Unknown Speaker 0:00
We're gonna chat about a couple things today that I think you guys are really going to enjoy. One is corporate structure. So when do you need a corporation? Good morning, boss, then when do you need not need a corporation, and all of that sort of stuff. And we have Dominic not able to join. And then what Dominic's going to talk about is, he's going to go through Dominic a real business advisors is going to go through and chat about the number one way to get to clients for your new business. I think he guarantees that or you can actually move into his house for a week for free. And he will cook for you. It did I can dominate. Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. I don't know what my wife will say about that. But yeah, I'm gonna also love it. Love it. So basically, if you guys are brand new, by the way, Dominic, you missed it. We actually had intro music, I went with a little I went, Yeah, it was gonna let me join, but I could hear it. It was awesome. I love it a little wasted years my Iron Maiden. But it's kind of appropriate, I thought if we're gonna get all beat, because what's the number one thing that people talk about when it comes to making more and keeping poor, they wish they'd made more earlier, not wasted time, and they wish they'd kept more. And that's the whole spirit of this. If you guys are brand new, and have never seen a slide before, the whole point of this is to show you guys how to make more money. But also keep more of it, grow more that manage it well, and be a steward setup, generational wealth, all those sorts of things. So we let Dominic go first. Last time, he is more of the keep more. I'm sorry to make more. Yes, that's right, one of these days. And Dominic spoken in front of 1000s and created tons of revenue for companies, I think he can give you the official number. And then my firm is an accounting, it tax planning and financial firm. So I focus a little more on the making. He's the making the growing cheese dominant coming to get it right one of these days.
Unknown Speaker 2:14
more expressive this morning, or how are we doing with that? I have been running about four and a half hours of sleep at night just because it's tax season and all that stuff. And then I'm having to start every day between 530 and six so that I don't sleep worried that I am going to oversleep. And it's just a vicious cycle. But yeah, dishing up a project. I will tell you guys about it next week. But let's get to work here, shall we? So here's what we've got for you today. Number one, we have a lot of questions that came in last week about types of corporations and what you should do and those sorts of things. Hold on, I'm having a little trouble with my stand here. I think we got to fix. So I thought I'd walk you guys through when you're getting a business. When do you need a corporation? What's the difference between corporations? What are those sorts of things that you need to focus on? Then we'll turn it over to dominate, handle some questions. And let me go back to craziness of taxis. And so one of the biggest misconceptions when people are getting started with a side hustle, or any sort of entrepreneurial venture is they go and form a corporation first. You really, really, really do not have to do this. And I want you guys to write this down. Because this will this will really help you. You need a corporation under two sets of circumstances. One set is that you have multiple owners and you just want to get that all covered up front. So then you absolutely need a corporation just to keep all the paperwork straight. And frankly, because every business should have a business prenup before they even get started up if one partner wants out what or multiple partners want a partner out? How does that go down. And so that is one reason that you need a corporation if there is more than one set of owners and particularly if there's differing amounts of capital getting put in and things like that. The second and only other reason to get a corporation this certainly in the game is if you are in a high risk business where there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Let me give you a perfect example. We have somebody who just running a delivery service of kids delivering pizzas around a college town and we hear like you absolutely want to have the be incorporated to protect your personal assets from what happens inside the business. That's really the whole point of a corporation in the first place. Those two reasons. There is as your business grows and develops Dominic Yes, you may have need For some of the tax structure that comes with a corporation, particularly like an S corp, or a C Corp or something like that, but you do not this is a writer downer, you guys do not need to have a corporation to get started with anything. You need to literally start selling some stuff, picking up some clients, selling stuff, getting money coming in the door. As a sole proprietorship, you can have all the write offs that IBM has and Facebook and metta. And Tesla and Warren Buffett and Elon Musk and all those guys. And we have businesses that we do tax advisory worker actually prepared the returns, where for whatever reason, we've kept on the schedule C with $4 million of annual revenue. Now, again, at some point, we'll move them away from that. But I function as a sole proprietor for years with no problems whatsoever. So that's the number one thing. Everybody wants to go get their corporation started and do it. No, go get some clients make some money, then we can clean up the mess later. Any thoughts on that Dominic or anything? Otherwise, I'm going to keep going to explain the differences on it. Yeah, I think that's kind of an interesting feeling. I mean, how much of it do you think is just I know, for me, like we started our preparation before I sold anybody but you know, that's before I was talking to you about it. But like I think part of it's a pride issue to some degree, right? Like, is it just that you want it? What do you think? I mean, I guess that's what I'm asking, Where do you think the reason is why people race to do an LLC, a corporation? Do you think it's because they literally thought it was a tax advantage? Or just because that's that's the number one misconception is that by having a corporation you will have access to tax advantages that you do not otherwise have. And again, not true. And it can slow down the beginning of the process you can have I had a corporation for years, called Camino perdido, I thought it was cool. There was a country labeled as last highway. That's that translated into Spanish. Good morning, Jeff. Good to see you.
