In this episode of the Main Street Business Podcast, hosts Mark J Kohler and Mat Sorensen delve deep into the challenges and opportunities of running a farming operation. They provide their expert insights on eight distinct, yet interconnected, farming strategies that can help both budding and seasoned farmers.
Here's what you can look forward to:
This episode is a must-listen for anyone involved in the farming industry, interested in asset protection, tax-saving strategies, and those planning for the future of their farming business.
In this episode of the Main Street Business Podcast, hosts Mark J Kohler and Mat Sorensen delve deep into the challenges and opportunities of running a farming operation. They provide their expert insights on eight distinct, yet interconnected, farming strategies that can help both budding and seasoned farmers.
Here's what you can look forward to:
This episode is a must-listen for anyone involved in the farming industry, interested in asset protection, tax-saving strategies, and those planning for the future of their farming business.
The problem many farmers have is they buy more stuff they don't need to save taxes or they put all their money back in their business rather than peel it out. And many of you believe, right, your best investment is back into yourself, back into your farm. I know it. But it's elusive. It's deceiving. It's a trick. Need to stop the insanity. The problem is, when you go buy something, it's not a dollar for dollar deduction against the tax. It's a deduction against the gross income. I've got eight tips for you today. We're going to talk about the S corporation strategy. The asset protection balance of left side, right side, and the trifecta number three, for those of you that might be stuck in a C corporation or a mess owning real estate in a corporation. Four, we're going to be talking about the transition to the next generation. Five, overbuying equipment we don't need. Yes, you know who you are out there. Six, being land rich, cash poor. How did we get there? How do we get out? Number seven, the estate plan, which is related to the farm transition. And then number eight, maintaining your entities, having a board of directors or board of advisors with your family. Because business is family. Farming is family. And yes, I'm a Yellowstone fan. Damn, I was going to wear my Yellowstone sweatshirt because I set up the Kohler Dutton Livestock company in Idaho two years ago. Okay, so, number one, I need to teach you a concept that is called the trifecta. The trifecta is a way to visually look at your structure as a farmer. Having a structure that you can build upon and organize your entities and your properties is absolutely critical. And a lot of farmers may be using annundated strategies or don't have a picture of where everything's at. They can feel overwhelmed. They can feel disorganized. So let's draw this out. What the trifecta is about is this three legged stool. And we are going to have at the base, your revocable living trust and also your 1040 tax return. So there's kind of a legal piece and a financial piece. All of your income runs down to your 1040, ultimately. So that's where we're going to have that. That's your foundation of the trifecta. The two other pieces, you can see this. The three legged stool here is you're going to have operations over here. This is running your business, your farm, your restaurant, whatever the case may be. Obviously, we're talking farming here. This is going to be the operations. Typically an S corporation, and it could be an LLC taxed as an S corp. Now, for those of C corporation, we'll come back to that. But the most common structure, and this is in ranching, farming, land development, real estate development, all of this is to have an S corporation on the left. Then on the right hand side is where we put our assets. And this could be the LLC with the farm. This could be buildings, structures, everything on it, yada, yada. So we're going to have all sorts of assets on the right side, but in this example, it'd be the farm. And we may lease the farm over to the S corp for the operations and then send back rent to the LLC for renting the farm and equipment and buildings. And this creates asset protection. The S Corp should own nothing. I don't want any assets on the S Corp side. Now, yes, you may have some backhoes, some tractors, some equipment. I'm okay with that. That might be in the corporation. In fact, it's very common that the equipment would be over here. But when I talk about, and I shouldn't have said the word equipment when I talk about buildings and land, I want these over here because the buildings are attached to the land. And if there's an accident that occurs in the ranch or the farm, I don't want a lawsuit from something that goes wrong here to get over to our land. So this is a very simple visual representation of left side, right side foundation. I want ops over here, I want the real estate over here, and I