Ron Caruthers 0:00
Gotta get show for you guys. Personally, I like to think we have a good show for you guys every week. But today, we're gonna be talking about two great tax breaks that anyone can take advantage of. And we're going to talk about one or two of them that are good. So we're technically to talk about three, but two great tax breaks. One kind of crappy one, we're going to look at some math on it. And then Dominic is going to jump in of Rob as advisors. And he's going to go through and talk about in anything in life, whether you're trying to get a job or something like that. Trying to get more clients, what is the appropriate amount of follow up before you actually become a stalker in how to do it in a cool way that doesn't turn people off? Alright. How are you?
Dominic Cummins 0:51
Doing? Well, man? How are you doing? You? You're up in Berkeley or something? Right?
Ron Caruthers 0:56
Yep. Right down representing I got the shirt here. You guys can't see it backwards. In fact, I hope it isn't see this. But I got a client of mine up here. That's cool. As as the kids say, prize them and bring him a bottle of champagne, because he just got a new job. So hopefully he doesn't see this until afterwards. You know, he normally joins in. So yeah, there's a little vegan hippie left child, she graduates in six weeks. So and I haven't gotten to come up here and see her luck because of COVID. So she's been all over the place. So looking forward, at the window open thing in the Berkeley Marina. So it's cool. You've got the whole city of San Francisco right there. But with with first class time, it's my turn to go first or your turn. Yeah,
Dominic Cummins 1:46
I think you should go first three tax tips. Man, that sounds good. Well, there you go.
Ron Caruthers 1:54
Don't want to do the third one. Well, you might. But here's the thing. So we talk a lot about the importance of having a business. And so having a business is great. And really, this is one of those things where you don't want to say, well, I don't have a business. This doesn't apply to me, I'm gonna click Keep clicking. The answer is no, when our country was founded, if you go back to prior to World War One, the majority of America was self employed. That's why from the very inception of the tax code in 1913, so many of the rules were written for self employed individuals that was considered the backbone of our country. Then we got into much bigger corporations with the Carnegie's and the Rockefellers and those guys, and so more and more of America became employees. But the code was still written and developed for people that were self employed, and it continues to favor self employed individuals. However, those aren't the tax breaks we're going to talk about today. We'll save those for another time. The ones I want to talk about today are section 121. Section 163, and sections 401, K and 7702. So let's go through the good ones first. Section 171. B. Three is the mortgage acquisition indebtedness, indebtedness debt code, I brought my special interest servicing with me DOM
Dominic Cummins 3:33
dice,
Ron Caruthers 3:34
right now. And it goes with me everywhere. But I'm three end, but it's tax season. So I haven't been getting tons of sleep here lately. So last night was the first night and more and two weeks that I've gotten more than five and a half hours sleep. But so here's the way it's section 163 works. And I'm gonna give you guys a tip on this. And then we'll tie it all together. And we'll flip it over to Dominic. But what the government says is, look, if you're going to buy a place, we will let you write that interest off. Up to it used to be a million dollars of acquisition indebtedness. Now it's 750,000. So whatever that interest is, particularly now that interest rates are rising a little bit, it would appear, you can write that interest off forever. And here's the key point. You never pay it back. So this is not recaptured. And you get it on your primary and a second home. And a second home can include about an RV as long as it meets certain conditions in house to have like a bathroom and a kitchen and I'll read those off on another time. So
So what's your point here? Well, number one, when it comes to living, one of the things that I hear is people are in a rush to buy a place right now, particularly one of my clients just sold his house. The reason he sold his house is he's having some health challenges. And he was worried that the market was too high, which it may be, we'll find out. But what happened was now they are about to pay $3,500 or $4,000 a month in rent. And they're worrying like, Oh, my God, we gotta buy another place, we're gonna lose out, and we're throwing that money away on rent. And that is a real common theme that I hear rent money is just being thrown away. And so we'll address that in a moment. But one thing that you guys all want to keep in mind is up to $750,000. On two places combined, you can buy and write off all that interest. And like I said, the key point is that you never, never never pay it back. Now, let's take it one step further and talk about section 121. Section 121 Is the exclusion that says, as a single individual, you can profit up to $250,000 on the gain of your house, if you do own one, when you go to sell it, without paying any tax on it, and it's doubled if you're married. So $250,000 as a single individual $500,000, married, you pay zero income tax in the game. And you can do this every two years. And by the way, one of the questions I saw flashed by is, is this only if you have a business? No, this is for any. So these tips, these tips today, guys, whether you have a business or not. And we'll tie together again, how can you use this to maximize what you're doing. But back to this, we just had a client sell their place here in Solana Beach, which is kind of like midway between downtown San Diego and where I live, they ended up moving to Hawaii, they had bought the place for 383. They turned around and sold it for like 1.1 million US finished their taxes. And because when you go to sell, you not only keep you don't pay tax on what you originally paid, right, the 383. In this case, you don't pay taxes on any improvements you make on the property. So in other words, we went back and we're doing that for this other guy right now. Like you find the every receipt is like, oh, yeah, we got to the place. We did this. We did this, we did this. I'm like, great. Give me everything you got. Because we're going to add that to what you paid for the place. Then we take our $500,000 deduction, and in this lady's case, they walked with several $100,000. And we figured out the taxes they paid about 9000 More than they normally would. So they profited probably 600,000. Net seven net, but because of stuff they had done along the way that we were able to add back in their tax bill was minor and it was minor to the point where when we went over the tax review with them, I'm like, this looks really good. She goes oh my god, are you sure it's right. I'm like, that was my first question. Summer Street. They're solid. We just took it off of everything, but it looked too good even for for me. So those are the good tax deductions. Let's talk about the bathroom. The bad one, in some cases 401 K's now, if you guys have heard me speak before, uh, you know about once every month and I'm probably due for a good one. I go on a rant about 401k buy the stock. And let me just pull this up. I can remember how to suppose name your I think that's close enough. And it won't let me have anything All right, Dominic, I'm gonna let you speak for a little bit in a moment here. And I'm gonna report on the dot tax. But once a month ish, I go on a rant about 401 k's and why they suck and why you shouldn't have one. And again, there's exceptions to every role. Obviously you want to take a match. Always. They're giving you free. Look, we're not stupid. We want all the free money we can get The
