The Most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast Ever!

Save on Taxes with KC Chohan of Together CFO

• Dwan Bent-Twyford/KC Chohan • Season 5 • Episode 387

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Unlock the secrets of minimizing tax liabilities with KC Chohan of Together CFO! In this episode, KC provides expert guidance on sophisticated tax strategies tailored for high-net-worth individuals and business owners. Discover invaluable knowledge about tax structures, including cost segregations and opportunity zones, and learn how specific areas like downtown Clinton, Iowa, are providing unique tax advantages through revitalization projects.

Achieving success in real estate isn’t just about making smart investments—it's also about preserving wealth. We discuss the importance of setting clear daily goals to stay productive, building a knowledgeable team, and leveraging private foundations for asset protection and legacy planning. These strategies are essential for anyone with significant tax liabilities looking to optimize their financial approach and ensure long-term prosperity.

Ever wondered how to transition from corporate life to starting your own business? Hear firsthand experiences of the entrepreneurial journey, from overcoming challenges to celebrating triumphs. We delve into the significance of instilling a strong work ethic in the next generation, the difference between being rich and being wealthy, and the impact of gratitude in everyday life. This episode is brimming with insights for anyone eager to enhance their financial strategies and leave a lasting legacy.

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Make it a Dwanderful Day!

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I'm your girl. You can also go to dwanderful d-w-a-n-d-e-r-f-u-l, dwanderfulcom, opt in and I have some free ebooks for you. I took my name Dwan aWonderful and I made a new word, so that's how we became Dwanderful and I made a new word. So that's how we became DeWonderful. And, as you can see, I have one of my wicked smart dudes on here today. So we have Casey Chohan. How are you today? Did I say it right?

KC Chohan:

You did say it right. I'm doing fantastic. Thank you for having me on.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I'm excited to have you on here today because I don't know a whole lot about you, so I'm excited to learn what you're all about, casey. So we basically just throw our guests straight up into the wolves, and so what I have you do is just tell us in like a sentence what you do, how to find you on social media, and then we're just going to ask questions and see how you became to be the wild and famous KCasey.

KC Chohan:

All right, yeah, so we'll start with the social media stuff. Get that out of the way with. So, Ttogether, cfo is the name of the company, and we help high net worth individuals, business owners, save money on taxes and create a lasting legacy. Protecting assets, eliminating capital gains it all pairs really well with real estate and real estate professionals, so it kind of it's going to be a great one today for your audience.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

It is and what are your? How are we find you like on Instagram? What is your?

KC Chohan:

Yeah, instagram. You can find me at together CFO, or one word, ogether CFO. On Twitter, it's my name KCasey Chohan, just the two letters K-C and then C-H-O-H-A-N Full name. Again on LinkedIn, the company is also on LinkedIn, so you can type in Together CFO anywhere on Google. It'll come up or Casey Chohan and you'll easily be able to find me, or the website itself, which is TogetherCFOcom. Nice, I love it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

And I always just like everyone to. I know a lot of people that give like this long laundry list as they introduce people, but I feel like it sounds nice for coming from you and I like to have all the stuff at the top of the show notes, Cause you know some people will watch. You know two, three, four minutes of a podcast and read the show notes and then decide if they're going to watch. I at least want them to know where they can find you if they don't listen and watch all of it. But I mean honestly, who would not want to watch the two of us? So people need to stay in and be a part of it, because this is what's happening, all right.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So exactly right, it is exactly right now. I love the fact that you talk about taxes because I know, because I teach and coach a lot of new real estate investors and they're always asking me tax questions. I'm like, listen, I'm not your girl, I can't give you any tax advice. I can't tell you what kind of LLC. I can't tell you any of that stuff because I don't know enough to teach you. I have a person. You need to find a person. So this would be great because you can help us unfold some of the mysteries about the taxes. And then I'll say people like, hey, go check out Casey. If you like him, you need to work with them because it is like it's great for real estate, but it's a whole different animal just by itself, regardless of what you do for a living, taxing and saving money and all the stuff, it's just this whole entire entity.

KC Chohan:

Oh, 100%. It can get really complex and especially here with America, the rules are very different. It follows you around the world, anywhere you go, so you kind of set up a structure that really takes care of you and your family in the most efficient way possible, unless you actually like paying taxes, and I've not met many people that like paying taxes.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

None of us do. And I hear people say like, oh, the rich people, they don't pay as much in taxes. It's like no, the rich people or the don't pay as much in taxes. It's like no, the rich people or the people that have more, hire somebody to help them to save and not have to pay on every single solitary thing.