want it to all flow down into your trust for ownership and privacy. And any money comes down here goes onto your 1040. Any money down here onto your 1040. And this gives us some tax planning opportunities, because over here we're going to have rent, we're going to have depreciation. We might be using cost Seg, and we're going to be using strategies to rent these buildings back to the farm operation. Then over here, the equipment will also be a write off. But this is where all of our rev comes in. And we might have employees, vendors, supplies, equipment, seed, all that stuff. So this is our left side ops. So when we look at it in a little cleaner picture here, revocable living trust, we'll come back to that. We have an LLC for the land and barn, if you will call it that, or sheds, yada buildings. And then over here we have our s corp for operations. Boom. Boom. That's it. That's the trifecta. Now, we accomplished two goals here with this one. We're creating asset protection. I want these assets not in your operational entity. Again, if something goes wrong, where it's going to go wrong is in operations. We want a firewall. They can't get over here. We can't get to the LLC because there's a lease agreement arrangement for that. So let's stick with this for a minute. Some clients say, well, how many llcs do I need? I've got multiple buildings, I got multiple parcels, multiple pieces of land. It depends. We might have multiple llcs and it's very common. This might be the back 40, this might be the front 60. This might be the 1000 acres over there. This could be the buildings and the barn. Yada yada. And this could be on a separate parcel. So you're going to have multiple parcels, but it's about putting eggs in different baskets. We don't want to overdo it. I'm not the type to set up an LLC for every parcel. Any lawyer recommending that, not a good idea. We also want to set up the llcs in the state where the property is located. We're not going to go set up an LLC in Wyoming or Nevada to own directly property in Texas or Oklahoma. I want to make sure that my llcs are set up where the property is now down the road. We might set up a holding company that might own multiple llcs, and then we can create this extra barrier of protection. And this is called a cope entity if you want to study up on that. It's in my books. I've got all sorts of articles and podcasts on that, but this is next level. So number one, we want at least one LLC for my farm and buildings land. I'm going to lease it back to my operations. Now, number two, next level is I'm going to have multiple parcels, multiple buildings. I'm going to decide when it's too much, when it's too little. Look at cost benefit analysis and own those llcs over here, own those properties in the llcs and then lease any of those back to operations. Level three, I may add a holding company with extra protection. This is when I see clients with a million or more of equity, which many farmers and ranchers have. Mark, my lands were 20 mil, five mil, two mil, whatever it is, we got to be careful here. We don't want a lawsuit taking that away, but we don't want to overdo it with legal fees and all that. Well, Mark, I have insurance. I'm covered. Oh, really? When was the last time you made an insurance claim? Did they just rush to go pay that insurance claim? Not normally. They're always looking for a way to get out of it. We need to have two layers of protection. I still get insurance, but I also have a good LLC and do all the things to maintain it. And that's not one sheet of paper in a drawer somewhere in the home office. That's not an LLC. We got to have all the pieces and parts. I'll come back to that. So, number one, we want to have a good asset protection model in our trifecta. Number two, the S corp. I've got to tell you, so important. You have an S corporation structure. Now, let me explain the reason why, and I'll diagram this out. Let's say you have an LLC, you have a C Corp, or you have an S corp. It's very simple. I don't care if you're Mark. Well, you don't know. I know I've helped tens of thousands of business owners over the last 25 years. I've lived the 10,000 hours rule. I've done 10,000 consultations, hundreds if not thousands of people that own farms, and certainly real estate and land. So this is the law. This is how it works. Now, when it comes to the operations of the farm, not the renting of the buildings, that is revenue subject to self employment tax. It's ordinary income. You might put it on a schedule f on your 1040 with just a plain old LLC. Well, here's what happens. You bring in 100 grand, you spend 25 grand on expenses. You net 75. Now you have self employment tax. That adds up quick. I know farmers get some special benefits and breaks and hear that, and we could dive into it more deeply. We don't have the time for that today. But there's self employment tax, and we want to minimize that, so. Oh, well, 80 years ago, 60 years ago, all I could do is a C Corp. And