end of the day beyond that most companies do not contribute to your your 401k, your employer's not contributing it up anywhere close to the maximum that you can put inside. And I can literally name two exceptions. In the last 10 years where a company has contributed more than matched a contribution of more than 10,000. The government lets you contribute almost double that. And the problem is twofold. One is because the taxes are not saved. And I want to make a huge point here, when you write off a mortgage interest deduction, you never have to go back and pay those taxes back, you're done. It is a true deduction forever and ever. Amen. As opposed to a 401k, where you are not sieving or deducting anything, it's a reduction of your salary, and you're agreeing to be taxed on it at a later date, out whatever amount of taxes they claim it not time. And they will turn around, they control that deal. You have no say in it. And you're locking up on your access for that money for that period of time, if you need it. And I'm writing in the middle of a thread on why 401k loans are not a good idea unless you absolutely have to have one like everything that can go wrong with it. So yeah, maybe you can borrow against it. The both rules are super strict. So you're just paying that tax later. And here's the catch to the whole thing. They don't want the tax on the amount you deferred. They want the tax on the amount you deferred, and everything that you made from that point on. So if you defer in your 20s, and you're differ $10,000 a year now. I mean, hopefully it's not worth $10,000.40 years, oh, hopefully it's worth a little more than that. And it's very likely to be worth 5060 $100,000, depending on market appreciation. And now that's the amount the government wants to tax you on. And they control how it's taxed, and how much you pay. And you have zero say in that deal. Absolutely zero set. So that's the reason that we say, look, yeah, take the match. But beyond that, let's have a conversation. Because what gets people into trouble? Now we'll tie this together, and then I'll come back with the math for you guys in a moment. What gets people into trouble is we are taught as a society. pay your mortgage down as fast as you can. You know, Dave Ramsey has this whole the borrower is slave to the lender. And there's a joke Dominic, do you watch the Babylon B at all? They have a they had they do like satirical headlines, and they had a great one, which is a few months ago. It's like a Dave Ramsey visa, that when you apply for it, you immediately get told no. It's literally like just someone picks up the phone and yells at you know, Dave's a fake. go to his website and you're on the honor system. And you will not I can't do a good Dave Ramsey, but I'm gonna practice it and come back to you guys with a question. But Dave Ramsey's, like, don't use a credit card on our site, you're on the honor system. You know, you'll understand why. Another Dave Ramsey headline is about called the catchy borrower. It's like Dave Ramsey is sneaking around trying to catch Christians using their credit cards because it's a sin. It was funny if you need to pay rent. So rather than a Dominic's gonna get a turn to chat for a little bit. And while I look up some numbers for you guys, that will straight blow your pots. But so here's the thing that gets people in trouble. Number one,
we are taught to pay off our home as fast as possible, because we're in debt. So people rush to put money into that. But you can't get that money back if you need it. Unless you prove to the bank that you don't need it. So you have to go through an application process to get your own money set or you have to sell the place. Secondly, we're taught to put all the rest of our money into 401 K's where now we have restricted our asset access to that money for decades in some cases, then something comes along like we need a new roof or transmission goes out or we have a surgery coming up. And now even though we're sleeping was really doing what we thought we were going to do. Or even I would say worse, an opportunity comes up that a liquid person can take advantage of. And we can't, because we follow the good advice, and all our money is tied up in all these places. So it's something to think about long and hard about where you want to be position. And look, I don't want to go conspiracy theorists on you guys. But I think the whole point of kind of why they steer everybody that way, is because you're a little more dependent on them. Am I right? Am I wrong? Who knows? But it's something to think about. So one last comment on are you throwing your money away with rent? Absolutely not. You need a place to live. houses do not always go up in value, even though they have gone up for the last 11 years. I would I do not, you know, just that opinion. And I want to stress that. But it's an opinion, I would be very cautious going into a new house right now. If I was young and new out of college or getting ready to move a place, I might wait a little bit. Because in my opinion, the market has gone up pretty much straight since 2011. And usually it moves in about 10 or 11 year cycles. Before we have a correction you can get in much more affordably back to this family that sold their house and is now antsy to get into another one, even though they sold it because they were concerned the market was too high. Here was my comment. The wife told me, Well, I am throwing away $4,000 A month on rent. And I'm like, fair enough. You know, like I understand that. But here's a couple of things to think about. Number one, let's say it's a year before you guys buy a place sign a year lease market cools off, you're looking in the million dollar range, right, which you were were dominant, where you grew up. And where I live now isn't really even anything super fancy. That's just kind of like going rate. I'm like, if there's a 10% correction on housing prices, not 40. That's not even an actual crash, let's just a correction. You turn around a year from now, your million dollar house is worth 900,000. Now you quote threw away 50,000 in rent. But really, at the end of the day, you actually came out if you can now turn around and buy a place for 900,000. And let's say we even made three or 4% on the money just sitting there we got some of that back. And finally, how much of your mortgage interest in the first year goes towards principal Anyways, if you're making a $3,000 a month payment, you know, 2800 in the first year is going towards the interest. So again, just be very careful about being in a rush to make a poor decision. When because you think you're throwing interest away, you're throwing race away and get when we went through the math there. Oh, okay. You know, I never thought it I'll see saw was God, that's $50,000 I'm like, wow,
Dominic Cummins 18:37
yeah.