Unknown Speaker 7:07
Okay, awesome. Literally for added $800 to the state of California for five years, and we generated exactly $0 of revenue, it did me no good, I would have much better off for you know, 20 or 30 bucks doing a DBA coming up, printed out, making some revenue. And I think we've all done it. So if you guys have done it, don't sit yourself, don't sit your chair in the corner and feel bad. Just realize until money changes hands until profit and revenue are generated, none of this shit matters. So so just keep it keep it focused on that. Don't focus on the other stuff. Again, unless you've got multiple owners and partners and people are putting up capital. That's a whole different deal or the business's high risk, where someone is likely to sue you. If I was a doctor, we have doctors that come in under sole proprietorships. And if there's one group of people that everybody loves to sue more than anybody else, it's doctors, absolutely insane. Right, the rest of us, doesn't really matter. So, on that vein, then let's talk about types of corporations. First of all, what everyone tells me is, Hey, man, I'm getting an LLC, and we're, like, great, and then what? And they're like, What do you mean what we're like, okay, an LLC is literally the vanilla ice cream of corporations. I'll explain what I mean. In my career, Dominic, I was once head ice cream maker for a Swensons Ice Cream Factory. Nice guys are old enough to know what Swensons Ice Cream Factory was. It was actually a great that great ice cream, you would sit down a waiter would come they look like an old time bartender you know from the Old West, and they would make you Sundays and you could sit there and eat it or you can get account ago. And what a lot of them were famous for was that they would have the ice cream made right on premises. And I got that job. It was a terrible job. Like two days a week I was locked in this little room making ice cream for 10 hours. And it absolutely sucked. But it everybody could see the ice cream being made and it was one of their things. So based on vanilla, vanilla ice cream is the base for everything else that you do for the most part. So meaning you add peppermint to it. It's not peppermint ice cream, you add some strawberries in there, it's not strawberry, you add some chocolate in there, it's chocolate, you add some cookies in there, it's not kicking some cream. So an LLC can be taxed like any of the other things that are available. You have to decide which one so let's go through these real quickly pros and cons just so you guys have it in the back of your mind. First off, if it is a single member LLC meaning you and only you are the only one that has ownership, it is now what we call a disregarded entity. And all it means is you're protected if someone Sue's you, but for tax purposes, it's going to go right on your tax return as a sole proprietorship, just the way that you would have if you hadn't gone through the process in the first place. So again, the advantage is liability protection, there are no tax advantages, there's no anything like that. So that's the easiest. Now there's two of you, husband and wife, boom, we've got a partnership or another partner, we can be taxed as a partnership, and part flows through to one person or it flows through to another. And again, you still are operating under the LLC environment. But you've now elected to be taxed as a partnership, we go one step further, you can elect for a corporate structure, what types of corporations are there, there's two of them. There's a C corporation, where you have retained earnings. And then there is an S corporation where everything flows through to you personally. So S Corp is the most common. And you're going to see that a lot. And we're going to explain to you that I won't go through all the quirks that they have. But S corporations have a ton of quirks and rules that things that you can do with every other entity that you can't do, you have to do differently with an S corp. But the biggest deal of an S Corp is you can have multiple owners up to 35. They all have to be US citizens. So you can't have any foreign armies on that like you can with a C Corp. and But the big deal is is unlike a sole proprietorship where everything flows through to your personal return, and you get taxed self employment tax on up to I think it's $142,000 of income.
Unknown Speaker 12:08
And let me explain that real quickly. With an S corp, you can break that up, so you're only being taxed on a portion of it. So here's the way this works. If you're a sole proprietor, and you make $80,000 a year of net revenue, so we got 150 coming in, we've got 70,000 of expenses, God, I hope that math works out. So sleep deprived right now, I'd be super embarrassing, you're like the worst tax person and finance person ever, you can't even do that. Anyway, back to this. So if that math works out and you net 80,000 80,000 is what's gonna show up on your tax return, you'll get, let's just say a normal deduction, and you're single, so that's about 12,000. So you would pay federal and state tax on 68,000. But the government wants you to pay into Social Security. And unlike an employee, where the employee pays half, and the business pays half, you as a sole proprietor have to pay both halves of that. And that's why you get the qualified business income deduction, and you get to write off half of it. So you would get some other deductions against your federal return. So actually, 68 wouldn't be your taxable amount, you'd get to deduct half of your self employment tax, whatever that is, it's 16% of the ad. And I realize I'm whipping through the math on this fast, don't try to keep up. So that would be roughly 16% of the ad, call it 14,000 You wouldn't get a right half of that off for federal and state purposes. So now we get to we're down to 61,000. And then you would get a qualified business income deduction of roughly 