(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to the Business Credit and Financing Show.
Each week, we talk about the growth strategies
that matter most to entrepreneurs.
Listen in as we discuss the secrets to
getting credit and money to start and grow
your business.
And enjoy as we talk with seasoned business
owners, coaches, and industry leaders on a variety
of topics from advertising and marketing to the
nuts and bolts of running a highly successful
business.
And now, to introduce the host of our
show, financial expert and award-winning author, Ty
Crandall.
Hello, and thanks for joining us today.
I'm super excited you could be here because
today we're really talking about how you can
go really beyond bookkeeping and build strong tax
strategies that actually scale.
And to have this conversation with us is
Casey Cohen.
Now, he is actually the founder of Together
CFO, which is a premier advisory firm specializing
in advanced tax strategies for high network business
owners and family offices as well.
Now, he's actually known as the secret weapon
for CPAs and financial advisors.
Casey actually has helped clients save millions of
dollars by implementing innovative strategies that go well
beyond standard tax loopholes.
So he's actually born in England and now
is based in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles.
Casey has actually built a reputation as a
trusted authority in wealth and tax planning.
And his expertise has been featured in places
like Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, NBC, Yahoo Finance, and
Fox News, where he's really recognized as breaking
down complex strategies into very clear, actionable insights.
So he's a dynamic speaker and has shared
his knowledge on global stages, including the Accounting
and Finance Conference, The Money Show, Quantum Mastermind,
Amplify, and Market Disruptors.
And today he actually continues to empower entrepreneurs,
financial professionals, and family offices to minimize taxes,
to protect wealth, and also to create lasting
financial legacies.
Casey, what's up, man?
Thanks for joining us today.
Wow, what a great intro.
Thank you so much.
I think you should just follow me around
and introduce me all the time.
That was fabulous.
Well, it's easy, man.
You've done a lot of cool stuff.
And because you're doing so much cool stuff,
a lot of people are out there featuring
you.
So congratulations on your success.
Yeah, thank you so much.
And thanks so much for having me on.
Excited to get into it.
Yeah, absolutely.
I know you're big on the tax side.
So let's start with mistakes.
What are some of those common mistakes that
you see a high net worth, like entrepreneurs
especially, that are out there making, even family
offices are making?
Well, it starts at the foundation level, right?
So the bookkeeping is prevalent here.
So think about it as when you're building
a house, you're not gonna build a house
on sand without digging a really deep foundation.
The equivalent of that in the business world
is your bookkeeping.
The bookkeeping is the foundation of any business,
because if you don't understand your numbers or
if your numbers are wrong, then that's gonna
form cracks and the house will eventually come
falling down.
And the consequence of that could be an
overpayment in tax or even worse, you could
get in a lot of trouble because you
misstate numbers if you're a publicly listed company.
And it could all fall down very quickly
if you don't have the fundamental basics in
place correctly, which in this instance is the
bookkeeping.
That makes sense.
Why don't people do more and put more
into getting their bookkeeping done the best way,
the right way?
People generally see it as just a cost
center, right?
They just say, hey, how can I get
this transactional activity done as quickly as possible
or done by AI right now, right?
Or a VA overseas, because I don't wanna
put any bandwidth into thinking about it because
they don't see the value of the bookkeeping
driving any growth in their business, which is
completely wrong.
And they're definitely missing the beat if they
think like that.
I see that a lot of entrepreneurs that
follow us here on the show, they're just
using a standard bookkeeper or standard CPA.
Is that what they need or what should
they be out there looking for?
So this depends on a few different factors.
So firstly, at what stage of company are
they?
I would say at the beginning stages, if
you're a startup or you're early on, let's
say a million below, you can usually get
away with the local bookkeeper down the street
and CPA down the street because you've not
grown into more complexity, but definitely as you
grow to seven, multi-seven, eight, multi-eight
figure businesses, you then start needing to beef
up a really strong team.
And that's where you need much more specialist
professionals in what they do because you're now
a big organization, right?
So I would say, depending again on your
ambition too.
So if you have a manufacturing company, you're
gonna have a lot more inventory issues, working
capital cycles, you will probably need lines of
credit.
You have just a lot more complexity going
on than if you just have a Shopify
store.
So factors that go into industry specific as
well, size as well, and then how fast
you're growing because the number one killer of
businesses in America, it isn't profitability, it's lack
of cashflow.
And most entrepreneurs don't really understand the difference
because no one's taught them this and they're
not looking at this and they are amazing
in their own industry, but they're not really
that strong in specific finance calculations, right?
So they might not realize that, hey, just
because I've sold this big contract and on
paper, I'm making a million dollars.