Ron Caruthers 18:39
Hold on a minute. So, anyway, Dominic.
Dominic Cummins 18:44
Yeah, I think so just to kind of interject on this a little bit. And so for those of you just joining on, I know we got a bunch of people that just came in on the little bit here, you're on the make for Keith Moore Show with Ron Carruthers. He's run on Dominic, he I'm gonna make more he's the keyboard though we both know a little something about both of those things as well. But to to go through this, you know, obviously one of the big points of the show, as you can kind of guess by the title. It's all about making more money and keeping more money and such Iran went through three tax tips, too. If you just missed this, it'll be posted on his feet a little bit later. And you guys can check out those tax tips. But what we're talking about is things like section 171 63 121 versus like a 401 K and you writing off your mortgage interest. And so for some of you, I think I've had the same question, you know, where we live in LA, and prices are crazy. I mean, our house is darn near tripled since we bought it two years ago or three years ago, whatever it was right or doubled, I should say. And, you know, it's it's you think about that, well, what if I sold right now and then you go oh, and that's the that's the part that hit you go vote if I had to go pay rent? Well, that would suck. You know, and I think you bring up some really valid points because part of what we talked about about making more money, and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, is the ability to have access to ready cash If they can, if your cash is tied up in your home, not necessarily a bad thing per se, in the sense that like, you know, the it's obviously good to have value in your home, we're not expecting you to mortgage your home to the hilt, but just understanding that there are opportunities. So think about it for from the perspective of even in our my own personal situation over the last two years with the whole pandemic and things going on my wife and I've had opportunity to buy, I don't know, half a dozen businesses, right, you know, the the in those things have come up. And if you have ready cash, you can take a look at those verses, you know, go back to the days when we were getting our business started and opportunities like that came up and you're like, oh, man, that'd be awesome. But there's just no way I mean, I don't have the cash for that and barely, you know, making my my payments, right? So anytime that you guys listening in can think about how you can make cash available. That's a big thing in my mastermind group I made a part of the thing that I talked to them about this couple of weeks ago was set your cash in the bank goal for the year. Like we talked a lot about what your revenue goals are for the year we'll talk about, you know, how much money do you want to make this year? Or how much money do you what kind of things do you want to do? Do you want to you know, microbes all trying to get down to like a three hour a day work day, maybe four days a week type of thing really limiting their their amount of work, you can get a lot done. I mean, it's the Parkinson's Law, right?
Ron Caruthers 21:27
It's gonna do with the rest of the time, if they're only working three hours a day,
Dominic Cummins 21:31
well find investments that didn't fill places to make the cash work for them. Right. So
Ron Caruthers 21:36
they were like, Yeah, we just want to go hang out. It's like, Man, y'all are gonna end up looking on stuff on the internet that you're not supposed to.
Dominic Cummins 21:44
Idle hands, idle hands, man
Ron Caruthers 21:47
idle. That goes without saying, We're never known
Dominic Cummins 21:51
for something like that. Yeah. So it's, you know, we put you think about it, like, okay, so you can reduce your workweek, you can make more money. But the the real goal is, how much money do you want to have in the bank, at the end of the year that you can use for stuff, because you just talked about market cycles, 10 year market cycles are pretty typical, we're 11 years into one, there is some prediction that we might extend out a couple of years, because the last two years, we'll we'll add on to that maybe we'll be in a 13 or 15 year cycle this time, but we'll see. Who knows, really. But in the next year or two, there will be opportunities, whether that's in the housing market, or that's in the business market, and you having access to cash is a huge piece of that, right? And so it makes this, you know, show more relevant and this idea of like, how do you make more money? And then how do you keep more of your money? Because paying it to Uncle Sam isn't helping you either? Yeah. But they so when you say the I had a question on it, I forgot what it was, oh, the prophet. Yeah, actually, you covered it the 121 163. But that's kind of fascinating, be interesting to see, maybe, I don't know, if you do a post on that, or we can talk about it another episode, we'll talk about, like, what defines a second home, all that type of stuff. Because I know for Ivana, and I we've thought about that too, like sucked to sell and then have to pay rent. Now my current solution is, well, I could actually just make more money and go buy another house, and then, you know, rent this one out, which is, which is a good way to go. So
Ron Caruthers 23:17
the guy who's considered the make more portion of the show, whatever this actually is, yeah, that seems like a good solution dominate.
