so people when with the life insurance play people will say you can become your own bank and all they're really saying is i'm leveraging an investment or an asset that i already have yeah to be able to create cash flow right so that so that's what it is in life insurance with this i like it a little bit more because you typically can't do the life insurance strategy without having someone who understands what they're doing at a really high level to be able to design the policy the right way.

Because here's what happens with life insurance.

life insurance is in order to make it make sense for you, it has to be designed in a very unique way, right?

And if you ask, I will show somebody my investment portfolio today: like, hey, this is where, yeah, here's how it works, here's how much money is outstanding.

If you ask any life insurance guru to show you their policy that they actually borrow from, it's almost almost impossible.

Yeah, right.

When have you ever seen somebody online saying, Here is the transfer from the life insurance policy to my investment to my bank account, right?

Never.

I will show you, Carter, when we teach people our strategies or when we hire new clients, we won't let you hire us until we show you what we've done for ourselves and what we've done for other clients.

He will show you his legitimate tax return.

I will show you my legitimate investment portfolio.

The same way you wouldn't hire a personal trainer.

I hope you wouldn't.

He's like, wait.

But some of us make these blind decisions because we hear these snippets online and we're afraid of Uncle Sam and we just want to delegate it to somebody.

Or, you know, we don't know a lot about investing.

So we're just going to take your word for it.

But we are still licensed experts.

We're not talking heads online.

It's very important for our client, for us to know that our clients know that we do this in real life.

We don't play one on TV, right?

I hope you guys are enjoying the show.

Please don't forget to like and subscribe.

It helps the show a lot with the algorithm.

Thank you.

We show our legitimate statements and say, this is how it worked for us.

If that's not enough, here's how it worked for our clients.

And then last year alone, our clients improved their collective net worth by over $100 million in just the first five months of the year.

Jeez.

Right.

So that's how we approach it.

Just lead with results and receipts and

continue to help the people that we serve.

I love that.

You actually show your tax returns.

I show my tax returns.

We teach a class

every week and I show a copy of my my tax return because if I can't help me save on taxes, how am I going to help you?

Right.

So I believe that, especially in the world that we live in today, you need to show that you can do these strategies yourself.

So I've done all this.

I bought the car over 6,000 pounds just to show people that I can do it.

I bought the $2 million real estate property that gave me a $600,000 tax deduction.

I've done those things.

So number one, that I can teach my clients how to do it.

But number two, like I've already done it for myself.

I know it works for me.

I know how to implement the strategy on a tax return so that I can do it for you all as well.

I love that, man.

There's not a lot of guys like you that are showing receipts like this.

I could say that, especially in your space.

Yeah, well, I think I don't think a lot of people are, real talk.

I don't think a lot of people are licensed to talk in the space, right?

Like, like I'm, I've been a CPA for 12, going on 13 years.

And that means I think I have four years of college, another year of master's degree, and then to take the CPA exam.

He's a licensed financial advisor as well.

So I think that is this difference between where you're a financial influencer and a financial expert.

Both have their place.

But if you're going to be advising clients, I feel like you should have the licenses to do so.

And that's the only reason why we started teaching, right?

Because the financial influencers are going to give you the relatability, right?

It's like five tips to spend less money on whatever, right?

It's cool until you start making six figures, seven figures.

I need a little more than that, right?

The financial professional is going to give you the credibility.

Right.

But it's kind of like watching paint dry.

Boring as hell.

You know what I'm saying?

So we saw that.

It was like, well, we're not, we are those guys in the technical sense, but we're not those guys, right?

So we decided to carve out a space in the the middle.

It's like, hey, we got the relatability of the financial influencers.

We got the credibility of the financial service professionals.

And then that's how we're going to serve and impact the market.

Bridge those gaps.

I love it.

Do you guys see a lot of disinformation in your space online?

Because I see these infinite banking videos and it's like a lot of kids are falling for that.

Yeah, we see it.

We see a lot.

And that's honestly one of the other reasons why we do do this because we're trying to drown out the noise of just like, this is stupid.

This is silly.

People are like, you know, become your own bank.

If you don't have money in your actual bank account, you shouldn't be trying to become your own bank and life insurance.

Period.

Because the unfortunate reality is this, in order to quote unquote, become your own bank and life insurance, you have to buy a certain policy.