Well, if that million dollars is coming in
in increments of 100,000 a month for
the next year plus, then that cashflow is
tied up.
You can't keep spending that million day one
and expect not to feel that pain in
the business because the cashflow is completely different
to the net profit and the timing cycles,
specifically working capital cycles and cashflow cycles advanced
on the finance spectrum, but it's so critical
for running a business.
So if I'm in this world where built
a seven figure business, now I'm well surpassing
that, right?
The bookkeeper's not enough.
What are some of the first steps I
should be taking to kind of go down
the road of creating a custom strategy that
is a little bit more in depth that
helps me save more on taxes?
So I would put it in a couple
of different steps rather than just jump straight
to the taxes.
So one of the secret weapons that we
use at our firm is a software called
financialfusion.io and it effectively helps act as
an AI CFO.
So it plugs into QuickBooks, into Xero, into
whatever accounting software you have and it gives
you a monthly financial report.
It's like a scorecard, like a report card
if you're at school to see how well
you're doing across your financial statements in really
simple English with graphs and charts and color
code.
It is really easy for business owners to
understand.
So we use that.
We give that to all our clients on
a monthly basis just so that they can
one, get a touchpoint from us, two, they
can review the report and know exactly where
they are and understand complex financials in really
simple terms.
And then if that's done right and there's
no errors showing, we know the bookkeeping is
done right so we can check off, hey,
bookkeeping solid, monthly reports are looking good.
Now we can get ready and be proactive
for tax strategies because if that piece isn't
right, we might be trying to solve a
problem that isn't really there.
So as an example of that, if your
books are saying you're on track to make
a million dollars net profit a year, so
we now got to come up with a
strategy to save you as much of that
million as possible.
But if the books were wrong and that
million actually is really 200,000, we've just
wasted all this time, energy, effort, money on
creating a strategy for a million dollars when
it's much easier to save 200,000 than
it is a million.
And I love this financial fusion.
I've never seen it before and I was
looking at it here.
So if you talk about financial fusion and
kind of being your AI CFO, at what
point do you think a business gets to
where they need a real CFO, either a
full-time or let's just say an interim
CFO or a fractional CFO?
So yeah, so we started, I started this
company to get a CFO exactly as that
fractional CFO.
So I know the space really well.
We've been doing it for over 10 years
and we see it as you go through
different stages throughout your business cycle, ups and
downs, right?
So if you, let's say below 5 million
in revenue, you probably don't need a full
-time CFO.
Arguably, the closer you get to that 5
million, you may need a fractional CFO, but
up until that point, let's say zero to
4 million, you can use a tool like
this and you can get actually more time
with that CFO because it's 24 seven, 365
than you do with a fractional CFO.
So when we're on a CFO engagement fractionally,
it's usually an hour a week and it
costs about five grand a month, give or
take.
So the client is getting one hour face
-to-face plus any work that we're doing
on the backend.
It's a lot of money for not a
lot of time in terms of ratio of
how much am I on my team sitting
down with the client.
So now we've given them a tool that,
hey, we want you to have the maximum
amount of value.
This AI CFO can answer 90% of
your questions.
So when it does come to our weekly
meeting and our accountability stuff, we are here
and we can get straight into the good
stuff.
But all of that other stuff, the low
hanging fruit can be done on a day
-to-day basis.
It doesn't have to wait until we come
in every week or every month, just depending
on who it is.
So if we look at the cost of
a full-time CFO, anywhere lowest for a
good one must be 150, 200K a year.
If you wanted a part-time one, let's
say it's five grand a month.
So that's 60K a year.
So it's a no-brainer to kind of
integrate a good AI into that for the
sake of a couple hundred bucks a month,
just to kind of fill that gap until
it's so inevitable that you need that full
-time headcount.
And I think you hit on something I
think is important because a lot of entrepreneurs
I talk to, when we talk about tax
strategists, we talk about financial planners, we talk
about accountants, right?
Then we talk about CFOs, don't understand the
roles of each of these positions.
So you've done a good job describing, look,
you kind of need a bookkeeper when you're
in the beginning stages up to a million.
And then when you're above 5 million, you
might need a full-time CFO.
As you start getting into millions, that 5
million might need a fractional CFO.
Who else should we have in our corner
besides somebody on the fractional CFO side as
the business grows, a bookkeeper, who else should
we have beyond that?
So there's two positions in the middle of
that.
So if we look at it as a
spectrum, the first thing all businesses need is
a bookkeeper because you need to know what
your numbers are, right?
And then above a bookkeeper would be a
financial controller or a senior accountant internal.