20%. That's another 16,000. So we take that off the 61, we're at 45. So that's what you're going to pay federal and state taxes as a sole proprietor, netting 80,000, but you have to pay the self employment tax on the entire ad, which is why you get some of those other deductions. Now let's take the same scenario and an S corp. With an S corp, you could say, well as the employee of the S corp, I'm getting a salary of 40,000 on this $80,000 of profit. So 40 is going to come as my salary 40 is going to come as my profit to the business. And now I'm going to turn around and I don't have to pay any self employment tax on the second 40. So I only have to pay it on the first 40 So we just cut that number in half, and more or less everything else is gonna stay the same. That's the advantage of it. So now we see accountants all the time a new client that we just picked up his countin told him to set his S corp salary at 140,000. And we're like, There literally is no point to that your guide does not know what he's doing here. Because there's no the whole point of the S Corp is to set the salary some number below the 142. And my man is making more than that, so that we get that break. Otherwise, there's no point it literally there's no point. Now, the flip side of that before you enter is you have to set a salary because also a friend of mine, we were chatting yesterday and we're doing some finance work for a she's getting audited right now. Because the accountant never made her pay any salary. See, Iris is like, what the heck, dude, we're gonna set this for you. And then we got to get into formulating formulas and things like that, to set that salary. So again, just know that s corpse are popular, but weird. And that the whole point of them is that you can break it up and not pay self employment tax on some portion of that money below 142, where you would normally have to what were you going to say? Good shot? Yeah. So that was that's kind of the interesting question. Because I you and I actually talked about this on just more teasing it out. Because it's been it was interesting for me to find out that maybe some of the audience felt the same way I did. I got advice that you shouldn't pay yourself a salary out of your S Corp. And part of the reason and I'm curious about this was that EU, partly for banking reasons. So like, if you write off capital expenditures, for example, or something like that, from a banking perspective, they'll usually add those back in, because that's a capital expenditure. They'll take that deduction, like a, you know, heavy vehicle, the 7000 pound vehicle or whatever, six pounds, whatever that number is, they'll add that back in and give you credit for that. But they won't do that with your salary. But do you feel that the overarching like benefit? Is your long term tax strategy should be pay a salary? Or is there situations where that might vary a little bit,
Unknown Speaker 17:04
you have to pay a salary, the IRS will come and mess in just straight and Jack you up. If you do not pay yourself some salt. Now, again, first year businesses are getting started. Alright, messy, we can work on that. But the IRS wants to see that you are paying yourself some salary. And someone was saying in here if your salary is much higher than that, you know, are you saving and yeah, there's some Medicare savings. But again, if you and whoever wrote that, because it rolled off the screen before I can even see it. Like, if you want to chat about it, just reach out to me in the DMS. And let me know you were on this. But I'm happy to chat about it. We're a little jammed up right now just because it is tax season, but happy to go over it and just look at it from the 30,000 foot perspective there. But keep in mind that the IRS if you don't set a salary, with some basis in reality, and another day, we can chat about where that comes from, you know how you put the three different criteria are, the IRS is going to come in and set it for you. And the way they're going to do it is be like you at your salaries at you owe Social Security and all of that. And if you think it can make sense. What did Congress do you, they've kind of stole that money for years that was beat the surplus of Social Security, they spent it on everything else wrote IOUs. And then they're like, crap, we spent all the money now we need it back, we'll just print more of it. So that's really that. And then the I'll give you guys a couple more tips here real quickly. And then Dominic, I'll turn it over to you. If you have a vehicle, the way you get reimbursed on a vehicle with an S corp gets kind of wonky. You either have to have the the company owned the vehicle, and then you reimburse the vehicle for any personal mileage that you have. Or you own the vehicle personally, and the company has to reimburse you for any business mileage. It just gets a little weird. It's a little cleaner in some of the other ways of ownership. So like I said, s corpse are really popular, but they're there. They get audited, a decent amount for mistakes that people make. So don't assume that it's your best way and best thing to do right there. Now real quickly, let's chat about a C Corp. So C Corp is an entity where things do not pass through. So on an S corp. Your corporate year is January one to December 31. You have no say in the matter. That's what it is. With a C Corp. You can set that year however you want. So you can have a July 1 to June 30 year and a C Corp can retain earnings meaning you do not personally have to receive those earnings from the C Corp. Now there Gonna get taxed at the corporate level. And that's when you hear them talking about corporate taxes. And the corporations aren't paying enough, the big greedy corporations just know that that's kind of what they're referring to. And another thing we'll talk about why when politicians chat about that, it's not the whole truth of what's really happening in here.