KC Chohan:

That's exactly right. So when you look at the tax code itself, all it says is that you have to pay your fair share. So what is your fair share compared to the billionaires that are all paying single-digit tax rates? When their tax returns got leaked in ProPublica a few years back, it showed that they were in the low single-digit tax rates as a net tax rate, which is ridiculous to some people. But honestly, they're just using the structures out there that are available, the structures out there that are available. There's one level for loopholes which pretty much everyone should be using things like cost segregations, pub zones, opportunity zones, like there's so many different things to do that everyone can do. But then when you start making that serious amount of money, you kind of run out of loopholes and that's really where structures supersede loopholes and that's really where we supersede loopholes and that's really where we come in yeah, we and I you know, I told you we're.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I'm in my little downtown, clinton iowa apartment my husband is from here and this little downtown it's, uh, three blocks wide and three blocks deep. It's like it's right on the mississippi river. So you have three blocks and three blocks. So this little area they're doing like a bring back the downtown, but it's 100 opportunity zone. So we and you know, if you keep them for 10 years, there's no capital gains, and so we ended up getting a total of 28 parcels of land here and they're giving us grants and money for facades and money for things and it's an opportunity zone. So then people are like, what does that mean? And I was like well, it's just an area that you know, whoever made the decision? Maybe you can tell us whoever made the decision to make an opportunity zone and trying to get people to invest there and bring up the values of those properties.

KC Chohan:

Yeah, the way I would phrase it is that the tax code is written for the government to incentivize certain activities. So in this example it is to redevelop this particular spot of land. In other opportunities they wanted people to buy vehicles, so they let you accelerate depreciation of vehicles over £6,000. Let you accelerate depreciation of vehicles over 6,000 pounds. So the government's always coming up with new and not wonderful, but new loopholes that phase in and then other loopholes phase out at the same time. And it can be problematic as well, because a couple of years back I'm sure you had some clients that were doing conservation easements. Now they came out with a whole set of rules about these easements which were really beneficial for a lot of people, but too many people abused it and then they ended up changing the rules and auditing a bunch of people. So it's not to say that loopholes can be risky if you push it too far.

KC Chohan:

But that's where again, structures when you build a structure. You mentioned capital gains there. Yes, in certain situations you can defer capital gains with a 1031. Or if you're doing an opportunities on or get like some special relief, you can defer it. But there's a lot of parameters and things that you have to meet. If you have the right structure, using the foundation as an example, you can totally eliminate capital gains tax. So in the right type of structure, you can get your effective tax rate down to 1.39%, which is very similar to all these billionaires because they're doing it in the right structure, rather than the traditional LLCs, s-corps and C-Corps that people use rather than the traditional LLCs, s-corps and C-Corps that people use.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So someone is and let's just say we're going to talk about in the real estate investing scene. Someone is in the real estate investing and they are the first thing like, oh, I've got to get an LLC, I've got to get this. You know, everyone spends like six months I need an LLC, I need a website, I need this, I need this, I need that. I'm like you know, you just need to start, you need to hire someone to help you manage whatever money you're making so that you start off with good habits. So for someone that might be listening today, that's really new. Maybe they're buying, like their first property, what is something they need to know or look out for, that they wouldn't know. If they're, just, you know, a regular person that's like, hey, I'm going to buy a house and fix it up and keep it and turn it into a rental. Yeah, so we can.

KC Chohan:

We can use. We can use a scenario. So the first one that I use in everyday life is I don't let anything paralyze me getting stuff done, because there's so many things that you could put in your own way, like you mentioned. Hey, I need an LLC, I need a website, I need a new office stamp or whatever it is. You can make these things up and you can get in your own way so quickly. That's not going to achieve anything. I always have a list of. These are my three objectives for the day. If buying some real estate is one of them, then I'm going to be making a hell of a lot of calls to find a good deal, to underwrite it and get it closed right. So get out of your own way is always the first thing, because you could go clean your office or your house 10 million times and still get nothing done because you've just put something in your way that it's not significant. So that's the first one.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Then the second one, telling people to get out of their own way is that is such good advice, because people are like paralyzed by the fear and you know, making them say what if? What if? What if? What? If it's like, yeah, but what if it works, like, let's just go with that?