And usually that policy has to be in existence for two years.

You don't just put the money in your account and have access to it tomorrow.

It's usually a two-year gap.

Wow, they don't mention that.

Yeah, they don't mention it.

It's usually a two-year gap to gain the cash value in your life insurance.

And the thing I don't like about using your life insurance as a, as quote unquote, become your own bank, if you, for whatever reason, can't pay it back, you lose your life insurance policy.

Damn.

So if you had a million dollar life insurance policy that was supposed to set your kids up for their future and you borrow all this money against it and you can't pay it back, you lose the whole policy and all the money you invested into the policy.

With the stock portfolio that George mentioned, they would just make you sell your stocks, but you'll still have your original money.

Like losing your life insurance policy that's supposed to set up your family for their generational wealth.

That's not something that you should be gambling with, in my opinion.

Yeah, 100%.

And to put it in context, right?

So with life insurance policies, they have annual premiums.

Sometimes you pay them monthly, quarterly, whatever, right?

So, say you have this million dollar policy, but it's only a million-dollar policy as long as you're making these premiums, right?

If I have money, if I dump a lump sum into my investment account, I don't have to invest another dollar, right?

I might have this outstanding loan, but to Carl's point, worst-case scenario, if I don't pay back the loan, they will just, okay, you had, you had a half million dollar portfolio, you had a hundred thousand dollar loan, you didn't pay us back, we'll margin call you, we'll sell some of your investments, you still have 400,000, right?

Life insurance policy, you miss a, you miss, I think it's a 30 days, right?

35 days, the policy lapse.

It's a wrap.

You could have had it for 10 years.

Right.

And then the most you'll get is the surrender value, which is going to be peanuts because these advisors, excuse me, agents aren't designing them the right way.

They're not designed, because here's the thing.

They lose up to 90% of their commission when they design it the right way.

Most of them don't design it the right way.

Yeah, because it's called a high, most the best policies are called high early cash value, where the way it's designed is most of the money is going towards the cash value and not the insurance benefit.

But if they do that, then that means the money's not going to the insurance company.

If it's not going to the insurance company, then it's not going, it's not going to input, and they're not going to give you the same commission because the insurance company is not benefiting the same.

What do you guys think of the credit hack with paying your own children?

Um, so I actually

like the tax strategy.

Is there a tax strategy?

I love that.

So, um, I'll dive into that after I give your audience the frame.

So,

there are, in my opinion, three levels to tax-saving strategies, right?

Level one is tax deduction strategies.

How do I turn my personal expenses into tax deductible business expenses?

So you see people writing up their cell phone, their rent, their cars.

It's like, how do I take things I'm already paying for, get the IRS to help me pay for those so that I can save on taxes?

That's level one.

Unfortunately, most people just stay at level one tax strategies.

Then there's level two strategies, which I call income shifting strategies.

How do I shift money off of my tax return?

at a 37% tax bracket and put it somewhere else at a lower tax bracket.

That's where we have private family foundations.

That's where we have management companies.

And that's where we have paying your children.

So with the pay your children strategy,

I'll talk about level three.

Then I'll come back to paying your children.

The level three is depreciation strategies.

How do I leverage assets like real estate that will allow me to increase my assets, but also decreasing the taxes I pay?

Because with real estate, you can buy a property and it can go up in value, appreciate, but you can still get a tax deduction as if it lost value.

depreciate.

So those are like the three levels of tax strategy.

So we help our clients implement all three.

Therefore, they're able to to live tax-free.

Now, you mentioned specifically the paying your children strategy, which I think is a phenomenal strategy.

So if you have a business and you have a child, we recommend between the ages of six and 17 because they're younger than six.

Like, come on, bro.

Like, what are we talking about?

Like, you know, unless you have like a physical product brand that can be a model of the baby clothes or something.

I am able to take advantage.

I have a son that's three.

We have a clothing brand.

So that makes sense.

But if you have a construction company, bro, your five-year-old son should not be working in in a construction company.

So we recommend for the mass audience, your kid should be between the ages of six and 17 to implement this strategy.

And what you can do is you are able to pay your child up to the standard deduction, which this year is $15,000.

You, the business owner, get a $15,000 tax deduction, just like you would get a tax deduction for paying any other employee.

