So after they come to you and you put together that plan and, and you, and you now see that the plan came to fruition, well, What are some factors that need to be discussed on what they should decide on putting those dollars into action?

That's a good question, Mike.

And, you know, this is probably one of my favorite topics about this is in the before method.

You know, we have B for the business, E for expose, and then F for foundation.

We've talked about O for the orchestrate and R for the review.

And now it's time for the E, the envision.

And again, Keeping more is only the beginning.

So that's a huge point that you bring up there.

How do you keep it polished up fresh and keeping from going stale throughout the year so that you're not playing catch up or pulling an all-nighter before you got a file?

Well, the R, like you said, is to keep the strategy current all year, right? Not just in April.

And a tax plan starts aging the day we write it, right? And businesses change.

And so the plan must change too.

And so when we're looking- and we're trying to figure things out, we want to schedule the reviews and we want you to respond when something changes that's important or you feel like is a big change for the business.

So we start the year with a projection.

We check the actual results around mid-year, and then we revisit the major decisions in the early fall, and then we confirm the implementation.

How much time does it really take in these quarterly meetings? Is this like a half day event? I've got to block out or what is the time frame they should be expecting?

So talk a little bit about who owns the main steps and then what happens if something hiccups and you need to watch out for.

So I can go.

Go ahead, Chris.

I can go real quick and then you can follow up with your details on like how you do it.

But typically for us, the owner makes the business decisions, right? The bookkeeper keeps the records.

Payroll is who implements the compensation and the changes, right? A plan administrator is going to handle everything.

The retirement plan, the design, the compliance.

And we weren't even trying to talk about that at all, but from the world of marketing and business and guarantees and peace of mind, no matter what the program is, it is pretty powerful that you're putting your, you know, your personal, you know, reputation behind that to say, Hey, it's going to work, but if it does it for some odd reason, here's your money.

I heard that's a pretty good deal." Um, what are some of the things that you're finding that, um, business owners need to understand when making that entity choice that might have made sense years ago or what they saw online but now no longer is a fit?

Um, you review when it profits the ownership, staffing, or plans change.

An S corp might not justify its administrative cost at a modest profit, yet it becomes useful when the earnings are consistently well above reasonable owner compensation.

The reversal can also happen when we compare the actual economics, payroll, maybe even the legal needs, the state rules, and, and a future exit strategy, um, not just what a friend said worked for them.

So it's kinda what you talked about, right? You're, you're talking to your friends and your buddies and, or you're getting on there, "No, Delaware sounds great." Well, does it? Maybe it sounds great-

Yeah.

So when it's properly structured and administrated, or administered, uh, the reimbursements are generally tax-deductible to the business, tax-free to the employee or owner-employee, and not subject to federal payroll taxes.

And that's gonna exclude from what the employee's W-2 wages see or do.

Yeah.

So we need to still check the eligibility, right? We need to calculate the total tax effect, we need to consider the cost, and we need to see how strategies interact.

And also, expose creates a list of candidates, right? So a foundation fixes the underlying structure.

Um, orchestrate determines the candidate, the candidates, um, and if they deserve action.

Otherwise, we're just selling ideals.

We're just, we're just grabbing the shotgun approach, right? You talked about sales later, but you know, we're just grabbing a handful of stuff and throwing it to see if it sticks against the wall, right? We're not making pasta and throwing it on the ceiling to see if it sticks.

We're not doing the shotgun approach.

Yeah

I didn't even tell you where the pain is."

Right.

So I think it's important that before anyone or I recommend any type of deduction or anything, that we need to understand the business and the life that the owner is trying to build, right? Not necessarily the business, but the life that the bus- that the business owner wants.

And that goes back to their values and where we're going.

And so when we're, when we're looking at the before method, the B is the business, right? Understanding the business before choosing any strategy.

And so before we look at any single strategy, what does that person need? And so first I need to know how the business makes money, whether the profit is predictable, uh, what the cash is really, what cash is available, right? How many, or how the, how is the owner paid? Is he just taking money whenever he needs it? Is his personal account mixed with his business account like they probably shouldn't be? So how has his historical, meaning how has he always been paid? What are his habits? And then I ask about the employees.

Do we have an exit plan? Debt? What upcoming purchases do we have? The, the owner's personal goal.

Give me last two year's returns, and here's the strategy."? Well, there might be some things, you know, that you're not able to ascertain, right?

That's a good point

... what happens is, [laughs] right, and, and it's not that their CPA did bad or anything.

It's just a historian, right? I use the word historian to describe, uh, the job, right? So most, uh, tax preparers or CPAs, what they're doing is they're going based- they're using old information to give you new quotas, right? And so it's not to criticize the profession, but it's a, it's an older, it's a historian, um, use, meaning they're using records from old records.

They're using the years past, right? So that they can get what they need.

And then moving forward, they have the old numbers, they're a year behind when it comes to having everything corrected.

Yeah.

And the answer is, probably never.

And the reason you haven't is 'cause you didn't wanna pay to get them all together, and the other reason is, is more times than not, they don't wanna talk to each other because they all wanna go different directions.