some farmers inherit these C Corps from their moms and dads. In a C Corp, if you make the same 100 grand, you spend 25 grand on expenses. And by the way, you get the same freaking expenses in a C Corp as you do an LLC, you net 75. Well, now I have corporate tax. Oh, well, Mark, I get out of corporate tax because I just buy more crap I don't need and park it out back, or, oh, I take more salary and I zero it out. So my C Corp never pays tax. Oh, so you're either buying equipment, which you don't need, which we're going to talk about in a moment, or I'm going to take more salary. And when you take more salary, what do you take more? FICA, which is self employment tax. So if you're taking more salary, so you don't pay corporate tax, you're in a vicious cycle. Now you're paying. Oh, but I don't want to pay FICA, so I'll pay corporate tax. Well, at 21%, I don't want to pay that. The C Corp is ultimately a disaster. And I know some of you know that others are going well, Mark, I have carry forward losses in my C Corp. Okay, once those C Corp losses are gone, we're out. We got to make our s election and get the hell out, because here's how the S Corp works. So let's highlight this a little larger here. So, in an S corporation, this is what every operational ranch, farmer, dentist, doctor, dermatologist, accountant, engineer, landscaper, realtor. This is what we all are. These are very common. These are not high risk. If your accountant says, yeah, those s corps are high risk. You got to watch out for reasonable comp. They are wrong. I have never had a client audited in 25 years taking too little of salary on the S Corp. It can be abused, but it's not by millions of Americans, and it's well established. Freaking Joe Biden had an s corp for his book deal before he became president, and he did the same strategy. Very, very common. So what it works like, same. 100 grand comes in, 25 grand goes out, and that 75, there's no corporate tax like a C Corp. And there's no self employment tax. No self employment tax, which is normally 15.3%. So that's. Oh, my gosh. That's another ten grand in tax before you pay fed and state, depending on where you're at. So this scorp saves a ton because there's no self employment, no corporate tax. But, yes, you have to take a reasonable salary. So in this example, I might take 25 grand of salary. W two, it the bottom drops out with 50 grand. See, all I'm doing is switching. I'm cleaning my scorp. So the scorp has 75 profit, but I'm going to take 25 grand in w two and 50 grand in k one. You just saved $7,500 in self employment tax. So this is the scorp strategy that so many farmers are missing because their accountant is so conservative that they take a huge salary and the savings sucks. And then they tell you the scorp doesn't work. No, it works. They're just taking too much salary. So if you're not using the scorp. That's step one. Let's get it going and get a consultation, make sure it's a good fit for you. I like the break even of 50 grand. If you're making 50 grand or more and not buying crap, you don't need to bring down the profit, you know what I'm saying? You're making 50 grand or more. The scorp works every time, and we've been standing behind it for years, people. I'm licensed in multiple states as a lawyer and accountant. I'm on the board of the AICPA here in Arizona. I am not screwing around with this. And I carry malpractice insurance and I have books on that stand behind it. So anybody else is telling you something different, look at their credentials and start getting a second opinion. This scorp is phenomenal. It works great. Level one, have an s corp. Level two, don't take too much in payroll, people. This is the time to set up your 2024 plan. All right, so if we look at our first two strategies here. So, number one, we looked at having good asset protection and the right number of entities. Number two, you're going to look at your s corporation and make sure if it's needed, and if you're taking the right salary, those are your first two strategies. All right, number three, while we're here, I'm going to talk about the C Corporation mess. So what happens is a lot of farmers, regrettably, it's not their fault, inherit a C corporation from mom or dad or some old school accountant. So now you've got the C Corp sitting over here. You're fighting the battle of corporate tax every year, buying crap you don't need or taking salary you don't need. If this is you, I cannot recommend enough getting a second or third opinion from advisors that are not your current advisors because they're going to justify what you have because they don't want to be guilty for having you in a bad spot. Isn't that kind of interesting? It's like if you go to your accountant that's recommended a C Corp and ask if it's a good idea, of course they're going to tell you it's a good idea because they've been making you do it. You got to get a second opinion from someone else that has no vested interest in your decision. That