Wow.

The child,

because they're your child, they can receive the $15,000 tax-free because the standard deduction will wipe out all of their taxable income.

So you take the $15,000 from your 37% tax bracket and put it to their 0% tax bracket, saving $4,500 or $5,000 in taxes.

The extra step is that now that your child has earned income, they can set up something called a custodial Roth IRA, which is basically a Roth IRA for kids.

So with a Roth IRA, you never pay taxes on the money as it grows.

So now we can take $7,000 of that $15,000 and we can invest it for our children's future.

And that money will never pay taxes on in the future.

So essentially, we save taxes three ways.

The parent got a tax deduction for paying the child.

The child received the money tax-free.

And then the child invested the money and the money will grow tax-free forever.

And we have some of our clients that did this when their kid was six.

And now their kid might be like, you know, 10 or whatever.

But if they do this from where their kids are ages six to 17, your child at their 18th birthday or graduation, they'll have over $150,000 of tax-free money.

Wow.

So now they can use that money to pay for college if they want, or they can start their own business.

They have $150,000.

You know what I'm saying?

So, like, this is honestly what we wish we had when we were kids, right?

Yeah, I would have loved that.

Yeah, my son's son's a lucky guy.

And then what I do is with the difference, because obviously the Roth IRA has a contribution maximums, right?

Yeah.

I take the difference of what I'm paying myself because he don't got, he don't need to pay for nothing.

I put in a brokerage account, which is another investment account.

It doesn't have any provisions on which you can contribute.

So now not only does he have half of it in the Roth IRA growing tax-free, he has the other half growing in the brokerage account.

And so, now he's going to have double that amount of money when he's ready to use it.

Damn, brilliant.

So, you guys aren't too like risky with your investments.

That sounds like crypto and all that degenerate stuff.

Degenerate stuff.

One thing I love to say, and we tell our clients this:

it's okay to get a base hit when you're up by 20, right?

Most people strike out because they try to swing for the fences.

If you're already doing well financially, you don't need these thousand percent returns to become wealthy.

And as you know, in baseball, the more you swing, the more you swing for the fences, the more you strike out.

So we tell our clients, if you know, the bases are low that we are up 20, just get on base and you're fine.

And it goes back to the quote that you said that you liked earlier, the wealth is made through concentration, it's preserved through diversification, right?

We work with mostly entrepreneurs, right?

And their concentrated asset is their business, right?

That's where they're, that's where they're, they're being taking all the risk, right?

Dumping the money back in.

And so it's like, we don't need to do that with our other investments, right?

It's like, let's continue to do what we're doing in the business to grow that.

But with the things that we're doing outside of our business to build wealth, like let's

sleep well at night, at least in one area.

Yeah.

So that's, and that's what we recommend.

Now, if you are going to invest in some outlier things, like maybe venture capital,

or even private equity is pretty, pretty consistent and stable, but or crypto, we typically recommend it makes up no more than 10% of your overall investable assets.

Right.

Because that way you can afford to lose.

Like I've invested at this point, I think, in eight different venture deals.

I think only two will do well.

That's pretty good, actually.

25%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

It's only two will do well, but I'm cool with that because I only invested in an amount that it won't wipe me out if it doesn't, it doesn't do.

I'm not swinging for the fences.

I'm doing that in my business.

We invest, reinvest a lot of money into our business.

That's our asset.

That's the asset that we're trying to build that has enterprise value that we'll be able to exit.

So when we come, when we think of investing outside of that, we want to keep it simple and strategic.

Shout out to one of my good friends,

Ian Della, the master investor.

He says, look if you want excitement right slap a line on the ass right your best your investments don't have to be exciting they can be boring right and so that's that's how we think about it right it's like our businesses ebbs flows ups downs highs lows but when we invest our money let's just keep it simple let's keep it straightforward um and let's just sleep well at night I've made and lost my money twice already at my age.

And

when I look back at why I lost it, it's because I try to apply the principles of entrepreneurship to investing.

I went all in on risky endeavors.

And a lot of people are good at making money through their business.

Yeah.

But, you know, preserving wealth, like you said, and making money off investment is a total different skill.

Yeah.

And that's why we're here.