And above that would be a director of
finance or VP of finance, depending on how
big the company is.
And then above that would be the CFO.
So on the spectrum of things, the CFO
is setting the strategy and the vision of
the finance and the company.
And all the way down to the other
end of the totem pole, which is the
bookkeeper, is doing the transactional work of actually
executing, putting the debit cards in there, the
credit cards in there, the bank statements and
analyzing the books just to make sure that
they are complete and they balance out.
And they then pass that on to the
next person in line to do a review
and an analysis.
So think of the bookkeeper as the transactional
person that's doing the actual entry, data entry
into the bookkeeping system, say QuickBooks.
Then once that's done and balanced, it gets
moved up to the next level, which is
the, let's just say the financial controller.
And the financial controller will do a review
of the bookkeeper, the keeper's work.
Does the bank accounts balance?
Do the credit cards balance?
Are they all in there?
Is it coded correctly?
Because you could have a big problem if
you code, let's say you've got this coffee
cup and you coded it to cost of
goods sold versus the P&L expense line
that it should be on as a marketing
expense, let's say.
Now, when you're reviewing that, you're gonna have
two different outcomes depending on where it was
placed, because now is it, hey, our margins
are low because we put a lot of
things in there that shouldn't be in there,
or our margins high because a lot of
things are in the P&L and they
shouldn't be there.
So it tells, it sends a different message
further up the accounting line you get to.
So that's the controller's job to analyze and
make sure that the books are clean and
complete.
And then it would go up to like
a CFO level to set the strategy of
the business.
Hey, what are we doing?
We should maybe focus more on product A
and B because they're producing the most profitability
in the least amount of time to make,
or are we gonna go IPO?
Do we need to raise capital?
What's our funding look like?
And they'll be analyzing the business from a
long-term perspective.
So that's the strategy side of it.
And yes, the controller reports into the CFO,
but really their roles are very different.
Most of the time, the CFO will leave
the controller alone, let the controller get on
with the day-to-day operations of the
business, and then just.
And now a quick break to hear from
our sponsor.
Hey, it's Ty Crandall with CreditSuite.
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Present a report to the CFO to say,
hey, are all the checks and balances done?
Can I have confidence that when I pull
a report, it's gonna be correct?
Because I'm then taking your report and I'm
plugging it into a forecast or a budget
or a cashflow analysis, a more advanced accounting,
let's say, strategy than just the simple things
that like a bookkeeper and a controller will
be looking at, which is more transactional.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, it makes perfect sense, and I appreciate
you breaking it down that way, because there's
so many financial roles.
I think it's overwhelming and confusing.
I think a lot of entrepreneurs miss out
on getting the people that they need to
get in the organization when they need to
be.
Or they ask the wrong person the wrong
question.
So you mentioned earlier financial planner, wealth manager,
CPA.
These are all additional things on top of
that internal core team, right?
So your wealth manager is completely different and
should be external because they are taking the
money that you've made and investing it for
you because they should be able to bring
you a bigger return than what you can
do yourself.
The CPA is the one that most people
totally misunderstand.
The CPA does not work for you.
The CPA works for the government.
I wanna make that very, very clear because
if you look at how a CPA is
incentivized, and let's just use your CPA as
an example, Ty.
Is your CPA incentivized to save you money
on taxes or is he incentivized to get
you filed, let you know how much you
need to pay and help you process that
payment?
Yeah, definitely the latter.
Yeah, because if he saves you 100,000
or a million dollars, you're not paying him
any more.
You're paying him the same set amount for
filing the tax return.
So most people get it confused and they
think, hey, I've got to ask my CPA
everything when the reality of the matter is
most CPAs don't care how much they save
you because they are not getting paid anymore
for saving you money, but it's taken them
extra effort and extra hours and extra work
to jump through those additional loopholes to save
you that money.
So that's the difference between a tax strategist
and a CPA.
So the tax strategist's job is solely focused
on maximizing your tax savings as much as
possible, whereas the CPA's job is just to
make sure you are compliant and you file
your taxes and you pay your taxes on
time.
Two completely different things, but people seem to
merge them in and get that mixed up.
What are some things on the tax strategy
side, just top of head, that you think
entrepreneurs mess up, they make mistakes on, that
if they knew these things and just took
a few actions that it could help them
save money?
Well, the biggest one is strategic giving.
So people are not using nonprofits the same
way that the elite billionaires and family offices
are using them.
And that is simply down to lack of
team that's not educated on that because you
wouldn't expect the average entrepreneur to know these
things, right?