KC Chohan:

Let's start on that side. Well, that's the whole point of having a mentor like yourself. Right, you surround yourself with people that have been there and done that several times over. It's not their first rodeo. They know what they're doing. They're not nervous at the transaction because it's a walk in the path for them. They're experts in that field. Right, if you're doing it on your own and you don't have a team, that's where you start getting nervous and you start double guessing yourself and the doubt creeps in. But if you've got the right team around you whether that's real estate team, whether that's tax team, whether that's operations team, it doesn't matter the team You've got the right people around you then that's going to help you accelerate a lot quicker.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yep, quicker. Yep, yep, Yep. Okay, so that's first piece Get out of your own way.

KC Chohan:

What else should be what we got for? Get the right team, get the right mentor around you. That's essential, right, because if you're guided in the wrong direction, you can easily make some mistakes. Right, if you're trying to figure it out yourself for the first time, you could underwrite a deal pretty horribly and lose everything very quickly. Versus, if you hire the right mentors and the right team around you, you get to use their decades of experience and you're more likely to hit a home run than if you're doing it on your own. Now then the third one is depending on the level at which you're at in terms of net income and how much you want to spend and what scenario it is.

KC Chohan:

Look into a private foundation. This is one of the most underused structures and people think it's only for the billionaires. It's not. It's for the regular millionaires, accredited investors as well. You can use this type of structure. It not only protects your assets because it's not in your name, so you don't have a huge target on your back. It creates legacy, because your children and future generations can take that over completely probate-free. And it gets you down, if done correctly, to a 1.39% tax rate and also, just sprinkling a cherry on the top. If you're buying all cash, you can eliminate sales tax. Sorry, the property tax. You can eliminate property tax. So there's so many benefits to be had.

KC Chohan:

If you use a private foundation, you're helping grow your legacy and protect your assets, and really that's what we help people do is, hey, you know what an LLC does. Yes, wyoming, nevada, delaware LLCs you know, everybody knows that, or most people know that S-Corps probably not the best structure for real estate, and then C-Corps unless you're doing a syndication, probably not the best, right? Yeah, not. It's pretty simple. When you're beginning, people are going to usually push you towards an LLC. But what I would say is do some extra research and see if a private foundation is actually a better fit for you, because there's no capital gains in that. Because there's no capital gains in that. So even if you were to flip it or it's a long-term hold or it's just a rental you can go on making paying such little tax firstly, and then no capital gains on the flip side. So there's a lot of benefits, in my opinion, for the right type of person. Again, it's not for everyone, but if you're an accredited investor or higher, then it's something you should definitely look into.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So what is your ideal client? Because it doesn't sound like your ideal client is someone starting off on their first deal. So for them to be able to come to you and say, ok, casey, I'm ready for you. I've been over here, I've had my little CPA and now I'm ready to move up into the big leagues, what would someone need to come and say I want to work with you. Where do they have to be in?

KC Chohan:

the food chain. Yeah, firstly, they don't have to switch CPAs. We play really well with other CPAs and other advisors, so it's not a mandatory requirement that they have to switch their relationship over. But they do have to be paying over $200,000 a year in taxes or expect to be paying over that much in taxes. And that's really where going through the complexity of creating something like a foundation makes sense, because if you're paying $50,000, $20,000 in tax, there's enough loopholes that you can use for free without having to go for the Rolls Royce of structures. Right, that's right, you can get by. So it's dependent on what level you're at. But generally speaking, $200,000 in taxes plus starts to make sense to look into a foundation.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So then the person opens the foundation, so I have the De family foundation, and then that is how it all gets passed down through probate, and down, down down no, there's no probate.

KC Chohan:

That's the beauty about this. So with the probate, you you're actually taking a risk that you could lose a lot of that wealth to the system of paying taxes on that, but with the foundation, it's already written out. So let's say that you would be the chairperson of your foundation and then your husband would take over upon your demise and then your children or nieces and nephews, or whoever you wish, would take over. Next, it's just passing over control of the entity To the next person. The entity, yeah, is always owning all of the assets. So the foundation will always own the real estate apartments half of Mississippi that you own. Right, that would be owned by the foundation. But the person controlling the foundation would be whoever you designate.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I like that. I like that. I guess I don't know enough about private foundations. I'm feeling like I should have been doing this a decade ago.

KC Chohan:

Definitely at your level. You should have been yes.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Okay. Well, that's okay. It's never too late to change.

KC Chohan:

Exactly, and that's the beauty about it is that there's so much information out there at all times, so don't want to get over paralyzed, but definitely look at the pros and cons of hey. If we were to move this 20-odd parcels that you bought into a foundation, how would it work? Well, firstly, you'd get a tax deduction because that's a donation, so on your personal taxes that would go down. Then the asset would be in the foundation and any passive income that you're making on that would be taxed at 1.39% If you were to flip any of those parcels 0% capital gains. So there's a lot of benefits.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

There are a lot of benefits. I don't know enough about her. I've never really sat down and thought about it, but it's like I feel like we should already be in this.