Dominic Cummins 23:32
It turns out, and we've talked about this a lot in our early episodes, there is, you know, there is opportunity to make more money, there's plenty of money in this world to be had. If this Ukraine situation has taught us anything that the Russian oligarchs have a lot of it, there's money to be had right in and you can get a you can get your piece of it if you just you just go after it. So somebody asked about best place to keep that said cash. I'm sure it's a bigger discussion, but what what's your thoughts?
Ron Caruthers 24:03
Gonna do and we'll probably do it next week. But I'm gonna drop some knowledge from you guys on stuff that they are doing, literally, they are doing and they are Congress, people and presidents and banks and corporations and tons of wealthy people that they don't talk about. And no, it's not a secret and a big conspiracy theory. It just literally is one of the best kept secrets today. 50 years ago, it wasn't but where you can have cash grow tax free, access it when needed and get a better rate of return than point 000001 2%. I keep, you know, a sizable amount of cash just reading my business from COVID. And I mean, on a healthy size of cash Dominic I think my interest earned from my bank last year was like $7. And it was like guys seriously, like, you obviously need the $7. You got to keep it. Now, the reason, by the way, that cash will not sit there forever, I practice what I preach as the keep more. But it was just a like weird time we're like, Okay, well kinda, let's just make sure cash flow is really good. Everything's going great. But let's make sure that this is going, Hey, before we jump into you, and thank you for giving kind of the, the intro time that I was supposed to give it the beginning, I got all fired up on on did notice what we were chatting about. So I forgot supposed to give you guys an introduction about the show and all that stuff, to give you some guys to math real quickly. So this assumes this is for one of my clients that's 27 years old. So we were looking at what she was doing beyond the match for work. And we're like, okay, let's reroute $10,000 of that money that you're contributing, that's more than what they're matching you on up to the match. So we're going to pay that tax now and get it over with. And we're going to compare where this ends up. So let me give you guys this number here. So we were going to make a $10,000 contribution to age 65. So from her age, that's 37 years. So the contributions 370,000. Now, if we took the same money and put it into her 403 B right now, that would actually be because we're assuming a 28% tax rate, we're going to gross up what she contributes, which means to that account, we're actually going to contribute $13,889. Does that make sense to you, Dominic? Yeah, and listening. If it doesn't make sense, just pop it in the chat. And I'll go back and explain it. But all we're saying, that's the whole point of the 401k contribution, or four, three, B or IRA or whatever, it goes in pre tax. So you save those taxes now. So that's why we went, Hey, to be fair, we got to put more into that account, because now we're paying the taxes and getting it over with over here. So we save on three on a $370,000 contribution, which we're going to bump up by 28%. So we'll call it more like 500,000, we saved about $130,000 in taxes right now. Okay? So if we fast forward out and say, Okay, it's 65, we're going to start taking that money out to live on, first of all, to match the tax free alternative that I'll talk to you guys about next week, we would have to pull about $160,000 a year. And the problem is the money runs out after 10 years. Okay? For you guys, that's not the part we're worried about right now. Here's the crazy part. To match the income of the tax free vehicle, we would have to pay $512,613 in taxes,
the same rate, that she saved the taxes that now so if you remember, we only put about 500,000 in the first place. But remember, they want the tax on all of the gain from that point forward, when you go to pull it out. Now what if taxes go up? Because the government is $30 trillion in debt right now? Well, now, he's gonna pay for maybe one and a half times double what she contributed in the first place. And she has no control over it again, because the government controls that. I can be like, sorry, guys, we need more money. Sucks to be you. So again, that's why I hammer on this so much, because the government kind of counts on people not doing the math on this. And again, absolutely, I guarantee you, there's a kinder to our mind, on this podcast right now that I have said, yeah, those rules are for everybody else, you got enough other stuff going on, we can afford to max this out because you're in such a high tax bracket now. And we can still put money places where we can get our hands on. But those are the things to chat about. And I'm gonna make another spread. So while you while I turn the show over to you, or you fire off any questions that we have, but not want to cheat you on your time?