And it's not their job to really go
away and sift through research and read these
very dry white papers just to figure this
stuff out.
That's not really realistic.
So it comes down to how good is
your team?
And literally, as you scale your company from
zero to 1 million, 1 million to 5
million, 5 million to 10 million, what should
also be happening is your team should be
getting better at each stage.
But what we see all the time is,
often the CPA team and the tax strategy
team, if they even have one, hasn't been
improved the same way the operations team or
the marketing team has been because it's often
just an afterthought.
People think about it come April or come
the end of the year or September when
they actually have to cut a check.
Other than that, they're not really feeling the
pain too much.
So they just kind of let it slide.
It makes a lot of sense.
And I completely agree with that.
And it's the difference between having a strategist
that can help you in those areas and
having an accountant or a CPA that's not
gonna help you in any of those areas.
What we've made, we're making it, we're saving
money on taxes, asset protection.
How important is trust, estates, having attorneys and
professionals that can help us?
They're like, what kind of things should we
know about protecting our assets?
It's everything because what is the point of
creating and making so much money and having
so much assets?
Just for someone to come in and wipe
them all away.
So it's really valuable to one, structure yourself
correctly and defensively because I'm from England.
So I can see different sides of different
countries and it's the most litigious place I've
ever been in America.
You can sneeze on the street and get
sued for it.
So it's really, really important to have everything
created in a way that protects you.
A very simple and easy way to do
that is don't have anything in your own
name directly, have it all through LLCs, trusts,
limited partnerships.
And then that way you've got the degree
of separation that all your assets aren't in
one bunch and you'll have additional protection.
And then if you wanna be more advanced,
you can even then start factoring in things
like Wyoming LLCs versus California LLC because in
Wyoming they don't disclose who the owner of
the LLCs are.
So you get additional level of protection, Wyoming,
Nevada, Delaware, the main three for that.
And then if you wanna get even more
advanced, you could look at trust structures to
put assets into, you could look at foundations
as well.
There's a lot of different advanced planning techniques,
again, used by the elites and the billionaires
very frequently that doesn't get passed along to
the let's call it successful entrepreneur that could
utilize it, but doesn't have the team that
has the knowledge to be able to do
that.
AI, how important is it to your world?
I mean, what are you seeing right now?
And I love the financialfusion.io that actually
is the AI CFO, but what do you
see developing with AI in your world, in
the world of tax strategy and asset protection,
bookkeeping, all these things, like where do you
see this going?
Eventually that you could just throw your returns
into an AI and it will produce them
for you because it'll have knowledge on every
single loophole possible.
It'll have knowledge on these advanced structures, but
you'll also be limited to the knowledge base
that the programmer has put in there.
So you still have a human limitation on
it.
But I think for me and the companies
that I own, we like to be advanced
with AI because we see it as a
friend, not a foe.
And it's like, how can we get efficient
by using this to help us?
So we're working with it a lot, maybe
most on the backend and on the sales
and marketing side right now, but eventually on
the operation side, I think someone will come
up with a way to take QuickBooks and
then produce tax returns just by press of
one AI button.
And I think that will be awesome when
it's working right.
But again, for what we do, I would
say is very niche because we're doing advanced
strategies specifically for high net worth and that
isn't the masses, right?
So we're talking about maybe 1% of
the population that we target and help.
Whereas the 99% of the population, let's
just say an employee in a big company
could easily do that very quickly because they're
a W2 employee, you know the payroll, you
know there's not many deductions, do you own
a house or do you have a car
or whatever small movements that you have.
I think that's relatively easy for a W2.
I think for a business owner, it becomes
a little bit more complex because you have
different, you have so much you can do
as a business owner that you can't do
as a W2 employee.
It adds a level of complexity, but AI
is growing so fast and it's getting so
smart that I wouldn't rule it out.
I think we will get there at some
point.
You see, you're really well known in the
industry.
I mean, you are mentioned and talked about
in a lot of different publications.
You speak on some really, really big stages.
So let me ask you this, together CFO,
what do you do that's so unique compared
to anybody else that's out there?
So like I said, we are so hyper
-focused, we effectively created our own blue ocean.
So we focus on tax saving strategies versus
loopholes firstly.
So when you are working with a CPA
or a tax strategist, they're going to try
and maximize the amount of loopholes you can
use to reduce your tax, which is fine.
And then up to, I would say roughly
$200,000 in tax liability, that would work
really well.
Once you get above 200K in taxes, that's
really where you need someone like us because
we can then often reduce your tax bill
by 50% by using strategic giving structures.
Now what that means is really nonprofits.