Like we, we understand, even though we're entrepreneurs, we're financial professionals by trade, right?

So if you're an entrepreneur, listen to this, it's like, don't beat yourself up because you don't know everything about tax strategy.

You don't know everything about investing or estate planning or insurance, right?

You're not supposed to.

You're supposed to be world-class at building your business, continue to reinvest in yourself to grow that, and then hire experts like us or a money team that can help you do that right that's why we work with entrepreneurs because we we get it

even us like we we have a a cfo team right so that we can we can be objective if it's up to us even though we're financial guys we just we're just gonna keep doubling down our final our money claim is like slow down

relax yeah relax because you guys are entrepreneurs yeah yeah so it's that interesting balance of like doing what entrepreneurs do while still wearing the financial hat and with our own we with our own business it's hard to wear that financial hat because we just we're not risk averse we want to we want to win we want to get to a non-figure exit at some point and that requires a lot of risk.

If you want to make uh, you know, a hundred million, you gotta be willing to invest, I'm not gonna say lose, invest 10 million, yeah, at least, yeah, at least at least at least 10 million.

Yeah, I mean, I study all the top podcasts right now, they're spending 10 million a year, really, yeah, diary of a CEO.

Shout out to

that's my favorite show, yeah.

He spends 10 million a year, 10 million on production, production, the team, getting guests, flying out, certain episodes.

Oh, because he probably does it, he probably, yeah, I get it.

Yeah, I mean, but at the end of the day, like

you can't expect to get a harvest if you don't plant a seed.

And that's with all areas of life, right?

Like, and so we, we believe that, like, yes, we need to invest in our business.

Yes, we need to invest in our assets.

Yes, you need to invest in yourself.

The only way to get a return is to make an investment.

If you make no investment, I can guarantee 100% return on zero investment is still zero.

Yeah.

If anything, you're losing money with the inflation.

Yeah, period.

If you're not investing.

Yes, period.

Talk about that.

People don't know that.

The hidden tax, they call it, right?

Yeah.

So, like,

inflation is a silent killer because you put, you know, $10,000 in the bank account, you check a year later, it still says, it might say $10,000 and one cent

give you the interest, but that $10,000 isn't $10,000 anymore.

The cost of goods went up.

Air flights went up.

Like things around you increase in price.

And that's what we tell our clients, you can't neglect the necessary.

Investing is not a thing you should do.

It's a thing you must do or you're guaranteed to lose money.

People are like, well, what if I invest?

I lose money.

If you don't, I guarantee you will.

Facts.

Yeah.

It's almost like necessary these days to maintain with the inflation rates.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's a requirement.

Yeah.

Especially with all the money they printed.

God damn.

Yeah.

Wild.

Yeah, wild.

I used to go to Costco when I was a kid and love it.

Now it's like, fuck, 400 bucks?

What did I buy?

Can I even make a meal with this shit?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's crazy, bro.

Facts, facts.

For real.

Yeah.

What's your podcast about?

Like, you do you guys have on guests or it's just you two?

It's a combination.

Yeah, so we have on guests, you know, other entrepreneurs, you know, what's working in their business,

how they're building wealth.

And then when we do our own individual podcasts, typically just variation of what's happening in the world, like what's happening with the tariffs, like talking about different investing and tax strategies.

But ultimately, as a company, our goal is to decrease the wealth gap by $100 billion.

And so all of the content that we create is just a derivative of that.

Because our goal is to help 100,000 people achieve their first or next 1 million in net worth, which will achieve that ultimate goal of decreasing the wealth gap.

So yeah, so just all things wealth building, tax strategy, entrepreneurship, sometimes that's therapy for us.

Just being able to talk about all the woes of entrepreneurship, but yeah, it's a good time.

The wealth gap's a fascinating topic, right?

Because there's people online saying the middle class will be wiped out within our lifetime.

Have you seen that?

We have.

We have.

And we're big.

Even here's the interesting thing, maybe a hot take, right?

So we are finance guys, right?

At least that's how people would describe us if they didn't know us, right?

And so they would, most people will probably think that we're always going to advocate to just, you know, tried and true investing or just save money on taxes, which is that that is our base, right?

But one thing that supersedes that is skill set acquisition, because at the end of the day, what gives you the resources to invest, what gives you the resource to have a tax problem is you make enough money to do so.

