In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Chad Brown to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover business tax credits and what they can do for your business.
Connect with us on social media:
- Facebook: Thomas Bennett
- Instagram: @Thomas.mbennett
-YouTube:@SmallBusinessMoneyConnector
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Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Chad Brown to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover business tax credits and what they can do for your business.
Connect with us on social media:
- Facebook: Thomas Bennett
- Instagram: @Thomas.mbennett
-YouTube:@SmallBusinessMoneyConnector
- LinkedIn: Thomas Bennett
Subscribe to "Small Business, Big Moves" on Your Favorite Podcast Platform for more inspiring episodes on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
Welcome to the Small Business Big Moves, the podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Tom Bennett, and we'll explore all things business growth from business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses. Welcome to the show. My guest today is my partner, Chad Brown. Chad, I'm excited to have you on the show. If you could introduce yourself. Hey, yeah, Tom, I appreciate the opportunity to be on man and share my story a little bit about what we do. But yeah, I'm Chad Brown. I'm a certified public accountant or CPA as they refer to us. And I, I work with small businesses in the area of, you know, all the way from, you know, startup at the beginning phases, bookkeeping, accounting through their growth and extended all the way to corporate income tax and corporate tax incentives for businesses and Tax strategies that they may be able to implement along their growth stages and, and to one, improve their cashflow, but also keep the money in their hands so they can reinvest in their business, things of that nature. So yeah, glad to be here, man. Absolutely exciting stuff. Yeah, and then kind of piggybacking off that today's topic is going to be on a little bit around business tax credit, some growth strategies, and some solutions for entrepreneurs and business owners, but we'll switch it up a little bit. I kind of jump into a little bit of a different approach, right? I know I know you and I are both getting up early in the morning like a lot of other entrepreneurs and business owners. I know you're you're getting your workouts in. Walk us through what your your morning routine looks like these days. Yeah, I try to start early, man. But to be honest with you, I just, I, I don't really set an alarm. I let my body tell me when it's ready to get up. Sometimes that's my mind more than my body that, that tells that story. But anyway, typically I wake up around 5, 5. 30 in the morning. And lately, I've kind of changed up my routine, but the main thing is in the morning, I like to do something active, you know, month. Normally, I was reading. I'd get up, make a cup of coffee, and I'd read, okay, for 15, 20 minutes kind of journal, do some of that. And then lately, I've kind of gotten up, and I make breakfast right away. You know, I make like three eggs and, and get some protein in and I go and do 30 minute workout, you know, in the first 30 minutes, it's a program, 30, 30, 30 gear, Gary Brekka speaks about it a lot. If you follow him Tim Ferris, four hour workout, four hour day or work week or whatever, you know, fame, the author of that book talked about it, but it's really to get your body, fueled in the morning and firing on all cylinders. But yeah, after a workout, it's you know, get ready and go to the office. Typically, I'm in the office by 8. 30 or 9. You know, after I work out, get cleaned up. I spend a lot of time with the family, as they're getting off to school. But, you know, my kids are a little bit older, so they're kind of independent and move on their own. that's what my morning looks like. But if I don't get that workout in or get that heart rate up, typically, you know, my day feels a little off. Absolutely, yeah, appreciate you sharing that. And I know obviously, I mentioned you and I have partnered up. I know we did a lot of collaboration together on the employee retention credit helped a lot of small, medium sized businesses, not just survive the pandemic, but also kind of take their business to, to new levels. What? I know you've obviously been in the CPA space. You've been in the business tax credit space. what got you into the employee retention credit and realized how big of an opportunity that could be for some of these businesses. Yeah, we've been in the tax plan tax credit space for a while. Me personally, since 2004, I've been working with companies and procuring tax incentives, mainly through their employee credits, hiring incentives, that sort of thing program referred to most commonly as work opportunity tax credit. tHrough doing that and just kind of keeping abreast of some of the tax credits available when COVID hit, you know, everybody's the PPP, EIDL, all of that was kind of the windstorm and one thing that a lot of folks weren't paying attention to is this employee retention tax credit and originally the credit, it was, you either take PPP or you take PPP. The E. R. C. Well, P. P. P. Was real money real fast, right? And the process to get it was not very hard. E. R. C. Wasn't that popular until December 2020. They changed the rules. They changed the game and passed legislation that said you can Take ERC, even though you qualified for payroll protection program funding and got forgiven those loans, you can still get the ERC. You just cannot calculate the credits on the same wages that were forgiven for that PPP loan. So I started working with some folks, you know, at Shield Advisory Group, Matt and Luigi, and we put together a game plan. Matt and I have been talking, what can we do to help small businesses? And I said, you know, work opportunity tax credit's a great credit, but if they're not hiring a lot of people, it's not a huge benefit. What else is there? We're looking at restaurant revitalization programs. We're looking at r and d, which is a little bit heavier of a lift. There, there's. Elements to that, you know, and so we were actively looking for other opportunities to support and help small businesses, not only through the pandemic, but just in general. That's what we do. And when they changed that legislation. It was like, okay, this is the real deal. This is it. And so we started working. We helped well over 500 businesses. capture those credits. Unfortunately, not every business qualifies, you know, there's