Unknown Speaker 20:22
But eventually, even if the corporation pays those taxes, that money is going to get distributed back out to their employees, or to shareholders or things like that. So then it can get taxed to get. So definite advantages to C corporations where you can retain earnings. Or you can move from one year to the next. So if you marry a C Corp, with an S corp, and let's say dominant, you're coming down to the end of the year. And your S Corp is where all your money runs through. And you're having a great year, and all of that money is going to get distributed, and you're gonna go up three tax brackets, we can move some of that money over to the C Corp, which has a different year. And maybe now turn around, and some of that money gets gets dropped back down. In fact, we're doing that for a pharmacist right now, who's having a killer year because of COVID, and all the vaccines, and now testing and stuff like that, so we're gonna marry those two strategies. And now he's gonna have like one really good more year, so we can take some of the income of 2020 to move it into 2023. And hopefully, he repeats again, but if not, we can spread out and lower the tax liability. So that's kinda again, we're diving in. On the deep end, just know that things like this exists. And if your accountant is not sitting you down as revenue grows and having these conversations with you, then that's something you want to find another accountant. And you want someone who's proactive and sitting down and chatting you and like smacking, you're like, No, don't go get a corporation right now. Go make some freakin money. Bring me that money, you know? And then let's chat about it. And then we'll figure out how to save taxes on it. Not like yeah, let's get incorporated and let's run a missions. The let's get our website done. New New, no, go sell some shit. All right, I gotta go. You know, it's interesting. You say that, because I remember last week, there was a lot of questions. And by the way, for those of you who just joined, this is the make more keep more show, I'm more than make more guy, you know, sales and helping you improve the top line. And Ron is the key poor guy, keeping more in your pocket rather than paying it to good old Uncle Sam, whether he's your favorite and growing not. So Andrew Yang growing it Don't forget about that, too, because there's actually a lot of ways to make more, and a lot of ways to keep more beyond taxes as well. So that's a that's what we're talking about today. So if you do have questions, by the way, throw them into the chat. We're happy to answer. They fly by pretty quickly. But we've tried to catch and we also have our team watching too. So I'll get a text from somebody saying, Hey, you missed a question. Probably my wife usually say like, Hey, that's our team. I gotta I gotta someone's someone's reading the pledge right now. That is a fantastic book, pledges like, literally, I'm finishing up the 75 hard book, and that is literally sitting on my nightstand. And I will go back through starting in about two days. For my fourth or fifth reading of it. stuff on there. That's good. All right, man. It's so we beat up those taxes pretty good. Tell me, tell me a little bit about how these guys gonna get if they're starting a new business, Dominique, how do they go get their first client? Well, this is to go incorporate and do a bunch of other nonsense that just, you know, kind of Yeah, for sure. And listen, if you're, if you're listening into this, and you're like, oh, man, I'm gonna bail out because I don't need to worry about getting my first couple of clients, this is actually a really good strategy. If you launch a new product as well. So tight, hang in there. And I'll share not only how to get your first couple if you're kind of moving your side hustle to your main hustle scenario. But also if you're like you want to test something, roll out a new product or what a new service, the same approach works exceptionally well for doing that. But I do think your point that you brought up just before I jump into that, I think you brought up a really great point is I was talking to a guy yesterday, he may be listening. He's good friend of mine, I love him. He's amazing. And and he's trying to he's 30 years at a company, super smart guy and is now you know, as companies have consolidated and COVID and stuff that he got, you know, essentially given a package to sort of exit if you will, I think they had an acquisition and things and it's interesting, because he's trying to start a business and already he's created the LLC. He's already doing some of those things. It's like, dude, just go sell something first, right? And I love him if he's listening. He knows he's loving this criticism, but I think we all do it. I did it too. We Ivana was like, Hey, man. wife Ivana, like, Hey, you should start your own business Cool, let's go get a corporation. If you don't, you're not even making money. Now the good news is, is I implemented this and started making money pretty rapidly on that business. But looking back, and this applies to a lot of places in the keyboard side of things, I think it's too is because it's not just,
Unknown Speaker 25:22
you know, like, it's not just the spending money on that type of stuff. But like, I'll see people go, Oh, well, I gotta go go right into brand new computers. And let me get a new phone specifically for this business. And let me go and do this. This, I mean, software, like, I'll see marketing agencies, man, they'll buy all this type of software. And pretty soon, you're gonna do $1,000 A month $2,000 worth a month in subscription tech, and you're not making any money. And I get asked all the time. In fact, one of our first episodes, somebody asked me like, what's your favorite CRM? I'm like, up to a million dollars, Excel for Google. Not not because it doesn't do something, you know, like, obviously, CRMs work really well. And I do have some favorites. But, you know, save the money until the system starts to break. And I have literally run million dollar businesses off an Excel spreadsheet. So you can do it's not ideal, but you can do it. So I'd rather see you save money. So let's jump into it. So here's an interesting before you jump in. Yeah, what Kaylee bro asked me a couple questions. Oh, just want to say before I forget, DM me those. If we have some time, I can give you a quick answer. But I think you're gonna want a longer answer. So just reach out to the DMS and throw your contact info in there, sir. And we'll reach out and just set up a time to chat about it privately. Because it's more than a, someone was asking about I got a whole thing, a music label clothing label, how do we do all that. And that's just something that's a little outside of this podcast, although I know you've floated the idea of just doing like an AMA on a Saturday morning or something. So we will toss that idea for you guys want to see that by charging a little bit just to keep our wives