doesn't mean free advice either, because that means they're going to sell you something to get paid. So pay for good advice. Do not step over the dollar to pick up a nickel in this area. You've got millions of dollars at stake with your family, ranch, and legacy. Same second opinion for an hour or two is not going to hurt the C Corp. What we would normally do is try to get you out of that in various ways. We might set up a sister S corp and start shifting operations over here. Slowly but surely, over the next two to three years, we might make an S election and then just sit on it and wait. Because you have a five year wait before you could sell any assets in the C Corp without a built in gain. But you can start saving taxes immediately with an S election. And sometimes you can just dissolve the C Corp all entirely and just immediately and shift over. The problem is sometimes the C Corp owns equipment or owns land and the farm. Oh, and I know some of you feel this pain. Your C corporation already owns the whole freaking farm on title, lockstock and barrel, and grandpa or grandma or dad or whoever put the company and the land all in a C Corp. I know you've been there. It's a hard planning situation, but don't throw up your arms. That's what I wanted to say on this point. Get a second opinion of how you can unwind the C Corp, even if there's land and built in gains in it, and make an S election and wait the holding time before you sell the business to your kids or the next generation or whoever farm hands, whoever you're going to sell it to. There's a five year wait once you make the S election. Learn about it, study it up. That's number three. So the number three strategy is those in a C Corp mess get a second opinion. All right, now I want to go over to. I've already alluded to this overbuying of equipment, so I just want to have a little heart to heart. I know many of you hate, hate paying taxes. And in your minds, trust me, I grew up in a family of farmers. My grandpa was a farmer, owned a dairy. Because of this red blooded american hate of paying taxes, which I totally get, they would rather buy a new piece of equipment and have it out there gaining rust than give the government tax dollars. But let me just open your heart and mind for one moment. Let's say your tax bill is $30,000. You've got $100,000 of income. You're in a 30% bracket. So you're like, mark, I don't want to pay that tax, so I'm going to go buy something. The problem is when you go buy something. It's not a dollar for dollar deduction against the tax. It's a deduction against the gross income. So if you have 100,000 of income and a $30,000 tax bill and you go buy a piece of equipment for 50 grand, you now reduce the income and cut the tax bill down to 15 grand. So you're still paying tax of $15,000, and you're sitting on a piece of equipment for 50. Okay. Now, if you would have just paid the tax, you would have had $70,000 left over. Now, you go buy equipment that's sucking wind over here, maybe 50 grand, and you're paying tax of 15,000. So you spent $65,000, and you're only sitting on 35,000. Now, you may say, well, Mark, I bought that tractor on a note. Don't kid yourself with notes. Now you're just kicking the can down the street. You know that you're going to have to pay the 50 grand. So I would prefer to see you take pay the 30 grand. I've got other suggestions here, but hang tight baseline. If I don't need that piece of equipment, and I could lease one from a farmer or the supplier for ten grand next season, I just saved 40 grand. So I'm putting now in my pocket more money by just simply paying the tax and being more efficient and not buying something that really doesn't reduce the tax proportionally. I only reduce the tax by, if I go buy something for 50 grand, I only saved 15 grand in tax. I'm out. Good. We want to be thinking of the net benefit of buying equipment and be very careful. So I have a historian or example on the same point that leads to land rich and cash poor. So one of my Idaho farmers and I drive truck in the Idaho harvest I have the last three years. It's awesome. So I'm driving truck as the digger is kicking out potatoes into the truck. Then I peel off, head back to the silo, drop my potatoes, and go. And doing 60,000 potatoes in one truckload is so exciting. Some of these guys are selling, of course, to McDonald's and five guys and all that. It's huge. The potato operation in Idaho. So I'm driving truck. Love it. Anyway, so I'm hanging out with my farming buddies, and I love Jason. Just say his first name. And we're talking about his farm and the whole operation, and he's like, look at these. He's got building after building. Truck lined up, diggers and cedars and fertilizing machine. I mean, he's got just beautiful operation. It's just gorgeous. Quintessential. Got a big flag on the side of one of the barns. I just love him and his operation. But his bane of existence is I have no 401, I have no ira. I don't have any