a process that you go through but we were able to help a lot of businesses out. yeah, I know. And I know that was definitely something that we ran up against. Obviously when like you said, everyone. Had that idea because before it was, you could only take the PPP or the ERC. Obviously the PPP was a lot more promoted. A lot of businesses didn't really know about the ERC. I know Matt and Lou joke about it all the time that the the IRS doesn't have a marketing arm. So that's kind of our job to get in there and help these businesses familiarize themselves. But let's jump into that a little more too. partnered. Matt and Luigi, I know, obviously, we all run in some of the same networking groups give us kind of a little of the backstory on how you guys partnered up and how you were able to really turn this into such a big opportunity for some of these businesses. Yeah, it was kind of ironic back in 20, late 2019, I joined a group called Apex. And. We I joined cause I knew a guy locally that was in the group. You know, I'd met him in, in Ryan Steumann sales talk group. You're probably in that too. And we connected and he was an apex. He told me about the benefit of it. And so I sat on it for six months and you know what, man, I gotta get in the right circles around the right people and around the right energy. I can't control my destiny all by myself. I need people that are where I want to be around me. You know, and, and learn from them. And so I joined and it was a few weeks later, I got connected with a guy, Daniel Sablini, he was kind of in the tax business as well. He wanted to create kind of a group of guys that form a syndication to. You know, if you posted something, we go on there, comment, share, blast it up, you know, build that audience, influence that Facebook algorithm. And so he and I got, he started this group, we were in it. I invited somebody, he invited a couple of people anyway, ended up in the same room with Matt. And Matt and I, you know, that group quickly turned from, hey, let's support each other's Facebook posts, which kind of boring and sucks to be honest. I'm not, I post on social media, there's power in it, but that that didn't really interest me meeting every week and talking about that. So that group quickly navigated into more of an accountability group. And how can we help share wins, losses that sort of thing. And so Matt and I got to know each other. He was kind of at a point where his career, you know, he was repositioning himself with shield advisory, going a different route to help small businesses. I was helping larger corporations procure hiring incentives because they hired a lot of people, right? So I wasn't targeted on that small business that hires one, two, three people. I had some individual tax businesses, multiple tax offices that were focused on individuals, but not that small business. So he wanted to help small business. I love being involved with small business. So we started talking, how do we do that? And then that led into that tax credit conversation. How, what are some other elements out there that businesses might be missing? And then. Behold, they changed that rule. And we were able to, to queue up and we were down at a million dollar mastermind, Ryan Stuma's Apex million dollar mastermind in April, I believe of 2021, my son was with me. We were sitting at, I think it was at the Westin in the lobby. During the convention, the convention's going on, the mastermind, speakers and everything, and we were sitting on a couch and a chair with a coffee table and a laptop, and we said, okay, you get DocuSign and contracting set up, we'll, you know, and you build the questionnaire, and then we'll do this, and then it just kind of goes Then a couple of weeks we had our first client come in and I'm like, okay, this is great. And then next, next, boom, gas on fire and, you know, kind of opened it up. So yeah, we were able to impact a lot of lives now. Definitely. No, it's exciting stuff. I wanted to to let you share that story because I know I, I've heard it from Matt a few times and I love hearing it every time. So yeah, good stuff for sure. It was on the couch in the Weston in Dallas. That's great. And then on top of that too, I know I know obviously how much experience you have in the tax credit space, right? But I know on top of that, you get some other growth strategies, some other powerful options for business owners, entrepreneurs walk us through that a little bit, some of the value that you're able to provide to some of these business owners and entrepreneurs out there. Yeah, so a couple of different directions, you know, being a CPA, I was in a firm for a number of years, right? And, and I decided I did not want to be a partner in a CPA firm at that time and kind of went on my own. The first option was, hey, you know, I had been approached by a franchise to get in the tax business. I'm like, well, let's do that because I know tax and everything. And so I go in there and I really just created a job for myself. I didn't know what the hell a business was, to be honest with you. How to run it. I had worked with small businesses, right doing their accounting bookkeeping, but not that next level stuff. And so when you get into business for yourself, you learn a lot. You're the IT guy, you're the marketing guy, you're the PR guy, you're, I mean, sale, you're, and then you're doing the work. And, you know, I went through some, it was, it was challenging. You know, I opened up a couple of, Retail franchises and I was doing well. So then I went to four or five and then not so well because I couldn't duplicate myself. I could handle two right, but not not more. And then the importance of building a team came about and just that whole general idea of how do we. Make business better. Right. And our business, and that's kind of where it morphed. And, you know, after a few years, I partnered with the guy, we went through our challenges, struggles and how to partner the right way and how to separate, you know, responsibilities and challenging when you get two alpha males with egos that come into the same room, you know, it doesn't work. All the time, or it doesn't work well until you decide, okay, let's set the egos aside, right? What is our purpose? And, you know, a few years ago we decided to set a North star and our North star was, we want to impact the growth and financial wellbeing of those we serve. And that's from our, our Liberty Tax, Retail Franchise Tax clients to our small business tax planning and tax credit client and bookkeeping accounting clients. That's to our team