happy, since we're taking a Saturday, but it won't be much. But we will just go for like three or four hours. Answer every last question. So if that sounds good, go for it. So let us know. And we'll do it. You know, because like, Man, I don't know, man, my kids are grown. I hang out and stare and drink coffee. If I'm not getting caught up on a Saturday. I can't speak for you. But anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Are we allowed to carry on? You're not coffee. We're doing a coffee morning thing. I mean, I feel like that would be add to the audience. It's 50 and 50 days. There you go. That's right. Yeah, that's hard. 75 It's really interrupting our ability to have a drink on this podcast, man. I'm a third word, start. Ah, all right. What do you do to get a first you know, your first few clients on a new product, new project, or I'm sure you're gonna pick up some stuff, even if you guys already have clients. Yeah, for sure. It really does work really well, even if you just want to generate some cash, it's a good way to go. So here's, here's the, let me give you a little backstory to this. So bear with to get into exactly how you're gonna execute this. And then but there's a little bit of backstory to this as well. So I didn't know about this when I first started my business. But I remember so I told us on one of the previous episodes, my wife was the one I had had a pretty successful exit from a software company we sold for half a billion dollars. So that was cool. And we I got a job lined up pretty quickly right after to go into another software company do the same thing again. And my wife and her infinite wisdom goes, Well, why do you keep doing this for everybody else? Why don't you just do it for yourself starting a job and and to be honest, I did not consider myself to be an entrepreneur. I mean, I had two two kids, I think, yeah, I actually had my son by that point to know my son was on the way maybe are close to and so you know, I mean, our kids good family, mortgage, and, man, there's no way I'm gonna get you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go give all that up. I mean, my salary was good at stock options, bonuses, all that kind of stuff. So I wanted to go do it again. And she was like, Nah, man, just start start your own business. And so because I'm scared of her, I'm kidding. She'll kill me. But he's not. He's not scared of our she's on. Don't want to end on her bad side. Well, she is silly after all. So
Unknown Speaker 29:23
look, so she said that. So you know what, it really made some sense. I talked to a few friends of mine. They're like, Just do it. Right. So I didn't really know what I was gonna do. And so I had these ideas. Like I had always helped big businesses with their sales and I knew how to coach salespeople. I knew how to create scripts and telemarketing stuff. And I knew how to structure everything about sales, right? Calling plans, all that kind of stuff. And I didn't really have an offer for that, like, how do I go about like doing that? So I called a guy who had actually offered me a job a few years prior. And I said, Hey, can I buy you breakfast? And if you'll do me a favor and I want to run an idea by you and you just sanity check me but make any sense what I'm thinking about doing. So we go to breakfast, it was actually at the at the club in Orange County, I might choose tomatoes and peace, you know? And I took them over there. And we we've had breakfast and at the end of it, he was like, this all sounds great. When can you start? And I was like, what? Because I literally had gone there to get his opinion. And so interestingly then he said, so he said, this is kind of embarrassing. He was like, Well, how much would it be? And I literally didn't know what to say, because I was like, he's like, Yeah, I could use all of this. Could you start Monday? And it was on a Thursday or something? And I'm like, Ah, yeah. And he goes, what's it going to cost and I go $1,500 was literally the first thing that came to my mind. $1,500 a month. So we go into that that was in September, I incorporated in in June, because of the payout from another company, I couldn't actually start another business for a little bit period of time. So this is my first sales call in September, did that we ended up doing about 70 grand by the end of the year, which wasn't, which wasn't SAP chatty. And then that next year, that particular client by built for about a buck 50 bucks, 70 somewhere in that neighborhood. So I haven't seen rates up and not that we renegotiated and did that. So it all started because I asked him for a favor. Okay, fast forward a few years, and I've done this approach a few times, or you know, when I wanted to get a client hate, can you do me a favor? Can I run something by you just want to get your idea about it. And it seems to really work. Go back. Fast forward a few years. I find out about this guy named Robert Collier, which Ron you'll know is Dan Kennedy already. Robert call your sales letter. Robert car sales letter. He is actually I have his books that are one of his one of his many books. He's written about 100 of them. I think. The Robert Collier letter book he's considered widely considered probably the best or one of the best copywriters I've ever lived. Oh, it's one of the great. So in 19, he touched his letter book in 1934. But it's interesting in the late 1920s, he wrote a letter that is now referred to as the do me a favor letter. And what he basically said was in there trying to sell these coats like some sort of, you know, raincoat, and he asked everybody in this letter, okay, would you just do me a favor and try the coat? He didn't say, Would you buy the coat? He's at the wall. There's the Robert Collier letter book to somebody who just asked what the book is. That's one that's probably the easiest place the Robert Collier letter book. Yeah, Robert, walk. Haley bro. Got one of the lines Robert Collier. And it's the Robert Collier letter book. And looks like when you do I mean, shoot me the just remind me and I'll give you a whole list of good copywriter old school guy. Yeah, yeah. So Robert Collier is one of the greats. Right? So he writes this letter and basically says, Would you do me a favor, try on this jacket, let me know what you think. Like, that's the whole letter. And in fact, by the way, if you guys want it, I have a copy of the letter, I wrote up a little thing on it. And with a little bit of the backstory on it, it's yours. If you want it, just go to fix your pitch.com FYI, X, your while you are pitch p i tch.com. There's no opt in or anything, you literally just download it right there. So you can just literally it's yours to have. And it gives a little write up on this. But don't do that. Now listen to the story. So so we go. So I find out that this this whole thing, here's the great thing about it, he sold 20,000 units of this product. And what's interesting about it is that was $550,000 in sales in the late 20s.