And so we're always reminding people.

I remember back in the day when I would meet clients one-on-one and I would go through their, their budget line item.

They're like, what should I cut out?

And I would go through everything.

And I'll be like, well, honestly, nothing.

What do you want me to do?

Make more money.

Right.

And so like, we're big proponents of investing, which is why, and we live by that.

We're, we're here.

We already run an eight-figure financial advisory firm, but we came out to Vegas to invest in ourselves to learn more skills.

And so we are, we are pushing that insight down to our clients.

Hey, look, we think that as the world is changing, you need to equip yourself with more skills, right?

The same way you're diversifying your investments, you need to diversify your skill set so that you can be in a position to where AI is not going to disrupt you, right?

Or you'll at least you'll at least you'll know how to navigate it when when it does because i think that's people's issue they get comfortable they get complacent like the 70 80 year old cpa yeah got comfortable got complacent and now you're now you're relevant now you got the carters of the world or you're their investment advisor that's like hey just invest your money in this etf and it's gonna earn you seven percent and then i walk in the room uh-oh right so it's like you have to acquire skills to differentiate yourself you can't get comfortable we're always poking holes in our own boat right like we know disruption is around the corner right so it's like so it's like why not disrupt yourself right so when we came together we could have just created a traditional advisory firm and you know help rich people get richer and all that kind of stuff we said how can we do it differently right how can we not just be the guys that are super credible how can we add a little bit of this relatability how can we come online how can we have a podcast how can we do live events to bring those clients together so well now they're doing business together now they're doing deals together right and just being willing to do something different acquire skills um so that you don't become obsolete i love that and you guys have not only a skill but a high income skill right you can approach a guy with a hundred million dollars and provide value to him.

So that's what people got to think about when they're trying to learn skills.

Yeah, and I love you said that because I believe that, you know, how high value equals high income, right?

And I believe that you're paid

in direct proportionate to the level of problem you are able to solve.

So if somebody has a $10 million tax problem and I charge them $1 million to get rid of that tax problem, they made $9 million by hiring.

You know what I'm saying?

So I think the frame for the people listening is how do I become so valuable to the marketplace that I can charge five, six, seven figures for my time?

And the person I'm charging feels like they're getting a deal

on hiring me.

I love that.

Right.

The reason that we were talking about this book candidly, the reason why we know we, we, we paid Hermosi so much to come out here is because we know that with the right tool, he can help us make 10, 15, 20 times that amount.

And people never have a problem paying you if they're able to make more off you than they paid you.

Facts.

So, how do you set yourself up in this marketplace to be that high-value person?

And that's even just the entrepreneurship lesson, right?

Like, how do you, for example, we have a higher-tier service for entrepreneurs who are doing multiple millions a year, it's a fractional family office, right?

And we did the math, right?

Because we don't like offering any service if we know that you can't benefit more than it costs us.

We did the math.

We said, if you had a full-time CFO on staff, or if you had a full-time investment advisor, full-time, like we went through all those attorneys, trust attorney, all those things.

We went through the math.

Like, if you had all that on staff, it would be anywhere between 875 000 to 1.3 million in payroll right damn because that's what it will cost you to have that family office and so we looked at if we ran as lean as possible but didn't remove any value what would it cost us to do it'd be disproportionately less than that so even if we're if we're charging 250 000 for that service Anybody that understands the value that comes out of that is, oh my gosh, this is still.

I talked to the other guys that's come to the office.

They said, number one, if you don't have $150 million in network, you can even talk to them.

You mean to tell me that, you know,

I'm an entrepreneur making, you know, $7 million a year, $10 million a year, and I can pay y'all a quarter million dollars to do all these things.

Shoot, why wouldn't I?

Right.

And so you just have to really operate from that frame because at the end of the day, even when you buy something as simple as a book off Amazon, right?

What you're saying on a subconscious level is the $20 I'm about to pay for this book, I believe that what I'm going to get from it is more than that.

And that's how everybody makes decisions on a subconscious level.

It just only becomes conscious when the number gets bigger.

Absolutely.

On a subconscious level, it's like, oh, okay, well, this book is worth more than $20.

Right.

