Welcome to the six Figure Business Mastery Podcast, where every week Kirsten and

Jeanie dive into the essential topics to fuel your business growth, from

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So what if the wealthiest favorite tax-free profit strategies

could be automated for you?

No lawyers, no spreadsheets, and no giant consulting bill.

How cool would that be?

So I'm excited to introduce our next guest.

His name is Ben Collier.

He is the founder of a amazing program called Profit Shield.

So welcome to the program, Ben.

It's lovely to have you, Jeannie.

Thanks, Kirsten.

Thanks.

It's great to be here with you too.

We are so excited.

I know you and I have nerded out and had lots of awesome conversations, but tell

everyone here just a little bit about profit Shield and what you're doing.

Thanks Kirsten.

I come at anything tax and business planning related, not as a CPA, not as an

attorney from, but from a business owner who's been given a lot of bad advice and

a lot of decent advice over the years.

And after starting a couple manufacturing companies and being in business myself,

I found that even the really high priced attorneys and CPAs I was using

for one large manufacturing company.

I was just getting the same advice that kept me and my business

overpaying on taxes and when I mean overpaying, paying unnecessary taxes

that I found out didn't need to.

Hmm.

And just one really quick example, my first manufacturing company, in the first

three years, we lost out on $350,000.

Tax credits and deductions, dollar for dollar tax credits

that we were eligible for.

It's just 'cause nobody knew.

So when it comes to Profit Shield, my automated platform, it's just something

to bring tax strategies to business owners by filling the gap between what

most people are getting from their CPA and what they're really eligible for.

And we just automate the paperwork for them so that

they can take advantage of it.

Awesome.

I know Jeannie and I talk about our Love Your Profit program

where we pair our clients with bookkeeping, virtual assistants.

Mm-hmm.

We do talk about paying your kids and we talk about the Augusta rule,

and so do you wanna explain both of those and how your platform works?

Yeah, sure.

So those are two great strategies.

A lot of business owners don't realize that.

Tax savings goes beyond just, I buy things and I get a write off for them.

I spend money on gas and I get a mileage deduction.

I go on a business trip and I get to write off my hotel or my Airbnb, the tax code.

And again, I'm not a CPA or an attorney, so everybody always has to talk to their

attorney or their CPA about this stuff.

But I like educating people through profit Shield on what's available from the IRS.

What's available from the tax code to benefit businesses?

'cause really what people don't realize is a lot of the tax code is actually

written to benefit businesses and to promote you continuing to be in business.

So, you know, you mentioned the Augusta rule, super simple strategy where

if you're having regular business meetings, you can do it in a way that

helps you capture more tax deductions.

It's really simple if you're not having regular business meetings.

You should be.

So if for most businesses, if you're not having those regular business meetings,

it's just a simple way of doing it.

Having regular business meetings, which actually boost your legal

protection because you're running your business like a business, and

now you can do it in a way that can help you save more money on taxes.

It's as simple as that.

So profit shield automates that.

And you mentioned the family employment.

Was that the other one you mentioned?

Yeah.

Paying your kids.

Yes.

Paying your kids.

So how many business owners with teenagers don't have the kids?

Do something like sometimes the kids are models for social media.

Or on the website, maybe the kids are helping do social media posts.

Maybe they're shredding.

Does anybody shred papers anymore these days?

Maybe they do, but there's all sorts of things that business owners get

their kids to help with that could be paid now if you do it the right way.

There's some specifics with the IRS.

If you do this exactly the right way, you can actually pay your kids up

to about 15 grand a year tax free.

No self-employment tax, no unemployment tax, no federal income tax.

You just, it has to be legitimate.

It has to be market rate.

You can't pay your 7-year-old 40 bucks an hour.

That's not gonna fly.

But there's great strategies that help you as a business owner teach your kids

entrepreneurship in a way that transfers money to them tax free, and you just.

The biggest thing with Profit Shield is my platform just comes in to

fill the gap between theoretically what you can do and how to execute

it in the best possible way.

We help you automate the paperwork so that it's all above board,

done the right way, and you've got all the compliance documentation

right there at your fingertips.

I think the paperwork is the big thing, and when we talk about

tax strategies that only the rich write off part of that is because.

In order to have all these, all this paperwork done and be in and in

compliance, if your CPA's gonna do that, they're gonna charge you a fortune.

So a lot of times a smaller business owner almost feels like they don't have

access to that because they can't upfront pay their CPA 15 grand to help them

implement these types of strategies.

And I think, like you said earlier, the CPA doesn't necessarily want to

sign your taxes that they filed them.