Unknown Speaker 33:48
By ran that number on an thing on a you know, like an inflation calculator. It's $8.1 million from one letter in our life. That's a good letter. So it got me thinking like, Well, how do you take that and what's interesting about it, the psychology behind it's really fascinating because he didn't ask them to buy something. He asked them to do him a favor, and there's something really critical about that. So here's what I recommend. If you're looking to launch a new like, turn your side hustle into your main hustle. If you're looking to get your already main hustle, you're not making any money. Let's face it, that happens too. Sometimes. I'm trying to say the sucks up in there, right? Or if you're trying to launch a new product in there, too. This is a really great approach. So here's what I would do. You know your people talking about the dream 100 I don't know about you. I can't manage a list of 100 people and I'm not even sure I could pick up 100 people but I really don't even know Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop for one second. I gotta I gotta make a couple of comments. Number one you got now you guys know if Dominic calls you for a favor. Don't you button all the way? I the thing is I don't even know that I know what the dream 100 is? So if I don't know I'm gonna go with for sure somebody on this does not also know what it is. So what would you what is the dream 100 So the dream how you do that I'm gonna, I'm gonna go get this thing fixture pitstop calm. It's literally a book, if I'm not mistaken and it's part of like this whole, like, you know, let me see It's the dream 100 book The it's called the book that the book that makes all your business dreams come true bold statement I like that I don't mind the principle on it I just find that typically 100 thoughts. Russell Brunson is big into this one. You know, I mean, there's there's a few people that are down with this strategy. So obviously, there's something to it, I just find it let's keep it manageable and do it right. Because 100 is a lot to manage that. So I say pick 10. Pick 10 people that you think and here's the difference, a little difference between what what I how I approach this. Pick 10 people who would be an ideal client for you? Who would also when you call them up, they don't have to be like, Ron, my best friend. What's up, buddy? Haven't heard from you since yesterday? You're not looking for that guy. But you're looking for somebody who's going to be like, oh, man, Ron, longtime buddy, how's it going? Like, who's gonna know who you are? So here's what I'd say. Like somebody mentioned being a musician earlier, you know, or having a brand or whatever that question was around it. You probably know club owners. You know, some people that are let's say you want to launch a you know, marketing agency for musicians or something called Club, pass club owners call some other musicians, you know, so people that you've done some business with in the past, if you're, you know, you came from a big corporation, you have contacts with the old vendors and stuff that probably respected you, maybe you're an IT guy, maybe you're a software developer or something you work with people that know and respect you at some level. And then all you really have to do is say, Hey, listen, can I buy you lunch? Can I get you breakfast or whatever. If they're remote, hey, I'll send you a little something as a thank you tell me if you want an Amex gift card or a Starbucks gift card, but I would love to get your opinion on something. And then when you get in there, the story is pretty simple. Listen, I left my company and thinking about starting a new job, whatever. And I had this idea. And I'll be honest with you, you're like, kind of the type of person I would love to work with. Now, I'm not pitching you. But I'd love to know your pin opinion. Can you tell me what you think about and then kind of go through what you're trying to formulate? The great thing about it is you're not pitching somebody. But the key to that is you mentally have to not be pitching. You actually have to care for their opinion. And here's the worst case scenario. They give you their opinion. I'll give you an example. This so Ivana, my wife after she had Enzo, our son. That was probably self explanatory. But after she had Enzo,
Unknown Speaker 37:52
well pretty sure it's like me. By the way, hold on. I got her up. I call Enzo. What's his middle name?