So there's ways to use nonprofits to maximize
your deductions personally, but then also still use
that money to create a lasting legacy around
your mission and your purpose.
Lasting legacy, how important is that to that
group that you really focus on and help?
It's everything.
It's like, if you think of, it's changing
a lot, but generally speaking, it's everything because
we work so hard.
We're in this whole hamster wheel or rat
race as Robert Kiyosaki likes to say, of
just constantly going round and round the motions.
But why are we doing all that?
We're doing it to leave a better place
for our loved ones, for our kids and
our future grandkids.
And that's literally what we help and build.
So when we work with someone, we're not
looking at it as a one-off relationship.
We're looking at this as a multi-generational
relationship that we are gonna have with each
other.
And that ultimately means that you're gonna leave
your family so much better off, but not
just with wealth or control of the wealth,
but with mindset as well.
Because when we look at the publications and
the studies that have happened, wealth has totally
dissipated by the third generation.
So let's say that Ty, you make the
money and your son can maintain it to
a certain degree.
He doesn't have to mess it up, but
your grandson is gonna mess it up.
And the statistics heavily weight towards that.
So what we're trying to do now is
put that education in your mind, transfer it
to your son so that he doesn't squander
it and starts sure that 86% is
okay.
But then when it gets to the next
generation is that you teach your son how
to shift that mindset into his son, because
oftentimes you may not be around.
Geographically, you might not be local.
There's a million things that can happen, but
it's the multi-shift of mindset needs to
follow the shift of wealth, because if it
doesn't follow in line, the wealth is gonna
be gone very, very quickly.
So what was the point of you working
so hard, building up all of these businesses,
making a difference in your community, only for
your grandson to totally kind of piss it
all away?
Yeah.
Any other parting thoughts or ideas or just
tips for us as we kind of get
ready to wrap up?
Yeah, I would look into strategic giving is
the phrase, because ultimately, there's no reason that
every successful entrepreneur shouldn't be saving an additional
50% on taxes on top of all
the loopholes that you're already using, right?
So this isn't one or the other.
This is stacking tools, is that use all
the loopholes that are available, and so many
more are now with this new bill that's
just passed.
Then stack that on top of the strategic
giving, and then you can get down to
a very, very low tax rate.
And that's really what the billionaires do and
the elite families do, along with shifting that
mindset into going from being rich to being
wealthy.
And that whole transition is where your money
is making money while you sleep, and it's
then making enough money to kind of take
care of the full next generation.
Love it.
Casey, people watching this, they want to get
in touch.
They feel like they're a good fit for
you.
Where should they go?
What should they do to learn more?
Yeah, our website is togethercfo.com, or you
can type it into YouTube or any social
platform.
We do a free one-hour consultation.
So if you are just curious, you can
jump on a call with our team.
We'll work through your scenario and show you
how much you're overpaying on taxes every single
year, and then extrapolate that number out to
what your working life is.
And you can see how much you've been
overpaying in the past and then again into
the future.
And then it's really down to you because
ultimately you've got to hold yourself accountable to
creating your own legacy.
And that's as much as I can want
it for you or you want it for
them, Ty, they've got to want it themselves.
So if you don't want us to keep
overpaying the government that's $37 trillion in debt
and doing a lot of shit that a
lot of people don't really agree with, then
that's on you to take that action and
save that money and put it to better
use within your own community and the charities
that you support.
But more importantly, building a legacy and having
that mindset transfer with that legacy, that's on
you as the entrepreneur, as the leader of
your family.
And if you don't take that seriously, then
no problem, continue overpaying on taxes and we
wish you well either way.
Appreciate it, Casey.
Thanks for coming on with us today.
Yep, thanks for having me.
All right, so listen, you should go to
togethercfo.com.
A lot of things happening there.
First of all, if you go to the
bottom right of togethercfo.com, you'll find all
their social channels.
So you can easily like and subscribe and
then get like regular information about what's happening.
You can also learn about their services and
they have a lot of great information through
their blog.
They have a podcast there as well, even
have a roadmap.
And as Casey said, you get a free
hour consultation.
So you think it's a good fit, then
take the action right there while you're at
togethercfo.com to be able to do that,
to be able to meet with them, to
be able to talk more about legacy, you
know, to talk about asset protection and paying
way less money than what you're more than
likely paying now.
So make sure you check it all out
at togethercfo.com.
Thanks for tuning in.
Take care.
Have a great day.
You've been listening to the Business Credit and
Financing Show with your host, Ty Crandall.
Watch for our next episode to get even
more insight on financing and growing your business.
And don't forget to check us out online
at creditsuite.com for even more business growth
strategies.