rental properties. Mark, what you see, that's my wealth. Land rich, building rich, equipment rich, cash, not poor. They're successful. But it's a year to year type thing, right? You guys know what I'm saying? Me, myself, I want to own this. The last 25 years, I've been building up multiple firms, accounting firm, law firm, trust company. I am business rich and cash poor myself. I did not peel off enough money along the way and set it aside in asset protected, different investments, hedge against inflation, hedge against market risk, hedge against prices of commodities. I just went straight at it. And many of you believe, right, your best investment is back into yourself, back into your farm. I know it, but it's elusive. It's deceiving. It's a trick. Need to stop the insanity. And Jason and I were talking, saying, hey, if I could just peel off 100 grand a year out of my operation, and he could, and rather than going and buying more equipment and more operations, stay lean and mean, pay off a little more debt and maybe take that 100 grand and drop it into some Roth IRAs, health savings accounts and 401 ks. Not because you're going to buy Wall street products. Oh, no. You can take that, buy another piece of land and rent it to another farmer. You could buy a duplex in your could buy a fourplex rental property, other buildings, other equipment in your iras and 401 ks and rent them to others. This is called self directing. Self directing a retirement account and investing in what, you know, boast what you love. This is very doable. So my point here is on this topic. Be very careful of throwing money at assets and equipment to chase a tax deduction and not invest in some diversified ways. I'm going to repeat that. The problem many farmers have is they buy more stuff they don't need to save taxes, or they put all their money back in their business rather than peel it out. Now, the good news here on these two points I'm making is that if you peel money off into a retirement account, there's all sorts of creative retirement accounts. You call my office, my attorneys will hook you up. We don't sell investment structures, but we can point in the right direction between 401 ks and group 401 ks, safe harbor, all the things that might be really helpful for your team and family. Then you can invest in what you know. Let's do an example for fun. Oh, I wish I had a little picture. I think maybe in post production here, we can do a little picture in my trifecta. And this is something that you're going to all build, is you're going to have also your iras over here. You're going to have your 401, your kids Roth Iras, your Roth IrAs, your spouse Roth IRAs. And then what we're going to do is the llcs that own the real estate and the farm and the buildings and the ranch lease over to the S Corp. But your S corp is sponsoring these retirement accounts or funding them. The one I did, that I've been doing for years, and I loved it. And I want to show you an example, is I have a health savings account. You can fund a health savings account and not even cover other employees'health insurance if you don't want it. So you build an HSA health savings account. I got podcasts and videos on. You'd love them. You want to screw over the medical industry and the government. The HSA is your best knife to twist in their back. I love the HSA. So this HSA of mine formed an LLC two years ago and bought cows. So this is called self directing. You can take an HSA, you could take an IRA, you could take a Roth, you could take a. Could take a simple. A sep. Any of these retirement accounts. I took my HSA, formed an LLC called the Kohler Dutton livestock Company in Idaho. You can go look it up. It's on the state website. And I bought five cows in the spring who were already pregnant. They gave birth to five, believe it or not, steers. A lot of times it's a 2332, but I got five steers. It was like fluke. Steers are worth more in the auction in the fall, but I can't build my herd with five steers. We can go to birds and the bees for you farmers that aren't ranchers, if you need. But anyway, then I got the five cows pregnant in the fall or in the summer. So in the fall, I sold it all out and I sold my five pregnant cows. My five cows. Five in the oven, my five cows and my five steers. And I had bought some pre bought some hay for the fall, and I sold the whole operation and made 30%. Now, as many of you can imagine, this was a $10,000 investment. Nothing earth shattering, but I wanted to show my clients that, yeah, you can buy ranches, farms, real estate, inside a health savings account, even an IrA Roth. Or. Funny thing was, as you guys know, I went to go sell. I was tracking beef prices and all this, and I had put these cows with a friend of mine up in Idaho that threw them in his herd and charged me a grazing fee for the summer. And then we had vets come and we did our roundup and all this stuff. It was so fun. And I call him up, and I go, hey, I'm ready to sell my