Unknown Speaker 38:03
Ethan. You gotta get that. II Cummins. How good is that? Right. It's pretty awesome. So my nickname for him is doubly so he's cute is really cute. By the way. Back to work, sorry. So that in. So when he bought I wanted to kind of get back into the working world. She had worked a lot with attorneys in the past that was kind of her specialty. That's the types of people that you work with. But she wanted to use some things around like marketing and social media for those guys and do some, like agency style work for stuff. And I say cool, try to do me a favor approach you know, since like, like, teach it to my mastermind group and everything, you you kind of have to do it because you know, that look bad if you didn't? Anyway, so she calls up first guy she calls up, goes, she says, hey, I'll buy you lunch or whatever. He actually said, you don't need to buy me lunch, I'd love to chat with you and catch up here or here. We're happy to give you my opinion, because that's the key people are happy to give you their opinion. They love to give their opinion, think about how many people give you your opinion, whether you want it or not. So they like to offer that. So he goes yeah, I'll talk to you happy to talk to you. So they jump on a call. I think that was on a Wednesday. She chatted with him says hey, this is what's happening. So this what I'm trying to do is some of the things I want to do for an attorney. He goes, Yeah, you know, to be honest with you. I don't know that I'm pretty interested in that. And here's why. Because of this, this gave me some really logical reasons why he wasn't into it. He said, But here's what's interesting. You know who this would be great for this person, this person, this person and this person. And here's the reason why. That was already a win. However, he followed up with one more statement he goes, but just out of curiosity, would you be willing to do this, this and this yesterday, a couple of different things. And she was like, Yeah, and it goes, Great. When can we start? Nice. So Bonnie? If I remember correctly, that was on a Wednesday and she she invoiced them on Friday got paid like frickin off that's in. I've rolled this out now to have Hundreds of people and the only people who have not had successful that literally didn't listen to me. Like they just say they're like, Well, I didn't do it that particular way. No, there's nuances and keys to it, you got to do it, you have to say, Would you do me a favor, you have to say, You are the ideal client really curious about. So those are key areas to making sure that this works. And again, if you go to fix your pitch.com You guys can download the letter and I give a little explanation on how to actually use this appropriately. With your clients. Again, no, there's no optin literally just download it's it's our it's yours. I threw it in the chat there, by the way, but I think Instagram broke it all up. So um, and when you go there because I did while he was talking, you just got to click Data part of the letters there. Just click download. It'll open in a new window. I'll tell you something really interesting about what you're seeing Dominic, number one for any of you guys that like copywriting and enjoy reading. One of the things you guys should all be hit to is the Gary Halbert letter. So and I think it's on the Gary Halbert. letter.com has to Gary die, man, it's been like 15 years ago. And Gary was a hot mess. He was one of those guys larger than life, complete train wreck in his personal life, you know, just kind of a wild man and the stories of carrier hilarious. But what Gary used to do, because Gary was probably like, Robert, he was the Robert Collier of our age, where he wrote some of the most famous ads, again, because he passed away 15 years ago. Some of you Millennials might not know who he was. But if you're a little bit older than that Gen X or Boomer, you would absolutely recognize, you know, when he generated billions of dollars of sales. But what Gary used to do, was he would go to a bar with his new sales letter, and he would read the sales letter like, Hey, do you guys mind giving me your opinion? Kind of like the do me the favor? Do me a favor, and what he was looking for if everyone was like, ah, yeah, that's a great letter. Awesome. Now Good job, man. He really did a good job. He'd be like, Great thanks, letter would go in the trash. Because that's like the focus group problems. People get together in focus groups, and they know they're in a focus group, or kind of wanting to stay with that they think that people want to hear what Gary would do instead is he knew it was a winner. If everyone's like, Oh, man, what is that going to be available? How can I get one of those, and then he knew he was on to something. So good idea there, Dom love it.
Unknown Speaker 42:47
And that is the stuff if I can add one other point is that's the stuff you should be doing instead of going and getting incorporated and writing your business plan in your state. Like, let's just find out if the idea even works. By the way, what if Dominic had gone to 10 different people and everyone's like, you know, like, that's a great idea, man, like, yeah, that's the equivalent of Devin telling Gary Halbert, his sales letters awesome. 100%. And here's being nice. Your ideal set rocks. There they are. And here's the thing I'm only have that happened to one person, group and awesome lady, she's in my coaching group, she went through 10 people, and she figured out the offer was wrong. Perfect. And they are not better than mine again. Yeah. Because Because think about it, how many times have any of us, if you've been in business for a while, you've come up with like, this is the greatest idea. And then you put some advertising money behind it, and you shoot it out there and you do something with it, nothing comes of it and 25 grand later, that's an actual number for my own story. 25 grand later, you realize, okay, so apparently the product set, you and you had a website on it, and you got involved, and you were convinced it was the greatest idea ever. And that's why I go right back to go sell something because nobody wants to buy anything. Your idea might suck, or it might not suck, but it's not your offer isn't there yet. And then they'll give you that feedback. I remember early on so I don't always follow my own advice. And to be honest, I suspect nobody does it. I have this advice. Right. And so I remember launching a product a few years ago it was it was a training course on hiring and recruiting salespeople which you know, in my head should have been just awesome, right? So I launched it out there hire an agency to put money behind it. I'm gonna ended up spending probably close to 20 grand all in to advertise this didn't sell one of them. I literally got to a point where I put it up for free. And guess how many people bought it? 00 Yeah. So because I was so irritated with it at that point. And it was because the market wasn't written down. In retrospect, I know how to do it. It's funny on that same author, I turned it in into a coaching offer rather than a course. And I probably made 100 grand 250 grand off of that offer insurance. And it's interesting because that's but had I done the do me a favor approach because that's when it started to make money was when I started to go like Well, hey, I got this idea around like hiring recruiting I created a course somebody goes, Yeah, I wouldn't watch your course. But would you be open to coaching me on it? You're like, oh, okay, we need, you know, and I sit and that's when he granted advertising. Nevermind my team's cost for coming. I do actually have some team and team coming to film a team come. Dude, it's just crazy, right? I had a Dominic, I have the exact same story, we got a great idea. We filmed a product in advance. And it flopped. We made about 10,000 on it. But and by the way, you guys are all very welcome. For those of you seen you enjoy the thing we enjoy doing them. I mean, that's what I do. I can't speak for you dominate. But I mean, we at least have some sales. We had about 10,000, but not enough to justify the time and again, that's not me flexing on you guys. We put a lot of time and effort and I had a professional crew. And what I realized two things was number one, our approach to the way we put the course together was wrong because we didn't do the market research, right? We didn't talk radical, like what do you want to know? Number two was we pre recorded the whole thing and so you know, it's like some bands are really good in the studio and they absolutely suck live. And then other bands are freaking awesome. Why but their studio albums are like, and I learned that I do not do good in the studio, you know Hi there. You might wonder how you can pay less taxes. Well, I'm here to tell you.