If they're not making sure the proper paperwork's being done

for these types of strategies.

So I think it's amazing that you have a technology now that could automate

this so that it makes it really affordable for your average Joe to

take advantage of these things that, again, bigger business owners have been

taking advantage of for a long time.

Absolutely.

I think of it as like the old school shoebox full of receipts that a

lot of business owners would dump on their CPA once a year or once

a quarter, and then eventually.

These platforms, American Express and QuickBooks.

All of a sudden there's receipt automation where you can save your

receipts automated, and that saved business owners and CPAs time.

And to your point, there's other tax strategies that are, they call 'em

advanced tax strategies in my opinion.

There's nothing advanced about them.

They're just more paperwork intensive.

That's so, rather than a shoebox full of receipts, it's.

Every time you do an Augusta rule booking, there's three or four really specific

documents that need to be generated.

A residential rental agreement, fair market value justification,

all this stuff that nobody really wants to spend the time doing.

And so just like automation came along so that receipt tracking became

easier, and that actually gave the average CPAA lot more peace of mind

because they don't have to worry about is my client fudging all of this?

Same thing here.

All we have is compliant documentation in an automated way, and that just,

it adds a lot of peace of mind.

It helps you tap into strategies that the average CPA is just hands off with

because it sits outside their wheelhouse.

So we help you bring it in the wheelhouse, and at the end of the

year, just hand everything to your CPA.

It's also, it's only gonna get harder because we already have a shortage

of CPAs in the United States.

We've got all the baby boomers are retiring.

I know a couple guys here in Florida, they're in their seventies,

early eighties, and they're still working, not because they want to.

But because they feel terrible that they can't find anyone

to hand their clients off to.

And so this is, and not as many people are going into that field.

So again, CPAs are almost more like an assembly glide

of getting tax returns done.

Rather than really helping you strategize over how you could save

more money and how put more money away, tax deferred, things like that.

So I love Janine, I love automation.

So that's, you're definitely speaking our language.

I know when I was talking about the Augusta rule, because we do talk

about that in our Love, your Profit, you know, program, and one guy asked

me could he pay his grandchildren?

Do you get that question a lot?

Oh, that comes up sometimes.

Yeah.

As long it's a parents or grandparents can pay the children.

That's correct.

It just needs to be done in a really specific, particular way to make sure that

it doesn't get reclassified in an audit.

So as long as you do it right, they're good.

Nice.

So do they put the information into your software or do they work with you or do

they do it themselves and then ask them specific questions or A bit of both.

So when you get into Profit Shield and you get onto the family employment

module, it's a really brief five minute questionnaire and it'll tell you exactly.

You just say, here's my type of business, here's the name of my business.

I have two kids enter the kids in and it does all the documentation for you.

So if based on your answers, if your business is the type of business

that needs a little side family partnership, in order to legitimately

pay your kids, it's just gonna create it for you automatically.

We're gonna give you the document to form the partnership.

Easy done.

If your business, let's say you're a an LLC, that's just a single dad or mom, LLC,

and you're just filing unincorporated.

You can just use that as it is and it'll tell you that.

So there's, it's super easy.

It's probably a five minute onboarding and we have, when you're done, you've

got, I think, four to six new documents generated for you in a five minute

period so that it's all by the book.

Yeah, it sounds amazing.

It's interesting because again, I think most of us as business owners,

we're not CPAs, we're not bookkeepers.

We don't really enjoy the whole accounting side.

And Jeanie and I love pairing our clients with bookkeeping VAs, who take care

of all of their bookkeeping for them.

And what has been really fascinating with that is when you know where your money's.

Going and what you have coming in and going out.

We've had so many people who have realized they needed to raise their prices.

They realized they were paying for things they had not used.

And then when we're talking about these tax strategies, and for all of you out

there, Ben actually does a bonus module in our program that really goes a lot

deeper into all of this information.

But once they have their bookkeeping up to date, it's like a whole

new world has opened up to them.

And you see all these things about pay zero taxes.

Could you make that happen?

Possibly if you take advantage of all of these different tax codes that are

written for you to take advantage of, but sometimes just too complex to do that.

So I love the fact that you're automating it for any of you out there who are

listening, who are not taking care of your bookkeeping the way you should.

If you notice Ben is talking a lot about compliance and making

sure you're following the rules.

One thing that we see a lot of people do is commingling their

business and personal funds.

And so if you have an LLC or you're incorporated and you are doing that, you

could actually be your LLC may not be able to protect you if you are in a lawsuit.