KC Chohan:

Yeah, and you don't have to wait 10 years to defer that capital gains tax, it's instant yes, yes, yes, okay.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So it's super good that I met you today, because I clearly need to step up my game.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I've already I've got three kids and I've got, like you know, four, four grandkids at this point and I'm like, and you know my husband's like, oh, our kids and then our grandkids. I'm like, yeah, but what if grandkids don't want to take it over? And you know, it's like we need to have like more things in place because I don't want to work all the years I'm working to build up all this wealth. And then the kids are like, oh yeah, let's just go party on Mimi's dime.

KC Chohan:

Well, that's what happens when we look at family offices. They do a lot of surveys on the elite families and they see by the third generation that usually gets squandered. So the first generation makes the wealth, the second generation sometimes helps or sometimes kind of keeps it stable. But the third generation, the grandkids, usually squander it all because they're too far away and they've only seen the good times but they don't really have the work, ethic or kind of the traits that the initial person that created the wealth has, because it hasn't been passed down correctly through the generation.

KC Chohan:

So that's another good thing about foundations it's all about legacy. So you should be doing at least an annual retreat with the family to talk about the portfolio, the investments, the community. Good, what are you doing to better yourselves as a family, as a community, for charity? But generally speaking, those are the times where you're transferring your perspective and your knowledge to the future generations. So that's what the likes of the Rockefellers do and the Rothschilds do, all very well, yeah, compared to the Vanderbilts, which were also a very wealthy family, but they squandered their money on.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

They did On all sorts of meaningless stuff, to the point at which they're now not an elite family anymore now I was reading about that really recently and I knew it, but like I had forgot about it and I was like, yeah, like they're nothing, they're broken. You know either the rockefellows are like doing all this stuff. So bill and I uh, I'm from ohio and he's from here in Iowa, so we were raised in very blue collar. Like you know, my parents like worked at factories and you know his dad was like a paint contractor, like you know, very blue collar, and out of his entire side of his family and my entire side of my family were the first two that became millionaires. So I said, ok.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So now that we're older, I'm like, why didn't my dad or my grandfather, my great grandfather, why didn't somebody start something? And then Bill said too, like why didn't no one start? I'm like, okay, so we're the first ones, we're at the top of the food chain. I said so we have a chance to be the beginning step for generational wealth. But I told Bill, I said, listen, our kids will work for it because they work with us now. But I'm like I tell you what those grandkids don't? I said I'm just going to make everything get sold. I'm going to give every dollar to charities. Ain't no grandkids going to be living off my money.

KC Chohan:

They're going to be working for it. That's what happens. You're totally right, because the grandkids get the benefit of the hard work that you and bill have put in. Yeah, your kids have put in. But then you know, we have this notion I've just become a father recently is that you always want the next generation to have it easier than you had it yeah, we do.

KC Chohan:

And then if you've got the means to do that, why wouldn't you do that? But then there's a fine balance between I don't want it to be spoiled little brats or trust fund babies. I want to have the drive, the determination, the intelligence to go succeed themselves. But if you're giving them everything on the silver platter, you're taking away, giving them or building in that determination into them. Yeah, no, you're right our kids.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

We didn't give our kids anything. We bought them school clothes at the beginning of the year and they had to work for everything, every single thing. You want to go to a concert and tickets 85 bucks. You got to work for it. So we made our kids, even still, we made our kids work for every little thing. Now my so my grandkids are three, four, eight and nine. So all of them, even the three-year-old.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I make them work when they want something. I just had them here in Iowa in this apartment for like 30 days. It's like, oh my God, I forgot. I was like by the time they left I'm like, oh my God, I'm dead. But I made them work for everything. They were cleaning, they were outside, they were helping my husband carry paint buckets around Like they work. And. But I made them work for everything. They were cleaning, they were outside, they were helping my husband carry paint buckets around like they work. And then when they work, I let them shop and you know, and spend their money. So they're learning, they're learning, but you know they're little.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

But I just said we're not going to do that with our kids, you know. I mean we bought them cars when they graduated high school we probably did things that you know nobody ever did for us. Okay, and we'll give them a little bit, but we did make them work hard, because I've always heard that that by the time you get to the grandkids nobody's got any work ethic anymore and we have that really hardcore midwest worth, that work ethic where you work and work and you don't show up and you don't call in sick and you know you work, and so I think we were able to instill and our kids are all millennials and millennials are like I am, you're probably a millennial, so I'm sorry they're like the laziest generation, but we didn't let our kids be that way. They had to work for every single thing and they had dirt bikes and four wheelers and things and and it's like, hey, that thing costs eight grand, I'll put up four. You got to work for four and they worked like hard work.