cows. He's like, what do you mean you're ready to sell your cows? I'm like, this is an investment. I'm trying to make money. He's like, don't you want to build your herd? No. This is why you're broke. You keep building your herd. You need to sell them once in a while. He's like, well, I love my cows. I'm like, yeah, that's why you're cow rich and cash. And I love him. And we joke, and I'm like, no, you got to make some profit. This is Beth lecturing John Dutton, dad, we got to make some money here. And John Dutton's like, no, we got to build the herd, protect farm. It's like, oh, my gosh. We're losing money, dad. Anyway, so classic example, right? And so what did he do? He bought my cows. I'm like, can we just sell them on the auction? He's like, no, I'll give you auction price. I'm like, holy crap. So he built up his herd another by 15, and I was like, oh, my gosh. You're killing me. But the point is, I want to say is that this is very doable to self direct. So we've got overbuying of equipment and staying land rich, cash poor, by not peeling money off into retirement accounts that are tax deductible or even a roth, and buying what we love and investing, not just so it's sitting on the back 40. All right, so that's done. That's done. Let's go to the board of advisors and maintaining your companies. Then we'll do our estate plan and farm succession planning. So, people, when you set up an LLC, you want asset protection. Someone gets hurt driving truck, car, blah, texting and driving. Someone gets hurt on machinery, equipment. You want to protect whatever's outside of the LLC. So if there's an accident in the LLC, they can only get what's in the LLC. Well, the court process for that is showing the court and the judge that you protected the veil, the corporate veil, the LLC veil, it's the same thing, corporate veil, whether it's an LLC or corp. And the judge is going to go, did you commingle cash and checking accounts? Did you do your tax return? Did you use the name of the LLC on all the lease agreements? Did you use the LLC on title to the property? Did you pay your people out of the right entity or did you pay for your employees over here, but the LLC owns it over here that's commingling. And any plaintiff that's pissed that their kid got hurt on a four wheeler and on your property and starts suing you, they're going to try to pierce your other entities by showing you commingled. And they're going to ask for a copy of your LLC and your minutes and your bylaws and your operating agreement and all the stock certificates and membership certificates. And you're going to go, I don't have any of that. I don't even know where dad set up the LLC or corporation 30 years ago. So you have to clean it up. You've got to maintain your entities. And it's cheap. It's totally cheap and affordable. And this year you have a new sheriff in town. Finson, the corporate Transparency act, have you seen this in the news at all? Oh, you're going to see it hard this year. We've already been getting broadcasting everywhere. Finson Financial Investigation Network for crimes is the sister to the IRS. Finson there was a law passed by Congress three years ago that said we are sick of money launderers and people ripping others off with these Shell LLCs and corporations around the country. So now we're asking and requiring in 2024 that all business owners report the ownership, their home addresses, the officers, the managers to the federal government. Now, I can still keep you private from other farmers and people on public record, but the federal government, just like the IRS, they know what you own. And Finson needs to know what you own because they're going after bad guys. Don't blame me. Don't blame the gov, blame bad guys that are ripping people off with these Shell lcs and companies. So the BOI report business owner information report is now required to be filed this year for every entity you have. Every entity or the penalty is $500 a day or two years in jail. Some of you are like, what? Pay attention. Every LLC incorporation for small business owners in America, there's 23 exemptions. Trust me, they don't work for small business owners. They're all for big companies. And I've got articles on this and podcasts. You can learn more. It's coming. It's right now. The government warned us three years ago it's going to come. And now it's here. It's like the real id for traveling soon. You have to file this report by the end of the year or it's $500 per day penalty or two years in jail and a $10,000 fine. We are helping our clients do this along with company maintenance, doing their minutes, cleaning up their LLC, cleaning up their corporation. We charge $200, $200 to maintain your entity. And to clean it up, it might need $300 of love. New operating agreement minutes. La la. Maintaining your entity property properly protects you in an IRS audit and from a potential lawsuit. And now you've got to get the feds their report, too. And we take care of all