Unknown Speaker 46:57
I'm here like the hinder of tax. Oh my god, next person Dominic and I went to see we'll wrap this up in a minute here and see if we have any questions of Dominic, I'll give you a chance to check and see if we have any questions. But Dominic and I went to the bad boys of Rock Tour years ago, a part of the reason of for those of you just jumping on this as the make more keep more. You're tuning at the end of the episode and unlike earlier where I completely butchered who was make more and more. Dominic's background is in sales and increasing and recruiting salespeople as you just heard him talking about that's his sphere of genius to use somebody's word. And I am 31 years in the accounting and financial advisory business. And unlike lazy accountants who don't like to save their clients money, we really go out of our way to teach our clients principles. So they pay the legitimate lease to the IRS and manage the rest efficiently. Make more keyboard. So anyway, today, we do these every Friday, and I'm at 8am Pacific. But back to this Dominic and I have been friends for 30 years. 30 I'm 31 actually. And a few years ago, we went to the bad boys of rock concert. hinder Papa Roach, Buckcherry Great show right until hinder the headliners came on and they suck. Oh my god, they were terrible. Like yeah, really? Like cat being strangled. Terrible. Luck cherry Papa Roach, were freaking fantastic. Yeah, they're awesome. All right, do we have any questions we need to get to Dominic? Or do you have any other last minute things otherwise, because it is tax season, I'm gonna have to wrap this. And next week's episode will be on my own tax savings ideas that you can implement last minute, or at least go back and check for I'll give you four or five of them. And I will be doing it from Northern California from the rid of because I'm going up to see my vegan hippie left child daughter, who's at Berkeley and graduating and because of COVID, I never really got to go visit and hang out with her more than one time. So I'm gonna be up there. So I'll do that from the hotel room or from a cafe or something like that. But do we have any questions we need to? And I? I did they were going fast and furious this morning. So I didn't really see which ones I was used to do a better job of writing them down. But if you guys did get something that didn't get answered, please let us know. We can also if you have so we're going to try to get better about announcing these out in advance. Speak for yourself. I'm totally kidding. I'm gonna try to get better about getting wrong to announce these out in advance and give you guys some topics ahead of time. But if you do have questions for us, please let us know. We're happy to answer anything on on anything really to do with finances. I mean, it's really how to get more finances that actually make some money or how to just what to do with it after the fact. You get it how to keep from paying taxes. I mean, that's really the focus of this show on there. And so we're doing that and And also let us know, either here in the chat right now, or actually the only bonus that we covered most everything she says to me so. But if you guys have any, if you're interested in it, we're thinking about doing a little like ama session, we these are 45 minutes to an hour, but maybe taking a Saturday morning and just spending three, four hours, whatever it takes. If you got really in depth conversation, some of the questions in here do get a little bit more than we can cover in the scope of this. Happy to jump on a Saturday morning ama session, our wives may make us charge a small amount for that, like, you know, nothing just to make you take it seriously. That's that but for doing that, but we'd love to do that. So let us know if you're interested in something like that. We can we can totally put that together in the next couple of weeks. So, but yeah, no, I think we think we covered off the covered off the big stuff. All right, man. Let's get our outro music we're gonna go right back to wasted years. There we go. Alright guys, we'll see you next week. Spread the word. We love doing these. If you miss part of the video, or that's a little out. Let's turn our admin down a little bit. If you guys missed part of it, go back and listen to it. I'll have it posted the next little bit and we'll see you next week and we'll announce on Monday what we're going to be chatting about. Take care you guys Dominic, good seeing you my friend. We will talk to you soon. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