Dominic Cummins 29:39
No, I think you've again, it's bringing up a great point of like, there are just so many places and a lot of it just has to be what we've been trained. I mean, if you grew up in any sort of corporate environment, and I think a lot of both of our audiences are people who are probably who are turning their side hustle into their main hustle or have turned their side hustle into their main hustle, you know, came out as some sort of former core Corporation executives like you know, I wasn't an executive position before starting my company and you do that sort of thing and so you're trained of like, okay, cool. I remember starting when we started right mind I remember looking into Okay, so now what I don't have a 401k anymore. So what's going to be my new retirement vehicle I'm going to start putting money in that's like a 401k. In fact, I looked into 401k for my business and they're just such a nightmare to set up for a small business but I was like, you know, your mindset just teaches you that's the whole thing. And then somebody comes along goes, Hey, man, what about cash value whole you know, cash value life insurance, or what about you're like, wait, what I could do what with and that does, how and it's never
Ron Caruthers 30:43
Well look, if it's set up correctly, it's fantastic. But a brokerage account with a margin account a tied to it, where you can access the money without having to sell anything works great, too. We're going to talk about those. But super good. By the way, guys listening. Dominic's got his fancy podcast set out, which is awesome. He looks good. You look professional. I've got my poor iPhone that I can't even get my airpos to work on today. What I want is, how does Dominic sound versus me? I'm feeling you do sound better. So but if you guys want to pop that in the chat, Dominic, tell me about following up with if for no other reason myself for a moment long enough to make an espresso. But yeah, putting in when I'll do the I'll do the break. We are this is the make more keep more show. I am the keyboard portion rock Carruthers, Dominic at real business advisors is the make more portion he is well of course your wife thinks you sound amazing. She doesn't cap totally cheating. Your wife says you sound amazing. And my wife wants to know if I'm having a stroke because the thing froze real quick. Well, hold on. You guys liked the way Dominic sounds. But how about me? How do I sound?
Dominic Cummins 32:10
Oh, well, that's a different state your phone? And you know, $1,000 mic setup here. I mean, that is kind of the difference, I suppose. But yeah, no, listen. So this will follow up discussions and interesting one, so I'll get this set up. So Ron can actually make his coffee.
Ron Caruthers 32:25
Nice thing though. This is the show every Friday at 8am. Pacific. The goal is we run about an hour. And the goal is to talk about all things related to the making and growing of your wealth and the keeping the most of it for you, you stuffed fish, bastards, not wanting to give it all away to somebody else. So that's the point of our show. So Dominic is going to chat about some keyboard stuff. I mean, some make more stuff. And I'm gonna meet myself just long enough to get an espresso. And I guarantee you guys that my happiness will increase by at least 15%. It's amazing.
Dominic Cummins 33:01
Good, good on you, man. So yeah, so Ron, and I were prepping for this show this week. And we were talking about some of the things he wanted to share his three tax tips. And he's like, What are you talking about in sales? And I was like, I don't really know. I'm thinking of something right now. I'll work it out. And he goes, dude, you know, now we get a we get to play by play of the espresso being made. I like that. It's, so he turns me it was
Ron Caruthers 33:22
so beautiful. It's so beautiful.
Dominic Cummins 33:25
So he says to me, Hey, man, how can how can we follow up? He's like, I actually got clients, if he doesn't mind me sharing this, but I'm gonna share it anyway. Even if he does, I got some clients who were like, just go dark on me. You know, we got to follow up, like, how do you follow up with people without annoying the crap out of them? And look, the thing is? It's a great question. Because the reality is, is how many of us have had just been so annoyed by some sales rep that's following up with you. And so we kind of I think in terms of when we think about doing it, we're really nervous. We're hyper nervous about doing the same thing to other people. So let me go back to the topic, slight bit of the topic, why this is so relevant. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, that pre pandemic, to get somebody from like your initial outreach to actually get them to agree to meet with you took about eight attempts. During the pandemic, it's up to 18. So massive difference between where you were and where you are today with regard to follow up. Now, once you meet with somebody, and just as being that we're talking about the pandemic for a second, think about Pete some people go Well, that'll probably come back down as we come out of the pandemic. I don't think so. Here's why. A lot of the reason that drives you to make it harder for to get hold of somebody is because people are doing exactly what we're doing. I'm working from home, right? I don't have an office anymore. We got rid of that lease, like I built something in my backyard for myself, and then you know, you got all sorts of people so it is a little bit different, more difficult to get a hold of and I think that's gonna stay the case for quite some time. Time. Now once you meet with them, it's anywhere from eight to 12 follow ups to close the deal. Right now I'm sure some of you are going to close the deal on the spot that does happen. And if you're in like a low dollar figure type of stuff like anything less than, let's say 20 $30,000, you probably can close that in one shot, because it's not a big, big massive purchase for a decent sized customer. But you start getting into the high ticket stuff rear north of $100,000, your million dollars, you're looking at eight to 12 follow up. So it's a lot of opportunity to follow up. It's also a lot of opportunity to annoy knowing people. So here's what I'll say is the main thing to keep in mind is that every interaction, if every interaction that you have with that client or that prospect is you trying to either get the appointment or close the sale, which I know that sounds counter, you're like, Well, no, that's why I'm following up. Yeah, but if every interaction feels like that to the client, then I don't know about my parents in our audience. But it's like taking a long road trip with your kid. And what do they keep asking you? Are we there yet? Sorry. Yeah, yeah, it? Yeah. And at some point, you want to do that my mom's favorite famous reach around Smackdown. My mom was a different era. So you know, beating your kids was okay. I'm not suggesting you should do that.