KC Chohan:

So my kids are not, but that's important, right? I really think. Yeah, I think it's really important because then when they get the item let's call it the dirt bike they value it so much more because they put four grand worth of blood, sweat and tears into getting that and they're like no, I don't want to break it.

KC Chohan:

Or if I break it, I'm going to fix it because they have more pride in it Rather than there's your dirt bike, and then they break it, and then they leave it to one side to be forgotten Right Until the next day comes along.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

They had to work for everything. And my little grandkid, the oldest one, the nine she got in the habit of like buying things and, just like you know, tossing it aside. So this summer I was like you know what, honey, anything you want you got to work for and I'll give you five bucks an hour. So she helped me do moving, she helped clean out some buildings, a bunch of stuff and everything she bought with her money. She literally she put things in a safe, she put things in a room in a closet so the other kids couldn't touch it, and it was really amazing just to see the difference of what she bought versus what was given to her at the beginning of the summer. So I'm like, all right, making a more card does give them a little bit more. A little bit more. The item is that more valuable because you know it's their money 100%.

KC Chohan:

I definitely I see that and I read that all the time in a lot of these studies that UBS was the latest bank that did this type of study within their family office, which is the highest level within those banks because they only deal with high net worth 25 million plus. They do such deep studies on all of the psychology of what goes on and how to grow the wealth. So you get to a point where you go from being rich to being wealthy and the main difference that people don't really get is being rich is working really hard and making money. Being wealthy is when your money is making money while you sleep. That's it. So real estate does that fantastically. You can have a plot of land or an apartment or anything in between and you can be off on vacation in Iowa or Idaho or wherever you would like to go on vacation and it could be making money for you, I would never vacation in Iowa.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

This is a really cute. It's like a little Hallmark town that just sort of like got left like building. Half of it was boarded up and now they have music every week and they block off the streets and they have all these street parties and we help do a lot of that. And just recently we found out that the property values down here have gone up 40 since we started investing, so it's like that's really good. Okay, I'm like all right, we're making our little little like teeny, weeny little manhattan city out here in the midwest, but we actually live in colorado and florida. So now, um, switch topics for a minute. What's your favorite band of all time?

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

favorite band of all time. Favorite band of all time.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Oh, I'm going to go back to my English roots and go with Oasis.

KC Chohan:

Oh, Oasis yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I don't know if many Americans will know. I don't know if I know Oasis.

KC Chohan:

So their most famous song is a song called Wonderwall.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Oh yeah, I'll have to listen to them. Hardly anyone ever I'm like a music junkie. Hardly anyone ever stumps me on a band, and if I don't know it, I listen to it after the show. So I can like get the vibe of the music Oasis Wonderwall.

KC Chohan:

That's the track to listen to.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Okay, I'm going to listen to it today and text you. All right, and tell you about it. I love it when I hear a band that I've never heard of before. That's a good one.

KC Chohan:

Yeah, I'm born and raised in England. My background is in accounting and finance. I worked for a big Fortune 500 company for eight years. I worked my way up the ranks from making cups of tea like you do in England, and then after four years I was running the European region of finance and then I transferred over to North American region and that's how I ended up here in LA and haven't looked back since. So I did another four years while I was in America and then started my own business. So it was it was time then.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

So pretty much followed the American dream, as they call it, it is, it is and that's the thing I tell people. It's like I don't really care what you get into, like in with what you do, or real estate, or if you want to I don't know make shampoo, it's just. I think it's just the point of working for yourself. Even though there's more stress working for yourself. There's so much more for me. There's so much more much my pleasure knowing I did it and I make the decisions and I don't have to have someone tell me what to do.