And when you truly care about the people that you serve, it's easy for you to quantify that, oh, they're going to get three times more value out of this service than what I'm charging.

And then you're not selling it.

We don't sell anymore.

We invite people into the decision-making process.

This is what we do.

This is the results that we get.

Would you like to join us?

Yeah, you don't have to sell.

The numbers speak for themselves.

We'll be here for a very long time.

You can join the party whenever you want.

Yeah.

I mean, I pay my wealth advisor 72K a year.

Shout out to DoWealth, but they got 150 people.

They're making, you know, 10 million a year.

But you got to think, how much are they saving their clients?

Yeah, exactly.

You know what I mean?

Probably close to 100 million.

I don't know the exact number, but yeah, I mean, you had no problem departing with $75,000 because you knew that your choices were pay the IRS

hundreds of thousands or pay them $70,000 to get rid of the problem.

Exactly.

Period.

And, and

if you're a business owner, you should be thinking, how do I position?

my

offer next to a price they're already paying that's much higher than that offer that way it's a no-brainer because if you don't give people a frame to compare your offer to they will always compare it to some something cheaper facts if you say like i'm charging you ten thousand dollars they'll be like well i can get i can go i can go to the store and get a pair of shoes for 200 10 000 is a lot when you show them like it'll cost you 50 if you don't do this only pay me 10 you give them the proper frame to actually be able to say yes exactly the moral story is don't lie and be good right

if you're good at what you do and you're not lying about it right it's easy to say yeah

Yeah.

People spend all this money on ads and it's like that, that's not sustainable long term.

You know what I mean?

If the product isn't good.

Yeah.

She worked.

If the product isn't good.

Yeah.

So

we actually spent a decent amount of money.

I'm curious.

What is your philosophy on paid advertising?

Yeah, it changes over time.

You got guys like Elon saying he spends $0 on marketing, but then you got guys like Cormosey that you see his ad every day.

So I'm somewhere in the middle of that.

I don't think you should be spent like your whole main funnel shouldn't rely on ads.

I think you should have a really strong personal brand.

Let the product speak speak for itself yeah and that will help your ad cost go down too uh a friend of ours mentioned she said that brand is who you are when everything is turned off so if the ads are turned off it's like well how much of my money money am i making now to your point if you turn the ads off and the machine stops working you got a problem yeah right and that's a problem you need to fix um and be optimizing for so i i agree i think you definitely have to have the right balance between brand right um and some level of paid media and it's and at some point maybe what you're spending on paid is more brand awareness to double down and compound on the brand.

Agreed.

Right.

So we sponsor like a golf tournament every year.

We don't necessarily expect that we're going to walk away with 20 clients, but the association of that is powerful.

I think Hermozi actually said this one of his podcasts.

He was like, and we've seen it all the time with Nike.

And, you know, we don't know who for years, we didn't know who Phil Knight was.

We knew Serena, we knew Michael Jordan.

Right.

So it's like, how can you?

associate your product with something that people already have a positive association with right because then it's like oh like i want nike because i think i'm gonna play like jordan right and so when when you think about it from that frame, obviously you have to be intentional.

Like, again, we're still doing well, but we're still growing entrepreneurs.

And so we're balancing between like direct sale, you know, in terms of like spending money on ads to convert a customer, but also spending money to be like to expand our brand.

But I think both are necessary.

You just got to figure out where you are in the spectrum.

Yeah.

Your point, Elon Musk is Elon Musk, right?

Yeah, he's different.

But Hormozi also talks about word of mouth from your customers.

I feel like that's a really good channel, too.

Well, yeah, I mean, we were just at the event yesterday.

They said,

well, first of all, referrals referrals have a 70 higher close rate oh wow than coming from somewhere else and they have a 60 more stick rate meaning so there's they're 70 more likely to close and they're 60 more likely to retain

because that emotional connection because that emotional connection right so our segue was like all right where's this client referral program that we're gonna need to roll out you guys don't have one yet we have one but it's not it's not where it needs to yeah yeah we need to dial it in right because that that's where the compounding comes from because if you are spending money on paid ads the moment you use your referrals dialed in you're not paying to acquire that person.

Right.

It's like I paid whatever to acquire this person.

They got results.

They loved it.

They told their friend, I didn't pay a dollar to acquire this person.

So that compounds at scale.