Ron Caruthers 36:17
funniness old school.
Dominic Cummins 36:20
Ron knows my mom. So
Ron Caruthers 36:23
it was the go to the yard and pick your own switch. And if it's not big enough, I'll go pick it for you kind of parent.
Dominic Cummins 36:33
Very much. So very much so. So you following up with somebody like that? Go? I'm like, what is basically are we get there you are there? are we reading it? Are we meeting it? Did you buy it? Did you buy it? Like that's annoying. So what you have to do is really make your your follow up meaningful? And how do you go about doing that? Right? Because you're like, damn, yeah, well, so one of the big things is share Industry Insights. I talked about this a few weeks ago, there was actually a study that was done by a company called HubSpot. Some of you probably familiar with them, said 92% of buyers will happily meet with a salesperson and speak with them. If that salesperson brings relevant industry insight. How many sales reps do that? darn near zero, right? So if you can I teach something that's called the triad? Or what I coined the triad is this idea of like, how do you share three points of interests inside of a narrative to a bunch of people so that they're, they're really interested in what you have to talk about. And if you have that format, then you can send that in an email or in a ditch in a direct message or something to them that that really is helpful. But here's the thing, here's what I see when it comes to email and direct mail. Don't blow your okay, my wife would kill me if I say that. Don't read it in dumb, right? It is a family friendly show. Don't use all your follow ups in one shot about that. That's a better way of saying it. Because I'll see this happen. Somebody will hit me up on LinkedIn, send me a message, you know, connect connection requests, send a message, immediately follow up with an email, call me and then follow me on I Instagram all in one day. Technically, that was five of your 18 follow up opportunities, but the 18 Follow up opportunities can happen in one day. I was
Ron Caruthers 38:19
gonna say technically, that's stalking and somebody should put a restraining order out is kind of what I'm thinking here.
Dominic Cummins 38:28
Yeah, I mean, that's and that's how people feel. So when you want to space things out. So let's say you reach out to somebody and connect with him. Well, then, like a couple other posts, not on the same day, just find one. Wait till they post something like yeah, I'm all over LinkedIn. Right. So I post a lot there. Also, post a lot, obviously on Instagram. She follow me a couple days later comment on one of the posts a couple days later sent me a DM Hey, this is you know, something interesting, I noticed anything like that just space it out a little bit, you have to do the 18 follow ups. Interestingly enough, ideally, all 18 of those follow ups are done in 28 days or less, if not too much less 21 to 28 days. So you know what I mean? So that at that point, you have to think in terms of you are doing it but it better be meaningful. Here's another one Don't be afraid of snail mail. Like people overlook this This is gold is you can mail something to somebody now you got to get their address. I mean, I understand there's some challenges, but let's say you can get a hold of their address. There's this guy I know. He may even be listening. He runs a pretty successful podcast himself, but he sends a little plastic soldiers. He's a marketing agency. And he's like, what would it be like if you had an army behind you? Now it's super corny. Granted, those stupid little toy soldiers he orders and buy like 100 pack because he he'll send them like 100 pack of these little things or 50 pack. You can get those. Yeah, Amazon it's like five bucks or something. He sends it out to them. And then says What if you had an army behind you? That's what my team brings to the table. Now that's not his only follow up, right? Because that would be people be like, Who's this moron essentially sent me a thing. But they've presumably maybe saw his podcast. So send them an episode say, Hey, I thought of this one. This was really cool. And he interviewed some pretty big names like he's interviewed. Gary Vaynerchuk, Grant Cardone, you know, all these different people. So he'll send one that he's like, Hey, this is so you can do a little positioning there. But it's really cool. So I've sent books to people that I thought might be relevant to them, like, Hey, this is a book I read. I love it. I think it might be cool for your situation. Think about it. If you spend, let's say even 100 bucks on a mailer to close $100,000 deal. You want all day, right? I actually have a video right now that my team is editing to put up here on Instagram. So you guys probably see this soon enough. But I shot a video on like, don't be afraid to jump on a plane. Like if I had to think about this morning, if I had to probably added up Ivana might have better sense of this. But I guess I've spent probably $10,000 on flights, but landed a million dollars worth of business.
Ron Caruthers 41:02
You know what's interesting, Dominic, if I can interrupt you real quickly. If any of you guys have not seen Saving Mr. Banks with Tom Hanks is Walt Disney. It's the story of him getting the Mary Poppins, you know, the rights to Mary Poppins so they can make the movie out of it. And there was a great scene in there, where he he just think she would not the author would not release those rights. And so he hopped on a plane went to London to go and talk to her and make his pitch. And that's what ended up sealing the deal for him. And you know, look, it's Tom Hanks so of course it's great movie. And you know, Disney has gone a little crazy right now but but the original premise of Disney was awesome. And yeah, great. Heat. That's exactly what he did. There was work getting everywhere. He jumped on a plane and basically showed up at a place on announced. And again, we you don't want to cross the line and do stalker, but you understand the point?