KC Chohan:

So I, you control your own destiny. You control your own destiny. Yeah, I was a corporate guy for a long time and I thought, you know, I would just shoot around the whole globe with this company, which was fantastic to me, you know. But I quickly realized that I was a very small cog in a four billion dollar web and that I wasn't. I didn't feel significance at all. And then when I started my own company, it was tough because you've got to learn a lot of different skills, like I've got a finance background, what do I know about sales or marketing or anything like that. But I figured it out Right. You've got to persevere and you've got to get through it. You've got to surround yourself with the right people. Just like we've been talking about is that I didn't have any sales or marketing experience. So I went and hired it because I need to fill the voids of where I'm weaker, and then got a few clients and scaled a company and ultimately, the way we pivoted into the tax structures was we helped a client scale his business. So he went from 5 million a year to 120 million a year in the space of six months. Throughout CFO services. We analyzed what was working and it was great timing, but it was also a good strategy and he executed it really well. That then created a huge tax problem for him, because now paying taxes on 120 million is a different ballgame than 5 million.

KC Chohan:

So we then researched and figured out what the elites were all doing, and it's so weird because all the billionaires and all the mega millionaires all have this private foundation. It's a very specific type of structure which is a private, non-operating family foundation. It's a subset of a subset of a subset. You've got to go four deep in order to get the right one. It's not as simple as picking an LLC or an S-car, unfortunately. So when you figure that out and you see the trends and you're like, oh, why do all the billionaires have this one specific subset? You then realize that's the most powerful one, where you can control everything but own nothing, and that's the key.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That's the key. So when you were deciding to branch off and start your own business, what do you think was like your biggest fear initially?

KC Chohan:

Well, for me it was how am I going to make money? Because I've gone from a very comfortable multi six figure corporate salary to zero. Because it's like holy smokes, this is just me. Now I'm really in the real world here. So the way I mitigated that was before I'd actually left. I knew I was leaving, so I prepared for that. So I'd already started pitching my services, started the website, started all those things up and running before day one, before I actually put in my notice so that I was able to have some revenue when I left. And then I backed myself.

KC Chohan:

You really have to have the confidence to back yourself to know that, hey, I'm doing this for my own vision, I'm doing this for the next steps. And it's not always a smooth ride. Mine definitely wasn't, because I got the first few clients, but then it battled. And then you know, with CFO services it's so difficult because you can say to someone or ask 100 people what is CFO services and you'll get 100 different answers because it's not a generic oh, it's this and this. So if you're a CFO in a real estate company, you're looking at number of transactions and all these types of things. Analytics are fair. But if you're a CFO of a big Fortune 500 company, you're writing financial summaries to your shareholders, which is a sentence or two at a time about like. As an example, when I left Flosa, my portion of the business was a $300 million sub-business within the $4 billion cog. So even though it seems significant, it's so small compared to $4 billion. So when there was a discrepancy in, hey, we're up, we're down on this line item because of this, it didn't even go into the board summary because it was just a rounding error at that point, which is crazy to think. Right, it is, it is. So I'm spending all these hours drilling into all this analytics and data and explaining what's going on, only for it not to be really recognized at all because it's a rounding error and it's like you know what. It's time for me to move on.

KC Chohan:

And I just needed a tool up because I didn't have the skill like I was really good with numbers and really good at being able to explain complex financial scenarios into layman's terms so that anyone can understand them, and that's really what I took that skill set and built a business around it until we pivoted into the tax savings because we saw an opportunity to be able to help more people that didn't have access to a family office. So for those people who don't know what a family office is, a lot of the elites and a lot of the billionaires all have a family office and if you think about, let's say, a financial advisor is a simple one, or a CPA is a simple professional, they usually have their own book of business, whether that's hundreds or thousands of clients that they're dealing with at any one time or throughout the year. Well, if you're in a family office, you have that same level of individual usually better but they are only dedicated to you as a single family. So now think about that.

KC Chohan:

If you could pick up the phone or walk down the corridor and speak to your financial advisor whenever you want, and all he is doing every single hour of his working day is focusing on the family's portfolio, do you think you would get a better outcome compared to the guy that's got a thousand other clients battling for his time? And that's ultimately what a family office is. But within all the departments whether that's insurance, whether that's HR, whether that's recruitment, finance CPA, like real estate, is a big one as well. You know we've seen more and more real estate legs or expertise coming into family offices, but it's expensive, right? So if you look at, hey, if this financial advisor would be making roughly a million dollars a year in his own business. But we want to hire him just to focus on our family.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Yeah.

KC Chohan:

You've got to compensate him a little bit more because he's taking more risk with one client than he would with a thousand clients. Oh, I get it. So having a family office can often cost more than five $10 million a year, just for the right staff. Because, again, it's about the right team, right? If you have the right team working with you, you're going to make better decisions, you're going to move faster, you're going to make more money and then, if we're talking about millions and not thousands, you're going to make more millions a lot more quicker. It's going to compound compared to trial and error, the old fashioned way, right?