that. We've been doing this for years for clients. So if you get to our law firm site, it'll be down in the description and I'll give you some contact information here so that you can get some support in this area. Not all accountants and lawyers are doing BOI reports this year because they are exposed if they do it wrong. But we've been doing this for years. We're all ready to go. So here's the cool part. Some of you are like, more crap to do. Here's the good part. When you set up and clean up your entity, you're going to set up a board of advisors, a board of directors. And what I want you to do is use those board of directors and advisors to help you in your business. And guess who they're going to be? Your family. So if you're trying to train brother sister kids on how to take over the farm, having them on the board and having regular board meetings allows you to compensate them, which is one of the best tax strategies out there. I don't even have time to go there today. Compensating family members, having your spouse and yourself and the kids on the board of advisors. If it's an LLC, board of directors, if it's corporation having regular minutes. Well, my accountant or lawyer never told me to do that. That's because accountants aren't lawyers and they shouldn't be setting up entities. And number two, lawyers don't know everything about asset protection. They're usually multitasking. They're doing divorces on Mondays in small towns, a car accident on Wednesday, and set up your LLC on Friday. That's not the right person for your multimillion dollar farm operation. Get a second opinion. We want all of your entities in a trifecta. Clean, organized, tight, very affordable to maintain them. Privacy, we may want your name nowhere on these entities and your home address nowhere to be found. We can do that. Now, the feds are going to know, but not the public or people that might want to sue you. So maintaining your entity, maintaining your structure and asset protection is so simple and affordable, but it's critical. It's like the Achilles heel of a small business owner. All right, now, the last two points, number seven and eight, let's go back to the whiteboard for a minute. So what I'd like to do here is let's talk about the estate plan and succession planning. Now, many of you know they have financial advisors that will buy you dinner. And I know many of you have gotten pitched this. I'm not going to say sucked into or taken advantage of, because there's great lawyers and financial advisors out there. There's also wolves and sheep's clothing. But in so many of main Street America, these financial advisors and lawyers will offer you a free dinner and then come in for an estate planning spiel, blah, blah. And then they're charging two, three, $4,000 or more. They look at how much your farm is worth, and that's how much they charge you. Bull crap. I hate that. We have the same flat fee for a full on comprehensive estate plan, the creme de la creme. The most expensive estate plan we have is $2,500. And whether you're worth 25 million or $250, it's the same damn price. So as you're shopping around, be careful of lawyers that like to go, oh, you're worth this much, or, it's complicated, it's this. More, don't go there. So the estate plan I'm talking about is this, of course, the revocable living trust. It's revocable. You can change it. Don't do an irrevocable trust. For every thousand trusts we do, we may do one irrevocable. I have books on this. Watch out. But your trust owns your home. The trust owns your LLC that owns the farm. The Trust is the beneficiary of your IRA. The trust owns your s corp or LLC, taxed as an s corp. And everything flows down into your trust. If anything happens to you, the trust tells the trustee and the family how everything is going to be divided out. This is absolutely critical to avoid probate. So there's no court involvement, fewer judges, fewer lawyers, and the family can just boom go to the next step. Again, I've got an hour at least, of talking about this, but if you don't have an estate plan, get it done. If you've done it more than five years ago, get it reviewed. And if you're kind of liking some of the things I'm saying, have one of my tax lawyers review it. Look at your tax return, build a trifecta, and give you a plan for the year. You may be out less than two grand to get a second opinion. That could save you ten times that. We'll look at your tax returns, what your accountants are doing, lawyers are doing, and just give you a great plan of attack that you can implement wherever you want or with us. Now, what the sister of this is, and that's super important, and I'm going to put it in red, is the succession plan. How are you going to transition the farm operations and the land and buildings? How are you going to get those down to the next generation? Are they ready for it? Are they being trained properly? Do they know what to do, how to do? Are you involving them in the books? A lot of