Dominic Cummins 42:08
Yeah, I've closed a lot of business down in Australia, for instance, I've done a ton of work down there, largely because I hopped on a plane and went down there and met with them. And people literally told me like, Wow, I've never seen you know, an American, they use less friendly terms. But an American ever get on a plane and come down here. This is an 18 hour flight from my house, you know, so it's no joke to get down there. Well, 16 But either way, it's a long flight. But it's worth it. And and you know, you got to be careful about it. I've never done it on announced. But I've definitely like, Hey, listen, I'm actually going to be in your area. And I don't make it weird if they're like in the middle of nowhere. But you can put it like, Hey, I'm going to be you know, an hour away at some place. Hey, would it be cool if I stopped by one of the things I talked about for that is why that's so important during your follow up, is because people love to talk about their stuff. They love to show off what's cool about what they do. So I get one of the examples I had is I was at I got a chance to sell ESP and a few years ago. So fly to their Bristol Connecticut campus. That was one thing we flew there right to actually meet with them and spend some time with them. Those dudes wanted to show off everything. We walked studio to studio, the NFL studio, the baseball studio, the everything checked it all out, which of course as a sports fan was like one of my coolest experiences ever. But it just proved the point that these guys didn't have to do that we could have just sat in their office and worked on the deal. They took us to lunch in the employee break room. So all the like guys you see on TV are all and ladies are all just sitting around us and all the tables, which was awesome, right? You're like, oh my god, I recognize all these people see, saw Scott Van Pelt, you know, I mean, all these guys. And it's, but they didn't need to do that they wanted to do that because they want to show off their thing. I couple years ago, or many years ago now actually, I was in there as a business. And they were like they made parts for airplanes. And I was like, I don't quite I gotta be honest with you. I don't quite understand what you guys are talking about. Is there any way we could walk the floor with you? And they were like, oh, we'd love to. So we had to put on hard hats and safety glasses and do the whole thing and rock in walk out there and walk the whole floor which actually, incidentally, enough was I was like, oh my god, this is what they're asking for. Okay, changed my whole sales pitch because I was on a completely different trajectory because of that. But they were also they made a comment later they closed the deal was 150 $180,000 deal. And they said you were the only one who asked to see what we actually do. So, you know, that's to me. Those are the reasons why you gotta get in front of people and spend some time and yeah, you'll also have some pretty darn cool experiences because of it. You know, which is which is great. So, a lot of being doing Follow Up is spacing it out, understand, you gotta follow up a lot in a small period of time. Interestingly, size of deal doesn't change that a whole lot. There might be more players, but usually the numbers stay about the same. So whether you're a deal under 100,000, or over 100,000, kind of doesn't matter, you just have to do the follow up. Here's the scary part. I remember how I said 18 follow ups. I think I talked about this in one of the shows, but you know, what the average is per sales rep.
Ron Caruthers 45:28
Not one or one, one?
Dominic Cummins 45:32
Account, right? So I gave a really good here, let me one final example give you actually because I don't see this very often, but I gotta give credit where credit's due dude, from AT and T of all things like which, you know, normally none of us want to talk to some at&t. Rep. I don't either guy sent me an email, then sent me a message on LinkedIn, with all spaced out, then he sent a text message because obviously at our phone numbers were at 80. People already sent this this this and he basically every every interaction with me was like, Hey, listen, I know, you basically don't want to talk to me. But I do think looking at your overall situation, you should convert from this to this. And he brought like detail, Hey, did you know businesses of your sort of your size can actually save this much whatever. I didn't count it up. I should, it might have been close to 18 follow ups. But when we finally got on the phone with him, we bought, like, I feel like everything possible from the guy. But it was because he didn't give up. And so it comes some point I remember I talked to you Laughter My analogy, but sales is a little bit like hovering like a vulture wait for something to die? There's there's a little bit of that. Because what it took ultimately was we had a problem. All of a sudden, we were trying to figure out how to get internet into this office. And I was like, should we talk to that 18 T guy that keeps following up. And we did. And we sold a bunch of stuff saved a bunch of money. Every single sales rep anybody on here trying to sell something, chances are you can save somebody money, make them some money, do something for them free up their time, every one of us selling something that's a benefit to somebody. But if you don't follow up and do it in a meaningful way, it's just wasted. Nobody knows that.
Ron Caruthers 47:09
And what I went through in Dominic is there's a principle for marketing kind of one on one that call it top of consciousness. And so if you follow up consistently, if you think of it this way, David Ogilvy, the great admin, guys watched Mad Men. They kind of referenced him several times when like Roger was trying to get his book written is because Ogilvy had one of the greatest ad men of all time with David Ogilvy said, that was so interesting as life isn't moving parade. And so when it comes to business, someone you didn't have a need for AT and T until you couldn't get internet in the office, right? But then that guy followed up enough so that when it came time, and you had that need, your need changed. Now all of a sudden, you're like, Alright, I gotta call this a TNT guy like his, you know, he's been persistent. So I think that applies. And by the way, I would see that this applies to everything in life. Like, literally, if you're trying to get a job somewhere, or you're trying to get a promotion, or you're trying to get your bosses to notice you. So I would say the context is greater than just if your clients for it, like literally being the person who keeps following up and keeps following up and keeps following up and keep swallowing up. And still keeps following up but in a conical way. And switching up the media, you know, so you're not just blowing them up on LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, but LinkedIn in the email, commenting on a post sending a snail mail sending a postcard all that stuff, you know, all of it's brilliant.