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

No, yeah, no, I, my whole, my whole first decade was all trial and error and I was like, ah, I wish I would've had someone to like, help me, show me the ropes. Which is why I like to teach other people, because I just the mistakes I mean the money. It's just like, oh, but now it's like, ok, now I know I don't know everything, but I know enough to, like, you know, make other people millionaires too. So I always think I always love to hear the story Like when you made that step, because I still feel like, even even though we're both really successful in what we do, that first step is hard.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

It's really hard so some of the things that backup is gone.

KC Chohan:

Some of the things that helped me a lot through that process was personal development. So I used to listen a lot to Tony Robbins, obert Kiyosaki, jim Rohn. Like a lot of these people, I would literally sit in my cubicle at the office and have my headphones in, working on my spreadsheets and subconsciously just taking it all in. And you need you need to have that belief, because you'll never take that step, otherwise we were talking earlier about paralyzing yourself and kind of putting insignificant steps in the way. That's all due to lack of personal development, because if you are focused on what the goal is and what you're trying to achieve, you can achieve that. But you need to get yourself out the way and that's all comes from within. So if you've got a higher level of self-awareness and personal development, you can definitely use that as a solid foundation to then build on. You can definitely use that as a solid foundation for them to build on.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That's what I tell people. I said you know, I just I feel like a lot of people like us that start their own businesses. I think you have to. Initially, you just have to have a higher risk factor, because it is still risky. Even if you plan everything and you have everything done, nothing ever works exactly like it's planned anyway. So I feel like, well, we have to have a little bit higher. So I tell people, hey, listen, if your risk factor is zero, you probably shouldn't start your own business. If your risk factor is 10, like mine, it's like you just jump off the building and you grow your wings on the way down.

KC Chohan:

Yeah, that's it. That's exactly right. I was speaking to one of my colleagues yesterday and he's like his brother is a lawyer and he's just settled the biggest case that he's had and now he's thinking about starting his own practice, but he's so uncertain on how much he'll make in his first year going from being an executive to then being on your own and it's like, look, the simple thing is, if he doesn't, if he's not built for that risk, just don't do it. You'll just phase yourself out and you'll stress yourself out and you won't succeed because you'll be too worried about what if? Rather than taking the action and doing it and then refining it and getting better along the way.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Exactly, that's exactly what I say. So I want to ask you a question. So I ask you about your music, which I'm excited to listen to Oasis. That's exactly what I say. Okay, so I want to ask you a question. So I asked you about your music, which I'm excited to listen to Oasis. What's your favorite food? What do you like to eat? Oh, that's simple Steak.

KC Chohan:

I love a good T-bone steak With some French fries peppercorn sauce, a side of Dijon mustard and a little bit of horseradish as well.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That's so good, that sounds so good. So next time I come to LA, we're going to go out to eat. We're going to go listen to some Oasis, we're going to eat some steak and, yeah, I feel like you can tell a lot about people by their music and what they eat and what they like to do Then we're going to have some drinks, smoke some cigars and find some real estate too.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Right, that's good, I'll smoke some cigars, I'll have drinks too. I was just out there, um, we stayed at the fairmont hotel, um, right next to my house. Yeah, we stayed there. My son-in-law is like the manager or something, so we got to stay there for just two months ago, for nine days, and it was like oh so, bougie, so fun it's.

KC Chohan:

So fun. It's one of the newest hotels here. It's a beautiful five-star resort right in the middle of town. The mall's on one side and Beverly Hills is literally on the other side.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Oh, it's great, we ate down at the restaurant every night. It was like, oh, I'm definitely a five-star kind of girl.

KC Chohan:

We had the French Bistro. Is it still the French restaurant in the hotel? Yes, is it?

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

still the french restaurant in the hotel. Yes, oh yes, oh yeah. No, we did twice. It's like oh, it was so good. I'm like I'm definitely a five star, I'm a bougie girl, and so it was really nice. It was really nice okay.

KC Chohan:

Well, the spa is really nice at that hotel as well great, we got everything we have.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I mean, you know gregory's like the manager, so we got so many things conned like just champagne and strawberries and chocolate and just all kinds of stuff again delivered to our room just all day and night and was like I could totally just live right here right, gregory, good son-in-law we like that that's right now. What's your biggest goal for you personally, casey? What's your biggest goal that you are trying to accomplish right now, and how can the Dwanderful family help you reach your biggest next goal?