If you have 100 clients, if 50% of them give you a referral that signs up, that's not a bad day.

Yeah, not at all.

Not at all.

You guys.

It depends about 50%.

Yeah.

You guys have mentors throughout this process?

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

My first mentor, you know, Neil Davis?

Yeah.

Neo.

Neo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, Neil was probably my first mentor who like taught me digital marketing and sales and advertising.

Um, then I hired his mentor, who was Myron Golden.

Myron, yeah.

Yeah.

Um, then I hired his mentor, who was Russell Brunson.

Damn, worked your way up.

Yeah, it's working.

And that, but that's the, that's the game.

Right.

Like, you learn from somebody and you take what you can from them, and then you learn who they learn from.

Because every learning process, information falls to the cracks, it gets distilled.

But, like, like George said earlier, skill acquisition the best like as much as we say invest in s p 500 take some of that money and invest in the sm me 500 because an investment in yourself is still the best like think about this bro if somebody spent so myrman he spent his 35 years of his life learning about sales i can pay him whatever his fee is in 12 months get 35 years worth of experience

and imagine if you do that with five people

got a hundred years of experience in five years.

And people say, like, man, invested as a mentor.

Investing in the mentor is a scam.

Yeah, it's a scam to the mentor because you took 35 years of his experience and got it for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, $100,000, whatever the price was.

You bought 35 years.

Yeah.

And I think that's the misconception when people are new to this space that they can't wrap their head around.

It's like, well, why are you charging for real mentors don't charge?

It's like, it's such a silly way to think about it because like they spent decades of their life spending a lots of money right to fail to win to lose whatever and you get to shrink decades into days and you just expect to walk into their office after all that time effort and money that they spent and just say you know what give me all you got those 35 years for free silly right like we we do it at scale because At the end of the day, I want to shrink decades into days and I want to get the lesson without the scar.

Yeah.

Right.

Because you, you already drove that road and you avoided that pothole, right?

You knew where that speed trap was, right?

You knew where, you know, you knew where the

where the cop was.

So like, I would much rather just pay you.

I'm going to still have my own journey that I got to navigate, but I'd much rather pay you for the known

blockages and the known pitfalls versus going through it myself.

Because the reality is you are going to have your own.

So I don't want my own plus the things that could have been avoided, but I was too scared to invest in myself.

Facts.

I think the moral is just really do your research on who the mentor is, but they are crucial.

Yeah,

you definitely want to do your research, but like

people like, well, what if it doesn't, what if it doesn't work out?

Well, what if it does?

Right.

It's just like, it's like a reframe.

Like, what if it does?

Then you can get to where they're at faster.

Right.

But definitely do your own research.

It's crazy in these streets.

Yeah.

For sure.

A lot of coaches out here these days.

A lot of young ones, too.

Yeah.

A lot of young life coaches.

Yeah, it's like 22.

How are you a life coach?

Crazy times we're in.

Crazy times we're in.

Well, you guys got anything coming up?

Any events or any, and where could people find you, I guess?

Yeah, so we'll start with the event.

We actually do have an event coming up um in atlanta georgia july 18th and 19th called wealth weekend and essentially that's kind of like our our homecoming right so our clients come um and we celebrate them on their various net worth milestones so that we can continue to tangibly measure that goal of how we're decreasing the wealth gap and then we also invite some of our peers who are in different verticals, whether it's they're investing or entrepreneurship or real estate, who we feel like in their own way are helping close that gap as well and just recognize them from them for the work they do.

So we have that part of the event through our award show.

And then we have a conference as well um so we have some really heavy hear speakers coming out um to be able to educate the people in different ways to build wealth um that's gonna be a really amazing event um july 18th and 19th we'll make sure you get the information

yeah they can go to uh melonandmoney.com and it's on it's on the website and then our youtube channel which we're putting a lot of focus on um melon and money as well we put out two videos a week one on taxes one on investing um because the the good thing about implementing the strategies is we can literally give all of our strategies away for free because you still need somebody to do it for you You know what I'm saying?

So, we put out a lot of value on our YouTube show and reach the people and teach the people.

I love it.

Thanks for coming on, guys.

That was awesome.

Thanks for having us, man.

Yeah.

Check them out, guys.

See you next time.