Dominic Cummins 48:51
Yeah, I mean, think about to your points that consciousness like all will be talked about, who by the way, guys, if you haven't ever read anything by like Ogilvy on advertising or any of these things, if you've got any, any interest or ever want to just understand how marketing works today, how like, Facebook advertising or Instagram is no different than newspapers and no different than early TV ads
Ron Caruthers 49:14
in you know, hundreds and hundreds of years. By the way, Ogilvy on advertising actually has a topless French lady in it. So you know, like there's that as well. And by the way, it's Olga v. And for anybody asking and there was a couple of questions in there for vana can grab them. That would be great because we'll cover them prominent.
Dominic Cummins 49:45
Yeah, trying to find I have the Ogilvy book over here I just trying to figure out I can't remember if I show it to everybody but if you if you it's yeah, it will be as OG I LV why I think
Ron Caruthers 49:57
well, yeah, if you just look it in there, you'll find it real quickly. So not only does it have like great text and a great understanding of timeless advertising principles, there's lots of pictures and it's showing what he was doing. There's a great Rolls Royce ad in there. And then there is the topless French lady, for those of you that don't get out of the house a whole lot and don't have the internet. So there you go.
Dominic Cummins 50:26
I think one of the questions that because Olson has been sending me a few of these two as they go by is that one of the questions was, and I think we covered a little bit of it, somebody asked if you have savings, what's the first thing you should invest into? I think we're going to cover I think you mentioned you want to cover that maybe next week, next Friday.
Ron Caruthers 50:43
I'm going to talk about that next week. And I think we're actually think we're going to come up your way. So we might even be in your your studio next week. So maybe you'll let me the microphones and headsets or something like that stop being all stingy.
Dominic Cummins 50:56
I ordered a second one just for you, buddy. So it's
Ron Caruthers 51:01
about that next weekend, start to build out your legit financial planning pyramid on all that. Because the one that most people have versus the one they should have is really, those don't match a lot. What else do we have? Question was
Dominic Cummins 51:22
there was a question about just follow up. I think a copy went over and Mr. Archer, I think is with the whole sign said no stalking. I would wholeheartedly agree with that.
Ron Caruthers 51:37
For sure. Right now. Let me do you got?
Dominic Cummins 51:45
Oh, yeah. So I think we've got some good some good content. By the way, guys, it again, make more keep more. So this shows really all about what you guys we're obviously talking a lot about different different things here. Regarding making money and keeping money. So today, we got some good questions about investments, which we'll put we'll talk about in next week's if you've got any questions on, where can you make some more money, opportunities for investments, anything that you want to do about sales, follow up marketing, for that matter, both of us have a fair bit of experience of marketing. I run marketing for some pretty large companies right now. So there are, we can answer all those questions. So if you guys got stuff that hit us, either, either one of us up on Instagram, we do get some questions here and there. Towards or during the week. We're happy to cover those when we when we get together for sure.
Ron Caruthers 52:38
I concur. A little crazy, because I'm OB Hashmi, you had one of the questions that I wanted to answer, but I don't remember it. I have one of the questions somebody just asked does drop shipping a great business. I have a lot of clients who are making really good money doing that now that are oh, what kill bro. started, it was on its tax season. So my last week was not quite as bad as the Titanic after hitting the iceberg. But things just got a little hectic. So I'll go back and find that again, over the weekend. And make sure we follow up on that. So any way of controls local tax, I think a couple of questions came through if Ivana can just grab those.
Dominic Cummins 53:25
Yeah, I also understand screen capturing. So I'll take care of those and make sure we pull those together for your for everybody for next week. And we'll definitely get them answered there. So awesome, man. I think I think we've covered some good, make money, keep money, things. And at some point, we will have intro music, I bought the tech to be able to do that. But I was scared to use it this today without testing it. So we'll we'll get into a future iteration there. And then yeah, next week, actually, it'd be interesting because you just are I'm trying to figure out how to get that tech to work. But we'll be sitting here at the studio together.
Ron Caruthers 54:05
Yeah. Screwed up that tech because you muted yourself for a second, but we got the general idea. So guys, if you tune in every Friday, it's make more keep more. I think we kind of generally I don't know, I like the format if you don't mind. Of course I do. Of doing kind of the keyboard piece first. Because that kind of applies to everybody. And then we can slide into the make more if you have your business. I don't know. Dominic will we'll chat about it. You know what we'll, we'll negotiate will come to the table. We'll have my people and your people work it out. Yeah, exactly. Go the shows to talk about all things money and Oh welcome Maria fey IFBB pro. We're happy to have first time listener always we want you back next Friday. We're going to be checking to see if you're there and thank you guys for all the kind words and if there's anything we can do to make this better besides getting into music, and getting me better equipment. uh we'll do it alright guys thanks again we'll see you guys next week 8am sharp Pacific and every Friday we'll see you guys that to count awesome
Dominic Cummins 55:10
so talk to you soon
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