KC Chohan:

The biggest goal is to develop a city from scratch.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

To develop a city from scratch. Oh man, I'm with you on that, oh man, I'm with you on that.

KC Chohan:

Yeah, so we want to put together a full city that it's not one of these green hugging type cities, but it's just a city that helps everyone, right? So here in LA, just south of LA, there's a place called Orange County I don't know if you're familiar with it. Oh yeah, so it used to just be orange trees. Oh yeah, so it used to just be orange trees and literally, my vision is very similar to that is to take a plot of land and develop it into an ecosystem that can then live on for generations after me.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I love that. What a great goal.

KC Chohan:

Now how can we help you do that? We're going to start with a plot of land right and some financing. You need billions of dollars to do this. That's a good goal. I'm putting it out there.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

What a great idea when it's time for you to do that I want to be part of your plan 100%.

KC Chohan:

I'll hit you up for sure.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

I love it. I'm rehabbing a city right now, so our own little town it's a lot of these buildings. These buildings are all like 1900s and 1920s and 20. Yeah, they're old and so we're like we're throwing them back.

KC Chohan:

Yeah, that's character right, because America is such a young country, to have some character like that is really good we are yeah, the reason I wanted to develop my own city is I just don't like a lot of the practices going on here, especially with the government and what they do to our food supply and what they're teaching our kids in school. So if we can build our own city, we can go farm to table with really good food, we can make sure we have clean water, we can make sure we have great schools for the kids and really build a lasting legacy that will be that will surpass me by many generations and decades to come.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

And when you're ready for that, I want to be part of it. I was like why did it get so dark all of a sudden? I think the sun just went behind the clouds. I forgot to turn my light on behind me. All right, so thank you first of all for being on the show. I love your heart. I love hearing your story about how you started. I love all of that and I love your goals to build a city from scratch. How much fun is that going to be. It's amazing.

KC Chohan:

That's going to be a great project. You know, another thing that people often do is they're limited by their lack of vision oh please. So if you can only see two steps in front of you, they're likely not going to be big enough steps. If you can see a hundred steps in front of you, or at least put that vision out there and just take the risk and put it into the universe, then you can attract it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That's it. That's it. Even like, in this little town we started spending so much money. Why are you putting all that money in that old town? That town's all run down. It's like, yeah, but if you can see it booming and bustling like that's what we see, so that's what we're going to make happen, so all right. So uh. Again, I want to thank you for being on and everyone. You can go to um uh together. I'm sorry I blamed for a second cause. I wrote everything in my uh abbreviations together CFOcom, yep. And they opt in and you'll send them something Welcome to the team and get them some information.

KC Chohan:

Yeah, we've actually got a really good tax savings calculator on the website. So you can go straight onto the website, plug in your numbers and you can see how much you could save on taxes. So that's a good one to try out.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

That is good. I'm going to do that. I like to opt into all the things from all the people. I like to stay up and see what everybody is doing and again. So, folks, I'm going to ask you to do me a favor. If you enjoyed the show today, if you laughed, if you learned just anything at all, I want you to subscribe to my podcast Also, to subscribe to your podcast, and yours is called.

KC Chohan:

The CEO Story.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

The CEO Story. Subscribe to both, because you know podcasts are a lot of work, and leave me a five-star review and write something. Tell me how amazing we all are, and don't forget to go to dwonderfulcom and opt in to get some free stuff. Okay, very last thing, casey. So I want you to leave us a parting word of wisdom, but just one single word.

KC Chohan:

Grateful.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Okay, so everyone that listens to me regularly, they all know that we take the word grateful and put it on a little sticky and put it on our mirror and the word of the week is grateful. So we're all grateful, we use grateful, we think about being grateful, but what does it mean to you?

KC Chohan:

Every single second of every single day. I'm always grateful for the smallest things and the bigger things, because if you can't appreciate the smaller things, then you're never going to get significance because you're not going to hit the big things all the time. So the small things, such as waking up and being healthy, being able to drink water, eating food we take that for granted, but there's so much turmoil and misery and war going on in the world that we kind of see on the TV or the news but are really not paying as much attention as we should. So just to be grateful for living our own lives and being here in America is fantastic and not being in other parts of the world, because it could be a lot worse. And if you're grateful and you live in gratitude, you'll attract that to you as well.

Dwan Bent-Twyford:

Amen. I love what grateful means to you. It's about what it means to me as well. All right, so, everybody, we'll be back next week, same bat time, same bad channel. And remember that the truth is in the red letters, casey. Thank you again. Goodbye everybody. We will be back next week, ciao.