times, trust me, I've been there. Mom and dad don't like to share the books, like keeping the family in the dark, and, oh, we're always broke, and we're always this and we're always that, and they're trying to build it. And you're right, you got to manage cash flow. They don't know how you survive during the rough years, and you're nervous kids are going to blow the money in a good year and be starving during the bad years and go into debt. I know. I've seen it, and I know many of you are afraid of that. Well, the only way your kids are going to learn about this so they don't fall into that trap is you bringing them in, opening your kimono, having board meetings, showing them how to manage money, and getting involved. They don't have to have control, but they have to see and learn. And a succession plan is typically tied to your revocable living trust, because in your trust, you're going to say, uhoh, I just died and I didn't get a chance to fully pass along the business to my family. So here's how it goes. And it's kind of like an evacuation plan. We're going to go. A succession plan could be a five to ten year plan with your next generation. But if you die, the succession plan goes into warp speed. And so you have to have a plan that takes that into account on this note, too. I cannot say this enough, and I'm going to say it to all you dads out there. Do not forget your daughters. Your daughters are going to be ones taking care of you. And I've seen it over and over again. Dad gets taken care of for years, maybe mom, by loving, caring daughters. And the son drives away with the new f 150 and the farm and the daughters get nothing. It happens all the time. And it doesn't have to happen that way if you want the son, oldest, youngest, whoever, or sons and farm hands to get the farm. Because I know you. You want to say they know what they're doing. I get it. They know what they're doing. They're going to run the farm and carry on the legacy in the name. I get it. Beth doesn't want to run Yellowstone. Casey barely wants to run it. The boys are going to want to run it. But you've got to build a plan to take care of the daughters. It can be done through some extra parcels, rental properties, retirement accounts, life insurance. You can say, hey, when I die, here's what the daughters get. They get this fat life insurance policy. Thank you for being great daughters and taking care of me and mom. Sons, you get the farm. But guess what? You don't get it on a silver freaking platter. You're going to have to pay off the daughters a little bit. And it's fair. They're not paying you off. You're dead. So they can pay off the sisters a little bit, maybe, I don't know. Do you have a plan? If you died tomorrow, would it be Defcon three and a train wreck and a cluster. You know what? Don't let that happen. It happens all the time. I'm freaking ten steps away from a heart attack myself, and I hate even saying that. But we are have a succession plan tied to your estate, plan that can kick it into warp speed if you have to get a second opinion from a tax lawyer or lawyer that understands the ramifications of estate tax and how you're going to pass this on, how you're going to get paid or bill. In my book, financial freedom, I have six chapters on how to sell your business. I've been there. I've got practice group attorneys that will help with this, too. Now, this today, this was not an infomercial. It's been an honor to be with you. I'm telling you what we charge and our resources, just so you can price check. If you don't have anywhere else to go, you can come our direction. We'd be grateful. We're busy. We're not starving. We're trying to build a main street America law firm. And I love my farmers. I'm going to be on the farm the rest of my life. I've got all sorts of dreams and plans and raw land ideas, and I'll get it to my potato farm every year. And love alfalfa and the smell in the fall. I want to thank you for your hard work. So many Americans have no clue how that food ends up in the grocery store. And if you're like me, there's a little doomsday in me planning my bunker or whatever, and my food storage and water and fuel. And we're all wanting to build that compound a little better. Maybe we spend our money there instead of another combine. Let's be wise with our money. These eight tips, I hope one of them impacted you in a big way. I've got a weekly podcast called the Main Street Business podcast. This directed Ira podcast, a YouTube channel, books. I'm not going anywhere. And I love to help plan and for these sorts of issues. I hate fights. I don't want you to have any fights. So thank you for hearing me out again, honor to be here. Thank you to all of you. I'm just so grateful to be part of your lives. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you. Appreciate you. I'm going to grab lunch now. Someone brought that in. I'm excited. And everybody, keep living the dream. It's real. It's there. Let's keep working hard. Close.