So there are reasons why you need to run your business like a business,

especially when it comes to your finances.

A lot of people don't realize that as well.

I wanna ask, is the person who is just overwhelmed by taxes,

overwhelmed by receipts, overwhelmed by just the whole bookkeeping thing.

When you think about talking to them, what is a piece of advice that you give

them that can help them get to the point where they're ready for that strategy,

they're ready to move on with this?

Everything you just said hits the nail on the head with that, Kirsten.

So with what you guys have put together with six figure business

coaching with the virtual.

Bookkeepers.

That's really for so many people, that has to be step one, get everything

organized, get a virtual bookkeeper and do it through six figure business coaching.

Get a virtual bookkeeper, get somebody who helps you organize all that stuff.

Even though I've run like large multimillion dollar manufacturing

budgets, I'm not a bookkeeper.

I can look at the p and ls and the balance sheet and the cash flow statement

and pay attention to all that stuff, but when it came to the actual placing

everything in the bookkeeping side.

Not for me.

And having that person there who can help you organize it, and then

once you feel that everything's organized, it's so much better.

And then from there you feel more confident tapping into other

strategies, finding thing, paying attention to things like what Kirsten

said about not co-mingling funds.

One helpful tool.

It's a free tool.

On my profit shield platform, it's a business health assessment.

It's like a 2122 question.

Assessment.

It's pretty detailed, but it only takes the five minutes.

Just go on profit shield and take the assessment.

It'll give you any of your back doors that might be in your business.

And commingling funds is one of them.

That's something that'll just help you get a little bit of ammo on, how can

I make sure my business protects me?

And to Kirsten's point, running your business like a business

that actually gives you the most robust legal protection.

So my biggest piece of advice would be combine.

The way to combine legal protection as a business owner and tax savings.

There's actually really great ways to combine those two things because

as a business owner, you're bringing in profit, but you also wanna protect

it, and you wanna protect your family.

And funny enough, when you do things really by the book with Uber compliance.

It helps you not only protect your profit better from a legal standpoint,

it can actually help you tap into more profit by getting into strategies

like what we do on Profit Shield and what we're talking about today.

So make more.

Protect it.

Yeah.

And to, to your point, I joke, six bucks an hour, why would I ever do that myself?

But the other thing is, this is I think is hard for a lot of us to understand

because we start our businesses because we're really good at something, right?

And we're really passionate about it.

For you, it's actually software.

You're like, you're great at creating softwares and so it makes

sense that you don't necessarily wanna do your bookkeeping, but.

What I think is so surprising to a lot of us is that there are people

out there who love bookkeeping.

All of our bookkeepers have degrees in accounting or finance.

They're QuickBook and zero certified.

They love everything about bookkeeping, and what I have found too is when you get

your books up to speed and your meeting with your bookkeeping VA every month.

Their excitement and their passion for what they do, even though it

is drudgery for us to do it, that spills over to us and now all of

a sudden we're excited because we have all these financial statements.

We don't just have them, our bookkeepers, helping us really understand what they

mean and how we can increase our profit.

And so I love the fact that you've partnered with us because we wanna

get them to that point where they're really excited and confident because

they have that, they have that specialized bookkeeper on their team

taking care of everything for them.

And then we do wanna figure out how we can help them start working with someone

like you to maximize their profit, because that's what it's all about.

We talk about profit first.

We talk about.

I don't mind paying taxes.

Kids have to go to school.

We need roads to drive on, but I don't wanna pay more taxes.

And it is crazy.

The estimate of small business owners, small, I'll say under $5 million, is

generally what they kinda consider small, but they're the ones who pay

the most in taxes because they aren't organized and they aren't taking

advantage of all the tax codes.

And so I love the fact that you're on the mission with us to change that.

A hundred percent.

And the funny thing about it is who?

Who writes the tax codes?

People think it's the IRS.

It's not the IRS.

Congress brings tax codes.

The IRS enforce them.

Who writes the ro?

The rules that Congress takes a lot of rich people.

Exactly.

So you've got wealthy business owners, real estate owners, people

who put the codes in place in order to encourage business growth,

real estate, asset ownership, being business ownership as well.

If we just simply look at how the rules are written, I like

to think of it like this.

If you've got the entire tax code and all these rules that can be used to the

benefit of businesses, there's this, if it's a big yard, a football field,

there's this tiny little box in the middle, and that's what the average

accounting industry focuses on, and they make sure that you're compliant.

You're doing the paperwork right, the numbers are in the

right check boxes and all that.

There's a whole lot more field out there.