that, that works with us, whether they be contracted outsourced labor or they're on our core team. We want to positively impact their growth and financial well being. That's what we want to do. So my focus, I kind of stepped out of the retail tax side from an actual day to day operation standpoint. I support it through compliance and, and management strategic direction still. But my focus is Kintzler Brown and that is our small business bookkeeping accounting tax strategy on, and that can go from anywhere like we just went through a Tax planning demonstration with one of my clients on a software that we are utilizing their significant tax savings, but they came to us because they weren't getting anything from their CPA of value, right? So just by analyzing and doing an assessment, we're able to determine that we could save them by 5 to 10, 000 in taxes each year just by one simple strategy. through the technology and stuff that we're using. And that's valuable. Another client we're taking over a larger portion of their, I'd say more like an assistant controller type role. And really dialing in, you know, take it over some of the accounting and bookkeeping responsibilities, but more importantly, getting the book structured the right way and dialing in on what the numbers would tell their construction business, you know, they do multiple million dollars in business, but at the end of the day, there's not much meat left on the bone. So why is that? Well, the numbers tell the story. And the numbers make you ask questions. And if you ask questions, you realize that maybe it's the two business partners and their egos that all can be fixed if we came together. So we're kind of bridging that gap, but we're using the financial metrics and KPIs to, to find and tell the story, right of how. You know what the business is doing. The numbers don't lie. The numbers don't lie. So if we can add, if we can add 1, 2, 3, 4%, 5%, that's a couple hundred thousand dollars to their bottom line. Now, the owners aren't, you know, so angry, right? Absolutely. I know obviously we always, especially with social media now, right, we always hear about the wins, we always see all the good things people have got going on in their business. I know you've been in the industry for a while, kind of established yourself as an expert and leader in the industry. Any, would you say there has been some hiccups or failures or anything along the way that's maybe slowed you down or caused some bumps in the road throughout the journey? Yeah, 100%. The biggest obstacle and the biggest hurdle and the biggest slowdown was me, you know, to your listeners that are entrepreneurs and small business owners. You know, of course there's the, there's technology, there's widgets, there's marketing, there's everything that you can do to get more clients, whatever. But ultimately, if your business is stagnant, look at yourself. And if You're not growing. Look at yourself that start there because I was a roadblock. I was a hindrance, not only to my business when I was solo. bUt also when we partnered it was very, I don't know, prideful, ego controlling, whatever it may be. And not that I made every decision, but I made every decision complicated, or, and some are complicated. You have difficult conversations, some are complicated, but some of the most trivial things I would over complicate, man. And I think that was one trust my controlling nature somewhat conservative nature, and so getting out of my own way and trusting my business partner and our director of operations to run this side of the business. He trusts me to run this side, uh, bringing people onto my team. You've met, you've talked to Sarah a number of times you haven't worked with Pauline, but I've got Denise, I've got some great folks on my team that I trust. Trust me. And man, if you get out of your own way and give people, treat them right, give them opportunity to enhance their growth and financial wellbeing and just purpose that North star that they're helping others do the same. And it's night and day. And you sleep better at night. Definitely. No, it's power fire. I'm glad you shared that. And then I know we do a lot, a lot of value at them today. Was there anything I didn't ask you or anything that I didn't cover that you want to leave them with? No, I mean, for, for business owners, one, get out of your own way to be open to opportunities to improve your business, maybe that's tax strategies. Maybe that's financial management, just reviewing financial statements. You know, don't, don't just keep going through the same pattern. I know a lot of small businesses struggle. They have their guy, they have a great relationship with their accountant, their bookkeeper, their tax preparer. That's great. That's great. Relationships are great, but ask yourself two things. One is that relationship proactive? Right. Are they bringing something to the table to help me as a business owner? Okay. And am I getting an ROI versus a task completed? Right. There's a difference. And if the answer is no, they're not proactive and two, you're not getting an ROI, then maybe it's time you talk to an advisor, not necessarily to displace your current workers or your current relationships. but supplement them because they might be great at what they do. So if you've got a strategist over here, somebody that can help you understand the numbers, more of a CFO or controller type they can feed that and work together with your bookkeeper and your CPA that does your tax file. And if they're not open to doing that, then, you know, you probably shouldn't go that route either, but for us, it's not about Tom, you know, I want all of your business now, if you've got great relationships and just like we did with the ERC. I didn't want necessarily want to file the tax returns. I didn't want to do all this stuff, but if you got your guy, here's your guy, we'll provide the value to them. Now they deliver the final result, you know, good. So don't feel like you're stuck in a box because you got relationships with good people, but you can't bring somebody else in to help supplement that value. Absolutely. Yeah. I appreciate the time chat. I appreciate you joining me today. That's going to be a wrap for this episode of small business, big moves. If you enjoyed today's episode, what would really help us is if you shared the podcast with someone you think could get value out of it. And you can hit me up on all social media platforms at Thomas Bennett or on Instagram at Thomas dot M Bennett. And we look forward to seeing you all in the next episode.