And traditionally, in order to tap into more strategies that

require more paperwork like we're discussing, it requires five, 10,

$15,000 a year consulting fees.

And it's just for the average business owner, it can be cost prohibitive, right?

And so by automating those into an online platform, making

them accessible, all of us.

Main street average business owners can now pay taxes more like the wealthy.

And that's really what it's all about.

Just finding what applies to us and making sure we use it.

I love that.

I love that.

Yeah.

Because in our program we see how excited people are once their books are in

order, and once they start looking at them every month and understanding them

and feeling really good about, it's like building a solid foundation and then.

They're gonna be ready for what you offer, which is, okay,

let's save even more money.

Let's stop paying for taxes on things we don't need to.

What's out there?

How can we maybe restructure things a little bit?

Or how can we just take advantage of things we aren't taking advantage of?

I think it's brilliant.

Absolutely.

And that kind of flow of things is once you get things organized, you

can feel like your house is in order.

And especially having that virtual bookkeeper can help you feel that way and

knowing why a lot of business owners end up in this position where the reports.

QuickBooks don't match the bank account.

That seems a lot lower than it feels.

A lot lower than it should, and a bookkeeper can help you to feel

all of that cohesion and understand where your money is really at.

And from there, there's so many opportunities.

I'm working with a just, I'm helping a friend out in California who's

making probably about $150,000 a year with a one person business,

but paying a lot of taxes.

They're just running it through themselves.

No LLC, no S-corp.

And the conventional wisdom from their CPA is well set up an S-corp

and you're gonna save $8,000 a year.

So they were about to do that, and I hit the brakes on that with them because.

If you think about save saving $8,000 a year sounds great, but when they're

already paying $30,000 a year in taxes, you know what we can look for first

is what kind of opportunities are there to drastically lower that tax?

But what we found was they wanna be putting more into retirement, and if they

simply set up an LLC, they can funnel a lot of that current tax money as being

lost into a retirement account, which will then further lower their taxes to

the point where they don't even need to pay the expense of an S Corp yet.

So there's this huge tax saving opportunity just sitting out there,

waiting for them, and then as their business grows in revenue, then they

can implement something like an S corp that will make more sense for them when

they're a little higher in revenue.

So there's just so many opportunities to save money.

It's just, you gotta find, you gotta get the right strategies and that's

really, that's what my business questionnaire helps out with.

It helps people see some of the strategies.

It'll even help them see some strategies that my platform.

It doesn't even do for them.

It'll just give them some knowledge on where things could go for them.

Ben, where can they go to take that assessment?

Yeah, so head to, we'll drop the, we hopefully we can drop the link in here

'cause it's shield dot profit switch.com, which is really not the most glamorous

sounding website to tell people, but it's shield.profit-switch.com, which is gonna

have to change one of these days because it's cumbersome to talk to, talk about.

And yeah, there'll be a section where you can take a business health

assessment, a tax savings assessment, you can sign up for a free account.

And store the results and hop in there once a quarter and take those

assessments, see how you're doing.

It'll give you a health score, detailed recommendations, and

yeah, that's the way to do it.

I love it.

And Ben has been very generous.

For those of you who are listening.

He's even offering a free consultation where you could talk with him

just to get a clear, you better understanding of what's going on.

So if you get that report and you're like, this looks like Greek to me,

I don't understand what half of this means, he's willing to give you a free

consultation to talk you through that.

So make sure to take advantage of that.

Also for those of you who do not have your bookkeeping in order, you wanna

take advantage of tax write-offs, but everything's a hot mess.

Jeanie, I offer two free master classes every month.

And Jeannie, what is the URL to that?

We will put it in the bottom, but it's less math, more money.com.

Love it.

Love it.

Guys, thank you so much for just being here with us today.

Ben, thank you for being here with us.

I know that.

I got a lot out of it.

I'm sure our listeners got a lot out of it.

And also thank you for being a part of our Love Your Profit program and providing

so much value to all of our students.

We really value and appreciate you.

Yeah, thank you Kristen.

Jeanie, this has been great.

I've enjoyed it big time and love to see more and more people getting on with your

accounting, your book or your bookkeeping services and everything that you do.

It's, it's a wonderful.

Complete package you've put together for everybody.

So thank you.

Thanks for listening to the six Figure Business Mastery Podcast.

If you enjoyed listening to this episode and you are ready to leverage video

marketing on all online platforms, or maybe even start your own video

podcast, then you need to check out the done for You and Done with You program

at the marketing va advantage.com and take your business to the next level.